KNYAZ IGOR / PRINCE IGOR (1969)

There were quite a few of these filmed operas made back in the USSR days of cultural proselytization. First we give them Opera, then Communism! The form shouldn’t work at all with realistic locations working against the highly stylized format, and when you add on handsome actors lip-synching to pre-recorded operatic voices . . . it’s not exactly a recipe for success. Yet, many work like a charm, and feel much more like real movies than the currently fashionable HD-live stage productions with their odd Concept Driven directorial conceits and ironic modernizations. Nothing ironic about Brezhnev’s Russia. Anyway, opera already comes with ‘QUOTES’ around everything. The best of the lot is still the old BORIS GODONOV film from ‘54. Weirdly compelling, with stunning visuals of vast hordes playing out the drama on sets that manage to be paradoxically ultra-realistic & highly stylized. (It helps that it’s a work of genius, too.) But later films of lesser operas, like the unusually handsome b&w version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s THE TSAR’S BRIDE/’66, work almost as well within a more naturalistic manner. This one, from a heavily cut edition of the Alexander Borodin opera that was originally cobbled into a performing edition by Glazanov & Rimsky, shouldn’t hold together at all. But under its recklessly tuneful surface, director Roman Tikhommirfov successfully locates a narrative thread to work with. The basic story finds Prince Igor ignoring bad omens before defending his land against the Polovtsian Invaders. Back at home, his wife pines and Prince Galitsky revels in debauchery. Meanwhile, Igor’s captor, the great Polovtsi Khan, gets a major bromance on his Prince of a Prisoner, offering to make him a partner and rule all the Russias together. This is further complicated because Igor’s handsome boy is also enslaved, but by love for the Khan’s alluring daughter. The whole thing plays out like some sort of sung-thru Spaghetti Western, alternating vast landscapes, hordes of soldiers with loudly intimate operatic soliloquies, often sung in the character's head. (Nice way to avoid bad lip-synch.) The Corinth DVD is taken from a weary print that improves a bit in the last reel, but don’t let that worry you. Here, the sum is very much greater than the occasional mismatched parts. Oddly, the one can’t-miss element, the famous Polovtsian Dances don’t come off. The focus & energy they acquire in a restricted stage space dissipate out in the Steppes. NOTE: The 1972 date listed by IMDb likely reflects the film’s Stateside release.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Four or five of the Borodin melodies in here went from IGOR to B’way’s KISMET. More came from Borodin’s Sym. #2 and his great D Major String Quartet. (Stranger In Paradise; This Is My Beloved; Baubles, Bangles & Beads.) The show remains tuneful, corny and irresistible. Alas, the 1955 M-G-M film version is resistible. But it’s still fun to pick out the tunes.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)

Good fun, though not quite so much as that poster promises! (Click to enlarge it.) The template was Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA/’54 which revealed untapped profit in first-class Sci-Fi family adventure pics. James Mason again plays an eccentric genius type, but a nicer one (the film had been planned for the ailing Clifton Webb). He discovers a tunnel leading 20,000 leagues into the Earth, bringing along Grad Student Pat Boone who systematically sheds his clothes all thru the film until his original outfit resembles a pair of Bermuda shorts . . . and nothing else. And there’s blond beefcake, too, in the pleasing form of Icelandic athlete Peter Ronson in his one & only film role. Also present for the descent is Arlene Dahl as the comely widow of a rival explorer. She offers good company, a bit of turn-of-the-last-century sexual politics and yet another striptease. (Don’t worry, it’s just her corset.) Henry Levin megs in a lively fashion unknown from his later work and there’s a better than expected script from Walter Reisch & film producer Charles Brackett that finds room for comic relief from a duck named Gertrude between the scary underworld culs-de-sac. Most of the effects remain spritely & imaginative, though unconvincing process work fails yet again to turn small reptiles into fierce pre-historic creatures. But a bit of posh location shooting back at the University bookends the pic with some real pomp & circumstance for a handsome finish. Especially in the fine restoration now available. Check out the pre-restoration comparison in the Extras to see just how bad things had gotten.

DOUBLE-BILL: There’s plenty of good-to-awful Jules Verne adaptations to pick from, but why not go for a CD of Bernard Herrmann’s phenomenal score. Heard on its own, it’s an unexpectedly somber, powerful affair that points to a far more serious film, yet works great in this more lighthearted context. Listen toward the end when a huge serpent wakes up and Herrmann references a touch of Fafner the Dragon from Wagner’s SIEGFRIED. Decca once had a suite from this score on a Phase 4 re-release CD called Great Film Music with Herrmann conducting a selection from his own fantasy films.

LIBERTE / KORKORO (2009)

One of the great under-reported stories out of WWII Europe involves the treatment of the Gypsies (‘Roma’ in the current terminology). This really isn’t too surprising, nationless & nomadic, who’s around to tell their story; what country would co-fund the film? With French citizenship and a mixed Algerian/Gypsy background, writer/director Tony Gatlif certainly brings the right cultural baggage . . . but he brings too much. This story of an extended Gypsy family rolling thru the French countryside, then suddenly asked to go against their nature, settle down or face some sort of exile (prison, concentration camp, extermination) plays up their wild nature in picturesque, as well as picaresque fashion. They don’t just travel, they gambol; they aren’t just natural musicians, they can fiddle the birds down from the trees. And their numbers include a sweetly crazed wildman, a regular violinistic Django Reinhardt; along with a pale French orphan boy who tags along, a gypsy at heart. But Gatlif doesn’t trust us with his set up, pointing out good guys and bad guys when we’re already on board, as if we were as childlike as his superstitious clan.* And he can’t stop himself from making the two sympathetic French townies the most interesting people in the film, showing when all is said and done that he knows exactly where his pain is buttered. Still, it’s a fascinating (and terrifying) period and Gatlif runs a smooth, visually sophisticated tour of the situation for us. If only he didn’t also make everything right down to the cow dung smell quite so worthwhile.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Then again, back in France, where kicking out Roma is still part of the political landscape, pointing out the Good Guys and the Bad Guys may not be quite so redundant.

SILVER CITY / HIGH VERMILION (1951)

Oscar’d for his publicity hack in THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA/’54; famous for informing the cops that he’s just been murdered at the beginning of D.O.A.; Edmund O’Brien was a good utility player, best known for playing stocky, sweaty urban men in crisis. But he also made a fistful of Westerns, including the lead in this neatly plotted story of a mining expert with a bad rep that keeps him on the move. Yvonne De Carlo is the sweet young thing (hey!, De Carlo was never a sweet young thing) who gives him a second chance running her pop’s silver claim before their lease runs out. But Barry Fitzgerald, remarkably menacing as the greedy owner, doesn’t want to lose that good silver vein and pulls off a series of dirty tricks to stop the digging. Meanwhile . . . O’Brien’s past is catching up to him and he’s got to stop the mine sabotage without being sidetracked by having to prove his innocence. It should be a swell little ‘B-pic,’ but Byron Haskins’ megging is frankly lousy with poorly staged action work and a sense of desperation in every undercranked chase. (Undercranking: the flop-sweat of action scenes.) Worse, TechniColor pioneer Ray Rennahan shoots as if it’s still 1935 and he’s got to show off his levels of color saturation. Still, the story plays out reasonably well, there’s a deft, scary chase thru a wood cutting mill (careful, boys!) and a nice range of supporting players like Richard Arlen, Gladys George & a tall, drink o’ water named Michael Moore. Michael Moore?

DOUBLE-BILL: O’Brien plays support in two Western Classics, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62 and THE WILD BUNCH/’69. But why not give yourself the pleasant shock of seeing his film debut as a sweetly handsome, slim & cute poetic stripling in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME/’39.

