Reign of Terror (1969)

Sep 291969
 
three reels

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Robespierre (Richard Basehart) schemes to make himself dictator.  But his black book, which holds the names of both friends and foes he will execute, has been stolen.  Masquerading as a psychotic killer, Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings) is given the job of retrieving the book, which he secretly plans to use to destroy Robespierre.  The task puts him at odds with FouchĂ© (Arnold Moss), the treacherous head of the secret police, as well as brings him back into contact with his ex-love, Madelon (Arlene Dahl ).

In the never-ending argument on the nature of Film Noir, I am squarely in the genre camp (as opposed to Noir being a movement or style).  But then along comes Reign of Terror to demonstrate there is no right answer when dealing with artificial labels.  This is Film Noir, no doubt about it.  It doesn’t matter that it’s a costume drama set several hundred years before the term was invented, and there isn’t a private detective or revolver to be found.  Like Porn, I know Noir when I see it.

Reign of Terror is a taut, intense, expressionistic journey into the dark recesses of humanity.  You can’t find a better time and place than the French Revolution for viewing the unpleasantness inherent in human nature and director Anthony Mann captures it all.  Robespierre is a vicious megalomaniac, FouchĂ© is an amoral killer, and the people of France are bloodthirsty savages.  Even our hero D’Aubigny, while brave and fighting for a higher cause, isn’t a likeable guy.

Cummings shows surprising range, leaving his normal light fare.  He plays the bitter but honorable man who isn’t above putting the innocent in danger, and if I wasn’t aware of his career, I’d never guess that this was an actor who specialized in friendly, everyday characters.  Dahl is the sexy (and amazingly gorgeous) femme fatale who displays the proper amount of cruelty to go with her almost true heart.  Basehart manages complete malevolence, while Moss creates a nearly sympathetic villain who switches between charm a brutally.

The story weaves about, with mistaken identities aplenty and more intrigue than in any ten traditional spy flicks.  No one should be bored.  But the story isn’t the point.  Style is king.  It doesn’t matter what happens, but how it is presented.  The whole movie could be about a guy counting his socks and it would still feel sinister.  Mann uses every trick in the Film Noir handbook and makes up a few of his own.  Shadows are ever-present, with beams of gray “light” in darker seas emphasizing the solitary nature of each character.  The camera perches overhead or squats on the ground, and then shoots forward for uncomfortably personal close-ups.  It induces both vertigo and claustrophobia.  There’s nothing to hold on to, nothing stable.

Reign of Terror is like no other film.  Nearly surrealistic, it is a must-see for any young horror director who wants to see how to build a nightmare.

 Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with:

Marlowe (1969)

Sep 291969
 
one reel

On what looks like a standard missing persons case, detective Philip Marlowe (James Garner) meets a blackmailer (Jackie Coogan) who is later murdered.  A set of incriminating photos of a sitcom star (Gayle Hunnicutt) and a gangster (H.M. Wynant) that the blackmailer was holding leads Marlowe along a convoluted trail of dead bodies and uncooperative people, including a stripper (Rita Moreno), a TV executive (William Daniels), a kung fu hit man (Bruce Lee), a shady child psychologist (Paul Stevens), and a frustrated,  police lieutenant (Carroll O’Connor).

You don’t read or watch anything based on the works of Raymond Chandler for the plot.  To do so would be an exercise in frustration.  It’s unlikely you’ll ever completely find out what’s going on, and what you do learn is rarely of any interest or importance.  Things happen; sometimes they have causes and sometimes they don’t.  It didn’t matter to Chandler.

What you’re there for is the characters and the style, and the return of Chandler’s most famous character in Marlowe has the style of a standard TV detective show.  The direction can be politely labeled “competent” and the acting clicks in as “acceptable.”  There’s a Noir situation in play, but I wonder if director Paul Bogart even saw a Film Noir.  So, we’re left with James Garner’s charm (and the implied assists of Rita Moreno) to keep the film interesting.  He’s not bad, but no one is that charming.

Garner also lacks a grasp of the character.  He would take on the role of Jim Rockford just a few years later in the mildly successful television series The Rockford Files, and there is little to differentiate Marlowe from Rockford.  Chandler’s dialog is there, but I’d have never recognized Marlowe without being told it’s him (and then only accepted it as a sign of alien pod people invading our cities).

