“In nuclear research, there is no room for lone wolves.”

IMDB lists the budget of this sci-fi meller as an estimated $105,000. Considering how much 1953 dollars were capable of buying on an independent production, that figure seems a sizable over-estimation. The camerawork is good, it has capable performers and a number of sets, but the big stuff is borrowed from a 1934 German film called GOLD, and much stock footage is also used. This is about as threadbare a decent fright film as I can recall until the turn-of-the-century cycle begun with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER is the brainchild of Curt Siodmak, who can’t stop reminding us that he is indeed a brain (not DONOVAN’S BRAIN, also his). The film is meant to exist primarily in the realm of scientific ideas, such things not being subject to budgetary restraints. We hear an introductory voice over intoning about modern science, and the potential threats to mankind there in, which would make Nigel Kneal’s head spin. The script is the work of Siodmak and Ivan Tors, but having known Siodmak, I can certainly feel his voice throughout, but there’s only so much sci-fi-chatter one can absorb if one is going to a movie to see something happen. The big act Two crisis, a building imploding, is talked about in the protagonist’s home and never seen (not even its aftermath). The big third act extravaganza, while effective, is the aforementioned borrowed footage.

Richard Carlson, the film’s lead, plays an earnest member of the Office of Scientific Investigation, uncovering potential worldwide atomic threats. We see him with his doting, pregnant wife periodically , so as to lend a domestic, human side to his character, and to introduce a thread of concern about the fate of an unknowing population, vulnerable fetuses, etc., should the threat become a cataclysm. He’s solid, though best when intent on solving the planet-imperiling problem, and less effective when playing the concerned hubby.

Leonard Mudie plays Dr. Denker, a rogue scientist who is lugging around a dangerously unstable element in a briefcase ( REPO MAN anyone?) . He ends up dying of radio-active poisoning on a plane, lending the film such a convincing air of thespian honesty that the gears reverse and the narrative becomes quite compelling, and also upsetting (everyone on the plane is probably contaminated to some degree, a la Mike and Velda in KISS ME DEADLY). From that point on we’ve got a real investment in what’s going to happen. I also liked Mudie two years later as the old health club concierge who gets slapped around mercilessly by bully/gumshoe Ralph Meeker in none other than KISS ME DEADLY.

King Donovan is Carlson’s right hand man, Dan Forbes. Laid-back and contemplative, but devoted to his job, he still somehow manages to communicate a sense of doubt about the usefulness of what these A(for atom)-Men are up to, Carlson included. Playing it real, he gives the spine of the film another solid disc to sit on. He would turn in a highly memorable performance three years later in the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Off-celluloid he was married to Sid Caesar’s TV partner, comedienne Imogene Coca, until his death in 1987.

On the downside cast-wise, Byron Foulger, an interesting character actor who plays agitation well, with tremors in his voice as its pitch rises under duress, feels played to elicit amusement from the audience. Even though he’s a prissy boss, there’s an unwanted caricaturishness in his first act setup of the crisis. Once the A-Men investigate the floor above his store and find a human arm protruding from underneath a pile of boxes, things begin to get grim, and the airplane sequence erases any early missteps in casting/direction.

The tone is docu-drama. Long takes. Voice over. Often newsreel-like grain. One library footage scene of jet planes refueling in mid-air was used to considerably more surreal effect by Stanley Kubrick in the title sequence of DOCTOR STRANGELOVE.

The tight shots of family planning between Carlson and Byron are slightly painful but also integral. And the eponymous monster, with its unleashed appetite, anticipates the hopefully-just-paranoid fears at large today about current scientific experiments which might create an earth-swallowing black hole.

There were a number of super-low budget theatrical releases around this time. Excluding Roger Corman’s vast repertoire, others that come to mind are ROCKETSHIP XM (budget est. $94,000) and FIVE (written, produced and directed by Arch Oboler, and shot in a Frank Lloyd Wright house for invaluable, non-art-directed production value). These three are all of lasting value. Soft historically, perhaps, but worthy nonetheless. And most similar is GOG, very much carved out of the same mold, by some of the same key people, for a budget of $150,000 more allowing for color and the ability to use all their own effects, props, and sets. These two are reviewed currently on FIR’s site, and they belong together for etermity.

GOG. Sounds like…

Remember THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL? The giant robot that walks out of the flying saucer, capable of destroying the earth with a flick of its visor? Its name was Gort. Sounds like…

Now, I don’t know that Ivan Tors picked up on the religious undertones of the Robert Wise film. The critics sure didn’t at the time. Neither did Wise or his producer Julian Blaustein. But three years later and we’ve got another robot with a similar moniker. I’m just sayin’….

GOG was a scary flick for kids. I went to see it several times back in ’54 in 3D. The idea of technology turning on its creators as if it were alive was really frightening. The 3D wasn’t great as I recall, still it’s too bad that, according to IMBD (bolstered by the fact that the film has never played in 3D at the Film Forum in NYC), the one remaining matching set of 3D reels is both faded and out of registration.

I don’t remember the color being this lovely, so maybe what we’ve lost in gimmickry, we’ve gained in picture quality. The art department did a nice and dedicated job thinking out the results of all the applied research. Lighting is a bit TV in its generality, but that isn’t overly bothersome, and probably suits an underground installation.

