Reviews of Classic Film, with artwork and news
LAST UPDATE October 10, 2024
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."
Directed by Frank McDonald, written by Mark Hanna
Featuring David Ladd, Julie Adams, John Agar
Fast review: The Scavengers - 1959: In this B-movie tale of foreign intrigue, ex-air force pilot Stuart Allison (Vince Edwards), weary of his life as a smuggler in the Far East, spots his wife Marion (Carol Ohmart), who has been missing for six years, boarding a ferry from Hong Kong to Macao. Desperate to reach her, Stuart frantically fights his way through the dockworkers, only to be detained by the Hong Kong police. The authorities, fed up with his record of trouble in their city, politely suggest that he leave for good.
Determined, Stuart follows Marion to Macao, where he encounters Casimir O'Hara (played by cheerful and flamboyant Vic Diaz) who says about his name "not really a strange name if you're Chinese, Filipino and Irish," who is a man Stuart saw on the dock watching his wife as she left on the ferry. Stuart suspects Casimir’s involvement with Marion and confronts him with violence in an alley, only to be repeatedly judo-thrown for his trouble. When the police arrive, Casimir fabricates a story about being attacked by muggers and credits Stuart for saving him. Casimir’s sympathy is telling, he is an "agent of the Chinese Nationalist Government" and knows far more about Marion’s situation than Stuart can grasp, and it takes the rest of the film for Stuart to catch up.
The Scavengers is marked by flashes of quality direction (John Cromwell) and thoughtful writing (Eddie Romero), suggesting a better film struggling beneath the surface of the production cheapness and swipes from The Maltese Falcon and other noir films of the past. The low budget, despite the exotic on-location settings (mainly filmed at Premiere Studios in Manila, Philippines), detracts from the production, sometimes operating at a level of TV-episode brevity and frugality, with lots of noise from scenes in which the usual "looping" wasn't performed. It sounds like whatever was captured on a take has been used, even if its loaded with the noise of shoes scraping on the ground, bumps and other audio distractions. Cinematography is good and there are an endless number of night-scenes that are carefully lit and it is a shame that there aren't any good quality prints (that I know of) for The Scavengers which has good visuals and well done stunt sequences.
Carol Ohmart stands out with a genuine Hollywood presence as the female lead, while Vince Edwards gives an energetic performance as a man caught between bitterness and attempts at self-reformation and the reformation of his estranged wife who is in way over her head with a serious narcotics addiction. As a husband, Stuart can’t fully abandon the wreckage of his marriage to this femme fatale, yet Ohmart’s bad girl isn’t entirely bad, and by the end of the tale is a pitiable victim searching for a way out, even if that way out is self-destruction.
In a way the theme of The Scavengers for much of the cast is a story of embracing or avoiding self-destruction, with self-delusion a close second (such as portrayed by a very good Richard Loo as a Chinese general turned crime boss hunting for stolen bonds, a journey that has taken years and endless trips around the Orient). Against that is Stuart's sometimes Hong Kong girlfriend Marissa (played by Tamar Benamy, who unfortunately often sounds dubbed), but as a character is far younger but more aware than the American characters in the cast. That's a lot going on for a barely B-level movie, and that John Cromwell and Eddie Romero can squeeze in these elements is a witness that there are things more memorable about The Scavengers than the penny-pinched production and some unintended laughs would otherwise suggest.
The Scavengers, the title of which refers to a line given by Vic Diaz early on in which he says he and the others are all "scavengers" searching for long hidden government bonds, "picking up the pieces" after his country (China) was "strangled by idealists." The film is also known as Los buitres de Macao ("The Vultures of Macao") and was re-released in 1963 as City of Sin.
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. Instead, his daughter (Lauri Peters) won't leave the rather worn-out structure because of embarrassment over her new braces on her teeth, and Hobb's son (played by Michael Burns) is addicted to TV and won't leave the house either. Hobbs himself sets up right outside the front door with a beach umbrella and a book, but his launch of a quiet rest on the California shore is interrupted by the voluptuous Marika (Valerie Varda) who wants to talk over books, and the arrival of Hobbs older children who bring their families, and along with it, their family troubles.
Stewart's Mr. Hobbs is the heroic figure in the film, along with the level-headed Mrs. Hobbs (Maureen O'Hara) and the pair do something that probably stood out in 1962 as much as it would in any other year: they modulate to meet the needs of all their children, whether its the youngest who has to finally face daylight because the TV tube burned out, or the rest who each has a unique problem, from unemployment to sticky relationship issues. And then there's a young grand kid who only has to spot Mr. Hobbs from across the room to then shout "I don't like you!" and then hide.
