Foster on Film – Page 105 – The Film Criticism of Matthew M. Foster

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Apr 241956

In 1956, the alien invasion film was in its full “glory.” The Thing From Another World, War of the Worlds, and many others had displayed an external threat. THEY are out there and are coming to get us! The UFO craze put flying saucers everywhere. Invasion of the Body Snatchers made the threat internal. It was no longer “The Others” that were to be feared, but our own friends, family, and neighbors. This is a much more frightening concept, and it created a smarter and more tension-filled picture than its relatively simplistic contemporaries. Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t the first film where alien possession/replacement was the means of attack, but it was the best, and the one that has been remembered.

Doctor Miles Bennell returns from a medical conference to his idyllic, Californian small town. He’s thrilled to find his high school sweetheart, Becky Driscoll, is back in town, free, and interested. He’s also got a mystery as the large number of people who made appointments while he was gone all cancel, and the few people he does see all have a strange disorder where they “feel” that a family member has been changed. Accepting it as some kind of mass delusion, he carries on normally. But he is summoned to the home of Jack Belicec, a writer and friend, who has found a dead body—one with no wounds, no finger prints, and few features. It soon becomes obvious that people really are changing, or being replaced, and it is impossible to know who to trust. Now that’s the stuff of paranoid nightmares.

Based on Jack Finney’s novel, The Body Snatchers, screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring weaves a tight tale, with likeable, multi-dimensional characters, and snappy dialog. There’s no wasted moments. Director Don Siegel adds a Film Noir look to crank up the hopelessness. Darkness hides the malevolence until it is too late, and then it is “good” that has to take refuge in shadows.

The acting is excellent, a rarity in 1950s genre films. Much of the movie rests on the shoulders of Kevin McCarthy, who creates a very human Dr. Bennell. Dana Wynter is equally good in a less taxing role, though she gets the films most chilling moment, laying on the ground, looking up with nothing behind her eyes (see the pic above); I’ve seen viewers shudder at the sight. The two of them, charming on their own, have chemistry together. That makes the story not just a paranoid dream, but a tragedy.

Taken as a horror film, without examining its context or theme, it is amazingly effective, even fifty years later. It ignores cheap jump-scares in favor of slowly building anxiety that leads to real fright. But as a straight story, it does have a few flaws. How can people tell when their loved-ones have been replaced? I’ve seen people go through massive psychological changes, and never felt that they had been taken over. Anyone on the proper drugs will appear to have all of their emotions sapped away. The answer for the film, though never stated, is that people are seeing the lack of a “soul” (taken in its broadest sense). As a symbol, this works well, but for straight ahead storytelling, it is problematic. Also, Bennell’s proposal to leave the odd corpse on the table for the night and watch it is out of character, not to mention stupid. And I’ve always wondered what medicine he’s giving the hysterical child early in the film. The biggest plot hole comes late in the film, when pod-Becky opens her eyes. It’s a great scene, but how was Becky replaced? Yes, she fell asleep for a minute, but was there a pod in the cave with her? The replacement always took time before, and involved a new body, but this time it plays like a sudden demonic possession. But these turn into minor problems because it is nearly impossible to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and see only its surface. The implausible events and situations bow under the weight of symbolic meanings.

Theme vs. Theme vs. Politics
I can’t imagine anyone watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers without being overwhelmed by levels of meaning, and that’s why it works so well. It isn’t frightening because you’re afraid that pods from outer space are going to take over (well, unless you actually are afraid of pods from outer space, in which case…), but rather because it suggests that everything you believe in, everything you hold to be of value, could be stripped from you, not taken by outside forces, by attack from foreign countries, monsters, or aliens, but taken by those close to you, who willingly give up their individuality. Even worse, you might do it to yourself. The danger that Siegel preaches against is conformity (in some interviews, he’s claimed it was just an invasion film with no theme, but in others he contradicted that, stating it was about conformity and going on at great length about it). The pod-people are those who have given up thinking for themselves, who have accepted the party line (where the “party” is not limited to political groups).

