Reviews

Having recently visited Britain to make a Technicolor version of 'Treasure Island' Uncle Walt returned to make a follow-up which boasted the distinction of being the first screen version of Robin Hood actually shot in the original Sherwood Forest; with interiors shot at Denham and matte work by Peter Ellenshaw, which for him marked the beginning of a long association with Disney.

Inevitably not in the same league as the versions starring Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Disney however prided the film on its greater fidelity to the original tales, while Peter Finch supplies his usual class as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Elton Hayes as Alan-a-Dale almost certainly inspired the minstrel in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and the sight of Joan Rice as Maid Marian in tights and pixie boots is alone reason enough to see it.

Although it failed at the box office and is today largely forgotten, writing about Doris Day the late David Shipman described 'It Happened to Jane' as "a Capraesque comedy that was perhaps the best she made".

Coming between their respective hits 'Some Like It Hot' and 'Pillow Talk', few people are even aware that Jack Lemmon and Doris Day even made a film together, but here's the evidence, and they make a charming team; Lemmon as his usual bewildered guy in a suit, Day in jeans halfway between the earlier girl next door and the career woman she later became.

The result is a charming and mellow character piece shot in attractive Connecticut locations, with a bizarrely made up Ernie Kovacs to add vinegar to the recipe as The Man.

Dressed to kill in a series of figure-hugging thirties gowns and seldom without a cigarette in her hand Tallulah Bankhead and preCode Paramount were positively made for each other. And while the 'Introducing' credit has long been a joke among viewers not for the first - or last - time this glorious piece of preCode hokum bears such a declaration that really counts for something; giving special billing to a moon-faced young stage actor named Charles Laughton who had just arrived in Hollywood to play the role of a latter-day William Bligh just as Bankhead was on the verge of packing her bags and leaving.

Despite playing Laughton's wife Bankhead omits to wear a wedding ring; a detail Joseph Breen would have been sure to have noticed just a couple of years later. Similarly when two different women both express a desire to spank Tallulah I'm sure she would have happily accommodated them.

Remarkably this is only the eleventh review ever posted on the IMDb of this pioneering work on the subject of child psychology, representing both the apex of the Ealing drama and the directorial career of Alexander MacKendrick; which also continues writer Nigel Balchin's exploration of the role of the outsider aided by pellucid photography by Douglas Slocombe.

Once seen Mandy Miller (who you actually got to hear speak in 'The Man in the White Suit') is never forgotten; although the real tensions plainly reside in the tensions between the adults, which is probably in line with Ealing's equivocal view of the role of officialdom in general.

Alistair Sim had one of his most memorable roles in this rollicking farce in which he played a professional man operating in an incongruous everyday milieu; the one fly in his ointment being George Cole, who demonstrates that he can wreak more havoc with a vacuum cleaner than Sims can with multifarious weaponry at his disposal.

Rather at odds with the general tone of levity one does feel sorry for poor Avril Angers, cruelly taken advantage of by Sims in a fashion that recalls Ruby Gates in the 'St Trinians' films; while the seamier side of the newly affluent society is demonstrated by Raymond Huntley as a Tory politician enjoying a dirty weekend.

Now that billionaires are becoming increasingly obvious about their desire to live forever the search for the elixir of youth seems as topical now as its ever been.

As screenwriter Bernard Gordon was a casualty of the Hollywood blacklist it might not be too presumptuous to read an allegory into 'The Man Who Turned into Stone' for bloodthirsty capitalists exploiting innocent young working girls and state-sanctioned abuse of psychiatry.

Students may think that a generation gap divides them from their elders, but that Victor Jory and his ghoulish confederates wear wing collars is a bit of a giveaway; while Ann Doran as a bluestocking with her hair tied in a bun is a worthy antecedent of Alida Valli in 'Eyes without a Face'

As part of their master plan to demonstrate themselves a force to be reckoned in the British film business during the eighties one of the up & coming directors Cannon brought under their wing was Tobe Hooper on this deliriously Big Dumb Movie on which they lavished spectacular special effects by John Dykstra, glossy photography by Alan Hume and an energetic score by Henry Mancini. (A slinky-eyed young actress called Elizabeth Morton - who met author Colin Wilson on the set during filming and dismissed him as "a schoolboy" - initially shows promise as one of the astronauts but sadly most of her part was lost in the final cut.)