The plot: in an underground advanced science lab, the individual projects seem to be turning against the technicians, resulting in some nasty deaths by freezing, centrifuge acceleration, extreme sound vibrations, etc. Government investigator Richard Egan comes to visit, looking for an answer to the growing threat. There is no second act demarcation, just a long series of visits to the various experimental chambers to observe the scientists work their wonders, followed by instances in which these experiments turn on their creators. The eponymous robot and his twin brother Magog are introduced about 40 minutes in, and once we see them, we know they’re going to figure into the climax in some insidious way.

The oddly episodic nature of the narrative lives or dies on viewer interest in each new experiment, and on the casting choices. For the most part, I liked the casting, particularly stalwart, practically humorless Egan (LOVE ME TENDER, THE 300 SPARTANS) who lends the proceedings some gravitas. Herbert (PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE FLY) Marshall as lab boss Dr. Van Ness, and Austrian John Wengraf as a cold, egomaniacal scientist responsible for the supercomputer and his pet robots, are also grounded and engaging. Wengraf is particularly well cast physically – there are veins standing out all over his forehead, which somehow suggests his high intelligence. And even more interesting, unfriendly as he is, he’s likeable. When the Doctor Who-like robots turn on the humans, he keeps his cool to the bitter end.

Even after all those viewings back in the 50s, I thought the suggestion was that some outer space intelligence was responsible for all the mayhem. Now, I’m not so sure. It seems like someone abroad might have been futzing around with NOVAC, the installation’s super-computer. Several homing devices are discovered hidden in the lab, and although the enemy rocket flying over head is destroyed, no one is ever assigned the blame for placing the miniature devices in the lab. I wonder if, in a longer cut, the saboteur was revealed. In any case, in retrospect it seems more like a commie plot, typical of the times, after all.

As with the same company’s previous (1953), smaller, B&W film THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, GOG’s screenwriters take great pride in trying to entertain us with serious meditations on scientific progress and theory. I can tell you that as a ten year old, all that mumbo jumbo didn’t bother me one bit, or hinder my involvement in the story. Today, though the script’s cerebral speculation is hit and miss, it is laudable that Tors was spearheading a couple of sci-fi flicks such as these. Much of the science still holds up (IBM is on display…as is a Coca Cola mcahine – product promotion I would assume) while other aspects have been invalidated, but that’s okay. 2001 will probably have a hit/miss ratio as well when we catch up to its ideas in practice.

If you can take a double-bill of striking sameness, these two titles, released recently, within a month of each other, from the MGM archives (unintentionally, perhaps) would be a kind of ultimate pairing.

Like Wow, Bam, Boffo and Hotsy-Totsy! Please excuse me if my prose style is a little giddy but I’ve just seen BOMBSHELL, Victor Fleming’s exercise in pure zany pleasure expressed through a camera style that makes the dialectical montage of Sergei Eisenstein look shy and retiring, not to mention trumping by almost a decade the speed-crazed, overlapping dialogue of Howard Hawks’ HIS GIRL FRIDAY. A luscious valentine to Jean Harlow’s peroxide-tinged All-American womanhood as well as a send-up of movie-making in a manner that would seem positively avant-garde if the film wasn’t produced at MGM, that bastion of Hollywood political and aesthetic conservatism, BOMBSHELL may be 78 years old but is nonetheless up to the minute in sensibility.

The movie zings and wings its way through the chaotic but nonetheless joyous life of Hollywood star Lola Burns (Jean Harlow), her extended, leech-like family (Frank Morgan plays her bumbling con-man of a father, Ted Healy her drunken brother, Una Merkel her two-faced secretary) and Lola’s love-hate relationship with Monarch Studios’ cutthroat press agent “Space” Hanlon (Lee Tracy), whose behavior might best be described as a cross between Count Dracula’s and an amorous bunny on amphetamines. Mr. Fleming’s exploration of the thin line between egotism and what one might call life’s banana peels imbues Ms. Harlow’s and Mr. Tracy’s haphazard dance of attraction/repulsion with a laugh-out loud hilarity.

Mr. Fleming also pulls the rug out from under the audience both visually and narratively, adding immensely to the film’s humor as well as to its visual zest. Lola spends her life pretending to be someone else, which causes her to search for authenticity, except everyone she meets is a fake. In an ironic turnaround, the film suggests that this talent for phoniness is in fact the most authentic thing about both Lola and the people that surround her. The air becomes thick with aphorisms delivered by character actors at the top of their game, playing simultaneously fictional archetypes but also themselves. (For instance, at one point the very proper C. Aubrey Smith, dressed as a British aristocrat, turns towards the camera and asks, “How come Lewis Stone always gets these parts?”) Actual behind-the-scenes production footage from Mr. Fleming and Ms. Harlow’s previous film together, RED DUST, is inserted into the mix. Various production people at MGM have walk-on cameos, as well as real-life Hollywood celebrities, such as Coconut Grove bandleader Gus Arnheim and champion boxer Primo Carnera. The film expresses a confusion of fictional and everyday states of being sixty years before French philosophers brought this contemporary phenomena to our attention. Where do the movies end and life begin, the film seems to ask. Is this reality, performance, or something in between? Then again, does it really matter?

