Tales of the Easily Distracted

AFTER THE THIN MAN Remix: Mystery Dates!

2012-02-18T22:40:00.000-05:00

Hey, everybody, in honor of the Classic Film and TV Cafe Dogathon, I did a sort of re-mix of my 2010 post of After the Thin Man, the sparkling sequel to The Thin Man (1934), with more fun facts about Skippy, the adorable wirehaired fox terrier who played Nick and Nora Charles' beloved pooch Asta in the first two Thin Man films, plus more pictures and rib-tickling GIFs! Every dog has its day during the Dogathon! Click here to give it a look and join the fun! Feel free to leave a comment or two! :-)

THE GLASS KEY: The Littlest Gumshoe

2012-02-10T19:29:00.015-05:00

The Glass Key (TGK) gets Team Bartilucci's vote! Dashiell Hammett, one of my writing heroes, wrote his hard-boiled crime novel in 1931, and like virtually all of Hammett’s novels, TGK became a best-seller and a classic. Hollywood got ahold of it twice: first came the 1935 version starring Edward Arnold, George Raft, Claire Dodd, and Ray Milland; then came the 1942 version starring Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd, and Veronica Lake. I’ve only seen the 1935 version once, and I’m afraid it didn’t really grab me — but the 1942 version is one of my favorite films, so that’s what we’re focusing on this time around! The film gets off to a snappy start at the campaign headquarters of a city that isn’t identified but brings to (my) mind a cross between Chicago and Baltimore. Paul Madvig (Donlevy), aptly described on my 1989 paperback edition of the novel as “a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler,” breezes through the crowd, leaving both brickbats and bouquets in his wake:

“He’s the head of the voters’ league.”
“He’s the biggest crook in the state.”
“I hear he feeds a thousand people a week.”

A new type of ploy

Paul is against Senator Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen from Hitchcock’s Notorious, and the Father of the Bride movies) and his Reform Party: “If Ralph Henry’s so anxious to reform somebody, why don’t he start on that son of his? He gets in more jams than The Dead End Kids.” A beautiful, petite blonde has been listening. She greets Paul with a resounding slap in the face (pretty impressive, considering she’s wearing gloves! I’ll admit I didn’t think about that until Vinnie pointed it out — that’s how quickly I got into the story). “That’s for talking about decent people,” she snaps. “A little reform wouldn’t do you any harm. As a matter of fact, I think it would do the state good if someone would reform you. Get out of my way, you cheap crook!” Since TGK is a 1942 crime drama and not real life here in 2012, where people sue each other at the drop of a hat (and what charming chapeaux the gals in TGK were wearing that season!), Paul is immediately smitten as he watches the feisty lass storming out. “Hey, what a slugger,” he says, grinning as he rubs his aching jaw and finds out he’s been slapped by Senator Henry’s elegant patrician daughter Janet (Lake). Paul can hardly wait to break the news to his right-hand man and close friend, Ed Beaumont (Ladd): “I just met the swellest dame...she smacked me in the kisser!” Although TGK is set in the early 1940s, I’m hearing a song from another era in my head: “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” On the one hand, I get a kick out of the rollicking way Paul cheerfully bulldozes his way through life, but on the other hand, he’s also an impulsive, hot-headed guy who all too often acts before he thinks. Ed’s usually good at keeping Paul from letting those impulses backfire on him.

Finding Taylor dead in the street curbs Ed’s enthusiasm!

Poor "Snip" fought forlorn, and forlorn won.

Tough politicians need good dental hygiene!

Nurse Frances Gifford likes Ladd's bedside manner!

But things get complicated. Janet Henry is turning Paul’s head, and he’s sweetened the pot with an eye-popping engagement ring. Paul’s rival Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia from After the Thin Man, My Little Chickadee, Gilda, Touch of Evil) is out for payback after Paul closes Nick’s casino. Nick’s vicious henchmen, Rusty (Eddie Marr from Mr. Moto’s Gamble and Mr. Moto on Danger Island, as well as Disney’s The Reluctant Dragon — in which a young, uncredited, pre-star Alan Ladd played a storyboard artist, while supporting actress Frances Gifford played the voice of the train!), and sadistic cohort Jeff (William Bendix, scary yet darkly funny in Hissable Thug mode a la The Dark Corner), are closing in. The situation only gets worse when Ed finds Janet’s irresponsible brother Taylor (Richard Denning of Creature from the Black Lagoon; No Man of Her Own; the TV series version of Mr. and Mrs. North) dead in the street, his skull apparently fractured by a blunt instrument. Every finger in town seems to be pointing to Paul as the killer. The grieving Janet is angling for Ed to help him find out who killed Taylor, and the reluctant yet undeniable attraction growing between Ed and Janet is stirring things up all the more. Even Paul’s 18-year-old sister Opal, affectionately called “Snip” (Bonita Granville, Oscar-nominee from 1936’s These Three, and heroine of the Nancy Drew movies from the late 1930s! She also went on to be executive producer of the early 1970s Lassie TV series) thinks Paul killed Taylor, making the situation even tougher since Snip was in love with the big dope (even though Taylor kept “borrowing” money from her to pay off Taylor’s gambling debts; boy, she sure can pick ’em!). Then there are those mysterious typed notes about Paul, insinuating that Ed knows more than he’s telling. On top of that, Snip must live an awfully sheltered life with Paul, because she stubbornly insists that all the wild stories Paul’s enemies are printing in the paper surely couldn’t be printed if they weren’t true — sheesh! It’s a good thing Ed is a cool, wily guy who wears a fedora, because he’s got to play detective if he wants to keep Paul out of the electric chair!

After a spat with Paul, Ed throws in with Nick Varna—or does he? Turns out Ed’s still on Team Paul, gathering evidence, but what a way to make his point! Poor Ed is attacked by a German Shepherd, and Jeff and Rusty hold Ed captive in a marathon beating, mostly from Jeff, who dubs our hero “Little Rubber Ball.” That scene always has me on the edge of my seat; it almost makes the classic slugfest in Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) look like kids playing in a sandbox! Wally Westmore’s makeup effects for the savage beating William Bendix gives Alan Ladd looked convincing enough to make me wince! Heck, it seems like everyone was slaphappy on the Glass Key set at one time or another. Ironically, bad-guy Bendix was a sweetheart in real life, at least with co-stars Ladd and Lake. According to Jeremy Arnold on the TCM Web site, “During the film’s memorable beating scene, Bendix accidentally slugged Ladd in the jaw for real, knocking him out. (The take survives in the finished film.) Bendix felt awful and he burst into tears. When Ladd woke up, he was so touched by Bendix’s reaction that he became friends with the actor and requested him for many of his future films, helping him with his career as best he could.” Lake hit it off with Bendix, too, becoming close friends. “I came to adore the guy,” Lake wrote in her autobiography. “It was a platonic adoration for a marvelous human being.” Then there was another real-life beating on the set, this one during TGK’s opening scene, where Janet Henry had to sock Paul Madvig in the jaw. Lake and Donlevy had previously worked together in I Wanted Wings (1941), and the experience didn’t exactly make them the best of pals, so when Lake did that scene, she actually slugged the guy! She wrote, “I’d learned in my Brooklyn youth to lead with the hip when you throw a punch…Every pound I owned was behind it when it caught his jaw.” When the irate Donlevy confronted her, Lake admitted she didn’t know how to pull her punches.” I’ll give you until the next take to learn,” he said and walked away.

It's raining diminutive detectives!
Might as well stay for dinner!

Brian Donlevy gets top billing in TGK. His career and colorful life could fill a blog, a book, or even a movie of its own, including Donlevy’s war record and valor in battle (14-year-old Donlevy lied about his age to join the Army), as well as his roles in both silent and sound films as well as stage acting. In 1939, Donlevy earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as sadistic Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste . His career soared with such box-office hits as The Remarkable Andrew; Nightmare (which I’ve never seen, and want to. Paging TCM!); In Old Chicago; Wake Island; I Wanted Wings; and Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty (read Brandie’s great blog post about it in True Classics!). But we of Team Bartilucci, especially Vinnie, know and love Donlevy best in the movie versions of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass science-fiction novels, directed by Val Guest. Admittedly, Donlevy’s portrayal of scholarly British scientist Dr. Bernard Quatermass goes through some changes, probably to attract us excitable Yanks. Donlevy’s Quatermass is more the two-fisted type in The Quatermass Experiment (a.k.a. The Creeping Unknown) and Quatermass II: Enemy from Space. Vin gets a kick out of these particular flicks; he feels that half the fun of Donlevy’s portrayal is that viewers half-expect Quatermass to just punch out the aliens and save the day!

You'd think Nancy Drew could solve this case!

William Bendix is the spitting image of evil!

Paramount Pictures must have blessed the day that Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake came into their lives! Back in those days, guys with the physical stature of 5-foot-6¼-inch-tall Alan Ladd didn’t always get the girl in real life, much less in movies, plus young Ladd was haunted by his tragic childhood. But talent scout and former actress Sue Carol saw something special in fair-haired, cool yet smoldering Ladd, and under her tutelage, his career began to take root. So did love: she became Mrs. Alan Ladd and stayed that way until his death in January 1964. By comparison, Donlevy practically towered over his co-stars at 5-foot-8!

Before Veronica Lake (born Constance Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York; I love it when my fellow native New Yorkers make good!) became a star as “The Peek-A-Boo” girl, thanks to her long blonde mane and her memorable performances in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941), as well as This Gun for Hire, TGK, and I Married a Witch (all in 1942), she had bit parts in the late 1930s and early 1940s in films like Sorority House. For the record, my 1995 edition of Halliwell’s Film Guide describes the 1942 movie adaptation of TGK thus: “Nifty remake of the (1935 version) which finds some limited talents in their best form, helped by a plot which keeps one watching.” I agree; to paraphrase our own John Greco of Twenty-Four Frames, nobody could play Alan Ladd like Alan Ladd! Similarly, when Paramount teamed up Ladd with sultry, flaxen-haired, 4-feet-11½-inch tall Veronica Lake, who happened to be pretty darn good at playing Veronica Lake (and looking gorgeous in Edith Head’s costumes), it was the blond leading the blonde, and a new movie star team was born! According to the IMDb, Ladd and Lake made seven movies together: in addition to the films we've already discussed here, Ladd and Lake also appeared together in Star-Spangled Rhythm; 1945’s Duffy’s Tavern and Variety Girl, in which Ladd and Lake played themselves; The Blue Dahlia (1946); and Saigon (1948).

"Bear with me, Ed, all this
intrigue has me easily distracted!"

Screenwriter Jonathan Latimer had adapted Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock for the big screen, in addition to Alias Nick Beal (see the great review over at Jim Lane’s Cinedrome) and the long-running TV series adaptation of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, among many others. Latimer’s tight, wry adaptation of Hammett’s novel was right on target, with director Stuart Heisler (The Monster and the Girl; Along Came Jones; Smash-Up) ably playing to his stars’ strengths. Victor Young’s score deftly blends sweetness and menace. An uncredited young Dane Clark (also in Wake Island) plays Henry Sloss (his character was “Harry Sloss” in the novel). Clark gets a memorable opening scene: after mouthing off about Janet Henry, Paul throws Sloss through a window and into a fountain! Of the three TGK stars, Donlevy did well for himself, but Ladd and Lake sadly fell on hard times both physically and emotionally as they got older; both died at the age of 50. However, Donlevy continued to have a steady acting career, including his 1952 TV series Dangerous Assignment. According to the IMDb, he retired to Palm Springs, CA until his death from throat cancer in 1972 at the age of 71. However, in his retirement, Donlevy wrote short stories and ended up owning a prosperous California tungsten mine — good for him, I say!

When you work for Paul Madvig, bring water wings!

Having a dish like Janet at his bedside would perk up any guy!

Hold onto your hats: Janet and Ed are playing for keeps!
(Cheer up, Paul, a big politician like you won't have trouble finding a new babe!)

Wedding Bell Wackiness Double-Feature: BALL OF FIRE and OSCAR

2012-01-22T19:31:00.006-05:00

This post is being published as part of the CMBA Comedy Classics Blogathon from January 22nd to 27th, 2012.

Love is a funny thing, especially in the movies, so Vinnie and I have donned our Team Bartilucci romantic screwball comedy caps to spotlight two of our favorites!

Dorian’s Pick: Ball of Fire (1941)

“Once upon a time — in 1941 to be exact — there lived in a great, tall forest — called New York — eight men who were writing an encyclopedia. They were so wise they knew everything: The depth of the oceans, and what makes a glowworm glow, and what tune Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. But there was one thing about which they knew very little — as you shall see…”

How could I not fall in love with Ball of Fire (BoF)? To borrow a line from Foul Play, it was fate, Fergie — kismet! The star team of Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, reunited from Meet John Doe that same year, was a tantalizing draw, plus I’m a sucker for stories set in my hometown, New York City. But I was also interested in BoF because I like comedies about characters who appreciate wordplay and learning (Pygmalian/My Fair Lady, anyone?). I’ve loved reading, writing, and generally having fun with the English language ever since I learned to read at the age of three (during a family vacation in the Bahamas, but that’s a story for another time). My older siblings used to show me off by having me read passages from The New York Times out loud; granted, I didn’t always understand what all the words meant, but somehow I figured out what they sounded like phonetically. For another thing, on an even more personal note, BoF’s sassy heroine Katherine O’Shea goes by the name “Sugarpuss,” or “Shugie” for short. As luck would have it, our daughter Siobhan’s nickname happens to be “Shugie”! (For the record, “Shugie” is pronounced like “sugar” ending with “ee” instead of “er.” For those of you who’ve never heard the name “Siobhan,” it’s pronounced “shuh-VON.” Those who pronounce it ‘SIGH-oh-ban’ will be asked to leave the Internet.) Mind you, this was long before we watched and loved BoF; up till then, we had nicknamed Siobhan “Shugie” in honor of Shaggy’s baby sister on the animated TV series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (yet another story for yet another time. We’ve got a million of ’em)! Our Shugie thought the name “Sugarpuss O’Shea” was the most hilarious name she’d ever heard!

Professor Potts digs NYC’s sub(way)culture!

Taking good notes for research is important!

Sweetening the entertainment pot further, other talented people behind BoF included director Howard Hawks; Samuel Goldwyn, producing BoF for RKO; screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, who based their story on Wilder and Thomas Monroe’s From A to Z; and versatile Director of Photography Gregg Toland, who got an Oscar nomination that year for Citizen Kane. To qualify for the 1941 Academy Awards, BoF played a week-long engagement in Los Angeles, then officially opened at the Radio City Music Hall in January 1942. Set in the then-contemporary New York City of 1941, BoF is a breezy comic take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (more about that shortly). In New York City’s Central Park, we meet our hero Professor Bertram Potts (Cooper in lovable naïf mode), the youngest of eight brilliant, endearing professors taking a constitutional in Central Park on the first sunny spring day of the season. Prof. Potts’ colleagues are played by a great cast of beloved character actors: Oskar Homolka (Hitchcock’s Sabotage and the Harry Palmer spy thrillers Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain) as Prof. Gurkakoff; Henry Travers (Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, It’s a Wonderful Life) as Prof. Jerome; S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (Casablanca, Wonder Man) as Prof. Magenbruch; Tully Marshall (Scarface, Grand Hotel) as Prof. Robinson; Leonid Kinskey (Duck Soup and The Man with the Golden Arm, and he’s a Casablanca alumnus, too) as Prof. Quintana; Aubrey Mather as Prof. Peagram (Jane Eyre, The Song of Bernadette); and Prof. Oddly (Team Bartilucci fave Richard Haydn, known for voicing animated characters as well as his supporting roles in live-action films). These men have virtually cloistered themselves in the house they all share at The Daniel S. Totten Foundation. They’re in their ninth year of writing their encyclopedia of slang. Man, these boys need to get out more! More to the point, they need to get their slang encyclopedia finished pronto, because even though Miss Totten (Mary Field from The Dark Corner and Dark Passage — so much dark in such a lighthearted movie!) has a crush on Potts, the Foundation’s lawyer Larsen (veteran character actor Charles Lane, back when he was actually young!) is pressuring our boys to “slap it together” and finish already. Potts firmly replies that “we are not the slapping-together kind…If our work goes slowly, it’s because the world goes so fast.” Well, Potts and company had better hang onto their hats, because their world is about to go a whole lot faster, not to mention funnier! (By the way, there isn’t a real-life toaster inventor named Daniel S. Totten that we know of, though there are electric toasters!) Fun Fact: According to the TCM Web site, Wilder and Brackett picked up authentic slang for the script by visiting the drugstore across the street from Hollywood High School; a burlesque house; and the Hollywood Park racetrack.

The happiest fellas in Brainiac Land!

Just as our eight professors aren’t seven height-challenged miners pitted against a wicked witch and a poisoned apple, nor is our heroine a sweet, demure princess. Instead, we have beautiful, brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O’Shea, a.k.a. Shugie (Stanwyck). She’s introduced to us in smart, snappy style, performing “Drum Boogie” (her singing was dubbed by Martha Tilton, bandleader Tommy Dorsey’s lead singer), accompanied by the great drummer Gene Krupa (as himself)! Seems the D.A. is convinced that Shugie’s gangster beau Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews, before Laura made him a star at 20th Century-Fox) just might have knocked off one of his fellow hoods. Ol’ John Law wants Shugie for questioning, since the D.A. has an incriminating receipt for a pair of pajamas she’d once given him as a gift. With a “subpeeny” nipping at her heels, Sugarpuss goes on the lam, and we don’t mean the Little-Bo-Peep kind! But Lilac’s henchmen Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea) and Asthma Anderson (Ralph Peters) see the business card from Potts that Shugie had left behind after initially nixing his invitation to join his slang symposium. The thugs get ideas: first, if Lilac marries Shugie, he’ll be safe because as Mrs. Lilac, she wouldn’t be able to testify against him. Second, who’d think to look for Shugie in a quaint old house infested with bookworms? Asthma and Pastrami give Shugie incentive to go along with their scheme by giving her a ring with a diamond almost as big as the one at Yankee Stadium! Potts and his colleagues are plenty book-smart, but something tells me they’ll also be street-smart by the time Shugie gets through with them!

If Shugie’s the new neighborhood Avon Lady, we’ll take one of everything!

BoF’s sprightly plot and snappy patter had me smiling from the start. Cooper and Stanwyck have marvelous chemistry together as Shugie shakes up Potts and Company’s scholarly existence for the better. While the versatile Stanwyck is always awesome in both dramas (such as my own favorite, Double Indemnity) and comedies, I particularly enjoy seeing her funny flag fly in films like BoF and The Lady Eve. It’s a joy to see Stanwyck’s impeccable comic timing in BoF, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s as beautiful as she is hilarious. With Edith Head costuming her, whether Stanwyck is wearing sequins or a simple shirtwaist dress, you can’t take your eyes off her, especially with the confident, panther-like way she walks. I was touched at the sight of “Potsie’s” modest engagement ring above Joe Lilac’s huge rock, undoubtedly the best ring Potts could afford on his academic salary, bless him. His proposal to Shugie touched me even more, especially: “Dust piles on our hearts, and it took you to blow it away.” Shugie finds herself growing increasingly fond of her “eight wise idiots,” and slowly but surely falling in love with Potts and regretting her commitment to Lilac and the con job she agreed to.

Mr. Looper, er, Hooper, lilac’s not really your color!

But the professors climbing out of their ivory tower aren’t the only outstanding supporting character actors in BoF. There’s Will Lee as Benny the Creep, one of Lilac’s henchmen, long before he became the beloved Mr. Hooper on TV’s Sesame Street; Charles Arnt from My Favorite Brunette as Lilac’s lawyer; and Allen Jenkins (his many roles included George Sanders’ sidekick in the Falcon films and the voice of Officer Dibble on Hanna-Barbera’s animated series Top Cat, another Team Bartilucci fave) as a garbage man who enlists the professors’ help in winning a radio quiz show so he can take his sweetie out on the town — but let him tell you in his own words as Potts tries to keep up with all these new-to-him words and phrases:

“We’ll be steppin’, me and the smooch, I mean the dish, I mean the mouse, you know, hit the jiggles for a little rum boogie?...Brother, we’re gonna have some hoy-toy-toy!” In turn, the delighted professors roar, “Hoy-toy-toy!” The garbage man adds, “If you want that one explained, go ask your papa.”

