The Booksteve Film Festival 2022--May

 

 

 

This month saw me with multiple deadlines all ultimately converging to the same point for four very different projects! Luckily, one of those projects involved me getting to watch some movies. More details on it later but it isn't MY project. I'm just behind the scenes on it. 

 

 

 

 

Dana Andrews in a hat. Noir films don't get much cooler than that. Unfortunately the magic that struck when Otto Preminger teamed him with Gene Tierney in the great LAURA didn't really continue here. Parts of it are good but it leads to an unsatisfying ending.

 

 

 

What can I say? I was on a Dana Andrews kick. This one is another Preminger but with a weird storyline, characters who change characterization mid-film, characters who show up looking like major plot points and then disappear without being mentioned again. I'm told this was the picture that led to Alice Faye leaving movies! Darnell is good and Percy Kilbride sheals the picture--as he often did.

Finally, a really GOOD noir picture. I wasn't even familiar with June Vincent but she's really good here. Duryea and Lorre are favorites of mine!A woman's husband is on death row for murder and she teams with the victim's ex-husband to prove his innocence no matter what it takes!

 

 

Is it a comedy? A musical? A tearjerker drama? Or a preachy rant against feminism? Or all of the above? Debbie is cute as a Broadway star who moves to the country and finds six children living on her property, and a handsome preacher living next door all ready to help her raise them. Great cast includes John McGiver, Jim Backus, and Eileen Heckart.

 

From the man who brought us THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and LORD LOVE A DUCK, this late '60s sex comedy has some sharp barbs and funny scenes but much of it is a showcase for the rarely showcased Anne Jackson! There's also a major mistake regarding it on IMDB. 

 

 

I had never even heard of this until Jerry beck recommended it on Facebook the day after it came out. Don't ask, he said, just watch it. So I did, with Rene and David, and we loved every creative minute of it, in spite of my immediately picking up on the seeming anti-Disney dig over what happened to a former Disney golden boy. Even with that, an amazingly fun movie...and I'd never even seen an episode of the series!

Hard to say that George Carlin wasn't one of the funniest men who ever lived as well as one of society's most perceptive critics. This long two-part documentary shows the way to do docs right! He is shown at his best and at his worst and in the end, at his most human, something I almost think he would have hated. 

Literally the FIRST Sherlock Holmes movie, long considered missing but rediscovered and restored just within the past decade! William Gillette, the classic stage Holmes who created all the tropes we think of as Doyle's in his only recorded Sherlock appearance.

Unquestionably one of THE best screwball comedies of all time, with Stanwyck at her most attractive and another amazing Warner Bros. cast. I even have a tie to this one as I met Robert Shayne at San Diego Con in 1987.

 

 

A wacky swingin '60s sex comedy with some funny lines and good performances, mainly from Leigh and Jeremy Slate, whom I knew mainly from BORN LOSERS where he's a sadistic biker.

 

Who thought casting Widmark as a romantic lead would  be a good idea (Probably Widmark!) This was Gene Kelly's last pic on his MGM contract (He directed) It's supposed to be adult with its pregnancy teases but seems just dull.

 

 A Laurel and Hardy fan for half a century and yet I'd never seen this one. The funniest part is Our Gang's Darla Hood growing up to be Thelma Todd!

 

 

 

Another absolutely hilarious and classic screwball comedy that I had the great privilege to see first in a big screen revival back in the late 1970s. Nary a false note and lots of heart and laughs.

 

Arguably one of the oddest movies ever made, the "plot" has the aging Burt Lancaster swimming through the pools in of numerous New England estates on the way to his own home. Surreal, confusing, but oddly satisfying.

 

And here's a more recent candidate for oddest movie ever made as Michelle Yeoh finds herself at various points in the multiverse attempting to save herself and her family. Think MCU without any Marvel heroes!
 

Bogart is Mad Dog Earle in... The Maltese Falcon?

 Noticed this elsewhere earlier today. These 2 posters for the classic MALTESE FALCON don't show Bogart as Sam Spade at all, but as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, from his star-making role in HIGH SIERRA, a film basically about a man and a woman...like on these posters. In both posters, he has his Mad Dog hairpiece...err...haircut, as opposed to his Sam Spade style. Also, as someone pointed out, there aren't exactly a lot of "blazing automatics" in FALCON. HIGH SIERRA had been such a huge hit and the two previous versions of FALCON were also-rans so I guess they were hedging their bets at Warner Bros., trying to make this look like HIGH SIERRA 2. Even the trailer image of Bogie references HIGH SIERRA. The ironic thing, of course, is that THE MALTESE FALCON is now considered one of THE all-time great movie classics while HIGH SIERRA is only remembered by film buffs.

 

Roger Corman Blogathon--Ski Troop Attack

 

  

AS PART OF THIS WEEKEND'S ROGER CORMAN BLOGATHON, TODAY WE LOOK AT SKI TROOP ATTACK!

SKI TROOP ATTACK is one of two movies produced in 1959 on the same South Dakota location with mostly the same crew and cast, one right after the other. BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE came first, a ten-day wonder produced by Gene Corman and directed by Monte Hellman. As it wrapped up, Gene’s always cost-conscious brother Roger moved right into production and direction on another ten-day wonder, SKI TROOP ATTACK. 

