The Round-Up: August 20—26

It was a bad week for horror, but that was more than compensated by one great film I saw for the first time and one from the archives (sorry, occasionally I have a social life). All that, and we'll always have Venice. 

Summertime

Katharine Hepburn after losing her virginity (top) and before

One of the prettiest sights in all of cinema is Katharine Hepburn standing in a gondola at dawn, waving goodbye to lover Rossano Brazzi in David Lean’s SUMMERTIME (1955, Max). Yet the shot is also problematic. Although it’s clear they’ve spent the night together, she’s wearing a different outfit than in their scenes the night before. Did he have a collection in various sizes in his apartment, or was this just a sop to the censors? And prettiness dominates the film, which works fine as a contrast to Hepburn’s early loneliness as a single woman on her first European vacation and as she and Brazzi grow closer. It’s just that it starts feeling a bit forced at the end. She’s caught Brazzi in two lies, one of which is a whopper (he tries to pass off his adult son as his nephew). And Brazzi can’t quite match Hepburn’s sincerity. She makes us believe she’s a virgin in the throes of first love. Her silent scenes on her first night in Venice are exquisite and should help you forgive the few moments in which her bumptiousness seems more an actress’ striving for effect than a character acting foolishly. But his protestations of love sound hollow. In the play (Arthur Laurents’ THE TIME OF THE CUCKOO), his character has more ambiguity. You’re never quite sure if he loves the leading lady or is just using her. 

 

Though it’s a blessing to have some of Laurents’ talkiness cut to make way for Hepburn’s exploration of Venice (this is one film you couldn’t shoot in a studio), I think the playwright came up with a better ending. Lean’s film ends picturesquely, but it’s more an old-movie trope about the redeeming power of love and all that bushwa. Hepburn’s Jane is going to spend the rest of her life living off the memory of her few days with Brazzi. Leona, the role Laurents wrote for Shirley Booth, has learned to get on with her life and put her Italian fling in its proper place. With Darren Gavin as a young artist and Isa Miranda as the realistic owner of the pensione where Hepburn stays — both parts were significantly cut for the film — and Jane Rose, the only member of the original stage cast, making her film debut with a very funny performance as a gauche yet strangely charming tourist. This was David Lean’s last intimate film, and his light touch with the comedy here would be sorely missed in his later epics.

Most Likely to Die

The Graduate, a serial killer in a franchise that never took off

According to the horror press, we’ve now moved from slasher to neo-slasher films. This would seem to refer to horrors since the late ‘90s, after the genre’s heyday. They’re supposed to supply some new spin, as in post-modern slashers like WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994) and the SCREAM (1996) franchise that call attention to the conventions of the genre. But there are still plenty of slashers that add nothing new beyond a gimmick. Case in point: Anthony Di Biasi’s MOST LIKELY TO DIE (2015, Peacock). Laura Bannon’s script suggests a new plot device: a killer called “The Graduate” dressed in cap and gown does in former students the night before their tenth high-school reunion in ways related to the predictions under their yearbook pictures. This could have potential if a) the predictions were in some way clever, b) they actually related to how the people died, c) the premise were revealed from the start and d) it were followed consistently. But a) they aren’t, b) they don’t, c) it isn’t and…you get the picture. So, it’s just a bunch of random deaths and scares, some involving decent actors (Heather Morris as a professional poker player; Tess Christiansen as the class lesbian; yes, it’s that formulaic), some involving not very good actors (a model whose lines are all delivered the same way; Perez Hilton, ‘nuff said). The film even fails to cash the mediocre check it writes early on. Morris can’t make it to the top rung of poker players because she lacks a killer instinct. Shouldn’t the film end with her back on the poker circuit, now cleaning up because facing off against The Graduate taught her that instinct? Instead, there’s a half-hearted attempt to establish a franchise, which, given the film’s poor reception and limited release, isn’t likely to happen. So, there’s some consolation in all this.

Dear Heart

Geraldine Page and Glenn Ford share a tender moment.

I have a strange relationship with Geraldine Page’s work. I like her best in the material for which she has the least respect. Put her in a mindless comedy or melodrama, and she delivers a wonderful performance, often much more fleshed out than what was in the script. And I delighted in her deft playing of Alan Ayckbourn’s farce ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR on Broadway. Put her in Tennessee Williams or Woody Allen at his most serious or, goddess help us, Chekhov, and after five minutes I want to step out for a smoke. I’ve never smoked. I hate smoking. But I’d take it up to get away from those self-conscious, mannered performances. Between her on-screen bouts with Williams and Chekhov, Page was cast in Delbert Mann’s romantic comedy DEAR HEART (1964, TCM), and she’s a delight. You can see echoes of her more serious work — the fussiness she brought to Alma Winemiller and a gesture she would slow down to an almost glacial pace in INTERIORS (1978) — but here it all serves to make the character more endearing and dimensional. As a single woman of a certain age attending a post master’s convention in New York, she’s like the new Jean Arthur. Her Evie Jackson comes off the train from Ohio at the start and knows the names of all her fellow passengers and the porters. She leaves messages for herself at the hotel desk or has herself paged just to feel somebody cares. Then she meets Glenn Ford’s womanizing greeting card salesman, who’s about to move into an office job and marriage to “that tomato from Altoona” (Angela Lansbury), and something magical happens. Her fussy, detailed acting and his proficient, studio-trained mining of personality meet and make something beautiful. There’s a scene in which he shows her the apartment he’s just rented for himself and Lansbury that’s a gorgeous acting duet, and they have a fully dressed scene in Page’s hotel room that’s one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. You half expect them to light cigarettes when it’s over. Tad Mosel adapted the script from his TV play. When he’s writing for the adults it’s spot on. The early scenes for Lansbury’s son (Michael Anderson, Jr.) appear to have been written by somebody with no understanding of young people, and Anderson comes off almost unbearably glib (he settles in later). Lansbury is very good as Ford’s fiancée, and the supporting cast also includes Barbara Nichols as another of her cheap blondes (but this one is funnier than she is irritating), Richard Deacon as the convention’s manager and a glorious trio of cranky old women played by Ruth McDevitt, Mary Wickes and Alice Pearce (I’m always amazed at how much nuance she can bring to roles like this). The Henry Mancini-Jay Livingston-Ray Evans theme song — the producers liked it so much they named the film for it — was more successful than the movie, but I think the film is ripe for rediscovery along with some of Delbert Mann’s other late works.