As Miss Bragg, Kathleen Howard is the very model of an uptight, narrow-minded den mother type who, to slightly paraphrase a line from Witness for the Prosecution, has just had an egg-beater thrown into the wheels of her Victorian household. Miss Bragg may mean well in her stick-up-the-butt way, but I couldn’t help hoping someone would belt her one, so I couldn’t help approving when Shugie did just that — that is, until I read on the TCM Web site that while shooting the fight scene with Howard, Stanwyck accidentally connected too hard with a punch and broke Ms. Howard’s jaw — yikes! Just goes to show sometimes it’s unwise to go too far for your art!

Is this what they mean by “stopping on a dime”?

Of all the lovable professors, the one I found myself most fond of was Richard Haydn’s Prof. Oddly, who gets so into whatever he’s examining that the other professors have to whistle for him like a dog. A widower, Prof. Oddly is the only one of the group who’s been married. When Shugie and the professors set off for New Jersey for the wedding, unaware that Lilac and his goons are setting the boys up, it leads to a funny and truly touching scene as Prof. Oddly suggests fatherly advice to Potsie, sharing his fond remembrances of happy times with his late wife Genevieve and the popular old song by that name, with all the professors poignantly singing along. With the help of a loose room number on the motel room door, it leads beautifully to both comedy and sweet love, though not without bumps along the way. It all ends in our guys dashing (in every sense) in top hats and tails to New Jersey to save the girl and the day in a finale that only our astute octet could have pulled off, and it had me cheering! It’s no wonder that, according to the TCM Web site, BoF ended up being the 25th highest-grossing film of 1942, taking in $2.2 million at the box office (which was serious coin back then). Between the success that year of both BoF and the Oscar-winning Sergeant York (1941), it was a mighty fine year for Gary Cooper, who ranked seventh at the box office for 1941 — no small feat considering all the films available back then, decades before TV and so many other forms of entertainment created competition for fans’ attention. Another Fun Fact: In 1942, Barbara Stanwyck joined her Remember the Night co-star Fred MacMurray for a radio version of BoF broadcast on Lux Radio Theatre in 1942, and of course, they would eventually reunite for Double Indemnity and There’s Always Tomorrow. On a related note, as a fan of Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, I’d like to check out A Song is Born, their musical remake with Hawks, even though I hear it’s not as good as the original. I sympathize; improving on the perfection of BoF is a tall order indeed!


Things that make you go "Yum-yum!"

Nothing perks up symposiums like a conga!

One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind her!

Before Witness for the Prosecution’s Monocle Test, there was Prof. Gurkakoff’s Reflector Test!

Hope is the thing with feathers — perfect for tickle torture!

Vinnie's Pick: Oscar (1991)

To simplify greatly, there are three types of people; those who have never seen Oscar, those who love Oscar, and those who have never forgiven John Landis for Vic Morrow, and refuse to give any of his work since a fair viewing.

It's a comedy, something that star Sylvester ("Stop or My Mom Will Shoot") Stallone is not well known for. Specifically it's a screwball farce, based on a French film from 1967 Director John Landis and his writing team turned it into a period piece, following many of its trappings religiously. It takes place largely in one location, the palatial residence of gangster Angelo "Snaps" Provolone, who has promised his father (a hiLARious cameo by Kirk Douglas) that he'd go straight. On one madcap day as he prepares to invest in a bank and fulfill his promise, he learns that his head accountant "Little" Anthony Rossano (Vincent Spano) is in love with his daughter, Lisa (Marisa Tomei) (except he's not), who is pregnant from another man, the titular Oscar, their chauffeur (except she's not), planned to marry her off to his dialect coach, Dr. Thornton Poole (Tim Curry) who is also in love with her (except he's not), and at random times, 100,000 dollars plays a shell game among three black satchels that make their way about the house.

Snaps, Connie, and Aldo keep it all in the Family

Landis keeps the film going at a breakneck pace - characters and situations fly in and out of the house at ramming speed, the dialogue is fast and laced with period slang ("Nix the underwear, Doc, it never happened"). With all the questionable characters (and black bags) that come and go, it's no surprise Lt. Toomey (Kurtwood Smith, a guy who's a LOT better at being funny than people realize - we're still all remembering Clarence Boddicker) is sure something's up in the Provolone home. Like so many tributes to past genres, it's as good as you remember 1930s madcap comedies were, but so few actually were. Another recent example is Down With Love, which featured more bedroom comedy tropes per capita than any actual films of the genre.

The meat of the plot is from the French original, the comedy of errors about the people in love and the bags, but Landis added a whole layer of comedy by making it a comedic Prohibition-era period piece. Lots of wordplay comedy, many new characters, and the whole plot about the bankers and Lt. Toomey's insistence that things are not as they appear. And oh, those bags... A classic plot point of comedies, whether used as the McGuffin to get the spies after the wrong guy, or a devious way to hide the diamonds, it's been seen in endless films, in recent years, most famously What's Up Doc?

Lisa and Thornton's budding romance
is by the book!

Both Stallone and Landis surrounded themselves with friends - there's lots of folks in the film who'd worked with one or the other in past films. Peter Reigert and Mark Metcalf return from Animal House, as does scoremeister Elmer Bernstein. As opposed to the tack they took in Animal House, where Bernstein wrote a deliberately serious score that worked perfectly against the on-screen goings on, they went for a patently comedic soundtrack here, based on the opera The Barber of Seville.

A couple of important first major breaks in the film as well - It's Marisa Tomei's first major role, and while she got a Razzie for it, The Wife and I knew right away we'd be hearing from her again, and I don't mean a postcard. One year later she grabbed an ACTUAL Oscar for her role in My Cousin Vinny. Similarly, lovable lunkhead Connie was played to slack-faced perfection by Chazz Palmintieri, who just a year before had played a very different kind of mobster in his self-written one-man play A Bronx Tale. Combining this with similarly comedic gunsel Cheech in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, and he quickly became one of our favorite comedic gangster actors. So when we later saw him in things like The Usual Suspects and the film version of A Bronx Tale, we were blown away by the diametric opposite performances.

"So, boss, which satchel has the secret
Government underwear?"

Tim Curry had just premiered his older, slightly puffier look in the previous year's The Hunt For Red October, and had already shown staggering ability for madcap comedy in another sadly underappreciated film, Clue. His timing here is flawless, his face a wild set of earnest expressions and a perfect upper-class twit of a voice.
But in honesty, the shining jewel of performances is Stallone himself. In later comedic performances like Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, he's more parodying himself, but here he plays a note-perfect comedic gangster in the Damon Runyon tradition. He shares the screen with some heavy hitters, but holds his own expertly. "Snaps" remains exasperated throughout, and some of his best lines are when his emotions get the better of him. As he tries to explain a small part of his day to his wife Sofia (Ornella Muti), including mention of a daughter Theresa, she responds "We don't HAVE a daughter Theresa!", to which he gaspingly replies, "Do you think I don't KNOW that?"

Going to the chapel and they're gonna get married...

Few films got as bad a rap as this one in its time. In those pre-Internet days, it was able to be the number-one film for two weeks before the reviews started making the rounds and and people suddenly were educated as to how bad a film it was. It's gained a big following thanks to video, one it seriously deserves. See it.
Expeditiously.

NIAGARA: Falling for the Wrong Girl Can Be Murder

2012-01-06T14:49:00.007-05:00

Niagara (1953) may have been filmed in dazzling Technicolor, but it’s got the black heart of a film noir! Directed by Henry Hathaway from a script by Billy Wilder’s frequent collaborator Charles Brackett (who also produced it), Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen, Niagara is a dark thriller despite the blue skies and white waters of majestic Niagara Falls; even Sol Kaplan’s music has a dark but lush tone, bringing to mind one of my favorite composers, Bernard Hermann. Director of Photography Joe McDonald (The Dark Corner, My Darling Clementine, Mirage) shot the beautiful, bright locations while still making atmospheric, suspenseful use of shadows and light. Even more dazzling is Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest star vehicles; the film’s ads boasted about the film’s two “forces of nature,” Niagara Falls and Marilyn, and they meant it! Monroe is sultry and slippery in one of her last femme fatale roles before Gentlemen Prefer Blondes showed the world Marilyn’s funny side. 20th Century-Fox’s head honcho, Darryl F. Zanuck, wasn’t exactly Marilyn’s biggest fan. In the intro to the most recent TCM airing of Niagara, Robert Osborne reported that Zanuck felt she had no class, and that gals like her were a dime a dozen. What a dope! But the Marilyn Buzz was stronger and louder than Niagara Falls itself, so she got the upper hand; good for her! It helped that co-star Joseph Cotten was fond of her, and he was very kind and patient with Marilyn’s frequent tardiness. More importantly, Cotten recognized Ms. Monroe’s earnest determination to prove she wasn’t some here-today-gone-tomorrow type. Heck, after I learned all this, I was doubly impressed with Marilyn’s powerhouse performance, considering director Hathaway had a reputation as a tough taskmaster (see my blog post about The Dark Corner). Fun Fact: Niagara’s assistant director was Gerd Oswald, who went on to the TV series The Outer Limits.

Dangerous when wet! (Or dry, for that matter!)

Despite the happy cliché of Niagara Falls being a honeymooners’ paradise, Niagara The Movie is moody from the start as edgy George Loomis (Cotten) wanders around the Canadian side of the falls at dawn, feeling insignificant. He’s a war veteran freshly released from an Army hospital, where he was treated for PTSD, or as they called it back then, “battle fatigue.” He’s also got a gorgeous young sexpot wife, Rose (Monroe), so you’d think George’s life isn’t that bad. Ah, but Rose has thorns: a secret lover (Richard Allan, a tasty piece of eye candy) and a plot to kill George and make it look like suicide. In fact, Lover Boy is so secret that we never actually hear his name! For the record, old newspapers I checked on the Internet identified Richard Allan’s character as, variously, “Patrick” and “Ted Patrick.” In any case, George may not be the most stable guy, but I found myself feeling kinda sorry for him. This is why it’s so important to get to know someone before you get married (as Audrey Hepburn learns the hard way in Charade)!

Rose, you naughty girl, don’t smoke in bed! (How does she keep her glossy fire-engine red lipstick from smearing the sheets?)

Fate brings the Loomises together with Polly and Ray Cutler (Jean Peters and Casey Adams, a.k.a. actor/composer Max Showalter from Sixteen Candles, among others). Polly and Ray are at the falls for their late honeymoon, long delayed by eager-beaver Ray’s demanding job as a cereal executive. Ray brings his Winston Churchill book with him (he’s a regular Lance Romance, that Ray), but he promises Polly that “It’ll be as good as a regular honeymoon.” “It should be better,” Polly replies teasingly. “I’ve got my union card now.” They laugh and snuggle, and that’s one of the few happy moments Polly and Ray have together before the Loomises make their honeymoon into a living hell.

Loving a wily vixen like Rose would give any guy a headache!

*SMASH!* "Uh, sorry; can't stand that darn
'I gave my love a cherry' song!"

Things get creepy, starting with small, mild inconveniences, like our lovebirds settling for a cabin with a so-so view because Rose and the unwell George are still in the cabin Polly and Ray were supposed to have. While the Cutlers enjoy their tour of the falls, Polly spies Rose making out with her hunky hottie. At an outdoor party that evening, Polly almost misses a romantic moment watching the falls’ light show with Ray because she’s bandaging George’s hand after he cuts himself breaking Rose’s favorite romantic record in a rage. For her part, Rose just sits there and smirks. (It reminded me of the toga party scene in Animal House when, out of nowhere, John Belushi busts up folkie Stephen Bishop’s guitar, then gives it back to him with a deadpan “Sorry.”) Our sympathetic honeymooners get fed-up as they’re reluctantly pulled deeper into the Loomises’ problems, not realizing wily Rose is setting them up as witnesses to George’s increasingly shaky mental state, all the better to make his eventual death look like suicide. Like that’s not enough, Ray’s ridiculously jolly boss, Mr. Kettering (Don Wilson, from Jack Benny’s various shows) and his wife (Lurene Tuttle from Psycho and oodles of TV shows) show up, eager to sightsee with the Cutlers and schmooze with Ray about giving him a raise because of his prize-winning shredded wheat promotion idea, turning the honeymoon into a busman’s holiday. Oy!
By now, Polly and Ray have been through the wringer because of those loony Loomises, so even though Ray can be a chucklehead at times, I had to smile and sympathize with him being, to quote the High Noon theme song, “torn ’twixt love and duty,” sincerely wanting to take care of his distraught bride, yet reluctant to nix an opportunity to score a raise that would improve their life together in myriad ways. If the 1953 economy was anything like today’s economy, I can’t blame Polly for agreeing to include face time with the boss as part of their honeymoon itinerary! Peters and Adams make an appealing couple, sweet with a nice touch of insouciant playfulness. The peripatetic Ray clearly means well and loves Polly. Heck, he doesn’t even show any serious lust for the luscious Rose; he just makes good-natured wisecracks about her to Polly, and vice-versa. For that matter, I liked how Polly never acted catty or jealous around Rose. Now that’s self-confidence! As the calculating, manipulative Rose, Monroe smolders like nobody’s business, driving the fellas mad with her careless come-hither air and her curves in, as George grouses, a dress “cut down so low in front, you can see her kneecaps.” Monroe even gets to sing “Kiss” (no, not the Prince song), the lushly romantic tune that Rose and her secret sweetie like so much. It’ll come back to haunt her later, but I don’t want to give away the nifty twists! I’ll only say that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to call the bell tower scene his own. Admittedly, considering Hitchcock’s particular taste in female stars, I imagine Hitch would have picked a cooler, more subtle blonde than our Marilyn, dazzling though she is; I suspect Hitch would have considered Marilyn’s Rose Loomis to be more the Judy Barton type than the Madeleine Elster type . After the bell tower scene, the film almost literally drifts into Perils of Pauline territory, but by then I cared enough about the characters to stick around and see how it all worked out.

"Goody! My evil plan is working beautifully!"

Hot make-up sex with Rose? No wonder George is happy!

Cotten is at once terrifying and heartbreaking as Rose’s emotionally scarred fool for love/lust, a hard-luck guy who can’t seem to get out of his own way. We learn a lot about Rose and George’s relationship in little scenes and throwaway lines, like George admitting to Polly and Ray that he re-enlisted in the Army to show Rose he was still just as capable as any young stud. Then there’s the couple’s short-lived jubilance the day after that literally record-breaking fight. The Loomises laugh and kiss, with Rose under the covers in bed and George on top of her with the blanket between them (this was the 1950s, after all), talking about all the fun they’ll have when they hit Chicago. “Georgie, this is quite a change,” Rose purrs. “What brought this on?” George smiles at her. “You know what.” He gives her a long kiss. “When we have a fight and make up that way, I never want to leave your side.” Ooh, hot make-up sex — a little daring for a mainstream studio film of that era, no? All told, Niagara is good, dark, tawdry fun. By the way, keep an eye out for the uncredited Sean McClory of The Quiet Man fame (and many other movie and TV appearances) as Denis O’Dea’s right-hand man at the police station.

Hi, remember us, Jean Peters and Casey Adams, Marilyn and Joe's co-stars?

Wonder if Rose’s hunky hottie gets style tips from Bruno Antony?


Wonder if Rose gets her style tips from Marlene Dietrich?

What's the matter, Rose? Don't you like that song?

Bells are ringing for me and my MURDER!

"Uh, Georgie, let's not be hasty...c'mon, I'll sing you 'Happy Birthday'!"

"'Rest and relaxation, my foot! Come on, Polly, we're spending our
delayed honeymoon in Disney World! And no shredded wheat, I promise!"

THE BIG SLEEP-OVER! Retooling a Good Bogart Film Into a Great One

2011-12-23T18:43:00.017-05:00

This review is part of the Humphrey Bogart blogathon hosted by Meredith. The Blogathon runs from December 23rd through December 25th, 2011. By all means, please leave comments for one and all! :-)

Thanks to talented blogger Meredith of Forever Classics and her terrific blogathon saluting the one and only Humphrey Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), we have back-to-back Raymond Chandler film adaptation posts here at TotED: last week’s Lady in the Lake, and now my entry in the Humphrey Bogart Blogathon, in honor of what would have been the great man’s 112th birthday: The Big Sleep (TBS)

Raymond Chandler by Rick Geary

Ah, Howard Hawks! Was there any genre he couldn’t tackle with what seemed to be the greatest of ease? And with all due respect to Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, Robert Mitchum, and James Garner (I haven’t had a chance to catch up with George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon yet), was there ever a more perfect cinematic portrayal of Raymond Chandler’s private investigator hero Philip Marlowe than Humphrey Bogart in TBS? Or a more perfect leading lady for him than Lauren Bacall, playing Vivian Sternwood, who in 1945 happily became Mrs. Bogart for the rest of Bogie’s life? Admittedly, the kind of perfection I mean has nothing to do with such trifles as linear, crystal-clear plotting. (Clarity? We don’t need no stinkin’ clarity!) No, the elements that made the 1946 film version of TBS such a perfect entertainment include Hawks’ zesty direction; the film’s great cast, including those sleek, smart, sassy Hawks women, almost all of whom try to seduce him to one degree or another (I want to be a Howard Hawks kind of woman when I grow up!); and the tangy, moody yet cheeky atmosphere that Hawks and his screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett (as far as I’m concerned, she’s a Hawks kind of woman, too), and Jules Furthman created with sharp dialogue, humor, and suspense. The memorable characters Marlowe meets along the way range from colorful lowlifes to people of integrity staring down corruption and destruction. In my opinion, TBS is one of the most perfect thrillers about decidedly imperfect people in big trouble!

"Build a greenhouse, reduce your carbon footprint," they said.
I shoulda called Nero Wolfe; he knows orchids!

Marlowe knows reading is
fun, manly, and sexy!

TBS opens with the famous greenhouse scene, where Marlowe meets his wealthy new client, General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), an elderly, ailing, wheelchair-bound widower who describes himself thus: “You are looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life.” General Sternwood wants Marlowe to help him keep an eye on Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), the youngest and wildest of the two beautiful young Sternwood sisters, who’s being blackmailed over gambling debts. While Marlowe is at it, the General also wants him to see if he can find his friend Sean Regan, who Marlowe knew back in their rum-running days in Mexico: “I (Marlowe) was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.” Sternwood has come to regard Sean as the son he never had. Sean, usually the family enforcer, always took care of anyone who tried to make trouble for the Sternwoods. However, Sean apparently drove off about a month ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. It’s clear that Sternwood misses him terribly, which touched my heart and got my suspicions aroused. Marlowe agrees to take the case.


Oh, baby! What guy wouldn't want to try weaning Carmen Sternwood?

Carmen is the kind of sexy, spoiled flirt who can’t say no, and won’t take no for an answer, either. She’s not shy about approaching men; in fact, Carmen gets to the point pronto when she meets Marlowe, deliberately falling into his arms—lucky for her that Marlowe’s a good catcher! Still, Marlowe makes it clear she’s not his baby as he tells butler Norris (Charles D. Brown, who makes a great straight-faced foil for Marlowe), “You ought to wean her. She’s old enough.” Between Carmen’s bedroom eyes and her gambling debts, is it any wonder she keeps getting herself into more hot water than a tea bag factory? But this time, Carmen gets in a jam it won’t be easy to get out of: Marlowe tails her to the home of book dealer and blackmailer Arthur Gwynn Geiger (the uncredited Theodore Von Eltz), only to find Geiger murdered and Carmen in a dazed, giggling stupor. Even worse, the Asian statue in Geiger’s house has a hidden film camera inside, and somebody’s already made off with the photographic evidence. Soon Marlowe is up to his fedora in colorful and dangerous characters, including gambler/gangster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), whose wife supposedly ran off with the missing Sean. By all accounts, Mrs. Mars isn’t the kind of wife a guy wants to lose, so what’s up with that? (Fun Fact: According to the TCM Web site, Eddie’s henchmen Sid and Pete were named for Bogart’s frequent co-stars and off-screen pals Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.)

