Robert Aldrich promised no-holds barred rough-tough dramas, and his first two Associates & Aldrich productions certainly hit hard. This play adaptation shows its director’s strength (no-flinching full shock impact) and weakness (theatrical overplaying) in full measure, but the unrestrained performances of Jack Palance and Eddie Albert are unforgettable. The main event can’t have pleased the Pentagon: shooting one’s own officer in combat. Plus, Lee Marvin and Richard Jaeckel get in early innings for their future work in Aldrichs’s The Dirty Dozen.
Attack
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date December 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, William Smithers, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Jon Shepodd, Peter van Eyck, Jimmy Goodwin, Steven Geray, Strother Martin.
Cinematography: Joseph Biroc
Film Editor: Michael Luciano
Original Music: Frank Devol
Written by James Poe from the play Fragile Fox by Norman Brooks...
Attack
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date December 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, William Smithers, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Jon Shepodd, Peter van Eyck, Jimmy Goodwin, Steven Geray, Strother Martin.
Cinematography: Joseph Biroc
Film Editor: Michael Luciano
Original Music: Frank Devol
Written by James Poe from the play Fragile Fox by Norman Brooks...
- 12/15/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“Grand Hotel. Nazis come. Nazis go. Nothing ever happens.” That’s a paraphrase from 1932’s Grand Hotel, indicating that the hallowed halls once occupied by Greta Garbo are now overrun with Warner Bros. contract players. As defeat looms, German officers, crooks, fugitives and ordinary citizens fumble for a way to survive. Writer and fervent anti-fascist Alvah Bessie almost didn’t — he would later be politically scourged as a member of The Hollywood Ten. Get set for a soap opera with swastikas.
Hotel Berlin
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf.
Cinematography: Carl Guthrie
Film Editor: Frederick Richards
Original Music: Franz Waxman
Written by Alvah Bessie,...
Hotel Berlin
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 98 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine, Raymond Massey, Andrea King, Peter Lorre, Alan Hale, George Coulouris, Henry Daniell, Peter Whitney, Helen Thimig, Steven Geray, Kurt Kreuger, Erwin Kalser, Torben Meyer, Jay Novello, Frank Reicher, John Wengraf.
Cinematography: Carl Guthrie
Film Editor: Frederick Richards
Original Music: Franz Waxman
Written by Alvah Bessie,...
- 3/31/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Robot roll call! This also-ran robotic fantasy from the 1950s is precisely the kind of movie one would expect from Republic, a two-fisted anti-Commie tract for juveniles. The studio comes up with an impressive robo-hero, but short-changes us when it come time for action thrills. Still, as pointed out in Richard Harland Smith’s new commentary, Tobor filled the the kiddie hunger for sci-fi matinees, at least until Robby the Robot came along.
Tobor the Great
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1954 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date September 12, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Charles Drake, Karin Booth, Billy Chapin, Taylor Holmes, Steven Geray, Hal Baylor, Alan Reynolds, Peter Brocco, Robert Shayne, Lyle Talbot, William Schallert
Cinematography: John L. Russell
Production Design: Gabriel Scognamillo
Special Effects: Howard and Theodore Lydecker
Film Editor: Basil Wrangell
Original Music: Howard Jackson
Written by Philip MacDonald, Carl Dudley
Produced by Richard Goldstone
Directed by Lee Sholem...
Tobor the Great
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1954 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date September 12, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Charles Drake, Karin Booth, Billy Chapin, Taylor Holmes, Steven Geray, Hal Baylor, Alan Reynolds, Peter Brocco, Robert Shayne, Lyle Talbot, William Schallert
Cinematography: John L. Russell
Production Design: Gabriel Scognamillo
Special Effects: Howard and Theodore Lydecker
Film Editor: Basil Wrangell
Original Music: Howard Jackson
Written by Philip MacDonald, Carl Dudley
Produced by Richard Goldstone
Directed by Lee Sholem...
