HOME VIDEO HERALD: RAGE IN HEAVEN (DVD) 0
Total Views: 42 By Brian Lafferty June 5, 2012 (San Diego) – There is a scene in Rage in Heaven in which Philip (Robert Montgomery) lures Ward (George Sanders) up to a scaffold at a steel mill where a worker fell and instantly perished in a pile of molten steel. According to the workers, the scaffold’s oblique positioning is such that it’s impossible for anyone to see anything. As Philip convinces Ward to lean over and look down, he’s ready to push the man to his death. This scene, little more than halfway into the film, occurs at what would ordinarily be too early for an important character like Ward to die. However, W.S. Van Dyke’s direction, the screenwriters’ unpredictable set-up and plotting, and Robert Montgomery’s performance made strong such a possibility. It all starts when Philip escapes from a French sanitarium and heads back to England. He falls in love with Stella (Ingrid Bergman), a stunningly beautiful war refugee employed by Philip’s mother as her secretary. She’s more in love with Philip’s friend Ward, but his job takes him away to Ireland. She reciprocates Philip’s love enough to marry him. What Stella doesn’t know is that her otherwise charming husband suffers from extreme paranoia, and is prone to psychotic – even murderous – fits of jealousy. His mental instability is slowly brought out when he suspects Ward of getting too close with his wife. Rage in Heaven wouldn’t be as remarkably chilling were it not for Montgomery’s two-layered performance. On the outside, his demeanor is calm and affable. Although he doesn’t display much emotion, if you were to sit next to him on a bus, you could carry a friendly conversation with him. But beneath that veneer is a twisted mind diseased by paranoia. It’s evident the moment he lays eyes on the stray cat that Ward gives to Stella, a cat that he later kills. (Offscreen, thank goodness. Sorry, but I feel the same way about scenes of cats being in danger the same way Gene Siskel hated scenes of children in peril.) A manipulative jerk, he alienates everybody he works with at the steel mill. This generates some heated suspense when rebellious workers nearly riot after he stubbornly refuses to fund their needed housing project. His utter lack of concern brings the situation to a near boil. Ingrid Bergman’s casting spikes up the already high chill factor. Her naïveté, innocence, and angel-face look had me under her spell. Her accent is aurally arresting. These attributes elicit sympathy and concern for her. She isn’t someone you want to see harmed, emotionally or physically. It made me all the more truly hate Philip for the way he mistreated her. Bronislau Kaper’s score contains twisted tonalities, along with an almost indescribable “evil” sound intermittently spread out. Other times it sounds as “deep” as the vast recesses of Philip’s paranoia-riddled mind. Like Montgomery’s performance, it doesn’t overpower, yet you can’t ignore it. The Warner Archive Collection does yet another solid remaster. The black and white cinematography by Oliver Marsh and George J. Folsey (uncredited) isn’t especially noteworthy; the lighting is the standard Hollywood three-point kind then-popular. I was more impressed with the deep focus shots, which the filmmakers routinely make full use of. In the aforementioned steel mill scene, the melting steel spills in the background. In the foreground is smoke. Philip and Ward fill out the middle ground. This composition generates suspense by giving the audience an idea of the forbiddingly hot work environment and the deadly nature of the occupation. Rage in Heaven induced strong emotional reactions from me, with anger, fear, and sadness being most prominent. The screenplay, by Christopher Isherwood and Robert Thoeren, doesn’t go overboard and it doesn’t go the cheap route in getting these responses. Saying this is a good old-fashioned suspense movie isn’t enough. It’s a great old-fashioned thriller. A- Rage in Heaven is available only through manufacture-on-demand through the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. A Warner Archive Collection release. Director: W.S. Van Dyke. Screenplay: Christopher Isherwood and Robert Thoeren, from the novel by James Hilton. Original Music: Bronislau Kaper. Cinematographers: Oliver T. Marsh and George J. Folsey (uncredited). Cast: Robert Montgomery, Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, and Lucile Watson. 85 minutes. Brian Lafferty welcomes letters at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
0 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: …TICK…TICK…TICK… (DVD) 2
