|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 4, 2024 14:03:24 GMT
This neglected film is from 1958.
Showdown for revenge
I rewatched this film and had to increase my score to a ten out of ten. This is everything a low-budget independent western should be. Actor Mark Stevens had previously helmed two motion pictures as director; those were crime dramas that also featured him in the starring role. This would be his first time overseeing a western. Stevens has a laid back approach to acting and directing, but he is able to convey a lot with simple efforts.
The German title for this picture is Satan’s Fist, which makes sense since there is plenty of fist fighting. But there is also a fair amount of knifing and shooting. It’s a story about brutal men in the old west, most of them on the wrong side of the law. Of course, Stevens and his partner (John Lupton) are among the few good guys that exist in this wind-battering environment.
You might say this is a precursor to the spaghetti western, though it has a 1950s TV western vibe. The violence that is depicted made this something that had to be exhibited on the big screen, not the small screen, since television in its infancy was controlled by ad agencies and networks that wanted wholesome entertainment which would appeal to wholesome Eisenhower era audiences. Stevens and Lupton had both been headlining weekly series on television, but this was a chance to do something daring and yet still reverential.
In addition to the explicit violence (relatively tame by today’s standards but still shocking), there are some daring bits involving an interracial marriage between a native woman (Sri Lankan actress Jana Davi in her first Hollywood motion picture) and an outlaw (Dean Fredericks); as well as scenes about alcoholism; and even the inclusion of a ‘family friend’ of Stevens (played by Cyril Delevanti) who does not seem to be closeted. I thought these touches added a degree of social realism to the proceedings.
The reason I am rating the film so highly is because I think its premise is highly original. Stevens’ parents (Russell Thorson and Jean Inness) are slain when thieves break into their home one night to rob them of furs and other valuables.
Stevens manages to survive the slaughter, and from here, it’s his mission to go through Sioux country after the baddies to avenge the murder of his parents. That part is not original; we’ve seen plenty of western revenge tales.
But what is original is that Stevens’ pal Lupton knows the identity of one of the thieves— it’s his father (Aaron Saxon). He wants to help Stevens kill the old man. I don’t think I’ve seen a Hollywood film from this period in which we are supposed to root for a man to kill his father.
When they do have the inevitable showdown at the end of the film, Lupton’s father knifes him, so Stevens is forced to kill the evil man. But there are still shades of Greek drama here, and indirectly, it is a form of patricide. A lot happens during the picture’s approximately 80 minute running time.
In between the more dangerous events, there are simple laidback moments where we see the men enjoy riding across the land; and the native woman bathing in the river. We are never in doubt that although there is a woman to share, the men put their feelings about each other first. They’ve both lost their fathers. And since Lupton is suffering from lung disease (shades of Doc Holliday), he might not have long to live himself. It’s an unflinching account of two men in a mostly unforgiving environment, and this is a brave film on many levels.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 11, 2024 15:26:51 GMT
This film is from 1937.
A bit of a caricature, spoofing hard news
Carole Lombard excelled at screwball comedy, and it wasn’t until she made NOTHING SACRED for David Selznick that she had ever been photographed in Technicolor. So it’s a real treat for Lombard’s fans, and for fans of the genre, since the early use of Technicolor seemed to be reserved for musicals or big scale epics.
NOTHING SACRED is only 77 minutes. Ben Hecht is the credited screenwriter, though supposedly at least a half dozen other writers contributed material. Some of what we see on screen is meant to suggest Hecht’s disdain for “important” news. Where he was saying that most of what is printed is barely worth wrapping up a fish, or lining the bottom of a birdcage. It’s very tongue-in-cheek.
In some ways the goings on remind me of a Damon Runyon story. There are outlandish situations and colorful characters, and it all blends together in a frenetic and rather amusing way. This is kind of new territory for a David Selznick picture, since his productions tend to be much more high brow and focusing on members of the upper class.
Lombard’s character is brought into the story in a very clever way. After a news reporter (Fredric March) has been sent by his boss (Walter Connolly) to work in the obituary department, he reads a blurb about some Vermont woman who apparently has radium poisoning and is dying.
In the next part March travels to Vermont to learn more about the woman and to meet her. Their initial run-in is interesting. Then things become quite exaggerated.
At first, I wasn’t sure if she was actually sick or not. We know that whether or not she is ill, that’s besides the point. The main point is that March’s reporter is going to milk the situation for what it’s worth, to generate a ton of sympathy for her so he can sell newspapers. In order to do this, he flies her from Vermont to New York.
Even though this is supposed to be funny, there is something serious being portrayed on screen. Mainly the fact that everyone else is deeply concerned about Lombard’s character, thinking this is the end for her. They have all taken her situation to heart.
