Flickers in Time

Damn the Defiant! (AKA “HMS Defiant”)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Written by Nigel Kneale and Edmund H. North from a novel by Frank Tilsely
1962/UK
Columbia Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Captain Crawford: [Crawford smacks his desk, jumps up and approaches Scott-Padget] I will say this to you only once, sir: I will not be bullied or threatened and I intend to be obeyed! Your friends in London mean nothing to me! I assure you that while you serve aboard this ship, they will mean absolutely nothing to you! You can go now.[/box]

With Billy Budd and Mutiny on the Bounty, Damn the Defiant completes a trifecta of 1962 films about brutality aboard British warships during the Napoleonic Wars.  It’s a worthy entree to the genre.

Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is a veteran seaman with great pride in his ship.  Times being what they were the only way to fill the crew is to simply press gang (kidnap) likely men.  Crawford sees this as a necessary evil.  Second in command Lieut. Scott-Padget (Dirk Bogarde) gets sadistic pleasure from the exercise.  One voluntary member of the crew is Crawford’s son who is getting his sea legs as a midshipman.

Scott-Padget rules the men with an iron hand and plenty of lashings.  When the Captain insists on disregarding Scott-Padget’s advice in favor of his orders, the younger man takes it out on the twelve-year-old boy.  Scott-Padget has friends in high places in London (is he the illegitimate son of an Admiral?) but this cuts no ice with Crawford.

Scott-Padget’s main aim seems to be to avoid engagement with the enemy.  Nonetheless, the Defiant prevails in two different sea battles.  Below deck, the ill-used crew is planning mutiny.

I thought this was a nice entertaining adventure.  It’s hard to go wrong with Guinness and Bogarde.  Bogarde plays his part as a suave young gentleman with a heart of stone.

Varan the Unbelievable
Directed by Jerry A. Baerwitz (Ishiro Honda uncredited)
Written by Sid Harris
1962/USA/Japan
Cory Film Corporation/Dallas Productions Inc./Toho Company (uncredited)
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] The scariest monsters are the ones that live within our souls.  — Edgar Allen Poe[/box]

Obake didn’t want his name used in this terrible movie so he’s called Varan in the poster art.

Studly, masterful Cmdr. James Bradley lives a perpetual honeymoon with his submissive Japanese wife Anna on a remote Japanese island where he conducts desalinization experiments. He appears to command the Japanese military on the island, possibly in all Japan.  The experiments involve dumping chemicals in the local sacred lake, which the natives believe to be occupied by a monster named Obake.  Bradley’s plans involve evacuating the villagers but Anna pleads for them so he merely quarantines the lake. We can all see where this is going.

Every ham-fisted step Bradley takes to deal with his ensuing problems makes matters worse until he outsmarts both the military and Obake to save the day.

For now, this one holds the title as worst kaiju movie I have ever seen.  It is perhaps unfair as the Americanization seems to have removed about 75% of the Japanese original and replaced it with utter inanity.  Watch at your own risk.

Panic in Year Zero!
Directed by Ray Milland
Jay Simms and John Morton from stories by Ward Moore
1962/USA
Roger Corman Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Dr. Powell Strong: Now, you stay on the back roads. And you keep your gun handy. Our country is still full of thieving, murdering patriots.[/box]

This movie says more about the Alpha-male’s obsession with his gun than it does about nuclear apocalypse.

Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) is a man’s man and the unquestioned head of his household. This is made up of wife Ann (Jean Hagen and teenagers Rick (Frankie Avalon) and Karen.  The story begins with Harry barking out orders as the family readies itself for an early morning departure to Harry’s favorite fishing spot in their camper.  The family is well out of town when it spots a mushroom cloud in the distance.  Ann convinces Harry to turn back out of concern for her mother but before long Harry has formulated his master plan.  It is basically every man for himself until the return of civilization.

Harry was carrying hunting rifles with him for the vacation and swiftly picks up handguns and ammo.  He descends on an out-of-the way town which has not heard the news and buys a huge stockpile of food and provisions.  When his money runs out, he simply appropriates the necessaries at gun point.  Rick soon follows in the footsteps of dear old dad

Ann pleads to deaf ears for some return to humanity.  Finally, the family sets up housekeeping in a cave near the fishing spot.  All encounters with other survivors are met with hostility.  Finally, an appropriate object for violence presents itself in the form of some JD punks who have their eye on daughter Karen.

If I had had a father or husband like Ray Milland’s character, my only prayer would be for immediate disintegration by the bomb.  The type was, of course, more common in 1962 and perhaps this is a kind of critique of survivalist gun nuts.  On the other hand, the little family does survive.  Any way, it is a well-made movie and worth seeing if you are interested in the topic or genre.

