Category: 1958

Cat Feud (1958, Chuck Jones)

Cat Feud is almost too precious for its own good.

In fact, the precious nature is what gets it into most of its trouble.

The cartoon concerns a tough construction site guard dog who gets all mushy inside when he finds an adorable kitten. Trouble comes in the form of a stray cat, who is after the kitten’s lunch.

Jones has some fantastic shots of the construction site, where all the action plays out (including the chase) but the cartoon’s pace is disastrous. Milt Franklyn’s score is most obvious culprit. Franklyn concentrates on accentuating the cuteness of the situation–the bulldog protecting his kitten–without bringing any of the tension. The kitten will be about to plummet from a steel skyscraper frame and the music will be pleasant and ethereal.

Feud could have been exciting and enthralling. Instead, it’s just a cute little cartoon.

Adorable or not, it’s lesser work.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Chuck Jones; written by Michael Maltese; animated by Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson and Ben Washam; edited by Treg Brown; music by Milt Franklyn; produced by John W. Burton; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Mel Blanc (Marc Anthony / Pussyfoot)

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It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958, Edward L. Cahn)

I watched It! The Terror from Beyond Space because I understood it’s widely considered (look at that passive voice) a precursor to Alien. Any such connection is tenuous at best. I also thought Ray Harryhausen did the special effects.

No, no, he did not.

If It! were a production of a middle school theater department–I kept thinking of Kesey’s favorite Cuckoo’s Nest adaptation, with the machine off to the side, a moving feature–it might be impressive. It’d work as a play, multiple levels, all connected through the same central staircase. It’d need a rewrite, of course. Bixby’s script would be laughable if one could muster the enthusiasm.

There are there major problems with It!, not including the script (the plotting isn’t bad, just the dialogue).

First, the direction. I’m not sure I’ve seen a director less enthusiastic about a space adventure than Cahn. Budgetary limitations aside, there’s a lot he could have done, maybe angled some shots, but he doesn’t.

Second, the alien. The costume is atrocious (it looks like a green sweatsuit over a bunch of padding) and the mask is lame. Ray Corrigan, playing the monster, moves with the grace of a dump truck.

Finally, the acting. Of ten actors–we’re supposed to remember all their characters, following a painfully weak introduction to them–only Marshall Thompson gives a good performance. Kim Spalding, as his antagonist, gives one of the worst performances I’ve seen lately in a theatrical release.

It! is a painful waste of time.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Edward L. Cahn; written by Jerome Bixby; director of photography, Kenneth Peach; edited by Grant Whytock; music by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter; produced by Robert E. Kent; released by United Artists.

Starring Marshall Thompson (Carruthers), Shirley Patterson (Ann Anderson), Kim Spalding (Van Heusen), Ann Doran (Mary Royce), Dabbs Greer (Eric Royce), Paul Langton (Calder), Robert Bice (Purdue), Richard Benedict (Bob Finelli), Richard Hervey (Gino), Thom Carney (Kienholz) and Ray Corrigan (It).

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The Trollenberg Terror (1958, Quentin Lawrence)

The importance of the director, in cinema, used to be a topic of discussion for me. It hasn’t been lately, because it’s hard to find good examples of well-scripted, well-acted, but terribly directed motion pictures. Thank goodness for The Trollenberg Terror and Quentin Lawrence. Lawrence might be the most boring bad director I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t have a single moment of inventiveness, good or bad, in Trollenberg and it’s astounding the film actually achieves moments of suspense. It only achieves one–in the last fifteen minutes–but still… it’s unexpected.

Trollenberg‘s script–from Hammer hack Jimmy Sangster–isn’t terrible. Sangster was adapting a television serial, so there’s a lot of content and potential (the serial is, unfortunately, unavailable). The film’s setting–a mysteriously terrorized mountain resort–is fantastic, so Sangster (and even Lawrence to a point) don’t have to do much work. The cast is mostly solid, with the principles selling their characters.

I’m not sure if Forrest Tucker is a good actor or gives a good performance, but it’s an authoritative one and that aspect makes it work. Laurence Payne is a likable reporter. Jennifer Jayne and Janet Munro are solid damsels in distress, though the pairing off of them with Tucker and Payne, respectively, is absurd.

Even Warren Mitchell is all right and he’s got an absurd accent to go with his unbelievably knowledgeable scientist (he hypnotizes as well as studies geology and cosmic radiation).

The Trollenberg Terror deserved a far better director (and budget).

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Quentin Lawrence; screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, based on the television serial written by Peter Key; director of photography, Monty Berman; edited by Henry Richardson; music by Stanley Black; produced by Robert S. Baker and Berman; released by Eros Films.

Starring Forrest Tucker (Alan Brooks), Laurence Payne (Philip Truscott), Jennifer Jayne (Sarah Pilgrim), Janet Munro (Anne Pilgrim), Warren Mitchell (Prof. Crevett), Frederick Schiller (Mayor Klein), Andrew Faulds (Brett), Stuart Saunders (Dewhurst), Colin Douglas (Hans) and Derek Sydney (Wilde).

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The Last Hurrah (1958, John Ford)

While the title refers to politics, The Last Hurrah also, unfortunately in some cases, provided to be the last hurrah of a number of fine actors as well. It’s a fitting–I can’t remember the word. It isn’t eulogy and tribute seems intentional. I don’t know if Ford knew he was making the last film like The Last Hurrah, and there are a number of films like it. Watching it, the mood, the politics, and James Gleason reminded a lot of Meet John Doe. Jane Darwell, for some odd reason since she wasn’t in it, reminded me of The Informer. The Last Hurrah is very much the last film in style–and not the exact style, Ford was a fluid filmmaker–Ford pioneered in the 1930s. While Touch of Evil is, I suppose, a later stylistic descendent, The Last Hurrah‘s the last in the storytelling vein.

Ford’s direction here, his composition, his camera movements, are all very assured, very confident, but also very sentimental. He ties the composition to the story content, letting the frame express what sometimes Spencer Tracy cannot verbalize. I meant to start with Tracy, then I thought I’d save him, but now’s as good of time as any. Tracy’s performance, down the way his nose moves when he breathes, is perfect, so perfect it’s hard to remember he’s Spencer Tracy and was probably in a hundred movies. He’s nothing like any of them. He and Ford, whether by design or accident, create something amazing–Ford for constructing the framed arena capable of supporting Tracy’s performance–but also needing nothing less–and Tracy for filling this field.

The other performances, starting with Jeffrey Hunter, are excellent. Hunter’s great as the film’s emotional reference. He’s new to it, so is the viewer. The rest of the characters have all been around a while; Hunter doesn’t lead the story or even provide an access point, he just shows on screen what the viewer is experiencing. Frank S. Nugent’s script’s something fantastic, but in the story it tells, and the way it tells it. Everyone’s good so it doesn’t make sense just to list them all, but Basil Rathbone’s great as a villain, Carleton Young as Tracy’s assistant, Dianne Foster as Hunter’s wife and Edward Brophy. Brophy’s role’s hard to describe and what he does for the film. Pat O’Brien too, in maybe the least flashy of the film’s roles for good actors.

The way Ford finishes it. Coda. Is coda the word I’m looking for? Maybe The Last Hurrah is coda for certain kind of film, the adult drama of the 1930s and 1940s. Anyway, Ford’s last shot in the film. The pace, the sound, the shadows. It gets blood from a stone. It reveals a deeper capacity for feeling. It’s his best close.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by John Ford; written by Frank S. Nugent, based on the novel by Edwin O’Connor; director of photography, Charles Lawton Jr.; edited by Jack Murray; production designer, Robert Peterson; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Spencer Tracy (Mayor Frank Skeffington), Jeffrey Hunter (Adam Caulfield), Dianne Foster (Mave Caulfield), Pat O’Brien (John Gorman), Basil Rathbone (Norman Cass Sr.), Donald Crisp (Cardinal Martin Burke), James Gleason (‘Cuke’ Gillen), Edward Brophy (‘Ditto’ Boland), John Carradine (Amos Force), Willis Bouchey (Roger Sugrue), Basil Ruysdael (Bishop Gardner), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Weinberg), Wallace Ford (Charles J. Hennessey), Frank McHugh (Festus Garvey), Carleton Young (Winslow), Frank Albertson (Jack Mangan), Bob Sweeney (Johnny Degnan), Edmund Lowe (Johnny Byrne), William Leslie (Dan Herlihy), Anna Lee (Gert Minihan), Ken Curtis (Monsignor Killian), Jane Darwell (Delia Boylan), O.Z. Whitehead (Norman Cass Jr.) and Arthur Walsh (Frank Skeffington Jr.).

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