The story by Dan O'Bannon at first resembles a glossy retread of 'Alien' but as it progresses the Freudian aspect and visceral imagery soon recall David Cronenberg and Nigel Kneale. Occasional slivers of wit include Peter Firth muttering "I know I don't!" when a sentry advises him "You don't want to go in there sir!", while it was probably O'Bannon who had the bright idea of calling the character played by Frank Finlay 'Hans Fallada'.

Despite its uncharacteristically glossy photography by Conrad Hall, 'The Professionals' is an early manifestation of the trend towards rowdiness that entered them western genre attributable to the influence of Sergio Leone; well exemplified by the initial appearance by Burt Lancaster in long underwear.

Like 'The Wild Bunch' ''The Professionals' is set at a later date than most westerns, both being located in Mexico after the revolution; also like 'The Wild Buch' Robert Ryan is in the cast, and in one of the gruff roles that were characteristic of his later years Ralph Bellamy plays Mr Big as Albert Dekker does in Peckinpah's film.

The presence of Claudia Cardinale also anticipates Leone while it gains a further continental sophistication from the score by Maurice Jarre.

The opening credits of 'The Vagabond Queen' betokens both the slipshod and the accomplished: the former by the misspelling of the director's name (which would be apt for one of the characters), the latter by the name of Oscar-winning Hollywood cameraman Charles Rosher.

This British retread of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' builds its narrative around the tiny but substantial frame of Betty Balfour (adorned at one point by a chic trouser suit), backed by an unusual supporting cast including one of only two film roles for the eminent stage actor Glenn Byam Shaw (the other being as Mary Ure's father in 'Look Back in Anger') as a rather passive leading man (the initial plot device that he's an inventor working on an experimental television transmitter rather surprisingly soon abandoned), Ernest Thesiger wearing at least three top hats - judging from the amount of punishment they take - a wing collar and a frock coat; while Harry Terry as the pretender to the throne provides an ugly face that reached its apogee ten years later in the title role of 'The Face at the Window'.

A melodrama rather than the saucy Parisian comedy the title and the name of Charles Chaplin suggests. Promptly withdrawn by its creator, 'A Woman of Paris' was for over half a century one of those films whose reputation was based upon it's unavailability for reappraisal and like many of Chaplin's later films was to prove a disappointment when it was finally revived in the 1970s.

Both the plot and the wardrobe worn by Chaplin's leading lady Edna Purviance evokes the era of Chaplin's fellow United Artist D. W. Griffith rather than the continental sophistication suggested by the title, while the presence of Adolphe Menjou happily anticipates the nascent sophistication of the twenties.

If there were an Oscar awarded for overacting it surely would go to the big hair here sported by Shirley Henderson, although with a supporting cast including John Sessions and Jim Broadbent you hardly expect method acting in this cartoonish successor to Irvine Welsh's 'Trainspotting' which certainly provides enough to offend everybody, starting with the Edinburgh tourism board.

After only twenty years the racial epithet employed by John Sessions as James McAvoy's would already warrant a disclaimer, while it's depiction of McAvoy as a copper wenching, boozing, snorting cocaine and accepting backhanders doesn't do too much for the image of the upholders of the law.

The newspaper editor in the final scene of 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' famously declared 'print the legend'. For many years Hollywood tenaciously repeated the legend that the Second World War had been won by non-combatants Errol Flynn and John Wayne; while neither Audie Murphy or Neville Brand who genuinely came back with chests full of medals really looked the part. So for years afterwards no war film with aspirations to status felt complete without Wayne's presence.

Although the film is pretty conventional Wayne is extremely good and received his first Oscar nomination; but Victor Young's score is as usual too noisy.

This priceless British copy of an American crime film comes to you courtesy of rising young director Ken Hughes with a tongue-in-cheek tone set from the outset by shots of fifties London accompanied by a noisy jazz score provided by Malcolm Arnold, with noirish photography by Basil Emmott.

Set in the days when travel by plane was considered the high of glamour, the presence of Sid James as Arlene Dahl's stepfather serves as a visual reminder of Miss Dahl's humble beginnings (early on she's seen wielding a broken bottle) before she rises in the world while wreaking havoc on all the men in the cast,

Tessie O'Shea provided Frank Randle with an amply proportioned partner in this postwar outing that demonstrates evidence of ambition on the part of Manchurian Films through its duration and a budget that permitted Randle at least five different hats, including a flying helmet for when he takes the wheel of the family car.

