Movie review - "Crime and Punishment USA" (1959) **1/2

 Launched George Hamilton. Roger Corman had money in it. Interesting rather than good. Good things about it - photography, ambition. Felt a little like Night Tide  - low budget, jazz, art hosue links. George Hamilton's performance and character all over the shop - sometimes arrogant, other times idiot, sometimes sympathetic. Why does Mary Murphy's hooker go near him?

Best moments are when the cop interrogates him. Also the creepy guy who leches after Hamilton's sister is effective. But the film is tonally inconsistent. And has too many characters to service - the sister, the mother, the guy, Hamilton's friend. It feels undefrcooked. 

Still, worth watching. 

Movie review - "Where the Boys Are" (1960) **** (rewatching)

 This just works. Location photography, lovely cast, splendid camraderie - the four girls are friends, but they befriend other girls, find boys, the boys become mates.

Dolores Hart has perhaps her best role - spirited, smart, liberated, attracted to George Hamilton. Hamilton brings some second tier star power. Jim Hutton v affable, Paula Prentiss hugely likable, as is Connie Francis who isn't asked to do too much - she gets Frank Gorshin who is engaging, though I'm sure Francis wanted someone better looking. The sexual assault done on Yvette Mimieux is very well handled. The film shows aspects of its time but has aged far better than other movies from this era. 

Book review - "The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows" by Dolores Hart

 Great book. Fascinating. More than half is nun stuff. I got lost in some Catholicism but there's plenty of human conflict in those abbeys. 

She seems like a nice person. Not without desire - she was up for kissing Stephen Boyd (they later clashed over his scientology). Henry Levin's wife was jealous of her and wrote a letter in the abbey calling her selfish. She had boyfriends. Said she wanted to kill Debbie Reynolds when she found out Reynolds had been cast in the film.

Full of interesting sketches - George Peppard looked down his nose at her during Pleasure of His Company,  Elvis was shy and awkward, Anna Magnani was terrifying but then nice, Where the Boys Are was a dream, Lois Nettleon became a friend as did Karl Malden and Patricia Neal, she helped Neal get back in the saddle after Roald Dahl left her, Paula Prentiss was a mate, Michael Curtiz was a bully on King Creole.

Seems like a nice person. Not in a two dimensional way. Her parents sound like pieces of work. 

Top Ten Beach Party Movies

 Going off the description in Tom Lisanti...

1) Gidget (1959) - feminist (ish), fun, great star turn

2) Where the Boys Are (1960).- light but also serious in a good way

3) Bikini Beach (1964) - Beach Party started it but this is the most pure

4) Ride the Wild Surf (1964) - angst! But also a more serious exploration ofbeach life

5) Beach Ball (1965) - fun, terrific music

6) Girl Happy (1965) - Elvis does beach party, great fun

7) Pajama Party (1964) - underrated musical, bright and poppy, heaps of fun

8) Beach Party (1963) - kicked off the series, often overlooked, but great

9) Ski Party (1965) - a bit smarmy but great snow, and tunes, and the Avalon-Hickman combo works

10) Blue Hawaii (1961) - aww, Elvis... look not really beachy but beach-ish and gorgeous

Movie review - "Angel Baby" (1961) **1/2

 A few people on this who went on to become big names - Burt Reynolds, Haskel Wexler- and a lead role for George Hamilton at his peak.

I love how this film tried to do something smart, European. It's not dumb. Nicely shot. Good atmosphere. The world is interesting. Strong acting. Hamilton is very good but also Reynolds is terrific. Mercedes McCambridge and Joan Blondell are good as always. Salome Jens quite effective - she must've thought this was going to launch her in a big way. Paul Wendkos is an interesting director (Tarantino loves him).

The problem is structural. It starts well but when it should build it dissipates, separates Hamilton and Jens when they should be together. Or at least so I felt.

Still, an interesting movie, a bold try and a reminder of how good Reynolds was from the get go.

Movie review - "A Time for Killing" (1967) **

 I only watched this because Roger Corman was fired as director shortly into filming. I wonder why he wanted to make it - to do a bigger budgeted Western I suppose. It's unremarkable, really - Phil Karlson took over - although it has some good actors. George Hamilton is good as a Confederate officer who leads an escape from a POW camp right at the end of the war and tries to escape with his troops into Mexico. Hamilton is a bit of a fantatic. He's pursued by Glenn Ford, looking constipated as he was want to do. Inger Stevens is a girl of Ford's who is taken by Hamilton, who then rapes her to keep Ford angry at him and his men to keep the war going.

The cast is interesting. People pop up like Timothy Crey, Kenneth Tobey, a young Harrison Ford, Dick Miller, Max Baer, Harry Deean Stanton (billed as "Dean Stanton").

Ford can be good but phones this in. Stevens is competent. Hamilton presses. Nicely shot although the occasional obivous studio-for-location work jars. It's a downer of a movie. Everyone dies so pointlessly.

Apparently Robert Towne worked on the script. And that work impressed Warren Beatty who read the script (he was offered the lead, turned it down)

George Hamilton Top Ten

 1. Light in the Piazza (1962)

2. Love at First Bite (1979)

3. Godfather Part 3 (1990)

4. Doc Hollywood (1993)

4. Your Cheatin' Heart (1965)

5. Evil Knievel (1971)

6. Death Car on the Freeway (1979)

7. Rough Riders (1997)

8. Where the Boys Are (1960)

9 Home from the Hill (1959)

10.The Victors (1963)

Movie review - "By Love Possessed" (1961) **

One of those adaptations of sexy best sellers you had in the 50s and 60s. The ingredients are there for some pulpy fun - there's adultery, prostitutes, fraud, suicide, a rape allegation - but the film doesn't click.

Some people feel perfectly cast - Lana Turner (though her character doesn't have much to do, which is probably why she asked for so many changes) and George Hamilton (horny spoilt brat).  Susan Kohner is fine. These feel like they belong in this movie.

But this isn't John Sturges' sort of material. Nor is it Walter Mirisch's - it needed a Ross Hunter. Or Delmer Daves in his Troy Donahue mode.