STAR WARS (1977)

And now it's a heartbreaker. Between dissing George Lucas for his recent pet project (RED TAILS/’12) and the current buzz over Disney acquiring rights to the STAR WARS series (and all related properties?), it seemed right to check-up on the original, last seen here during its original engagement. (Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . at Grauman’s Chinese!) LucasFilm took so much grief over the tweaking done to the film on its last theatrical release (refined F/X, reinforced saber light and a pointless new scene for Jabba the Hutt with some repeated dialogue from Hans Solo) that a recent DVD issued both the massaged print and the original cut which is a few minutes shorter. So, after all this time and all those copycat Sci-Fi/effects-heavy fantasy pics, how does it look and play? Pretty gosh darn wonderful. And in either version. (Lucas hasn’t exactly played fair with the two prints, giving the latest incarnation a spiffy polish and the expected ‘enhanced for 16X9 screens’ feature for optimum picture quality. The original, a bit blasted here and there, gets no such boost, but looks well enough, anyway.) Oddly, both prints have synch problems in the first reel. You can’t tell at first since there’s make up and masks hiding so many mouths out there, but when Princess Leia shows up, the synch is an annoying two or three frames off. (Sloppy, sloppy 20th/Fox.) No matter, the thrill remains, as does the wit, speed, fun, sense of imagination, beauty and quick-time storytelling which is, if anything, stronger than you recall. What a relief after the encrusted mythology, effects for the sake of effects, grandiosity and toy-selling priorities that soon submerged the original larky spirit of this grand adventure. And, heavens to Betsy, what marvelous perfs! Well, except for Carrie Fisher who comes off as a bit of a lummox. That odd Mid-Atlantic accent and the white outfit; was Lucas aiming for a sort of Olivia de Havilland/Maid Marian thing? Well, never mind, everything else is just super. Most especially Alec Guinness, who needs only to open his mouth, or to contemplate the scene, and you feel honored to be in the presence. And, while it’s always fun to spot the ‘inspirations’ (read rip-offs) by John Williams in his scores (his latest, LINCOLN, takes more than a fair share out of the sound world of Aaron Copland’s famous A LINCOLN PORTRAIT), who remembers the nods in here toward Stravinsky’s RITE OF SPRING in the early desert scenes, in addition to the well-known nips of Korngold & Tchaikovsky? And all that precision editing, the kind that brings a rush with simple cuts when Han Solo makes his ‘surprise’ return to the action. It sets up some naughty giggles when Lucas goes all Leni Riefenstahl TRIUMPH OF THE WILL for his triumphal ending. NOTE: Started watching to check on differences between the two editions, then just couldn’t stop. It’s really a wonderful pic.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Please note this post’s title, not Episode IV: A NEW HOPE, but simply STAR WARS. The way Lucas spins his own legend, I’m surprised he never found a way to layer Hans Solo onto all the original posters after the fact.

RED TAILS (2012)

A ‘passion project’ for STAR WARS mogul George Lucas, this fact-inspired tale of the pioneering all-black Tuskegee Airmen of WWII and their fight to get into ’the fight,’ comes off like a vanity project. From the opening shot, a tone of gung-ho trivialization and self-defeating CGI overkill bollixes things up. And while the facts behind the fiction are rich enough to hold your attention, you wind up feeling you’ve just seen the African-American experience in WWII as told by Up With People. Maybe we’d buy in if the no-name cast of actors had enough talent to match all the forced enthusiasm. (Star-billed Terrence Howard & Cuba Gooding, Jr. are just window dressing, thespian ‘loss-leaders.’) The handsome lead with the drinking problem is particularly colorless, and his nerveless ‘wingman’ hasn’t the charisma or looks needed to pull off this macho flyboy smoothie. (But a modest tip of the hat to Ne-Yo’s ‘Smokey,’ who manages his entire role as if he had a gumball in his mouth.) Weak as they are, bland as Anthony Hemingway’s direction is, weightless & uninvolving as the air battles are, the real problem undoubtedly stems from Lucas. For all his technical savvy, he’s been culturally clueless for decades, unwilling to acknowledge how those STAR WARS prequels would have fared without the original trilogy to buck them up. This glitzy film is probably more in line with his INDIANA JONES tv spin-off, and just as disposable.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Highlights from the Tuskegee Airmen documentary DOUBLE VICTORY are included as an Extra on this DVD. The full program doesn’t seem to be available, but this 15 minute edit is both moving & exciting in a way the film isn’t.

THE BUCCANEER (1938)

Cecil B. DeMille’s final motion picture credit was as producer for this film’s 1958 remake, directed by his son-in-law Anthony Quinn. The film was not a success; worse, it largely put the original production out of sight. You could find it in various poor editions, but nothing like the newly released, sharp looking Olive-DVD edition taken from a pristine print. It even includes a brief color-tinted sequence probably made for early RoadShow engagements. And, wouldn’t you just know, this lesser-known DeMille turns out to be the yeastiest, meatiest, least studio-bound, most energetic work he made in the ‘30s. Possibly, the only DeMille since the early ‘20s that adds to his filmmaking capital rather than living off the dwindling interest. And the ‘real life’ story even has a bit of history grounding it. Jean Lafitte (vigorously played by Fredric March with zee French accenté) really was a privateer who ran the swamp-lands near New Orleans and he really did give assist to Andrew Jackson in defending the city in the War of 1812 against the Brits. Take the rest with a grain of salt. Paramount had a new feisty foreign femme under contract, but DeMille lets Franciska Gaal push too hard as the lovestruck stowaway and she only made two more Hollywood pics. (But check out her cute little doggy. It’s Toto!) The rest of the cast is just about perfect, walking a line between corny & memorable in the best DeMille fashion. But the filmmaking is so unexpectedly dynamic. There’s a thrust, a beauty (super lensing from Victor Milner & excellent trick work) and a refreshed DeMille style that’s lighter than expected. There’s even good comic relief not only from expected sources like Akim Tamiroff (with a magnificent nose), Walter Brennan (sans shoes), an hilarious Spring Byington as Dolly Madison rushing a White House dinner as the British Are Coming, but also, for a change, from a heroic character in Hugh Sothern’s Andrew Jackson. Even DeMille detractors (and they are legion) give him credit for his use of mass movement & spectacle, and they’re right to do so. But DeMille’s true gift, the one that never left him no matter how stiff & silly his films became, was his story sense. He always knew what we wanted and needed to see next . . . and he delivered. Here, the story construction gives him two reels to fill after the big climactic battle. It’s a problem that has defeated many a better filmmaker. But watch how DeMille paces the final scenes leading up to the victory ball, with its escalating public & private revelations of love, honor, regret & responsibility. Then ending his film with the quietest diminuendo of his career.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Mentioned before, but worth another plug is Scott Eyman’s fine 2010 DeMille bio EMPIRE OF DREAMS.

IN WHICH WE SERVE (1942)

Winston Churchill thought Noël Coward could best serve his country during WWII by singing ‘Mad Dogs and Englishman’ to the troops. But Coward had a better idea after his close friend Lord Mountbatten told him about the ship he had commanded and lost early in the fighting. Like John Ford in his WWII masterpiece, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE/’45*, Coward instinctively knew that a story of determination & defiance in the face of defeat was exactly what he had been searching for. The fact that he’d never made a film before (others had adapted his plays and he’d acted in a mere handful) didn’t stop him from writing, co-directing, starring & composing the score for what would turn out to be one of the largest productions ever made in Britain. David Lean got bumped up from crack editor, to co-director, and future directors like Ronald Neame, Michael Anderson & Guy Green were also behind the camera. The cast is similarly filled with future stars including John Mills, Michael Wilding, Kay Walsh, James Donald, Richard Attenborough,  Celia Johnson, even Juliet Mills & Daniel Massey as kids. (Massey would get to portray his godfather in STAR/’69). Critical & academic esteem toward Coward & Lean have known their ups & downs over the past decades, but in general, the film just looks better than ever. And the old canard about Coward’s condescending views toward lower-middle-class types seems more than ever a shibboleth of outdated academic thinking.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Coward declined the Alec Guinness role in Lean’s BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57, but you can see what might have been in a scene here which shows Coward coming aboard a rescue ship. He’d have been veddy, veddy good.

