I saw this film in a theater when it came out. I was just a little kid and it had a profound effect on me. My first exposure to Greek Myths and Italian Peplum thanks in part to Joseph E. Levine, a film distributor sometime producer that started out with a small movie theater in Boston.

.        Joseph E. Levine (with slate)

He released Godzilla in the USA and hit it big with Hercules, He wound up producing a lot of films through his Embassy Pictures, his biggest hit was The Graduate, Paul Simon said when they first screened the film, at the end Levine got up and said “I smell Money!”. He was right! I just realized while checking Levene’s resume that I actually worked on his last film, Tatoo, I was just an apprentice editor working in a cutting room at 1600 Broadway in Manhattan,

        1600 Broadway back in the day

in a suite that George Craig, a big music editor, had. His father had worked on Nanook of the North and a lot of other films as a music editor as well. Thom Nobel was the editor on Tatoo, a real character he came to work in a silver jumpsuit. I was only on the film for a short time.

Oh well, 1600 Broadway was a cool place to work, I had a view of Times Square, and they were one of the last buildings to have a crew of elevator operators, all great characters. But I digress. I really wanted to say that I believe Hercules even though credited to Pietro Francisi, is really a Mario Bava Film!

Genius at work! The Great Mario Bava!

Bava is credited as in charge of Special Effects and Lighting but no D.P. is credited! Bava did it all! I heard stories of Francisci falling asleep after lunch as Bava told everyone what to do. Believe me it is not uncommon in the film business for the person that does the work to not get the credit! And then history shows that Francisi’s career soon fizzled out while Bava’s took off.  Also the efficient directing, the classic imagery, the sets and lighting all scream “Bava!” to me. Check it out for yourself. It’s a Cool Movie. And Steve Reeves is great as Hercules, better than Reg Park whom Bava would use in his wonderful film, Hercules In The Haunted World, another film worth checking out.

And here’s a Bonus Fun Fact for All Film Forno Fans:

Steve Reeves first film appearance was in an Ed Wood Film, JailBait!

 Steve Reeves without Hercules beard!

My favorite Movie Studio was RKO. They made the best films, for example, King Kong,

Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Out Of The Past,

Cat People, The Leopard Man, The Seventh Victim, Flying Down To Rio, They Lived By Night,

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Pride Of The Yankees, Hitlers Children, I Walked With A Zombie, Murder My Sweet, The Spiral Staircase, Curse Of The Cat People, Notorious, Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Mighty Joe Young, Kon Tiki, The Thing From Another World,

Bringing Up Baby, The list goes on and on.  So many great films! What a great place to work, from what I’ve read the money people behind the Studio were in New York and busy with other interests so the Studio was left alone for stretches of time, not much interference. Of course that changed when Welles left to shoot It’s All True before Ambersons was finished. Big BooBoo on his part, plus his champion George Schaefer died suddenly and Welles was chopped off at the knees by new management.

.                                                                                                               Welles directing Ambersons

George J. Schaefer

At One point Howard Hughes owned RKO and put everyone through insane changes. Nicholas Ray said Hughes delayed the release of his first film, They Live By Night for over a year.

          Howard Hughes

Nicholas Ray

I read an interview with Robert Wise, he was a film editor at RKO. He said they would get very busy once a year preparing for a distributors conference , they had to show theater owners what was coming up so the editors would work round the clock getting ready for the Big Show.

Robert Wise

Several of RKO’s editors went on to great directing careers, like the afore mentioned Robert Wise, also Mark Robson, John Sturgis , and Edward Dmytryk. Those were the days! Wise caught a lot of flack for the recutting (Some might say butchery) of Ambersons. Welles never forgave him. There is a hunt on right now for a print that was sent to Rio for Welles to work on. It has never been found. The last version of Welles complete film.  I hope they find it.  Wise and Robson had been editors on some of Val Lewton’s films.

 Val Lewton

Lewton was the man that gave them their directing breaks, Wise got to take over Curse Of The Cat People and Robson directed The Seventh Victim and The Ghost Ship.

