I went to the CineFamily Theater yesterday at 4 pm and I didn’t leave until about 2am! Quentin Tarantino hosted a marathon screening of David Carradine performance gems. First off we watched a 16mm print of the first episode of Kung Fu called King Of The Mountain, it featured John Saxon as a bounty hunter and Brandon Cruz as a boy orphaned by an Indian raid. It was terrific! I haven’t seen Kung Fu since it was on TV! QT regaled the audience with tales of Carradine between each showing that made the screenings really cool. The philosophy Caine spews during Kung Fu is pure Confucianism and it works excellently. Next up was an episode of a long gone TV show called Cimarron Strip starring and produced by Stuart Whitman. Carradine was a guest star on this show and turned in an excellent performance. QT stated it was hands down his favorite David Carradine guest star appearance. DC demonstrated his formidable quick draw technique in this episode, according to QT Carradine was one of the fastest quick draws in Hollywood history, 2nd only to Sammy Davis Jr.!
Next up we had a bunch of trailers, great stuff! Then a scene from Larry Bishop’s chopper opera Hell Ride that featured Carradine. Some more trailers and then the jam packed car crash extravaganza Cannonball, a Paul Bartel helmed follow up to his Mega Hit for Roger Corman, Death Race 2000.
An amusing anecdote from Mr. T, Ingmar Bergman wanted an American actor for his film The Serpent’s Egg. He called Richard Harris but he was booked up. Someone recommended Ingmar go see Death Race 2000, as it was playing in Berlin where Bergman was casting, so Ingemar went and the rest is history. After that the extremely bizzare Sonny Boy, Carradine plays this film in drag, it’s a completly wacked film, check out the trailer. A surprise visit from the star of the film Sonny Boy himself Michael Boston capped the experience, he had never seen the film projected! By the way the 35mm print had a horrible noise on some of the reels, people should check this stuff out before shipping defective films.
Finally we watched Gray Lady Down, a studio pic starring Chuck Heston as a sub captain and DC as the pilot of a mini sub that has to rescue the sunken crew. Yo it was crazy! All in all a touching tribute to an actor from a director who loved his work. Carradine was part of the Tarantino Film Family and he got a great send off. Tonight they’re going to show Circle Of Iron because it got too late to go on last night. See You There at 10:30!
The restored,longer version of Fritz Lang’s super mega masterpiece,METROPOLIS is being shown in theaters starting today Friday, May 14, 2010! GO! Do not miss it! This film is like the wellsping, the source from which all sci-fi sprang! New Footage! 20 minutes worth and the original orchestral score not throbbing disco. Check it out. I once heard Lang was editing the last reels as it was being premiered, so he had guys on motorcycles rushing the reels as he finished cutting them to the theater! Crazy! I went to see Black Monn last night and it was SOLD OUT! (I got in) But what an amazing occurence, a sold out Thursday night screening of an obscure Art Film! Down with corporate Art! Don’t go see the Hollywood crap go see METROPOLIS!
Two super cool films will screen in glorious 35mm at the CineFamily this Thursday night. Starting at 8 o’clock Louis Malle’s Fairy Tale for Adults , Black Moon will be projected. This is a unique, disturbing, highly creative film and chances to see it in a theater with other humans are rare as hen’s teeth.
The same can be said of Jaromil Jires Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders. This epic of surreal magic unspools at 10. Click HERE for details. I’ll be there how about YOU!
A black leather jacketed, sunglass wearing amnesiac Beatnik Jesus shows up in a small town in post WWII Poland and turns on the townsfolk with miracles and music. Novelist/filmmaker Tadeusz Konwicki conjurs up Salto from his novel A Dreambook for our Time. It expresses the inexpressible remarkably. Once again the proto Beatnik figure is seen as a semi Messiah, as in Cocteau’s Orphee. This was the psychic build up to the creative explosion of the 60’s. But just watch this clip, I dare you not to be impressed.
Arch Stanton, Bill Carson, Tuco Ramirez, Angel Eyes, Blondie, these are the names that only a lover of Westerns and Classic American Cinema could come up with and bring to life in a magnificent screenplay. An epic sweeping tale of Greed in the American West,our Holy Three search for Treasure, Buried Gold, and nothing, not a Prisoner Of War camp, a raging battle for a meaningless bridge, the burning sands of an impassable desert, nothing can stop them in their quest. One of the writers of THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE! has passed on. The Titans of Cinema await you Furio Scarpelli. they will take you by the hand and lead you to Paradise! Requiescat In Pace!
