cult film freak: August 2016

Written by James M. Tate / 8/30/2016 / No comments / counter culture , drama , drug culture , george c. scott , leonard gaines , paul schrader , peter boyle , prostitute , reb brown , season hubley , seventies

GEORGE C. SCOTT 'HARDCORE' PETER BOYLE & SEASON HUBLEY

counter culture, drama, drug culture, george c. scott, leonard gaines, paul schrader, peter boyle, prostitute, reb brown, season hubley, seventies

GEORGE C. SCOTT 'HARDCORE' PETER BOYLE & SEASON HUBLEY

George C. Scott hanging out in HARDCORE Year: 1979 George C. Scott is a straight-laced, Midwestern business-owner with an innocent daugh...

GOODBYE WILDER GENE: A MEMORIAL FOR GENE WILDER

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>We Rushed this Rushed Tribute, so FORGIVE any Unedited Mistakes!</u></td></tr>
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What was it about Gene Wilder that worked? That really, really worked? To go back to WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, the trickster who limped until suddenly being able to roll himself over, hop back up and shake hands, was all part of an unexplainable magic... outside the script and outside the box... that put everyone, young and old, in a spell – and for decades we were completely spellbound...<br>
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It's difficult to fathom that such a good thing couldn't last... longer than the long time it did. After a while, Wilder became like a magic trick everyone just kind of... stopped using. Of course, we all remember the Mel Brooks' double-genre parody of BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: in the first, his character's jail-cell introduction ended a string of laugh-a-minute introductory jokes and is where the story really began, and the latter, co-written by Wilder and Brooks, is his most famous venture. Most also recall STIR CRAZY, with Richard Pryor, where both had an equal share of screen-time following Gene's lead in SILVER STREAK, a train-set homage to Alfred Hitchcock that only sporadically featured the black comedian and both, as a team, collaborated on four films together...<br>
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gene wilder, tribute

GOODBYE WILDER GENE: A MEMORIAL FOR GENE WILDER

We Rushed this Rushed Tribute, so FORGIVE any Unedited Mistakes! What was it about Gene Wilder that worked? That really, really worked? ...

DEFENDING THE NOIR-HORROR CAMP OF 'THE LEECH WOMAN'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Part of the Universal Science Fiction Collection YEAR: 1960</u></td></tr>
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While it's rare, Mystery Science Theater (or what they've become, Riff-Trax) can be a misleading device in which to discover or uncover vintage b-movies, and while the "b" technically stands for the production value, or lack of, and the lower spot given on the marquee, it usually refers to a movie being just plain "bad."<br>
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That's not always the case – THE LEECH WOMAN, one of many victims of the MSTK-3000 treatment, should also be called a C-movie, for Creative: What it lacks in budget, it makes up for in... other ways, like how the title character, an aged, formerly attractive wife of a doctor seeking an impossible cure for aging, winds up on a killing spree. The first act plays out economically inside two interior locations, the most important being the Doctor's Office where Coleen Gray's bitter June Talbot verbally tears into her husband, Dr. Paul Talbot, played by BORN TO KILL stiff-suit Philip Terry...<br>

coleen gray, cult, exploitation, gloria talbott, horror, kim hamilton, philip terry, science-fiction, sixties

DEFENDING THE NOIR-HORROR CAMP OF 'THE LEECH WOMAN'

Part of the Universal Science Fiction Collection YEAR: 1960 While it's rare, Mystery Science Theater (or what they've become, Ri...

FIFTIES & EIGHTIES: GLOSSING OVER TWO DECADES OF D.O.A.

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>1950 D.O.A. starring Edmond O'Brien</u></td></tr>
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<u>D.O.A. 1950</u>: Before the ball really gets rolling, and things become serious for a small town businessman on vacation in San Francisco, an unbelievable sound occurs, more befitting a zany comedy caper, perhaps even a cartoon, than the sparsest, most serious of Film Noir vehicles...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>The Eighties One</u></td></tr>
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Inside a lavish hotel, whenever an attractive "dish" passes our rural fish out of water, an intentionally corny and contrived wolf-whistle chimes... Not coming from any character in the movie but from the "author" intruded editing room: Like PULP FICTION's Uma Thurman drawing an animated box outside Jack Rabbit Slims, the viewer must simply go with it. So in this severe tale of a dying man frantically in search of who "killed him," perhaps that silly noise existed to separate the two halves – and that's the gist of this particular nightmarish odyssey. Loaded with whodunit potential since what's been done can't be set back, it's never a question since, with the exception of those convention partiers who left town before O'Brien wakes up with a lethal hangover, no one's really known to us or him other than a faithful secretary, back home, on the phone, talking to her frantic boss who, poisoned at a jazzy bar that the hotel party had moved to, he has only a few days to live, and has to find out who, and why?<br>

dennis quaid, edmond o'brien, eighties, fifties, film noir, jazz score, neo noir, remake

FIFTIES & EIGHTIES: GLOSSING OVER TWO DECADES OF D.O.A.