The trick with that message is that no one saying it ever means it entirely. Don’t conform, but who aren’t you supposed to conform with? It’s hard to find anyone who would suggest that you shouldn’t conform to non-murdering (in your society). Think for yourself, as long as you don’t come up with certain answers (like chopping up the neighbors is OK). Some kind of conformity is required. So, what is Invasion of the Body Snatchers warning you against? Well, it was 1950s America. It doesn’t take much work to find the dangerous ideologies of the day: Communism and McCarthyism. And the film is filled with hints that we’re on the right track. What does it give us:

The pod-people are emotionless, specifically lacking love.
They are efficient, all working together.
They are fanatical about their system.
They meet together at night in cells
They are not trying to keep things stagnant, but alter them to their “utopia.”
The town of Santa Mira is a pretty nice, all American place to live.
This pushes things pretty firmly into the anti-communist camp. Those first five are all part of the typical view of communism at the time. If McCarthyism had been the target, I’d expect the pod-people to be uniformly emotional, shouting about how they must keep things pure. It’s not that you can’t make an anti-McCarthy message fit the film, it’s just that you have to do a lot more stretching of the metaphors while the anti-communist one slides in easily.

In 1962, the U.S. Department of Defense teamed with Warner Bros. to produce the propaganda movie, Red Nightmare, a thinly veiled take off on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Narrated by Jack Webb, it showed a peaceful small town that could have been Santa Mira. In it, Jerry Donovan (Jack Kelly, TV’s Bret Maverick) goes to sleep (remember, they get you when you sleep) and wakes to find his town taken over by communists. Everyone has changed, with his wife now a good party member, his children ready to go off to state run institutions, and the church converted to the People’s Museum, where everything is claimed to have been invented in Russia. This is a deadly serious work, and my personal favorite propaganda film. While Red Nightmare smashes you over the head with its anti-communist stance, Invasion of the Body Snatchers does the same thing with a touch more subtlety.

It’s not uncommon to hear people proclaim that the message is more general, or that it covers other changes that society was having problems with, such as the role of women. But such interpretations are unlikely. First, because in the mid-50s, these other issues were rolled into the communist hysteria: women wanting to work was an attack on American values and an aid to the communists. Second, and more importantly, communism and McCarthyism were too omnipresent; any artist would have to address these if touching on a close topic or know that they would be misinterpreted. If you were going to discuss conformity via mindless takeover, you’d have to state that you weren’t talking about communism or McCarthyism. It would be similar to someone making a film after 9/11 about planes crashing into two towers. Without any mitigating statements, this would be about al Qaeda. Actually, even if the filmmaker claimed, and truly intended it not to be about al Qaeda, but about violence in general, it would still be about al Qaeda to everyone who viewed it. You can’t escape context.

But does this weaken the present impact of the film, particularly to those who found the right-wing, anti-communist rants to be dangerous? No. Because times have changed. We’ve got a new set of fears and new bogeymen in the form of terrorists. The specific political arguments of the ’50s aren’t important now, but the philosophical message is. So, after ’50 years, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has become the general anti-conformity statement that it couldn’t be when it came out.

Aliens, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Jan 131956

Moses (Charlton Heston), an all-American boy, grows up to be prince of Egypt and fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is, until he finds out he’s a Hebrew, which makes him give up everything, including easy ways of freeing his new found people, and throw himself in the mud. Talk about self hatred. After a peaceful walk in the desert, he starts talking to hot bushes (and not the fun types), that tell him to stand in dramatic poses and say things very loudly. After winning a posing competition with the King of Siam (Yul Brynner), he takes off with every Jew he can find, all of whom yell, “Stone him,” whenever things look dicey. (Come on folks. Get some backbone!) But with his faith in God, Moses defeats the communists and is given the Constitution of the United States…I mean defeats the Egyptians and is given the Ten Commandments. Same thing.

The Ten Commandments is the ultimate in cinematic spectacle. Filmed with the color and contrast turned to eleven, gigantic sets, sweeping North African vistas, stirring music, and a cast of thousands, including substantial portions of the Egyptian military, they never made them like this, and never will again. This is film as pageantry.

It’s hard to forget the parting of the Red Sea, or the fire-carving of the Commandments, but equally thrilling are the scenes of the great treasure city, with its gigantic obelisks, huge marble slabs, and numerous statues. CGI hasn’t managed anything half as impressive. God as a mildly glowing fern is a let-down, but the rivers turning to blood and the deathly fog that kills the first borns more than makes up for it.

There were plenty of other religious epics produced in the ’50s. None so grand, but The Ten Commandments is more than the biggest parade. It is the perfect vehicle for its larger than life stars. Charlton Heston couldn’t handle subtle emotions or even everyday actions; he’s never believable displaying amusement, affection, or love. But as a force of nature, a representation of authority, he’s magnificent. The Ten Commandments never asks him to do anything small. He rages and he proclaims, and at those, no one is better. However, Yul Brynner is close. When both appear in the same frame, I expect the extras to drown in a flood of testosterone.

