3D Classics On Blu Ray: Dragonfly Squadron (1954)

For fans of vintage 3D movies, 2014 has been a pretty good year. We've had four vintage releases so far this year, three of them from the Golden Age of 3D known as the 1950s.  The most recent of which is a rare and wonderful treat, the 1954 Korean War drama Dragonfly Squadron, just out from Olive Films thanks to the efforts of the 3D Film Archive.


Dragonfly Squadron is in some ways a flipside of the other 3D Korean War film from the 50s, Paramount's 1953 release Cease Fire. While that film dealt with the end of the war, Dragonfly Squadron deals with the beginning. Opening in May of 1950, Dragonfly Squadron concerns the American efforts to train South Korean pilots to fly the Mustang P51 for air combat while the build up to the war is going on. John Hodiak, best remembered for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, is the Air Force Major tasked with training the pilots in 28 days. Things are complicated since at the base he's stationed to is a woman he had a fling with when she thought her husband was dead. Only the husband isn't dead and is right there with her. Needless to say, this makes for an awkward time. All the while, things are heating up on the northern side of the 38th Parallel.

Dragonfly Squadron was made by little tiny Allied Artists, formerly Monogram Pictures, the company best remembered for the cheap Charlie Chan movies done after Fox dumped the series and some early 40s Bela Lugosi quickies. Therefore, it's not as extravagant a war film as something like Bridges at Toko-Ri. However, it is not without it's merits. Chief among them is a wonderful who's who among serial, TV, and B Movie actors in the cast. Besides Hodiak, the film feature Barbara Britton, female star of the first of the 50s 3D features (Bwana Devil) as the love interest. Serial actor Herman Brix, known by this time as Bruce Bennett is the put upon husband. Gerald Mohr, best remembered for the schlocky subliminal horror film Terror in the Haunted House aka My World Dies Screaming as well as being a serial villain in the early forties, is Hodiak's second in command. Speaking of Charlie Chan, number three son Benson Fong is one of the instructors. Character actor Harry Lauter, star of the last Republic serial (the admittedly awful King of the Carnival) is another instructor who doesn't much like Hodiak due to an event that happened a couple of years earlier. Jess Barker is an obnoxious newspaper reporter who keeps giving Hodiak a hard time. But best of all is TV's Rifleman, Chuck Connors, as a hilariously tough talking Army captain. Connors steals the film from everybody the moment he shows up and keeps on stealing it.


Some will complain that the film is a little too soap-y and that there's not quite enough battle scenes. But again, this does deal with the beginning of the war. So it's naturally not going to have the same level of intensity as something like Cease Fire. But it tells a fairly compact story and keeps it moving. When the battle scenes do show up, they're pretty impressive. And the last half hour is not without it's suspense as the base has to run for it's life pretty much unarmed against an ever advancing column of tanks.

I will be quite honest here. Dragonfly Squadron is not the best of the vintage 3D movies on 3D Blu Ray. But that's okay, because it doesn't need to be. Like Twilight Time's release of Man in the Dark on 3D Blu Ray earlier this year, the very existence of this Blu Ray is cause for celebration. Especially when one considers that up until last year, the movie had never even been shown in 3D. Ever.


Though shot in 3D in the summer of 1953, Dragonfly Squadron was one of a handful of films from the Golden Age that went out flat due to declining interest in 3D. By the time the film was released in February of 1954, it seemed like only the really big studios--Universal and Warner Brothers mostly--were still gambling on 3D. So audiences never got the chance to see it the way it was meant to be seen. And it was believed that the 3D print was lost to the ages until the 3D Film Archive, headed up by Bob Furmanek, Greg Kintz, and Jack Theakston, managed to find a complete 3D print. Yes, the print has some dust and speckles on it. But the alignment of the film is perfect, and this is one of the deepest 3D films of the era to boot. The work the Archive did on bringing this film back from the dead is reason alone to add it to your collection. They did a thorough job on it and as a result, this is actually one of the best discs for 3D you can have. True, there's not much pop out, but the screen is so deep, it seems to go on forever. If your idea of a deep 3D movie is Avatar, you ain't seen nothing yet!

The Archive next has Arch Oboler's The Bubble coming out in November from Kino. While not my first choice, I am very interested in seeing what they did with that one since that one does have one of the best 3D gimmick shots of any 3D movie ever.  There again, I did buy Kino's release of The Flesh and Blood Show, a movie I have never had the slightest interest in seeing (and still haven't watched). Until then, if you're a true 3D believer, you really do need to pick up Dragonfly Squadron. While you're at it, drop by http://www.3dfilmarchive.com for some fascinating 3D history and to say thanks to the guys who have managed to keep our 3D heritage alive all these years.


All photos used in this post are courtesy of http://www.3dfilmarchive.com

Sequels, Remakes, and Reboots Part III: Sequels

Of the three things being discussed in this series, sequels are generally speaking the hardest to come to a vague defense of.  And yet, they've been around for decades to say nothing of centuries. The biggest argument against them is that they seem to be nothing more than a money grab. But, truth to tell, one can say that of almost any commercial endeavor, especially in regards to movies. Movies are a business, after all, something most people forget.

While we like to think of sequels as being of relatively recent vintage, they really aren't. They stretch back to at least the 1910s. But back then, nobody just numbered the films. One of the early examples of a sequel comes, fittingly enough, from the serial format. The first serial was done in 1912, called What Happened to Mary?. It was a success--as well as being one of the early movie tie-ins where a novelization was done in serial format in the newspapers--and inspired a second serial called Who Will Marry Mary?. Admittedly, neither one of those sounds like an edge of your seat cliffhanger, but then again, it took a couple of years for the serial format to really develop into that. That wasn't the only serial from the era to gain a sequel. 1916's Pearl White thriller The Exploits of Elaine got one called The Romance of Elaine.

Of course, I'm just speaking cinematically. You can take it back a lot farther than 1913. In fact, you can take the numbered sequel routine back to a guy whose name may or may not have actually been William Shakespeare. Seems he did a few Part 1 and Part 2 type plays back in the day. In fact, you can take it father back than that to the Greeks, with the Thebes plays by Sophocles and The Illiad and The Odyssey. "Yes, but those are classics" you may be saying. They're classics now, but they were pop entertainment--in particular Shakespeare's work--in their day.

Sequels proliferated in novel format once the printing press was invented. Accordingly, a number of said sequels were essentially repeats of the novel that preceded them. Sound familiar? This was done mostly to assert the author's ownership over the properties.

The point is, this sort of thing has literally gone on for centuries and isn't likely to change any time soon.

Up until about the 1970s, however, sequels--or at least movie sequels--tried to tell somewhat different stories and have completely different titles. The sequel to the 1931 Frankenstein wasn't called Frankenstein 2, it was called The Bride of Frankenstein. While some of the nuts and bolts of the story were similar, it also wasn't a direct repeat of the first movie, either. Not even serials told the same exact story or numbered their sequels.

There were a couple of examples of sequels being numbered prior to the 1970s--Quatermass 2 from 1957 being possibly the earliest example--but starting in that decade, the floodgates started to open. While both The Godfather Part II and The French Connection II were both considered better than their respective first movies, they also seemed to help get the trend of numbering started. The Exorcist II, Rocky II and Jaws 2 followed by the end of the decade. Then came the 1980s.