 

The picture plays like an ultra-low budget episode of TV’s COMBAT—itself still a few years away. It’s 1944 in Germany and a small, diverse band of American soldiers on skis (that way no army uniforms necessary) are on a reconnaissance mission in snowy German forest country. Although under orders to avoid conflict with Nazis, they keep running into them anyway and have to engage. In one early scene, Corman has lots of gun sound effects while onscreen we see only one man sneaking around behind the enemy. Ultimately, the four Americans are tasked with blowing up a railroad bridge, HOGAN’S HEROES-style, and slowly work toward that goal.

 

While probably 70% of SKI TROOP ATTACK consists of just watching all the actors skiing, the atmospheric musical score composed by jazz musician Fred Katz—a Corman regular—carries it along nicely. 

 

Most of the Germans are played by members of local high school ski teams, although there’s lots of grainy stock footage of real tanks and soldiers from 15 years or so earlier. Corman himself pops up as a Nazi skier in one scene, replacing the lead “German” skier who broke his leg skiing the day before. As Corman pointed out in later years, he himself couldn’t ski at all. 

 

The screenplay—such as it is—comes from another Corman mainstay, Charles B. Griffith, hailed in recent years by Quentin Tarantino as “the father of redneck cinema.” The highlight of the picture is the bickering chemistry between its stars, Michael Forest and Frank Wolff, respectively the Lieutenant and the Sergeant. Both men were good, trained actors with charismatic screen presences and their lives and careers would intertwine from that point on. 

As actors go, tall, muscular Forest has had an absolutely fascinating career and, as of this writing, seems to be still working at age 93. A veteran of acting teacher Jeff Corey’s training, he appeared on all sorts of episodic TV in the late ‘50s and all through the ‘60s, as well as starring in some Italian sword and sandal flicks and spaghetti westerns. His most memorable live-action role was probably as the god, Apollo, on a classic STAR TREK episode, a role he repeated nearly half a century later on an episode of STAR TREK CONTINUES. In more recent years, Forest has become a cartoon voice actor, particularly for anime, and IMDB shows him with a hundred or more credits just for that alone!

 

Frank Wolff was the definition of a character actor. He, too, started in episodic TV but after following Forest and Corman to Europe for a movie, Roger convinced him he might have a better career if he stayed there…and he did. Throughout the 1960s, Wolff appeared in spaghetti westerns, poliziotteschi, lowbrow comedies, and even some softcore porn. He could go easily from being a staid businessman, to a fascist police commissioner, to a wild-eyed western outlaw, to a cool spy. Sadly, Wolff committed suicide in 1972 in Italy. His longtime friend Michael Forest dubbed Wolff’s final role.

 

 

Although it received mixed reviews at best, SKI TROOP ATTACK played around in theaters and drive-ins for several years and is a great early example of how a bunch of talented and clever people could make something out of essentially nothing—a template that would end up defining the entire career of Roger Corman. 

https://weegiemidget.wordpress.com/2022/05/26/blogathon-welcome-to-day-1-of-the-cormanverse-blogathon/

#rogercormanblogathon

1940s Superman Ads

 

 

Hollywood Party-1934

It seemed as though every major studio felt compelled to put out an all-star production int he early days of talking pictures, featuring as many of their contract players as they could fit in. By their very nature, these were episodic but HOLLYWOOD PARTY is one of the best. The basic story deals with Jimmy Durante acting a Tarzan-like role opposite Lupe Velez--real-life wife of the "real" MGM Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller--but the real highlights of this one are appearances from Laurel and hardy and, as unlikely as it seems, a color sequence from Walt Disney, featuring Mickey Mouse--arguably the world's most famous star at the time!

 

1939 Radio Catchphrase Contest

Say! This is fun! From an online scan of a 1939 comic book, here's a radio catchphrase contest that the original purchaser of the comic actually tried to answer! I'll grant you some of these lasted better than others but I only missed # 4--which is one Miss or Mr. X actually got 83 years ago!

 

The Bookstore Film Festival 2022--April

Another slooooow month, at least for movies. A lot going on behind the scenes but I did still manage to get in a few. 

The last starring comedy vehicle for the man who was my favorite movie star growing up. Although not without its moments, Jerry seems to be phoning it in for the most part. There are even a few slightly blue gags! Not a good movie by anybody's standards but diehard Jerry Lewis aficionados will likely get something out of it.

 

 

I had never heard of this 2007 thriller but I watched it on a  whim and it was pretty entertaining. AZ little slow and the killer was predictable pretty early on but good performances all around.

 

We got Netflix back for the first time in 2 years because my wife wanted to watch BRIDGERTON. Me, I immediately gravitated to this. I'ma  sucker for a good twisty time travel flick and this one hit all the right buttons! Even made me cry a couple times.

I know, I know. I was late, okay. Actually a much better film than its so-so trailer indicates, but Florence Pugh--whom I already knew from HAWKEYE--steals every scene she's in. 

A decidedly odd '60s comedy presaging Mel Brooks' THE PRODUCERS in its plot of a mob plan attempting to make a movie that can't possibly succeed in order to launder money, but accidentally making a bug hit! Chevalier shamelessly chews the scenery, as does Tamiroff. Jayne's basically window dressing and never once wears that bikini.

  

The biggest big-name cast ever assembled...even if they were all assembled in the editing room! This French action-comedy is made up of reduced and re-edited scenes from a score of other releases starring Paul Newman, John Wayne, Dean martin, Robert Redford, Jimmy Stewart, Dustin Hoffman, and more! Hilariously NSFW!