Total Views: 34 By Brian Lafferty April 24, 2012 (San Diego) – Alfred Hitchcock once opined that a great film requires three things: the script, the script and the script. I would also add a fourth element, the title. A movie’s title need not be catchy, but it must hook the potential moviegoer while describing what it’s about. It could be as simple as Titanic or it could be as long as The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. To give you a good idea of what I mean, let me tell you the standard protocol when choosing to review DVDs and Blu-Rays. The studio sends out a press release and the marketing agency relays it to whoever is on their press list. In the case of Warner Archive Collection titles, I am allowed to select up to three review copies, which are then sent to me. Within a relatively recent batch of new Warner Archive Collection titles – most of which featuring football star turned actor Jim Brown – my eyes glanced down and saw the film …tick…tick…tick… It would have been foolish to select a title based solely on the title. It did have my attention, however, and when I read the plot description, I was sold. All thanks to the title. …tick…tick…tick… is about the simmering tensions of a small Southern town when incumbent white Sheriff John Little (George Kennedy) is defeated fair and square by black opponent Jimmy Price (Jim Brown). The mostly white locals are displeased. Price faces resentment and threats, exacerbated when he jails a rich man’s white son for the vehicular manslaughter of a little girl. Meanwhile, the bored Little and his family – particularly his little daughter – are taunted by the cruel, bigoted townspeople over his defeat. The film plays as if screenwriter James Lee Barrett – whose credits include The Greatest Story Ever Told and Smokey and the Bandit – came up with a list of events and assembled the entire script from those ideas. The majority of …tick…tick…tick… consists of isolated individual events instead of one unified narrative. At first discombobulated, I quickly adjusted. While almost all of these isolated moments don’t congeal into a whole, all of them pack an emotional wallop. They simmer with tension and suspense before ending with a Muhammad Ali caliber punch. One such illustrative scene is when Price finishes his first day of work. It’s night and his pregnant wife waits in the car. Both are alone. Price discovers someone damaged the car so they can’t drive. Meanwhile, with all the hate bubbling up, something horrible could happen to him and his vulnerable wife. The tension builds. What does he do? He gets into a police cruiser, blares the siren, and – for a few minutes – drives all over town, waking people up to show he’s the boss and refuses to be intimidated. The acting is a biggest weakness. Everybody except Fredric March (in his second-to-last role as the Mayor) looks uncomfortable and unconfident in front of the camera. This surprisingly made it difficult for me to buy Jim Brown as the Sheriff, but I eventually did; Brown walks the walk, but he can’t talk the talk. Both he and Kennedy deliver their lines stiltedly and sometimes apprehensively. The film has been given a fine remaster by the Warner Archive Collection. The frame is frequently sun-baked with blazing, scorching bright sunlight. It’s “sweaty” and stifling, although this is offset by slight darkness. …tick…tick…tick… is overbroad in its depiction of racism and comes on a bit strong. Slurs are routinely uttered and screenwriter Barrett lathers on the hate. The film tells you nothing about racism that you don’t already know. It is, however, a powerful film. Rarely has my heart beat so hard and so fast, and for so long. B …tick…tick…tick… is available only through manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. A Warner Archive Collection release. Director: Ralph Nelson. Screenplay: James Lee Barrett. Original Music: Jerry Styner. Cinematography: Loyal Griggs. Cast: Jim Brown, George Kennedy, and Fredric March. 97 minutes. Rated G(!). Brian Lafferty welcomes letters at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
2 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (DVD) 0
Total Views: 29 By Brian Lafferty March 6, 2012 (San Diego) – Anthology films are like short story collections and concept albums. Like the former, they offer an eclectic selection of stories. Like a concept album, an anthology film’s stories can sometimes be connected to a certain theme or share similar qualities. From Beyond the Grave consists of four tales of greedy customers cheating or presumably cheating the unassuming antique shop Proprietor (Peter Cushing) out of a valuable item. The wrongdoers are then punished in twist endings that combine the droll uncanniness of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and the sinister ghostly underbelly of Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan. The first story is about Edward (David Warner), a bachelor commanded by the ghost in his antique mirror to kill. The second features an unhappily married businessman named Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) falling for a young woman (Angela Pleasence, daughter of Halloween actor Donald Pleasence) who practices witchcraft. The third entails a man (Ian Carmichael) who, with the help of an eccentric psychic (Margaret Leighton), tries to rid himself and his wife of an elemental. The fourth tells of a young man (Ian Ogilvy) who purchases an antique door that leads into a hellish dimension. It concludes with a thief – seen prowling around the shop throughout the film – trying to rob the old man but getting his just desserts. Warner – who three years earlier played the pivotal role of the village idiot