Failla on Film

I was look­ing through my elec­tron­ic cor­res­pond­ence with my friend Joseph Failla (see below) and wanted to share some of it here. The first entry is a response to a request; I asked him, after the death of hor­ror maven Forrest J. Ackerman, to con­trib­ute some­thing for this blo­g’s own trib­ute to the man. The last piece of cor­res­pond­ence is fol­low­ing the death of Christopher Lee, and is, like all the oth­er bits of writ­ing, self-explanatory. 

December 7, 2008

G,

There’s nev­er been any ques­tion that fantasy and hor­ror films were the birth of my movie obses­sions. But Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was the light­ning rod that brought it all home for me in a way that was attract­ive (col­or­ful cov­er art­work), inform­at­ive (how great to dis­cov­er who Lon Chaney Sr. was!) and addict­ive (every issue packed with plenty of b&w pho­tos, both from the films and behind the scenes). It was def­in­itely aimed at kids but that was its geni­us and last­ing gift. I’m still amazed I knew who Todd Browning was before I learned about Orson Welles. For a kid to long to see the lost silent LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, at a time when all he had access to was after­noon tele­vi­sion is pretty unheard of. 

I saw my first still from a Fritz Lang film in the pages of FM, it was a shot of the dragon from SIEGFRIED and it looked as real­ist­ic as I could ima­gine, I imme­di­ately tried to fig­ure out how they made it work. And I can­’t tell you how I felt see­ing the sur­viv­ing rem­nants of KING KONG’s spider pit sequence, or the only recog­niz­able pics of James Arness in full THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD regalia, let alone all those Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen ori­gin­al art sketches before I under­stood the anim­a­tion pro­cess. I vividly remem­ber the concept draw­ings for an unmade O’Brien pro­ject KING KONG VS. PROMETHEUS, which I still regret nev­er saw the light of day in the form presented. 

One of my favor­ite art­icles was a piece on the 50 worst hor­ror movies ever made called “Dante’s Inferno”, writ­ten by a teen­age Joe Dante. This is where I first read about PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, I don’t remem­ber it’s rank­ing but he said Tor Johnson rising from the grave was the best thing about it. Not a bad job of report­ing, because when I caught up with PLAN 9 so many years later, this bit of early film cri­ti­cism ran through my mind dur­ing that very scene. 

Although I nev­er made it to LA to tour the famed Ackermansion, I did get to meet the great man him­self at a loc­al col­lect­or’s con­ven­tion. As this would be my one oppor­tun­ity to explain how import­ant his magazine and devo­tion to fant­ast­ic films had been to me, I felt a little inhib­ited. Once we began talk­ing how­ever, I could tell any appre­hen­sion I had was­n’t neces­sary, he was gra­cious and every bit the old friend FM lead me to believe. At the time, I was con­trib­ut­ing to a mys­tery and nos­tal­gia film magazine which FJA was also asso­ci­ated with. I poin­ted out how proud I was that both our names appeared reg­u­larly under the same let­ter­head. It cer­tainly was some­thing I nev­er thought pos­sible while I was read­ing FM dur­ing those days when we first learned about the films, stars and legends that would occupy so much of our time and influ­ence us through­out our lives. 

For a good look at FJA’s leg­acy, I recom­mend Criterion’s EQUINOX spe­cial edi­tion DVD, a low budget spe­cial effects won­der, with a video intro­duc­tion by Forry. THE SCI-FI BOYS, an affec­tion­ate reflec­tion on clas­sic sci-fi with much input from FJA, Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Roger Corman, John Landis, Rick Baker, Dennis Muren, Peter Jackson and oth­ers. RAY HARRYHAUSEN: THE EARLY YEARS COLLECTION shows exclus­ive foot­age of FJA with friends Harryhausen and Bradbury remin­is­cing fondly over their lives spent pur­su­ing their dreams through a com­mon love of all things sci-fi and fantastic.

Joe

April 6, 2009

G,

I’m actu­ally glad to hear ADVENTURELAND is not your usu­al com­ing of age com­edy and offers quite a bit more. John Hughes by way of Truffaut? Not an easy match but I’ll take a look. I’m writ­ing you about this because the ADVENTURELAND trail­er I saw looked like any­thing else except what you describe in your review. It appeared to be just one more in an end­less line of goofy teen com­ed­ies which I long ago out­grew (or was I ever into goofy teen com­ed­ies?). Even the theat­er goers sit­ting near me seemed to be put off by remark­ing how glad they’ll be to skip this one.

But that was a mis­take I made with DAZED AND CONFUSED when the trail­er I saw per­fectly sold it as an unfunny stoner com­edy. I did­n’t catch up with DAZED until years later and real­ized how misled I could be. Sure, as a teen this was not my group of friends and I did­n’t grow up in Texas, but in a way I felt I knew many of the char­ac­ters depic­ted in that film regard­less. As a res­ult, DAZED is now a favor­ite trip back in time for me and I still regret not catch­ing it when I first could. I just find it fas­cin­at­ing that a trail­er can some­times work in reverse and hide the spe­cial film it is by tak­ing the hard sell approach. 

Btw, speak­ing of com­ed­ies, I watched RACHEL GETTING MARRIED this week­end and while some of it was very funny, the per­form­ances were nat­ur­al and the atmo­sphere invit­ing, I found Demme’s insist­ence to man­u­fac­ture an “inde­pend­ent” film to be very dis­tract­ing. Hasn’t that fly on the wall approach become tir­ing to any­one else but me at this point? I would have much pre­ferred a less “obser­v­ant” point of view than the one chosen as tra­di­tion­al tech­niques would have ten­ded to call less atten­tion to them­selves. Still the film has its moments but I wish it were more of the return to Demme’s roots in the ’70s and ’80s that I heard it was. Why doesn’t someone just release HANDLE WITH CARE so I can com­plete my early Demme collection? 

Joe

February 4, 2010

G.
Friedkin’s TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. was almost com­pletely ignored at the time of its release, but as you’ll remem­ber, I could­n’t stop talk­ing about it and saw it sev­er­al times the­at­ric­ally. What most people hated, was not it’s cold blooded-ness per se (there nev­er has been any short­age of tough cop flicks), but the com­bin­a­tion of excess­ive bru­tal­ity and cyn­icism was simply too unap­pet­iz­ing for mass audi­ences to embrace.

Advertised as a big screen MIAMI VICE action pic, L.A. man­ages to shake that false impres­sion fairly quickly. Not long after the film begins, any­one expect­ing trendy tele­vi­sion fare, will find them­selves extremely shaken. If any­thing the psychot­ic coun­ter­feit­er (Dafoe) has more scruples than the clearly unbal­anced agent (Petersen) on his tail. But it’s the unex­pec­ted twist the story takes at the end that really sep­ar­ates L.A. from any­thing found on tele­vi­sion or at the cineplex. Most folks I encountered felt con­fused, even cheated, but hav­ing seen CRUISING a few years pri­or, I was well pre­pared for L.A.‘s trans­fer of per­son­al­ity finale.

Although com­ing smack in the middle of the ’80s, L.A. seems to sim­ul­tan­eously harken back to the gritty ’70s cop film Friedkin helped define years before (“The dir­ect­or of THE FRENCH CONNECTION is on the streets again!” was its tag line), while proph­et­ic­ally intro­du­cing us to the notion of Middle East sui­cide bombers, even before the film offi­cially begins.

Is it true Scorsese was so cap­tiv­ated by Dafoe’s per­form­ance por­tray­ing pure evil, that he felt com­pelled to cast him as a com­plic­ated Christ in LAST TEMPTATION?

Quick, what is the con­nec­tion between TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. and TOUCH OF EVIL? Why it’s Val De Vargas of course, the creepy judge who Petersen threatens, is the same act­or who plays Pancho, the Mexican street hood in leath­er jack­et, who men­aces Janet Leigh in EVIL. I did­n’t real­ize it for years, but I always knew there was some­thing eer­ily famil­i­ar about the judge’s voice. Maybe because it’s post synched, it stood out all the more.

The most amaz­ing thing about the film on disc, is the extra offered as the deleted end­ing. It’s pretty incred­ible that such a thing was con­ceived, let alone actu­ally shot. It’s a great glimpse into what com­prom­ises some­times have to be taken to sat­is­fy every­one who has a say. You can plainly see how it’s inclu­sion would have voided everything that came before.