The project was in trouble before the cameras rolled.  Updating Chandler to modern times is never a good idea, particularly when “modern” means the late ’60s.  This isn’t Marlowe’s world.  His dialog is out of place (well, everyone’s dialog is out of place) and the major characters belong to another era.  If the setting had to be the ’60s, why not start with a new PI?

A pre-fame Bruce Lee makes an appearance as a martial arts enforcer and plays it for comedy.  His last moment in the movie is absurd, but perhaps the most enjoyable bit in the film.

Marlowe had previously been portrayed with varying degrees of success by Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, and George Montgomery, but it was Humphrey Bogart who defined him for the screen in 1946’s The Big Sleep.  Elliott Gould would be next to try out the role, followed by Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely and the poorly conceived 1978 remake of The Big Sleep.

 Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with:

Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)

Apr 201969
 
one reel

Two school boys discover a spaceship which takes off when they get in, leaving a sister behind to fail to convince the adults what’s happened. The ship is almost hit by a meteor, but Gamera, who was perusing space for lost children, saves the day. But the mighty turtle can’t keep up with the spaceship, which lands on Terra, a planet on the other side of the Sun from Earth. Terra is under constant attacks from space gyaoses, which the only two survivors of this alien world fend off with Guiron, a quadrupedal shark with a knife for a head. They plan to eat the children and travel to Earth, but finally Gamera arrives.

Gamera vs. Guiron is much like the previous film, Gamera vs. Viras. Again we have two kids (one Japanese, one American) in space. It’s much more a kids adventure film than a daikaiju flick. There’s no city crunching here. The two kids wonder around the new and exciting planet and comment to each other about the things they see and what they will do next. This is a movie where kids with a dart gun are as effective as super-technological aliens. Adults, not counting aliens, are hardly in the film and are useless (and manage to be more annoying than the children).

And again, it is really cheap. There’s plenty of reused footage to save money (they don’t even bother tinting the scene from the B&W Gamera The Giant Monster). The planet is made up of a few small sets with a few simple miniatures, and obvious map paintings. In one scene rocks come crashing down and you can see the Styrofoam bounce off the children. Guiron is a ghastly looking monster that didn’t push the budget.

On the bright-side, the two alien chicks are quite cute and wear spangly outfits with capes. That’s as sexy as a Gamera movie gets.

Be ready for multiple renditions of the Gamera song. The film ends with the moral: We shouldn’t dream of other planets, but make this one free of “wars and traffic accidents.”

 Foreign Language, Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with:

Hello, Dolly! (1969)

Mar 291969
 
two reels

Dolly Levi (Barbra Steisand), an elderly widow who for some reason looks twenty-five and stunning, decides to give up her matchmaking career and find herself a match. Her target is wealthy Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau). On her path to getting him, she fixes up the relationships of his niece Ermengarde (Joyce Ames), who she sends off with poor artist Ambrose Kemper (Tommy Tune), and his employees Cornelius (Michael Crawford) and Barnaby (Danny Lockin), who she matches with shopkeeper Irene Molloy (Marianne McAndrew) and her assistant Minnie (E.J. Peaker). Everyone ends up in New York City for one big, wild, romantic night.

I’ve gone to some effort defending Oliver! against being an out-of-touch antique, but with Dolly!… Wow, this film is a dinosaur. It doesn’t feel like a 1969 film. It feels a bit like 1955, but more like 1933. Busby Berkeley would be at home with the never ending musical numbers that are disconnected from the story. Yes, everyone is dancing, but why is everyone dancing? In ’69, unlike ’33, that feels like a question there ought to be an answer to.

I tend to only trust my views in reviewing films, but in the case of Hello, Dolly!, the filmmakers themselves may be the best judges. Walter Matthau said (to her and anyone who would listen) that Barbra Streisand couldn’t act, and he didn’t say it nicely. Streisand thought Matthau was a petty asshole, but did agree she was miscast, decades too young for the part. They both agreed they had no chemistry. Director Gene Kelly was sure he could have helped Streisand find the character of Dolly, if he’d been given more time; but he wasn’t
 Choreographer Michael Kidd thought Kelly had the wrong focus and Kelly thought Kidd wasn’t doing his job as well as he could have. And they were all correct.

Taking Streisand’s side, which is hard to do as Matthau is a fine actor, it’s important to note that this is a musical, and she could sing. She couldn’t act, or dance, but she could sing. That’s a talent he lacked. There is no reason to ever have Walter Matthau sing. Or be within a city block of any musical.