Fender Bender

The Driver, a serial killer in a franchise that...is there an echo here?

Writer-director Mark Paiva knows how to generate suspense. His FENDER BENDER (2016, Shudder) has all the right rhythms for a slasher film. But there isn’t a lot of character logic. People do things not because they would, but because it will advance the plot or make a supposedly neat effect. But without logic, we know we’re watching plot devices instead of people, so caring goes out the window. The film opens creepily. A woman (Cassidy Freeman) enters her house while talking on the phone about an accident she just had. Someone rear-ended her, and she has his info. Then she gets into a bubble bath to relax and receives a text from the guy who hit her telling her to enjoy her bath. Creepy, huh? Then she gets into her bed, turns off the light and rolls over to discover a masked, leather-clad man in bed with her. So, did she not notice him while walking into her fully lit bedroom or feel another presence in the bed beside her before she turned out the light, or did he just materialize as soon as the light was out?  And while you’re trying to figure all that out, you may not notice that he’s killed her, and we’ve moved into the credits. Then it all repeats with a young woman (Makenzie Vega) whose parents ground her for getting into a fender bender that wasn’t her fault, but they needed some excuse to leave her home alone. After she takes a shower, she discovers her phone isn’t where she left it. When she finds it, she sees that there are photos she didn’t take of a steamy bathroom. So, she slowly walks down the hall to compare the photos with her bathroom, because she doesn’t know what it looks like? By this point, it was time for my evening snack, and then I did some knitting because the film really didn’t deserve my full attention, nor does it deserve any of yours.

Death of a Cyclist

A road accident leads to guilt and paranoia while showing up the corruption of the ruling class.

The grandeur of the American Southwest is poorly supported by the actors and script in Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION (1998, Shudder), aka “Phantasm: OblIVion.” Coscarelli admitted he only made the film to cash in on the franchise, but did he have to do it so poorly? Sadly, the picture starts promisingly, with a montage showing the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) stalking, Mikey (A. Michael Baldwin) driving, Reggie (Reggie Bannister) escaping the trap in which Scrimm held him at the end of PHANTASM III (1994) and scenes and outtakes from the earlier films. It’s all very dreamlike, in the manner of the first film, and then Bannister’s voiceover narration comes in and drags everything down to mundanity. At one point, he refers to himself and Baldwin as “soldiers,” which would indicate Coscarelli didn’t realize one of the charms of the original was that the main characters weren’t soldiers. They were a group of schlubs who got caught up in the mystery surrounding the local funeral home. The third sequel conveniently forgets there was a child kidnapped by Scrimm at the end of the previous film. Instead, it follows Baldwin as he tries to resist being turned into the next Tall Man and Bannister as he tries to find Baldwin. There’s lots of driving and walking through Death Valley, three exploding cars (no originality for us), a demon woman with death orbs as her breasts (misogynistic much?) and lots of outtakes from the original, some with new dialogue post-dubbed, that are supposed to reveal something or other but just serve to pad out the running time. There’s one intriguing scene in which Baldwin travels back in time to meet Jebediah Morningstar (Scrimm), the good-hearted undertaker who would become the Tall Man. Scrimm gets a chance to use his natural voice, and for a moment there’s the possibility he’ll get to show off his stage training (he was particularly noted for high comedy), but the script doesn’t do anything with the idea. You don’t even get to see his transformation. Then it all ends on a cliffhanger that wouldn’t be resolved for almost 20 years. As if at this point anybody cared.

The Steel Helmet

Three faces of war: James Edwards, William Chun and Gene Evans

Samuel Fuller’s third directing effort, THE STEEL HELMET (1951), brought him a contract with 20^th Century-Fox, and quite rightly so. It’s not just that he scored a 2,000 per cent profit on the low budget film. With a limited budget and a script that has its fair share of war movie cliches, he still manages to construct a gut-wrenching anti-war story. Fuller’s script establishes Gene Evans’ tough sergeant, left for dead by North Korean forces and saved by a war orphan (William Chun), as an effective battle veteran. Fuller then steadily chips away at him until he’s a broken man moving on sheer primitive instinct. There’s no romanticization of war in this film. It’s hard and brutal. And Fuller even raises the conflicting feelings of people of color fighting for a nation that mistreats them as the black medic (James Edwards) faces a prejudiced corporal (Steve Brodie) and memories of Jim Crow back in the States while a Japanese-American soldier (Richard Loo) speaks of his parents’ separation when they were sent to World War II detainment camps (the screen’s first mention of those camps). For Fuller, race is a part of the U.S.’ ugly history and no determinant of character. In his films, a person’s worth is defined by actions: the first Asian seen on screen is Chun, who saves Evans’ life; Edwards saves lives, too; Loo helps Evans take out a pair of snipers, but Brodie sends one of his men into a death trap out of sheer ignorance. Fuller was accused of anti-American, pro-Communist leanings and investigated by the FBI, but that didn’t stop Daryl F. Zanuck from hiring him. Talent and profits like his were too important to overlook.

The Round-Up: August 13-19

Two great films, some schlock horror, one of which proved embarrassing, a rediscovery and a box-office flop that deserves a second look, despite its script. Quite the week!

Frogs

Poor Nicholas Cortland probably wishes her were doing Aristophanes' THE FROGS

at this point, or even Stephen Sondheim's.

