The Cobalt Screening Room Balcony

Post #535 (A torturous Palindrome Picture): You can always count on Pre-Code Hollywood to wade into waters that can make you blanch or blush, and in the case of today's feature, *The Mask Of Fu Manchu* (1932), who'da thunk it could make you do both in the same scene? This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around--it is one of the most edited and censored and protested films of the period: The Chinese embassy in Washington launched a formal complaint against the film for its hostile depiction of the Chinese. For some good reason--according to Brian Hu, artistic director of Pac-Arts' San Diego Asian Film Festival, "This is on the heels of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which were enacted in the late 19th century as a result of fears that Chinese people were taking American jobs and as well as the fact that they were afraid that Chinese people were bringing some sort of kind of immorality — they were not Christians."

So the dialogue is peppered with xenophobic acrimony. As Fu Manchu ("I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, I am a doctor of law from Christ College, I am a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me doctor") Boris Karloff, sporting make-up that required 2.5 hours of application each day, whips up his Mongol followers during a sacrifice of heroine Sheila Barton (Karen Morley) by shouting, "Would you have maidens like this for your wives? Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man and take his women!" As Manchu's daughter Fah Lo See, a sadistic nymphomaniac, Myrna Loy salivates over a bound and shirtless Terry Granville, running her hands over his chest purring, "He is not entirely unhandsome is he, my father?" to which Fu Manchu in homoerotic glee answers, "For a white man, no."

So what have we got here, anyway? Well, check your laundry list for offences: Constant references to "The Yellow Peril" and unbridled racism with Fu Manchu intent on extinguishing the oppressive white race and Caucasian "heroes" upping the ante by laying their tongues on every Asian epithet around; a strong focus on various forms of harrowing torture and cruel violence; really creepy shots of snakes, lizards, alligators and black widow spiders; muscular loin-cloth-wearing Nubian minions all posed by designer Cedric Gibbons to resemble Oscar statuettes; sado-masochistic sexual allure from Fah Lo See (Myrna Loy's initial response to the script was, "Oh, this is obscene!"); a dismembered hand thrown at the heroes to induce fear; deadly injections to the neck with a formula extracted from spiders and snakes and blood, which would induce mind control; access to Fu's lair is accessible only through an opium den, which Smith enters; and where would any self respecting megalomaniac intent on eradicating the white race be without his handy Binford electrical current Death Ray!

A quick recap of the narrative, which stripped of all the neat stuff above is just funky pulp. Sir Denis Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone) of the British Secret Service meets with Egyptologist Sir Lionel Barton (Lawrence Grant) to provide the exposition for the film. The nefarious Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) is searching for the mask and scimitar of Genghis Khan, intent on harnessing its power for world domination. Smith knows where the artifacts lie and sends Barton to dredge them up before Fu do. Unfortunately, Fu's fiends kidnap the scientist and subject him to the torture of the bells, binding him to a slab over which a monstrously oversized bell will be rung inches over his head until he freely offers site directions. Barton will remain there, with bells ringing in his ears, deprived of water, starved, driven mad, and (holy sh*t) becoming "unmistakably foul," a line which was excised in many theaters during its release. (Evidently Fu didn't want to interrupt his torturing with bathroom breaks.)

Receiving news that Barton has been taken hostage, Smith sends a team to the excavation site. Sheila Barton (Karen Morley) insists on taking her father's place on the expedition, and she finds Genghis Khan's tomb and its treasures with the help of her fiance Terrence "Terry" Granville (Charles Starrett, originally cast between Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown), Professor Von Berg (Jean Hersholt), and McLeod (David Torrence), a supernumerary who is killed almost immediately. Then there were four, counting Smith who weighs a proposed trade--Barton for the artifacts until one of Fu's men tosses Barton's severed hand at them, the hand wearing his signet ring. At that point it's all hands on deck and with a show of hands Sheila decides to give the old "Yellow dog" what he wants, despite Terry's misgivings, especially since it means delivering the goods to Fu themselves like pith helmeted Avon Ladies (such a visit frankly scares the pith out of them).

Alas and alack, Fu tests the scimitar to find it a genuine faux imitation artifact and he will accept no substitutes. So everybody is taken hostage: Terry is bound by chains from the ceiling (rip the shirt, how cliche) and whipped (c-rack that whip, give the past a slip) by black minions while Fah Lo See is also whipped into an orgiastic frenzy, shouting "Faster! Faster! Faster!" (Woo, kinky baby); Smith is suspended over a hungry alligator pit (and those are real alligators, folks, not faithful reproductions) while the sands of time lower his to his doom; Von Berg is stapled to a chromium seat while "Silver Fingers" (two walls of impaling spikes) close in on him; and all the while Tesla coils and arcing ecstatic energy bolts crackle and whiz and dance at Fu's fingers. (These Death Ray effects were created by Kenneth Strickfaden, who also designed the laboratory equipment for Universal's *Frankenstein* films). And if poor Charles Starrett hadn't endured enough indignity by the whipping, he also has to be strapped to another chromium table with harnesses around his legs, arms and neck, adorned only with a loin cloth, while Fu and Fah run their fingers over his chest and stomach before Fu injects his neck with a powerful concoction which will make him yield to Fu's instructions. (A particularly tough scene as director Charles Brabin had repeatedly stopped filming because Starrett kept, how shall we say, pitching a tent at the sexy attraction of Myrna Loy in bejeweled garb.) Yes, all the actors found the film exciting, while according to Myrna Loy biographer Lawrence J. Quirk, Myrna Loy and Boris Karloff "decided between themselves that the only intelligent way that this movie could possibly be played was subtly tongue-in-cheek."

Karloff remembered, "I shall never forget, about a week before we started, I kept asking for a script - and I was met with roars of laughter at the idea that there would be a script. On the morning that we started shooting, I went into the makeup shop and worked there for about a couple of hours getting this extremely bad makeup on, as a matter of fact, for Fu Manchu. It was ridiculous. And, as I was in the makeup chair, a gentleman came in and handed me about four sheets of paper which was one enormous, long speech. That was to be the opening shot in the film and I was seeing it for the first time, then and there. It was written in the most impeccable English. Then, I said, 'This is absolute nonsense. I can't learn this in time to do it,' and he said, 'Well, it will be all right. Don't worry.' So I got my makeup on and, on my way to the stage from the makeup shop, I was intercepted by somebody else who took those pages away from me and gave me some others that were written in pidgin English!"

Similarly, in her autobiography *Being And Becoming*, Myrna Loy said, "The script was really the last straw. In one scene, she [Fah] has this beautiful young man tied down, then whips him while uttering gleefully suggestive sounds. Well, I'd been reading Freud, and apparently the writers hadn't. 'I can't do this,' I told our producer, Hunt Stromberg. 'I've done a lot of terrible things in films, but this girl's a sadistic nymphomaniac.' 'What's that?' he said. 'Well, you better find out, because that's what she is and I won't play her that way.' I did play her, of course; there was nothing I could do about it. But Hunt Stromberg. . . did some research, and in the end the character's worst excesses were toned down. She wasn't Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but, as I remember, she just watched while others did the whipping."

She continued, ". . . it astounded me how good Karloff and I were. Everyone else just tossed it off as something that didn't matter, while Boris and I brought some feeling and humor to those comic-book characters. Boris was a fine actor, a professional who never condescended to his often unworthy material. There's a wonderful scene where he says, 'I want you to meet my ugly daughter [NOTE: The actual line is " I have no son to follow me. Therefore, in shame, I ask you to receive a message from my ugly and insignificant daughter. Speak, my daughter."], and in walks this ravishing creature wearing a jewel-encrusted Chinese ensemble by Adrian [Norma Shearer's favorite designer]. Despite such moments, I insisted Fah Lo See be my last exotic, and she was."

For a film freighted with so many complications (Charles Vidor was the original director who was fired after two days [but he ended up marrying Karen Morley anyway], and two more were on hand before Brabin took final duties, long and protracted delays in scheduling occurred, several script writers were fired, and of the final three Irene Kuhn was actually a Hearst columnist for *The New York Daily Mirror* with Hearst being one of the most influential and vocal anti-Asian advocates, fearing an influx of "The Yellow Peril" would rob Caucasian Americans of their jobs), *The Mask Of Fu Manchu* is a glistening, glossy wonder. In keeping with the Art Deco favored sets of MGM, this film is glorious to behold, with details that saturate the screen, and cinematography from Tony Gaudio that shimmers with light and shadow. It's simply beautiful to watch and ugly to behold.

But is securely Pre-Code classic material. When it was re-released after forty years in 1972, it became subject to massive controversy, and many subsequent prints excised full scenes and any Fu Manchu disparaging references to "your Christian heaven" or anything Christ-driven. In 1972 the Japanese American Citizens League protested that "the movie was offensive and demeaning to Asian-Americans," and so even into the 1990s home releases of the film were severely chopped to pass the muster of the PC-crowd. Today, I count myself among the lucky to have found a completely uncut print on DVD, restored with a brilliant commentary track by Greg Manck. At first blush (or blanch) it still packs a wallop, and Manck's terrific references let us in on some of the fun Karloff and the cast had during filming.

For instance, in the nearly cringeworthy injection scene, Brabin had Karloff inject a potato strategically hidden by Starrett's head, to simulate a straight shot to the jugular. Unfortunately, the potatoes used in the shot kept exploding from the injected fluid, until Karloff and Starrett convulsed in laughter with each pass. Finally, Brabin decided enough was enough and dismissed the actors saying, "Never mind! We'll shoot it tomorrow morning!"

In response to the PC clamor and the ongoing debate about the racism running rampant in Hollywood past (and present), I share the position of Whoopi Goldberg who is lobbying to have *Song Of The South* re-released instead of languishing in the vaults of Disney Studios, pretending it was never made. “Some of the cartoons here reflect some of the prejudices that were commonplace in American society, especially when it came to the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities," she said of Warner Brothers cartoon compilations. "These jokes were wrong then and they are wrong today, but removing these inexcusable images and jokes would be the same as saying they never existed, so they are presented here to accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored.”

Brian Hu agrees, specifically in the case of *The Mask Of Fu Manchu*: "These films reveal so much about how we think about America, how we were taught to maintain a certain kind of racial purity in America, which is so relevant today. These films are setting the stage for a lot of the ways we think about race today. There's so much we can learn from them," Hu said. "And yeah these are very exaggerated versions of fear of the other. But today we have more subtle versions that are still part of the same ideological desire for racial purity that we see in these films. So what's important to me is understanding that history knowing kind of the production context, knowing what it was in Hollywood that created these kinds of films so the context is most important."

Even if you wish to table the discussion of racism and studio treatments of races other than Caucasian, I'd recommend this film as a potent form of entertainment in the science fiction/horror mode. To me it's much more menacing than most of the shock schlock people elevate today as "edgy." You want edginess? Watch these non-Asian actors smacking their lips over over-the-top dialogue and merciless torture that is more psychologically daunting than watching the graphic torture porn of *Saw* (2004-2008) and its followers. It ain't the meat, it's the emotion that gives it the sock! And we get buckets of emotion with Karloff and Loy. I guess I never realized how torture could be treated as such great fun. Now, I'm still not in the market for it, mind you, but for 68 minutes of it from the safety of my couch I was okay with it.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Post #536: Continuing our trek through Halloween offerings, today's feature is yet another underseen classic, this time knocking off the Universal *Dracula* (1931) while giving Bela Lugosi even more opportunities to chew the scenery, which he does splendidly. MGM took the silent *London After Midnight* (1927) Lon Chaney's film which has been lost to time and put director Tod Browning back in the driver's seat to update the horror he filmed four years earlier. But remember, MGM was not Universal--it put more gloss into its spooks and sets, with costumes by Adrian, and while MGM was not in the flow of horror films, today's feature, *The Mark Of The Vampire* (1935), was the last film in the genre MGM made, even though it was a moderate success.

*The Mark Of The Vampire (aka Vampires of Prague*) was banned in Poland and Sweden and edited by Hungarian censors, taking out shots of bats, screams, and other gruesome images. But for all the hoopla it's just a great throwback to the early vampire movies with truckloads of mood, fog, deep shadows and glamorous close-ups of our female lead Elizabeth Allan as Irena Borotyn and Dracula's daughter Luna played by Carroll Borland who utters only one line in the entire film; Rita Hayworth had tried out for the role but lost out. It's a terrific cast, with Lionel Barrymore at his eccentric best as Professor Zelen, summoned to the Borotyn mansion when Sir Karell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found drained of blood in his study.

Along for the investigation are Lionel Atwill as skeptical Inspector Neumann, Jean Hersholt as Baron Otto von Zinden, an excitable family friend who believes vampires are the root (canal) of the murder, Henry Wadsworth as Fedor Vincente, Irene's incredibly bland stand in for a fiance, and Donald Meek as Dr. J. Doskil, a nervous Nelly practitioner who is also the town's goofball physician. Naturally lurking in a friendly neighborhood decrepit museum for lost sinewy spiderwebs are Count Mora (Lugosi) and his Morticia Addams inspirational daughter Luna (Borland) who do little more than peek through windows lit from beneath, sneer in the background and flounce around the Borotyn home in shadow presumably looking for a little nosh or a nice necking session with Irena.

The first forty-seven minutes of this 60-minute epic is a perfectly capable and entertaining nostalgia fest with splashes of comic relief coming from the wary butler and hysterically high strung maid (Ivan Simpson and Leila Bennett). The cast is so much fun to watch, you might initially judge the film to be not a standard horror film but a fabulous parody of one, as the tropes come so steadily, including perhaps a couple "firsts" in the genre--the unexpected appearance of a cat and what we might label "The Vampire's Hiss" from Carroll Borland. To insure the secrecy of the climax, MGM forbade theater ushers to seat anyone during the last fifteen minutes of the picture.