What’s surprising is that considering how flawed it is, that Hello, Dolly! is watchable at all, but it is. The characters who aren’t Horace or Dolly are quite pleasant to spend an afternoon with (I’m particularly fond of Irene, who seems brighter and more capable than everyone else, and has a sense of fun). Most of the songs aren’t memorable, but they aren’t bad either. Call them enjoyable filler. The title track, on the other hand, is very catchy and worth sitting through quite a bit of nothing to get to. As for those perpetual dance routines, they are amiable in an unfocused way, and only fail due to lasting twice as long as they should. And the one for Put on Your Sunday Clothes actually works all the way to its distant end. There are worse problems a musical can have than dancing that won’t stop. Everything without the two leads would be quite good if it was just trimmed a bit.

As for those leads, well, there’s not a lot good that can be said about Matthau. He can, mostly in other films, do a lot with the grumpy old man role, and every once in a while that shows through here. But he’s not nearly amusing enough for the time we spend with him, and as mentioned, he can’t sing. And every moment with him and Streisand is cringe-worthy. She’s far too pretty and young for the role, which makes it impossible to figure why Dolly wants to end up with the unpleasant Horace. It’s clear she could do better, and that cuts the romance off at the knees. I don’t want them to get together. The fault really lies with the script. There is no arc for Horace. There’s no scenes of him slowly falling in love with Dolly or realizing the error of his ways. He’s obnoxious, and he stays that way, just for some reason he ends up with Dolly.

As for Streisand without Mathau, her lack of acting skill is evident, but when she’s in pixie mode, rushing about causing happy chaos for the other couples, she works well enough. And when she sings, her sins are forgiven.

Yes, it nearly bankrupted Fox, but that blame can be divided among it, Star!, and Doctor Dolittle, and there’s no excuse for Doctor Dolittle. Hello, Dolly! is a mess, but it isn’t an unpleasant one.

 Musicals, Reviews Tagged with:

The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

Feb 221969
 
three reels

Three or so years after a brief nuclear “misunderstanding” destroyed the world and killed most of the population, the remaining British are still very, very British. Father (Arthur Lowe), Mother (Mona Washbourne), and Penelope (Rita Tushingham) live on an underground train, which is powered by a man peddling a bike. When Father finds Penelope has been seeing Alen (Richard Warwick) in another car, he decides they should travel to the surface to make a proper home in the rubble. Elsewhere, Lord Fortnum (Ralph Richardson) is undergoing difficult to define medical problems and goes to see “Doctor” Bules Martin (Michael Hordern), who sits on a huge pile of discarded boots. As they travel about, they are repeatedly told to “move along” by the police (Peter Cook, Dudley Moore) who float about in a balloon. They all have to fear being mutated by radiation into a sitting room or cupboard.

This may be the most British movie ever made. It’s like Monty Python, but without concern for punch lines. There’s little plot and only the most cursory awareness of sense. Call it stiff-upper lipped English absurdist satire. That makes this either quite funny, boring, or just weird, depending on your interest in and tolerance for this brand of humor.

Written by Spike Milligan as a one-act play, the theme is the overwhelming, never ceasing, stupidity of man. Although everything has changed, everyone carries on with the same foolishness that they always had, and they always will. Call it two parts cynicism and one part depression. The characters behavior isn’t just dim, but insane. With between 20 and 30 survivors, there’s still a queen, a man is named Prime Minster due to the size of his “inside leg,” and the police tell people to move along when there’s nothing there and no place to move along to. The doctor asks for a medical card before filling out a prescription for food, and a death certificate takes precedence over the person sitting there talking.

The dialog fits a world where a person might (and does) turn into a parrot at any moment.

“Didn’t you have a mummy and a daddy?”
“No, my brother had them.”
“That’s a bit unfair. You could have had one each.”

“I was in the Army, actually. I’m a Captain.”
“Oh, I say! What regiment?”
“Oh, we didn’t know, owing to the Official Secrets Act.”

The problem with plotless, gag-type films is the ending is bound to be anticlimactic. The Bed Sitting Room doesn’t reach an ending, but fades away, but I enjoyed the journey. It’s thought-inspiring, if not thoughtful, and unlike most films you’re likely to run across.

 Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction Tagged with:

The Green Slime (1968)

Oct 101968
 
two reels

Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton) volunteers for a mission to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. But while planting the explosives, the team accidentally picks up a piece of alien slime which grows into deadly monsters when taken to the space station. Rankin must stop the slime, as well as deal with his uneasy relationship with the station commander and ex-best friend, Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel), and his ex-girlfriend, Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi), who is now Elliott’s fiancĂ©e.

While a Japanese-American co-production, The Green Slime is mostly influenced by its Italian writer and producer, Ivan Reiner. Certainly there is little of director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) to be found, though the special effects of his countryman, Akira Watanabe, known for his work in Godzilla features, is evident in the rubber-suited monsters. Reiner had previously applied his interesting talents to the Italian space station “epics,” Wild, Wild Planet, The War of the Planets, and The Snow Devils. The Green Slime could easily be thought of as part of that series. Just change the name of the station to Gamma 1. It’s the same cheap sets, the same rockets that look like toys, the same groovy future, and the same testosterone-filled, irritable leads. Were 1960s males always suffering from PMS, or is there some sociological explanation for their sullen, irrational behavior?  Was being ill-tempered thought of as a positive male trait in 1968?

The Green Slime does fly above its competition with its psychedelic theme song. It could be played at any concert between Incense and Peppermint and Eight Miles High. It’s the perfect start to the film, announcing loudly that nothing in the next hour and a half should be taken seriously.

I was pretty excited as a child when The Green Slime screened locally, though even then I knew something wasn’t right with the film. I can be pretty forgiving of horrendous special effects, ludicrous science, and silly monsters, but there is only so much bickering I can handle before becoming annoyed. The Green Slime is bogged down in an unnecessary and constantly intrusive love-triangle subplot. As Rankin is an unlikable guy (again, I’m trying to fathom if the filmmakers thought this guy was sympathetic or just couldn’t write reasonable characters), any time spent on him swiping back his girl is tiring.

The shorter Japanese cut removes much of the squabbling between the always-right Rankin (though his tantrum-inspired breaking of the specimen jar caused the whole problem) and the always-wrong Elliott, but at the cost of the theme song. That’s too high a price.

 Aliens, Foreign Language, Reviews Tagged with:

Goke – Bodysnatcher from Hell (1968)

Oct 091968
 
three reels

A UFO causes a plane to crash in the mountains. The survivors (the abrupt co-pilot, a weak-willed stewardess, a corrupt politician, a ruthless arms dealer, his drunken wife, a young anarchist, an American war widow, an obsessed space scientist, an amoral psychologist, and an assassin) fall upon each other instead of working together.  Things get worse when the assassin is possessed by an alien, and turned into a vampire. (Japanese with Eng subtitles.)

Stylish for its low budget, this horror import plays out like an extended version of the Twilight Zone classic, The Monster’s are Due on Maple Street, crossed with Night of the Living Dead. The people are dim-witted and vicious, and are more than happy to destroy themselves. Alien invaders don’t have to do much with this bunch to turn them into savage killers. I suspect the viewer was supposed to like the stewardess (such helpless but cute females were often ideals in American films of the era, and I have no reason to believe the same wasn’t true in Japan), as well as the inconsiderate co-pilot (if so, this one is more of a cultural thing as I found him irritating). The rest are the scum of the Earth. The space scientist is willing to sacrifice another human just to see what a “vampire” is really like, and he’s the best of them. The arms dealer is bribing the politician, and throwing in his wife’s body as incentive. The politician is not only accepting the money, but molests the wife in front of everyone. Both are capable of murder. The psychologist enjoys frightening people so he can watch them react, and the anarchist is ready to set off a bomb because he’s bored. They are all stuck on the downed plane, afraid to venture out. It doesn’t take long for the thin veneer of civilization to vanish. I was rooting for the extraterrestrials.

The human drama pulled me in, and the anti-war theme is effectively presented (if they weren’t fighting each other, then maybe they could stop the aliens), though it gets a bit thick at times, with inserts of red-tinted stills of the Vietnam War popping up several times. Some of the scenes will stay with you long after the film is over: the red skies and suicidal birds, the vaginal head wound that the alien uses to enter and leave the assassin, and the ending (which I won’t give away). These are great moments in horror/science fiction.