- 8/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
What in the world -- an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 -- it's a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman on the Run Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Jane Liddell, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung, Reiko Sato. Cinematography Hal Mohr Art Direction Boris Leven Film Editor Otto Ludwig Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Alan Campbell, Norman Foster, Sylvia Tate Produced by Howard Welsch, Ann Sheridan Directed by Norman Foster
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...
- 5/24/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It's a different Bogart -- a character performance in a Nicholas Ray noir about distrust anxiety in romance. Gloria Grahame is the independent woman who must withhold her commitment... until a murder can be sorted out. Which will crack first, the murder case or the relationship? In A Lonely Place Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 810 1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 93 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 10, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching, Steven Geray, Hadda Brooks. Cinematography Burnett Guffey Film Editor Viola Lawrence Original Music George Antheil Written by Andrew Solt, Edmund H. North from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes Produced by Robert Lord Directed by Nicholas Ray
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Which Humphrey Bogart do you like best? By 1950 he had his own production company, Santana, with a contract for release through Columbia pictures.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Which Humphrey Bogart do you like best? By 1950 he had his own production company, Santana, with a contract for release through Columbia pictures.
- 4/30/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
This adult film noir masterpiece showcases the most glamorous pin-up dream girl of the 1940s. Rita Hayworth, a young Glenn Ford and a sinister George Macready form a sophisticated, poisonous love triangle. Criminal intrigues and killer striptease fill out the bill. Gilda Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 795 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 110 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 19, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Joseph Calleia, Steven Geray, Joe Sawyer, Gerald Mohr, Ludwig Donath, Argentina Brunetti, Eduardo Ciannelli, Ruth Roman. Cinematography Rudolph Maté Film Editor Charles Nelson Music underscore Hugo Friedhofer Written by Marion Parsonnet, Jo Eisinger, E.A. Ellington Produced by Virginia Van Upp Directed by Charles Vidor
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Some of the best 'movie' times I remember were seeing classic pictures cold, with no knowledge beforehand. Back at film school they'd show us things we'd never heard of, often in prints of incredible good quality.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Some of the best 'movie' times I remember were seeing classic pictures cold, with no knowledge beforehand. Back at film school they'd show us things we'd never heard of, often in prints of incredible good quality.
- 1/30/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Kirk Douglas movies: The Theater of Larger Than Life Performances Kirk Douglas, a three-time Best Actor Academy Award nominee and one of the top Hollywood stars of the ’50s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" featured star today, August 30, 2013. Although an undeniably strong screen presence, no one could ever accuse Douglas of having been a subtle, believable actor. In fact, even if you were to place side by side all of the widescreen formats ever created, they couldn’t possibly be wide enough to contain his larger-than-life theatrical emoting. (Photo: Kirk Douglas ca. 1950.) Right now, TCM is showing Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1967 Western The Way West, a routine tale about settlers in the Old American Northwest that remains of interest solely due to its name cast. Besides Douglas, The Way West features Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Lola Albright, and 21-year-old Sally Field in her The Flying Nun days.
- 8/30/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Gregory Peck from ‘Duel in the Sun’ to ‘How the West Was Won’: TCM schedule (Pt) on August 15 (photo: Gregory Peck in ‘Duel in the Sun’) See previous post: “Gregory Peck Movies: Memorable Miscasting Tonight on Turner Classic Movies.” 3:00 Am Days Of Glory (1944). Director: Jacques Tourneur. Cast: Gregory Peck, Lowell Gilmore, Maria Palmer. Bw-86 mins. 4:30 Am Pork Chop Hill (1959). Director: Lewis Milestone. Cast: Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, Rip Torn. Bw-98 mins. Letterbox Format. 6:15 Am The Valley Of Decision (1945). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, Donald Crisp. Bw-119 mins. 8:15 Am Spellbound (1945). Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, Bill Goodwin, Norman Lloyd, Steve Geray, John Emery, Donald Curtis, Art Baker, Wallace Ford, Regis Toomey, Paul Harvey, Jean Acker, Irving Bacon, Jacqueline deWit, Edward Fielding, Matt Moore, Addison Richards, Erskine Sanford, Constance Purdy. Bw-111 mins. 10:15 Am Designing Woman (1957). Director: Vincente Minnelli.