in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs – instills in his character an eligible bachelor charm that masks his murderous intentions. The bloodthirsty, hungry look on his face as he takes his first victim to his flat is as disturbing as the murder he commits. Edward’s progressively disheveled appearance symbolizes his descent into madness; he starts out clean-shaven, his clothes spotless, and his hair perfectly combed. By the end, however, he resembles a murderous ragamuffin. His blood-soaked apparel, messy hair, less-than-refined facial hair, and dirty face are the signifiers. The violence itself is bloody, but tame by today’s standards. But the effectiveness of violence cannot be adequately measured solely by the amount of blood. The barometer for me comprises the characters’ emotions and the tastefulness and artistry of the execution. Here Warner’s deranged performance, director Kevin Connor’s strategically placed and non-leering camera, the carefully thought-out editing, and the restraint from reveling in bloodbaths coalesced to send chills running through me. The second story functions more as a moral lesson than as a vehicle for scares. That’s not to say there aren’t any of them. Some are cheap, as in the “it was all just a nightmare” cliché when Christopher’s unpleasant wife Mabel is apparently attacked in her bed. Others, not so much, like when Emily pokes a Mabel look-alike doll in the eye with a needle. Is it real? Is it make believe? Will Mabel really die? Angela Pleasence is as beguiling as Edward, but in different ways. She’s pale-faced and mousy, mysterious and bewitching. Donald Pleasence is a kind soul and seemingly harmless. Unfortunately, everyone else excepting Christopher and Mabel’s son is annoying and shrill, with Mabel the worst offender. This morality play is succeeded on a lighter note by the third tale, The Elemental. I say lighter, but I’m not quite sure it was intended as such. It’s at times laugh out loud funny. However, half of me thinks the humor is unintentional and the other half believes it’s by design. Whatever the case, it offers some needed comedy relief. Much of it resonates from Margaret Leighton. Her character is an amalgam of Mrs. Drysdale from The Beverly Hillbillies and Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show. When I wasn’t chuckling at her exaggerated performance – she constantly speaks in similes like, “Sucking up the fluids like a baby at his mother’s breast” – I couldn’t help laughing at such foolishly composed effects shots of objects flying – more like floating – across the screen and dishes exploding. It’s campy, although previous scenes with a more serious tone temper this feeling of levity, like when the Elemental attacks the wife while she sleeps. The fourth story is the weakest overall. It’s thin in plot, but what it lacks in narrative is made up for in atmosphere and cinematography. It is the best-looking of the four tales. Cinematographer Alan Hume and production designer Maurice Carter’s design of the netherworld oozes with ethereal spookiness. The blue colors lend it an otherworldly, hellish, and cold appearance. The transfer is fine. It’s not great, but that doesn’t mean the viewing experience suffers. Oddly, the sound emanates from the center speaker only, at least on my 5.1 surround sound system; most other Warner Archive collection titles I’ve encountered use the right and left speakers. The sound is good, although you might need to turn the volume up a little higher depending on the quality of your speaker system. B+ From Beyond the Grave is available only through the Warner Archive Collection via manufacture-on-demand. You can order it here. A Warner Archive release. Director: Kevin Connor. Screenplay: Raymond Christodoulou and Robin Clarke, based on stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Original Music: David Gamley. Cinematography: Alan Hume. Cast: Ian Bannen, Ian Carmichael, Peter Cushing, Diana Dors, Margaret Leighton, Donald Pleasence, Nyree Dawn Porter, David Warner, Angela Pleasence, Ian Ogilvy, Lesley-Anne Down, Jack Watson, Wendy Allnutt, Rosalin Ayres, Tommy Godfrey, Ben Howard, John O’Farrell, and Marcel Steiner. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
0 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: ALEX IN WONDERLAND (DVD) 0
Total Views: 23 By Brian Lafferty January 11, 2012 (San Diego) – After I watched Alex in Wonderland, available from the Warner Archive Collection, I remembered an interview I saw that featured independent director Henry Jaglom. At one point he said Steven Spielberg and George Lucas ruined the movies for him because after the massive box office successes of Jaws and Star Wars, it became about events, distraction, mass entertainment, and mechanization. There was a period in American cinema before Jaws and Star Wars when a surge of new, young filmmakers emerged. Social values were changing, audiences were getting younger, and studios struggled to attract moviegoers who preferred to watch television in their homes for free instead of paying for a movie ticket. These studios put their trust in these filmmakers and gave them carte blanche to make any