Even with the impressive imagery turned off, this is still one entertaining movie. I could be content just listening to the voices. Besides Heston and Brynner, there are the distinctive Edward G. Robinson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, and John Carradine. Where else can you find the remarkable tones of Robinson entwining with those of Price?

The behavior of the film’s characters makes little sense (particularly that God guy, who apparently is all-powerful, but waits for generations before stopping the torture of “his people”), but for a change, that’s not a problem. The Ten Commandments isn’t a slice-of-life pic, where real people deal with real situations. It’s a hero-story told round the campfire (but in sparkling VistaVision), where the individuals are close kin to Agamemnon, Achilles, and Zeus.

DeMille could never decide if he was telling a tale of the glory of God or of the wonders of the United States. I suspect the two were inseparable in his mind. Moses may be the messenger of the voice from the fiery foliage, but he speaks of tyranny and repression as the reasons why the Hebrews must be freed, not simply because God said so. In the weakest moments of the picture, DeMille, in an unneeded occasional narration and an embarrassing prolog, tries his best to connect the Biblical story to the fight against Soviet communism. It’s an uncomfortable fit. Yes, the Israelites are free from the Egyptians, but now they are under the thumb of a vengeful god, who will smite anyone who doesn’t worship as proscribed. Not exactly freedom in my book. But with the cold war behind us, the political propaganda merges with the religious propaganda to make both distant and irrelevant. DeMille may have wanted to push faith and country, but instead, he ended up with a rip-roaring story and little coherent theme, which is how I like my religious pics.

Sure, the whole thing is silly, but then so is The Iliad, Beowulf, and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. It is gloriously, magnificently silly. It is the cinematic epic against which all others are judged. And while it has flaws, I can never forget hearing Rameses proclaim “So let it be written, so let it be done,” and seeing Moses stretch out his staff over the Red Sea and part the waters. Now that’s good fantasy.

Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

We’re No Angels (1955)

Oct 081955

Three escapees from Devil’s Island (Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov) intend to rob a store, but end up acting as angels for the store-keeper and his family over Christmas. However, these angels are more Old Testament than New.

Why is this movie forgotten? Directed by Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca), my pick as the finest director of all time, and staring Humphrey Bogart in one of his last films, We’re No Angels is funny and heartwarming without being saccharine. It avoids Hollywood Christmas convention. The three convicts are unapologetic killers who are surprised to hear their guard survived their escape. They hide out in a general store, talking the manager into having them repair the roof. Soon they are cheating the customers and planning an unpleasant fate for the shopkeeper, but they are also watching his life and becoming involved with his family. His problems, particularly the arrival of the store’s miserly owner (Basil Rathbone) on Christmas, become their problems. Bogart, not known for his comedy, shows a real gift for humor, though Ray and Ustinov also shine. This isn’t the kind of Christmas film where sinners convert to saints. The three “angels” are there to solve the shopkeeper’s family’s problems, not to become new men. And the owner isn’t going to see the error of his ways. For 1955, there’s some radical stuff here, particularly in a Christmas film. We’re No Angels can best be understood by one of Bogart’s character’s lines: “We came here to rob them and that’s what we’re gonna do – beat their heads in, gouge their eyes out, slash their throats. Soon as we wash the dishes.” Add viewing this film to your list of Christmas traditions.

Christmas, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)

Oct 081955

A military sub is grabbed deep underwater by something unknown. Doctor John Carter (Donald Curtis) and Doctor Leslie Joyce (Faith Domergue) determine that the culprit is a giant octopus, altered by radiation. While the military search for the beast, Carter and Commander Pete Matthews (Kenneth Tobey) vie for the affections of Joyce.

For several generations, including mine, Ray Harryhausen is an artist whose work has never been matched. His stop-motion animation has brought fantasies to life, but always kept them in the land of the fantastic. Whether he will keep his god-like status in the world of special effects when judged by generations raised on CGI is yet to be seen, but I’m an old guy, and I love everything he’s done.

In It Came From Beneath the Sea, what he did was the octopus (or hexopus as the budget only allowed for six tentacles), and while it’s not his best work, it is still captivating. The creature destroying the Golden Gate Bridge has become an iconic moment. Whenever the beast tugs on the side of a ship or slaps some guy who is too stupid to stay off of the beach, I stare at the screen, enthralled.