A very young Sam Elliott paddles through a swamp taking pictures at the start of George McCowan’s eco-horror FROGS (1972, Prime). With the first shot, the frame freezes on two large lizards with the names of AIP’s founders, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, superimposed over them. At first, I thought someone was slagging the executives, but all the credits play over freeze frames of various noxious critters, litter and pollution, so unless someone hated everybody working on the film, I guess that wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, any time those two lizards turned up, it seemed the money men were on set making sure nobody was wasting money. At times, they even helped kill off various characters, possibly so they could stop paying them. But that’s enough whimsey for now. The film depicts the animal kingdom revolting against humanity after years of abuse. Its heart is in the right place, but its brain is nowhere to be found. A boating accident leads to nature photographer Elliott’s staying with ruthless tycoon Ray Milland’s family during a reunion celebration, but the script is so inept it takes forever to establish the blond young man (David Gilliam) always by Milland’s side is his grandson and not some random boytoy. For that matter, it’s hard to keep clear which characters belong to which parents. Most of the deaths are laughable, but dotty Aunt Iris (Hollis Irving), done in while hunting a butterfly for her collection, actually works, as the creature leads her deeper and deeper into the swamp, and she becomes progressively disheveled. Some of the actors — Elliott, Joan Van Ark (in her film debut), Judy Pace and Nicholas Cortland — do decent work within the limitations of the inane script. Milland snarls his way through until almost the end, and Lynn Borden whines so much as his daughter-in-law it was a mercy to the audience she was finally done in by a large tortoise. The film has good atmospheric photography by Mario Tosi, though there are times the footage cuts between day and night with no logic. And Les Baxter creates an eerie score with random notes that seem inspired by the sound score for Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963). Of course, this is an obvious attempt to up the ante on that film. Sadly, the ad campaign didn’t warn us “The FROGS is coming,” but they did advise, “If You Are Squeamish Stay Home!!! Cold green skin against soft warm flesh…a croak…a scream.” The scream, I fear, would mostly likely be from laughter.

Day of Wrath

Anna Svierkier suffers the predations of the religious patriarchy.

Released during the Nazi occupation of Denmark DAY OF WRATH (1943, Criterion Channel),, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s tale of a small Danish village corrupted by a fundamentalist regime hunting out witches, bore inevitable comparisons to the current political situation. That was reinforced when the director-co-writer fled to Sweden the day his film opened on the pretext of selling it to the international market (it didn’t reach the U.S. until 1948, when James Agee called other leading critics to task for their inability to understand the film). There’s more here, however, than just a political statement. Dreyer has turned Hans Wiers-Jenssen’s play ANNE PEDERSDOTTER into a tragedy in which Anne (Lisbeth Movin, who looks like the young Lauren Bacall but acts lots better) suffers a forced marriage to an aging minister (Throkild Roose) only to fall in love with her stepson (Preben Lerdorff Rye). Contrary to what critics like Bosley Crowther said, the tragedy is leavened slightly by comedy in Movin’s dealings with her disapproving mother-in-law (Sigrid Neilendam). But the true focus is on the way the family tragedy grows out of the persecution of an innocent woman (Anna Svierkier) charged with witchcraft because she knows herbal cures. In that, the film is a proto-feminist document, depicting the oppression of women at the hands of an aging religious patriarchy. Svierkier calls out Roose’s hypocrisy — he had spared Movin’s mother so he could marry her daughter — which triggers an attack of guilt that causes him to distance himself from his wife. And their emotional reaction to the woman’s execution brings Movin and Rye closer together. Dreyer shoots his interiors, where Movin is constrained by her marriage, austerely, with long takes in which the camera moves from one focal point to another. By contrast, the young lovers meet in the woods, a bucolic setting that almost glows in Karl Andersson’s camera work. Poul Schiefbeck’s score, working variations on the traditional “Dies Irae, adds to the sense of tragedy. When a boys choir accompanies the execution with the tune, the film reaches the heights of horror and takes on a special contemporary relevance, underlying the way the church grooms the young, in this case quite destructively.

The Demented

In the Louisiana of THE DEMENTED, it's not the heat, it's the apocalypse.

If Christopher Roosevelt’s THE DEMENTED (2013, Tubi) lived up to its name, it might be worth watching. As it is, it would be better titled THE DERIVATIVE or just THE MEDIOCRE. From its boring opening, in which college student Richard Kohnke gives girlfriend Kayla Ewell a promise ring because they’re not ready to get engaged (nothing like keeping the stakes low) to the tired nihilism of the ending, it’s a relentless exercise in why bother. Six college students party at a country house outside Baton Rouge. That means for the first few minutes you get a lot of beef- and cheesecake as they cavort on a slip ‘n’ slide. I’d say Roosevelt was an equal opportunity exploiter, but when they find out a terrorist attack has unleashed a deadly biological agent, the guys put on shirts and pants while the girls keep on their bikini tops, so you know who the film’s aimed at. The chemical, I know this will surprise you, is turning people into zombies. Between early attacks, Roosevelt throws in a little soap opera over whose boyfriend cheated with whose girlfriend. At least the attacks move fast. And there’s one neat effect — until activated by sound, the zombies stand as if in a trance. It’s a sign of Roosevelt’s lack of awareness (or the budget or scheduling) that the only engaging actor in the film, Michael Welch as the spoiled rich kid, is the first to go. That leaves us with leaden dialogue delivered in either monotone or forced hysteria. But the sickest part of this whole mess is that partway through I realized I’d seen this before (I recognized the house), but it was too late to switch to anything else. So, my greatest disdain for this film is reserved for myself. At least this review is better written than the earlier one.

Thriller: "Masquerade"

Elizabeth Montgomery, Tom Poston and John Carradine prepare for a night

of wit, middle-brow comedy and inspired scenery chewing, respectively.

When I was younger there were episodes of Boris Karloff’s THRILLER series that scared the pants off me. My favorite episode, however, was a comic horror, “Masquerade” (1961, YouTube), directed by Herschel Daugherty with a script by Donald E. Sanford from a story by Henry Kuttner that first appeared in WEIRD TALES in 1942. Tom Poston and Elizabeth Montgomery are a bickering couple lost somewhere in the South who take refuge in a sinister house whose inhabitants may be killing and eating travelers. It would just be a clever thriller were it not for a twist at the end, and watching it knowing the twist may be even more fun, as you can see all the set-ups. Montgomery and Poston play in two different styles. She seems to be doing THE THIN MAN (1934) and quite well, while he seems to be doing WHISTLING IN THE DARK (1941). But they have one scene arguing about his drinking moonshine that has great comic timing. John Carradine and Jack Lambert are their hosts and possible killers, and the wonderful Dorothy Neumann (a Roger Corman regular with a background in sketch comedy) is the madwoman locked in a room upstairs. The three take such glee in their over-the-top characters it’s pretty much infectious. The set is great, but then, it was great in PSYCHO, too, with different dressings. And Jerry Goldsmith’s score catches the right balance between the eerie and the ridiculous. 