Ultimately she is put up at a hotel suite where everyone thinks she is going to die. And in that sequence, we get some ironic commentary about this gal’s life and the thought of her passing away so young. It is all the more poignant since Lombard herself would die just four years later.
I love the scene where Lombard has an argument with March and socks him in the jaw. I think it’s definitely Lombard’s best moment on screen, and it’s easy to see why Lombard would tell people this was her favorite film.
It’s a very well-rehearsed choreographed moment for her. It’s perfect from start to finish.
Watching something like this, you really get a sense of Lombard’s greatness. I think she was ahead of her time in many regards. I especially like her impersonating Garbo in a Paramount picture she made with Fred MacMurray (THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS). In this film, she is also doing a bit of a caricature; and her timing is impeccable. She likes to satirize things, to spoof situations and Hecht’s story is right up her alley.
It starts as a ruse. But then the ruse becomes something very real. Lombard expertly accomplishes that transformation with the character. But she never lets it get too maudlin; she keeps it fun.
|
|
|
|
Post by jamesjazzguitar on Sept 11, 2024 16:06:19 GMT
Big Fan of Nothing Sacred, which for me is my second favorite Lombard film (after My Man Godfrey).
Nice write-up. As for the technicolor: are there any non-fussy prints of this film? All I have seen lack sharpness.
The film also exposed me to Fredric March: if one looks at his film legacy, one could say it is equal to all the other Hollywood actors of his generation. So many versatile roles, in so many high-quality, first-rate films.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 11, 2024 17:10:42 GMT
Big Fan of Nothing Sacred, which for me is my second favorite Lombard film (after My Man Godfrey). Nice write-up. As for the technicolor: are there any non-fussy prints of this film? All I have seen lack sharpness. The film also exposed me to Fredric March: if one looks at his film legacy, one could say it is equal to all the other Hollywood actors of his generation. So many versatile roles, in so many high-quality, first-rate films.
As for Fredric March, I tend to associate him with dramas like THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and INHERIT THE WIND. So yeah, it's good to be reminded that he excelled in comedic roles. Another screwball picture he made around this time is called THERE GOES MY HEART, with Virginia Bruce. Not the best script, but as always, March elevates the material. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 11, 2024 21:35:54 GMT
This is the one to watch:
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2024 15:02:37 GMT
This neglected film is from 1956.
Quinn shines in low-budget indy western
It’s interesting to see Anthony Quinn at this stage of his motion picture career. He had already earned an Oscar for VIVA ZAPATA!, and was about to earn another one for LUST FOR LIFE. Both of those performances were in studio ‘A’ budget productions. And now we see him returning to the low-budget fare he had done a decade earlier, starring in an independently produced black-and-white oater that seems a lot like an extended episode of a popular TV western.
Perhaps Quinn wanted to keep busy, perhaps he liked the script or perhaps he was toying with the idea of doing a weekly western series, and this was to function as the pilot or a test-run. If he had transferred to a regular gig on the small screen, like so many stars his generation were doing in the mid-50s, it would’ve been lucrative if he was also a producer or co-owner in the venture.
Because this is still a feature film, and because it’s an Anthony Quinn picture, it contains a fair amount of artistry and social message statements. Quinn plays a Mexican-American gunfighter with a fondness for alcohol. He has an old score to settle in his hometown Mesa. He quickly kills an opponent, but gets shot in the skirmish. While his flesh wounds are treated, he meets a sharp-tongued doctor’s assistant (Katy Jurado) who has an aversion to gunfighters.
In the next part Quinn has some drinks at the local saloon and meets a gang that has a prank in mind. Soon the gang has strung up a weak sheriff (Douglas Spencer) out on main street, and are using him for target practice.
It’s one of the film’s more memorable scenes, especially when Jurado tries to intervene and is nearly assaulted. This causes Quinn to whip out his gun and start shooting. He makes mincemeat of the men, but Jurado is still not keen on him.
After the big scene on the street, Quinn is asked by the bar owner (Peter Whitney) to become Mesa’s new sheriff. The bar owner would like to build up the town, and in order to do so, there needs to be real law and order. Quinn ends up accepting the job. He has nothing else to go on to, and he’d like an excuse to stick around for a chance at romance with Jurado, though that won’t be very easy.
The scenes between Quinn and Jurado remind me of the scenes that Quinn had with Anna Magnani in the following year’s melodrama WILD IS THE WIND; and scenes he had with Maureen O’Hara in 1991’s ONLY THE LONELY. Quinn was always great when acting opposite tough-willed women. There is considerable chemistry between Quinn and Jurado, and though the film drags in spots between the various shootings, things still remain interesting during the unusual romantic interplay between the leads.
