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Post by berkley on May 4, 2023 14:19:33 GMT -5
Curtiz is the Jack Kirby of film directors. There's no genre he couldn't do. Name a genre and he has directed films in it. Crime, musical, Westerns, foreign intrigue, melodrama, horror, swashbuckler, drama, comedy, social commentary, adventure, historical, noir, war, prison, biography, mystery, sports, epic, and permutations of all of them, too. And that's not counting the dozens of movies he made in Europe before he came to America. Keep watching the Mad Hungarian's movies...
Was it Curtiz who said "Bring on the empty horses!", thereby giving David Niven the title for one of his two highly entertaining books of Hollywood reminiscences years later?
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Post by Prince Hal on May 4, 2023 14:32:58 GMT -5
Curtiz is the Jack Kirby of film directors. There's no genre he couldn't do. Name a genre and he has directed films in it. Crime, musical, Westerns, foreign intrigue, melodrama, horror, swashbuckler, drama, comedy, social commentary, adventure, historical, noir, war, prison, biography, mystery, sports, epic, and permutations of all of them, too. And that's not counting the dozens of movies he made in Europe before he came to America. Keep watching the Mad Hungarian's movies...
Was it Curtiz who said "Bring on the empty horses!", thereby giving David Niven the title for one of his two highly entertaining books of Hollywood reminiscences years later?
Indeed it was! He once kept telling a prop man that he needed a poodle. The prop man couldn't believe what he was being asked to provide, until Curtiz, notoriously impatient and hot-tempered, yelled, "A poodle! A poodle! A poodle of water!" He was so famous for such malaprops and twisted expressions that there was often a sign hung outside his soundstages that read "Curtiz spoken here."
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Post by Hoosier X on May 4, 2023 15:24:29 GMT -5
One of Curtiz’s most underrated movies is The Walking Dead, with Boris Karloff. I’ve seen it two or three times, and I always wonder why it doesn’t get almost as much notice as other 1930s horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein and The Invisible Man.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 4, 2023 15:28:41 GMT -5
And then there’s 1935’s Front Page Woman!
I’m a big fan of Bette Davis, and most of my Top Five Bette Davis Movies list is some obvious ones, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Jezebel.
But Front Page Woman is also in my top five. Based on how many times I’ve seen it, it’s in third place, barely beating out All About Eve.
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Post by berkley on May 4, 2023 18:10:34 GMT -5
One of Curtiz’s most underrated movies is The Walking Dead, with Boris Karloff. I’ve seen it two or three times, and I always wonder why it doesn’t get almost as much notice as other 1930s horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Don't think I've seen that one, unless I happened across it on tv when I was a kid and have forgotten it since. Does Karloff get to talk in it? I prefer it when he has more of a speaking rôle. After Frankenstein, i think they tended to give him similarly inarticulate characters a little too often.
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Post by berkley on May 4, 2023 18:11:36 GMT -5
And then there’s 1935’s Front Page Woman! I’m a big fan of Bette Davis, and most of my Top Five Bette Davis Movies list is some obvious ones, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Jezebel. But Front Page Woman is also in my top five. Based on how many times I’ve seen it, it’s in third place, barely beating out All About Eve.
I liked her in Petrified Forest and ... not much else that I can think of, to be honest. But I haven't tried anything in a long, long time.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 4, 2023 18:13:07 GMT -5
One of Curtiz’s most underrated movies is The Walking Dead, with Boris Karloff. I’ve seen it two or three times, and I always wonder why it doesn’t get almost as much notice as other 1930s horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Don't think I've seen that one, unless I happened across it on tv when I was a kid and have forgotten it since. Does Karloff get to talk in it? I prefer it when he has more of a speaking rôle. After Frankenstein, i think they tended to give him similarly inarticulate characters a little too often. He talks. He’s condemned to death for a murder committed by gangster Ricardo Cortez.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 4, 2023 18:13:49 GMT -5
And then there’s 1935’s Front Page Woman! I’m a big fan of Bette Davis, and most of my Top Five Bette Davis Movies list is some obvious ones, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Jezebel. But Front Page Woman is also in my top five. Based on how many times I’ve seen it, it’s in third place, barely beating out All About Eve.
I liked her in Petrified Forest and ... not much else that I can think of, to be honest. But I haven't tried anything in a long, long time.
That’s another really good one!
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 4, 2023 19:29:33 GMT -5
I had never seen The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
For shame! It was brilliant! Abu is a great character and the genie is a riot!
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Post by Hoosier X on May 4, 2023 20:08:20 GMT -5
I had never seen The Thief of Bagdad (1940). For shame! It was brilliant! Abu is a great character and the genie is a riot! Such a great movie! I saw it about 1990 and loved it. I taped it off cable (probably AMC) and had it on VHS for a long time. I watched it quite a few times in the early 1990s. But when I switched over to DVD, I never replaced it. I probably haven’t seen it for 25 years.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 4, 2023 20:11:21 GMT -5
I'm more a fan of Curtiz' swashbucklers; but, I love Mildred Pierce and Casablanca and he also directed Elvis to his best notices.