When Harryhausen’s creature isn’t on screen, things slow down and I wonder if it isn’t a good time to sort my socks. The first half of the film is a lot of exposition with the characters explaining to each other what is clear to anyone in the audience who had bothered reading the film’s title. And if something is worth telling (which isn’t often), the script goes with the philosophy that it is worth telling over and over again. Apparently, there wasn’t enough cash for appropriately sized sets, so the stars (and one or two extras) repeatedly huddle together in cramped spaces—tiny offices, an undersized lab—and make sure not to move.

For all you fans of stock footage (and who isn’t?!), this is your lucky day. There’s lots and lots of stock footage, accompanied by yet more exposition, delivered by a narrator who thinks he’s recording a news reel. You’ll see those standard shots of ships and planes that have appeared in a hundred film, and one of traffic in San Francisco that had to be twenty years old when it was spliced in (or everyone in 1955 SanFran drove antique cars).

The plot isn’t much and the ending is anticlimactic. The romantic subplot just takes up time, and the dialog is so-so. Faith Domergue is competent and attractive, and her co-stars do their job adequately. That means it all comes down to Harryhausen. If you love his work, then you’ll want to catch this at least once. If you don’t like stop-motion animation or ’50s giant monster movies, give this a pass.

Ray Harryhausen’s other features are The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The First Men in the Moon (1964), One Million Years B.C. (1966), The Valley of Gwangi (1969) ), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and Clash of the Titans (1981).

Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Oct 081955

Professor Bernard Quatermass’s (Brian Donlevy) experimental rocket crashes in a field in the English countryside. Quatermass, along with a representative of the Ministry of Defense (Lionel Jeffries) rushes to the site to find two of the astronauts have vanished and the third, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), is hurt in an inexplicable way and unable to speak. Dismissing all other concerns, Quatermass searches for answers to uncover scientific truths, while Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) attempts to solve the mystery of the missing men, and Carroon’s wife (Margia Dean) tries to help her mutating husband.

When a film is this influential, I want it to be great. And at times, The Quatermass Xperiment is, but only at times. The atmosphere is there, and the basic concept is filled with potential (it better be considering how many later films “borrowed” the idea). The supporting cast is made up of skilled British character actors (Was Lionel Jeffries ever anything less than impeccable? And if you can’t answer that, go rent some ’60s British comedies.). Then there is Wordsworth’s heart-wrenching performance as the man who is becoming a monster. He succeeds where so many who followed him failed, invoking sympathy and horror simultaneously. It is reminiscent of Karloff”s work as The Monster in Frankenstein. But a casting error and several script blunders leave this a remarkable work that should have been better.

What makes this an important film? The young Hammer film company picked up the rights to make a big screen adaptation of a phenomenally popular, six-part TV series entitled The Quatermass Experiment. The substantial box office of their version persuaded the studio’s officers that money could be made with horror, and set in motion the next fifteen years of genre movie-making, with Hammer recreating the classic Universal monster films. They changed the title due to England’s new X-rating (adults only). For reasons that are hard to fathom, Hammer’s sci-fi horror flick was slapped with an X (I’d give it something between a G and a PG in the U.S. system). Instead of running from the rating, Hammer embraced it and advertised for audiences to come see the “horror” that was too extreme for mainstream society.

The film stood as Britain’s entrance into alien sci-fi and was early enough in the invasion film cycle that almost everything in it was new, and would be copied more times than I can easily recall.

The character of Quatermass appeared in additional live TV broadcasts, feature films, books, and radio broadcasts. He became the symbol of wisdom, nobility, and a bit of overly aggressive wide-eyed wonder in science (not that those traits were obvious in this film).

But the most important films aren’t always the best, and this one has some huge problems. The special effects are less than special. However, as the full “monster” is seen only briefly, this is a minor difficulty. The quick ending is not so easy to forgive. After a huge buildup, there is little payoff with the creature being dispatched without causing anyone to sweat. The real mistake was the alteration of the main character and the casting of Brian Donlevy, who excelled playing villainous thugs but was out of his depth as a rocket scientist. Changed from a Brit to an American to make the film more marketable in the States, Quatermass is made into a bullying, overblown sociopath. He’s rude, cruel, reckless, and unconcerned with the suffering of anyone. Considering the lack of safeties built into the experiment, it makes sense that he be self-absorbed, but the picture gives us no one else to follow. If more time had been spent with Carroon, it could have worked, but this is Quatermass’s picture and he’s the one we spend ninety minutes with. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to spend ninety minutes with him. Or ninety seconds. I’d rather the monster eat everyone just to shut him up. As this film relies on the viewer wanting the professor to beat the creature, his unpleasantness kneecaps the production.