DOUBLE-BILL: *As mentioned, Ford’s THEY WERE EXPENDABLE has an American story of defeat from the early part of the war. Alas, Ford’s film came out just after the war ended, flopped at the box-office and has never gotten the attention it deserves.

12 TO THE MOON (1960)

Dopey Kiddie Matinee space adventure about an international mission to claim the moon for all mankind is now available without a jokey comment track from the Mystery Science Theater guys. Feel free to make your wisecracks. Much more fun. Even on its own lowbrow/low-budget terms, it’s plenty awful, but even more weird. The moon turns out to be inhabited by aliens (unseen thanks to the minuscule budget) who grab a couple of over passionate scientists/astronauts to learn all about mankind & sex. They also get a pair of space cats to learn about . . . cats. Later, when the survivors on the spaceship head back to Earth, they find their home planet frozen. Time for a big sacrificial bombing run with an atomic weapon, piloted by the hot-headed Israeli and the guilt-ridden son of a Nazi scientist. By then, the film has more or less given up explaining these strange events. (Or why only the French character has his dialogue looped.) Fortunately, the moon-beings stay in touch via calligraphic writings, translated with ease by our female Japanese astronaut. (The only other thing she does is take a water-free shower.) Some of the ultra-low-grade effects are fun to watch, sort of like a backyard space epic made as a school project. And who’d want to miss man’s first words on the moon, ‘No air detected, no sound . . . soil seems to be pumice dust.’ Stirring stuff!  Don’t skip the trailer which promises One FREE Ticket to the Moon with every ticket bought to see 12 TO THE MOON! Wonder if anyone tried to redeem one in '69?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:The real mystery of the film is how the great cinematographer, and noir super star, John Alton got stuck on the project. He certainly brings an unexpected gloss to things, but sandwiched between ELMER GANTRY/’60 and an assist on THE BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ/’62, the assignment must have given him pause. Only sixty years old, this legend never shot another film.

JESSE JAMES (1938)

Nunnaly Johnson had to twist his script like a pretzel to turn the outlaw Jesse James into the sort of wrong-headed, decent, mother-loving fellow Tyrone Power might play. And we’ve been paying for it ever since with scores of True-to-Life portraits just as phony. Nicholas Ray’s little seen THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES/’59 even lifted some of the stunt footage, including a jaw-dropping cliff dive that killed some horses. (There’s more spectacular horse chases, but apparently no other fatalities.) Henry King was usually at his best helming Americana stories, he understands the pace of the things, and he gets a good, sympathetic perf from Ty, with just enough of an edge for Jesse James. Unfortunately, Henry Fonda shows up as big brother Frank, and he puts out so much contained energy, he blows Ty off the screen. Lenser George Barnes kept the TechniColor as muted as possible @ 20thFox, home of the neon reds & greens, plus there’s a darn funny bit from Slim Summerville at the jailhouse and an irritating one from newspaper editor Henry Hull. The love interest, Nancy Kelly, had been a child star (collectors of camp treasure her OTT mother in THE BAD SEED/’56), but she’s awfully tame here. There’s an unusually strong supporting cast with Jane Darwell, Brian Donlevy & blue-eyed John Carradine as that famously, cowardly killer, but Randolph Scott is the guy to watch. Playing the sheriff who waits for Kelly’s misguided passion to cool, he’s so darn natural in the Western genre, you can miss seeing just how good is. But the studio execs must noted what was going on since he and Fonda both get shuttled to the side to let Ty take the spotlight.

DOUBLE-BILL: A sequel, THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES/’40, has Fritz Lang, of all people, calling the shots. But Philip Kaufman’s THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID/’72 and Walter Hill’s THE LONG RIDERS/’80 give the grandest look at this era of bank-robbing outlaw brothers.

MUA LEN TRAU / BUFFALO BOY (2004)

An exceptional coming-of-age story from Nguyên Võ Nghiêm-Minh (Minh Nguyen-Vo per IMDb) which takes place in the flooded grass plains of a 1940s Vietnam. On this strange & difficult land mass, the sparse homes are set on stilts and the main family assets are water buffalo. But with the arrival of the flood season, the local grasslands are covered and the animals must journey off with young herders in a yearly search to find grazing land. That is, if rival herding gangs or corrupt government officials don’t get to them. We follow the son of one such family thru a five-year time span, with his story told in a lyrical, elliptical fashion that takes some getting used to. The plot points we expect to latch onto get a hop, skip & jump narrative treatment that flings us past anything we can fill in for ourselves. The social dynamics and customs of the time & place float as freely as the rising waters, but the quiet revelations of character & family history build up a lot of emotional force. And the beautiful look of the film (as well as its beautiful people) make the film easy to watch. Unlike their life and the choices they make to survive, which look impossibly hard.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A remarkable first film from Nguyen-Vo. Alas, it also appears to be his only film. Sad. (The DVD is part of the Global Film Initiative which highlights about a dozen international releases each year, with a track record far above the usual festival offerings.) The film also makes a useful Neo-Realist companion piece to LIFE OF PI/’12 which touches on many similar themes. Though it does that much-hyped film few favors, and does so with a budget that was probably less than the price of LIFE OF PI's lunch truck.

LICENCE TO KILL (1989)

Timothy Dalton got a bit of a raw deal with his abbreviated two-film stint as 007. Brought in to toughen up the increasing silliness (and creases) of Roger Moore’s aging agent, he had the looks, the physicality & the acting chops. What he didn’t get was the support. Instead, unmemorable storylines, flavorless super-villains and the flat megging of John Glen, a second-unit whiz who got promoted past his abilities. This title provides some of the worst acting in the series (though there’s a nice bit from a baby-faced Benicio Del Toro) and a mystifying lack of coordination between the lax staging and camera placement. The loss of some old regulars in front & behind the camera is also keenly felt, especially on that Michael Kamen score that only makes you miss John Barry’s circling motifs. The big villain, Robert Davi, and his plans to control drug distribution aren’t all that far from SCARFACE/’83, and his tricky ordering gambit, using a phone-in code via Wayne Newton’s phony tv preacher, is actually swiped from (wait for it) the Vincente Minnelli/Judy Holliday musical BELLS ARE RINGING/’60. Good grief! And yet, the film has a decent rep thanks to the final action sequence, a truly spectacular, jaw-dropping chase down a twisty road with gasoline tankers doing tricks that would be improbable on a motorcycle. All honestly performed by some deeply insane stunt drivers and captured on film in a pre-CGI era. It pastes a grin on your face that won’t quit.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Dalton’s two BOND pics did well enough for him to continue with the series, but the combination of the financial/contractual travails of the United Artists/M-G-M partnership delayed the next BOND for six years, the longest wait yet. By the time GOLDENEYE/’95 got going, Cubby Broccoli’s daughter Barbara had taken up the production reins and she wanted a clean talent sweep except for production designer Peter Lamont who stayed on for the next three, taking time out for a little thing called TITANIC/’98.

NIGHT MUST FALL (1937)

Robert Montgomery put away his usual tux and tony romantic patter for the chance to play the young psychopathic charmer in this film adaptation of Emlyn Willams’ stage shocker. Playing a bit of a drifter, Montgomery’s a revelation, a purring menace of calibrated madness, with the Irish cadence of a ‘darling boy.’ His new mark is Dame May Whitty, a crotchety old bird who lords it over two service women at her isolated country home, and her repressed live-in niece (Rosalind Russell). Whitty falls right away for Montgomery’s raffish charm & playful compliments, happy to have a young man about, especially after hearing about that corpse the police just found near her property . . . a headless corpse. There’s nothing particularly subtle about Williams’ play, clues & incriminating information are dropped with stagy thuds and ‘whodunit’ is never in question. It’s how everyone reacts to the obvious that pulls you in, and that can still give you the creeps. Watching Russell lowering her defenses, even when she knows better, still cuts pretty deep. Whitty, the sole holdover from the original stage production, is just about perfect, with a startling bit of hysteria that must have brought down the house on stage. The film isn’t exactly a triumph, Richard Thorpe was an odd choice as director, oriented toward action rather than nuance. But you quickly adjust to the period conventions, helped along by some atypically poetic tech work out of the M-G-M trick photography department. Neat miniatures, guys! Even the background score is a treat, with Edward Ward getting a rare prestige assignment instead of William Axt or Herbert Stothart, the usual M-G-M hacks. Hunt Stromberg is the producer of record, but the whole thing was a pet project for Montgomery who deserves credit for sweating the details to fine effect.