Trailer

The Day of the Triffids
Directed by Steve Stekeley
Bernard Gordon from a novel by John Wyndam
1963/UK
Allied Artists Pictures/Security Pictures Ltd.
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] And I really got hot/ When I saw Janette Scott/ Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills – “Science Fiction Double Feature”, lyrics by Richard O’Brien[/box]

Well, I can hardly think of anything cooler than a story about a small band of survivors that tries to battle carnivorous plants in a world gone blind.

As the story begins, the world is being treated to the most spectacular meteor showers in recorded history.  All eyes are glued on the heavens.  All, that is, except for a few lucky people.  Naval officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel) was recovering from eye surgery and blind folded.  When he wakes the next morning he cannot rouse the doctor or anyone else from the clinic.  He unwraps his own bandages and discovers a London that seems entirely populated by blind people.  Eventually he meets up with a little girl who spent the night of the meteor shower stowed away in a freight car.  The two go on to meet up with huge, and mobile, carnivorous plants that seem determined to wipe out humanity.  As they try to find help outside the city, they eventually come across a few other survivors nursing a number of blind people in a mansion.

On a separate track, marine biologists Tom (Kieron Moore) and Karen (Janette Scott) Goodwin conduct research in an isolated light house.  Tom is evidently trying to drink himself to death and has no inclination to see the light show.  Karen stands by her man, wringing her hands.  But the Triffids have found even their little island and Tom finally has to put on his big boy pants and get to work.

It’s got a certain amount of cheese and the bi-furcated solution to the problem doesn’t bear much scrutiny.  No matter, I loved this thing.  Just the idea of all these newly blind people bumping into each other while being pursued by plants caught my fancy.

The Day of the Triffids was the last movie referenced in the song “Science Fiction Double Feature” that I had left to watch.  If you would like to pursue this quest you will end up seeing:   (1951); (1936); The Invisible Man (1933); King Kong (1933); (1953); Doctor X (1932); (1956); (1955); Day of the Triffids (1963); (1957) and (1951).  Anyone interested in seeing some really classic sci-fi could do far worse than this list.

Trailer

“Science Fiction Double Feature” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Intruder (AKA “I Hate Your Guts”, “The Stranger”, and “Shame”)
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Charles Beaumont from his novel
1962/USA
Roger Corman Productions
Repeat viewing/YouTube

[box] Adam Cramer: No matter how much you hate me, blame me, and want to shoot me – it wasn’t all my fault![/box]

Roger Corman and William Shatner went way outside their comfort zones to make this little exploitation flick the best work of either.

The “white” public schools in a small Southern town are about to be integrated under then-current Supreme Court decisions.  There is no love lost between blacks and whites in the town but the whites basically accept the action because, after all, it is the law.  This creates a gap that “social reformer” Adam Cramer (Shatner) is aching to exploit.

In his shining white suit, Cramer preaches conservative values and race hate and manages to stir up violent opposition on the first day of school.  He soon finds out a mob is a dangerous thing and can turn on a dime.

The first time I saw this I was amazed at how powerful it was.  It held up very well to a second viewing.  Shatner plays one of the most repellent rats in movie history and is excellent at it.  If you have a strong aversion to use of the “n” word and racial slurs, even though necessary to the plot, this might not be for you.  Otherwise, I recommend it.

Trailer

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Having survived a bout with pneumonia, I will be catching up on the B science fiction films I watched on my tablet in the hospital over the next couple of days before starting again on the regular rotation.

Tears on the Lion’s Mane (AKA “A Flame at the Pier”) (Namida o shishi no tategami ni)
Directed by Masuhiro Shinoda
Written by Ichiro Mizunuma, Masuhiro Shinoda, Shuji Terayama
1962/Japan
Shochiku Company
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards. Lech Walesa [/box]

For me, there seems to be a real cultural disconnect that prevents me from understanding Shinoda’s films.  Here is another very dark, sex-fueled expose of corruption in the Japanese shipping industry.

Super-cool some-time rock singer Saburo Murakami is the right hand man to a man living off graft on the docks.  His main occupation is as a strike breaker. The boss man has convinced Saburo that he saved him from fire-bombing as a toddler and thus owes him his life.  Between beating up people, Saburo just happens to fall in love with the cute daughter of one of the union organizers.

Of course, the organizer has to be Saburo’s next target. Heartbreak ensues.

