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Jigoku {Hell} (1960)

Aug 121960

Graduate student Shirô is a passenger in a car driven by his wild and apparently supernatural “friend” Tamura when it hits and kills a local thug. Tamura doesn’t care but Shirô gets very upset. Eventually Shirô decides to turn himself in to the police, but the taxi crashes on route (most likely due to Tamura’s influence), killing Yukiko, his fiancée. This drives her mother insane. Shirô is later picked up by an addict who happens to have been the victim’s girl friend. She and the victim’s mother plan to get revenge, but Shirô leaves town at that point to visit his dying mother. Shirô’s father runs a horrible old-folks home and keeps a mistress in the house. The doctor lets people die, the policeman is carrying out blackmail, and except for one woman who is the spitting image of Yukiko, everyone in town is terrible. And it would be a spoiler except it is the entire point: Everyone dies, most in improbable ways, and goes to Hell.

Jigoku is an odd picture—an art house horror flick where the small budget from a dying studio is as responsible for the look as any creative desires. The first two thirds are grim, slow, and spartan. There’s very little light and the sets look like sets. While cost is obviously the reason, one can attempt to explain away the problems by claiming we’re already in Hell, just an outer circle where sins are remembered. That or just shrug and figure they ran out of money.

The final third—in Hell—looks a lot more interesting, though it is just as austere. With strange angles, colored filters, and a lot of gore, the afterlife is an imaginative dream world. And it is that look, the blood, and the screams that made Jigoku a cult hit. Many in Japan think of it as the beginning of modern J-horror, something that is a bit hard to fathom when watching.

Though Jigoku has an interesting aesthetic in its final section, over all there’s not much there. The plot doesn’t hold together, which isn’t a problem in a film which is essentially just some sins and some torture, but then it needs something in its place. Theme doesn’t do the trick as while Jigoku presents sin and guilt, it doesn’t have anything to say about them. The characters are one note sinners, except for Shirô who is too passive to be of any interest. Which leaves you with the film’s selling point: shock. For 1960 Japan, this was considered very edgy, with bodies being sawn in half and people being “flayed.” But it isn’t shocking now. Jigoku is worth a quick look for the tableaus of Hell, but nothing more.

Asian, Foreign Language Tagged with: Two Reels

The Leech Woman (1960)

Jun 301960

Dr. Paul Talbot (Phillip Terry), an obnoxious, egomaniacal doctor wants nothing more than the wealth that a de-aging technique would earn him. Besides, he can’t stand old women, or even slightly older women. His wife, June (Coleen Gray), is a self-hating alcoholic (later narcissist). Malla (Estelle Hemsley — later Kim Hamilton) shows up to make a deal. She’s a 150 years old and wants to return to her African tribe. In exchange for the money to do that, she’ll show the doctor a powder which will prolong youth, and with an added secret ingredient will reverse aging. It isn’t long before the foul doctor and his naive wife have called off their divorce lawyer Neil (Grant Williams) are headed to the dark heart of Africa with guide Garvay (John Van Dreelen). They find the tribe, and first Malla, and then June are granted youth, but there is a high cost for youth, and it doesn’t last.

The title points to some strange monster sneaking around, but this is essentially a vampire film, once it gets past the African safari stuff. That travel material does bring up some questions about time. The film seems to take place in modern times (for 1960), but Africa seems set in the 1850s. Well, it’s amusing, so I’ll forgive the time problems. And the stock footage is obvious, but no more so than in fifty other films of the era.

Perhaps the greatest joy of The Leech Woman is how horrible everyone is. Malla is by far the least foul person, and she murders people without a blink. For a brief time it looks like Garvay, and maybe Neil will be OK, but nope, they are atrocious too. This is a group of greedy, cruel, shallow, cheating slime bags. Their particular failings fall somewhat along gender lines, but then the film is commenting on society’s views of beauty. It can be read either as a feminist statement or as a sexist statement and has been taken as both.