And for real fans of the mechanical bat, there's a wonderful shot of Carroll spreading her wings and flying through the dungeon, a blissfully short capture that took three weeks to film (the bat jockey who was supposed to do the stunt got nauseated by the motion, and so Borland herself was hitched up with wires and pulleys and a steel bar running from her neck down to her ankles). The effect is magical albeit only seconds long.

Borland remembered, "Large bat wings were attached to my back and I was supposed to flap them up and down...I had a bar that went from the back of my neck to my ankles. Sometimes they would lower the tail wires first and I'd end up landing on my nose. Sometimes they did well and I landed on my stomach...Then, when they had just about got it right, Mr. Browning decided that he wanted me to fly in a different direction. So we had to wait while the construction team tore out a wall and rehung the track."

But in those last thirteen minutes Tod Browning flips the bill and makes this a film well worth the investment of time. In fact, I watched it a second time immediately after a first run through, with the commentary track and agreed with critics Kim Newman and Steve Jones that repeated viewings will reveal the film to be quite comedic in tone once the audience is given its "twist" ending. Absolutely no spoilers here--and run if someone tries to tell you what the twist is, because it allows us to reassess everything we'd just seen. Contrary to Borland and Lugosi's assessment that the ending is "absurd" (Lugosi in particular was incensed by the final reveal and pleaded with the director to alter his role)," I found it delightful, raising it above standard vampire fare. To Browning's credit, he did not inform the actors of the last act until the end of shooting, so what we see is the director's best attempt to capture the best performances without the actors knowing what might otherwise affect their interpretations of character.

Carroll Borland made her feature film debut in this feature and admitted to developing a crush on Lugosi during filming. Not everyone, however, was happy with the experience. According to make-up artist Bill Tuttle, "The crew and I didn't like to work for director Tod Browning. We would try to escape being assigned to one of his productions because he would overwork us until we were ready to drop from exhaustion...he was ruthless. He was determined to get everything he could on film. If the crew didn't do something right, Browning would grumble: 'Mr. Chaney would have done it better.' He was hard to please. I remember he gave the special effects men a hard time because they weren't working the mechanical bats properly. Though he didn't drive his actors as hard, he gave Lionel Barrymore a difficult time during a scene. Lugosi's performance, however, satisfied Browning."

For her part Carroll Borland was not impressed with her director, saying, "He was a great big negative. 'Carroll, I want you to walk in front of Lugosi. You're going to be holding a candle, so look out for your hair.' 'What am I supposed to do?' 'Walk over and down the steps and walk out.' That was it. He simply expected Lugosi and me to be vampires. Everybody asks me, 'What was it like working with Tod Browning?' The answer is, I didn't work with Tod Browning. Tod Browning told me to go out and go down the steps!"

According to film historians, *The Mark Of The Vampire* originally ran for an additional twenty minutes, and there's some speculation that the Hays Code might have figured in those cuts. The original script called for a backstory for Count Mora to have engaged in an incestual relationship with his daughter, causing him to strangle her and then commit suicide by putting a bullet through his head. This of course would never fly in a bat movie, though in the remaining print the Count does sport this season's fashionable bullet hole at his temple with no reason given for its appearance. (Apparently he has been doomed for all eternity to walk the earth in penance for his guilt.) Writer Gregory William Mank, who had access to the original shooting script, suggests that the film's original running time was 75 minutes, not 80, and the cuts made were largely composed of exposition or comedy. The incest angle was not in the shooting script, as Borland confirmed, but was in the first script. Louis B. Mayer *hated* horror movies and wanted to run as far away from this film as he could get, but Irving J. Thalberg, production head of MGM, lobbied heavily for it, gaining a modest profit of $54,000, though Mayer ensured it was the last of its kind from his studio.

Some territories edited scenes from the final release including the scene in which Otto pulls at Sir Karell's neck (Pennsylvania); a shot of "vermin crawling over girl's robe -- and rats across path" (Alberta, Canada); the image of a "Roman Catholic cross on the spire of a church" (Austria); and footage of "methods showing how murder was committed" (England).

I'm always excited when James Wong Howe is enlisted as cinematographer, and he does not disappoint here, taking his movable camera into eerie fog-enshrouded cemeteries, dank and damp labyrinthine corridors just below the surface of the swampy ground, creaky dungeons replete with rats and possums, smoky transformation scenes (recounted by the butler and maid), and the dust-bunny heaven of the Count's manor whose spiders must have been workaholics on acid. It's just so evocative, a perfect primer for horror virgins who may not be ready for the 1992 Coppola *Bram Stoker's Dracula*. And hey, Browning directed the original Lugosi Universal offering, so he knows how to showcase the largely silent Hungarian here--he actually spouts volumes more dialogue in the accompanying trailer than in the whole film.

While *The Mark Of The Vampire* earned generally positive reviews at the time of its release, one vocal critic, Dr. William J. Robinson, physician, sexologist and birth control advocate, lambasted the film in *The New York Times* on July 28, 1935: "There is a good deal of criticism of obscene and vulgar movies. Many of them are bad enough. But a dozen of the worst obscene pictures cannot equal the damage that is done by such films as *The Mark of the Vampire* [sic]. I do not refer to the senselessness of the picture. I do not even refer to the effect in spreading and fostering the most obnoxious superstitions. I refer to the terrible effect that it has on the mental and nervous systems of not only unstable, but even normal men, women and children. I am not speaking in the abstract; I am basing myself on facts. Several people have come to my notice who, after seeing that horrible picture, suffered nervous shock, were attacked with insomnia, and those who did fall asleep were tortured by the most horrible nightmares. In my opinion, it is a crime to produce and to present such films. We must guard not only our people's morals -- we must be as careful with their physical and mental health." Wow. It may be a blessing to him that he died one year later and never got to experience Freddy Kreuger.

Strict horror mavens today offer mixed reactions. "Purists" complain that Lugosi is not more vocal in his portrayal (and he probably agreed wholeheartedly with that assessment) and feel that the ending compromises the genre. But for pure fun you can't beat this cast, this atmosphere of dread, the quaintness of tying weedy bat-thorn to the windows to keep the vampires at bay, and the importation of real large South American bats ready for their close-ups, Mr. DeMille (government officials required the studio to export or destroy the bats after the production).

Man, I hope I can continue to unearth little gems like this in the coming days. So if you see someone in your backyard with a spade and a hurricane lantern, you should not be surprised--It's me looking for more films like this.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Post #537: Thank you for that rousing welcome, folks, and welcome to Wheel Of Miscegenation. I'm your host Pat Say Jen, and now join me in saying hello to our hostess, Miss Cegenation herself, Nirvana White. Wave, Nirvana, and I must say that's a lovely gold embroidery on your cheongsam dress. I love the tasteful slit up the side revealing just a hint of leg.

"I know, Pat. It's just the first in my new line of cultural appropriation gowns, The Nirvana White Collection. Just don't even *think* about touching me. The censors would go crazy."

Ha ha ha, you are so right, Nirvana. Now our regular viewers will remember when Caucasian people like Nirvana were legally prohibited from any romantic entanglement with any other race, be it black, Asian or even native American. And as well all know, the movies were governed very strictly in Pre-Code Hollywood to ensure this line of taboo was never crossed. Speaking about today's feature, *The Bitter Tea Of General Yen* (1933), star Barbara Stanwyck said, "The women's clubs came out very strongly against it, because the white woman was in love with the yellow man and kissed his hand. So what! I was so shocked [by the reaction]. It never occurred to me, and I don't think it occurred to [director] Mr. Capra when we were doing it. I accepted it, believed in it, loved it."

"Wow, Pat, she was quite the forward-thinking woman of the time, wasn't she?"

Oh that she was, that she was. The film was her fourth collaboration with director Frank Capra and it bears the distinction of being the first film to open Manhattan's prestigious Radio City Music Hall, on January 11, 1933. Unfortunately, due to the highly controversial nature of interracial love, it was had a truncated run of only eight days of its scheduled two weeks, despite a box office pull of $80,000. When it came up for re-release in 1950, the Breen Office said, "It would be well if the company [Columbia] would drop its plans to reissue this picture. . . . Probably the most objectionable characterization is that of the American financial advisor to the General, played by Walter Connolly. He is a completely unscrupulous character without morals or ethics. This does not seem to be a good portrayal of an American in the Orient to be circulated at this time."

*The Bitter Tea Of General Yen* grew out of Capra's "obsession," as he called it, with winning an Academy Award nomination. But Columbia's head Harry Cohn didn't believe in "artsy" pictures and so eventually bent to allow Capra to tackle this philosophical meeting of the East and West, at a modest budget of $1,000,000. Capra said, "I wanted to get out there in front. I wanted to win one of these Academy Awards for directing. It became an obsession; all ambitious people, all nutty people think that way. I'd seen how the Academy voted – they voted for art; they didn't vote for comedy. They didn't vote for this kind of junk I'm making. So I thought, What the hell, I'll give them art." But no Academy Award recognition came.

"Wasn't the handling of the story rather dark too, Pat? I mean, deciding to make a love story between a vicious warlord and a passionate missionary during civil war in China appealing must have been a terrific challenge, not only visually but philosophically as well."

You are so articulate, Nirvana. Yes, as you know the film is set in the 1920s during the Civil War in Shanghai, where people are slowly starving to death or being killed by Yen's forces--all while missionaries Dr. Robert Stripe (Gavin Gordon) and his fiancee whom he hasn't seen in three years, Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck), are getting married at the home of fellow missionaries who continually disparage the Chinese people they hope to save. In a startling scene of judgmental bigotry, a friendly neighborhood Bishop Harkness (Emmett Corrigan) intones to shocked fellow Christians, "I was telling the story of the crucifixion to a group of Mongolian bandits. I thought I was really getting to them. They kept moving closer and closer and they seemed so intent. A few days later, a group of travellers were captured in the desert by these bandits – they crucified them. I had misunderstood their reaction to my story. That, my friends, is the nature of Chinamen." They also spout lines like "Human life is the cheapest thing in China."

"That IS dark, Pat. But I'm sure the Americans come off looking better as the film moves on."

Not really, Nirvana. When Megan and Robert seek passage into war ground, postponing their nuptials in order to rescue some orphans pinned down by riots and destruction, our couple are separated and Megan is rescued, taken to General Yen's Imperial Summer Palace to recover--"

"The evil, maniacal Fu Manchu like warlord who slaughters so many innocents? I imagine the movie turns into his imposition of will over the imprisoned Megan, and she continually refers to him as a 'Yellow dog' or some such."

Well, thanks for the epithet, but no. Capra's skill as a director is much more textured than propagandistic shibboleth displaying American superiority to Eastern cultures. If anything his portrayal of Yen's mercenary American financial advisor Jones (Walter Connelly) is much more severe than his focus on Yen. When Megan is awakened in the palace (the most sumptuous, intricately woven sets you can imagine with incredible detail, costing $200,000 worth of Chinese antiques and art objects as set decorations, $7,000 of that being spent on acquiring a bronze incense burner) by the shrill disquieting executions of prisoners in the courtyard just beyond her room, she is attended to by Yen's concubine Mah-Li (Toshia Mori). Megan immediately feel sympathy for the girl, and they become close as the film moves on.

"And the despicable Chinese war-monger keeps Megan locked in her room unless she will yield to his fiendish sexual appetite, right?"

What is *wrong* with you, Nirvana? No, General Yen (Swedish actor Nils Asther) is nothing less than the consummate gentleman with Megan, whom he sees as a delicate inviolate woman, though unmistakably enticing. In a wonderful silent scene as he entreats Megan to rest and find herself safe from harm and refreshed from the violence of the streets, Yen sits across the room from her in contemplative study--"

"I knew it--he's a creepy voyeur who wants to drink in her exotic foreign beauty and maybe get a glimpse up her skirt, or wait until she's off her guard and--"

NO. If anything he stays to ensure her contentedness and safety. Mah-Li places an ornamental pillow behind him and covers him with a lap blanket, then settles down on a couch next to Megan, seductively positioning herself to entice him to her. But Yen looks away from the invitation and turns his watchful gaze to Megan protectively, while Mah-Li ranges the space between the members of this triangle and jealously gives up, realizing he's more infatuated--on a totally different plane--with the White girl. It's a masterful piece of cinema that humanizes the warlord, so much so that later Megan will exclaim, "It's hard to become acquainted with a man who slaughters helpless prisoners, and then shows such a tender reverence for the beauty of the moon."

And this is the brilliance of the film: Yen evolves as a tender, noble soul caught in the barbarism of provincial war and capitalistic opportunity; Jones becomes an evil Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder as he relishes the spoils of war by the trainloads. Megan, too, blinded by her singular zeal, evolves in Yen's company, subtly shifting from what Yen refers to as "Words, words" to a personal transcendence that shows an internalization of Christian teaching rather than a rote memorization of parables and verses. Beneath he is a soul: "Perhaps I shouldn't speak. I might astound you. Perhaps you believe us incapable of such moments. Yes, I'm sure you do. Have you ever read our poetry, Miss Davis? Do you understand our music? Have you ever seen our paintings of women walking among fruit trees? Where the fruit trees look like women and the women look like fruit trees? There has never been a people more purely artist, and therefore, more purely lover, than the Chinese. . . . I would wish to take you to a celestial garden. There isn't a General Yen or Megan Davis, but just you and me."