While the subtlety of the gags recalls the silent cinema - complete with a conclusion (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) set in a haunted house - that impression is soon dispelled by the sheer quantity of talk along with the fortifies big hair worn by the women and the enormous shoulders on their coats.

Although the action seldom leaves the studio, archival interest derives from contemporary footage of the actual Blackpool and a rare screen appearance by Irish tenor Joseph Locke. One question remains: how did a grotesque pair like Randle and O'Shea produce two such personable daughters?

Fifties and sixties teenage rebellion having by now remorselessly plunged into simple hedonism John Hughes' sequence of films celebrating eighties acquisitiveness continued apace with the latest in his series of exercises in which the excesses of the era are by now synonymous with blatant product placement throughout done in the style of a comic strip in bright dayglo colours.

Bueller's lack of respect for authority shows in the way he cheerfully ignores the Fourth Wall throughout as he invites us to admire his anarchic activities; while Jeffrey Wright as Bueller's hapless principal is easily the funniest thing in it.

Jack Lemmon's second dramatic role and his only western was this bowdlerised version of Frank Harris' unreliable memoirs 'My Life Out West' which represented a further step in the move by Delmer Daves - a director incapable of making a dull film - from rugged outdoor fare to romantic melodramas when he took Lemmon out of his accustomed urban environment and teamed him with Glenn Ford; who later the same year himself made a memorable venture into comedy with 'The Sheepman'.

As might be expected much of the humour derives from Lemmon looking incongruous in a stetson, while in a supporting role Brian Donlevy is permitted rather more depth than usual.

Despite the title the subject is really the impact on Tilda Swindon as a mother obliged to come to terms with (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the sociopathic depravity of her first-born (chillingly played by Ezra Miller), a problem liable only to increase as we move further into the 21st Century.

Considering that 'We Need to Talk About Nigel' begins with Tilda Swinton dreaming that she's undergoing crucifixion, things at first seem they can only get better, but when she wakes up things get even worse as she experiences every woman's nightmare that she might have spawned a bad seed in this fancifully organised, highly-coloured adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel depicting every mother's nightmare.

Described by Denis Gifford as "cheap but intelligent" and quite a departure for Merton Park, which although for a long time considered of interest merely as a promising early film by director Alan Bridges now enjoys a respectable reputation of its own as an atmospheric piece of science fiction in its own right in which James Wilson does a fine job depicting a hospital sweltering through a night shift experiencing an unseasonable heatwave ably assisted by an excellent score by Bernard Ebbinghouse.

Despite such pulp elements as female aliens in beehives & rubber suits (more prominently displayed in the posters than in the film itself), under the stewardship of Jack Greenwood - who had already provided Joseph Losey with the opportunity to demonstrate nascent potential with 'The Criminal' - 'Invasion' demonstrates the contribution that can be made by the influence of a specific producer; you only need compare this with the glossier but trashier 'Konga', also made at Merton Park but with the grubby fingermarks of Herman Cohen all over it.

While not usually given to bothering with sequels, 'Lara Croft: the Cradle of Life' shares with 'Night in the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' the singular distinction of being more fun than the original.

It mercifully doesn't take itself too seriously and at less than two hours compared with much of its ilk seems a model of brevity. But what places it head and shoulders over the competition is that it bucks the trend by for once providing a substantial role for a woman and represents an extremely rare occasion when the outfit the heroine wears in the movie actually improves upon the original.

A strange film on which to find Dimitri Tiomkin's name as producer, especially as the music itself was by Quincey Jones. The credits proudly declare this 'Carl Foreman' MacKenna's Gold'; but it would be more apt to call that a confession since despite frequently spectacular location work by Joseph MacDonald much of the dialogue is plainly staged on studio sets and some of the special effects work is absolutely atrocious.

This star-studded, kill-happy attempt by J. Lee Thompson to emulate a spaghetti western features an extraordinary cast ranging from Gregory Peck to Edward G. Robinson, Omar Shariff and Keenan Wynn as Mexican bandits wearing sombreros as wide as their grins, Telly Savalas strangely cast as a cavalry commander, while Raymond Massey quotes the bible as a religious zealot.

As the heroine Camilla Sparv wears the usual anachronistically tight britches; while Julie Newmar's return to the western genre fifteen years after 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' as an Indian squaw (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) seen skinny-dipping provides some compensation for this film being responsible for her unavailability to appear in Season Three of 'Batman'.

A late entry in Budd Boetticher' series of westerns for Ranown that demonstrated the ability to stage an intimate, character-driven drama in the wide open spaces even when shot in widescreen and colour.

Randolph Scott's career as a morally ambiguous hero was nearing its conclusion when his path crossed that of an up & coming Pernell Roberts and James Coburn, bearing their teeth as a pair of leering bad boys.

Karen Steele as the resident female as usual has an unsettling effect on the men, while in retrospect the most quirky piece of casting is probably James Best, best known these days as the trigger happy sheriff in 'The Dukes of Hazzard', but here cast as Scott's bounty.

Although the authorship of 'The Servant' is usually solely attributed to Joseph Losey - who gets to give full reign to his obsession with the British class system - it should always be borne in mind that there were actually three intellects behind this film.

It makes more sense if one is aware that it originated with a 1948 novella by Robin Maugham, who admitted that it was based on an episode when he was a young man when a butler introduced a good-looking young 'nephew' into the household and the book is a version of what might have happened had he risen to the bait; and certainly makes one view Barrett's 'fiancé' Vera in a new light.

But the major creative element was probably Harold Pinter's script, which supplied the playfully sinister wit such as the poisonous scenes between the two bachelors forced to cohabit; although Maugham sneered contemptuously upon viewing (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the climactic orgy that it was plainly the work of a simple working class lad "who'd never been to an orgy in his life!"

Finally there's the element of serendipity which provides the visual impact supplied by a London shrouded in snow by the great winter of 1963 that the film of 'The Caretaker' had also recently benefitted from.

The third of three science fiction movies made by Terence Fisher for a company called Planet was the only one to feature Christopher Lee, playing a sort of 20th Century Van Helsing who carried a camera and a walkie-talkie rather than a crucifix and a mallet.

Unlike the rather picturesque Nineteenth Century backdrop of Fisher's work for Hammer this time the story is very 20th Century in its anticipation of global warming, and whereas 'Island of Terror' was obviously shot in the deep of winter, 'Night of the Big Heat' lives up to it's title although you only have to look at the trees to tell it was also shot in winter.

The giant robots in 'The Earth Dies Screaming' were probably the most formidable aliens of the trio, and the addition of colour doesn't add very much, but some of it is pretty strong meat, with a couple of gory deaths, an attempted rape and a raw depiction of an adulterous affair.

Although the title is familiar as the play written by Private Godfrey very few people have actually seen it. Even less familiar is how close the British and Continental film industries were in the twenties, Alfred Hitchcock actually making his first two films in Germany. Despite the lead going to quintessentially English lead Guy Newell the original silent version was filmed in Berlin with photography by Otto Kanturek and design by Oscar Werndorff - both of whom would subsequently settle in Britain - and the chic twenties look of the women all share a very Germanic ambience; while Geza von Bolvary was one of many Magyars to make his mark in British films.

Considering its theatrical origins it works surprisingly well in visual terms, containing such fanciful sights - characteristic of the silent era - as Isle Bois' alcohol-induced vision of an animated pair of bellows joining a pair of items of luggage in a dance.

The reason for this film's existence is that with the advent of colour TV viewers ceased being choosy about what to watch as long as it was in colour.

Hence this quickie remake of 'It Conquered the World' starring 'B' movie mainstay John Agar and our old friend Bronson Caverns under the alias "the old Hot Springs Cave", which if memory serves follows the plot of the original pretty closely since the producers were obviously too cheap to come up with a new plot, as evidenced by Agar riding a bicycle rather than drive a car on the pretext - it says here - that all terrestrial power has been neutralised; while the military attribute the strange occurrences to "some kind of communist conspiracy"

It certainly is bad - with the cool name 'Zontar' promising something rather more impressive than the enormous boggle-eyed bat that we actually see - but the addition of colour gives it a glossier look with John Agar wearing a sharp suit and the ladies in chic sixties hairstyles; while the employment of negative printing (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) embellishes a couple of shots near the end.