Category Archives: 1961

The Explosive Generation
Directed by Buzz Kulik
Written by Joseph Landon
1961/USA
Vega Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Mrs. Katie Sommers: What do you mean “prove” your love?

Janet Sommers: Well if you don’t know, maybe you’d better ask DAD![/box]

I was pleasantly surprised in the variety of ideas explored in what looks suspiciously like a straight exploitation flick from the poster.

English teacher Peter Giffort (William Shatner) “gets” teenagers and has been selected to teach the “Senior Problems” course designed to prepare graduating teens for “real life”. The discussion turns to problems seniors are experiencing in their current lives and Janet (Patty MacCormack) suggests that the number one problem is “sex”.  There is kind of a mixed reaction to discussing this but Giffort invites anyone interested to write a paper explaining their problem.

Janet’s own problem stems from an unauthorized and unchaperoned over-nighter spent by her and a girlfriend with their boyfriends at a beach cottage owned by one of the guy’s fathers.

The boys are none to happy that Janet may have spilled their secrets.  But in the meantime, the parents get wind of Giffort’s intentions, misconstrue and magnify the intent, and end up protesting to the principal.  All the principal wants is peace and he even gets Giffort to apologize.  Then the students take matters into their own hands and a youth movement is born.

I expected nothing from this sex ed movie and it actually kept my interest the whole way through.  This little movie sort of shows the birth of the youth culture that would contribute to the burgeoning civil-rights movement and lead to the anti-war movement and hippie culture by the end of the decade.

Montage of clips (spot an early performance from Beau Bridges!)

The Young Savages
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Written by Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller from a novel by Evan Hunter
1961/USA
Contemporary Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, / You gotta understand, / It’s just our bringin’ up-ke / That gets us out of hand./ Our mothers all are junkies, / Our fathers all are drunks./ Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks! – “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story, lyrics by Steven Sondheim

This A-list juvenile delinquent drama can’t quite decide what it wants to be.

A turf was has broken out in East Harlem between the Thunderbirds, an Italian gang, and the Horsemen, a Puerto Rican gang.  As the story begins, three Thunderbirds are seen walking purposefully through town en route to brutally killing a blind Puerto Rican teen who had been sitting on his front stoop playing the harmonica with other family members.

DA Dan Cole thinks the aggressive prosecution and conviction of the boys for first degree murder will be a valuable campaign asset.  Assistant DA Hank Bell is enthusiastic about taking the case but must disclose that he had a teenage romance with the Mary, the mother of one of the boys (Shelley Winters).  Bell’s wife (Dina Merrill) sees something sordid in making the case political and in seeking the death penalty for offenders so young.

Mary is certain that her boy could not have participated in the killing and Bell goes out to personally investigate the crime, along with the circumstances of the accused and the victims.  None of it makes a pretty picture.  An eventful trial ensues.

This film ticks all the boxes for an early sixties social drama with its focus on political corruption and misunderstood youth.  I thought the message was muddied, however.  The movie never really decides how it feels about these boys.  The acting is solid, if not spectacular.

Promo

Nikki, Wild Dog of the North
Directed by Jack Couffer and Don Haldane
Written by Ralph Wright and Winston Hibler from a novel by James Oliver Curwood
1961/USA/Canada
Walt Disney Productions/Cangary/Westminster Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” ― Will Rogers[/box]

Disney gives its nature documentaries a plot and we get a pleasant family film about a Malamute dog and his friend who just happens to be a bear cub.

Nikki is still almost a puppy when his owner, a trapper, takes him with him for work in the far North Canadian wilderness.  While there, they encounter mother bear and her cub.  Mother is killed protecting her baby from a wolf and the cub becomes one of the family.  Nikki and the cub don’t get along at all and for some reason the trapper solves that problem by tying them together and putting them in his canoe.  The animals become separated from the human and we watch their friendship and adventures in the wild.  Toward the end the cub goes to hibernate and Nikki is left on his own in the harsh winter where not all humans turn out to be humane.

This is quite watchable.  The dog actor is very talented!

Clip

The Deadly Companions
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Albert Sidney Fleischman from his novel
1961/USA
Pathe America/Carousel Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Yellowleg: You don’t know me well enough to hate me that much. Hating is a subject I know a little something about. You got to be careful it don’t bite you back. I know somebody who spent five years looking for a man he hated. Hating and wanting revenge was all that kept him alive. He spent all those years tracking that other man down, and when he caught up with him, it was the worst day of his life. He’d get his revenge all right, but then he’d lose the one thing he had to live for.[/box]

Sam Peckinpah’s big-screen debut is surprisingly tame.

Ex-Uniion soldier Yellowleg (Brian Keith) is on a mission to take revenge on the rebel who tried to scalp him.  In the meantime, he teams up with Southern eccentric Turkey (Chill Wills) and lustful bad guy Billy (Steve Cochran) to rob a bank.  But Yellowlegs is basically a good guy and when he sees bandits attempting to rob a store, he shoots.  Unfortunately, he hits the son of “fallen woman” Kit Tilden (Maureen O’Hara).

