Film Forno

A lot of fun and definitely different, go check it out. I edited it. Opens today!

Hey fans of Film Forno I’m back after some technical difficulties. Thanks for standing by. I have since subscribed to Hulu Plus. They have a big selection of films and TV shows, including a lot of the Criterion collection.

Murder by Angel’s Flight!

But the film I’m writing about is not one of those.The Indestructible Man was a staple of WPIX’s Chiller Theater back in the 60’s. It is probably the film that made me fall in love with Los Angeles and want to move there. It features some of the coolest LA locations, Angel’s Flight, streets of downtown LA, the Bradbury building, where a murder is committed. Just a plethora of wonderful settings for this low budget Horrorfest. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays the Butcher, a career criminal who is executed then revived by a Mad Scientist and wants revenge. I mean you couldn’t ask for a better plot to please a 10 year old. Check this one out, it’s delicious even if it’s bad for you like hot dogs and cotton candy.

Recently a new list of the 50 greatest films ever made was complied by experts. Usurping the past favorite Citizen Kane was a newly elected film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Two undeniably great motion pictures that have something in common, both of them were scored by Bernard Herrmann! Herrmann had worked with Welles in Radio back in NYC and went to Hollywood with his Mercurey Theater compatriots.

His first film score was Citizen Kane, his last was Taxi Driver, he died right after the Christmas Eve scoring session. The Taxi Driver score is one of the all time greats and it seemed Herrmann was heading into new uncharted waters with this score, if he had lived who knows what he would have come up with. The use of the harp and snare drum is so cool. I wonder if the snare was influenced by Gene Palma’s presence in the film, he is the Drummer Man, a fixture on midtown streets back in the 70’s, he’d call out the name of a jazz drummer “Louis Belson” and hit a representative lick.”Buddy Rich”, “Gene Krupa” one day his snare drum was stolen, he just played on a mailbox. NYC was full of characters back then.

But here listen to Herrmann’s theme from VERTIGO.

And here is the theme fromTAXI DRIVER.

Chris Marker has died. I understand he was still making films and very active until the end. He was 91!Here is his ,masterpiece La Jetee. It shows what can be done with still images, sound, imagination and dedication. Au Revoir maitre!

Here it is, on Youtube no less, the doc I saw at the Rock and Roll Film Festival a couple years back,Nancy And Lee. A glimpse into the life of Nancy Sinatra and her musical guru, Lee Hazelwood, as they put on a show in Vegas with Billy Strange as their conductor. Strange supplied the guitar for Bang, Bang, You Shot Me Down and Theses Boots Are Made For Walkling. He also played on the duet between Nancy and her old man, Francis Something Stupid. Hazelwood wrote Boots and a bunch of other hits, many with guitar man Duane Eddy. He was a Producer’s Producer. But here he’s just part of the act. This is a great peek into American culture and backstage at a big Vegas show circa 1972. A follow up to their album of the same name from 1968. Check it out, it’s pretty cool. Thanks to Ken Adamson for turning me onto this Youtube find. We were at the Rock Film Fest together and saw this film projected at the CineFamily. Tres Groovy!

Mario and Lucio Fulci
Here is a great documentary about the great Mario Bava. Parts are in Italian with no subtitles but a lot of it is in English(with Italian subtitles) but I really enjoyed it!  Plus they used super cool Italian film music from classic scores of the 60’s and 70’s.It’s wonderful, check it out below.

Here is a real blast from the past, some enterprising soul has uploaded a broadcast of Chiller Theater from the 70’s, I grew up watching this show on WPIX Channel 11 in NYC.  This is complete with commercials ! Talk about Time Tripping, And the movie is none other than The Crawling Eye! Starring that fugitive from F Troop, Forrest Tucker, The animated title sequence, featuring long arrows entering the frame brought to mind rumors of Forrest’s physical attributes. Anyway in honor of BLOBFEST, check out The Crawling Eye (originally titled The Trollenberg Terror).

 

Here via Youtube you can watch a movie that scared me to bits as a young impressionable child, Mario Bava’s CALTIKI Il MOSTRO IMMORTALE. Bava took this project over from Riccardo Freda and did an excellent job. There is plenty of his ingenious in camera effect work to check out. And the use of a cows stomach as monster influenced many filmmakers, like David Lynch in ERASERHEAD. Check it out.

I watched this film last night and what can I say, I stayed awake till it was done and I didn’t turn it off, two big criteria in my home theater viewing habits, I enjoyed this film for several reasons. It’s a good story with excellent acting, nicely shot, most of it takes place in the Eternal City Roma, we get to see Italy only 15 years after WWII so it’s still pretty close to how it was. Most of the dialog is in Italian (even though the main titles are in French) so I can practice my comprehension. It’s a polyglot film, with people speaking Italian, English, Russian, Latin. A wartime film featuring occupying Nazis and escaped prisoners of war. A Russian, an Englishman, and an American to be precise. I like how the characters represent their respective cultures, sort of like the characters in The Third Man. The story kind of meanders along but in a very enjoyable way then suddenly veers into violence and death. I usually don’t like such an abrupt change of tone but Rossellini pulls it off, probably because he lived through that time of trauma and he brings that reality to it. This movie is a good example of what elevates a great director from just a journeyman, everything is well done in the film, the story is interesting, the acting good but there is some indescribable something that makes the film more enjoyable to watch than it should be, a “Lubitsch touch” as it were. It’s not the editing, the music, the setting,it’s everything, it’s the reflected talents of a man of taste and genius, Roberto Rossellini.