Mark Robson

Both got great starts to their careers but later when they had all left RKO, Wise Robson and Lewton started a fledgling production company. Lewton was in poor health at the time and it seemed as though his mentees were paying him back, inviting him to be part of their company. Unfortunately the Magnanimous gesture was short lived, Wise and Robson canned Lewton and did it by Telegram. They didn’t have the courage to tell him to his face. An action Wise regretted till his dying day. This proved to be the Last Straw for old Val Lewton, his fragile health worsened and he died soon after, maybe as a result of this treacherous act.

from The Ghost Ship

Here is a cool documentary, shot on the set of the seminal film Silent Running. I saw this in the theater when it came out and really enjoyed it. Ahead of it’s time, the environmental message that’s even more relevant today. Bruce Dern is great and the double amputees that play the robots are really cool. They’re all teenagers, who knew. I later worked with two key players from this film, Michael Cimino, who was one of the writers and John Dykstra a VFX supervisor. Anyway check it out and see the film!

Everyone equates Nosferatu with F.W. Murnau, one of the all time great directors, and they should. He brought the film to life in such a powerful way that it still lives today. 90% of films made back then are either gone or forgotten, probably more. But let’s give credit where it’s due, Albin Grau ,who produced the film through his short lived company Prana Films also thought up the concept and designed the film. Here are some amazing images he created.

Albin Grau

F.W.Murnau

Pretty Damn Cool! You can see he was a huge part ofthe stylization,imagecreation,atmosphere,everything.Murnau ,being the supreme film artist that he was, created the celluloid realizations of these images, plus he shot on location which gave the film more reality, making it scarier.

Bram Stoker’s widow sued and won a copyright infringement lawsuit, she tried to have every copy of the film destroyed. And she almost succeded! Luckily for us a few prints and a negative escaped destruction. But Prana films was kaput! Albin Grau was forced to declare bankruptcy even though the film was a hit. The curse of Nosferatu continued with the tragic early death of Murnau in a car crash in California on the deadly Pacific Coast Highway. Years later his skull was stolen from his grave, presumably by some Satanists. Berg moved to Switzerland and worked as a graphic artist. Here’s a trailer from the restored version, so you can appreciate the beauty of Fritz Arno Wagner’s cinematography.

Robert Siodmak Vs. Burt Lancaster

Vs. Robert Aldritch

Here is a movie that I loved as a kid. Swashbuckling Adventure, Gymnastics, Crazy Inventions! So many cool elements that appeal to a young mind. It was directed by the great Robert  Siodmak and starred Burt Lancaster, who also produced. I guess Burt could be difficult to deal with. Siodmak “discovered” Burt, putting him in his first film, The Killers, based on a story by Ernest “papa” Hemingway, the only film adaptations of his works that Hemingway liked. Anyway Burt and Siodmak clashed and Siodmak left before the film ws completed, I think the shooting was pretty much done, but Burt wanted control. Burt was in another film (Also Great) Ulzana’s Raid, directed by Robert Aldritch, Burt insisted on creating his own cut of the film, which he did, so now there are two cuts of that film circulating out there. Burt’s cut was for the European market supposedly, but I saw it at the New Beverly Theater. I din’t know there were two cuts at the time, when I watched it on VHS, i could tell it was a different version, I researched it and found out about the different versions. Anyway Burt had his own production company and wanted to run the show. Oh well. He should have directed the films himself. Anyway here’s the trailer for The Crimson Pirate. You can watch the whole movie on Youtube but you have to pay.

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I bought the Criterion Collection Bluray Zatiochi box set, it is great. I am going to write a piece on it soon, maybe even rate them! In the meantime here is the star of the Zatoichi films, Shintaro Katsu singing Unchain My Heart. He loved to sing, when his brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama, star of LOne Wolf and Cub, sang a song for a Lone Wolf film, Shintaro got angry and told the filmmakers to take it out. I guess he didn’t want his brother straying onto his musical turf. They did not remove the song and you can hear it in the film still. Anyway here is the great Shintaro Katsu singing. Enjoy.

Here is a great BBC produced series about the early days of the Movie Business and how it wound up in Hollywood USA. Great interviews with the real Silent Movie people done back in the late 60’s I’d guess. Narrated by the great James Mason who in real life bought Buster Keaton’s old house and lived there for a while. Anyway it’s a great series chock full of amazing information and fascinating characters. Check it out!

This is a classic movie, iconic L.A. locations, a twisted noir plot, amazing San Francisco street footage, a crazy bebop Jazz sequence and Neville Brand. Where to begin? Well I had a friend in town visiting frome Rome, Italy that is, Trevi Fountain, Cinecitta. Anyway I wanted to show him around downtown L.A. and one of our stops was the amazing Bradbury building. Most people recognize it as the location in Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford fights Rutger Hauer but I think equally as important a use for this location was in D.O.A.

