Flickers in Time

The X from Outer Space (Uchu daikaiju Girara)
Directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu
Written by Moriyoshi Ishida, Eibi Motomochi, and Kazui Nihonmatsu
1967/Japan
Shochiku
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] Tagline: What is This Monstrous THING (1967)?[/box]

Some days nothing will do but inane, cheesy, unintentionally hilarious Japanese sci-fi with stupid scientists and a ridiculous monster.

Some time in the near future, Japan’s space agency repeatedly launches missions to Mars despite the fact all mysteriously disappear before arrival.  Of course, they keep at it.  Eventually, our heroes find a way to defeat the mysterious force but not before retrieving a glowing, blinking egg like object that they feel compelled to take home.  On the space flight the object is kept in a vacuum jar but back on earth the scientists just have to remove it from the container.  An interracial love triangle and irritating Japanese comic relief are thrown in for good measure.  The picture below explains exactly what happens next. With Eiji Okada (Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshima Mon Amour) praying he won’t be recognized.

Stupid story?  Check.  Monster who looks like a chicken-lizard hybrid? Check.   Inane dialogue? Check.  Godawful miniature effects?  Check.  In short, a good time was had by me.  Perfection would have been if the monster had appeared before the last ten or 15 minutes.

This was the first film I watched on the Criterion Channel.  I was an early adopter but took my sweet time upgrading to the most current version of Amazon Fire as required by the service.

Montage of clips set to a song of the same name

Up the Down Staircase
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Tad Mosel from the novel by Bel Kaufman
1967/US
Park Place Production
First viewing?/Amazon Instant

[box] [Frequently Over Intercom] Mrs. Finch: Disregard all bells.[/box]

Loved the book.  Not so keen on the movie.

It is Sylvia Barrett’s (Sandy Dennis) first year as a high-school English teacher.  She happens to wind up in an inner city (though mostly white) school with the most baroque bureaucracy outside the U.S. Civil Service.  The kids are initially resistant to her idealism.  A bad boy mistakes her interest in him as a come-on.  A sensitive girl is driven off the deep end by her unrequited crush on a male teacher.  It is not a spoiler to say that Ms. Barrett wins the hearts and minds of her scholars, if not of the school administration. With Eileen Heckart as a fellow teacher and Jean Stapleton as a Ms. Finch, the principal’s secretary.

The least attractive costume in cinema history?

What made the book so good was its frequent inclusion of hilarious memos from the management. This has necessarily been stripped out of much of the movie, leaving the melodrama intact.  But what really got to me was all the speechifying.  By this I mean that Dennis breaks out in ponderous statements on the meaning of life at the drop of a hat and interpretations of literature that made me roll my eyes.  Nobody, but nobody, talks like this.

By far my favorite part of the movie was when Eileen Heckart danced the boogaloo with a student.  And a creditable job she did too!

Interestingly, Sandy Dennis tied for Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival.

The One-Armed Swordsman
Directed by Cheh Chang
Written by Cheh Chang and Kuang Ni
Hong Kong/1967
Shaw Brothers
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Shih Yi-fei: Pei, don’t worry. So what if you cut off his arm? He’s not coming back anyway. We’ll just never bring it up in front of Sifu.[/box]

Japan has its blind swordsman Zatoichi, to whom I have formed some sort of addiction. The logical next step is Hong Kong’s one-armed swordsman.  And a worthy and extremely entertaining step it was!

A servant saves the life of the master of a sword fighting school and loses his own in the process.  In gratitude, the master takes his son Fang Kang (Jimmy Wang Yu) on as a student.  The other students look down on him although he is superior in every way.  The master’s daughter is secretly in love with him.  She challenges him to a duel – which he insists must be hand-to-hand – and she slices off his arm in a fit of anger.

Kang flees the scene and is rescued by a farm girl with a complicated past.  He falls in love with her but she wants him to put down the sword.  He agrees but enemies abound and honor and loyalty keep drawing him back into the fray.

It must have caught me on exactly the right day.  I thought this was a complete gas!  In a movie full of colorful costumes and sets, wildly dramatic music, histrionic acting, and plenty of wire-work assisted sword play, the action never stops.  We also get a love triangle that doesn’t slow the momentum down.  Recommended to fans of this kind of thing.

The version available on Amazon Prime is dubbed into English by some fairly stiff voice actors.  Might have been even better in the original Cantonese.

Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told
Directed by Jack Hill
Written by Jack Hill
1967/USA
Lasky-Monka
First viewing/Amazon Prime
One of 1000 Movies on They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?

[box] Schlocker: This has gone well beyond the boundaries of prudence and good taste.[/box]

Watched this in hopes of a so-bad-its-good movie.  Surprised at how down-right entertaining it was.

Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) works as caretaker for the Merrye Family manse. He has three very weird young people in his charge. We learn in the intro that the children suffer from a hereditary curse that causes them to regress in age until they reach a pre-natal state. Who knew that before birth we were cannibals that identify with venomous spiders! Bruno really has his hands full.

One fine day, the household is visited by an evil aunt, her grasping attorney, and a couple of fairly decent other people. They have no idea what they are in for.  With Mantan Moreland as the first victim.

I would classify this as a very black comedy that also qualifies as horror though I was never scared.  Lon Chaney Jr. finally gets a role he can sink his teeth into and is very good!  The rest of the cast rises up to meet him.  I thought the film was fun and entertaining.

***************************************

I’m going out of town for a week.  See you when I come back.

The Whisperers
Directed by Bryan Forbes
Written by Bryan Forbes from a novel by Robert Nicolson
1967/UK
Seven Pines
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Mrs. Ross: Are you there?[/box]

Great, sensitive performance from Dame Edith Evans in a well-made film.  Bit of a misery sandwich though.

Margaret Ross lives a lonely life in her two-room flat.  Age has left herwith dementia, hallucinations, and delusions of grandeur.  She believes she is being spied on from the flat above. Unfortunately, her paranoia does not save her from the multitude of family and strangers that take advantage of her.  With Eric Portman as Margaret’s estranged husband.

I can’t think of a single thing wrong with this film other than I really did not feel like almost 2 hours of a poor old lady being abused.  I’m glad I watched it though.  Edith Evans has long been a favorite and is simply amazing here.

Edith Evans gives some advice on acting

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Directed by David Swift
Written by David Swift from the Broadway musical by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert and the novel by Shepherd Mead
1967/USA
The Mirisch Corporation
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

J. Pierpont Finch: This is the secret ingredient: it can’t miss, I’m combining greed with sex.

I was looking for a movie that was sure to make me happy yesterday.  This beloved favorite was just the ticket!

Window washer J. Pierpont Finch (Robert Morris) gets ahold of the titular self-help manual.  He picks the World Wide Wicket Company as his target.  He manages to favorably impress CEO J.B. Biggley (Rudy Vallee) and snag a job in the mailroom.

Within two hours he has advanced to the junior executive pool.  As he rises to the top, he has to contend wit ruthless rival Bud Frump, Biggley’s nephew, and flirtation from secretary Rosemary Pilkington (Michelle Lee).  Things get sillier and sillier as one glorious number follows another.

This is basically a filmed stage musical.  That bothers me not at all.  I just love Morse and Vallee, the story, and all the singing and dancing.  Unreservedly recommended to musical lovers.

Clip – “Gotta Stop That Man”/”I Believe in You”

To Sir, with Love
Directed by James Clavell
Written by James Clavell from a novel by John R. Stone
1967/UK
Columbia British Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mark Thackeray: If you apologize because you are afraid, then you’re a child, not a man.[/box]

The surroundings have dated but Sidney Poitier is forever.

Mark Thakeray (Poitier) is an unemployed engineer who finds work teaching in an inner city London high school.  The kids test him mightily until he decides to start teaching life lessons instead of out of textbooks.

The most important lesson Thackeray teaches is respect for self and others.  Eventually he earns their love.  Introducing teen singing sensation Lulu and with The Mindbenders as the high school rock band.

I liked this a lot on original release and it remains an entertaining movie. Without Poitier it would have been so much less.  I tend to like inspirational teacher stories.

Despite hitting number one in the US, the title song was not nominated for an Academy Award.  I have always loved it.

Lulu’s final rendition in the film – some spoilers but nothing you would not have guessed already

Wait Until Dark
Directed by Terence Young
Robert Carrington and Jane Howard-Hammerstein from a play by Frederick Knott
1967/US
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Susy Hendrix: Do I have to be the world champion blind lady?[/box]

This movie has lost none of its gripping terror since original release.  And what a great cast!

A young beauty transports heroin from Europe to New York hidden inside a doll.  Once there, however, she passes the doll to an unsuspecting stranger instead of delivering it to the intended recipients.  She will not be long for this world.

The stranger is Sam Hendrix (Efram Zimbalist Jr.).  He takes it back to the apartment he shares with wife Susy (Audrey Hepburn).  Susy was blinded in a car accident a year ago. Sam cuts her no slack whatsoever, demanding that she be self-reliant to the maximum extent possible.

Good thing too as some very bad guys will be along to acquire the doll post-haste.  The leader of the gang is Roat (Alan Arkin), a psychopath who combines evil, oiliness, and smarts in equal measure.  His henchmen are clean-cut Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and ex-policeman Carlino (Jack Weston.

The men begin by trying to get the doll by gaining Susy’s confidence.  I’m going to say nothing about further plot points except to say that the story moves on to an absolutely terrifying climax.

[box] You don’t get nominated for being mean to Audrey Hepburn – Alan Arkin[/box]

I can’t think of anything more terrifying than a home invasion unless it is experience one while blind.  The screenplay is tight, the acting – especially by Hepburn and Arkin – is great, and the Mancini-penned score adds to the suspense.  Highly recommended.

Audrey Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.