movie they wanted with minimal interference. The result was a slew of not just great movies, but personal ones. These are the types of movies that a filmmaker doesn’t make for the money, nor for audiences, but for himself. Movies as diverse as Martin Scorsese’s gritty Mean Streets and John Boorman’s surreal Zardoz were born from this period. Alex in Wonderland is a very personal film. It’s a film made out of love for movies, not for mass audiences or money. But is it too personal? There’s a dividing line between a film that is meaningful to the audience and meaningful only to the director. Half the time it felt like the latter was true. The titular Alex is a hippie director (Donald Sutherland) who just made his first movie. Test screenings and previews indicate it’s going to be box office gold. Studios and producers bombard him with directing offers. So what’s keeping him from making his next feature? Himself. He can’t decide what his next project will be and spends the rest of the film aimlessly trying to find one. The film consists of nothing more than Alex contemplating offer after offer and coming up with idea after idea. His search for his next project takes him as away as Mexico and Italy. At one point he’s so desperate he goes on an acid trip to gather a great idea, but LSD doesn’t inspire much. It’s similar to how some comedies consist of only a one-joke premise, endlessly repeated; the difference here is that that instead of a joke it’s a simple plot point. I have no qualms about one-joke comedies or one-premise films as long as the filmmakers can consistently and creatively sustain said jokes or premises. The idea itself in Alex in Wonderland becomes rote about three-quarters into the film, but the fascination with the journeys (both physical and mental) it takes Alex, the interesting people he meets, and the strain it puts on his family remains. Sutherland doesn’t employ a stereotypical hippie persona in his performance. A lot of the time he’s more of a family man than a fanatical man. What’s key is his interactions with some notable filmmakers and actors. In one scene Alex meets his directing idol, Federico Fellini (appearing as himself). Sutherland makes it awkward; he becomes so star-struck that he can only think of telling Fellini, who is busy and struggling to be polite, how much he loves his films and dishes nothing but fanboy complements. Shot with mostly golden and brown colors, Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography benefits greatly from the remastering job done by the Warner Archive Collection. The transfer is very pristine while retaining the film’s rugged 1970 flavor. Alex in Wonderland feels autobiographical. I read somewhere that the idea for this film came from Paul Mazursky’s similar bout of indecision following the release of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. I found it fascinating but fascination can only go so far. If you want to see a great Paul Mazursky movie that’s personal, but is a deeper emotional investment, I suggest watching Harry and Tonto instead. C+ Alex in Wonderland is available only via manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. A Warner Home Video release. Director: Paul Mazursky. Screenplay: Paul Mazursky & Larry Tucker. Original Music: Tom O’Horgan. Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Ellen Burstyn, Meg Mazursky, Glenna Sargent, Federico Fellini, and Jeanne Moreau. 110 minutes. Rated R. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
0 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: DEMON SEED (DVD) 1
Total Views: 35 By Brian Lafferty January 3, 2011 (San Diego) – Demon Seed, available from the Warner Archive Collection and adapted from a novel by Dean Koontz, may borrow from Rosemary’s Baby and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I still felt like I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Demon Seed starts out ten minutes too slow in showing the separation between Susan Harris (Julie Christie) and her husband Alex (Fritz Weaver). Their daughter died of leukemia and Alex has spent hundreds of hours tirelessly working on Proteus 4, an artificial brain. As a result, the two become estranged and Alex temporarily moves out for a few months, leaving Susan home alone. Proteus 4, which is able to think for itself, invades the Harris home through a terminal linking the house’s computer and security system with that of the lab’s where it’s constructed. It traps Susan in the house, terrorizes her, probes and prods her, then impregnates her. Proteus 4 deserves a spot among the elite mechanical movie villains, a pantheon that includes HAL in 2001 and the original Terminator. Upon first glance, it appears to be an unconvincing villain. It’s housed in a gigantic lab deep in the mountains of a remote desert. It has barely any “body” unless you count a giant room of mechanical workings and viewing screens. Kenneth Johnson, the creator of the original Bionic Woman and the 1970s TV series The Incredible Hulk, once said that audiences will only make so many buys when it comes to believability. Here director Donald Cammell is asking the audience to make a very big buy