1960 was far past the glory days of Universal horror. The great directors were gone, as was the cash and concern. They weren’t going to make a masterpiece, but for the times, this is pretty good, and the the studio allowed for better cinematography then the budget would normally allow, as well as first rate editing. The acting is very broad but enjoyable; John Van Dreelen and Grant Williams were solid second-tier actors, while Gray is a hoot. The script isn’t a classic, but has a few quotable lines and plot-wise gave me exactly what I wanted: nasty things happening to nasty people who deserved every nasty second of it. The Leech Woman is better than it has any right to be and fitting for a double feature with The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Horror, Reviews, Vampires Tagged with: Three Reels

La Dolce Vita (1960)

May 101960

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is a playboy and entertainment reporter, living adjacent to the rich and famous, and though that proximity and his own charms, he is living the sweet life. He hangs out at night clubs, bars, and parties, often with Paparazzo (Walter Santesso), his photographer, at his side. In the course of a week, he has a liaison with a rich woman in a prostitute’s flooded apartment, ends up in a fountain with a movie star (Anita Ekberg), covers a story of children claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, takes his ignored and overdosing girlfriend (Yvonne Furneaux) to the hospital, takes his father to a club where he hooks up with one of Marcello’s ex girlfriends, hangs with the intellectual elite, and hitches a ride with an acquaintance to a castle where the truly rich and bored search for new indulgences.

If you have never seen La Dolce Vita, but know it only though the images that have made it into general pop culture—Anita Ekberg standing in the fountain or dancing without her shoes, the statue of Mary being dragged through the sky by a helicopter, Mastroianni hanging out at one club or another hitting on women—you likely think this is a comedy or romance, or at least a moving, light drama. The title means “the sweet life” after all. And the bits with the reporters (the word “paparazzi” came from this film) are biting and darkly humorous.

But La Dolce Vita is a melancholy affair. It competed with fellow Italian release, L’Avventura to capture ennui, and while it might have lost that race (L’Avventura is unrelenting in its despondency, a film that feels like a ghost story, without the ghost, unless everyone in it is a ghost), it ends up hitting harder. La Dolce Vita sparks with energy, points out possibilities, sucks you in… And then it gut punches you. And after it’s done that several times, it finally settles into the gloom that was always there, but hidden by the imitation of life. Sound dour? It is. The film is fun to watch, until it isn’t. There was something in the water in Italy at the turn of the decade.

La Dolce Vita (like L’avventura) examines the world via the idle rich, though it doesn’t suggest that either being rich or idle is the problem; it’s just that the rich lack the distraction of having to scramble to survive, so the emptiness of life is more apparent. The problem is alienation. No matter how much Marcello mixes and plays and intertwines with others, he’s fundamentally alone. And he’ll always be alone.

Yes, dour. But it’s beautiful, and it makes its point. In fact its only real flaw is it makes that point too well. About half of the third act could have been cut as we’ve seen it all and know exactly what it all means. Both the castle event and the final party drag. Poor editing pulls the whole down, but it was so high before that it can handle it, with the result a must-see film.

Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

The Battle of the Sexes (1960)

Mar 141960

Obnoxious American business expert Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings) runs into Robert Macpherson (Robert Morley), whose just taken over as head of his family’s Scottish tweed company. She sets him on the route to innovation, but that goes over poorly with the extremely conservative men-only workers and the reactionary Mr. Martin (Peter Sellers). Martin set out to sabotage the changes.

Director Charles Crichton and a few of his old Ealing Studio compatriots get together for a mild satire that just never gets going. It looks good, and all of the supporting characters excel, but it limps along, never daring to be anything more than nice. There’s no laughs and only a few smiles. The problem is the gags are all nasty tricks against either the old-timers or Barrows, and for those to be funny, you have to be on someone’s side. But all these folks are terrible. We are supposed to side more with the men, though it is hard to see why besides they are “quaint.” Ealing made an art of showing quaint people, but Ealing had gone bankrupt and the magic isn’t there.

It’s easy to blame Sellers, and I’m happy to take the easy way out. He loved putting on his old man makeup and shuffling about and I suspect he was far more interested in his own little game than in the film. He’s good at it. He always was, but that doesn’t make it entertaining. With Cummings purposefully being annoying (because women in the workplace are always annoying—yeah, its more than a bit dated, and was in 1960, which I suspect contributed to its poor box-office), and Sellers doing his own thing, it’s left to Morley to put some fun into the proceedings, and he does his best, but it isn’t enough.

I’m a bit harsh on a well-made and (generally) well-acted film, but the problem is one of expectation. In every way, this should have been a better film. So count it not as a bad film, but as a disappointing one.