DOUBLE-BILL: Albert Finney did a forgotten remake in the ‘60s and Matthew Broderick played against type in a well-received stage revival in the ‘90s, but Patrick Hamilton got the most out of it, using Williams' play as a near template for his famous stage thriller ANGEL STREET, filmed as GASLIGHT in England in 1940 & then in Hollywood 1944, and a treat both times.

MAN TRAP (1961)

A decent set up for a tight film noir goes nowhere in this story of a Korean War vet (Jeffrey Hunter) who’s dragged into a robbery-gone-wrong by the Marine Corp bud he rescued back in the day (David Janssen). But it’s lovely Stella Stevens, as Jeff’s dipsomaniac wife (and the daughter of his sleazy business partner), who gets the worst of it. She’s all over the place as a castrating shrew who digs her claws (literally) into Hunter’s weak-kneed co-dependent spouse. Trapped between Stevens high-wattage emoting and Janssen’s signature clenched-teeth mumbling, Hunter’s clean-cut personality all but makes him invisible when he should look tortured.* In theory, this doesn’t sound all that bad, but character actor Edmund O’Brien, in a rare gig directing, hasn’t a clue what to do . . . or even how to do it. Action sequences go limp (the staging for the film’s centerpiece airport robbery is particularly inept), the actors either give too much or too little (look for Bob Crane, of HOGAN’S HEROES infamy, laughing it up at the BBQ grill), and the flatly lit interiors all look like screen tests shot in model homes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Hunter had much the same problem playing Jesus in Nick Ray’s huge production of KING OF KINGS/’61 the very same year.

THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS (1967)

Producer Sam Spiegel loaded this WWII-flavored whodunit with a classy international cast & top tech elements, but nothing could camouflage its general crumminess. Peter O’Toole is wildly off his game as a neurasthenic Nazi general under investigation, along with fellow generals Donald Pleasance & Charles Gray, when a prostitute is found stabbed to death in Warsaw. Omar Sharif is the mild-mannered, but determined military investigator who gets a second chance at finding the culprit when all three generals turn up in occupied Paris along with another dead prostitute. Meanwhile . . . the Allies are getting closer to the city, art masterpieces are being prepped for a transfer to Germany, and half the cast is involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler! The perfect moment for O’Toole to take a couple of days off for some Paris sightseeing with his driver, Tom Courtenay. (Hey, no lines at the Louvre!) Physically, it’s a treat to look at, what with Henri Decaë on camera & production design from the great Alexandre Trauner, but helmer Anatole Litvak, in his penultimate pic, seems past caring, letting a lux cast (including Harry Andrews, Philippe Noiret, Christopher Plummer & Coral Browne) get away with (thespian) murder. The whole ridiculous thing feels more like a contract being worked off than a motion picture.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY-I: *Indeed, O’Toole & Sharif ‘owed’ Spiegel a picture post-LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62 which may partially explain O’Toole’s outlandish perf.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY-II: It was talk show host Dick Cavett who, in a revelatory flash, first noted that Peter O’Toole was the only movie star whose first and last names each refer to the male genitalia.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: It’s tempting to list IS PARIS BURNING?/’66 which told a similar endgame story of Occupied Paris. But it’s nearly as useless. Why not THE TRAIN/’64? Paul Scofield is the Nazi general trying to steal French art; Burt Lancaster’s the wily train station manager trying to stop him. Yes, much better.

NANJING! NANJING! / CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (2009)

Chuan Lu’s harrowing look at the massacre, subjugation and occupation of Nanking, China in 1937 by the Japanese on the eve of WWII is impressive on almost every level. It's startling from the first images, where city officials & much of the local military battle past their own defensive lines to flee the collapsing city. Early scenes focus on the ragtag holdovers who remain, falling back building by building against the onslaught. What follows are numbing war atrocities, even now under-examined in Japan, shown with an almost casual sense of their savagery. But in the midst of so much horror, Lu focuses as much as is possible on personal stories, finding traces of grace & humanity in unexpected places: A Japanese soldier sickened by his own involvement & actions; a German businessman* who uses his Nazi status as an ally to create a Safe Zone in the city, saving thousands before he is forced to leave; a prostitute who volunteers as a ‘comfort girl’ to the Japanese forces to save others. Stunningly shot in WideScreen b&w, with stately rhythms working against fierce episodes of violence & action (some quite heroic), the film is filled with compelling & unexpected moments of bravery and character development. Yet, fine as most of it is, it doesn’t quite connect emotionally. Only Lu’s third film, he doesn’t show the confidence to let the mess of reality into his tightly controlled compositions. So, even as we get a handle on the large cast, we also feel kept at a distance. Considering the 300,000 killed, perhaps not a bad thing.

DOUBLE-BILL: *This remarkable German businessman got his own bio-pic, JOHN RABE/’09. Alas, neither of these films got more than a token Stateside release; and less than that in Japan where the subject matter remains verboten, so to speak.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Note the Chinese poster (above right) which wants to sell this as some sort of Martial Arts Action Pic (and in color!). Difficult subject matter for the home crowd, too, but worth the effort.

HOMELAND (2011)

Last year’s breakout cable series seems to be having a sophomore slump. (Or so goes the buzz on Season Two, not seen here.) But it may just be a delayed reaction/consequence to Season One which ain’t all its cracked up to be. The basic idea, borrowed from an Israeli series called PRISONERS OF WAR (look for it on HULU), is dandy: Iraq war vet (Damien Lewis) returns home after eight years in captivity and is crowned hero of the day. But Claire Danes’ CIA agent thinks the guy’s been ‘turned,’ a terrorist in suburbia, hiding in uniform. There’s a load of good performances in here (heck, even Mandy Patinkin is a treat) and lots of believable Wash, DC atmosphere, but the triple-twist plotting & turnabout character revelations start to grow wearisome long before the first season teases us with a faintly ridiculous explosive (non)ending. You can spot exactly where things start to go wrong about a third of the way in when Lewis’s vet takes a lie-detector test and needlessly lies about a roll in the hay he’s just had with Danes. There’s no reason for him to lie about his infidelity except to allow Danes to see how he might be lying about more important questions on the test. It keeps the plot mechanics going, but confuses the creation of situations with the creation of drama, a common mistake/misstep on more than a few of these open-run cable shows. Soon, you’re noticing three or four similar dodges in just about every episode. Guess HOMELAND doesn’t share a couple of producers with 24 for nothing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: That could be Steve McQueen on the poster with Claire Danes . . . if Steve had red hair.

MILDRED PIERCE (2011)

This five-part HBO mini-series of the James Cain novel looks to the book, rather than the old Michael Curtiz/Joan Crawford classic noir for its source material. No murder-mystery in this one, no police detectives, no flashback structure, instead writer/director Todd Haynes brings in his thoughtful style of suburban melodrama and the same smoldering, sensual pace he used in FAR FROM HEAVEN/’02, his shot at ‘50s domestic melodrama, a la Douglas Sirk. And, for about half its running length, it all comes together as neatly as one of Mildred’s famous pie crusts. The 1930s-era production values are particularly well observed (great period clothes!) as Mildred (Kate Winslet) watches a husband, lovers & friends, even her daughters leave for various reasons. Clinging blindly to the restaurant business she at first stumbled into, along with a pathologically self-centered child & a scapegrace lover, Mildred is continually blind-sided by life’s turns even when looking straight at them. But while Mildred may not see what’s coming, the film isn’t nearly so lucky, going wildly off-course right before our eyes at midpoint. Maybe the filmmakers were too faithful to Cain, a writer unable to resist a double-twist surprise even when it pulls his characters & plot out of whack or serves up unintentional giggles. Perhaps the jolt comes when Evan Rachel Wood replaces Samantha Morgan as the growing Veda, and this selfish, self-dramatizing child makes a switch from piano prodigy to coloratura soprano, learning half the available repertoire & all the technique in a matter of months. Or is it just that Haynes thinks he’s being serious about Pop Culture when he's really just turning ponderous? Hollywood once knew better. Speed past the dramatic deadwood, or cut it out. Don’t worry the absurdities. And, when needed, toss in a murder or two. It comes with the meal.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: At one-third the length, the original MILDRED PIERCE/’45 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/mildred-pierce-1945.html) gave Joan Crawford her Oscar®, and, even better, gives us Eve Arden, cracking wise on the side.

LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (1936)

David O. Selznick started his independent production company with the same child star (Freddie Bartholomew) and British author (Hugh Walpole) he used back at M-G-M on his wildly successful adaptation of DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35. This book was no COPPERFIELD, but it’s mix of character & sentiment has been remarkably lucky on screen. John Cromwell was a new director for Selznick, and the film has little of the stylized flair George Cukor brought to the Dickens work, but he was a solid craftsman and had the insurance of lenser Charles Rosher backing him up. (Rosher had made his rep on Mary Pickford’s famous 1921 silent version, the one where Mary played the little Lord and the boy’s mother. Talk about a Freudian nightmare!) The story, considered slight & old-fashioned, even in ‘36, tells what happens when an American kid goes to England as the new Lord Fauntleroy and meets up with his curmudgeonly Granddad. Hearts melt, forgiveness, sweetness & light . . . until someone else shows up as the rightful claimant! Sentiment threatens to sink the ship, but Bartholomew was truly an enchanting little gentleman (the Audrey Hepburn of child actors), getting huge effects without stepping over the line. And his restraint proves contagious. Mickey Rooney & Guy Kibbee (in full stage Irish get up) are swell as his American pals and all the British archetypes (including more COPPERFIELD alums) are buffed up in the true Hollywood meets ex-pat fashion. C. Aubrey Smith has a field day as the crusty old Lord and shows off his tone-deaf singing in Church. Of course, the class condescension is something fierce, but with Selznick, Anglophilia was more like Anglo-lust. NOTE: Long available in indifferent Public Domain DVDs, the new Selznick Estate Approved edition out on KINO has a better image of the complete 102 minute cut, but the audio remains subfusc.

DOUBLE-BILL: The Pickford version comes on a good DVD from Milestone, but the unexpectedly fine tv adaptation of 1980 with Ricky Schroeder & Alec Guinness is only available in Italy. Gluttons for punishment can watch a young Jody Foster play a modernized variant of Fauntleroy in CANDLESHOE, a typical Disney pacifier from 1977.

BOARDWALK EMPIRE (2010)

Atlantic City in the 1920s, Prohibition, the Mob, the new Mass Media, this lux series from HBO is loaded with pretty irresistible stuff. ‘Created By’ Terence Winter, and ‘godfathered’ (pardon the pun) by Martin Scorsese, the construction of the sets and story is meticulous, the characterizations and general attitudes less so. Too often, the behavior feels out of place, as if the cast were auditioning for a GOODFELLAS sequel, blowing our chance to see the Birth of the Mob in all its ethnic variety, before the hard shell of self-promotion & myth-making media glare took over. And where did the peppy quick-step tempo of the era go? (Maybe they're tuckered out from all the sex on display?) Just as problematic is how arbitrarily the women's characterizations change to meet each week’s plotline, and in how they've made our lonely Fed Agent such a murdering psychotic religious basket case. But when the narrative drive is this strong, it hardly seems to matter. Especially with such a wonderfully eccentric choice as Steve Buscemi for the lead. Watching him pull the strings of power behind the curtain is more than enough to make up for a production staff that took three episodes to find a shade of lip gloss that worked for him.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Someone had the sweet idea to score much of the film with period songs (not so unlikely) using real period recordings of the time (very unlikely). It represents a larger sampling of acoustically recorded music than most HBO subscribers would normally hear in a lifetime. It’s such a good idea we can forgive them for slipping in a bit of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder decades before anyone had recorded it. (Less forgivable is degrading the sound quality of a famous Kathleen Ferrier recording for the task.)

FUNNY GIRL (1968)

Barbra Streisand’s relatively sparse film output, 21 films over four & a half decades, hardly measures up to her talent . . . or her potential.  Now, even her smash debut looks a bit threadbare, though a recent restoration brings out its shiny gloss.  (The ladies all look like they’ve had their hair done for that year’s Miami Beach Republican National Convention.)  The original B’way show librettist, Isobel Lennart, got stuck having to please producer Ray Stark, the real-life son-in-law to both leading characters, Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein, the mid-level crumbum conman she married.  And if Brice’s rise in the Follies was lightly fictionalized, her slightly sordid romance had to be completely re-imagined.  Well, re-imagined if you don’t know the plot & characters of SHOW BOAT and/or A STAR IS BORN: Offbeat female star with unconventional looks; glamorous but fading/emasculated husband; asexual guy pal; tough, but kindly producer; a shameful night-court appearance; even a ‘This is Mrs. Norman Maine’ moment.  Three or four numbers from the stage show can still thrill, not so much the showcase Follies numbers staged by dance director Herbert Ross, but the integrated set pieces director William Wyler kept a hand in.  'People;’ the ultra-dramatic ‘My Man’ finale; and most especially ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade,’ a blissed out end to the first act that’s Wyler’s tribute to Ernst Lubitsch who invented this sort of musical epiphany for Jeanette MacDonald on a moving train in MONTE CARLO/’30.  Some of the original Jules Styne/Bob Merrill score got swapped out for actual Brice specialty songs, including ‘I’d Rather Be Blue,’ co-written by Fanny’s next husband, Billy Rose!  Alas, in gaining ‘My Man’ for the climax, they lost the show’s own great torch song ‘The Music that Makes Me Dance.’ (Listen to a rare live B’way perf here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxWrfKiAxKI )

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  How times have changed.  Now, when Streisand opens the film by slyly looking at herself in the mirror and saying ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ we’re apt to agree.  If only she didn’t.

CONTEST:  Kay Medford as Mama Brice purposefully & repeatedly mispronounces something in this film. (A gag that goes missing on the French-language soundtrack.)  Spot the mispronunciation to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The obvious double-bill is the follow-up, FUNNY LADY/’75, but it’s a bit of a stinker.  Why not try the real Fanny Brice.  Her first film, MY MAN/’28 has all her hit tunes, but this early Talkie only survives as a complete set of VitaPhone Synch-Discs, most of the visual element has been lost.  But you can get a pretty good idea of what she was about from THE GREAT ZIEGFELD/’36 where she sings a verse of ‘MY MAN’ on stage; and in ZIEGFELD FOLLIES/’45 where she applies her astonishing (and astonishingly physical) comedy technique to a not particularly amusing missing lottery ticket sketch.  These skits always date badly, but she’s something to see.  Completely exposed, working without a trace of vanity, the real Fanny Brice was thrillingly common.

FOLLOW THE FLEET (1936)

While arguing for the supremacy of TOP HAT/’35 vs SWING TIME/’36, Astaire & Rogers fans sometimes miss the pleasures of the film that came between. Not without some cause. Even by the slapdash narrative standards of the series, the story, gags & characterizations in this one barely make a ripple. Fred & Ginger are their usual delightful selves, this time in Working Class mode as ex-partners who almost got hitched. Now, he’s in the Navy & she’s working as a taxi-dancer when the fleet comes to town. Since they’re already a couple, they spend a lot of screen time getting the painfully uninteresting secondary couple together, Officer-in-Training Randolph Scott & Ginger’s Plain-Jane sister Harriet Hilliard (of OZZIE & HARRIET fame). But with an Irving Berlin score & dances that equal anything in the series, the earthbound script hardly matters. Especially so when Fred & Ginger decide to help their pals by putting on a show. A rehearsal scene, showing them hashing their way thru ‘I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket’ is a rare comedy dance that really raises laughs. (Also, right before the number, Fred limbers up at the piano, playing ‘live’ with a jivey spin Berlin must have marveled at.) Then, to a stunning Berlin lyric & melody for ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance,’ they step away from their own light romantic characters to reveal an emotional charge they never tapped elsewhere. As supremacy arguments go, this beautiful dance may be their ultimate masterpiece. And watch for brief bits from Betty Grable and a blond Lucille Ball who works up a couple of neat comic bits. (Don’t skip the Extras for some swell Big Band Jazz from Jimmie Lunceford & Co. These guys really swing!)