The film was re-titled The Creeping Unknown for release in the U.S.

It was followed by 1957’s Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space in the U.S.), 1967’s Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years to Earth in the U.S.), and 1979’s The Quatermass Conclusion.

Aliens, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Oct 081955

Another expedition up the Amazon finds a gill man, subdues it, and takes it to an aquarium. There it is gawked at by the public and experimented on until it escapes, taking a beautiful graduate student (Lori Nelson) with him.

Quick Review: While it is questionable to place Creature from the Black Lagoon as a classic monster film, it is absurd to include this one—but I have to put it somewhere, so I’ll list it with its predecessor. This is a sequel, with all the bad things that implies. What is difficult in the first, finding and then capturing the creature, is done in minutes here. Then it’s a matter of the gill man escaping (ludicrously easy) and again going after a girl just to hold her.

The characters are paper thin (and it’s not as if they were Hamlet in the original). We’re also given an interesting view of scientific study. Apparently, all scientists do is torture their animals with electro-shock and keep them cruelly chained. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon behavior in our world, but when you’ve only got one animal and it is under public scrutiny, I think our film scientist would have thought up something a bit more clever. ’50 sexism is also evident (yes, much more than in the first). Here, they discuss how deep down, women exist only to be subservient wives and mothers. I’m being kind giving it , but fans of Creature from the Black Lagoon will want to catch it once. For anyone else, skip it.

It was followed by the even weaker The Creature Walks Among Us.

Back to Mad ScientistsBack to Classic Horror

Classic Horror, Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Oct 061955

The street-hoods are eagerly awaiting news of where Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) is holding the illegal crap game. Nathan needs a thousand dollars to secure a location and doesn’t have the money. When big time gambler Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando) brags that he can pick up any girl, Nathan sees an opportunity and bets him a thousand that he can’t and points him toward Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons). As Sky tries to seduce the prudish Sarah, Nathan attempts to hide his activities from his fiancée of fourteen years (Vivian Blaine) while keeping gamblers (B.S. Pulley, Johnny Silver, Sheldon Leonard, Stubby Kaye) interested.

A rating? Am I being a little rough on this bright, star-filled MGM musical. Nope. If I had a Black Plague rating, I’d give it that.

I love Guys and Dolls. Note that I’m referring to the Broadway musical, not the film. Based on the charming stories of Damon Runyon and set in his world of eloquent street hustlers and sexy dames, it is jammed with jokes, romance, and great songs by Frank Loesser. Luck Be a Lady and Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat are classics of American theater. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people realize any of that because the show is remembered, when it is remembered at all, either from numerous high school productions or from this miserable, poorly paced flick. The high schools do a better job.

So, how did director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and producer Samuel Goldwyn ruin a quality musical? Removing three excellent numbers was only a minor mistep, though replacing them with bland forgettable ones was certainly a mistake. The very stagy sets don’t help. The entire production is claustrophobic, failing to capture the expanse of the Runyonesque world half as well as the smaller, black & white The Lemon Drop Kid had four years earlier.

Far worse is Mankiewicz’s sleepy direction. He had quite a reputation with dramas, but this was his first musical and he didn’t have the knack. It needed to be rapid fire, with the gags emphasized, but Mankiewicz seemed unaware that the conversations are supposed to be funny. There isn’t a single laugh in the picture. It’s clear where they should be, but the delivery is too languid to inspire a smile.

But the greatest flaw, the absolute death to the movie, is the casting. Jean Simmons is adorable (that is the proper word), but her singing is dubbed and not dubbed very well (she’s flat on If I Were a Bell). That’s a minor issue compared to the male leads. Sinatra was given the wrong part. He campaigned for the larger roll of Sky Masterson, feeling only distain for the marble-mouthed Brando. He had little interest in the secondary roll, and it shows. He’s never been worse, not bothering to create a character; he tiredly recites the convoluted dialog as if he’d never heard it before. His singing voice is in fine form (the only one of the leads where that’s true), but he doesn’t get to do much with it. As for Brando, it’s hard to guess what movie he thought he was in. He never comes close to the character of Sky Masterson although he does seem to enjoy randomly emphasizing words. And he can’t sing. Yes, the lead in a musical can’t carry a tune. Reedy is the nicest term I can come up with. During filming, Brando couldn’t get through a song, so his numbers in the finished movie are made up from multiple takes as the editors tried desperately to construct something in the right key.

