The Woman Eater (“Womaneater”) Directed by Charles Saunders Written by Brandon Fleming 1958/UK Fortress Film Productions Ltd.
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Tanga, the native: You want masta? You come in. [/box]
By 1958, George Coulouris was specializing in B movies and TV. He gives this dreary skid-row British production just a bit of class.
Mad scientist Dr. Moran (Coulouris) goes deep into the Amazon jungle in search of a serum that will bring the the dead to life. The ritual involves a snake charmer, drums, and a woman-eating plant. Moran brings the drummer and the plant back to England, where he feeds fresh victims to the plant in hopes of extracting the serum. Apart from some staid romance, not much else happens.
The best part is the opening snake charming ritual. It is downhill from there. This movie is entirely missable.
Le beau Serge Directed by Claude Chabrol Written by Claude Chabrol 1958/France Ajym Films/Cooperative Generale du Cinema Francais
First viewing/Hulu
[box] The priest: Who do you think you are? Jesus Christ? What can you do?
François Baillou: I don’t know. That’s why I’m waiting.[/box]
A do-gooder gets his comeuppance in Chabrol’s directorial debut.
After success in the big city, Francois returns to his home town to recuperate from a bout of TB. It is perhaps the last place on earth anyone would look for a cure. The town is bleak and everyone is in a perpetual rut or worse. Francois’s friend Serge has become a wretched alcoholic. Serge’s downfall began when he gave up his studies to marry Yvonne. She was pregnant but the couple lost the child at birth. Francois becomes obsessed with helping Serge.
No one seems inclined to cooperate with Francois’s efforts. To add to his troubles, he begins an affair with Marie, despite being warned off the relationship by everyone who knows her. All this angst begins take a toll on Francois’s health.
This is a worthy debut but I felt like the director was sending a message that I just did not get. Probably it is that no good deed goes unpunished. Serge certainly went about things without ever understanding exactly what was going on. Nor did I. I also did not understand a lot of the use of music in the film. It is given to portentous dramatic flourishes at the oddest times.
According to IMDb, this is generally considered to be the first film of the French New Wave. I guess it’s as good a candidate as any.
A Night to Remember Directed by Roy Ward Baker Written Eric Ambler from a book by Walter Lord 1958/UK The Rank Organization
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Dr. O’Laughlin: People first, things second.[/box]
Forever the best of the Titanic movies in my book.
This tells the same story as James Cameron’s more famous 1997 Titanic, minus the framing story and the romance. The character out of dozens we get closest to is Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller (Kenneth Moore).
The film nicely recreates the doomed voyage with beautiful and accurate sets and costumes. It also covers activities aboard the S.S. Californian, a ship ten miles away which failed to notice any of the Titanic’s distress signals, and aboard the S.S. Carpathian, 50 miles away, which picked up the survivors.
I liked this even better on my second viewing. Throughout is that poignant stiff upper lip courage that I find so irresistible. The special effects are convincing for 1958. And the absence of the Rose-Jack romance only improves things. I’m sure many respectable young women had sex with working-class stiffs in 1912 – but not in the back seats of cars parked in the Titanic’s hold!
The DVD contains a very good commentary by a couple of historians.
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman “Nathan Hertz” (alias for Nathan Juran) Written by Mark Hanna 1958/USA Woolner Brothers Pictures Inc.
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Delivery man: [inventorying the items he has just brought] Meat hooks, four lengths of chain, forty gallons of plasma, and an elephant syringe.[/box]
This is a shoe-in for the coveted Best Bad Film of 1958 award.
Nancy Archer is fabulously wealthy and the owner of the gigantic Star of India diamond. Nancy’s life has gone on the skids since her marriage to the nasty, money-grubbing, womanizing Harry. But she loves him and calls for his help constantly. For his part, Harry is torn between killing her and committing her to an insane asylum.
Harry is having an affair with a bimbo, Nancy catches him, and takes a drive into the desert to clear her head. Instead, she runs into a satellite that looks suspiciously like a ping-pong ball and is attacked by a 30-foot giant who is after her diamond.
Naturally, nobody believes Nancy at first. Soon enough a couple of sightings confirm the story and Nancy’s rapid growth seals the deal, allowing her to get delicious revenge on her tormentors.
The key to a successful B movie is a catchy title and a lurid poster both of which this film has in spades. The movie itself, however, was so embarrassingly bad that its director (who worked several times with Ray Harryhausen) refused to allow his name to be used in the credits. It is a trifecta of awfulness, featuring god-awful acting, wooden dialogue, and “special effects” that must be seen to be believed. My favorite is the giant woman’s hand which at various times looks like it is made of papier mache and at others like it is made of canvas. Needless to say, I had a good time watching this space-age soap opera.