CORIOLANUS (2011)

Ralph Fiennes grabs Shakespeare by the short & curlies and hoists his last (and least well-known) Roman tragedy into today’s world, amid a modern conflict like Bosnia. As actor & director, he shoots the public scenes like BBC or CNN news coverage, and the private scenes with hand-held fervor, holding back as much as possible on the pomp. It’s clever, it ‘works,’ but decades of this sort of contemporizing makes the basic concept look nearly as old-fashioned as togas, tights & tilted sets. (Here’s CORIOLANUS FOR DUMMIES: Roman general returns in triumph but can’t quite stoop low enough to please the Tribunes or the famished hoi polloi. (Oops!, that's Greek. How 'bout 'the famished rabble?') Expecting kudos & a consulship, he finds himself reviled & exiled. Hardened to the point of cracking, he now joins the enemy and makes ready to attack Rome itself when his patrician mother begs him to make peace. And we all know what happens to the peacemakers.) Most of the cast are Shakespeare savvy, though Gerard Butler’s enemy commander puts out the occasional blank stare, but Fiennes reads Coriolanus as a Pride-Goeth-Before-a-Fall figure when it’s the man’s unwavering integrity that probably does him in. Well, that . . and listening to his mother! That’d be Vanessa Redgrave who pulls out the same dead-eyed, icy stare that Ethel Barrymore once owned. But the best perf comes from Brian Cox as Menenius, the close aide who grows irrelevant, a favorite Shakespearean type. Think of, say, Buckingham in RICHARD III. Did Will write these scene stealers for himself to play? Flawed as it is, the remarkable (and remarkably current) play still manages to come across and is worth a look. (NOTE: Just a reminder about our Family Friendly rating.  It's not necessarily meant to be taken for Kid Friendly, but as truly Family Friendly. As in, something that might work for the whole family.  A high-schooler stuck with a bad bit of Shakespeare might find this newsy approach fresh; and it certainly lends itself to a current events type of discussion.  That kind of Family Friendly.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Back in ‘79, Morgan Freeman did Coriolanus for The New York Shakespeare Festival. The production was taped (for television?), but was it ever shown?

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT (1946)

There’s a neat gimmick at the center of this film noir*, but Joseph Mankiewicz had just added directing to his long CV as producer/writer, and doesn’t yet have the control to get past the plot holes or integrate the assortment of acting styles he gets from an uneven cast. John Hodiak is merely colorless as the WWII vet, suffering from amnesia and trying to find out who he is, but debuting Nancy Guild, a Veronica Lake/Gene Tierney type, is amateurish as the sweet young thing who believes in him. The rest of the cast (Richard Conte, Lloyd Nolan, a highly theatrical Fritz Kortner) is more colorful, but might as well be in separate pics. The plot, something about a missing briefcase of Nazi cash, isn’t especially clear, but that’s not much of a problem. Spic-n-span plot development isn’t what we need from a noir, just the momentum to get swept up in a cloistered atmosphere of danger, suspense & fatalistic romance. Elements Mankiewicz would put together next year in a different kind of noir, a romantic noir, and his first masterpiece, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR/’47.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Apparently, DARK CITY/’98, a graphic novel adaptation, shares more than the usual noir story components with this title. Follow the IMDb link below for details.  (NOTE - Spoilers in the link message.)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038965/board/nest/189901678

THE VIKINGS (1958)

Pillaging rarely looked like so much fun as in this period adventure tale with Kirk Douglas & Tony Curtis giving battle as friend & foe against dastardly Brits while vying for the affections of Janet Leigh.* Richard Fleischer keeps the action moving and manages to untangle a tricky narrative structure that needs three or four prologues before we get to the main story. (The opening is extra nifty, a limited-animation lecture from the UPA studio, that sketches out a potted Viking history intoned by Orson Welles. And don’t skip the end credits, done in the same spirited manner.) As Papa Viking, Ernest Borgnine isn’t the most convincing fellow on screen, but he throws himself into the stunts & swordplay with gusto. And though Fleischer makes the action look unusually scary with a death-defying castle-keep duel for Tony & Kirk and some terrifying trained hawks in full attack mode, the film never loses its strong comic edge which has the advantage of keeping Kirk from taking things (including himself) too seriously.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Generating plenty o’ heat, Leigh & Curtis easily disprove the old Hollywood canard about real-life married couples lacking on-screen sexual chemistry.

DOUBLE-BILL: Lenser Jack Cardiff not only brought his A game to the film, but enjoyed the experience enough to direct a close-follow up, THE LONG SHIPS/’64, with Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier and a tone that ups the ante from this film’s comic edge to near goofy.

ROMEO AND JULIET (1936)

Norma Shearer had a test-run on Juliet, doing the balcony scene with John Gilbert’s Romeo back in THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929. The pairing didn’t amount to much, but it must have made a lasting impression on her husband, studio honcho Irving Thalberg, who went all out on this love-letter/vanity production. (It was part of a long-term plan to wean Norma off her sexy sophisticate roles and reinvent her as the ‘First Lady of the Screen!’ Hence, her move toward stage-tested vehicles originated by legit stars like Gertrude Lawrence, Lynn Fontanne & Kit Cornell, B’way’s Juliet in 1934.) Naturally, the film was assigned to George Cukor, new to Shakespeare, but the resident stage-to-screen specialist, and noted ‘Ladies Director.’ It’s wildly over-produced, large-scaled & dreadfully tasteful, and its never had much of a reputation. But, on its own terms, it’s better than you may recall. Thalberg really did go all out, physically it’s both gorgeous & gargantuan (note the multiple credits for famed London-based designer Oliver Messel), but you keep expecting some stately grand opera to break out, LA GIOCONDA or LES HUGUENOTS. (Or maybe PIQUE DAME to go along with all the Tchaikovsky on the soundtrack.) The whole cast is twice as old as they should be. Well, maybe not twice as old . . . more like thrice as old!; and the text heavily trimmed to allow for plenty of dance & pageantry in the 2-hr running time. But the old-fashioned, well-mannered speaking style has its charms compared to the bland realism & whispering speech patterns of today. If only the players rose above mere adequacy. The film only comes fully to life with the rude vitality of John Barrymore’s Mercutio & Edna May Oliver’s Nurse. (Barrymore looks completely debauched in his first scene*, less so later. But he spent an entire day insisting that one line about Romeo went ‘He speaketh not; he sleepeth not; he pisseth not.’) Along with Basil Rathbone’s Tybalt**, these two troopers are the only cast members unfazed by the boundaries of taste or refinement. Bless them.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Barrymore was living in a sanatorium during the shoot, trying to dry-out after his 1934 breakdown. You can see the ghastly place re-imagined by Cukor in his version of A STAR IS BORN/’54. It’s the scene where studio head Charles Bickford visits James Mason to offer a small role. OR: Cast your own Hollywood Juliet by auditioning the 18 yr-old Olivia de Havilland as she plays Hermia in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM/’35.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: **Rathbone had good cause to be loose on the set, he'd been Romeo to Kit Cornell’s Juliet on B’way. (And the 19 yr-old Orson Welles was Tybalt!) Meanwhile, poor Leslie Howard, charming, but cool to the touch as Romeo here, doubled down on Shakespeare in ‘36 with a B’way Hamlet that flopped against John Gielgud’s.

