By Darren Allison

Cult director Bert I. Gordon was at the helm for this terrifying story of supernatural passion. Set on an island in a tight-knit community, Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) is preparing to marry the woman he loves. All is well until Tom's old girlfriend, Vi (Juli Reding), confronts him at the top of the island's lighthouse, claiming he can only be hers! A freak accident throws the scorned woman to her death. At first relieved, Tom's tune changes when her vengeful spirit begins to follow him wherever he goes. He's soon tormented, body and soul, by an unforgiving she-ghost! What lengths will Tom go to in order to protect his secret? Will the vengeful Vi finally reveal herself to the others at hand?

And the scene is pretty much set for a quite wonderful slice of low- budgeted shenanigans. Bert I. Gordon was of course a master of his art in this particular genre of filmmaking. Starting off in advertising using his trusted 16mm camera, Gordon wasn’t one to sit back and wait for success, instead he chased his dream, and as a result accomplished a pretty good career in movies. He’s best known for writing and directing science fiction and horror B-movie classics such as King Dinosaur (1955), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), Village of the Giants (1965), and later the Joan Collins fun fest Empire of the Ants (1977).

In the late 50’s, ghostly supernatural films were building in popularity, movies such as Roger Corman’s The Undead (1957), Edward L. Cahn’s Voodoo Women (1957) and William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill (1959) signified a change in trends. Gordon was always astute and possessed a good sense of understanding when it came to successful box office. And so, following the current trend, Gordon embarked upon his own ghost story in the form of Tormented (1960). Starring Richard Calson, the actor that had already established himself in genre classics such as The Maze (1953), It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Carlson engages in the fun like a seasoned pro. He’s supported by former child star, Lugene Sanders, the marvellously formed Juli Reding, child actress Susan Gordon (daughter of the director) and a young, hip Joe Turkel – who appeared in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), and later in The Shining (1980). Aside from being hugely enjoyable throughout, this Film Masters 4K restoration looks absolutely perfect. Stark, sharp and beautiful on the eye, the amount of work afforded to this rather cheaply made movie really elevates it to a much higher level. Blacks are nice and deep, and the images contains just the right amount of grain without over-cooking it. There seems to be a couple of very minor jump cuts along the way – best rest assured, blink at the right time and they’re pretty much undetectable. The print shows no wear, scratches and virtually free of dust and dirt spots. The audio clarity is also clean and bright in both DTS and the Dolby digital track. It’s very obvious that the efforts in restoring this film have really paid off and the results are hard to fault.

But this Film Masters release offers so much more – you really have to praise the package as a whole, there’s really no skimping or cutting corners in terms of its content. Firstly, and as we have come to expect with the Film Masters releases, there’s an interesting and insightful commentary track by historian, writer and filmmaker Gary Rhodes along with contributions by Larry Blamire. The track is a detailed and informative education. There is an all too brief featurette, Bert I. Gordon: The Amazing Colossal Filmmaker – which features an archival interview with the charismatic director who provides us with a general overview of how he began in the business of movies. Then there is Bigger Than Life: Bert I. Gordon in the 1950’s and 1960’s, a Ballyhoo Motion Pictures documentary featuring film historian C. Courtney Joyner. This documentary provides a great insight into the director’s career, with plenty of clips, stories, trailers, poster art and rare photos illustrated throughout – a real joy. For the more serious scholars, there is an enjoyable visual essay by The Flying Maciste Brothers (Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr). The Spirit is Willing: CineMagic and Social Discord in Bert I. Gordon’s Tormented, offers a much deeper analysis of the movie and its implications – which is fine should you want to delve into that particular territory. At the other end of the spectrum, Film Masters also offers the whole film again, this time in the form of the Mystery Science Theater 2000 version (1992). There’s no disputing the fact that these presentations are purely produced as a put down or a ‘roasting’ for light-hearted entertainment – which is fine if this is your thing. At least Film Masters has again had the foresight to cover all areas, and provide something for everyone – dependent upon your particular taste. One thing I did find particularly interesting during this version is that it contains the original opening Allied Artists title – something that was missing from the restored main feature version. There are two Tormented trailers included, an original ‘raw’35mm version and a 2024 re-cut version using restored element. Again, a nice way of satisfy all audiences with both the old and the new, and I’m fully behind that way of thinking. Also included on the disc is an ‘unreleased TV pilot’ of Famous Ghost Stories featuring Vincent Price. I was initially quite excited about viewing this, as it tied in nicely with Tormented because the episode again starred Richard Calson and Susan Gordon. So, I was a little disappointed to discover that this was not the full episode and instead was simply just the opening and closing intro and outro clips featuring Vincent Price. The entire show would hade been a real treat if included. But overall, this minor quibble takes nothing away from what is a very generous collection of extras.

On top of that, Film Masters have also included a nicely produced 22-page illustrated booklet with essays by respected film historian Tom Weaver and novelist/filmmaker John Wooley. The film sleeve and booklet cover make good use of the original film artwork.

Film Masters have produced an excellent package with their presentation of Tormented. The company seems to grow from strength to strength with each of their new releases. It’s a rare feeling to feel genuinely excited when considering what might be waiting around the next corner. I can only hope it’s more of the same.

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(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro), 

 

By Lee Pfeiffer

Actress Barbara Rush has passed away at age 97. Rush had a long career in film, theater and television. She worked under contract in the 1950s for both Paramount and Universal. Her first prominent role was in the 3-D sci-fi cult classic "It Came from Outer Space". She also had a major role in director Martin Ritt's 1957 drama "No Down Payment", a riveting critique of hypocrisy in post-WWII suburban society. She co-starred with Paul Newman in the acclaimed 1959 drama "The Young Philadelphians" and would reunite with him, playing an unsympathetic role, in Martin Ritt's 1967 classic western "Hombre". She was the female lead in the 1958 WII drama "The Young Lions" starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. She would also co-star with Frank Sinatra in the comedies "Come Blow Your Horn" and "Robin and the Seven Hoods". In later years, she found success on television in recurring roles in the prime time soap operas "Flamingo Road" and "7th Heaven". She also toured in the one-woman stage production of "A Woman of Independent Means", earning kudos from critics. She also gained pop culture status in the 1960s by playing the villainess Nora Clavicle in the "Batman" TV series.  Rush was married three times, including to actor Jeffrey Hunter. She is survived by her son and daughter. For more click here.

By Todd Garbarini

As a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film version of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, which I saw at the age of fifteen and was completely terrified by, it is a daunting task indeed to watch any other (excuse the pun) incarnation of this fantastic story as seen through the eyes of another filmmaker without being drawn back to Mr. Kubrick’s much-maligned interpretation that was initially criticized but subsequently revered by some as the greatest horror film ever made. The Shining is a film that has affected me profoundly in ways that only a handful of other films ever have. I felt a compelling obsession with it that was nearly impossible to verbalize. It was my second Jack Nicholson film, and it made me a lifelong fan of his; it introduced me to pre-existing music and its use in a contemporary film; and perhaps, most significantly, it was my introduction into the world of Mr. King’s writings. Having read the novel a mere two months after seeing the film for the first time, I was completely surprised to see how much Mr. Kubrick altered the source material. Much has been written about his decision to jettison nearly all but the bare bones plot of a former alcoholic schoolteacher-turned-writer taking on the position of the caretaker of a Colorado hotel during the winter months with his wife and young son. The film’s most vocal critic is perhaps the author himself who, while acknowledging Mr. Kubrick’s genius as a film director, has never held back his disdain for The Shining for which he wrote a screenplay that was subsequently rejected by the director in favor of his own collaboration with novelist Diane Johnson. Mr. King’s disappointment in the film made him vow to make his own version one day, and The Shining, as presented in a three-part mini-series on ABC in April and May of 1997 and directed by Mick Garris, is the result.

Jack Torrance (Stephen Webber) is a recovering alcoholic who has been fired for beating up a student following the latter cutting the former’s car tire after an argument. To say that Jack is skating on thin ice would be an understatement, even after many AA meetings. His marriage is on the rocks with his wife Wendy (Rebecca De Mornay) following him breaking their son Danny’s (Courtland Mead) arm after a drinking bout. All he really wants is quiet time to write his play. Taking care of the remotely located Overlook Hotel during the brutal winter months is his opportunity to do just that. Stuart Ullman (Elliott Gould), the stern and surly hotel manager, has been apprised of Jack’s past and is not too pleased to have to offer him the job as a favor. Dick Halloran (Melvin Van Peebles), the Overlook’s head chef, gives Wendy and Danny a tour of the kitchen, and discovers that he shares the gift of the Shining with Danny, a force described as a “psychic ability to see visions of the past, present, and future, as well as communicate telepathically with others who possess similar abilities.”

Once on their own following the hotel’s seasonal shutdown, the Torrances spend time acclimating themselves to the quiet solitude of the hotel and their quarters. It does not take long for them, however, to realize that strange things are going on in their midst. Unfortunately for Jack, there are evil forces at work that threaten to unravel the very fabric of his family unit as well as his sanity. Evidence of past horrors that occurred within the hotel begin to emerge in the form of an undead and decaying woman in room 217, an anthropomorphized topiary, a hornet’s nest of not-quite-dead wasps, and a scrapbook of news articles providing evidence of the hotel’s sordid history. Wendy’s attempts to seduce her husband into a night of lovemaking while dressed seductively are spurned multiple times by a distracted Jack who is thinking of incorporating elements of the Overlook into his play while also dealing with the demons of his alcoholism. In the midst of this is their seven-year-old son Danny who plays referee between them while trying to make sense of all that conspires to destroy his family. It isn’t long before the ghosts of the Overlook’s past begin to show up in their evening gowns and Jack loses his grip on reality, attempting to destroy his family while Danny telepathically summons Mr. Halloran who comes to their rescue.

At four-and-a-half hours, this version of The Shining is highly faithful to Mr. King’s story and, except for the genuinely frightening woman in Room 217, there is little in the way of tension and scares. Steven Webber does an admirable job of portraying a man modeled after Mr. King himself who is trying to go sober and keep his temper in check. Rebecca De Mornay, who was just twenty years-old when she was cast in late 1980 as an understudy in Francis Ford Coppola’s extravagant One from the Heart (1982) and found overnight fame as Lana in Paul Brickman’s highly successful Risky Business (1983) opposite Tom Cruise, plays Wendy much closer to Mr. King’s original vision in his novel. She is a strong-willed mother fiercely protective of her young charge against the adversity unfurling within the family unit. The film is ultimately undone by the not-ready-for-prime-time computer-generated imagery effects (CGI) that come off as silly and unfinished.

It is impossible to avoid comparisons between this and Mr. Kubrick’s film, the scariest film I have ever seen and which has only become more revered, iconoclastic, studied and analyzed in the years since its original release, so I will tread lightly. There are many areas that make Mr. Kubrick’s version, which was faked on backlots and massive sets at Elstree Studios in England, a standout. In his film, the Overlook, as represented by Oregon’s Timberline Lodge, became a character of its own. The Torrance’s, as played by Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall, and Danny Lloyd, felt as though they were really and truly snowbound and had absolutely no recourse from the outside world. The same cannot be said for the hotel in this version which, ironically, is the very hotel that inspired the story: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.

The one area that neither film version touches upon that is a big fear of Danny’s in the novel of the notion his parents will divorce, which is further italicized to emphasize innate fear. The other words that do make their way into both films are, of course, REDRUM and MURDER.

The miniseries is now available on a double disc Blu-ray from Scream! Factory. Blu-ray Disc One contains Parts One and Two, and Blu-ray Disc Two contains Part Three and additional scenes that were cut from the film. The film begins with a disclaimer: “To provide the most complete version of the film, a few scenes have been upgraded from the best available, non-Interpositive source.” This verbiage will go over the heads of the uninitiated, and as such it merely states that the folks at Scream! Factory did their best to locate the best available film elements for this high-resolution transfer. I must admit that even to my trained eyes, I had difficulty differentiating between the best film elements and whatever less-than-stellar footage was used in the transfer, which is excellent. There is a highly enjoyable audio commentary by author Stephen King, director Mick Garris, actor Steven Weber, actress Cynthia Garris, visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis, makeup supervisor Bill Curso, and cinematographer Shelly Johnson that is worth the price of the movie alone. They give great insight into how the film came to be, especially author King who discusses staying at the Stanley Hotel in October 1974 with his wife. He explains that, had the concierge not asked the Kings if they could pay cash to stay overnight, the book would never have come to be. Talk about a fortuitous exchange. He also talks about his own experiences and struggles with alcoholism and his relation to Jack Torrance.

Director Garris discusses how his version is not intended as a remake of Stanley Kubrick’s film (which would have been a fool’s errand) but instead a filmed representation of author Mr. King’s novel, and discusses the challenges of making a film of a beloved book and working with a child actor, made easier thanks to Dawn Jeffory-Nelson, an acting teacher. She appears as an unwitting victim in David Schmoeller’s ultra-creepy Tourist Trap (1979), and worked extensively with young actor Mead. Steven Weber provides his insights into working with Ms. De Mornay and how the most difficult scene they did consisted of nine pages of dialog and had to be in the can in one day.

The film was originally released on DVD in 2003 and the commentary and additional eleven scenes that run a total of sixteen-minutes appear to have been ported over from that release. The image quality of this new double-disc Blu-ray, however, easily bests that DVD so if you are a fan of this film this is a worthy upgrade. 

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By Hank Reineke

In the aftermath of the surprise runaway success of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde – the Warner Bros. crime-drama garnering a fifty-million dollar profit on a two million dollar investment by the close of 1967 – rival studio United Artists wisely chose to give the director free-reign in choosing his follow-up project. Ultimately, Penn chose to give folksinger Arlo Guthrie’s already fabled talking-blues, the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a big screen treatment. The timing seemed right.

Though Penn’s new film would be far removed in temperament and style (and certainly less violent) than his previous effort it was, in many respects, a prudent choice. Such anti-establishment films as Easy Rider, Medium Cool and Wild in the Streets had proven critical and box successes in the years 1968-1969. Such free-spirited films brought in young, enthusiastic audiences, the movie industry’s most important target demographic. But Penn was also aware that this recent trend from literary to reality-based story-telling on film signaled an important shift. He told the Los Angeles Times that filmmakers were in increasingly “moving more and more into direct relationship with the populace.”

Guthrie’s meandering, sardonic epic – one seamlessly weaving an innocent’s view of government inanities, the overreach of small-town policing, of “American Blind Justice,” the travails of Selective Service draft board induction and of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam – was blistering clear-eyed and acutely withering in its impossibly gentle, but mocking satire.

In March of 1968 Guthrie’s manager, Harold Leventhal, was in process of inking the film deal with Penn and UA. That very same month Guthrie’s debut album, also titled Alice’s Restaurant, had climbed to the no. 29 spot on the Billboard Top 100 album chart. Guthrie’s album had, improbably, been charting steadily upward since it’s entry in the no. 180 position in November of 1967. This was a particularly impressive feat for an album whose signature song was eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long. The song’s maddeningly memorable and cyclical melody was supported only by the most basic backing instrumentation: Guthrie’s acoustic guitar, a sparse standup bass and an impish typewriter-cadence drum beat.

By all measures, the commercial success of the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” was implausible. Guthrie’s studio recording was understandably ignored on ever-important AM radio – partly as no broadcast-length version was made available to them.* But long before Guthrie would formally record his shaggy-dog studio version of the “Massacree” in a professional setting in June of 1967, the song was already well-known by those listening to such free-form underground radio stations as New York City’s WBAI and Philadelphia’s WMMR. The song had been pirated – in several differing “live” versions and iterations – from reel-to-reel recordings sourced from Guthrie’s appearances during late-night on-air radio show appearances.

Thanks to the underground circulation of those recordings, the “Massacree” was quickly adopted as an anthem of the counter-culture, and by writers, artists and anti-war activists. In time, Guthrie’s talking-blues filtered up from underground radio to a more mainstream audience. The song particularly appealed to open-minded listeners, draft-age youngsters, journalists and social-political pundits. They immediately recognized that many of Guthrie’s satirical observations were acute and perhaps too-closely reflected a society going amiss.

Upon its release in September of 1969, Penn’s cinematic version of Alice’s Restaurant wasn’t the box-office blockbuster that Bonnie and Clyde was – but no one expected it to be. It was a more personal low-budget film, but one that still did great business. The film would bring in some 6.3 million dollars and sell just shy of 4.5 million paid admissions in the domestic North American theatrical market alone. The film’s cast of professional actors were supplemented by the townspeople of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and by Guthrie’s own friends working as extras on the edges. Penn estimated that ninety percent of the extras in the film were of the community.

Penn’s cinema vérité style dabbles are evident throughout. The film’s primary strength is in its glimpses of the otherwise private involvements of the community congregating at Alice and Ray Brock’s Old Trinity Church in Great Barrington. The film, on occasion, has a documentary feel to it. This was Penn’s choice, his personal way of doing things. “I work very fluidly, with almost no preconceptions,” he told a visiting journalist on set. Penn also shared that he did not work from storyboards nor even visit locations prior to shooting. “I just sort of set up how life would be if you were in that situation.” It could be argued that the biggest issue with this approach was Penn’s viewing the unfolding drama through a lens of presumption: the film’s reality and fictional episodes are uneasily juxtaposed throughout.

Though Arlo Guthrie holds mixed feelings about the resulting film (“I only made one film,” he’d tell concert audiences over ensuing decades, “…’cause I saw it.”), his memories of working with the creative team involved remain warm. He thought Penn’s effort was an “honest” one, his efforts allowing outsiders a small peek into the “scene” built around the Old Trinity Church. But Guthrie was also aware that the scene at Trinity circa 1965 – the time of Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Day crime of littering - was a fluid one. Penn’s film could only provide a brief snapshot of a time already passed since, in coming days, Guthrie reckoned, “there’ll be a whole new scene up there, as everywhere else.”

Guthrie was only twenty-years old when the film went into production - and had not acted professionally in any capacity. Many on set in the summer of ’68 found the folksinger private and distant, “elusive” in answers to both crew members and visiting journalists. According to a long essay in Playboy magazine, even old friends at the Trinity suggested that Guthrie was “thought by some” to have already “left the family.” Certainly, his visits to the Trinity were less frequent due to his new touring and recording commitments. On the brighter side, manager Leventhal was impressed by his young client’s professionalism. He told the New York Times, “Here’s a kid who likes to sleep until 3:30 in the afternoon who had to make a 7:30 A.M. movie call every day for three months of shooting, and he did.”

In November of 2023 the University of Oklahoma Press published a biography of the folk-rock singer in which he and I collaborated: Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie. Cinema Retro editor Lee Pfeiffer asked if Arlo might be willing to share some memories of his experience working on the Alice’s Restaurant film with Arthur Penn. Though it’s been nearly fifty-six years since production on the film began in June of 1968, Guthrie graciously offered to share some of his remembrances of that time with readers:

Q: My first question to you is a pretty general one. As a kid growing up in the 1950s and early ‘60s, how would describe your interest in cinema? Were you a big fan of the movies? If so, what sort of films were you attracted to?

Arlo: I wasn’t so much into films as I was more into TV shows. Obviously, films that came out when I was a little older - the mid to late 60s - had a bigger impact on me. “Bonnie & Clyde” for example.

Q: What were you favorite TV programs? I understand you were a big fan of Star Trek – and just missed out on being cast on an episode. What was the story behind that?

Arlo: I got a phone call from Leonard Nimoy one time, out of the blue! I couldn’t believe I was chatting with Spock! But I have no memory of being asked to participate with Star Trek. **

Q: I have a news-cutting from Variety reporting from your overseas promotional tour for the Alice’s Restaurant film. In this case, from Paris in May of 1970. At the press conference you suggested that following the release of the Alice film in the U.S. you were suddenly “offered ten films about hippies but would prefer to do a western.”

Arlo: We didn’t do any promotional tours in the US, as they were un-needed. But when I was asked to do a promotional tour of Europe I jumped on it. I wanted to go to Europe. I had offers for more acting roles, but mostly on TV shows that were popular at the time. Hawaii 5-O, etc. But in those days everyone who had long hair was cast as a drug-addled thief or a murderer. So I kindly declined those invitations.

Q: In any case, you did accept a number of television acting assignments in the 1990s. Our readers might recall your reoccurring role as the graying-hippie Alan Moon on ABC’s Byrds of Paradise. My personal favorite of your television work was your role as a 1960s folk-singing, Weather Underground-style fugitive on the Lorenzo Lamas series Renegade. How did those opportunities come about?