1950 D.O.A. starring Edmond O'Brien D.O.A. 1950 : Before the ball really gets rolling, and things become serious for a small town bu...

SOARING MELODRAMA OF 'THE CROWDED SKY' W/ DANA ANDREWS

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Karen Green w/ Efem Zimbalist Jr YEAR: 1960</u></td></tr>
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Now this... THIS is an "entirely different kind of flying, <i>altogether</i>..." A classic line, not only from the 1980 comedy AIRPLANE but its low-budget, sky-high thriller ZERO HOUR...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Dana Andrews taxis the runway</u></td></tr>
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And you'd think Dana Andrews, the original Ted Stryker, had learned to stay clear of THE CROWDED SKY – but it's ingrained, from returning from Korea in THE FEARMAKERS; heading to England in CURSE OF THE DEMON; and suffering memories in the Post-War drama THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, he had a cinematic penchant for taking to the skies<i>...</i><br />
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And now<i> </i>it's 1960 and he's a legit commercial jet pilot.. Meanwhile, soaring in a jet fighter is Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and his young co-pilot, Troy Donahue — soon both big and small plane will meet (and vice versa in AIRPORT 75) but this is different than most aerial disaster flicks — before the nail-biting finale, SKY plays out not only like miles-high soap opera, it spends 75% of its time in each of the character's narrating minds, reflecting upon their troubles, romances, and even a little happiness...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Efrem Zimbalist Jr and Dana Andrews converge</u></td></tr>
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Beginning with an awkward close-up on child starlet Karen Green as Efrem's daughter: she much prefers her tall military dad to narcissistic mom, Rhonda Fleming...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>"He's Dick to everyone"</u></td></tr>
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Other flashbacks include a "He Thinks, She Thinks" of our two young buried leads: grouchy "jerk boyfriend" co-pilot played by John Kerr and blond-haired, optimistic, "she deserves better" stewardess Anne Francis (her and Dana Andrews would return five years later in William Conrad's <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2016/08/citizen-cannon.html">BRAINSTORM!</a> and the same year he's her dad in THE SATAN BUG)...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Crowded Sky Movie Score: ***1/2</u></td></tr>
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The most annoying stories don't include a visual aid, punctuating their overall insignificance — those being: a shunned, slightly-older gal seated beside a suave (not handsome) Hollywood player, letting him woo her and, as we <i>do</i> hear her thoughts, learning they once had a one night stand while he doesn't recognize her at all...<br />
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Also on board is an awkward businessman finding the guts to address a middle-aged gal; and a nervous method acting James Dean type (who actually resembles Troy Donahue) attempting to persuade a world-weary New York agent/yenta to represent him. "I can't feel fear... I've never been afraid in my life," he whines... A forced harbinger of what's to come, and Dana Andrews goes right back in <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2016/07/Dana-Does-Airplane.html">ZERO HOUR</a> dead-serious mode...<br />
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Holding the gears tight while sweating profusely, and yet he keeps his edge this time around: At which point the near-catastrophe is a relaxing break following all those damn memories – some intriguing, others draining yet all an intricate piece of a bizarre cinematic puzzle that, despite the camp, is an original spin on the plane-in-peril subdivision of the overall disaster film genre, and one that Dana Andrews is a patron saint of.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7o_8ocV0uMg/XE7o7u-imlI/AAAAAAAA_Iw/IUbLyN_PlIML-KzNqGx6BEr9SzylmiD6QCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-01-28%2Bat%2B3.33.16%2BAM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="893" data-original-width="1600" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7o_8ocV0uMg/XE7o7u-imlI/AAAAAAAA_Iw/IUbLyN_PlIML-KzNqGx6BEr9SzylmiD6QCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-01-28%2Bat%2B3.33.16%2BAM.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Some of the quick flashbacks are pretty great... looking, like Rhonda Fleming in THE CROWDED SKY</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Dana Andrews is the patron saint of disaster flick pilots, already having flown in ZERO HOUR!</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dana Andrews as Captain Dick Barnett in THE CROWDED SKY</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Nothing cooler than a late 50's early 60's fighter jet, no matter what the stinkin' hippies think</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Workmates here, in five years Anne Francis and Dana Andrews would be unhappily married in BRAINSTORM!</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>And here's proof.... Anne Francis and Dana Andrews unhappily married in BRAINSTORM five years later</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Dana Andrews propelled to turn down a proverbial raise since he wants to keep flying</u></td></tr>
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anne francis, dana andrews, disaster, efrem zimbalist jr., john kerr, joseph pevney, keenan wynn, melodrama, rhonda fleming, romance, sixties, troy donahue, warner archives

SOARING MELODRAMA OF 'THE CROWDED SKY' W/ DANA ANDREWS

Karen Green w/ Efem Zimbalist Jr YEAR: 1960 Now this... THIS is an "entirely different kind of flying, altogether ..." A class...

Written by James M. Tate / 8/24/2016 / No comments / action , adventure , david carradine , moonshine , seventies

DAVID CARRADINE & KATE JACKSON IN 'THUNDER & LIGHTING'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Car chase in THUNDER & LIGHTNING</u></td></tr>
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Around the same time as Ingmar Bergman's THE SERPENT'S EGG and Hal Ashby's BOUND FOR GLORY, David Carradine, free from his career-making stint on TV's KUNG FU, had some moonshine downtime in the everglades... <br />
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Although only the opening twenty minutes takes place knee-deep in the muddy water during a local goon bully session, leading to a vengeful fan-boat chase (ala LIVE AND LET DIE), and while the film peaks early, there's still loads of adventure left during a prolonged car chase that takes up the entire second half, mirroring (not copying) that exact same year's "grungy maverick with a fancy dame in a fast car" road run in the wildly popular SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. The characters that'd been... well... fleshed-out – enough for this kind of movie – are all but forgotten and/or completely insignificant when action trumps storyline... Hell, it doesn't even matter what names these people have after a while, or who's in the cast, although, THUNDER & LIGHTING is a nostalgic TV fanatic's dream as Carradine's near-past ("Knock off the Kung Fu shit!" Charles Napier growls during a fight), and Jackson's role on CHARLIE'S ANGELS following an eclectic small-screen career ranging from THE JIMMY STEWART SHOW sit-com to a Movie of the Week exploitively titled: SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Poster for Thunder and Lightning 1978</u></td></tr>
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Fanning through the water or roaring over roadsides, pretty much anyone could have been driving the long stretch of highway where things wind up, just beyond the wet marshes that provided a misleading rudimentary impression on what the landscape would be, and it's a long, long road at that...<br />
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Too bad because the plot's buildup is actually somewhat intriguing, putting a spin on the cliche moonshine motif: Kate Jackson's crooked father runs competing 'shine against her boyfriend Carradine's makeshift yet good quality swamp-still (run by underdog character-actor Sterling Holloway) while dad's soda company turns out crap including six gallons of toxic rotgut. But crime doesn't pay. While Carradine has good ol' boys, a beautiful girl and a vintage car on his side, the token heavy has thugs either breathing down his neck or out for his hyde: Soon enough, everyone's caught in the crossfire – Carradine breezing his way throughout like he did in some of his pictures (BOUND FOR GLORY, THE LONG RIDERS and KILL BILL are a few grand exceptions), yet he maintains an organic worldweary realism: when it matters most, he means what he says and, doing a lot of his own stunts, the hard work shows.<br />
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action, adventure, david carradine, moonshine, seventies

DAVID CARRADINE & KATE JACKSON IN 'THUNDER & LIGHTING'

Car chase in THUNDER & LIGHTNING Around the same time as Ingmar Bergman's THE SERPENT'S EGG and Hal Ashby's BOUND FOR GL...

Written by James M. Tate / 8/21/2016 / No comments / earl holliman , fifties , film noir or melodrama , heist , jack palance , lee marvin , perry lopez , remake , shelley winters

JACK PALANCE IN THE NOIR REMAKE 'I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES'

earl holliman, fifties, film noir or melodrama, heist, jack palance, lee marvin, perry lopez, remake, shelley winters

JACK PALANCE IN THE NOIR REMAKE 'I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES'

Warner Archives DVD Year: 1955 HIGH SIERRA is a great book that became an even greater film: With Raoul Walsh's tight direction from...

'FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT' HAS RELOCATED

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Martin Kosleck as Tramp</u></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2019/02/kosleck2.html">CLICK HERE TO THE NEW HOME OF 'FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT' </a></span>

action, adventure, alfred hitchcock, espionage, forties, george sanders, joel mccrea, laraine day, martin kosleck, war, world war II

'FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT' HAS RELOCATED

Martin Kosleck as Tramp CLICK HERE TO THE NEW HOME OF 'FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT'

Written by James M. Tate / 8/19/2016 / No comments / dana andrews , disaster , drama , elizabeth taylor , fifties , peter finch , romance , suspense , warner archives

LIZ TAYLOR & DANA ANDREWS TAKE A GIANT 'ELEPHANT WALK'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Peter Finch, Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews YEAR: 1954</u></td></tr>
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Elephants are beautiful, majestic, powerful and... potentially dangerous — not man-eaters but could easily become human-stompers if something got in their way...<br>
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So in ELEPHANT WALK the gallant gray beasts provide a suspenseful element of doom, and it's not their fault...<br>
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As usual, vapid, selfish humans are to blame: The backstory goes: In the British Dominion of Ceylon, an immense watering hole that herds of elephants would rush to during drought season has a "bungalow" mansion as a bulwark to their path, and only a large backyard wall serves as protection. KING KONG proved how ineffective that can be, and like that movie, the plot is simple, and most important, extremely familiar to Elizabeth Taylor fans...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Novel Artwork</u></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Opening of the book and narration by Finch</u></td></tr>
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In two years she'd star alongside Rock Hudson and a posthumous James Dean in what would (arguably) be her greatest film, GIANT – as the wife of a stubborn, determined, old-fashioned (or simply, Texan) millionaire, she was equally set in her ways and not too crazy about the ingrained "boys club" mentality...<br>
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While here, being the only white woman in a land full of natives, she's not as headstrong as her newly-wed husband she'd met in England, played by Peter Finch, the owner of the "Elephant Walk" Tea Plantation. Their hotel-like chateau perpetually harbors a dozen or more guests; loud and obnoxiously-drunk Englishmen play bicycle polo in the main hall. Instead of putting her foot down, Taylor's more vulnerable, ladylike character whines, mopes and desperately yearns for the man she fell for back home – who we only caught five minutes of during the prologue, making Finch's role one-dimensional and severely limited.<br>

dana andrews, disaster, drama, elizabeth taylor, fifties, peter finch, romance, suspense, warner archives

LIZ TAYLOR & DANA ANDREWS TAKE A GIANT 'ELEPHANT WALK'

Peter Finch, Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews YEAR: 1954 Elephants are beautiful, majestic, powerful and... potentially dangerous — not...

DIRECTOR WILLIAM CONRAD'S PSYCHO-NOIR DOUBLE FEATURE

anne francis, dana andrews, drama, drive-in, jazz score, jeffrey hunter, neo noir, nicolas coster, richard kiel, romance, sixties, strother martin, thriller, troy donahue, viveca lindfors, william conrad

DIRECTOR WILLIAM CONRAD'S PSYCHO-NOIR DOUBLE FEATURE

Poster for BRAINSTORM w/ MY BLOOD RUNS COLD Year: 1965 From his sinister beginnings as one of the two title hitmen who cast an ominous s...

ANATOMY OF A COURTROOM AGENDA: TWILIGHT OF HONOR

claude reins, courtroom drama, joey heatherton, nick adams, richard chamberlain, sixties

ANATOMY OF A COURTROOM AGENDA: TWILIGHT OF HONOR

Richard Chamberlain faces Joey Heatherton YEAR: 1963 Once again, Hollywood puts Capitol Punishment on trial along with another of their ...