that this giant computer, benign in both looks and attitude, will turn evil and wreak havoc. And it does. At one point Susan becomes uncooperative after being closed off from the outside. It traps her in the kitchen, turns off the water, electrifies the doorknob, and turns up the temperature on the kitchen floor. It’s so scorching that eggs fry. I felt the same chills as I did when the Terminator pursued Sarah Connor. What distinguishes Proteus 4 from HAL and the Terminator is its ultra-invasive tendencies. It constantly watches Susan’s every move through the surveillance cameras stationed in every room. It wants to study her body and it does so with the mentality of a rapist. It is so malevolent and almost so human that when writing this review I had to remind myself to refer to Proteus 4 as “it” instead of “he.” There’s another aspect of Proteus 4’s deceptive appearance. It traps Susan in the house, toys with her, harms her, rapes her, and kills anyone who tries to help. On paper, it reads like it’s a purely vile and evil character. If that were the case, it wouldn’t have been as effective as a movie villain than the way screenwriters Robert Jaffe and Roger O. Hirson portray it. What makes Proteus 4 intimidating, scary, and despicable is it’s capability of pretending to be nice about it while doing all these horrible things to this innocent woman. Proteus 4 is half the equation of Demon Seed’s success. The other half is Julie Christie. Victimized, scared, brave, and resilient, if it weren’t for her performance, Demon Seed wouldn’t be as compelling. The aforementioned kitchen trapping sequence is terrifying because she plays it frightened, weak, and psychologically battered. When one of the robots under Proteus 4’s control undresses her, her face and body language call to mind Susan George in the infamous double-rape scene in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. The transfer is fine, but not great. It hasn’t been remastered like a number of Warner Archive Collection titles, but it’s perfectly acceptable. The only noticeable instance of imperfection is in the opening credits set at the desert, which look too grainy and blotchy. But even then I’m being picky. Demon Seed is available only via manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. A Warner Archive Collection release. Director: Donald Cammell. Screenplay: Robert Jaffe and Roger O. Hirson, based on the novel “Demon Seed” by Dean R. Koontz. Original Music: Jerry Fielding. Cinematography: Bill Butler. Cast: Julie Christie and Fritz Weaver. 94 minutes. Rated R Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
1 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: THE PACK (DVD) 2
Total Views: 43 By Brian Lafferty October 12, 2011 (San Diego) – The 1950s spawned a then-novel horror subgenre. Many of these movies involved everyday animals and insects attacking entire cities after being transformed into giants (usually thanks to atomic testing or laboratory experiments). After years of dormancy, this subgenre made a comeback in the 1970s, only this time the animals tended to be their normal sizes. However, they were just as deadly. Films of this kind included Frogs (1972), Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), and The Pack (1977), the latter of which is now available from the Warner Archive Collection. The Pack is a sad story, a cautionary tale that warns us of what happens when vacationers abandon their beloved pet dogs on a remote island. Over the years, these dogs have formed a pack, have gone hungry, and are vicious enough to literally tear a human to bits. After a storm knocks out all communication with the outside world, a group of vacationers led by Joe Don Baker are forced to defend themselves against the ferocious beasts. The Pack probably looked scary to writer and director Robert Clouse as he penned the screenplay, which was adapted from a novel by David Fisher. Dogs can make scary horror villains in theory. Like Cujo, the rabid St. Bernard that trapped Dee Wallace and Danny Pintauro in their Ford Pinto. I could see what director Clouse (director of Enter the Dragon) was going for when he cast the dogs. I believe he was going for breeds that a traditional family would normally own. In real life an abandoned family dog can turn vicious under the circumstances portrayed in this film. But sometimes it’s not best to strive for realism in horror films. I’m not saying the entire pack should have consisted of Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and St. Bernards. But Dalmatians? Collies? Golden Retrievers? Almost all of the dogs in the pack are breeds that we don’t normally view as aggressive. It is stereotyping, I know. Dalmatians, behind their black-spotted white fur, are in reality aggressive. Rottweilers, if properly trained, can be a docile family pet in spite of their attack dog reputation. The difference is that Rottweilers have a menacing and aggressive image. Dalmatians, Collies, Labrador Retrievers, and Golden Retrievers don’t. A couple of aggressive breeds are thrown in, but the pack as a whole was too hard for me to take seriously as a threat. It isn’t scary except for a few