Arlo: I don’t remember exactly. But my booking agents, David Helfant and later Paul Smith, made those roles possible. Those offers came through their offices. I wasn’t looking for acting jobs.

Q: Since you are a musician first and foremost, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the soundtrack accompanying the Alice’s Restaurant film. Prior to his work on Alice’s Restaurant, Gary Sherman was the arranger and conductor for John Barry’s soundtrack for Midnight Cowboy. On Alice’s Restaurant, Sherman is billed as “Musical Supervisor,” credited as composer and arranger of the film’s “Additional music.” What exactly was Sherman’s contribution? Did you work closely with him on the arrangements?

Arlo: Gary Sherman wasn’t very familiar with the kinds of instruments I wanted to be used as a sound track. But he was very knowledgeable with regards as to how music supported a film. We worked very closely together trying to integrate our different skills.

Q: Fred Hellerman, the producer of your first two albums for Reprise - is credited on screen as the film’s “Musical Director.” What exactly was Hellerman’s role in creating the soundtrack?

Arlo: Fred had some knowledge of the kinds of musical instrumentation - and songs - I was into at the time. He may have worked with Gary more than I was aware of, but I think the credit was more of an honorific title.

Q: In Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie, you recall your enthusiasm of having partnered with John Pilla on the soundtrack sessions. Pilla, of course, would soon become the “Spiritual Advisor,” producer and/or co-producer of all of your albums from Running Down the Road (1969) through Someday (1986). What was it about this earlier collaboration that made you so trusting of John as someone musically simpatico?

Arlo: John and I loved the traditional songs and instruments that became the underlying sound track for the film. For example, we made extensive use of the autoharp which had not been used before (or since) in Hollywood movies.

Q: Any particular fond (or perhaps not-so-fond) memories of working on the Alice’s Restaurant soundtrack sessions with Pilla and Sherman?

Arlo: Arguing about music became the hallmark of my collaboration with John Pilla. He was very traditional in his assessment of what was good while I was a little too experimental. Gary was good at determining what worked. So between us we arrived at a consensus.

Q: The Old Trinity Church is central to Arthur Penn’s imagining of the Alice’s Restaurant film. What role did Ray and Alice’s deconsecrated church-home play in your life?

Arlo: I always felt very much at home at the church. Long before we began working on the film, I had stayed there often. It wasn’t very long after Thanksgiving 1965 that I was to spend more time traveling around and less time at the church. Using the church as a central location was fabulous. 

By Lee Pfeiffer

The first African-American to direct a major film for a Hollywood studio was Gordon Parks, whose feature film debut "The Learning Tree" was released in 1969. Parks may have shattered the glass ceiling but there wasn't a tidal wave of opportunities that immediately opened for other minority filmmakers, in part because there were so few with any formal training in the art. One beneficiary of Parks' achievement was Ossie Davis, who was internationally respected as a well-rounded artist. He was a triple threat: actor, director and writer but his directing skills had been relegated to the stage. In 1970 Davis co-wrote the screenplay for and directed "Cotton Comes to Harlem", a major production for United Artists. The film was based on a novel by African-American writer Chester Himes and proved to be pivotal in ushering in what became known as the Blaxploitation genre. In reality, it's debatable whether "Cotton" really is a Blaxploitation film. While most of the major roles are played by Black actors, the term "Blaxploitation" has largely come to symbolize the kinds of goofy, low-budget films that are fondly remembered as guilty pleasures. However, "Cotton"- like Gordon Parks's "Shaft" films which would follow-  boasts first class production values and top talent both in front of and behind the cameras. Regardless, the movie had sufficient impact at the boxoffice to inspire a seemingly endless barrage of Black-oriented American films that were all the rage from the early to mid-1970s. The Blaxploitation fever burned briefly but shone brightly and opened many doors for minority actors. 

The film was shot when New York City was in the midst of a precipitous decline in terms of quality of life. Crime was soaring, the infrastructure was aging and the city itself would be on the verge of bankruptcy  a few years later. Harlem was among the hardest hit areas in terms of the economy. The once dazzling jewel of a neighborhood had boasted popular nightclubs, theaters and restaurants that attracted affluent white patrons. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, that had changed radically. Street crimes, organized gangs and the drug culture spread rapidly, making Harlem a very dangerous place to be. It was foreboding enough if you were Black but it was considered a "Forbidden Zone" for most white people, who spent their money elsewhere, thus exacerbating the decline of the neighborhoods. "Cotton Comes to Harlem" serves as an interesting time capsule of what life was like in the area, having been shot during this period of decline. Director Davis was considered royalty in Harlem. Despite his success in show business, he and his equally acclaimed wife, actress Ruby Dee, never "went Hollywood". They stayed in the community and worked hard to improve the environment. Thus, Davis was perfectly suited to capture the action on the streets in a manner that played authentically on screen. Similarly, he had a real feel for the local population. As with any major urban area, Harlem undoubtedly had its share of amusing eccentrics and Davis populates the movie with plenty of such characters. 

The film opens with a major rally held by Rev. Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart), a local guy who made good and who is idolized by the population of Harlem. O'Malley is a smooth-talking, charismatic con man in the mode of the notorious Reverend Ike who uses religion as a facade to rip off gullible followers. This time, O'Malley has launched a "Back to Africa" campaign for which he is soliciting funds. It's based on the absurd premise that he will be able to finance disgruntled Harlem residents back to the land of their ancestry. The hard-working, semi-impoverished locals end up donating $87,000 in cash but the rally is interrupted by a daring daytime robbery. An armored car filled with masked men armed with heavy weaponry descend upon the goings-on, loot the cashbox and take off. They are pursued by two street-wise local cops, "Grave Digger" Jones (Godfrey Cambridge)  and his partner "Coffin" Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques). Davis provides an exciting and colorful car chase through the streets of Harlem, as the cops fail to snag the robbers. They also discover that O'Malley has gone missing, leading them to believe that he orchestrated the heist himself so he could keep the proceeds raised at the rally. The plot becomes rather convoluted, as Jones and Johnson learn that a bale of cotton has arrived in Harlem and its somehow connected to the crime. They assume that the stolen money has been stashed in said cotton bale, which quickly changes hands among the most unsavory characters in the community. Getting in on the action is a white mob boss and his goons who are also trying to recover the cotton bale. The cotton itself is resented in Harlem because of its historical links to slavery and by the end of the film, the bale ends up in a stage show at the famed Apollo Theater where it is used as a prop in a bizarre production that involves historical observations about the black experience intermingled with a striptease act! Through it all, Jones and Johnson doggedly chase any number of people through the streets, engage in shoot-outs and car chases and come in and out of contact with Rev. O'Malley, who professes his innocence about being involved in the robbery. The Rev isn't so innocent when it comes to other unscrupulous activities such as chronically cheating on his long-suffering girlfriend Iris (Judy Pace) and manipulating other women in a variety of ways. 

The most delightful aspect of the film is the showcasing of some very diverse talents of the era. Godfrey Cambridge (who made it big as a stand-up comic) and Raymond St. Jacques enjoy considerable on-screen chemistry even if the script deprives them of the kind of witty dialogue that would have enhanced their scenes together. They make wisecracks all the time and harass some less-than-savory characters but the screenplay never truly capitalizes on Cambridge's comedic potential. The film's most impressive performance comes from Calvin Lockhart, who perfectly captures the traits of phony, larger-than-life "preachers". He's all flashy good looks, gaudy outfits and narcissistic behavior. Lockhart seems to be having a ball playing this character and the screen ignites every time he appears. There are some nice turns by other good character actors including pre-"Sanford and Son" Redd Foxx, who figures in the film's amusing "sting-in-the-tail" ending, John Anderson as the exasperated white captain of a Harlem police station that is constantly on the verge of being besieged by local activists, Lou Jacobi as a junk dealer, Cleavon Little as a local eccentric, J.D. Canon as a mob hit man and Dick Sabol as a goofy white cop who suffers humiliation from virtually everyone (which is sort of a payback for the decades in which Black characters were routinely used as comic foils).  The film has a surprisingly contemporary feel about it, save for a few garish fashions from the 1970s. It's also rather nostalgic to hear genuine soul music peppered through the soundtrack in this pre-rap era. Happily, life has not imitated art in the years since the film was released. Harlem has been undergoing the kind of Renaissance that would have seemed unimaginable in 1970. The old glory has come back strong and the center of the neighorhood, 125th Street, is vibrant and thriving once again. These societal perspectives make watching "Cotton Comes to Harlem" enjoyable on an entirely different level than simply an amusing crime comedy.

The film is currently streaming on Screenpix, available for subscription through Amazon Prime.

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Here's some interesting insight into the filming of a scene from The Beatles' 1965 movie "Help!" in which they appeared with legendary British comedic actor Frankie Howerd. Actress Wendy Richard, who was also in the scene, explains how the experience went from being a joy to heartbreaking.

“WILFRID THE FOX”

By Raymond Benson

Director Billy Wilder was on an incredible streak during the decade of the 1950s. Some of his most notable works were made between 1950-1959, and his 1957 courtroom drama, Witness for the Prosecution, is one of the high points.

Based on the 1953 stage play by Agatha Christie (which, in turn, was based on one of her short stories), Wilder’s film version actually improves a bit on the already engaging theatrical work. (By the way, the stage play is currently enjoying a long and successful run in London at County Hall’s old courthouse and actual courtroom, and this reviewer can attest that it is a magnificent production, definitely worth seeing in those authentic environs.)

Tyrone Power received top billing as Leonard Vole, the accused (Power, an American, plays the role as one as well). The fabulous Marlene Dietrich is Christine, the “witness for the prosecution.” But make no mistake—this movie belongs to Charles Laughton, who received third billing. Laughton plays barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts, who is the senior counsel for Vole. As his private nurse, Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) declares during the trial when Wilfrid makes a slam-dunk move, “Wilfrid the Fox! That’s what they call him, and that’s what he is!”

The nurse character is something that screenwriters Wilder and Harry Kurnitz (adapted for the screen by Larry Marcus) added to the story, as well as turning Sir Wilfrid’s character to be more of a protagonist. Seeing that Laughton and Lanchester were married in real life, their chemistry and constant bantering together is priceless, providing the film with comedic elements that the play never had.

Vole is accused of murdering a wealthy widow that he befriended. She had become besotted with him and made him a beneficiary of her will. Vole is married to German immigrant Christine, who at first provides an alibi for Vole. Sir Wilfrid, despite recovering from a heart attack and is not in the best shape for a highly publicized trial, takes the case of defending Vole. It’s a shock to Wilfrid when the prosecution calls Christine to testify against her husband—because she is actually married to someone else back in East Germany, dodging the law that a wife can’t testify against a spouse. To reveal any more of the twists and turns—and especially the surprise ending—would spoil the fun. (In fact, a voiceover announces at the end of the movie that the “management of this theater” suggests that the secret of the ending not be revealed to friends!)

All three of the leads are particularly outstanding, and they are strongly supported by not only Lanchester, but also John Williams, Henry Daniell, Torin Thatcher, Una O’Connor, and Ian Wolfe. Wilder’s direction is a lesson in pacing, the rise and fall of tempo and suspense, and his guidance of the actors. Dietrich, in fact, would not agree to do the picture unless Wilder was hired as director.

The film was popular in 1957. It received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Laughton), Best Supporting Actress (Lanchester), Best Editing, and Best Sound. Curiously, the screenplay wasn’t nominated. Lanchester did receive the Golden Globe award for her stellar performance.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics has issued a Special Edition Blu-ray that replaces their earlier 2014 release. The contents are exactly the same except an audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride (author of Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge) has been added. Previous supplements included are a short piece of Wilder discussing the film with director Volker Schlöndorff, and the theatrical trailer. The restoration itself looks marvelous in glorious black and white.

Witness for the Prosecution is a must-have for fans of Billy Wilder, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Agatha Christie, and courtroom thrillers. Great fun all around.

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By Todd Garbarini

Woody Allen’s Chekhovian-titled Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) is reportedly only twenty percent of what he actually wrote for the film on his Olympia SM-3 typewriter, which he has owned for decades and written all of his films on. Given how extraordinary this outing is, one can only wonder what the remaining projected film would have looked like. Conceived of as his answer to Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) which ran three hours theatrically and nearly five-and-a-half hours on Swedish television as a mini-series, Hannah is considered by many to be Mr. Allen’s finest hour, although I am in the minority as I view Another Woman (1988) as his best film, with Hannah coming in at a very close second.

Hannah is a sumptuous film, the first Woody Allen outing to be photographed by the late great cinematographer Carlo Di Palma who would go on to work on eleven more films with Mr. Allen. He captures the visual splendor of New York and all its beauty and ugliness over a two-year period between Thanksgiving holidays. It is also a family affair. Hannah is a housewife/actress and is played wonderfully by Mia Farrow. Her parents are her real-life mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, and actor Lloyd Nolan, who used to be actors as well. Hannah is married to businessman Elliot (Michael Caine) and they have a good number of children who are all played by Ms. Farrow’s and Mr. Allen’s real-life adopted offspring. Hannah’s sisters consist of the emotionally adrift Lee (Barbara Hershey), who is in a relationship of sorts with the hermetic painter Frederick (Max von Sydow) and the actress-wanna-be Holly (Dianne Weist) who always appears to be on the verge of a breakdown between bouts of ingesting nicotine and alcohol following auditions. As with previous Allen outings, especially his 1979 film Manhattan, Hannah revolves around myriad romantic entanglements, but it is not all fun and games. Elliot is intensely attracted to Lee who is a lost soul and is pulled to him thanks to Frederick’s older age and insouciance. Holly and her actress friend April (Carrie Fisher), with whom she runs a catering company to make ends meet, battle it out for the affections of David (Sam Waterston), an erudite architect who uses opera and fine wine as his tools of choice to woo them both.

As if this were not enough, Mickey (Woody Allen) is a television producer/hypochondriac and is Hannah’s ex. He has a near-death experience when he becomes convinced that he has a brain tumor and ponders the meaning of life, questioning his parents and his co-worker played by Julie Kavner while also looking to religion for answers, but stopping short after speaking with a Hare Krishna, confirming the absurdity of shaving his head, wearing long robes, and dancing around at airports. Though most of the action is that of a serious theme (Crimes and Misdemeanors would take this to even further horrific heights in 1989), the film also balances it with outright hilarity. The ending is perhaps one of the most hopeful and positive in all the Woody Allen filmography.

Hannah boasts two celebrated cinematic moments. The first occurs in a restaurant among the sisters as Lee tries desperately to hide her affair from Hannah who simultaneously attempts to talk Holly off the ledge when she announces her decision to take off a year to try and find herself. The camera circles the triumvirate in a 360-degree maneuver that illustrates Lee’s increasing discomfort with the situation at hand as the tension mounts.

The second comes near the film’s end when Mickey notices Holly perusing titles in Tower Records and engages in a humorous and heartfelt exchange with her. The scene is done in one take and is a highlight.

Among Woody Allen fans the question has usually been which do they prefer: Annie Hall (1977) or Manhattan (1979). They can add Hannah to the mix. This was Ms. Farrow’s fifth outing with Mr. Allen and she does a wonderful balancing act of being the confused wife of an adulterer and the sister of a neurotic.

After being lensed in the fall of 1984, Hannah opened nationwide on Friday, February 7, 1986 to near universal acclaim, leaving Mr. Allen wondering how had he failed, the idea being that if you make something that just about everyone loves, you must be making something that fails to be interesting or challenging!

Hannah won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay for Woody Allen, Best Supporting Actor for Michael Caine (who will never live down his unavailability to accept the Oscar in person as he was away filming Jaws IV), and Best Supporting Actress for Dianne Weist. It is one of his best-scored films, boasting a soundtrack of both upbeat and melancholic tunes.

The film is available in a Region B Blu-ray from Fabulous Films, the fine company that released Manhattan. The source material is terrific and the film’s warmth shines through.

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Female directors in the film industry are still very much a minority. However, in decades past, the situation was even more frustrating when studios imposed an unofficial "glass cieling" that precluded most women from advancing their careers unless it was in front of the cameras. There were some brave exceptions, however. One of those women to break barriers was actress Ida Lupino, who not only had a successful career as a leading lady but who also helped pioneer public acceptance of female directors. In this 2021 clip from Turner Classic Movies, she is paid tribute to by another acclaimed actress/director, Oscar winner Lee Grant.

By Todd Garbarini

After the dramatic, Ingmar Bergman-esque directorial turn he took with Interiors (1978) which came unexpectedly on the heels of his masterfully hilarious Oscar-winning film Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen turned back to contemporary New York for a daring film that was shot in black-and-white and scored with the music of George Gershwin. Proclaimed as the only truly great American film of the 1970s by film critic Andrew Sarris, Manhattan is a joy to behold from start to finish and is quite simply one of the most romantic-looking films of all-time (though its subject matter in the era of the MeToo movement will indubitably raise more than a few eyebrows with the allegations of sexual molestation launched against Mr. Allen). Gordon Willis’s beautiful photography married with the sumptuous Gershwin music makes me wish that filmmakers would make black-and-white films today. There are some who do, admittedly, but they appear to only do it within avant-garde and independent circles.

Manhattan, released on Wednesday, April 25, 1979, stars Mr. Allen as Isaac Davis, a television writer who is unfulfilled with his life as a comedy writer. His second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has left him for another woman and is writing a book about their marriage. Isaac is 42 and is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) who is 25 years younger than he is and is still in high school. He feels very guilty about this, but genuinely cares for her (this plot point was reportedly inspired by Mr. Allen’s affair with actress Stacy Nelkin on the set of Annie Hall which was shooting in 1976, though her part was eventually cut from that film). His friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is writing a book about Eugene O’Neill and is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but has started an affair with high-strung and neurotic Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton) whom Isaac initially cannot tolerate but increasingly grows fond of. Throughout the film we are confronted by these characters who cannot seem to put their finger on what they want and stick with it. They are not inherently bad people. They just keep making questionable decisions. By the end of the film, the only person who seems to have their head on straight is Tracy and the film ends, like Mr. Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), on a very positive and upbeat note.

The real star of the film is Manhattan itself, with its pulsating and bustling people and automobiles. Rarely has the city looked so luminous and beautiful onscreen (if ever). Gordon Willis, the revered cinematographer of The Godfather films and a good number of Mr. Allen’s early works, captures Gotham in all its beauty even during an era when the city was beset by social decay. For the first time in his career, Mr. Allen forgoes the relative constraints of the 1.85:1 flat ratio to the far more accommodating 2.35:1 anamorphic Panavision vista and the results makes one ache for further use of this format.

Manhattan was penned by Mr. Allen and Marshall Brickman, who also co-wrote Annie Hall. The dialogue in Mr. Allen’s films has always been a strong point, but here it really shines. His use of long, uninterrupted takes that first surfaced in Annie Hall shine here Rarely have onscreen walks and chats been so fascinating.

Manhattan was also one of the first movies to appear on home video in the widescreen format, which retained much (but not all) of the film’s original image. I have owned Manhattan on letterboxed VHS, letterboxed laserdisc with a gatefold, letterboxed DVD, and I must say that this Region B anamorphically-enhanced Blu-ray courtesy of Fabulous Films is beautiful.

It would be wonderful if Mr. Allen would be open to providing commentary tracks on his older films, specifically this one which, unbelievably, he reportedly was so displeased with that he imposed on United Artists to shelve it and offered to do another movie for free.

Thankfully, they did not take him up on it.

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By Todd Garbarini

Would you go see a horror film billed as “Makes Night of the Living Dead Look Like a Kids’ (sic) Pajama Party! Scream so they can find you!!!” Somebody did. Released in New York City on Wednesday, March 7,1973 as the second feature on a double bill with Mario Bava’s R-rated 1971 film Twitch of the Death Nerve (the U.S. title of A Bay of Blood), Amando de Ossorio’s The Blind Dead actually was given a theatrical release in a watered down, PG-rated version minus blood, gore and nudity. It is also a tighter cut of the original (known as Tombs of the Blind Dead) as it also dispenses with some prolonged meandering that gets old real fast. Does the truncated Stateside version triumph over the longer original Spanish cut of the film? That depends on the viewer. As a purist who prefers a director’s original vision, I applaud the efforts of the uncut version.

Lensed in 1971 in Spain and Portugal at some truly creeping locales, Tombs of the Blind Dead, clearly influenced by George A. Romero’s aforementioned highly successful Night of the Living Dead (1968), is one of the better Spanish horror films to come out of the 1970s, so much so that it spawned no less than three follow-ups all written and directed by the original’s writer/director: Return of the Blind Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974), and Night of the Seagulls (1975). The madness begins when Virginia White (María Elena Arpón) encounters her old college lover Betty Turner (Lone Fleming) at a public pool. Their congenial attitude quickly becomes strained when Virginia’s friend Roger Whelan (César Burner) shows up and immediately takes a more-than-platonic liking to Virginia, inviting her on a train ride that he is taking with Betty. Female resentment ensues and Virginia takes it upon herself to jump off the train midway, baggage in hand, and goes off into the ruins of a town named Berzano that the train deliberately bypasses due to an unsavory past. Making creepy and effective use of the Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Valdeiglesias, Pelayos de la Presa, Madrid, Spain, the director follows Virginia through the decrepit structures and, unbelievably, camps out solo overnight! Her presence awakens the buried corpses of the Knights Templar from their crypts who attack and kill her, her body found by the train conductor the next morning when on the return trip. Betty and Roger look for Virginia in Berzano, and out of nowhere, two police detectives emerge to question them about their relationship to Virginia. It’s a peculiar entrance into the scene, as though they were standing “stage left” and issued in front of the camera by the offscreen director. Betty and Roger make their way to the requisite know-it-all, The One who comes in at the eleventh hour to explain the goings-on to them, in this case Professor Candal (José Thelman), who explains to them (and the audience) who manipulates them into finding his son, and the this leads to a showdown with the Knights and sets up the film for a continuation.

Spanish horror films of this era were on a par with their Italian giallo counterparts as both genres flourished with exemplary outings from both countries. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s La Residencia (1969), aka The Finishing School and The House That Screamed, while not a zombie film, is beautifully lensed and ends with a creepy and original denouement. Francisco Lara Polop’s La Mansión de La Niebla (1972), known here as Murder Mansion, boasts beautiful artwork that belies an otherwise pedestrian thriller. Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974), known also as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and here in the States as Don’t Open the Window, is, on the other hand, a key zombie film from this era and is generally regarded quite correctly as one of the best, and has received stunning Blu-ray treatment from Synapse

By Adrian Smith 

In 1965 a huge brightly-painted sculpture of a reclining woman, called ‘Hon – en katedral’ (She – a cathedral), was displayed in a gallery in Stockholm. Visitors would enter the sculpture by walking through an open vagina, and inside they found two floors of amusements including a slide, a vending machine, silent film screenings, a public telephone and a ‘lovers' bench’ whose romantic conversations were secretly transmitted via microphone to a bar. This massive artwork was created by an art collective lead by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle and was a perfect melding of pop art and second wave feminism. 

By Hank Reineke

As a monster-movie loving kid growing up in the shadow of Manhattan, most of my Saturday night plans in the late 1960s and early 1970s were solidly set. That night was reserved for watching old horror and sci-fi flicks on New York City’s Chiller (WPIX-TV) or Creature Features (WNEW-TV). I don’t recall the latter program surviving past 1980 – and even then there had been an interruption of some six years in the scheduling of Creature Features. Though the program would return to the airwaves in 1979, the 8 PM broadcasts were now a thing of the past. The revived telecasts had moved to midnight and well into the early hours of Sunday morning. It hardly mattered, really. I no longer watched Creature Features with the same fervor of 1969 through 1973. I was age nineteen in 1979 and found other (if not necessarily better) things to do on Saturday nights.

This absence from Creature Features caused me to miss out on a number of obscure, aging films broadcast 1979-1980. Among this mix of occasional cinematic gems with near-misses was a mostly forgotten mystery programmer of 1944 titled The Man in Half Moon Street. I was particularly sorry to have missed this one: if my research is correct, I believe the film was broadcast only once – just shy of 2 A.M. - on March 29, 1980. Though one New York area newspaper listing dismissed the film as little more than a “Moody and marginally interesting tale of eternal youth through murder,” such lukewarm praise actually piqued my interest. This seemed my kind of movie. And for some forty-three years I’ve lamented having missing that broadcast.

It has been a tough film to get ahold of: though I’m guessing gray-market copies could have been found at conventions or through those “specialty” dealers of vintage VHS tapes from the ‘80s onward. But as far as I can tell (and, please, feel free correct me if you know better), The Man in Half Moon Street has never been officially available on any home video format: not Laser Disc, VHS, DVD or Blu Ray. Well, that is until now, as we near the eightieth year of the film’s original cinematic release. We have Australia’s Imprint Films to thank for finally issuing this superlative, region-free coded Blu-ray release.

As in the case of many Hollywood pictures of the day, The Man in Half Moon Street was not an original invention of the filmmakers: the scenario was actually based on the British stage drama of playwright Barré Lyndon. Lyndon’s play, published in 1939 by London’s Hamish Hamilton Publishing House, had first toured Bournemouth, Oxford, Manchester and Brighton on a two-week testing-sortie in February of ’39. The play would formally open at the New Theatre in London’s West End on 22 March 1939.

Lyndon’s main antagonist in the stage drama, chemist John Thackeray (Leslie Banks), is a ninety-year old man. One wouldn’t notice the dotage as Thackeray appears decades younger. This is due to the chemist having discovered that by combining radium and periodically replacing his aging super-renal glands with fresh specimens he can retain both youth and immortality. Of course the collection of fresh glands requires innocent others to lose their lives to Thackeray’s ghoulish harvesting.

Over a fifty-year period eight bank cashiers – those with access to large sums of money - have fallen prey to Thackeray’s criminal doings. Dissolving their bodies in acid baths, the chemist then steals the cash reserves his victims had been minding in their bank-telling guardianship. Thackeray requires the large sums so he can pay a confidant: in this case an ethically-challenged surgeon friend, to perform the necessary life-sustaining gland grafts. But Scotland Yard takes up the case just as the chemist readies to take the life of a targeted ninth victim for his evil ends.

Interestingly, playwright Lyndon would go on to write screenplays for Hollywood studios by the mid-1940s, including such moody mystery-noirs as John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945). But in late January of 1940, it was announced that Don Hartman, a dependable scenarist for Paramount, was scheduled to begin work on adapting Lyndon’s stage play to the big screen. Hartman was, at present, in New York, trying to finish up his co-write (with Clifford Goldsmith) of The Further Adventures of Henry Aldrich.

That May of 1940, Paramount optimistically announced there would be no production delays on their twenty-five million dollar film schedule budget for the upcoming year. This declaration was made “despite war conditions in Europe which continue to threaten returns” in both national and international film markets. One of the films on the Paramount schedule was The Man in Half Moon Street. Early reports suggested that Basil Rathbone was to take on the leading role. The actor was available to assume the role of Thackeray as he had only recently completed work on Paramount’s A Date with Destiny (soon retitled The Mad Doctor).

Rathbone had played the villainous role in The Mad Doctor which, despite the intriguing title, was not a horror film, but a mystery crime-drama. The Los Angeles Citizen-News would report in June of 1940 that while Half Moon too was not of “bogeyman classification,” it on the “fantastic side” with its lurid sci-fi angle. In any case, the film project fell temporarily to the wayside, first due to scripting issues and afterward to the cranking out of patriotic films necessitated by America’s entry into WWII following the attack at Pearl Harbor.

But by early winter of 1943, the long dormant Half Moon project was showing signs of revival. On March 2, 1943 it was announced in the Hollywood trades that Lester Fuller, recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York, had been offered the director’s chair for The Man in Half Moon Street. In spring of 1943, Albert Dekker, a Hollywood “heavie” who recently scared audiences as Universal’s Dr. Cyclops (1940), was announced to assume the leading role.

But on June 15, 1943, Variety reported that Fuller was out of the Half Moon project. Ralph Murphy was now chosen to direct. Technically, the pair’s previously assigned directorial spots were merely traded-off. Murphy had initially been chosen to helm Paramount’s production of Marseilles, but former stage director Fuller was now tasked to assume responsibility on that particular film. Murphy was to move over to direct Fuller’s Half Moon project.

Murphy’s first assignment was a formidable one: he was “to order a complete rewrite job on the script.” There was also a report that such rewriting would likely require a recasting of principal characters. Though Swedish film star Nils Asther had been the latest actor announced to assume the film’s leading role, his participation in the project was now suggested as being “off” - for the time being, at least. The film’s producer Walter MacEwan wanted to weigh casting options “until further developments” in the scripting of Half Moon were resolved.

The re-writing of Half Moon would eventually fall to scenarists Charles Kenyon and Garrett Fort. The final screenplay credit would ultimately go to Kenyon alone who, like Fort, was a veteran of old Hollywood: their work in the industry could be traced to silent cinema’s earliest days. Fort’s resume for this sort of film was particularly impressive: he had written or co-written such totemic pre-code Golden Age Horrors for Universal as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula’s Daughter (1936). But Fort’s credit on Half Moon only noted his role in adapting Lyndon’s play for the screen.

The final screenplay drafted would, peculiarly, expunge most of the ghoulish and murderous elements of Lyndon’s stage play – perhaps America’s real-life wartime experiences were horrific enough. There are no murders of bankers. The Thackeray character (renamed Dr. Julian Karell in the film) appears to be already a man of means, an accomplished portrait artist and scientist. He attends black-tie, high society, posh parties and conducts his experiments at an upscale London row house. The film curiously offers no scenes of on (or off) screen physical violence.

There are no gruesome acid baths in which the bodies of victims are disposed. The film’s lone “action” scene captures a moment when Karell “rescues” a despondent medical student (Morton Lowry) from a watery suicide attempt near the Thames Embankment. Most scenes of this dialogue-heavy script are set in parlors and sitting rooms – which, to be honest, really proves a drag on the film’s ninety-two minute running time. One begins to welcome even the briefest scenes when Karell ventures out into the shrouded night and pea-soup fog of the London Streets. Not that much happens during these interludes, but such moments provide a measure of moodiness to this otherwise slowly paced non-mystery.

Truth be told, The Man in Half Moon Street is no detective nor mystery film; we know almost from the beginning what’s going on. We learn the handsome and youthful Karell is actually more than one hundred years old in age. But through a century of experimentation – and with the assistance of the aging Dr. Kurt Van Bruecken, the “world’s greatest living surgeon and necrologist” (Reinhold Schünzel), Karell has managed to stay young through his drinking of a luminous serum and periodically undergoing fresh glandular transplants at ten year intervals.

There are problems ahead. Following a stroke, the shaky hands of the elderly Van Bruecken are no longer trustworthy to perform the necessary surgeries. Besides, Van Bruecken has undergone a change of heart: he fears that Karell is no longer working in the interest of science and humanity in staving off the aging process. He fears (rightfully) Karell is now consumed only by his burning desire for the lovely Eve Brandon (Helen Walker) and selfish self-interest in maintaining a “fraudulent youth.”

“No man can break the law of God,” Van Bruecken cautions, but Karell is confident if anyone can do it, he can. Even if that means farming the glands of the suicidal medical student he’s imprisoned upstairs. The other more pressing problem facing Karell is that his mysterious activities have finally brought him to the attention of an ethical surgeon (Paul Cavanagh), a cabal of fine art appraisers and Scotland Yard.

With Paramount now holding what they believed an acceptable – and mostly non-horrific - script in place, the casting of the film proceeded in earnest. In May of 1943 it was suggested that young actress Susan Hayward would play a “featured role” in Half Moon, though the report cautioned Paramount was still “having a time of it procuring someone to play the sinister male lead.” The earlier front-running names of Rathbone and Dekker were both out, and rumors of Alan Ladd’s casting were squelched when the actor chose instead to sign up for military service.

That same month producer MacEwan confirmed Nils Asther would in fact play the role of Dr. Julian Karell as earlier rumored. The trades suggested that it was Asther who, in fact, first suggested that Paramount pick up the rights to Lyndon’s play and cast him in the lead role. There was some mild press controversy regarding Asther’s casting. Some Hollywood gossips dismissed the actor as “Yesterday’s Star” (born in 1897, Asther had appeared in silent films with Greta Garbo). Though his character was scripted as someone thirty-five years of age, Asther was in reality 46 years old at the time of production. Still, there was an acknowledgement that the dashingly tall, slender, handsome (and rumored bi-sexual) actor “still has a big following.”

Though the actor was to star opposite the sultry Hayward, the role of Karell’s paramour Eve Brandon was ultimately given to Helen Walker. There would be some delay before she could join the production: the actress, currently on a wartime U.S.O. tour, was expected to report to the set near September’s end. Truthfully, Walker doesn’t have a lot to do in the film. She certainly photographs well as Karell’s doting and perhaps too protective and morally-blind girlfriend. Even though Karell’s work is secretive – so much so that it causes him to disappear for weeks or months at a time – Eve chooses to accept her lover’s “general mysteriousness” as a byproduct of his genius. I personally found Brandon less likable and sympathetic as the film progresses. When it’s finally revealed to her that Karell’s experimentations have brought harm to innocents, she’s so in love with him she dismisses his guilt, choosing instead to reflexively defend the “grandeur” of his ambitions.

If the main characters in this picture aren’t always likable, there’s still a lot to admire about the film. Miklos Rozsa’s moody musical score is certainly worthy of praise. Henry Sharp’s fog-bound “exterior” photography is similarly moody, but unfortunately not up on the screen much. In the final minutes of the film when Karell dramatically reverts to his actual age, long-time make-up man Wally Westmore – of Hollywood’s make-up family dynasty – does his best on the effects. But the camera cheats the audience of a full on-screen transformation ala Westmore’s make-up on Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) – which remains the “gold standard” of Golden Age horror transformations. Ralph Murphy’s direction is competent but workmanlike in execution. He creates very little visual tension until the film’s final scenes and, by then, it’s simply too late. Following the completion of Half Moon, Murphy was planning to move back to New York City to direct the Broadway stage production of Sleep It Off.

Of course World War II was still on-going, interrupting, ruining and/or ending the lives of countless innocents globally. In such an atmosphere Hollywood was not immune to war-time production delays and release date restrictions. Paramount alone had accumulated an unprecedented backlog of thirty-one completed films awaiting release in early summer of 1944. There was some confidence that the tide was turning in favor of the Allies, studios cooperating in the war effort by rolling out whatever patriotic war films they were sitting on. There was a consensus it was time to empty the vault of such films. It was believed that movie audiences would weary of war films following the cessation of fighting overseas.

There was, at long last, a belated screening of The Man in Half Moon Street held at a Hollywood tradeshow on October 16, 1944. Variety thought the script was a “compact and interesting,” the Kenyon/Fort scenario displaying a “few new twists from the formularized style of long-life mystery tales to keep interest at consistent level.” But the reviewer acknowledged, not unreasonably, that the film would best serve as “strong support” to a superior attraction. Other critics likewise suggested Half Moon was too weak to see top-billing on a double-attraction.

Indeed, The Man in Half Moon Street (already in U.S. regional release as early as December 1944 although the film’s copyright is listed as 1945 on the sleeve of the snap case) was featured as the undercard of a double-bill. (On his commentary, Tim Lucas reveals the film actually had its world-wide premiere in Australia in early November of 1944). On its U.S. run, the film was usually topped by director Fritz Lang’s cinematic take of novelist Graham Greene’s Nazi espionage tale Ministry of Fear. This double feature actually did reasonably well, the trades citing solid - if not necessarily boffo - returns as the package was rolled out across U.S. markets and into 1945. Newspaper columnists tended to give the Lang film the lion’s share of its critical attention, though both films were generally branded as little more than decent programmers of primary interest only to devotees of suspense and mystery films.

By Hank Reineke

I wouldn’t have fared well in Puritan America of 1642. A title overlay inscription on the front end of Robert G. Vignola’s The Scarlet Letter (1934) offers, “Though to us, the customs seem grim and the punishments hard, they were necessary in the formation of the U.S. destiny.” With the benefit of hindsight, I might argue this opinion otherwise, but it is what it is… or, rather, was what it was. Puritan America seemed a bit too inhospitable to my taste: everybody at one time or another was being publically humiliated or punished for terribly mild transgressions.

In 1642 you could find yourself in the stock for laughing on the Sabbath, or publically gagged and propped for gossiping, or aggressively poked with a long stick if caught dozing off during a long and ponderous sermon. And that’s not to mention having the Towne Crier ordering you to extinguish your lights for a pre-ordained bedtime set by the whims of a council of elders. Of course all of this, I suppose, is all still far preferable to being trussed to a pole and stoned by your “righteous” and “pious” neighbors for accusations of adultery and other crimes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of 1850, The Scarlet Letter, is widely regarded as a masterwork of early American literature. The novel’s storyline is set in Puritan American of 1642, beleaguered seamstress Hester Prynne forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her clothing, a mark identifying her as an adulteress. With her physician husband missing from the village for two years and presumed lost at sea, Prynne gives out-of-wedlock birth to a daughter, Pearl. Though castigated and ostracized by the community, Prynne refuses to name the father of the child, thereby preserving his unsoiled reputation. Despite the travails, Prynne manages to live her life with a sense of dignity and compassion – and a measure of moral clarity not exemplified by the religious zealots who continue to harass and condemn both mother and child.

There had been several film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter, preceding this 1934 effort directed by Vignola, though all previous were released as silents. The first adaptation was a 1908 adaptation directed by Sydney Olcott, a film short now presumed lost. Interestingly, Olcott was still alive and kicking when the Vignola film went into production. In June of 1934, the Los Angeles Post-Record reported, “One visitor to the set was Sydney Olcott who directed the one-reel 1908 version of The Scarlet Letter in one day. Olcott was still proud of his effort, telling actor Henry B. Walthall, “We didn’t do so bad in 1908, Henry. We didn’t have cranes, microphones and we didn’t use big crowds. We had a solitary cameraman and he helped with the props […] Them was the days.”

Olcott’s film may have been the first cinematic adaptation, but certainly not last. Between 1911 and 1926, the film was re-made as at least on five occasions. Some of these versions – varying as one to nine reelers in their release – are also presumed lost or suffer missing reels. The most famous of these silent era cinematic adaptations have survived: Victor Seastrom’s 1926 version for Metro Goldwin Mayer featuring Lillian Gish and Henry B. Walthall.

But producer Larry Darmour, the founder and president of Majestic Pictures, was determined to bring The Scarlet Letter to the big screen for the title’s first sound version. A wartime cameraman and newsreel editor, Darmour was interested in creating Hollywood productions, ultimately scoring his earliest success with a series of Mickey Rooney Mickey McGuire comedy shorts. Then - riding on the coattails of Universal’s successful Dracula and Frankenstein pictures – Darmour served as an uncredited executive producer for Frank R. Strayer’s The Vampire Bat (1933), a fine Golden Age chiller featuring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray.

It was gossip columnist Louella Parsons who broke the big news in March of 1934: “The Scarlet Letter, the picture that MGM would just as soon forget, is to be brought back to life. But this time it will be made without the airy, fairy Lillian Gish and in a different mood. I don’t know how it can be made different, but Larry Darmour […] says they will bring a little humor into it. Hope Nathaniel Hawthorne won’t turn in his grave if they put too much humor into his famous novel.” Parsons would also report that Leonard Fields and David Silverstein had been hired to script from Hawthorne’s novel.

It is true that Darmour made the odd decision to bring in episodes of light-comedy relief to this otherwise somber and dramatic enterprise. Actors Alan Hale (“Bartholomew Hockings”) and William Kent (“Sampson Goodfellow”) are written into the storyline – neither character appears in the original novel – and the pair’s misadventures as offered are completely irrelevant to the film’s storyline and disturb the scenario’s sense of dramatic tension. Variety certainly noted this scripting failure in their review of September 25, 1934, noting this “venerated classic [goes] wrecked on the rocks of comedy relief. Hawthorne’s tense plot is lightened with a John Alden-Miles Standish development that recurs with mathematical precision about every so often to spoil whatever tension the players have been able to create.”