Joe

June 29, 2010

G,

I don’t know if this helps or hurts your stand on Reed but did you ever see FLAP (1970), his next to last film? Most folks prob­ably nev­er heard of it (and I’ve only watched it once many years ago), but this unfunny, totally unen­joy­able tra­gi­com­edy about the plight of mod­ern day, Native Americans was Reed’s curi­ous follow-up to his Oscar win­ning OLIVER! 

Although FLAP did receive a good review in the NY Times, say­ing star Anthony Quinn was once again giv­en a role worthy of his tal­ents, all I can recall is Quinn spend­ing most of the film rant­ing in a drunk­en stupor (see some of the pics). Much of his antics are played for laughs, but the finale (in true ’70s fash­ion) was as depress­ing as they come.

Whatever your feel­ings for OLIVER!, it’s still quite an achieve­ment turn­ing the des­pair­ing, Dickensian mater­i­al into such a lively music­al without embar­rass­ing itself. The Bill Sykes caper and chase in the second half is remin­is­cent of Reed’s hunted man thrillers and is at least as excit­ing. So how does this explain the drear­i­ness of FLAP? I don’t know the cir­cum­stances that lead Reed to want to make it but hav­ing just won an Oscar (over Kubrick for 2001), he cer­tainly would have his choice of pro­jects and must have found some­thing com­pel­ling here. 

Joe

January 26, 2011

G,
I’m actu­ally glad to hear you enjoyed THE MECHANIC remake because the ori­gin­al was just the type of viol­ent action pic that I used to enjoy Sat after­noons dur­ing the early days of our ’70s movie going edu­ca­tion. I got a big kick out of the Bronson/Winner ver­sion pre­cisely because it was so amor­al and straight for­ward in present­ing its hero as a cul­tured cold blooded type who took his unusu­al line of work extremely ser­i­ously. The film’s first murder I remem­ber as being par­tic­u­larly ingeni­ous and “executed” in a very prag­mat­ic style. The pay­off to which (a fiery inferno sparked by the killer­’s well aimed, high power rifle shot) was a ter­rif­ic con­clu­sion to one of Winner’s few truly sus­pense­ful sequences.

But in order for this kind of thing to really work, it’s all in the cast­ing and I won­der how Statham with his non­stop energy will com­pare to Bronson’s steely, silent, unbreak­able men­ace. A good part of the film’s appeal for me came from see­ing the nor­mally unvar­nished Bronson, strut­ting about in expens­ive bath­robes, tailored suits and lux­ury liv­ing quar­ters. I seem to remem­ber Bronson also being a well-read pro­fes­sion­al that stood in dir­ect com­par­is­on with the many blue col­lar tough guys he was usu­ally cast as. Now say what you want about Winner’s blunt dir­ect­ori­al approach to the mater­i­al, but there was some­thing about the way ’72 MECHANIC slowly lum­bers from one mur­der­ous set piece to the next that coin­cided with Bronson’s own brand of min­im­al­ist emot­ing which works com­pletely in its favor.

I’m also assum­ing (or should­n’t I?) that the ori­gin­al’s potent twist end­ing will be con­veni­ently avoided in order to provide a pos­sible fol­low up if neces­sary? It was the first film’s final chilling clos­ing moments that per­fectly punc­tu­ated all the uncon­scion­able may­hem that pro­ceeded it, and in a sense made the char­ac­ter­’s leth­al cun­ning­ness, easi­er to accept in its abrupt sense of justice.

Let’s see if they have the nerve to remake THE STONE KILLER next? Just kidding.

Joe

January 3, 2012

G,

It took a while but when I caught up with DON’T MAKE WAVES, I was­n’t dis­ap­poin­ted in the least. While I have a lik­ing for some of the sil­li­er beach movies, WAVES as dir­ec­ted by Mackendrick seemed to have more on its mind, basic­ally skew­er­ing many American val­ues of excess. This would make a good double fea­ture with the incred­ibly acid­ic THE LOVED ONE, also helmed by an English dir­ect­or tak­ing an even angri­er aim at the same sub­ject (in fact both films fea­ture a sequence with valu­able beach front prop­erty pre­cari­ously tee­ter­ing on the edge of destruction). 