For reasons that film historians will be debating 100 years from now, if they're not already debating it, the sequel concept really caught fire in the 80s. It mostly seems to have started off with the slasher film. 1981 brought us both Halloween II and Friday the 13th Part 2, both of which were just sucessful enough for the studios to ensure that we'd be spending much of the decade watching their spawn. Sequel after sequel to those and other horror franchises followed and so long as they made a profit, they kept getting made. Comedies--most notably raunchy juvenile comedies like Porky's and Meatballs started getting in on the act as did action movies. The single biggest problem with a large number of these is the fact that they really did simply repeat the first movie--and nowhere near as well. I enjoyed the first two Police Academy films when I was a teenager but quickly abandoned the series after the third film when I realized that not only did it suck, but it simply repeated all the jokes in the first two. Mind you, this is coming from someone who didn't always have the greatest of taste in movies when he was a teenager.

The trend was so bad by 1983 that Siskel and Ebert's "Worst of the Year" show for that year was dedicated to nothing but sequels. I have to admit, there were some pretty wretched sequels unleashed on the public that year. They highlighted such rotten sequels as The Sting II, Staying Alive--the sequel to Saturday Night Fever and the only film on the list of sequels to not have a number--, Smokey and the Bandit 3, Jaws 3-D (which I kinda like even though it is a bad movie), and Amityville 3-D. At the end of the show, they implored audiences to not watch any sequels unless they said so.

I will be fair to the 80s, however. There were some sequels that were very good in that decade, mostly in the science fiction genre. I'm not sure what it is about science fiction, but the sequels to sci-fi movies are rarely dumb repeats. The Star Wars and Star Trek sequels are all fairly decent. Even the "bad" entries in those series are better than most comedy and slasher sequels. I'm sorry, but I'd rather watch the much hated Star Trek V: The Final Frontier than the same numbered Nightmare on Elm Street or Police Academy movies. None of the 80s Indiana Jones movies--even the much maligned Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom--are bad movies either. Continuing with the sci-fi theme, Aliens was also an excellent sequel. We just won't talk about the 90s Alien movies.

Part of the problem, which again goes back to the 70s, is that following the law of diminishing returns, sequels got lower and lower budgets as the series went on. The original Planet of the Apes series is a prime example of this. The excellent make up jobs on all of the apes in the first film gave way to bad Halloween masks in later entries. The diminishing budgets may not be as evident in comedies like the Revenge of the Nerds series, but it comes up front and center in an effects heavy series like Superman. The budget and effects for the notorious Supergirl and Superman IV were so bad that they killed the series until the 2000s.

Lately, however, that doesn't necessarily follow. Movies are trying to put more money into the sequel, to make it bigger and more spectacular than the film that came before. Sometimes that pays off. A fairly surprising source of good sequels nowadays seems to be in the comic book genre. With the exceptions of a few notable missteps like X-Men III--a movie I truly regret seeing--the comic book genre has really stepped up. The latest Thor and Iron Man movies were, if not better than their predecessors, at least as good as. Spider-Man 2 and X2 were also better sequels. Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy got better as it went along.  In the coming months we'll have sequels to both Captain America and X-Men that both look like they should be good. Again, like Sci-Fi movies, the thing that these newer comic book movies have going for them is their ability to tell different stories in each film. That helps make the movies at least seem fresher, or at the very least, not make us think "didn't we see this story already?".

Of course, there's a lot of other sequels coming this summer and even more in 2015. The thing is, some of them will be good. They certainly have the capacity and lately haven't been too bad at it. Well, except for comedy sequels. They still haven't figured out that idea. Other sequels--like the forthcoming Dolphin Tail 2--will make us wonder why in God's name a sequel was necessary. Others still just may make us hate humanity for their existence.

So, at the end of the day, should you listen to Siskel & Ebert's advice from 30 years ago? No sequels unless directly told otherwise. Not necessarily. I still watch sequels and in a few weeks will be happily dropping money to see the second Captain America. I'm fairly sure it will make a mint, too. So long as sequels make money, sequels get made no matter how good, bad, or indifferent. That's the way it's always been, that's the way it is, and that's the way it's always going to be.

Serial Saturday: The Crimson Ghost (1946)

1946 was a turning point in the history of motion picture serials. It marked the last year of serial production for Universal studios. It also really helped mark the beginning of the end for Republic serials. Republic whiz kid director William Witney, freshly returned from World War II, would make The Crimson Ghost the last serial he directed. It would also mark the last true masked mystery villain in a Republic serial. Every mystery villain from here on out would either be a character talked about but not seen until their unmasking or a voice barking out commands.

The serial itself is your standard-issue mystery man serial. Professor Chambers (Kenne Duncan in his last serial appearance) has created an anti-atomic bomb device called The Cyclotrode, which can not only stop nuclear missiles, it can cripple transportation and communications. He demonstrates a prototype of the machine to his colleagues at the university, unaware that one of them is secretly a madman wearing a skull mask and crimson robes calling himself The Crimson Ghost. The Ghost wants to get hold of the Cyclotrode for his own nefarious plans, including selling the device to a foreign power. Opposing him is two-fisted criminologist Duncan Richards (Charles Quigley) and Chambers's secretary Diana Farnsworth (Linda Stirling). The duo go up against the villain and head henchman Ashe throughout the 12 chapter chase, being threatened with death by explosions, poison gas, deadly slave collars, death rays, and cars going over cliffs. In other words, the standard stuff.

This was Quigley's last appearance as a serial hero. He is best remembered for this serial and 1939's Daredevils of the Red Circle, where he was the de facto leader of the trio trying to track down villain Charles Middleton. After this, Quigley would appear in a few more serials for Columbia, always in villainous roles whether as the head villain or a henchman. He actually makes for a pretty good hero, not quite up to the standards of Kane Richmond maybe, but good. He's aided immensely but some great one-liners in the script. Point in fact, The Crimson Ghost may have the snappiest dialogue of any serial ever.

At SerialFest 2001, I put forward the theory that there were three types of serial heroine: Serial Queen, who could basically hold her own against all comers. The Damsel in Distress, whose sole purpose seemed to be to be put into peril. Finally, there was what I called Pretty Background Scenery, a heroine who basically sat around in the office or the hero's house and took very little part in the proceedings, letting the men fight it out amongst themselves. Republic's second advertised Serial Queen, Stirling got to be all three during the course of her six serials. She was a full fledged Serial Queen in The Tiger Woman and Zorro's Black Whip fulling kicking people in the teeth, put into constant peril and in need of constant rescue in The Purple Monster Strikes and Manhunt of Mystery Island, and beautiful but with little to actually do in this one and Jesse James Rides Again. It's a pity, because her first two serials demonstrated what she could do. She still gives as good a performance as anyone saddled with such a thankless role could, but one is left wanting more from someone advertised as The Serial Queen.

Clayton Moore, like director Witney, had also just returned from World War II. This was his first serial since 1942's Perils of Nyoka (starring Republic's first advertised Serial Queen Kay Aldridge). In that one, he was the hero and most people know him today as TV's The Lone Ranger, so it's a bit of a pleasant surprise to see him as a bad guy. He played the henchman role again in 1952's Radar Men From the Moon, but he's much better here. Also, footage of him from this one shows up in 1950's Flying Disc Man From Mars. Moore was one of the top five serial leading men and one of the few to do as well both as hero and villain. Moore's next serial, which also had Linda Stirling in it, returned him to the hero role in Jesse James Rides Again.

As for The Crimson Ghost himself, he was voiced by character actor I. Stanford Jolley. Jolley popped up in a bunch of late era serials and, while not the most imposing looking villain, he still had a great oily presence. His voice work as the title character is top notch.

