Reviews
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Where's That Been? - Night Train to Munich
It is mid-March in 1939, and Czechoslovakia is being invaded by German forces in the time leading up to the start of World War II. Inventor Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), a scientist working on a revolutionary armor-plating process, is all too aware he needs to evacuate Prague before he falls into the clutches of the Nazis, and with the help of Allied support, secures a seat on a plane seconds ...
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The Mind-Bending Power of Science Fiction Theatre
'I hope you enjoyed our story. We'll be back with you a week from today with another exciting adventure from the world of fiction and science.' --Host Truman Bradley concluding each episode of Science Fiction TheatreTimeless Media Group's Science Fiction Theatre: The Complete Series is a tremendous discovery for lovers of classic television. This DVD set provides 7...
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Where's That Been? - Odd Man Out
The opening titles of Odd Man Out (1947) state: 'This story is told against a background of political unrest in a city of Northern Ireland. It is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organisation, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved.' But let's be frank about this. That unnamed Northern Island city is c...
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Where's That Been? - The Secret Invasion
The year is 1943 and the place is Cairo: British Intelligence officer Major Richard Mace (Stewart Granger) is assembling a crack team for a suicide mission in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. The aggregation he's put together is an unusual one, consisting of convicted felons: IRA demolitions expert Terence Scanlon (Mickey Rooney), forger Simon Fell (Edd Byrnes), thief and master of disguise Jean Saval (W...
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Teen Scene: The Man Who Knew Too Much
'A single crash of cymbals and how it rocked the lives of an American family.' That's what it says at the beginning of The Man Who Knew Too Much. The question is: how can a crash of cymbals rock the lives of a family? That's what you'll discover when you watch this great 1956 Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece. This month it's this film I'll explore and try to convince our teens that this is...
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Bring on the A-MEN!
So far in our In The Balcony early-50s sci-fi marathon, we've seen films that are barely sci-fi, films that intend, accurately or not, to be a realistic depiction of science and wonder as it believed at that time, films about monsters from outer space (my favorite), and now we see a film that simply trots out gibberish and presents it as science-fiction. This latter type creates 'horror' and 'susp...
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Highly entertaining Billy Wilder POW film
Laughs and drama in a German POW camp, 1943, based on a play but heavily rewritten by Mr. Wilder as filming progressed. Nasty Kamp Kommandant Otto Preminger (who has an aide help him put on his boots so he can call Berlin) and his comic sidekick Sig Ruman (as Sgt. Schultz!) have an uncanny knack for knowing everything that's going on in the camp vis-a-vis escape attempts. Who is the traitor fee...
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Where's That Been? - Stranger at My Door
'Republic. I like the sound of the word.' It's a line spoken by John Wayne (as Davy Crockett) in the 1960 epic The Alamo, but some classic film fans have also interpreted it as an in-joke for Republic Pictures, the Duke's motion picture home for many years where he was unquestionably the studio's biggest name. Several of Wayne's finest films open with the familiar Republic eag...
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Where's That Been? - Day of the Outlaw
The dead of Wyoming winter brings cattle rancher Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and his foreman Dan (Nehemiah Persoff) into the town of Bitters because, as Starrett explains to town shopkeeper (Donald Elson), 'I need a shave.' But it's really a personal matter for Starrett: on the way into town he's spotted a load of barbed wire in a wagon belonging to homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal), and h...
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Where's That Been? - Cartoon Roots
Even if you're not old enough to remember when animated cartoons were every bit as big a draw as the main feature showing at your neighborhood movie theatre, you're probably familiar with the fact that cartoon icons like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse unleashed their shenanigans on the big screen before going into retirement on the small screen. You see, cartoons weren't just for kids -- they were...
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Back to School
Dancing Co-Ed (1939, dir. W. Sylvan Simon) is so bad it made my stomach hurt. That's a shame, 'cause it has some things going for it, including very lovely and attractive Lana Turner and Ann Rutherford, very swingin' Artie Shaw and reliable funnymen Monty Wooley and Leon Errol. Ultimately, it's done in by a so-so script and a truly rotten performance by Richard Carlson, playing one of those real j...
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Where's That Been? - Diary of a Lost Girl
'There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!' So proclaimed Cinematheque Francois founder Henri Langlois in 1953, when the rediscovery of films starring the immortal silent screen siren nicknamed 'Lulu' was just beginning to spread throughout France during the 1950s. Brooks had long been forgotten in her native U.S., having officially bid the movie business a fare-thee...
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Colorama: How Lust for Life Recreated a Master
There's a certain Russian nesting-doll aspect to movies trying to portray the lives and artistry of painters. What you have is one visual medium, the medium of cinema, trying to recreate the work of people who themselves were using a different visual medium to recreate the world they saw around them. Movies that want to truly capture the spirit of a painter have to, in a sense, reinvent the wor...
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Where's That Been? - The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming
A Russian submarine manages to run aground of a sandbar off the coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts (dubbed 'Gloucester Island' in the film) and a crew of nine sailors, headed up by Lieutenant Yuri Rozanov (Alan Arkin), are sent ashore in search of a motor launch to free the sub rather than risk embarrassment radioing for help. Rozanov and a younger sailor named Alexei Kolchin (John Phillip Law) a...
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Teen Scene: Mr. Hulot's Holiday
Mr. Hulot's Holiday, or Les Vacances de M. Hulot in its original French, is the third Mr. Hulot film I've seen and is, without any doubt, my favorite. Jacques Tati directed this film in 1953 and it was the first of four movies starring the character of Mr. Hulot (played by Tati himself). The three other ones are Mon Oncle in 1958, Playtime in 1967 and Tr...
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The title sells it.
Jonathan Hale's construction company is supposed to be digging a tunnel through a mountain, but 'accidents' keep happening and they're months behind and he's about to lose his contract. So he calls in Victor Jory, the most bad-ass construction foreman in the history of construction foremanism, to beat up and/or fire the guys behind it. Jory is tough, but not all that bright: he can't figure out hi...
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Where's That Been? - Thunderhoof
Horse breeder Scotty Mason (Preston Foster) is on a mission in the deserts of Mexico: he's out to capture an elusive wild stallion that answers to 'Thunderhoof,' a magnificent beast Mason hopes to snare for the purpose of starting his own ranch with his wife Margarita (Mary Stuart), a former cantina singer. Scotty has enlisted the help of a sidekick identified only as 'The Kid' (William Bishop)...
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'Mainly a curio'
Low-budget independent drama directed by Howard Higgen in late 1931 but seeming to come out of 1928; almost no music, static camera angles, and stilted acting by much of the cast. But the film had two future stars in it, and saw a healthy reissue life (thanks to Astor Pictures). Junior Durkin is a very nice 14-year-old who is suddenly orphaned and shows up at the doorstep at his Aunt and Uncle ...
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Where's That Been? - Man of the West
In the 1940s, director Anthony Mann established his cinematic reputation by helming several film noirs, many of which (Railroaded, T-Men, Raw Deal) are considered classics by vintage movie fans today. He continued to dabble in the noir style after he was hired by MGM in 1949; Mann's Border Incident is perhaps one of the most uncompromisingly violent pictures ...
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Where's That Been? - Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory, Vol. 3
From 1934 to 1959, the knockabout slapstick trio known as The Three Stooges were the kings of two-reel comedy. Columbia Pictures established their shorts department in 1933 (under the direction of Jules White) after years of distributing two-reelers made by independent studios and Moe, Larry & Curly were among the first funsters hired to headline the studio's efforts. Dismissed by critics but b...
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