"Sniff. I have to admit, that is a lovely sentiment, Pat."

In the words of critic Kevin Lee, "In a strange irony, General Yen’s ruin is a reaffirmation of the Christian ethos – his act of mercy towards his enemy was his moment of salvation, transcending the fatal consequences. – driven to the point of insanity or suicide for upholding their selfless, humanist ideals. What’s also ironic is that the events leading to General Yen’s martyrdom are what drive Megan Davis to doubt her own cultural values and even her faith." As such, General Yen reinvigorates Megan's faith and depth of understanding through a very Christlike model of service and acceptance. "I don't believe a word you say, but when you say things like that, I forget I am General Yen." On one level he is a cynical pragmatist, the militaristic general who says of the executed, “Surely it is more humane to kill them quickly than let them starve.” And yet he seems to understand the complexities of human nature that are eluding Megan in her crusade toward ideology. “What are you doing?” Jones asks, bewildered, at one point, and Yen smiles. “I am converting a missionary.”

"Oh, now that's just WRONG!"

But think about it, Nirvana. Even though Yen says, "“[Christ was] a fool enough to hope,” he believes life is a challenge to be endured, and if one is lucky s/he might find moments of joy buried in it. To quote Pre-Code Hollywood.com, Danny writes, "And, ironically, Yen seems to be the only person who sees Christ’s teachings of hope for what they really are rather than as a way to mark one’s own perceived superiority. But, no, the missionaries are obsessed with their own fetishism for Christ on the cross, more interested in his death than his teachings. But that fetishism also works a good bridging point for the next step in the film: the sexual enticement of Megan by General Yen."

In a spectacularly surreal dream sequence, racism seems to run rampant as Megan, seductively draped over her bed, is awakened by a pounding on her locked door as the most hideously exaggerated Chinese caricature smashes into her sanctum, leering and lasciviously pawing at her as she screams, to see a Lone Ranger-masked man appear at her balcony and quickly subdue the intruder. Filmed through a gauzy nylon and soft focus, the rescuer and Megan embrace, and as she lifts the mask she finds Yen is her saving grace. They kiss passionately but lovingly. Megan is jarred awake.

"Well, I certainly would be. Fun Manchu breaking down my door better well know I've got mace handy, boy."

That's just more racial profiling, Nirvana, you should know better. The entire point of *The Bitter Tea Of General Yen* is “You can always do so much more with mercy than you can with murder.” And according to film historian Clayton L. White--

"No relation."

"[Megan's] ignorance and naiveté ruin Yen. She doesn't mean to do so, but that doesn't change the fact that their lives alter for the worse because of it. Capra was a faithful subscriber to the belief of 'The American Dream,' but what made him unique, what made him special, was the fact that he was smart enough to realize that dream, at times, could impose on the dreams of others, belittling their aspirations in the process." And in the *New Yorker* Anthony Lane perfectly captured Capra's cinematic love affair with Barbara Stanwyck: "Film theory has dwelled, with justice, on what is called the objectifying male gaze—that is, the power of the camera to ogle and depersonalize, and to encourage the viewer to follow suit—without always remembering that, at Hollywood’s height, there were plenty of people who could take that gaze like a punch and throw it right back."

So I'm going to give the Wheel a big spin here and see how it runs. Okay, Ooookay. On a miscegenation scale *The Bitter Tea of General Yen* runs pretty high, just below Blowing Your Head Off and just above *The Mask Of Fu Manchu* (1932), and on the Rah Rah America scale, Ron Howard has nailed it as "the dark side of American imperialism as an aggressive means to not spread liberty, but to make money.” But on the Romance-O-Meter it's off the charts, tossing it up into the balcony as a mature, luminous, and visually arresting, involving film that will delight both Capra and Stanwyck fans and perhaps teach us a moral lesson that takes Megan a week to understand, even though she spouts it like water from a fountain, “We’re all of one flesh and blood.”

Film historian Kevin Lee (quoted in an earlier commentary regarding Karloff's Fu Manchu) suggests *The Bitter Tea of General Yen* is "a film that weaves an elaborate web out of competing cultural perceptions, social and religious values, and sexual desires.. . . [and] risks offence for the sake of constructing a dialogue, one fraught with so many perils in the realms of politics, religion, cultures and sex, that it would not be worth it if it weren’t necessary."

"It sounds great, Pat. What do you say we go out for some Chinese, I'm famished."
Enjoy.
Jeff

So, you Moo Goo Gai Panned this one?

Sorry, I'm working on my derivative sarcastic humor and it's just not there yet.

Actually, Space, I LOVED that movie. It's enough to make your egg roll, pal.
Jeff

Post #539:  Today's strange feature, *Mad Love* (1935), was Peter Lorre's American film debut, after experiencing some delays on *Crime And Punishment* (1935) directed by Josef von Sternberg.  Cautioned by the Hays Office to avoid producing a film that would be "too brutal or too shocking," MGM issued the original print with advertising boasting "Suitable For Adults Only" (which was not enforced) and this spoken warning at the opening:  "Ladies and Gentlemen, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feels that it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning. We are about to unfold a story which we consider one of the strangest tales ever told. We think it will thrill you. It May shock you. It might horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject yourselves to such a strain, now is your chance to-well, we've warned you..."

Jumpin' Jiminy Gee Willikers, it sounds intense, doesn't it?  Well, it is. Director Karl Freund pulls out a lot of stops to project, with twisted glee, a taut psychological mystery of obsession and unrequited love, with Peter Lorre's bulging eyes staring directly into the camera in early usages of subjective camera work, which would become a Hitchcock staple in decades to come.  Some countries banned the film, while others allowed it with some judicious editing of scenes with a horrible train wreck, torture, strangulation and the guillotine, since the story is set in France.  Fifteen minutes were cut from the final print--the opening warning, scenes of Lorre's doctor perfuming and fondling a wax figure, and shots of bodies--to leave us with a tight 68 minutes.  Still, in Lorre's hands we've got a performance that moved Charlie Chaplin to exclaim, "He is the greatest living screen actor."

Aided by the spectacular cinematography of Gregg Toland, the inventor of the deep focus lens for *Citizen Kane* (1941), *Mad Love (aka The Hands Of Orloc)* excels on the Creep Meter as a study of consumptive enthrallment. We begin our journey into madness at the "Théâtre des Horreurs" in Paris, as actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) gives her final performance in a tableau of torture which terrorizes some of her audience and provides a kinky kick to others, most notably Doctor Gogol (Peter Lorre), a talented and much sought-after master surgeon, who has attended Yvonne's every performance. Retiring to her dressing room where she hangs on the radio broadcast of her concert pianist husband, Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive), Yvonne is visited by the Doctor who kisses her hand and expresses his undying appreciation of her, with a passionate demeanor that completely unnerves her.  With good reason.  

But this initial disconcerting fervor, she finds, pales in intensity when at the wrap party the good doctor, invited to share cake and a chaste kiss with the actress, plants a reckless and aggressive mauling lip lock on her to the misunderstanding gaiety of the cast crowding around them.  Eeeyewww!  But fate is cruel in this Grand Guignol world, as in traveling home to his wife, Stephen suffers a disastrous train crash which completely crushes his revered hands. And yes, you guess it, only Doctor Gogol has the technical perspicacity to attempt a hand transplant, using the appendages of a recently guillotined knife throwing expert who is also a deranged killer.  So it's all hands on deck, as Yvonne is positioned to plead with the doctor to save her impresario hubby.  Show of hands! How many of you can predict that Stephen finds he cannot play the piano as fluidly as he once could, but discovers he's pretty darned talented at flinging cutlery across the room?

Meanwhile, Doctor Gogol covertly buys the wax figure of Yvonne used to advertise her portrayal in the Theater Of Horrors and has it secreted away in his room, spending massive sums of money on flimsy negligees to adorn her, much to the drunken disgust of his landlady Francoise (May Beatty) who inexplicably carries a cockatoo on her shoulder. Calling the statue Galatea, the ivory sculpture of Pygmalion of Cyprus who magically came to life, Gogol fawns over Yvonne's likeness, dreaming of the day she'll burst into breath and love him unconditionally. Continuing to treat Stephen in his healing from the surgery and transplantation, Gogol warns Yvonne it may not be safe to stay with her husband, as the shock of receiving the hands of Rollo the convicted and executed Knife Thrower (Edward Brophy) might drive Stephen MAD! (Takes one to know one.)

Soon Stephen, his spirit crushed along with his hands, finds he is strangely drawn to sharp objects which can streak across the room and become imbedded in the woodwork with a twist of his wrist.  In a fit of pique after being turned away for a loan from his wealthy and recalcitrant stepfather Henry Orlac (Ian Wolfe), Stephen nearly impales the old man with a blade.  While these little drawbacks persist, a sensationalistic American reporter Reagan (Ted Healy, whose partners Moses Harry Horwitz (Moe) and brother Shemp Horwitz, known as Ted Healy and his Stooges, pre-dated the famous triumvirate later joined by Louis Feinberg (Larry) leaving Healy whose alcoholism was running rampant) has been following the infamous Rollo's trial and execution, and now thinks something hinky is going on with the doctor.

It's creepy and it's kooky, mysterious and spooky, and altogether ooky, this *Mad Love* fantasy.  No spoilers, but you can guess how events unfold, as Doctor Gogol nudges Stephen along while keeping one buggy eye on Yvonne once her hsuband is sent up the river as they're coming to take him away, ha ha, they're coming to take him away, ho ho hee hee ha ha, to the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes. . .

And it really succeeds in giving Peter Lorre a role that can showcase his swirling ferocity and tossing a meaty bone to Frances Drake (who could easily play Della Street on *Perry Mason* if that role were not taken by Barbara Hale) who registers a full range of panic and roiling fear.  You would never guess that Lorre, at five-foot-three, could contain such a fury, especially when dominating Frances Drake with a stage presence that seems to cow others even in his most sane moments.  Yet despite all its chills, critics were not moved to praise it, though today it rests comfortably as a cult classic; its dismal performance at the box office grossed just $170,000 domestically and a slightly better $194,000 internationally – disappointing returns on a budget of $403,000, validating, at least in Louis B. Mayer's mind, the perception that horror and MGM were not compatible bed partners.

There's a strange empathy that exists when Doctor Gogol screams in personal pain, “I have conquered science! Why can’t I conquer love?”  The dual nature of the character--talented humanitarian medical genius and the grasping delusional would-be lover--sets us a grim dichotomy that would invite pity if he were less *intense*. When Yvonne's character on stage is tortured, tied to a stretching wheel and subjected to a glowing poker below the bottom of the screen, her powerfully evocative screams obviously draw a psychosexual response from the doctor, whose face is perfectly framed in metaphor with one side bathed in light and the other swathed in darkness; the look of twisted satisfaction is unmistakable, upping the audience's distaste for him, even though he and his assistant restore a little girl's ability to walk again in a subsequent scene as he whirlpools into mania.    

Peter Lorre biographer Stephen D Youngkin praised the director: “for atmosphere, Freund looked to a past that he had helped make, steeping *Mad Love* in German traditions rich in dark, brooding territory…a miscellany of of sinister shadows, oblique angles, staircases and reflections.”  And toward the end, Gregg Toland's photography is immaculate, blending sharp contrasts to draw the most from the actors' abilities.  And in a strange tribute to this little slice of horror, nothing less than *Ren & Stimpy* paid homage to Peter Lorre's character in a cartoon called "Space Madness," augmenting and lifting a snatch of dialogue directly from the film as Ren, succumbing to lunacy in outer space, intones the memorable line, "Eet ees not I who am crazy--Eet ees I who am MAD!"

What a deliriously weird classic it is.  And with a superb trailer like the one accompanying this commentary, you can be sure it will give you a few scenes of campy (by today's standards) unsettling joy.  It may even make you want to hunt down Linda Ronstadt's rendition on vinyl--you might have to search for it, but it is available from Friday Music on pink vinyl in a limited edition.  I think Peter would approve.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Post #540: "The killer [is] a gaunt, bent figure in a long black cape and a wide brimmed hat. The few glimpses one is permitted to catch of this creature’s face show a large, horrible and bulging pig-like head with two cruel and fiery little eyes set on either side of a big snarling nose. The ears of this repulsive thing are small and pointed and set high on its frightful rolling head. Powerful and grotesquely misshapen hands dangle at this monster’s side when they are not fumbling over its thick and gibbering lips, lips that continually make a clucking sound like that of some wild beast of prey devouring warm flesh." No, this is not a description of the Presidential Debates, it's an except from the screenplay of today's feature, the comedy-mystery classic *Doctor X* (1932) to which our previous Bogart entry *The Return Of Doctor X* (1939) is not a sequel, even though both films boast a Doctor Xavier and deal with reanimation of dead tissue. Kleenex Alert--today's villain has some pretty severe post-nasal drip when he slathers on the synthetic flesh.

Like *The Mystery Of The Wax Museum* (1933), Michael Curtiz is in the directorial seat with some of the same acting personnel--Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray--along with make-up once again curated by Max Factor. But instead of Glenda Farrell as the spunky wise cracker reporter we have Lee Tracy, who is prone to bad luck and broad brushes with pratfalls, vulnerability and persistence. And because it's a Pre-Code shocker, it's got more than its fair share of ghoulish and button-pressing moments, the foremost being cannibalism. (Two cannibals were sitting around the fire, chewing the fat, when one said to the other, "I hate your brother-in-law," to which his friend replied, "Well then, just eat the noodles.")