“So, shamus, how’re the Falcons doing this season?”

The strong, spirited, beautiful women in any Hawks film are always worth watching. TBS provides a veritable smorgasbord of fabulous females, all rushing in and out of the story like it was Grand Central Terminal at rush hour! One of my favorites was a young, pre-Oscar (for Written on the Wind) Dorothy Malone, proving guys do make passes at girls who wear glasses, especially when they let their hair down. Then there’s the uncredited but nevertheless captivating Sonia Darrin as Agnes Lowzier, another sulky, gorgeous, dangerous dame who may not get tons of screen time, but what she gets is, as Spencer Tracy would say, “cherce.” Agnes’ fool for love, Harry Jones, is played by Elisha Cook Jr. and he almost steals the show when he puts himself on the line for Agnes. The sacrifice that “Jonesy” makes on Agnes’ behalf really made me feel for the little guy.

“That does it! No more sleepovers
for you, young lady!”

I’ve always liked General Sternwood, and how he calls a spade a spade (not to be confused with Dashiell Hammett’s detective Sam Spade, another iconic Bogart character). Indeed, I like the way Sternwood and Marlowe get along immediately, with their “insubordination” in common. Like so many parents, Sternwood has trouble keeping his two gorgeous young daughters out of trouble; as Marlowe says, “Both pretty, and both pretty wild.” Still, I’d say that even with her penchant for gambling, Vivian is the soul of sensibility and practicality compared to out-of-control Carmen. This isn’t the first time she’s been blackmailed, either; oy, some kids never learn! To further complicate matters, Marlowe and Vivian are starting to fall for each other. Even so, the clever, loyal Vivian makes it clear to Marlowe that she’ll stop at nothing to protect her sister and father as, separately and together, they work to solve this dizzy, violent, but gleefully entertaining mystery.

That's some bad hat, Baby! No wonder Bacall
shed the chapeau in the retakes!

Between Vivian and Mrs. Mars, Marlowe's fit to be tied!

Like The Boy Scouts, Marlowe is always prepared!

Love is like an itching on Viv’s knee, and baby, she can’t scratch it!

Here's looking at you, Baby!

"Baby, you're the greatest!"

If you’re a stickler for clear, linear plotting, don’t look for it in TBS, or any other Chandler novel based on one. Chandler’s strengths are in his witty, sardonic dialogue, his memorable characters, and the moody atmosphere he weaves with words. The ever-versatile Hawks evokes this atmosphere with his great cast and production values, including Max Steiner’s score combining suspense and playfulness, working beautifully with the delightfully insolent banter between Bogart and Bacall. In both TBS and Lady in the Lake (indeed, in almost all Chandler/Marlowe movies to one degree or another), at some point Marlowe gets fed up with the leading lady playing it cagey, and he almost always takes her to task, whereupon she hotly responds with a line like, “People don’t talk to me like that!” I always think of these scenes as “The Taming of the Hottie,” because here as in other Chandler/Marlowe movies, Marlowe and the heroine each give as good as they get. It’s especially fun in TBS with the evenly-matched Marlowe and Vivian. Hawks’ leading ladies always have (or quickly develop) spunk to go with their sexiness and strength! Hawks’ films had a reputation of being fun to make, and TBS was no exception. According to Lauren Bacall in her memoir By Myself, Hawks and company got a memo from studio head Jack Warner: “Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop.” No word on whether or not anyone did so (my money’s on “no”)!

Vivian sure can sling those obligatos on "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine"!

Although TBS was actually completed and in the can by March 1945, Warner Bros. sat on it for about a year and a half. Robert Gitt, the Preservation Officer at UCLA Film and Television Archives, explains it all in the DVD’s Special Features. For starters, World War 2 was ending around that time, and movie studios were scrambling to get their remaining war movies into theaters before they started to feel dated; as a result, Warner Bros figured their detective thriller could wait for the nonce. But even more importantly, despite Lauren Bacall’s star-making role in To Have and Have Not, the movie that had brought her and Bogart together, her star was plummeting after her dreadful reviews as an upper-class Brit in the 1945 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Confidential Agent. In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther didn’t sugarcoat poor miscast Bacall’s performance: “The noise she makes in this picture is that of a bubble going ‘poof!’” Ouch!

Happily, a knight in executive’s shining armor saved the film and Bacall’s career: Charles K. Feldman, the producer who also brought us 1967’s wild-and-crazy comedy version of Casino Royale. Feldman was Howard Hawks’ production partner, and his confidential advice really turned things around for TBS. In addition to shuffling some scenes and eliminating others, Feldman implemented other suggestions which really made the magic happen for the new-and-improved 1946 version:

1.) Bacall wore a none-too-flattering veil in the 1945 version. What was the costume department thinking? Moviegoers wanted see Bacall’s beautiful kisser, so they ditched that veil and reshot the scene.
2.) Hawks shot more scenes between Bogart and Bacall, encouraging their sexy, insolent attitudes. To borrow a line from the TBS trailer, audiences loved seeing That Man Bogart and That Woman Bacall that way!
3.) Mrs. Eddie Mars was played by Pat Clark in the 1945 version, but apparently she wasn’t available for re-shoots in 1946. Clark’s footage was scrapped for scrappier Peggy Knudson.

Personally, my perfect version of The Big Sleep would be the 1946 version as is, except that I’d love to put in the D.A. scene from the 1945 version (it’s in the double-sided version of the TBS DVD) to clarify at least that part of the plot! In any case, TBS may not always make sense, but it brims with so much suspense, desire, wit, and riveting personalities that I didn’t mind a bit!

Enjoy the following Big Sleep links from YouTube:

Why, Miss Malone, you’re beautiful!

http://youtu.be/2I_tNbfBZMI

The Big Sleep, Bogart and Bacall and the prank phone call:

http://youtu.be/DwXc4N_10rA

Lauren Bacall sings “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”
http://youtu.be/z11dA7srESo

For more information about the fascinating making of The Big Sleep, check out the TCM Web site:

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/45/The-Big-Sleep/

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to birthday boy Bogart, and Happy Holidays of all kinds to all of you and all you care about from all of us here at Team Bartilucci H.Q.!

Have Yourself an SF-Film Noir Christmas! LADY IN THE LAKE and TRANCERS

2011-12-15T23:22:00.028-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours from Team Bartilucci! When genres collide during the holiday season, you know you’re in for one of our double-feature blog posts. Hope you’ll enjoy them!
Dorian's Pick: Lady in the Lake (1947)

Every P.I. needs leads—Lila Leeds!

Adrienne Fromsett in The Big, Big Phone!

Director /star Robert Montgomery's advice:
Don't look directly into the tomato-cam!

Whaddaya mean, I'm mugging?

In Lady in the Lake (LitL), the durable Robert Montgomery not only played author Raymond Chandler’s tough but noble P.I. Philip Marlowe, he also made his solo directorial debut, having previously helped director John Ford to finish the 1945 war drama They Were Expendable when Ford broke his leg on location. Marlowe draws on his life of detection and crime-fighting to write a short story, “If I Should Die Before I Live.” (“They tell me the profits are good,” Marlowe says dryly. Wow, how can I get in on this gig?) Marlowe submits his work to Kingsby Publications, home of such pulp fiction mags as Lurid Detective and Murder Masterpieces. (Maybe Marlowe can go out to lunch with Walter Mitty and pick up pulp fiction tips!)

Is Marlowe out of his skull to trust Adrienne?


On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Fallbrook knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice!

Before he can say “byline,” editor Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter in her first major leading role after her memorable appearance in The Postman Always Rings Twice) has Marlowe up to his neck in murder, dirty cops, and missing dames, including Chrystal Kingsby (or “Crystal” if you believe the wire from El Paso in Adrienne’s apartment), the wife of Kingsby Publications’ head honcho Derace Kingsby (Leon Ames from The Postman Always Rings Twice, Meet Me in St. Louis, They Were Expendable, and so much more!). To top it off, you can see things Marlowe’s way, literally!

Between LitL and the rueful Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall noir drama Dark Passage, 1947 seemed to be The Year of the Subjective Camera. Before all those slasher movies came along during the last few decades, LitL used the subjective camera treatment; hell, the camera was practically a character in the flick!

Throughout most of LitL, we see everything exactly as Marlowe sees it; the only times we see Marlowe/Montgomery’s mug is when he looks in a mirror, as well as in a brief prologue, an entrè-acte segment, and an epilogue. In the trailer featured on the spiffy DVD version of LitL (along with an enjoyable and informative commentary track by ace film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini), MGM’s publicity department did its best to push the film as the first interactive movie experience: “MGM presents a Revolutionary motion picture; the most amazing since Talkies began! YOU and ROBERT MONTGOMERY solve a murder mystery together! YOU accept an invitation to a blonde’s apartment! YOU get socked in the jaw by a murder suspect!”

YOU occasionally start snickering in spite of yourself when the subjective camera gimmick teeters dangerously close to parodying itself, like when Adrienne moves in for a smooch with Our Hero The Camera. As Totter’s Adrienne spars verbally with Marlowe in the first half of the film, some of her facial expressions are pretty funny, too, though I’m not sure all of them were meant to be. Totter uses the arched eyebrow technique done so much more effectively later by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek; Angela Lindvall in CQ, Roman Coppola’s affectionate salute to 1960s pop art films; Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; and one of Team Bartilucci’s favorites, sexy Eunice Gayson from the early James Bond thrillers Dr. No and From Russia with Love.

Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, a gigolo? Say it ain't so!

The mirror has one face and a beautiful babe!

Adrienne gets close-up and personal
with Marlowe

In fairness to Totter, she and the cast and crew had a challenge on their hands, considering they all pretty much had to re-learn how to act in front of the camera for LitL. As Jeff Stafford wrote in his article on the TCM Web site, “A good deal of the budget went toward elaborate camera set-ups and breakaway sets. ‘The real challenge was the filming itself,’ Montgomery told writer John Tuska in his book, The Detective in Hollywood. ‘We had to do a lot of rehearsing. Actors are trained not to look at the camera. I had to overcome all that training. I had a basket installed under the camera and sat there so that, at least, the actors could respond to me, even if they couldn’t look directly at me.’”

"DeGarmot, it's times like this that
I wish I was back on the U.S.S. Caine!"

"I wish my sister Audrey was here!

Having said that, I felt that the subjective camera technique in LitL worked more often than not. In particular, I thought the fight scenes and a harrowing sequence where an injured Marlowe crawls out of his wrecked car worked beautifully. It helps that Steve Fisher provided a good solid screenplay for Chandler’s novel, though Chandler purists were annoyed and disappointed that the novel’s pivotal Little Fawn Lake sequence was relegated to a speech in the recap scene in the middle. Apparently, Montgomery and company tried to film that scene on location, but the subjective camera treatment proved harder to do in the great outdoors back then, so they gave up. I’d love to see how today’s filmmakers would do it, with all the different equipment and resources available! I also liked David Snell’s music (with an assist by an uncredited Maurice Goldman), and the way he made the Christmas background music sound increasingly foreboding. According to the IMDb, Goldman said, “I never got credit for being the composer of the choral score for Lady in the Lake. In those days, young, unknown composers who were hoping for a career writing film scores got their foot in the door by letting someone else take credit for their work. We had to agree, as long as we received some musical credit for our part in the film’s music.”

However you feel about the subjective camera approach, all the performances are top-notch, including supporting players Tom Tully (Oscar-nominee for The Caine Mutiny) as honest cop Captain Fergus X. Kane; Lloyd Nolan in one of his best performances as Lt. DeGarmot, a conniving cop who knows more than he’s telling; Dick Simmons as smooth, sly gigolo Chris Lavery, who went on to be the star of TV's Sgt. Preston of the Yukon; and an intense dramatic turn by young Jayne Meadows SPOILER ALERT…who essentially plays three characters!...END SPOILER ALERT. I also love the little throwaway bits here and there, like Kingsby Publications' charmingly distracting receptionist (Lila Leeds, who gained some notoriety after being busted for marijuana possession with Robert Mitchum), the phone chat Marlowe overhears in the Press Room (“Palm Springs? What’s the matter with Anaheim?”); the coroner’s mild disappointment when he’s told that the corpse in question, Lavery, is a man; and my favorite, Captain Kane’s phone conversation with his wife and child as he prepares to play Santa Claus for his “little dumplin’ darlin’” on Christmas Eve. Montgomery’s sardonic snap mostly works well for cynical Marlowe, though he sometimes forgets to tone it down during tender dialogue with Adrienne, making him sound like cinema’s crankiest Marlowe! Totter eventually tones down her mugging and becomes genuinely affecting as her Adrienne, after trying to be “the bright, hard lady,” lets down her guard and her hair (almost literally), with love growing between Marlowe and Adrienne at last. You may love or hate this Lady..., but if you enjoy Chandler’s mysteries and film noir in general, and you’re intrigued by offbeat movie-making techniques, I urge you to give her a try! Don’t forget to watch it on TCM on Friday, December 23rd at 10:00 p.m. EST

YOU play detective with cinema's crankiest Philip Marlowe!
(And play house at Christmas with Audrey Totter!)

Vinnie's Pick: Trancers (1985)

"Mommy, that man shot Santa Claus!"

There are Christmas movies and there are Christmas movies. Some movies are about Christmas itself, and usually involve a young child helping someone regain the spirit of Christmas; usually a relative, or if you're really lucky, a bear or an alien or something. Then there are the films that merely happen AT Christmas, which are usually more fun as they become holiday perennials almost by accident, much in the same way that the classic and controversial song "Baby it's Cold Outside" has become a de facto Christmas song, presumably because it involves snow.
Trancers is one of the latter. It takes place in Los Angeles at Christmastime, which means you wouldn't be able to tell at all save for the occasional holiday greeting, the punk band singing "Jingle Balls" and the zombie Santa trying to kill our hero with a set of mounted reindeer antlers. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is a policeman in the 23rd century of Angel City, a city built after The Great Quake sank most of California into the ocean. After losing his wife to psychic cult leader Martin Whistler, he dedicates his life to bringing Whistler down, as well as his near-zombie mind slaves, known as Trancers. When Trancers are killed, the promptly disintegrate, leaving behind nothing but a scorch mark on the floor, hence the term for their execution; being "singed". The film starts off seeming to be an...oh, let's go with "homage" of Blade Runner, but very quickly reveals itself to be more of a Terminator pastiche. Whistler is revealed to be alive, surviving his last battle with Deth and has escaped into the past, planning to kill the ancestors of the city's High Council. He's already destroyed one of the three when Jack is called in to go after Whistler.

"Nice tan, squid...very Christmassy."

They have interesting time-travel rules in the film - they can send back small inanimate objects, but not people. Instead, one takes a drug which sends you back "down the line" into one of your genetic ancestors. They'll watch over his body in the future, along with that of Whistler, who they found in a secret hideout in the desert, having already escaped down the line. The plan is to capture Whistler and return him to their time so he can be tried. Jack offers another plan - he singes Whistler's body, making sure that when he finds him, there'll be no coming back for the madman.

They send Jack back to 1985, where his ancestor is a journalist, and Whistler's is a high-profile police detective. Jack arrives after what was apparently a very successful one-night stand with Lena (Helen Hunt), who he drives to work at a local mall, where she's a photographer for the Santa Claus booth. Whistler has apparently been quite busy amassing an army of Trancers - when they enter the mall, Santa recognizes Jack and attempts to kill him, resulting in a exciting yet hilarious battle in Santa's workshop. Jack ends up shooting Jolly Old Saint Nick and runs off with Lena, to whom he hastily explains his situation.
His job is relatively simple - protect the ancestors of the remaining council members. Well, simple unless you count the fact that all he has to go on is a photo of one, a baseball card of the other, a gun (with two doses of the time-drug antidote in the handgrip) and a funky watch that slows time for a few seconds, and Whistler has the LAPD at his command, and a growing army of Trancers. Indeed, by the time Deth catches up with one of the Council's great-times-your-age-grand-father, he's already been Tranced. They track down the last remaining ancestor, former baseball player and now drunken Sterno-bum Hap Ashby.

Who wouldn't want young Helen Hunt under the mistletoe?

As pleasant as Helen Hunt is to look at (especially at this age...woo), this film, indeed the entire series rises and falls at the awesome charisma of Tim Thomerson. A solid stand-up comic and busy character actor, he plays Jack Deth like an old-school street P.I. -- no surprise when he starts surfing the channels of 1985 he becomes enamored of Peter Gunn reruns. It's a shame he never got the same level of Geek fame as a Bruce Campbell. It's likely the folks they got to work with -- Bruce partnered with Sam Raimi who has gone on to do great things, and Tim never really advanced past the mid-low budget of Band and New Moon.
The plot is solid, and pretty original, with moments of great dialogue. The film is played fairly straight until the first After being saved from nearly being roasted alive in a turned-up-to-11 tanning booth, Jack's first words as he comes to is "How's my tan?" You know things are gonna be fun shortly after the fight in the mall starts and Mrs. Claus calls security with an ominous "There's trouble at the North Pole". It's hard to ride the balance between a straight sci-fi film with moments of comedy and an out-and-out parody, but they do it well here. The film also features Telma Hopkins, half of Tony Orlando's Dawn who built up a solid acting resume in the '80s and '90s and well-recognized "That Guy!' character actor Art LaFleur.

First appearing at Charles Band's Empire Pictures and the franchise moving with him to New Moon, they made 5 Trancers films, two of which written by talented comics and sci-fi writer Peter David. One of the most successful series they had, along with the Puppet Master series, they tried to make a new film a few years back, but without Thomerson, and suffered a deserved failure. As is true of a lot of the low-budget horror flicks, if you don't blink you'll see people who went on to really be somebody. Look in the credits, down in the art team, you'll find one Frank Darabont.

The first two films are on Netflix Instant, and are well worth your time. The last film's for squids.

HIS KIND OF WOMAN: Face the Music!

2011-12-09T16:22:00.007-05:00

Ever see a movie that seems like a typical genre flick, but as you watch it, you realize it’s got a mind of its own, and it’s so wild and crazy and all-but-off-the rails that you can’t help loving it? Well, the 1951 RKO comedy-noir His Kind of Woman (HKoW) is my kind of movie! John Farrow (The Big Clock, Wake Island, and Hondo, among many others) gets the directing credit, though Richard Fleischer was responsible for considerable tweaking—re-shoots, even! Lots of writers involved, too, including Frank Fenton and Jack Leonard, with Gerald Drayson Adams’ original story getting credit as well. Seems like everyone gets a little credit here!

In HKoW, Robert Mitchum is at his so-hot-he’s-cool, bedroom-eyed best as Dan Milner, a rambler and a gambler, literally. Dan’s easy to like; how can you not trust a guy who sticks with milk or ginger ale instead of booze? (Of course, it’s implied that Dan has gotten in trouble with liquor in the past, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.) Dan is the kind of likable lug who really should get in the habit of looking before leaping. He seems to have been pretty successful at making a living from gambling (wish Dan was a real guy who could’ve given my late dad pointers), but Lady Luck hasn’t been returning his calls lately (dames—sheesh!). Dan has a funny feeling there’s more to his recent string of nigh-Kafkaesque mishaps than cold dice, especially when he’s accosted by a couple of smooth-talking, suit-clad jaspers: Corley (the uncredited Paul Frees, whose voice is well known to Team Bartilucci from both animated and live-action films, including another RKO classic, The Thing from Another World) and Thompson (Charles McGraw from The Narrow Margin and The Killers, who also narrates the film in early scenes). Corley and Thompson offer Dan a cool fifty grand to go to The Morros Lodge, a fabulous Mexican resort (filmed in Baja California) and await further instructions, no questions asked (well, few questions, anyway). Dan’s not entirely comfortable with the arrangement, but he sure can use the dough. Wonder if Dan’s ever heard a little story about a Trojan horse….?

Dan rubs Lenore the right way!

