Film Reviews by Steve

Disappointing later Billy Wilder comedy which takes an already slender premise and stretches it over 144 minutes. Jack Lemmon plays a wealthy US business executive who travels to Italy to claim his father’s body for burial. And discovers that he was conducting a long affair with a lower class English woman, whose corpse is collected by Juliet Mills.

Essentially it’s the familiar story of an uptight wage slave liberated by the beauty and culture of Italy. And the more pastoral way of life. Which always works, except this time. While the location shoot around Naples is alluring, there are multiple problems. Jack Lemmon is usually so reliable at giving unlikable characters just enough charm to be sympathetic….

But his irascible corporate entitlement is too maddening. The American abroad comedy is incredibly patronising towards the foreign stereotypes. Apparently, they can’t make decent coffee in Italy! Also the 66 year old director feels prurient and old fashioned in his use of nudity and swearing.

It isn’t a disaster. There is some decent topical humour; which is even mildly subversive. Clive Revill is convivial as another of the director’s wily finaglers. Unfortunately, though the source Broadway play is opened out skilfully, Wilder develops some scenarios purely because the relaxed censorship of the 1970s now permits. And in doing so, exposes a lack of taste. 

Landmark Italian western which turned the whole of Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy into a ’60s cultural phenomenon. Although as it takes Clint Eastwood until the final scene to wear the iconic poncho, perhaps there was only a late attempt to align it with the earlier films. This is usually acclaimed as the best of the three.

And it feels like A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965) were preparation. The Leone style is now fully evolved from the start: the extreme closeups, the extended pauses, the sadistic violence and the idiosyncratic fusion of period realism with pop art visuals. Most of all, Ennio Morricone’s legendary soundtrack, a mix of mariachi and ambient atmospherics.

Eastwood isn’t as dominant this time around and shares the spotlight with Lee Van Cleef, as the relentless sociopathic killer, and Eli Wallach, as the squalid, ratlike survivor. The three are in pursuit of buried treasure. But it’s an episodic narrative with more subplots than a tv soap opera. We get some thematic content about the futility of war and the wretchedness of greed.

But plenty of laconic humour too. There’s an epic three hour running time, and during the civil war battle scene, it attains a visual grandeur of scale, which the director carried into his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); only Leone himself ever made a better western. It’s hard to overstate how influential it has been, particularly now…

Lesser, low budget British sci-fi which, like its title, feels spliced together from other better pictures. It takes most from the Quatermass series, and like those films was initially made for tv. Though this does less to disguise that origin. So there are only a two or three locations, and rudimentary special effects.

This was an independent production directed by Hammer stalwart Terence Fisher and features their perennial stars, Peter Cushing- in a cameo- and Christopher Lee. And it is these three who give it some quality. The narrative is driven by the heat which prompts the locals to behave in ever less predictable ways.

Lee plays an irascible boffin who suspects the unseasonal high temperature on a remote island is caused by preparation for an alien invasion. So the tiny community comes together to repel the glowing intruders who feed off light and burn their victims to ashes. But who have the usual fatal flaw.

And this scenario works yet again. It is padded out with a love triangle between a macho writer (Patrick Allen), his doormat wife (Sarah Lawson) and sexy secretary (Jane Merrow) who keeps on getting so hot she has to strip off. But there is zero nudity, or gore. The US release was called Island of the Burning Doomed which might be the most hyperbolic film title ever! 

Long, complex POW drama adapted from a bestseller by James Clavell, which feels realistic, while also haunting and poetic. It is set in a Japanese jungle camp, from which there is no possibility of escape. The allied soldiers revert to a primitive tribal state which is antagonistic across every possible divide.

Its fundamental weakness is there is no overarching narrative; this is an episodic scrutiny of the psychological trauma of the prisoners. George Segal leads an ensemble cast as the finagler who runs the camp like his own private racket; a role that has become something of a cliché.

But this digs deeper, into issues of class, nationality, sexuality and politics. James Fox is affecting as a clever but naive English blue-blood who gets snagged up in Segal’s circle of racketeers. James Donald arguably steals the picture in a cameo as a wise, phlegmatic doctor, weary of despair. Tom Courteney is unconvincing as a resentful tyrant without status.

It’s stunningly edited and photographed in b&w, with an evocative score by John Barry. This might have been big with the ‘60s counterculture as it is anti-authoritarian. But it flopped and took a while to find an audience. Maybe it would be more celebrated if not by a stalwart director like Bryan Forbes, yet this is an arthouse masterpiece.

