Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Friday, July 6, 2018

BEAT THE DEVIL (1953)

With help from Truman Capote’s on-the-set rewrites, John Huston made a ‘Shaggy Dog’ story out of what presumably started as a ‘straight’ international caper pic. (Note clueless poster.)  It’s less parody than slightly mad variant; tremendously entertaining, with the sort of laughs that bubble up days after watching. In a small Italian coastal town, Humphrey Bogart and wife Gina Lollobrigida meet up with a quartet of scoundrelly con men, all on their way to hoodwink a Central African country out of uranium deposits & rights. Or some such thing, the film isn’t too particular about what exactly is going on. But since the quartet includes Robert Morley & Peter Lorre, you have a pretty good idea of where you stand on the integrity front. Accompanying them on this fortune hunt, though unsure why or what it’s all about, are married twits . . . I mean, married Brits Edward Underdown and Jennifer Jones, his on-the-prowl/fantasist wife (commoners, but very La-Di-Da). Sporting a blonde wig & an unplaceable English accent, Jones seems unaware she’s in a comedy, which makes her all the funnier. Everyone else expert players, having a grand time and, for a change, passing on the feel-good vibrations though it took audiences decades to catch on.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The film’s fallen into Public Domain and dreary copies abound. But Film Detective has sourced a pretty good print for their 2014 DVD/Blu-Ray release which nearly does justice to the cinematography of Oswald Morris & camera operator Freddie Francis. (Note that on Film Detective the Academy Ratio (4:3) picture is mastered to show properly on an anamorphic (16:9) setting.)

No comments: