Monthly Archives: March 2017

The Lost World
Directed by Irwin Allen
Written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett from the book by Arthur Conan Doyle
1960/USA
Irwin Allen Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Professor George Edward Challenger: [to the people at the Zoological Institute] Live dinosaurs![/box]

Lizards in dinosaur suits just don’t cut it.

The irascible Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) arrives in London to assault reporters and report to the Zoological Society.  He claims he glimpsed a world evolution passed by high atop a plateau in the Amazon.  Challenger needs money to return and prove his sighting was real.  Thus he collects a party including an adventurer (Michael Rennie), his admirer (Jill St. John) and her younger brother, and even the reporter he hit at the airport.

When he arrives in the Amazon, he collects a helicopter pilot (Fernando Lamas) who is investigating the death of his brother on a previous expedition and an offensively stereotypical greedy and cowardly Hispanic guide.  The party has adventure after adventure with dinosaurs and cannibal natives.  This being Irwin Allen, the whole thing is capped off with a fiery disaster.

Willis O’Brien was hired to do stop-motion animation for this film but budget woes meant none of his work made the screen.  As it is, we have some lizards, flicking their tongues helplessly, standing in for the dinosaurs.  The cast, a mixture of the great and some TV regulars, was burdened with some equally lame dialogue and could not save the movie.  There are some pretty nice shots of Iguazu Falls.

Trailer

The Time Machine
Directed by George Pal
Written by David Duncan from a novel by H.G. Wells
1960/USA
George Pal Productions/Galaxy Films Inc.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

George: What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust. A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams… FOR WHAT? So you can swim and dance and play.

I’ve read the source novel and was looking forward to the movie.  It is nowhere near as thought-provoking but still a fun special effects adventure.

The year is 1900.  A group of men impatiently waits for dinner at an inventor’s (Rod Taylor) home (known in this movie as H.G. Wells).  Their host is not in attendance.  Suddenly he appears, having obviously suffered a great ordeal.  We segue into a slight flashback to the night of December 31, 1899.

During that evening, Wells showed his friends a miniature time machine and sent it on a journey into the future.  They all seem to think it is a magic trick.  He invites them all for dinner on January 5.  After his guests have gone off to celebrate the new century, Wells decides the real thing is ready for prime-time.

Wells begins with tentative forays into the immediate future.  He moves on to investigate the 20th Century.  This is filled with war and destruction.  He goes into fast forward hoping to find a time when humanity is not hell bent on its own annihilation.  He ends up trapped within a mountain and has to wait for it to erode away.

By the time Wells is freed by the mountain it is 802,701 A.D.  He finds himself in a paradise where beautiful young people live off the fat of the land without a care in the world.  He rapidly becomes disillusioned when he discovers that these people, the Eloi,  are ignorant and totally passive.  He rescues one of the women, Weena (Yvette Mimeaux), and she becomes his companion.

Through Weena, Wells learns about the terrible Morlocks who work underground and are raising the Eloi like cattle.

This movie starts off slow and builds interest as the time travel begins. One of my favorite parts was changing fashions via a mannequine in the window opposite Wells’s lab.  Things get even more interesting when we arrive in the land of the Eloi and Morlocks.  These of course speak English among other things, but I can cut the film some slack.  Taylor’s character, however, morphs into a bit of a self-righteous bully and I didn’t like him much. Still this is a quality science fiction movie that is worth seeing for fans.  I can highly recommend the book.

The Time Machine won the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer

Sink the Bismarck!
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Written by Edmund H. North from a book by C.S. Forrester
1960/UK/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Edward R. Murrow: This is London, Ed Murrow reporting. This island, which is no stranger to bad tiding, received news today that HMS Hood largest warship in the British fleet and pride of the British navy, has been sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. From the Hood’s compliment of 1500 men, there were three survivors.[/box]

This WWII sea battle epic could have been so much more compelling than it was.

This true story was changed by inserting the fictional character of Captain Shepard (Kenneth More) in place of the actual line officer in charge of the effort to sink the Bismark. The Bismarck was the pride of Germany’s fleet.  Her builders and officers believed her to be unsinkable.  As the movie begins, she is seen to be preparing to break out into the North Atlantic to wreak havoc on British supply lines.

The story details the long and perilous effort to put the Bismarck out of commission. Between battles, we follow the saga of Captain Shepard, who has become cold and all-business since the death of his wife in the Blitz.  Aide Anne Davis (Dana Wynter) offers him unwanted sympathy.  But the captain is forced to care again when his RAF pilot son in dragged into the battle.

The real drama in this movie comes from the troubles of Captain Shepard whereas the actual naval campaign should have been more than enough excitement for one film. We get a lot of special effects but no real tension.  The film was OK but never really grabbed me.

Trailer

Where the Boys Are
Directed by Henry Levin
Written by George Wells from a novel by Glendon Swarthout
1960/USA
Euterpe
Repeat viewing/Netflix Rental

[box] Narrator:  The boys come to soak up the sun, and a few carloads of beer. The girls come, very simply, because this is where the boys are.[/box]

I like this chauvinistic trip down memory lane more than it probably deserves.