The main problem with the serial is the same problem that most of these mystery villain serials had: the suspects. None of them particularly make any sort of impression. The four actors fill their necessary spots as the bland fellow, the suspicious acting fellow, the helpful fellow, and the grouchy fellow, but that's it. Republic's best guessing game remains The Adventures of Captain Marvel, which really showed audiences how the game could be played. As it is, we wait for the Scooby Doo ending of The Crimson Ghost knowing that the identity of the character is going to be as random as usual.

That said, this is probably Republic's last truly great serial. Witney, who had revolutionized the way serials were filmed with the choreography of the fights in the 1930s, dropped out of the genre after this. He apparently saw the writing on the wall and went on to direct Roy Rogers features. Other serial supreme director Spencer Gordon Bennett would leave Republic the following year, finishing the genre off at Columbia. Republic's legacy would be left in the hands of such lethargic directors as Fred Brannon and Franklin Adreon.

But with it's memorable looking villain, witty dialogue, and inventive fights, this is a fitting finale for it's director. It also gained it's own legacy, with punk rock band The Misfits co-opting the villain's visage for their mascot. It also became one of only two Republic serials colorized in 1990. The colorization looked decent for the time, though the serial itself makes enough use of light and shadow that it should only be viewed in black and white. Olive films is releasing the serials The Invisible Monster and (ironically enough) Flying Disc Man From Mars on Blu Ray later this year. They should also seriously considering The Crimson Ghost as well.

Favorite Fridays: My Fair Lady (1964)

It seems fairly rare for a movie based on a hit Broadway show to actually retain cast members from the show. Sometimes this is because it takes too long to get the movie version going. Movie fans famously missed out on Michael Crawford playing the title role in Phantom of the Opera because of how long it took to get that film version going. Other times it's a simple case of the studio deciding to recast with more famous actors such as Kiss Me Kate. But every so often, we movie fans get a taste of the magic that Broadway audiences got. My Fair Lady is one of those times even though it almost wasn't.

Hollywood legend has it that producer Jack Warner wanted Cary Grant and James Cagney to play, respectively, Henry Higgins and Alfred Doolittle in his big screen version of My Fair Lady. Cagney turned it down on the grounds that he was retired. But, as the story goes, Grant told Warner that not only would he not do the movie, he would never do another movie for Warner Brothers if Warner didn't quit fooling around and get Rex Harrison to reprise his stage role. I don't know  if that story is true or not, but if it is, it proves Cary Grant was a pretty classy guy. As for Doolittle, Cagney's turning the film down left the door open for Stanley Holloway to reprise his role.

Of course, not everyone from the Broadway cast made it into the film. Wilfred Hyde White takes over for Robert Coote as Pickering. More controversially, Audrey Hepburn was cast in place of Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. Rex Harrison didn't want her to begin with even if he did later state she was his favorite leading lady. The Motion Picture Academy was apparently so outraged that Hepburn got the part over Andrews that she wasn't even nominated for Best Actress, even though the movie itself got 12 nominations--including for Best Actor (Harrison), Supporting Actor (Holloway) and Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper as Mrs. Higgins)--and won 8, including Best Picture, Actor, and Director (George Cukor). Instead, Andrews was given Best Actress for Mary Poppins that year basically as a consolation prize for losing out on the role of Doolittle.


Well, I'm going to be the guy who out and out says it: Nuts to that. Audrey Hepburn is superb as Eliza Doolittle. She got robbed and mistreated by the Academy. Yes, her singing is dubbed by Marni Nixon about 90% of the time. So? The list of actresses who got dubbed in a musical movie is long and mighty: Ava Gardner in Show Boat, Rita Hayworth every single time she sang, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Debbie Reynolds in Singing In The Rain to name a few. The fact is, she acts the part. One of Harrison's concerns was if someone who was so classy all the time could play a "guttersnipe" with a cockney accent. The answer, of course, is yes, she could. You can question Jack Warner's decisions on a lot of things, but his casting of Hepburn was dead on. Point in fact, this may well be Hepburn's best movie.

By the way, she does do some singing in the film. She sings the first minute or so of Just You Wait as well as it's reprise. She also sings the sing-speak parts of The Rain In Spain and the beginning of I Could Have Danced All Night. So give her some credit, people. The simple fact is--and this will drive all the Andrews apologists nuts--that Audrey Hepburn did a better job at the part than Andrews would have. Hepburn was primarily a film actress and Andrews, at that time, was primarily a stage actress. Those are two entirely different styles of acting. And no, Andrews as Mary Poppins was not better than Hepburn as Eliza.

Most people know that this is a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's 1914 play Pygmalion. However, the musical takes most of it's cues not strictly from the play but from the 1938 film version with Leslie Howard (who was a rotten Higgins, but that's a topic for another post). The ending that tends to outrage most people was written by Shaw himself for that movie. He hated that ending, but it stuck. The premise of both versions is that arrogant professor of phonetics Henry Higgins takes in flower girl Eliza Doolittle with the bet that he can pass her off as a Duchess at the Embassy Ball six months later. Higgins, who calls himself "a confirmed old bachelor and likely to remain so", doesn't seem to realize that this "heartless guttersnipe" has a few lessons to teach him as well.

This is one of the few movie musicals to transplant every song from the play to the screen. Not even The Sound of Music did that. It is a common practice for the movie versions to drop a song or two and replace it with another often lesser song.  But anyone who fell in love with the Broadway soundtrack will be delighted to know that it's transplanted whole to the movie. Considering that this may well be the best soundtrack for a non-songbook musical, it's well deserved. In fact, the only movie musical I can think of that's not a songbook musical that's it's equal may be Kiss Me Kate, and even that one may fall a little short despite a wonderful Cole Porter score. But every song in My Fair Lady is wonderful. My personal favorite is I Could Have Danced All Night.

Harrison doesn't sing his songs so much as he sing-speaks them. But it works, and why not? It worked for Robert Preston in The Music Man, too. The more important thing here is that this is as close as modern audiences will ever get to seeing Harrison's defining role. He may have done other movies before and after, including The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Anna and the King of Siam, but he's forever Henry Higgins. After seeing him in the role, I can't imagine anyone else in the part. It is one of those perfect marriages of actor and role, the proverbial lightning in a bottle. He was honored with Best Actor and it was a well deserved honor.

Hepburn may not sing most of the time, but she acts the songs out fantastically. Holloway as her ne'er-do-well father gives a masterly comedic performance and his two songs are easily showstoppers. Come to it, Holloway should have won an Oscar as well. He steals every scene he's in from every other actor. Again, as this is modern audience's chance to see what delighted Broadway audiences for years. Jeremy Brett, who was also dubbed, manages to not make lovestruck Freddy Eynsford-Hill not a creepy stalker, which is definitely one way to look at the character, but a charming, well-meaning goof. Hyde-White was always a great character actor (and always looked to be about 80, even back in 1949's The Third Man) and he's a perfect foil for Harrison as Pickering. And if Hyde-White wasn't dubbed, he's a better singer than you'd think. He plays off Harrison beautifully. His reactions to A Hymn to Him is hysterical. Cooper's Mrs. Higgins and Mona Washburn's delightful Mrs. Pearce also due their bit as foils to Higgins. Let's not forget Theodore Bikel as "that hairy hound from Budapest" Zoltan Kaparthy. He's in the movie only about five minutes, but he's an absolute delight.