BOOMSHADOW: DANA ANDREWS COURTROOM NOIR DOUBLE

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Poster Art and DVD Cover YEAR: 1956</u></td></tr>
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, DANA ANDREWS & FILM NOIR: Following the career of Dana Andrews and dedicating two months spotlighting his eclectic career, the man's become a sort of "Six Degrees," connecting actors, actresses, directors and even similar themes within particular genres...<br />
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This isn't only Dana's month, but director Otto Preminger's as well (while next month's centered on both James Stewart <i>and</i> director Anthony Mann, covering the films they did together and separately)...<br />
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For example, three Westerns (reviewed soon) that starred or co-starred Andrews, all center on or involve a lynch mob kangaroo court. His characters are either an opponent or possible-victim: And in two Noir ventures, the same theme plays out only in the "modern" post-war era, trading the hangman with the electric chair (or a more modern hangman); starting out with...<br />
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<u>BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT</u>, which, with the exception of a slight variation on a completely predictable twist i.e. a twist within a twist, is one of Dana Andrews weakest Film Noir outings, and it's a complete shock that that genre's top-shelf director, THE BIG HEAT auteur Fritz Lang, had anything to do with it. The pace is slow-moving and uncreative, resembling a drowsy television program as each scene has the actors standing, and talking. Talking, and standing. And during sporadic courtroom scenes, sitting, listening, and talking some more...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>DOUBLE: Beyond a Shadow Doubt SCORE: **</u></td></tr>
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Few sites call to attention any vehicle written by and starring 1970's improvisational comic actor Tim Conway while reviewing a political Film Noir, but it must be done: His surprisingly effective prison romp THEY WENT THAT-A-WAY & THAT-A-WAY centers on two inept highway patrolmen given an assignment by the Governor to go undercover as felons at an infamous chain-gang penitentiary to check the conditions inside...<br />
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This includes being tried and convicted of a crime, and <i>only</i> the Governor knows about it... Before their road adventure escape, the two goofs wind up serving a possible life-sentence with no evidence of their mission, and you can easily guess the reason why...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year: 1947</u></td></tr>
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Future ROSEMARY'S BABY devil-agent Sidney Blackmer plays an ultra progressive-advocate against the death penalty. He abhors a political climbing lawyer having too much pleasure in sending men to the electric chair. A desperate idea arises: to find someone beyond-innocent for the recent death of an exotic dancer in order to be tried, convicted, and then, at the last minute, revealed as a shill to prove how, without a substantial witness or evidence, no one should sizzle in the hot-seat. The perfect candidate is his former star reporter, Andrews' Tom, working on a novel and engaged to his high society daughter. The most intriguing scenes show Andrews undercover, traipsing in and out of a strip-joint, trying to hook up with the dancer-friend of the slain victim. The strippers, despite yammering in a put-on "New Yawwk" accent, are the most real and grounded things get, despite sounding like an actor's workshop.<br />
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While the idea, seeming creative in the 70's Tim Conway flick (the plot's been used other places as well, including the fairly recent Sly Stallone flick, <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2013/10/escape-plan.html">ESCAPE PLAN</a>), is intriguing, the extremely dull and lethargic manner of how it's pulled off, before and after the trial... even noted by suspicious ingenue Joan Fontaine... make this quickie programmer more a sleeping pill than an effective thriller. It's impossible to figure out who's more of an obvious cliche: the "Yay" man of Capital Punishment or the two "Nay" dolts going too far to prove a not-so-buried agenda with a predictable turnout, albeit curbed by that aforementioned 11th hour surprise wherein, luckily for fans of Dana Andrews, he wakes up enough to finally earning his paycheck.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>BOOMERANGE Score: **</u></td></tr>
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And speaking of swift, uneven, questionable justice – a decade earlier, another courtroom melodrama Film Noir with soon-to-be groundbreaking A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and ON THE WATERFRONT director Elia Kazan pushes that theme's envelope to the hilt, and beyond: Never has one man been so innocent as Arthur Kennedy's otherwise wayward drifting war hero. In fact, Andrews, as the initially headstrong prosecutor, changes sides after one conversation with the person The State is all-too determined to punish – since it had taken too long to find the killer, and goaded by the press (never blamed in old movies), the first worthy culprit becomes "the best" choice. And while the direction is passably taut and, along with Lee J. Cobb as a put-upon police chief and the often too-perfect idealist Sam Levene (who rarely plays a character that doesn't seem to know more than anyone) as a reporter, who, as the writer's mouthpiece, had his mind up made up even before the street-corner slaying of a beloved small town priest, BOOMERANG! is less of an ambiguous programmer and more an overtly obvious morality tale, and yet, this bleeding heart does have heart.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Lee J. Cobb and Dana Andrews in BOOMERANG!</u></td></tr>
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<u>A Second Glimpse into BOOMERANG, much angrier, written for IMdB, not written in the usual style of this site but, still, it needed shared here</u>: A Closeup on one of the witnesses coke bottle glasses. Another closeup on the feeble old obviously insane bum as one of the culprits in the ridiculously eclectic police lineup. The expressions of the shunned waitress that screams "I'm lying and just seeking revenge." Scenes where townsfolk speak to each other which sound like a much too perfectly timed rehearsal. The politicians having a meeting while an idyllic putting green of a golf course sleeps in the background. Ed Begley pulling a gun, and thus making leading man Dana Andrews's role that much less mysterious and engrossing. Sam Levene, as usual, playing the perfectly wise "progressive" working man, who knows more than anyone with a wink, almost directed right at the audience. And a narrator that pours on the grim irony behind a pseudo-documentary template.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Another shot of Cobb and Andrews in BOOMERANG!</u></td></tr>
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BOOMERANG is extremely disappointing, especially since it's a movie starring Cult Film Freak Cinema's favorite actor, Dana Andrews, and directed by one of my favorite directors, Elia Kazan, who hadn't yet met Marlon Brando i.e hit his stride, and became more subtle, and implied...<br />
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Idealistic is an understatement for this contrived Film Noir that's hardly a Film Noir. And that's the word to center on... The one connected to Under... Which is, Statement. This movie is not only making one, it's screaming like a wounded and abused banshee: And all this is why Dana's usual director, Otto Preminger, hit it outta the ballpark with his masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder, by having all the characters ambiguous, and, unlike BOOMERANG, remaining realistic without having heroes and villains. Such characters should never be anywhere near a Courtroom Drama. Anyhow: Dana Andrews did a good job and stayed tried and true despite starring in a movie that not only made up its mind from the start, but takes sides, one side... One-Sided, and beyond!