Obviously, it’s not all of so high a level (or I’d have given it more s). The American, on her way to pick up her husbands body, speaks English, so it is easier for me to evaluate the actress’s performance, and it is terrible. Close-your-eyes-and-play-jackhammer-sounds-through-headphones-just-to-miss-it kind of terrible. Perhaps she gave up trying when she read her lines. I suspect the writers were not at home with English. The dub on a ’70s Godzilla flick has better dialog.

The special effects vary from acceptable to laughable; the most noticeable example of the latter is the foam boulders that keep falling from a cliff. And what’s with that cliff? Whenever an avalanche would be handy, down comes the Styrofoam. Not that there is any place for those artificial blocks to be coming from, except the hands of grips who are off camera, tossing them over the side. An obvious dummy is also thrown over the edge in a similar fashion, and it looks every bit as realistic.

The plot comes in ridiculous exposition moments when everything stops so someone can tell the audience what it all means. In one case, a survivor is possessed so the aliens can use her body (though not her voice?) to explain who they are and why they’ve come. But once you get the answers to those, it becomes clear that there was no reason for the aliens to say a word. The space scientist also relates a cringe-inducing theory held by many “scientists”: Earth is bound to be taken over by aliens because they will be drawn here due to the dropping of the A-bombs over Japan. Huh. That’s quite a theory.

Goke – Bodysnatcher from Hell has gotten some press recently because Quentin Tarantino mentioned it as an influence; he copied the shot of the plane against the red sky Kill Bill Vol 1.

 Aliens, Foreign Language, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with:

Kuroneko (1968)

Oct 071968
 
3,5 reels

During a period of unrest in Japan, a mother and her daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa & Kiwako Taichi) are raped and murdered by a band of disheveled samurai. They return as ghosts, seducing and then killing samurai. The local samurai lord Raiko (Kei Sato) tasks newly minted samurai Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura) with finding who or what is killing his warriors and to put an end to it.

The first moments of Kuroneko (also known as Yabu no naka no kuroneko or The Black Cat of the Grove) are cruel and filmed in a drab, semi-realistic style, though the acting is dialed to eleven. That’s the last time realism will have anything to do with this movie. From then on we are in a surrealistic world, the world of ghosts, as well as the metaphoric world of grief and longing and regret. And that world is beautiful. Darkness prevails, with streams of light appearing that have no source and where the ghosts, and sometimes others, glow in the night. It is as fine a use of B&W photography as you are likely to see and that artistry is the picture’s strongest suit.

The story is very much of a type of fairytale common to Japan and common to Japanese cinema before the J-horror boom of the late ’90s. The rules are straightforward and the plot is simple. It is a “kaidan”—a ghost story with an old-time feel—one that is never frightening, but often eerie.

Director Kaneto Shindî, who is best known for his similar film, Onibaba, from several years earlier, had more on his mind than a fairytale and an amazing atmosphere. Politics was a basic part of his filmmaking and Kuroneko digs in. We are deep into social criticism of the rich and powerful and how the poor always suffer. It doesn’t matter what and who is in charge as the system is always corrupt. Add to that commentary on the mistreatment of women and you’ve got plenty to chew on between ghostly attacks.

Unfortunately, I had way to much opportunity for that chewing. Even at only 99 minutes, Kuroneko is too long. In the second half, it feels less like a horror film than a stage melodrama and the acting is way over the top, even for the artificial style. Conversations take four times longer than they should as each character must pause dramatically—sometimes running about the room—between sentences. Grief is displayed by characters throwing themselves on the floor, moaning, rising up only to do it again, and then again. It’s too much, and it’s too slow. The good wins out, making Kuroneko a ghost story everyone should see, but it fails to be the classic it could have been.

 Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with:

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Oct 061968
 
two reels

Housewife Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her self-absorbed husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move to an apartment next to a strange old couple (Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer). Rosemary becomes pregnant, but this happy event is also the beginning of her paranoia and fear that witches want her baby.

Along with The Omen and The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby created the Christian Mythos sub-genre of horror. Sure, there were films with Satan and chanting witches before, but most ignored anything Biblical and were hardly serious films with teeth. Rosemary’s Baby is the lightest of the three, with some people (not I) regarding it as a comedy.

