Reviews of Classic Film, with artwork and news
LAST UPDATE October 28, 2024
Updated review of the 1935 film directed by James Whale.
See this page on the coming release of the Our Gang/Little Rascals silent short films on Blu Ray – Classicflix.com
Years in the making, with over 800 man-hours of restoration invested in the shorts in this collection, ClassicFlix presents The Little Rascals - The Restored Silents, Volume 1 this November 19th. Volume 1 showcases the franchise in its infancy, including Our Gang (1922)—the premiere short in the series put together from eight different sources and now in its most complete form..."
Mitzi Gaynor has died - 1931-2024
South Pacific star Mitzi Gaynor dies at 93 – UPI Press
Legendary South Pacific Actress has died – People Magazine
Chicago Tribune 2013 Mitzi Gaynor’s interview – Chicago Tribune
"Showbiz Dynamo" Mitzi Gaynor – Hollywood Reporter
Mitzi Gaynor's top ten movies – Soap Central
The career of Mitzi gaynor – Soap Central
Kiss Me, Deadly - 1955
Kiss Me, Deadly can be a bit jarring if you're not prepared for how this story (courtesy of director Robert Alldrich) is told and if you're conditioned to seeing the other, more ethical 1950's noir investigators of filmdom. Here, the private detective (played by Ralph Meeker) doggedly pursues a "thread that becomes a string that becomes a rope." This means he often putters around his high-tech (for 1955) luxury apartment trying to figure out why a desperate hitchhiker he picked up on the road one night who told him "remember me" just before meeting a cruel demise is at the heart of a mystery about an obscure object of desire being sought by everybody else in the cast.
Mysterious MacGuffins aren't exactly rare in cinematic mystery stories, but the detective in the story is, with Meeker playing Mike Hammer as one of "the stupidest, sleaziest, most brutal" investigators in fiction, or at least that's how the critic inside the Criterion Blu Ray package puts it. All three of these attributes are mitigated by the fact the film itself is rather a funk of stupid, sleazy and brutal characters, and there's a kind of self-parodying humor (that can be enlarged considerably once you've seen the film in toto) that operates on the fringe of many scenes as we watch gangsters, femme fatales and Hammer go through the steps of telling us a tale of secrets, money, murder and dread.
As Mike Hammer tries to sort things out, he doesn't fare too badly in the brains department, competitively speaking, since just about everyone else lacks foresight and intelligence, too (except for his 'Girl Friday,' played by Maxine Cooper, who is in a constant state of frustration). We're also supposed to recognize the intelligence of Police Lt. Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy), who coolly and sadly shakes his head as he watches Hammer sink deeper into what Hammer believes will be 'a big score,' the policeman can sense it's actually a one-way trip to disaster.
In lieu of brains, Hammer relies mostly on the built-in pun of his hammer-like fists, and there's some terrific stuntwork (and location filming) in Kiss Me, Deadly, but to top that, we in the end find out that the "big score" is very big, but not the kind anyone expected. The climax of the film itself is a cinematic highlight of special effects that has been lifted from to be reused in numerous other films, from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Repo Man.
Kiss Me, Deadly can be taken as is, a stylish, polished and well-told upgrade to the usual exploitation-noir of the 1950s, or it can be seen as a keen-eyed faery tale about the danger of science with Albert Dekker providing a smooth-talking, articulated Dr. Soberin that calmly and intelligently shows us he's just one more fool playing with matters beyond his understanding. There's also the petty delusions of power that the host of criminals in the film traffick in. But repeated viewing makes another element more clear: Director Aldritch inserted a comedic element that if scratched at a little bit by a thoughtful viewer, turns the tale into a bit of a comedy where the joke is continually on Mike Hammer.
Raymie – 1960
Ike (John Agar) "You know for a gal who only lets a guy hold her hand, you expect an awful lot from him."
Helen (Julie Adams) "That's because I quit training Octopuses when I was a teenager."
Raymie features a young boy who lives in a world where fishing, mostly in the company of other hard-core fishing enthusiasts who stand day after day on a long pier that juts out over the Pacific ocean, is just about the most important thing in the world for everyone involved.
The nine-year old Raymie, though, has more than just one reason for being on the pier day after day. His widowed mother (Julie Adams) waitresses in a nearby cafe and is using the private pier (fishermen must pay to use it) as a way to keep tabs on her child when he is not in school. Another reason is that fishing is one of the few things that keeps the boy in a kind of contact with his dead father, who was also a fisherman. This is particularly highlighted in the film by the valuable fishing knife Raymie uses to clean fish which had been his father's, a knife that the other fishermen regularly are offering to buy or trade for.
Raymie isn't particularly subtle about the trials the main character has to pass through, which is the way children's films are usually told, but there is a sub-story about the adults on the pier that fills out the movie and gives it a more graceful and expansive story. John Agar went from a nearly A-list Hollywood star during his career to a being the prince of a legion of B and sub-B films, and Raymie is in the former, not because of subject, but because of the limited budget on hand. But a certain maudlin tonality hampers the film, just as sentimentality hampers a lot of kid's movies, but Raymie is populated with a cast of great character actors (Frank Ferguson, Jester Hairston, John Damler, Ray Kellogg) and even if the story of coming to terms with death (and life) is mostly on a child's level, all of the other talent on screen gives that simplicity a fine edge.