One is most impressed by the seeming effortlessness of it all. The editing sweeps us into the thick of things, as well as sweeping us off our feet, with an extraordinary sense of precision. If BOMBSHELL doesn’t resemble life as we know it, the film certainly maintains the informality, not to mention humor, of a wild weekend with old friends. For instance, Lola says to her maid: “Your day off is sure brutal on your lingerie,” or there’s Lola’s exchange with the new butler over a glass of orange juice: “His name was Summers and your name is Winters. Are butlers always in season?” Characters come and go in a swirl of invective and manic movement, speaking in a hyper-exaggerated style that mixes advertising slogans with street poetry. “Your hair is like a field of silver daises,” a passerby tells Lola. “I’d like to run barefoot through it.”

In addition to the spontaneity of Mr. Fleming’s direction is the anchoring of the story in a very specific Hollywood reality, fixed by the silvery light captured by Harold Rosson’s luminous cinematography. What one remembers most are the myriad details: the manicured tangle of rose bushes adjoining Lola Burns’ insanely white mansion, the absurd number of staircases that people run up and down with continually raised voices, and when Lola attempts to escape to a resort in the desert, the shimmering sands underfoot, so clean and reflective it appears one can see for miles.

At the center of this self-referential parade of confusion, avarice and mixed motives is Ms. Harlow, who simply shines through the film grain in a surfeit of authentic niceness. The more shrill Lola Burns becomes, the more she entangles what she desires with how she feels her public expects her to behave, the more charming is Ms. Harlow’s screen presence. How this was achieved I have no idea, but it creates yet another immensely entertaining level to the film’s interplay between acting and being, fiction and self-delusion, authenticity and subterfuge.

Yes, I know I’m making BOMBSHELL seem decidedly post-modern, but why not? Pre-code is often more advanced, both stylistically as well as philosophically, not to mention more fun, than the films being made today. Just look at Ernst Lubitsch’s DESIGN FOR LIVING (1934), which was released by Criterion a few weeks ago, a romantic comedy that deals with an open, loving relationship between two men and a woman, as a shining example of that very principle.

Of course, Victor Fleming is known today, if at all, as the director of GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ, two lumbering, over-produced films from 1939 that, in spite of their occasional felicities, are the antithesis of personal cinema. Warner Archive is to be commended for releasing this dazzling, inebriating, deliciously directed bonbon of a movie, so deadpan and deceptively bright that its cinematic brilliance takes one by surprise. While BOMBSHELL may be Victor Fleming’s greatest work (and arguably the most personal and idiosyncratic film ever made at MGM in the 1930′s) it’s by no means an anomaly. There’s the previously mentioned RED DUST, TREASURE ISLAND, CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS and A GUY NAMED JOE, as well as a number of deceptively effortless and deliriously subversive silent comedies, especially WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY starring Douglas Fairbanks.

The Warner Archive’s remastered transfer of Mr. Fleming and Ms. Harlow’s magnum opus, while far from perfect and exhibiting occasional bouts of medium grain and hairline scratches, is still quite beautiful. The white silk dresses and flesh tones gleam, as they would in a fine grain nitrate print. Black levels are generous, and the detail, especially in the long shots of Lola’s mansion filled with shouting studio hacks, assistant make-up artists and hanger-ons, as well as the leaves of palm trees on the streets of Beverly Hills, is stupendous. The sound is extremely clean and natural sounding for a film of this vintage with no hiss that I could discern, allowing one to hear the zingers that pepper the dialogue very clearly. As is usual with a Warner Archive release, there are no subtitles, and the only extra is a trailer with Spanish titles, though the dialogue is in English.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WHERE’S VELDA?

The complete, two-season, 78-episode collection is certainly an exciting event. At first there appeared to be more wrong with it than there was right with it, but for Mike Hammer completists it would, under any circumstances, represent a wonderful unearthing from the treasure troves of early TV.

Initially it felt like a low-rent series, shot quickly, with few takes and insufficient coverage. In the premiere episode – ‘The High Cost of Dying’ – which should be a showcase for what the series is capable of, one of the key actresses (Lynn Allen) flubbed her lines a few times, but rather than go for another take, she and Darren McGavin just kept on gamely plugging away. The dialogue felt clumsily faux-noir (McGavin’s voice over narration sounded as if he was rehearsing for KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, the horror-noir series which would come his way two decades later). McGavin himself, giving it his best, still seldom radiated the sympathetic notes he was capable of, at least not in that opening episode. And the score was a bit clunky, often mickey-mousing the action. But most distressing of all was the absence of Velda. What Mike Hammer film or series would be complete without her? I hoped that she would show up in the second season, but no such luck.

I then ventured into the second season, to see how the production quality had progressed. The title I chose was ‘”Requiem For a Sucker”. Sounded good, but was pretty much the same quality of the first season premiere. Flaccid and forgettable.

And yet there were nice elements too. Despite a disclaimer refrain about the quality of the materials used, the image was quite nice. There were occasional sound drop-outs, but they barely broke the pace.

Tight as the budgets must have been, the productions managed to fit in nice location work around New York City, as well as in upstate locales, etc., particularly effective as it transported me back to a world over fifty years gone.

Directors tended to be TV journeymen, revolving to keep the schedule going. Boris Sagal worked on many TV series over the years, including Rod Taylor’s ‘Hong Kong,’ which has yet to surface, and boasts one of the most violent fight scenes ever created for the tube (in the episode called ‘Colonel Cat’). But probably Sagal’s ticket to immortality was 1971′s THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston, a camp classic version of Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend.’