It isn't sufficiently glamorous - not enough attention has been paid to clothes. The central character is actually Effrem Zimbalist Jnr who is bland - torn men can be interesting as shown by Gregory Peck but Zimbalist doesn't have It. Jason Robarts feels under utilised. Ditto Barbara Bel Geddes.

It's like they tried to make a decent film out of this, couldn't do it, but didn't compensate by going full melodrama. There's no vision behind it, even just a simple Ross Hunter "rich beautiful people suffering" vision.

Thoughts on Michael Callan (1935-2022)

 I was thinking of doing a piece on Callan but I'm not sure there's one in me at the moment. Still, I felt I should jot down a few thoughts.

An interesting quasi-star, was Callan. He had looks and the backing of a Hollywood studio but the studio system was in decline. 

He was born "Martin Calinoff" in Philadelphia in 1935 - dad ran restaurants - and was something of a showbiz baby, taking singing and dancing lessons at an early age, and appearing on local radio shows. He was a very good dancer, later saying his idol was Gene Kelly. “I thought unlike Fred Astaire, Mr Kelly has that double whammy of sex appeal… Not that I even knew what sex appeal was, but I liked athletics and he moved like an all-star athlete.”

By the age of fifteen he was dancing professionally in local nightclubs. Two years later, when he graduated from high school, he moved to New York, got work in summer stock in St Louis, performing under the name "Mickey Calin".  Callan/Calin/Calinoff successfully auditioned for a small part on Broadway in The Boyfriend with Julie Andrew (you might've seen the Ken Russell film version), playing various parts over seven months; he was then in Catch a Star. He also danced on television and in nightclubs. 

Then came the big big break - Riff in West Side Story. "“There were a great many kids like me up for that part,” said Callan. “I was told I was too cute! Imagine! But I really wanted it, I was asked if I could backflip, so I did a backflip, and eventually, after a year of rounds, I got it. Riff set me on my way.”

Riff is one of the best parts, if not the best part, in one of the greatest musicals of all time and really established Callan, who was in it for seven months. During the show's run he was spotted by Joyce Selznick a famous casting director (her discoveries included James Darren) and she signed Callan to a seven year contract to Columbia off the back of his appearance. 

The studio system was dying off but there was a bit of a revival of signing young talent in the late 1950s, especially at studios that made a lot of television and continued to make B pictures, like Columbia. The studio also signed Evy Norlund, Glenn Corbett, Carol Douglas, Jo Morrow, Margie Regan, Joby Baker, Rian Garrick, Joe Gallison, and Steve Baylor... not a big list of future stars.

Callan was, however, given what those actors weren't - a nice support part in a big budget film, They Came to Cordura, playing one of several seemingly heroic soldiers escorted through the Mexican desert by Gary Cooper along with Rita Hayworth. The studio put him in a low budget circus picture for Sam Katsman, The Flying Fontanes. They also put him in a Dick Clark teen film, Because They're Young (as a delinquent trying to go good who romances Tuesday Weld) and he danced in Pepe. In Oct 1960 he left Columbia's record arm to sign with Paramount (see here) but he never enjoyed Darren's success as a singer.

Callan had looks, and could move, and act. But I think the main thing holding him back was he gave off a sort of intense swaggering self-love vibe. I'm not saying he was like that in person, not at all - but he lacked the sensitivity of say a Tony Curtis or Rock Hudson. He had charisma and was a potential star but needed careful handling.

Callan auditioned for the film version of West Side Story but didn't get it - possibly due to his Columbia contract, possibly they wanted a fresh slate. But he did dance in the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), opposite Deborah Walley as Gidget. He was one of the troops in Mysterious Island .

He was well cast as a thug tormenting a puffy Alan Ladd in 13 West Street and romanced Deborah Walley again in Disney's Bon Voyage! The latter film demonstrates the issue with Callan - he lacked the affability of Tommy Kirk and when he rough houses Deborah Walley it's really scary. As I wrote in a piece on this film "he was a good looking guy, Callan, who could act, and dance, but his performances often had a strand of cruelty about them, he looked like a villain, and I really didn't want him and Walley to wind up together."

However he had a big hit with The Interns as a compromised doctor. Callan was in this alongside a lot of other Columbia contract talent like Cliff Robertson. It was a fun role with some meat in it - Callan plays a super ambitious intern, who dates a rich girl but also sees an older nurse on the side so she'll help his career; this gives him a packed schedule which leads him to take drugs... it's very well done and handled, leading to Callan breaking down at the end. The film was a hit and would have rejuvenated Columbia's faith in him. 

David Merrick offered Callan the lead in a Broadway musical, I Can Get it for You Wholesale, but they couldn't agree over money apparently so Elliot Gould took the part instead - and wound up marrying his co-star Barbra Streisand.    In November 1962 he talked about how he had his own publicist - see this here.

Callan had a showy small part as a pimp in Carl Foreman's cynical war picture The Victors - he's not in the film for very long and the leads went to other new faces (George Hamilton, George Peppard), and Callan presumably thought "hey why not me" but at least the film was a big hit.

The did The The New Interns, one of the few to return (along with Stefanie Powers and Telly Savalas with Dean Jones playing James MacArthur's role). He didn't have as much to do in this one, which hurt the film - in the original his character was comic and romantic but also serious, here he's just comic (in drag for one sequence) and romantic (Barbara Eden); the film hints it's going to deal with his character's past as a druggie, which would've been great, but throws it away. It's a NAGOATO sequel (not as good as the original).  Still it encouraged Columbia to sign him to a new six picture contract. Jack Lemmon had started his film career at Columbia and many pieces from this time would refer to Callan being a new Jack Lemmon.

Callan was announced for a film musical remake of Cover Girl which was never made and a Broadway musical Kelly. See here. But Callan was lucky to miss out on the Broadway Kelly which shut after one night

There was talk of Callan starring in King Rat from the novel by James  Cavell about a smooth operator in Changi during World War Two.He would've been perfect. But he lost out to George Segal who was also in The New Interns which must have really really hurt. Because that film, while considered something of a commercial and critical disappointment, kicked up Segal to a higher plane that he never really left. In fairness, Segal had more acting chops than Callan - he'd done heaps of Broadway and TV.