I real­ize to call DON’T MAKE WAVES, the LA DOLCE VITA of beach films is a stretch, although these pics from both movies are inter­est­ing to look at side by side. I may not have picked up on the white suits, but I find Tony Curtis makes for a decent Marcello Mastroianni, American style (just think of press agent, Sidney Falco in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS as a more smarmy coun­ter­part to Mastroianni’s fam­ous paparazzi, Marcello Rubini from VITA). While the inclu­sion of Claudia Cardinale reminds me of the pres­ence of a European’s eye view of the sweet life in ’60s south­ern California. You may not feel both films should be men­tioned in the same con­ver­sa­tion but is there not a sim­il­ar glint in Curtis’ eye for Cardinale that Mastroianni has for Ekberg?

Btw, could WAVES have been where Curtis first met up with Roman Polanski thru co-star Sharon Tate and later be cast for a voice cameo in ROSEMARY’S BABY?

Joe

March 1, 2012

G,

By now I’m sure you know of the passing of Davy Jones but were you also aware Lina Romay suc­cumbed last week to can­cer at the far too young age of 57? A very odd week of celebrity passings indeed, hav­ing read about Erland Josephson on your blog last Sunday, I looked at CRIES AND WHISPERS to do a little reflect­ing. But who knew I’d have to do the same this week­end with HEAD for Jones and FEMALE VAMPIRE for Romay? 

In fact the untimely passing of Davy Jones comes when I was get­ting acquain­ted with the Monkees tele­vi­sion show all over again. What sur­prised me about revis­it­ing the series was not how con­sist­ently funny the first sea­son is but how drastic­ally exper­i­ment­al (which ulti­mately doomed the show) the second sea­son really was. Probably due to the boys insist­ing on more input them­selves, the second sea­son epis­odes are altern­ately dar­ing, free form and even a bit irrit­at­ing at times. But they are an eye­ful and cer­tainly point the way to HEAD, which seemed to have found the per­fect mix­ture of Monkee humor while com­ment­ing on the times and their own pre­pack­aged image. I don’t know how well the show has aged with you but I can­’t recall you dis­agree­ing with me it was any­thing but fun in the day. 

Joe

August 22, 2012

G,

For a bet­ter idea of how Tashlin might have tackled SEVEN YEAR ITCH, why not take anoth­er look at SUSAN SLEPT HERE? Made a year before ITCH, SUSAN also incor­por­ates the idea of an older man (Dick Powell) shar­ing his apart­ment with (in this case) a sexy teen (Debbie Reynolds), caus­ing him end­less frus­tra­tion and turn­ing his life upside down dur­ing her overnight stay. Although he’s not mar­ried, he does have a sul­try Anne Francis as his inter­fer­ing girl­friend, adding even more pres­sure to his plight, rather than a non-present wife away on sum­mer vaca­tion as in Wilder’s movie. 

I’m not unhappy with the way Wilder handled ITCH, although it may be a film that’s bet­ter remembered than how it actu­ally plays and the cen­sors would have come down hard on any­one try­ing to make a film ver­sion of the ori­gin­al show. What I do like about it is how it clearly details what was really on most folk’s minds regard­ing sex in the oppress­ive 50’s. Everything seems to sim­mer in the sum­mer heat, from the fans in motion, to the under­wear placed in open ice boxes, until it spills over with Marilyn’s more than sug­gest­ive bubble bath scene and the ever fam­ous shot of her white dress bil­low­ing over the sub­way grating. 

Incidentally, I did man­age to see Walter Matthau’s screen test for ITCH years ago on a tele­vi­sion pro­gram pro­mot­ing the film. As I remem­ber, he was much more lively than Ewell, not sad or down­hearted at all, if any­thing, he’s overly giddy and self-satisfied. Running up and down a stair­case while man­aging a fair bal­an­cing act with a tray of items he’s bring­ing to the girl wait­ing for him upstairs. He also worked that crick in his neck bit quite a lot, nev­er miss­ing a chance to bring atten­tion to it. That said, this is one of those rare instances where Matthau can actu­ally appear youth­ful in com­par­is­on to Ewell’s droopy, wan­nabe rebel. 

