WILD, WILD PLANET (1966)

Hack megger Antonio Margheriti (credited as Anthony M. Dawson) made low-budget Sci-Fi in batches. This one, reportedly second of four, will prove enough for most! Released Stateside in ‘67, the distributor must have hoped for a bit of helpful tailwind coming off that new tv series. What was it called? Oh, yes, STAR TREK. Here, Tony Russell (the American ringer in an Italian cast) as Space Station Project Captain, finds his mission threatened by an evil researcher working for ‘The Corporations.’ Turns out they're kidnapping scientists and shrinking them down to the size of dolls (for easy carrying?) when not repurposing extra arms on zombie enforcers. Jeepers! SpaceAge model rockets, still with a whiff of rubber cement about them, pass for F/X here, and the film’s fight director apparently knew one (and only one) Ju-Jitsu move which is used over and over. Best of all are the uniforms & costumes which look like Mom helped out for the High School Musical. (Yes, musical, with a big dance number as part of the plot.) Alas, like too many of these things, it sounds more fun then it actually is, though you do get to see Franco Nero (as a junior officer) just before he leapt from micro-budgeted crap to a small role in John Huston’s macro-budgeted THE BIBLE/’66 and then lead hunk in Joshua Logan’s mega-flop CAMELOT/’67.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: From a year before, Mario Bava shows what a big imagination could make of a small Italian Sci-Fi budget in PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES/’65.

LE SAMOURAÏ (1967)

With a trench-coat mantle, concealing & revealing sangfroid and undemonstrative threat, Alain Delon is all smooth legato lines under the crisp brim of his fedora as the nearly still, nearly silent contract killer in Jean-Pierre Melville’s minimalist (or is it reductio ad absurdum?) thriller. His adversary? Chief Detective François Périer, all unfocused staccato energy. But even Delon’s existential cool won’t get you past the finish line in Melville’s fatalistic world view. Instead, an understated, unforgettable frisson to the journey, laid out by the director in impeccably staged chase & release set pieces, caught in gorgeous subdued shades of mottled grey, taupe, pale blue, textured walls (and one shockingly red telephone) via Henri Dacaë’s plus-perfect lensing, visually a good decade and a half ahead of its time.* While on the soundtrack, a more than reasonable facsimile of Miles Davis stoppered jazz stylings between the insistent tweeting of a coal mine canary. Just right. With its grace, precision, inscrutable women, and air-tight illogical logic, the film is to Melville what VERTIGO is to Hitchcock.

DOUBLE-BILL: *See Dacaë bring his French New Wave ‘A’ game to the American commercial cinema in the preposterously enjoyable nonsense of THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL/’78.

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)

Considering how influential this film was in kickstarting the ‘Spaghetti’ Western, the careers of director Sergio Leone & composer Ennio Morricone (billed here as Dan Savio), and in pulling Clint Eastwood up from small screen to large, they’ve sure taken their time putting out a decent edition! Bad old versions may still be about, but a proper restoration, made for the 2008 Blu-Ray, set things right all ‘round. The trouble likely stems from the original negative which used a cut-rate WideScreen process called TechniScope that loaded two images onto every frame of 35mm film. (Leone used it for all his Westerns.) The loaded image doubled the width by using only half the space on each negative frame (putting one picture on top of the other). It was then squeezed and printed for projection in full-frame 35mm anamorphic; ‘pushing’ the grain in unpleasant ways that made even new prints look like dupes. So, kudos to whomever returned to the original negative to get the most out of them; and kudos to the film for being worth the effort. Like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/’60, it’s an Akira Kurosawa remake (YOJIMBO/’61, uncredited), redressed from Samurai Japanese to South-of-the-Border Western (filmed, of course, in Spain). The story gimmick is that Eastwood, an opportunistic stranger in a violently divided town, manages to sell his loyalty & info (sequentially) to both sides, carefully pocketing fees from each faction. Leone’s later films enlarged on the basic model with his considerable talents & personal style intact, but the bigger scale (in the physical production as well as in plots & less abstracted characterizations) could feel a bit calculated in comparison to this succinct beauty.

DOUBLE-BILL: Leone followed up with Eastwood in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE/’65, but it’s not really a sequel. Imagine your own by returning to Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO/’61 before watching that film’s even better actual sequel, SANJURO/’62.

SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE (2015)

Expanding smoothly from gently anarchic kiddie tv to gently anarchic kiddie feature (written & directed by Mark Burton & Richard Starzak), SHAUN is also delightful for any grown-up in the room. Retaining a near silent-film format (think Jacques Tati: exaggerated sound effects/gibberish dialogue), the story travels from rural slapstick to urban chaos when a runaway caravan trailer takes The Farmer for a ride, crashing in the big city. Recovering, but now with a case of amnesia, The Farmer no longer recognizes his own sheep or even his loyal dog when they come to his rescue. Anyway, who wants to be rescued when your half-remembered sheep-shearing skills turn you into an instant celebrity hair-stylist? And while the animals are trying to jog his memory, the city’s chief of animal control is busy rounding up stray sheep & dogs. (In the ridiculously difficult world of clay-model stop-motion capture, this villain is an amazing piece of character animation.) Great fun, big laughs, the Aardman folks, doubling down on their split with DreamWorks, hold fast to alternating sly & broad eccentric British humor, as well as in their punishing handcrafted artisan technique. (Check out the Extras to see just how insanely labor-intensive the process is.) And if no single character in this pastoral crew can match the soulful empathy level of Gromit (the pooch with the creased brow in the WALLACE AND GROMIT adventures), the characters make a close race of it.

DOUBLE-BILL: The SHAUN tv series is a bit less polished, a bit more kid-oriented, but none the worse for it.

THE OUTFIT (1973)

John Flynn’s tight little crime thriller is a lot like a Don Siegel movie.  Not just any Siegel film, mind you, but one of the greatest, CHARLEY VARRICK.  Each a tale of dirty money inadvertently stolen from the mob with sympathetic robbers pursued by professional hit men; the films also share Joe Don Baker as co-star, plus Sheree North in sleazy support.  And just to make sure no one missed the resemblance, each got an October 1973 theatrical release.  Who schedules these things?  But if OUTFIT never reaches the unheralded masterpiece status of VARRICK, it’s still a dandy piece of modernized knowing noir filmmaking.  Robert Duvall is all keyed up as a just released prisoner looking for payback after learning that his brother’s murder came on orders from high class mob chairman Robert Ryan.  Partnered with girlfriend Karen Black & trusted sideman Joe Don Baker, they circle back to Ryan in a series of raids on his gambling ops.  Flynn, or some clever casting agent, populates each step of the way with classic noir character types (Elisha Cook Jr., Tim Carey, Henry Jones, Richard Jaeckel and Jane Greer & Marie Windsor in the same film!), all with something real to do, it’s no nostalgia parade.  Taken from a Donald Westlake novel (writing as Richard Stark and feeling a bit like Elmore Leonard), the downbeat locations are gritty and well-caught by regular Siegel lenser Bruce Surtees.  With a shot list as plain & functional as a Siegel pic, though with a few dead compositions Siegel wouldn’t have let go by.  It’s a strong little film, but Flynn rarely had a chance to show his best form after this.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, CHARLEY VARRICK/’73.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/charley-varrick-1973.html

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983)

A brief Stateside vogue for writer/director Nagisa Ôshima climaxed with the notorious dick amputation that ended IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES/’76; limped by the ghostly eroticism of EMPIRE OF PASSION/’78 and was snuffed out in this elegantly composed WWII Prisoners-of-War oddity. The story, unexpectedly traditional, is all East-is-East/West-is-West cultural barriers as Japanese ideals & ideas of honor & suicide bump up against Western decency & principled wartime surrender. Oshima tries breaking the pattern by fetishizing the brutality of the Japanese camp guards & officers and by eroticizing a power struggle of model-worthy high cheek bones & square jaw-lines of Commanding Officer Ryuichi Sakamoto & undaunted new prisoner David Bowie. As camp facilitator/translator, Tom Conti tries to tamp things down, but is unable to cut thru sexual/psychological tensions barely perceived let alone acknowledged. The film might have worked somewhat better without Bowie, any presumed box-office appeal losing out as distraction. And while Bowie successfully took up many personalities acting out the role of Pop/Rock/Punk/Glam musician, regular acting gigs proved mostly beyond his range.

DOUBLE-BILL: Bryan Forbes’ KING RAT/’65, a Malaysian set WWII-P.O.W. tale, is stronger than many better-known films of this type. Structurally (if in no other way), George Segal & James Fox hold the Bowie & Conti spots, but the guy to watch to see what a real actor might have done with Bowie’s part is Tom Courtenay playing a by-the-book pain-in-the-arse prisoner. OR: See Bowie come off in the visually stylish if otherwise underwhelming ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS’86.