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (1975)

With its tiny budget, and even tinier imagination, this Grade Z Post-Apocalypse tale never finds its groove. Glum, but hardly serious, it imagines New York City in 2012, a place of scavenging savages who roam the streetscape, and a small group of elite survivors whose rooftop garden hold rare hybrid plants with their promise of a new beginning for mankind . . . if we can only keep those tomatoes on the vine! Robert Clouse, a cult director of Martial Arts pics (ENTER THE DRAGON/’73) must have known his script was too sobersided for its own good, more SOYLENT GREEN/’73 than PLANET OF THE APES/’68, and without a Charlton Heston-sized budget. So, Yul Brynner, fresh off a surprise hit with his robotic gunfighter in WESTWORLD/’73, got tapped. But without that film’s comic edge, Yul was stiffer than ever, and the action scenes flatfooted. The film’s biggest mystery is the participation of Max Von Sydow. He’d just finished the super-classy thriller THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR/’75 and then gets booked into this crummy vehicle? Maybe his agent thought it was the end of the world?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a neat twist on Post-Apocalypse NYC pics, it’s hard to beat the formal storytelling stylings of John Carpenter near his best in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK/’81.

CAMELOT (1967)

Jack Warner’s final film at his home studio was this immense, lumbering musical that didn’t please anyone. He’d bet big (and won big) on Lerner & Loewe’s MY FAIR LADY/’64, but this show had been nothing but trouble. (See Alan Jay Lerner’s ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVE.) Hiring film-phobic Joshua Logan to direct only made things worse and, while the film has some lovely things in it, none of the pieces go together. It’s a stylistic nightmare right from the start when Richard Harris’s pasty-faced Arthur sings his intro song between finicky jump-cuts while Vanessa Redgrave’s Guinevere grooms a fur coat right out of Carnaby Street. At least, the ridiculously handsome Franco Nero gets a dashing number as Lancelot, riding in stages from France to Camelot to the verses of C’EST MOI. It’s the film’s one happy moment, a lively glance from Lerner-the-lyricist toward his favorite film musical, LOVE ME TONIGHT/’32 from Rodgers & Hart and helmer Rouben Mamoulian. That’s the director who might have pulled this off, instead we get the inert film staging of Josh Logan. You don’t expect Logan to find shots for a jousting tournament or a ride to the rescue, but even a musical roll-in-the-hay like ‘The Lusty Month of May’ leaves his poor editor helplessly repeating shots of forced merriment.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The legend of King Arthur has been filmed often, if not particularly well. Those with a tolerance for Wagner, Flower Power, magic & communes should try John Boorman’s EXCALIBUR/’81.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: As mentioned above, Lerner’s B’way memoir is a treat.

BLUEBEARD (1972)

Richard Burton hit the classics in ‘72 with a film of Dylan Thomas’s radio play, UNDER MILK WOOD, a forgotten Faustian fable from Peter Ustinov, HAMMERSMITH IS OUT, and this odd take on Bluebeard, that legendary ladykiller. The films were all disasters, but this one, a late effort from vet Hollywood helmer Edward Dmytryk, isn’t bad in the way you expect. The Hungarian-based production is surprisingly lux, handsomely shot by Gabor Pogany, and the tale fits nicely into its Old Europe/Fascist ‘30s setting. But the script plays out like a check list of aristocratic rue, with an unvaried pace and uninventive murders. Dmytryk seems out of his element, unable to lighten Burton’s ghoulish purring or deathmask demeanor. Some of the international crew of wives show a bit of spunk (unlike the impotent Bluebeard) and lots of bare breasts (which repel him); alas the most screen time goes to Joey Heatherton, inept as his last wife. (Raquel Welch looks yummy as a highly experienced nun, but her big confession only makes you hark back to Stanwyck’s similar tell-all in THE LADY EVE/’41.) As told here, it all boils down to sexual inadequacy, an explanation that feels . . . er, inadequate. WARNING: This film contains Wild Game Hunt footage.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Edgar Ulmer’s BLUEBEARD/’44, with John Carradine & some memorable puppets is effective zero-budget fare, and there’s the similarly themed THE HONEY POT/’67, Joe Mankiewicz’s failed VOLPONE update. That leaves Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX/’47, itself a disconcerting mix of brilliance & heavy-handed dramatics. Maybe it’s best stay in Hungary with a CD of Bartok’s great one-act opera, BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE. Try Bernard Haitink on EMI with Anne-Sophie von Otter & John Tomlinson. Close your eyes to watch.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH (1967)

This ultra-low-rent thriller for the Kiddie Matinee crowd imagines an underground network of tunnels being prepped by a rogue Communist Chinese General for an American invasion! Fear not, our best scientific mind (and ear!) is on the case, closely listening to the activity with his ear pressed to a Las Vegas sidewalk! Now, if we can only count on the military to get this nutcase genius out of the loony bin and off to combat headquarters! You don’t find this level of silliness everyday and, for much of its running time, the cheesy production values & straight-arrow acting are plenty fun to watch, along with a plot that looks back to DR. NO/’62 and forward to MOONRAKER/’79. Fantasy film star Kerwin Matthews deserved something classier for his last leading role, but megger Tully Montgomery makes his particle-board budget look even worse than it has to with camera set-ups that force his cast to unnaturally twist their heads just to make eye contact. Still, who’d want to miss the set decoration on the General’s underground field office: Chinese screens, ornamental vases and a fresh pineapple on the desk. He’s taking the Hawaiian route in.

THE IRON LADY (2011)

No doubt, a straightforward bio-pic on Britain’s transforming Conservative/Tory Prime Minister was never a possibility. But it was an odd (and largely unsatisfying) idea to tell the tale via flashes of suspect memory as the retired P.M. drifts toward senility. And not much helped by a production that looks cable-ready, at best. An obvious plan might have shown her trying to hang on to power, after alienating most of her own party, while we jump back to see how her political principles grew out of a middle-class upbringing as a grocer’s daughter; her start in politics & the unlikely rise over the usual ‘suits; how her career was ‘saved’ by a ‘lucky’ war, only to watch it all go sour before she's ready to leave the scene. An even better idea might simply have stuck with the Young Margaret, it's the best/most revealing part of the film as Alexandra Roach’s young & bristly Thatcher finds her voice and her life partner in Harry Lloyd’s amused portrayal of young Denis Thatcher, a man who doted on her prickly personality and her paradoxically lofty, yet down-to-earth manner. Of course, that would have left out the film’s raison d’être, Meryl Streep’s powerhouse Maggie T., along with any commercial shot at the American market.* She’s certainly something in the role, though the ghost of Greer Garson keeps veering into view. Or did Mrs. Thatcher actually use Garson’s manner as a lady-like speaking/fashion template? And while the economic issues of the day have been ludicrously simplified and Argentine’s military might is probably misrepresented**, the film is neither a whitewash nor a hatchet job. And unexpectedly watchable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Included with the Extras is a little puff piece on three other ‘historicals’ from the Weinstein Co.: CORIOLANUS/’11 via ‘director’ Ralph Fiennes; IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY/’11 from ‘director’ Angelina Jolie; and W./E./’11 out of ‘director’ Madonna. With a combined Stateside gross around 6 mill., these Harvey Weinstein vanity pics are ‘star f**king’ losses comparable to Sheldon Adelson’s Republican Super-PAC funding.

DOUBLE-BILL: **If you can roust up a copy, there’s a good Argentinian pic on the Falklands War from the POV of some conscripted Army grunts called BLESSED BY FIRE/ILLUMINADOS POR EL FUEGO/’05 that shows how politically motivated & ill prepared the invasion actually was.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012)

This Gothic Ghost story about a Haunted House in a Haunted Village where a Haunted Spectre makes Haunted Kiddies do themselves in has all the ingredients to make your flesh crawl. But it’s overcooked, with script & direction that make everything go bump-in-the-night, so the shock effects bring diminishing returns. By the last act, it’s the audience who’s rolling their eyeballs. Speaking of eyeballs, a spectacle-free Daniel Radcliffe is fine, if a decade too young, as the widower who’s sent up to settle the estate and finds the deathly hallows . . . er . . . apparition while Ciarán Hinds, as a friendly local who pooh-poohs the occult, gets good horror mileage out of his hangdog face. The film is something of a resurrection for the old Hammer Studios and, much like their famous '50s horror pics, the storytelling doesn’t keep pace with the elegant visuals. Fourteen producers on this, and not a one of them figured out how to take proper narrative advantage of the wild country landscape or an evening tide that puts the only road to the mansion under water.

DOUBLE-BILL: Naturally, Wilkie Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE. The famous Victorian shocker has been filmed many times and a recent tv version (shown on Masterpiece Theatre in 1997) may take liberties with the story, but it also has a real gasp-worthy ‘reveal’ on the main mystery.

KNUTE ROCKNE ALL AMERICAN (1940)

While this loudly sentimental bio-pic retains a dollop of fame as the film where Ronald Reagan tells his coach to ‘win one for the Gipper,’ there’s not much else memorable in this programmer. Pat O’Brien was an odd kind of movie star and, as the eponymous Notre Dame football coach, he uses the same unpleasant manner & brusque delivery he brought to all his roles.* (And Warner Bros. did him no favors with a blondish receding hairline that makes him look like Jack Benny.) Add in some by-the-numbers megging from Lloyd Bacon and the film threatens to come to a complete standstill. As the loyal Rockne wife who hopes for a bit of vacation time, Gale Page is a complete nonentity. (She’d soon fade from the screen.) And even Reagan is a bit, well, amateurish, though his sheer presence is formidable. (The acting would quickly improve.) A decent supporting cast walk thru their roles (has Donald Crisp ever done less?) with the film only fitfully coming to life during some archival footage that features lots of lateral passing (yeah!) and during a sequence that shows how Knute was inspired to create a ‘shifting offense’ after watching an all-gal chorus line. If only Bacon could have bothered to stage it with a little pizzazz. By the way, the ‘K’ in Knute is sounded.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *For O’Brien, the exception to the rule came in his co-starring vehicles with pal James Cagney. TORRID ZONE/’40 lets them work up a fine vaudevillian rhythm of mutual respect & loathing that gives O’Brien’s dyspeptic line readings something they can bounce off of. Nothing sticks to Cagney when he’s wearing that awful little moustache he grew to annoy boss Jack Warner.

JITSUROKU RENGO SEKIGUN / UNITED RED ARMY (2007)

The late Kôji Wakamatsu was just past 70 when he made this grim, but compelling film about the small, but lethal local Maoist cult that emerged in Japan like a toxic residue after the mass global student uprisings of the late-‘60s had evaporated. The opening half hour plays out as docu-drama, with newsreel clips of the period interspersed with recreations and perhaps too much expository narration. But hang in there because the film soon evolves into a full character piece. Once the authorities start taking out key members of the ultra-left, we follow two of the most extreme organizations who join forces to secretly train in the hills for their soon-to-come labors as catalyst to the revolution with acts of violence & anarchy. But when the small cult of true-believers find themselves removed from capitalist hostilities & constant police surveillance, they start turning on themselves with deadly tests of communist purity tearing them apart from within. Political self-delusion soon has them ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ of revolutionary correctness while the authorities, more felt than seen, start to close in. Not an easy watch, and as emotionally dry as late-Godard, but powerfully argued by Wakamatsu who shows the control of a master.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: How odd that these young militants question every aspect of their own culture & society (quite rightly, too), yet blindly parrot whatever New Order dogma they are fed.

BLOODHOUNDS OF BROADWAY (1952)

This Damon Runyon adaptation was trying to hitch a ride on the GUYS AND DOLLS bandwagon. (The film version of the hit B’way musical wouldn’t come out till ‘55.) But there’s little Runyon flavor to be had in this tale of a backwoods gal (Mitzi Gaynor) who reforms Scott Brady’s Times Square wiseguy. In fact, little flavor of any kind. What a colorless crew of lowlifes, hangers-on, sharpies & book-makers the guy runs around with! To say nothing of the forgettable dames & coppers. Five or six musical numbers get shoe-horned in, but only a trio for Gaynor, Mitzi Green & dancer Richard Allan (‘I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’‘) puts out a bit of larky energy. And we get two (count ‘em, 2!) hayseed 'numbos.' Credit dance director Robert Sidney rather than helmer Harmon Jones for the lift & the corn.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mitzi Gaynor had it all: looks, voice, legs, steps . . the works. Yet, frustratingly, she makes almost no impression other than cheery ultra-competence. She’s a flawless Ms. Efficient when we want Ms. Memorable, flaws & all. An interview with her in the Extras (she's remarkably well-preserved, sharp & funny), lets her review her incredibly smooth career-track. Maybe the lack of obstacles partially explains what’s missing on screen.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Frank Capra's LADY FOR A DAY/'33 is the great Damon Runyon film; and Lucille Ball had a couple of winners with THE BIG STREET/’42 and SORROWFUL JONES/’49. (Check out the latter to imagine the Adelaide & Nathan Detroit that Ball & Bob Hope might have made in a dream version of GUYS AND DOLLS.)

CONTEST: Spot the uncredited future star seen here as one of Brady’s gang, and name the other film he made in ‘52 playing a comic gangster to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of any NetFlix DVD. As always, no Googling or IMDb, please. What would Runyon have said?

STATE'S ATTORNEY (1932)

John Barrymore’s journalist pal (later his biographer) Gene Fowler did him no favors on this poorly structured legal drama. It breaks up the remarkable run of performances Barrymore gave from ‘32 to ’34, before alcohol took him out of action and largely reduced him to supporting roles. Playing a heavy drinking attorney to the rich & corrupt, he falls for one of his clients, Helen Twelvetrees, very sympatico as call-girl turned mistress. But when he switches sides to become the new State’s Attorney, setting up a likely run for Governor, he finds himself compromising whatever remains of his professional integrity, even leaving his mistress for a proper wife. Fowler (or someone) had a nice idea here with Barrymore’s character losing principles as he gains sobriety, kicking out tru-love for a respectable wife. But nothing in the direction (from an over-parted George Archainbaud), story construction or in Barrymore’s undisciplined burlesque manner adds up . . . and the drinking plays into Jack’s worst habits. (Very different then the tragic alcoholic actor, Barrymore would soon play in DINNER AT EIGHT/’33.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Barrymore is at his greatest as the attorney in William Wyler’s superb adaptation of Elmer Rice’s COUNSELLOR AT LAW/’33, the play that established Paul Muni as a B’way star.

MONTANA (1950)

You can almost feel Warner Bros. washing their hands of Errol Flynn (and his pricey contract) on this Western programmer. Minimal production values and a B-list megger (Ray Enright) do it in, yet the basic idea isn’t bad at all. It’s that old stand-by, Cattlemen vs Homesteaders, but nicely varied to play into Flynn’s Aussie roots as Cattlemen vs Sheepmen. Alexis Smith is on hand as a ranch owner ready to be romantically won over and S. Z. Sakall shows up driving a covered-wagon department store for comic relief. Too bad no one bothered to work out the plot & character turns, pulling the plug after a brief 76 minutes. Even shorter once you factor in a couple of musical numbers which at least seem to let Flynn & Smith do their own vocals. A nice touch even if Smith looks oddly uncomfortable in her tight costumes while Flynn looks just plain tight. Maybe that explains the unusual amount of stunt doubling for the aging matinee idol.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Flynn ran out his contract with happier results: a couple of decent loan-outs to M-G-M and a final Warners release, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE/’53, one of his better late efforts.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: According to Flynn's auto-bio (MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS), he did some sheep tending as a young man back in Australia.  Alas, there's nothing in the film that displays any great lamb-expertise and definitely no sign of a custom he claims to have performed called daggit ta hapsheep (well, that's close to the phrase) which is castating male sheep with your teeth!