September 30, 2012

G,

This might amuse you, upon read­ing of Herbert Lom’s passing the oth­er day, I imme­di­ately had this flash­back to the two of us at the Oritani theat­er in Hackensack 1972. While wait­ing for a double fea­ture of TALES FROM THE CRYPT and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD to begin, the trail­er for the next week’s attrac­tion, MARK OF THE DEVIL turned up. As I recall it was a fairly no holds barred advert­ise­ment (this was widely pub­li­cized as rated V for Violence) com­plete with uncensored shots of sad­ism and blood­let­ting which the theat­er man­age­ment appar­ently had no prob­lem run­ning for an after­noon audi­ence of kids. Amid the may­hem of tor­ture by rack, brand­ing, stabbing, a behead­ing and burn­ings, a famil­i­ar face appeared on screen, that of Herbert Lom in full Witchfinder General mode. 

At which point I exclaimed to you, “That’s the guy!” 

You respon­ded, “What guy?”

Me: “The guy from the Pink Panther!”

You: “That’s not Peter Sellers!”

Me: “Not THAT guy! The OTHER Pink Panther guy!”

Talk about “Who’s On First?”

Seriously, as pop­u­lar as his Inspector Dreyfus was, my favor­ite Lom char­ac­ter was Kristo the London rack­et­eer in NIGHT AND THE CITY, who ruth­lessly ran the wrest­ling pro­mo­tions that Richard Widmark’s small timer Harry Fabian tried to muscle in on. Lom is thor­oughly sin­is­ter here (even more so than usu­al), you just know Widmark will suf­fer dearly for his ambi­tions. When Lom says after the death of his fath­er whom Harry was inad­vert­ently respons­ible for, “Bring me Fabian!” he can still raise the same har­row­ing chill with­in me (des­pite so many view­ings) till this day. 

I also remem­ber him fondly as the psy­chi­at­rist who tries to help Ann Todd in THE SEVENTH VEIL, the most dan­ger­ous mem­ber of THE LADYKILLERS, the pir­ate who betrays SPARTACUS,  the vil­lain­ous Moor from EL CID, Captain Nemo in MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, a very sym­path­et­ic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the Clouseau ‑hat­ing Dreyfus (from A SHOT IN THE DARK in par­tic­u­lar), a Van Helsing for Jess Franco in his ver­sion of COUNT DRACULA, a clev­er and suave Russian spy in HOPSCOTCH, the kindly doc­tor who tells Christopher Walken how he’d deal with Hitler in THE DEAD ZONE and even a buf­foon­ish German officer in the ‘80’s KING SOLOMON’S MINES remake. But can either of us ever for­get the deadly, tiny mech­an­ic­al dolls made in his like­ness for ASYLUM?

By chance TCM was run­ning one of Lom’s earli­est films, THE DARK TOWER last week when I heard that unmis­tak­able voice of his. As I turned my atten­tion to the movie, there he was look­ing as young as I’ve ever seen him, he was thin, trim and quite dap­per but already a com­mand­ing pres­ence at the start of a very long career. 

Joe

Joe’s com­pan­ion at the Tales from the Crypt/House That Dripped Blood double fea­ture at Hackensack’s Oritani Theater in 1972. 

April 3, 2014

G,

With all the dis­trac­tions you have with assign­ments and dead­lines, you may have missed that today is the 45^th anniversary of the open­ing of the road­show engage­ment of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at the now long gone Capitol Theatre in New York City. Beginning on April 3^rd, 1968 (although the film had its world première the even­ing before in Washington D.C.) 2001 ran for a total of 24 weeks in Cinerama with reserved seat­ing arrangements. 

It may interest you to know the theatre was loc­ated at 1645 Broadway, which should sound famil­i­ar, as it’s been replaced by the Paramount Plaza, the loc­al home of Première Magazine (not to men­tion the offices of Jerry Langford in THE KING OF COMEDY). 

I’ve included a few pho­tos which should help us appre­ci­ate what the exper­i­ence might have been like see­ing 2001 in that won­der­ful set­ting. Note in the news­pa­per clip­ping, while 2001 was enjoy­ing its run at the Capitol, BELLE DE JOUR could have been seen at the Little Carnegie theatre just sev­er­al blocks away. 

