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Post by brutalis on Apr 4, 2018 10:38:23 GMT -5
Perfect timing last night. Just got in from work and GritTv was airing Gunfight at the OK Corral from 1957 with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Historically inaccurate western but highly entertaining. The fun is in sitting back and enjoying the Lancaster/Douglas pairing. Lots of familiar faces from television throughout the movie as well. A real Saturday popcorn movie if ever there was one.
Personal note: when I was old enough to begin working at age 17 my 1st paycheck I bought a television set for my bedroom and 2nd paycheck a VCR and 3rd paycheck I bought my 1st 2 VHS tapes: Gunfight at the OK Corral and The Magnificent Seven.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2018 10:59:48 GMT -5
I'm looking forward seeing Charge of the Light Brigade, The (1936) late Wednesday Night on TCM and I haven't seen this movie for more than 30 years!
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 10, 2018 12:02:08 GMT -5
"I'd like to kiss ya, but I just washed my haiya." - Bette Davis, Cabin in the Cotton (1932) ("Haiya" is how Miss Davis pronounces "hair" with her outrageous Southern accent.) I think we all know how much I love Bette Davis. And she made so many movies! I constantly check the TCM schedule, looking for Bette Davis movies I haven't seen. (My IMDB list of Bette Davis movies I've seen has over 60 movies on it.) Lately, TCM showed "The Cabin the Cotton" (1932) and then I found "Phone Call from a Stranger" (1946) on YouTube. "Cabin in the Cotton" is directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Richard Barthelmess as a peckerwood tenant farmer struggling to survive by raising cotton for the evil rich Southern landowner. (I specialized in Southern history for my master's degree, and I believe it is difficult to exaggerate how awful Southern landowners could be to tenant farmers.) Bette Davis is the landowner's daughter. Barthelmess shows a knack for bookkeeping and math, so the landowner takes him on at the company store. Bette Davis starts a little romance with him. He's becoming part of the exploitive system of the landowners and he's torn between the comfy landowner life that is now within his reach, and his friends among the tenant farmers who have taken to stealing cotton and burning things down. I love these early 1930s movies a lot, and this was no exception. But it is awfully daffy sometimes. "Phone Call from a Stranger" is about a guy who takes some time away from his adulterous wife to think things over, and he gets on a plane to wherever. He's played by Gary Merrill, which is good casting because, when you know anything about Gary Merrill, he seems like a guy who would drive his wife to cheat on him. On his journey, he meets up with fellow passengers, all well played by some great actors - Keenan Wynn, Michael Rennie and especially Shelley Winters. Merrill spends enough time with them to learn their problems. Then there's a plane crash and Gary Merrill is the only survivor. After a day or two in the hospital, he is well enough to visit the loved ones of his fellow passengers and help to take care of their unfinished business. Bette Davis isn't in the movie until the last ten minutes or so. She's the wife of Keenan Wynn and she's an invalid. It's a great little scene because it's Bette Davis, who always took such care with every movie she's in that you sometimes forget they're not always such great movies overall. I liked "Phone Call from a Stranger" well enough. It's kind of a shame that Wynn, Rennie and Winters were all killed so early in the movie.
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 10, 2018 12:34:35 GMT -5
According to Wikipedia, Miss Davis had this to say about working with Mr. Curtiz:
"Mr. Curtiz, I must say, monster as he was, was a great European moviemaker. He was not a performer's director . . . You had to be very strong with him. And he wasn't fun . . . He was a real BASTARD! Cruelest man I have ever known. But he knew how to shoot a film well."
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2018 3:45:58 GMT -5
Charge of the Light Brigade, The (1936) ... was an epic movie and very dramatic as well; its really have that charm of its own and Flynn and de Havilland never been better. The ending of this movie is so unreal (sorry poor video clip) was done so amazingly that I just find this battle scene was incredibly done so well it's like being there in person.
The costumes, the props, and the photography is amazing and I just in loss in words seeing this movie for very long and I'm thrilled seeing after 30 years and I've truly enjoyed watching it tonight on TCM.
First Class Cast, everything is done in perfection and they did a good job leading to the dramatics to the end.
Glad that I had a chance to watch it ... and I wished that I could had seen it back in 1936 on the big screen ... bigger the better!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2018 10:48:17 GMT -5
I'll be watching Born Free on TCM - next Sunday Evening and I've seen this movie for more than 40 years. Looking forward seeing it for a very long time. Great Drama and touching as well if I can recall. I've a foggy memory on this film; and if I'm mistaken it's a touching one indeed ...
