Vampyr (1932)

 

VAMPYR  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Carl Theodor Dreyer

    Julian West, Maurice Schultz, Rena Mandel,

    Sybille Schmitz, Jan Hieronimko, Henriette Gerard

A man checks into an isolated inn, where the first thing he sees out the window is a figure with a scythe getting into s boat, like Death about to cross the River Styx. An omen? Well, yes, and it's only the beginning. A one-of-a-kind vampire movie, eerie and dreamlike, shot as a silent and dubbed into various languages. Most of the actors were amateurs. Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg, who plays the lead role under the pseudonym "Julian West," appears to be sleepwalking. (He never made another film.) The vampire is not the elegant, caped figure played elsewhere by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. And what happens to the vampire's chief disciple, a doctor, is truly horrifying. Based on a couple of stories by Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, but the creative sensibility behind it was definitely the director's. This was Dreyer's followup to "The Passion of Joan of Arc", and he was hoping for a hit. (Lugosi's "Dracula" had come out the previous year.) But the picture lost money, and Dreyer's reputation for being demanding and difficult made him unemployable. He went back to journalism for a while, and didn't make another movie for ten years. 

TRICK OR TREAT

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)

 

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL  

    D: Rob Garver                                                 (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢

These are the words I wrote down to describe Pauline Kael while I was watching this documentary about her on TCM: cruel, caustic, controversial, full of herself, a snob. Kael was also, without a doubt, the most influential film critic in America in the last decades of the 20th century. (Her review of "Bonnie and Clyde" in the New Yorker in 1967 helped turn a flop into a landmark.) She comes across like a brilliant little kid who demands attention and evolves into a grownup who knows how to get it. She doesn't mind it when her reviews are admired, but she loves it when they're despised. She picks fights, antagonizes other critics (like Andrew Sarris), and always seems happiest when she's pissing people off. The movie is mostly Kael in her own words, and along with a passion for film, she always had plenty to say. Others who turn up to talk about her include Paul Schrader, John Boorman, Robert Towne, Camille Paglia and Quentin Tarantino. David Lean, Woody Allen, Jerry Lewis and Peter Bogdanovich appear in archive footage. 

For Love of the Movies (2009)

 

FOR LOVE OF THE MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gerald Peary

A documentary on the first century of film criticism, from the early silent era to the digital age. Witnesses include some of the best reviewers around, and (like a good movie review) what they have to say is both accessible and informative. For anybody with an interest in the subject - and who doesn't like movies? - these people are worth listening to. Kenneth Turan, Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell and Michael Wilmington are among those who appear. 

Listomania / Take 12

 

Some women whose movie careers 

have lasted more than 50 years:

                                     Charlotte Rampling
                                     Geraldine Chaplin
                                     Vanessa Redgrave
                                     Sophia Loren
                                     Helen Mirren
                                     Jane Fonda
                                     Claudia Cardinale
                                     Faye Dunaway
                                     Eva Marie Saint

                                     Catherine Deneuve

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

 

BRINGING UP BABY  (1938)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Howard Hawks

    Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charlie Ruggles,

    Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson,

    Fritz Feld, George Irving, Virginia Walker

The screwiest screwball comedy ever. A golf ball, a leopard and a dinosaur bone. The dizzy self-assurance of Katharine Hepburn and the flustered perfection of Cary Grant.

The Song Remains the Same (1976)

 

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME  (1976)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Peter Clifton, Joe Massot

Led Zeppelin takes the stage at Madison Square Garden, and art and pretension get all mixed up. A music doc that combines concert footage with fantasy sequences featuring the members of the band. A must for Led Zeppelin fans. More iffy for everybody else. At 2 hours and 16 minutes, it's a whole lotta Led Zeppelin. Highlights: three teenaged boys who can't believe their luck when a security guard lets them into the hall for free, and Jimmy Page playing an electric guitar with a bow.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES  

    D: Terence Fisher               (1959)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Peter Cushing, André Morrell, Christopher Lee,

    Maria Landi, David Oxley, Francis De Wolff

Sherlock Holmes investigates a murder out on the moors in one of the Hammer Studio's best movies. Peter Cushing makes a great Sherlock.

Clue (1985)

CLUE  (1985)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jonathan Lynn 

    Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Lesley Anne Warren,

    Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Martin Mull,

    Michael McKean, Colleen Camp, Lee Ving,

    Bill Henderson, Jane Wiedlin, Kellye Nakahara

Six characters in an old dark house in search of a murderer, who could be one of them. The year is 1954 - a television in the background is tuned to the Army-McCarthy hearings - and everybody in the room works in some capacity for the government. They're also all being blackmailed. The clues keep piling up, along with the bodies, and the butler seems to know more than anybody. Did he do it? A frantically paced, farcical whodunit, and an energized workout for its keyed-up cast. The odds of making sense of all the evidence are low, but for a movie based on a board game, this is pretty good. Just pile the corpses on the couch in the study.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

 

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE  (1943)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jacques Tourneur

    Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison,

    Edith Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon,

    Teresa Harris, Sir Lancelot, Darby Jones

Val Lewton's deal to make horror movies at RKO in the 1940s had two key provisions: No movie could cost more than $150,000 to make, and the studio provided the title. Beyond that, the creative process belonged to Lewton and his moviemaking team. Lewton's first movie under the agreement was "Cat People" in 1942. The second was this, a shadowy melodrama about a Canadian nurse who goes to Haiti to care for a woman who appears to have joined the living dead. Voodoo's involved, and a pair of brothers who were rivals for the affection of the zombified girl. The plot's lifted partly from "Jame Eyre", and the subtext is slavery and the suggestion that Africans should never have been brought to this island, and white people shouldn't be there now. It's an eerie, atmospheric 69 minutes, an inventive return on an investment of $150,000.

