Monthly Archives: April 2018

Viva Las Vegas
Directed by George Sidney
Written by Sally Benson
!964/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing?/Netflix rental

[box] Count Elmo Mancini: You work on my car, I’ll work on your girl.[/box]

If you are looking for your first Elvis movie this would be a good place to start.  Has Elvis being Elvis but WOW that Ann-Margret!

Lucky Jackson (Elvis Presley) makes his living gambling at the casinos in Las Vegas.  His real passion is car racing.  He needs a new engine to participate in the Las Vegas Grand Prix.  He meets up with Count Elmo Mancini who wants him to help him with his own car and act as a “blocker” in the race but Lucky refuses.  While at Elmo’s shop, fate meets both men up with the tasty Rusty Martin.  After looking for her in all the girlie shows in Vegas (allowing us to see excerpts from several casinos), they find her working as the pool supervisor at the Flamingo.

It is obvious from day one that Rusty and Lucky were made for each other.  Of course, before they can be properly united we get many misunderstandings and complications, along with some fabulous singing and dancing.  With William Demerest as Rusty’s father.

This has a fairly standard Elvis white-bread plot but Ann-Margret gives it sexual tension in spades.  The songs are pretty good and Ann-Margret’s dancing is electric.  My favorite part however were all those views of Las Vegas from the good old day before the billionaires took over.

Bedtime Story
Directed by Ralph Levy
Written by Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning
1964/USA
Pennebaker Productions/The Lankershim Company/Universal Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Freddy Benson: Oh, dad, I see you’ve got a lot to learn about women. Let me tell you somethin’. The more you lie to them, the more you take ’em, the rougher you treat ’em, the better they like ya.[/box]

Despite the promising cast, this sex comedy fell flat for me.

Lawrence Jameson (David Niven) has spent years perfecting his persona.  He poses as the prince of a country that is on the brink of destruction.  Wealthy widows immediately drop their diamonds in his lap at this approach.  Freddy Benson (Marlon Brando) poses as a GI who seemingly has a grandmother from every country in Europe in need of an operation.  Beautiful young women cough up the dough every time.

Lawrence and Freddy meet up on a train to the French Riviera.  They immediately begin competing for King of the Mountain.   Both men soon set their sights on beautiful, sweet Shirley Jones.  By this time Freddy is posing as a psychosomatic paralytic who needs a psychiatric cure,  Lawrence is usually one step ahead of him.

Marlon Brando could do light roles but this one is just not for him.  The plot calls for him to lose all dignity on several occasions and he is not funny.  Add to that the fact that none of the wormen in the film has a brain in her head.  I kept waiting for Shirley Jones to outwit these guys but it was not to be.  A disappointment.

The story was remade as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) with Steve Martin and Michael Caine.

Re-release trailer

Two Thousand Maniacs!
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Written by Herschell Gordon Lewis
1964/USA
Jacqueline Kay/Friedman-Lewis Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] [Upon finding the plaque that explains the town was attacked by Union Soldiers during the Civil War] Terry Adams: What does it mean?

Tom White: It means this centennial is a centennial of blood vengeance! It means… It means we’re here to be killed! [/box]

This is schlock-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis’s favorite of his films.  That perhaps is not a recommendation to be relied on but it is a lot of fun if you are in the right mood.

The plot gimmick was borrowed from Brigadoon in which a town reappears once every hundred years.  In this case, the Southern town of Pleasant Valley has reappeared to celebrate the centennial of the end of the Civil War.  The event does not include happy memories for the town, which was destroyed and its population massacred by Union soldiers.  So festivities are planned in which Yankees will be lured to the town to participate in the celebrations as “honored guests”.

The “guests” consist of three young good-looking couples.  One by one they are featured in events which will end in their deaths.  You may be sure that the imaginative townspeople will come up with something as terrifying and gory as possible.

If you like a good exploitation flick once in awhile you could surely do worse than this one. The gore is so fake that it is less disgusting than it might otherwise be.

The DVD includes a commentary by Lewis, producer David F. Friedman, and a film scholar.  The participants have fond memories of making the film and its fun to listen to them reminisce.

The Glass Cage
Directed by Antonio Santean
Written by John Hoyt and Antonio Santean
1964/USA
Futuramic
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] The only safe thing is to take a chance. – Mike Nichols[/box]

On a shoestring budget, Antonio Santean crammed the only film he ever directed with every experimental device he could think of.  The resulting psychological thriller/murder mystery is interesting if not great.