Merritt (Dolores Hart), Melanie (Yvette Mimeaux), Angie (Connie Frances) and Tuggles (Paula Prentiss) are coeds at a Midwestern women’s university.  The snow is falling hard and all of them are looking forward to spring break in Florida.  Merritt gets herself in trouble and possibly expelled for suggesting that the text book for their (womanhood? sex ed?) class is hopelessly out of date.  She declares that she believes that “playing house” before marriage is OK.

On arrival in Florida the girls begin to pair off.  The tall Tuggles is the first to snag herself a man in the form of lanky oddball TV Thompson (Jim Hutton).  Then Merritt is wooed by Ryder Smith (George Hamilton) a handsome and wealthy ivy leaguer.  Angie appears to be a wallflower until she finds her match in weirdo jazz musician Basil (Frank Gorshin).  Poor Melanie, perhaps the prettiest of the group, sadly finds herself passed from one Yale frat boy to another.

Many comic adventures and one tragedy lead us to what we suspected all along.  These girls are holdouts for marriage and are looking to find it on the beach.

I had a teenage crush on Jim Hutton from watching these movies on TV and I always enjoyed them.  Despite being hopelessly politically incorrect in its sexual politics, I still found this one extremely entertaining.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously so it’s hard to be offended.

Paula Prentiss does the commentary for the DVD.  She is as delightful 40 years later as she was in the film.  I may have even developed my crush on Hutton because it seemed like she was always his love interest.  She’s kind of a prettier Eve Arden type.

Ocean’s 11
Directed by Lewis Milestone
Written by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer; story by George Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell
1960/USA
Dorchester/Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Danny Ocean: [Answering the phone] Hello, this is a recording, you’ve dialed the right number, now hang up and don’t do it again.[/box]

A bunch of friends got together to make a movie and it’s not half bad.

Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) is addicted to risk taking, so much so that his marriage to Bea (Angie Dickinson) has broken down.  Ocean’s latest adventure is to execute a plan developed by mastermind Spyros Acebos (Akim Tamiroff who mugs and wrings his hands throughout) to simultaneously rob five casinos on The Strip in Las Vegas.

Danny gathers together WWII buddies that served together in a paratroop unit under his command.  These include: spoiled rich boy Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford); Lounge singer Sam Harmon (Dean Martin); and Josh Howard (Sammy Davis Jr.).

As in the typical heist movie, most of the story is devoted to the planning, execution and aftermath.  These guys are also quick with the one-liners.  With Richard Conte, Henry Silva, and Joey Bishop as others of the eleven; Caesar Romero as their nemisis; and George Raft, Red Skelton, and Shirley MacLaine in cameos.

This is pretty entertaining.  You can tell that the actors had a blast making it.  Lots of the dialogue is improvised.  It doesn’t suffer in comparison to the scripted parts.  My favorite thing about the movie though was seeing the “old Las Vegas” with its lounge shows and mechanical one-armed bandits.  I didn’t start going there until the early seventies but the vibe was nearly the same then.

Davis and Martin sing.  Sinatra does not.  The DVD contained a nostalgic commentary from Frank Sinatra Jr. and Angie Dickenson

Trailer

Elmer Gantry
Directed by Richard Brooks
Written by Richard Brooks from the novel by Sinclair Lewis
1960/USA
Elmer Gantry Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Elmer Gantry: I have here in my pocket – and thank heaven you can’t see them – lewd, dirty, obscene, and I’m ashamed to say this: French postcards. They were sold to me in front of your own innocent high school by a man with a black beard… a foreigner.[/box]

This film’s failure to decide what it wants to be drags it out to an interminable 2 1/2 hours.

The story is set in the Prohibition-era Midwest.  As it begins, Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a hard-drinking extroverted traveling salesmen.  We learn early on that he was expelled from theology school.  While continuing to entertain fellow barflies with dirty jokes, he has not lost his fascination with religion.  He spots the beautiful evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) at a camp meeting and proceeds to follow her.  She repels his advances but the secretly down-to-earth believer comes to like him.

One night, Gantry takes the pulpit at a revival and mesmerizes the crowd.  He becomes a popular mainstay of Sister Sharon’s meetings.  These, so far, have taken place in the hinterlands.  The ambitious Gantry sets his sights on urban Zenith (Lewis’s stand-in for Chicago).  The traveling evangelists may have bitten off more than they can chew.  With Dean Jagger as Sister Sharon’s manager; Arthur Kennedy as an H.L. Menken-style journalist; and Shirley Jones as a former lover and current prostitute.

Clearly I am in the minority but I can’t get behind this movie.  What starts out as a critique of evangelism in general and Elmer Gantry’s type of evangelist in particular, devolves into something much more sympathetic to the character.  All this is evident in the many sudden shifts in the point of view of the journalist.  Then we get the whole love story aspect and end with a special effects conflagration.  I have not read the source novel but cannot imagine that it was so uneven in tone or contained so many climaxes.  I was dizzy from the amount of times I expected “The End” to appear on screen.

I love Burt Lancanster much of the time but when he does this kind of bigger-than-life showman, I just get exhausted.  Jones is excellent playing against type.

Elmer Gantry won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actor; Best Supporting Actress (Jones); and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from another Medium.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer