Starts brilliantly with tremendous design and style. Don't mind lack of stars. Making one of the scientistists a woman was a good move especially as she has a sense of humour. But then it bogs down in chat - it's too faithful. Staring at screens. Chat, chat, chat.
Terrific last twenty minutes. But the film is over two hours. I felt sorry for that baby crying all the time.
I wonder if this movie is why Sphere the film was so faithful - "well The Andromeda Strain did it and that worked well."
Unpretentious B from RKO with Tom Conway as an ace lawyer whose singer finance Martha O'Driscoll is accused of murder of dodgy Robert Armstrong. Conway accidentally kind of caused the death fighting over a gun - but he's a goodie here.
Decent direction and production values. Story from Earl Felton.
Plot has similarities to Conway's A Night of Adventure.
The fans don't like this even though they did turn up and it's got the cast. The special effects are pretty snazzy - maybe lingered over too long. I think the core problem is the big emotional stakes - the spirit of the bald lady being possessed (Persis Khambatta) and the man who loves her (Stephen Collins) being affected - are "guest stars". This issue needed to be given to our regulars.
Still it's not bad. It's smart. Talky. Nice to see everyone, although only Spock has much to do.
I spoke with Tamblyn in 2004 and he said he wanted to write a book so it took him a bit of time but I think Tamblyn likes to go his own way in life. A genuine name in Hollywood in the 1950s - not a big star, but a regular lead player in studio films with a long term contract to MGM - he dropped out very quickly, via choice really (he moved to Topenga Canyon to pursue art). He never got his groove back, could never quite re-consolidate despite a stint in Twin Peaks but hung in there. Found love third time round.
I liked the book. Listened to audio version. Tamblyn did it. He sounds amiable, a bit spacey. The third section is mostly about his daughter and Neil Young - like many in Hollywood people try to stay relevant where they can.
Interesting vignettes. Jeff Richards was a boozehead and smashed up Tamblyn's place, Dean Stockwell was a good friend but eventually alcoholism destroyed him while Dennis Hopper of all people got over it, Tamblyn was a polyamorist in like 1960 at Malibu, his second wife was a boozer (she's a tragic figure), his first wife an interesting character (Anna Lee's daughter), Glenn Ford tried to get Tamblyn's dance removed from Fastest Gun in the West, Tamblyn and Yvette Mimieux went for a skinny dip and had sex one night making Brothers Grimm, Tamblyn had a fling with Regina Carroll making Satan's Sadists.
If you like that period and these movies this book is hard to resist, even if it does need an edit.
Entertaining look at the life and times of Val Lewton. Excellent narration. A lot of made up dialogue. Some of it doesn't seem real and Lewton comes across as a bit of a whiner and a victim but I really enjoyed it.
Val Lewton's second non horror at RKO apart from Youth Gone Wild is a more realised effort - it doesn't feel cut about. Yet the public didn't go for it either.
The low budget was blamed though it's still a decent looking film. I wonder if maybe it was also:
- lack of star power. There's Simone Simon. That's about it. Tom Conway would've helped.
- possibly too foreign. The Franco Prussian War isn't very well known - surely this was the case in 1944. Maybe a good old map and narration outlining the situation would've hlped, ie. the Germans invaded, French were under occupation. Though also the situation isn't that analogous because the Germans weren't in France was long were they? And didn't France start that war?
- too many characters. Odd thing to say for a low budget film. But some characters are easy to identify - lecherous German officer, proud prostitute, French guy who is political (undercast John Emery)... but the rest, the French passnegers who go with the flow, all seem the same. There's like six of them or something, three couples, who all seem identical (one is played by Alan Napier). And there's identical Germans. In Stagecoach this didn't matter because all the characters were so different - gambler, alcoholic doctor, pregnant woman, stuffy banker, weedy dude. Seriously, this would've been better with the cast halved.
