ICE STATION ZEBRA

1968/Director: John Sturges/Writers: Alistair MacLean (novel), Douglas Heyes (screenplay)

Cast: Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, Jim Brown, Tony Bill, Lloyd Nolan, Alf Kjellin, Gerald S. O’Loughlin

My dad was stationed on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas in the late 60’s. One of the little perks of being the son of a military dad was having the ID card that got me onto the base and then into some cool places, like the bowling alley, the PX (base exchange), the cafeterias and of course the various bland looking movie houses. With my ID card it cost me all of 35 cents to see assorted spaghetti westerns, horror and sci-fi films, comedies and once in a while a real movie. Such was the case with Ice Station Zebra, a film I saw all alone in the base theater at about the age of eleven. Shot in stunning 70mm  with a dramatic score my Michael Legrand (restored in full with intermission music on the version I have) it was awesome to behold on the big screen and if I remember right I saw it about three times in a week. (more…)

ROMPER STOMPER

1992/Director: Geoffrey Wright/ Writer: Geoffrey Wright

Cast: Russell Crowe, Daniel Pollock, Jacqueline McKenzie, Alex Scott, Leigh Russell, Daniel Wyllie, James McKenna,    Eric Mueck, Frank Magree,

Romper Stomper was early on in Russell Crowe’s movie acting career and when I first saw the film on VHS back in the 90’s he had yet to achieve the level of stardom he has since attained. Had I known Crowe already and some of the Hollywood work I have seen of his lately, such as A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man I would have thought something like “wow, he really made some wild movies way back then, not like Gladiator at all”. But when I first saw the film I really knew very little of the guy and doubt that I even knew his name, which only added to the intensity of this already riveting drama about angry skinheads in Melbourne Australia. Crowe is simply mesmerizing as Hando, the leader of a band of skinheads who at the moment are focusing their plentiful hatred and violent behavior on the local Vietnamese community. The film was written and directed by Geoffrey Wright and has a blood pumping soundtrack of instrumental music as well as the “Oi” type skinhead punk rock music. The photography  is often rawand grainy and the editing fast at the right moments but not overboard and constantly jerky, as it often can be with this type of film. Along with Crowe are Australian actress Jacqueline McKenzie and actor Daniel Pollock, who had played a small role with Crowe in 1991’s Proof, another great independent Australian film.

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THE COLLECTOR

1965/Director: William Wyler/ Writers: John Fowles (novel), Stanley Mann (writer)

Cast: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washbourne, Maurice Dallimore

The Collector is a film by William Wylers, based on the novel by John Fowles, starring basically only two actors in a almost stage style performance. Terrance Stamp plays butterfly collector Freddie Clegg who is actually rather brilliant but has an incredible inferiority complex. He works as a clerk who is taunted daily by his co-workers until he one day wins a substantial fortune in the British football pool. He uses his money to buy and equip a isolated, rustic old house in the lush British country side. By equip I mean he turns the Gothic looking cellar into a furnished holding cell meant to contain one Miranda Grey ( Sammantha Eggar ) who he has developed an obsession with and is determined to make her fall in love with him. The first step in his bizarre courtship is to chloroform her then kidnap her and haul her back to her cell. She has no idea where she is or what Freddie’s intentions really are and in some ways neither do we, as the viewer is uncertain of how sincere he really is with his promises and comfortings.

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IN A LONELY PLACE

1950/ Director: Nicholas Ray/ Writers:Dorothy B. Hughes (story), Edmund H. North (adaptation)

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart

It has been said that the character of “Dix” Dixon Steele in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place comes closer to conveying Bogey’s real character than any other of his film roles. Steele is a once successful screen writer who has not had a hit in years and now is cynical and inclined to drink heavily and sulk. His disposition is moody and prone to violence. It is a small wonder that he becomes the main suspect when a young girl is found murdered after she spent her last night alive at his apartment reading a book meant for adaptation. Steele is so burned out and bitter at the shallow movie industry that made him a celebrity he cannot even read the book himself.
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THE SERVANT

1963/ Director:Joseph Losey/Writers: Robin Maugham (novel)Harold Pinter (screenplay)

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, James Fox, Patrick Magee, Catherine Lacey, Richard Vernon

I had never really heard about this movie, a collaboration between director Joseph Losey and playwrite/screenwriter Howard Pinter except in passing while reading reviews of other films. I had had the DVD lying around for a couple months and decided I would pop it in one night and was so stunned by the film I felt compelled to do a post on it here at the Cafe though it tends to fall outside what I would normally write about though is one I want to promote. In fact, the film is not easy to critique and really is one that must be seen and allowed to wash over you with its dark waters and sinister shadows. I made a clip from the movie and uploaded it to youtube (see the next post… I must post videos separately from posts heavy laden with text and graphics for technical reasons), as well as uploading the trailer, as there was very little there about this marvelously malevolent story of role reversal, British class struggle moral decay and sexual decadence. (more…)

I am a huge enthusiast of film noir style films and especially those of the 40′s and 50′s. I decided to finally begin this category dedicated to noir films. I have seen plenty and have a decent DVD collection to review. I might add that for me film noir is not limited to tough talking detective films, though those movies represent the core of what film noir is noted for, but can include boxing films such as The Set Up and Requiem for a Heavy Weight, and in a stretch even westerns such as High Noon or Gregory Peck’s The Gunfighter. Some newer films such as the excellent Body Heat and L.A. Confidential draw from the film noir tradition but are not really film noir to me for one big reason: they are not in sensational black and white. Color just eleviates the despair and suffering to a tolerable point. The soul is to so dark and stained any longer and you cannot get those great smoke rings against the black background any longer. Lets begin this category with triple doses of the underbelly of life, beginning with pretty boy Tyrone Power’s experiment in carny angst:

Nightmare Alley

1947/Director: Edmund Goulding/Screenplay: Jules Furthman , William Lindsay Gresham (novel)

Cast: Tyrone Power , Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith

From what I understand Tyrone Power bought the rights to Lindsay Gresham’s novel for something like $60,000 and wanted it to be a vehicle to shed his romantic lead image and establish him as a legitimate actor. The studios at first felt the material was unfilmable but Powers and prospective director Edmund Goulding were persistent and the movie was filmed. Powers plays a traveling sideshow carnie on the look out for his big break who he finds in the sideshow fortune teller. They team up after her alcoholic husband or boyfriend drinks a bottle of wood grain alcohol and do a mind reading act that soon grows too small for Powers. He is shotgun married to the strongman’s (Mike Mazurki) naïve but sexy daughter played convincingly by pretty Collen Gray.

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