The role of beleaguered Hester Prynne was given to the acclaimed silent-film actress Colleen Moore, just coming off her early sound role as “Sarah” in J. Walter Ruben’s gun-less and pretty pedestrian crime-drama Success at any Price (1934). In the words of an overly critical journalist from the Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA), Moore’s assumption of the Prynne role might “atone somewhat” for the failures of Success. Moore was already disillusioned with Hollywood’s new way of doing things, this ingénue of the silent screen uncomfortable with both microphones and sound recording. Moore’s appearance in The Scarlet Letter would in fact prove to be her final big screen credit.

The actor Henry B. Walthall more easily made the transition to sound pictures. He had been knocking around movie sets since 1908 and would continue working until his death in 1936. Walthall was cast to reprise his role as Prynne’s surprisingly-retuned-from-sea husband Roger Chillingworth: who now lives only to bitterly exact revenge on the unnamed father of young Pearl and bring public “dishonor” upon Hester as a “faithless woman.” Hardie Albright rounds out the cast’s major players, taking on the role of preacher “Arthur Dimmesdale,” a fallen Man-of-God tortured by a secret that has eaten away at his soul.

In May of 1934, the Los Angeles Times reported this first sound version of The Scarlet Letter was to go before cameras on or about May 23^rd. The film was shot primarily at Culver City’s Pathe Studios and at RKO’s forty-acre desert Pathe Ranch location. The latter area suffered no shortage of rattlesnakes crawling about. Film producer-distributor Sam Sherman suggests on a commentary that a cruel joke played on snake-fearing actress Moore by members of the film crew actually led to the actresses’ hospitalization for a nervous breakdown.

There were some journalist-train spotters who seemed dismissive of the project from its onset, carping on the smallest of details of Majestic’s economically-budgeted feature. Again, from an on-set report in June of 1934 courtesy of the Evening Vanguard: “An anachronistic note occurs in the churchyard. The dates on the tombstones are of the nineteenth century. On a major lot, such a state of affairs would not be tolerated for a moment.” The filmmakers protested such eagle-eyed nonsense, noting – accurately – that such graves would only be seen “from a distance” in the final print.

By 2 July 1934, production was already completed, Variety reporting that Darmour was in process of producing no fewer than thirteen features for Majestic, with The Scarlet Letter and Ralph Cedar’s She Had to Choose (with Buster Crabbe and Isabel Jewell) already in the can. There was a preview screening of The Scarlet Letter held at Pasadena’s Colorado Theatre held in July of 1934. Billboard allowed the film was a “sincere effort, singling out Moore’s performance as “the only redeeming thing about the whole business, [but] the balance of the cast are mere shadows.” The review also thought the film demonstrated a “slow development and uneven tempo.” The critic mused the script might have benefited with modern dialogue, as the cast was (…) “to speak the silly lither of year’s gone past.”

The critic from Variety was in agreement that Moore’s performance was “informed by gentle humility which gives the part dignity and appeal.” And though the scenarists were given credit for a mostly “well done” script, the writers were chided for not digging “below the surface” to reflect the “real soul-tragedy” of this man/woman relationship, choosing instead to only amplify the “community’s cruelty to the transgressor.” Though the Boston Globe thought the film a worthwhile effort, this critic too made plain The Scarlet Letter was not a “first-rank picture.” Post-dated tombstones aside, it was the reviewer’s belief the film offered, “Too much attention to realism of detail, and not enough of virtue of emotion in drama.”

But ultimately the harshest critic of Vignola’s The Scarlet Letter was the powerful Archbishop John T. McNicholas of The Catholic League of Decency who found the age-old subject matter of adultery and babies born out of wedlock to be contemporaneously dangerous and abhorrent. The League put the film on its banned list as a “Class C” film, a rating deeming such films as “indecent and immoral and unfit for public entertainment." This was problematic for the producer Darmour as many Americans accepted the judgement of the clergy as holy writ to be wholeheartedly obeyed.

Hoping to change the mind of the “Decency” League ruling – while arguing for the right of free expression in America – Darmour would telegram McNicholas in September of 1934. The ruling, he protested, was unfair. After all, the producer argued, 95% of U.S. schools offered Hawthorne’s book as “compulsory reading” in their curriculum of American literature studies. Darmour also sent a copy of his telegram to newspapers. It read:

We were moved to produce The Scarlet Letter because of its widespread use in schools, logically feeling that a faithful screen adaptation should be acceptable to educators. We have adhered faithfully to the basic theme related in Hawthorne’s great work.

If the campaign you are waging for decency is carried to its logical end, why, then, are not attempts made to bar the book in schools and public libraries? Since the film version is a faithful adaptation of the book, your ban on the film appears as agitation against one medium and not another. One is forced to admit this is discrimination and wholly undemocratic.”

Sadly, it appears as though this telegram, with minor changes in the particulars, could be sent to administrators of certain U.S. States in 2023. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?

By Lee Pfeiffer

Ryan O'Neal, the star of "Love Story" and "Barry Lyndon", has died from unspecified causes at the age of 82. He had been experiencing health issues since being diagnosed with leukemia and prostate cancer over a decade ago. O'Neal learned the craft of acting on his own, never having taken a lesson. He entered the film industry as a teenager, performing stunts. In 1964 he received his first major role, starring in "Peyton Place", the successful TV series based on the hit feature film and its sequel. His career went into high gear when he was cast with another up-and-coming actor, Ali MacGraw, in the 1970 screen adaptation of Eric Segal's bestselling novel "Love Story". Segal had adapted his own screenplay to form the basis of the wafer-thin novel about a doomed romance between a young couple at Harvard University. The novel sold millions and paved the way for Paramount's big screen version, which was both a critical and financial success. O'Neal and MacGraw both earned Oscar nominations. O'Neal's post-Oscar career skyrocketed and he worked in with some of the industry's top directors including Richard Attenborough, Peter Bogdanovich and Stanley Kubrick, who raised eyebrows by casting the American actor in the leading role in his opulent 1975 epic "Barry Lyndon". The film won enormous acclaim but much of it didn't rub off on O'Neal, as some critics voiced the opinion that Kubrick, who was not known as an "actor's director" had cast him simply because he was a bland screen presence who wouldn't distract from the more spectacular aspects of the production. Nevertheless, O'Neal had been riding high with hits like "What's Up, Doc?", in which he co-starred with Barbra Streisand, "The Main Event"and "Paper Moon", in which he starred with his pre-teen daughter Tatum, who became the youngest actor to receive an Oscar. O'Neal also had a major role in Attenborough's 1977 WWII epic "A Bridge Too Far". His misfires included the starring role in an ill-fated 1978 big screen sequel to "Love Story" titled "Oliver's Story" which he personally denounced as "a complete-off" that he did for the money.One of his last major big screen hits was "The Main Event" in 1979, which teamed him again with Streisand.

By the 1980s, O'Neal's career was in a tailspin. He still found work but the better roles and films eluded him. Attempts to move into television did not have successful results. He also suffered an endless stream of sensational stories in the press about his personal behavior, most of it centered on his mercurial temper. He was once arrested for beating his son Griffin, though charges were eventually dropped and years later would be arrested on drug charges along with another son, Redmond. He had been married and divorced twice when he began a long relationship with actress Farrah Fawcett, who was married to actor Lee Majors at the time. The couple never married but Ms. Fawcett was mother to Redmond O'Neal. O'Neal and Fawcett split up but eventually reconciled and he saw her through her traumatic battle against terminal cancer.  He worked in television with little success before landing a recurring role on the popular series "Bones". The O'Neal family's personal problems had long been regular fodder for gossip columns. He was estranged from Tatum for most of her life and the two never fully reconciled, even though the two had co-starred on a reality show that portrayed their relationship favorably. Characteristically, O'Neal would later say that the show was sanitizing what was still a very volatile relationship. He proclaimed that one of his most satisfying late-in-life highlights was reuniting with Ali MacGraw to co-star in the moving stage play "Love Letters". 

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By Hank Reineke

Nicholas Anez’s Science Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills is the fourth installment of the author’s “Celluloid Adventures” series, all published by Baltimore’s Midnight Marquee Press. Although I’m not familiar with Anez’s original triad, I can reliably muse - based solely on the strength of his newest effort - the preceding trio are as well-researched, informative and against-the-grain-in-opinion as is this new volume.

In his introduction to Science Fiction Thrills, Anez – full disclosure, a contributing writer to Cinema Retro magazine - informs readers that his intent in the writing of this current book is to “hopefully create interest” in fourteen –mostly dismissed upon original release – sci-fi and horror films. These were films that, in one way or another, failed to find an appreciative audience despite creative merit. Being a guy from New Jersey, I can appreciate Anez’s fighting up from the mat for recognition of these underdog efforts, championing under-performing films he posits as overlooked cinematic treasures.

The fourteen films that go under Anez’s microscope are: Son of Dracula (1943), Alias Nick Beal (1949), The Maze (1953), Donovan’s Brain (1953), 1984 (1956), The Mind Benders (1963), Crack in the World (1965), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), The Power (1968), Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), Who? (1974), The Medusa Touch (1978) and Capricorn One (1978). The latter title, Peter Hyman’s “space mission” conspiracy film Capricorn One is, of course, an odd man out in this study. Though not critically praised on its release, the film actually performed reasonably well at the box office.

Each of Anez’s contributing essays are formulaic in presentation: an introductory paragraph or two; a multi-page synopsis of the film’s storyline; a discussion of the movie’s production history (including full cast and crew credits); a review of a film’s critical reception and subsequent box office performance. The book is filled with a score of illustrations – both photographs and promotional memorabilia - all well-reproduced in balanced black-and-white saturations. The book additionally closes with an eight-page Appendix where the author lists his favorite sci-fi and horror flicks - as well what he considers the greatest performances by an actor or actress in both genres. Suffice to say, I share many of the author’s cinematic enthusiasms.

To his credit, Anez doesn’t argue that any of the films under examination - in an extremely readable and cogent two-hundred and fifteen page paperback - is necessarily a “lost classic.” But Anez does suggest that each film studied here offers challenging ideas and (mostly) cerebral storylines. Some of the films, he argues, were critically maligned or were proven box office disappointments for economic reasons: that is, a shortfall of money. Too often the production budgets allotted were simply too modest to mount and support the project’s ambitions. Having said that, Anez also notes the paucity of money wasn’t always the reason a particular film did not light up the big screen as hoped. The author opines some of the films perhaps simply fell to the wayside due to the carping of critics (i.e. the alleged miscasting of Edmond O’Brien as “Winston Smith” or of Michael Andersons’ “unobstructive” direction of George Orwell’s novel 1984).

Other films, such as Basil Dearden’s The Mind Benders, might not have met expectations due to the filmmakers having chose to mix multiple genre devices into their storylines. Anez gives examples: The Mind Benders is described as being “as much a domestic drama as a thriller.” He offers John Farrow’s Alias Nick Beal as “a supernatural horror story,” but one that “also fits in the category of film noir.” The author also contends that Robert Siodmak’s Son of Dracula (a personal favorite of mine, featuring an arguably miscast corn-fed Lon Chaney Jr.) remains “a vastly underrated horror movie that is also a romantic tragedy.”

It soon becomes apparent that Anez’s argument that certain films failed at the box office - or with film critics – was not due to the quality of the films themselves. Instead many were perhaps doomed by visionary “outside-of-the-box” productions that were tough to commercially pigeonhole. Perhaps these films didn’t achieve nor enjoy a measure of acclaim due to the schematics of the filmmakers. It’s suggested such creative teams, at their own expense, had gambled on their film’s commercial potentials – perhaps accidentally, perhaps purposefully. Ultimately, they chose not to cater to clichés or to rigid formulas or to the expectations of their target audience.

In the book’s afterword, Anez notes he chose to focus on “an era in which science-fiction movies depended on ideas and not special effects,” a time when horror films conjured chills “upon the power of suggestion and not graphic gore.” Reading through these essays it becomes obvious that Anez is a strong champion of scenarios that feature solid writing and cerebral storytelling. It’s of interest that of the fourteen films examined here, no fewer than eight had been adapted from pre-existing science-fiction novels or other literary sources published from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Anez acknowledges that some of these films under his microscope might now appear dated - even open to some ridicule by contemporary standards - for their dopey, unsophisticated poor-science-based projections. He muses other films might have been doomed at the box office by their gloomy, paranoid prognostications of a dreary, dystopic future. (Certainly none of the films Anez examines here can be thought of as “feel good” movies – quite the opposite, in fact). Such dystopic melancholia is reflected in Anez’s own opinions. He writes of his fear that contemporary exercises of political correctness and encroaching Orwellian cancel culture movements might yet alter - even expunge – aging artistic works and forms of “popular culture from the past.” “In today’s Hollywood,” Anez sighs, “nothing is implied anymore; everything is explicit.”

I’m probably not as fatalistic as Anez on some of the points he makes, though one can certainly understand – and even sympathize with – some of the arguments he makes. But by my reckoning, home video has - from inception - assured that a majority of cultural artifacts will survive in their original forms for some time well into the future. Certainly books and films and music reflective of the aggrieved historical period in which they were created will survive in their original state. How could they not? There’s too many of us who have carefully collected and curated these artworks to see them suddenly made unavailable. But it is also true that many of these works might – might - need to co-exist alongside a bowdlerized version for generations to come.

The real question is whether or not our shared histories – good, bad, tragic, celebratory or indifferent - can be erased easily? The jury is out on that point, and the debate on the historical revisionism of culture, I imagine, will be argued long into the future. It’s of interest that many of the future-looking films that Anez studies in Science Fiction Thrills… Horror Chills cautions and forewarns against the censorship of free ideas - be those ideas well-meaning, ignorant, brilliant or otherwise. I was going to end this review with Shakespeare’s famously reflective and internal ponder on the duality of intentions, “Ay, there’s the rub.” But I admit I almost didn’t, perhaps employing a bit of guarded self-censorship. After all, Shakespeare, the “immortal bard” of Avon, might not prove so immortal after all. He too is now a target of cancel culture.

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“THE BUSTER KEATON COLLECTION, VOLUME 5”

(Three Ages: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)

(Our Hospitality: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone)

(Cohen Film Collection)

“KEATON CLASSICS DOUBLE FEATURE”

By Raymond Benson

The availability of Buster Keaton on Blu-ray can be a head-scratcher. Kino Lorber seems to have the monopoly on Keaton’s features and shorts, but the puzzlement comes with more than one release of certain titles in Kino’s catalog of disks for sale. Add to this befuddlement is the Cohen Media Group and their Cohen Film Collection’s ownership of Keaton’s library. Cohen has also released Keaton Blu-ray disks—and they’re distributed by Kino Lorber! (And still others are released by Eureka Entertainment, licensed by Cohen!) Which editions are we supposed to get?

A new Cohen Film Collection release, available from Kino Lorber, is The Buster Keaton Collection, Volume 5, which includes a double bill of the master filmmaker’s 1923 features—Three Ages and Our Hospitality. (Also available from Cohen Film Collection are Volumes 1 – 4, which likewise contain double bills of Keaton’s features from the 1920s.)

Here on the Cinema Retro site, I reviewed the Kino Lorber release of Our Hospitality in 2019. Apparently the Kino versions are different restorations from the Cohen’s restorations. The latter are performed by Cineteca di Bologna as part of Cohen’s “Keaton Project.” Long ago, Cohen Media Group acquired the rights from the Keaton estate, even though other companies have had access to them. I won’t even attempt to sort out the rights issues here. Just know that the Kino Our Hospitality disk had bonus features, whereas the Cohen Film Collection double bill discussed here does not contain any supplements aside from Cohen’s own trailer of Our Hospitality release and other Cohen releases.

That said, the Cohen restorations by the Keaton Project are likely the best to come about. They look marvelous. Bonus features? Who needs supplements when the feature films are the best quality available?

Three Ages was Buster Keaton’s first feature film (not counting The Saphead, 1920, in which he only starred). Co-directed with Eddie Cline, Keaton presents the “story of love,” i.e., courtship, in three different time periods—the stone age, the Roman age, and modern times (the 1920s, of course). The same cast portrays the same character types in each story, and the film narrative jumps back and forth between these time periods throughout the run of the picture. Keaton stars as the “lesser” man when compared to his more attractive, manly, and wealthier rival played by Wallace Beery. The woman who is the object of both men’s affection is played by Margaret Leahy (the actress made only one film, and this is it). Beery’s character is a bully, and Keaton must overcome the man’s physical strength and social standing with cunning and trickery. There is certainly amusement and clever bits here, but Three Ages could be called baby steps for Keaton as a feature filmmaker when compared to later works. Three Ages was perhaps the Keaton film most in need for preservation, as there are many instances—a few seconds here and there—in which visual elements are deteriorated. The restoration folks have done the best they could, and this is probably the finest you will ever see Three Ages. The lively score for this release is composed and conducted by Rodney Sauer.

Of more importance and interest is Our Hospitality, considered one of Keaton’s greatest works, and it was only his second feature (it is co-directed by John G. Blystone). The story takes place in the early 1800s and draws upon a rural family feud like the Hatfields and McCoys—in this case the McKays and Canfields. When patriarch John McKay is killed by James Canfield (and vice versa), Mrs. McKay flees with little baby Willie McKay (played by Buster’s real-life infant son, Buster Keaton Jr.). Twenty years later, Willie inherits the old family estate in the south and returns to claim it, only vaguely aware of the feud that has existed for decades. On the way he meets Virginia (played by Keaton’s wife at the time, Natalie Talmadge), who happens to be a Canfield. Upon arrival at home, Willie continues to court Virginia, but her brothers won’t have it. The rest of the picture is a cats-and-mouse game of Willie avoiding being killed and at the same time wooing the woman he wants to marry.

There are many striking aspects about the picture. Keaton’s paid great attention to detail in the design and location shooting. Apparently, he took great pains to create realistic locomotives and tracks that depicted early train development in America (although he played with time period accuracy for the sake of more interesting visuals). The final act contains some spectacular and hair-raising stunt work by the star, including an incident of falling into rapids and almost drowning on camera. Mostly, though, the story is well-constructed, the characters have more depth than in the other silent comedies of the day, and, in the end, Our Hospitality is one of Keaton’s most satisfying movies.

Interestingly, it’s the only Keaton film to feature three generations of Keatons—Buster himself, his previously-mentioned son, and his father, Joe Keaton, as a train engineer.

The Cohen presentation here is gorgeous and near perfect. Carl Davis supplied the wonderful musical score that accompanies it.

For Buster Keaton fans, you can’t go wrong with this double bill release (nor with the Cohen Film Collection’s other four volumes). Highly recommended.

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By Todd Garbarini

Paramount Home Video has released a set of five horror films in 4K UHD format. Here is a breakdown of the films included in the set.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

I was in the minority of those left unimpressed by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), based upon the 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. I never saw what the fuss was about and could not find it even remotely scary when I originally saw it in the 1980s on VHS. I rewatched the film when the Criterion Collection released it on the now-out-of-print Blu-ray in October 2012 (if you have that version, hold on to it) and I realized that I had an incorrect reading of it. I believe that the terror that oozes from the screen is directly attributed to Rosemary Woodhouse’s (Mia Farrow) new life in the enormous Dakota Apartments (made famous by Mark David Chapman following his murder of John Lennon in December 1980) which is surrounded by people who initially make her feel safe and welcomed, but slowly begin to reveal their true natures which are malevolent and evil. Her husband Guy (maverick independent film director and actor John Cassavetes) is a struggling actor who understudies for a Broadway play and is suddenly fast-tracked to the lead role by the inexplicable blindness that befalls the play’s lead actor (portrayed by an off-screen Tony Curtis over the phone) following a discussion with two nosy neighbors (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon as Roman and Minnie Castavet, respectively) who ingratiate themselves into their lives. Coincidence? Guy is often short-tempered with his wife, but midway through the film he suddenly has a burst of fatherhood when he suggests to her that they have a baby. Overwhelmingly happy, Rosemary soon becomes suspicious of the people around her during her pregnancy. They are revealed to be a coven of witches, and Rosemary is carrying Satan’s child during a disturbing sequence of supernatural impregnation that she believes was just a dream.

Rosemary’s Baby is the ultimate gaslighting movie. It is also a movie that, I would imagine, would work to great effect on the psyche of female audience members for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is due to knowing what the outcome of Rosemary’s pregnancy is, and knowing that no one, not even the doctor (Charles Grodin) she has foolishly and naïvely confiding in regarding her suspicions regarding the coven, can or is even willing to help her. The film is set against a backdrop of complete normalcy, and when that normalcy is slowly eroded by the Devil’s minions in sheep’s clothing, it’s too much for us and Rosemary to bear. It’s also a film about betrayal, and it’s shocking to see how Guy willingly confesses to her that he had no problem selling her out to this life inorder to make an easy life for themselves, something he sees as a bonus. Her reaction to him and to the (offscreen) face of her baby is complete disbelief, and Ms. Farrow is more than capable of carrying the film. Rosemary’s horrifically contorted face when she sees her baby for the first time, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (sorry, Walt…), is all that the audience needs to know that the evil has come full circle.