dana andrews, elia kazan, fifties, film noir or melodrama, forties, fritz lang, lee j. cobb

BOOMSHADOW: DANA ANDREWS COURTROOM NOIR DOUBLE

Poster Art and DVD Cover YEAR: 1956 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, DANA ANDREWS & FILM NOIR: Following the career of Dana Andrews and dedicat...

Written by James M. Tate / 8/09/2016 / No comments / cold war , dana andrews , dick foran , fifties , film noir or melodrama , jacques tourneur , marilee earle , mel torme , politics , thriller

JACQUES TOURNEUR'S 'THE FEARMAKERS' WITH DANA ANDREWS

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year Released: 1958 </u></td></tr>
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Of the three motion pictures actor Dana Andrews starred in under the direction of Noir-Horror guru Jacques Tourneur, we'll cover two, made a year apart: CURSE OF THE DEMON and THE FEARMAKERS...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Dana Andrews w/ Marilee Earle & Dick Foran's shadow</u></td></tr>
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Very rare a film go after the "Peace at any price" groups even and especially the 1950's when <i>not a</i> (for example and unrelated to this particular movie) science-fiction flick played out without a hidden or not so subtle message against nuclear weapons — and FEARMAKERS is a reverse sermon in a vacuum, and it's not a "Red Scare" film, which would center on Americans fearing Americans but instead, having been captured and tortured by actual Communists in their country, fear is real, palpable, and has merit: Herein beginning with a low-budget, rushed version of patriotism about as obvious as Michael Rennie leaving Earth following his Martian State of the Union Address...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Dana Andrews gives to faint spells no thanks to Korea</u></td></tr>
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But enough of all that... FEAR is no space movie or the usual Noir despite one of that genre's signature leading men from <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/search/label/dana%20andrews">LAURA, FALLEN ANGEL, BOOMERANG, DAISY KENYON, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS</a>, and especially OUT OF THE PAST director Jacques Tourneur, who Andrews requested after the surprise success and worthy turnout of their first collaboration (reviewed below) the year before, CURSE OF THE DEMON...<br>
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Our heroic when tortured after being captured in Korea war-vet Andrews has a horrible fake-looking beard in the prologue — and thereafter flashbacks — and it's nice to see him all cleaned up and suited, back home, processed by the Army as sane (despite reoccurring dizzy spells), ready to dive back into work — his own business: A somewhat complicated operation that has a big surprise waiting, and it's no party...<br>

cold war, dana andrews, dick foran, fifties, film noir or melodrama, jacques tourneur, marilee earle, mel torme, politics, thriller

JACQUES TOURNEUR'S 'THE FEARMAKERS' WITH DANA ANDREWS

Year Released: 1958 Of the three motion pictures actor Dana Andrews starred in under the direction of Noir-Horror guru Jacques Tourneur...