 It wasn't over yet - He did guest stints on television, Breaking Point and Twelve O'Clock High, then had his biggest hit to date as Jane Fonda's love interest in Cat Ballou but most of the attention for that movie went to Fonda and Lee Marvin. 

He was sent to England for You Must Be Joking, a farcical army comedy for Michael Winner - Callan was cast at Columbia's insistence but didn't do much for the film's box office. He doesn't fit in the movie, he sticks out - the whole film is like a trial run for Winner's better The Jokers.

In August 1965, Callan signed a four-picture deal with Columbia. Jackie Cooper, former actor turned exec at Columbia's TV arm, Screen Gems, offered Callan the lead in a pilot for a sitcom Occasional Wife. Callan asked Cooper what he needed TV for: Cooper replied, "This year we're asking you to do the series. In three years you may be asking us?" The deal was a good one -  $100,000 a year plus a percentage according to this. This didn't last long.  TV Guide did a profile on him here which refers to a partying lifestyle, "a reputation along the Sunset Strip-Vegas axis as one of the great new swingers. He had a Sinatra-like coterie of hangers on and regularly made the columns."

A1967 interview with him is here. Occasional Wife only lasted a season but marked a major shift in Callan's private life as he left his wife for his co star, Patricia Harty. 

After the sitcom was axed Callan might've been expected to return to movies or television but instead he appeared in a musical in Las Vegas, That Certain Girl. See here

In 1968 he was in a TV version of Kiss Me Kate with Robert Goulet.

By the late 60s Callan was out of fashion, Ric Dalton style - he no longer had the film offers or television lead offers. It was a very very quick fall, especially considering The Interns and Cat Ballou had been so popoular and not that long ago. I wonder if there were behaviourial/temperament issues. I have no proof of that - it's just conjecture.  But it does seem odd that a good looking, charismatic performer, who could act and move, didn't get any more leads. This was the time of spaghetti Westerns, war films in Yugoslavia, and telemovies. There were star parts going for former contract stars. But Callan didn't get any.

Not that he was unemployed. Callan kept busy on episodic TV like The Mary Tyler More Show,That Girl, The Name of the Game, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Griff, McMillan & Wife, Barnaby Jones, 12 O’Clock High, Quincy, M.E., Charlie’s Angels, Simon & Simon, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Bionic Woman, four episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and eight episodes of Love, American Style. Callan also made the occasional feature like Frasier the Sensuous Lion, The Magnificent Seven Ride, Lepke and the Cat and the Canary. He did have the lead in 1974's The Photographer which was kind of remade as 1982's Double Exposure - in both Callan plays a psychotic photographer. See trailer here.  

He appeared in theatre around the country - a lot of musicals like Anything Goes, The Music Man (program here), George M, Bar Mitzvah Boy plus plays like Absurd Person Singular. He produced some musicals.

I don't think Callan was a great lost star. He was unlucky in that Hollywood made less musicals when he hit down  - at least less dancing musicals. He would've been fantastic as Riff in West Side Story  - too cruel to be Tony though.  The tide went out really quickly for him though. I mean, to go from a sitcom to being a permanent guest? I wonder if something else happened.

Callan appears as a character, in a way, in the novel version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Agent Marv talks to Ric Dalton about Dalton's Western, Tanner, directed by Jerry Hopper, in which Dalton appeared alongside Ralph Meeker and Callan, and Dalton criticised Callan for "sounding like  a Malibu surfer".

TV Guide

Movie review - "Death Car on the Freeway" (1979) ***

 Years before Deathproof was this little TV movie gem about a psycho van driver who tries to run women off the road. It's well written and Hal Needham shows he was capable of directing more than jokey Burt Reynolds films (not to diss those). 

Lovely cast - Shelley Hack is the plucky heroine, a reporter, George Hamilton is her ex, Peter Graves a cop, Frank Gorshin a colleague of Hack's, people like Dinah Shore, Barbara Rush, Harriet Nelson.

It's a bit feminist - Hack is the hero, routinely dismissed and belittled, her ex Hamilton is controlling and he's not heroic. Hack learns how to drive from Hal Needham (playing a defensive driving instructor) and goes mano o mano against the van at the end. I think the writer had his consciousness raised.

A surprise. Exciting, solid script, strong cast. Well done driving scenes.

Movie review - "The Power" (1968) ** (warning: spoilers)

 There's a decent enough story at the core of this - a scientist investigates murders committed by a psychic  but the treatment was needlessly confusing. I also think it wasn't very well directed by Byron Haskin, towards the end of his career/life. The treatment cried out for spookiness, scariness, atmosphere, but too often looks like a flat Universal movie from the late 60s. There's no MGM lushness or style.

As a whodunnit it's not effective because we forget (or I did) who the people at the start of the movie were. I'm not sure George Hamilton was up for the challenges of the role although it is one of his better performances. I wish Suzanne Pleshette, who plays his girlriend, and who should have been the main baddie, had played his part. Or, if it had to be a man, then Rod Taylor, who was attached to this for a time.

Some decent moments like going out to the desert where Aldo Ray tries to kill Hamilton. This needed to be shot outside a studio, with a director really keen to make it work, not an old pro.

Overview of Ken Hughes

Ken Hughes was one of those directors I used to dismiss on the basis of a traumatic childhood experience. One day in high school, a history teacher locked us inside the assembly hall and forced us to watch the 1970 epic Cromwell, a sluggardly dull trudge through the English Civil War. Hughes’ name was plastered all over it, as writer and director, and it scarred me from visiting his filmography for many years.

It was unfair, I know, but these things happen. Later on I heard he made one masterpiece, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), which I did see - and was brilliant. So I had a second look at Cromwell, was bored again, and ran away once more.