Rosemary’s Baby turns 55 this year. Filmed in the final four months of 1967 and released on Wednesday, June 12, 1968, it takes place in 1965 and 1966. Ruth Gordon won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films of all time, and it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. The film spawned a TV-movie follow-up in 1976 with Patty Duke.

The new package contains the film in 4K UHD on one disc, and the film on a standard Blu-ray, the latter boasting the following extras:

Rosemary's Baby – A Retrospective – this piece, originally shot in 2000 for the DVD, runs just under 17 minutes and includes comments from the late film producer Robert Evans, the late production designer Richard Sylbert, and Roman Polanski.

Mia and Roman – this piece runs roughly 23 minutes and contains a lot of nice behind-the-scenes shots taken during filming on location in New York City, with input from actress Mia Farrow and director Roman Polanski.

Theatrical Trailer

50th Anniversary "Redband" Trailer

This is a nice upgrade to 4K that will make you feel as though you’re watching it in a cinema again, though the lack of a feature-length commentary by film historians is disappointing given the film’s stature in the genre, making one wonder if the director is just against this sort of thing. Steven Spielberg and David Lynch do not offer commentaries on their works, sadly.

NOTE: It has come to Paramount’s attention that there is an error on this pressing, and they are going to correct it with a disc replacement program. Apparently there is a line of dialog missing from the film! When you purchase this box set, click on this link to request the replacement discs which should become available in the next several months.

Pet Sematary (1989)

Stephen King published two frightening and best-selling novels in 1983: Christine and Pet Sematary. Attempting to sandwich these massive tales into films that ran less than two hours is a near impossible task and neither film, the former directed by John Carpenter and the latter by Mary Lambert, is completely successful in this regard. Lensed between August and November 1988 and released on Friday, April 21, 1989, Pet Sematary begins with a familiar nod to Dan Curtis’s creepy Burnt Offerings (1976) as Dr. Louis Creed and his wife Rachel (Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby) leave the Windy City and arrive at their new Ludlow, Main home with their young daughter Ellie (Blasé Berdahl) and even younger son Gage (Miko Hughes). The house is located right in front of a major road that trucks whiz by at a high rate of speed, setting up the roadway as the imminent threat. Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), the family neighbor, takes them to the Pet Sematary and explains how children bury their pets there. This proves convenient when the family, sans Louis, visit Rachel’s parents for Thanksgiving, and Ellie’s cat Winston Churchill (“Church” for short) is killed by a truck. Jud takes Louis to a location beyond the Pet Sematary called the Micmac Burying Ground dating back to ancient Native American days. Buried pets have come back to life, though their personalities are different, and this is no exception with Church. The idea is to save Ellie the grief of losing him.

Following Ellie’s displeasure of the now-reanimated Church’s smell, Gage finds himself in the path of a truck and, following his death, Louis digs up his corpse and heads for the Micmac Burying Ground despite verbal warnings from Jud. Unfortunately, Gage comes back as a meanie, killing those around him until a final showdown with his father.

Despite being written by author King, the screenplay never really manages to get above the level of a gross-out horror film. The subject of grief is best left to serious dramas (think Ingmar Bergman) as director Mary Lambert can only give us what’s on the written page as a truncation of an oversized novel, is fairly schematic at best. Whereas the novel is more of a deep-rooted mediation on the nature of the overwhelming emotion of grief over the death of a child, the film focuses more on the horrific aspects of the deaths at hand. It does seem to be enough, however, to satisfy genre fans.

Bonus Content (on both 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray Disc):

Feature-length commentary by director Mary Lambert

Pet Sematary: Fear and Remembrance – this piece is in high definition and runs about 7 minutes. Select members of the film’s cast and crew look back on the film and its reception.

Pet Sematary: Revisitation – this piece is in high definition and runs about 10 minutes. The director discusses the film’s production, how she came to direct the movie, and restoring the film.

Still Galleries – this is in high definition and consists of a large selection of photos separated into four sections.

Storyboards Introduction by Mary Lambert – this intro runs 1 minute in length. She explains how they derived the new transfer from the original camera negative and how the storyboards came to be.

Storyboards – this feature is extensive and recalls the image galleries of the laserdisc days. By using the left and right buttons on the remote control, you can navigate what is essentially a visual representation of the film. Very cool!

Behind the Scenes – this is a stills gallery that, like the storyboards, can be navigated in a similar fashion, showing images on the set of shooting during the summer of 1988.

Marketing – nice section of stills containing the marketing of the film for both theatrical and home video exhibition.

The following extras are only on the standard Blu-ray, though I will never understand why they do not replicate all extras on both discs as there is more than enough room to do so:

Stephen King Territory – this is a nice piece from 2006 that is shot in standard definition for the then-DVD release and runs about 13 minutes. It discusses the autobiographical genesis for the story, which really happened to Mr. King’s family and daughter.

The Characters – also from 2006 and shot in standard definition, this runs 13 minutes and looks at the motivations behind the characters and the cats used on the set. They had an ingenious method of making the cat’s eyes glow maniacally with an attachment to the Panavision cameras.

Filming the Horror – running 10 minutes, Mary Lambert discusses how the script came to her and while she read Stephen King’s novels, she did not consider herself to be a horror film director. Miko Hughes, who was two-and-a-half-years old when he played Gage, appears to have had a fun time on the set!

Smile (2022)

David Sandberg’s 2013 short film Lights Out is a brilliantly frightening, just-under-three-minute film about a woman seeing a strange creature in her kitchen and bedroom. It is widely available on Youtube and is one of the scariest movies I have seen in my 42 years of watching horror films and thrillers. It provided the basis for an unnecessary, feature-length film of the same name three years later, also directed by the same person, who has gone on to direct Annabelle: Creation (2017), as well as other projects. Likewise, Parker Finn is a director who made a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept (2020), starring Caitlin Stasey and Lew Temple as her somnologist. It’s the second short he made after his impressive and creepy The Hidebehind (2018), a nearly ten-minute now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t bit of computer trickery that will make you think twice about trekking solo in a forest. In Laura Hasn’t Slept, which is just under twelve minutes, Laura tells her therapist that she has a recurring nightmare wherein a frightening man is constantly smiling at her. While I appreciated the effort of this film and experienced no difficulty in determining the ending, the prospect of sitting through the theatrical version entitled Smile simply did not sit well with me. My disappointment with Lights Out nearly made me pass on Smile, and I am glad that I reconsidered.

Unlike most of the horror films marketed today, Smile is every bit as terrifying as its marketing campaign has professed. Like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Smile feels like the sort of film that would emotionally bifurcate the audience into those who love it and those who hate it. In terms of genre tropes, the film’s most obvious cinematic antecedent is David Robert Mitchell’s superb It Follows (2014), and a nod to the film’s title can be further traced back to the malevolent chauffeur, played with icy stillness by the late Anthony James in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings (1976). While it is true that familiarity can often breed contempt, this does not make Smile any less frightening. There is credence to the notion that although the film might offer up a less-than-compassionate view of mental illness and handle the subject flippantly, the movie should ultimately be judged for what it sets out to do: scare you. It may not be completely original, but it is no less frightening.

Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, gives a bravura performance as recently engaged Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who meets a new patient, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey, the actress from the short film), who fails to convince Rose that she is being chased by a demon that possesses people by smiling at them. Rose’s training misinterprets this as an episode of some sort of psychosis until Laura screams and reacts violently to something in the examination room invisible to Rose. Laura’s terror suddenly turns inexplicably serene wherein she effortlessly cuts her own throat with a broken plant’s pot while smiling maniacally at Rose, who reacts with complete terror. Unbeknownst to Rose, a terrible curse that plagued Laura has now been transferred to her. It takes Rose a while to make this realization. In the interim, she blames what she experiences on overworking, reluctantly taking a week off at the urging of her manager. Her fiancée (Jesse T. Usher) wants to help her but feels powerless. Rose begins to have hallucinations, and as the audience we see what she sees. Her mother’s painful death becomes a force that she needs to reckon with and is a major reason why she works as hard as she does. The hallucinations become more and more unnerving. With the aid of her ex-boyfriend cop Joel (Kyle Gallner), she begins looking into murder cases wherein people having died by suicide that they committed in front of another person, and they themselves have also witnessed a suicide. A turning point occurs when Robert Talley (Rob Morgan of Netflix’s Stranger Things, in a small but powerful role), a murderer currently in prison, managed to escape the clutches of the entity. With Joel’s help, Rose goes to the prison to see him. He tells Rose that the entity feeds on other people’s trauma. Apparently, the only way to relieve oneself of this curse is to murder someone else in front of a witness to thereby transfer the trauma on to them (again, similarly like in It Follows). Rose attempts to do this, yet it turns out to be another hallucination. By the end of the film, Rose confronts her childhood trauma at her now-abandoned childhood home in an unsatisfactory ending that paves the way for a sequel.

Thematically similar to Rosemary’s Baby in that the protagonist knows the truth and cannot seem to convince anyone around them that they are not crazy, Smile, while certainly not original, manages to take a familiar horror genre trope and seriously make it its own, packing a powerful emotional punch with several genuine jump scares nearly on a par with Gary Sherman’s Death Line (1972) and William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III: Legion (1990). In order for a film like this to work, the performances need to be believable and they are all spot-on.

Bonus Content (on 4K Ultra HD Disc):

Audio Commentary by director Parker Finn – this is a feature-length discussion by the film’s director who speaks about the movie scene by scene regarding what he wanted in the scenes and what he got. I normally shy away from such commentaries as I am not interested in a blow-by-blow description of the film, but the director speaks so intelligently about it that he is a constant pleasure to listen to.

Something's Wrong with Rose: Making Smile (HD) – at just under 30 minutes, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make the film in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flies on the Wall: Inside the Score (HD) – Smile has one of the creepiest scores that I have ever heard, and it was composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer. In under nine minutes, we are treated to his vast studio and his methods of creating ungodly sounds for the film.

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by director Parker Finn – there are two scenes provided here with an optional commentary and add depth to Rose’s character. These run just under 12 minutes. I would have loved to have had these scenes added as an optional cut of the film viewable through seamless branching.

Laura Hasn't Slept – Original Short with Introduction by director Parker Finn – this is the short film that Paramount scouts saw at South By Southwest in Austin, TX that paved the way for Smile. It runs about 11 minutes.

By Hank Reineke

Roger Corman had, over a relatively short period of time, directed and/or produced more than a half-dozen pictures since his entry into the movie industry in 1955. His first efforts were modest successes, but the filmmaker firmly broke into a dependably bankable stride within two years’ time. Though already having helmed two low budget science-fiction pictures with some success (Day the World Ended (1955) and It Conquered the World (1956) his reputation in Hollywood - as a budget-minded money-spinner - was properly recognized following the box office counting of his 1957 chiller combo: Attack of the Crab Monsters/Not of This Earth. Variety noted the package – each film made on a “slenderized bankroll of $85, 000,” had brought in an impressive domestic gross of $800,000. By early November of ’57, that package, distributed through Allied Artists, had earned back the entirety of its production and marketing costs within twelve weeks of its release.

Through the remainder of the 1950s and well into the early 1960s, Corman continued to grind out a dizzying array of feature films, not all of the horror and sci-fi variety: there were plenty of exploitative teenage rock n’ roll pictures and crime dramas offered as well. But from 1960 through 1964, Corman worked primarily – though not exclusively – producing and directing an impressive slate of upscale horror classics. He had already given fans such soon-to-be low-budget cult favorites as Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960). But in 1960 he more famously scored with House of Usher, the first of his iconic and moody cycle of Poe and H.P. Lovecraft adaptations - many featuring Vincent Price in roles as both tormentor and tormented.

One of Corman’s most important collaborators in his early years was screenwriter Charles B. Griffith. Griffith would receive screenwriting credit – or co-credit – on no fewer than eight of Corman’s earliest films 1956-59. The writer would later recall for Beast from Haunted Cave he had been commissioned by Corman to essentially rework the storyline of an earlier film they had crafted together – Naked Paradise (1957) aka Thunder Over Hawaii. Naked Paradise, of which Griffith was brought on late to the project for a re-write, was essentially a South Seas crime-drama set in a pineapple plantation under the umbrella of a glistening sun.

Since that film had done well enough, Corman wanted to revisit the scenario of Naked Paradise for the reimagined crime drama titled Beast from Haunted Cave. There would be a new twist: the new scenario was to take place in and around a gold mining community nestled in the dead winter snow of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Oh, and Corman advised Griffith that he also wanted a genuine cave-dwelling monster thrown in for good measure - that sort of thing was still selling. That was essentially all the background material given to Griffith to get started on the project.

Despite its menacing title Beast from Haunted Cave appears more a crime-drama than horror flick in the course of its 65-minute running time. The story revolves around the criminal doings of a circle of bandits: chain-smoking mastermind Alexander Ward (Frank Wolff), his two minions Marty Jones (Richard Sinatra) and Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and Ward’s oft- inebriated “secretary” Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol). The thieves have gathered in the snow-capped mountain winter of the pioneer town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Their plan is to plant an explosive in an abandoned cave in the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning. The explosion is set merely as a strategic ploy to distract authorities for a time, enabling the thieves’ free reign to steal gold bars from an unattended payroll office of a local gold-mining company.

Unfortunately, their plans don’t run smoothly. Ward’s dissatisfied and affection-starved lover-secretary, Gypsy, has a bit of a drinking problem. She complicates matters when she falls hard for ski instructor and trail guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), a swarthy, dark-haired gentleman of gentle temperament. (As an aside, I occasionally had a bit of trouble understanding actress Sheila Carol’s dialogue in this film: her diction seemed a perplexing amalgam of drunken slurred words and a faux Katherine Hepburn accent). The cold Ward takes notice of his woman’s wandering eye but is unworried. He has plans to kill Jackson once the skier - unwittingly - guides this gaggle of crooks on a cross-country trail run to a remote location.

Ward had plans to rendezvous with a waiting plane to ferry his gang - and their misbegotten treasure - off to safe sanctuary in Canada. But this plan too is scuttled by an unwelcome blizzard passing through the mountains. (As a second aside, Ward’s cross-country ski scheme is surely the most ineffectual escape route ever mapped by criminals carrying weighted gold bars in rucksacks. They really would have done better just hightailing it out of town in their rented car). To complicate matters further – and this is where the horror finally comes in - their explosive mine charge has awakened the titular beast, sort of an upright walking, giant spider that collects his victims by webbing them against cave walls and drinking their blood at his leisure. Let’s just say the moral of the story is a familiar one: essentially, crime doesn’t pay.

In Corman’s attempt to make their chilly time in the Black Hills more productive and worthwhile (i.e. profitable), the filming of Beast was to be produced back-to-back on location in Deadwood with yet another Charles B. Griffith script, Ski Troop Attack. This second film was to be a somewhat more ambitious project, a snow-bound WWII action-adventure pitting American ski-troopers against their wintry Nazi counterparts. The Corman team would use the same primary on-and off screen talents featured in the cast and credits of Beast for Ski Troop Attack.

The scenario of Ski Troop Attack referentially takes place in the snow-capped mountains of Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, circa December 1944. A small American band of ski-troopers are the only remaining Allied force active in this Nazi-controlled region, hiding themselves behind enemy lines so they can spy and report on SS ski-troop movements. The level-head Lieutenant Factor (Forest), a graduate of the Army’s Officer Candidate School, wishes to stay clear of engaging in active combat with the enemy. As the only team of Allied forces positioned inside the Nazi-controlled German-Belgian border, it is Forest’s belief his outfit should purposely avoid direct contact. He instead wants to concentrate his efforts on secret reconnaissance missions. By acting as the covert eyes of the good guys behind enemy lines, his outfit would be able to transmit vital information on Nazi troop movements back to HQ.

But Factor is at loggerheads with tough-talking Sergeant Potter (a mustache-less Wolff, again cast in a “heavy” role). Potter is described by Factor as an old school “regular army guy,” a man of pure fighting spirit but someone strategically short-sighted. Potter desperately wants to engage the Nazi ski-troopers in active combat and is mostly dismissive of the Factor’s civilian background and wartime decision-making capabilities. Potter does get a number of chances to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The film actually offers no shortage of brutal on screen violence with competing ski-troops ambushing and beating one another with fisticuffs, rifles butts, bayonets, knives and machine-gun fire.

Ultimately, the American’s decide to blow up a strategic railroad bridge that Allied air powers are unable to access and target. But while attempting to get to the base of the bridge to set off their detonators, they must first successfully climb an ice-covered vertical cliff side. If this isn’t problematic or dangerous enough, they must also fend off a team of six pursuing Nazi ski-troopers hot on their trail. The German skiing contingent, incidentally, is led by the badly-dubbed Roger Corman himself. The film’s climactic ending is, somewhat surprisingly for this type of adventure, more bleak than celebratory.

Griffith’s screenplay is actually far more nuanced than it is given credit for in the film’s original round of reviews. The sensitively written dialogue is mature – the scene where soldier Grammelsbacher (Sinatra) sits around a campfire musing if somewhere out there there’s still “a bullet with my name on it” – is particularly gripping. The better written dialogue also brings out better acting performances of all involved – including Shelia Carol who appears midway through the film as a spiteful German captive of the Americans.

The film does plod a bit. There’s a lot of wartime newsreel footage interlaced throughout, and no matter how beautiful the mountain settings are photographed, there’s far too many time-filling shots of ski-troopers silently trudging cross-country style through the tundra. Having said that that, there’s also some well-executed ski chase scenes captured on screen, such action-footage surprising for a film shot on a threadbare budget. The soundtrack of the film is riddled with the sound of machine-gun fire and a decent score courtesy of composer Fred Katz – though fans of Corman’s earliest films will surely recognize a good number of Katz’s recycled musical motifs are in play.

As both projects were to be shot on tight schedules, Roger’s brother, Gene, stepped in as the de facto producer of Beast. Once a Hollywood agent, Gene Corman was co-founder (with Roger) of their company Filmgroup, Inc. Gene’s earliest entries as producer would include a number of exploitative sci-fi efforts such as Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). With Roger set to both produce and direct Ski Troop Attack, the directorial duties of Beast were given to first-timer Monte Hellman - whose only previous film experience was having worked as an apprentice editor at ABC-TV.

In his entertaining memoir, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (Random House, 1990), Roger Corman recalled the wintertime location shooting in and around snowbound Deadwood as “unbearable” and “a very tough challenge.” When shooting was to commence on the peak of Mount Terry, Corman recorded temperatures of a frigid thirty-eight degrees below zero. In the recollection of script supervisor Kinta Zertuche, her primary job was simply “to find ways to keep the film warm enough so it wouldn’t get brittle and crack.” She was also deigned to find ways of keeping the production cameras from freezing – not always successfully.

Production assistant Paul Rapp recalled he had been tasked to drive the parsimonious Corman – and an automobile-filled cache of film props - from Los Angeles to Deadwood, so the director “could save on airfare and have an extra car on location.” When filming one downhill ski sequence, Corman accidentally set off a small avalanche by shouting “Action!” too loudly through a bullhorn. Rapp recalled while the incident scared him half-to-death, Corman quickly realized the potential visual impact of what the camera was capturing. So the team was commanded to continue to roll film, Corman exhorting via bullhorn that his terrified skiers try their best to “Stay Ahead of the Avalanche!”

In March of 1959, there was a trade announcement that “Corman’s distributing outfit, The Filmgroup,” was planning to release Beast from Haunted Cave nationally (paired with The Wasp Woman) as early as June 1, with Ski Troop Attack (to be paired with Task Force 38) a little more than a month later, July 13. But neither of those prospective release dates would actually roll out as planned, even though the films themselves were ready to roll. Beast would come closest to realizing its projected release date, appearing on some screens in July 1959.