A guy named David Becken wrote to me, seeking information on Lowell Grant. Lowell was a sculptor who lived around the block from me until his kiln exploded killing him and burning down his house. I think this occurred back in the 70’s. His house was never re-built and the foundation is still there covered with graffiti, it was used as a location on the Echo Park film Mi Vida Loca. Lowell also did sculptures for a movie starring Vincent Price called Diary Of A Madman. Here’s a link to my earlier piece about Lowell.If anyone has any information they’d like to share please write in, I’ve had one person ask about getting a sculpture repaired and if Lowell had any children that were now sculptors but alas I don’t know. Here are some images that Mr. Becken sent to me of Lowell’s work.
The great editor Dede Allen has passed on. She was the Queen of New York Editors and she started the careers of many big name editors working today. I met her several times and spoke to her about mutual friends. She knew my old buddy and mentor Frank G. Host and started out Frank’s pal Hugh Robertson on his career. Frank and Hugh were some of the first Afro American film editors in New York. Dede cut some incredible films. Some of my favorites are Odds Against Tomorrow, The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, and Slaughterhouse Five. But I really love The Hustler in my opinion one of the best edited films of all time. I knew the apprentice film editor, a guy names John Taylor, a black filmmaker. Dede integrated the cutting room before almost anyone else. Dede edited Warren Beatty’s massive film Reds. I remember when it was being edited in NY. They took over Trans Audio on 54th street, right upstairs from Studio 54. It was a gigantic job, there must have been 50 people working in Post on that film. She leaves behind a son, Tom Fleischman, an excellent mixer and a great guy. I had the pleasure of working with him back in the 80’s, my condolences go out to him. This is the end of an era, Dede changed film and editing for all time. She will be missed.
Lewis Allen
An excellent film in all respects but Film Noir? I don’t know, they billed it as Gothic Noir but it’s like Merchant Ivory noir. Ray Milland is excellent as a talented cad, painter/thief no goodnik.He seduces the virginal widow of a missionary, Ann Todd, gets her to commit unspeakable acts and thanks to the writing and Miss Todd’s acting you totally believe it.Art Direction and Cinematography are top notch, all the acting in the movie is good. Look for Leo G. Carroll as a tenacious detective. Lewis Allen does an excellent job directing.He was around New York when I lived there but he was producing films in his later years. I met with his representative, a sleepy gent whose name escapes me, about a script I had written but Mr. Allen said no thanks. Allen produced the successful adaptaion of William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies directed by Peter Brook, he also produced Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. He directed Suddenly starring Frank Sinatra as an assassin out to hit the President, Sinatra pulled the film from circulation after he heard Lee Harvey Oswald had watched it a few days before the Kennedy assassination. Now that I’ve seen So Evil My Love I’ve got to say Bravo to his work as a director.
Well since I posted 2 items that featured beautiful women in spider webs, I might as well go all out and post this one too. I like these Inquisition through Time type films , the Mexican film The Brainac is another one. We have an extra special bonus of Mickey Hargitay in the starring role.
Jayne Mansfield’s ex-husband, he appeared with Jayne in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter after he quit acting he ran a plant/florist business in Hollywood. Also I heard he was a landlord and a nice guy. Altogether a solid example of mid 60’s Italian Horror. Oh yeah special effects by Carlo Rambaldi (E.T.s creator)
Thursday April 8th two Gothic Noirs unspool at the Egyptian, Lewis Allen’s So Evil My Love and Jacques Tourneur’s Experiment Perilous. The first pairs Ann Todd and Ray (Man With X-Ray Eyes) Milland while Perilous features the beautiful Hedy Lamarr.
Friday night John Brahm’s excellent, rare, psychological thriller The Locket is shown along with Richard Fleischer’s Bodyguard. The Locket stars Laraine Day and Bad Boy Bob Mitchum. Bodyguard features a script by Robert Altman and stars super psycho Lawrence Tierny. A tough double bill to beat! I’ll be there how about you?
Here, thanks to You Tube, you can watch the entire Horrors Of Spider Island. Beautiful models stranded on a tropical island where a spider bite mutates one of the men traveling with them, turning him into a love sick monster.