Charles Crichton’s other Post War British Comedies are Hue and Cry (1947), Another Shore (1948) Dance Hall (1950), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and The Love Lottery (1954). He returned to directing after a more than twenty year hiatus for A Fish Called Wanda (1988).

Peter Seller’s other Post War British Comedies are: Orders Are Orders (1954), Heavens Above! (1963), The Ladykillers (1955), The Smallest Show on Earth (1957), The Naked Truth (1957), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959), I’m All Right Jack (1959), Two Way Stretch (1960), Only Two Can Play (1962), The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963)

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Mummy (1959)

Nov 071959

Obsessive archeologist John Banning (Peter Cushing), and his even more obsessive father, ignore the standard “all who open this site will die” warning and enter an obscure Egyptian tomb. Banning Sr. is found babbling soon thereafter, and it is not long before Kharis (Christopher Lee), an ancient high priest turned mummy, is strolling the streets of England, eliminating all who desecrated the tomb. The police won’t believe a word of Banning’s superstitious–though calmly delivered–drivel. Good thing his wife happens to look like an ancient Egyptian princess.

In the late ‘50s, Hammer studios struck gold with their re-imaginings of Frankenstein and Dracula. A deal with Universal allowed them to go for remakes of the 1930s and ‘40s classics, adding in their own lush color and semi-eroticism. They chose not the original 1932 Mummy to recreate, but its two semi-sequels: The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb, combining those films, and removing the romance and comedy. The result is passable entertainment, improving on its source material, but still a bit stale and low rent in 1959, and now as moldy as Kharis’s rags.

Fans of Hammer films will be pleased to see both Cushing and Lee together once again. They had already been adversaries as Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, and as Van Helsing and Dracula, and here they face off once again, and once again, Cushing gets most of the lines. Lee does the best he can as the most un-Egyptian of Egyptian high priests (he doesn’t even attempt a faux accent, speaking with his normal, regal, and very very British inflections in flashbacks, and not at all once covered with bandages). The make-up is not his friend, making his mummy far from frightening or believable—less a terrifying monster, and more a gangly actor shambling about in a mid-range Halloween costume.

Cushing has a lot more to do and comes off better, rising above mundane material. His portrayal of a faux-Victorian scientist is as believable as anything can be, or should be, in this fluffy horror flick. Though he has a reasonable number of lines, he doesn’t really do a whole lot since Banning merely reacts to situations.

The film is aided by the always good character actor, Raymond Huntley (The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery, The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s, Make Mine Mink, The Green Man) as an uncle, doctor, and dead-man-walking. The rest of the cast do their bit, and draw little attention, good or bad.

The Mummy, like all early Hammer Horror films, has its fanatical supporters, but anyone younger than 50 is not going to be impressed by the fact that once upon a time it was remarkable to have vivid color in a horror film. It is an attractive enough movie, though those same colors do accentuate how fake the Egyptian scenes are. Casting away its historic importance (which isn’t that great as it came after Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula), you are left with a standard mummy flick, carried out with middling skill, lacking in scares, but supplying a few smiles. When compared against other mummy films, it comes off well, but that’s not overwhelming competition.

Hammer’s “Mummy cycle” included The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), and Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb (1971).

Mummies, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Attack of the Giant Leechess (1959)

Oct 081959

Drunken moonshiner Lem is out for his daily otter poaching run in the swamp when he is attacked by a vicious-looking Hefty bag. No one believes his story, except the Hefty bag, which kills him a few scenes later. Things then switch over to sweaty hillbilly Dave (Bruno VeSota) and his hot, white-trash wife, Liz-Baby (Yvette Vickers). They have all kinds of trouble, including Liz-Baby’s affair with another redneck, but all that comes to an end when several enraged plastic bags do away with Liz and her lover, and the local stereotypical sheriff locks up Dave. With all of the major characters removed from the plot, we’re stuck with white bread Steve Benton (Ken Clark), his bland but still annoying girlfriend, Nan (Jan Shepard), and her doctor father (Tyler McVey). Doc is sure that there are monsters afoot, and the best way to find them is to drop dynamite into the swamp (really; that’s presented as a reasonable step). The tactic does uncover the dead yokels, which means its time for Steve to strap on an oxygen tank and go diving to face the bags, and save humanity.