The box covers boast about guest stars such as Angie Dickinson, Barbara Bain, Robert Vaughn, Hershel Bernardi, and DeForest Kelley, but overlook such 50s ‘B’ icons as Gloria Talbot, Joan Taylor, Robert Clarke, Allison Hayes, Yvette Vickers, Madlyn Rhue, Tom Neal, Dorothy Provine, and Abby Dalton.

Now Yvette Vickers, who was barely an actress but quite a looker, appeared in some cheapo delights like ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. She also posed for Playboy, quite wonderfully. Today, sadly, and from today onward, she’ll be remembered for her demise, up in the Hollywood hills, lying on the floor while a nearby standing heater cooked the juices out of her for a year before her mummified body was discovered. Naturally I had to skip to this episode, partially out of morbid curiosity, but also because I liked her looks back in the day.

Well, it’s a good thing I did. ‘Scar and Garter’ was a really fun episode. It didn’t have as much of a rushed feeling, the location manager did a great job securing a quirky, ‘B’-level SUNSET BOULEVARD location, and the script was loaded with mouth-dropping surprises and details. The director of this one was Lawrence Dobkin, who had acted in countless TV shows (as well as features such as THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS) and directed quite a few episodics. I wondered if, knowing the grueling schedule they were up against, the MIKE HAMMER staff & crew didn’t decide to pull a John Ford – two for you, churned out passionlessly, then one for us, treated with care on all levels. Because this one was awfully good, and it was probably even more impressive in ’58.

And Yvette? Well, acting may not have been one of her strengths, but she sure looked great.

I decided that since I’d been third time lucky, maybe I should stay in the game a little longer. This time I went for Allison Hayes in “Mere Maid”, directed by our old friend Boris Sagal, who hadn’t done well by the material in the pilot episode…or maybe it was the material that hadn’t done well by him. But this time we had a strong script with a great first act. Hammer is taking a weekend off upstate at a picturesque lake, and a flirty little mermaid lures him over to her side of the pond where all the wealthy weekenders are hanging out. The plot breaks loose from there, and emotions run pretty wild. Hammer gets to smooch up another doll, and figures out the sly manipulations behind a murder. There’s an obviously staged climactic fist-fight, but otherwise it’s a solid episode, and Ms. Hayes wasn’t at all bad.

I couldn’t stop now. I had to have a gander at Gloria Talbott. Who can ever forget her in I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, with her striking, pointed features… Well she’s lovely in this one, too (aged 27), and it’s a fine supporting cast. James Westerfield as a corrupt DA was cut out of the M. Emmet Walsh mold, and he’s really solid, as are H.M Wynant as Deputy Moran and Rusty Lane as Sheriff Al Miller. The cinematography is the best yet, with rich blacks and whites, and the narrative generates real fear about Hammer’s safety when he butts heads with purveyors of small town corruption. There was that name again – Boris Sagal. I guess I had to cut the guy a break. Two for three. That’s a good deal in my book.

“Look at the Old Man Go” was next on my hit list. I was captivated from the get-go as it was filmed in my upper West Side Manhattan neighborhood. I’d forgotten why I chose it until I realized that I’d been looking at a very young Angie Dickinson (also aged 27) for a few minutes without even recognizing her. And while she’s good in the episode, and changes flashy outfits several times, the plot was far too convoluted for my nighttime viewing brain. At one point, one of the key players says she can’t follow what’s happening anymore. Amen. And yet it starts off wild like a good noir should, and it’s a plenty fun episode. Reminded me of noirs like THE BIG SLEEP, the ones that keep you involved but in the end it isn’t at all clear what just went down.

As you can imagine, in its attempt to be true to Spillane’s immortal protagonist, there are healthy doses of macho machinations and compromised women in trouble. The general depiction of women in the series is an amusing sign of the accepted behavior and social attitudes of the times, but also it’s as Spillane might have wished it. He so despised KISS ME DEADLY for tampering with his hero. This series tries a bit harder to adhere to the author’s tenets. No matter how rough and chauvinistic Mike was, he did have ethics and often upbraided his clients for asking him to do things that were ethically inappropriate. McGavin definitely portrays that guy. Ralph Meeker’s Hammer wouldn’t have given unethical behavior a second thought.

But I’d love to know what the heck happened to Velda?

“John le Carré’s Cold War Spy Drama, timed to the feature film remake.”

I am such a fan of the Focus Features film version of TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY starring Gary Oldman (as seasoned spy George Smiley) and directed by Tomas Alfredson, I just HAD to watch the original 1979 BBC television version “Based On The John le Carré Classic That Redefined The Spy Thriller” (the 2011 movie’s tagline).

Acorn Media’s 3 DVD set (approx. 324 mins.) of the six-part miniseries features the worldly Sir Alec Guinness as bespectacled superspy George Smiley (filmed in between Guinness’s career-defining role as Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first two Star Wars films), a thinking man’s James Bond who’s called out of retirement by “Control” (Alexander Knox) to find a “mole” that the Soviets have planted in the MI6′s “The Circus.”

The “Circus” is the highest echelon of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Control, the Circus Chief, assigns code names to the senior intelligence officers under suspicion of being a Soviet mole, with the intention that should an agent called Prideaux uncover information about the identity of the mole he can relay it back using an easy-to-recall code the mole is unaware of.