While waiting for his plane to Mexico, tough guy Dan is smitten in spite of himself when he meets the lovely, sassy, ostensibly rich Lenore Brent (Jane Russell). She’s waiting, too, passing the time by displaying her great pipes, among her other charms (producer Howard Hughes never missed an opportunity to showcase the ravishing Russell’s pulchritude). I always enjoy hearing Jane Russell sing; she has a nice snappy way with a song, and she’s both sultry and jaunty as she sings “Five Little Miles from San Berdoo” and the torchy “You’ll Know.” Despite their characters’ mutual cat-and-mouse routine, you can see the electricity crackling between Russell and Mitchum. There they are, sexy and playful as all get-out, and nobody’s naked (though they sometimes come close, at least by late 1940s/early 1950s standards)! By all accounts, Mitchum and Russell were good friends offscreen, and only friends. (In fact, after Mitchum’s death in 1997, Russell and Mitchum’s wife Dorothy scattered his ashes at sea.)

With that hat, Lenore can't help bewitching Dan!

Back at the ranch, er, lodge, the fun in the sun apparently includes role-playing games as well, because each vacationer Dan meets at this gorgeous resort seems to be trying to be someone else! Lenore may or may not be an heiress, and her real name may or may not be Liz Brady; Bill Lusk (Tim Holt of The Magnificent Ambersons and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) might be a drunken tourist, or he might be a wily Fed. Myron Winton (Jim Backus, whose many roles included Rebel Without A Cause and TV’s Gilligan’s Island, not to mention the voice of Mr. Magoo) is a businessman who turns out to be a card sharp, or maybe just a plain old cheater. Then there’s mysterious author Martin Kraft (John Mylong) who only seems interested in playing chess with himself (“Maybe he hates to lose,” Dan suggests).

"Who's the rat saying I look like David O. Selznick?"

I also like that Dan is basically a decent guy with a kind heart underneath his sleepy-eyed shrewdness, like when he helps the young newlywed couple win their money back from sneaky so-and-so Winton. Maybe that’s why Lusk finally ditches his lush routine and reveals to Dan that he’s an immigration officer pursuing underworld kingpin Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr in one of his juiciest over-the-top bad-guy roles before Perry Mason made him a TV star). Turns out the only thing Kraft writes is prescriptions: he’s really a plastic surgeon who was himself deported, like Nick. Seems Dan’s role in all this is the ultimate face-off: the doc’s supposed to put Dan’s face on the evil Nick so he can sneak back into the U.S., after which Nick and his boys will bump Dan off so Nick can keep his secret! Yikes!

Dan's snooping has the blinds leading the blinds!

I’ll admit the mix of film noir suspense and zany comedy gets a bit lopsided at times, but I was so caught up in HKoW that it seemed churlish to quibble! I liked the nice background details, too, like the sarcastic radio announcer ragging on Ferraro. Lots of our favorite uncredited supporting players and bit players are in HKoW, too, such as Mamie Van Doren, Robert Cornthwaite (clean-shaven and almost unrecognizable from his role as the exhausted, going-mad scientist in The Thing from Another World), and Anthony Caruso (The Asphalt Jungle, among others) as one of Nick’s vicious strong-arm boys. On a related note, it’s interesting to see the difference between early 1950s and 21st-century beefcake. As I said in my I Wake up Screaming post, today’s muscular hunks are so ridiculously ripped, you'd cut yourself if you touched them!

Dan and Mark saved Lenore the balcony seats!

Ironically, one of the most sincere characters in HKoW is Vincent Price’s character, the flamboyant movie star Mark Cardigan. He thinks he’s gonna run off with his mistress Lenore. Surprise! Wifey Helen (Marjorie Reynolds of Ministry of Fear) shows up, with her attorney in tow. Price is clearly having a blast, and I don’t just mean with his hunting rifle! Even with Mark’s goofy airs, he saves the day, bless him (with a few hilarious fits and starts along the way). Every cast member is great fun to watch, though there’s no denying that Price steals the show as Mark. He basks in the spotlight and he’s a big ham, but a tasty one. Even better, Mark truly puts his money where his Shakespeare-trained mouth is when Dan’s in danger. The scene where Mark tries to squeeze every volunteer at the resort into the boat to rescue Dan is laugh-out-loud funny!

Got a gambling problem? Don't call these guys!

Over at the TCM Web site, Price wrote that Mitchum was “heaven to work with...one of those diamond in the rough types in whose character you can’t find any sort of holes because he’s so open and honest...He’s a complete anachronism. He claims he doesn’t care about acting, but he’s an extraordinary actor. He’s one of that group of people in Hollywood who are such extraordinary personalities that people forget they’re marvelous actors.” Moreover, Mitchum was generous on the set, treating about twenty members of the cast and crew to lunch in his bungalow every day, and “on several occasions when he realized his stand-in had had a rough night, he stood in for the stand-in.” Don’t you love it when actors you like turn out to be decent folks, too?

"Don't you picturesquely pass out on me when I'm trying to torment you, young man!"

"Here's looking at you, Dan!"

"I'll pass, Nick, thanks anyway."

Profiles in hotness!

Dan and Lenore have their love to keep them warm! (Artificial fur optional.)

Our own Ivan G. Shreve of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear also did a wonderful blog post earlier this year about His Kind of Woman, with special emphasis on Vincent Price; by all means, read it and enjoy!

http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2011/05/alas-why-must-i-be-plagued-by-yammering.html

More fun and clips from TCM here:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/336625/His-Kind-Of-Woman-Movie-Clip-You-re-Being-Paged.html

"I tell you, Dan, I was THISCLOSE to having that Sierra Madre treasure...."

THE FALLEN SPARROW: Surrender to Dorothy!

2011-12-02T12:42:00.016-05:00

Before we begin, here's a NEWS FLASH for folks playing Page's Six Degrees of Separation game: our awesome fellow blogger Monty of All Good Things passed the baton to me, since the next Six Degrees involved linking Gert Frobe to Goldie Hawn. To my surprise, I got it in one stroke: Frobe and Goldie Hawn were both in the 1971 caper comedy "$" (a.k.a. Dollars). So I picked Myrna Loy and Danny Kaye for the next challenge for awesome fellow blogger Lara from Backlots. Thanks!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Author Dorothy B. Hughes

And now for our feature presentation, the subject of this week’s blog post, the 1943 film version of Hughes’ paranoid wartime thriller The Fallen Sparrow (TFS)! Novelist Dorothy B. Hughes knew how to build a good head of paranoia and suspense in her novels. No wonder Hollywood knocked on her door after her first novel, The So Blue Marble (1940), became a best-seller! Three of Hughes’ 15 suspense thrillers were made into classic movies, including In a Lonely Place in 1950; Ride the Pink Horse in 1947; and of course, TFS. RKO skillfully and faithfully adapted Hughes’ novel for the silver screen. Director Richard Wallace (this versatile director’s wide variety of films included Captain Caution, Framed, and It’s in the Bag!), screenwriter Warren Duff, and editor Robert Wise had their hands full trying to condense the novel’s complicated relationships and events without watering it down. Hughes’ thrillers were brilliant, with memorable characters, but her plots are also quite complex, keeping readers on their toes as well as on the edge of their seats. It was worth it; all concerned did a masterful job of bringing TFS to the big screen!

Don't you love film/book tie-ins?

Set in November 1940, TFS starts with the quote “...in a world at war many sparrows must fall....” The film brings us into the mindset of troubled yet determined hero John “Kit” McKittrick (John Garfield). Lt. Louie Lepetino, Kit’s boyhood friend, had helped him escape the Spanish prison where he’d been tortured for two agonizing years after the Spanish Civil War. Returning to New York City from a ranch rest cure, Kit’s stunned to discover that Louie’s been killed in a 12-story fall from a window at a swanky party for two wartime refugees, Dr. Skaas (Walter Slezak) and his nephew Otto (Hugh Beaumont before his TV stardom on Leave it to Beaver). Hell-bent on proving Louie’s death was neither accidental nor a suicide, Kit starts sleuthing, with help from pal Ab Parker (the likable Bruce Edwards, who earned his first film credit in TFS after many uncredited roles). Kit’s grim goal: killing Louie’s killer.

Does that look like the
French Connection movie ad, or what?

Hughes sure knew how to grip a reader with suspense while evoking the feeling and atmosphere of wintertime World War 2 Manhattan, even if some of her turns of phrase (such as a reference to one character’s “wrathy eyes”) looked a little odd to this modern reader. Her portrait of the era’s upscale café society characters and their milieu is presented with both glamour and bitterness as seen through war veteran Kit’s eyes. His viewpoint is especially intriguing because, it’s indicated, he’s had trouble fitting in for some time, having been raised in a working class environment only to be shoehorned into the glamorous life when his policeman dad came into money, which only turned into more money when his mother became a widow and married into the upper crust. When I first watched the movie version, I was glad to see the film got that right.

"Dear Louie: I'm out of my hed. O hurry or I may be ded...."

FF #1 Barby Taviton: rich, hot refugee den mother

Kit’s suspects include just about everyone in his upscale circle of friends, especially the women, since he’s gotten it into his head that surely only a dame could’ve gotten close enough to Louie to shove him out a window. The trio of gorgeous suspects include:

FF #2: Whitney Parker, The "Content Imp"

Femme Fatale Candidate #1: Patricia Morison as Kit’s alluring old flame Barby Taviton. Stunning brunette Morison may not look like the blonde Barby described in Hughes’s novel, but she’s got the right sophistication and entitled attitude. Ironically, Morison’s many films included The Song of Bernadette and Song of the Thin Man, but she never sings in TFS! That honor went to:

Femme Fatale Candidate #2: Martha O’Driscoll as Whitney Parker, Ab’s young chanteuse cousin, affectionately nicknamed “The Imp.” The appealing O’Driscoll got plenty of work in the 1940s, including roles in Reap the Wild Wind and The Lady Eve, as well as playing Daisy Mae in the first film version of Li’l Abner from 1940. By the way, Whitney’s name was actually “Content Hamilton” in Hughes’ novel (she was the one with the aforementioned “wrathy eyes”), but I prefer Whitney’s new movie-friendly name. I must admit that as I read the book, my eyes kept tripping over the name “Content”! For all I know, “Content” might have been a popular name for girls back in the early 1930s and ’40s, but to my 21st-century eyes, reading “Content” as a person’s first name looked odd, yanking me out of the story several times before I finally resigned myself to it.

FF #3: Mysterious refugee Toni Donne. God bless America!

Femme Fatale Candidate #3: Team Bartilucci favorite Maureen O’Hara as lovely, guarded, sad-eyed refugee Toni Donne, who’s falling in love with Kit despite her wariness (admittedly, Kit's a convincing, persistent fella), but there’s some terrible hold over her. O’Hara’s performance is a big change from the fiery, strong-willed redhead we all know and love from The Quiet Man and so many other great films. Somehow I think Toni and House of Cards’ Anne de Villemont should get together and start a support group for women in sinister neo-Gothic households!

At least Kit doesn't have to sit with Bruno Antony!

But Kit’s biggest obstacle is that he has what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He’s still haunted by the memory of the mysterious man from Franco’s elite Nazi squad, a limping man (called “Wobblefoot” in the novel; in the film, he’s simply “The man who limps”) who tortured Kit relentlessly in his dark cell, trying to make our troubled but determined hero reveal where he’d hidden his regiment’s battle standard. (In the novel, the MacGuffin was a set of fabulous Babylon goblets the defiant Kit took from the enemy. The goblets are in the film, but Duff’s script emphasizes that battle flag and the symbolism behind it.) Even now, Kit struggles against fear as he imagines hearing the drag and thump that signaled his sadistic tormentor’s arrival—or is he imagining it? Terror mounts as Kit slowly realizes his enemies may have followed him home, maybe even planting their spies into every aspect of Kit’s life, placing not only himself in danger, but also his friends and loved ones. Even the innocent Whitney’s accompanist Anton is suspect—especially considering he’s played by young John Banner in his pre-Hogan’s Heroes days!

Kit has a Bernard Herrmann moment. Next time, he should play some nice, soothing violin music!

The role of Kit fits John Garfield like a glove (no, not a boxing glove, though Garfield seemed able to handle himself despite his real-life health issues). Even when his character is fighting his fears, he commands the screen as a working-class, self-described “mug” in gent’s clothing, with a heart full of determination and all-but-shattered ideals. Garfield’s toughness, tenderness, and humor have us rooting for Kit immediately. As in the book, Kit spends lots of time and energy trying to convince himself he’s not afraid, only to be proved wrong, to his frustration. Author Hughes’s haunting descriptions of Kit’s memories of his horrific Spain ordeal in the book are conveyed well in Garfield’s powerful monologue, enhanced by the camera’s slow close-up on his expressive face. The sweat on Garfield’s brow and the twitch in his cheek as he finally faces his enemy during the climax speaks volumes. If you ask me, TFS showcases one of John Garfield’s finest performances; he should have gotten an Oscar nomination!

Smooches, balloons, and plush penguins?
I totally want to know more about Kit and Toni's date!

Lovely Maureen O’Hara tries to downplay her Irish accent, but it still lurks in certain words. While our family adores O’Hara, I’ll admit she wouldn’t have been our first choice as a femme fatale, but Toni’s inner fear and regret come through in O’Hara’s poignant, soulful portrayal, winning my sympathy. O’Hara also has great fire-and-ice chemistry with the intense Garfield. When Kit kissed Toni in the novel, she never kissed back with any kind of enthusiasm, especially considering her cautious-bordering-on-icy reserve. But in this film version, Kit and Toni finally share longing kisses and tender embraces—much more fun to watch!

Walter Slezak’s performance as Dr. Skaas is silkily sinister, though I felt that his true evil nature was telegraphed much earlier than in the book, with his interest in “the cruelties of men towards other men” and “comparing modern scientific torture with the methods of the ancients,” who apparently didn’t mess with victims’ heads enough for Skaas’ liking! An avuncular hybrid of Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Clifton Webb, Slezak is one of 1940s cinema’s most memorable villains.
TFS keeps the paranoia percolating and the suspense simmering. I was especially glad to see that the filmmakers included much of the novel’s best dialogue, with only minor tweaks. They truly evoked the feeling and atmosphere of wintertime World War 2 Manhattan, underscored by Roy Webb and Constantine
Bakaleinikoff’s Oscar-nominated score. Today’s audiences might not understand Kit’s obsession with the battle flag, even with the explanatory scene at Toni’s home. Then again, I bet the men and women now fighting overseas will get the significance of a battle standard and what it symbolizes!

Kit's crowd has the swankiest suspects this side of The Thin Man movies!

Otto and Dr. Skaas dish new tips from Popular Torture Monthly
(Can you believe that's young Hugh Beaumont on the left?

Although Dorothy B. Hughes’s mysteries were best-sellers in her heyday, they seemed to be all but forgotten after she retired to focus on her family. Luckily, the film version of TFS captures her tale of terror beautifully. If you want to read the book, Amazon.com has both new and used paperback editions available so you can rediscover her. Interestingly, the 1988 paperback edition I read had cover art with an uncanny resemblance to, of all things, the movie poster for The French Connection!

On the TCM Web site, writer Andrea Passafiume wrote, “RKO bought the rights to the novel in 1942, but the political backdrop involving Nazi villains and Spanish Fascists was a bit of a hot-button issue at the time. RKO executive William Gordon fired off a memo to producer Robert Fellows that stated his three ‘areas of concern’ about the story’s content: ‘1. Desire of State Department to maintain friendliest relations with present Spanish government. 2. Possibility of Spain as ally. 3. Offensive to most Latin Americans.’ He even suggested that the film’s reference location should be changed from Spain to Nazi-invaded France. Similarly, Joseph Breen of the Production Code Administration wrote to RKO saying, ‘We strongly urge that you consult your Foreign Department as to the advisability of the Spanish angle contained in this picture.’ Fellows chose to not be deterred by such warnings and moved forward with the film keeping all political angles and locations intact.”

"Talk treason to me, baby."

TFS brims with ambiance even apart from its palpable paranoid atmosphere. An otherwise decidedly mixed review in The New York Times (and it wasn’t even by the ever-picky Bosley Crowther! The only identification in the Times’ review from August 20th, 1943 were the initials “T.S.”) said, “What lifts the film above the merely far-fetched and macabre is largely the skill with which Director Wallace has used both soundtrack and camera to suggest the stresses upon (Kit’s) fear-drenched mind. A street lamp shining through a fire escape throws a lattice across a sweating face; in a shadowy room, the remembered footsteps mingle with the tinkle of a bell and become the sound of dripping water from a leaking faucet. And again, when the climax is being quietly prepared at a refugee gathering in a mansion, the strident strains and swirling skirts of a gypsy dance brush momentarily across the silence between the warring opponents. Through these scenes and others Mr. Garfield remains almost constantly convincing, and without his sure and responsive performance in a difficult role, Mr. Wallace’s effects would have been lost entirely.” Happily, The Fallen Sparrow is available from Warner Archive for all to enjoy on DVD and downloads!


Who knew John Banner of Hogan's Heroes was dapper?

Godzilla Vs. Flintstone! Team Bartilucci's Favorite Thanksgiving-Season Flicks 2011 Remix!

2011-11-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, gang! Is this how your Turkey Day is going so far?

Yikes, you don’t want to spend your Thanksgiving blowing out matches, do you?!

Vinnie and I put on our Team Bartilucci caps for the holiday, with our youngest Team B. member Siobhan looking forward to the new Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon of her favorite cartoon character, the new and improved Sonic the Hedgehog! (Don’t fret, classic animation fans: Shugie, as we call her, also loves Looney Tunes, Tex Avery, and many more!) To celebrate, we’ve re-mixed last year’s post for new TotED readers who haven't read it. Now there’s even more fun, more pictures, more quippy captions—Click here to give it a look! Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to leave a comment or two! :-) And most of all, everyone, have a truly happy and healthy Thanksgiving and a genuinely joyful holiday season!

Godzilla Vs. Flintstone! Team Bartilucci's Favorite Thanksgiving-Season Flicks

FICTION NOIR Review: Thirteen Noir Tales in Brief

2011-11-18T13:58:00.007-05:00

I love books as much as I love movies, so I was delighted to get the opportunity to read Fiction Noir, the latest suspense anthology from Hen House Press. The trick will be to give you all a taste of each of the 13 compelling short stories without spoiling any of the endings!

Eve Gaal’s Loser’s Ledge focuses on Viola, a woman of a certain age standing on the roof of a twenty-story building, ready to jump to her death because she can’t forgive herself for all the things that went wrong in her life, particularly one fateful day when “a simple but massive blunder…fogg(ed) up all of her good intentions and all her judgment by clouding her brain with self-pity and loathing,” all because of a lottery ticket. If there’s a moral to this poignant, tense drama, it would be: “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!”

Joanne Dobson is renowned for her popular mystery book series about Professor Karen Pelletier, but I’ll admit I was particularly eager to read Dobson’s story Hey, Girlie because I grew up primarily in the Bronx myself, including being an alumna of Fordham University, where Dobson has taught. The emotions and the setting of the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx after World War 2 really rang true for me, having had family members who’d fought overseas as well. My heart went out to Rachel Cohen, the unfortunate poet and concentration camp survivor who has to face her tormentor from the camps regularly now that the creep is the building’s new super. Rachel’s account of wearing her white linen dress in hopes that “if I looked nice, they’d know I was a nice girl” broke my heart—which also went out to our bewildered, apprehensive young heroine, and her rude awakening about terrible truths that she’s not quite ready to comprehend. Rachel gets her well-deserved revenge, but at a terrible cost. If Stephen King/Richard Bachman’s Thinner made you think twice about eating strawberry pie, you might never think about cherry-topped coconut cake quite the same way again after reading Hey, Girlie.

Alfred Hitchcock by Rick Geary

On a more playful if darkly comedic note, there’s Everyone’s a Critic by A.R. Philips, also known for his entertaining blog Hitchcock and Me. Sure, every director wants a hit movie, but in Philips’ slyly satirical universe, film criticism can literally be murder, especially if your magnum opus is an unnecessary remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy! Here’s one of my favorite lines from our witty narrator: “…he looked like a no-foam soy latte kind of guy, but I could have been wrong…Give me the cheap coffee in those heavy cups you get in a diner and I’m happy.” Philips’ plot cleverly veers into unexpected but satisfying directions.