One thing I especially liked was how Quinn’s skill and reputation is called into question when later in the story he suffers a wrist injury. I don’t recall seeing that plot twist in a western before.
It adds irony since a gunfighter turned sheriff needs to be able to shoot straight without injury impeding his fastness on the draw. Quinn’s character tries to hide the injury, swearing the doc (Douglas Fowley) to secrecy; but his next opponent, the bar owner, calls him out on this.
What makes the film work is Quinn’s dynamic central performance, and the psychological aspects of a man proving himself. The writing is not overly fussed with Freudian psychology, and Quinn refrains from the typical Method acting extremes he might otherwise have exhibited. It’s an admirable production despite its low-budget status, and is a decent way to spend 82 minutes of your time.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Oct 11, 2024 13:45:29 GMT
This neglected film is from 1937.
Kids and grown-ups find dead ends and new beginnings
One thing that impresses me is how sincere Sylvia Sidney’s portrayal is as a hardworking young woman living in the tenement district of New York City. While this is an ensemble drama based on a hit Broadway play, it is Sidney’s characterization that holds the story together in key spots and humanizes the otherwise dehumanizing conditions of life in this rundown section of the city.
The actress was borrowed by producer Samuel Goldwyn from Walter Wanger, another independent producer to whom Miss Sidney was under contract at this time. Earlier in the decade, Sidney had made her mark in precode dramas at Paramount. Some of her motion pictures teamed her with George Raft, who specialized in playing hoods. In fact, Raft had been approached by Goldwyn to play Baby Face Martin, the gangster who is hiding out in the Dead End. But Raft turned the role down, so Humphrey Bogart was borrowed from Warner Brothers.
The main story involves Sidney’s character and a hardworking young man (Joel McCrea) whose eye has also been caught by a well-to-do gal (Wendy Barrie) living in a nearby high-rise dwelling.
Barrie, we learn, was raised poor but now an engagement with a rich suitor means she won’t ever have to go near the slums again, unless she wants to— meaning, unless she wants to marry McCrea. Ultimately, she decides they are from two different worlds and she chooses the rich dude.
While McCrea is figuring out his love life, these romantic situations complicate Sidney’s life. That’s because she is not-so-secretly hoping for a future with him.
Meanwhile there are various hijinks occurring along the riverfront dock involving a group of dead end kids. One of the kids is Sidney’s young brother (Billy Halop) who gets lessons in violence from Bogart’s character. In order to impress his pals, Halop roughs up a rich kid (Charles Peck) living in the high-rise, and seriously wounds the boy’s father (Minor Watson). The police are now after him.
Part of the drama involves Sidney hiding her brother from the cops, but conflicted about doing what is morally right. At the same time, McCrea has a tense showdown with Bogart and Bogart’s partner in crime (Allen Jenkins) that culminates with Bogart getting killed and McCrea set to receive some reward money. Tied into this turn of events, we see Bogart’s grieving mother (Marjorie Main) and the other tenement residents absorbing the shock of the violence that’s just occurred.
It seemed to me that McCrea is a bit tougher in this movie, more than holding his own against Bogart and Jenkins. He is also just as tough with the dead end kids. So is Ward Bond, who plays a mostly annoyed doorman at the high-rise who calls the police when the kids start a fire on the dock. A lot happens, but somehow Lillian Hellman’s intelligent script connects it all and gives us valuable insights about life among the different socio-economic classes in a mixed neighborhood.
I do think that some things are left unexplored. For instance, there is a good extended cameo by Claire Trevor, playing an ex-girlfriend of Bogart’s, who seems to be dying from a transmitted diseased. But while we are told several times how Bogart grew up here and became what he is, we are never given the female side of the story. We never see young girls who might grow up to be what Trevor’s character has become.
I also felt a bit more could have been done with Marjorie Main’s character. Why is she so ashamed of her son? After all, Cody Jarrett’s ma in WHITE HEAT was proud of her son’s criminal exploits. Why did this mother have the opposite reaction? Something severe has caused a sense of dread in her, but we are never told what it is exactly. She has a very intense reaction seeing Bogart again. It cannot just be embarrassment over his notorious life as a gangster. What did he do to her specifically?
But these are minor quibbles. Mostly, this is an engaging think piece that causes the viewer to reflect on the various segments of an urban society. We know that some of these people might find new beginnings and escape the old patterns, while some, like Bogart & Trevor, can’t ever escape the tragedy that engulfs them. All they can do is reach a final dead end.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Oct 31, 2024 16:18:19 GMT
This neglected film is from 1956.
Western horror with romance
If you like films with death by animals, then you will probably enjoy THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN. This co-production between U.S. and Mexican companies was filmed on location in Mexico. It features two Hollywood stars in the lead roles— Guy Madison who had made a name for himself in the western genre; and Patricia Medina, a British import who had established herself in romance dramas and adventure flicks.