Horrifyingly, copyright holder CBS has treated this movie shamefully over the years. They let the negatives deteriorate, leading Film Restorationists Robert A. Harris and James Katz to due a Herculean restoration in 1994, which did actually lead to a re-release (which is where I first saw the movie). The DVDs have apparently been skittish over the years. But most shameful of all is the fact that the Blu Ray of this was massively mishandled. That's a heart breaker. This is my favorite musical and one of the main movies I most wanted on Blu Ray. Being as this is the 50th Anniversary, it is to be hoped that CBS corrects this, but there has been no word on such as of this writing.

Still, it really is a wonderful movie. Among musicals, only Singing in the Rain can be argued as being better. But that may simply be because Singing in the Rain has the great dancing, the only thing missing from this. That said, My Fair Lady has a fabulous cast, gorgeous sets, and hands down the greatest original soundtrack ever.

3D THURSDAY: GRAVITY (2013)

I am of the opinion that there are certain movies you need to see in 3D. Some of them--mostly from the 80s--are pretty pointless without it in fact. Let's be honest here. Nobody watches Comin' At Ya! unless they are watching it in 3D. Other movies stand on their own in 2D but are also very different experiences in 3D. Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder is one such example. Surprisingly, Alfonso Cuarron's Gravity is another.

Surprisingly because unlike Dial M which was shot in true 3-D--the only way they could do it in 1954--Gravity is converted from 2-D. Conversions are always a tricky proposition. Even the really well done ones like Marvel's The Avengers don't look as good as real 3-D. The good ones fall just short and the bad ones--I'm looking at you Harry Potter--are spectacular insults to 3-D. They leave you not only wondering why you're wearing 3-D glasses, but why you paid extra to do so.

Gravity, however, doesn't look like a conversion. Part of that is because only 27 of it's 91 minutes were converted. The rest of it is CGI, so the 3-D is real by way of virtual twin cameras. Impressively, it's impossible to tell the difference between the two. Of course, it also helps that the movie seems to have been shot with 3-D in mind instead of just as an afterthought.

Gravity tells a simple story. George Clooney is astronaut Matt Kowalski, on his last space flight. Sandra Bullock is Doctor Ryan Stone, on her first space mission. While making repairs on the Hubble, a destroyed Russian satellite sets off a catastrophic chain reaction of debris that destroys their space shuttle. Trapped in space, the two have to find a way back to Earth by making their way over to the ISS.
After the amazing 17 minute opening shot, once the disaster strikes, the film becomes an incredibly tense ride, more so in 3-D. I saw this in the theater in 3-D and found myself hyperventilating when Bullock first spins out into space. Even at home that scene caused my heart to race, that's how effective it is.

Unfortunately, the effect is lessened in 2-D. This is one of those cases where 3-D gives genuine perspective to what is going on and actually heightens the sense of danger. The last time 3-D was used quite that effectively was in 1953's Inferno with it's deep and dizzying shot of the canyon Robert Ryan is trapped in. This is 3-D as a You-Are-There experience.This is what 3-D is meant for the most and puts the film firmly in the Top Ten of 3-D movies, right alongside the classics of the Golden Age.

The experience is helped along by the cast. Clooney and Bullock truly sell the film. Clooney exudes the confidence of a veteran astronaut while Bullock captivates use with her performance as the rookie who must step up or die. According to interviews with Bullock, it was a rough movie to shoot and she fully deserved her Oscar nomination for it.

In addition, Alfonso Cuarron became the second director in a row to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. Ang Lee previously took the same Oscar for 2012's Life of Pi. The mere fact that 3-D movies are winning major Oscars now shows that the form is gaining legitimacy. It is not unreasonable to think that one day a 3-D movie will take the Best Picture Oscar.

Some people have questioned the science behind the film, but that always seems to happen with a picture like this. Truth to tell, the overall premise of the debris chain reaction is in the realm of theoretical possibility, so the film's science isn't all that shaky. On top of which, it's effects are every bit as groundbreaking as those seen in 2001. Point in fact, I think it's a better movie, too.

At any rate, the next time you wonder what 3-D is good for, I suggest you watch this. Then you may just get it.

3D Thursday: Robot Monster (1953)

Back in 1978, Harry and Michael Medved wrote a book called The 50 Worst Movies of All Time. In it, they listed  1953's infamous Robot Monster as the worst movie of all time. They changed their minds two years later when they wrote The Golden Turkey Awards and gave the title of worst movie to Ed Wood's equally infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space. To not put too fine a point to it and yet still try to sound somewhat diplomatic, the Medveds were wrong.

Let me qualify that. The book ultimately is their opinion of what the 50 worst movies are. All movie criticism is ultimately that. However, the movies in the book, while undeniably bad, really don't deserve that title. Truly bad movies are boring and unwatchable. Try watching something like The Phantom of 42nd Street or The Clutching Hand. Both of those were directed by a man named Albert Hermann. Unless you're a serial geek like me, you've probably never heard of Albert Hermann, and for good reason. Albert Hermann was a man who could take a 60 minute B-movie like The Phantom of 42nd Street and make it feel like it ran for 60 hours. Considering the fact that his serial The Clutching Hand runs over 5 hours, you can extrapolate how long that one feels. Albert Hermann made boring, seemingly never-ending dreck and he did it with shocking consistency.

Robot Monster, if nothing else, is not boring. It can probably best be described as crack cocaine for the brain and eyes. It's a dizzying 66 minutes of "wait, what?" that no mere synopsis could ever do justice to. It's a movie you need to see to believe, you won't believe you've seen, and you'll have to see again just to believe that you've seen it. That, my friends, is Robot Monster.

The plot has the earth invaded by an alien named Ro-Man (George Barrows). Ro-Man is basically a guy in a gorilla suit with something vaguely resembling a space helmet on his head. Ro-Man has managed to destroy all but six hu-mans. Actually, there's eight people still left on the planet, but two of them had common sense enough to not actually appear in the movie. The six are a Scientist (John Mylong), his wife (Selena Royale), his oldest daughter Alice (Claudia Barrett), his two young kids Johnny (Gregory Moffett) and Carla (Pamela Paulson), and his assistant Roy (George Nader). Great Guidance Ro-Man (Barrows again) orders his underling to seek out and destroy the pesky hu-mans. Ro-Man does his best, which is usually pretty inept. He does manage to strangle Carla and pummel Roy, but then he falls for "Al-lice" and kidnaps her instead of killing her. This annoys Great Guidance, who kills Ro-Man and unleashes earthquakes and prehistoric reptiles to kill all who remain. In the film's twist ending, ripped right off of the same year's Invaders From Mars, we find out this was all a dream of Johnny's. Then Ro-Man comes out of a cave.

Actually, the only a dream ending is telegraphed five minutes into the movie. You just have to pay even half-attention to know what's happening. Though that does raise a few questions about what type of kid Johnny is. I mean, seeing as to how his dream involved his younger sister being strangled and his older sister being tied up and almost forced to have sex with a gorilla spaceman, well...

Like I said before, Robot Monster is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good movie. You won't confuse it with the likes of Dial M For Murder. However, it's also not the worst movie ever made (neither is Plan Nine for that matter). It's not even the worst 3D movie ever made, even if you take 3D porn out of the equation. It's not even the worst 3D movie of the 1950s. I can make a pretty strong argument that Flight to Tangier and Jivaro go on far too long and are far more boring for the 50s movies. I can make a better argument that Domo Arigato, Run For Cover, and Camp Blood are all far worse 3D movies.

