Reviews
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Radioactive Rooney
Okay, maybe we were just in a silly mood... or maybe we were expecting so little from this forgotten Cold War comedy... but the darn thing ended up being highly enjoyable and affable, and we ended up liking it, to our own big surprise. Mickey Rooney and Robert Strauss are a comedy team here, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this thing (from a story by Blake Edwards) was conceived as Ab...
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Zombifyin'
A nice young couple accepts an old friend's invitation to his sugar plantation for their wedding, but he's got designs on the girl, and hires next-door neighbor, zombie maker Bela Lugosi, to turn her into a Living Dead for awhile so that the fiance will leave and HE can have her. Bela decides, once she is an animated corpse, that he likes her too much to let her go. More zombifyin' is called for. ...
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Capricorny
To prove the 'trans-Atlantic' in his Transatlantic Pictures meant alternating productions between Hollywood and England, and so Hitch and his family were off to his native land with an international cast (a Swede, an American, and a Brit, all playing Irishmen, none playing one well) in an adaptation of a book none of the production crew (besides Alma) seemed to have liked very well. Once again, Hi...
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Colorama: The Sensual Madness of Black Narcissus
Within the brief span of five years, the British team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger released four Technicolor films so dazzling each could easily compete for the title of 'Most Beautiful Color Film Ever Made.' The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, and The Red Shoes; looking back on these films, each one of them masterpieces in their own rig...
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Where's That Been? - A Life in the Balance
Let's get this out in the open: itinerant musician-widower Antonio Gomez (Ricardo Montalban) isn't going to be nominated for 'Father of the Year' honors any time soon. Antonio isn't a bad father to his ten-year-old son Francisco (known to one and all as 'Paco') -- he certainly doesn't mentally or physically abuse the child -- but he's undeniably an irresponsible one. His quick temper h...
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Where's That Been? - Accidentally Preserved, Vol. 2
If you've read enough Where's That Been? columns by now, you're well aware that the movies discussed here are those that weren't necessarily trumpeted with a great deal of fanfare but are features that are often referred to as 'sleepers'; movies that have disappeared under a classic movie fan's radar or are underappreciated films well worth seeking out. So for a change of pace, I decid...
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Where's That Been? - Smart Woman
It was a young upstart named Walter Mirisch - later to become an important film producer, winning the Best Picture Oscar in 1967 for In the Heat of the Night - who convinced Steve Broidy, head of Poverty Row champ Monogram Pictures, to create a new unit within the studio for the purpose of making higher-budgeted films in 1946. That unit...
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Colorama: The Fantasy of Funny Face
Within the canon of Audrey Hepburn movies, there has to be a subcategory called “Movies All About Giving Things to Audrey Hepburn,” and within that genre, Funny Face is surely dueling with Sabrina for the top spot. Both movies tell the story of how Audrey Hepbur...
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Where's That Been? - Flame Over India (North West Frontier)
India, 1905. As his palace is besieged by Muslim rebels, a Hindu maharajah asks a British Army Captain (Kenneth More) named Scott to take his son, Prince Kishan (Govind Raja Ross), to safety in Delhi. Kishan is only six years old, but is also the future leader of the country…so Scott, along with the young boy’s gov...
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Colorama: Why Samson and Delilah Still Casts a Spell
Despite a long, groundbreaking career in film, a stunning box-office record, and a sure hand with crowd scenes that will probably never be equaled so long as CGI continues to reign, Cecil B. DeMille never quite seems to get his due as a filmmaker. There is a certain coolness factor to be had in championing Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks. Not so for the man who said, “Ev...
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Where's That Been? - The Breaking Point
Skipper Harry Morgan runs a struggling fishing charter that he hopes will get back on its feet after he agrees to take a wealthy customer out to do some deep sea angling. But when his patron takes a powder without paying what he owes, Morgan is forced to take on an assignment ferrying some passengers who would be of great interest to the authorities. Harry's clandestine smuggling activities are...
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Where's That Been? - Exit Smiling
Before I sat down with the Warner Archive release of the 1926 Beatrice Lillie comedy Exit Smiling, my only prior contact with the legendary Tony Award-winning comedienne was her appearance on a February 3, 1946 radio broadcast of The Fred Allen Show. Allen invites Bea to participate in an Oklahoma! parod...
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Mayberry RFD - Season 1
In the history of television, only three situation comedies finished their final seasons ranked #1 in the Nielsen ratings for that year. I Love Lucy was the first to accomplish this feat; the classic TV comedy was so popular that it even continued for an additional three seasons as a series of hour-long ...
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Betty Boop - The Essential Collection, Vol. 3
The Fleischer brothers’ Betty Boop series of theatrical cartoons are something of a “Holy Grail” for classic animation fans, because unlike some other cartoons of the period (notably, the Fleischers’ own Popeye and Superman series), th...
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Where's That Been? - So Long Letty
Gangly comedienne Charlotte Greenwood was making her mark on the Broadway stage in productions like The Tik-Tok Man of Oz and Pretty Mrs. Smith (a musical comedy that she literally stole out from under its star, Fritzi Scheff) when producer Oliver Morosco fashioned
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Where's That Been? - Knock on Wood
Ventriloquist Jerry Morgan (Danny Kaye) may be able to wow audiences with his act – but his love life is another matter entirely. His fiancée, Audrey Greene (Virginia Huston), is incensed by his tendency to needle their relationship through his dummy Clarence onstage, referring to her as “a blonde, blue-eyed baby...
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The Big Valley - Season 2
It's not quite as dramatic as the proverbial cavalry thundering forward on horseback to save a besieged wagon train, but Timeless Media Group pulls off an impressive rescue by freeing The Big Valley from the barren, unforgiving desert of DVD limbo. The complete Season 2 set arrives 7 years after Fox ceased production after 1 ½ seasons. That's right, 1 ½. Fox rele...
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Colorama: John Huston and the Romantic Reality of Moulin Rouge
When I think of classic Hollywood adventure films, at least the ones that involve tough, masculine heroes fighting off danger with little more than luck and nerve, three directors come instantly to mind: John Ford, Howard Hawks and John Huston. Their movies were overwhelmingly populated with male characters struggling to find some measure of loyalty and honor in a chaotic world. But while Ford&...
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Verboten!
Verboten! (1959), a World War II melodrama written, produced and directed by cult moviemaker Sam Fuller, bears the distinction of being the last movie to roll off the assembly line of the RKO studio. Co-produced with Fuller’s own Globe Enterprises, the film was eventually distributed by Columbia Pictures because RKO had already closed up its tent before the...
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Colorama: The Desert Comes to Life in The Garden of Allah
If Cinemascope was, as Fritz Lang so memorably put it in Contempt, only good for filming “snakes and funerals”, then the unspoken axiom of Technicolor in the ‘30s and ‘40s was that it was mainly good for musicals and epics. A movie as grandly ambitious as Gone With the Wind and one as sweetly intimate as Meet Me In St. Louis both came under the...
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