Some of this past week's goodies at Movie Night-
Hollywood-1980-Thames--We've been re-watching this 13 part documentary series at Movie Night over the past several months and finally finished up the last episode this week. The series, produced by film historian Kevin Brownlow, is arguably the best series ever done on the history of film. It only covers the American film scene of the silent era but does it magnificently! Stately narrated by James Mason, filled with many interviews of participants of the era-all now long gone, and filled with loads of clips of the films being talked about, the series is always interesting, informative and entertaining. My initial viewing of this series three decades ago helped further ignite my already growing interest in films and film history and I have re-watched it several times since (I believe this was my 5th viewing of the entire series). Highly recommended!
Battling With Buffalo Bill-Chapter 4-"The Savage Horde"-in the "There's Something You Don't See Very Often in a 1930's Kiddie Serial" (or "How Did They Slip That One Past the Censors") department---after a narrow escape from a fierce battle with Indians, Buffalo Bill and his companions stop to catch their breath and gather their wits when actor William Desmond (big stuff during the silent era but now growing long in the tooth and playing mostly supporting roles) decides he can best comfort the lovely and "amply endowed" Lucille Browne by rather obviously...ahem... "copping a feel"...(as we used to say in high school). To her credit Miss Browne rolls with it (so as not to ruin the take-after all these serials didn't have much budgets and retakes could be costly) and finishes the scene (although we were all betting she slapped him silly as soon as the director yelled "cut"!
A Film Johnnie-1914-Keystone-1 rl-
Mabel's Strange Predicament-1914-Keystone-1 rl-
The above two films were from Charlie Chaplin's first year in films and were from the recent DVD collection which showcases restored versions of these early films. We watched these two films in their entirety and skimmed through several others to check out their quality. We were duly impressed with much of the restoration work (although also noted some unfortunate missed opportunities) but were generally put off by the fact that we felt the films were run at too slow a speed-something which can be deadly for comedy films. The musical tracks were a mixed bag-some quite good, some less so, but none that were considered gawdawful.
Charlie's White Elephant-1916-Movca-1/2 rl-within two years of his entrance into films people could not get enough of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin couldn't turn out new films fast enough to satisfy the public so some enterprising individuals got the idea of turning Chaplin into an animated cartoon character (he was also made into a comic strip character-some drawn by E. C. Segar) to try to satisfy this Chaplin-mania. The trouble was most of these animated adventures of Charlie were pretty awful (as clearly shown in this offering) and pleased neither Charlie, the critics or the public. Understandably, they did not last very long.
Spook Spoofing-1928-Roach-MGM-3 rls-The Our Gang (aka The Little Rascals) comedies were one of the longest running (1922-1944) and most popular series of theatrical shorts ever produced, bridging the gap from silent films to talkies (almost) effortlessly. This late silent entry was a good choice to show with Halloween only a few days away as the Gang spends much of their time in a graveyard. We were also happy to be treated to a rare viewing of the original 3 reel version of the film as many of the prints circulating of it today have been cut down to 2 reels.
Match Play-1930-Sennett-Educational-2 rls-An early talkie from the Mack Sennett Studios, interesting mainly for the appearance of two actual golf pros (who's names totally escape me now) joining comics Andy Clyde and Bud Jamison for some mild laughs on the links.
Horror Maniacs-(aka The Greed of William Hart)-1948-Another good entry for our Halloween Movie Night was this feature by Britain's chief horror star of the Golden Age of Films-Tod Slaughter! The film, one of Slaughter's last feature films and based on the lives of notorious grave robbers Burke and Hare, is a very low budget affair. "How low budget is it?" you ask. Well when British censors, for some obscure reason, objected to the use of Burke and Hare's real names in the film the producers had to re-dub throughout the movie wherever the characters were called by name changing the names from Burke and Hare to Hart and Moore. This slight extra expense completely blew their budget for a film score so the film was released with no score and thus seems even cheaper and older than it actually is.