What it is, however, is excessively entertaining. Once Ro-Man shows up, you just sort of hold on tight and go along for the ride. It's lunacy is an undeniable part of it's charm, too. Lines like "I must--yet I cannot. How do you calculate that? At what point do must and cannot meet on the graph. I cannot--yet I must", "you look like a pooped-out pinwheel!" (!) and "you're so bossy you should be milked before you come home at night" abound. That's bad? No, my friend, that's  brilliant.  Do you know why? Because we know those lines and probably a couple dozen more. Anyone who has ever heard them knows them and is likely to quote them. Truly bad movies like Domo Arigato don't have lines like that. Name me one memorable line from a crapper like Hillbilly Monster. You can't, probably because you've mercifully never heard of Hillbilly Monster and even if you had, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a quotable line from it!

Contrary to popular belief, Robot Monster was shot in 12 days (not four like the Medveds claim) for a budget under $20,000. It was shot with a new, never before (or since) used 3D camera rig called Tru Stereo Three Dimension, mostly in Bronson Canyon. Funny enough, a far worse 3D movie in the 80s was also shot in Bronson Canyon (Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn). Despite these conditions, the cast tries there best, even if they do get defeated by the dialogue sometimes. And stunningly enough, the 3D is actually really, really good. In other words, this isn't the incompetent piece of garbled mess you may have heard it is.

Robot Monster has been a fixture on home video for nearly 30 years. The late, lamented Rhino Video even had a (horrible) anaglyphic videotape release in 1991 that had a couple of looped in joke lines. Mystery Science Theater 3000 did the film. This is a film that won't die. Unfortunately, the greatest crime against the film--besides the Medveds' ill-informed books--comes from the so-called rights holder, one Wade Williams. Whether or not he actually owns the rights to Robot Monster, like almost every film he claims to own the rights to, he doesn't care about any sort of restoration of the movie. He's content to let this and it's spiritual sister movie Cat Women of the Moon rot away instead of preserving them and getting them on 3D Blu Ray. That's a shame, since the 3D is so good, the movie deserves to be released on 3D Blu Ray. It's mind-boggling to me that something like The Flesh and Blood Show will get a 3D Blu Ray release, but not this.

If you truly want to appreciate this movie, see it in a theater in 3D with a packed audience. I've done that three times and outside of a couple of cranky old people, the majority of the audience loved it. They laughed with it.They were entertained by it. And isn't that the ultimate purpose of any movie? To entertain it's audience? 

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

There are movies that become a permanent part of their decade's landscape, movies that one thinks of instantly whenever the topic of movies of that decade get brought up. Winner of multiple Academy Awards including it's famous theme song and nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is one such movie for the 1950s.

Based on the autobiographical novel A Many Splendored Thing by Han Suyin, the movie tells the story of an Eurasian doctor who meets and eventually falls in love with a married war correspondent. The novel was based on Dr. Han's real life affair with Ian Morrison, a war correspondent she met in Hong Kong in 1949. For the novel and movie, Morrison's name was changed to Mark Elliot. The story takes place as the Communists take over China and the beginning of the Korean War.

Jennifer Jones plays Dr. Han, who is doing her residency in Hong Kong in 1949. She is a widow, as her husband was a general killed by the Communists. She has a small room in the hospital itself and devotes her life to medicine. At a party given by one of the directors of the hospital, she meets Mark Elliot (William Holden). He pursues her and she at first rebuffs him. For one thing, he's married. For another, after her husband's death, she turned off her heart. Mark is persistent and she eventually falls for him, causing her to be ostracized by the greater Chinese community. Though they briefly find happiness, his wife refuses to give him the divorce he wants so he can marry Dr. Han and he eventually is shipped off to the Korean War.

This was one of the early CinemaScope films, but curiously fails to take full advantage of the process. Outside of the requisite gimmicky shots at the beginning of the point of view of an ambulance racing through the Hong Kong streets, the film doesn't really do anything with the process. Most early CinemaScope movies fill the image from left to right, especially with the placement of the actors. In this one, the actors mostly get clumped together in one area of the screen. There are some panaromic shots of Hong Kong, where the movie was actually filmed, but I guess after the opening bit, director Henry King thought, "well, there's my nod to CinemaScope. Now on with the picture." Which is odd, since those shots, like similar ones in How To Marry A Millionaire are obviously supposed to duplicate the thrill of Cinerama, something CinemaScope could never do. CinemaScope was always about the left to right image and widening that image, so it's use here is a little disappointing.

The film also fails to take advantage of the undertones of it's story. We're told repeatedly early on that Eurasians are treated badly by the British, but outside of some somewhat racist or at least clueless dialogue by the wife of the hospital's director (Isobel Elsom) at the party, this isn't evident. We're also told that Chinese  people having affairs with foreigners, especially married ones, will lead to ostracization in the Chinese community. Again, outside of two scenes of Kam Tong's Dr. Sen berating Jones for her affair, this doesn't seem to come out much, either. It's almost as if the film is afraid to commit to the difficulties it claims the couple should be having. Which is a shame, because it makes it a little bit harder to be fully invested in them and feel for them. The film only really pulls through in the emotionally charged ending, which would have been even better if it had committed to it's undertones a lot earlier.

I'm not saying that they had to go out of their way to wreck the lives of the two lovers. However, there's an awful lot of talk about things that could come to pass and very few examples of it actually coming to pass. As a result, the tension of the love affair isn't fully there. The most tension comes from whether or not Holden can get a divorce from his wife. Even that isn't fully realized. I wanted this movie to make me feel bad for these two, to really invest in them. After all, doesn't Romeo and Juliet make you feel for it's star crossed lovers by making the tensions between their families palpable? I may have to read the book to see if it expands on any of the themes the movie suggests but doesn't much get into.

What we're left with is Holden, Jones, and some lyrical dialogue. I suppose for a love story that should be enough, but it's not quite for this. Don't get me wrong. Holden and Jones are wonderful in their parts. I've never actually seen a movie Holden was in that I didn't like him. He was a terrific actor consistently and he's extremely effective here. He plays Mark as eager in the early scenes, but not overbearing or obnoxious in his pursuit of Jones.  When he tells her in the canoe "I would never do anything to hurt you", he truly sells it. As for Jones, she does the right thing and doesn't play Dr. Han as a caricature, but as a human being. I completely bought her transformation from the scientific doctor in the beginning not wanting to commit to her heart to the passionate person she becomes. That transformation is part of what makes the movie's last 20 minutes so emotionally charged, in fact. It's a little bit amazing that they seem to have such chemistry together, as by all reports they couldn't stand each other on set. There are reports that Jones ate garlic before the intimate scenes to discourage known womanizer Holden. She also apparently complained about everything on the film, including her makeup which she felt made her look old. I don't agree with her assessment if that was the case.

As far as the dialogue goes, it  really is lyrical. Some love stories have dialogue that makes you say aloud "who in the world actually talks like that?" but not this one. Maybe it's the fact that this was based on a true story, but nothing feels over-baked or sappy. In fact, as far as romantic movies go, this is probably one of the best in that regards.

The supporting cast is just that: a supporting cast. Nonetheless, there are a few amusing bits. Character actor Phillip Ahn plays Jones's Third Uncle and gets the film's most amusing line when he says "let us have tea and talk of absurdities". Keye Luke also has a bit part as a relative of Jones. Richard Loo, who later played Hai Fat in The Man With The Golden Gun and Major Chin in The Sand Pebbles, plays a rare sympathetic part as the husband of Jones's best friend.

Mention must also be made of Alfred Newman's score. It's a fairly lush score that incorporates the theme song throughout. The title theme was written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. We get bits of it throughout before getting the full blast sung during the emotional ending. It's one of those songs you either love or it gets on your nerves. I actually like it myself. The recording by The Four Aces became a number one hit for four weeks before Rock and Roll took over the charts.