The Master

Nothing homoerotic here. Just Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix

enjoying a post-"processing" cigarette.

As with so much of his work, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as cult leader Lancaster Dodd in Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER (2012, Hulu, Max, Plex) is so good you may want to cry over the loss of one our best actors. His Dodd is a showman who revels in his control over those around him while masking his own insecurities and repressed desires. It’s easy to believe people’s falling under his spell just as it’s easy to believe his son’s (Jesse Plemmons) statement that he’s just making it all up. At Hoffman’s request, Andreson’s script focuses on a World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix), possibly suffering from PTSD, who stows away on Hoffman’s ship and quickly bonds with him, though his problems often prove inconvenient for the growth of a religion founded on freeing people from their animal natures. Hoffman’s scenes with Phoenix play as a long seduction, with Hoffman doing his best to draw him into the cult and make him their greatest success story. There’s never any overt sexual play between the men (though they share a “post-coital” cigarette after Phoenix’s first “processing” session), but there’s a definite sense that Hoffman’s luring Phoenix into his orbit, is an exercise in power and abuse. That confluence of power and seduction is echoed in the way Hoffman’s wife (Amy Adams) positions herself as his controller and enabler and even in a brief scene in which his married daughter (Ambyr Childers) comes on to Phoenix only to later accuse him of coming on to her. With a great score by Jonny Greenwood that incorporate some very apt music from the early ‘50s, and Anderson’s carefully planned imagery, the film can be an overwhelming experience. It lacksa satisfying ending, as if Anderson had written himself into a corner, though the final scene between the two male stars is just as strong as anything that had preceded it. With Laura Dern as a faithful follower and Patty McCormack as a wealthy sponsor who turns on Dodd.

Bad Things

Gayle Rankin, a good actress deserving a better script than BAD THINGS.

I really liked Stewart Thorndike’s debut feature, LYLE (2014), which offered a plot reminiscent of ROSEMARY’S BABY and anchored by Gaby Hoffman’s terrific performance. It was compact, eerie and very persuasive as it built on Hoffman’s suspicions that her wife and neighbors were trying to sacrifice her unborn child. Thorndike’s follow-up, BAD THINGS (2023, Shudder), is 25 minutes longer and starts promisingly as a lesbian take on THE SHINING. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin), her lover (Hari Nef), Nef’s ex- (Rad Pereira) and a woman Rankin once cheated with (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) spend a weekend in an upstate hotel Rankin has inherited. She wants to sell it, but Nef thinks they would enjoy running it. Of course, it’s haunted, and the first sitings — two models jogging and an empty dining room suddenly filled with hotel guests — are treated almost matter-of-factly, which is rather chilling. Thorndike takes her time getting to the horror. She wants us immersed in the tangled relationships and Rankin’s emotionally unstable character. And the four actresses are strong enough to maintain interest as almost nothing happens. There’s an eerie moment when Molly Ringwald, very good as the host of a hospitality web series Rankin has been watching, suddenly starts addressing her directly. Thorndike keeps holding the camera on people who are alone but with an empty door behind them. Or she holds on a location for a few moments after people have left it. You keep waiting for this to pay off with one of the ghosts drifting into view. But the horror moves in an entirely different direction. Instead of THE LESBIAN SHINING we get THE UPSTATE NEW YORK CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and the slow build-up fizzles as people get hysterical and the bodies start not exactly piling up The cast is too small for that. They’re just there, and the film dies along with them.

Looking for Love

Even a weak script can't keep Connie Francis and Danny Thomas from sharing a sweet duet.

When I was teaching theater, I sometimes thought GLEE was my worst enemy. Try getting students to work on acting assignments and productions when they’ve seen the GLEE kids grab some music and immediately improvise a polished production number. I even had some students ask me to sponsor a glee club, their own version of New Directions, and managed to decline without screaming, “No fracking way! This school’s already given me one ulcer!” That’s all a round-about way of getting to Don Weis’ LOOKING FOR LOVE (1964, TCM). Early on, while on THE TONIGHT SHOW to hawk her new “Lady Valet” invention, Connie Francis mentions she used to be a singer, and Johnny Carson (not as embarrassing as he used to joke after the film tanked at the box office) urges her to do a number. She then launches into a polished impromptu performance, with the band not missing a beat as they back her up. “Thanks a bunch,” my inner curmudgeon screamed. But then she’s booked at the last minute on a variety show (to replace Barbara Nichols in a number nobody in their right mind could envision her performing), does the number without rehearsal, and it’s a disaster — a very funny, expertly performed disaster, but a disaster, nonetheless. I felt vindicated. Then the show’s host, Danny Thomas, asks her to join him in an unrehearsed duet. And it’s great but, more important than that, it looks unrehearsed. The two create a totally believable, utterly charming illusion of spontaneity. And, of course, the number makes her character a star.

 

Anyway, producer Joe Pasternak had worked magic with Deanna Durbin and Jane Powell, so naturally when MGM signed Francis to a three-picture deal, they expected him to do the same for her. He didn’t, but it’s not for lack of her trying. Francis is a natural in front of the camera and, working with veteran director Don Weis, pulls off some nifty physical bits. I kept thinking somebody should have cast her and Annette Funicello as sisters, with a good script (a musical version of EXPERIMENT IN TERROR? Nah! Something original and, did I mention this before, well-written). Francis is backed by a solid cast, including Jim Hutton as the promoter she loves who can’t see her as a romantic object, Susan Oliver as her wise-cracking best friend and Joby Baker as the bass player who loves Francis. The script, however, just isn’t there. The jokes aren’t funny, and the suggestion that becoming a singing star can’t hold a candle to marrying a doctor (who’ll probably end up cheating on her with Lauren Bacall or Gloria Grahame or Dyan Cannon, because that’s what movie doctors do) is hopelessly dated. Of course, given her choices between Hutton’s chauvinistic character and Baker, who keeps trying to upstage her while they’re performing (his book scenes, however, are solid), I kept thinking she should have ended up with Oliver. When they’re struggling roommates, they naturally share a bedroom in their otherwise spacious apartment. But when Francis hits it big and hires Oliver as her secretary, they live in a mansion,where they’re still sharing a bedroom. Kind of makes you go, “hmmm!” doesn’t it?