- the coach people are thrown away in the last act and it becomes about Emery and Simon. Could not they have used the support characters? There's all this stuff about ringing a bell.
In fairness, if Lewton had been able to get some of his original casting - Eric Von Stroheim as the German, George Sanders as the freedom fighter... this would've been better.
But you know it would've been better with Tom Conway and Jean Brooks instead of Emery and Simon.
Anyway, this isn't bad. It's better than Youth Runs Wild. It is just cluttered and confusing when it needn't have been.
It is cool that a Simon stabs a German to death and isn't captured.
Some people like this film. It has some not very good actors - Jane Rudolph, and Kent Smith. Val Lewton gave a gig to Sir Lancelot as their butler! In Tarrytown! I guess a gig's a gig and there wasn't much else going for him.
Robert Wise got his first directing credit here although he only got it because the original director was fired.
The film has resonance if you know about Val Lewton's life (which I didn't appreciate until I heard a podcast on his career). The little girl is both young Lewton and his daughter, a little odd, lonely, living in a fantasy world. The weird old lady, ex actress, is based on Lewton's aunt, Nazimova.
It's touching the girl wants a friend. The dad, Kent Smith, is a moron. I think it would've been better if they'd killed off him or Jane Rudolph (probably the latter to be honest) and played a romance.
It feels cut about, lacks a really cohesive whole type drive. The threat towards the girl feels contrived - the daughter who is angy at her doesn't feel as though she's really going to kill the kid. They throw in a storm.
It's interesting. I wish I'd seen the original version though (apparently onle exists). But the poor acting is the poor acting.
Excellent book. Looks at the short stories, novels, different drafts of scripts. Compares how he improved apparently easy jobs eg West Side Story, Sound of Music. Retrieves Lehman's contribution to Virginia Woolf from the cult of Mike Nichols and to West Side Story from the cult of Arthur Laurents and Steven Sondheim.
Affectionate towards Lehman to a degree but also exasperated. Hypochondriac, night owl, distant father, workaholic, loving husband but not around, tolerant of wife's long affair, devoted carer towards end, became a dad in his eighties, super talented, decent supervisory producer but bad hands on one, terrible director. Skill as novelist left him in 70s apparently, though could still write good essays. Probably retired at right time, I can imagine him getting kicked off Mission Impossible. Fitted in well at classy studios like MGM and Paramount and Fox. Mate of David Brown's. Should have written another original. Should have teamed more with Robert Wise, they collaborated so well together.
Really good work.
Interesting book. Kazanjian isn't one of the famous producers, he's more of a line producer, but he worked during interesting times. There's a lot of quotes from Marcia Lucas and the book is especially insightful on that and makes you wonder why she doesn't do a memoir.
Kanzanjian was one of the DGA trainees alongside Walter Hill which is interesting. He became a top AD and after doing heaps of TV worked for a lot of directors at the end of their careers, such as Billy Wilder, Hitchcock, Robert Wise and Elia Kazan. He also worked for Coppola on Finian's Rainbow and with Peckinpah on The Wild Bunch (this section is terrific).
He was mates with George Lucas and eventually went to Lucasfilm in the late 70s, producing Raiders and Return of the Jedi as well as More American Graffiti (the account of that is fascinating).
Fans of Star Wars and Raiders will find this interesting. Neat trivia like Kazanjian talking Lucas out of considering Jack Smight for directing a film. Bruce Beresford was considered for Jedi.
Kazanjian's credits post Lucasfilm are not that amazing - The Rookie, Demolition Man, a bunch of other films I hadn't heard of.
Still it's good to have a book about a less recognised figure.
A great idea - a look at the making of the five films nominated for Best Picture in 1967, the birth of the New Hollywood. It helps all the films were all so different - Dr Doolittle, old school Fox musical yet also New Hollywood in a way because it was bloated in a post Sound of Music Way; In the Heat of the Night, which is a race movie so they can explore Sidney Poitier's career; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner which is also race but had Tracy and Hepburn; The Graduate, which is a youth movie; Bonnie and Clyde, a fresh take on an old genre that led to a major passing of the guard among critics.
The people involved play up their struggles as most Hollywood story tellers do ("I was down and out", "no one thought we'd be successful", "It was my last chance"). Dustin Hoffman pinched Katherine Ross' arse during rehearsals "to get a reaction"... talk about a red flag.
I wound up having surprising respect for Stanley Kramer sticking to his bland vision for Dinner.
Could you tell a story about years in Australian cinema? Not really the same. Maybe 1975.
Enjoyable RKO film noir from director Robert Wise made during Lawrence Tierney's brief post Dillinger reign as a leading man. There's a really interesting story here - a man kills a couple out of impulsive jealousy in Reno and winds up following a divorcee to San Francisco; he winds up marrying the divorcee's sister.
In Devil Thumbs a Ride I thought the film should have been about the relationship between Tierney and the brassy blonde... well that kind of happens here with the focus being the relationship between Tierney and Claire Trevor.
The casting's not quite right - both are meant to be unable to resist each other in a Postman Always Rings Twice way but that worked because they were young and hot and her husband was old, and they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Here Trevor and Tierney are kind of old looking and she's got another option ( a dull rich man) and he's got this hot rich sister (Audrey Long who is too good looking for Tierney... maybe he's great in the sack). This feels like it should be a Joan Crawford vehicle with the Tierney part played by some young hunk.
Miscasting aside, the acting is very good. Superb support work from Walter Slezak (sleazy investigator), Elisha Cook Jnr and Esther Howard as well as the actors who play the couple who are killed (a shocking sequence where we hear thump thump thump as a dog watches).
It's bleak soul - two selfish people who can't resist each other - mean I can see why the censor didn't like it.
I always wondered why this wasn't better known - great source material (The Most Dangerous Game), top director (Robert Wise), a B picture from a studio known for its Bs (RKO). But it's simply not very good.
Partly its the cast. John Loder is a dreadfully dull hero - lumpy, with a big head and prissy manner (I don't care what a ladies' man he was off screen). Audrey Long is dull as the heroine and Edgar Barrier does little as the crazed hunter.
A bigger problem is the script which has precious little hunting - it doesn't get going until like 45 minutes in. The action is underwhelming despite some pleasing photography and production value.
I felt really let down watching this.
An attempt at making a Hepburn-Tracy romantic comedy only instead the stars are Patricia Neal and Victor Mature. Both these two incidentally are talented, can act and can play comedy - but they're not A graders and the film needs it especially as the material isn't strongest.
The set up isn't bad, and has resonance today - Neal is an environmentalist determined to protect a bird who is threatened by gas explorers; she enlists the help of old admiral Edmund Gwenn and lobbyist Mature. Gwenn turns out to be an imitation admiral - indeed, that's another plot going on, he's an engraver who pretends to be an admiral.
There's two films going on here - Neal trying to protect condors by playing politics in Washington and Gwenn pretending to be an admiral. Neither is developed. Why don't we see the areas where the condors live? Why is it all set in Washington? Why is there no villain - no oil company person, or bad lobbyist or nemesis for Gwenn? Why no developed love interest for Gwenn? Why not really get stuck into lobbyists?
There are no real stakes for Gwenn's involvement apart from vaguely liking Neal and wanting to have a go. There's some attempt to talk about the importance of democracy etc (the influence of Born Yesterday and State of the Union no doubt) but the satire on Washington, lobbyists and birds is mild. Gwenn makes these little speeches at the end which I think are meant to get you inspired (extras clap) a la Frank Capra, but they're just annoying, like his character.
Mature is okay as a bouncy lobbyist but he doesn't strike sparks with Neal who is just plain miscast. The direction seems intelligent from Robert Wise - it's crisply shot and staged - but it's a film devoid of fun and life.