Not only can’t Brando sing, he can’t dance. Neither Simmons nor Sinatra were known for their dancing either, so many scenes have dead framing as these three do little or nothing, standing about uncomfortably. I suppose you could consider this an avant-garde approach, but I think if you’re making a movie musical, it might be clever to hire actors who can sing and dance. Just a thought.

A few of the supporting players put in good performances. Both Vivian Blaine and Stubby Kaye were members of the Broadway cast, and demonstrate that they should be in the show. Kaye almost makes the film watchable, for a few minutes anyway, but it’s too much for one man to manage.

Guys and Dolls is a desecration of a great musical comedy. Skip it, and pick up the original Broadway cast album instead.

Musicals, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

To Paris with Love (1955)

Oct 021955

Widower Col. Sir Edgar Fraser (Alec Guinness) and his twenty-something son travel to Paris where each tries to match the other with a beautiful woman. But they fall for their own choices, setting up two May to December romances that are doomed to fail. Complicating matters, the younger girl already has a fervent admirer.

Well, this is a Post-War British Comedy. It was released in 1955 (within the normally accepted post-war period), produced by The Rank Organization (which also made The Card, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Genevieve), and stars Alec Guinness. That’s pretty good credentials for being part of the movement. But it doesn’t feel like it belongs. There is no charm or wit, and it is lacking that very British outlook. The plot is more fitting for a Hollywood-made romantic comedy, except there are no sparks in the romances, and it has none of the broad humor typical for that genre.

If it sounds to you like To Paris with Love isn’t much of anything, then you have the right impression. It has some nice shots of Paris, but nothing that you couldn’t find in a documentary on the city. Most of the film consists of one pair or another meeting and having conversations that aren’t meaningful or entertaining. They just take up space. The few attempts at comedy miss the mark and are out of place: Edgar gets his elastic suspenders caught on a door and bounces back several times when he tries to walk away, and Edgar gets caught in a tree while attempting to retrieve a badminton birdie. Slapstick was not the way to go, but if there’s nothing funny about the characters or in their dialog, I guess you grab for whatever you can.

If there is any point at all, it is a sad one. Apparently the young are all foolish and anyone over forty has past the point of being able to have fun. Brief fantasies are allowed, but in the end, people have to match up with others their own age, or with no one at all.

Once upon a time, To Paris with Love might have appeared to be interesting for multiple reasons (“might have” doesn’t mean that it was, only that someone, somewhere, could have been curious about the movie), but now, a half century later, Alec Guinness is the only draw. Unfortunately, he brings nothing to the table. Sure, he’s given nothing to work with, but I’ve come to expect him to rise above the material. He doesn’t here.

Guinness also appeared in the Post-War British Comedies Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Last Holiday (1950), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Card (1952), The Captain’s Paradise (1953), The Ladykillers (1955), Barnacle Bill (1957), The Horse’s Mouth (1958), Our Man in Havana (1959).

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

Oct 021955

When Kobayashi crashes his sea plane on a small island, he discovers a second Godzilla (the first died in Gojira) fighting an enormous, mutated Anklyosaur. The beasts fall into the sea and soon turn up in Osaka, and destroy it. Godzilla disappears into the ocean, and Kobayashi, and his more-able friend, Tsukioka, search for the monster in hopes that the military will find a way to stop it.

Note: This review is of the Japanese version with English subtitles.

Godzilla Raids Again is an oddity for me. All of the other “Showa” cycle Godzilla films (1954 – 1975) I’d seen as a child or teen, but this one had escaped me. So I sat down to watch with perhaps a bit more sympathy and a lot more nostalgia than it deserves. And in that mindset, it was reasonably satisfying.

A sequel to the dark, brooding, nuclear paranoia drama, Gojira (re-edit as Godzilla, King of the Monsters for the U.S.) Godzilla Raids Again is much lighter fare. It is a transitional film between its tragic predecessor and the campy action pics that would follow. It is still a drama, but without the grim tone of the first film, and with an occasional joke tossed in. These jokes either aren’t funny, or simply aren’t translated well (I don’t understand Japanese), but the characters think they’re hilarious. Unlike Gojira, it doesn’t feel particularly Japanese. If the characters had been all blond, white guys, and spoke English, it would have been a typical American ’50s/’60s giant monster movie.