The styles, music and the era itself are all of course dated to the early 1960s, but the problems of family life seem rather timeless: Mr. Hobbs gets a rare chance to build a relationship with his youngest son who is temporarily cut off from his total absorption into TV, and this situation could just as easily be depicted as video-gaming or any of the other obsessions that permeate contemporary American youth culture. Hobbs goes into the task with energy and stays with it, but the story plot puts the effort into jeopardy, a kind of tension that pops up into every relationship that Mr. and Mrs. Hobb's have with their kids, and that undergirds the rolling buffet of jokes and humor (some of it delivered dead-pan by Jimmy Stewart as a narrative voice).
Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation seems to really do its storytelling on two parallel tracks, one a comedy with funny situations (a recurring sub-story is the delicate plumbing that gushes water at all the wrong times) and various other characters helping to make that humor expand, such as John McGiver showing up to visit as a teetotaling executive who is hiring Hobb's son-in-law, but as we get to know the executive (and his rather odd wife played by Marie Wilson) we find they're raging secret drinkers. That's all for laughs, but the second parallel track of the story is a tense tale of parents fearing their children's failures (and by reflection their own) as the kids, whether "grown" or not, struggle to succeed and deal with the difficulties of life that are not particularly cushioned by the humor, but are realistic and common, and that's a credit to the script from Nunnally Johnson and Edward Streeter to keep the ridiculousness from bleeding too much into the underlying fear of failure that moves like a drip-drip-drip through the rest of the tale.
Fast review: Jackpot - 2024: Action/comedy film that features a hero and heroine on the run through the mean streets of Los Angeles, pursued by zombies... wait, that's not right, pursued by greed-mad fellow Los Angelenos who are playing a lethal game called "Jackpot."
A "lottery-winner" (star Awkwafina) unexpectedly wins a gigantic money reward, and inflation being what it is that's $3.6 billion in this iteration, still a mighty sum in this future-setting of 2030, but there's a huge catch: you can only collect your winnings if you survive long enough to do so. At this future date in sunny California it is legal to murder the winner and receive the money instead, but you must obey the simple rules which seems to mean "no guns." Hurled objects, and especially knives, axes, etc., are quite alright, as are fists and strangling.
Jackpot is a comedy with a grotesquely brutal premise that only barely explores the pop culture genre of ultra-violence to which it clearly belongs (with a swerve through the obvious link to Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery) but Jackpot operates without any self-awareness of these things except for some mugging at the camera and a string of celebrity-centric jokes.
The stunt-work is impressive and abundant but the plot is threadbare and what story elements there are to justify the characters (as played by John Cena and Awkwafina) are sparingly dished out as the violent, though comedic, confrontations multiply in a bizarre Three Stooges sort of reality where inventive ways to perform bodily harm are practiced but the impact of the physicality is not typically represented in wounds or a body count. This is of course an easy face-saving way to avoid any meditation on death or even murder, since it is generally no more real in Jackpot than the death of a character is in a video game.
Each stereotype of society: moms, old people, police, workmen, and especially fame-seeking amateur actors, are lampooned as money-obsessed would-be murderers who go from "normal" to violent in a flash of werewolf-like speed. So, with this sort of catelog of "types" on hand, there's a lot of satire to be had, there's just precious little story to hang these paper dolls on. There are a few breathers along the way, but the tempo of the chase is what really propels the tale and though the cast is using every possible vulgarism in popular usage in order to salt and pepper the dialogue, only the stunt work is very clever and it seems at the end we're to understand murder is funny and money, as a goal that is pooh-poohed by the main two characters, is still the key to happiness and the underlying nihilism isn't intended but the story can't help itself but be drenched in it, well, that and all the killing.
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
"Where'd you surf in Phoenix? On a sand dune?" – Richard Crane as Sgt. Wayne Neal
American "beach movies" are usually happy affairs with goofy characters and humorous situations abounding, mixed in with frolicking young people in swimwear getting a lot of exercise. The films are almost always taking place in colorful southern California with a main co-starring role belonging to the Pacific coastline rolling in one frothy tall wave after another amid a rock and roll sound track. Surf Party has all of this, to a point, but director Maury Dexter gives us a black and white film with a lot of tension that comes about because, like the titular character in the film that sparked the beach movie cycle, Gidget (1959), an outsider intrudes upon the regimented and insular sub-culture of surfing does-and-don'ts and causes an uproar, and in Surf Party it is three young women from Phoenix.
