Here’s a trailer from what many consider the first giallo, La Ragazza che sapeva troppo, released in the USA as The Evil Eye. Directed by Mario Bava, the genre maker, starring John Saxon, Leticia Roman, and Valentina Cortese. I read an interview with John Saxon a few years back and he talked about how he got involved with this project. Leticia Roman contacted him and, representing herself as a producer working on the film, offered him the part. After some haggling Saxon accepted. Then, unbeknownst to John Saxon, she approached Mario Bava and said she represented Saxon and if Bava wanted him for the movie, he would have to give Leticia the female lead! Bava agreed and she got the part. During filming (according to the interview) Bava became infatuated with Leticia and was pressuring her to submit to his desires. She told him John Saxon was in love with her and he’s better back off as Saxon was jealous and would walk off the film or worse. Bava left her alone, Saxon knew nothing of all this at the time, he found out later. So here’s to Leticia Roman, a grandmaster of the chessboard of Cinema hustling.
I watched a classic B movie from 1955 last night. Big House U.S.A. Ralph Meeker is even more amoral than he is in Kiss Me Deadly. Here he plays a kidnapper nicknamed The Iceman. He starts off this romp by kidnapping a rich kid at summer camp who has bad asthma. He stashes the kid in an abandoned lookout fire tower and after the kid crashes through the rotted railing, the Iceman calmly picks him up and flings him off a precipitous cliff. What a guy. He gets the ransom stashes it and is promptly arrested. Dropped into Cascabel Island Penitentary, he gets to bunk with- Charles Bronson ( an early use of the name Bronson, instead of Buchinsky), Broderick Crawford ( the “brains” of the outfit, if you can believe that) Lon Chaney Jr. ( he’s carving an anotomically correct doll of a blonde bimbo when we first see him) and William Talman ( you’ll know him if you see him, a blond sleazebag). What a cast! Meeker is so evil, I think this portrayal got him the part of Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly. That’s the next film he did and it’s great. But Crawford does his best to outdo Meeker, first he steams to death his henchman Dipsy so his escape plan won’t be found out then he has Talman kill Bronson while he’s asleep. This is directly after Bronson saves Crawford’s life! Then he directs Talman to disfigure Charlie with a blow torch and chuck him overboard so the cops will think it’s Meeker. Jeez! They all get their comeuppances in the end. But what an amoral crew! And this is 1955! I think movies from the 50’s can be pretty violent indeed. I guess after the horrors of WWII the American public needed more thrills, chills and spills! Another thing that’s great. The prison location. I love seeing guys in a huge prison machine shop or powerhouse. Like the part of White Heat where somebody tries to drop a 2 ton motor on Cody Jarrett ( James Cagney) and the Rat, (star of D.O.A.) Edmund O’Brien saves him so he can infiltrate his gang.
So if you like amoral noirish prison movies with a cast to kill for, check out Bighouse U.S.A.!
Last night I watched a documentary about legendary director Budd Boetticher. There were some excellent interviews with the man himself and other directors, Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, Taylor Hackford (who directed a doc on Budd back in 71′ for KCET, around the time he made his film about Bukowski). At one point they were discussing Seven Men From Now and how during the climactic gunfight between Lee Marvin and Randolph Scott . Boetticher cuts away from Scott during his draw. You don’t see him draw his gun and shoot, you just see Marvin get shot before he can draw his gun, almost a magical cut. Then Hackford said what an influence on Sergio Leone, yeah I can see that but the magical fast draw was used almost exactly by Jean Pierre Melville in his masterpiece Le Samourai. Alain Delon (Costello) kills the club owner with an unseen quick draw. Delon confronts the guy in his office, while the clubman is sitting at his desk. We see the clubman get a gun out of his desk drawer, Delon still hasn’t made a move, the club owner starts to raise his gun, cut to Delon firing his pistol, killing Mseur. Club. The magical Boetticher gun draw reincarnated by Melville, one of the greatest miners of American Cinema Gold.
I found this clip fom Sweden, Heavan and Hell over at Bedazzled. It shows the incredibly well-known MahNa MahNa song in it’s original context, very surprising. Alessandro Alessandroni is the singer, and he told me he came up with the voice himself. Another example of his genius and his under appreciated role in world Cinema. [Note: this clip contains nudity, but it’s pretty mild by today’s standards].
I’m hoping to start uploading a series of Podcasts, interviews with some of the people I’ve met and worked with over my time in the film industry. Filmmakers, Actors, Composers, Cameramen, all sorts of interesting people who’ve worked on all sorts of historic Cinema. I’ll post more on this subject as I go, but I’m hoping to do roughly one a month.
Sergio Corbucci’s masterpiece Navajo Joe or A Dollar A Head will screen at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. I’ve always loved this film, partially due to the incredible Ennio Morricone soundtrack, featuring the amazing Alessandro Alessandroni, Gianna Spagnulo, and The Cantori Moderni, Alessandroni’s choir. The screenplay is co-authored by Fernando De Leo who later went on to direct some of the best polizotto or crime films of the 70’s, like Il Boss and The Italian Connection and Milano Calibre 9. I also must applaud Burt Reynolds, he did all his own stunts and it is one of the most impressive physical performance’s of all time. To top it off the film has an ambiguous ending, unlike anything I can recall and subsequentially one of my favorites. The only other film ending that struck me in a similar way (although completely different) is Luis Bunuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid and that ending was not ambiguous but surreal, completely out of character with the rest of the film. On reflection the ending of Tristana falls into this classification as well.