I felt technically obligated to retell that joke since I haven't in about one year, and with Halloween coming I figured it was time.

To make the film creepy and earthy, First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) asked Natalie Kalmus, the color director at Technicolor, to help them create perfect moods by choosing clothes to emulate muted grays, burgundies, deep aquas and browns, and she handpicked Fay Wray's wardrobe to ensure she was decked in ecru rather than startling white. Fantastical set designer Anton Grot was also assigned to create electrical apparatus jutting off in odd angles and twisted glass to promote sinister yet unstable vibes in Doctor X's yawning caverns in his comfy beach house. With the filming in "improved" Technicolor two-strip "Process 3" that had a much finer grain, resulting in better color and clarity, *Doctor X* moved director Curtiz to exclaim, "This will make your blood curl!" And we all know there's nothing worse than curled blood.

Three separate versions of the film were created, disobeying Natalie Kalmus's mandate that the film not be recorded in black and white if Technicolor were being used. Two of these prints have been lost--the black and white version (which offers different scene set-ups and interactions between Lee Tracy and Mae Busch in a brothel and some operating room shots) and the international market version. But in all the emphasis is on comedy more than horror, although the mad scientist scenes and stealthy eye on flesh-eating keeps the film in the terror genre. Based on the Broadway stage play of the same name which ran for eighty performances in 1931, Warner Brothers bought the rights for $5,000 with a budget of $224,000 and banked $594,000 at the box office, making it a success that paved the way for *The Mystery Of The Wax Museum* one year later, though the two- or three-process color technique was, well, a wash.

Our narrative follows reporter Lee Taylor (Tracy) hot for any scoop of madness he scrounge up on the series of six grisly murders in as many months, deaths by strangulation, a surgical incision at the base of the brain and portions of the bodies masticated. His investigation takes him to Doctor Xavier and his prestigious think tank and medical academy for Icky Studies when the good doctor (Lionel Atwill) is called in as a consultant. Since the incisions were created with surgical precision, employing a special Swiss scalpel found only at Xavier's institute. QED: The maniac must be one of Xavier's colleagues, each of whom is twisted and eccentric enough to do the job if he's in the mood for a snack.

They are: Wells (Preston Foster), an amputee who has made a study of cannibalism and is ruled out pretty quickly as a suspect since he has only one hand; Haines (John Wray), who displays a sexual perversion with voyeurism, stashing French magazines in his scholarly tomes; Duke (Harry Beresford), a grouchy paralytic who would inspire Lionel Atwill's wheelchair bound sculptor in *Wax Museum*; and Rowitz (Arthur Edmund Carewe), who is conducting studies of the psychological effects of the moon since all the murders were conducted when the moon was high. Of course Xavier has to board his pretty daughter Joanne (Fay Wray) in his echoey manse by the beach along with his butler and maid, Otto (George Rosener) and Mamie (Leila Bennett), who help him reenact a gruesome murder to gauge the rising heart rate of the suspects and unveil the killer.

To create the proper atmosphere, Curtiz shot many of the night sequences literally after the main unit retired for the night, shooting at times until four o'clock in the morning, telling ghost stories to keep the cast involved. He also shot up to fifteen hours per day to impress Jack Warner, though Fay Wray recalled his pacing back and forth before the cast during their lunch breaks just to keep them intimidated and off balance. His very strong Hungarian accent often made directing tough as the cast and crew--including Fay Wray (Joanne), John Wray (Haines), Ray Rennahan (cinematographer) and Ray Romero (make-up specialist)--couldn't tell whom he wanted at any one minute and so generally hovered around him on the set. He said, "To be sure, stories of the fantastic, the horrible, the bizarre have been told with fullest success in black and white photography. But it has always been a question in my mind whether those very stories would not have been more gripping, more realistic, if they had been photographed in color such as we have employed with such unusual success in *Mystery of the Wax Museum* (1933) and *Doctor X*."

Off screen Atwill also cultivated a mysterious aura within himself, actually attending murder trials in his time off. He told one reporter, "See -- one side of my face is gentle and kind, incapable of anything but love of my fellow man. The other side, the other profile, is cruel and predatory and evil, incapable of anything but the lusts and dark passions. It all depends on which side of my face is turned toward you -- or the camera. It all depends on which side faces the moon at the ebb of the tide."

In referring to her roles in Curtiz's two shockers, Fay Wray said, "Those horror pictures were the parts I was being offered at the time, and the scream came into play in almost all of them. People today call them classics; that amuses me a little, because I had so many reservations about them when I made them. I thought they were much too gruesome." And in recalling her role in *King Kong* (1933), she said, "My scream was a product of pure imagination. I had to imagine what was happening to me, and I imagined that the nearest help was far away. When I first saw the picture, I thought the screams were overdone. But they were an important part of the picture and I was delighted with how it all looked. My scenes with King were exactly the way I imagined them. . . . Every time I'm in New York, I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there."

Her performance in *Doctor X* is fairly standard fare of the time, but her elegance and photographic glow in her henna'd hair (so it would play better on the screen than her regular brunette locks) demonstrate her dedication and poise, especially as she is called to tolerate the hovering of the slimy serial killer as she writhes in a flimsy garment.

This is definitely not one for the kids right before bed, but for vintage chills mixed with sustained comic moments in care of Lee Tracy you could do worse. It's a terribly odd film, especially by today's standards, but then how many movies on cannibalism make you laugh anyway? Gnaw on that old bone for a while.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Post #541 (5=4+1): We're taking a short breather from the horror films of old to sneak in a strange little noir in today's feature, *Destination Murder* (1950). It's a Poverty Row picture, low budget, even though its convoluted plot takes us to some nice digs for the bad guys, but overall it's a strange little noir-wannabe from director Edward L. Cahn who also produced it; he would later gain more notoriety for more B-movies like *Dragstrip Girl* (1957), *The She-Creature* (1956), *Zombies of Mora Tau* (1957), *Invasion of the Saucer Men* (1957), and *It! The Terror from Beyond Space* (1958). Yup, as you can tell, we're not reaching the pinnacle of memorable cinema here, but at least it's a quick and painless 72 minutes.

Our Improbability Index hits seven out of ten when small potatoes grifter Jackie Wales (Stanley Clemens, Stash in the East Side Kids movies and Tony Scaponi in *Going My Way* 1944) sneaks out of a movie with his girlfriend at intermission, catches a ride across town, and kills Arthur Mansfield (Franklyn Farnum) before returning to the theater and his girl to catch the end of the feature. No one's the wiser, eh? Yeah yeah, sure sure, but witnessing Jackie leapfrogging the front fence to escape, Laura Mansfield (Joyce Mackenzie) vows to catch her father's killer no matter what comes her way. Why was the old man offed? I dunno, but it starts the film in motion.

At the police lineup Laura spots Jackie but cannot conclusively identify him, so off he goes, later offering Laura a ride home. She accepts, eyes him quasi-suspiciously then sees him hurdle the gate again and now is certain he's the one. But Police Lt. Brewster (James Flavin) sees it as light evidence and ignores her entreaties to snatch the guy. Disenchanted and now wondering if she should defund the police, she decides to investigate on her own, dating Jackie to uncover the plot. Meanwhile, Stretch Norton (Hurd Hatfield), manager of nightclub Vogue, commiserates with big boss Armitage (Albert Dekker) who speaks of himself in the third person and has hired Jackie for the hit. Dating Laura one night at the Vogue, Jackie loses a fortune at gambling and demands more money from Armitage. Being a nice guy, Armitage beats Jackie about the face with his belt while Norton engages a player piano to drown out the noise. Music lovers.

Defying all logic and safety, Laura takes a job at the Vogue as a cigarette girl where she meets Alice Wentworth (Myrna Dell), a noir staple as a gold-digging, back-stabbing fiancee of Armitage who wants to double-time with Stretch while Laura unravels the criminal activities of the club leading to her father's death. But don't worry, folks--people get knocked off left and right before we're done. You can even find a bit part for John Dehner before he portrayed Paladin on radio for CBS's *Have Gun, Will Travel*. Of special note, though, are Steve Gibson and Steve Gibson's Redcaps as the snazzy little jazz combo at the Vogue who sing two swingin' tunes, "Let's Go To A Party" and "Palace of Stone." Right reet skeet for the feet, neat.

A couple small twists make this fashionably okay to sit through, though Joyce Mackenzie is attractive but relatively dense in her acting, Stanley Clemens plays his role as he has all his other roles as a smart aleck overextender who thinks he's smarter than he is, and our remaining bad guys and gal move the story along capably with sneers and slinks and menacing looming. It's all in all passable, meaning if you passed it up, you wouldn't go into mourning, but if you watch it, turn off your logician monitor and float with it. It's a serviceable B.
Enjoy.
Jeff

More Noir, More Noir, More Noir!

And don't be dissin' Earth Versus the Saucer Men. It could be the greatest Sci-Fi epic of it's era. Well, it's pretty funny. Just not intentionally. My favorite character is the farmer with the shotgun and winning personality.

Post #542 (The Answer is 42, five times): What a change of pace and a treat for you today, friends. And anyone who says Barbara Stanwyck wasn't one hot little *Ball Of Fire* (1941) has never seen her in this role as Sugarpuss O'Shea in this Howard Hawks classic. Just dig this crazy musical number, "Drum Boogie," with Gene Krupa and his orchestra (with a fabulous Roy Eldridge trumpet solo at its core) to get up on your feet with some combustion in your soul. And with a story by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and a cast of notables you'll instantly recognize, this is an all star extravaganza with some screwball comedy propelling us through its fast 111 minutes. (Martha Tilton supplies Barbara's solo in this clip, but that just adds more prestige to the whole affair.)

Nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Actress in a leading role, Best Original Story [by Billy Wilder], Best Sound Recording and Best Musical Score [Alfred Newman]), *Ball Of Fire* is a full throttle dream for anyone who loves English. Gary Cooper plays Bertram Potts, a professor of language studying slang, who along with seven of his esteemed colleagues is writing a comprehensive encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Joining him are Oskar Homolka as Professor Gurkakoff (Sciences). Henry Travers [Clarence the Angel in *It's A Wonderful Life* 1946] as Professor Jerome (Geographer), S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall as Professor Magenbruch (Physiology), Tully Marshall as Professor Robinson (Law), Leonid Kinskey Professor Quintana (Philosophy), the easily distracted Richard Haydn in his feature film debut as Professor Oddley (Botany) who is the group's only widower, and Aubrey Mather as Professor Peagram (History).

Into their lives comes Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), a bold and brassy nightclub entertainer who needs to hide from the police, who want to question her about her fiance mobster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews). In the relative seclusion of the professors' home, watched over by domestic help Miss Bragg (Kathleen Howard), a force who keeps the professors in line, Sugarpuss teaches the old boys how to conga, loosen up and appreciate true living. Her presence has an immediate effect on "Pottsy," as she calls him, through her colorful patois and her sexy openness, for which he falls deeply infatuated.

When Joe proposes to Sugarpuss only to take advantage of the husband-wife confidentiality in court, Sugarpuss slowly recognizes Pottsy is enamored of her, asking her to marry him with a modest ring that is one-thirty-second the size of the bauble Joe sends to her. Tricking the professors into helping her cross the Washington Bridge under the noses of the police, when she reaches Joe and the minister to be wed she starts harboring a sincere change of heart. From here the complications of the heart gleefully unravel in a clash of comic confrontations that take full measure of Gary Cooper's gangly innocence and Barbara Stanwyck's sultry teachings of the phrase "Yum Yum." Toss in Dan Duryea as one of Lilac's hoods, look for Allen Jenkins as a quiz-following garbage collector and Elisha Cook Jr. as a waiter, enlist the formidable talent of cinematographer Gregg Toland (*Citizen Kane* 1941) and you've got a romantic comedy with quite a kick.

According to IMDB, "Producer Samuel Goldwyn promised director Billy Wilder a $10,000 bonus if the film became a box-office hit. When it was released in theaters, it was an instant success. One day Wilder stopped by Goldwyn's office and asked for his $10,000 bonus. Goldwyn flew into a rage. 'You Hungarian thief!' he shouted at Wilder. 'I never promised any such thing! Get out of here!' Wilder left the office, furious. That night, however, Goldwyn's wife, Helen, awoke to find him pacing the floor of their bedroom. 'I've just remembered that Wilder was right,' Goldwyn told her. 'I DID promise him a $10,000 bonus.' 'What are you going to do?' asked Helen. 'What CAN I do?' Goldwyn replied. 'I'm going to sit down here and write Wilder a check for $5,000!'" Although Wilder and Goldwyn became friends in later years, they never worked together again. (Other sources suggest Goldwyn offered a $2,500 bonus and relented with a $1,500 check.)

The role of Sugarpuss O'Shea was a much sought-after role, with such actresses as Lucille Ball, Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Miss America of 1941 Rosemary La Planche, and Betty Field in the running. It was Gary Cooper who recommended Barbara Stanwyck for the role, and when Goldwyn found out she was available immediately signed her. At one point in the filming, when Sugarpuss throws a right hook at Miss Bragg, Stanwyck actually connected with Katherine Howard, giving her a fractured jaw, which mortified Barbara.

Howard Hawks, known for his overlapping dialogue and lightning fast speaking roles as in *His Girl Friday* (1940), saw some differences in this film: "Well, it was about pedantic people. When you've got professors saying lines, they can't speak 'em like crime reporters. So we naturally slowed up - couldn't do anything about it. Also, it was a little bit further from truth and a little more allegorical. It actually was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - with the striptease dancer as Snow White. It didn't have the same reality as the other comedies and we couldn't make it go with the same speed."

