I subscribe to the Criterion Collection newsletter and have breaking news. The collection is moving to Filmstruck, a new streaming service, from its current home on Hulu. The new service will be co-curated by Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies and will focus on hard-to-find films. For me, the most exciting aspect of the service will be the ability to get commentary tracks via streaming. I’ve been waiting for that to happen. The first to launch will apparently be the out-of-print commentary track to The Silence of the Lambs.
I try not to spam my readers but I just had to share this.
You can sign up to get a free two-week subscription when the service launches on October 19 here. Criterion’s announcement is here.
Touch of Evil Directed by Orson Welles Written by Orson Welles based on a novel by Whit Masterson 1958/USA Universal International Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#343 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Tanya: He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?
Orson Welles ends the film noir era with a bang.
As the film begins, we see the trajectory of a car bomb as a couple drives from a Mexican border town into the United States, where it explodes. At the same time, Mexican police official Mike Vargas (Charleton Heston) is walking across that same border with his new American wife Susan (Janet Leigh). The location of the explosion determines jurisdiction and Police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) is in charge of the investigation.
Vargas takes an interest in the case and is allowed to observe Quinlan’s investigation as a courtesy, a decision Quinlan mightily resents. Vargas is appalled at Quinlan’s tactics. Quinlan is famous for his “hunches” and he manages proceedings so that his hunches are always proved right.
In the meantime, Vargas is scheduled to testify against a drug lord in Mexico City. The drug lord’s brother, “Uncle” Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) is determined to prevent him from doing so. Knowing that Vargas himself is untouchable, he sends his numerous nephews to get to him through Susan. With Joseph Calleia as Quinlan’s right-hand man, Marlene Dietrich as an old friend of Quinlan and Zsa Zsa Gabor as a strip club owner.
This is a fantastic look at the underbelly of humanity. It has not just a touch of evil, but is permeated with it. The performances are all just wonderful, if you pretend that Heston isn’t supposed to be playing a Mexican. This time I concentrated the richly human performance of Calleia. I’d rank it as Welles’s second-best film and that puts it pretty high up the best pictures of all time list. Very highly recommended.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space Directed by Gene Fowler Jr. Written by Louis Vittes 1958/USA Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Bill Farrell: Eventually we’ll have children with you.
Marge Bradley Farrell: What kind of children?
Bill Farrell: Our kind.[/box]
This sort of wastes an above-average monster suit but is not too bad for all that.
The film opens at Bill Farrell’s (Tom Tryon) bachelor party at a local bar. All the other guys are telling horror stories about married life. Bill leaves early to visit fiancee Marge (Gloria Talbott). But he is waylaid by a mysterious force and it turns out Marge will be the one with a horror story for a marriage. In fact, her new husband seems like a stranger. Soon, other men in town are acting pretty weird.
I was expecting something like I Was a Teenage Wolfman but it turns out this is more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s not as effective as the latter film but few films are. This is a nice solid studio B picture. Almost all of the monster shots are super-imposed, shadowy images. I can’t figure out why as the stills of the beast are rather awesome.
Paramount distributed The Blob as the intended B feature on a double bill with this movie. The Blob, produced by a small church studio, was much more successful. Paramount should have seen that coming as The Blob has color, Steve McQueen, and a much better alien.
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
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