What prompted a more serious dive into the Hughes oeuvre was my interest in Diana Dors. (https://www.filmink.com.au/a-tale-of-two-blondes-diana-dors-and-belinda-lee/) Hughes directed Ms Dors in The Long Haul (1957), a great little unpretentious B-movie about truckers co-starring Victor Mature. I was surprised to see the name of the auteur of Cromwell on it, and decided to revisit his filmography, only properly this time.  I was surprised to find a filmmaker whose output was consistently interesting and entertaining, and deserved more critical attention than it has received.

Hughes was born in Liverpool in 1922. He began working at the BBC as a technician when he was only sixteen, then during the war moved into making documentaries, short features, and training films for the Ministry of Defence. After the war he directed documentaries for the BBC.

The British film industry had a thriving “B” picture scene in the 1950s, helped by quota protections which incentified thrifty producers to make short features that played the lower half of double bills. A new organisation that specialised in this field was Anglo-Amalgamated, run by the team of Stuart Levy and Nat Cohen. Cohen is one of those moguls who should be better known - a shrewd gambler who would later control EMI Films and help finance debut features from directors as varied as John Schlesinger, Ken Loach, John Boorman and Alan Parker... and Ken Hughes. Anglo-Amalgamated wanted to make a crime drama called Wide Boy (1952), based on a radio and TV play by Australian Rex Rienits about a low-class chiseller who gets in over his head when he attempts blackmail. Hughes was given the job of directing and did it excellently - it’s stripped back, atmospheric entertainment, without an ounce of fat on it. Check out this opening sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8ESUCgmjE

Anglo-Amalgamated put Hughes to work writing and directing 30 minute films for release in cinema, such as The Missing Man (1953), The Candlelight Murder (1953), The Drayton Case (1953), The Dark Stairway (1954), The Blazing Caravan (1954), The Murder Anonymous (1955), Passenger to Tokyo (1954), The Strange Case of Blondie (1954), Night Plane to Amsterdam (1955). These essentially feel like self-contained episodes of an anthology TV series; I’ve only seen a few but they hold up well - Australia’s own Vincent Ball pops up in some, like The Drayton Case here
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2goxdb

Hughes’ second feature was Black 13 (1954) which he wrote and directed for low budget producer Roger Proudlock. The star was Peter Reynolds, a highly entertaining actor who specialised in cads, and who later emigrated to Australia where he died in a fire.

Hughes then wrote and directed The House Across the Lake (1954) based on Hughes’ own novel. This was made for Hammer Films, before that studio specialised in horror, and featured many aspects of British B movies from the 1950s: a short running time, film noir-ish plot, and imported B-list American stars, in this case Alex Nicol and Hilary Brook. It’s quite a fun movie, reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice; one is inclined to wonder if Nicol’s character, a writer under the pump and distracted by lust, was a Hughes self-portrait.

Here’s a trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmhJJn0LIPA

Anglo-Amalgamated hired Hughes to make The Brain Machine (1955) with Elizabeth Allen and Maxwell Reed, a decent little thriller that feels like it wants to be sci fi but isn’t. Like most of his early features, it’s an easy watch if you’re in the right mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o2kJ8Vdmdc

Hughes wrote and directed two more features for Anglo, both with B-list stars from Hollywood, both worth watching: The Little Red Monkey (1955) with Richard Conte, based on a TV serial, and Confession (1955) with Sydney son-of-Charlie Chaplin. He also helped write The Flying Eye (1955) for the Children’s Film Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb9BBVS4hOw

Hughes’ thrift and versatility impressed Tony Owen, aka Mr Donna Reed, who had set up a filmmaking operation in England, Todon. Todon had a lot of success making genre pieces aimed at the international market; indeed, Owen’s impact on the British scene is under-rated because he rarely took screen credit - it was easier to get British subsidies with a local producer’s name on it. Owen hired Hughes to write Portrait of Alison (1955), a lively Laura (1944)-style murder mystery starring Howard Hughes favourite Terry Moore and Canadian-living-in Britain Robert Beatty; Guy Green did the actual directing.  Also for Owen, Hughes wrote and directed Timeslip (1955), a slightly sci-fi tale based on a TV serial, starring two Americans, Gene Nelson and another Howard Hughes fave, Faith Domergue. Both were distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKLDiI_zak

The first really stand-out movie of Hughes’ career was Joe MacBeth (1955) a modernised re-telling of Macbeth set among American gangsters of the 1930s, shot in England. It was produced by American Mike Frankovich from a script by another American, Philip Yordan (with a little help from Shakespeare). “It was one of the few scripts I picked up in my life that didn't require a great deal of work,” said Hughes. The movie is gloriously fun. Everyone is in strong form: Paul Douglas, Ruth Roman, Sid James, Bonar Colleano (an American who worked extensively in British films prior to his death in a car crash). It was distributed by Columbia; Frankovich became head of that company’s British operations, and they would finance Hughes’ next few films.

First of these was Wicked as They Come (1956), which Hughes wrote and directed for producers Frankovich and Setton. It starred Arlene Dahl as a woman who claws her way from poverty to the top; it’s revealed at the end she was motivated by having been sexually assault when younger (there was a feminist-ish strand through some of Hughes’ work: for instance in The Brain Machine a person refers to Elizabeth Allen’s character as “ma’am” and she asks to be called “doctor”.) Dahl later sued Columbia over the movie claiming its poster art was misleadingly sexy.  The film would have been better off following the lead of the poster art rather than the script: at heart this should have been a campy Joan Crawford vehicle but it’s far too reticent and dull. I watched this after Joe MacBeth put me on a high over Hughes’ abilities - Wicked as They Come sent me back down to earth. I’m sure the film has its fans. Dahl lost her case, incidentally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7E9WNUWJLU

Hughes worked on two more Max Setton films for Columbia. He wrote the excellent script for Town on Trial (1957), directed by John Guillermin, where detective John Mills investigates the murder of a sexy piece of tail in a small town (men driven by lust was a recurring theme of Hughes movies). He also wrote and directed The Long Haul (1957) which I mentioned at the top of this piece, a movie that has been overshadowed in the cinema of British truck driving stories by Hell Drivers (1957) but which is enormously entertaining, with Diana Dors and Victor Mature giving excellent performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1-1SZN3yVg

Maxwell Setton left Columbia to help establish Bryanston Films with Michael Balcon, leaving Hughes needing a new patron. For British TV he wrote episodes of Solo for Canary (1958) and had a huge personal success with a one-man TV play he wrote and directed, Sammy (1958); this was a 40-minute story about a low-level Soho operator (played Anthony Newley) who can’t pay his gambling debts. Reviews were excellent and Hughes’ script was adapted countless times in other countries for TV, notably in the US as Eddie (1959) starring Mickey Rooney.