I recommended to my Italian friend that he watch D.O.A. and see how the building we just visited was used in that film. I wound up watching it again and I realized that Russel Rouse was one of the writers and Harry Popkin was the producer.

These guys were responsible for some of the hippest 50’s noir to hit the silver screen of your local drive in. I did not know they were part of the D.O.A. team. Popkin and Rouse worked on The Well, a searing indictment of racism, ahead of it’s time and The Thief. Rouse made Wicked Woman, a film I recently wrote about. So that got me re-interested in D.O.A. , Let me just vsay it right out front I am not a big fan of Edmund O’Brien, but his scene chewing style works pretty well at times in this film and he runs like no one in Cinema! His frenzied run for your life performance on the streets of San Francisco, crashing into innocent bystanders is a highlight of the film.

Other wonderful elements include an incredible sequence aboard a city bus, where the gangsters that want to kill O’Brien are following the bus he’s on and you can see them out the window of the bus at night as they stalk him. A beautiful nightmarish sequence. Actually the nighttime photography of downtown L.A. is particularly great, Neville Brand taking O’Brien for a ride especially.

There is a great wild man jazz sequence that has frenetic performances of Black Jazz musicians that is outstanding. I love musical sequences and this one is a doozy.

I think it would be educational to compare this sequence to some that Robert Siodmak did, like the crazy jazz jam session in Phantom Lady or the dance scene in Criss Cross. The D.O.A. scene is really great performances, great shots and great editing, Siodmak’s reveal a planned out sequence that works beautifully, it was created in the director’s mind while the D.O.A. scene was put together in the editing room.
Rudolph Mate’ the director of D.O.A. started as a camerman in Europe, shooting such masterpieces as Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, this is the movie that Anna Karina watches in Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie. Mate’ also directed a film that was a location on another stop of my downtown tour, Union Station, a noir that takes place at perhaps the most iconic downtown L.A. location.

Rudy at the camera films Dietrich
Mate’ was director of photography on many, many classic Hollywood films, Pride Of The Yankees, Dante’s Inferno, Foriegn Correspondent, Stella Dallas, Sahara, Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai, to name just a few. He delivers a fast paced ( 83 minute) gem that never let’s up and has many especially well directed scenes, take for example the final confrontation, at The Bradbury Building. It is shot just like a classic shootout from a Western, incredible.

Draw, Motherfucker!
Whenever a director can put another subtext or layer of meaning onto a scene and it is harmonius with the action not obtrusive, it’s a wonderful thing. Watch it for yourself, a film class in 2 minutes. Then there’s Neville Brand, so over the top as Chester the thug or maybe goon is better, Sadistic, simple minded, evil but with a lot of personality.

Chester doesn’t like Bigelow. He’s soft in the belly!

I like Neville Brand, check him out in the underrated Eaten Alive by Tobe Hooper. And as Quentin Tarantino once told me, the second most decorated soldier of WWII after Audie Murphy. So check out D.O.A. then go down and visit the Bradbury building, you can park across the street at the Grand Central Market and have lunch.

P.S. Here it is on YouTube.

Here’s a noir bombshell from1949. Byron Haskin directed it, he was a special effects guy at Warner Bros. and later directed The War Of The Worlds for George Pal. He also directed some of the best episode of The Outer Limits, Demon with A Glass Hand, and The Architects of Fear. Hunt Stromberg produced this “cookie full of Arsenic”. He had a long run as a successful producer at MGM, he came up under Thalberg and worked with Selznick, then he got into a beef with Louis B. Mayer and went independent. This is one of his independent creations. The script was by Roy Huggins, based on his novel and it’s a winner, great characters, excellent dialog, everything top notch except the very end, oh well. Huggins went on to be a giant among TV creators/Producers with such shows as The Fugitive, Run For Your Life and The Rockford Files.

But the real heroes of this opus are Lisabeth Scott as the one of the coldest killers ever to grace the silver screen and Dan Duryea, the slime king. Best known for slapping women onscreen, the poster for this film is Dan slapping Lisabeth! They marketed the film on his woman beater appeal.