A DOUBLE LIFE (1947)

This superb psychological thriller is like a genre unto itself: Theatre Noir. Ronald Colman, after three decades as the screen’s most gentlemanly romantic idol, turns dark & threatening as a B’way star who closes a lightweight hit (actually called A GENTLEMEN’S GENTLEMAN) to test the depths of Shakespeare’s OTHELLO. But danger lies that way, since Colman tends to over-identify with his roles; a carefree fellow playing Boulevard Farce, he becomes tortured, even dangerous playing tragedy. A first collaboration between director George Cukor and married scripters Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon, the combination brought out an exciting, experimental tone, especially from Cukor, visually freed from studio strictures and reveling in location shooting, arhythmic editing, daring long takes & stylized angles. Strongly abetted by lenser Milton Krasner & editor Robert Parrish, Cukor was able to concentrate on working his cast to a frenzy. The film is remarkably scary at times, and shows technically unexpected physical chops. An out-of-the-blue propulsive fight scene for Colman & publicity man Edmund O’Brien; and a shockingly blunt, brusque sexual pick-up of trampy, young Shelley Winters by Colman, working a vein of sexual entitlement rare in films of the time.* And note how smoothly the film morphs from rehearsal into performance with Colman’s Othello, generally thought underpowered by theatrical fashions of the day, holding up to stunning effect as a film assumption. Even his swarthy makeup as The Moor remains acceptably modern in today’s touchy P.C. environment. Less successful is the murder investigation which runs a little too smoothly with the OTHELLO connection conveniently brought out by the medical examiner. But it hardly detracts from the achievement here, and that includes Miklos Rozsa’s pulsating, award-winning score.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Typed as a “Women’s Director’ (read ‘closeted gay’), Cukor bristled at the dismissive title having guided James Stewart, Rex Harrison & Ronald Colman to Oscars®. (And Laurence Olivier to an Emmy.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Both Miklos Rozsa’s auto-bio and Patrick McGilligan’s Cukor bio carried the title (A) DOUBLE LIFE.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Winters claimed to have based her role on roommate at the time Marilyn Monroe.

RADIO DAYS (1987)

Warmhearted and buoyantly funny (gutbustingly so in the early parts), Woody Allen’s memoir pic is comically precise & believably messy, affectionately charting his extended family over the war years, celebrating their peculiarities as they bump into each other (physically & psychologically) in a modest 2-story house, emotionally steadied by the Golden Age of Radio playing in the background. Underrated (and under-seen) at the time, it’s something of a ‘lost’ Allen film, but a beauty, a great entertainment that’s deepens as it goes along. And what a cast! From a well-preserved Kitty Carlisle Hart at the radio ‘mic’ to the young Seth Green as Woody the kid, there are scores of perfectly spotted performances at home and in some wonderful quick-sketch radio vignettes. (Though a glam cameo from Diane Keaton offers a rhythmically self-indulgently song arrangement that breaks period protocol.) With spiffy recreations that aren’t wallowed in, but handsomely caught on the fly by Carlo Di Palma, shooting the second of twelve Allen films. All wrapped up in a tight 80 minutes.

DOUBLE-BILL: This one resonates not only with auto-bio pics like Fellini’s AMARCORD/’73 and Bergman’s FANNY AND ALEXANDER/’82, but also with touchstone stories invested with personal significance by directors like Minnelli in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS/’44, Welles on MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS’42 and Renoir for FRENCH CANCAN/’55.

HARRY IN YOUR POCKET (1973)

An apparent vanity project (there's no other explanation) for tv writer/producer Bruce Geller of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE fame, it was (thankfully) his sole attempt at feature direction. How ultra-competent James Coburn got mixed up in this is a mystery. It’s shockingly bad (LOVE BOAT bad), though just barely worth a look to see the throw-in-the-towel DeadStop of an ending. Coburn plays a seen-it-all master pickpocket, working the streets in what ought to be photogenic cities with failing old-timer Walter Pidgeon; leggy Trish Van Devere, the gal who ‘stalls’ the target; and upstart protégé Michael Sarrazin, ‘the Kid.’ In another film, you might note that Sarrazin & Van De Vere are too old by a decade, but that hardly registers amid the general level of incompetence. Think the poster looks bad? Take a peak at the film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lenser Fred Koenekamp must have been a very accommodating fellow. His next feature was PAPILLON/’73 for the super professional Franklin Schaffner who he’d worked with on PATTON/’70.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Robert Bresson’s PICKPOCKET/’59 is not only the essential existential pickpocket pic, but also an easy way to come by CRIME AND PUNISHMENT!