For 15 years after WWII, UK cinema told its war stories, usually in b&w with a cast of great British stalwarts. In the ’60s, the Hollywood studios remade them as blockbusters. This is in Deluxe colour and Panavision. John Sturges is a major US director of action films leading a lavish production, shot in genuine locations.

And there’s a big Hollywood star in Steve McQueen. The narrative is more satisfying than those ‘50s UK films. It’s a loose adaptation of a non fiction book about a mass breakout from a German POW camp; but isn’t grim realism. The mood is sometimes quite cartoonish, yet the US screenwriters create a coherent environment

It sustains interest over an epic three hours of skilful storytelling, sardonic comedy and plausible visual detail. Credit is also due to Elmer Bernstein for his famous score which skilfully sets the tone so the events feel credible, but not futile. What UK cinema contributes is that phenomenal support company of actors.

My pick is Donald Pleasence as the self-effacing forger, going blind. The only casting blunder is James Coburn as an Aussie larrikin. Everyone remembers the action climax with McQueen hanging from the wire on the Swiss border, but it’s the relationships which most endure. Sure, it’s Hollywoodised- but still a heartfelt tribute to the prisoners’ bravery and ingenuity.  

This is regarded as the last in the long cycle of gothic horror from Universal studios, and has genre superstars Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. on board, though in support roles. It’s a period melodrama with sadistic undertones, grafted onto an adventure film.

Richard Greene plays a swordfighting avenger tracking two friends who vanished while visiting a malign German Count (Stephen McNally in an eyepatch). On entering his black castle, the hero gets snagged up in his host’s thrill seeking bloodsports while recklessly romancing the imperilled Countess (Paula Corday).

And so on. The production benefits from the gothic set decor borrowed from the superior The Strange Door, released the previous year. It is full of shadowy atmosphere, with the secret passages, the spooky old crypt and the fiendish alligator pit which guards the escape route from the dungeons.

Greene is a fair swashbuckler and McNally a persuasive aristocratic villain; a psychopath with unmoderated power. Though the hero is actually an ivory hunter! Nathan Juran’s debut job of direction sometimes plods, but it looks great and Karloff is wonderfully insidious. It’s a minor programmer but still viable entertainment.

MAN-MADE MONSTER

This low budget Universal sci-fi/horror clearly borrows from Frankenstein a decade earlier. Yet also feels at least ten years ahead of its time; more like a drive-in feature from the ’50s. It features Lon Chaney jr’s debut in the genre as an oddball idiot who can survive huge amounts of electricity without obvious harm…

Only to run into Lionel Atwill playing a mad scientist intent on creating a prototype for a super-race by plugging him into the mains. Future generations would adapt this idea with atomic and then computer technology. But this is the ’40s and Chaney spends the second half of the film glowing like the Ready-Brek kid.

Despite the B picture resources, this effect is really quite impressive. And surely the stuff about the army of automatons is intended to reflect the Nazis? As usual, Atwill is the standout, just edging out Corky the dog, who is way ahead of the rest in noticing something is going badly awry.

It’s a cheap shocker obviously directed with an eye on the clock. The support cast is mundane, aside from Corky. But some care has gone into the action set pieces and it builds to an exciting climax as the electrical man goes berserk. It’s entertaining, and you will learn plenty about ‘electrobiology’. 

MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS

Standard sci-fi/horror for the '50s drive-in crowd, elevated by a superior production from Universal studios, rather than shoddy trash from poverty row. There’s a competent crew led by genre legend Jack Arnold. And a fair cast which gets the balance between seriousness and sendup just about right. But the crazy plot is the same sort of hokum.

Arthur Franz plays a hot biology professor who gets contaminated by a prehistoric fish and periodically transforms into an angry, homicidal caveman. For complicated reasons involving atomic radiation. The dialogue works hard to convince us this might actually happen. But it’s dumbed down Jekyll and Hyde.

And the Prof wakes up at the centre of a zone of destruction, wondering what just happened… Being low budget campus sci-fi, there are teenage hunks (Troy Donahue) and babes (Nancy Walters). But they are relatively well behaved, not wild for kicks. Most of the mayhem happens to the grownups.

We don’t get to see the monster until the climax, which is a good thing, as it’s a terrible rubber mask. The days of Jack Pierce rising at dawn to paste yak hair onto the star are long gone. Sadly. The effects are prehistoric. Of course this is all completely idiotic, yet surprisingly fun. And not because it’s bad. This is decent nonsense.

Chic thriller set on the French Riviera which like many films of its time, aspires to be To Catch a Thief (1955) but falls some way short. No VistaVision or A+ list stars. Or made by Alfred Hitchcock. But this is still stylishly directed by John Guillermin with a few really eye-catching flourishes.

And the sports cars on the coastal roads of the Côte d'Azur look cool, even in b&w. The cast is decent with Stewart Granger as a film producer having an affair with his sexy Italian leading lady (Gianna Maria Canale) who ends up with a knife in her back and all the evidence pointing at him...

There are a couple of Oscar winners in support with Donna Reed underused as the jilted wife and George Sanders excellent as a slimy villain. Michael Simon is a bonus as the inscrutable continental detective. We also get a quick glimpse behind the scenes of a trashy ’50s film production.

The twisty plot is implausible, but that’s only to be expected. There is suspense and plenty of Mediterranean set decor and a chillout jazz soundtrack from Johnny Dankworth. The production looks like this had a decent budget. Everyone there said Granger was a nightmare, but they all still turned in a glossy, sassy thriller.

Coruscating polemic aimed at corporate America which doesn’t attempt to disguise its origins as a low budget TV play, but makes its threadbare claustrophobia into a virtue. For aficionados of political cinema, this may be the great forgotten film of the decade. Easy to imagine it inspired David Mamet.

Van Heflin plays the small town nice guy appointed to the board of a New York firm by its sociopathic chief executive (Everett Sloane) to lead human resources. And covertly edge out the New Deal philosophy of a traumatised company man (Ed Begley). Because big business operates like a shark, without conscience.

The big asset is Rod Serling’s brilliant, deadeye script which communicates the social Darwinism that operates the levers of US free enterprise. There’s an astonishing scene when it becomes obvious that the newcomer’s stay-at-home wife (Beatrice Straight) is easily as ruthless as the boss. And today would be in the boardroom herself.

It’s ultimately ambiguous whether the newcomer gets assimilated into the detached pragmatism of malign executive culture. This is pessimistic political noir and doesn’t generate much hope. It’s is a realistic and devastating analysis of US capitalism, even though filmed in the time of McCarthyism.  

Hardboiled cult heist picture, which is Jean-Pierre Melville’s personal homage to Hollywood film noir, and has itself proved an influence on other directors- including the Nouvelle Vague. However there isn’t an expressionist look. The lighting is mostly natural. There are no shadows of entrapment.

Maybe its tawdry greyness suits this story of a high roller fallen on hard times. Parisian criminal Roger Duchesne (in the title role) plans one last job, to rob the casino at Deauville, so assembles a team of deadbeats to execute the caper. Naturally, his plan falls apart on the big day...

There is the obvious influence of year zero heist noir, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), though this isn’t flattered by the comparison. The main problem is Duchesne lacks charisma and the support cast is anonymous in underwritten roles. Isabelle Corey stands out as the mercenary teenage moll. She is beautiful and sexy, but more of a model than actor.

This is much more salacious than US noir. It is ultra-lowkey, barely stirred by the soundtrack of nocturnal jazz. There is plenty of genre pessimism and Paris by night. Melville directs with the élan he brought to all his critically adored crime films. It’s très cool, but not in the class of The Asphalt Jungle. 

Delirious and deliciously debauched adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's 1864 locked room mystery. And rather than underplaying or updating the 'tache twirling Victorian melodrama, this revels in its gothic excess. There is clearly some talent on board.  Yet if they cut the budget and the shooting schedule, there's a Tod Slaughter B film left.

After her father's death, a naive but spirited teenager (Jean Simmons) is exposed to the doubtful solicitude of her wicked, avaricious Uncle Silas (Derrick De Marney) and his menagerie of human grotesques. If she doesn't make it to legal age, the inheritance passes to this grasping, murderous relative. So is moved from her comfortable home into his cobwebby, derelict castle.

Nothing is in moderation. The orphan is sweetly innocent. De Marney makes a spidery villain. His son is a bewhiskered blackguard and the female accomplice a hideous, cackling harridan. The huge coachman is mute, the dialogue is ripe, and the climate given to thundery storms. While the photography is impressive, the expressionism is unsubtle.

And yet it is extremely enjoyable. This kind of melodrama usually gets a meagre budget, this is well mounted with fine sets. It is fortunate to feature a future star, with 18 year old Simmons in her first lead. If everyone else overacts, then that is the style. Director Charles Frank is obscure, but he has an eye for detail. It's a kind of guilty pleasure.