Besides being an important horror film that has influenced filmmakers for close to forty years, it has one of those ending that will stick with you, that is twisted and clever and that makes the film worth your time. Unfortunately, it is just the ending that does it as the rest of the film drags out the obvious. I’ve heard reviewers describe it as a thriller with a growing sense of tension and uncertainty. It is a thriller only if you’re not used to being thrilled, and as for uncertainty, if you don’t know everything that is going to happen twenty minutes before it does (except for the last two minutes), you’re just not trying. The first time chanting is heard through the walls, the story is set in place.  It is not uncommon for someone to drone on about how you never know if everything is in her head or if there are real witches.  Well, I knew, because if there weren’t real witches, then there was no story except a woman having a rough pregnancy (and if that’s all it was, a nice pamphlet or short health tape would be both more informative and more entertaining). John Cassavetes’s Guy doesn’t help as his character is written so poorly, so out of touch and unpleasant to Rosemary, that he might as well be twirling a mustache and sweeping his cape. He’s a bad man. Got it.

Several plot elements just don’t work, pulling me out of the story, including:

  • Guy sells Rosemary out almost instantaneously. A few words from the neighbor and he’s cool with Satan having sex with his wife. Sure he’s an ass, but Hitler would have held out longer, and for more than one acting gig.
  • Rosemary is paranoid of everyone including her neighbors and husband, except for her doctor, who the neighbors sent her to, who her girl friends said was a sadistic nut, and who was prescribing her drinks made by the neighbors and filled with the root that her dead friend warned her about. Isn’t he the first person she should have been afraid of?
  • The witchcraft books at the bookstores. Do I need to explain?
  • BIG SPOILER: With witches everywhere, they keep the stolen, crying baby just a wall away from Rosemary instead of keeping him…anywhere else.

I can’t help think what a brilliant short film Rosemary’s Baby would have been. Take the last scene, and about ten minutes of setup, and your done. It would have covered the material and sold the point. But instead, it is 136 minutes. That’s far too long for the limited content, particularly when the viewer knows what’s going to happen. There’s never any tension (even the ending isn’t tense), just lethargy.

 Christian Mythos, Overrated Films, Reviews Tagged with:

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)

Sep 101968
 
four reels

In the future of 1988, archbishop and political prisoner Kiril Lakota (Anthony Quinn) is finally freed from a Siberian labor camp by a deal made between Premier Piotr Ilyich Kamenev (Laurence Olivier) and the Vatican. During his first meeting with The Pope (John Gielgud), he is made a Cardinal, an honor he did not want. He also becomes acquainted with elderly Cardinal Leone (Leo McKern), who represents orthodoxy, and befriends sick Fr. David Telemond (Oskar Werner), who represents radical change. These are dangerous times as famine is pushing China to attack its neighbors, and the US and Soviet Union are looking at a nuclear response. And then the Pope dies, which is announced by news reporter George Faber (David Janssen).

People forget—I forget—that this is a science fiction film, at least lightly so. It’s set in the then future and involves political shifts in the world. It was also one of the last of the road show pictures. It’s 162 minutes, and has an intro and intermission. Critics are rightly harsh on its significant flaws, particularly that length, the unnecessary reporter and his subplot that goes nowhere, excessively long discussions of Telemond’s views, and a focus on pomp and circumstance over plot.

All of that is fair. Yet I love this film. Yes, it’s long, but it doesn’t feel it and sweeps me along. Yes, the reporter serves little purpose, but he doesn’t get in the way, and the scene with his wife meeting Kiril is excellent. Yes, it goes into a lot of detail on Telemond’s philosophy, but that allows me to become more emotionally invested with his trials. And yes, it’s filled with grand ceremony, but that’s the point. This is an epic film, not of action but of sumptuous pageantry. Perhaps the movie was made for me, a person brought up with Catholicism but who doesn’t dwell on it day-to-day. At times The Shoes of the Fisherman plays like a documentary on the election of popes, but shot so much more gloriously than any doc could manage. And sticking it in a sci-fi global frame gives a feeling of importance to all the scenes of grandiose architecture and magnificent wardrobes.

It’s been suggested that the film is a wishful fantasy, one in which the Church has unrealistic power to save the world, or let it die. Perhaps, but films are often wishful fantasies, and few are this sumptuous while having a very human core.

Anthony Quinn makes for a thoughtful, reserved lead. As a Mexican actor in the 1960s, he was given all the best non-American parts, so he played Arabs, Frenchmen, Eskimos, Greeks (a lot of Greeks), Spaniards, Romanians, Italians, and Mongols. He isn’t particularly believable as a Russian, but he doesn’t need to be in a film with Gielgud as an Italian pope. He does get across that Kiril is a man who doesn’t fit in with his surroundings, and that’s all that’s needed.

