Monthly Archives: October 2019

Valley of the Dolls
Directed by Mark Robson
Written by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley from the novel by Jacqueline Susann
1967/USA
Red Lion
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Anne Welles: Neely, you know it’s bad to take liquor with those pills.

Neely O’Hara: They work faster.[/box]

I was expecting a sudsy melodrama with over-the-top acting and that is exactly what I got.  Not that this is entirely a bad thing!

Nice girl Anne (Barbara Parkins) leaves her idyllic home in New England for the excitement of the Big Apple.  She promptly gets a job with a show business attorney.  This eventually leads to meeting Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward), an aging Broadway legend; Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke), an aspiring Broadway legend; and Jennifer (Sharon Tate), a sweet, reluctant sex symbol.  Anne, with her elegant looks, gets hired to represent a line of beauty products.

All of the younger women fall in love with men who are basically non-entities. The stress of  making their dreams comes true lead all to prescription drugs and booze at some point.  Neeley goes completely over the edge.  With Lee Grant as a doting sister.

This became kind of a guilty pleasure.  It’s super trashy but very entertaining.  I didn’t know Patty Duke could overact to this extent but she is perfect for her part.  Susan Hayward emerges with her dignity intact.  I had forgotten how much I love Dionne Warwick’s rendition of the theme song.  Can’t exactly recommend it but don’t regret I saw it one bit.

John Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for his adapted score.  Andre and Dory Previn wrote the songs.

Monster from a Prehistoric Planet (Daikyoju Gappa)
Directed by Hiroshi Noguchi
Written by Iwao Yamakazi and Ryuzo Nakanishi
1967/Japan
Manson Corporation/Nikkatsu
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] President Funazu: Like it? I call it Playmate Land.[/box]

In a year of goofy monster movies, this is second rate.  I blame part of that on the English dubbing.

As usual, Japanese scientists travel to a tropical island to do some questionable experiments and come upon an infant monster.  Of course, they must take it home, largely at the insistence of a greedy promoter.  Mommy and Daddy Gappa come to the rescue and all but destroy Tokyo in the process.

The movie is in color but I liked this still.

This combines a bird-lizard monster a la The X from Outer Space and the sentimentality of Son of Godzilla.  It lacks the  inadvertent hilarity of both, though.

A Colt Is My Passport (Koruto wa ore no pasupooto)
Directed by Takashi Nomura
Written by Hideichi Nagahara and Nobuo Yamada
1967/Japan
Nikkatsu
First viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade. — Percy Bysshe Shelley[/box]

This is one of the better of the many “noir” gangster movies put out by Japan’s Nikkatsu studio in its prime.

Jo “Chipmunk Cheek” Shishido plays Shuji Kamamura, an assassin for hire.  As the film begins, he is assigned to kill a mob boss.  His target is heavily protected.  Then Kamamura’s boss is offered a lot of money to wipe his employee out.

I find these things are a bit samey in the plot but generally of a fairly high standard.  I particularly liked director Nomura’s attention to detail.  But best of all was the jazzy score!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-39pm0Es7w4

Hear Morricone’s influence?

The Sorcerers
Directed by Michael Reeves
Written by Michael Reeves and Tom Baker
1967/UK
Toby Tenser Films/Curtwel Productions/etc.
First viewing/Amazon Instant
They Shoot Zombies Don’t They?

[box] Prof. Marcus Monserrat: From now on, we are going to control your mind.[/box]

Interesting premise plus Boris Karloff made this unsung thriller a very pleasant surprise.

Aged hynostist Marcus Monserrat (Karloff) has invented telepathic mind control which he hopes to use for the good of mankind.  The process also causes the hynotist to feel the sensations felt by his subject.

Monserrat and his dotty old wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey) manage to lure a bored young man into their web.  It is only then that Marcus learns that Estelle has been hiding something dark in the recesses of her mind and that she is a pretty powerful hypnotist herself.

I hadn’t heard of this before finding it on the They Shoot Zombies Don’t They List.  Had no idea what was coming and was delighted to discover this character-driven thriller.  Karloff and Lacey are really superb.  Other features are 1967 Swinging London and some psychedelia.

The Trip (AKA “A Lovely Sort of Death”)
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Jack Nicholson
1967/USA
American International Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Paul Groves: [Holding an orange up to the horizon] That’s the sun in my hands, man! Oh, it gives off an orange cloud of light that just flows right out over the sea! Wow![/box]

The stars of Easy Rider (1969) team up with Roger Corman to bring us a sort of Reefer Madness (1936) updated for the 60’s.  Film director Peter Fonda decides to take LSD under the guidance of Bruce Dern.  The film starts with a stern warning against using the drug then makes it look like a total gas, starting with loads of free love and sexual fantasies.  With Dennis Hopper as a pot dealer and Susan Strasberg as Fonda’s estranged wife.