I have a theory about noir, WWII is over, soldiers are returning home, a lot of G.I.s got Dear John letters, their wives left them while they were at war. Tokyo Rose would broadcast stories of infidelity by Statebound brides to the soldiers overseas. This led to the creation of the Noir Femme Fatale, the false female, who’ll smile , seduce, and kill without missing a beat, sure they can turn on the waterworks, shed tears at the drop of a hat, but underneath, all business. So here is the returning soldier’s nightmare come true. What’s the one thing a desperate soldier, far from home could think about to give himself some relief from killing, mayhem, explosions? Little Sally Jean, the girl he left swinging on the garden gate. What if Tokyo rose was right? She’s evil, corrupted. His dreams are all Lies! Well, here she is, the beautiful blonde with the morals of a scorpion. Lisabeth Scott is amazing in this film. She turns from a bitchy but seemingly happily married woman in an instant all because of money, the old do re mi, a lot of it that drops in her lap. I don’t want to ruin the story but there are some depraved scenes of her and Dan Duryea getting it on just because he can make her do it, they hate each other! It’s deliciously perverse! According to Eddie Muller, the czar of noir, almost all of the budget went to the two big stars, they were worth it!

It was later re-released under this title
So the production of the film was low budget, a lot of the action takes place in Scott’s apartment but it makes the film psycologically more real in a way. You feel trapped in that nest of evil. There are some scenes in Dan Duryea’s flop, it’s perfect as the dump a small time creepy crook would hang his hat in. Another couple of great locations are Union Station, maybe the most beautiful building still left in L.A. and the lake at McArthur Park, called WestLake Park in the movie. A one time high rent district that’s now kind of funky. Silent Film director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in his bungalow just around the corner. Anyway the film is in poor shape, Eddie’s Noir Foundation did a restoration with UCLA but I don’t think that’s out on video yet so you have to make do with what’s available. But next time it screens at the Noir Festival, I will be there.

Here’s the best looking Youtube version I could find.

What a cool movie! I just saw it on YouTube. A great story that unfolds like a mystery, simple, compelling, intriguing. Geraldine Chaplin is wonderful as a crazy, obsessed waif who can kill you. Nobody messes with this tiny beauty and gets away with it. Ans as you watch the film you realize she is sort of a female Charlie Chaplin, she looks a lot like him, she is such a wonderful actress, in this film and the Carlos Saura films she did, I am a true fan of her talent.

Anthony Perkins is excellent too, so is Moses Gunn and a super skinny nerdy Jeff Goldblum. The way Geraldine plays all these people is amazing, it’s like she’s a ghost that can just walk into their lives, they don’t see her unless she wants them to. She actually is a kind of ghost from Tony Perkin’s past, and the way she causes Moses Gunn to fall for her is wonderful, a tough manager of an L.A. flophouse, he’s heard it all and seen it all. Nobody can break through his hard exterior except her, Emily. She has the guy loaning her money and doing chores for her in no time flat. And she is beautiful with her hair tied up in a classic style, transformed by buying a nice dress at a classy shop. this movie is kind of a paen to dedication, single minded attacking a problem, not letting anything stop you, and what a person can accomplish.

Another interesting highlight is the score, which consists of songs by the great Alberta Hunter, she was recently (when this film was made) re-discovered and made some amazing music in her later days. Another factor you’d never see in a movie today.And the movie was produced by the late great Robert Altman, a real American maverick. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him once at an early screening of The Player. I had an idea for a cut so I told Altman’s publicist, and lo and behold he liked it and implemented it. It’s fitting that he produced this film,  Alan Rudolph worked with Altman on some of his films as Assistant Director, Nahville, California Split, and The Long Goodbye.

Alan Rudolph- Super Genius
This film falls into one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite genres, female revenge movies. It is one of the most powerful types of film story out there, so compelling by it’s essence.  To me this film is the true extension of Film Noir, like Altman’s Long Goodbye, PostModern Film Noir. Future filmmakers, be inspired by this film! It shows you what a great story, excellent acting, and great storytelling technique can do, make an entertaining, thought provoking film, without special effects or zombies. Check this out.

What a cool movie! Dripping with atmosphere and featuring some powerful performances especially from Steve Cochran and Peter Lorre.

Lorre is one of my favorite all time film actors, check out Friz Lang’s M if you haven’t seen it. Cochran has one of the most distinct physical presences in films, his nastiness  just shoots off the screen in a way like no other actor. He’s just a bad dude.

Bob Cummings is the perfect American everyman, sort of innocent, shocked by what he saw in WWII, messed up but a good egg. He brings to mind a comment Quentin Tarantino made to me about Joseph Cotten, “I love Joseph Cotten, he’s so weak.” Cummings is kind of in that category, but Cotten always had that down at his heels ex-Southern gentleman thing going on, Cummings is just from small town nowheresville.