I can’t say that The Shoes of the Fisherman is a great film in whatever objective sense films are rated, but it is a great film for me.

 Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with:

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Aug 181968
 
five reels

Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner), and Dodge (Jeff Burton) survive the crash of their spaceship on an alien world in the far future. They quickly discover that apes are the intelligent and dominate life form, and the primitive, mute humans are thought of as pests. Taylor is taken captive, where chimpanzee scientist Zira (Kim Hunter) takes an interest in him, to the dismay of her fiancée, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) who knows it will lead to trouble. And it does, in the form of their superior, orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), who is both the head scientist and the keeper of the faith, and is not about to allow a talking human to contradict the holy texts.

What is seeing Planet of the Apes like now, seeing it for the first time? It can’t be like it was in 1968. Soylent Green and Psycho share the same fate—their success has lessened them. Everyone knows Planet of the Apes, even if they don’t know they know it. Few endings stand so high in pop culture. I can think of a few that stand with it, but none higher. No one can go into Plant of the Apes now in ignorance. And it isn’t just the ending.

“It’s a mad house! A mad house!”
“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”

It’s been transformed into a series of memes, which not only makes it impossible to see it totally fresh, but also leads those who know it to forget how good it is. Familiarity has bred contempt. I am one of the lucky ones who went into it blank—in the early ‘70s—and even I was started to forget how good it is. Because however you rate it from those memes and Simpsons episodes and improv routines, it’s better. It’s a great film, not just one with a couple of good quote and an iconic ending.

Let’s start with the music. Jerry Goldsmith, one of the best modern film composers (my list here), creates something stunningly original, part futuristic, part primitive, and part nightmare. I’ve been told it’s the first American atonal film score. I’ve read that it isn’t atonal but microtonal. What that means is that it’s filled with sounds no one had heard before in a Hollywood picture. There’s just enough of the expected orchestral music there to string us along before Goldsmith cuts us off at the knees. Strange timings. Odd tones. And the instruments he added to his orchestra: a ram’s horn, log drums, conch shell, electric harp, and a Brazilian tunable friction drum to name a few. He didn’t create a score to sit in the background. He made a soundscape. He created the world of the apes before a nail was struck to build the sets.

Let’s talk about Taylor. People forget about all the time spent at the beginning of the film, pre-apes, on Taylor. We get to know him. He’s not a hero. He’s not a villain either. He a cynic who laughs at flags and hope. He’s brave because he doesn’t care. He’s a bit of an ass. It isn’t clear what his abilities are—who knows what space travelers need in the world they come from?—but for the leader of the group, he sure doesn’t have people skills. He pokes at his fellow survivor just for the hell of it. He’s not too smart. Not too nice. He had no real goals before the mission. He disliked people but didn’t know what it was he did like, and wasn’t all that thrilled with himself. There’s a touch of cruelty to him, but he can be introspective, at least when forced to be. He’s also smart enough, nice enough, and thoughtful enough. He’s exactly who I want to see in this world. Planet of the Apes would lose so much with a hero boldly striding in to do the right thing. This isn’t a film about action, but about comparisons and Taylor is just the guy needed. Charlton Heston wasn’t a great actor, at least in scope. He was limited, which is fine. If I need a nail, I care that it’s a really good nail, not if it could also be a fine cup holder. Heston was a fantastic nail, a walking charisma machine—big and loud and powerful. Find him the right part and no one could do better. I’ve thought for some time that Moses was his perfect part, but no, it’s Taylor. Moses is all bombast. Taylor is a combination of strengths and frailties, a macho-man who knows that he’s wrong, but whose ego is pumped by the knowledge that everyone else is wrong too. I don’t like Taylor. You shouldn’t like him. But I sympathize with him.

I could go on about the makeup, but I’ll keep it simple: it was revolutionary and probably the best work done since Jack Pierce.