scattered close-ups of bared teeth and a sequence reminiscent of the phone booth scene in The Birds. But it is certainly is bloody and somewhat gory as one by one the vacationers perish violently. In between the attacks are banal dialogue and scenes that are nothing more than filler. The Pack has been remastered by the Warner Archive Collection. There’s plenty of good grain and the remastering job cleans up the image while retaining its 1977 B-movie quality. Even though the sound is 2.1, the mix is clear, booming, and loud. It emphasizes the loud barking and the gusty winds. Despite the large absence of thrills, The Pack isn’t a total failure. It actually works better as a cautionary tale than as a horror film. At first the thought of people abandoning their dogs on an island is senseless; one of the first scenes, in which a family deliberately leaves their dog, seems nonsensical. Then I remember that over the last few years people have done the same thing when their homes have been foreclosed upon. In these tragic cases, they can no longer take care of their pets and there’s nothing they can do. If you really think about it, it’s not unlike that in The Pack. Released in 1977, The Pack is very timely, but unless you’re a huge enthusiast of the genre, you’re better off finding something else to spend your money on. The Pack is available only through manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. A Warner Archive Collection release. Director: Robert Clouse. Screenplay: Robert Clouse, based on the novel by David Fisher. Cinematography: Ralph Woolsey. Original Music: Lee Holdridge. Cast: Joe Don Baker, Hope Alexander-Willis, Richard B. Shull, R.G. Armstrong, Ned Wertimer, Bibi Besch, Delos V. Smith Jr., Richard O’Brien, Sherry Miles, and Paul Wilson. 99 minutes. Rated R. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
2 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: HEARTS OF THE WEST 0
Total Views: 42 By Brian Lafferty August 24, 2011 (San Diego) – Hearts of the West, available from the Warner Archive Collection, is a film about westerns that was released at an inopportune time. The year was 1975, a time in which the western genre was falling out of favor with audiences and studios alike. Over the three-plus decades since, there have been some notable exceptions, such as Unforgiven. But the genre has been nowhere near as popular as it was from the 1930s to the 1960s. It’s too bad that Hearts of the West was a victim of such bad timing. It’s a smart, intelligent, and funny film about moviemaking in the 1930s. It doesn’t have what I would consider an all-star cast, but it certainly has a number of recognizable names. It’s an overlooked classic that deserves to be seen and now you can, thanks to the Warner Archive Collection. Jeff Bridges is Lewis Tater, a neophyte writer of western literature. He takes a correspondence course in writing, which he discovers is really a scam. After he escapes with his life from the two crooks, a veteran actor (Andy Griffith) on a movie shoot takes him in. Initially wanting only to soak up the western genre as research for his novels, he goes from stuntman to leading man. Meanwhile, the two crooks spend most of the film pursuing Lewis, who also made off with their ill-gotten gains. Cinematographer Mario Tosi’s photography benefits a lot from the remastering job by the Warner Archive. Tosi shoots with very soft, high-key lighting. This soft approach parallels the light tone of the material. He also chooses to make the light in interior scenes directional. Many times all the lighting comes from the same source, which helps guide our eyes to the proper place. The remastering also enhances the brown, gold, and yellow color scheme. This palette is instrumental in establishing the 1930s during which the story takes place. Since the film is set during the Great Depression, everything in each scene – including the lighting, set design, and color palette – is appropriately rusty, worn-out, and impoverished. Ever since the 1920s, people imagine Hollywood as full of glitz, glamour, and wealth. Director Howard Zieff infuses none of that in Hearts of the West. The actors, directors, and producers aren’t wealthy and elite. Everybody isn’t doing what he or she does for the fame and glory. They do it because they need to work during the United States’ worst economic hardship. The movie couldn’t have worked without the performance of Jeff Bridges. He’s so naïve and such a neophyte in both acting and writing that it’s hard to not feel sorry for him when he’s given bad advice or being taken advantage of. Screenwriter Rob Thompson shies away from making him turn egotistical. He sticks to his Colts and writes Bridges as a reluctant and accidental rising star. The film’s only weakness is the scenes featuring the two crooks. While Hearts of the West is a comedy, these scenes in particular are too madcap in tone compared with the others. One scene is when the crooks’ car is unable to go up a hill. It falls back and crashes off-screen. Even though many of these of these scenes don’t try as hard for laughs as this one, they nonetheless feel like they belong in a different comedy. The leitmotif, which telegraphs the madcap, doesn’t help. But so what? It stars Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, Blythe Danner, Alan Arkin, and Donald Pleasance. It’s funny. It’s unique. It has a lot of fun with the western genre. And did I mention is stars Jeff Bridges? Hearts of the West is only available through manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