Creaky, old fashioned gothic melodrama loosely based on an early short story by Robert Louis Stephenson. The plot is slight and outré and implausible, but still functional, augmented by the rich period set design, with the shadowy secret passages, devious torture devises and the dark, dangerous dungeons.

The ripe dialogue is effective in the context. But best of all are the theatrical, scenery chewing performances. And that’s mostly Charles Laughton as an insidious ham… who plays a decadent, malign French aristocrat intending to punish his imprisoned brother by making his lovely daughter (Sally Foster) marry a dissolute waster.

Richard Stapely is charismatic as the latter, enough to suggest he might have developed into a B-picture Errol Flynn. Except this kind of film was in decline and Universal horror production about to be turned over to sci-fi. Boris Karloff has a minor role, but brings some old school class, and memorably takes a full 10 minutes to die from bullet and stab wounds!

Everyone enters into the spirit… It was made in a co-production with The Black Castle (1952) which is similar, but not as good. My hunch is this was intended for the teenage horror crowd, which no longer exists for this sort of period melodrama. But it’s still fine entertainment for aficionados of the virtues of the classic studio era.  

Minor film noir which extracts plenty of interest from its lowlife location shoot in Santa Monica, on the Californian coast. Which is a squalid hell! It’s a pessimistic crime-does-not-pay parable with an anti-capitalist subtext; where business and finance chews up the luckless workers... Director Irving Pichel was soon blacklisted by HUAC.

It’s one of a pair of crime films in which Mickey Rooney plays a small town mechanic drawn in by the lure of exotic sex and easy money (see also Drive a Crooked Road, 1954). There’s the usual noir scenario of an ordinary guy who makes one wrong turn…. He takes 20 dollars from the garage cash register, and his whole world caves in.

Pretty soon he’s strangling his corrupt boss with a telephone wire and fleeing down to Mexico in a stolen car. He is drawn into this shabby inferno by a cheap blonde (Jeanne Cagney) who sets up the grease monkey to loot a rundown penny arcade owned by her scuzzy ex-boss, played by a splendidly repellent Peter Lorre.

Does the reckless stooge not have eyes? He is pursued by his girl-next-door ex (Barbara Bates), who is not only not a chiseller, but ten times the babe that the femme fatale is… Still, Mickey is back from the war and wild for kicks. There are echoes of zero budget cult noir, Detour (1945). It isn’t as good but still sleazy fun for genre fans. 

Charming gaslight melodrama based on a 19th century urban myth. Jean Simmons stars as a young, romantic English rose at the 1889 Paris Exposition with her brother (David Tomlinson) who suddenly and mysteriously disappears. As does his room, and any memory of his existence among the hotel staff.

Of course, it is a familiar story often told but this conveys an eerie sense of muted hysteria beneath the late Victorian gentility. It’s a fine vehicle for Simmons which won her a Hollywood contract. Eventually Dirk Bogarde comes to her aid as an aristocratic Brit studying art…

They produce zero sparks as a romantic couple, but are both uncommonly beautiful. It’s a handsome costume drama which might better have been filmed in Technicolor. Still, it benefits from an extensive location shoot in the French capital. And a glorious support cast.

The motifs which made the legend a proto-urban myth, still resonate. Particularly of the innocent alone in a foreign country, unfamiliar with the customs or language and unable to trust anyone. This is genteel melodrama; there are no jump scares. But has value as an eternal folk tale, and full of period atmosphere.

Intelligent, loquacious western noir which illustrates the psychology of the frontier outlaw rather than presenting much as realism. It feels like a tv play, but with major studio resources; principally Gregory Peck as a former desperado who has lived long enough to be haunted by his reputation as the fastest gun around.

His character is loosely based on real life killer Johnny Ringo. Everywhere he goes, some young punk wants to beat him to the draw. Everyone with a grievance believes he is to blame. It’s a study of small town mob mentality, as well as an interesting- if schematic- attempt to get inside the head of the gunfighter.

This was released near the trigger of the western golden age, and influenced many pictures which present the gunman as a lonely wayfarer, pursued by his own legend. Who has to kill, or be killed. Like Shane (1953). Peck’s lowkey performance isn’t as mythic as Alan Ladd. This is stripped down. Plus there is some effective humour.

There’s a textbook demonstration of Hitchcockian suspense as the gunfighter delays his departure to see an estranged wife (Helen Westcott), while his nemesis closes in. The ’50s western is typically in Technicolor, but this has a high contrast b&w look which suits the noir-ish scenario. It may even appeal to those not usually attracted to the genre.