The Round-Up: August 6—12

 How to Marry a Millionaire

Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall bring the glamour and comic chops.

Films about young women or sometimes men out to conquer the world have been a Hollywood staple since the silent era. The studios used them to showcase new talent, figuring if one performer hit it didn’t matter if the others didn’t. At times they would even pair an established star with the newcomers as box-office insurance. Jean Negulesco’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953, Criterion through month’s end), which should more accurately be called writer-producer Nunally Johnson’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, was designed to boost Marilyn Monroe’s rise to stardom by teaming her with 20 Century-Fox’s reigning blonde bombshell, Betty Grable. It also gave Lauren Bacall a shot at comedy (she’s good with wisecracks, but sometimes her timing feels off). They’re a trio of models who pool their resources to rent a posh apartment in hopes of finding rich husbands. To keep up the ruse, they even sell the furniture that comes with the place. Today, the rampant materialism feels rather atavistic, and Bacall’s plot, in which she repeatedly fights her attraction to Cameron Mitchell because she thinks he’s poor, is particularly unlikable, even though the film hedges its bets by revealing he’s a millionaire early on. When her story takes over and turns into soap opera (will she marry wealthy William Powell even though she doesn’t love him, and he can act her off the screen without batting an eye?), the picture starts feeling very long. But Monroe is funny as the woman trying to hide her near-sightedness, and this is one character for whom that forced diction works. Grable is charming, but she’s got some weak material casting her as a stock dumb blonde. Why Johnson didn’t attempt to capture the real Grable in all her bawdiness and warmth is a mystery. For Negulesco, the film marked a turning point as he switched from the stylish films noirs he had directed for Warner Bros. and other studios to over-stuffed Cinemascope extravaganzas. This was the first film shot in that wide-screen process (though it was released after THE ROBE), and at times the characters are so far apart you’d think they’d need bullhorns to communicate. But he manages to use the image to showcase the three stars (and later their boyfriends) to good effect, and when Bacall lounges in an easy chair with her outstretched body filling more than half the screen, it’s a lot more satisfying than watching vast natural vistas or endless Roman armies.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Daniel Haller supplied the sets, and Barbara Steele and Vincent Price had fun eating them.

Maybe it’s the acting teacher in me, but Roger Corman’s second Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961, Criterion) feels like two movies. The one I like is about 16^th century Spanish nobleman Vincent Price’s guilt over wife Barbara Steele’s sudden death. The two of them hit just the right level of scenery chewing without going so far over the top they make us feel they find it funnier than we ever could. The real surprise here is Anthony Carbone, a member of the Corman stock company playing the family doctor, who seems surprisingly comfortable in the period clothing and also matches their style. They’re ably backed by Daniel Haller’s imaginative art direction, some great color camera work by Floyd Crosby and Lex Baxter’s eerie score. Then there’s the other film, with Luana Anders drowning in her period costumes as Price’s treacly sister and John Kerr as Steele’s sullen brother, visiting the castle to find out what happened to her. Both actors could be good in contemporary stories, but they seem lost here. And they have to fall in love because they’re the only people boring enough for each other. As long as Price is mourning for his wife or following her voice through dank corridors, the film is great fun. But it keeps stopping for scenes with the two young lovers. By the time Kerr got strapped into the eponymous torture device, I was rooting for the pendulum. Fortunately, that’s another great set by Haller, and then the film ends with one of the most chilling final shots in the genre.

Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia

Be honest, Scott Rogowsky was the main reason most of us played HQ Trivia.

HQ Trivia debuted as I was entering retirement. With a mortgage to pay and a lot of charge debt, I fell into playing it to see if I could get rich quick. It was the same reason I bought a weekly lottery ticket. And I’ll have to admit, I thought host Scott Rogowsky was hot. But then I learned how hard it was to collect on winnings, which I never had anyway. I usually crapped out as soon as they got to questions about sports or pop music. And Rogowsky wasn’t turning up as often as I’d have liked (he left in April 2019). So, I fell out of the habit. Salima Koroma’s new CNN documentary GLITCH: THE RISE AND FALL OF HQ TRIVIA (2023, Max) traces the app’s history. Although it’s been accused of being one-sided (it was produced by former executives and basically tells Rogowsky’s version of the story), it still provides some fascinating tidbits about the problems that existed even before the launch. Rogowsky and the other interview subjects — former employees, media experts and one investor who was close to co-founder Colin Kroll — are all good story tellers. If there’s a flaw as entertainment, it’s that some of the visuals are repeated too much. It feels like a made-for-TV documentary, designed to be viewed in chunks between commercials. But there are clever touches, like HQ Trivia-style questions to introduce segments and clips from classic radio and TV quiz shows. It even takes time for some sentiment, as when Kroll’s friend starts to tear up while discussing the co-founder’s sudden death from a drug overdose. It would have helped had the surviving co-founder, Rus Yusopov, participated, as Rogowsky and some of the other employees slam him badly. There’s simply a slide stating he declined to be interviewed, though he told other sources he had declined because of conflicts of interest. I guess sifting through those different perspectives could be the topic for another documentary.

Kiss Me Deadly

The world ends with a bang, not a whimper for Maxine Cooper and Ralph Meeker.