At the end of the day this is a very good movie that could have been just a little bit more. It's bouyed by it's stars but one can't help feeling it holds too much back both in it's cinematography and exploration of it's themes.But the thing that nails it and makes this movie the classic that it has become is the ending, which is guaranteed to not leave a dry eye in the house.

3-D Thursday: Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

In terms of great comic book movies, it can be argued that the genre didn't really find it's legs until the early 2000s with Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Some have argued as far back as Tim Burton's Batman, but Burton's Batman, like Richard Donner's Superman (1978) was more of an anomaly then a standard bearer. Actually, I tend to think that comic book movies didn't truly hit their stride until 2008's Iron Man, which started the great run up to what is probably the genre's best film ever: 2012's spectacular Marvel's The Avengers (the actual onscreen title, by the way).

The Avengers is a crossover movie with the heroes and/or supporting characters of five previous Marvel movies. The loose umbrella of films that came previously became known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in the movies before. Surprisingly, despite the risky endeavor, the film works beautifully.

Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and the Incredible Hulk--or more specifically Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Bruce Banner--are called upon when Loki, brother of Thor, steals the Tesseract, a mystical cube he intends to use to conquer the world. Loki has also taken over the minds of Dr. Erik Selvig, who he plans to use to help him harness the power of the Tesseract, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Clint Barton, code name Hawkeye, who he plans to basically use as an assassin.  Thor joins in when Loki is captured to try to make him give up the cube. But as Nick Fury points out, Loki seems to be the only person who wants to be on the Shield Heli-carrier.

The problem with comic book movies in general is that so few people know how to make a good one. Too often have comic book movies gone for camp or at least what they think is camp, such as the dreck that mostly made up 90s comic book movies, or else they tend to just be about explosions and fights like X-Men III: The Final Stand. Amazingly, Richard Donner laid out the blueprint for how to do it right in 1978, but too many people have missed that blue print. Luckily, Joss Whedon wasn't one of those people.


Donner taught these movies how to have a sense of humor but also a genuine sense of menace and Whedon improves on that idea with The Avengers. Yes, there's some funny bits in the film, but Loki and the Chitari are not jokes, even if Loki makes a couple of wisecracks himself. If Tom Hiddleston's Loki isn't the best comic book villain of all time, he's in the top three for certain. Maybe Heath Ledger's Joker and Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor edge him out, but it's pretty close.

This is Robert Downey Jr.'s fifth appearance as Tony Stark/Iron Man, while everyone else except Mark Ruffalo as Banner is on their second appearance. Downey has made Stark his own and turned a character not many people cared/knew about before his movies into a major player. Chris Hemsworth likewise is the living embodiment of Thor. Ruffalo becomes the third actor in the past decade to take on playing the Hulk and while I really liked Edward Norton in the role, Ruffalo is easily the best. Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow shows she can play with the big boys and surprisingly doesn't look ridiculous doing it. Chris Evans is the best actor to ever play Captain America and I frankly can't wait for Captain America: The Winter Soldier in a couple of months. Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg do their usual bits as Nick Fury and Agent Coulson. Actually, Gregg has been the glue through most of these movies as the only two he doesn't show up in prior to this are 2008's The Incredible Hulk and 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger. He's a fan favorite and gets one of the best scenes in the movie when he squares off against Loki. Although the funniest scene in the movie is still Hulk meets Loki.

Whedon's film also improves on the idea of a comic book team up movie. If you really look at prior films like the X-Men, most of the movie relies on a couple members of the team, with the rest basically the useless army. The Avengers, however, gives every major player something to do and not just once in the movie. The movie treats every major hero equally, giving them all bits of business, good lines, and heroic things to accomplish. The same can be said of the actors playing those characters. The only one who tries upstaging the others is Hiddleston, and well, he's the villain with a flair for the theatrical.


As far as the 3D goes, it's a conversion from 2D. It happens to be one of the best conversions, but it's still a conversion and as such is bound to fail when compared to movies shot in Native 3D. The conversion manages to eek out some decent depth, but the pop-outs would have looked far more impressive had the movie been shot that way. Unfortunately, this is a situation that is not about to change with Marvel movies.


Is Marvel's The Avengers the best comic book movie ever? I think it just might be. Every so often a movie comes along with a sense of "wow" to it that just captures the imagination. This is one of those movies. I've already seen it half a dozen times. I try not to rewatch movies too often in order to keep them fresh but I find myself wanting to toss this in every few months. It's a great film with the right balance of story, humor, and action to please any movie buff.

Little Miss Marker (1934)

When I heard this morning that Shirley Temple had passed away, it occurred to me that the only one of her movies I had ever seen was Fort Apache, done when she was an adult and near the end of her film career. So I knew I had to watch one of her earlier films in salute. Being a Damon Runyon fan, Little Miss Marker was the natural choice.

Little Miss Marker concerns a bookmaker who goes by the name of Sorrowful Jones, so named due to his most unhappy disposition. Mr. Jones lays a G on a race that is somewhat fixed by the gambler Big Steve. Big Steve is planning another, bigger fix which will net him 10 to 1 on a $10,000 bet. During the course of the first fix, a gambler leaves a marker with Jones in the form of a small doll named Marthy. Marthy's mother went to the Big Racecourse in the Sky already and when the gambler loses the bet, he decides it would be more advantageous to him to join her than to attempt to come up with the $20 he owes Jones for Marthy. So Jones and his friends find themselves stuck with the little doll whom they end up nicknaming Marky. The big plan seems to be to make the authorities think that Marky owns Big Steve's horse so that Big Steve can place his bets and win his money. But while Big Steve is in Chicago placing bets, his doll Bangles starts to fall for Little Miss Marker and Sorrowful. Sorrowful himself falls for the kid and starts to change his ways. Unfortunately, Sorrowful's friends are a not very good influence on Marky and she starts to become more than somewhat cynical and tough. So it comes that Bangles and Sorrowful conspire to turn Marky back into the nice doll she once was so she can eventually end up with a good family.

My apologies for my attempt at Runyon-speak, but it seemed appropriate for the movie.

Temple, of course, is Marky and it takes all of five seconds of her on the screen for one to realize why she was such a big deal in the 1930s. She absolutely bursts with personality in a way that no child star before or since her has. At the age of five, she could do everything a veteran adult performer could do: sing, dance, and act. Not mug--act. Her antics could crack you up, but when she turned on the dramatic moments, she could break your heart. The scene of her telling Bangles (Dorothy Dell) about the death of her mother is particularly touching. She switches gears mid-scene frequently and does it effortlessly. I have no idea how directors got the performances out of her that they did, but those performances are a marvel to watch. What's doubly surprising is that this is one of her earlier films.

On the adult side of things, we have Adolphe Menjou as Sorrowful. Menjou was a talented actor best known for this and the 1931 version of The Front Page. Ironically, Walter Mathau would star in remakes of both movies, both times in Menjou's part. Menjou doesn't play Sorrowful as sad-faced as Runyon described him, but he does marvelous in the part. Dorothy Dell is Bangles. This was one of only four movies she was in before she was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 19. That's a shame as she had a great singing voice and shares a fun duet with Temple. Charles Bickford is de facto villain Big Steve. He's not in the movie a lot, but his final scene makes the character. And Lynne Overman's character Regret steals scenes whenever he shows up.