So if you've noticed the film as an homage to *Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs* (1937), pat yourself on the back. When Pottsy is jotting down notes from the newspaper boy, you may notice the film playing across the street on the theater marquee. MGM also photographed the professors sitting in front of a Disney poster, each one in front of his corresponding dwarf: S.Z. Sakall - Dopey; Leonid Kinskey - Sneezy; Richard Haydn - Bashful; Henry Travers - Sleepy; Aubrey Mather - Happy; Tully Marshall - Grumpy, and Oskar Homolka - Doc. Billy Wilder also cited the story as inspiration for his screenplay.

According to TCM, Hawks was less than impressed with Toland's use of deep focus. "He rarely had time for deep focus, nor did he think it contributed much to a picture. But he did call on the cameraman to help him capture the romance of the scene in which Cooper admits he loves Stanwyck. Hawks wanted just her eyes to show in the scene, played in a darkened bedroom, and Toland told him the way to do it was by having Stanwyck perform the scene in blackface. The star was a little surprised at the suggestion, but was too professional to refuse, resulting in a great scene."

*Ball of Fire* wrapped one day ahead of schedule at a final cost of $1,152, 538 million. It premiered on December 24, 1941, in time to qualify for that year's Oscars, and ended up becoming one of Goldwyn's biggest hits, generating over $1 million in profits, the 25th highest-grossing film of 1942, taking in $2.2 million at the box office. Billy Wilder was paid $7,500 for the story and $79,800 for the screenplay, while Gary Cooper's salary was $150,000, Stanwyck's $68,333, for all the accountants who might be reading this.

But money alone can't capture the fun of this picture. The performances are uniformly cheeky and sweet, the direction brisk, and framing glorious for the wealth of detail and fidgety mannerisms in any given scene. If you're looking for a film to relax with while offering a fair share of laughs and cute moments, look no further. This one is a gem.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Love this movie. And have I mentioned that I'm a HUGE Barbara Stanwyck fan lately?

Oh she is a hot patootie. Especially in this film.
Jeff

Post #543 (2.1. GO!): With less than two weeks to go before the Big Election takes place, I need to vent for just a minute, if you'll excuse me.  Every day I find a fresh inundation of heavy card stock flyers exposing the heinous evils of some political candidate at the local level (the big runners just piggy back their ads with fervent actors and wackos). Screaming abstractions attempt to scare the living bejeebers out of the undereducated or lazy, asking complex questions that assume the truth of unsubstantiated claims: "Do you want SOCIALISM to sacrifice your children to the evil Vince Clortho, who is the keymaster to the decline of Michigan's good life? Have you heard that Vince Clortho actually once had a sexual encounter with a THESPIAN who performed before a live audience? We don't need more decadence taking over our safe communities, so vote Winston Zeddemore this Tuesday for a return to American values!"  

Look, Candidates, I already voted, three weeks ago, and I tracked the receipt of my ballot so I know democracy is at work. You are wasting paper and time sending me something that did not and never will sway my conscience by extolling the virtues of your platform and razing your competition.  It's a done deal for me.  My shredder blew up last night after ingesting all your vitriol, so just lay off, okay?  I swear sometimes I feel like Louis Del Grande in one of the opening scenes of today's feature, *Scanners* (1981) written and directed by Canadian horror master David Cronenberg. (Once you've seen Louis's scene, it will be etched in your memory for years to come.  A genuine classic "EEEyewwww" Moment if there ever was one.)

Thank you for indulging my frustrations; they are rare, usually initiating head explosions at four-year intervals.  But now, to our movie.  *Scanners* was the first Cronenberg film I ever saw, and it quickly cemented the perception in me that he was undeniably talented and bedbug crazy and dark as a black hole as a director.  Such a nice guy in interviews, he somehow managed to cull the most visceral visuals from his imagination and share them with his audiences. Since I saw *Scanners* when it was released, I went on to stick my tentative toe in his deep waters in the years to come, having seen *Videodrome* (1983) largely because Debbie Harry was in it, *The Dead Zone* (1983) because it was Stephen King, and actually pretty good, *The Fly* (1986) with Jeff Goldblum who made ME cry "Help me, help me" it was so gross, *Dead Ringers* (1988) with Jeremy Irons in a dual role, *Naked Lunch* (1991) which I've never been able to finish, based on William Burroughs' nearly unfilmable book, *Crash* (1996) J. G. Ballard's totally creepy freaked-out meditation on sex and death, and finally *eXistenZ* (1999) which I'm still unsure of, and *A History Of Violence* (2005) which is rough going but interesting nonetheless.  I'm just glad I'm not inside this guy's head.

*Scanners* was one I avoided buying for my library for a LONG time, but with age comes senility and I finally chipped in for the Criterion Collection edition, in my mind the Rolls Royce of versions.  And in watching it again, I found myself in need of revising my initial reaction.  Maybe it's my exposure to Quentin Tarantino, but I found this film a whole mess (pardon the pun) less troublesome than when I first saw it.  Sure, it's still suspenseful and interesting as all get-out, and Howard Shore's electronically-sprinkled soundtrack is still one of the most unnerving I've ever heard--that sucker will stay with you in a way similar to John Carpenter's minimalistic score for *Halloween* (1978).  And I appreciated the measured pacing of *Scanners* as the basic plot rolled on.  At the time of its release I thought it was just a shocker; today I see it as a good mystery with special effects advancing the narrative.

For the two or three of you who haven't seen the film, we see the story of an entrepreneurial military company, ConSec,  connecting with and recruiting the titular "scanners," who are super-powered citizens capable of telepathy and psychokinesis, to serve their interests.  Unfortunately, for ConSec, a rogue scanner, Darryl Revok (the perfect Michael Ironside), appears to have been methodically assassinating scanners with a grand plan. When ConSec head security man Braedon Keller (Lawrence Dane) decides to close down the program's research, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) opposes the action and isolating a new scanner, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), plans to infiltrate Revok's underground. And so the scanners and anti-scanners are locked in combat over the administration of a drug, Ephemerol, which inhibits scanners' powers.

In a taut suspense sequence when Cameron meets a reclusive scanner, Benjamin Pierce (Robert Silverman), as Jeff Lebowski would say, "New sh*t has come to light," as Pierce may reveal Revok's whereabouts and put Cameron on to  scanners in opposition to Revok's group led by Kim Obrist (Jennifer O'Neal who shows up at the 37-minute mark). Together Obrist and Cameron discover vast quantities of Ephemerol being amassed by Revok through ConSec's RIPE program.  And the mystery deepens.  Any more plot reiteration would ruin the surprises Cronenberg has in store.

Stephen Lack, who has retired from acting and is now a successful painter, holds the story together like an empty-eyed Jimmy Fallon with a pronounced cleft in his chin.  While some critics found him one-dimensional in his range of emotions, I found his portrayal an accurate underplayed blank tablet, which is good in this instance.  He is clearly at sea with these powers, which he can neither control adequately or understand, so it would be natural for him to shut down extreme emotional reactions in service to the character.  Patrick McGoohan (Number 6 in one of my top three favorite television series of all time, *The Prisoner*) remains aloof, internally driven, and emotionally unavailable, demonstrating an officious demeanor that cloaks his character in deeper mystery. (Evidently he and Cronenberg locked horns during the filming and his approach clashed with Jennifer O'Neal as well.)

Michael Ironside was originally paid $5,300 (Canadian) for a bit part with one or two scenes, but became a main force in the film.  He said, “There’s a scene … where I’m set on fire and my head comes up and those scleras they put on your eyes, they had scratched all my corneas.  So the contact lenses they had made for me to change my eye color didn't fit properly because my eyes had been scratched. Dick Smith happened to have with him Dustin Hoffman’s eyes from *Little Big Man* and they were actually oversized, and you wouldn't normally do this because they have to be fitted, but when you see me come out from under that coat at the end of *Scanners*, those blue eyes of mine are Dustin Hoffman’s from *Little Big Man*.”

Cronenberg does not recall the production in glowing terms, however.  With the Damolean Sword of two months hanging over his head, enabling his financing to take a tax write-off, some antagonism with McGoohan and O'Neal, and not having completed the final script, Cronenberg often spent evenings after the shoot revising and rewriting sections of the film to be shot in the coming days.  Stephen Lack recalled for *Film Comment*,  “Not only was *Scanners* not rehearsed, but it wasn’t written.  David was coming in with pink, blue, and yellow pages for the day for the version of the script that we were doing, and he was working on it right there. As a result I had to deal with the dialogue in such a way that I was not reacting to things, because the information hadn’t been given to my character in the linear progression of the story. If you chop it up and look at it, 50 percent of my dialogue is not an assertion of anything but rather a question: ‘You called me a Scanner, what does that mean?’ ‘You’re part of an organization, who are you?’ Everything is a freaking question!”

And due to those constraints, the director shifted some of the narrative around, moving Louis Del Grande's iconic scene encountering Revok during a marketing meeting to a few minutes into the film rather than at the very beginning.  “People tend to come late at films, they walk in after the first three minutes,” Cronenberg told *Starburst* magazine. “For me, films are really made for an audience, like the way poets read their poetry for reactions and make changes based on that. I used to sneer at test previews but now I realize that it makes perfect sense. You get so close to something that you can’t objectively gauge on how an audience is going to react to something and you need that kind of resonance. I really agonized over that change for quite some time. It was suggested by somebody else, though I wasn’t forced into it at all.”

According to AV Club's A.A. Dowd, "test audiences reportedly found the effect, conceived by legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, so profoundly disturbing that they couldn’t connect with anything that came after it. The scene now occurs a reel or so into the movie, after the introduction of the hero, but it still packs a wallop. Who needs CGI when you can just stuff a prosthetic head full of offal and blast it with a shotgun?"

Yet for all its pyrotechnics, the story of telepathic showdowns is fairly straightforward, certainly much more conventional than some of his other films which persist in promoting the title bestowed on Cronenberg as "Master Of Venereal Horror."
Compared to some of his other films, this one is almost tame, in retrospect, which may be one of the key reasons I truly enjoyed it this time around.  Now, make no mistake--it is still tough stuff, with some harrowing shots, but for a sustained shower of unmentionables and deteriorations that so many schlock directors are interested in exploring merely for a gross-out moment, the story holds and the effects grow out of the conspiracy narrative naturally. (The climax still offers jolts, though, so be warned.)

Today, thirty-nine years after its release, *Scanners* still resonates as a pharmacological nightmare, as some critics have compared Ephemerol to Thalidomide in the 1950s.  With Covd-19 still lurching through the world, one can only speculate what incredible but too credible narratives are presently weaving through the minds of writers and filmmakers now.  The ageless folly of man trying to subvert the natural order of things in bold and startling chemical calculations in the name of advancement will continue to leave a trail of detritus in its wake.  In the cinemas it doesn't matter if it's Pre-Code dabbling with reanimation of lifeless tissue, synthetic flesh, or simple cloves of garlic hanging in the window and door frames like mistletoe, the boogeymen will get us if we don't. Watch. Out.  Personally I don't see a whole bold new world shaking the foundations of life from Dr. Fauci, but in the hands of governmental wannabes who will never cease in their overkill in the mailboxes, who knows what will come next?  Sometimes I can't get over the shakes by repeating "It's only a movie, it's only a movie" when the movies are more fun than reality.

Even though they are both concerned with balls of fire, in strictly divergent ways, I think I’ll return to Barbara Stanwyck faster than Michael Ironside. But in the race for attention, I'll stick with Mike over any politician any day.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Jeff there is no politicians anymore. It's a war of ideology. People are One side says listen to science read be informed. The other side says stay free don't wear a mask the individual over the collective. Keep you angry so you don't notice they have both hands in your pants stealing your money. Over the last 20 years the 1% have removed 50 Trillion dollars in income from the middle class. Where is that money? why are people hungry? why are people homeless. Well once you stop the BS anger you take a breath and look at what you are being fed. Trumps experimental treatment cost 100K and was created by advanced science. Two weeks later he is on the stump saying do not believe in science and the sheep eating it up while he laughs into his sleeve.

Its ideology over thought. Us against you. Time to stop and look and you will find there is only us against the 1%. I could write a book on the sleight of hand the watch this hand while I steal you blind.

Also thats a great movie. Just watched Cronenberg in The Disappearance at Clifton Hill. He was okay. Like the Leonard Cohen of acting. Unlikely but quirky presence.

You know, Boss, I don't know what's worse--being able to discern how handily the public are fed fertilizer, seeing through all the smoke and mirrors by merely being literate (and therefore pissed that they think we're that stupid), or being so blissfully blinded by ideology, nothing else matters, proving so many are stupid. I keep going back to Frank Zappa--"There are two things on earth that are universal: hydrogen and stupidity, and stupidity has a longer shelf life."

I am Grandpa Simpson shaking his fist at the sky, yelling at clouds. I'll go away now, before I start getting death threats.
Jeff

This is what a happens when you have an inability to think for yourself and discern the truth. You get 24 year old morons killing mafia crime bosses because they believe the deep state BS they are fed online.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/gambino-mob-boss-frank-cali-killing-everything-we-know.html

Read where he got his source of truth. Space is in tech like me. We know how easy it is to embed this stuff. Create thousands of fake robot accounts use a probability algorithm that is catered to the sweet spot of these spoon fed morons. Exactly what they will click what they will react to. What triggers them and what they will share. the sharing is key. This is what wood block head amoral Zuckerberg exploits. Because in this world chaos equals clicks and clicks equal money.

Dear ducks I could write a book on this shit. If you use the internet to shape your world view then you are screwed. Algorithms shape your search results. Cross reference your click history and display stuff that results in consumption. If wiki is your source of truth then you are lost. You have to search out analog sources of truth define your world view and not be sucked in. Nothing you see online is entirely accurate. So you need to beware and be careful.

Shocks me lads its just shocks me..... its all going to end in horrendous violence because those of us who think have seen this all before. Rome, France, US/England... revolution. Now its been stoked by amoral mad men who will make more and more money. The SP 500 is at its highest. Billionaires added wild gains because chaos is good for business. During a pandemic that is wiping out middle class businesses. Record unemployment and the rich get richer. The whole system is rigged. Rats in a maze.

This is why I stepped out the the tech rat race. The final straw was San Fran 2018 meeting with Google X labs and billionaires standing around looking at their phones no one talking to each other. The largest concentration of wealth in any one city in the history of the USA and 185000 homeless. While 20 somethings drive Lambos to eat at overpriced nitrogen bars. Not a soul to be had amongst them all.

Here's quite a bit of preface, followed by a bit of personal opinion.

Boss, on this coming Monday I'm retiring from 34 1/2 years in the entertainment industry. But none of it as an entertainer. I've done everything from toilet scrubber to A-List celebrity wrangler. My most frustrating day in this time, was when I had to maintain consistent lighting through 14 takes of a "spontaneous" exterior scene for a "reality" TV show. This during a two hour time frame just after sunrise in Florida during the summer.

I've never been in Tech. But I describe myself as an old nerd. I've been building, upgrading and troubleshooting computer hardware, since the mid 70's. This was my first computer. https://heathkit.garlanger.com/hardware/systems/H88/ Windoze 8.0 cured me of ever trying to troubleshoot software again in this lifetime.

Politically, I describe myself as a true independent. My voter registration says "unaffiliated". And I research everything using the best unbiased sources I can find. This is becoming harder and harder to do. I go to great lengths, to try to base my political decisions on truth and information, rather than opinion and personal bias. But I don't pretend to be perfect.

And finally, I'm a gun owner, sport shooter and licensed concealed carrier. You'll note that I said sport shooter, not hunter. I have no problem with hunting for meat. But I'll never support trophy hunting. I became a concealed carrier three years ago, when I narrowly escaped an attempted carjacking. This happened almost directly in front of the local police station.

Now for the opinion stuff.

I thoroughly detest the state of the web. What could and should have become an incredible resource for the world, is being used as a tool to subvert the world. We're constantly being driven to dis-information and propaganda by a few online power players. In my mind, this is very close to criminal in nature. And the level of information harvesting for profit and political gain is downright Orwellian. I'll never support censorship. But we have got to find a way to bring this under control. And giving government the ability to control these things scares me even more.

Whatever happened to compromise? Politics has become so polarized, that those of us who try to treat both sides fairly don't even have a seat at the table any more.

Post #544: After the Presidential debate last night, I felt obligated to watch one of my favorite movies just to lighten my mood because I had spent most of the two hours quietly yelling, "AAAARRRR!" like Pee-Wee Herman at the screen. So in celebration of the 35th anniversary of its release, today's feature is *Pee-Wee's Big Adventure* (1985). Back in that year I wheedled my buddy Ric Shahin​ into seeing it with me at the old Studio M theater.

Now, those of you who are not lucky enough to know him, Ric is one of the most spontaneous, funny and warm hearted people I know. But that night he was mega-super-dynamically skeptical of this film (as was probably everyone else who didn't jump into it willingly). But I persisted, and that movie instantly shot to the top of my Most Entertaining Movies List. I still love it because it is so unabashedly silly and goofy, reminding me of what it was like to a child. I'm not even going to apologize to Ric for dragging him to see it (my wife's MS at the time was prohibiting her from seeing films in theaters because the effort was too great; so I gleefully bought the film when it first came out on video and laughed uproariously while my wife questioned why she'd ever married me).

Twenty-six-year old Tim Burton's first feature length film, *Pee-Wee's Big Adventure* follows Pee-Wee (Paul Reubens) through his various trials and tribulations when someone steals his prized bicycle, in farcical nod to the famed Vittorio De Sica Italian classic *The Bicycle Thieves* (1948) Reubens co-wrote with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol. The trio wrote the screenplay literally by the book, specifically Syd Fields' *Screenplay* and the resultant script is now used as a textbook example of the perfectly symmetrical screenplay. Reubens said, "It’s a 90-minute film, it’s a 90-page script. On page 30 I lose my bike, on page 60 I find it. It's literally exactly what they said to do in the book...There should be like a MacGuffin kind of a thing, something you’re looking for, and I was like, 'Okay, my bike.'"

Wedged in between the losing and finding are extended set pieces of Reubens and Burton madness, memorable scenes and dialogue that get funnier (to me) every time I watch the film. The opening breakfast sequence is a Rube Goldberg masterpiece, especially due to the quirky soundtrack from Danny Elfman, formerly of Oingo Boingo, and now a prolific composer of film scores associated with 17 Tim Burton films, Sam Raimi's *Spider-Man* films, and *The Simpsons*, scoring over 100 films for movies and television. Pee-Wee's trip to "the basement of the Alamo" includes a funny bit of improvisational dialogue from former *Saturday Night Live* regular Jan Hooks. His encounter with bikers at a seedy dive (including a cameo from Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson) is a cult favorite as he dances to "Tequila" atop the bar. An accepted ride from "Large Marge" (Alice Nunn, who never blinks when she recites her history) makes an unexpected turn that allows Burton's black humor to shine, as does a surreal dream sequence when clowns operate on Pee-Wee's bike. One crazy scene after another, the pace never lags.

I recall, during the screening my buddy and I attended, I kept in reserve a nagging trepidation that with all the innocent fun moving across the screen, the film was going to detour into more profane or morally questionable "adult" humor as was popular at the time. My estimation for the film skyrocketed when it never strayed into inappropriate territory, but remained joyful in a childlike manner. Oh, a couple silly jokes with veiled references slipped by, but never to detract from the likable nuttiness that would appeal to kids. What I found most refreshing was how Pee-Wee's infectious enthusiasm and optimism brushed off on everyone he met, including hardened criminals like Mickey Morelli (Judd Omen) and the biker gang.

Granted, you own enjoyment of this film will be reliant on your appreciation (or tolerance) of Paul Reubens' character, but since this has become a cult favorite--despite Gene Siskel's nomination of it for The Worst Picture Of The Year, excoriating it in his reviews--its success spawned the television series *Pee-Wee's Playhouse* which ran on CBS from 1986 to 1990. It was a favorite in our household (and still is, since I have it on DVDs, though my wife can deal with episodes that will never be bingeworthy in her eyes) when our sons were growing, and saying the Secret Word at dinner provoked a "scream real loud" (Zizzybaluba is still a cherished memory).

And Paul Reubens is nothing if not faithful to his friends, who have followed him from his stage show to the movies and television: Watch carefully in the film for John Moody (Mailman Mike) as the bus clerk in the movie studio sequence, Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne) as the Mother Superior, John Paragon (Jambi the Genie and voice of Pterry) as high-voiced studio extra in red armor from whom Pee-wee asks directions, and Phil Hartman (Cap'n Carl) as the reporter interviewing Francis in the final scene at the drive-in.

Also along for the ride are Ed Herlihy (Francis's father Mr. Buxton), James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild (P.W. Herman and Dottie in the movie within the movie), Milton Berle (as himself), Tom Berenger (a diner patron after the Large Marge scene), Professor Toru Tanaka (who was in Raimi's *Darkman* 1990, as well as countless television and film roles, as the Buxtons' butler), Elizabeth Daily (Dottie who would also provide voice talent for *Powderpuff Girls*), Diane Salinger (Simone, and played alongside Paul Reubens in Burton's *Batman Returns* (1992) as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot "The Penguin's parents; Reubens would reprise that role in the TV series *Gotham*) and Tim Burton himself (thug who accosts Pee-Wee at the Fortune Teller's home). Twisted Sister also puts in an appearance while shooting a video on the Warners lot.

Lori Loughlin, Laura Dern, Phoebe Cates, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Jason Leigh were all considered for the role of Dottie, and Corey Feldman was offered the role of Francis Buxton but had to turn it down due to filming conflicts with *The Goonies* (1985).

Tim Burton turned down the directing duties on the sequel *Big Top Pee-Wee* (1988) with Valeria Golina and Kris Kristofferson, in favor of his pet project *Beetlejuice* (1988) who eventual success along with *Pee-Wee's Big Adventure* convinced Warner Brothers that he should be helming the Michael Keaton-Jack Nicholson franchise *Batman* (1989). David Ansen of *Newsweek* called *Pee-Wee* a "Mattel Surrealism, a toy-store fantasia in primary colors and '50s decor. Whoever proposed teaming up Pee-wee (a.k.a. Paul Reubens) with 26-year-old director Tim Burton knew what they were doing ... Together they've conspired to make a true original — a live-action cartoon brash enough to appeal to little kids and yet so knee-deep in irony that its faux naivete looks as chic as the latest retrofashions." With many of the props coming directly from Paul Reubens' personal collection, the film's budget of $7 million was compounded with a domestic box office return of $40,940,662. And that's not counting the profits it's incurred on home video outlets.

So call Pee-Wee juvenile (I know you are, but what am I?) all you want, but any film that persists in bringing a smile during dark, wintery (literally and figuratively) days is fine in my book. Break out your old boxes of Mr. T cereal and chow down on Roger Ebert's "guilty pleasure" and a film nominated for inclusion on The Top 100 Funniest Movies List. Huh Ha Ha Ha!
Enjoy.
Jeff

Lord o'Mercy, Space, if you haven't seen this Barbara Stanwyck movie, drop whatever you're doing and see it. Wowsers.

Post #545 (A Palindrome Romantic Comedy): I know I'm pushing the envelope a bit here, as today's feature "Remember The Night* (originally named *Great Love*)(1940) by Preston Sturges is traditionally seen as a Christmas movie. I think I must have been inspired to comment on this one because Hallmark is running an early Christmas movie marathon this weekend, with most of the movies sharing the same plot line with different actors (or at least it feels that way). But take heart, friends, as this is much more a sweet tempered if somewhat predictable holiday story that does not ram holly, mistletoe, and eggnog down your gullets while twinkles in the eyes of the actors as they beat us senseless with candy canes to remind us of the meaning of being kind. In fact, the holidays are more background material than center-stage bombast.

It's the first of four teamings of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck (with my personal favorite being *Double Indemnity* 1944), produced and directed by Mitchell Leisen, who edited Preston Sturges's script and shifted a couple key elements that moved Sturges to vow he'd direct his own films from then on. While that may sound like a mark against *Remember The Night*, the result is abundantly positive overall. Leisen's biographer David Chiericetti has written, "Tailoring the script to fit the personalities of MacMurray and Stanwyck drastically changed Sturges's original concept of the characters. Reading the script, one gets the impression that it is the attorney who dominated the story. Sturges gave him many lengthy and clever speeches which made him assume almost heroic stature. Leisen felt that this was a bit theatrical, and the wordiness of the dialogue demanded a certain articulate quality on the part of the actor that MacMurray simply didn't have. Cutting MacMurray's lines down to the minimum, Leisen played up the feeling of gentle strength MacMurray could project so well. It was a far cry from Sturges's dashing hero."

The story follows Assistant District Attorney John "Jack" Sargent (MacMurray) prosecuting the case of Lee Leander (Stanwyck) for shoplifting an expensive bracelet just before Christmas. After witnessing the show stopping theatrics of Lee's defense attorney Francis X. O'Leary (Willard Robertson) preying on the sympathy of the jury, Sargent moves to have the trial of this third-time offender postponed until January 3, so the jury and judge might spend time with their families at Christmas. Feeling guilty that Lee will be remanded to jail over the holiday, Sargent arranges for bail bondsman Fat Mike (Tom Kennedy) to post bail. But Fat Mike skews Jack's plans by depositing Lee on his doorstep, since she has nowhere to go. Finding her family lives in Indiana, Jack's home as well, he begrudgingly takes her along to drop her off at her family home while he continues on his trip back to his home to visit his mother.

Their trek to Indiana provides the screwball comedy aspects of the story to shine, as they find themselves arrested for trespassing when they get lost, and finagle their way out of that predicament. Yet when we reach Lee's mother's home we gain dramatic insight into why she steals and how she's come to be the person she is. The story then turns warm and serious as Jack takes her home with him, where his mother (Beulah Bondi), Aunt Emma (Elizabeth Patterson), and cousin "Chilly" Willie Simms (one of my favorite character actors Sterling Holloway, who voiced Winnie the Pooh) welcome them with Currier and Ives nostalgia into the family bosom.

Yes, of course, the mismatched pair fall in love--it's only natural in these instances--but the perfect storm of love, comfort, altruism and honest appealingness thrums at your heartstrings with relative ease. Audiences buy into their story because they are archetypal strugglers, people who have honestly earned or been thrust into their lots in life, and they are truly decent people, flawed but fine folks. A typical moment that separates this film from sloppy sentimentality comes when Willie sings "End Of A Perfect Day" with such winsome charm and delicacy that it makes you year for such carefully balanced simplicity of emotion in movies today. Of course such a sweet moment would never be duplicated today since so many audiences' sensibilities are informed by brute force obviousness rather than quiet moments of reflection that resonate such calm. And that's a shame.

