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. 

Jim Hutton top ten

 Can we get there? Let's see...

1) And When the Sky Was Opened (1959) - Twilight Zone so maybe cheating but I'll do it

2) Ellery Queen (1975)

3) Where the Boys Are (1960)

4) Who's Minding the Mint? (1967)

5) The Horizontal Lieutenant (1961)

6) Time to Love and a Time to die (1958)

7) Period of Adjustment (1962)

8) The Hallelujah Trail (1965)

9) The Green Berets (1968) - don't yell at me! His performance is fine

10) Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

There I go - did it! I haven't seen a lot of his TV work. 

Movie review - "In Harm's Way" (1965) ***

 Big Otto Preminger movie which has mini series vibes but star power to carry it - John Wayne and Kirk Douglas up top, Burgess Meredith and Patricia Neal to the side. Brandon de Wilde isn't up to playing Wayne's son but I like that Neal is age-ish approprate for Wayne.

The movie is enjoyably adult and that women are given prominent roles. Gorgeous black and white photography and production values.

Franchot Tone looks as though he's about to drop dead. The whole subplot of Tom Tryon and Paula Prentiss could be cut out. The scene where Douglas decides to rape Jill Haworth is very powerful. Douglas is given a heroic death. Stuff him. Haworth is likeable, Neal very good.

Feels like a movie that could've been trimmed down - it didn't have to run this long. Annoying Stanley Holloway plays an Aussie coastwatcher. I guess he was coming off My Fair Lady.

I enjoyed this. Tells a story, looks great, war, sex, movie stars. 

 

Movie review - "Saturday the 14th" (1981) **

 If I saw this has a kid I would've loved it with its silliness and scares. It's a spoof of old day house mysteries - a fash of Amityville Horror but also the vibe of scary house stuff in old AIP films like Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.

There is starpower in Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss playing a husband and wife who move into an old house. There's Dracula (Jeffrey Tambour) and his girl trying to kick them out which is underdeveloped. The creatures in the house are fun.

The film has good ideas but can't quite string it together.  Compares badly with say Love at First Bite.

The daughter, Kari Michaelson from Gimme a Break, takea a bath in a drawn out scene which is old school Corman. She was 20 (I googled it) but looks super young, uncomfortably so.

Movie review - "Follow the Boys" (1963) ** (warning spoilers)

 MGM tried to repeat the success of Where the Boys Are but never quite did - I think because they went too light, while Boys had an aspect of reality about it with the Yvette Mimieux plot.

This has an interesting idea - the story of women who follow their naval men from base to base around the Riviera. Yes they chase the men but also... it is the Riviera. It wouldn't be a bad life if you were into it.

The women are: Janis Paige, getting sick of chasing hubby Ron Randell; Paula Prentiss, determined to nab lothatio Richard Long, Dany Robins, who is French and with Russ Tamblyn, and Connie Francis, desperate to be rooted by her new husband.

There's pleasing views of the south of France and Italy. Richard Long is made for this sort of thing and Randell acquits himself well. 

The film is geared heavily towards Francis, who gets several songs - she's fine but her character is depressing and the storyline is sad. Because she wants to have sex and it's difficult. I think she should've just had a good old fashioned stalking storyline eg "you said you loved me I want you" - something fun.

Depressing endings - Randell gives up his dream of a command for Paige, Francis decides to stick it out with her guy but he's still carted off arrested i.e. they still haven't had sex, Prentiss is with Tamblyn but they haven't resolved the fact she doesn't want to marry a naval guy and he wants to go career, Long is with Dany Robin but she's a debt collector and he's got no money... Literally no one's relationship looks like it has a future! 

No sense of camraderie or even funny set pieces.

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 - "The Parallax View" (1974) ****

 I'm still wrapping my head around Warren Beatty's career - it's so random. After Bonnie and Clyde he made a disaster (The Only Game in Town) and a film that seemed to disappear ($) then two of the cultiest movies of the seventies: McCabe and Mrs Miller and this.

It's an astonishingly shot movie - Gordon Willis does a sensational job with unusual framing, use of shadow and light, long shots. The film is constantly off kilter and unsettling. (Kudos to the art department as well).

Gorgeous "tinkle music" score. Very very strong cast - Beatty's shaggy haired reporter in over his head is actually in line with his most effective screen persona: man who is slightly hapless. He's still a stud muffin - Prentiss is his ex and he's got some woman staying over early on who is never seen again.

Paula Prentiss scores in her small role as does everyone else really: Hume Cronyn, Jim Davis (craggy, smoking senator), William Daniels, Kenneth Mars.

The car chase feels dumbly inserted. The ending is amazing. The plot makes no sense if looked at too closely. But it works.

Talk by Paula Prentiss in Feb 2020

I watched a talk by Paula Prentiss at a screening of The World of Henry Orient.

Some takeaways
- she seemed lovely and a bit mad - I don't say that in a derogatory way but she was off with the fairies
- talked about her luck and joy and the importance of finding joy
- Texan accent can still be heard
- said she auditioned with Dick Benjmin at Northwestern performing from A Hatful of Rain, going all method and joking how actor-y it must have seemed
- Joe Pasternak gave her a new surname - he discovered Deanna Durbin and Doris Day and was a big believer in alliteration
- she had warm memories of everyone especially Where the Boys Are
- this random actor stood up and said he was in The Black Marble with her and dropped off an envelope gave his name said he was Christian Slater's father then left

I went up to get a photo but there were all these fans who had piles and piles of things for her to sign - one must have had twenty. I got a photo - talked about Australia and No Room to Run which she remembered fondly. She was concerned about Australia - all the country being on fire.

I talked briefly with Richard Benjamin, told him Quark had been on Oz TV a lot growing up, and commiserated over the recent passing of Buck Henry.

What a long time ago now it seems.

Movie review - "The World of Henry Orient" (1964) ***

Sweet, charming film about two 14 year old girls on the loose in New York City, having adventures, telling white lies that get mistaken for the truth and (one of them) obsessing over a pianist based on Oscar Levant (Peter Sellers).

Sellers is great fun as is Paula Prentiss as the married woman he keeps trying to shag but gets interrupted. These two are great together - but then Prentiss was one of the best comics of the 60s.

The real stars are the girls, who bond instantly with their fantasy worlds, and broken homes - the movie is very moving on the topic of divorce.

New York looks lovely. So clean. And the adults, while bossy, at least care. Well, everyone except Angela Lansbury who is a slightly too convenient villain with nice Tom Bosley as dad... but he did ignore his child too. Having said that the depiction of Lansbury's adultery is well done, and the scene where Bosley bonds with his daughter is lovely.

I can see why the film wasn't a big hit - it is slow in paces and doesn't have a strong narrative drive. It feels long.

There are some racist-ish jokes which haven't worn well - the girls joking about being ravished by the Chinese and what not. But it's a movie made with affection and care.

Movie review - "Man's Favorite Sport?" (1964) ***

A maligned entry in the career of Howard Hawks but it's bright and colourful with a sense of relaxed camraderie that is winning. Paula Prentiss has this friend (Maria Perschy), who goes along who probably isn't really needed script wise but jokes around and is fun. They probably should have given Hudson a similar friend instead of that random boss figure.

There's some dated jokes about a local who pretends to be a Native American, bright colour, Prentiss is a delight, Hudson is amiable even though his role was clearly meant for Cary Grant and he plays it like Cary Grant (the slow burn, being pursued by a woman). Charlene Holt - like Perschy, a Hawks discovery - is Hudson's fiancee who is never much of a threat.

The whole film has a nice vibe to it.

Movie review - "No Room to Run" (1977) **

The first in a series of TV movies made as co productions between the ABC and America's Transatlantic Enterprises. They would feature American stars and directors, and usually American writers. At least the stories made allowances for the Americans to be here.

This one is a thriller which is... Hitchcock-ian I guess, with Richard Benjamin as the innocent hero who is in Sydney to do some PR for an orchestra and winds up accused of murder of which he is... innocent I guess only he did shoot someone (a flunky... Grant Page is another flunky). The only person who helps him is a fellow American who is living in Australia, Paula Prentiss.

Writing that out, the film sounds fun - I mean two superb light comedians trying to be Cary Grant an Eva Marie Saint... sure! But Hitchcock films are harder to make than they seem and this isn't very good. It's confusing, and the tone is heavy as opposed to light. There's some car chases around Circular Quay, and betrayal. The film seems uncertain of its tone - the bones are light hearted Hitchcock but it seems infused with 70s seriousness. And it's about corporate espionage which never seems to work on screen. Apparently the script was rewritten a fair bit and you can tell.

Barry Sullivan is heavy handed as Benjamin's boss but Noel Ferrier and Ray Barrett offer fine support. Benjamin and Prentiss play the roles straight which is annoying - I mean, if you've got those two, why not let them do their thing? Maybe they didn't want to. Occasionally like when Prentiss wears a florally dress at the end and acts a bit silly you go "oh that's what this film should have been" but not nearly enough.

Movie review - "Buddy Buddy" (1981) **

Billy Wilder's famously unloved final film as a director - while Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Avanti have their fans, and some speak up for The Front Page and Fedora, no one seems to like this one.

It's not very good - slow and lethargic.Walter Matthau seems to take forever to say his lines. Jack Lemmon is better; Paula Prentiss (in another misfire from a top director) and Klaus Kinski are quite good. The support cast is full of sparkly little support roles in best Wilder fashion - a chatty bellhop, lazy cop, hippie father of a baby - but they rarely seem to shine.

I couldn't put my finger on why this didn't work. The basic story is okay - it never seems real. Maybe it's too slowly paced for farce. I didn't believe it. Maybe Matthau was miscast when the role needed a straight action star. It just felt slow and long and... off.

I actually enjoyed some of Wilder's attempts to modernise - Matthau telling someone to f*ck off, the topless servant at the end, sex jokes. While Wilder would whine and whine about declining standards in new Hollywood I wish he'd had the guts to make a really bawdy comedy.

Paula Prentiss

Tip of the hat to Paula Prentiss, the tall, gawky, brilliantly talented actor who lept to fame in her first movie Where the Boys Are but who never became a star despite being the best thing about pretty much every film she made in the early 60s...

There were a few reasons for this, including the fact that the films were often not that good (The Horizontal Lieutenant, Follow the Boys), or considered disappointments (Man's Favourite Sport - though Howard Hawks loved her). 

She had brilliant bits in The World of Henry Orient and What's Up Pussycat? but during the making of the latter had a nervous breakdown that saw her retire from acting for a while. 

She went back to it but never regained her former career momentum (the late 60s and 70s weren't a great time for female stars in Hollywood) but always could be counted on to turn in great work, whether in The Parallax View or The Stepford Wives. She also had a family and is still married to Richard Benjamin after 50 years. If you like screwball comedies and aren't familiar with her work she is worth checking out.

A top five
1) Where the Boys Are (1960) - great debut
2) The Honeymoon Machine (1961) - a rare Steve McQueen comedy, quite fun, and Prentiss steals the show
3) The World of Henry Orient (1964) - Prentiss hilarious as a nutter
4) What's New Pussycat? (1965) - see above
5) The Parallax View (1974) - only a small role but very effective

Script review - "Catch 22" by Buck Henry

I remember loving the novel for its pace and wit and disliking the film for being unfunny and so long, confusing and lumbered. David Shipman wrote that Buck Henry did a good job knocking the script into shape but was let down by Mike Nichols' direction. Reading this, for me the flaw it in the script.

This takes forever, over 200 pages, isn't very engaging or funny. The female characters are all sex objects, it was hard for me to tell characters apart on the page. It perked up in the last third when people started dying.

Book review - "Hawks on Hawks" ed Joseph McBride

Do people still care about Howard Hawks any more? Once upon a time he was right up there on the auteur tree, along with John Ford and Hitchcock. He never quite enjoyed the high brow acclaim of either of those but was always respected - his films perhaps enjoyed more for sheer enjoyment's sake.

This is a highly entertaining collection of interviews with the great man where he reminisces about the films and espouses his philosophy. Some of it feels like typical exaggeration - everything was his idea, he takes credit for a lot of the writing, stock Hollywood stuff - but other feels fresh and true: the importance of getting bad scenes over and done with quickly, how to cast someone interesting and different, freshness in writing, the necessary of a good story.

He slags off Rio Lobo and Jennifer O'Neill (says she got too big for her boots), has some interesting things to say about discovering Lauren Bacall, chats a lot about the movie he hoped to make in the 70s with Starsky and Hutch, wonders (as everyone does) why Paul Prentiss didn't become a big star, doesn't mention The Thing, is candid-ish about his less successful pics (The Land of the Pharoahs, Redline 5000), loves Wayne, Grant, Cagney and Bogart. It's a shame Hawks never wrote a memoir but this is great to have anyway - we're lucky to have it.

Movie review - "What's New Pussycat?" (1965) ***

The sixties at its most swinging - Peter O'Toole in the lead, Charles Feldman producing, Woody Allen writing but being rewritten, Clive Donner directing (there was a time when Donner was one of the leading British directors in the world), Tom Jones singing the title song, Peter Sellers in a wig, European leading ladies, Richard Williams animated credit sequence.

It's a mess but it's fun, bright and colourful. Not all the jokes work, in fact most of them don't, but there are so many of them you can count on some hitting their mark, and I've got a soft spot for movies which end in a slapstick chase on small cars (it has an almost Beach Party vibe about it).

There's a massive race as to who can ham it up the most - Sellers of course through sheer Sellers-ness but O'Toole tries to match him and Woody does his schtick; Romy Schneider plays things relatively straight, which is probably for the best (the plot has O'Toole try to give up womanising to settle down with her), but Paula Prentiss is brilliantly hilarious as a stripper who likes to commit suicide after bad dates (she's sexy too), Edra Gale goes OTT as Sellers' wife (wearing a viking outfit lot of the time), Ursula Andress lots of fun as a woman who parachutes from the sky (though she only appears in the last half hour) and Capucine again impresses with her comedy chops.

The women are very good looking and it's all full throttle.

Movie review - "Looking for Love" (1964) *

MGM and producer Joe Pasternak struck box office gold with Where the Boys Are but could never quite turn any of his leads in that film into a star: The Horizontal Lieutenant, Come Fly with Me, Follow the Boys, this. It's a vehicle for Connie Francis, and the actual concept isn't that bad: she plays a singer who is frustrated with her career and thinks she's never going to make it, so she decides to get a husband.

Instead of going after someone rich and inappropriate while falling in love with a poor but honorable boy - the way these stories always go, she chases after an inventor (Jim Hutton) who wants to promote a clothes stand Francis invents, goes on Johnny Carson's talk show, then starts singing again, goes on Danny Thomas' talk show, and doesn't realise the boy next door (Joby Baker) is more appropriate. And she's got this best friend Susan Oliver who just kind of hangs around.

This film annoys me - it was just dumb. It's as though they had a story session with people going "hey you should put that in" and they did.  Francis tries to channel Judy Holliday in some scenes but it doesn't work - maybe she could have made it as a movie star, she was likeable with that great voice, but her material is horrid here. Hutton throws himself into it as always but he's got nothing to work with - he can't even have a romance. Why is Susan Oliver in this film? Why are we meant to be happy that Francis gets Baker?

Hutton and Francis were in Boys - there's also cameos from other graduates of that flick: Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton and Paula Prentiss. Francis sings a lot of songs and her fans won't want to miss this. But I found it an offensively stupid movie.

Movie review - "The Honeymoon Machine" (1961) ***

Steve McQueen became known for playing Mr Cool but he's a lot of fun - if admittedly not entirely comfortably cast - in this breezy service comedy, an enormously popular genre in the1950s (when the great bulk of the male population had spent time in uniform) which faded out in the 1960s.

It helps that this has a decent plot, based on a play by Lorenzo Semple Jnr - McQueen and some mates (Jim Hutton, Jack Mullaley) pinch a top navy computer in order to help them win at the casino. While there McQueen romances Brigid Bazlen (not a familiar face - she was Salome in King of Kings - but bright and pretty), who is the daughter of admiral Dean Jagger; Hutton hooks up with his ex, Paula Prentiss, and they all set out to make a lot of money.

I wish they'd given Mullaley a girl to have a romance with and our lead characters are far too passive at the end - I also didn't like how Bazlen gott McQueen out of trouble simply by saying "I love him", and I wish more had been done with the Russians. But it's energetic and colourful, Jagger is a strong antagonist and I loved the camaraderie that exists between the four leads. Prentiss is a stand out as the short sighted heiress determined to nab Hutton come what may (she reminded me of Alison Janney) - they do steal the film from McQueen and Bazlen, but those two are no slouches either.

Movie review -"The Horizontal Lieutenant" (1962) **

Could Jim Hutton ever have been a star? Producers loved casting him in support roles in comedies and action films during the 60s, but he rarely got a lead. This puts him front and center, in what should have been sure fire material - albeit in 1962 starting to be a little dated: to wit, a service comedy from MGM via old veterans Richard Thorpe (director) and George Wells (writer). But it's not very good and Hutton flounders.

Maybe he didn't have what it took - he was often compared at his peak to James Stewart (a similarly gangling type of actor) but he never had Stewart's intensity or voice. But he was an easy going, charming actor with a likeable presence and real flair for comedy - I think he could have carried more movies as star, with better material.

It's the story that sinks this. Hutton plays a bumbling officer in army intelligence who is shipped off to the islands and winds up capturing a Japanese soldier who refuses to surrender. That's not a bad idea for a movie but the story goes all over the shop - Hutton keeps making mistakes and being saved by deux ex machinas, he becomes passive for much of the story which is taken over by his Japanese American mate, we never really got a fix on his character other than "bumbling", I got other characters confused, I wasn't sure if this was set during the war or just afterwards (no one seems to regard the Japanese as any sort of threat), Paula Prentiss (who's great as always) needed more to do, there should have been some life and death stakes.

Jim Backus and Charles McGraw are on hand. It's colourful and just wants you to like it. And there is some novelty with its mostly sympathetic depiction of the Japanese.