Anyone who has read Runyon's stories and watched the movies made from them know that most of the movies simply take the short story as a jumping off point and make huge changes to them. Part of that comes from the fact that many of Runyon's tales are more tragic than they are funny. The short story of Little Miss Marker in particular is a heart breaker. However, there were certain things you didn't do in 1930s Hollywood and the tearjerker ending to Runyon's tale was one of them, especially with Shirley Temple in the lead. The changes to this one are good and at least the germ of the story was there.

Ultimately, this is one of the best Runyon adaptions, especially as it isn't a pure comedy like most of them. It has a pathos to it which showed an understanding of the source material. A large portion of that pathos is set by it's irrepressible star.

Rest in peace, Shirley Temple and thank you for films like Little Miss Marker. Your films helped make the world a better place in the 1930s and they still do today.

St. Louis Blues (1958)

I've always found the 50s a fascinating decade for movies. While most people credit the 60s with changes  in the way movies were done due to the introduction of the rating system in 1968 (among other things), but if you peel back the 50s, you can see the changes that were slowly coming. Directors like Hitchcock started pushing boundaries involving sex while other directors like Preminger and Kramer pushed the boundaries of race. Studios started taking chances on films like Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess, despite the ugly scourge of segregation in the South. Into that came St. Louis Blues, a somewhat lesser known but worthy entry.

St. Louis Blues is the story of W.C. Handy, the father of Rhythm and Blues. Handy is the son of a fire and brimstone preacher in Memphis. Rev. Handy believes there are only two types of music: God's music and the Devil's music. Anything that isn't a hymn is the Devil's music. Young W.C. (Billy Preston as a kid) is attracted to the Devil's music, naturally. Of course, he doesn't see it the same way as his dad. Rev. Handy in a particularly mean spirited moment takes W.C.'s prized horn and tosses it under a passing wagon, causing it to be crushed. Years later, the adult W.C. Handy returns from college. He's supposed to take a teaching job, but he gets asked to write a song for a politician. Torch singer Gogo Germaine (Eartha Kitt)hears the song and gets him to adapt it for her and he's off and running in a career writing popular tunes while working in the same seedy nightclub Gogo works in. His father eventually finds out and the two are estranged for years.

This film is a Jazz lover's dream. Nat King Cole plays the adult W.C. Handy. Poor Nat has drawn a lot of criticism for his performance, but he's not really bad in the film. Cole's problem can best be summed up by the fact that he was shy by nature and comes off as shy and a little awkward. But that awkwardness actually works considering the nature of the relationship between him and his father (Juano Hernandez) in the film. Singers who turn to acting are always a tricky proposition and he does better than some of the others who have tried it (though not in this film per se). Besides, anytime he sings, he commands the screen with that velvety voice he had. His rendition of the title tune is the final word in the film--as well it should be.

Eartha Kitt plays Gogo and nearly steals the film from everyone. Gogo should just be another bad girl, and yet Kitt breathes a life into her that you're not expecting. She's actually one of the more sympathetic characters in the movie, quietly championing Handy and trying to get his family to accept him as he is. Hernandez doesn't quite overdo the Rev. Handy, which would be easy to do as the character is written pretty melodramatically. The film also boasts performances by Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, and Cab Calloway. Calloway doesn't get to sing, but as the snake who owns the night club, he makes a great villain. Bailey plays the understanding Aunt Hagar. She only gets to do a couple of verses of the title tune, but she's great throughout. Ruby Dee plays Handy's fiancee, who never fully seems to know what she wants. Ella Fitzgerald gets an anachronistic cameo in one scene.. All she does is belt out a tune, but that's all Ella needed to do. In fact, the only people missing from the movie seem to be Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong.

Some people have criticized the film for playing fast and loose with the facts, jumbling events up such as Handy's blindness. But that was Standard Operating Procedure for Hollywood Biopics of the day. Come to it, it still is. Yet the film has a purpose in it's storytelling and it's a purpose that isn't immediately self-evident. 

It's interesting because this isn't a film you would instantly associate with race. Oh, sure, it's got an all African-American cast in it, but on the surface it appears to your standard Hollywood bio-pic musical that just happens to have a purely African-American cast. And yet, like the decade itself, when the layers get peeled back, you find out there's more than the surface story going on. And like Billie Holiday's famous song Strange Fruit, it's not too subtle when it drops it's bomb. Appropriately, it's Kitt who drops it right in the audience's lap. I can imagine the reaction of Southern theater owners upon seeing it, too. 

The movie was shot in VistaVision, the 65mm Hi-Fidelity film process Paramount used back in the 50s. It was one of the rare black and white VistaVision films. But considering how incredible most of the VistaVision films that have been released on Blu Ray look--in particular White Christmas, The Ten Commandments and To Catch A Thief--it's a crime that the only way to see this currently is a Standard Definition Open Matte 1:33 version on Amazon Instant Video. Paramount, Warner, Olive--Someone--needs to get this out on Blu Ray in all it's VistaVision glory. Maybe then this movie would get the attention it so richly deserves. With some of the greatest voices in 20th Century music and a message it cleverly slips in when you aren't looking, St. Louis Blues is a movie that deserves to be far, far better known that it is.

Sequels, Remakes, and Reboots Part II: Remakes

There are people who believe that only the original version of something is a good version. That anything that follows is automatic trash. You'll find this with characters played by different actors, such as James Bond. A large number of people insist that the "original" James Bond, Sean Connery, is the only one worth watching. This thinking applies to songs, with some people going so far as to say that any musical artist that does a remake (they're actually called covers in musical terms) of a song sucks. And of course, it applies to movies, with people citing that the original version is always the best.


Yes, well, Sean Connery wasn't the original James Bond. Barry Nelson beat him to the part by 8 years.


You'd be hard pressed to find a musical artist who has been around for a while that didn't do a cover. Even the Beatles did a cover of Twist and Shout. After all, you can't be a Celine Dion fan if you don't like remakes, since pretty much every single album of hers is almost guaranteed to have a remake (or two or three) on it.


And yes, Virginia, some of the best versions of movies--indeed some of the best movies ever--are remakes.


I get that it's fashionable for Hollywood to do remakes. They truly seem to be on a kick of remaking 80s movies. I'll even go so far as to say that with all the 80s remakes going on over the last five or six years, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm reliving my teenage years. God, I hope not.


One of the most famous film noirs, the Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon, is actually the third version of that story. It was originally filmed in 1931 with Ricardo Cortez. It was filmed again as Satan Met A Lady in 1936 with Warren William and Bette Davis. But it was the third version in 1941 that gets remembered and loved. I haven't watched the 1936 version yet, but I have seen the 1931 version. It isn't bad and it is Pre-Code, so it's racier than the 1941 version, but it famously blows it in the ending. And none of the cast--not even Dwight Frye as Wilmer--match their 1941 counterparts.


Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock apparently both thought remakes had their place as they both remade earlier films of theirs in 1956. DeMille chose to remake his 1923 The Ten Commandments while Hitchcock remade his 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much. There's plenty of debate about the Hitchcock films--both versions have their fans--but most people prefer the 56 version of The Ten Commandments.


Speaking of religious films that got a superior remake, it is worth mentioning the 1959 film that won more Academy Awards than any other, a record it held until it was tied in 1997 by Titanic. That film, Ben Hur, is probably the best argument you can make for good remakes. In fact, the 1950s is peppered with remakes that are either as good as what came before or just plain kick the original in the teeth: House of Wax, Miss Sadie Thompson, A Star Is Born, Hound of the Baskervilles, Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, and The Mummy are all pretty good examples.