In general, I like my giant monster movies to have gigantic monsters in them, but I suppose I can be generous, at least with regard to what counts as being huge. When the atomically enlarged creature is a leech, a man-sized monster is pretty big. But that’s the extent of my generosity. Hey, the filmmakers weren’t generous to me, displaying uncommon stinginess with talent and skill, so why should I extend the courtesy to them?

There’s the potential for an hysterical, cult film, with the zany hillbillies, sexy Yvette Vickers playing the sleazy wife, a doctor with an explosives fetish, and the title: Attack of the Giant Leeches. That’s all it is, potential. The hillbillies don’t get enough screen time. The first half of the picture plays like a soap opera performed by the cast of Deliverance, but it comes to nothing. The sleazy wife isn’t nearly sleazy enough; her scenes might have been pretty wild for 1959, but come off as prudish by the early 1960s, and are forgettable today. The doctor’s bizarre need to blow up wetlands isn’t nearly extreme enough. Most of the doc’s time is spent in tedious discussions with the hero, while his daughter whines. I didn’t use a stopwatch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of the film is spent on these stagnant chats.

However, the title is the one unqualified success. Without it, most viewers would be flailing, trying to figure out why plastic garbage bags, sculpted with Mr. Bill faces, are attacking rednecks. But the title explains that those garbage bags are supposed to be giant Leeches. How else would you know? They don’t look like leeches. They look like guys wearing plastic sacks. And they don’t act like leeches. They act like guys stumbling about inside bags. So telling the audience is the only way. That doesn’t make the leeches any more entertaining, or the entire film any less plodding.

Shot on poor quality film stock, with sluggish camera work and inappropriate lighting (the only way to tell if it is day or night is to guess), this is an amateur operation from beginning to end. The dialog is no better than the monster design. All these flaws make it ripe for MST3K-style viewing, which is the only way to get any fun out of it. While it did make it onto that program (I haven’t seen the episode), I’d suggest getting a few friends together and going at it yourself. It isn’t as if you need to be a professional to find ways to rip Attack of the Giant Leeches apart.

Giant Monsters, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Return of the Fly (1959)

Oct 081959

Years after the events of the original film, Philippe Delambre (Brett Halsey) uses his father’s notes to create a matter transmitter. Aided by his reluctant uncle François (Vincent Price) and his friend, Alan Hinds, he succeeds. But Alan is really a murderer who plans to steal the device. When Philippe learns of the treachery, Alan puts him into the transporter along with a fly.

I don’t recall seeing a b&w sequel to a color film before. A cheaply and quickly made follow up to The Fly, color isn’t the only thing missing. So are special effects, sympathetic characters, and all but one qualified actor. Vincent Price returns, obviously only for the money, to stand around and look disturbed. I can’t say if it is from the dangerous experiments performed by Philippe or from the script. Brett Halsey looks enough like David Hedison (who played the inventor in the previous film) to be his son. That’s the only “talent” Halsey displays. Perhaps if some time had been spent developing his character, he might have managed more than one expression. But instead, time is spent in a complicated plot designed to get Halsey into a giant fly mask. It’s not an interesting plot, just convoluted.

The filmmakers of The Fly were clever enough to show their underwhelming fly head only briefly, but such sense wasn’t in play in The Return of the Fly. The gigantic, papier-mâché head, three times the size of the mask in the first film is shown repeatedly in bright light. Don’t think “frightening monster”; think “guy in a Mickey Mouse costume at Disney Land.” There are times when the poor man nearly falls over from the weight of his huge false head.

Plot holes abound, and characters have neither sense nor motivation. The police are particularly frightening in Montreal where it seems you can put out orders to “shoot to kill” with no provocation. Luckily, the police are incompetent, unable to find a fly-person wandering about the city. I’d think that would be hard to miss. It’s not a subtle look.

The strongest compliment I can give Return of the Fly is that I’ve seen worse.

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Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Hideous Sun Demon (1959)

Oct 061959

Gil McKenna (Robert Clarke), an alcoholic research scientist, is exposed to a new kind of radiation that causes him to change into a scaled creature whenever he’s struck by sunlight. Ann Russell (Patricia Manning), a colleague with more than a scientific interest in Gil, tries to find a cure. The overly-emotional Gil spends his time drinking and picking up an attractive bar singer (Nan Peterson), both of which lead him to end up in sunlight.