The iconic “Circus” members are all here: Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase, Roy Bland, Bill Haydon, and of course, Jim Prideaux (who botched up an assignment and sets the crisis in motion), and wild card “scalphunter” Ricki Tarr (played in the feature film by Tom Hardy in a lousy blond wig).

Having watched the 2011 film a few times I couldn’t help comparing it to the miniseries. Alec Guinness’s George Smiley is about a decade older – whiter, and more talkative and charming – than the brooding, always contemplating darker portrayal by the fabulous Gary Oldman. As the miniseries is over five hours long, Smiley has a lot more room for speeches!

The tightly-constructed two hour movie ties scenes, events, expositions quickly and skillfully, whereas the miniseries can take its time, developing plot lines, discussing characters and events more in depth, revealing full scenes that might have only been mentioned in the movie.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a great series to watch, an engaging television experience for fans of the spy genre. I’m looking forward to watching the sequel, Smiley’s People with Alec Guinness’s return as George Smiley, also from Acorn Media (and now the book is required reading for me!)

The DVD set features a half hour interview with John le Carré and a glossary of characters and spy terms.

What kept this one down in the vaults all these years? QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (FIVE MILLIION YEARS TO EARTH) and QUATERMASS 2 (ENEMY FROM SPACE) have both been in release for quite a while. And now that it’s out, although it bears its original UK release title, I miss it’s American moniker, THE CREEPING UNKNOWN. I saw it several times back in 1956, so the US title has sentimental value for me.

This was a pivotal production for Hammer Films, adapting the popular early Brit TV series into a no-kids-allowed theatrical version. It did great business and steered them away from film noir quota-quickies and into sci-fi-horror and, shortly thereafter, into the Gothic Horror field that would be their bread-and-butter and their legacy.

Val Guest adapted the script and strove to give the film its documentary sensibility whenever possible. He also introduced the Frankenstein-monster-and-little-Maria sequence about midway through, a nice touch, which would be reprised yet again in CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. There’s only one false note in the entire 82-minute running time, and that is when a drunken female derelict comes into the police station complaining about seeing a monstrous thing. There’s an artificial comic tone to this scene that I’ve noticed in other Hammer films, as if they felt it was a necessary rhythmic break – but they were almost always mistaken.

Nigel Kneale, the author of the original broadcast series’, was so affronted by American actor Brian Donlevy’s brusque, egomaniacal take on his beloved creation that he ranted about it for the rest of his life. Personally I love Donlevy in this, and in its sequel. I think he very much embraced the cold, self-involved and not necessarily humanistic image the Brits had of scientists following the war, a group not to be trusted (along with military and certain governmental types). QUATERMASS AND THE PIT has them all, except that in that 1967 film Quatermass is humanized by Andrew Keir, more in line with how Kneale envisioned him.

In THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, three men go up into space, but only one comes back, and he’s not who he was when he left. Richard Wordsworth plays Victor Carroon, the doomed astronaut taken over by some monstrous force that has designs on our planet, with a surprising range of emotions. The film has its quotient of creepiness, scares, and upsetting makeup effects. It also has intelligent dialogue, and a strong directorial hand that keeps it moving quickly through its 82 minutes, by far my favorite running time when I was a kid.

I show this film every year in my History of Horror class at the School of Visual Arts, and they always ‘get it’ and enjoy it, applauding appreciatively after it ends. It’s gratifying to see this little sci-fi thriller working its wonders 50+ years since its debut.

It’s a cold, sun-streaked morning somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas. Two men, the brown suede and red plaid of their hunting caps uncharacteristically store-bought shiny for this out of the way place, walk into a worn, rough-hewn diner. An elderly man, bent-over, with wisps of stray white hair across his weathered scalp, carries a none too clean coffee pot their way. It’s Elijah Cook, Jr., fragile and scrawny, but the glint in his eyes is the same as when he kicked Humphrey Bogart in the head in THE MALTESE FALCON. We expect something to happen, possibly wild and unpredictable, but no, the hunters sit at the counter and ask for Cody, the owner of the place. In walks Joe Don Baker with a slight smile on his face, his good-old-boy demeanor positively disarming. “Can’t seem to place you boys,” he says. He goes behind the counter, grabs the largest knife and begins slicing a loaf of bread.

“We know some friends of yours,” the hunter in the suede cap says. “Old friends.” In the low light at the back of the diner, film grain dances like motes of light on the surface of a lake. Photographed by Bruce Surtees, who brought a dangerous beauty to films such as DIRTY HARRY, the image is so sharp, one can read the menu clearly in the distance: “Hamburger – 60 cents.”

“It’s always nice to hear from old friends,” Joe Don Baker says. He points to the hunters’ rifles standing in the corner. “Going quail hunting?”

“Sure. Quail.” Through the window, one can see a hillock of green suffused by shadows, like a brush stroke by Monet.

Cautiously, Joe Don Baker lifts the blade of the knife, holding it firm. “You boys are too late. You got to get up early when they’re feeding…if you want birds. Besides, your guns are too big. Twelve gauge would tear a bird apart.”

“Is that right?” One of the hunters picks up the rifle and points the barrels at Joe Don Baker. Still behind the counter, his smile darkens a little. One thinks of William Conrad and Charles McGraw waiting for Burt Lancaster in the small town diner in the opening scene of THE KILLERS, the other patrons enveloped in a sense of dread, but then suddenly everything changes.

“Want to know about guns, you ask Bob Caswell there, the Sheriff. He knows all about guns. Don’t you Bob?”

A middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and a Santa Claus moustache sitting by the window grins. “That’s the truth.”

The sunlight streams through the window as the hunters abruptly take their rifles and open the door to leave. “You know something, Cody,” suede cap says. “You ought to play the races. You’re that lucky.”

I wanted to try to give you a feeling of what watching this movie and this lovely transfer is all about. THE OUTFIT (1973), a made on demand disc of impressive quality and delicate, film-like characteristics, is the best looking DVD from Warner Archive I’ve yet come across. It also turns out, much to my surprise, to be a movie for the ages. An astonishing compendium of seventies grunge with fifties’ tough-guy actors (such as Robert Ryan and the legendary cult figure Timothy Carey), THE OUTFIT is a terse, brutal, yet surprisingly lyrical adaptation of the second Richard Stark paperback novel featuring Parker, a workaday criminal. While the story and characters have been slightly changed – Parker, for instance becomes Macklin and is given a girlfriend wheelman, something Parker himself would never condone while on a job – the stoic matter of factness and unadorned low rent background of a life outside the law described in the books is tone perfect.

Presenting the adventures of a lone wolf bank robber who is being chased by the mob and decides instead of running to fight back and rob the big boys, the film is filled with the kind of small, telling details found in the Parker books: a hired gun who crosses himself before a hit, the carny-like sales pitch, warm-hearted yet cagey, of an illegal firearms merchant, or an unsubtle shade of pink neon that bathes the cabins of a budget motor camp in a garish glow, imparting a carnival ambience to a scene of violence.

Produced in 1973 when former CBS wonder boy James Aubrey (THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES) was in the process of leaching out the glory of MGM into nothingness, THE OUTFIT fell through the cracks and was poorly distributed. It turned up once on a double bill with THE SPLIT, an anomie-ridden James Brown caper film, in a run-down theatre in Crown Heights, but I didn’t make it in time. I must say that this film was well worth the wait. In fact, if this movie had been promoted properly, I think it would have been a hit, for it’s head and shoulders above much more prestigious action films of the same period staring Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen. Like a stripped-down pro on a bank job, THE OUTFIT focuses on the matter at hand, yet every step along the way resonates.

Paradoxically, this disc has some of the most gorgeously saturated color I’ve ever seen in a 70′s film, as if the director, going for the visceral attack of Film Noir, decided to use the color palette of THE SOUND OF MUSIC for the sake of contrast. Yet somehow it all works. The action is pared-down and unsentimental, the consciousness as straightforward as the hammer locking in a Colt .45, and the stunning beauty of the images, rather than weighing down the narrative, stings like salt on the rim of a margarita glass.

The Parker novels came at the end of a Noir cycle of original paperbacks, the stories doom-laden and decidedly baroque in style, featuring rot-gut heroes at death’s door, written by such masters of the genre as David Goodis, Jim Thompson and Charles Wileford. The Parker novels signaled a changed in tone as the anxiety-ridden 50′s turned into the free-wheeling 60′s, focusing on the small details of assembling a team of criminals for a robbery, written in a laid-back ironic prose that was also capable of great subtleties. Richard Stark was actually Donald Westlake, a writer of comic caper novels such as The Hot Rock that were quite different in style. Once a friend complained that Donald Westlake should write more like Richard Stark. I told this comment to another friend that knew Westlake, and reported back that Westlake was quite amused by the comparison.

To say that Robert Duvall is perfect in the role of the robber Macklin is almost faint praise. He inhabits the character, fuses his skin and his every breath with Macklin’s unique contradictions, makes the character come alive to the extent that every fiber of Mr. Duvall’s being seems to exist in the slowly pulsing film grain that moves the narrative forward and which the technicians at Warner Archive have so wonderfully preserved in this marvelous transfer. The rest of the cast is equally impeccable. Joe Don Baker as Cody, Macklin’s partner, compliments Robert Duvall’s brooding intensity with an unimpeachable affableness that hides a sharp instinct for sensing the danger inherent in every situation. John Flynn, the director and screenwriter, has also cast a compendium of character actors that through their mere presence evokes an entire universe of cinematic feeling: Richard Jaeckel (ATTACK), Sheree North (THE UNTOUCHABLES), Marie Windsor (FORCE OF EVIL), Jane Greer (OUT OF THE PAST), Henry Jones (VERTIGO), and Emil Meyer (SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS). I must also reserve special praise for Karen Black, who as Macklin’s girlfriend Bett, takes what could have been a stereotyped role and transforms this into the emotional core of the film. Although I love Karen Black as a personality, I’ve never known her to play a part with such simplicity or transparency of feeling before.

By eliciting a performance of such verisimilitude, Mr. Flynn remains true not only to Richard Stark’s sense of realism, but also evokes crime author Jim Thompson’s vision of sublimely complicated women, which has not been at all well served by the cinema. In the film versions of such Thompson novels as The Grifters and The Getaway, while the fairly simplistic plots are retained, the complicated characters which make these books memorable are mostly excised. It is to Mr. Flynn’s credit that while THE OUTFIT is a beautifully made genre piece, full of moody characterization and tough action, what remains in the mind are the emotionally complex relations of the characters adrift in a world of violence.