"Okay, so they knew how to do good remakes in the 1950s", some of you may be grumbling. "They can't possibly do good remakes nowadays."


Actually, they can and do. I love the Rat Pack myself, but the George Clooney version of Ocean's 11 beats the Rat Pack version in almost every level. For one thing, it's more fun. And while it can be argued that the Rat Pack version has the better ending, that and Dean Martin singing "Ain't That a Kick In The Head" are about the only things the original has over the remake.


What about King Kong, the poster child for poorly thought out remakes? It is true that Dino De Laurentis unleashed a mind-numbingly awful remake of King Kong in 1976. In fact, it's pretty shocking how the special effects of the 1976 version are such an epic fail as compared to the 1933 original. I mean, they just look cheap. But, while Peter Jackson's 2005 version isn't better than the 1933 version--it's far too bloated and excessive for it's own good--it's actually a pretty good movie. It's certainly not as bad as the 1976 version. And if you could cut a good hour out of the movie, it would likely give the original a real run for the money.
Other good, recent remakes include 3:10 to Yuma and True Grit, both of which can be argued as being better than their previous versions. Certainly 3:10 to Yuma is better. True Grit is at least as good if not better than the Wayne version.



The most common (and absurd) argument I've heard regarding remakes is the age old question of "Why do they remake only good movies? Why don't they remake bad movies to make better versions?" First off, they do remake bad movies from time to time. 1953's Catwomen of the Moon was remade in 1958 as Missile to the Moon. 1982's My Bloody Valentine was remade in 2009 as My Bloody Valentine 3D.  That's just two such examples. Second, do you know what you get when you remake a bad movie? How about...a bad movie? Neither one of those remakes are what you could call an improvement on their originals.  Besides, do you really want a remake of The Terror of Tiny Town or Reefer Madness? I didn't think so.


Are there rotten remakes? Of course there are. Nobody is arguing that. 1988's The Blob and 1994's The Getaway are both pretty poor, just proving the adage that you don't remake Steve McQueen.
Are remakes necessary then becomes the next snooty question. Necessity is not the point nor should it be the question, however. The question is or at least should be, like any film, are they good, bad, or indifferent. As with almost any type of film--except porn, of course--you can find examples of all three. So a generalization of "all remakes are awful bastardizations of the original" is really pretty silly at the end of the day. The great ones or at least the good ones will stick around and probably outshine the original to the point that we don't recognize that they aren't the original and the bad ones will be flushed down the drain like most bad movies do.


I don't watch every remake. I still haven't watched the redo of Footloose and I seriously doubt I will. They can keep the slasher remakes, too, as I have no interest in them. I had no interest in the original slasher movies in the 1980s, so why would I be interested in their remakes?  But I'm not going to write off remakes entirely and some that are still coming have me interested, such as this year's Godzilla. So relax and remember, this is nothing new. More to the point, this can just as often be a good thing as bad.

Serial Saturday: SECRET AGENT X-9 (1945)

If you say the name Lloyd Bridges to most people today, they instantly think of the guy who said "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue" in 1980's Airplane!. But 35 years before that movie redefined his carreer, Bridges headlined this WWII serial as the title character.

Secret Agent X-9 was based on a comic strip created by mystery writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and comic strip artist Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon). It was the last serial Universal based off a comic strip and one of their last serials. It was also the second such serial Universal did based on the strip. It's quite different from it's predecessor, but also as good as it.

Japanese agents discover that formula 722, when mixed with distilled water, becomes a perfect substitute for aviation gasoline. The problem is, the secret to the formula is in America, in the papers of a scientist who was trying to develop it for use as an explosive. The Japanese and Nazi agents determine to steal the formula from America, using a supposedly neutral island known as Shadow Island as their base of operations. Shadow Island is run by Lucky Kamber (Cy Kendall), a self-serving profiteer who collects a protection tax from fugitives on the island. When an American agent is murdered on Shadow Island, Secret Agent X-9 (Bridges) shows up to route out the Axis agents and put a stop to their mad plan. X-9 is aided by a Chinese agent named Ah Fong (Keye Luke) and a beautiful Australian agent (Jan Wiley) posing as a Quisling.

B-Movie and serial fans will find a lot of amusement in seeing who shows up in this. Samuel S Hinds, better remembered today for the Bela Lugosi version of The Raven, plays the mysterious Solo, who sits at the bar Kamber owns playing tiddlywinks constantly, except for when he shoots one would-be killer and draws a gun on another. Of course, as soon as the excitement is over, he goes back to playing tiddlywinks. The serial also has two of Charlie Chan's sons in it, though on opposite sides of the law. As mentioned, Keye Luke (No.1 Son) is Bridge's sidekick. No 3 Son, Benson Fong, plays Japanese scientist Dr. Hakihima. Serial regular Eddie Cobb gets big billing on the poster, but only shows up in a couple of scenes as a bartender. Another frequent serial baddie, I. Stanford Jolley (best remembered as the voice of The Crimson Ghost), plays a short-lived thug.  Other frequent serials players in the serial include John Merton and Stanley Price, who gets the funniest death scene in the serial.

Victoria Horne plays the lead Japanese agent. Naruba. She does this by basically looking like a somnambulist, with her eyes mostly shut and her arms folded and in her dress sleeves for most of the serial. Politically correct-minded people will howl at this portrayal as racist, as well as Bridges referring to the enemy as "Japs" and "Nips" in the serial. But I think a little historical context is in order when watching this, or almost any WWII serial for that matter. The film was released in 1945 and we were still at war with Japan, which meant that they were the enemy. This was also just over three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, I know that it's not fashionable to demonize your enemies anymore, but back then it was. More to the point, it was a release valve for audiences. Secret Agent X-9 and its ilk were meant to be patriotic flag waving films, much the same as Top Gun and Red Dawn were in the 1980s. The worst thing we can do to a serial like this is try to apply our present-minded thinking to it. X-9 had a time and a place and, in some respects, represents a snapshot of America at that time. It's propaganda people, something that still goes on today, just a little differently than back then.

I'm not necessarily excusing the portrayal, I'm just savvy enough to understand where it was coming from and so not get so worked up about it. Besides, there are far worse portrayals of Japanese agents in other serials like 1943's Batman and the Popeye cartoon You're A Sap Mr. Jap. Let's not even bring Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips into this, either.

As for Bridges, he makes a fine serial hero. It's actually a shame this is his only serial since he does so good in it. This serial was done when Bridges was apparently cutting his teeth in acting, doing a lot of B-Westerns. It gives a glimpse of the actor to come, and only 6 years after this would he be playing Gary Cooper's deputy in the classic High Noon. Jan Wiley's Lynn Moore (great last name) gets to stand around and look pretty most of the time, leaving the heavy lifting to Bridges and Luke, but she does well with the sneakier aspects of her character. Three Stooges (and serial) buffs will also recognize Gene Roth as an incompetent Nazi henchman.


Every serial producing studio took a different tact when it came to the form. Republic favored constant action and set destroying fistfights, sometimes to their detriment. Columbia relied on silly, over the top humor. Universal took a more plot oriented approach, however, with a lot of dialogue. Some serials this worked for while others it just slowed down to a crawl. Fortunately, in Secret Agent X-9, it works. All the spy vs. spy and double dealing routines help keep the serial moving. One is never completely sure who's on whose side in this and that's a large part of the fun.

This is Universal's last truly great serial as the last few that squeaked out after it weren't quite up to par. But it's a fun and entertaining early glimpse at an actor that most would later know for comedy, back when he was a straight leading man. For that alone, it's worth watching.