There is no real plot just oodles of psychedelia and music by The Electric Flag.  Jack Nicholson takes the writing credit.  Corman, Fonda, and Nicholson and Hopper all experimented with acid before making the movie. Dern apparently had no love for the drug culture.  I can’t really recommend this but it does recall a long-gone time for those of us who lived through it.  

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Mars Needs Women
Directed By Larry Buchanan
Written by Larry Buchanan and Enrique Houston Touceda
1967/USA
Azalea Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Dop: Since the Earthmen, especially the Americans, seem to place their faith in luck rather than scientific certainties, I wish you all luck.[/box]

As everybody who has watched 50’s sci-fi knows, both the moon and Mars are lacking in one half of the reproduction equation.  Here, a group of Martian men land on earth looking for beautiful, smart, single women to take home.  Tommy Kirk is their leader.  He just happens to locate a beautiful, smart genetisist.  Another one chooses a stipper, intellect unknown.  Of course, the entire U.S. Government must go into action to shut the operation down.

Is Tommy Kirk’s costume a wet suit and duct tape? Yes, I believe it is!

As usual, schlockmeister Larry Buchanan manages to suck the life out of a fun premise.  Who knew Martians look exactly like humans and speak English?  Light on the old special effects budget, thats for sure.  Gets an extra point for being the first movie I remember to mention DNA.  Gets multiple point deduction for lack of truth in advertising.  Copious use of cheesecake for the teenagers in the audience.  I did laugh a couple of times, actually.

Trailer – version I saw was in color

Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates at the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade)
Directed by Peter Brook
Written by Geoffrey Skelton and Adrian Mitchell from the play by Peter Weiss
1967/UK
Marat Sade Production/Royal Shakespeare Company
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Herald: The revolution came and went, And unrest was replaced by discontent.[/box]

Director and his stellar cast make compelling viewing of this play within a play within a film.

The long version of the title gives a good summary of the basic plot of the play and movie.  It is 1808 and Napoleon reigns. Aristocrats visit an insane asylum.  Its head and celebrity inmate the Marquis de Sade prepare a play for them.  The ostensible purpose is therapeutic. The oppressed general population serves as a kind of Greek chorus.  All hell breaks loose.  With Patrick Magee as de Sade, Ian Richardson as Marat, and Glenda Jackson, in her first credited film role, as assassin Charlotte Corday.

The film is kind of a Brechtian enterprise, complete with songs, that serves as much as a commentary on the revolution that was brewing in the late 60’s as on the fate of the French Revolution.  The performances are outstanding.  It’s a unique little film and hard to find but I recommend it if the premise sounds appealing and you are in the mood for something avant garde.

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Yesterday, I also watched Night Fright (1967), a movie that should be avoided at all costs.

Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin)
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Written by Hachiro Guryu, Takeo Kimura, Chusei Sone, and Atsuye Yomatoya
1967/Japan
Nikkatsu
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] No. 1: This is how Number 1 works: first he exhausts you, and then he kills you.[/box]

Seijun Suzuki did it his way.  And didn’t work again for ten years.

Goro Hanada (chipmunk-cheeked Jo Shishido) is No. 3 hitman in Japan.  We soon find out he has a fetish for the smell of rice cooking.  He and the wife have rough sex throughout the film.  He is hired by a yakuza organization as bodyguard for a client.  The wife begins an affair with the yakuza boss.  The bodyguard operation is successful, but not before the body count approaches the double-digits.  Hitchhiking home, he is picked up by the mysterious beauty Misako.

Misako, a connoisseur of dead butterflies and birds, hires Goro to perform four hits.  She also knows how to boil rice and I don’t have to explain what happens with that.  One of Goro’s hits goes badly wrong.  The rest of the movie is devoted to a cat-and-mouse game with Japan’s No. 1 killer.

Suzuki put every bit of his sense of the absurd and experimental style into this film.  He was promptly fired on the ground that his films “make no sense and no money”.  The studio was right about that and yet Suzuki’s films have lived long after conventional potboilers had completed their brief but profitable runs.

The convoluted plot doesn’t really matter.  This is Suzuki’s chance to do what he loved best – make the most over-the-top scenes of death and sex oddly beautiful.  I can’t exactly recommend this film, but I think it would be worth it to try at least one.  You might like it.