0 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH 0
Total Views: 42 By Brian Lafferty August 24, 2011 (San Diego) – The first five minutes of The Woman on the Beach are ominous, spellbinding and foreboding. Hanns Eisler’s booming and menacing score accompany the opening credits. The frame is backdropped with shots of the alluring beach and its forceful, foamy, and frothy tide. It’s a simple sequence of shots, but they’re chilling. Following that is the best scene in the film. Coast Guard Officer Scott, played by Robert Ryan, has a nightmare in which he sees his ship sinking after it crashes into a land mine. Director Jean Renoir superimposes shots of a whirlpool, ship pieces, and drowning men sinking down into the abyss. Then Scott finds himself standing at the bottom of the ocean, the sunken ship in the background. Renoir superimposes over this scene a shot of shimmering water. Scott espies a blonde with angelic beauty. He walks towards her, stepping over a skeleton. She walks over to him. Renoir intercuts between them using dissolves for a surreal, dreamlike effect. As they get close, another explosion occurs, rocking him out of his nightmare. The opening credits and the dream sequence promise a lot of thrills and suspense. If only the remaining 66 minutes could have been just as thrilling and suspenseful. That’s what happens when you put the best sequences at the beginning. The Woman on the Beach is Jean Renoir’s attempt at a film noir. Scott becomes engaged to Eve (Nan Leslie), but breaks it off when he’s attracted to Peggy (Joan Bennett). Peggy is married to Tod (Charles Bickford), a former painter who is blind after Peggy injured him in a squabble. Scott believes the bitter Tod is faking it, so he takes him towards the cliff to see if he really is blind… Renoir was renowned for his long takes and masterful camera movement long before Max Ophuls, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson added it to their artistic repertoires. This time his camera is mostly stationary and the editing is of the traditional invisible Hollywood variety. The black and white photography is crisp and contains the familiar low-key lighting and harsh shadows seen in many a film noir. However, the film could have been photographed by anybody. Fortunately not all is lost, thanks largely to Charles Bickford. Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan get first and second billing, respectively, but Bickford is the one who makes the film work. Every conversation and every action is a chess match. How much does he really know about Scott and Peggy’s affair? Is he really blind? Most of the time, he likes to toy with his wife, Scott, and even us. Then there’s the “test.” A cold feeling awaits those who watch Scott lead Tod towards the edge of the cliff. Then the room gets icier when Tod loses his cane and falls over the cliff. The sequence is excruciatingly long. Renoir enjoys making us sit in painful agony as this horrible event unfolds before our eyes. The scene’s long length also reveals Tod’s extreme vulnerability, as seen through his terrified expression and frantic body language. The Woman on the Beach is a must for Jean Renoir enthusiasts. For everyone else, it depends on how much you’re willing to forgive the movie’s inability to match the first five minutes. The Woman on the Beach is only available through manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. Brian can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
0 viewsHOME VIDEO HERALD: THE DOUBLE MAN 2
Total Views: 26 By Brian Lafferty August 17, 2011 (San Diego) – As a kid I remember watching The Parent Trap (1961). That was the Disney movie that starred Hayley Mills as two separated-at-birth twins. It was the film that probably didn’t invent it, but it certainly perfected the split screen technique that enabled the same actor to appear as separate characters in the same scene. Perhaps director Franklin J. Schaffner and his team might have learned from The Parent Trap while making The Double Man (1967), available now from the Warner Archive Collection. Too bad it isn’t until about three-quarters of the way in that we see the effect in action. The Double Man is a run of the mill espionage tale. Yul Brynner plays Dan Slater, a CIA agent who loses his son in a tragic skiing accident in the Austrian Alps. Or is it murder? The icy cold and emotionless spy (his superiors say he’s never loved anyone in his life, not even his own son) travels to the Alps to investigate. It turns out it’s all a convoluted attempt to kidnap him and switch him with a Russian double (also played by Brynner). Brynner’s performance is as frosty as his surroundings. Initially, he looks stiff, as if he has gas, but he becomes more comfortable as the film progresses. Britt