The three arrive with a small camper in tow (which incredibly becomes much larger when we view interior scenes) all determined to become surfers and looking for an instructor. Right off they run into no-nonsense police sergeant Wayne Neal (Robert Crane) in full suit and tie, on the beach, who has a bit of a bias against all surfers, and drops a small tidbit of jaded dialogue wishing the whole sport was illegal. He provides the girls with a few questions and warns them against sleeping overnight on the beach. The girls actually know this already, tipped off by local surf shop owner (Bobby Vinton) who they return to for help in learning on how to ride the waves. Their schooling gives us actual teaching and explanations about "rails" and not using the board certain ways because it will lead to knobs developing on your knees. In this way, Surf Party is taking its subject much more seriously than most beach films which seemed to be undecided whether the sport was worthwhile or simply the domain of idiots and social drop-outs.
In the much later beach movie Lifeguard (1976), the whole concept of beach culture is questioned, and the matter shows up in a simpler format in Surf Party, mirroring the earlier Gidget yet again. Can a person pursue a beach lifestyle and still be a functioning, mature adult? The idea gets put through its paces in the script for Surf Party by Harry Spaulding, but there's not a lot of surprises here because we know reality is beaming down hard on the bikinis and surfboards, and the eventual answer is obvious (though the Sam Elliott Lifeguard does develop the answer into a more sensible and charitable way while staying more or less true to the template laid down by Gidget).
In the 1991 Point Break, the issue is dealt with again but in a broader way in which authority itself is questioned when up against beach culture and the desire for freedom, and like Gidget, Surf Party, and Lifeguard, it finds a way to compromise through the contradictions and end with sand still in the toes of the stars. In Surf Party, though, the three girls, who were not running away from life but simply needed to learn to surf, they reach the end credits still whole (something we can't say about all the male leads) but now older, more mature and equipped with wave mastery.
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 – One of the themes of modern action films of the 21st century is "forgotten sons" in which a mature, adult man is forced by a story line to remember he has fathered children and now circumstances require him to rise to the occasion and deal with the matter. Eventually, both some sort of emotional intimacy with the kid (who is in trouble) and some kind of overt physical action in which the father performs a deed that compensates in some fashion for years of absence and alienation will prove his true emotional investment in the child. There's a wistful "what could have been" angle to the tale, but not big enough to really cast doubt on the happy ending.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are a good comedy team and in between the jokes they set up some pretty involved stunt work as they battle a conspiracy of lies against their now departed "father figure" of police Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) and a threatening range of threats building up from both feds and criminals. Bad Boys Ride or Die has a complicated series of clues to solve, of course, but also a lot of Florida scenery and a wide cast of characters making up it's "family." In between the fighting and a final confrontation at an abandoned coastline theme park featuring a large albino alligator, the main thing we get is the dominant value of family for a "grown ass man" and the need to kill vicious criminals.
Shelley Duvall 1949–2024
Fast Reviews:
Central Intelligence 2016: The "Rock" (Dwayne Johnson) wears a fanny-pack, a My Little Pony tee and is an unstoppable secret agent who reconnects to hisold high school hero Golden Jet (Kevin Hart) while simultaneously undermining a conspiracy of double agent activity that could lead to worldwide disaster.
The film depends heavily upon the visual of a rather diminutive Kevin Hart compared on screen with the enormous Dwayne Johnson (in this way it's a faint echo of older films like the Schwarzenegger/DeVito Twins of 1988), and the humor in Central Intelligence (script and story by Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen, Rawson Marshall Thurber) mines that (plus the flashback "fat" jokes from the high school years of the characters) with a certain level of off-the-cuff funniness while trying to stay on the legal side of political correctness about body humor - - no small task in the 21st century. Joking aside (which is half the film) the other half is the impossible deeds of the heroes against intelligence agents of the United States who are not necessarily on the side of the United States. In between is the story of "Golden Jet" having to face that his high school years were apparently the high point of his life and he now drudges away through a career as an accountant with extremely lowered expectations... that is until Dwayne Johnson shows up and turns his world upside down.
Action film-comedy hybrids can sometimes have a tough time balancing the matter of whether we have tension about the heroics and the evil of the dangerous bad guys while also being instructed by the film to laugh it all off as the jokes around the explosions and bullets fly. Central Intelligence gets more from the humor and tension from the simple question of who is and who isn't the "rogue agent." The feats of prowess in fighting, shooting, dodging bullets and surviving the violence constantly being directed at our heroes isn't so much our worry over their making it out alive instead more like the basic question of a detective story: in what clever way will they do it, since we know they will, the threat of destruction just not strong enough. At its most effective, Central Intelligence is a well polished comedy with an excellent display of stunt work.
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 notionMore about The Beekeeper, 2024
Belief-Code, Body Code and T3 Therapy? See Belief Code Therapy.com