Joe

July 22, 2014

G,

Back in its day, this James Garner west­ern double fea­ture laser­disc provided me a lot of wel­come enter­tain­ment, both DUEL AT DIABLO and HOUR OF THE GUN are sol­id, adult themed genre examples that deserve to be bet­ter known than they are. However neither show­case the usu­ally gen­i­al Garner we’re most famil­i­ar with, but a much more somber and angry fel­low which broadens my appre­ci­ation for the act­or who too infre­quently got these kinds of oppor­tun­it­ies. Make no mis­take, we’re not in SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF ter­rit­ory here, as dir­ec­ted by Ralph Nelson and John Sturges respect­ively, these films intro­duce us to a Garner more in line with James Stewart’s con­flic­ted, com­plic­ated, Anthony Mann heroes. 

In DUEL AT DIABLO (1966), Garner is out to avenge the murder of his wife by track­ing those respons­ible and signs on to escort cav­alry sol­diers through hos­tile Indian ter­rit­ory in his quest. The action is viol­ent and real­ist­ic, Dennis Weaver is par­tic­u­larly intol­er­ant and twitchy, while Garner con­vinces as a man caught in the grip of ven­geance. In that sense this does pre­fig­ure Nelson’s much more bru­tal SOLDIER BLUE, which was still sev­er­al years off, but was not as suc­cess­ful as he is here them­at­ic­ally. DIABLO is also a pro­gress­ive film for its time in present­ing a very dap­per Sidney Poitier (com­plete with design­er vest) nav­ig­at­ing a racially charged west­ern land­scape, and casts Bibi Anderson as a woman held cap­tive by Apaches, now an object of scorn by loc­al towns­folk and her own hus­band (who­ever thought we’d see Bibi oppos­ite Garner in a west­ern no less?). 

Revenge is taken to obsess­ive lengths in HOUR OF THE GUN (1967), with Garner as a dog­gedly determ­ined Wyatt Earp hunt­ing down the sur­viv­ing Clantons in the after­math of the O.K Corral gun­fight. HOUR serves as more of an update than a sequel to Sturges own GUNFIGHT AT O.K. CORRAL from a dec­ade earli­er as atti­tudes dur­ing the ’60s towards viol­ence and retri­bu­tion in films reached new heights. Along with Jason Robards as a very cyn­ic­al Doc Holiday, he and Garner make for the screen’s most under­rated pair­ing of the two west­ern legends, Garner dis­tinctly impresses with a cruel edge not fully explored before. He brings to justice those he feels have wronged him by sys­tem­at­ic­ally elim­in­at­ing them in a series of show­downs staged with such cold blooded bit­ter­ness, he chances ali­en­at­ing him­self from the audi­ence. So much so, I can some­what under­stand the plight the ornery Clantons find them­selves in, I mean did you ever think you’d sym­path­ize with a vil­lain­ous Robert Ryan? 

Building on these, Garner made a num­ber of films which con­tin­ued to present him in a light far less appeal­ing than you’d sus­pect, MARLOWE (1969) a late ’60s telling of the Philip Marlowe story “The Little Sister” with Garner, an oddly, folksy choice as the fam­ous private eye. It’s not totally on tar­get, but the L.A. depic­ted is bright, sunny, swel­ter­ing and seedy, it’s a set­ting Garner nav­ig­ates with an unex­pec­ted nat­ur­al­ism (the bit with Bruce Lee is a gem) and the finale is a tense one. SKIN GAME (1971) is a west­ern com­edy of sorts in which Garner sells a slave (Lou Gossett) to vari­ous own­ers only to con them and meet up again after­wards to split the money. This set up imme­di­ately recalls the dubi­ous bond between Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. It begins humor­ously enough as we know Garner and Gossett are work­ing togeth­er but before long, things turn much more ser­i­ous. Why this film was­n’t dis­cussed in the wake of DJANGO UNCHAINED still sur­prises me. In THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS (1972), Garner is the police chief of a small cost­al California town try­ing to solve a recent murder with the main sus­pect being a dan­ger­ous Doberman pinsch­er. At the time this was an excep­tion­ally well-reviewed film which has seemed to drop off most every­one’s radar but it plays today as a decent mys­tery, low key thrill­er and char­ac­ter piece with Garner acquit­ting him­self nicely in a mod­er­ately irrit­at­ing role that makes him less likable than those he’s investigating. 