Fiction Noir meets Food Noir in author and radio host Amy Beth Arkawy’s elegantly cheeky murder tale Dangerous Appetites! Pity the artist who doesn’t have the opportunity to take part in his/her craft, like Stella, Arkawy’s frustrated chef/heroine/narrator, whose medium happens to be food. Stella curses the day her ruthless, high-powered attorney husband decided to lose weight, contributing to their crumbling marriage: “It’s been nine months since Leo first appeared on cable TV as the defense attorney in the high profile Dillinger murder case. The day after he saw his bloated visage float across the screen like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, Leo started ordering those vile diet dinners.” That’s not the postman ringing twice, nor the pizza guy; it’s gourmet murder to go. As in Joanne Dobson’s Hey, Girlie, coconut cake is enticingly mentioned here. Suddenly I’m getting hungry; must be Arkawy’s great sensory details and deliciously witty dialogue!

Raymond Chandler by Rick Geary

You loved Scott Fivelson’s zany movie-oriented comedy Dial “L” for Latch-Key; now Fivelson teams up with Tim Cleavenger to bring us the daffy detective spoof Johnny Passe, in which Frank Sinatra, private eye plots, and avid music collectors are affectionately lampooned. Johnny’s the kind of outwardly tough, inwardly addlepated gumshoe manqué who smokes in the shower and generally makes Police Squad’s Frank Drebin look like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Here’s a taste of Johnny’s snappy patter: “Yeah, it’s my philosophy that dreams are like snowflakes. No two dreams are ever alike. In fact, no two clubs are ever alike—although once I was in a club where they served a drink called The Snowflake. There was a lot of ice in it, and if you drank enough of ‘em, you’d fall down. If you didn’t drink ‘em, they’d only evaporate, and like dreams, become air. At least that’s what happened to mine.”

Grim Reaper by JWilliams

Steven Fried’s Anvil combines noir-style storytelling with philosophy and surrealism, in a rueful meditation on death and rebirth and plenty of food for thought.

Dennis Brock’s The Vinegar of the Seven Thieves is a tale of desperate, hungry people who find themselves running afoul of spies during World War 2, including the draft-dodger narrator. No glamorous James Bond-type spies in this brooding, gritty tale. To me, it’s the most deeply steeped in the noir style, with its no-way-out fatalism.

Art by Rick Geary

Remind me not to go boating with Greenbaum, the lawyer protagonist of Isaac Grimm’s sharp, cleanly-written Wrongful Death! Furiously miserable in his imploding marriage, he gets ideas when a new client comes to him certain that her mother’s fatal boating accident was murder, giving Greenbaum ideas about how he could literally get away with murder.

We love Lucy—Lucy Gordon, that is! Lucy is a young local newspaper reporter by day and, in today’s tough economy, a janitor by night in Murder Brokers by Jennifer Leeper. One of her cleaning clients, Arrow Property Group, is quite neat—too neat, as if nobody uses their chairs and desks at all. And what connection does it all have with the recent spate of pretty cleaning ladies turning up dead? As a writer and editor, I could relate to heroine Lucy Gordon’s annoyance about “the drastic surgery performed on my county commission stories by our copy editor.” Another great line: “It’s a voice that commands, it doesn’t request.” In addition to Lucy, I also found the other characters memorable and engaging, as was the depiction of small-town life and its newspaper reporters.

In The Village Idiot by Rivka Tadjer & Roberto Gottardello, troubled, vulnerable FBI agent Mary returns to the scene of a long-ago tragedy in Woodstock, NY that she was powerless to stop due to her own failings. Now that she’s back, will she redeem herself at last, or will history repeat itself? To me, Mary comes across as somewhat of a Clarice Starling who’s fallen on hard times, both emotionally and physically. Although I empathize with Mary, I’m afraid I’d be reluctant to put my life in her hands (not a criticism, simply an observation). I feel sorry for her and frustrated with her at the same time. The emotions and the brooding, sordid atmosphere and goings-on sound authentic. Loved this line: “Did you eat a fox sandwich to become so smart?”

Bernard Schaffer’s When the Man Comes Around is another standout, a suspenseful story harkening back to a shameful chapter of medical history. In 1935, Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz devised the lobotomy, convincing other doctors and the public that it was a surefire cure for any and all mental disorders. The 1940s and 1950s were the lobotomy’s heyday until people wised up and antidepressants were invented to make all those pesky emotional problems go away. New York City Police Detective Jimmy O’Leary is horrified to discover that a certain Dr. Freid is performing lobotomies the no-frills way: with a spike and a mallet and a life of being a virtual vegetable—if the patient lives. And Jimmy’s troubled ten-year-old nephew is next, despite his having responded well after spending time with Uncle Jimmy! The kid’s all-but-neglectful parents just seem to want the quick fix promised by Dr. Freid. But Jimmy has his own prescription for the “good doctor”…. Great dialogue, including this passage at the station house:

“Hey, what’s a nice way to say I was dealing with an ass…and he wouldn’t shut his yap?”

One of the older detectives said, “The subject was belligerent despite my repeated attempts to coerce him otherwise.”

Cornell Woolrich by Rick Geary

If you like gambling and the films of Martin Scorsese, I’m betting that Semyon White’s High Stakes Graft will be up your alley. When Las Vegas gambler Dean Curtis looks into the apparent murder of a bewitching, enticing young gambler he's attracted to, he finds there’s more than meets the eye in this fast-moving tale. There’s action and exotic atmosphere aplenty, vivid enough for me to picture it in my mind’s eye. I wouldn’t mind following Dean and Noelle on further adventures!

The anthology ends on a moody yet playful note with Ivan Jenson’s poem Love Noir, crystallizing the classic film noir tropes beautifully. Fiction Noir’s fabulous smorgasbord of noir tales are the book equivalent of a Thanksgiving feast!

Find more terrific Hen House Press books at http://loveandpublishing.com/henhouse.htm

Fiction Noir is perfect for light reading....

...so give Fiction Noir a shot!

Would Dashiell Hammett steer you wrong? (Art by Rick Geary.)

Art by Eric Bowman

Step into your local bookstore and get ahold of Fiction Noir today! Available at Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle, and the Google eBookstore, as well as in paperback. (Holiday gift-giving season is just around the corner!)

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY: Little Murders, Big City

2011-11-11T11:17:00.006-05:00

When I was in high school back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the teen heartthrob pictures taped inside the lockers of my classmates at dear old St. Catharine Academy in the Bronx included John Travolta, Parker Stevenson, Shaun Cassidy, and other cute lads one might find on the cover of Tiger Beat and the like. But I was always drawn to the so-called offbeat types, like Dustin Hoffman and writer/director Woody Allen, as well as Danny Kaye and Bob Hope in their 1940s movie comedies on WPIX or WOR. If I recall correctly, my sister Cara graduated from Lehman High School in 1976 at a ceremony at Manhattan’s own Carnegie Hall. Afterward, our family went to The Russian Tea Room for a celebratory lunch, all of us dressed to the proverbial nines. I was stunned to see Woody Allen and Dick Cavett standing together in front of us, chatting and waiting for their table! My combination of shyness and politeness kept me from running up to them and blathering like a fangirl. Frankly, I was perfectly content to stand on line quietly with my family, peeking at Allen out of the corner of my eye while munching on jelly-filled mints. However, Mom noticed Allen, too, and although she was never one to go up to celebrities and gush, she knew I was a big Woody Allen fan. As I believe I’ve mentioned in previous TotED posts, my dear beloved Mom was kind and as lovely as the fashion model she used to be—and about as shy as a speeding Mack truck, bless her! (She claimed to have been shy as a youngster, but she obviously got over it by the time I was born!) So I was both embarrassed and excited when Mom strode up to Allen and said in her enthusiastic way, “Mr. Allen, my daughter just loves your movies, and I knew she’d be thrilled if you’d say hello to her.” Allen had a deer-in-the-headlights look (can’t blame him, really; for all he knew, we could’ve been stalkers, or at least pests), while Cavett smirked and said, “Oh, here we go.” Mom gave Cavett a sort of elegant version of The Hairy Eyeball as she said to him, “I wasn’t talking to you, sir.” Then she turned to Allen and said, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were a movie fan like my daughter. How would you feel if someone you admired was rude and dismissive to you?” Looking both chastened and somewhat bewildered, Allen shook my hand, and I thanked him, and then our respective parties went our separate ways in the restaurant for lunch. Ah, if only Mom had lived to see our much more upbeat encounter in 2010 with our favorite Oscar-winner, Adrien Brody! (For those who didn't read this over at our friend and fellow blogger Clara Fercovic's Via Margutta 51 blog, here's the link: http://via-51.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-i-had-to-keep-4-guest-dorian.html)

Woody Allen schlepped here. (So did our family!)

That brings us to this week’s blog post, Manhattan Murder Mystery (MMM—an appropriate acronym for such a delicious movie). For my money, it’s sheer delight, one of Allen’s funniest, most unabashedly entertaining movies. Even the locations are a joy to behold; in addition to the Russian Tea Room, there’s the Cafe Des Artistes, The Chelsea Hotel, and The '21' Club, accompanied by the great music of, among others, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman performing Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing),” and the opening number, the great Bobby Short’s rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York.” The Oscar-winning team from Annie Hall—including Allen, frequent co-star/former inamorata Diane Keaton, and co-screenwriter Marshall Brickman—reunited for this film after Allen’s relationship with previous co-star/significant-other Mia Farrow ended (a long story in itself). That old magic and the marvelous quirky romantic chemistry Allen and Keaton had together in Annie Hall, Sleeper, Love and Death, and so many others was still there onscreen in full force, as if the two of them had never parted. As much as I liked Mia Farrow in Allen’s movies during the period when they were co-stars as well as lovers (they made 12 movies together, if I recall correctly), I feel Diane Keaton was the perfect choice to play Carol Lipton. While Allen certainly brought out Farrow’s funny side in their comedies, especially in Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose, it always seems to me that when Farrow plays funny everyday people—as opposed to over-the-top funny characters like the ones in Broadway Danny Rose or Radio Days—she often has a kind of a mewling, whiny quality that I feel just wouldn’t have worked for the brainy, bubbly Carol.

Is Ted hoping to make out on this stakeout?

When we meet Carol and Larry Lipton (Allen), their son Nick (Zach Braff, before TV’s Scrubs made him a star) is off to college. Carol is feeling a touch of Empty Nest Syndrome; how will she fill her days? Start a business, like maybe a restaurant, with their longtime friend Ted (Alan Alda at his most charmingly witty and rakish, kinda doing for MMM what David Wayne did for Adam’s Rib)? Ooh, wait, I know just the thing for those midlife blahs—solving a murder! You see, Carol and Larry have a chance encounter in their apartment building’s elevator with an elderly but bright and quick-witted couple, Paul and Lillian House, leading to a friendly chat-turned-impromptu-visit to the House hacienda. Carol and Lillian (Lynn Cohen, best known to Team Bartilucci as Golda Meir in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 thriller Munich) discuss dieting, health/fitness issues, and the Houses’ upcoming wedding anniversary. Paul, played by Broadway producer and character actor Jerry Adler (TV’s The Sopranos, Mad About You, Rescue Me, and the dark 1997 comedy film Six Ways to Sunday, with Adrien Brody in one of his earliest roles) cheerfully shows Larry his stamp collection while Larry quietly yearns to get home in time to watch the Bob Hope movie he’s been looking forward to on TV. (I wonder which one it was? If I’d written the MMM script, it would have been My Favorite Brunette! How charmingly low-tech life was before the invention of the DVR! But I digress….). Not long afterward, Carol and Larry come home from the opera to find ambulances, police, and a covered body; apparently Mrs. House died of a coronary! As time passes, Carol can’t help noticing that their “next-door widower” seems to be taking his beloved wife’s unexpected death rather well…perhaps too well? Carol’s curiosity and yearning for adventure in her own life kicks in, and she embraces her inner Nora Charles. But Carol had better watch her back; this is the kind of thing that gets Alfred Hitchcock’s characters in trouble, only (even) funnier!

At Cafe des Artistes, Marcia knows when to hold ‘em, but does Larry know when to fold ‘em?

At first, Larry is both too skeptical and too busy with his publishing job at HarperCollins to humor Carol’s amateur detective leanings. Where’s Jason Schwartzman as Bored to Death’s version of Jonathan Ames when you need him? At least Ted has both the time and, as a playwright, the imagination to help Carol solve The Case of the Merry Widower, especially since Ted is a divorcé, and not exactly shy about letting his understandable crush on Carol show. What I enjoyed most about MMM‘s amateur sleuthing was that for the most part, Carol, Ted, and eventually Larry pretty much go about searching for clues the way your average Joe or Jo would, with fairly accessible, approachable, down-to-earth DIY tactics. For instance, Carol and Ted stake out the street where Mr. House has been keeping company with a lovely young model, Helen Moss (Melanie Norris). During the stakeout, whenever a woman leaves Helen’s apartment building, Ted yells out, “Helen!” to see if she turns around. Dialing *69 comes in handy, too, when Carol surreptitiously borrows the super’s keys to investigate:

“I’ll pretend I’m a pair of comfortable old shoes until the coast is clear.”

The potential for illicit romance lurks not only with Carol and Ted’s stakeouts, but also with one of Larry’s authors, the alluring, accurately-named Marcia Fox (Anjelica Huston, another one of Team Bartilucci’s favorite Oscar-winners), who’s playfully making eyes at Larry. To Larry’s credit, he truly loves Carol and doesn’t want to lose her. To Marcia’s credit, she tells Larry point blank that if he wants to keep Carol, he’d better make more of an effort. (Fun Fact: As luck would have it, I happened to go to HarperCollins for a job interview the day Allen and Huston were filming that scene in Larry’s office! Although I didn’t get the Editorial Assistant gig I’d hoped for, it was nevertheless a thrill just to get fleeting glimpses of them. But I digress….) Larry finally joins Carol on a stakeout that leads to a rundown Gramercy Park hotel, a corpse, and a chase leading to New Jersey. It’s a zany, funny ride as the Liptons find themselves in all manner of suspenseful situations with just the kind of witty goofiness you’d expect from writers Allen and Brickman and that ingratiating cast. (I cracked up when Larry “takes care of” hotel employee Aida Turturro with one dollar!) See what happens when middle-aged people have too much time on their hands?

Will our heroes push up daisies in The Garden State?

As Nick and Nora, er, Larry and Carol dash around scenic parts of Manhattan and New Jersey trying to find clues without getting themselves murdered, the cowardly if practical Larry keeps kvetching and Carol keeps grumbling about how “Ted would know what to do…” It’s a delightful tip of the hat to Allen and Keaton’s 1973 classic Sleeper and its President’s Nose/“Emo would know what to do” gag! Just thinking about the comparison had me laughing even more than I already was! More affectionate salutes to classic movies abound, including the Vertigo ad on a crosstown bus, where Carol is sure she’s just seen the allegedly dead Mrs. House looking very much alive at the moment; and the big finale with our beleaguered couple and villain caught in a funny yet suspenseful send-up of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai in Mr. House’s revival theater. Larry gasps, “I’ll never say life doesn’t imitate art again!”

As Larry Lipton, Allen gives himself most of the best lines as he quips and dithers his way through their adventures, and why not? After all, who can say Woody Allen’s dialogue better than the man himself? Play to your strengths, I always say! Some of his best MMM lines:

On the emotions Wagnerian opera brings out in Larry: “…I always feel like invading Poland.”

On how Carol’s been dwelling on sinister things since she decided to play amateur detective : “You should wear happy glasses.”

Stunned to discover that a key player in the mystery plot is dead, and after they’d brought her a gift and everything: “She’s dead? Try giving her the present!”

Begging Carol to get rid of her fixation on the case and her jealousy of Marcia: “There’s nothing wrong with you that couldn’t be cured with Prozac and a polo mallet.”

Looking for Maxwell House, Carol finds Mrs. House!

MMM boasts stellar work from the rest of the supporting cast, too, including smart, sexy Huston, who turns out to be a pretty slick dilettante detective in her own right, bringing out the green-eyed monster in our heroine. When Carol feels like Marcia Fox is stealing both her thunder and Ted’s crush on her, you half-expect her to shout in exasperation, “It’s always Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Marge Redmond of Hitchcock’s Family Plot and TV’s The Flying Nun plays Mr. House’s right-hand woman Mrs. Dalton. Redmond gets an especially nice scene in the big movie theater climax; the catch in her voice as she quotes Everett Sloane in The Lady from Shanghai always touches my heart. I also liked Joy Behar and Ron Rifkin’s scenes as two of the couple’s friends, who help out with their recording studio, resulting in a shakedown ruse that goes hilariously awry. By the way, is it me, or does Paul House’s pretty young model girlfriend Helen Moss (Melanie Norris) dress rather like Annie Hall? (Tangent Alert…For the most part, I’ve liked Alan Alda best on the TV version of M*A*S*H and in other people’s movies, rather than the films he wrote and directed himself. Whenever Alda has donned the director’s hat, it’s always seemed to me that he gets preachy, self-conscious, and sensitive in a trying-too-hard way. Heck, I even liked him better in the otherwise disappointing thriller Whispers in the Dark until writer/director Christopher Crowe suddenly turned Alda’s character into an overwrought, frothing-at-the-mouth psycho. No wonder Alda won the Razzie that year!…End Tangent Alert.)


That’s not the kind of helping hand our heroes need!

Is that pride skeptical Larry is swallowing there in the elevator?

Eye contact is crucial when you’re catching killers!

Uh-oh! This wasn't the kind of movie-date night our heroes had in mind!

Life imitates art with the Mrs. Dalton gang!

But overall, MMM is Woody Allen Light—Light-Hearted, that is! Don’t take my word for it, watch this charming last scene (or don’t, if you’d rather be surprised):

“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”

Special photo treat from our pal and fab fellow blogger Caftan Woman!
Her sister Maureen got to meet Woody Allen in person!

Read all about it in C.W.'s true-life anecdote in TotED's Comments Section!

“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”

HOUSE OF CARDS: Little Movie Lost?

2011-11-04T12:54:00.004-04:00

George Peppard has his hands full; good thing he apparently has six of them!

I haven’t seen House of Cards (HoC) in years, mostly because I haven’t been able to find it on DVD or any other format that I can afford that would work with my good old American DVD player. I can’t even find a trailer for it, although I've found plenty for the 1993 drama by the same name starring Kathleen Turner as a mother trying to help her apparently autistic child. However, thanks to the many times I saw HoC on TBS and other local channels in my youth, I remember it like I saw it yesterday!

Dig that far-out groovy Peter Max-style poster, man!

During the 1960s, Universal Pictures made a mini-genre out of the Lighthearted International Technicolor Romantic Suspense Thriller, with such rollicking adventures as Charade; Arabesque; Mirage; Blindfold, and A Man Could Get Killed. Before making HoC, director John Guillerman had directed leading man George Peppard in the 1966 World War 1 thriller The Blue Max and the 1968 private eye drama P.J. (Note to Vinnie, all George Peppard fans, and all fans of Disney’s animated school comedy series Recess: Yes, P.J.’s last name is in fact Detweiler! But I digress....) I’ve always felt that HoC was one of the loopiest of the lot from its opening sequence: tracking shots of Paris from a corpse's-eye-view! There it is, floating in the River Seine practically unnoticed by the populace. Having grown up in a big city (NYC, for those who came in late), I know city dwellers tend to be blasé about things no matter what city they live in, but come on!

