Monthly Archives: April 2012

Brian Trenchard-Smith created this trailer for an Aussie supernatural thriller that never made it to American theaters. Director David Hemmings (star of Blow-Up) was determined to class up what was initially intended as a lowly horror movie, and rewrites of David Ambrose’s script continued throughout production. Actor’s Equity frowned on so many overseas cast members and refused to allow Susan George and Samatha Eggar to perform. Thom Eberhardt’s 1983 Sole Survivor uses the same premise to a degree that it should almost be considered a remake, although there’s no official connection.

Although seeming quite a bit like one of Roger Corman’s period Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, it’s actually a slight digression in that it’s not based on Poe at all but on an H.P. Lovecraft story. Economical but imaginative, it offers two Vincents for the Price of one and pairs them with Lon Chaney for the first time since Casanova’s Big Night. Features one of the best opening title sequences of the series.

In Universal’s long history of memorable monsters, the least personable must surely be the devil-possessed automobile that hits and runs through the southwest in one of the worst reviewed movies of its decade. Nonetheless Elliot Silverstein directs as if he believes it and Jaws-With-a-Car has survived as a goofy artifact of the auto-obsessed culture of the period.

RKO’s biggest budget film to date remains one of the finest literary adaptations ever, and is arguably Charles Laughton’s greatest screen role. His protege Maureen O’Hara never looked more stunning as the gypsy girl. Among the actors considered for Quasimodo were Orson Welles, Bela Lugosi, Claude Rains, Robert Morley and Lon Chaney Jr., whose father made an indelible impression in the earlier silent version. Cedric Hardwicke is creepy in the villain role intended for Basil Rathbone, and Edmond O’Brien is almost unrecognizably young and svelte in his first movie. This was the only picture shown at the first Cannes Film Festival, which was canceled when Hitler invaded Poland.

As Ethan de Seife notes in his essential, just-published study of writer-director-cartoonist Frank Tashlin, (“Tashlinesque”, Wesleyan University Press), this final collaboration between Tashlin and Jerry Lewis accentuates the tension between their divergent comedy styles, one of “the most vexing cases in the Tashlin/Lewis authorship question.”  Wacky cartoon gags alternate with rampant sentimentality in a film that anticipates Lewis’s upcoming directorial canon. If you’re curious about the semiotic fun phrase “diegetic rupture”, de Seife’s long-awaited examination of Tashlin’s well hidden career is for you.

One of the key works in the early British “kitchen sink” movement, John Schlesinger’s screen adaptation of Keith Waterhouse’s seriocomic novel spoke loudly to young people the world over. Tom Courtenay, taking over from Albert Finney in the stage version, made a big enough impression to go on to a strong career. But the revelation here is Julie Christie, luminous as the hero’s free-spirited girlfriend in only her third film role. Schlesinger went on direct her Oscar-winning breakthough two years later with the lead role in Darling.

Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel zoomed to the best seller lists after the success of this well-received multi-Oscar winner (best picture, director, screenplay and music score), attractively shot on location utilizing the residents of Cerne Abbas, a small village in Dorchester. Albert Finney and Joyce Redman’s elaborately erotic chow-down scene is right up there with Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe. Screen debuts of David Warner and Lynn Redgrave.