As early as February of 1960, Variety reported that the steamroller that was Filmgroup was optimistically planning to roll out eight feature films a month between March and June of 1960. Ski Troop Attack was to see release on the very tail end of that schedule. The Hollywood Reporter suggested Filmgroup’s plan as more ambitious than even originally announced: the company was planning on issuing no less than twenty-four features over a year’s period, with eleven of those titles already in the can and ready to go.

The company was also interested in testing international markets. It was reported that the usually closed-to-outsiders Soviet film market was interested in importing four Corman titles – including Beast and Ski – assuming whether or not Irving Allen, president of Canada’s Astral Films, could finalize a deal while visiting London. Later in May of 1960, it was reported Filmgroup had sealed another deal to distribute eight films – again, including Beast and Ski - throughout the Philippine islands. Finally, in August of 1960, Continental Distributors would obtain rights of Filmgroup product for European markets.

But the U.S. market was of most concern to the filmmakers. On March 16, 1960, there was a very belated press screening of the Beast and Wasp combo at the Hollywood Theatre. Variety was generally impressed with Hellman’s Beast, but suggested the film’s scenario was completely illogical. The critic also pondered that perhaps interest in horror films was generally on the wane. He opined, audiences were growing “inured to monsters and hardly blink when this one guzzles its customary quota of blood.” The review of Wasp was likewise middling in praise. The trade noted, while the film was certainly an “exploitable” passable entertainment, “it’s pretty slow and not very frightening.”

The “official” premiere of Beast from Haunted Cave was to take place at dual locations in South Dakota: Rapid City’s State Theatre and the Hile-Hi Drive-in outside of Deadwood: the latter venue was to enjoy a four day night run of Beast beginning August 2, 1959. This was obviously a nod of acknowledgment to the folks living in the area of the Black Mountain Hills who hosted and assisted the film’s production. But no matter how well-intentioned the “premiere” honor, Beast from Haunted Cave and The Wasp Woman had already been projected on screens in the mid and southwestern U.S. as early as July of ’59.

Earlier that spring, director Gene Corman had written Allan “Birdie” Arnold of Deadwood’s Chamber of Commerce City Council, a champion of the film shoot. “We saw a rough cut of our picture, it is very good and I’m sure everyone who helped, especially you, will be proud and pleased,” Gene wrote, adding, “I plan to make it a full length picture and hope to release it in the summer.” For their assistance, both Arnold and Mayor Ed Keene of Lead, South Dakota, were given “Technical Advisor” credits on Beast.

By Todd Garbarini

I hated William Friedkin’s 1985 police thriller, To Live and Die in L.A., when I first saw it. The mixture of Eighties-style pop music by Wang Chung and the disreputable characters were, I felt, meretricious and off-putting. Even the car chase seemed lackluster. I also hated Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972), James Toback’s Fingers (1978) and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) during my first viewings. Revisiting these titles soon afterwards made me realize that I failed to fully appreciate or understand them. My ignorance of film was evident!

To Live and Die in L.A., which opened nationwide on Friday, November 1, 1985 to lukewarm notices and underwhelming box office despite being championed by a four-star review by Roger Ebert, is a highly stylized, dark, and uncompromising crime thriller that boasts a then-unknown cast with a story and a pace that feels more suited to the 1970s. It also contains what I consider to be the greatest car chase ever filmed and edited for a major motion picture, which took no less than five weeks to plan and shoot.

Having seen Mr. Friedkin’s brilliant Oscar-winning East Coast police thriller The French Connection (1971), this West Coast-based yarn centers on a Secret Service agent, Richard Chance (William Petersen), whose best friend and partner Jim Hart (Michael Greene) has been murdered in cold blood by artist/currency counterfeiter Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe) just days prior to his retirement. This plot device occurred before it became a familiar film trope, and this is easily one of the best films of the 1980s. Chance has one goal: to put Masters away for life with no regard for how he has to do it. Truthfully, he would prefer to kill him. This causes many issues for his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) whose familial lineage of law enforcement officers and his “by the book” methodology conflicts with Chance’s no-bullshit headstrong attitude. Vukovich’s unwillingness to go outside the boundaries of acceptability is tested when: Chance surreptitiously removes crucial evidence from a crime scene in order to get to Masters; Chance, without Vukovich’s knowledge, springs a prisoner friend (John Turturro) of Masters to get him to testify; and most notably forces Vukovich to go along with a plan to obtain cash needed to get closer to Masters while nearly dying in what is arguably cinema’s most exciting getaway car chase sequence. What makes the chase work so well is that it’s physical, it’s possible (though highly improbable), and it’s not done in a Fast and the Furious, over-the-top sort of way. Nor is it perfunctory as it comes as a result of an important plot point, nearly besting the director’s own French Connection subway/car chase with a headlong ride straight up the 710 Long Beach Freeway while driving in the wrong direction against traffic.

Chance also beds a willing parolee (Darlanne Fluegel) who gives him information on current convicts in return for money to provide for herself and her son Christopher. Like the inexorable Popeye Doyle in The French Connection who will stop at nothing to put drug dealers and users away, Chance, like his surname, will stop at nothing to capture and punish Masters. The difference between the two films is that the former paints Brooklyn and New York City as gritty and almost despairing cities whereas the latter bathes the frame in a Los Angeles that we have not seen before or since. While also gritty, grimy and dark, this is a Lotus Land that is also highly glossy and enticing, with beautiful people who are about as real as the counterfeit bills that Masters manufactures. The overall theme and central conceit of To Live and Die in L.A. is fraudulence. People use each other for their own personal gains. Masters is an artist but hates what he paints and burns his work in frustration. Since he cannot find joy or satisfaction in his own originality, he resorts to copying others, in this case $20, $50, and $100 bills in a procedure that is painstaking, difficult, and now archaic.

Like The French Connection, To Live and Die in LA is also based on a book of the same name, this one a novel written by former Secret Service Agent Gerald Petievich. What makes the film remarkable is the opening sequence which features a martyr who shouts “Allahu Akbar” just before blowing himself up on the roof of a hotel where then-President Reagan is giving a speech. This scene made little sense to me upon my maiden viewing but is eerily prescient of the religious extremism that has made its way to America’s shores.

The performances are excellent all around. William Petersen, whose film debut was as a bar bouncer in Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), is terrific as Chance and plays him as a daredevil whose cowboy nature seals his fate and makes him a dangerous person to be around. This is established in an early sequence wherein Chance bungee jumps off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, CA. In addition to the martyr sequence, this could also be one of the earliest instances of this now highly popular activity’s depiction in a film. John Pankow is also quite good as Chance’s conflicted partner. The stand-out is Willem Dafoe as Masters, fresh from Walter Hill’s 1984 outing Streets of Fire. His icy expressions and demeanor can change on a moment’s notice without warning. Darlanne Fluegel, who heartbreakingly left us far too soon following an early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, is mysterious as Chance’s muse. I first saw her in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Debra Feuer is striking as Masters’ girlfriend and confidante. The late Dean Stockwell is great as Masters’ lawyer - you can almost see him prepping himself for the role of Ben in David Lynch’s aforementioned and masterful Blue Velvet the following year. Steve James is an actor I always liked ever since I first saw him in the “Night Vigil” episode of T.J. Hooker in 1984. He started in the industry as a stunt man in films as diverse as The Wiz (1978), The Wanderers (1979), The Warriors (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980), and He Knows You’re Alone (1980) prior to onscreen acting. Here he plays Jeff, one of Masters’ clients and his performance, though small, shines. He also appeared in the William Friedkin TV-movie C.A.T. Squad in 1986, which was also written by Mr. Petievich. His premature death in 1993 from what is rumored to be the medical treatment that he received after a cancer diagnosis is a tremendous loss to the entertainment industry.

To Live and Die in L.A. has been released on home video many times in the United States and is now available on 4K UHD Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The extras, which are ported over from the 2016 SHOUT! Factory Special Edition Blu-ray and the 2003 MGM/UA Home Video DVD, are all included and are as follows:

Disc One:

- 4K UHD Blu-ray remastered from the original camera negative.

- Audio Commentary by Director William Friedkin from 2003 – this runs the full length of the film and is the only bonus to be included on both the 4K UHD disc and the standard 1080p Blu-ray.

Disc Two:

- Standard 1080p Blu-ray down-converted from a 4K remastering from the original camera negative.

- Audio Commentary by Director William Friedkin from 2003.

- Taking a Chance: Interview with Actor William Petersen (20:42, in high definition, from 2016) – Gary Sinise read for the role of Richard Chance with the casting director, but the role instead went to William Petersen after he read for it at William Friedkin’s New York City apartment. A second reading with actor friend John Pankow solidified their roles.

- Renaissance Woman in L.A. Interview with Actress Debra Feuer (14:56, in high definition, from 2016) – Ms. Feuer reminisces about how wonderful the experience was for her. Despite the sexual angle of the film which made her uncomfortable, the cast and crew made her receptive and accepted on the set. Her role is small but important and I would love to see her in more films.

- Doctor for a Day: Interview with Actor Dwier Brown (08:53, in high definition, from 2016) – Dwier Brown talks about his excitement over reading for the film. He would later go on to appear as Phil Sterling in Mr. Friedkin’s 1989 druid-horror film The Guardian, and humorously recalls how the director forgot that he was in To Live and Die in L.A.

- So in Phase - Scoring To Live and Die in L.A. Interview with Composers Wang Chung (12:44, in high definition, from 2016) – It’s amazing that Mr. Friedkin heard Wang Chung’s 1984 album Points on the Curve, in particular the song “Wait,” and explained that that was the vibe that he wanted from the album for the film score. While there is a soundtrack album available for this film, it’s incomplete, and I hope that one day a full soundtrack album, remastered from the original master tracks, will be issued. Wang Chung recalls some interesting anecdotes in this onscreen interview.

- Wrong Way - The Stunts of To Live and Die in L.A. Interview with Stunt Coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker (35:39, in high definition, from 2016) – The famous stunt man discusses the intricacies and challenges of filming one of the most dangerous car chases ever mounted for a film. The director was all about disorienting the audience, and that notion comes into play here in how the chase was staged and ultimately executed.

- Counterfeit World - The Making of To Live and Die in L.A. Documentary (29:52, in standard definition, from 2003) – This is a fun look behind the scenes with mini interviews from many of the cast and crew involved, with discussions regarding the characterizations as portrayed by the actors and actresses to filming the famed car chase.

- Deleted Scene and Alternate Ending with Introductions (13:07) – this is the ridiculous ending that the director shot to please the studio executives and thankfully was never used. You won’t believe it when you see it.

- Radio Spot (01:04)

- Trailer (2:08)

All in all, a great package of a great movie.

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Acclaimed actress Piper Laurie passed away recently at age 91. She was nominated for three Academy Awards for "The Hustler", "Carrie" and "Children of a Lesser God". Here is a rare extended interview with her from the 2022 TCM Film Festival.

By Ernie Magnotta

To hardcore horror fans, the filmmaking team of Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter is well known. The dynamic duo first appeared on the horror scene in 1982 when they directed the cult slasher film The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Pranks, a movie that featured the big screen debut of actress Daphne Zuniga and, thanks to a murder scene involving a drill, was put on the UK’s infamous “Video Nasty” list. Obrow and Carpenter’s sophomore effort would be 1984’s The Power, a supernatural tale about a man who becomes possessed by an evil Aztec doll. Recently, the creative team’s third film, a creature feature titled The Kindred, was released on Blu-ray.

The Kindred (1987)concerns scientist John Hollins (David Allen Brooks) who, at the behest of his dying mother—a molecular scientist played by Kim Hunter—returns to her home with Melissa Leftridge (Amanda Pays) and several of his friends in order to destroy the “Anthony Journals”; his mother’s notes detailing her genetic experiments. However, evil scientist Phillip Lloyd (Rod Steiger) desperately wants the journals so that he can continue the unholy experiments himself. But there’s another problem—John’s murderous “brother”, Anthony, a horrible-looking, tentacled creature born from genetic experimentation, is lurking somewhere in their mother’s old house and he’s not a happy camper.

Besides once again directing, Obrow and Carpenter also co-wrote The Kindred (along with John Penney, Earl Ghaffari and the legendary Joseph Stefano) while Obrow produced and Carpenter handled the cinematography. Shot in California, this is a well-made and enjoyable 80s horror flick with lots of amazing, gooey special effects (one of the main reasons to watch the movie) by Academy Award winner Matthew Mungle, and a decent-looking creature. The film’s talented cast also includes Talia Balsam, Peter Frechette and Julia Montgomery, and there’s a memorable musical score by Oscar nominated composer David Newman.

The Kindred has been released on a region 1, 2 and 3 Blu-ray by Synapse Films and it is presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The 4K HD remaster of the unrated version is flawless and it has a new 5.1 English stereo surround remix as well. (The original 2.0 mono theatrical mix is also included along with optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.) The disc not only contains an informative audio commentary by directors Obrow and Carpenter (moderated by horror journalist Steve Barton), but it also features a terrific, all-new 52 minute documentary titled Inhuman Experiments-The Making of “The Kindred”; an interesting 18 minute featurette showing effects artist Michael McCracken Jr.’s never-before-seen on-set footage, as well as a still gallery, storyboards, trailers and TV spots. Pure 80s fun. Recommended.

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The following press release was received from The History Press.

“The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die” (Fine Press Edition) By Sir Roger Moore KBE

9781803992600 240 pages
4 October 2023, £350

· Will feature a new foreword from actress Madeline Smith (Agent Caruso in Live and Let Die) as well as an existing foreword by the late, great David Hedison (Felix Leiter)

· James Bond is synonymous with luxury, high-end products, and Bond fans typically seek these out (see 007store.com for examples)

· Live and Let Die is a much-loved and iconic Bond film, which lends itself to this format · Will include some more rare images from the filming of Live and Let Die

· The book will be individually numbered, beautifully produced, complete with slipcase

Out of print for over forty years, The 007 Diaries introduces Roger Moore’s James Bond Diary to a new generation of fans. To tie in with the release of his first James Bond film, Live and Let Die, Roger Moore agreed to keep a day-by-day diary throughout the film’s production, which would be published just ahead of the premiere in July 1973. From his unveiling as the new 007 in 1972 through to his first scenes on location in New Orleans and his final shot in New York, Moore describes his whirlwind journey as cinema’s most famous secret agent. Taking in the sights of Jamaica before returning to Pinewood Studios, Moore’s razor wit and unique brand of humour is ever present. With tales from every location, including his encounters with his co-stars and key crew members, Moore offers the reader an unusually candid, amusing and hugely insightful behind-the-scenes look into the world’s most successful film franchise.

AUTHOR DETAILS

SIR ROGER MOORE KBE had an extraordinary career that spanned seven decades, from early television to the golden age of Hollywood and on to international superstardom. Dashing, handsome and every inch the archetypal English gentleman, he was unforgettable as the title character in The Saint and as Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders! But it was as James Bond where he made his mark, playing the most debonair of the 007s in seven blockbusting films.

Click here for more information and to order. 

By Todd Garbarini

Something happened to me while watching John Cassavetes’s film Gloria that, to my knowledge, has never, ever happened before and probably will never, ever happen again. Towards the end of the film, the titular heroine exits a cab and asks the cabbie for the time, and she replies, “It’s 9:20.” Unbelievably, this was the exact time of day that it was on my clock as I watched the film in the evening. In films, people give the time to others when asked (Charles Martin Smith is told that it’s “a quarter to twelve” when attempting to purchase alcohol in George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti), but the phenomenon of the onscreen reel time being in synch with the offscreen real time is something that I have not experienced before, and it got me to thinking about how certain things happen by mere happenstance.

The cinema of John Cassavetes is an acquired taste as he was a maverick who made many films on his own terms. If the general audience loved his work, it would infuriate him and he would recut the film, as was the case with 1970’s Husbands, a film that was released, critically acclaimed, pulled out of release and re-cut into a completely different film, culled from roughly 240 hours of raw footage. Co-star Ben Gazzara stated that his favorite version of the film ran four-and-a-half hours. The director often employed members of a small but loyal acting troupe headed by his wife, Gena Rowlands, who portrays the titular heroine in this film, shot between July and September 1979 and released in New York on Wednesday, October 1, 1980. She received her second Oscar nomination for her performance here, the first being for A Woman Under the Influence in 1974, also under the direction her husband.

Gloria is a film mired in Manhattan, Harlem and the Bronx in New York. The film opens with nighttime establishing shots of the New York skyline to the music of Bill Conti best known for the theme to Rocky (1976). The Statue of Liberty and several bridges are luminescent and invoke Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie filmed there two years earlier. The daylight exposes the filthy streets and the people who inhabit them. A six-year-old Puerto Rican boy, Phil Dawn (John Adames), narrowly escapes being killed by the Mafia following his mob accountant father’s (Buck Henry of all people) involvement with them turned sour. Phil is saddled with a copy of the Bible, which in reality is incriminating evidence that the Mafia wants back in their hands. His parents and siblings all become collateral damage as he and the family friend, Gloria, bolt and attempt to get away. Gloria is part of the Mafia. She possesses street smarts and packs heat, unflinchingly firing upon her enemies in broad daylight, though no cops appear to be anywhere in sight. Like the interior of Marcellus Wallace’s suitcase in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), this Bible proves to be a MacGuffin to keep Gloria and Phil on the run.

Initially, Gloria and Phil cannot stand one another, and the former appears to be reluctant to be saddled with the latter despite her promise to Phil’s parents to take care of him. Eventually, they grow on one another and, dare I say it, even develop a mutual affection. John Adames proves himself to be a capable actor though, to my knowledge, this is his sole screen credit. The film, despite reportedly being disparaged by its director (who probably would have been happy to completely recut it), is a showcase for its leading actress, who is always fascinating to watch.

Gloria was released on Blu-ray in August 2018 by Twilight Time and that pressing contained an isolated musical score. There is a new pressing of the film, this time by Kino Lorber, and the results are unspectacular. This is not a carp about Kino,since they always do a bang-up job on their Blu-ray releases. The film image is dark at times, especially in the beginning scenes in the apartment building (look fast for Tom Noonan as a Mafia soldier), and it looks as though it was transferred from a theatrical print, minus the reel-change cue marks. I am only assuming this to be the case (though I am probably incorrect), or perhaps this was how it was either photographed or developed as the liner notes are absent of the usual declaration boasting a high-definition transfer from the film’s original camera negative.

The only extras to speak of on this pressing are theatrical trailers for Gloria, Sidney Lumet’s Gloria remake from 1999, Gorky Park (1983), 52 Pick-Up (1986), Code of Silence (1985), Number One with a Bullet (1987), and Lonely are the Brave (1962).

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Paramount Home Video: 

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the heartfelt drama TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, arriving for the first time on 4K Ultra HD as part of the Paramount Presents line on November 14, 2023 from Paramount Home Entertainment.   

James L. Brooks produced, wrote the screenplay (based on the novel by Larry McMurtry), and made his directorial debut with TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, which ultimately earned 11 Academy Award® nominations and won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Shirley MacLaine), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Both critically acclaimed and a box-office blockbuster, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT features a powerhouse cast including Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and John Lithgow.  Originally released on November 23, 1983, the enduring classic follows the ups and downs of a mother-daughter relationship with honesty, heart, and humor. 

This Paramount Presents release includes the film in sparkling 4K Ultra HD, with a transfer from the original camera negative reviewed and approved by Brooks.  The set includes a 4K Ultra HD Disc, a Blu-ray Disc™, access to a Digital copy of the film, as well as a brand-new Filmmaker Focus with James L. Brooks. In this newly recorded interview, Brooks reflects on the challenges and excitement that came with being a first-time director, including getting directing critiques from Jack Nicholson. He also discusses the casting process and the film’s amazing performances.  The set also includes a legacy commentary with director James L. Brooks, co-producer Penney Finkelman Cox, and production designer Polly Platt, as well as the theatrical trailer.

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Imprint, the Australian video label, is releasing "The Avengers: The Tara King Collection" as a region-free Blu-ray set on 29 November. Here are the details:

John Steed fights crime and diabolical masterminds in his own inimitable manner with nonchalant efficiency, sophistication, and charm. With the departure of Mrs. Peel (Diana Rigg), Steed (Patrick Macnee) has acquired a new assistant, Tara King (Linda Thorson), who relies less on judo and more on feminine guile to dispatch her assailants. Miss King will use a coo or a kiss rather than a karate chop, not to mention an occasional brick-in-the-handbag technique! Emotional, earthy, cunning, Tara is thoroughly emancipated, while remaining essentially feminine. This is her real distinction and it makes her devastating! 