This film is a kind of confluence of many strange and wonderful things. Based on a book by noir maestro Cornell Woolrich called The Black Path Of Fear, (I ordered a copy) it’s film noir pedigree could not be higher, I believe Woolrich had more novels made into film noirs than anyone else,( I include Val Lewtons The Leopard Man, and Truffaut’s Bride wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid).

The Producer Seymour Nebenzal produced Lang’s M, which Lorre starred in, the director , Arthur Ripley,was an old hand that got started in the silent days and would go on to direct Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road and found the UCLA film school. Michele Morgan, the blond femme fatale, is still alive and living in France. A friend of mine (Duke Haney)reminded me that she was having her home built while this movie was being made,  A kind of French Chalet that would go down in infamy some years later, 10050 Cielo Drive, scene of the grisly Manson murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voychek Frykowski, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent.

Michele Morgan at her Cielo Drive home

The camerman was the amazing Franz Planer, a Vienese transplant who emigrated to escape the Nazis. Planer also shot the beautiful, atmospheric noir Criss Cross for Robert Siodmak. His photography is nothing short of amazing. There is a wonderful sequence of a black limousine racing a locomotive at night , it’s a tour de force of miniatures, rear projection, great low angle shots of Lorre driving, shot through the steering wheel.

The film is in the public domain now, you can watch it on Youtube, but I just learned it was restored by UCLA and screened recently, unfortunately I missed it. Hopefully they will screen it again soon or at a noir festival.

Finally thanks to Youtube I had a chance to see Youth Runs Wild, the Val Lewton produced RKO film that’s eluded me for a long time. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. An interesting premiss, youngsters running wild due to lack of parental supervision, owing to the fact that most parents were either overseas or working in WWII related industries.

A LOOK Magazine story about a teenaged girl that started a Youth Club was the impetus for this project but once Lewton got involved he transformed it from a puff piece about wholesome Timmy and Jennie playing skittles in the church basement to a searing indictment of child neglect, abuse, and exploitation. This didn’t sit well with the brass at RKO, the State Department or even LOOK magazine so drastic re-editing was called for and Lewton disgusted at the end result asked that his name be taken off the project.  What remains holds clues to what might have been, Lawrence Tierney’s performance as a corrupter of youth, garage owner. Fencing stolen tires, in big demand due to War rationing. Tierney claimed in an interview that his character sold drugs to kids as well in the original version.

Dickie Moore in Out Of The Past
Dickie Moore, one time Little Rascal and the deaf mute sidekick to Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past appears and is often complaining about the treatment he gets from his father, in Lewton’s cut little Dickie offs his abusing psycho padre with a rifle.

Dickie with chicks in Youth Runs Wild
The ending really comes from out of nowhere, hacked on by a studio hatchet man, a bizarre montage about the teenaged girl that started her Youth Club, trying to shuck and grin the film back to pure propaganda niceness.  A few other noteworthy items, John Fante is credited as screenwriter, the author of the wonderous Ask The Dust, one of Bukowski’s (and mine) favorite L.A. novels. Fante knew his way around abusive, alcoholic parents, check out some of his other novels.  YRW was directed by Mark Robson, Lewton’s pet director, elevated from the editing room to the director’s chair by Lewton on The Seventh Victim after cutting several films for Lewton including Cat P_eople, The Leopard Man, and the incomparable I walked With A Zombie. Robson later repaid Lewton for his help by cutting him out of an independent production company deal and having his agent deliver the bad news.  Vanessa Brown plays an overworked, abused teenager lured into prostitution by an older wiser babe and in one scene she sports a flowery coif that I am pretty sure inspired Beth Short, the Black Dahlia to imitate.

Vanessa Brown with RKO stalwart Kent Smith

Life Imitates Art

 Short probably related to the character Brown played. Brunette, sexy beyond her young years, struggling to make ends meet, hustling drinks in Hollywood Wartime nightclubs. Fascinating stuff. But anyway you too can watch via Youtube and judge for yourself. Too bad no copy of Lewton’s original cut remains. The trims and outs were probably burned to reclaim the 20 cents worth of silver in the emulsion, just like the missing parts of Orson Wells Magnificent Ambersons.

WatchYouth Runs Wild  for yourself  on Youtube!