In her film debut, Cloris Leachman says, “I could tolerate flabby muscles in a man, if it’d make him more friendly.” The film that follows is neither flabby nor friendly, but it’s one of the great film noirs with one of the bleakest endings in the genre. Contemporary critics didn’t care for Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY (1955, Apple+), but it has grown in reputation over the years, particularly with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard calling it the single greatest influence on the Nouvelle Vague. Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer is far from a crusading private eye at first. He’s lost his gun and his license and concentrates on setting up honey traps with his secretary/lover Velda (the wonderful Maxine Cooper) so he can blackmail cheating husbands. Then he picks up a near-naked hitchhiker (Leachman) who’s escaped from a mental hospital to which she was committed because she knows about “the great whatsit,” one of the best MacGuffin’s in film history. When she’s murdered, Hammer figures whatever she knew must be worth money. Then one of his few friends is murdered, and it gets personal. The corruption he encounters is everywhere, from the government to the kiss of a beautiful blonde. And Hammer is a part of it. Meeker does a marvelous job in the role, changing masks depending on whom he’s trying to manipulate and betraying a bit of glee in beating up attackers and recalcitrant witnesses. Aldrich and A.I. Bezzerides wrote some great punchy dialog for the film (and appropriated the phrase “the great whatsit” from 1932’s THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME), and Ernest Laslo createed some eerie visuals, shooting through objects and casting shadows to create an off-kilter, dangerous world. There’s a lot of good work in the cast, but it’s hard to believe Aldrich couldn’t find a better actress than Gaby Rogers to play the blonde femme fatale. Her tinny line readings sound like a bad imitation of Judy Holliday, or maybe Lina Lamont without the humor. The rest of the cast includes Albert Dekker as a crooked doctor, Paul Stewart as a mob leader, Juano Hernandez as a boxing trainer Wesley Addy as a police lieutenant who may be in love with Hammer, Marjorie Bennett as a landlady (one line, but she delivers it with aplomb), Percy Helton as a coroner, Fortunio Bonanova as an opera singer, and Jack  Elam and Jack Lambert as two dim-witted hired thugs.

The Dunwich Horror

Gidget goes satanic.

Daniel Haller’s THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970, Shudder) has been hailed by some as one of the most faithful screen adaptations of an H.P. Lovecraft story, but faithfulness does not necessarily result in a good movie. It sure doesn’t in this case. The script, whose collaborators include Curtis Hanson, adds a female lead to the story, with elder god worshipper Dean Stockwell hypnotizing graduate student Sandra Dee into serving as…well, something or other. It’s not clear whether she’s supposed to be the sacrifice that brings Yog-Sothoth into this realm or the vessel for a new generation of cult members. Maybe he’s hedging his bets and trying to have it both ways. Haller, who was art director for many of producer Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations, is the damnedest director. He’s great with nightmares, atmospheric landscapes and satanic rituals, but when he tries to shoot two people talking, it all goes flat with no clear sense of composition or framing. They’re just there, only there’s no there there. It doesn’t help that Stockwell, who’s supposed to have an hypnotic hold over Dee, seems hypnotized himself. Maybe he was still stoned from his hippie days. Maybe his dissatisfaction with the script resulted in his not even trying to act. But he just does nothing. By contrast, Dee at least has star presence. She’s supposed to be the victim throughout, but her passivity is so compelling you actually miss her when she’s not on screen. The film is primarily of note for containing an early performance from Talia Shire (billed as Talia Coppola) and featuring two members of the Corman stock company, Beach Dickerson and Barboura Morris. Morris is supposed to be a bitter farm woman, but at one point she turns to her dog, who’s being driven mad by the nearness of an otherworldly monster, and says, “What’s the matter, little lamb?” Her delivery has all the warmth she displayed in such under-rated gems as THE WASP WOMAN and BUCKET OF BLOOD (both 1959), and suddenly you’re reminded of how good low-budget horror films can be.

Bay of Blood

There are so many killers in Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD,

I can't remember who's spying on which victim in this shot.

As Stelvio Cipriani’s lush romantic music plays on the soundtrack, the camera takes in the area around an Italian bay. Then an older woman (Isa Miranda) in a wheelchair rolls herself to a window to look out on the scene. As she leaves the room, the music stops as someone wraps a noose around her neck and pushes the wheelchair out from under her, killing her by strangulation. In the first few minutes of his BAY OF BLOOD (1971, Freevee), aka TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE aka CARNAGE aka BLOOD BATH, director-co-writer Mario Bava subverts expectations. He does it again when he reveals the killer immediately and then has him murdered by an unseen assailant. From that moment, you know that anything can happen, and it does in a film with 13 murders at the hands of five killers and one of the most deliciously absurd endings of any giallo. It’s all about who will possess the bay formerly owned by Miranda and sought after by architect Chris Avram, whose firm wants to turn it into a luxury resort. Early on, however, the film seems to abandon that plot as four young people joyride into the area and party in a house they’ve broken into. Their story eventually connects to the plot in a way that leads to their murders in a sequence thought to have inspired the slasher sub-genre. They’re stalked and killed in a series of shots from the killer’s point of view. At one point, the unseen killer gazes around the house where two of them are making love, taking in the many possessions there. That’s fitting in a film in which materialism trumping humanity. There isn’t a single healthy relationship in the film, with even the most appealing character (a drunken spiritualist played very well by Pasolini’s muse, Laura Betti) stuck in a loveless, contentious marriage. And some of the killers turn to murder without any agonizing whatsoever. Killing another human being is a matter of expediency for them rather than a moral issue. It’s all about what they own, which they think includes all the lives around them.

Tension

Audrey Totter taunts husband Richard Basehart because he's all laughed out;

that Cyd Charisse, in the dark (as usual when she had to act),

 watching Barry Sullivan and William Conrad arrest Basehart.

A saxophone slides into the notes of Andre Previn’s score to mark Audrey Totter’s entrance as Clare Quimby, one of film noir’s most despicable femmes fatales, in John Berry’s TENSION (1949, TCM). It’s a powerful performance, as she snarls out insults at her husband, druggist Richard Basehart, or turns on the charm with lover Lloyd Gough and police detective Barry Sullivan. When she has to share a scene with good girl Cyd Charisse, she shows up how shallow the dancer’s creamy non-acting often was (I think it’s the style studio acting coaches created for acting-challenged performers). Totter is already cheating on Basehart when the film starts. Within minutes she’s left him for Gough. So, Basehart plans the kind of convoluted revenge that only happens in the movies. He creates a fake identity so he can kill his rival. But then he makes the mistake of falling in love with the new identity’s neighbor (Charisse). The film takes a sudden swerve halfway through when the focus shifts to Sullivan and partner William Conrad as they investigate Gough’s murder. It’s easy to guess whodunnit, and Sullivan does a marvelous job of playing on the various suspects to ferret out the killer. Cinematographer Harry Stradling gets some great atmospheric shots, though there aren’t as many as in films noirs made at studios that didn’t emphasize glamour as much. MGM’s main concession to the genre’s grittier side was putting the cast in clothes that seem to have come off the rack at a discount store. The picture doesn’t even have a credited costume designer. Previn’s score, his first, is quite fine and particularly impressive given that he wrote it at the tender age of 20. 