The flip side of all this for me was 2000’s SPACE COWBOYS, a film I con­tin­ue to enjoy des­pite its more far­fetched and silly moments, mainly because it teamed Garner with Eastwood and the res­ults could­n’t have been more pleas­ing. The scene where they meet after years apart and Eastwood dis­cov­ers Garner has become a preach­er is a delight as we notice Clint sup­press his sur­prise and smile in response, giv­ing the sense of the two old friends they really were. In a way this was my own reac­tion to see­ing Garner in a the­at­ric­al film after far too long, my only regret is they had­n’t cost­arred before in a more tra­di­tion­al cow­boy film (their MAVERICK epis­ode not with­stand­ing). But it was a thought­ful remind­er of just how much I admired Garner and was grate­ful for the chance to have him on screen once again. 

June 13. 2015

G,

Believe it or not, it was my moth­er who first intro­duced me to the world of Christopher Lee when she bought me the Famous Films issue #2, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN / HORROR OF DRACULA magazine, which fea­tured both Hammer clas­sics in pictori­al form. Except for the cov­er art, all the pics used were in black and white, it did how­ever get across the unique tone of the films, already hav­ing a back­ground in Karloff and Lugosi, I knew (so to speak), I was­n’t in Kansas any­more. It thrilled me to read a film in com­ic book form, in a sense becom­ing my first keep­sake of an actu­al movie, if only my mom could ima­gine the door she was open­ing for me! 

But more to the point, she brought me into the orbit of Christopher Lee who would have such a pres­ence out­side the con­fines of hor­ror and fantasy so that when the time came for me to widen my view to oth­er genres, Lee was still there in full force. Although, I was nev­er quite able to sep­ar­ate him from the humble Hammer pro­duc­tions where I first learned of him, he remained a recog­niz­able, cha­ris­mat­ic and endur­ing con­nec­tion to my own youth as my movie appre­ci­ation and under­stand­ing con­tin­ued to grow.

To explain the longev­ity of my rela­tion­ship with Lee and his films, the first time I saw Lee onscreen in a theatre was in DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS in 1964. The first time I saw HORROR OF DRACULA, it was on Super 8 black and white film, pro­jec­ted on a sheet in a friend’s gar­age, even though it was only snip­pets of the film’s high­lights, it was extremely excit­ing to exper­i­ence in any form regard­less. It would be anoth­er 30 years before I could see a 35mm print with slightly faded col­or, pro­jec­ted prop­erly in a legit­im­ate theater.

While HORROR OF DRACULA can­not be beat for shocks, taut­ness and the team­ing of Lee with Peter Cushing, I may actu­ally prefer DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE as my favor­ite Lee Dracula film since it’s the most reli­gious of the series, mak­ing the struggle between good and evil even more profound.

Lee was the best of all pos­sible Fu Manchus in some of the oddest films made about the character. 

He was a great Bond vil­lain in one of the weak­est Bond films, said Lee about play­ing a Bond vil­lain, his only regret was “you can only do it once”. 

A favor­ite Lee per­form­ance was in a rare turn as the hero bat­tling sin and deprav­ity in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, mak­ing it a won­der­ful flip side double fea­ture with HORROR HOTEL, with Lee as his own dev­il wor­ship­ping “oppos­ite number”.

His expert swords­man­ship was on full dis­play in Lester’s THREE and FOUR MUSKETEERS. It was here he seemed to inher­it the same fate of Basil Rathbone, who also could slice up any of his fel­low per­formers but was not allowed to win any of his screen sword scuffles as we could not ask for a more effect­ive villain.

One of the great strengths of Jackson’s Rings Trilogy of films is the cast­ing, even down to the smal­lest of roles. But no act­or was made bet­ter use of in this series than Lee him­self. He was a most believ­able prac­ti­tion­er of the black arts, hav­ing demon­strated an affin­ity for such mis­chief in a host of pri­or films set­ting the found­a­tion for an evil film per­sona in stone.

Perhaps now his involve­ment in the STAR WARS pre­quels will garner a little more respect for the much dis­liked recent series of chapters. I for one could­n’t have been hap­pi­er to see Lee join the ranks of STAR WARS in any capa­city but his Count Dooku, while recall­ing his goth­ic vil­lainy, com­plete with cape and castle bring more of a sense of sym­metry and com­ing full circle with the ori­gin­al tri­logy than any oth­er ele­ment I could ima­gine. Although belated, Lee would now join his former screen part­ner Peter Cushing once again as a par­ti­cip­at­ing co-star, at least in spirit. 

So yes, this one really hurts.

Joe