Category: 1959
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Attack of the Giant Leeches stops more than ends. Some plot elements seem to go unresolved, but since the film never actually explains those stakes, maybe they don’t. Director Kowalski likes long lingering shots implying giant leech attacks, except there’s little distinction between ominous shots with leeches and those without. Since the characters never pay…
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One of my major complaints about “The Twilight Zone” is the ending reveal somehow distracts from the rest of the episode. It’s a “gotcha” moment. And The Invaders does have a gotcha moment, and it does shuffle star Agnes Moorehead off-screen ingloriously, but at least it doesn’t do anything to undercut her performance. The episode…
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Besides the unfortunate special effects execution (the conceptions are fine), the only thing wrong with Beast from Haunted Cave is the title. And, I suppose, some first-act budgetary shenanigans—the movie’s about Frank Wolff’s crew knocking off a gold reserve in a mining town and heading across the mountains on skis to escape, and they have…
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I’m not sure The Killer Shrews is the best movie with a protagonist with the first name Thorne, but it’s got to be very high on the list. James Best plays that lead—Captain Thorne Sherman of the S.S. Minnow, and he and first mate Judge Henry Dupree are on a three-hour tour… okay, no, but…
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I thought this one was called The Great Gila Monster, not The Giant Gila Monster. During the first act, I kept thinking how Great was one heck of a flex given the content, but it’s not Great; it’s Giant, which is technically correct. The film is about a giant Gila monster terrorizing a bunch of…
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The World, the Flesh and the Devil is one of those rare films where even the opening titles are spoilers. Devil is an end-of-the-world picture, all about coal miner Harry Belafonte emerging from a cave-in to discover he’s the last man alive. Except we’ve had the titles, so we know we’re also watching a movie…
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The most gracious explanation for The Crimson Kimono’s politics are it takes place in a universe where the U.S. didn’t concentrate 125,000 plus American citizens in camps during World War II. Even in that universe, there are problems, like white people Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw gaslighting Asian guy James Shigeta about his ability to…
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There’s not a lot to say about Plan 9 from Outer Space. It’s comically inept on almost every level—the uncredited sound editor (unless it’s also director Wood, who wrote, produced, and edited) does all right. The chirping crickets in the graveyard as the cast mugs their way through an alien zombie invasion give it a…
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Surprisingly good TARZAN outing–it’s consecutive action thrills as Tarzan (Gordon Scott) hunts British bad guys, led by Anthony Quayle. Along the way, Scott teams up with Sara Shane to give the picture some romance. It’s mostly romance banter and it works. The real star is Quayle, who’s phenomenal. He gets to Ahab out. Sean Connery…
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Vibrant retelling of the Orpheus myth during Rio de Janeiro’s Carnaval. Great looking and sounding, with a really likable cast–director Camus and co-writer Jacques Viot don’t have the adapting the legend part cracked. They’ve got the Brazil during Rio part; maybe it’s the same problem in Vinicius de Moraes’s source play. Leads Breno Mello and…
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Dated to the point of icky commercial for the miracles of French plastics–and fossil fuels–looks amazing. The narration and–more unfortunately–music are not (for many reasons). But technically glorious; it’s only thirteen minutes. DVD, Blu-ray.Continue reading →
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Peculiar character study slash mystery starring Alec Guinness as a staid British school teacher who meets his lookalike while in France. French Guinness tricks British Guinness into taking his place as a French blue blood, saddled with a wife, a kid, a mistress, and a failing business. Only British Guinness comes to love all those…
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Paddy Chayefsky adapted his own play for Middle of the Night and there are some clear alterations with original intent. Fifty-six year-old widower Fredric March is in garment manufacturing. His first scene has him hanging out with the other old guys in the factory, kvetching about how there’s nothing to do but visit their children.…
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Seven credited writers on Sleeping Beauty and none of them could figure out any dialogue to give the prince. Though, notwithstanding some cute banter between the three fairies, there’s not much good dialogue in Sleeping Beauty anyway. Villain Maleficent doesn’t even get any. Eleanor Audley’s great in the part, but it’s not because of the…
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The first hour of A Hole in the Head is slow going. It shouldn’t be slow going, not with everything the film has going for it, but director Capra is real lazy. He’s lazy with his composition, he’s lazy with his actors, he’s lazy with the pace. It’s amazing how the film’s pluses are able…
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There ought to be something good about The Bat, but there really isn’t anything. Agnes Moorehead is actually quite good, all things considered, and Vincent Price seems game too. Moorehead’s a successful mystery novelist vacationing in a scary old house–summering, actually–and Price is a murderous physician. Why is Price murderous? So the audience can suspect…
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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love is about, you guessed it, the human condition and the problems with being a humanist when you’re working in a foreign country your country has invaded and occupied. The film takes place in 1943, in Japanese-controlled Manchuria. It’s a desolate spot, but lead Nakadai Tatsuya doesn’t want to…
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There’s something rather amusing about Gigantis, The Fire Monster and not just its idiocy. It’s the American version of the second Godsilla picture and it has some amazingly bad pseudo-science–the monsters are “fire monsters,” which may or may not have been dinosaurs. They lived on Earth before the planet cooled and like it hot. They…
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Until the unfortunate deus ex machina finish, A Bucket of Blood is a small wonder. Even with the finish, the film manages to succeed; the performances are just too strong. Dick Miller plays a simple, well-meaning bus boy–who also takes drink orders, apparently for no tips–at an art café. The beatnik patrons condescend to him,…
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Some Like It Hot is perfectly constructed. Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script precisely sets up gags, even as the film moves through its three stages. For example, there’s a joke about matching blood types–type o–near the beginning and it keeps echoing throughout. It’s just in dialogue, but for another one, Wilder and Diamond cross…
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The magic of And When the Sky Was Opened is Rod Taylor’s lead performance. He’s an astronaut who holds on while reality loses track of his astronaut copilots after they return to Earth. Whether he’s loud or quiet, Taylor makes the episode work. The concept is simple enough, but Taylor is able to sell the…
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North by Northwest seems a little like a Technicolor version of an early Hollywood Hitchcock–the regular man combating the bad guys against incredible odds (at an American monument no less), but it’s a lot more. The film’s a tightly constructed proto-blockbuster; there’s not a bad frame in the film, not an imperfect scene. North moves…
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The Teenage Frankenstein. Where to start. How to start. First, it’s not exactly The Teenage Frankenstein, it’s more The Teenage Bride of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which actually works out pretty well. It’s unclear why teen auteur Glut includes a werewolf–who saves Dr. Frankenstein from a hanging at the beginning–but it all comes together…
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I hadn’t seen Here Today, Gone Tamale before, but I’ve seen Freleng’s subsequent Chili Weather. The setup is the same–these starving, but lazy, Mexican mice can’t steal any cheese from Sylvester the cat, so one of them whores out his sister to Speedy Gonzales. In Tamale, Sylvester is guarding a boat. In Chili, it’s a…
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A Broken Leghorn never confronts its bleakness or meanness. It opens with Foghorn Leghorn doing a good thing, tricking a presumably barren hen into thinking she laid an egg. But then it turns out to be a baby rooster, so Foghorn spends the rest of the cartoon trying to kill the adorable little rooster. Mel…
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Baton Bunny casts Bugs as a perfectionist conductor who, during a performance, has to cope with wardrobe malfunctions and a bothersome fly. The most interesting thing about the cartoon–and something I’ve never seen from a Bugs Bunny cartoon before–is how co-directors Jones and Levitow go out of their way to make Bugs cute. He’s not…
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A prerequisite for The Mouse That Jack Built is probably working knowledge of “The Jack Benny Program.” I have none, though I think I’ve heard the radio show before. But I certainly do not remember it enough for Mouse to make sense. It’s a strange concept for a cartoon–imagine Jack Benny is a cartoon mouse;…
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I’ve long held there are no good filmic Dracula adaptations. I’m now going to say there aren’t any good Mummy pictures after the Karloff one. This Hammer production was an officially licensed remake of the Universal production… only not the Karloff title, instead the inferior Universal follow-ups, The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb. These…
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As Our Man in Havana opened, I couldn’t help thinking of Touch of Evil. Reed uses a cock-eyed angle a few times throughout the film and it looks like Evil. The music doesn’t hurt either. Except, I hadn’t realized it was Reed–the opening titles start a few minutes in to the film–and then all I…
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I’m not sure the British are really suited for giant monster movies. No offense to the Brits, but watching a bunch of folks stand around and keep the stiff upper lip while radioactive monsters from the deep attack London isn’t too much fun. Behemoth might be unique in the giant monster genre in that respect–it’s…
The Stop Button 