In this stunning celebration of the Tara King era, The Avengers probe 33 colourful adventures in stunning high-definition, with a bountiful collection of vintage and new Special Features. 

Plus an additional disc brings together early episodes from the first two seasons of the series and audio reconstructions for Series 1 lost episodes. 

A second bonus disc features the worldwide Blu-ray debut of Patrick Macnee’s 1970 post-Avengers crime caper Mister Jerico, sporting a brand NEW 2K scan from the original negative.

11 DISC BLU-RAY SET + 120 page collectable booklet in LIMITED EDITION HARDBOX packaging.

THE AVENGERS SERIES 6 – all 33 episodes on 9 discs

Special Features and Technical Specs: 

• 1080p high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements 
• Collectable double-sided Hardbox packaging – 1500 copies only
• NEW! 120-page booklet featuring an essay by television writer / historian Andrew Pixley, and Press/Story Information from the original studio files
• Original ‘as broadcast’ mono audio track (LPCM) and “The Avengers in Color” opening slate
• NEW! Audio Commentary on “The Forget-Me-Knot” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
• NEW! Audio Commentary on the Terry Nation scripted episode “Invasion of the Earthmen”  by writer/film critic Kim Newman and screenwriter/author Robert Shearman (2023)
• Audio Commentary on “Split!” by writer/producer Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Waker 
• NEW! Audio Commentary on “LOOK! (stop me if you’ve heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers…” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
• NEW! Never-before-released Video Commentary on “All Done With Mirrors” featuring actress Linda Thorson, director Raymond Austin, composer Howard Blake, producer Brian Clemens recorded on-stage at “THE AVENGERS AT 50” event in 2011
• Audio Commentary on “All Done With Mirrors” by actress Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady 
• Audio Commentary on “Game” by director Robert Fuest
• Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by actress Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady 
• 2nd Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by stuntwoman Cyd Child
• NEW! 3rd Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
• Audio Commentary on “Killer” by guest actress Jennifer Croxton
• Audio Commentary on “The Morning After” by director John Hough
• Audio Commentary on “Love All” by writer Jeremy Burnham and guest actress Veronica Strong
• NEW! Audio Commentary on “Fog” by film historians Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons (2023)
• NEW! Audio Commentary on “Thingumajig” by film historians Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons (2023)
• NEW! Audio Commentary on “Bizarre” by television historians Dick Fiddy (of the British Film Institute) and Henry Holland (2023)
• Video Introductions to “The Interrogators”, “Love All”, “Take Me To Your Leader”, “Pandora”, “Thingumajig” and “Requiem” by Linda Thorson 
• Video Introduction to “Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?” by director Cyril Frankel
• NEW! Audio Recollection on “Get-A-Way!” by guest actor Peter Bowles 
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Interviews captured at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the series, held at Chichester University (2011) 
  • Helicopter arrival and Audio Commentary by Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady 
  • NEW! Linda Thorson introduces video message from Patrick Macnee
  • NEW! “The Impact of The Avengers” – panel discussion with Linda Thorson, Paul O’Grady, director Raymond Austin, actor John Carson and author Alwyn Turner
  • NEW! “The Music of The Avengers” – Themes from the series (and The New Avengers) performed by the Chichester University Orchestra 
  • Interview with Linda Thorson by Paul O’Grady 
  • “The Two Sides of Tara King” – with Linda Thorson and stuntwoman Cyd Child
  • Interview with director John Hough
  • Interview with director Robert Fuest
  • Interview with composer Howard Blake
  • Interview with director/stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin (NEW! Complete unreleased version) 
• “In the Footsteps of Tara King” – interview with Linda Thorson by Oliver Kalkofe (2010)
• “Wish You Were Here” – Locations featurette 
• “Avenging The Avengers” – featurette on the series (1992) plus additional unused interviews
• “Thriller: Lady Killer” – complete episode from the ATV series starring Linda Thorson, written by Brian Clemens (in Standard Definition) 
• “Return of the Saint: The Roman Touch” – complete episode of the ITC action series guest starring Linda Thorson (in Standard Definition) 

Archival Vault Material 

• “Introducing Linda Thorson” – Vintage Promotional Trailer
• “Girl About Town” – Vintage Promotional Short Film about Linda Thorson with optional Audio Commentary by Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady
• Artists Screen Tests – vault film of various actresses auditioning to be the new “Avengers Girl” (mute with optional Audio Commentary) 
• “Invasion of the Earthmen” – Alternative U.S. End Credits
• Series 6 Textless Closing Credits with theme music
• U.S. ABC Network Commercial Break Bumpers 
• “Mit Schirm, Charme Und Melone” – German Opening Titles / Closing Credits
• “Granada Plus Points” for “The Forget-Me-Knot” featuring Patrick Macnee
• Extensive Photo Galleries from the studio archives 

Bonus Disc 1: The Avengers – The Early Years 

• “Hot Snow Act 1” – the only surviving material from the very first episode of Series 1, with optional Audio Commentary by producer Leonard White (in Standard Definition)
• “Girl on the Trapeze” – the complete 6th episode from Series 1 (in Standard Definition)
• “The Frighteners” – the complete 15th episode from Series 1 (in Standard Definition)
• “Bullseye” – the complete 8th episode from Series 2, with optional Audio Commentary by actress Honor Blackman and Paul O’Grady
• “Warlock” – the complete 16th episode from Series 2, with optional, NEW! previously unreleased Audio Commentary by Honor Blackman and story editor Richard Bates recorded at “THE AVENGERS AT 50” event in 2011
• 14 Audio Reconstructions for missing Series 1 episodes 
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Interview with producers Leonard White and Brian Tessler, actresses Honor Blackman and Julie Stevens (2011)

Bonus Disc 2: Mister Jerico (1970)

1970 crime caper produced by ITC as the pilot to a proposed new Patrick Macnee series, but ultimately aired as a one-off television film, and theatrically exhibited in some territories.

• NEW! 1080p high-definition presentation of a 2023, 2K scan from the original camera negative by Imprint, with grading by award-winning colourist Jonathan Wood 
• NEW! Audio Commentary by television historians Dick Fiddy (of the British Film Institute) and Henry Holland (2023)
• NEW! Restoration Featurette 
• Original Theatrical Trailer (previously unreleased) 
• Textless Titles
• Photo Gallery

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER 

(Prices are in Australian dollars. Use  a currency converter to see what the price is in your local currency.)

By Lee Pfeiffer

Only a week after we congratulated David McCallum on his 90th birthday comes the sad news that he has passed away from natural causes in New York City, where he resided. I have nothing but wonderful memories of the time I spent with him. Like most boys who grew up in the spy rage of the 1960s, I became a big fan of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", though I had admired his work in "The Great Escape" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" even before then. His portrayal of Judas in the latter film was particularly haunting because he played him as a tragic and sympathetic figure. The success of "U.N.C.L.E." unexpectedly thrust David and his co-star Robert Vaughn into becoming international teenage idols. It was a distinction neither man had sought. At the height of the mania, David was to appear at Macy's in New York to promote his record album. The event was besieged by screaming teenage girls to such a degree that the police had to call the event off and hide David until the crowd had dissipated. The show ran from September, 1964 through January, 1968. Although David and Robert enjoyed their time on the series and were grateful for the fame and  fortune they gained from it, both men were eager to move on. David worked steadily in feature films and in live theater. Many years later, he landed the role of pathologist "Ducky" Mallard on the hit CBS series "NCIS". As the years went by, David joked to me that he kept trying to quit the series due to his advanced years but the producers always found a way to keep him on board. He seemed to love every minute he worked on the series.

What many people don't know is that David, the son of an acclaimed conductor in his native Scotland, was also a talented musician, arranger and composer who had some acclaimed albums in the 1960s. In recent, years he tried his hand at writing novels and found success in that endeavor, as well. At one point, I reunited David with my good friend, actor Joe Sirola, who had played a villain on a couple of episodes of "U.N.C.L.E." It gave me great pleasure to see them reignite their friendship and David would show up at Joe's legendary summer party on the terrace of his New York penthouse. When Dave Worrall and I began publishing Cinema Retro 20 years ago, David was a contributor. He was always reluctant to talk about himself and his career, but after one interview session he said he found it "therapeutic" to recall so many wonderful times in the acting profession that he had not thought about in many years. A very special evening occurred in 20009 at The Players, the legendary club for the arts in New York City. I was hosting a black tie dinner in honor of Robert Vaughn. During the cocktail hour he said, "I only wish David could have been here." Shortly thereafter, David and his wife Katherine did show up, causing many sophisticated middle-aged women to gasp with delight. David had told me he couldn't make the event but at the last minute he found a way to attend. It was a wonderful evening, especially when David gave a marvelous and touching speech about his former co-star. Years later, it would pain me to have been the one to break the news to David that Robert had passed away.

David was first married to actress Jill Ireland and the couple had three children: Paul, Jason and Valentine. After they divorced, David met and married Katherine Carpenter in 1967. They had two children: Peter and Sophie. David adored his wife and family and always spoke of them with great pride. 

While I mourn David's passing, I take solace from the fact that he did not suffer and was surrounded by laughter and love for most of his life. In an increasingly cynical age, David represented the vanishing attributes of graciousness and modesty. I had left him a phone message on his 90th birthday and had planned to get together with him soon. That won't happen but I can appreciate the time I spent with him over the years. He was a talented actor and musician, a good family man and a person who left his mark on the profession he loved. Thanks for the memories, David.  

By Todd Garbarini

The first time that I heard of the name Nat Segaloff was in 1990 when I purchased his new book at the time, Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. I eagerly read through it in no time as The French Connection, Mr. Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film for Best Picture and Best Director among others, is my favorite film. It was his fifth feature as a director, and it put Mr. Friedkin on the map following the disappointing box office performance of his first four films. However, the critical praise and box office success of this real-life-inspired police drama which contains two of cinema’s greatest action set pieces would not truly prepare audiences for his follow-up film.

Mr. Friedkin’s The Exorcist, a film adaptation of the best-selling 1971 William Peter Blatty novel of the same name, opened theatrically on Wednesday, December 26, 1973 on no less than twenty seven theater screens, one of which was the Cinema 57 which was part of the Sack Theatre chain in Boston, MA. Mr. Segaloff was a publicist and was tasked with playing door guard to a top-secret pre-arranged screening of the film on Christmas morning to a handful of critics who were there to get their reviews in their respective papers earlier than usual. This incident is recounted in his preface to his latest book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, the title of which brings to the forefront the shocking revelation of just how many years have transpired since Regan MacNeil’s head spun around. The film is something that I had heard about for years prior to becoming a fan of scary cinema and I was unsure how much of it was rumor or fact. I recall purchasing The Exorcist on VHS in February 1986 seven months before I saw The French Connection. It was in the oversized clamshell box by Warner Home Video and while I was impressed with it, it did not scare me in the slightest. However, I have spoken to other people who saw the film in their teenage years and refused to view it ever again. A September 1996 viewing of the film to a sold-out screening at Radio City Music Hall, introduced by both lead actress Ellen Burstyn and the director in-person, solidified the film’s stature as a masterpiece in my mind. The release of the film on DVD in a 25^th anniversary edition whetted the appetite of those who would see the film theatrically two years later when The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen was released which would include changes and additional footage. The Blu-ray of the film in 2010 in the extended director’s cut was by no means the final word, as in 2013 a 40th anniversary Blu-ray added a nice documentary and extended interviews with the author. Just in time for the 50^th anniversary, the film is now bowing in 4K UHD.

Following a foreword by John A. Russo of Night of the Living Dead fame, Mr. Segaloff begins his book, which is comprised of sixteen chapters and lasting just over three hundred pages in length, from the correct presumption that the film is a misunderstood classic. He agrees with the assessment by both Mr. Blatty and Mr. Friedkin that the film is many things except the horror film that it is widely revered as since the time of its release, though audiences have other opinions. We are treated to many interesting tidbits: the hilarious story of how Mr. Friedkin met Mr. Blatty and how the former’s honesty solidified a working relationship and lifelong friendship with the latter, with Mr. Friedkin being the sole director that Mr. Blatty wanted from the get-go; Warner Brothers’ initial reluctance to hire Mr. Friedkin until the release of his brilliant The French Connection in 1971 garnered sudden critical and financial success and changed the game completely; the original 1949 real-life case of a young possessed Maryland boy; Mr. Blatty’s writing of the novel; the making of the film; a multitude of issues that beset the film’s production giving way to the supposed “curse” on the set; the controversy surrounding the release of the film; in-depth looks at the much-maligned Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and the superior The Exorcist III (1990), the latter both written and directed by Blatty; the prequels and television series, and the little-known The Ninth Configuration. If you’re even just a passing fan of the film, the book is a must read.

Mr. Segaloff was gracious enough to speak with me from his home in Los Angeles by phone regarding the book. Unfortunately, the day I contacted him about the interview was the same day that Mr. Friedkin had passed away, a fact that I was unaware of until an hour later. Mr. Segaloff wanted to press on with the interview, however, which amazed me as he knew Mr. Friedkin for nearly fifty years.

Todd Garbarini: Where are you from originally?

Nat Segaloff: I was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is a good long way from Cottage City, Maryland, where that little boy was possessed in 1949. We were not possessed in Silver Spring. Silver Spring was a very strange place. It was the nation’s largest unincorporated city, about one hundred thousand people, and nobody taking out the garbage.

I was able to leave and go to school in Boston, and there, I not only ran the major movie program on campus, I also insinuated myself into both the city’s professional film scene and the then-burgeoning underground film scene. Of course, we’re talking the 1960’s.

When I graduated from college, I started doing publicity for the film companies in town and, after a while, moved to New York to do it there, then moved back to Boston and became a critic. All of that served as fodder for the books I’ve written and for the people I’ve met because I’m a kind of a demimonde. A lot of people remembered me from when I was a publicist, but then when I became a reporter, they thought I was still a publicist, and they trusted me. It’s a very odd combination, and I sometimes had to tell people, “You know, I’m a reporter now.” I was able to keep close to a lot of people that I’d met doing publicity, like Robert Altman, James Bridges, Paul Mazursky, and John Milius.

TG: A lot of people I’ve spoken with who work in the film industry didn’t go to the movies or even see films on television until they were much older. Did you do the same thing, or did you get into them later?

NS: Back when I was a pod, the only way to see an old movie was on late-night television. I stayed up till one-thirty in the morning to view The Jazz Singer on Washington television because there was no way I was otherwise going to see it. There was no video, and you couldn’t even rent a 16-millimeter print of it. Later, there were revival theaters in Washington where I attended occasionally, but you still had to wait for something to appear. Only when I went away to school and ran the film program was I seeing movies every weekend, because I had to make sure people weren’t smoking in the theater. That was my job. I was managing the campus theater. I saw a lot of movies in class and in theaters, and it was wonderful. Between that and being a critic, I must have spent thirty years watching a couple of movies a week, and then I just burned out completely.

TG: As much as I love watching movies, I don’t know that I would be able to do that! Do you have an all-time favorite movie?

NS: The easy answer is Citizen Kane. It certainly is the source of so much inspiration and technique for everybody who makes movies. I don’t think it’s possible to cite one particular film. Whatever pleases you at the time that you’re open to, it’s a film that becomes your favorite. I also like His Girl Friday. No connection between those, except they’re both about newspapers.

TG: Are you drawn to movies about reporters and publicists?

NS: It turns out that I am drawn to movies about reporters. Certainly, Sam Fuller’s Park Row is a movie that makes me cry, not because it’s sad, but because it reminds me of the days when I was writing for real newspapers. No, I don’t find myself glomming onto any particular kind of film, be it science fiction, horror, drama, musical, or anything else. I just like a good movie.

TG: So, you don’t consider yourself partial to certain genres?

NS: I think that so many genres, particularly horror or suspense films, seem to have a playbook, and I don’t like films that go where you know they’re going to go. I remember something Jonathan Demme said about the script for his film Something Wild. He said you literally didn’t know from one page to the next what was going to happen. I like to see that on the screen. I like films that have what I call an “Oh, shit!” moment. The first one I remember was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey, just before the intermission, when we realized that HAL was reading the astronauts’ lips, and that was the moment where the whole audience sort of exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” [laughs]. There are also other movies like A Beautiful Mind with that kind of moment, or a movie that very few people remember that Stephen Fears made called Dirty Pretty Things.

TG: Yes, that’s with Audrey Tautou from Amelie.

NS: Yes. I was watching it in a small theater, and not only did we all say, “Oh, shit,” but we all stayed through the credits and then stood up and congratulated each other after the movie for seeing that film.

TG: You’ve written and published a good number of books on The Towering Inferno, the Scarface films, the Hollywood Code, John Milius, William Friedkin and Harlan Ellison. Your latest book, The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear, is quite an accomplishment. It begins on Christmas Day in 1973. You were working for the Sack Cinema 57 on Stuart Street in Boston.

NS: Yes. I was their publicity director in 1973 when The Exorcist was scheduled to be released on Wednesday, December 26^th. One of our critics, Stuart Byron, who knew the industry really well, was able to inveigle William Friedkin to permit a day-before screening so that the weekly papers, which catered to the young audience, would be able to meet their deadlines. So, I hosted this greeting of The Exorcist on Christmas morning.

For some reason, the critics had no problem leaving the bosom of their families to come and see a movie about a little girl whose head spins around. I didn’t see the movie that day. I was standing in the lobby guarding the door so the people who weren’t invited couldn’t get in. Nobody got sick. We didn’t know we were supposed to throw up. Of course, the Technicolor yawns began the very next day.

TG: Did you have any inkling what that film was like? Based upon the lobby cards, the marketing of the film by Warner Brothers, did you have any idea what was going on behind those doors?

NS: I had no idea what was going to be going on, “on this street in that house in a little girl’s bedroom.” [laughs] I had read the book, of course. The only glimpse we had was a teaser trailer that went 30 seconds with the narration I just did for you. It was simply a shot of the poster of Max von Sydow standing outside of the house. That’s all anybody knew. There were no pictures, nothing. In fact, there was an embargo on anything from the film. I think it was either Time or Newsweek who ended up sued by Warner Brothers because somebody sneaked into the theater and got a picture of Regan in makeup and ran it. That was considered a breach of copyright, a very secret thing. The audiences, as you know, would file out ashen. The audiences waiting to get in would know that something weird was going on in there, and it became an emotional rollercoaster for them.

TG: Now, I of course, didn’t live through this. Was this a similar reaction like when Psycho came out? Psycho had been a novel first, and then the film was released and it was all hush-hush, “don’t give away the ending.”

NS: I wasn’t old enough to see Psycho when it came out. I do know, of course, that Hitchcock specified that nobody be allowed in once the film had started. That made a certain groundswell of public opinion. The film that was closest to The Exorcist when I was that age was Night of the Living Dead, which had a reputation for being gross, scary, and horrifying. The fact that it was shown at midnight to a bunch of kids who were probably high made additional impressions on people. A black and white film with blurry pictures from an indie source in Pittsburgh was not the same thing as a beautifully photographed color film from Warner Brothers. Incidentally, John Russo, who co-wrote Night of the Living Dead, wrote the forward to The Exorcist Legacy.

TG: What was your introduction to William Friedkin’s work? Had you seen any of his previous films?

NS: I had seen The Birthday Party. It was on a sneak preview where Walter Reade’s Continental Releasing was trying to get a booking for it, and I saw it in Boston. That wasn’t the film that I was there to see. The Birthday Party was just stunning. Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, I mean, just a beautifully contained job. I’d also seen The Night They Raided Minsky’s, and thought it was lovely, but I didn’t really realize it was a William Friedkin film. I had missed Good Times with Sonny and Cher, which I’ve seen since then. Then of course, The French Connection came out. I was late seeing The Boys in the Band because I was in school at the time when it played in theaters. I caught it later. The French Connection naturally was the one that galvanized everybody. In fact, at the theater that showed it in Boston, which is where I was working at the time, people would come in early when they knew that the car chase was going to start, and they’d see the chase and stay through to watch the film all through again so they could get in and see the chase twice. We had to clear the theater. It was remarkable with that on a huge screen. The vertigo was just phenomenal. It was just a staggering effect because I don’t think anybody had ever mounted a camera on the bumper of a car before Billy did it.

TG: That’s what blows me away about his cinema. He did things that we had never seen before.