I have not seen enough of his films and this one inspires me to see more, how about a Major Retrospective of his work! Maybe they can get one of his other masterpieces, his daughter Isabella to emcee it. And this film is available on Netflix streaming.

Crazy title, huh. maybe it’s an homage to Charles Laughton’s masterpiece Night Of The Hunter, I would think so. Anyway this film is worth checking out, so full of the cinepoetics that only Jean Rollin could create. A lot of nudity, a lot of violence, and an underlying Romanticism in the face of Ultra Nihilism. Made for very little money, shot in a few locations, but full of ideas, images, imagination. The opening is a bit like Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and the end is like nothing else. It’s sort of a modern Zombie movie sans brain eating. There is a sequence towards the end that is referencing the Holocaust, set in a train yard, a great location. Two guard/executioners consider a girl sent to them for extermination. ” This one’s still alive. I can’t do it.” “She’s as good as dead.” ” Let’s watch her and see what she does. “I am reminded in a way of the Japanese Pink Violence films. The producers said to the filmmakers, ” You can do anything as long as the film has so much nudity and violence. ” Rollin did the same, his nod to commercialism was the nudity and violence his films are full of. But I think he loved those elements as well. He truly dug his genre and he imbuded his creations with a wonderful, personal poetry. Jean Rollin it’s a shame you’re dead, I would write you a fan letter. It is amazing that  you got to make these atmospheric films for so many years, a triumph of the human spirit. Bravo! And it’s on Netflix Streaming!

No, not the movie about ballet dancers, this one is from 1952 and is all about crime, corruption and the law. It’s funny how things intersect on the Great Plains of Life, I have been thinking a lot about George Tomasini, the film editor. This guy was one of the all time greats, look at his IMDB page almost every film he did is a classic!

The Great Cutter! George Tomasini!
He worked in many genres and they all came out great, his fantasy work with George Pal, The Time Machine, The Seven Faces Of Dr. Lao, Houdini. All great. I was watching Cape Fear with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, end credits roll, edited by George Tomasini. Plus he edited a major share of Hitchcock’s Hollywood output. Everything from Rear Window to The Birds, including Psycho with it’s famous shower scene. Anyway I will one day soon write a piece just about George. So when I checked out Mr. Tomasini’s IMDB page I saw a film listed I had not seen, The Turning Point. I thought, ” I’ll have to check that out one of these days.” Then I was cruising around the internet and ran into a blog about Bunker Hill, On Bunker Hill, this site features great images of the old neighborhood that stood just north of downtown before it was demolished. A real dreamscape used as backgrounds by many film noir masters. I then found a link to Angel’s Flight Goes To The Movies, and there was A Turning Point! Then to top it off it’s on Netflix streaming! So I checked it out. Directed by super talented William Dieterle, the man behind such classics as The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Portrait of Jennie, this is a really well written story, excellently paced by Tomasini, it has some incredible scenes, including one of the best assassinations ever filmed. A crooked cop trying to do right is set up for a hit, and the shooter is then shot by two truck driving killers(one of whom is the Professor from Gilligan’s Island). There’s a lot of great location photography all over Bunker Hill.

And a climactic scene at what I think is the old Olympic auditorium, a boxing match featuring an appearance by the second most decorated veteran of WWII, Neville Brand.

This was two years after D.O.A. where Brand tortured Edmond O’Brien, Edmond is sort of the star of The Turning Point but really it’s William Holden. Check this gem out, great writing, directing and editing and all on Netflix streaming!

Maestro Of Psychic Cinema! William Dieterle

This is a film I’ve heard about for many years and now finally it can be seen, thanks to Netflix streaming. Written by the great Terrence Malick a couple years before he directed his masterpiece Badlands, Deadhead Miles is a paean to the open road, a picaresque tale of two and eventually one traveler. That one traveler is played by Alan Arkin, a terrific performance and one of the weirdest Southern accents ever. Arkin is the driver of the big rig of destiny. Beautiful cinematography, 35mm, rich color,awe inspiring landscapes, 1971 locations make this movie a kind of low ball visual feast. And a cool country music score, by Tom T. Hall. A great supporting cast, including some real gems.

But the reason I knew about this movie is that a friend of mine worked on it. Bud Smith, great editor of such films as The Exorcist, Putney Swope, Cat People, Zoot Suit, Sorcerer, Personal Best and many other films, told me about his time on Deadhead Miles. Bud was hired to edit the film, he stayed in Los Angeles while the crew shot on location and sent the film back. Bud cut the film as it came in. At the end of the shoot the director took a few weeks off to recuperate from the rigors of a road movie. When he came into the editing room Bud was ready with his first cut of the movie. They screened it. The director said,” Can you take that all apart and put it back in dailies?” Bud said, ” You mean there’s nothing in there that you like?” ” Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” “Well, I guess you got the wrong guy to work on your film.” And with that Bud left. Tony Bill , the producer, wisely duped Bud’s cut before having it disassembled and after a little while Mr. Bill fired the director. The new editor used Bud’s original cut for a lot of the film which then languished in obscurity until now. So check it out, a unique film.