Hughes’ work had impressed producers Irwin Allen and Albert Broccoli, owners of Warwick Films,  which, like Todon, was an operation aimed at making international-orientated genre pieces in England “for a price”. Hughes worked on the script for Warwick’s High Flight (1957) a Top Gun-esque tale, complete with cocky pilots and homoeroticism starring Ray Milland, that was directed by John Gilling.

Warwick liked it enough to hire Hughes to direct two films for the company. Oddly, these were different to the bulk of their usual output, being non-action films, and not featuring a Hollywood star. Instead, both featured Anthony Newley: Jazz Boat (1960) (based on another story by Rex Rienits) and In the Nick (1960).  Jazz Boat starts out as a crime drama then weirdly turns into a musical (complete with dance numbers) then back into a crime drama again. In the Nick is a comedy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV0basjmZns

Neither film is particularly remembered today but Warwick also financed Hughes’ one undeniable classic. This was The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) with Australia’s own Peter Finch in the title role. It’s a stunningly good account of the legendary playwright, with beautiful art direction from Ken Adams and a superb line-up of actors doing sterling work. Finch was rarely better; the entire subject is treated with taste and discretion.

The film was highly acclaimed by critics but not popular at the box office, in part because of the appearance at the same time as a rival project on the same topic, Oscar Wilde (1960) starring Robert Morley. The movie’s financial failure contributed to the dissolution of Warwick; Broccoli and Allen split up, Broccoli went on to make the James Bond films, while Allen spent the rest of his career trying to catch up to his former partner (and came close, incidentally, with a series of hit movies based on the Matt Helm stories).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQWf3VyLu9Y&list=PL0gml3Zg1wRlNV2NvOUtIq2sS01wBoh9y&index=39&t=0s

Hughes had wanted to follow Oscar Wilde with a biopic about Oliver Cromwell but was unable to raise the finance. Instead he wrote and directed The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963),  a feature-length adaptation of his TV play Sammy, with Anthony Newley reprising his small screen performance. The film was a co-production between Bryanston Films and Seven Arts, an American company headed by Ray Stark which had set up operations in England. The film contains much to admire, including superb photography and acting (Aussies Ken Wayne and Kenneth Warren have support roles), and a glimpse of Soho of the time. It is repetitive (Sammy tries to get money, almost gets it, doesn’t) and how much you like it will very much depend on your opinion of Anthony Newley. The movie has become something of a cult item in recent years but was a commercial failure on release and contributed to the collapse of Bryanston Films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJ7LrgcKpk

Hughes moved back to television, directing episodes of the TV series Espionage (1964) and writing episodes of An Enemy of the State (1965). He returned to features when Henry Hathaway walked off the set of Of Human Bondage (1964) which the latter was directing in Ireland with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak. The film was made by Seven Arts and Ray Stark offered Hughes the job of taking over; Hughes also rewrote Bryan Forbes’ script, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The resulting film is interesting, and contains one of Harvey’s best performances, but isn’t that good. Novak’s performance doesn’t help and, more seriously, Hughes doesn’t get - or didn’t have time to capture - the essential DNA of the story. It is interesting to compare it with other versions of the novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmthl1hAdFA

Seven Arts still liked Hughes and helped finance a comedy he wanted to write and direct, Drop Dead Darling (1965), starring Tony Curtis as a Bluebeard type who kills women he marries. It’s a frantic farce that does cartwheels for a laugh with beautiful locations and contains some excellent support performances, including Zsa Zsa Gabor. Curtis claimed in his memoirs he did the film because he liked Hughes’ “excellent script” but felt the final movie did not add up to the sum of his parts.  He was spot on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um5J9x-R89c

The movie was presumably why producer Charles Feldman hired Hughes to direct a section of the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) - reportedly the Berlin stuff with Joanna Pettet. Other directors credited included John Huston, Val Guest, Robert Parrish and Joseph McGrath. I’m not sure comedy was Hughes’ strength.

I think this is Hughes’ stuff here, but don’t quote me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_8o4BbDqkg

Hughes’ next movie also had a Bond connection, or rather, several: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), was based on a novel by Ian Fleming, produced by Albert Broccoli, written by Roald Dahl (who had scripted You Only Live Twice), designed by Ken Adam, and featured a number of Bond actors (Desmond Llewellyn, Gert Frobe). Hughes directed and rewrote Roald Dahl’s script. It’s a gorgeous looking movie with divine sets, a fabulous cast and cheerful songs; it’s also, like so many late 60s musicals, far too long and would have been better at a tight 90 minutes.

Chitty Chitty cost so much it actually lost a lot of money on first release - it helped convince Broccoli not to make anything other than Bond movies - but it was popular and has become a family viewing perennial.

“The film made a lot of money, but that doesn’t really make me feel any better about it,” said Hughes later. “On the other hand, I’ve made pictures that got awards at Berlin and places, and didn’t make any money, and that doesn’t make me feel any better either”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTTzcXSLjhI

The film was well regarded enough to enable Hughes to raise finance for his dream project, an epic biopic of Oliver Cromwell called Cromwell (1970). It was produced by Albert Broccoli’s old partner, Irwin Allen.

I’ve been mean about this film and will be again, but it does have some good things about it: Alec Guinness is superb as Charles I, and the production design is amazing. But it’s dull. So dull. Every time Richard Harris walks on screen he looks as though he’s about to give a speech and he does. Admittedly I don’t enjoy English Civil War tales unless they involve witch burnings or focus around Charles II in exile. But if you are a history teacher who couldn’t be bothered talking to class for two hours, Cromwell could solve your issues that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7QHFm2AeMo

Up until making this film, Hughes was riding high. He earned £44,177 in 1968 and £47,960 in 1969, the year he sold his company, Ken Hughes Productions, to Constellation Investments for  £300,000. It was one of those tricky financial arrangements filmmakers sometimes enter into to help with their tax situation; Hughes was to regret it.