For a time, Godzilla Raids Again sways into metaphor territory, with the survivors of the creatures’ attack on Osaka standing in for those who tried to get things back to normal after Hiroshima. The hunt for the beast is played out like the search for the Bismarck (the powerful German battleship that could overpower any single ship that caught it, but which had to be found before it destroyed the shipping lanes). In the end, this is just a monster movie.

Unfortunately, the effects are distractingly weak. The B&W photography helps, as do the many dark scenes, but there is far too much light for the quality of the Godzilla suit. An avalanche segment, in which ice cubes are plopped upon the flailing rubber lizard, is particularly painful to watch. The decision to give Godzilla substantial dental problems was also a poor one. The monster’s teeth stick straight out of his mouth, which has got to make chewing tricky. I suppose Toho productions might have been considering a cross-promotional campaign with orthodontists.

Unlike later entries in the series, the movie never gets too silly. But it also drags in the middle. A party is excruciatingly slow, and could have been cut in its entirety. It all adds up to a decent, but unmemorable picture.

The movie was released in the U.S., in a much altered version, as Gigantis, The Fire Monster (1959).

Foreign Language, Godzilla, Reviews Tagged with: Two & 1/2 Reels

Tarantula (1955)

Sep 301955

When secretive scientist Gerald Deemer’s (Leo G. Carroll) partner turns up dead of an unlikely disease, the local doctor, Matt Hastings (John Agar) gets suspicious. But it is going to be a while before he discovers that a giant Tarantula is now running around the desert, killing cattle and the occasional person. Until then, he flirts with Deemer’s sexy new assistant, Stephanie ‘Steve’ Clayton (Mara Corday) and chats to old-timey Sheriff Andrews (Nestor Paiva).

“I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel when Tarantula took to the hills” — Science Fiction/Double Feature.

Tarantula varies from the formula a bit more than the others, but then it came out only a year after Them! The main difference is the merging in of the ‘40s-era mad scientist story. The monster is not the result of nuclear testing, but of Professor Deemer’s attempt to make a super-food. His food was unstable and we get over-sized rats and guinea pigs before the still growing tarantula escapes. Our triad is Deemer, the local doctor, and the cute assistant, but as Deemer is less help than the scientists in these types of films normally are, the sheriff gets to fill in on the heroic team. It is unfortunate as Carroll is the best thing about the film.

The isolated location is the Arizona desert where Deemer has set up his mysterious lab. We never get to a large city, with the local town having to supply all the panicking civilians. We do get the required stock footage Air Force jets.

Tarantula is mildly enjoyable, and while the best in terms of cinematography and acting, overall, it is the weakest of the three. It is too laid back, taking far too long to get to our giant bug. That gives more time for the romance to develop, which isn’t in itself a bad thing. But if your movie is called Tarantula, no one is watching to see the romantic leads chat while they smoke (they always smoke…), sitting on some desert rocks. There needs to be more monster action than coy smiles and a mad scientist ranting.

Director Jack Arnold is known for his genre work on It Came From Outer Space (1953), the last of the great Universal horror films, The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and its weak sequel Revenge of the Creature (1955), along with The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Sep 291955

Late at night, amoral detective Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picks up an hitchhiking escapee from an asylum (Cloris Leachman). Shortly afterwards, she’s tortured to death and he’s in the hospital, wondering how he can make a profit on this mystery. Without showing proper concern for the safety of his adoring secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper), who he normally uses to entrap husbands, Hammer digs into a twisted case involving crass cops, more-than-usually cruel thugs, a drugged femme fatale, foolish government agents, and a box, the contents of which are more than any of them can handle.

If you know Mike Hammer from the novels or other films, well, forget him. Or remember him only for the joy in the changes. This is a different Mike Hammer. Not the homophobic, commie-hating, misogynistic defender of right-wing morality; this Mike Hammer is a sharp playboy, with no concern for how things should be, but only what he can get. He drives sports cars and has perhaps the first answering machine—a strange unit utilizing an LP. He is a skilled fighter, and takes glee in beating on anyone he can. But he’s not a savage, technically. He needs justification for his violence, which then allows him to smash a man’s head against a wall two or three times more than necessary, and many, many more than a hero would. He is almost supernaturally attractive to women, yet he shows little interest in them as they kiss and caress him. This has lead to many college term papers on how Hammer is homosexual. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is just another level in a film that has enough subtexts to fill forty books.