Sturges said of the screenplay, "Love reformed her and corrupted him." The finished movie, he said, "had quite a lot of schmaltz [sentiment], a good dose of schmerz [pain, grief] and just enough schmutz [dirt] to make it box office." As was standard operating procedure with Barbara Stanwyck, she never flubbed a line once and quietly set a level of professionalism that everyone on the set was striving to outdo but couldn't. Leisen said of her, "Barbara had a bad back, and when we were shooting the barn dance sequence, the corset she had to wear under the old-fashioned dress was very painful for her. I'd say, 'Look, you've got two hours until your next scene, why don't you just take it off and relax?' and she'd say, 'Oh, no, you might need me,' and she sat on the set the whole time. She was always right at my elbow when I needed her. We never once had to wait for her to finish with the hairdresser or the make-up man." Due to her work ethic Leisen said the film came in eight days ahead of schedule and $50,000 under budget.

And Sturges admired Stanwyck's resolve so much that he made a vow to her on the set: "One day he said to me, 'Someday I'm going to write a real screwball comedy for you.' *Remember the Night* was a delightful comedy, swell for me and Fred MacMurray, but hardly a screwball, and I replied that nobody would ever think of writing anything like that for me - a murderess, sure. But he said, 'You just wait.'" The result was *The Lady Eve* (1941), one of the best for both writer and star, commented on a short time ago.

Settling in at a comfortable 94 minutes, *Remember the Night* held a domestic gross of $167,800. And Barbara Stanwyck can take a line like, "Gee, you're swell," and make you melt. Victoria Wilson, in her fabulous study *A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True, 1907-1940", observes, “It is acknowledged that [Stanwyck’s] character, Lee Leander, is hot, that she knows about sex, that she’s not a good girl, and yet she’s not vulgar or tainted or soiled or bitter. She is sexy and good-hearted and smart. Sturges allows her to be all of these things and somehow it brings Barbara’s own persona together in a way that is light and appealing, buoyant and still full of substance… In the hands of Sturges and Leisen, the pace is light and up. Barbara is full of vitality and quick on her feet, and she blazes.” Dang, she's gorgeous--and this is coming from someone who until this year never paid much attention to her. How wrong I've been.

Now I've mentioned in previous posts that I am an unrepentant romanticist at heart; I just get really edgy when people start trotting out heaping bowls of Christmas pablum with side orders of manufactured sentimentality that announces itself like a bullhorn over a Bose sound system. But *Remember The Night* is one Christmas film that largely escapes from the mold of by-the-numbers predictability; its ending moments may surprise you--it made Joyce and me pause to let it sink in, but the critics' verdicts are nearly unanimous: this movie is a charmer, an underplayed gem for the holidays that deserves to be visited with the regularity of *It's A Wonderful Life* (1946) and *The Bishop's Wife* (1947). At least it will be in our household from now on.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Don't be silly Jeff. I'm a Stanwyck fan. Of course it's in my collection.

Post #546: Tending to be overcautious most of the time, I will start today's post with a disclaimer that may not even be warranted. I'm taking liberties with my mission today by providing a short commentary not on an obscure film or a hallowed favorite but on the first nine episodes of a TV series I've been quasi-bingeing. Truth be told I was working into the early morning, finishing up a chapter of the novel my two best buddies (friends since sixth grade, actually) and I have been laboring away for several months, and that left no time for a film. But I'm enough of a masochist/egoist/toady (pick one) to keep this thread going, if for no other reason than it has been a daily endeavor of unbroken posts for 545 consecutive days and I want to see how long it can last.

So my apologies, anyone who cares, for breaking tradition. But here we go. Today's "feature" is *Doom Patrol*, a Warner Brothers series drawn from the old DC Comic of the same name. Yes, it's part of that ever expanding universe that's trying to trip up the cinematic Marvel Universe, often with far less success; for my money, even though I vastly prefer DC Comics (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, et al), 90% of their films have given new definition to "abysmal." (*Wonder Woman* 2017 is a wondrous exception, in my mind.) And honestly, the television incarnations have been fairly good, though I cannot keep up with the fire hose explosion of series splashing across the various platforms and cable outlets. But *Doom Patrol, Season One* was incredibly cheap on Amazon, and it garnered high reviews, and I had vague memories of the original 1960s comic, so I sprang for it.

Today, plunging into just about ANY series is like falling into Alice's rabbit hutch and spiraling down into an endless corridor of doors that invite your entrance. From what I understand *Doom Patrol* is a spinoff of another DC series, *Titans* (which I didn't see, but evidently this series has continuity issues with their host series, which explains why I usually retreat into the past and watch films and such that don't require encyclopedic knowledge of character origins and backstories; I would not have time to breathe if I indulged every fancy). So I don't care about continuity convolutions. I'm going to comment on what I've seen and leave it at that.

Caveat: I've seen only nine of the fifteen Season One episodes, but that has been enough for me to make some conclusions about the show. For rabid mavens who read my posts and complain I can't judge the whole series by only nine hours of footage, I suggest--you're right, but I can assess what my friends might deem interesting enough to invest nine hours of their life into its pursuit. And so. . .

On the surface, *Doom Patrol* is an ensemble of varied personalities who have to deal with certain "talents/powers" to which they are ill equipped to adapt. Comic historians will see these "abnormals" (not used in a pejorative sense) were the acknowledged inspiration for Marvel's X-Men, mutants who are set aside by a society dedicated to homogenization. (*Doom Patrol* first appeared in DC Comics in June 1963, with *Uncanny X-Men* appearing in September.) They are led by Niles Caulder, aka The Chief (Timothy Dalton), a wheelchair bound medical man who assembles these folks in his huge manor in hope of helping them learn to live with their issues.

In this incarnation, the volatile group is composed of Jane, aka lots of distinct personalities (Diane Guerrero), the dominant identity of a traumatized woman who deals with a dissociative identity disorder saddling her with 64 separate entities; Rita Farr, aka Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby), a former 1950s Hollywood glamour star who struggles to prevent her body from morphing into a gelatinous pablum under stress; Larry Trainor, aka Negative Man (Matt Bomer), a former Air Force hotshot pilot who has an entity of negative energy living inside of him; and Cliff Steele, aka Robotman (Brendan Fraser), a race car enthusiast whose brain was placed in a robot body following a car crash. The team is later joined by cybernetically-enhanced superhero Vic Stone, aka Cyborg (Joivan Wade), who was engineered back to life by his father (Phil Morris) following an explosion that killed his mother.

Together but not united, they fight Mr. Nobody, aka Eric Morden (Alan Tudyk), an omnipresent megavillain with powers allowing him to travel through dimensions, infiltrate the minds of the principals and alter reality. In a refreshing break from the norm, he also breaks the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly with acidic sarcasm directed at the action on the screen and the viewers themselves. Episode One, for instance, sets the tone for the entire series, as Mr. Nobody sneers at his own introduction: "“Ready for a story about superheroes? Ugh, more TV superheroes, just what the world needs. Be honest, have you hung yourself yet? Or, what if I told you this was actually a story about super-zeroes, losers, achingly pathetic metahuman goose eggs? How about it? Ready to feel about better about your own miserable lives for the next hour or so? Follow me. Our story begins, as such stories do, with a visit to Nazi — I’m sorry, Cobbler.”

The production values on this show are mind-blowing for a television series. Consistently big-budget and imaginative, the producers have pulled out all the stops with this one. Phantasmagoria galore. One of the main reasons I will continue to watch this show is its insistence to employ special visual effects only in service to the plot, giving us sharp insight into the torturous inner lives of the characters. CGI is not gratuitous but woven deeply into the context of the narrative and in some cases becomes the narrative. And so far *Doom Patrol* has done an auspicious job keeping the viewers in tune with the labyrinthine plot twists and expanding character introductions without allowing it to become a tangled mess of technology over humanity.

There are some serious issues being tackled here as well, some of which will shock and annoy casual viewers or people with strong ideological frameworks. Larry Trainor, for example, struggles with identity and gender assignations as he has perceived by the greater public as a macho family man and "good American" hero, even as he wrestles with strong emotional attachments to one of his fellow officers, a male. Jane is a ticking time bomb with all her fragmented selves, brought about by child abuse and as a victim of involuntary scientific experimentation. In one show-stopping episode we are introduced (rather too blatantly for my tastes, as I like my symbolism a little more veiled) to the Bureau of Normalcy, a governmental militaristic organization to which Larry was one aligned, committed to wiping out anything and anyone who fails to fit into their mold of "regular" living. That this episode takes place in an LBTBQ fugitive sanctuary city protected by another "abnormal" force is a little heavy handed but sincere in its passion.

I like the measured movement of the show so far, though a small minority of Amazon patrons (2% of the 1,766 global ratings, while the series as a whole has rated an 89% four or five star standing) found it "slow and boring," which I cannot fathom because the show rockets along in editing of individual scenes when action is warranted. But for me it has never been boring: thoughtful, provocative, yes; boring, no.

Yet what stops me from hailing its platitudes from the rooftop is its weird overreliance on F-bomb strafing. To suggest it abuses the employment of the Grand High Mother Curse of all is a supreme understatement. Chief offenders are Cliff (Brendan Fraser), who also engages in some fairly gratuitous sex scenes early on, and Jane (Diane Guerrero) who may have every legitimate reason in the world to be on the defensive, but despite her downright spectacular acting and ability to change body posture, attitude, and demeanor at the drop of a curse, she has arguably the most profane mouth I've ever heard. And it gets really old really fast. Yeah, I get it: Producers wanted to pull together something "edgy" to distance themselves from the stigma of "Comic Book Show" that unjustly causes uninformed people to believe immediately it's a show for kids and not worth watching for adults. Well, *Doom Patrol* should not be entered into blindly unless you want to set your kids on a rocket sled to very early puberty and vocabulary enhancement. This is adult stuff, heady existential stuff, not George Reeves' Superman from 1952-58.

We could spend hours and endless streams of type debating the relative merits and demerits of a more open television marketplace filled with artistic intention, but that's not my mission here. It might, however, be worthwhile to mention that while Season Two has already been broadcast on the DC Universe (and I assume that include the WB network for its distribution), Season Three will be moving to HBO Max pay service, which will invariably make this property even more reclusive than it might already be; outside of a good cable package, we don't subscribe, nor will we be moved to, to any of the pay cable stations. CBS All Access has already gone belly up, even though their programming was enticing. Will moving to HBO (which, along with Skinemax, I've long believed catered to some of our baser appetites with unnecessary cursing, violence and sexuality), heaven knows if *Doom Patrol* will feel even freer to spread its wings. I hope not. At some point for me it just succeeds in arguing against itself.

Don't you hate it when people say "I'm no prude, but"? Yeah, me too. . . but. . . . .
Enjoy.
Jeff

It's OK. But if we could get a Mystery Men series, complete with the original cast... Oh Baby!

I just finished that first run last week. I really liked it. Most fave character Flex Mentallo. It was very well done and not like any of the other supes shows. To me it felt more like the 60's comics it was trying to portray. Lots of shows try and fall flat I think this did well.

And yes the seminal version of Doom patrol is Alan Moore's take on the comic and they seem to be pulling the story line from his version. The early Doom Patrol comics were hilariously bad. Moores more (ouch double mores is bad sentence structure) the psychological take on the broken characters we see shown in this TV version.

And Jeff is right the effects were so well done and the production values were consistent. And also agree no one wants to see Brendan Fraser in bedroom scenes. That said his portrayal of RobotMan is spot on to this version of the comic.

Post #547: The trailer for today's feature, *Happy Death Day* (2017), suggests everything I hate about many "horror" movies today--a young blonde being stalked, a stupid boyfriend, a masked killer (this time wearing a demented baby mask), escalating body count, an entire silver service of Ginsu knives gleaming in the moonlight, and more screaming than a continuous month riding a dangerous roller coaster. But what the trailer doesn't show you is what stupid fun it is. Written by comic master Scott Lobdell (just about everything in the Marvel Universe, with side trips to DC with Superman and Titans), the film almost parodies the tropes of the genre, winking a knowing eye at the audience while setting up its near flat-out comedy sequel *Happy Death Day 2U* (2019), which completes the cycle created in the first.

It's a hyphenate film: Teenage slasher-*Groundhog Day* (1993)-*Scream* (1996)-comedy-Mean Girls* (2004) hybrid with a garnish of *Heathers* (1988). You see, Theresa "Tree" Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is stuck in a time loop on her birthday, a day when she will be killed. . . roughly ten times during the 96-minute run time. Almost thoroughly unlikable due to her bee-yotchy character, she breezes through her day, waking from a drunken night in her class mate Carter Davis's (Israel Broussard) bed, snipes at her sorority sisters and barely tolerates her roommate Lori Spengler (Ruby Modine), reignites with her married professor Gregory Butler (Charles Aitken), and while on her way to another party is lured into a tunnel on campus where she is murdered by the Cranky-Gerber Baby-masked killer. Hit reset. She wakes in Carter's bed again with complete deja vu knowledge of what's just happened to her. Rinse. Repeat.

Now this all may sound derivative and banal, and for the most part were it directed by the book witlessly, it would be, just another of those endlessly recycled college girl in the grip of terror tropes that come and go with regularity through our googleplexes. But *Happy Death Death* plays it smart, first by toning down the viscera and gruesomeness and toning up the lightness of touch. Christopher Landon (Michael Landon's son), responsible for the scripts for *Paranormal Activity* sequels 2, 3 and 4 and *PA: The Marked Ones* (2010-2014), directs this escapade with panache and a good deal of humor; in *Happy Death Day 2U* he wrote and directed the feature. It's only the third "slasher" film to be rated PG-13, which also sets it apart. It's a film that actually seems to be having fun (if such a thing is possible) with itself, and the sequel is the rarity that actually enhances the experience of the first, providing insight into the characters where questions lingered.