The many faces of Barnaby Shaw & pals

Peppard plays Reno Davis, a sort of hip 1960s Hemingway type who drifts from one country to another, either writing his novel or getting into boxing matches. Indeed, when we first meet Reno, he’s getting the hell beaten out of him in a Paris boxing ring. One night, someone shoots at him—and discovers the triggerman is a frightened child, Paul de Villemont (played memorably by the haunted-eyed Barnaby Shaw). Reno drags the little sharpshooter home to his surprised widowed mom, Anne, played by the luminous Inger Stevens with a vulnerable sophistication reminiscent of Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. To quote New York Times movie critic A.H. Weiler, “Miss Stevens is...pretty enough to turn any adventurer's head,” and Reno and Anne almost lose their own heads in more ways than one. You see, it turns out the glamorous but troubled Anne is the American widow of a French general; she and Paul are virtual prisoners of her sinister in-laws and their cohorts, including British actor Keith Michell (TV’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry VIII and His Six Wives, among others) as the secretive psychiatrist Dr. Morillon. Anne and Paul take a shine to Reno, and the feeling is more or less mutual. No surprise, really; at the very least, Reno’s iconoclastic loner routine is surely a welcome change of pace from the Daphne DuMaurier types slinking around the family chateau. Anne hires Reno as Paul’s tutor/companion. The DuMaurier types don’t exactly welcome Reno with open arms, which may also explain why men in Anne’s orbit don’t seem to live too long whenever they try to help her and Paul, including that poor slob we saw floating lifeless in the Seine earlier, one Sidney Scott (who doesn’t even get a credit in the film for his trouble, poor guy).

It takes more than guns and Orson Welles as El Exigente to make Reno lose his cool!

Soon we viewers are catapulted from DuMaurier Land to Robert Ludlum Lite as the chateau’s occupants turn out to be not just any old Eurotrash stuffed shirts, but actually part of a Fascist group led by the powerful Leschenhaut, played by Orson Welles at his haughty and sinister best. Seems that Papa wanted his little man to be brought up as a Hitler youth! Before you can say “Alfred Hitchcock sent me,” Paul is kidnapped, Reno is framed for murder, and he and Anne (who’s not overjoyed about bodyguard Reno dropping the ball with her child; as a mother myself, I’m on Anne’s side!) are chasing and being chased all over Paris and Rome trying to save Paul and the world from these dastardly so-and-so’s. House of Cards was adapted from renowned mystery author Stanley Ellin’s 1967 novel, and set in opulent locations including the Colosseum and all manner of manors all over France. True, some of the plot twists in James P. Bonner’s screenplay (actually a nom de plume for the screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who brought us Hud, Hombre, The Cowboys, and Norma Rae, among others) stretch credibility to the breaking point (especially Dr. Morillon’s true identity). Also, some of the more attention-grabbing stuff is never explained, although I’m willing to blame some of that on TBS editing the version I saw on TV (besides, sponsors have to squeeze in commercials; they have to eat, too, I guess). Despite these quibbles, HoC still manages to be entertaining. When I first saw it on TV in my younger days, I found Francis Lai’s score to be a little syrupy for my taste, but it’s grown on me over the years. George Peppard, in his prime, was well-cast as a cynical rogue, with his all-American good looks, hard-boiled flippancy, and breezy charm. He cracked me up whenever he improvised outlandish excuses to authority figures, like in the Fountain of Trevi scene and this sexy sequence with leading lady Inger Stevens:

"Reno, thank goodness you're here! This is the stuffiest family reunion ever!"

Inger Stevens had been a favorite of mine since I first saw her on the TV series version of The Farmer’s Daughter. I always sensed something unconventional about her. Indeed, Stevens did have difficulties in life, and left us far too soon, but once you saw her, you couldn’t forget her. I thought Stevens was an excellent match for Peppard both physically and personality-wise, with screen presence aplenty. It wasn’t just Stevens’ striking blonde beauty and honeyed alto voice that made her stand out; she also had a warmth that belied her Nordic Ice Maiden looks, and a knack for being at once worldly and wholesome. This quality is reflected in Stevens’ fab Edith Head costumes, too.

This wildly complex thriller probably shouldn’t be watched by anyone with a migraine or a short attention span—but if you're in the mood for a well-cast conspiracy yarn that doesn't take itself too seriously, keep an eye out for HoC in your TV movie listings. Better yet, bug the folks at Universal and urge them to at least put out a House of Cards print-on-demand DVD!

A smorgasbord of George Peppard scenes (with and without Inger Stevens) for your viewing pleasure!

In any language, House of Cards is good fun if you can find it!

THE WICKER MAN: Man of Wicker, Feet of Clay

2011-10-28T13:35:00.011-04:00

My husband Vinnie and I have our Team Bartilucci caps on for this week’s Halloween post about the original British Lion 1973 version of The Wicker Man (TWM)! If you’re expecting a high body count, slam-bang action, buckets of blood and gore, and fast-paced editing of the sort lampooned so brilliantly in Edgar Wright’s 2007 police procedural spoof Hot Fuzz (which also happens to co-star TWM’s protagonist Edward Woodward), you may feel impatient at first. But if you chill out and pay attention to this subtle masterpiece of suspense and the pitfalls of religious intolerance, you just might be glad you did. Granted, we personally have yet to actually meet anyone who wasn’t drawn into the story and stunned by the denouement, but I thought I’d give you a heads-up just in case!

Sgt. Howie investigates, but will these salty sea dogs bite?

Everyone's friendly on Summerisle!

After a puckish opening title screen thanking the people of Summerisle “for this privileged insight into their religious practices and for their generous co-operation in the making of this film,” the devilishly clever screenplay by Sir Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, Frenzy, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun) tells the story of Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Woodward) investigating an anonymous tip begging him to find Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper), a 12-year-old girl living—or is she?—on Summerisle, an island off Scotland that’s renowned for its apples and other produce. A staunch Catholic and by-the-book police officer, Sgt. Howie’s expectations are confounded from square one. When he arrives via seaplane for an overnight stay, expecting to be served fresh Summerisle apples and veggies, he’s surprised to be handed a plateful of turquoise-hued beans from a can. Indeed, all the islanders seem to be eating nothing but canned produce as Summerisle’s apple crates lie empty. But that’s nothing compared to Howie’s outrage as his investigation reveals that the islanders, led by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee, in a performance brimming with urbane mischief and menace) are all free-thinking, free-singing, free-loving pagans. And don’t get Sgt. Howie started about the phallic symbols all over Summerisle, including the well-tended shrubbery! With all its bawdy and beautifully-performed songs and dance numbers, TWM would make a great musical (albeit kinda kinky and twisted).

Rowan Morrison: flower of young girlhood

The culture clash between Sgt. Howie and the Summerislers lends TWM as much wry humor as mystery and suspense. Things only get weirder, creepier, and often, more titillating as everyone he meets stymies his investigation into Rowan’s disappearance, which probably isn’t doing our courageous copper’s blood pressure any good. Everybody from Rowan’s family to her teacher, Miss Rose (Diane Cilento, whose many roles had included her Oscar-nominated performance in the 1964 costume comedy Tom Jones, as well as being author Shaffer’s wife of 16 years), to Lord Summerisle himself initially deny that Rowan even exists, then claim she’s dead, then…well, with the strange excuses and even stranger rituals on Summerisle, the determined Sgt. Howie has his work cut out for him as the film reaches its shocking, jaw-dropping climax.


On the good ship Lollipop, it’s a strange trip to the pagan shop…

Sgt. Howie has his own cross to bear

Nix muskrat love; sexy snails rule!

Is there no end to the carnal subtext?

Frog in your throat? Try Summerisle’s natural cure!

Over the years, fans and critics alike have tried to stuff TWM into the horror and fantasy categories, perhaps because the cast includes Lee and fellow genre movie veterans Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland. However, anyone anticipating traditional monsters, copious bloodletting, or F/X-oriented frights will be disappointed; that’s not what TWM is about. For all its suspense, we never see anything supernatural happen; even the weirdest things can be explained by real-world circumstances. There’s a bit of low-key gore, but by and large, the monstrousness is of a purely human variety, the evil and intolerance that lives and lurks quietly like a sleeper cell in people’s hearts, minds, and belief systems. To me, that’s scarier than any supernatural creature, because it hits closer to home.
TWM creates an air of unworldly unease, of events beyond what we can see and hear, keeping us guessing to the end. Between the uniformly fine acting, Robin Hardy’s skillful direction, and Shaffer’s slyly sinister script, TWM is a great example of how you don’t need endless gore and sadism to chill an audience to the bone, just suspense crafted from atmospheric direction, a stellar cast, and foreboding arising from the enigmatic circumstances, character development, and a location whose beauty hides its treachery. Shaffer’s script plays fair, trusting the audience to keep up with its skillful combination of wit, mystery, and dread. The characterizations are fascinating throughout, particularly with Sgt. Howie and Lord Summerisle. Paul Giovanni’s haunting music, with traditional Celtic songs woven throughout, is practically another character in the film, by turns erotic and beautiful, bawdy and joyful, fitting the film’s tone perfectly. No wonder Eli Roth used “Willow’s Song” in a key scene in his 2005 horror film Hostel! As Willow, Ekland looks luscious and does a decent Scots accent, though her singing is dubbed by Annie Ross, and some shots of her backside were done by a body double, as Ekland was reportedly pregnant and entering her second trimester. But why quibble when there’s such a powerful erotic charge to watching Willow drive poor Sgt. Howie nearly mad by essentially making love to the wall separating her room from his? Say what you will about pagans, they know how to party!

Willow drives Sgt. Howie up the wall in her own bewitching way.

Will lovely town librarian Ingrid Pitt make the cut?

Meet the beetle!

Our Anchor Bay DVD’s extras include the restored version and a terrific commentary track on Disc 2, with moderator Mark Kermode interviewing Hardy, Lee, and Woodward, exchanging entertaining stories about the tricks involved in making a low-budget, tight-scheduled movie while studio British Lion was on the slippery slope to bankruptcy. Disc 1’s excellent documentary featurette, The Wicker Man Enigma, includes interviews with Woodward, Lee, Pitt, Hardy, Shaffer, and Roger Corman, as well as the jaw-dropping story of the idiots who thought they were putting the TWM negative in a vault but instead put it in a waste pile that was buried under England’s M3 highway! The 2-disc DVD edition of the 1973 British cult classic The Wicker Man includes both the 88-minute cut that played in theaters, and the restored 99-minute version.

“The children do love their divinity lessons.” I’ll say! They’re all fired up!

It's May Day! Cut some capers, people! Everybody conga!

Who can sleep with all that singing? Darn hippies!

The Wicker Man Spoiler!

Vinnie and I have often said that in the end, what really killed poor, stalwart, well-meaning Sgt. Howie was the stick up his butt. Even before he realized he’d been tricked, that he and not young Rowan Morrison was the intended blood sacrifice that the Summerislers hoped would appease their ancient gods and jump-start their crops, Sgt. Howie showed nothing but hostility and intolerance towards the placid islanders’ religious practices. If he’d only loosened up and let himself be seduced by the bewitching Willow McGregor, he’d have lost his virginity, rendered himself useless as a blood sacrifice, and saved his own life! God and Howie’s fiancée would’ve forgiven him, I’m sure. It’s certainly better than having big, burly men shove you into a highly flammable giant wicker figure and set you and a barnyard’s worth of animals on fire to slowly burn to death, praying all the way.

Yikes! Burning Man this ain’t!

Turning other people on to TWM and watching them react as the plot unfolds is almost as much fun as watching the movie itself. Our daughter Siobhan and I used to visit my dear mom at her home in Florida, and she always encouraged us to bring DVDs we liked so we could watch them together in the evening. When I found out Mom had never seen TWM, I made it a point to bring the DVD set with me to Florida because she was both a suspense fan and a devout Catholic in her own flexible way (long story). One night Mom and I hunkered down to watch it in her bedroom, while Siobhan preferred to watch the animated movies she’d brought in her guest bedroom (just as well; at that time Siobhan was a little young for TWM's mature themes). I correctly predicted that Mom would find TWM as spellbinding as Vinnie and I did. Mom had always been a pretty sophisticated gal, but even she was couldn’t predict how things would turn out. Throughout the film, Mom kept eagerly asking me what was going to happen, and I kept refusing to give away the ending. Sure enough, when the big twist happened, Mom was just as gobsmacked by Sgt. Howie’s fate as I had been— even more so, because she brought it up in conversation almost every day during the rest of our visit! Mom and I had always had great conversations covering all kinds of topics over the years, but our conversations after watching TWM together were especially thoughtful and compelling. We had some fascinating conversations not only about the cleverness of TWM’s plotting, but also about respecting other people’s religions and beliefs and their right to live.

Incidentally, when Mom first saw young Edward Woodward onscreen, she knew she’d seen him in other things, but she couldn’t remember what. I cited his 1980s TV stardom on The Equalizer, figuring that was where she’d have been most likely to have seen Woodward before. Soon, however, Mom remembered where she’d previously seen him: “He was ‘Breaker Morant!’” (You’d think I’d have remembered that, too, since Mom and I saw Breaker Morant together during its 1980 theatrical release. Silly us!) It’s always interesting and fun to discover the roots of other people’s pop culture references.

I’ll admit that as much as I love the film as is, there’s always a part of me that wishes they could have had one last shot set one year later, showing whether Summerisle got their hoped-for bumper crop—or perhaps showing Lord Summerisle himself being dragged into the Wicker Man and set aflame after another disastrous barren year. Yeah, I guess it’s better to keep the audience guessing in the name of suspense, but closure has its merits, too.

Vinnie says: The wife can giggle at her Mom for her open-mouthed reaction to the film, but let's just say the Summerisle Red doesn't fall far from the tree. The Wife watches movies with her whole body -- in addition to the uncontrollable mutterings and intakes of breath during the exciting bits, she'll lean to and fro, urging people to the right corridor, curving her hands about and pointing, hissing, "No, you boob, THAT way, they hid the diamonds there!" So as Sergeant Howie hunched his way through the caves, young Rowan in tow, she said to me, with all the charming innocence of a child in line for Santa, "Oh, I hope that little girl will be okay!"

I looked at her in frank amazement. "You're kidding."

"No. What?"

"Well, yeah, hon, it's called 'The Wicker Man', not 'The Wicker Little Girl'..."

(penny in the air...)

"Oh, my GOD..."

(penny drops)

I damn near fell off the couch laughing.

The Wicker Man is one of those films you want to see twice, before and after you know the ending. Like The Sixth Sense and A Beautiful Mind, the fun is in going back, seeing all the "clues" and finding a whole new level to enjoy. The people of Summerisle play Howie like a Pan-flute, as perfect and elaborate a con as The Sting's Henry Gondorf could ever pull off. And going back and watching the game unfold is literally like watching a new movie. The first time through you're watching Howie like a hawk, now you're watching the actions of the townspeople. There's also the fun of realizing that like any good con movie, there's the chance that it could have all gone pear-shaped at any moment. If Howie had an ounce less moral rectitude, he'd have burst into Willow's room, thrown her down on the bed, and the next scene would have been her, her Dad and Lord Summerisle around a table in the pub the next morning, face in hands, saying "Well, NOW what?"

There's not a duff performance in the film. Woodward shines as a man so devout he'd probably call Mel Gibson a Cafeteria Catholic, and probably spends his free time going through the Sears catalog drawing in more tasteful clothing on the models with a Flair pen. Christopher Lee has rarely had a chance to so visually enjoy a role; from the singing, the cross-dressing and the chance to wrap his lips around dialogue like "Do sit down; shocks are best absorbed with the knees bent", the smile plastered on his face for much of the film is not acting. And let's face it, any opportunity to watch Britt Ekland dry-hump her bedroom is enough entertainment for an evening on its own.

The narrative is carefully precise. Like Titanic, they tell you what's going to happen, then it happens. Howie researches the May Day practices, so when they occur, they make sense to the viewer, and there's less of a sense of having to understand what's happening, and get straight to the Why. You KNOW there's going to be a sacrifice, there's just one bit of information that's withheld. Much like in Sleuth (about which we have previously spoken), where you're CERTAIN it's this kind of story, until one bit of information is revealed, and you realize with whiplash-suddenness that it's the opposite.

Hot Fuzz does tip the cap to the quaint and slightly horrifying way that Northern English villages do things, but the Wicker Man analogues are much more prevalent in the brilliant Brit comedy series The League of Gentlemen. Not to be confused with the old caper flick or Alan Moore's "Extraordinary" version, this is the tale of the Northern town of Royston Vasey and its eccentric inhabitants, a group who give the Addams Family nightmares. Husband and Wife (and possibly brother and sister -- it's never confirmed) Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup run the Local Shop "for Local people", and in direct homage to the film is their catch-phrase, when Tubbs would breathily ask "Did Tubbs do right?" to which Edward would answer "You did it BEAUtifully!"

The ending, as The Wife comments, is maddeningly ambiguous. You keep hoping for a shot of the next year's Harvest Queen, either surrounded by bushels of bounty or yet another barren year. But like all things open for interpretation, the debates over the success of the mad plan can be epic.

Observant individuals may notice an utter paucity of mention of the recent remake of this film, starring the once and future Ghost Rider, Nicolas Cage. For reasons we should not have to relate, this is deliberate. To compare the two would be like comparing a surgeon's scalpel and a nickel-electroplated sledgehammer. Let's just leave it there.

Can’t you just leave a mint on my pillow, like the other quaint inns?

Sorry, Charlie, only The Salmon of Knowledge gets to be in The Wicker Man!

And so ends another Summerisle wienie roast for another year....

Try to Remember: The Amnesia Trilogy. Part 3: SPELLBOUND

2011-10-21T14:36:00.024-04:00

To wrap up The Amnesia Trilogy, here’s the amnesia film that started it all, at least for me: Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning thriller Spellbound. I first saw it on WPIX-TV on a Sunday afternoon when I was a youngster in the Bronx. After the literally breezy opening credits, Spellbound sets the stage with a foreword by the film’s medical advisor, Dr. May Romm (more about her shortly):

“Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind. Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear…..and the devils of unreason are driven from the human soul.”

Got all that? Yeah, it may sound quaint in today’s more sophisticated, complicated world, but somehow I find Dr. Romm’s foreword (which has also been attributed to screenwriter Ben Hecht) endearingly earnest. In fact, Spellbound’s more dated aspects, like its approach to psychotherapy, intrigues me when I think of how these things have changed over time.

The lovely, luminous, gentle-voiced Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen, the youngest member of the crackpot, er, crack team of psychoanalysts at Green Manors, a posh psychiatric institution. Constance brims with book smarts, but her people smarts still need fine-tuning. Dr. Fleurot (John Emory), who’s a bit of a scholarly wolf in shrink’s clothing, is always trying to pitch woo at Constance, but she’s just not that into him. He says, “You approach all your problems with an ice pack on your head….I’m trying to convince you that your lack of human and emotional experience is bad for you as a doctor...and fatal for you as a woman.” Constance wryly replies, “I’ve heard that argument from a number of amorous psychiatrists who all wanted to make a better doctor of me.”

Doctor on Call-Me-Anytime!

If you could see Constance’s feet now, you’d see bobby sox on her feet! *swoon!*

Well, I can tell you from family therapy experience that sometimes it takes a few tries with a few different therapists to find one you really click with—and Constance soon discovers love can work that way, too, when Green Manors’ elderly head honcho Dr. Murchison (veteran Hitchcock player Leo G. Carroll) is about to retire, albeit reluctantly. Constance and the staff are sorry to see Dr. Murchison go, even though his imminent replacement, the renowned Dr. Anthony Edwardes, is supposed to be hot stuff. “Hot” is the word for the ruggedly handsome new doc on the block, especially considering Dr. Edwardes is played by young Gregory Peck, who became an Oscar nominee himself that year for The Keys of the Kingdom. (Little did Peck know he’d be playing another amnesiac in peril twenty years later in another New York-set suspense film, the 1965 thriller Mirage!) Cool Constance’s pleasant but prim demeanor thaws rapidly, Dr. Edwardes’ agitation at the sight of lines scratched into a tablecloth notwithstanding, and those crazy kids fall in love lickety-split. Heck, how could anyone not fall in love with Bergman and Peck in this movie, with both of them at the peak of their yumminess? I can’t help smiling every time I see the scene with Constance and Edwardes (I’ve never once heard our heroine call him “Anthony” in the film’s early scenes) on their impromptu get-to-know-you picnic in the sunshine, and the way she dreamily accepts a sandwich from him. She says, “Liverwurst” as it if were the loveliest word she’s ever heard, bless her heart!