Cromwell was popular at the British box office failed to recoup its huge cost. Around this time the American majors pulled out of filmmaking in Britain, and Hughes, after steady work for almost two decades, found himself floundering a little, earning no money in 1970.

In hindsight, he probably should have fled to Hollywood, like so many of his contemporaries (John Gilling, Michael Winner) or gone into horror, sex comedies or big screen adaptations of TV shows (the most profitable genres in 70s British cinema). Instead he stayed in London where he wrote for television (Menace, Colditz, Fall of Eagles, Dial M for Murder, Oil Strike North). He eventually got two feature gigs as writer-director: The Internecine Project (1974), a thriller for British Lion starring James Coburn and Lee Grant, and Alfie Darling (1975), a sequel to the comedy-drama Alfie (1966), financed by his old patron Nat Cohen (now head of EMI). Internecine has a decent central idea - James Coburn is up for a job so decides to kill off four people who know about his shady past - but feels in badly need of some extra twists/complications. And Alfie Darling suffers very, very, very badly in comparison to the original, which turned Michael Caine into a star (you may feel differently if you like Alan Price, who steps into Caine’s shoes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vhl7orjm20

Both films flopped. In 1975 Hughes declared bankruptcy, claiming his personal inability to curb expenses, two divorces, taxes and the collapse of the film industry.

Hughes decided to move to the US. He got the gig making one of the most bizarre movies of all time, something even weirder than Casino Royale: Sextette (1978), starring Mae West. Irving Rapper had originally meant to direct before Hughes stepped in just before shooting began. The resulting film is absurd but almost compulsive in its randomness, whether it’s Timothy Dalton singing “Love will Keep Us Together” to Mae West, or George Hamilton playing a gangster, or Ringo Starr putting on a weird European accent to play a director, or Tony Curtis as a Russian, or Dom De Luise as a manager flunky, or West talking to George Raft in an elevator, or Keith Moon and Van McCoy and Alice Cooper AND Walter Pidgeon or... Oh, anyway, see it if you want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as6Iv5R1G0M

Hughes’ last film as director was a slasher flick, Night School (1981), the movie debut of Rachel Ward. It’s quite a stylish piece of entertainment, made with professionalism and skill rather than ludicrous excess, which means it isn’t as fun as others in this genre. Ward has X factor from the get-go and takes part in a Psycho (1960) shower scene homage; it has a feminist moments and there’s also not one but two sexually predatory academics.  For me, it was Hughes’ most enjoyable film since Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fuMpdXBVZA

And then the credits stopped. I don’t know what happened. Night School was well done. The producer of that film speaks well of Hughes in interviews. He was heading towards sixty years of age so there was ageism, but he could write as well as direct and was used to low budgets... Maybe there were other issues (if anyone knows, please feel free to tell me). He died of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease in 2001.

So how good a filmmaker was Ken Hughes? For me - and this is purely, utterly subjective - he was very “ups and downs” kind of guy with a solid over-all average: the maker of a genuine classic (Trials of Oscar Wilde), a handful of terrific movies (Long Haul, Joe MacBeth, Wide Boy) and some films that have splendid things in them (Small World of Sammy Lee, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and yes Casino Royale). He also made movies that were dull (Cromwell), dire (Alfie Darling), disappointing (Timeslip) and in one case beyond belief (Sextette). He clearly worked best when attached to a feisty little production company with strong Hollywood links (Anglo Amalgamated, Tony Owen, Warwick, Seven Arts).

I also wonder if maybe Ken Hughes rated his own writing too highly. He clearly had abilities as a writer - some of his scripts were fabulous. But it is hard to keep a high level of quality if you write and direct all the time and Hughes was also prone to rewrite, even on screenplays by skilled colleagues (Roald Dahl on Chitty Chitty, Bryan Forbes on Of Human Bondage). In hindsight maybe Hughes would have been better off working more with a trusted collaborator than being a one man band. I completely admit It’s hard to make these sort of judgements without reading/comparing original drafts and the rewrites, but it’s just a sense I get.

Still he should be better known. I wonder why he isn’t. Check out Joe MacBeth if you haven’t.

Movie review - "Sextette" (1978) **

 It's weird to watch. So weird. But how else to have done it? No one else could've played Mae West and Mae West was 85.

So they shove it full of songs and stars and shenanigans. It's silly but it has a compulsive fascinating. Tim Dalton completely commits, whether ogling Mae or singing "Love will Keep Us Together". George Hamilton also tries but isn't entirely convincing as a gangster. Neither is Ringo Starr as a European director, but it's fun to see him. Ditto Tony Curtis as a Russian, Dom De Luise as a manager flunky type. She has a chat with George Raft in an elevator.

It's odd. So odd. So camp. Jeez, Ken Hughes made some crap in the 70s.  Keith Moon is in it - he would be dead soon. Van McCoy pops up. And Alice Cooper. AND Walter Pidgeon.

It's got to be said some of the lines are funny. And the film does want to entertain. It's grotesque. 

There seems to be little cult for it - Myra Breckenridge is better known.

Movie review - "The Victors" (1963) ***

Carl Foreman cashed in his Guns of Navarone chips to turn director with this strikingly cynical look at war. It's epic in scope - two and a half hours - with a strong cast of semi names: George Hamilton, George Peppard.

It's not highly regarded - I think its ambition annoyed people. And some of it is annoying to watch today - Foreman doesn't show battle sequences and a lot of the action is the Americans schtupping European women and hanging out on leave. Vince Edwards has a woman in Italy, Eli Wallach scores Jeanne Moreau, George Hamilton scores Romy Schneider and Elke Sommer, George Peppard scores Melinda Mercouri.