There's a certain quirkiness that is telegraphed to the audience even as the credits roll: The Universal logo, the company name crawling across the revolving globe, stops, rewinds and starts again, registering its snarky self-awareness that really hits stride in the sequel. We're in on the joke at the start, and this movie is not going to take itself abundantly seriously as Tree moves through her day riffing and signaling events to commence before they do. At one point she even alters her morning stroll through the quad completely naked just to see how it would feel, knowing it will not be recalled when she relives it tomorrow.

Of the scene (which is tastefully photographed, by the way, showing only her bare back and face), she said, "It was incredibly freeing. I think everyone fantasizes about what that would be like if you kind of just got to live life without repercussions and do whatever you want, and what that bucket list would be. Not only did I get to play someone doing it, but I got to do a few of those moments, like the naked walk of glory--not walk of shame, walk of glory. It was one of the most empowering experiences I've ever had in my life. And a huge part of that was I trusted [the director] so much, and to portray that in a way that I felt comfortable. The crew was incredible." For his part, Landon ensured that most of the crew were women."I just felt such love and female awesomeness in that moment. It's something where I could have a very long and successful career, and never get to do that again. So there were a lot of amazing moments filming this."

Many parental views of the film encourage watching the film if 1.) you're not obsessed with "pure" horror movies (that is, the grungy, over-the-top bloodbaths of Rob Zombie or *Texas Chain Saw Massacre* ilk more intent on grossing out people than generating suspense), for if you are, you'll be disappointed; 2.) you see *Happy Death Day* as a primer or "safer" introduction to scary films; 3.) you're in on the joke and don't believe it's trying to indoctrinate audiences into the ideological belief that all college students do is embark on meaningless sexual encounters, get hammered, and have a limited vocabulary beyond obscenities; 4.) you are over twelve (hence the rating) and view it as a thriller with a basically positive message as Tree matures in her perspective after all the plot machinations; 5.) you don't take a minute of it seriously--it's silly and entertaining. The sequel is double so.

One reviewer registered umbrage with the audience with whom s/he saw it, but that criticism shows us where we are ethically in our journey to becoming better versions of ourselves: The reviewer was shocked when a character in the film refrained from taking sexual advantage of a drunken young woman--and the audience applauded. On one hand, I would be surprised too, that a character was elevated in audiences' estimation because he *didn't* commit a crime. On the other hand, why should "doing the right thing" be surprising? And on the other hand, have we become so morally distanced as a social construct that a simple moral choice has become heroic rather than standard operating procedure? You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head.

Financially, with a budget of $4,800,000, *Happy Death Day* was considered a box office draw with 77% approval ratings from critics and a worldwide gross of $125,479,266 after 84 days (12 weeks) in a wide release of 3,535 theaters, pulling in $11,659,375 on its Friday, October 13, 2017 opening day. Its sequel scored less enthusiastically with a worldwide gross of $64,600,152 against a $9,000,000 budget, nearly twice the cost of the original, with a February 13, 2019 early opening day at only six markets, pulling in $9,497,665. Taken together the two films form a comfortable box office profit and very entertaining double feature.

Is there a *Happy Death Day 3* in the ether? Possibly, as *2U* sets up a terrific premise, returning to the trope of man's interference with science as a possibility. "I have the third movie and I have already pitched it to Blumhouse. Everybody is ready to go again if this movie does well. I keep shifting the tone, genre a little bit. The third movie I know is going to be a little different. It's going to be really bonkers and really fun," Landon has said. And he should know as Landon already had a script for a sequel and had pitched it to producer Jason Blum even before the first film opened. "There are a lot of other stories that I'd like to tell and different kinds of movies I'd like to make," Landon told *Insider*. "But this particular movie and this particular franchise, for me personally, I would only want to make three of them. The third movie would be the last one for me." Producer Jason Blum (of Blumhouse, the new powerhouse in horror films, responsible for *Get Out* (2017), *Whiplash* (2014), *Oculus* (2013) and scores of others) has said, "I know what the pitch is for the third movie, and I really hope we get to make it. I'm sure it's another '80s movie Chris is going to reference for it. But I do know it's totally different than the first two and I would be really excited to have a trilogy that are three connected movies, but all with different genres. I don't really think it's ever been done before."

Landon borrowed (or paid homage to) *Groundhog Day* in the first *HDD*, hopped aboard his time hoverboard from *Back To The Future, I-III* (1985-87-1990) to deepen Tree's issues in *HDD2U*, so if there is an *HDD3* we can expect some interesting developments crossing genres. Tentatively titled *Happy Death Day To Us*, the film has Landon dropping small hints: "[Happy Death Day 3] is definitely off to the side at the moment,” he says. “I wish it wasn’t, and I know that [producer Jason Blum] is passionate about it. I know I’m very passionate about it. And I know that [star] Jessica Rothe is really eager to do it as well. … I think we’re all excited by it because it’s different than the other two films. And so we’re really just crossing our fingers and hoping that our fanbase continues to grow – which is something that I’ve really enjoyed watching over the years, seeing more and more people discover both films. So who knows. There might be a time when it makes sense, and hopefully it’s sooner rather than later."

Of course the coronavirus has upset more plans in Hollywood than the writers' strike, so in June Jason Blum said, "Let me tell ya, I'm working overtime on it, believe me. I'm trying. Nothing official yet." Jessica Rothe has said of the threequel: "I think it’s just a question of seeing if the opportunity for that exists in the world. But the funny thing is I have a feeling whether it’s now or in five years or ten or twenty, if we pull a Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween and Tree comes back as a badass 50-year-old, I know that we will get to tell the rest of the story. I love Tree, I love that character so much and I feel very, very grateful to have been a part of that." And in September, last month, Landon confirmed it's going ahead: “The idea for the third film is not set in the same day, if that’s a big spoiler. So, it can happen later,” he adds, “We’re not up against a really difficult clock right now. The other movies were hard, because they were set in the exact same day, so everybody had to look the same, be the same. The pressure is off there.”

So, even though I've said it before and will probably do so again, I'm not a terrific horror movie fanatic, I will definitely be on the lookout for #3. In the meantime, you might want to try out that double feature option that will provide some suspense and laughs along the way, with the sequel warping your expectations for a rehash of what you've already seen. A perfect marathon would be nuking enough popcorn for the three *Back To The Future* films, *Mean Girls* and the two *Happy Death Days* films. While it wouldn't hold the same sweeping epic adventure of digging in with all the *Star Wars* films, it would be one heck of ride. . . provided you have enough coffee grounds to fuel Mr. Fusion.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Post #548: Registering shock and awe, today's feature is a film my wife had never seen before today, something I find incredible, since I've seen it conservatively a dozen times, most often as a kid. But somehow my lovely bride has escaped from the creepy joy it instill, even today. *Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein* (1948) was perhaps my favorite A&C movie as I was growing up, and seeing it again on Blu-Ray is a special treat, certain scenes etched in my memory unfolding before me just as they did the first time. In 2001 the Library of Congress adopted it into the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," American Film Institute names it as 56 on the list of "100 Funniest American Movies, and in 2007 *Reader's Digest* also included it in its 100 Funniest Movies List. Simply stated, it's a comfortable classic.

Thee second cheapest film made by Universal-International in 1948 ($792,270, $32,746 over its original budget), it became the studio's second highest-grossing film of that year with $3.2 million, with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello being paid $105,000. On hand with the boys are Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot aka The Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's monster--with the voice credit of Vincent Price as The Invisible Man. Boris Karloff passed on the film, wanting nothing to do with its filming, but as a concession to Universal he provided some promotional support--so long as he didn't have to watch the movie. Later he appeared with the team in *Bud Abbott & Lou Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff* (1949) as well as *Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* (1953). As it turns out, this was in many ways a swan song for the Universal monsters, before America turned its lonely eyes to atomic insects, Martians and teenagers from Outer Space.

Director Charles T. Barton was the driving force behind four Abbott and Costello films, Disney's *The Shaggy Dog* (1959), all the television episodes of *Amos 'N' Andy*, 90 episodes of *Dennis The Menace*, 106 episodes of *Family Affair*, for a total of 580 television episodes, 70 feature films and dozens of commercials. Here his comedy skills are in fine form, as Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello), two railway porters, unwittingly deliver the bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster to McDougal's (Frank Ferguson, Eli Carson on *Peyton Place*) House of Horrors, a wax museum of ghoulish delights. Despite a frantic phone call from Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) in London, warning them not to schedule a delivery until he gets there, the boys do their duty and set all heck loose (it's 1948, you shouldn't say hell).

At the same time Wilbur seems to be fighting off (but not too strenuously) the attentions of two beautiful women--the dark and mysterious Dr. Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert), who secretly courts him so she can transfer his receptive brain to Frankenstein's mindless stalker, and the blonde and lithesome Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph), who is covertly an insurance investigator using Wilbur's love gullibility to track down the missing bodies on behalf of McDougal. When Talbot discovers Chick and Wilbur have delivered the packages, he informs them they must stop Dracula from reanimating the monster or even worse levels of heck will be loosed on the world.

That's the gist of the script as our boys fumble and bumble their way into the swirling madness of monster transformation, hypnosis and chaos. But with Abbott and Costello, that's all you need for 83 minutes as Barton keeps the pace light with splashes of suspense and horror as the evil plot unfolds. "Lou hated the script," [producer] Robert Arthur recalled. "In fact, he came charging in the office one day and said, "My [five-year-old] daughter could write a better script than this. You're not serious about making it, are you?" Arthur managed to convince him by appealing to his financial interests with a $5,000 advance on his salary and promising him his favorite director, Charles Barton.

Barton recalled, despite all the practical jokes and fooling around on the set during filming (Lou particularly enjoyed getting Glenn Strange to break character by ad-libbing mercilessly), Bela Lugosi remained aloof to the shenanigans. "To be honest, there were times when I thought Bela was going to have a stroke on the set. You have to understand that working with two zanies like Abbott and Costello was not the normal Hollywood set. They never went by the script and at least once a day there would be a pie fight. Bela of course would have nothing to do with any of this. He would just glare at those involved with his famous deadly stare and the only emotion he would show physically was one of utter disgust." Later Lugosi told *The New York Times*, "There is no burlesque for me. All I have to do is frighten the boys, a perfectly appropriate activity. My trademark will be unblemished."

The opening credit sequence and Dracula's transition from man to bat (and vice versa) were animated by Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpecker, which sets the perfect tone for the coming fun. Even so, the film was banned in Finland for many years, with any scenes featuring the monster excised from the print. In its original form such luminaries as Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and Quentin Tarantino cite the film as being strong influences in their career choices, Tarantino suggesting it's a perfect blend of genres that inspired him in his efforts the blend movie types.

According to IMDB, "Actress Lenore Aubert did all of her own stunts. Including all her own screams. Including, also, the laboratory scene when the Monster, played both by Glenn Strange and Lon Chaney Jr. picks up Sandra (Aubert), and carries her to the skylight window to throw her through it. Aubert wanted to do the stunt to its completion and be tossed through the window, made of sugar; however the director, Charles Barton, and the head of the studio, Robert Arthur, who were persuaded by Aubert to do all of her own stunts explained to her they were nervous and scared for her safety and while the men took caution to not let Aubert get hurt in any way they could not let her be tossed through the window because the motion picture insurance company would never allow her to do it. It was a good thing she didn't do the stunt to completion because the stunt woman, Helen Thurston, when tossed through the sugar window fell on her right hip do to the fact that the cable wire she was attached to was given too much slack." In that same scene in one of the takes, Glenn Strange tripped on a camera cable and fractured his ankle; the scene was completed with Lon Chaney Jr. standing in for Strange in the final print.

Surprisingly *Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein* draws controversy from some steadfast, dyed-in-the-wool horror mavens as not being part of the Universal Monsters Canon "as an insult to the genre’s legacy and fondly remembered as a light-hearted farewell to an era of horror films. Any discussion about the film’s place in horror cinema inevitably starts to look something like a trial," says critic Doris V. Sutherland. Some more rabid "prosecutors" suggest this was the film that put the proverbial stake in the horror franchise. But that's simply not true: Universal's monster films were devolving into pale imitations of the original series, science fiction was gaining prominence, and Abbott and Costello were treating the monsters with reverence, never stooping to make them cartoons of their former scary glory. To me it was a logical step into history as the archetypes were ripe for parody, which is actually a natural progression in film study.

Perhaps the best way to conclude the argument was provided by writer Jim Knipful, who tried to track the continuity of Universal Horror films: "*Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein* is not only a logical and valid continuation of the shared universe, but a culmination of the series. It remains deeply respectful of its heritage, while at the same time taking some gentle, late-‘40s family-friendly piss out of the otherwise stuffy genre conventions. Why not simply think of it as yet another crossover film? *Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man* (1943) crossed between franchises, so what’s so awful or damning about crossing between genres? Not only is it a hell of a lot better than a number of the previous entries (like *Son of Dracula* (1943) or *Ghost of Frankenstein* 1942), it’s also, at long last, the only entry in which Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man appear in the same scene."

Works for me. I think it will work for you too, if you want to relax with some nice spooky moments sprinkled among the non-stop humor of this enduring classic. Boo! Just kidding.
Enjoy.
Jeff