Kiss Me Deadly was considered shocking in 1955. The Kefauver Commission (federal censors) named it the year’s greatest corrupting influence on America’s children. While I’m happy to discount anything that was coughed up by the Commission, the film does have the power to jolt the viewer, even after fifty years. Partly that’s due to the violence: torture, murders, beatings, an immolation, a hand is crushed. More than all of that, it is the off-kilter universe which makes it a strange viewing experience.

As I point out in my overview of Film Noir, films of this genre always take place in a different world than ours—close, but deformed. Kiss Me Deadly is set in a reality more twisted than usual, as if we are looking through several funhouse mirrors at once. Through it we see the normal Noir world in the same way The Maltese Falcon or The Big Clock showed us ours. People are more extreme, angles are odd, and the whole world is dark and claustrophobic. Even the credits run backwards. Plus, this is a science fiction film, but explaining that is giving away too much.

Kiss Me Deadly is infused with hopelessness. Sure, all Noirs have a degree of bleakness, but it’s different here. Hammer is still reasonably jolly for most of the picture, but the message is clear: There is no future. Why? Velma says it best:

They? A wonderful word. And who are they? They’re the nameless ones who kill people for the great whatsit. Does it exist? Who cares? Everyone everywhere is so involved in the fruitless search for what?

Here, the great whatsit is represented by a box, and it is one of cinema’s greatest icons. Quentin Tarantino swiped it for Pulp Fiction as Alex Cox had a decade earlier for Repo Man. But there was a way out in those films. Not here. You can put a lot into that box, but the specifics don’t matter. It’s too late, and one way or another, that box we shouldn’t have been wasting our time looking for is going to be opened.

Critics and film students have often commented that Hammer is weak, foolish, and dabbling where he doesn’t belong, but that’s not the case. Yes, he’s in way over his head, but so is everyone else. He’s the most able one in the game, there’s just no winning hand to be had.

Kiss Me Deadly is a wonderful, nillistic portrait of a lost world. It’s fast moving, exciting, thought-provoking, and weird in every way.

Mike Hammer was also portrayed on screen in I, the Jury (1953), My Gun Is Quick (1957), the horrendous The Girl Hunters (1963), and I, the Jury (1982).

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

The King’s Thief (1955)

Sep 291955

The evil Duke of Brampton (David Niven) executes wealthy nobles in order to steal their possessions. A book containing the names of his victims falls into the hands of Michael Dermott (Edmund Purdom), the leader of a band of outlaws. Michael and his sidekick, Jack (Roger Moore) plan to use the information purely for financial gain, but when he meets Lady Mary (Ann Blyth), the daughter of one of the victims, the outlaws turn into heroes to defeat Brampton and his aide, Captain Herrick (John Dehner), and save King Charles II (George Sanders).

With vivid colors and first class actors, The King’s Thief is an impressively mediocre work. It had to take real effort to be so thoroughly middle-of-the-road. The story is acceptable, the dialog is sufficient, the costumes are fitting, the fights are mildly exciting, and the cinematography is workman-like. Only the actors are above average, but for this production, they’ve all restrained themselves, putting in unmemorable performances. Miscasting Niven as the villain helps reduce his normal charm, and keeping Sanders’s screen time to a minimum eliminates the chance that he’ll be too engaging.

But there is also nothing to offend or irritate. No gigantic potholes (just a number of small ones), ridiculous characters, or horrific, out-of-place dialog. The story doesn’t drag, preach, or repeat obvious points.

Edmund Purdom has the twinkle in his eye needed for the role of dashing, fun loving thief. He even pulls off the goatee and puffy shirt without looking silly. A pre-Bond Roger Moore, with flowing golden tresses (I assume it’s a wig), displays the charm he’d later use as a secret agent. Here he’s the strong, loyal companion. Think Little John. Sure, during the main action and the tricky escape, he spends most of his time watching, but that’s what a sidekick is all about. Ann Blyth isn’t given much to do, but she does it looking exceptionally lovely, and as that’s the role of most female leads in traditional swashbucklers, there’s nothing to complain about.

You’re unlikely to remember much about The King’s Thief a month after you seen it, but you won’t regret the time you spent with it either. For completists or anyone looking for a Swashbuckler that’s unlikely to have worn out its welcome by repeat showings on late night TV, you’ll want to find a copy. For everyone else, if it pops up, great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

Back to Swashbucklers

Reviews, Swashbucklers Tagged with: Two Reels

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