NS: Yes, including racing through the streets of New York without permits. Randy Jurgensen will tell you one thing. Sonny Grosso would tell another. Billy Friedkin would tell you something else. There’s no agreement. From what I understand, and I trust Randy, is that they simply ran the car. They didn’t have any siren on the car to warn people because, as Randy said, if you put a siren on the car, people look at the car and they don’t want people looking at the car. Billy sat in the back, Bill Hickman drove, and they just tore ass through Brooklyn. If anybody stopped them, Randy said he’d just flash his badge saying, “Fellow officer, let us go.” You could do that then. You could get away with it.

TG: So much of what you could get away with, you can’t do now because of small security cameras and the Internet.

NS: Yes. We’re living, as John Milius said, under the booted foot of the lifeguard state.

TG: How did this book about The Exorcist Legacy come about? When did you start thinking about it? Had it been something gestating in your mind for some years? Had you started writing it a long time ago in anticipation of the 50th anniversary?

NS: I could tell you my publicity line, which is that I’ve been possessed by The Exorcist for 50 years, but in fact, I’d acquired a wonderful new agent, Lee Sobel, at the end of 2020. We were thinking what kind of books we could possibly sell. Anniversary books seemed to work well. What film was having a 25th, a 40th, or a 50th anniversary? We figured, well, with a year and a half or two of lead time, that makes it 2023. I said, “The Exorcist is going to be 50.” Bang, he sold it in a matter of days.

TG: Did you approach John Russo specifically to do the forward?

NS: John Russo was approached by my editor, James Abbate, who knows him and has worked with him. He very graciously did the forward to the book.

TG: Yes, John is very nice. I go to horror conventions that they have and most of the cast of my favorite horror films come and speak about them. Night of the Living Dead was one of them. I got to meet John there and talk with him at length about the films and all. I just love the behind-the-scenes stories that you haven’t read and haven’t been published. It gives you a real look into the film, a new appreciation, of the movie, whatever that movie may be.

NS: There are some very good people out there. The great thing about writers is that we tend to help each other. Whenever I need an author’s query or information, it’s always the writers who come through first, like yourself.

TG: As far as The Exorcist Legacy is concerned, who was the first person you spoke to? Did you go straight to Billy?

NS: I didn’t go to Billy at all for The Exorcist Legacy. There was a reason for that, which is that I had all the answers I needed back in 1988 to 1990 when I wrote his biography. In those days, The Exorcist was merely a hit. It wasn’t a classic yet. The stories, I believe, were closer to the source. I also had the good fortune to speak to Ellen Burstyn, whom I adore, and who I believe is our finest American actress of our generation.

TG: I agree, she’s phenomenal.

NS: She’s amazing. I had spoken to William Peter Blatty at great length. We’d been friends and kept in touch over the years. A lot of his material in the book is material that I could not publish while he was alive. He was very frank about his relationship with film studios. As he hand-wrote on the side of a transcript that I sent him for approval, as you do, he said, “Nat, don’t print this. I’ve got enough problems.” He was a warm, funny, and wonderful man. I’ve become friends with his oldest son, Mike, since the book came out. In fact, I saw him at a signing the other day. He happened to be in town. I’m very happy to keep up my connection with the Blatty family.

TG: Oh, sure. Whom did you speak to at great length for the book?

NS: I did it two years ago and it was with Terry Donnelly, who was the first assistant director and unit manager. I had worked on a film with Terry years ago. We picked up where we left off and he was able to tell me about the behind-the-scenes facets. I spoke to Craig McKay, who is a film editor. He cut The Silence of the Lambs among other films. He’s very good. He was a kid when he was starting out on The Exorcist, there to pick up pieces. He had some wonderful stories. I did speak to Jeremy Slater, who was the showrunner for the Exorcist television series, and of course, David Gordon Green, who has a new Exorcist film coming out. I had a lot of the material from when I wrote Hurricane Billy (Billy’s biography). I was able to use that. What can I say, covering all these films, two sequels, two prequels, and each of them was recut? It was a lot to write about.

TG: How do you keep track in your head just of all these different versions of these movies? As much as I love films, I really find it so hard to be able to keep track of the director’s cut, or the original cut, and this one runs this number of minutes, etc. I’ve always admired Tim Lucas’s review of movies in Video Watchdog for that reason because it’s encyclopedic, the amount of information that he has on all these films and how he would do all the video comparisons. How did you find doing that? Was that something that came easily to you because you had seen the film so many times in different versions?

NS: Tim Lucas is one of the people in the book, as is Mark Kermode. We’ve known each other for so many years that we don’t even think about it. With the different versions of The Exorcist, which I’m not very happy with, I guess, three of them, or maybe four, depending on if you count one of them twice, I think the original is the best version, except for a couple of scenes that are put in “The Version You’ve Never Seen,” so it’s very hard. I would like to do my own fan edit, but I think I’ve watched The Exorcist enough by now.

TG: Was there anybody you wanted to interview for this book whom you weren’t able to interview because they either passed away or you were unable to contact?

NS: Linda Blair.

TG: What was the first Billy Friedkin film that you were on the set of?

NS: The Brink’s Job in the summer of 1978. I was there for Evening Magazine, which was the version of PM Magazine that was run on the stations that were owned by Westinghouse.

TG: Oh, I remember PM Magazine. That’s where I first saw Matt Lauer.

NS: Billy allowed our cameras on the set, which is funny because he just kicked the publicity cameras for Paramount and Universal off the set, and he let us on. We had wonderful footage of Peter Falk and the cast. Dean Tavoularis had done a reconstruction of the Brink’s system as it was in 1951 when the robbery took place. It was a magnificent set. There was an incident where some local tough guys broke into the editing offices, took footage, and wanted to hold it for ransom to shake down the production. As it happened, I had the only footage of Brink’s and I was with a TV station, but I couldn’t get my TV station to run their own footage because we had shot non-union. That was Westinghouse. That’s why they’re not around anymore. Westinghouse was the Pazuzu of television. I was also on the set of one of Billy’s films in Montreal when I was writing the book (the 1988 TV-movie C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf). You don’t learn a whole lot on a set. William Goldman is right. The most exciting day of your life is your first day on a movie set, and the most boring day of your life is your second day on a movie set.

TG: I’ve seen a handful of films being shot. It’s fairly boring, I must say.

NS: I will correct you on one thing. Billy Friedkin didn’t allow chairs on his sets. You stand around.

TG: Christopher Nolan is like that. He doesn’t allow them either.

NS: He’s right! James Cameron has a nail gun (like in No Country for Old Men), and if anybody’s cell phone rings, he nails it to a prop.

TG: Holy Jeez! Is there anything that I haven’t covered that you wanted to say about the book?

NS: The book goes into not just the original Exorcist, but the sequels and prequels. That’s something that people don’t consider because nobody ever intended The Exorcist to be a franchise. It became a franchise when Morgan Creek bought the rights from Bill Blatty, and they are now trying to revive it, of course, with the October release of The Exorcist: Believer.

TG: Have you seen that?

NS: No, I haven’t seen it yet. I’m looking forward to it. I do know that I really like David Gordon Green, who was very kind to me. He probably shouldn’t have been talking about the film. He did because I had a year and a half lead time for the book, and it’s in there. I was disappointed in the prequel, both Dominion, which was Paul Schrader’s version, and Exorcist: The Beginning, which was Renny Harlin’s. Although I think there’s a lot in Paul Schrader’s version, I’ve been saying the difference between them is that Paul Schrader made a film where Renny Harlan made a movie. I think that both films had trouble because people expect an exorcism Exorcist movie and what they got was CGI. That’s not the same thing. CGI is not the real thing. That’s what distinguishes The Exorcist; what made The Exorcist work was that it was real. The things that happened in front of the camera actually happened. Linda Blair really floated, the bed really shook, doors really cracked, things really fell over. Curtains really blew on closed windows. They didn’t happen because anybody was possessed. They happened because Dick Smith created brilliant makeup and Marcel Vercoutere had incredibly complicated mechanical effects, but they all happened in front of the camera so that it looked real. That’s the documentary nature of Billy’s filmmaking and why he believes in reality. That, I believe, will be his ultimate legacy on film, which is that he made the movies look real. Of course, now most of the movies look like fantasy. We’ve lost that.

TG: Yes. Steven Spielberg would agree with that statement. He likes to see everything real in front of the camera. He does realize that in today’s day and age, you do have to use computer graphics, and that’s really came to fruition with Jurassic Park. Before that, he wondered how they were going to make the dinosaurs run.

NS: It’s true. He tried stop motion, but he didn’t want to make Jurassic Park until he could do it right. Not everybody has that. They’ll say, “Well, the audience won’t know.” No, no, they know. The audience doesn’t know what’s called the uncanny valley, but it is the uncanny valley.

TG: I want to thank you very, very much for taking the time to speak with me about the book.

NS: Thank you so much. I do want to say something about Billy who, as you know, died just twenty-two days shy of his 88th birthday. He was a friend for fifty years and an inspiration, not just for his films, but for his personality: he didn’t cotton to bullshit which, of course, is the coin of the realm in Hollywood. Billy was a very brave man because I can’t think of many other directors, except maybe Brian De Palma, who let somebody write a book about them while they were still working. He did that for me and launched my career as a writer. I love him and I miss him. And thank you, Todd and Cinema Retro, for giving me the chance to say that on the record.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Fabulous Films regarding the Region 2 Blu-ray and DVD releases of "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters", which are being released on 28 August. 

One of Woody Allen’s best-loved films, Hannah and Her Sisters, won three richly deserved Oscars and is considered a joy from start to perfectly-judged finish.

The films ensemble cast includes Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Sir Michael Caine, Diane Wiest, Lloyd Nolan (who died 4 months before the film's release), Mia Farrow and Daniel Stern. Caine won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role while Wiest won Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Allen won Best Screenplay (beating Crocodile Dundee, My Beautiful Laundrette, Platoon and Salvador). Max von Sydow and Barbara Hershey received a standing ovation from the crew after they finished filming their characters' break-up scene.

The film has some great one-liners, with a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil getting shot down with “How should I know why there were Nazi’s, I don’t even know how the can opener works”

Synopsis: Hannah (Mia Farrow) is a devoted wife, loving mother and successful actress. She’s also the emotional backbone of the family, and her sisters Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest) depend on this stability while also resenting it because they can’t help but compare Hannah’s seemingly perfect life with theirs. But with her husband Elliott (Michael Caine) becoming increasingly interested in Lee, it’s clear that Hannah might have problems of her own.

Cast: Woody Allen, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Carrie Fisher, Barbara Hershey, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen O’Sullivan, Daniel Stern, Max von Sydow, Julie Kavner, Richard Jenkins, Fred Melamed, Lewis Black, Joanna Gleason, John Turturro, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Dianne Wiest.

Extras: Theatrical Trailer

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“One of (Woody) Allen’s most enduring accomplishments” - BoxOffice

Nominated for two Academy-Awards® Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships set against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black and white (Allen’s first film in that format) and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score which includes Rhapsody in Blue.

Released in 1979. Manhattan won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the BAFTAs. Mariel Hemingway aged 16 years old earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for her performance. Woody Allen and Marshall Brinkman were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Synopsis: Forty-two-year-old Manhattan native Isaac Davis (Allen) has a job he hates, a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), whom he doesn’t love, and a lesbian ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), who’s writing a tell-all book about their marriage...and whom he’d like to strangle. But when he meets his best friend’s sexy intellectual mistress, Mary (Diane Keaton), Isaac falls head over heels in lust! Leaving Tracy, bedding Mary and quitting his job are just the beginnings of Isaac’s quest for romance and fulfilment . In a city where sex is as intimate as a handshake - and the gateway to true love...is a revolving door.

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Anne Byrne.

Extras: Theatrical Trailer

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By Tom Lisanti

A few years ago, actress-turned-playwright Carol Hollenbeck had a Zoom meeting with a theatre group and mentioned this fabulous red-carpet premiere in her hometown for a movie she made in the sixties. About a month later, the group met again on Zoom and one of the group members said to Carol, “By the way, I found your movie.’ She quickly asked, “What movie?’ “Eden Cried,” he replied. Carol was flabbergasted. That film had been lost for almost fifty years and from her perspective it should have remained lost.

Carol Hollenbeck was a starstruck teenager who had been fascinated with Hollywood from a young age. She candidly admitted, “I didn’t want to become an actress. I wanted to be a movie star.”

Arriving in Hollywood in the early 1960s, she unfortunately suffered the pitfalls many naïve young women fell victim to. However, using the stage name of Carole Holland, she did have some small successes greatly aided by the fact that she was a beautiful, shapely, baby doll blonde.

Carol’s looks and poise no doubt helped her land a job as a showgirl in a stage production of Irma La Douce, starring Juliet Prowse at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Carol recalls, “Juliet was engaged to Frank Sinatra at the time. She was very outspoken and yelled a lot.” She donned bikinis for a few of the non-AIP beach movies such as The Girls on the Beach. And her adoration of Jean Harlow gave her an indirect connection to Joseph E. Levine’s Harlow starring Carroll Baker and a direct connection to Bill Sargent’s rival Harlow starring Carol Lynley. She actually met with Sargent to discuss her possibly playing the thirties sex bomb. Alas, it did not come to be. [Carol discusses her Harlow experiences in my upcoming book Dueling Harlows: The Race to Bring the Actress’s Life to the Silver Screen from McFarland and Co.]

What did materialize was the female lead in the low-budget oddity, Eden Cried, which was also known as In the Fall of ’55 … Eden Cried. It was shot in 1965 but not shown until 1967—two years after Frankie and Annette had hung up their surfboards. It was a sort of adult, soap opera-ish Beach Party, set in Malibu supposedly during the mid-1950s (but everything from the costumes to the beach scenes to dance moves scream 1960s), that showed what life was like for teenage beach denizens off the sand. There is a fair amount of surfing footage and scenes of young people partying on the shore.

To alleviate all the histrionics, there is narration (that was not in the movie when it premiered) provided by a Jack Nicholson sound-alike who makes a lot of amusing, sardonic remarks about the characters and put-downs about Southern California living in general. It is done in a way that evokes those dead serious 1950s documentaries where they warned viewers about juvenile delinquency or impending bomb threats or predatory homosexuals. It also connects scenes due to missing or excised footage.

Carol has some good dramatic moments as rich girl Lorraine Parker (a sexy blonde with a big bouffant and a bad reputation) new to her high school. She falls for rebellious senior Skip Galloway (Tom P. Pace), a surfer and grease monkey with a bitchin’ hot rod. Pace, who was in his thirties at the time but looked forty-five, is so miscast that it is off-putting seeing him romance the more age-appropriate Carole or confiding to Larry Reimer as his best friend Rich or just hanging on the sand with the teenage beach and surfing crowd. Lorraine and Skip have a tumultuous, up-and down-relationship fueled by a drag race that ends in tragedy; her disapproving father (Victor Izay); infidelity (tired of taking it slow, Lorraine has sex with Rich); a suicide attempt (Lorraine downs some dolls after Skip leaves her) that leads to a quickie marriage, and an unwanted pregnancy that breaks the couple up. This is where the film abruptly ends without the requisite happy ending. It also promises a sequel that never came to be—thankfully.

After its 1967 premiere in Newburgh, Eden Cried was not released theatrically. Unbeknownst to Carol, it surfaced in January of 1972 (it is speculated the narration was added at this point) and was screened in a few theaters in Los Angeles. Then in April, it popped up in Atlanta before falling back into obscurity. In both cities, the nostalgia appeal for the fifties/early sixties was highlighted in its print ads to draw audiences. This was just ahead of the Broadway stage musical Grease and George Lucas’ film American Graffiti—both of which became box office hits.

As far as Carol knows, after being shown in Atlanta, Eden Cried was never televised and remained a lost film until a few years ago when it surfaced on DVD (from Video Screams). It has now become a cult curio especially for fans of 1960s drive-in movies. Carol recently appeared at a screening of the movie and is planning on attending more of them.

Cinema Retro: How were you cast in Eden Cried?

Carol Hollenbeck: I blocked it out regarding how I was cast. I really do not know. However, if I was to venture a guess, it was because of all the publicity I was getting at the time. My press agent was grooming me to be the next Marilyn Monroe. The media dubbed me “Hollywood’s Mystery Girl” because I was being photographed at discotheques and movie premieres. My face turned up in many newspapers.

CR: Do you know what the title means?

CH: It comes from the lyrics to the movie’s theme song [written by John Bambridge, Jr. and sung by Walter Rowen]. I felt that the title meant young love gone wrong...

CR: What did you think of the ridiculous casting of Tom P. Pace as your seventeen-year-old boyfriend?

CH: Tom was almost thirty-five. But it is Hollywood’s mentality. I will tell you why. Everybody knew he was too old. Somebody—probably one of the producers—said, ‘I want him. I don’t care how old he looks, I want him.’ And that was it. He was not physically right for the part, but they wanted him anyway. With me I was a few years older than seventeen but I did have an appropriate California blonde beach look. The public is fixated on that American blonde image. It has always fascinated me about the blonde myth, the blonde fantasy—the Marilyn Monroe-type.

CR: What do you recall about the film’s director and screenwriter, Fred Johnson?

CH: Fred was very young. We were all young—well except for Tom Pace. I think Fred did the best he could and was a good writer.

CR: How did it come about that Eden Cried had its premiere in your hometown of Newburgh, New York?

CH: I believe someone from Walter Reade Distributors thought of it. Eden Cried had its premiere on June 10, 1967. They flew me from Hollywood to New York. I was treated like a star. In Newburgh, they named a street after me called “Carole Holland Way,” but it was only for two weeks. I was so nervous that I didn’t go into the theater to watch it. My family and friends knew it was not very good but did not come right out and say so. They were nice about it.

CR: Do you know why it did not get a national theatrical release at that time?

CH: It got caught up in some kind of squabble between Walter Reade and the producers, so it ended up being shelved.

CR: What were your feelings like after hearing that the film was never going to be seen?

CH: Even though the film was not great, I thought I did a fairly decent job and it could have helped me get other roles. But I did not stay in Hollywood long enough to promote myself and get the film footage out, so people could see it. I just chose to dislike it and put it out of my mind. So, when it got lost and nobody saw it, I didn’t care because I didn’t believe it was going to take me anywhere. I walked around for many years with shame for making this film. It didn’t seem to bring me any happiness.

CR: What did you do after leaving Hollywood?

CJ: I moved to New York and continued acting for a bit. I did commercials and had day parts on soap operas such as Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and As the World Turns. I appeared in a number of Off-Broadway plays and a few movies, most notably Tootsie where I played an autograph hound in a scene with Jessica Lange. In the nineties, I began writing for local newspapers and then the National Enquirer. I then joined a women’s ensemble group and began playwrighting. Two of my plays, Funky Fifties and The Lifters, were nominated for the Samuel French Best One Act Plays Award.

CR: Did you ever try to find Eden Cried?

CH: In 2017, we did a reading of my play Hometown Premiere at the Ritz Theatre in Newburgh, where the film premiered. The staff of the theatre searched for Eden Cried because they wanted to use a clip of it in the staged reading, since the play was loosely based on the film’s premiere. It could not be found.  I thought then, ‘Perhaps I should accept that I did the movie, but I won’t ever find it,’

CR: When Eden Cried finally surfaced on DVD what was your reaction?

CH: It was being sold on DVD by Sinister Cinema.com and I purchased a copy. What they did to salvage the film, is they added a narration that pokes fun of the sixties’ era. I really liked that. The film is so corny that it’s funny. The narration gives the film a Mystery Science Theater touch.

CR: After watching fifty years later, what surprised you the most?

CH: That I had so many costume changes.

CR: What are your feelings today toward the movie today?

CH: I have done a 180-degree turnaround. It is like a cult film. Now everything in my apartment is Eden Cried. The framed movie poster is on my wall. There are twenty-four products with the Eden Cried poster on it—t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, hoodies, pillows, etc. When I couldn’t find it, I was glad I couldn’t. But when I found it, I was glad I did. I have embraced it and absolutely love it.

(Look for Carol Hollenbeck’s upcoming novella, A Moment of Blonde Madness and Tom Lisanti’s upcoming books, Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap from Citadel Press/Kensington Books and Dueling Harlows: The Race to Bring the Actress’s Life to the Silver Screen from McFarland and Company.)

(Photos courtesy of Tom Lisanti and Carol Hollenbeck.)

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