The Round-Up July 30-August 5

The end of the month meant getting in the last two Derek Jarman films I wanted to see before the left The Criterion Channel. The new month brought one of my all-time favorite films, a new favorite, an intriguing Argentine horror film and only one disappointment.

The Tempest

The finale of THE TEMPEST

Scholars were incensed. Vincent Canby likened it to “a fingernail scratching a blackboard.” But there’s no denying the rampant originality and often striking imagery in Derek Jarman’s THE TEMPEST (1979). Set in Stoneleigh Abbey, Jarman’s queered production fragments and rearranges parts of the text, adds a homoerotic element to the relationship between Propsero (Heathcote Williams) and Ariel (Karl Johnson) and has Trinculo (Peter Turner) turn to drag. There are some quite intelligent line readings and some that aren’t, including a few instances in which visuals contradict the dialog (I missed Caliban’s long fingernails, and Ariel tells the courtiers to hold still when they’re not moving). But there are also some inspired choices, like playing Miranda (Toyah Wilcox) as a feral child. One of the best scenes is her silent descent of a staircase as she imagines what it would be like to be a grand hostess, and her scenes with Ferdinand (David Meyer) are charming in their innocence and sincerity. It’s also a joy to see Peter Bull, often cast as curmudgeons, delivering a moving interpretation of Alonso. The scenes with the fools feel out of place. Though the image of them dancing in the surf is beautiful, they seem to be in another film. They’re rather too over the top to be a part of Jarman-world. But that’s all forgiven in the final celebration when a very gay sailor’s hornpipe is followed by Elisabeth Welch’s performing “Stormy Weather.” It’s the kind of shocking choice that suddenly throws the director’s work into vivid relief. Just as Prospero’s vengeance gives way to forgiveness, and the series of destructive coups behind the action (Antonio’s against Prospero, Prospero’s against Sycorax, Antonio’s and Sebastian’s ambitions to kill Alonso) are followed by the comic coup attempted by Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, so the storm that started the play and shipwrecked Prospero’s enemies has become aestheticized as a beatific vision. As Welch, all decked out in a fantasy version of Elizabethan drag, croons, the sailors break off into romantic couples and even Caliban is brought to a state of joy. Art can heal, and whatever flaws Jarman’s THE TEMPEST may have, that’s what it ultimately does.

The Angelic Conversation

Sweet love remembered in THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION

Using 14 Shakespeare sonnets as narration (delivered simply and effectively by Judi Dench), Derek Jarman’s THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION (1985, Criterion no more) is an impressionistic tale of obsessive desire. One man (Paul Reynolds) follows another (Phillip Williamson) until they achieve some form of purity, Reynolds by bathing and anointing a religious figure, Williamson by swimming naked to the accompaniment of Benjamin Britten’s “Sea Interludes.” Meanwhile images of a burning car, a fence and a radar tower serve as reminders of a civilization with no room for purity or love. It all creates an off-beat sense of fusion with Shakespeare’s words of love in the face of distance and social disapproval, particularly trenchant considering Jarman filmed this during Margaret Thatcher’s homophobic reign. This is a very demanding film from one of the screen’s most demanding directors. The rhythms are slow, and the images combine stop motion and slow motion that can be a little disorienting. I have to confess that the pacing was so close to the way my mind wanders as I’m drifting into sleep that it was hard not to nod off. But it’s worth the effort to share in this hallucinatory vision Jarman considered his favorite film.

M

M—simply one of the greatest films ever made

The best film I watched in August and probably the whole year will probably be a no brainer since I showed a friend Fritz Lang’s M (1931, Max, Prime) last night. Lang’s first sound film was a breakthrough in its use of tracking shots and a musical leitmotif to tell the tale of the hunt for a child killer (Peter Lorre) by the police on one side and the criminal underworld on the other. The film’s cynical view of power structures and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner’s painting with light and shadow would become major influences on the rise of film noir in the 1940s, while, with Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LODGER (1927), M would inspire decades of police procedurals with its panoramic view of the social effect of Lorre’s crimes. It also contains an unforgettable performance by the actor, who manages to make his character both animalistic and surprisingly sympathetic. His climactic monolog, delivered to a kangaroo court of criminals whose livelihood has been threatened by the police search for him, is one of the greatest acting moments on screen. What surprised me on re-viewing the film for the first time in years was how much humor Lang had injected into the film. Scenes of the public , as anybody seen talking to a child or in police custody is presumed to be the killer, are mordantly funny, while the quirks of the various legal and criminal authority figures create a great gallery of comic grotesques. As an early talkie, the film maintains a lot of the visual story telling of the silent era. You can tell the washerwoman featured early on is the mother of young Elsie just from the way Lang cuts between the two, and Elsie’s death is communicated through simple details — her ball rolling across the grass and the balloon Lorre had bought her tangled in some power lines. Lang also uses editing for social criticism, as he repeatedly cuts between a criminal meeting to discuss the murder investigation and a meeting of the city’s leaders. This is one of the film’s most subversive elements, the equation of the city government and police force with the criminal underworld. Is there that much difference between the police indiscriminately raiding underworld hangouts and the criminals breaking into an office building and torturing the night watchman? And when Elsie’s mother says at the end, “One needs to keep closer watch over our children, all of you!” the film becomes almost prescient, or at least benefits from our knowledge of the children (and adults) who would be slaughtered when the Third Reich came into power.