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 12, 2018 11:23:47 GMT -5
Charge of the Light Brigade, The (1936) ... was an epic movie and very dramatic as well; its really have that charm of its own and Flynn and de Havilland never been better. The ending of this movie is so unreal (sorry poor video clip) was done so amazingly that I just find this battle scene was incredibly done so well it's like being there in person. The costumes, the props, and the photography is amazing and I just in loss in words seeing this movie for very long and I'm thrilled seeing after 30 years and I've truly enjoyed watching it tonight on TCM. First Class Cast, everything is done in perfection and they did a good job leading to the dramatics to the end. Glad that I had a chance to watch it ... and I wished that I could had seen it back in 1936 on the big screen ... bigger the better! The movie was also one of the biggest examples of animal abuse, in Hollywood. They made frequent use of the "Running W" tripwire, to make the horses fall, leading to the Animal Protection lobby to get it banned. It wasn't quite as bad as the 1925 Ben-Hur, where over 100 horses died filming the chariot race scenes.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 12, 2018 11:59:38 GMT -5
Just finished watching a pair of classic sci-fi films: Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit. For the uninitiated, Professor Quatermass was the hero of three serials done for the BBC, in the 1950s, created by Nigel Kneale. They feature a British rocket scientist dealing with extraterrestrial threats. They were popular enough to be adapted into feature films, by Hammer, in conjunction with pre-sold US distribution. That led to American actor Brian Donlevy being cast as the scientist, starting with the first, The Quatermass Experiment (aka The Creeping Unknown). In that film, a rocket has returned from a space mission, with only one survivor. Eventully, an alien organism is discovered to have gotten inside the rocket and killed the other two crewmen, and it is growing on the Earth.
For the sequel, Quatermass II (aka Enemy From Space), Donlevy is back and Quatermass has been denied funding for his moon base. Hos colleagues have seen radar trackings of what appears to be meteors falling nearby. Quatermass, himself, runs into (or nearly does) a frantic couple who found a meteor, while picnicking, and the male has been burnt by it. He is acting strangely. Quatermass goes to the area to investigate and his aide finds a meteor, which bursts, spraying a liquid on him, causing him to scream out, leaving the same kind of burn. He is taken into custody by soldiers (the area has government warning signs, barring entry). Quatermass is told to shove off. He tries to involve the police and nearby officials with no luck. The story goes that the plant is a research facility, developing synthetic food. It is also the spitting image of Quatermass' design for his moon base. With the aid of an MP, he finagles his way onto an inspection tour, where he and the MP break away from the group to investigate. The others are seized and only Quatermass makes it out, with the MP dying horribly, covered in a toxic substance. Quatermass convinces a police inspector friend to investigate and they and a group of townspeople, who have worked at the plant, break in, where Quatermass discovers the truth, as the meteors are a delivery system for an alien entity, which is combining and growing.
Donlevy was a fine actor, though also an alcoholic. Kneale hated his performance and made claims of him being so drunk on the set he couldn't read his lines off cue cards (or idiot boards, as the call them, in the UK). The director disputed this, though acknowledged that Donlevy was not sober. The film is good, suspenseful fun, in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but, with a more intelligent script and dialogue.
For the third adaptation, Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth) Donlevy is gone, replaced by Scottish actor Andrew Keir (Rob Roy). Here, a work party is digging in a subway (Underground, for the Brits) tunnel, to expand it, and come across skull fossils and bones. An scientific group makes a survey and unearths a metal object, which is believed to be an unexploded bomb, from the war. The army is called out; but find no signs of explosives. After revealing more of the object, they find a more intact skull and, eventually uncover the object, which appears to be a spacecraft. Attempts to breach the hull with acetylene torches prove futile and a borazon drill is brought in to try to pierce it, which releases strange vibrations, causing hysteria. Prof. Quatermass accompanied the army, as the officer consulted is a new colleague, with the Experimental Rocket Group. Quatermass and a female scientist research the area, Hobb's Lane, and find references to ghosts and demons (Hob is an old name for the Devil), especially when a well was dug there and when the Underground station was first dug). The army succeeds in piercing the hull and finds insectoid carcasses inside. Visions are seen of the insects fighting and killing one another and the driller runs away in hysterics. Quatermass comes up with a theory of the alien creatures and how they attempted to "invade by proxy," via evolved ape creatures (the fossils). The media are shown the area by government people who don't buy Quatermass' theory and all hell breaks loose.