The rest of the film follows the stormy relationship between Yellowleg and Kit as the the entire band escorts her through Apache territory to the grave of her husband to bury the boy.  With Struther Martin as a preacher.

This movie was obviously made on a shoestring budget.  The acting is strong but the dialogue is not and I found it completely predictable.  This is of historical interest for those interested in seeingd a Peckinpah film before the old ultra-violence set in.

Clip

Love Old and New (Shamisen to ootobai)
Directed by Masahiro Shinoda
Written by Takao Yanai; story by Matsutaro Kawaguchi
1961/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box]  “We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. … That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind….

My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents’ side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.” ― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose[/box]

Shinoda does a good job with an Ozu-light sort of domestic drama.

The story concerns a widowed mother who plays the samisen and instructs men in the traditional art of kouta singing and her 20-year-old daughter who favors reckless motorcycle riding with her boyfriend.  The younger couple crash their bike and the daughter is badly injured.  The doctor who cares for her turns out to be the mother’s old flame.  The older couple rekindle a relationship and the daughter is shocked and appalled at her mother’s conduct.  But the generations are really not so different after all …

This reminded me of a story Ozu would make.  It really highlights the way the Master would strip the theme down to the essentials.  This was a bit more melodramatic and it is a tribute to Shinoda that he handled the script so well.  Worth seeing.

Hercules in the Haunted World (Ercole al centro della Terra)
Directed by Mario Bava and Franco Prosperi
Written by Mario Bava, Franco Prosperi, Sandro Continenza, and Duccio Tessari
1961/Italy
SpA Cinematografica
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] King Lico: Oh god of evil, the great dragon has swallowed the moon. And now my destiny shall be fulfilled. The blood of Deianira shall be my blood. Eternal shall be my reign in thy name. Eternal shall be the sorrow of Hercules. And eternal shall be the night for the woman he loves.[/box]

The principal reason to watch this hoary “peplum” semi-thriller is for Mario Bava’s eye candy.

Hercules (Reg Park) and his horny friend Thesus journey to their home in Icalia for a reunion with Hercules’ fiancee Daianara.  When they get there they find that the evil king Lico (Christopher Lee) is now in charge and Daianara has lost her memory.

At Lico’s suggestion, Hercules consults Medea who tells him the only way to save his beloved is to retrieve the stone of forgetfulness from Hades.  First, the pair must fetch a golden apple from the Kingdom of the Night so that they can survive their journey to the underworld.

Many supernatural adventures ensue.

Bava’s use of color is effective and he manages to create creepy effects on what appeared to be a very low budget. Otherwise, the film is just about what you would expect from the title. I watched a dubbed version of the film.  Christopher Lee certainly didn’t sound like himself!  I’ve seen some pretty bad prints around but the DVD I rented looked great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njdVh8jhaI0

U.S. Trailer

Screen great Gary Cooper died at the age of 60 of cancer. George C. Scott  became the first actor to decline an Oscar nomination, for his performance in The Hustler. Nevertheless, his name remained on the ballot, though he lost to George Chakiris. TWA exhibited the first in-flight feature film on a regularly-scheduled commercial airline. It was John Sturges’ By Love Possessed.

Director William Wyler’s controversial The Children’s Hour with its muted theme of alleged lesbian homosexuality, was released and given a seal of approval by the Production Code – now amended to allow homosexuality as a screen subject. Joseph Losey’s Victim was the first important British film with a non-judgmental homosexual theme and the first English-language film to use the word “homosexual.”  As it pushed the boundaries of permissiveness, it was denied a ‘seal of approval’ from the MPAA for its US release in 1962.

A search commenced for the first James Bond actor.  Cary Grant, James Mason, Patrick McGoohan, and David Niven, were considered for the role, ultimately given to 30 year-old Sean Connery.

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20.  He established the Peace Corps in March.  The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba was launched by Cuban exiles and the CIA and failed in April.  Alan Shephard became the first American in space on May 5 and Kennedy announced his goal to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade May 25. He sent 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam in November.

U.S. Freedom Riders began interstate bus rides to test the new U.S. Supreme Court integration decision.  The rides sparked angry protests and violence across the South and riders were arrested on disembarking their bus in Mississippi for “disturbing the peace”.

Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Tad Mosel won for drama for his play All the Way Home.  “Tossin’ and Turnin'” by Bobby Lewis was Billboard’s #1 Hit Single of the year, spending seven weeks atop the charts. John F. Kennedy was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12.

In July, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a widely watched TV speech on the Berlin crisis, warning “we will not be driven out of Berlin.” Kennedy urged Americans to build fallout shelters, setting off a four-month debate on civil defense.  Construction of the Berlin Wall began In August.

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Here is the list of films released in 1961 that I will select from.  I have previously reviewed on this blog.

Montage of stills from the Oscar winners

Montage of stills from the nominees for the major Oscars (special treat – listen to Roy Orbison singing “Crying”)

Bobby Lewis sings the #1 Hit (several years later – DYN-O-MITE!)