This Is Francis X. Bushman

The many faces of one of the screen's first great heartthrobs

More than just a punch line on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, Francis X. Bushman was one of the screen’s first credited male stars and, with Beverly Bayne, half of the screen’s first great love team. He also wrote and directed some of his starring vehicles and directed, adapted and starred in an acclaimed production of ROMEO AND JULIET (insisting the actors learn Shakespeare’s lines even though it was silent) before scandal and a feud with Louis B. Mayer sent him plummeting into low-budget productions. In later years, the generosity of fans like Orson Welles, Groucho Marx and Bob Hope helped bring him back into the public eye. Lon Davis’ THIS IS FRANCIS X. BUSHMAN (2021, TCM) just barely misses being the tribute he deserves — it’s rather short and clearly low-budget — but it’s a good start. Bushman’s grandson, Chris Bushman, narrates, and though he reads the lines intelligently, he’s clearly not an actor. Generous excerpts from an interview with the star in 1957 bring a lot more energy to the soundtrack. The treasure, of course is the film clips. Most of Bushman’s films are lost, but those that remain show an actor who was at times surprisingly naturalistic for his era. In some clips there’s a startling contrast between his acting and that of his co-stars. It’s also a treat to see clips from the previously lost CHARGE OF THE GAUCHOS (1928) and the recently rediscovered CALL OF THE CIRCUS (1930), his first talking picture. I wish, however, they could have included something from his last film, THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966) instead of just dismissing it, particularly since there are interesting clips of his attempting to maintain his dignity (and act off a walking fence post) in his penultimate picture, THE PHANTOM PLANET (1961). 

Terrified

Something is haunting the street where you live.

Usually when you can identify the other movies that inspired a horror film, it’s the imitation that looks tawdry in comparison. That’s not the case with Demian Rugna’s Argentine TERRIFIED (2017, Shudder, On Demand). This tale of a haunted street owes a debt to the episodic narrative of JU-ON (2002) and the domestic terrors of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2007) and INSIDIOUS (2010) but manages to improve on its sources. I’m tempted to say it’s the film INSIDIOUS thinks it is. It opens with a great jump scare. A woman working in her kitchen hears something coming from the drain. She bends closer to listen as the camera moves in on the drain, and suddenly water hits the sink. It’s simply her turning on the tap to see if that will end the noises (it doesn’t), but it’s a definite jolt for the viewer. Later we get one of the few bloody scenes in the movie when something throws her around her bathroom as her husband watches in horror. When the police question him, they compare notes on other strange occurrences on his street. One neighbor’s furniture moves around as he sleeps, and a dead child returns from the grave simply to sit in his kitchen, immobile unless you turn away. That sets up a powerful theme, the queering of the domestic by supernatural forces. Were the plot to follow through with that, it would be one of the great horror films. Instead, however, the coroner and chief detective join two paranormal researchers to move into the houses and investigate. What follows is very good, but it loses the sense of an attack on our most sacred and private spaces. Still, Rugna balances the few jump scares with a sense of queasiness as the investigators realize that things aren’t always what they seem. TERRIFIED traffics in intelligent, truly unsettling scares and could have you looking at your home with more than a bit of dread, particularly if you’re streaming it in what you think is your safe place.

Teorema

Terence Stamp in white could be the dictionary picture for "seductive."

It's hard to pin down a single meaning for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s TEOREMA (1968, Criterion Channel, in English on Prime). He seems to have been working so close to his subconscious that even his statements about the film don’t seem to encompass everything happening on screen. I can only describe my own reactions to its depiction of an upper-middle-class household thrown into an uproar when a mysterious visitor (Terence Stamp at his sexiest) seduces the four family members and the maid. A lot of it feels like social satire. The film opens with a flash-forward, a news report on a Milanese factory whose owner has just turned it over to the workers. As a reporter with a clear liberal bias questions them, they seem unable to conceive that the change will move them into the middle class or result in a classless society. It’s a clash between two blindered views of life — the working class mired in its own subjugation and the liberal who can only see the world in terms of political movements. After a silent, sepia-toned sequence introducing the household’s members, the film switches to color with Stamp’s first appearance. The various seductions seem both sensual and silly as the characters stare at Stamp’s crotch or, in the case of mother Silvana Mangano (who’s utterly exquisite in this film), adore his discarded clothing. When he abruptly leaves, each of his willing conquests finds their lives irrevocably changed. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll say the son’s (Andres Cruz Soublette) transformation into an artist whose increasingly abstract work is an attempt to capture the lover’s image seems one of the most positive responses, even as his words (and Pasolini’s after the fact) disparage his work. But like so much of the film, it’s both moving and somehow comical. There is a sense, overall, that the bourgeois family members, faced with an unclassifiable passion, fall apart. They’re unmoored from a comfortable world where everything to be consumed is in its proper place. Whether this unmooring is destructive or productive may be a question of your point of view, but damn, is it fascinating watching it happen.

Honeydew

Is Barbara Kingsley mourning her character's daughter or the good will generated by 

the first half of HONEYDEW and lost by the end?

Devereux Milburn’s HONEYDEW (2021, Shudder) starts like gangbusters. Its first hour sets up a New England farming community afflicted with a wheat fungus that can cause gangrene, seizures and even madness. Rylie (Malin Barr) and her actor boyfriend Sam (Sawyer Spielberg) have traveled there to research her dissertation. When their car breaks down, they stumble on a remote farmhouse and ask for help, only to wind up staying the night. The woman running the farm (Barbara Kingsley) is a bonafide eccentric, and Kingsley is very funny in the role as she drifts off during conversations and plies the disbelieving couple with food and small talk. Adding to the weirdness is the presence of her son, Gunni (Jamie Bradley), who she says was kicked in the face by a bull. He’s barely verbal and watches Max Fleisher cartoons while sucking on lemon wedges dipped in sugar and bleeding occasionally from the eyeball and a facial wound. So far, so good. There are tensions within the couple that add to the humor, particularly when the two dieters sneak food behind each other’s backs, and everything is well-played and well-shot. Of course, you know there’s going to be something deadly behind the silliness, and when it emerges, the film goes sour. Part of the problem is that the secret is derivative of other films pitting city people against rural folks. The other part is that Milburn cuts corners. In two instances, where we need to see scenes we suddenly cut and just see their results. And in one of those cases, the result doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Nor does the film ever follow through on the wheat fungus. Maybe it’s just a given, but this is a case where things need to be spelled out just a little bit more. There’s also a WTF cameo by Lena Dunham. She’s virtually unrecognizable, but if you realize it’s her, you’re likely to be distracted wondering how she wound up in this film. It’s enough to make you wish you were watching a marathon of GIRLS’ most annoying episodes.