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.
South Pacific Directed by Joshua Logan Written by Paul Osborn based on the play by Oscar Hammerstein III and the novel by James Michener 1958/USA Magna Carta Theatre Corporation/South Pacific Enterprises/Rodgers & Hammerstein Productions/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Most people live on a lonely island, / Lost in the middle of a foggy sea./ Most people long for another island,/ One where they know they will like to be. — “Bali Hai”, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein III[/box]
This would be a practically perfect musical if the color were not marred by the very odd use of filters.
The story takes place on an American-occupied island in the South Pacific while the outcome of WWIIr was still in doubt. Marines and sailors seemingly spend all their time waiting for something to happen. Their main occupation is ogling the Navy nurses and running harmless scams.
Lt. Cable (John Kerr) has been assigned a dangerous mission to land on a Japanese-occupied island to provide intelligence. He needs a man with local knowledge to guide him there. This he hopes to find in French planter Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi).
De Beque, however, is in the process of courting the irrepressible nurse Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor). While he is looking forward to a lifetime of happiness, the dangerous mission is out of the question. But when Nellie gets a look at his half-Polynesian children, she has cold feet. With Ray Walston as a wheeler-dealer and Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary.
The musical has some of Rogers & Hammerstein’s most glorious tunes and is well cast. I am surprised Mitzi Gaynor didn’t have more of a career. She is perfect in her part.
The use of color has always been a major distraction to me. It wavers from glowing Technicolor beaches to some oddly yellowed images. I had always assumed this was due to an aging print. But no, director Logan decided that filters would be a good way of getting around changes in weather, etc. The effect was much less subtle than he had envisioned and he recognized his mistake after it was too late.
South Pacific won the Academy Award for Best Sound. It was nominated in the categories of Best Cinematography, Color and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.
The Quiet American Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz from a novel by Graham Greene 1958/USA Figaro
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Thomas Fowler: Shall we save the truth for dinner?[/box]
Ethics meets politics in this Graham Greene morality tale.
The story is shown in flashback as Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave) contemplates the events leading up to the murder of an American. Fowler (Michael Redgrave) is a thoroughly cynical journalist covering the Indochina War in Viet Nam. He has been living with the beautiful, and much younger, Vietnamese Phuong for the last two years. Fowler has a wife back in England who is a High Church Episcopalian and will never give him a divorce. Phuong seems completely content with the arrangement but has a sister who wants to see her married.
Into Fowler’s world arrives a young American (unnamed in the film), who takes an immediate interest in Phuong, both because of her beauty and her predicament. This American is in the country to spread democracy and foreign aid. He appears to be a completely straight arrow and forthrightly announces his intentions to marry Phuong to Fowler.
Fowler resorts to increasingly desperate measures to keep his prize. He believes himself even more justified when he is shown evidence that the young man is not what he seems.
I am still pondering about the thought-provoking story. There is a lot that resonates with the beginning of anti-Americanism in the Third World and the impending War in Viet Nam. At the same time, there are the ethical and religious implications common in Greene’s work.
Mostly, though, the movie made me want to read the book and see the 2001 version with Michael Caine. Redgrave is fantastic in this but Audie Murphy, while ideal casting for his role, is too flat and the dialogue is unnecessarily wordy for the usually razor-sharp Manciewicz. Still recommended to Graham Greene fans.
King Creole Directed by Michael Curtiz Written by Herbert Baker and Michael V. Gazzo from a novel by Harold Robbins 1958/USA Wallis-Hazen
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Ralph: You’re a pretty fancy performer, ain’t ya kid?[/box]
Elvis was still making A movies with this one. The director, co-stars, and music are first class.
Danny Fisher (Elvis Presley) can’t catch a break. His widower father (Dean Jagger) is incapable of holding a job or, worse in the Rebel Without a Cause era, standing up for himself. Danny must work to support the family and this distraction plus his attitude has prevented him from graduating from high school for two consecutive years. This is Elvis, though, and we know from the first frame he has a thoroughly good heart.
Another thing we know is that Danny is a talented singer. He proves it when he rescues a moll (Carolyn Jones) from an evil night club owner, Maxie Fieilds (Walter Matthau). He proves it again by distracting the staff and customers in a drug store while some gang members rob the place blind. In the process, he falls for a pretty clerk (Dolores Hart).
A rival night club owner hears Danny at the night club and hires him for his own place. Danny is a huge hit. Maxie cannot tolerate this and uses every dirty trick in the book to steal Danny for his own joint.
This moves right along between the better-than-average tunes. The young Elvis is at his most gorgeous and sexy. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
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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