Foreman tries to downplay the predatory sexual nature by softening the encounters - Moreau is scared of bombing and Wallach comforts her, Schneider is actually a whore working for sleazy Michael Callan, Sommer's sister Santa Berger is money hungry and banging a Russian, Mercouri is a black marketeer who encourages Peppard to defect. Apparently in the original cut there was a sequence where an 11 year old French boy tries to sleep with Peppard and Hamilton for food.

But the non sex stuff is remarkable - the troops witness the execution of an Americans soldier, Peter Fonda adopts a dog who is shot by his fellow troops, white Americans beat up black Americans, the liberation of the camps, Eli Wallach is in hospital with his face blown off, Hamilton dies in a pointless knife fight with Albert Finbney.

The acting is strong - Peppard and Hamilton are excellent. Edwards' role is distractingly small - a few links/references to what happened to people like him would not go astray.

A film that has many irritating bits but also scenes of great power.

Film review - "Pretty Polly" (1967) **

Hayley Mills caused a commotion doing a little bit of nudity on The Family Way and continued to push the edge with her next film, this one, where she bangs with an Indian dude - played by the handsome Shashi Kapoor. They really do it too - he takes her on the beach, the night her aunt dies.

It's a Cinderella story with Mills being a mousy girl (i.e. she's got glasses on) accompanying her aunt in Singapore. The aunt dies and the girl blossoms. She sleeps with Kapoor, gets a better hair cut and starts flirting with a white guy. Her rougish uncle Trevor Howard is around .

I haven't read the story but can see its appeal for Mills - she has a character arc, gets to wear different types of clothes, she's the centre of attention, it has the Noel Coward brand name.

I can't see why they made the film in the first place, though. It's very light - feels like it was better suited to say an hour on TV (apparently the TV version - with Lynn Redgrave - is superior). The story is slight. The characters are not particularly rich. There's some neat location filming in Singapore, but you don't get a sense of the city, not really. The bulk of the characters are Englishmen abroad.

Mills is fine - accomplished, pretty. Maybe someone with more range would have done better, like say Redgrave or Rita Tushingham. Maybe Guy Green wasn't the right director. Maybe the screenwriters weren't the right people. Maybe the original material wasn't worth doing. Director Guy Green said later he regretted not casting George Hamilton - who he'd worked with - in the Kapoor part. In brownface, I guess. I'm not sure that was this film's problem.

I just kept going "what is the point of this" all the way through.

TV review - "Rough Riders" (1997) ***

Two part mini series from TNT about the Teddy's Roosevelt's Rough Riders and the Battle of San Juan Hill. Although Tom Berenger is top billed as Roosevelt this is more of an ensemble piece, with lots of characters being displayed: there's Dale Dye's colonel, George Hamilton as William Randolph Heart, Chris Noth as a rich man's son determined to be a hero, an Indian, a black soldier, Brad Johnson as a stage coach robber who becomes a hero, Gary Busey's blowhard Southern general, Sam Elliot's good ole boy sergeant.

Milius always displayed a pleasing acknowledgement of different people who fought wars - there's blacks, Indians, people from all over America. Should be said there's hardly any women in it though - and the Indians are stoic and the blacks humble.

It could have done with a  bit more of the younger Milius' satire that was present in The Wind and the Lion and Apocalypse Now. There's some, such as in Roosevelt's Patton like opening speech and Hearst's gleeful cynicism (I really wish this part had been bigger - Hamilton is great fun). But too much of it is stock tropes from 1940s war films - Johnson discovering bravery, brothers in arms etc.

To be fair I don't mind a well worn trope if it's done well and some of this was moving: the death of the stiff Harvard type, the black soldier going for a drink with the white one. It's hard to feel too much sympathy for anyone though since all the characters run headlong into battle and war, seeking glory, but I was moved.

Milius isn't particularly good with action and the battle scenes feel like a collection of gunfire and explosions rather than anything with genuine dramatic build. The last hour or so in particular is heavy going - battle scenes seem to be people running up hills in formation firing guns. Maybe that's what happened - it's not that particularly visually interesting.

The Texas scenery is pleasant. Brad Johnson was effective - he's a lot more handsome with a bit of three day growth. It took me a while to get used to Chris Noth playing a blue blood but I didn't mind him. Sam Elliot is always good in these sort of crusty sergeant roles - ditto Gary Busey as an eccentric general.

Milius fans will get a lot out of it - the depiction of Teddy R, the imperialist slant, the gunfire, the cast which includes many faces from earlier Milius movies (such as Johnson, Brian Keith, Hamilton, William Katt).

It's a watchable episode of American history. There are some effective moments and I liked Berenger's performance.

Movie review - "Act One" (1963) **

Moss Hart's memoirs about his early days as a playwright became a classic of the form. It was adapted, produced and directed by Dore Schary, then in his brief writer-director phase

It's a very Dore Schary movie - intelligent, sensible, polite, self conscious. Look at the way Hart talks to other writers - "I'm the soul of graciousness". The polite way he talks to actors. The awkward comedy. This was effective in telling the story of Franklin Roosevelt recovering from polio, not so much in a tale of a young man trying to Make It Big in Theatre.

It should be a racy, affectionate valentine to old Broadway but it's made with a pole up its backside, as if it were directed by Hilary Clinton. The jokes are awkward - Hart has dream sequences about being famous; his friends bicker and banter. But there's no atmosphere. It's shot like a serious 50s American TV drama.

Hart/Hamilton does a reading of the play - where he reads all the parts. Eli Wallach's theatre producer talks like an essay on playwriting. There's so much serious talk about comedy. A joke were women are attracted to a young Cary Grant ("Archie Leech") is funny at first then repeated like three or four times without much change. There are montages of people writing. We are never clear why Once in a Lifetime didn't work or how they got to make it work.

George Hamilton tries - he's a polite, well mannered man, it's a conscientious performance - but he's simply miscast playing a young struggling Hart. Too handsome. Too unlike a writer. I think Hamilton would've been perfect for the late period Hart - a darling of the social scene, well dressed, sophisticated. But not a young man on the make. He's got no energy or chutzpah: James Woolcott suggested a young Richard Dreyfuss would've been ideal. I think George Segal, who plays Hart's jealous friend, would've been better.

The support cast for this is strong - Segal, Jason Robards as George S Kaufman (tousle haired and grumpy - he seems like a real writer whereas Hamilton never does), Eli Wallach, Jack Klugman as an investor who seems to be in love with Hart/Hamilton. So too does sensitive David Starr played by Sam Groom who I later found was based on a young Dore Schary.

It's a failure as a film really - it lacks energy, is too stately, doesn't capture the atmosphere of the theatre. But it is interesting, because so few films are made about these people. There's a party sequence with Alexander Woolcott, Fanny Brice, Dorothy Parker - I wish there'd been more stuff like that.

Movie review - "Milius" (2013) ****

A highly entertaining look at the life and times of one of Hollywood's most colourful characters, and top writers - at least during the first part of his career. Milius became something of a cartoon caricature of himself, as this film points out, but early on few writers could match him for lively, original work: Apocalypse Now, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Jeremiah Johnson. I've read these scripts and they're fantastic.

The quality of his output started to decline as he went into directing (not uncommon, unless the person in question worked with a co-writer) - but Milius enjoyed a decent amount of success as a director: Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. His career started to go south in the late 80s - Milius blames this in part on prejudice against conservatives, which interviewees Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzeneggar poo poo... A more likely reason (as pointed out here) was the commercial failure of several Milius films, notably Farewell to the King and Flight of the Intruder - and also Milius' persona I think began to grate. He kept busy as a writer and director although never matched his old pals like George Lucas, Coppola and Steven Spielberg. Milius was never as good a director as he was a writer - the perfect director for him was Francis Ford Coppola; I also think it's a shame he never got to work with other operatic directors like Brian de Palma.

What gives this film unexpected gravitas is the dimension of unexpected tragedy - his friends talking about how Milius became a caricature, his friend who embezzled from him, a stroke that meant he couldn't speak. By the end of the film he has recovered a little bit, but not a lot - he can shoot and move around but the filmmakers don't show him talking that much.

There are some excellent talking heads - Coppola, Spielberg, Schrader, Eastwood - plus some who don't really have a connection, but I assume agreed to talk for box office value (Stallone, Bryan Singer). Michael Mann is in there - Milius made an episode of Miami Vice for fun, although we only hear about it during the closing credits, just like we only hear about his contribution to UFC there.

There are other areas I would have liked to hear more about - his marriages (none mentioned), his female characters (only two women talk, Lea Thompson and his daughter), his production company the A team.

But these are outweighed by the positives: the depiction of the collegiate atmosphere of 70s film making, home movies of the young Milius, extracts from old USC student films, the talk of the stroke and ensuing battles, meeting his kids. A must for film buffs.

Movie review - "The Godfather Part 3" (1990) ***

The fascinating thing about this movie is that for every really bad thing there's a really good one to counter balance it: Sofia Coppola's amateurish performance (though she does look the part) vs Andy Garcia's electric one; Talia Shire's brilliant reinvention as a Lucretia Borgia type matriarch of the Corleones vs Diane Keaton's flat, permed Kay; George Hamilton's unexpectedly good turn as a lawyer vs wasting the role of Michael Corleone's son; some delightfully dodgy priests vs the insulting concept of the Mafia trying to save the life of the new Pope; the stunning production design vs editing which keeps chopping up scenes.

I disagree with Coppola's assertion in that the first two films told the story - there was much to be had from the saga of Michael Corleone's third act: the fate of him, the kids, his family, was inherently dramatic. And this film kind of has it - Michael wanting to go legitimate but being tempted back to the old ways; uncertainty over the loyalty of Vincent; worried about his kids and soul.

There are plenty of great moments and performances - the action sequences are done well, including an interesting assassination via helicopter through the roofs, and a revenge shooting at a parade; the finale was satisfying; support players like Hamilton, Eli Wallach, Mario Donatone (a genuinely scary assassin) and Joe Mantegna work well.

It does feel as though Coppola and Puzo could never quite get the drama right - it needed the extra conflict that would have been provided by Tom Hagen, or Michael's son, having a bigger role. Also the Vatican stuff, while kind of interesting, ultimately isn't that effective dramatically because it doesn't really involve the Corleones - it's not like the plan to take over Cuba in Part 2 where they had so much money involved - this is like a casual investment. Michael's son being an opera singer is dull. John Savage does nothing as a priest. I wish they'd just redone King Lear, which has a great structure for something like this. Still, it is worth watching.

Movie review - "Jack of Diamonds (1967) **

If you're in the mood for a cat burglar movie this will hit the spot because its got every cliche/trope of the genre your heart could desire: George Hamilton in an all black outfit climbing down a wall during the opening credits, a wise old protege (Joseph Cotten), a beautiful rival female cat burglar (Maria Laforet) and her protege (Maurice Evans), a dogged detective to bring him down, a key jewel, European locations (ski fields, the beach), a big final heist, Hamilton has a trapeze in his apartment that he uses to work out, lots of fancy outfits, Hamilton is called "Ace", Cotten has a secret involving Laforet.

I guess it does lack a beautiful heiress whose jewels are coveted by the burglar. However it does have a series of cameos by actresses playing themselves - Zsa Zsa Gabor, Carroll Baker, Lili Palmer.

It could have done with a third act betrayal and a tightened running time - it feels flabby. The last ten or so minutes drag especially.

George Hamilton tries but is a long way from Cary Grant - a lot of actors got roles by being newer, younger versions of old stars (eg Matthew McConaughey was the new Tom Cruise, Julia Ormond was the new Audrey Hepburn) and only survived if they carved out their own niche; Hamilton would but the niche was as a jokey suntanned playboy, not Cary Grant. Marie Laforet is beautiful but indistinguishable from numerous European actresses who popped up in films around this time. It's a pleasure seeing Cotten - a movie about him teaching Hamilton (the back story to this) would have been more interesting than what's going on; their relationship is reminiscent of Bob Wagner and Fred Astaire in It Takes a Thief. Maurice Evans is alright - might have been nicer if they'd cast some old time movie star to square off against Cotten.