Madison and Medina play the central love story, with Medina as a Latina woman engaged to another man (Eduardo Noriega) but finding out that she’d much rather spend her life with Madison. He just came down from Texas to assume control of a ranch as well as assume control of her heart. The film’s first 45 minutes or so is about the love triangle and various other Mexican-American conflicts that occur, with the two Hollywood stars flanked by an assortment of Mexican character actors.
During the romantic drama, there is a subplot involving the loss of some livestock. At first this is attributed to rustlers, but the truth is much scarier than that. Apparently, there is a dinosaur living inside a hollow mountain, hence the title, who comes out when it’s hungry to devour cattle. I don’t think the beast is too discerning and will eat anything fleshy, including sheep and humans.
A shadow of the prehistoric villain is not glimpsed until more than halfway into the story. And its full presence is not revealed until the 59-minute mark.
Since this is a motion picture that only lasts about 80 minutes, the Tyrannosaurus Rex itself does not take center stage until the last twenty minutes. I suppose there was only so much budget and so much creativity to allow for just one elongated sequence with stop-animation techniques bringing the monster to life on screen.
While the special effects, and acting, might be regarded by today’s viewers as primitive, pun intended, it’s still a rather harmless way to be entertained. These kinds of movies were popular with the drive-in crowds back in the day, and they are a chance for filmmakers to try to blend genres and storytelling styles, even if the results are somewhat uneven and not one hundred percent classic.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Nov 17, 2024 14:25:55 GMT
This neglected film is from 1946.
She has them all wrapped around her finger
Hedy Lamarr, now freelancing and no longer under exclusive contract to MGM, tries her hand at a period drama with all the trimmings. She plays a beautiful but nasty woman with more than a few shades of scarlet(t)– as in the letter and O’Hara. She’s a selfish vamp who has a bevy of foolish men wrapped around her proverbial finger.
It’s never dull when Miss Lamarr is on screen. She not only radiates sex, she also radiates intelligence and it is almost as if you can see the wheels spinning in her head when she hatches a plan to divide and conquer. Guiding her in this naughty enterprise is director Edgar G. Ulmer.
The story itself is fairly predictable though fully engaging, and it could just as easily have had a modern-day setting. However, the writers place the action in a somewhat repressed Maine community circa 1830. Lamarr’s character Jenny defies convention at nearly every turn. She almost lets a young boy drown at the beginning, and this is followed by a shocking plot twist where she’s involved in the death of her alcoholic father (Dennis Hoey).
As if that were not enough, she then latches on to a much older man (Gene Lockhart) who functions as a replacement father figure. Of course, Lockhart is quite wealthy, or she wouldn’t take any interest and consent to be his wife.
Mr. Lockhart always gives a fine performance. This particular character is a far cry from his better known role as Bob Cratchit, but we still find him sympathetic…mostly because we know he’s a pawn in Lamarr’s schemes to advance socially, and boy oh boy this won’t end well.
The relationship is complicated by the arrival of Lockhart’s son (Louis Hayward) who incites considerable lust on Lamarr’s part. Hayward’s character was the same boy that nearly drowned at the beginning of the story due to Lamarr’s machinations. Despite knowing she is no good, he can’t help but be drawn to her and an illicit affair occurs behind Lockhart’s back. This leads to a compelling sequence where Hayward is goaded into killing the old man.
While Hayward is more than adequate here, I have never found him to be all that romantic in his films. Yes, he’s a nice looking fellow, but his favor with audiences eludes me. If I had been casting this film, I would have chosen either one of Lamarr’s two costars from DISHONORED LADY– Dennis O’Keefe or William Lundigan– to play the tycoon’s son. It needed to be some clean cut hunk with an all-American vibe, whose blandness could be outshined by Lamarr. With Hayward, we get an element of camp which works against the story.
Another thing that works against the ensuing romantic drama is that Hayward’s British demeanor is too similar to George Sanders who plays Lamarr’s next love interest in what becomes a steamy quadrangle. Mr. Sanders is an excellent actor, and it’s clear Lamarr enjoys costarring with him– the duo would team up again in SAMSON AND DELILAH to much greater effect. But something about Sanders as a lumber foreman in this era just feels silly.
We’re supposed to root for Lamarr and Sanders in the final act, even though he’s engaged to her best friend (Hillary Brooke). However, too many evil deeds have been committed by Lamarr’s character, and per the production code, she has to pay. There’s an abrupt ending where she’s killed off in a shocking carriage accident.
No redemption is allowed for her. She’s done too many wicked things, and the audience needs to see her punished for it. Unlike Scarlett O’Hara, she will never know that tomorrow is another day.
|
|