Mississippi (1935)

MISSISSIPPI  (1935)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: A. Edward Sutherland

    Bing Crosby, W.C. Fields, Joan Bennett,

    Queenie Smith, Gail Patrick, Claude Gillingwater

The Great W.C. pilots a showboat down South, past plantations where happy darkies sing "Swanee River" and Bing croons along with them. Fields and Crosby divide the screen time about equally, and while the results are all right, it's not the best thing either of them ever did. The racial stereotyping might be a product of its time, but the time is long gone. At least there's nobody in blackface.

The Whole Town's Talking (1935)

THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING  (1935)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ford

    Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur, Arthur Hohl,

    Wallace Ford, Etienne Girardot, Donald Meek

An amusing but predictable comedy starring Edward G. Robinson in a dual role as a timid advertising clerk and a vicious gangster who looks just like him. Nicely played by Arthur and Robinson. 

Two Rode Together (1961)

 

TWO RODE TOGETHER  (1961)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ford

    James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones,

    Linda Cristal, Andy Devine, John McIntire,

    Willis Boucher, Henry Brandon, Olive Carey,

    John Qualen, Ken Curtis, Harry Carey Jr.,

    Jeanette Nolan, Woody Strode, Mae Marsh

In a story that has some distinct parallels to "The Searchers", Marshall Jimmy Stewart and Army Captain Richard Widmark ride out into Comanche territory to try to secure the release of some white captives living with the Indians. They find what they're looking for, but the captives, who were kidnapped years before as children, don't want to go back, or they've gone insane. Ford wasn't happy working on the picture - he called it "a piece of crap" - and it has a misanthropic edge. When Widmark identifies one of the captives in the Comanche camp, damaged beyond recovery, he refuses to take her back, and then notifies her distraught family that he didn't see her. Stewart's character shifts from crusty but sympathetic to a total bastard and back again in a way that doesn't quite make sense. When vigilantes seize one of the returned captives, determined to hang him, they do. Nobody's there to prevent the lynching. And the racism exhibited by both the settlers and the soldiers is ugly. (It'a interesting to note how many of Ford's later movies - "The Searchers", "Sergeant Rutledge", "Cheyenne Autumn" and this - are obsessed with race.) At the same time, the movie coasts along, especially at the beginning, on the easy chemistry between Widmark and Stewart. (The scene with the two of them talking on the riverbank, much of it improvised, is famous.) Which makes the whole thing kind of uneven. And a movie no Ford fan should miss.

Mogambo (1953)

 

MOGAMBO  (1953)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ford

    Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly,

    Donald Sinden, Philip Stainton, Eric Pohlman,

    Laurence Naismith, Denis O'Dea

A visibly aging Clark Gable plays a safari guide who finds himself juggling two hot young women (a wild one played by Ava Gardner and a prim one played by Grace Kelly) in a remake of 1932's "Red Dust", which also starred Clark Gable. The earlier version had Jean Harlow famously taking a pre-Code bath, and while this one has Ava Gardner taking a jungle shower, the results are a lot less steamy. The stars and the African locations enhance a predictable script, and the gorilla footage is a definite plus.

Mars Needs Women (1967)

 

MARS NEEDS WOMEN  (1967)  ¢ ¢

    D: Larry Buchanan

    Tommy Kirk, Yvonne Craig, Byron Lord,

    Roger Ready, Neil Fletcher, George Edgley,

    Pat Delany, Sherry Roberts, "Bubbles" Cash

. . . and they've come all the way to Earth to find them. Tommy Kirk plays one of the Martians. He used to be a Mouseketeer. Yvonne Craig plays one of the women. She used to be Batgirl. It seems that females like her are in short supply on Mars (who knew?), and that's why (spoiler alert!) Mars Needs Women.

[Bonus feature: Some viewers would argue that's not much of a review, and they'd be right.To help make up for that, here's a special bonus "Mars Needs Women" trivia question. Besides Yvonne Craig, the other women in the movie include an actress called "Bubbles" Cash. Which character do you think "Bubbles" plays in the film? 

                                 a) the flight attendant

                                 b) the scientist

                                 c) the stripper

                                 d) the homecoming queen

The answer is probably the one you'd expect. It's a widely recognized fact that in the whole history of low-budget movies about rocket ships and men from Mars, no actress named "Bubbles" has ever played a scientist.]

Tommy Kirk

(1941-2021)