Those who scratch the tablecloth do not get fruit cup!

When Dr. Edwardes doesn’t recognize a caller’s voice, he’s initially annoyed, then laughs it off as a practical joke. Moreover, Dr. Edwardes takes a personal interest in Mr. Garmes (Norman Lloyd, frequent Hitchcock player and later producer of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour), a patient with a guilt complex about his late father. Garmes also seems to be way too intrigued with knives and letter-openers. When Garmes tries to kill himself, Constance and Edwardes assist at the emergency surgery. But to everyone’s shock, Edwardes freaks out and faints. In fact, this is the first of four fainting spells Dr. Edwardes has over the course of the movie. If you happen to have a thing for watching handsome men being rendered unconscious, Spellbound is your cup of Sleepytime Tea!

With a few more jokes and scientific types, we’d have Ball of Fire!

Uh-oh! Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do!

Love opens doors for Constance

Constance realizes what’s up when she compares the signature on Dr. Edwardes’ autographed book to a note he’d left for her. Turns out Dr. Dreamboat is an impostor with amnesia, and the lovebirds have to figure out why and how! They’d better hurry, because the initials “J.B.” on his cigarette case are their only clue to his real identity. But the jig’s up when Dr. Edwardes’ worried office assistant comes to Green Manors herself, confirming the ruse. Constance ends up playing footsie with a note J.B. had slipped under her door when the local police drop by. Apparently the real Dr. Edwardes is missing and presumed dead, with J.B. as a person of interest! Poor Constance—she lets her hair down for once, falls in love, and wouldn’t you know the guy might be a killer? No wonder more and more people meet through online dating services nowadays! Anyway, before he fled, J.B. left Constance a note saying he can be reached at the Empire State Hotel in NYC until the heat dies down. For the rest of the film, Constance is essentially a female detective, a comparatively rare bird in suspense stories. Cool! She can start by delving deeper into why J.B. resents smug women. Smugness is infuriating in both genders, but J.B. doesn’t seem to mind smug men!

Aww, J.B. sleeps so cute! (Faint #1)

When she hits NYC, Constance gets some unexpected but welcome help from the house detective (Bill Goodwin, who was also the announcer for The Burns and Allen Show on both CBS and NBC), who pegs Constance as a gal in trouble, “a schoolteacher or librarian.” I love the way the hotel dick comes so close and yet so far in his assessment of her as he helps her in his amateur “psychologist” capacity without revealing her mission! Oh, and what would a Hitchcock movie be without one of the director’s famous cameos? It’s in this very scene, about 37 minutes into the movie; you’ll see Hitch walking out of an elevator at the Empire State Hotel, wearing a fedora, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette. If you can’t wait that long, go back to the beginning of this blog post and click here for the trailer.

Ground floor, Hitchcock cameo, everybody off!

Pesky tourist Wallace Ford puts the “Pitts” in “Pittsburgh”!

Danger between the lines!

Once Constance and J.B. are reunited (and it feels so good), they’re able to figure out that J.B. is a doctor (“The eminent Doctor X,” he says ruefully). They also deduce that J.B. must have been with the real—and still missing and presumed dead—Dr. Edwardes when foul play apparently befell him. J.B. feels this is only further proof that he must have knocked off Dr. Edwardes. Also, J.B. has burn scars on his left hand, with a skin graft, and he relives the pain and horror of his accident as if it was happening all over again, poor guy. Well, at least it’s a start—but when the bellboy brings up the afternoon papers, there’s an article about the manhunt, including a lovely photo of Constance! Oops, gotta run—to Pennsylvania Station for train tickets to wherever it was that J.B. went with Dr. Edwardes. Constance figures when J.B. left the mountains after Dr. Edwardes’ accident, he must have passed through New York, so asking for train tickets might jog his memory. Poor J.B. can only stammer “Rome,” then collapse. If J.B. is gonna have these dizzy/fainting spells on a regular basis, I think Constance should get a wheelchair for him! So all roads lead our fugitive sweethearts not to Rome, but to Grand Central and Rochester, NY to see Constance’s dear old professor and fellow psychoanalyst Dr. Alex Brulov (played by Michael Chekhov, famed acting teacher, former member of the Moscow Art Theater, and nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov. Alex was one of my favorite Spellbound characters, so I was happy to learn he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his delightful performance). On the way, Constance helps J.B. remember the fiery wartime plane crash in which he was burned, reliving the horror: “I hated killing. I can remember that much….”

One perk to J.B.’s fainting spells; he’s got the lovely and devoted Constance to catch him!
(Faint #2)

Yikes! Talk about unwanted publicity!

When our fugitive couple reaches Alex’s Rochester home, claiming they’re honeymooning newlyweds, there’s a nice little scene with two police detectives (Art Baker and Regis Toomey of Burke’s Law), with one of them complaining about his clingy mother and accusations of being a “mama’s boy.” Even John Law has neuroses! And once again, poor J.B. can’t catch a break: the line pattern on the coverlet upsets him so badly that he faints again. When he wakes up after everyone’s asleep, the poor guy gets freaked out again by the relentlessly white bathroom fixtures; with his white phobia, he can’t even wash up or shave, though he seems perfectly capable of wandering dazedly through Alex’s house with a straight razor. Could’ve been worse, though; Spellbound could’ve taken place in the 1970s, with all those harvest gold and avocado green fixtures! Luckily, Alex turns out to be wilier than Constance gave him credit for; he slips bromides into J.B.’s milk, and it’s beddy-bye time!

“You like close shaves, don’t you?”

From the folks who brought you the Fisticam: The Dairycam!


But Alex, this is a good boy...this is a nice boy...this is a mother's angel! (Faint #3)

Next time J.B. comes over, we’re giving him the plastic cups! (4th and Final Faint!)

It takes lots of convincing, but the next day, Constance and Alex are able to get J.B. on the fast track toward helping him find out who he is and what happened to Dr. Edwardes. One more fainting spell and a look out the window on this snowy day, and our intrepid heroes realize the lines that freaked out J.B. were skiing tracks in the snow! That’s where the dream sequence comes in:

Sled tracks on a snowy day gives our heroes the major clue they need: Dr. Edwardes had been into sports, saying it was a boon to the treatment of mental disorders. That’s why the dark lines in the white snow freaked out J.B. so severely. Using the notes from J.B.’s dream, they figure out that J.B. and Dr. E. went to Gabriel Valley for what turned out to be their ill-fated therapy vacation. Constance and J.B. go there to recreate the events leading to Dr. Edwardes’ death. The couple opts for downhill skiing, and the tension is almost unbearable as J.B. starts to remember the horrible thing he was trying to forget: the accidental death of his little brother as young J.B. tried to yell warnings to him. The point of impact where the poor kid is impaled lasts only seconds, but it still breaks my heart and chills me to the bone every time I see Spellbound. But the evil spell is broken as J.B. grabs Constance and saves her from flying off the cliff in the proverbial nick of time. Now they can forget the past and forge a future together as husband and wife, as well as Doctor and Doctor Ballantine (the “J” is for “John”). Nice day for a white wedding….

Or is it? When the police catch up with them, they confirm that Dr. Edwardes’ body is where our heroes deduced it would be, all right—but they didn’t figure on finding the cause of death was a bullet! After a montage of Constance desperately trying to convince the jury that John is innocent,to no avail, our heartbroken heroine returns to Green Manors. Ah, but the film and the surprises aren’t over just yet:

The screenplay by Ben Hecht and Angus MacPhail is loosely based on Francis Beeding’s 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes; indeed, the opening credits specifically say “Suggested by Francis Beeding’s novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.” I’ve read in various sources that the original novel was a lot more gimmicky and Gothic-y. Hitchcock had no qualms about retooling a novel to serve his movie’s needs, so he, Hecht, and MacPhail improved upon it. But there’s one writer few can improve upon: William Shakespeare, whose lines from Julius Caesar open Spellbound with a most appropriate quote: “The fault…is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Spellbound was released in theaters in 1945, when World War 2 ended and soldiers were coming home suffering from shell shock, nightmares, and “battle fatigue” (or as we know it today, PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder), so it was inevitable that Spellbound would strike a chord with moviegoers at that time (and even now, really, since war is unfortunately still with us). It also struck a chord with its producer, David O. Selznick, since he was undergoing psychoanalysis on account of his own family tragedy: Selznick’s brother Myron, a top Hollywood agent, had died after many years of alcoholism. On top of that, Selznick’s marriage broke up, so he wound up in therapy with psychoanalyst/psychiatrist Dr. May Romm. Interestingly, in 1944, the year before Spellbound was released, life during wartime was the subject of another acclaimed Selznick drama, Since You Went Away (which I must confess is known here at Team Bartilucci H.Q. as one of the most depressing movies ever made! But I digress….)

Miklós Rózsa is one of my favorite composers, and it’s no wonder that he won an Oscar for his glorious Spellbound score! It sets the film’s tone in every way, its theremin weaving foreboding throughout the emotion-packed, lushly romantic orchestrations. Ironically, according to Wikipedia, Selznick originally wanted a musical score from future Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, another favorite of mine! But Herrmann wasn’t available, so Rózsa got the gig. Indeed, Spellbound also received five other Oscar nominations, not only for Chekhov’s supporting performance (James Dunn won for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but also for George Barnes’ gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (The Picture of Dorian Gray won); Jack Cosgrove’s special photographic effects (the Oscar went to another of my favorite movies, the Danny Kaye comedy Wonder Man); Hitchcock’s direction; and a Best Picture nomination for Selznick International (though I can't complain about The Lost Weekend winning the prize). Also, Ingrid Bergman won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance. It’s also worth noting that Rhonda Fleming, only 22 at the time, made quite an impressive debut in the small but memorable role of Green Manors patient Mary Carmichael, whose flirty manner and beauty disguises a vicious hatred of men. Team Bartilucci favorite Dave Willock of the animated Hanna-Barbera series Wacky Races and Robert Aldrich films such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte played the bellboy who recognized Constance in New York. Vinnie recognized Willock’s voice; he's got an ear for such things, bless him. Many folks reading this may also remember Willock from another Team B. fave, It's in the Bag.

Hello, Dali!

The scenes in Spellbound involving Salvador Dali’s surrealism were originally going to be even more surreal and elaborate than the classic dream sequence we movie fans know and love! However, as is explained in the Spellbound DVD’s special features, the rushes showed lighting problems, and worst of all for a romantic thriller, the footage just plain wasn’t packing the emotional and visual punch that Hitchcock had hoped for. So Selznick contacted production designer William Cameron Menzies, with whom he’d worked on Gone with the Wind. Menzies redesigned the shots, and the film certainly seems to have retained the impact and entertainment value that Hitchcock & Company wanted. Heck, I could go on and on about Menzies’ own extraordinary career alone, considering that in addition to being a brilliant production designer (a title Menzies created, by the way), he was also an Oscar-winning producer, director, and screenwriter in his brilliant 50-year career—but that deserves a blog post all its own, if someone hasn’t written one about him already!

If a honeymoon on a train was good enough for Mr. & Mrs. Thornhill, it's good enough for Dr. and Dr. Ballantine!

Sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you....

Try to Remember: The Amnesia Trilogy. Part 2: MIRAGE

2011-10-14T12:36:00.015-04:00

Ignorance can be bliss — but not if you’re Gregory Peck in the 1965 Universal thriller Mirage (click here to see the entire movie!). Playing our hero David Stillwell, Peck finds himself both literally and figuratively in the dark during a blackout in the Unidyne Building, a (fictional) Manhattan skyscraper. Since Mirage was written by one of my favorite writers, Peter Stone (Charade, Arabesque, Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and so much more), Mirage’s offbeat, cynical yet sparkling wit kicks in immediately, with every line sketching David and his fellow New Yorkers in brief yet memorable brushstrokes. This movie has plenty of Stone’s playful wit, yet it also has a lot on its mind. For instance, while the lights are out, everyone but our hero treats the blackout as a fun excuse to make out in the dark and, as David wryly notes, “rescind all the Ten Commandments,” as exemplified by two pretty young women who come on to him:

Blonde: “Everybody’s going to the boardroom in 2709, the one with no windows. We’re having a party. Want to come? It’s a Braille Party.”
Brunette: “Braille. Get it? The touch system.”

Meanwhile, others in the Unidyne Building regard the blackout as a mere inconvenience:

First Man: “This’ll probably make me late for the theater.”
Second Man: “What are you seeing?”
First Man: “Benefit. The whole thing’s deductible.”
Second Man: “Yeah, I know, but what are you seeing?”
First Man: “You know, that thing with what’s-his-name.”

Diane Baker as Shela, Our Lady of the Stairwell

Even David’s colleague Sylvester Josephson (Kevin McCarthy) quips about taking advantage of the blackout for making whoopee: “We’re marooned on a mountain, bubbie. Whoever pulled that plug gave me a foolproof excuse for the wife.” But David opts to nix the orgies and descend the 27 flights of stairs he’s got ahead of him. Soon he finds himself with a traveling companion: a beautiful, sophisticated young brunette (Diane Baker) who doesn’t happen to mention her name. She can’t see very well in the dark, especially since the only light David has is a pocket-size flashlight. But she sure seems to recognize David’s voice, happily so: “I heard you were back in town!” David swears he doesn’t know her (though he wishes he did), but he’s helpful and charming all the same. Sophisticated Lady still hasn’t mentioned her name, but she sure talks a blue streak, chatting away about personal topics and people who she clearly thinks he knows: “You wouldn’t know why he did it, would you? Cut off the electricity, I mean. If it were anyone else, I’d say it was a practical joke, but not The Major….” Once they reach street level, the lights go on — and Our Lady of the Stairwell (as David playfully calls her later) is chagrined and furious: “I knew it was you! That was a stupid joke!” When David introduces himself, that only makes things worse; she angrily runs down the stairs into the basement as fast as her little Cyd Charisse legs will carry her. Bewildered, David gives chase all the way down to the building’s subbasements, four of them in all (this will be important later).

Cost accountant fu!

When David finally gets out of the building, he finds himself in the middle of a crowd of onlookers ranging from shocked to jaded (Mirage is set in New York, after all). It may have been all fun and games when the lights went out, but when they went back on, it turned out someone had fallen from an open window, seemingly a suicide. An onlooker remarks, “If I had the guts to step out of that window, I’d have the guts to go on living.” The Unidyne reception desk is manned by Joe Turtle (character actor Neil Fitzgerald, whose credits include The Informer, Niagara, Bulldog Drummond, Mr. Moto, and Sherlock Holmes movies). Joe knows and likes David, on account of “you’re the only man in this whole building who can say my name without making it sound like a joke.” Joe notes that all of the city’s bigwigs showed up in a hurry after news of the death plunge. David asks Joe if he has any idea why the lights went out. Joe muses, “Someone upstairs playing God, most likely. A man living that high up gets aspirations, you know.” David’s about to discover Joe just might be right.

Maybe David needs a good self-help book!!

When David heads to a local bar before going home, it’s quietly chilling to see the darkened street being hosed down in the suicide’s aftermath. At the bar, everybody knows David’s name, but for him, it’s anything but cheers. Somehow, he realizes that he’s just going through the motions. As far as David knows, he’s a cost accountant at Unidyne. But something’s wrong somehow. As was the case with Our Lady of the Stairwell, he becomes aware that he really doesn’t know who he is or what’s going on. What’s more, when David goes back to Unidyne to find those subbasement levels from before, he’s only able to find one level. As my husband Vinnie would say, “The hell?” Soon the news of the dead man is splashed all over the front pages of newspapers nationwide. The departed John Doe is a big fish indeed: Charles Stewart Calvin, head of the renowned Charles Calvin Peace Organization. In fact, Calvin’s best-selling book The Peace Scare is displayed in bookstore windows all over town. David’s memory starts messing with him in earnest, with quick, sharp flashbacks when he least expects them. Even falling watermelons are unnerving in the increasingly strange and sinister world David has found himself in. Fun Fact: Charles Calvin is played by Walter Abel, longtime veteran of movies and Broadway. In fact, Abel played the amnesiac hero in the 1936 suspense drama Two in the Dark, which was remade in 1945 with Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford as Two O’Clock Courage (an undersung favorite of mine).

To borrow a line from A.H. Weiler’s New York Times review of Mirage from May 27th, 1965, our man David is “caught up in (a) sinister merry-go-round (and) behaves as naturally as a man could who discovers at the outset that he can’t remember what has happened to him in the last two years.” But there are plenty of people eager to help him out—of the country, that is! Seems like everyone David encounters wants to give him a one-way ticket to Barbados—and why not, since they keep insisting that “I hear Barbados is gorgeous!” Every time David nixes the offer, other sinister types try to force the issue, including bespectacled heavy Willard (future Oscar-winner George Kennedy in his second go-round as a Peter Stone villain after Charade) and gabby, gun-toting wrestling fan Lester (Jack Weston) who shares a push-button elevator ride with David and a sexy electronic voice (“she” should date HAL 9000). When they get off, Lester pulls a gun on our perplexed hero; lucky for David, he seems to have picked up the moves on Lester’s favorite wrestling show, though his memory is still playing hide-and-seek. The story is credited to Walter Ericson — which was a nom de plume for Howard Fast, the novelist who brought us Spartacus and Rachel and the Stranger, among others!

“Again with Barbados? You’ve been saying that through the whole picture! Who are you guys, The Barbados Tourism Board?”

He’s got the whole world in his hands….

So far, the primary clue to David’s predicament is a keychain shaped like Earth, with the logo “The Future is Here.” Swell, but before David can look forward to the future, he has to unlock his past. Something had happened to him over the last two years, and every time some little flashback sparks a fleeting memory, David’s subconscious aggressively tries to kick it to the curb. Mirage is unique in that unlike most movie amnesiacs who are desperate to remember who they are and what they’ve done, David is subconsciously prolonging his amnesiac state because reliving that memory, whatever it may be, is just too painful for him to face. On an increasingly tender note, however, there’s Our Lady of the Stairwell — but you can call her Shela. You’d think someone as sophisticated and smartly-dressed as Diane Baker’s Shela could afford to put an “i” in her name! I love it that Baker’s Jean Louis wardrobe includes a chic turban, just like my dear stylish mom used to wear when she was feeling exotic. Shela starts out playing it cagey and mysterious, popping up when David least expects it, usually at such picturesque NYC locations as the Central Park Zoo (where I spent many happy hours as a child; it was one of our family's go-to spots in Manhattan). When he encounters her again at Battery Park, the conversation becomes urgent:

David: “Shela, you’ve got to tell me who he is and what he wants! He can’t have it both ways. How can I give him anything if I can’t remember what it is?”

Shela: “Be grateful for that. Not remembering is the only thing keeping you alive!”

David: “But why?”
Shela: “Because you know something you shouldn’t about him. But also, you have something he needs. That’s why he’s taking a chance on keeping you alive a little longer.”

David: “I’ll have to write him a thank-you note.”

A Peck on the chic

We discover that Shela is the troubled mistress of Unidyne’s president, Major Crawford Gilcuddy (Leif Erickson), a.k.a. The Major. Apparently he’s assigned her to keep tabs on her old flame David. For both of them, I’d say it’s nice work if you can get it — amnesia, murder, and treachery notwithstanding! Despite loving each other, those crazy kids Shela and David had issues over ideology and commitment, and probably money issues, judging from references to Shela’s “extravagance.” This may also explain her Jean Louis fashions and her apparent “kept woman” status over at Major Manor. (What kind of salary does David earn in his line of work, anyway?) As Shela puts it, “We’re a couple of mules, David. The harder we pulled on each other, the harder we dug our heels in. You wanted me to commit first, without promises, out of principle. I wanted the promises first. Togetherness is just dandy, but I’d just as soon have foreverness.” I’ve always liked Diane Baker’s work, including her performances in The Prize, Marnie, and of course, Mirage. Having said that, sometimes Shela comes perilously close to simpering, if not outright whining. When Baker/Shela does what I call her “Simper Fi” routine, I wish I could leap into the screen, shake her by the shoulders, and snap, “Sheesh, lady, call off your pity party already! Use your money and connections for something useful, like teaching kids to read or learn a trade!” But when Baker and McCarthy’s characters eventually pull themselves together and do something useful, I cheered out loud! Indeed, Vinnie came into the living room to see what all the cheering was about!

Bubbie baby, give up! They’re here already!

McCarthy cracked me up with his then-current hip lingo (“bubbie,” “baby,” “sweetheart”). That said, in addition to adding humor to the proceedings, McCarthy also becomes gradually more serious as Mirage reaches its tense climax. McCarthy’s performance is an excellent portrayal of an executive just trying to stay out of trouble by brown-nosing his way through life and being forced to grow a conscience in spite of himself — a long way from McCarthy’s iconic role as Dr. Miles J. Bennell in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
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Almost everyone in Mirage is jaundiced, cynical, paranoid, and/or just plain out for themselves, like Dr. Augustus J. Broden (Robert H. Harris, who does a fine job playing a pompous ass who at least admits he’s a pompous ass), the psychiatrist author of The Dark Side of the Mind, who David consults in hopes of getting insight into his amnesia. Doctor and patient get off on the wrong foot when David claims the book’s co-author Dr. Max Ellman recommended him to Dr. Broden, only to be caught in a lie when Broden reveals Dr. Ellman has been dead for years. Things go from bad to worse when David absolutely can’t remember anything of the past two years of his life. Dr. Broden angrily gives David the boot, convinced that he’s a criminal and that he’s faking his amnesia as “a dodge to establish a tricky defense. There’s no such thing as the sort of amnesia you describe. There never has and never will be.” Well, at least Dr. Jerk didn’t take David’s money! (To be fair, he's helpful later, though no less pompous and selfish.)

Casselle, P.I. Fee: $500 a day, plus Dr. Pepper and p.b. and j.

Happily, there are other people besides Shela who believe in David, like Irene (Eileen Baral), the little latchkey kid whose parents work the night shift, making it possible for Shela and David to hide from the police there after poor Joe Turtle’s murder. It’s touching how sweet Shela is with Irene in this scene, playing house with David and an empty coffee pot (“I’m too young to drink coffee”), tucking her tenderly into bed. (Wish we could’ve seen what her parents thought, if they didn’t just chalk it up to a child’s imagination!) My favorite of these good-guy characters is newly-minted private investigator Ted Casselle, played by the delightful, scene-stealing Walter Matthau before he became an Oscar-winning star. He’s so new to the P.I. biz that David is actually Casselle’s first client! Unlike the iconic hard-boiled private eye, Casselle prefers Dr. Pepper and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to booze and cigarettes, but he’s loyal, honest, funny, and he delivers the goods, bless him! But Casselle had better watch his back, because it’s starting to look like people on David’s side don’t have long lifespans….

“It’s coffee-er coffee!” Writer Peter Stone used a real 1960s coffee commercial line in this scene. Anyone here know the brand? It's driving me nuts!

Gregory Peck’s production company collaborated on Mirage with Universal. According to Tom Weaver’s liner notes on the LaserDisc (yes, we of Team Bartilucci own the LaserDisc as well as the DVD from Universal’s Gregory Peck Collection), Peck was eager to include Cary Grant-style bon mots in the script. Stone and director Edward Dmytryk were worried. According to Dmytryk, “After Greg left, Stone said, ‘God, I don’t know what we’re gonna do here. He can’t do jokes like Cary Grant!’ But I realized that Greg was a very straightforward and honest man, and I said, ‘I’ll betcha that if you write some ‘Cary Grant jokes,’ they’ll be the first things to go when we actually start shooting it. I think Peck is honest enough to know that he can’t do that kind of thing.’ And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.’” (The situation was similar when Peck teamed up with Sophia Loren on Arabesque, but it seemed to me that Peck had become more comfortable with the witty dialogue by then. Peck may not have been Cary Grant, but I found his attempts to be more Grant-like were rather charming. But I digress….) I very much like Director of Photography Joseph MacDonald’s black-and-white imagery (I Wake up Screaming; The Dark Corner; The List of Adrian Messenger, among others). It left me with the feeling that a film noir lurked beneath the crisp, beautiful autumn New York locations, adding to Mirage’s paranoid atmosphere. I also loved F/X ace Albert Whitlock’s matte falling effects, not to mention Quincy Jones’ lushly romantic score, one of his earliest, with touches of Bernard Herrmann in Vertigo mode.

Underground fight in the subbasement

I wonder how many film actors have played characters with the same name back-to-back? I don’t mean movie series characters such as James Bond; I mean a sheer unadulterated coincidence, as was once the case with Gregory Peck. Of course, according to the IMDb, Peck played David Stillwell in Mirage, this week’s Amnesia Trilogy movie. But one year later, Peck played another David, namely Professor David Pollack, in Stanley Donen’s kaleidoscopic comedy-thriller Arabesque! Coincidence?

Hey, dig! It’s Franklin Cover, The Jeffersons’ Tom Willis!

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MIRAGE Ending Spoiler!

David falls into the clutches of Major Crawford Gilcuddy, a.k.a. The Major, and his henchmen as well as his toady, Sylvester Josephson. Willard savagely beats David up, then holds a gun to David’s head. A rather one-sided game of Russian Roulette ensues. The terror and shock of it all finally unscrambles David’s memory. He remembers that the subbasements he thought he’d seen in New York’s Unidyne Building were actually in California, where he’d been working as a physiochemist for the past two years—not as a cost accountant (more on that in a moment). In California, David had been working in a radiation lab at Garrison Laboratories. He remembers that he had called a meeting with The Major and Charles Calvin. David had discovered how to neutralize nuclear radiation at its source, therefore making a “clean bomb” that would be safer to use. But David had also realized, to his horror, that this would also make such bombs easier to use — ugh, just what this crazy old world needs, a shortcut to World War 3!

Outraged, David had snapped, “Isn’t there enough money in peace these days?” Meanwhile, The Major has dollar signs in his eyes as he demands to have copies of David’s report sent around immediately. David realizes that Charles’ Peace Foundation is in bed with Unidyne. He points out that it’s illegal for a foundation to do business with a profit-making organization. Charles replies, “I can’t respect any legality that would impede progress.” He asks The Major to leave so he and David can talk. Dismayed, David says, “We’re being turned into statistics, case histories, and percentage points, all in the name of progress! Whatever happened to human beings?”

A gun to the head may be quite continental, but...why do bad guys always threaten to kill our hero unless they get the formula? Don’t they know if they kill our guy, they won’t get what they want anyway? Haven't they ever read or seen The Maltese Falcon? Idiots!

Charles brings David to the window. “Is that what you want to see, David? Human beings?” He opens the window, gesturing at the night sky. “Come here, David. Look at them.” He and David look down on the street below, 27 floors down. Calvin says, “Do they look like human beings, or ants? You/re quite right, David, they are statistics. But I didn’t do it to them. I’m not responsible.”

David replies, “Maybe you are responsible. You’re one of the leaders. You have the power to control progress and to protect human dignity.” Suddenly the lights in the skyscraper go out. “What’s this? Crawford’s way of keeping me in the building until you can soften me up? Don’t you see what he is, Charles?” As Charles tries to get his secretary on the intercom, David says, “Those people down there aren’t even ants to him; they’re articles of commerce. That man computes human life in terms of dollars and cents. He’s made you his prize salesman, and I’m the cost accountant trying to cut down his overhead with what you and he call progress! I won’t let you have this, Charles.”

Scene cuts from the flashback to The Major’s study in the present. The Major is getting tired of waiting: “Get out of here, David.” Our hero retorts, “How far would I get? A block? Two?” Then another flashback kicks in: David had set the report on fire. Aghast, Charles had raced to the window, desperate to get the burning report. In his frenzy, Charles had accidentally launched himself out the window to his death. Shocked, David turns away from the open window, his face covering his hands as he trembles violently for what seems like eons. Eventually, David’s hands come down. His face is somehow blank and stunned all at once. He trudges out of the office in a bit of a daze, and that’s where we viewers came in.

Yay! Annie Oakley Shela grows a backbone!

Back in the here and now, David turns to The Major. “I didn’t kill him! You did!” The Major points out that he wasn’t in the room when Charles fell out the window, but David’s not buying it: “You were there, Crawford. Your sickness was inside him. You’re a carrier. You infected him, and he died from it.” Willard’s about to resume the Russian Roulette game when a shot rings out. Everyone is gobsmacked to see that Shela shot Willard — instead of feeling sorry for herself and letting The Major call the shots, Shela is finally on the right side! You go, girl!

At first, The Major and Josephson are pretty darn ticked-off at Shela, but David notices a change in the atmosphere: “What’s wrong, Major? You look nervous.” He realizes that Josephson has the gun now. Forget the “bubbie boobie baby” nonsense — David persuades/reminds Josephson that The Major is alone now, except for him: “For once in your life, you’ve got power. Use it!...He ordered two men killed. That’s first-degree murder! We can get him, Josephson, you and I.” The Major dangles the possibility that if Josephson sticks with The Major, “You’ll have a job at Unidyne for as long as you live.” David laughs sarcastically: “And how long do you think that’ll be? You’ve already hesitated too long. He’ll remember that…Commit, Josephson! If you’re not committed to anything, you’re just taking up space!” The Major tries one more time to bring Josephson to his side, but Josephson just smacks away The Major’s hand with the telephone receiver. Hooray, it’s Grow a Backbone Day!

Josephson, too! Backbones for everyone—I’m buyin’!

David and Shela are in each other’s arms as the police arrive. Shela asks, “Do you know why it happened?” David replies, “I believed in Charles Calvin so much that I forgot he was only a human being.” He figures he’ll be going back to work now that “Humpty Dumpty is back together again.” She asks, “I don’t suppose you could use any help?... You could run an ad in the Times: ‘Wanted: Extremely lonely young lady with a fairly low opinion of herself due to many mistakes. Willing to work long, hard hours….” Shela and David embrace again: “Oh, David, help me. Please help me.” David assures her, “We’ll help each other. That’s really what it’s all about, anyway.” The End!

Try to Remember: The Amnesia Trilogy. Part 1: WRECKED

2011-10-07T14:21:00.010-04:00

"You should see the other guy!"

To Merriam-Webster Online, amnesia means the following:

am·ne·sia

noun \am-ˈnē-zhə\

1: loss of memory due usually to brain injury, shock, fatigue, repression, or illness
2: a gap in one's memory

But to film fans, amnesia means a surefire way to plunge a movie's main character into a tailspin of paranoia and suspense! For the next three weeks, starting today, I'll be spotlighting three amnesia-driven thrillers from three different decades. Let's kick things off with the newest of these films first, Wrecked, released earlier this year by IFC Midnight.

…You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile….

…You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
“Once in a Lifetime,” Talking Heads

Objects in the rear-view mirror may be more painful than they appear!

Those of you who’ve been reading TotED for a while know that I rarely blog about movies made after 1980, unless it’s a film that’s really set up housekeeping in my heart and gut. The only post-1980 films I’ve discussed in these pages were 1996’s Independence Day (for Team Bartilucci’s disaster film double-feature back in April), and 2007’s No Country for Old Men (as a birthday tribute to my late mom back in January, since we both loved the film). However, director Michael Greenspan’s 2011 psychological survival thriller Wrecked, starring my favorite contemporary actor, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody (for the fact-based 2003 drama The Pianist), is so compelling that I want to recommend it to all of you now—why wait? Besides, as dear friend and fellow blogger ClassicBecky said when I was a guest at our own Clara Fercovic’s wonderful blog Via Margutta 51: “You know I’m also a 13-year-old with a ponytail about Adrien!” Becky, you’re in good company, believe me! (Click here for my Via Margutta 51 guest appearance, including my anecdote about Adrien Brody’s kindness to my daughter and me at New York Comic Con 2010.)

“Are we friends, George?” With friends like dead bank robbers, who needs enemies?

Not the kind of “rapid transit” our hero had in mind!

Splendor in the grass? Not so much.

If you thought you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, just be grateful you’re not in Adrien Brody’s shoes as Wrecked’s unnamed protagonist. He wakes up to find himself the pain-racked sole survivor of a horrific car crash! (Nice touch: we see the red insides of our awakening protagonist’s eyelids before he actually opens his eyes.) The Man, as Brody is billed in the credits, is bloody and bruised, with his nose and his right leg broken. His knees are trapped under the dashboard of a silver-gray Chevy. All he can figure out about his location is that it’s somewhere in a huge, dense forest (played by the beautiful Pacific Northwest), including a raging river that momentarily buffets our startled hero about the rapids; bah, wilderness! Oh, and did I mention there’s a bloody corpse in the back seat, apparently buckled in, and the windshield has been smashed, very likely from yet another passenger being thrown through the glass? On top of that, it becomes increasingly clear that our man is suffering from a concussion, resulting in amnesia. Well, how did he get here? And how the hell can he get out of here, preferably alive?

Our guy has a much-needed laugh and epiphany: “I hate mint!”

Brody gives a tour de force performance as our emotionally and physically persecuted man. His organic acting style is perfect for Wrecked; he always comes across as if he’s living in the moment, never hamming it up. When his character is hurt onscreen, you find yourself hurting along with him amid the sheer loneliness and frustration of his surreal ordeal. It helps that Brody has always been especially good at acting with his eyes; you can really read the emotions in those silver-sage orbs of his. Frankly, I couldn’t help wincing and whimpering at our beleaguered protagonist’s every ache and pain as he tries to move and make sense of his nightmarish situation. (Just thank your lucky stars that this blog post didn’t consist solely of me constantly whimpering, “Oh, nooo! Poor Brody! Poor baby!” or “Ooooh, poor boo-boo Adrien!”)

...“Goner,” if he can’t get out of this fix!

Greenspan and newbie screenwriter Christopher Dodd really sweat the small details of our man’s ordeal. When he isn’t fading in and out of consciousness, he becomes so hungry that even a mint on the car floor looks good to him—and being unable to reach that mint has him as maddeningly frustrated as if he was grasping for gold in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The excellent work of Greenspan, Dodd, and Brody’s compelling performance truly makes you feel his world shrinking to the size of the car’s interior. And yet even in this dire situation, they manage to slip in nuggets of wry comedy relief. One of my favorite bits: our hero finds he’s able to start the car enough to hear its radio, and…well, you may never listen to Tiny Tim’s rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” quite the same way ever again (presuming you can pry it out of your head at all!). Even our suffering hero manages to crack a smile! I’m guessing our guy stumbled across a Dr. Demento broadcast.

Oh, shoot! Bad man, or scared man?

Trail-mix-toting angel of mercy, or devilish hallucination?

Our hero’s physical condition improves bit by bit, and gradually he’s able to cobble together a makeshift splint for his injured leg. He also manages to find a couple of credit cards in the car, one with the name “Raymond Plazzy” embossed on it, the other sporting the name “George Weaver.” Too bad neither name rings a bell with our frustrated fella. He becomes grateful for little things, like managing to catch some rainwater to drink from the car’s ashtray (some of it splashes onto his face, too, cleaning him up a tad so we can see more of Brody’s angularly winsome punim). When he finds a cell phone later (which might be his, or might belong to the dead men), it doesn’t work, what with the deep woods location and later, his rapids ride. But at least he finds an OTC pain reliever in the wreckage to dull his considerable aches and pains. Greenspan and Dodd even went to the trouble of showing our full-bladdered protagonist *ahem* relieving himself during his forced captivity in the wrecked car. The promise of seeing more of Brody may intrigue those of us who are warm for Brody’s form as well as his fine acting, but sorry, folks, his bathroom break is only heard, not seen!

Desperation gives “money to burn” new meaning.

A boy and his possibly imaginary dog

See, he’s a good boy! The dog’s cute, too!

Our hero’s odyssey gets odder when he spots an attractive brunette, played by Canadian actress Caroline Dhavernas, who played private eye Brody’s blonde Girl(friend) Friday in the 1950s-set docu-noir Hollywoodland, about Superman actor George Reeves’ mysterious death. Our man is so overcome with gratitude at seeing another human being—with a plastic bag of trail mix, no less—just feeling the woman’s face melts our man into tears of joy and relief, sobbing, “So warm. So warm.” The woman soothingly says, “Everything’s going to be all right now. I promise.” And then he wakes up! Aw, man! (Is it me, or does Brody’s face look like a tragedy mask when he cries? I’ve noticed that about him in other films, too, like The Pianist, The Jacket, and The Brothers Bloom. As far as I’m concerned, Brody’s still got a cute face even when he’s all sad and anguished, so there! But I digress….) Then a brown dog with a husky/shepherd build comes along. Is he a good dog? A bad dog? Or just another figment of our beleaguered, concussed protagonist’s imagination? The dog and the woman seem so real, only to periodically appear and disappear just when our guy thinks maybe he’s not hallucinating. Comfort and hope morph into despair, then back again. On top of that, the image of a frightened bank teller who looks like the woman flashes into our poor mixed-up guy’s mind. Is this what Nick Lowe, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, meant by “Cruel to be Kind”? Still, it’s nice to see Brody and Dhavernas together again onscreen. Judging from their chemistry in Hollywoodland, I wish they'd team up again onscreen, maybe for a more lighthearted movie, like a witty romantic comedy-thriller. (This is why Team Bartilucci needs to run the world! But again, I digress….)

“Ants on a log?” Would you settle for ants on a dashboard? Where’s Andrew Zimmern when you need him?

One day, our guy is cutting off the seat belts so he can use them to keep his makeshift splint in place. The radio broadcasts a news update about escaped bank robbers wanted in connection with the deaths of a female teller and a security guard. They were last seen in a silver-gray Chevy, and the bad men in question are named Eric Stapleton…and George Weaver…and Raymond Plazzy! When our fella manages to check the trunk, sure enough, there’s a whole bunch of money inside. But a man wearing hunting/survival gear and carrying a high-powered rifle apparently robs him and runs off. Is he another figment of our guy’s confused imagination and jigsaw memory? Is our hero in fact a villain? Yikes! Say it isn’t so! Say it’s just exhaustion and his scrambled memory messing with him. Or perhaps the filmmakers are messing with us? But one thing’s for sure: Wrecked sure keeps us viewers on our toes! Life is too short for a terrific film like Wrecked to wait for years or even decades to earn its classic status—check it out on DVD and Blu-Ray now!

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ENDING SPOILERS!

In a final flashback sequence, our protagonist learns/remembers his name: Simon. Apparently the woman is either Simon’s wife or girlfriend. They’d had some kind of unspecified spat in their car, and then Simon went inside a store. When he came out, the woman was sitting on a bench waiting for him. He opens his mouth as if he’s about to apologize or explain whatever they were arguing about, but whatever it was went by the wayside after Simon is unlucky enough to get in the way of the escaping bank robbers, who promptly take him hostage, then burn rubber escaping while the horrified woman screams out Simon’s name. Eventually, on a mountain road, Simon manages to wrest the steering wheel away from the robbers, the car goes out of control, and you know the rest! Luckily, he's rescued by forest rangers. Simon asks about his dog, and the ranger says he didn't have one. (Wonder if he and his honey will get one once they get home?)

Cougar on the prowl, and we don’t mean Courtney Cox!

Go green: recycle dead homicidal bank robbers as cougar chow!

"Hi, hon, it's me, Simon. My captors are dead and I need a lift. Can you come to the middle of nowhere and get me? Thanks, you're the ginchiest!"

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Extra special bonus photos for those of you who'd rather see Adrien Brody looking happy and charming instead of miserable and disheveled:

Yes, this is a real dog! Not the movie, smarty!

Photo taken in Central Park by Brody's renowned photographer mom Sylvia Plachy

Beyond the forest, nicely-groomed stubble!

Look at that winning smile!

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, Exchanging Captions!

2011-09-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

Hot creepers! Where's this week's TotED blog post?

Hey, everybody, instead of a new blog post this week, I did a sort of re-mix of my earlier post of Strangers on a Train for my new readers who haven't read it. More fun, more pictures, more quippy captions, and Fisticam action - Click here to give it a look! Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to leave a comment or two! :-)