Quatermass is excellent sci-fi, mixed with horror and the character was a major inspiration fro Doctor Who, who would come on the scene 10 years after the broadcast of the original Quatermass Experiment. Andrew Keir would go on to appear in the second Doctor Who feature film, Daleks-Invasion Earth 2150 AD, starring Peter Cushing.
If you are a Doctor Who fan, you must see the Quatermass films and/or serials. Nigel Kneale was also the writer on the BBC's 1954 dramatization of Orwell's 1984. He also created a drama, The Year of the Sex Olympics, which featured a future, where the populace is kept docile by constant broadcast of pornography and realty tv, with a family struggling to survive on an island. Pretty damn spooky.
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 14, 2018 12:58:11 GMT -5
TCM showed Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) this week, and I watched it yesterday. I love these 70-minute mysteries from the 1930s so much! This is the third film in the Hildegarde Withers series, and the last to star Edna May Oliver. There were a few more films in the series with two different actresses in the lead (including ZaSu Pitts) but apparently they just couldn't recreate the magic of Edna May Oliver. I've only seen The Penguin Pool Murder (the first one) and Murder on a Honeymoon, so I don't have an opinion on the later films. ZaSu Pitts is awesome, but I have trouble seeing her play an Edna May Oliver role. Hildegarde Withers is a very strict, very strident school teacher who is something of an amateur sleuth just because she is very observant and always stumbles on a murder as she goes about her day. James Gleason is Oscar Piper, a New York cop who is always on the scene. They have a very adversarial relationship. Piper is always wrong, but he's not so stubborn that he won't see where the clues are leading ... especially when he can take the credit at the end. In Murder on a Honeymoon, Miss Withers is taking a plane to Catalina ... and one of her fellow passengers dies on the plane just before landing! It turns out the dead man is the key witness in the case the NYPD is building against a racketeer, so Piper is on his way to investigate. I'm not sure how other film buffs of 1930s Hollywood films will feel about this, but I loved it for a bunch of reasons. Oliver and Gleason are great together. The amphibious plane they used to fly to Catalina was cool. They landed on the water and then drove up a concrete ramp onto the runway. The Catalina law enforcement was very amusing. The chief of police is very condescending to Miss Withers when she tries to say it's murder. The medical examiner is doing his duties in a swim suit. Miss Withers is not very patient with the lax way they do things on Catalina. (And I should mention that I thought it was cool that the movie was set on Catalina. I've been kind of interested in California's Channel Islands for a while (I'm reading a book about Santa Cruz Island right now) and it's nice to see a movie set on Catalina.) Leo G. Carroll is one of the suspects! He's a film director and he's going to Catalina because his latest film is shooting on location. (The book I'm reading mentions some filming on Santa Cruz Island in the 1920s. The silent version of Peter Pan was filmed there. Everybody loved Anna May Wong but they all thought Betty Bronson was a ... witch!) Also ... Willie Best! He's still known as Sleep N Eat at this point. Miss Withers (who has apparently never seen one of his movies or she'd know better) enlists Sleep N Eat to help in her investigation. He's given a simple task and louses it up quite spectacularly. I love this stuff! By the way, TCM is showing Hell's Angels tonight! I've been wanting to see it for a while - decades probably - but I was extra interested after I saw The Aviator last year.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2018 8:00:13 GMT -5
Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) ... I've totally forgot all about this movie and I wanted to watch it too! ... I didn't know that's this movie was on and all that Hoosier X and kicked myself in the pants for not checking the TCM Schedule carefully and all that. I loved your write up here ...
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Post by brutalis on Apr 16, 2018 17:00:19 GMT -5
Recorded some movies off of CometTv the science fiction television station and found time to watch them on Sunday while cleaning and cooking around the house. cal: 1st up is horror film Voodoo Island from 1957 starring Boris Karloff and Rhodes Reason and the very 1st uncredited movie appearance as Weather Station Radio operator #4. Very low end cheaply made with no actual Voodoo involved. Totally mindless and silly D style horror.
2nd up is 1961's The Phantom Planet which pretty much is another low end cheap and silly science fiction movie with Richard Kiel as the man in the rubber monster suit. Spaceman crashes on an asteroid that is actually the home planet of a race of tiny people. He breathes in their atmosphere and shrinks to their size and helps them fight their enemy. Eventually finds love and yet still decides to enlarge and return to Earth. Saturday morning popcorn goofiness indeed.
Finally is an even lower effort part crime noir and part science fiction from 1956 called the Indestructible Man. Lon Chaney is a killer in jail who once dead on death row is brought back to life by electricity which revives him and increases his molecular density and he become super strong and nearly indestructible. He goes on a rampage hunting down his 3 partners to kill and try to reclaim stolen money until he is french fried by the police using bazooka's and flame throwers where he flees only to die receiving more electricity than he can handle.
Nothing spectacular in any of the 3 but still glad to have seen some good old silliness.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 16, 2018 20:16:22 GMT -5
I rewatched the four Indiana Jones movies last weekend, and had to revisit some opinions about them. Both Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade were better than I remembered, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a little poorer (although I actually enjoyed it more than Last Crusade upon initial viewing).
A flaw I see in the later two movies is that they tread the line of self-parody to an uncomfortable degree. Crystal Skull has one redeeming quality, that of actually allowing the character of Indy to move forward (as The Wrath of Khan had done for the Star Trek characters), but the silly jokes, video game action sequences and very poor CGI really killed any momentum it might have had. I did appreciate the comments on getting to an age where Life takes away more than it gives... and the return of Marion was just perfect. It was a grave mistake not to bring her back after the first film.
Of the four, the original remains the best. It was pretty new at the time, and its humour emphasizes the action rather than distracts from it. Temple of Doom was a decent follow-up... but as it is a prequel, it does not answer the question “where does Indy go from here?” In that regard, I preferred the Marvel comics that followed the adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Temple of Doom also occurs in just one location, and like a James Bond movie an Indiana Jones one benefits from changing scenery. I found the rather brutal and quasi-sadistic scenes to be a bit much, too... not as gruesome as in an actual gore flick, but somehow out of place. Cool soundtrack, though.
Last Crusade goes back to fighting Nazis and flying across the world, and the dynamics between Indy and his Dad are quite good. However, the impression is that the titular character isn’t moving forward: he’s still dealing with daddy issues as a teenager would, even if he’s already a grown man. The choice of Petra as some unknown lost city was also ill-advised, as most people know of the place. And I really, really didn’t need to be told of the origin of Indy’s whip, hat, jacket and fear of snakes. That’s way more fan service than I am comfortable with. (Props to River Phoenix who played the young Jones... He really nailed his impression of Harrison Ford).
What’s really sad about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is that it’s got many, many excellent ideas... but they fail to pan out. Indy’s work as an OSS agent during WWII? Sounds like great fun! Fighting Russians? Cool! Moving the story to the fifties and using both the original UFO craze and Von Daniken’s chariots of the gods concepts as a backdrop? So much potential! But in the end, the actual script is very disappointing.
There are rumours of a fifth Indiana Jones movie. I don’t know what it would be like, but hopefully it will only be made if someone has a great story to tell and not only because there’s still some dough to be squeezed out of the franchise.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2018 14:05:50 GMT -5
Born Free (1966)
I've finally got around watching this film that I've not seen in 30 years plus and it's a heartwarming adventure of a young female lion named Elsa the Lioness to adulthood and had to release her in the vast wilderness of Kenya. It was wonderful movie of love and sacrifice and it's full of enduring qualities that makes you feel emotional about it. Great Photography, Fabulous Music, and sense of love that makes you feel a sense of freedom for Elsa when she reached a full size lioness. I've cried at the end of this movie because it's so moving and yet it's captured the anxiety as Joy and George Adamson (a real life couple) played by Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers of who did a terrific job making it real for everyone that watches this film.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2018 14:09:59 GMT -5
Dracula A.D. 1972
I rewatched this film yesterday on TCM and came away more disappointed than ever before and this is the last time that I'll ever see this movie again. I didn't even watched the last 15 minutes of the movie and had a hard time enjoying it. Those who loves this movie - I apologize for this bad review and my opinion of this movie is honest as it can be.
I wished that I could do better and I've can't.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 17, 2018 15:43:29 GMT -5
Rewatched Kelly's Heroes with my youngest son Friday. He'd never seen it before. For me this is the perfect mash-up of action, comedy and caper film. The cast is great. The movie is fun. It's one of those films that I can watch over and over and never get tired of.
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