Directed by Frank McDonald, written by Mark Hanna with David Ladd, Julie Adams, John Agar.
Fast review: The Scavengers - 1959: Stuart Allison (Vince Edwards) is weary of his life as a smuggler and in a hopeless search for his missing wife Marion (Carol Ohmart), but suddenly he spots her boarding a ferry from Hong Kong to Macao. More about The Scavengers - 1959
Kris Kristofferson (1936–2024) has died
Singer-Songwriter turned Hollywood leading man – USA Today
He originally thought he'd be "dead by thirty" – People Magazine
Barbra Streisand praises A Star is Born co-star – USA Today
Martin Scorsese talks about Kris Kristofferson from his film ‘Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' – Indie Wire
Maggie Smith (1934–2024) has died
The brilliant Maggie Smith – New Yorker
Stars, royalty react to death of Maggie Smith – Rolling Stone
Fans reaction to death of Harry Potter star – Newsweek
Fast review: Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation - 1962: Jimmy Stewart (as Mr. Hobbs) drags his family from St. Louis to a rented beach house in California for a vacation centered on family and relaxation.
More about An older review of Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation
Fast review: Jackpot - 2024: Awkwafina is pursued by greed-mad Los Angelenos playing a lethal game called "Jackpot."
More about Jackpot - 2024
The British "Carry On" women are aging
Article at UK Guardian on the actresses that were cast in the long-running "Carry On" films of the late 1950s into the 1970s.
I interviewed five women who were in Carry On films. Not for any particular reason, but simply because we realized they would now be in their 70s, 80s, 90s … "Or dead. Or dead, darling, or still dead," says Amanda Barrie, who was in Carry on Cabby and Carry on Cleo (as Cleopatra herself). She’s 88 and still very much alive. But she’s right. Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor? All gone. I saw Leon at home in Chiswick and Jacki Piper at her home a few miles up the Thames in Teddington, with a plate of chocolate-covered ginger biscuits. Barrie, Patricia Franklin and Sheila Hancock I spoke to on the phone..."
The "Carry On" series numbers 31 films in total, the first film, Carry On Sergeant, was released in 1958, and the final film, Carry On Columbus, came out in 1992. The series frequently used parody of various film genres for their farcical stories, from historical epics to spy thrillers.
Not everyone was a fan, though. Barrie was offered further Carry Ons after Cleo. "But my agent said: ‘You’re not doing that – you’re going to Bristol Old Vic.’" Franklin agrees there was a snobbery towards them and that they were looked down on. "At a family thing, someone might say: ‘Patricia is in a Carry On,’ and a lot of people would say: ‘Oh, I’m not interested in Carry Ons.’ But then others were absolutely mad about it. I was in a play at the National with Anthony Hopkins and he said he loved the Carry Ons and had always wanted to be in one."
Fast Review: Surf Party - 1964
The need to learn to surf brings three young women from Phoenix, Arizona to California.
Germany honours Marlene Dietrich and other women who resisted Nazi tyranny – UK The Times
The exhibition also features Marlene Dietrich, the film star who emigrated to the US in 1930 and became involved in helping German Jews and politically persecuted people who had fled in 1933. In 1937 she rejected Hitler’s offer to return to Germany and applied for US citizenship, which she was granted in 1939. After the US joined the war in 1941 she performed for US soldiers and German prisoners of war in North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium and Germany. After 1945 she was defamed in Germany as a "traitor".
Fast Reviews: Good Neighbor Sam (1964): Secret identities and mistaken identities were part and parcel of many a classic era screwball film, and the 1964 Good Neighbor Sam featuring Jack Lemmon is a revival of the concept but with some aspects that could never have survived the Breen era of censorship.
More about Good Neighbor Sam, 1964
Fast review: Bad Boys Ride or Die 2024 – Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are a comedy team in a battle against a conspiracy of lies in Florida involving a dead friend.
Shelley Duvall 1949–2024
Fast Reviews: Central Intelligence 2016: Dwayne Johnson Kevin Hart commit comedic espionage together.
More about Central Intelligence
Literally the worst take on classic film, EVER. They were real people who created magic and we were lucky to have them.
— 𝔻𝕖𝕓𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕙 🥃🖊️ (@DADiClementi) June 30, 2024
It was finite.
And true.
And real.
And therefore, perfect.
And it’s over. https://t.co/wvoItdR7uz pic.twitter.com/4cinTgFelk
Fast Review: Eyes in the Night - 1942. Edward Arnold is one of the great "shouters" in classic Hollywood, able to wield belligerent but sharp dialogue at a high decibel, often accompanied by arm and face gesticulations that makes everyone else in the cast look like they're not moving (or small, Arnold himself was 5'10").
More about Eyes in the Night, 1942
Fast Review The Beekeeper – 2024: Depicting bad governments doing bad things has been a genre of cinema since the 1970's when real gov't scandals overwhelmed the news and made the topic not as controversial as it had been (when Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premiered in 1939 it was pooh-poohed by a number of Senators and Congressmen for its depiction of high-level corruption as being too fantastic, a notion that's no longer current, as they say. More about The Beekeeper, 2024
Belief-Code, Body Code and T3 Therapy? See Belief Code Therapy.com