Let’s look at the structure. It starts in standard ‘50s scifi space-mode but drops that as soon as they crash, and we find ourselves in an adventure film. Not action, but adventure. It gets our blood pumping, till the rug is pulled out from under us as we’re switched to a prison picture, where it hovers until it is almost painful, and then we’re back to adventure. It’s one of the quickest paced films I can recall, but the changes in form hide that. That structure comes straight from the script, so


Let’s look at the script. I’ve read the book by Pierre Boulee. It’s fine. Not great, but fine (and doesn’t having the ending of the film). Heston wasn’t that impressed by it either, but thought it could be made into more. He was right. It was, by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, two of the best screen writers of their generation, and their fingerprints are both clear to see. Serling is best known for The Twilight Zone, where he wrote science fiction fables to comment on and satirize American society and the human race. And he loved irony and twist endings, though ones that were clear if you knew what to look for. Planet of the Apes is the ultimate Twilight Zone episode. There’s more commentary on mankind than you’ll find in three philosophy texts. Taylor and Landon are used to compare humans in the first section. Then we go to the ape city, where everything is a satiric look at America. I’ve heard people complain that this isn’t real science fiction because there is close to no chance that ape society would have developed like that. Well, science fiction isn’t about predicting the future, but examining the present, and that’s what Planet of the Apes is all about. And then there is the ending—the perfect Twilight Zone ending. He dropped his glasses. It’s a cookbook. And they blew it up. Wilson’s additions are equally visible. Serling was an excellent wordsmith. Wilson, a screenwriter for Lawrence of Arabia, was even better. He made words pop, and so the dialog does. Wilson was also a critic of US policies, a Marxist, and had been called by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted. Now what does the ape court case, where Taylor is not allowed to speak, remind you off? Planet of the Apes has an exceptionally dense screenplay touching on almost every issue of the time, most of which are still unfortunately relevant: The Cold War, militarism, race relations, slavery, Vietnam, religious fanaticism, disrespect for science, unjust courts, individual rights and freedoms, capitalism v Marxism, and self destruction.

As for the rest, Planet of the Apes is a well shot, exceptionally edited, and solidly directed film. But it Taylor’s journey that sells it all. He’s a man who does not identify with humanity. He holds himself apart, but through his trials, he takes on the mantle of humanity and is proud of it
 Until he isn’t.

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Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)

Aug 181968
 
2.5 reels

The Monsignor of the region visits Dracula’s castle to perform an exorcism so that the frightened villagers will stop avoiding the church. He sees they are upset about a dead maiden hanging from the bell tower. I would be too since she was killed and bitten while Dracula (Christopher Lee) was frozen, but let’s not let plot coherence enter into this. His exorcism calls down a storm that frees the vampire from the ice he fell into at the end of the last film, and blood from the head wound of a cowardly priest awakens him. Dracula is quite upset over the exorcism and sets out to get revenge upon the Monsignor.

The forth of Hammer’s Dracula films, and the third to contain Dracula (and Christopher Lee), Dracula Has Risen From the Grave once again gives us a vampire out of revenge. That makes him not a grim monster, but a petty schoolboy. Shouldn’t Dracula being doing something more
evil? At least, unlike the last installment, Lee gets to speak, although infrequently. For a change, however, Dracula does come off as frightening and cruel.

This is much more of a character picture than the other Dracula movies. For the first time in a Hammer Dracula picture, we have engaging young leads in Maria (Veronica Carlson) and Paul (Barry Andrews). Her fate actually matters and the two not only are developed, but actually behave, at times, like humans.

The change over from Terrance Fisher to Freddie Francis is an improvement. Francis, previously a cinematographer, had a much better eye then Fisher, better control, and more skill in using the visual medium to tell the story and the subtext. The world looks larger. This is the least claustrophobic Hammer Dracula film. The images carry much more weight. Innocence and evil are displayed by framing and color, and the rooftops takes one back to the best of the Universal pictures.

While the previous films were solidly, and problematically, on the side of a repressive social order, here things are less clear. The Monsignor’s close-mindedness both brings back Dracula and nearly destroys the truly good people. But the film muddles its religious message. It insists on having one, but can’t figure out what it wants to say. Apparently we are all lost without religion (Dracula suddenly can’t be destroyed without prayer), but religion just sucks, making you stubborn, weak, and stupid. It’s as if two different writers were fighting over the script.

The most common complaint I’ve heard against Dracula Has Risen From the Grave is that it is slow and boring. It does have a substantial lull, but it uses that time to establish character, which is a nice change. It makes this a richer film, as does the superior camerawork, and is my favorite of the Hammer Dracula films.

The other Hammer Dracula films are: The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960)—which lacked Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970),  Scars of Dracula (1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).

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