A film that successfully builds on the rootless, road-movie style of FIVE EASY PIECES while incorporating the gritty ambience of such morally ambiguous Noirish thrillers as THE KILLING and KISS ME DEADLY, John Flynn’s THE OUTFIT is not only a continually impressive piece of filmmaking, but a stunningly produced disc of any stripe and should be in the collection of all serious movie lovers.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A couple of short films on DVD showed up in my mailbox this past week, both of them very well made and beautifully acted.

In SAILCLOTH (Academy Award nominee for best short feature, 2011), an old man (John Hurt) escapes from his nursing home, and, using his purloined sheets as a sail, goes out to sea to take care of some final business. The film has no dialogue, but the lonely beauty of the coastal village in Cornwall where it was shot and Richard Cottle’s haunting but not overwhelming score, coupled with John Hurt’s superbly nuanced performance make this a very fulfilling 18 minutes.

The plot of this little film encompasses some nice surprises, which I would be loath to give away. Suffice it to say that it is about triumphing over loss in a very personal way, which makes it sad, uplifting, and, also, funny. There’s Hurt, going through the lonely ritual of readying himself for the day in a sparse, single room. And, there’s Hurt, trotting briskly down the flooded hall of his nursing home, while holding aloft an umbrella. It is a logical development of the plot, and yet it’s an amusing, almost absurdist image.

Hurt plays the only major character in this production; and how much story, how much character we gather from the emotions that cross his aging face! In a December 2011 review of Hurt’s performance in the Beckett play Krapp’s Last Tape, Times reviewer Charles Isherwood wrote that the actor’s expressions reveal a “scarifying picture of the man’s shuffling, tormenting thoughts.” Hurt’s masterful ability to convey fleeting and conflicting emotions imbues this project as well. The corners of his eyes crinkle, and his face lights up when he makes eye contact with a young boy playing on the shore and then, suddenly, a mask of grief overtakes his visage. In a very unforced way, the inner life of the character is revealed.

Watching Hurt, one feels that one is observing a person with a real history, not an actor taking on a character. We see an old man, determined to accomplish one final, meaningful act, but we also observe the vigorous and efficient way he carries it out: the almost jaunty precision with which he executes his escape from the nursing home, the calm determination with which he defies the whipping wind while raising the bed sheet sail. Although this bereft pensioner has been put out to pasture, inside he’s still a quick, feisty, and independent man.

Director Elfar Adalsteins dedicated this short to his own grandfather. Adalsteins has said that he never intended to make another short (after his first, SUBCULTURE), but following the death of his grandfather, he had a flash of an idea–his grandfather’s bed sheet transformed into a sail. This image quickly evolved into a script. The story may be fictional, but the film is a lovely tribute to a man’s spirit.

THE PALACE

I am not one to watch action films. Scenes of violence, chase scenes, even scenes of psychological tension, send me flying to the corner of the room (if we’re lucky enough to be watching at home–into the Ladies Lounge if we are in a multiplex) where I stand with my back to the screen, crying out, “Mark, what’s happening? Is it over?” If this occurs in the multiplex, then, obviously, Mark is still in the theater watching the movie, while I am beseeching my image in the restroom mirror. I know, it’s ridiculous, but it’s because, to me, such movies are like giant nightmares that I cannot get out of.

So, imagine how I felt while watching THE PALACE, which is a fictional account of a real nightmare–the 1974 invasion of Cyprus. According to press materials, the story is based on the confession (later recanted) of one of Turkey’s most respected actors, who said that as a young conscript in the Turkish army, he had been forced to murder ten Greek Cypriots.

THE PALACE presents, in real time, fifteen horrifying moments in the life of a little family in Cyprus. The four are trapped inside their bombed out home as soldiers strafe the city, until father Taki (Christopher Greco) urges them out into the street, where they dodge more bullets, until they enter an ancient, solid palace, which seems a haven. Unfortunately, others have already sequestered themselves there and are terrified that the cries of the infant in mother Stella’s (Daphne Alexander) arms will alert the soldiers to their whereabouts.

The soldiers arrive moments later, and everyone scrambles to hide in closets, trunks, and armoires. Stella holds her hand over her infant’s mouth, as she watches through the slats of the closet as the troops swagger around, destroying and looting. When there is a noise from an armoire, Sergeant Akilan (Kevork Malikyan) orders his soldiers to shoot through the doors. They open the portals, and bodies tumble out. The sergeant is completely desensitized and does not see the poor unarmed victims as human beings; they are merely inanimate things, with rings and cash for the taking.

Throughout the scene, the camera shifts between the point of view of the soldiers and the partially obstructed view of the Stella, watching through the closet slats. This split POV is a terribly effective way to create tension. In spite of the shifting POV, emotionally, this film is not the soldiers’ story; the viewer’s guts are churning for the mother and her family. We experience her grief and fear.

I would not call THE PALACE an actor’s movie, as there are no sharply focused close-ups of actors running the gamut of emotion. The tension is sustained by the editing, and by cinematography that, in its graininess and muted focus, evokes the harshness and the depersonalizing effects of war. And yet the performances are both raw and deep. Although we almost always see Daphne Alexander through slats and dust, half obscured by shadows, her embodiment of the mother’s anguish and terror is palpable. The actors playing the antagonists, the Turkish soldiers, economically embody a hierarchy of men of war–from the hapless conscript Omer (Erol Afsin), to the inured sergeant–with very few lines and very little time on screen.