Ellen Sawyer is a prime suspect for the murder of a prowler in her apartment building.  It is hard to believe such a delicate, sensitive, troubled girl could do such a thing.  The prowler had been called into the police by Ellen’s sister Ruth.  Detectives have a hard time tracking down the elusive Ruth.  In the meantime, one of the cops starts to fall for Ellen who is having a hard time fighting off the advances of one of her neighbors.  With Elisha Cook Jr. as the girls’ evangelist father.

The film’s low-budget origins are betrayed in the post-synched dialogue and no-name acting.  However, the director used his artistic freedom with a lavish hand and there are many surreal sequences and unusual camera angles to enjoy.  The mystery itself is easily solved by the observant early on.

No video from the film so here’s a candidate for unofficial theme song.

Black Like Me
Directed by Carl Lerner
Written by Carl and Gerda Lerner from a book by John Howard Griffin
1964/USA
The Hilltop Company
First viewing/YouTube

[box] “Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man’s face. I felt like saying: “What in God’s name are you doing to yourself?” ― John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me[/box]

This is the true story of a white reporter who chemically changed the color of his skin so he could experience life for Black people in the deep South. Unfortunately, James Whitmore is an excellent actor but he would not have a prayer of convincing the smallest child that he was really African-American. Kind of ruined the film for me.

Texan reporter John Howard Griffin underwent a series of injections and “sun treatments” that temporarily darkened his skin.  The idea was that he would pass for black in the deep South.  He traveled throughout the South and experienced and experienced an incredible amount of ingnorance, bigotry and hatred.

I’m still on the fence about this one.  Whitmore and the director made no effort to disguise the character’s essential intellectual whiteness. I tend to think that was the right decision but it made me question the credibility of the whole story..

Lady in a Cage
Directed by Walter Grauman
Written by Luther Davis
1964/USA
AEC/Luther Davis Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Randall: [to George] We’re gonna kill you, pop. All of you. You… and the pig. And the human being.[/box]

Home invasion movies didn’t start with Funny Games. Here poor Olivia De Havilland is at the mercy of the scum of the earth.

Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard (De Havilland) is an independently wealthy poetess who lives with her grown son.  The son has left for the Fourth of July weekend.  Hilyard is recovering from a broken hip and uses a private elevator to move from the second to the ground floor.  An electrical outage traps her in the elevator.  In the days before cell phones, her only recourse is a feeble emergency alarm.

For some reason the mansion appears to be located on or near skid row.  The sound of the alarm only penetrates the feeble consciousness of a street preacher wino (Jeff Corey) who proceeds to break in and grab several bottles from the wine cellar and steal a toaster. When he goes to pawn the toaster a trio of crazed juvenile delinquents overhear his tale and decide to help themselves to some of the loot.  All the teenagers are psycho.  Their leader, Randall (James Caan) appears to be a homicidal psychopath.

The wino invites his “hustler” friend Sade (Ann Sothern) for a look at the wonders of the house.  The rest of the movie covers the many ways the intruders terrorize Mrs. Hilyard and each other.

This is a fun entry in the movies trying to capitalize on the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1963) during the early 60’s.  The filmmakers really pulled out all the stops in the luridness department and the cast overacts with great gusto.  De Haviland maintains her dignity at all times.  Recommended if this kind of thing appeals.

The Train
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Written by Franklin Coehn and Frank Davis from a novel by Rose Valland1964/France/Italy/USA
Les Films Ariane/Les Productions Artistes Associes/Dear Film Produzione
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Didont: Paul, uh, have you ever seen any of those paintings on that train? I haven’t. You know, when it’s over, I think maybe we should take a look, hmm?[/box]

An action-packed winner for when you are in the mood for suspense and plenty of explosions.

During the German occupation of Paris, Impressionist and modernist French masterpieces have been well-cared for under the watchful eye of Col. Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) despite the fact that many of them are considered to be “degenerate art” by the Nazis.  It is now days from the projected Allied liberation and von Waldheim prepares the paintings for shipment to Germany.  He is as interested in their monetary value as in their preservation.

Von Waldheim orders a special train dedicated to the effort although the German fighting forces can ill afford to spare one.  Members of the the French Resistance are ordered to prevent the train from reaching Germany while at the same time protecting the paintings. The man in charge, Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), is not convinced that the cargo warrants its cost in human lives.

We follow the train’s progress during many nerve-wracking encounters.  With Jeanne Moreau as an innkeeper who reluctantly shelters Labiche and Michel Simon as a crusty old locomotive engineer.

The film is dialogue-free during long sequences giving the viewer the opportunity to focus on the awesome work with real trains and Burt Lancaster’s stuntwork.  It also poses interesting questions about the value of artwork vis-a-vis the many lives lost in protecting it.  Recommended.

The Train was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuyme-U9-es