Along similar lines, also at Warner Bros is Raoul Walsh, who handled several genres and even mixed a couple, like in Desperate Journey, a war film that he styled like a swashbuckler, as Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan and Alan Hale Sr are shot down over Germany, on a bombing run, escape (with the location of a secret aircraft factory), destroy a munitions plant or storage depot (don't recall the exact use of the building), identify traitors within the Resistance, recapture a British bomber from the Germans and use it to escape Europe, and drop a bomb over Holland, to cut off the German advance. It was the closest thing to Blackhawk ever done by Hollywood, including the Blackhawk serial, with the possible exception of the first season of Baa Baa Black Sheep.
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Post by berkley on May 4, 2023 21:12:02 GMT -5
I had never seen The Thief of Bagdad (1940). For shame! It was brilliant! Abu is a great character and the genie is a riot! Yes! I watched it around this time last year, just after finishing The Arabian Nights - the first English version, translated from the French in the very early 18th Century. Great film, and so influential - even beyond just the movies alone, I think it helped create the mental imagery we in the west still unconsciously associate with the Arabian Nights. I saw it on tv as a small kid but only remembered a few of the more striking sequences, like the giant genie and the magic flying mechanical horse.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 7, 2023 18:50:18 GMT -5
Last night I watched The Food of the Gods (1976).
I wanted to see it when it first came out. I was 12 in 1976. But it wasn’t in theaters very long. So we didn’t get a chance to go see it.
There were a lot of movies that I wanted to see when I was a kid that I didn’t get to. But over the years, I’ve managed to see an awful lot of them. Like The Swarm. Empire of the Ants. The Day of the Animals. Lots of junk like that.
But for some reason, I had never been able to find The Food of the Gods.
It’s popped up on Tubi. So I was able to watch it after all these years.
It’s about what I expected.
I’ll always think of it as the movie were Ralph Meeker gets eaten by rats.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 8, 2023 0:36:28 GMT -5
Last night I watched The Food of the Gods (1976). I wanted to see it when it first came out. I was 12 in 1976. But it wasn’t in theaters very long. So we didn’t get a chance to go see it. There were a lot of movies that I wanted to see when I was a kid that I didn’t get to. But over the years, I’ve managed to see an awful lot of them. Like The Swarm. Empire of the Ants. The Day of the Animals. Lots of junk like that. But for some reason, I had never been able to find The Food of the Gods. It’s popped up on Tubi. So I was able to watch it after all these years. It’s about what I expected. I’ll always think of it is the movie were Ralph Meeker gets eaten by rats. Saw it on a weekend movie, back in the very late 70s or dawn of the 80s, on tv. Pretty crappy; but, entertaining enough for a quiet Saturday afternoon, before Wide World of Sports.
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 8, 2023 15:39:37 GMT -5
I remember having enjoyed At the Earth's Core when I first saw it as a kid. It's an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs first Pellucidar novel, and stars Doug McClure, Peter Cushing (as an uncharacteristically bumbling and absent-minded professor) and Caroline Munro, the helicopter girl from The Spy Who Loved Me and Stella Star from Starcrash. It has adventure, a strange world located inside a hollow Earth, many fights, daring escapes, and monsters. A pretty girl for the hero to fall for, too. Everything I would have liked! I'm pretty sure it was shown at some Saturday matinee, but it could have been on TV too... It was too long ago.
I'm certain that 12 year old me would still love it a great deal, but upon re-watching the film I must admit that the plot is rather thin, the fake jungle looks very fake, and the dinosaurs aren't exactly terrifying. More like ridiculous, in the case of the one that walks upright. The Mahars, those evil telepathic pterodacyls, manage to retain a measure of spookiness due to their never saying a word and mostly staying in shadows, but they're barely more than plastic statues; their range of motion is extremely limited. It might have been a good idea to show them even less than what we got here.
On the plus side, I really liked the design of the Sagoths; they were like the nastier cousins of the winged monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Their speech, which seems to have gone through some electronic filter, is appropriately weird and alien-sounding. The practical effects (explosions, fire and the like) were actually often more convincing than many modern-era CGI ones; probably because actual pyrotechnic pieces were used.
The character of Dian the beautiful is renamed "Dia" for some reason. I suppose "Dian" didn't sound exotic enough. She doesn't have a great deal to do in the film, but thankfully doesn't play the role of serial hostage. The actress is also very well cast; when it comes to people like Helen of Troy, Dian the beautiful or Dejah Thoris, whose looks cause empires to fall, beautiful people are called for.
What came as an utter shock was the ending, which I had forgotten. Having defeated the evil Mahars and ushered in an era of peace in Pellucidar, the hero David Innes is about to wed Dia and go back to our world but the lady realizes that she couldn't live in the outside world, where everything would be too different. "No problem", I expected David to say; "I'll stay here, discover more of this fantastic place and live happily ever after with a stunning cave princess!". But no! He just kisses her goodbye and leaves! Apparently he wasn't as deeply in love as he claimed to be. The scoundrel!
My favourite line from the movie is uttered by an indignant professor Abner Perry (Peter Cushing), who says to the Mahars "you cannot mesmerize me! I'm British!" It was almost Monty Pythonesque in its delivery.
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