- 8/16/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Fred MacMurray movies: ‘Double Indemnity,’ ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ Fred MacMurray is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" today, Thursday, August 7, 2013. Although perhaps best remembered as the insufferable All-American Dad on the long-running TV show My Three Sons and in several highly popular Disney movies from 1959 to 1967, e.g., The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Boy Voyage!, MacMurray was immeasurably more interesting as the All-American Jerk. (Photo: Fred MacMurray ca. 1940.) Someone once wrote that Fred MacMurray would have been an ideal choice to star in a biopic of disgraced Republican president Richard Nixon. Who knows, the (coincidentally Republican) MacMurray might have given Anthony Hopkins a run for his Best Actor Academy Award nomination. After all, MacMurray’s most admired movie performances are those in which he plays a scheming, conniving asshole: Billy Wilder’s classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), in which he’s seduced by Barbara Stanwyck, and Wilder...
- 8/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Paul Henreid in ‘Casablanca’: Freedom Fighter on screen, Blacklisted ‘Subversive’ off screen Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013, Paul Henreid, bids you farewell this evening. TCM left the most popular, if not exactly the best, for last: Casablanca, Michael Curtiz’s 1943 Best Picture Oscar-winning drama, is showing at 7 p.m. Pt tonight. (Photo: Paul Henreid sings "La Marseillaise" in Casablanca.) One of the best-remembered movies of the studio era, Casablanca — not set in a Spanish or Mexican White House — features Paul Henreid as Czechoslovakian underground leader Victor Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman’s husband but not her True Love. That’s Humphrey Bogart, owner of a cafe in the titular Moroccan city. Henreid’s anti-Nazi hero is generally considered one of least interesting elements in Casablanca, but Alt Film Guide contributor Dan Schneider thinks otherwise. In any case, Victor Laszlo feels like a character made to order for Paul Henreid,...
- 7/31/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
So Dark the Night is playing on 8 December, 2012 at 92YTribeca in the Mubi-presented series The Great Scott.
***
So Dark the Night is one of the best films of the estimable Joseph H. Lewis, one of those B-picture geniuses who really does reward the viewer's interest. Plodding through assorted films from Prc and Monogram Pictures, it's striking how the flurry of crazed activity required to produce demented genre films on miniscule budgets and truncated schedules did not, usually, result in any of that frantic buzz communicating itself onto the screen. Generally, the actors seem stiff, the camera motionless, the editing pace a little above average maybe, but a sense of pace quashed by the library music...
But Lewis brought real dynamism to his work, and his best B pictures, seething with nervous energy, reflect his passionate personality. This one is more muted and measured, but the sociopathic fervor of Gun Crazy...
***
So Dark the Night is one of the best films of the estimable Joseph H. Lewis, one of those B-picture geniuses who really does reward the viewer's interest. Plodding through assorted films from Prc and Monogram Pictures, it's striking how the flurry of crazed activity required to produce demented genre films on miniscule budgets and truncated schedules did not, usually, result in any of that frantic buzz communicating itself onto the screen. Generally, the actors seem stiff, the camera motionless, the editing pace a little above average maybe, but a sense of pace quashed by the library music...
But Lewis brought real dynamism to his work, and his best B pictures, seething with nervous energy, reflect his passionate personality. This one is more muted and measured, but the sociopathic fervor of Gun Crazy...
- 12/7/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
After watching The Invisible Man for the first time as part of the recently released Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection on Blu-ray, I moved to The Phantom of the Opera last night. Prior to watching this 1943 version directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Claude Rains as the Phantom (aka Erique Claudin), I had only seen the 1925 silent version starring Lon Chaney, which I must say was far more disturbing and effective than I found this version. Awash in Technicolor and continually stalled by operatic breaks in the narrative, as lush as the colors may look on this restored Universal Blu-ray, I wasn't nearly as taken with it as I hoped I would be. I felt Claudin's transformation from innocent, 20-year veteran violinist of the Paris Opera to wronged musical composer to outcast and murderer was poorly developed and paced. His obsession with operatic soprano Christine Dubois (Susanna Foster) was...
- 10/12/2012
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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