I can’t quite put my finger on it but there was a vibe in 60’s Japan that just does not compute with me.  A lot of what the people do in these films is clearly meant to be “cool” but simply baffles me.  I keep watching them but wish they were more like the older generation of film makers I love so much.

Sweet Bird of Youth
Directed by Richard Brooks
Written by Richard Brooks from a play by Tennessee Williams
1962/USA
Roxbury Productions Inc.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Alexandra Del Lago: No. No, I must look hideous in it.

Chance Wayne: Oh, no, honey. You just look exotic. Yeah. Like a princess from Mars or a… big magnified insect.[/box]

I’ve loved many movies based on Tennessee Williams plays.  Unfortunately, his crazy lady plot had run out of steam long before 1962.

Chance Wayne (Paul Newman) drifts back into his home town with washed-up movie star Alexandra del Lago (Geraldine Page) in tow.  She is deeply into the sauce and assorted controlled substances and when she comes to she has little memory of how she got there. Chance’s plan is to blackmail Alexandra into giving him a boost toward his own dream of movie stardom.

Alexandra may be a drunk but she is nobody’s fool and things backfire badly on Chance. In the meantime, Chance’s reappearance gives “Boss” Finley, the most powerful man in town, a chance to get vengeance on the drifter for trifling with his daughter (Shirley Knight).

One of the things that throws the film off from the get go is that Page is supposed to be an aging movie star and Paul Newman a much younger man.  Trouble is that Page was only a year older than Newman and they looked like a perfect match sexually.  More fundamentally, we’ve seen this story too many times before.  Billy Wilder did it much better in Sunset Blvd.  I think I had seen bits of pieces of this on TV before.  I always lost interest before seeing the whole thing.  Now that I have, I can see why.

Ed Begley won the Oscar for Best Actor in a supporting role.  Geraldine Page was nominated for Best Actress and Shirley Night for Best Supporting Actress.

Trailer

Billy Rose’s Jumbo
Directed by Charles Walters
Written by Sidney Shelton; book by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
1962/USA
Euterpe/Arwin Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix

[box] My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain/ Or a dance to a constantly surprising refrain/ All at once I can make my most fantastic dreams come true/ My romance, doesn’t need a thing but you – lyrics by Lorenz Hart[/box]

It seems it is a challenge to make a good circus movie.  This one does not break the genre’s losing streak.

Chronic gambler “Pop” Wonder (Jimmy Durante) owns a circus whose star attraction is the elephant Jumbo.  His show-rider daughter Kitty (Doris Day) has to deal with the many bill collectors hounding the production.

One day Sam Rawlins (Stephen Boyd) shows up looking for work.  It turns out he is a talented aerialist and Sam and Kitty quickly fall in love.  Can the relationship work after Sam’s connection to a rival circus owner is revealed?  With Martha Rae as Pop’s long-suffering fiancee.

One of the problems with circus movies is the need to show circus acts while at the same time including some kind of plot.  This one also adds in a bunch of Rogers and Hart ballads to get through.  All the elements are just OK and do not make a satisfying or coherent whole.  Still, this is another movie I saw as a child.  We had the soundtrack album on frequent rotation at our house.  So it retains a little bit of magic for me.

Jumbo was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment.

Trailer

The Inheritance (Karami-ai)
Directed by Misaki Kobayashi
Written by Koichi Inagaki from a novel by Norio Nanjo
1962/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Kikuo Furukawa: I’ve got a favor to ask. It’s embarrassing. But a coffin is waiting for me, so I can say this plainly. I don’t have any legally recognized children. But I do have children. To top it off, I’ve got three of them. Some may be dead. But there’s no way all three are dead. So I want you to find my children. I don’t mean to legally acknowledge them and their heirship right away. Some may have grown up to be scoundrels. But if any of them are suitable, I’d like to add them as heirs.[/box]

This lacks the gravitas of Kobayashi’s other 1962 film,  , but the imagery is equally beautiful.

Immensely wealthy Kikuo Furukawa is terminally ill and is trying to get his affairs in order before he dies.  He decides to leave a third of his estate to his wife and the remainder to his three illegitimate children who have remained unacknowledged until now.  If the children are not located he intends to leave their share to charity.

The story follows the search for the children.  It is half-hearted at best as those close to the dying man want that money for themselves.  With Tetsuya Nakadai as one of the money seekers.

I think Kobayashi is at his best when he has a grand theme to work with and I enjoy his period pieces the most (Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion). All the characters in this are unlikeable and there is a certain sameness to the proceedings.  No one could fail to appreciate the exquisite compositions however.

Clip (credit sequence)