According to the film’s official site, THE PALACE was shot on location in Cyprus, “along the United Nations Green Line in Nicosia, in buildings and streets still ravaged by the 1974 Cyprus conflict.” An international crew and cast collaboration between Australians, Cypriots, Turks, Germans, Moroccans, Brits, Greeks, and South Africans, THE PALACE is a succinct and harrowing antiwar statement

This film suffers from a textbook case of split personality. I’m not overly fond of Robert Wise’s contribution as director, if in fact he cast the leads, although I’ve read that his first choice for Tony (which went to Richard Beymer) was Elvis, and that would have radically changed my opinion. As it turned out, it was hard to direct the dramatic sequences in the film against the obstacle of inappropriate casting, whereas Jerome Robbins, who directed four of the musical interludes (before he was fired), choreographed some of the most dynamic dance sequences ever put on celluloid.

And so it’s the musical sequences I observed and listened to with the most enthusiasm while watching the BluRay. For sure, musically they outshine the DVD’s acoustics. Even more amazing, there’s a Play function which jumps to the musical numbers and intersperses relatives of the original team, etc., who talk about the sequences. Leonard Bernstein’s daughter, for example, reveals that it was Jerome Robbins, in the opening cityscape dance, who suggested the snapping of fingers. That one inspiration is critical enough that the film wouldn’t have been the WEST SIDE STORY we treasure without it.

Next you can jump from song to song with commentary by Stephen Sondheim. And therein lies another necklace strung with revelations. Originally the Russ Tamblyn-led gang, using comic books as a departure point, went to the moon and back. Robbins nixed it, wanting the dance and body language to say it all.

Also, Sondheim is critical of much of the lyrics, which would be heresy if it were not coming out of the author’s mouth. He particularly is embarrassed by ‘I Feel Pretty’, the lyrics of which he insists are inappropriate coming out of Maria’s mouth, but he was anxious to prove he could create more complex rhymes.

I must comment on the condition of the MGM lion. In both the DVD and BluRay, I’ve never seen that lion so sharply defined. They must have transferred it to 65 mm in a way that intensified the detail of the image. Once you get a gander at the lion, you know you’re in for an exceedingly sharp picture, and you’re not disappointed. The proceeding aerial shots of NYC are sharp as a bell. The sets and locations are shown off to great advantage. The art direction, and the musical numbers, are the finest aspects of the film, and they look and sound great. In fact, the sets actually overshadow and diminish the difficulties with Beymer’s performance. One reservation however: the school dance is bathed in reds, and even though DVD for all intents and purposes conquered ‘bleeding red syndrome,’ both formats still appear to have difficulty with this sequence.

I knew Robert Wise well enough to call him and pose a question or two over the years. He was a nice guy, impressively ambidextrous as a filmmaker, and there are quite a few of his films in my collection, including ones that he personally not only didn’t like, but couldn’t understand why I did (TRIBUTE TO A BADMAN, for example – he really seemed perplexed when I praised it). THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, THE BODY SNATCHER, BLOOD ON THE MOON, THE SET-UP, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, THE SAND PEBBLES, THE HINDENBURG. Those he understood. Well, maybe he was a little perplexed about THE HINDENBURG, too.

I was at Trader Vic’s one night back in ’62, enjoying Kamaina’s, Cho-Cho, and Crab Rangoon, when I spotted Natalie Wood in a gorgeous fur coat walking across the floor toward the entrance. I got up, went over and said hello, and in a most gracious gesture she turned and introduced me to her companion. “This is Jerome Robbins,” she said, and he shook my hand cordially. Quite a moment for me, meeting them in that way. Those were the days. Remind me to tell you about running into Sam Spiegel and Greta Garbo at Tracer Vic’s a year later.

Gory and gruesome for its time, combined with a documentary feeling to the Cornish environment, these qualities have diminished in effectiveness over the decades to the point now where only flaws in story, direction and performance remain.

Sidney Furie exhibits a (very) few stylistic traits he would display to far better effect in later films such as specific shots held an inordinately long time. One, a heart removal operation, doesn’t work, but another, grappling with a fungus-covered living corpse, still packs an ich-y punch. By the time he did LADY SINGS THE BLUES, he had that long take idea down.

The film is an inner-logic calamity. There’s an attempt at mystery early on around the tail-end of the first act – not revealing the killer’s identity, which is odd since we are absolutely sure we know who it is, and by the end of the second act, it’s confirmed that we were right all along.

Kieron Moore (ANNA KARENINA, DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS) as Doctor Blood, with his buffeted boxer’s face, is a welcome thesp in a film like this. But we never grow to like him, nor anyone else for that matter. Directorial clumsiness, heavy-handed scripting, casting against talent (other roles, not Moore’s or Hazel Court), and perhaps a rushed schedule, do this film no favors. In today’s market, where the scares of yesteryear are no longer visceral, we’re left with an unpleasant experience where once there was creepy horror.

Speaking of Ms. Court, she was quite lovely, but seemed to have an acne problem during the shoot. She’s great to gaze upon nonetheless, but the medical procedures against God argument she lays on Dr. Blood late in the film is not a bit of fun.

The print looks quite good. Grainy, just as I remember it, which adds to the sickening aura, and reasonably subdued colors. Editing, not too good. Coverage, awkward. Interesting to note that the camera operator was Nicolas (THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, BAD TIMING) Roeg, who later gave us a great horror film – DON’T LOOK NOW.