I try to critique and review films objectively. I have reasons for liking films (i.e. it’s not all just opinion). I study each film, evaluating it. Does if have a valuable theme? Does it present it in a way which illuminates the subject and allow the viewer to see it in a new way? Is the story original? Is it at least competently made, that is, does it demonstrate that the director and crew we’re skilled in their jobs? Were there exceptional lighting techniques used that aided in creating a mood and advancing the theme? I could go on.

But then I get to The Hideous Sun Demon and I can’t watch it as a blank slate. I saw it first when I was very young, and outside of the Universal classics, I hadn’t seen a humanoid monster movie. Oh, there were insane killers, gothic ghost stories (which normally came down to insane killers), unseen spirits, killer cockroaches, lizards, aliens, atomic dinosaurs, and any number of other less-intriguing horror oriented apparitions, but no old fashioned monsters. Later I’d find the Hammer pictures and I Was a Teenage Werewolf, but for a brief time The Hideous Sun Demon was it for “new” monsters. And I loved it. It had it all: a questionable protagonist, a hot blonde with lots of cleavage, bad guys who got killed right when they think they are soooo tough, a fall off a high tower, and a first class rubber suit. Well, it was mainly the suit.

So, how does it hold up these many years later? It’s hard to say as I go into it with a favorable slant. But, trying my best to filter that, the alcoholic theme still works. Gil is not a great guy. He drinks and he’s not big on thinking things out. In addition to the straightforward comments about his hangover causing the accident and his repeatedly popping up at bars, the transformation can be taken as a statement on alcoholism. Gil’s nice enough and certainly charismatic normally, but he can’t seem to help going out in the sun, and after a few shots of sunlight, he’s surly, violent, and abusive.

The Noir flavor nearly works. The cinematography isn’t skillful enough for that to be an unqualified success, and the criminals are too broad and clichéd, but then that was true in any Film Noirs shot by 1959.

And then there is the suit. Sure, it’s rubber. Sure, we can do much better now. But it’s a cool monster suit anyway you look at it. I also love that it is sunlight that changes Gil into a monster, not the moon or darkness. I can’t figure why there haven’t been more films that focused on the evil of the sun. I’m a night person myself, and like in most vampire movies, I’m not sympathetic to Gil’s whining about not being able to go out in the day. Who wants to go out in the day? The bright light washes out all the color, the best clubs are closed, and you might turn into a monster.

A few things don’t work so well: the static camera whenever anyone other than Robert Clarke (who not only stars, but wrote and directed) is onscreen; the uninspiring dialog; the random acts of stupidity (such as Gil driving a convertible); the day for night scenes that just look like day; the feeble fight choreography; the medical doctor that breaks into an inaccurate explanation of evolution when asked how Gil is doing; the reduction of the size of LA—one murder has all the citizens of the city on edge and every road is blocked; the muffled sound. But what are any of those compared to a cool monster suit?

So, for my rating, I’m splitting the difference between my enjoyment and what I think it really deserves.

I have a question for anyone who lived in LA in the late ’50s—what where the zoning regulations like? In The Hideous Sun Demon, there is oil drilling in residential areas and it looks like it was filmed on location. Perhaps I missed the point of the film. Perhaps it is a plea for better zoning, to save the children. Think about it…

Reviews, Werewolves Tagged with: Two Reels

Teenage Zombies (1959)

Oct 051959

Swell teenagers Reg, Skip, Julie, and Pam land their boat on a deserted island and become prisoners of a female scientist (Katherine Victor) and her zombies. She is working with a foreign power that plans to use her zombie gas to take over the United States. Luckily, two of their friends won’t give up the search for the missing teens.

Before watching Teenage Zombies, I was unaware of a major artistic debate going on in the film world. The issue: does moving the camera distract from a film’s central themes? On the static side is writer/director/artist Jerry Warren who brought the world such existential works as Frankenstein’s Island, She Was a Hippy Vampire, and Blood of the Man Devil. Opposing his well considered opinion is…well…everyone else.

Teenage Zombies shows Warren at his most artistic, setting his camera up in one location and then having people walk by. His indoor scenes step up his stylish immobility as not only is the camera locked in place on one side of a room, but the actors rarely move, standing rooted to their marks as they read their lines from what I assume is a cue card (certainly nothing in the film makes me believe the actors knew what they were saying before they pronounced the words). Perhaps the greatest example of Warren’s brilliance comes in a fight scene where the camera is set on two people wrestling on the floor. When they get up, we get a shot of their legs below the knees as they run out of frame.