Seen at the theaters recently-
Machete--This started out as a faux trailer run during Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino's double feature movie Grindhouse a few years back and apparently it generated enough interest to get made into an actual movie. It's exactly what it tries to be-a low budget, often over the top, exploitation movie-the sort that used to fill the drive-ins in days gone by. The main difference between those films and this one is the quality and number of stars in secondary roles. While usual character actor Danny Trejo plays the lead he is supported by the likes of Robert DeNiro, Jesica Alba, Steven Segal, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson. If you are at all a fan of exploitation films you'll probably enjoy this!
Devil--M Night Shyamalan wrote (but did not direct) this pretty effective little horror film. The film has no big name stars (although you'll probably recognize, even if you can't name them, several of the character actors in it) and is fairly low budget. Worth a watch.
Let Me In--Continuing in the horror vein (it is Halloween month after all) I caught this effective remake of the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In (which I have yet to see but hope to view soon). The film also marks the re-entrance into films of Hammer Films, a company that produced many popular horror films between the 1950s and 1970s. I won't say much about the story as it might give away too much but I do give it a thumbs up!
Some DVD collections watched recently-
Adventures of Captain Marvel-1941-Republic-12 chapters--This was my third viewing of this chapterplay since I first saw it back in the early 1980s so it held no surprises for me but I still enjoyed it immensely. My wife had never seen it before and was initially taken aback by the occasional bouts of ultra violence from the Big Red Cheese (it's based on the very early Whiz Comics stories before Cap's character had been really defined) but she even had to admit that the film had superior special f/x for its time including what were probably the best flying effects until the Superman movie of 1978.
The Lone Ranger-1938-Republic-15 chapters--I have been wanting to see this serial for years so was very happy to find it included on a cheapie DVD collection of mostly television episodes of The Lone Ranger and other television western series. Unfortunately the quality of their source material was not very good-ranging from barely acceptable down to practically unwatchable! There's just enough there to let me know that there's an exciting cliffhanger still awaiting for me to view it but this collection is not going to be where I accomplish that.
Black Adder II-1986-BBC-Technically this wasn't a DVD collection but rather a VHS collection that a friend gave me when they upgraded to a DVD collection but it still contains the second of four short (6 episode) series (plus a few specials) that introduced me to British comedian Rowan Atkinson. In all of them Atkinson plays a different member on the Black Adder family tree, all of whom appear to have no redeemable qualities whatsoever. All of the series are set in different historical eras. This one takes place during the reign of Elizabeth I. It's been close to a couple of decades since I last viewed these so I have been enjoying them immensely. They're all cleverly and ribaldly written and Atkinson is very ably supported by some equally talented comic actors such as Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny, Miranda Richardson, Patsy Byrne, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. A great bonus for me was the inclusion on this set of Black Adder: The Cavalier Years (set in Cromwellian times) which had originally been broadcast in 1988 on a Comic Relief special and which I had never seen!
Shotgun Slade-I've seen a few scattered episodes of this 1959-1961 (78 episode) series over the past few years on various collections but this cheapie 15 episode collection was my first really fair sampling of the series.
The series starred Scott Brady, an actor who's film career had never really taken off and whom, by this point, was looking to television for more steady employment. The most notable thing about the series is its crossbreeding of the western and detective genres with Brady playing western detective Shotgun Slade. He gets his nickname because the shotgun is his weapon of choice. If his real first name was ever used I didn't catch it in any of the episodes I saw.
The one other item of note about the series is its use of a jazz score which was very popular with detective series about that time (think Peter Gunn) but which really seems strange on a western series until you get used to it.
If these episodes are examples of the typical writing on the series I'll be kind and say it was "lackluster." Not even the occasional interesting guest star (Ernie Kovacs, Vitto Scotti, George Kennedy, Alan Hale) seemed to liven things up and while I've heard some people say the series is "so bad it's good", for now, based on this sampling, I'm gonna have to go with a "so bad it's bad." verdict.
Best
Joe