Ekland plays a mysterious beauty who may have had something to do with his son’s death. She matches Brynner’s coldness with her innocence and cherubic disposition. The special effect is a gimmick, but it’s a technically impressive one. There’s no obvious (at least to me) hint of processing that reveals the Brynner that is inserted. They both look exactly alike. Even after subsequent decades of special effects improvements, the effects in this film remain strong. As a result, this adds major credibility to the switch, although a large part of it is owed to Brynner’s dual performance. He is so consistent in both roles and his acting so identical that during the final showdown it’s impossible to tell which Brynner is which. The question is why did screenwriters Frank Tarloff and Alfred Hayes have to wait so long to incorporate it? Before the switch my interest was small, but it constantly wavered dangerously towards disinterest. The majority of the film is a marathon of boilerplate, lengthy scenes filled with a large amount of expositional dialogue. They’re the kind of scenes that tell us what’s going on through boring stretches of verbiage that’s easy to tune out. Schaffner (who would direct the original Planet of the Apes a year after this film) includes a plethora of shots of the Austrian Alps. One is an extreme wide shot of Brynner and Ekland skiing down the slopes, specks in the snowy distance against the backdrop of towering mountains. Outdoors it’s very white, pale, and ghostlike; the last quality echoes the internal haunting that torments Brynner as he searches for the truth. The Double Man is available only through manufacture-on-demand from the Warner Archive Collection. You can order it here. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
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Total Views: 42 By Brian Lafferty August 9, 2011 (San Diego) – Dark of the Sun (1968) was one of the first films to cash in on The Dirty Dozen’s success. Both films are set in war-torn countries, both are about do-or-die missions, and both feature football great Jim Brown (his second film after his retirement). The similarities end there. Judging it on its own terms, Dark of the Sun is uneven but when it’s good it makes you wish the rest of the movie were just as brutal and action-packed. When it drags, it really suffers. The film is set in the then-war torn Congo, a nation rebelling against colonial rule. Curry (Rod Taylor) is assigned a Mission: Impossible-esque task: To rescue a horde of innocent civilians held hostage by Congolese rebels. In addition, they need to retrieve a cache of diamonds worth tens of thousands of dollars. He has three days to assemble a crew, which includes a German soldier unashamed to wear a swastika (Peter Carsten) and a native Congolese educated in the United States (Brown). The second half is brutal and shocking in a magnitude much larger than I’ve seen in many contemporary movies…or many movies in general for that matter. Many movies play things safe. Dark of the Sun dares to be brutal. Women are chased and raped by the savage rebels. Men get burned alive and have their eyes gouged. That, believe it or not, is just for starters. It’s one of those sequences you can admire but at the same time you doubt you can watch again. The director is Jack Cardiff, who was better known as a cinematographer (netting an Oscar for his photography of Black Narcissus). The Warner Archive does a great job remastering the film, bringing out the colors such as the greens of the jungle and the glaring orange of the torched city. The 2.40 aspect ratio (the DVD is anamorphic widescreen) enlarges the jungle’s expansiveness and provides ample sweeping dive shots of the aerial attack on the train. This movie contains the first fight scene I’ve seen that involves a chainsaw. Editor Ernest Walter (who cut Robert Wise’s The Haunting five years earlier) helps the scene transcend gimmickry by fluid and natural cutting. Whereas many fight scenes today are edited Michael Bay style, this fight scene takes its sweet time with each shot. Because Walter lets the action dictate the editing, and not the other way around, it allows for a bigger buildup of suspense and the deadliness of the chainsaw isn’t diminished. My only complaint is that the movie is too talky at times and it seriously threatens to undermine the film. Other than the chainsaw fight and the aerial assault on the train, it doesn’t get really good until more than halfway into the film. I wanted to see more action and less conversation. Yvette Mimieux, playing a rescued damsel in distress, is gorgeous but she overacts. I suspect her purpose in this film is to provide some eye candy for the men during the long (and I do mean very long) interludes between action sequences. Rod Taylor and Jim Brown perform well but this movie could have used Charles Bronson. NOTE: Dark of the Sun is only available via manufacture on demand through the Warner Archive. You can purchase it here. Brian Lafferty can be reached at brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff. Printer-friendly version
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