Warren’s technique also has the advantage of saving hundreds of dollars on set construction as no room needs more than one wall (I’d say thousands, but the entire film couldn’t have cost more than a thousand dollars).

Outside of this fascinating controversy, Teenage Zombies also gave me insight into 1950s teens. Apparently, they were swell and said “crazy” a lot. The males were all brave and daring, while the females stood around waiting to be rescued. They also respected adults unless the adult dressed like Morticia Adams.

Ed Wood had nothing on Jerry Warren.

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Mad Scientists, Mad Scientists, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Toxic

On the Beach (1959)

Oct 051959

The only survivors of a nuclear war are residents of Australia and the crew of an American submarine that was submerged when the bombs went off. With only months left before the fallout arrives, those left try and deal with their inevitable deaths. Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), a pleasant alcoholic, starts a relationship with the newly widowed U.S. Commander, Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), while Lt. Commander Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) must find a way to get his wife to accept what is happening, and what it will mean to their baby. Scientist Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire) enters a dangerous race as a last fling. Out of desperation, Towers takes his sub north, with Osborne and Holmes onboard, to investigate a radio signal and test to see if maybe there might be a place in the world that is safe, but no one believes there is much chance.

Watching On the Beach now is a different experience than watching it thirty years ago (I can’t say much about what it was like when it was first released—I was…young). Back then, a nuclear war could have occurred at any moment (whereas now, I feel reasonably safe for several months). However, the big shift isn’t in political reality, but in perception. Somehow, watching this film was once a subversive act. Conservatives blasted it, and any film like it, as anti-American. For those of you too young to remember, conservatives were still claiming well into the ’80s that we could win a nuclear war. This lunacy peaked with the TV movie The Day After, when rightwing commentators and politicians demanded equal time to explain why nuclear war was an acceptable enterprise if it stopped them damn Ruskies.

Well, On the Beach came out at the end of the ’50s (when one could expect the conservative reaction to be even more extreme), and was the first anti-nuclear film that didn’t involve giant cockroaches or mutants. Time may have diminished its power, but it is still a compelling and bleak reminder of what could happen with only a touch of human stupidity, and that’s one quality we have in abundance.

The acting, directing, cinematography, and sets are all above reproach (unless you are obsessive about Australian accents). The story is slight, and even with little happening and a leisurely pace, On the Beach never drags. A feeling of dread hangs over everything so completely that fast action would be out of place.

Producer/director Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind-1960, Judgment at Nuremberg-1961, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner-1967) had a point to make, as he usually did, so wasn’t concerned with a realistic portrait of a post-apocalyptic world. He wanted to show the best in humanity after the results of the worst. So, the film is filled with controlled, dedicated, unselfish, saints. They have psychological problems, but nothing behavioral. There are no riots, no hording, and no complaints outside of party conversations. The sailors show up for work each day, and a race is the closest thing to “going-wild.” I think he could have conveyed the theme without everyone being quite so dignified.

But then that out-of-place dignity may be what keeps On the Beach relevant, because it makes it something other than just a warning. It is a fable, and the moral is: take joy in the things that are important in life, and do it now, because it can all be taken away in an instant.

When I first read Nevil Shute’s novel, also titled On the Beach, I considered it one of the most important books ever written. And the film struck me the same way. These many years later, neither are on my top ten list, but both are satisfying.

Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

Too Many Crooks (1959)

Oct 031959

Fingers (George Cole) is the incompetent leader of a band of unsuccessful thieves, made up of grumpy and nearly competent Sid (Sidney James), illiterate wrestler Snowdrop (Bernard Bresslaw), the agreeable Whisper (Joe Melia), and the buxom and stunning Charmaine (Vera Day). After several failed jobs, Fingers comes up with a plan to kidnap the daughter of Billy Gordon (Terry-Thomas) a rich cad and tax cheat. It goes wrong, and instead of his daughter, they kidnap Gordon’s much-put-upon wife, Lucy (Brenda de Banzie).

A thoroughly enjoyable little picture that works due to a clever script, but mainly due to the entertaining and familiar (for Post-War British Comedy fans) cast. George Cole was one of the stalwarts of the movement. A protégé of Alastair Sim, he could slip between wild character parts (such as Flash Harry in The Belles of St. Trinian’s) and mildly goofy romantic leads (like in The Green Man). Here he’s in the middle, a somewhat sympathetic fool. Sid James was best known for the Carry On series, films that were a bit too music-hall and silly for my tastes, but James was always enjoyable and a major force in English comedy through the ‘50s and ‘60s. Here he’s a voice of reason, or at least understandable frustration. And there’s Terry-Thomas, who specialized in a range of upper class twits. Here he’s the strong-willed nasty type and he’s hilarious, leering and sneering. Bresslaw, Day, and de Banzie have no trouble keeping up their end, and they are joined by John Le Mesurier, who seems to be in every good British comedy for several decades and is always part of making them good. Even if they had nothing to work with, this group of actors would make for a pleasant ninety minutes.

But they did have more, with a script from dependable Michael Pertwee (brother to Jon Pertwee of Doctor Who fame), stylish directing from Mario Zampi, and a zippy jazz score from Stanley Black.

Too Many Crooks doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It shuffles things around a bit, but the situations and characters had been done before, and would be done again. It’s just done so nicely. It isn’t a standout movie, but a cozy one. It isn’t the one to start with if you haven’t watched Post-War British Comedies. But once you are a fan, this is comfort food.

Other Post-War British Comedies directed by Mario Zampi include Laughter in Paradise (1951) and The Naked Truth (1957),

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

School for Scoundrels or How to Win Without Actually Cheating! (1960)

Oct 021959

Kindly, weak-willed Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) is cheated and abused by used car salesmen (Dennis Price, Peter Jones), a head waiter (John Le Mesurier), an upper class cad (Terry-Thomas), and his employees. When charming April Smith (Janette Scott) is stolen away from him, Henry takes drastic action, and enrolls in The College of Lifesmanship, run by Mr. Potter (Alastair Sim), where he can learn the ploys to beat others in life.

A very British film, School for Scoundrels is based on Stephen Potter’s books about the College of Lifemanship. As the books are wit-high, plot-low (if there is any plot at all), the film integrates the tone from the books with a story conceived for the screen, and generally it works well. There’s enough direction to keep you interested and enough character development to keep you caring. The jokes aren’t the type that will have you falling out of your chair, but they should keep a smile on your face.

In other hands, this would be a forgettable if amusing little flick. But the actors are superior to the material and carry the show. Ian Carmichael is rarely remembered on this side of the pond (not to imply that he’s dead), and when he is, it is probably for his later work on television mysteries that popped up on Masterpiece Theater, but he was an extremely effective, comedic, leading man in the late ’50s. He excelled as the pleasant innocent tossed into a cruel world, always befuddled and searching for a solution to a problem he can’t grasp. For most of School for Scoundrels he plays this role to a T. But he also gets to reverse this, becoming a self-confident rat that we can cheer for. He turns out to be even better displaying a bit of cruelty, always with a knowing glance and a false smile.

Carmichael is surrounded by the best that Britain had to offer in the ’50s. Terry-Thomas steels every scene as a bounder who, for a time, is always one-up on our hero. It’s the kind of role he could do in his sleep, but here he is awake. Best of all, there is the master, Alastair Sim. Sim, with his deep, falsely-sincere tones and bloodhound eyes, makes every line a little funnier than anyone else could. Perhaps the script’s biggest mistake is not putting him in six or seven more scenes. Janette Scott is lovely in a role that asks her to do nothing more than be lovely. Hey, she does exactly what’s required.

Even the bit parts and cameo’s are filled with the best of the best: Dennis Price, Peter Jones (The Book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), John Le Mesurier, and Hattie Jacques. These are people who know how to be funny.

Unfortunately, the film peters out. Great acting and good gags can only go so far. The movie needs a destination. Once the story embraces the darker edge of The College of Lifemanship, the filmmakers’ chicken out from the less socially acceptable consequences, and drably pull everything back to middle class morality. In an attempt to make the end someone palatable, they break the fourth wall, and address the audience. But it smacks of desperation, not wit. However, this doesn’t negate all the fun that has come before. While it comes off as tepid as a whole, School for Scoundrels is easy to enjoy as a series of vignettes.

Post-War British Comedy, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

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