AN OLDER JAMES CAGNEY IN THESE WILDER YEARS

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year Released: 1957</u></td></tr>
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While the Studio System may have been difficult for the talent, forced into project after project using whatever style that makes them shine again and again in various stories with similar plots and characterizations, it's great for anyone just turning on to a particular actor or actress...<br>
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James Cagney is a prime example. During the 1930's after accidentally hitting it big as the lead in PUBLIC ENEMY, a role that was supposed to go to the taller, more standard, typical Hollywood-looking guy and then wound up becoming Cagney's to own: the minute he smashed food on that dame's face a long journey had been ignited, and during that decade there are over ten programmers where his swagger, bravado, confidence, and dancing is in full form: From B-Pictures like PICTURE SNATCHER, WINNER TAKE ALL and our personal favorite, THE ST. LOUIS KID to crime flicks like G-MEN and EACH DAWN I DIE, con artist flicks like <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2014/01/cagney-bogart.html">LADY KILLER</a> and BLONDE CRAZY, patriotic but never too corny or cliche ventures like HERE COMES THE NAVY and eventually, Early Film Noir/Melodrama classics like CITY FOR CONQUEST and especially THE ROARING TWENTIES...<br>

barbara stanwyk, drama, fifties, james cagney, small town, teen

AN OLDER JAMES CAGNEY IN THESE WILDER YEARS

Year Released: 1957 While the Studio System may have been difficult for the talent, forced into project after project using whatever sty...

OTTO PREMINGER DIRECTS GENE TIERNEY IN 'WHIRLPOOL'

charles bickford, dana andrews, film noir or melodrama, forties, henry fonda, joan crawford, otto preminger, wrong man

OTTO PREMINGER DIRECTS GENE TIERNEY IN 'WHIRLPOOL'

Year: 1949 Before Jose Ferrer played loathsome, despicable villains he played classy, intellectual, sophisticated ones... In Otto Premin...

Written by James M. Tate / 8/04/2016 / No comments / cop , douglass dumbrille , jack younger , jazz score , larue farlow , maury dexter , merry anders , neo noir , robert dix , russ bender , sixties , willard parker

MERRY ANDERS CNEMA: WITH ROBERT DIX IN 'AIR PATROL'

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Terrific Fox DVD Cover Art YEAR: 1962</u></td></tr>
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In AIR PATROL, one of many low-budget movies directed by Maury Dexter, the wheels of justice move slowly, and the blades even slower. Scenes with the police helicopter dotting the blue sky of what seems like the rural suburbs just beyond a skyscraper-laden landscape, takes some time, but are still suspenseful and entertaining: Beginning with a soundtrack like any cop program of that era, though leaning on a jazzy upbeat over the usual forceful punch... other times providing bits of Halloween horror flick Tiburon sounds... as a faceless male thief steals a painting, and then takes off in a helicopter that meets him on that high-rise building's roof...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Merry Anders as Mona</u></td></tr>
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The one-man knockoff went easy enough, and only one lady, working late, got in the way: but only for the amount of time to get bonked unconscious in this breezy Late Noir with a beautiful, edgy, cranky, cop-hating ingenue, with old school chops of one of those brisk and edgy Femme Fatalle's, or the curt best friend of the leading lady on here, she's in the lead...<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Merry Anders plays it tough in Air Patrol</u></td></tr>
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Waking up after the heist with a feeling liken to a hangover, or worse, and she's our primary starlet, looking better than ever: that being Merry Anders, as part of our ongoing "Merry Anders Cinema" and/or, on other flicks sans the exotically wide-eyed ingenue, Maury Dexter Cinema, for her already covered in b-movie write-ups of <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2016/07/anders1-HYP-EYE.html">THE HYPNOTIC EYE</a> and <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2016/07/merry-anders-cinema-raiders-from.html">RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA</a>, here playing Mona, under questioning in the same office building by a wise, patient yet assertive veteran cop Lt. Taylor played by Willard Parker and then our hero, a mellow, younger lawman whose primary task is a flier in the AIR PATROL. Bob Dix is a personal friend of Cult Film Freak, having starred of <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2012/08/hells-bloody-devils-fakers.html">HELL'S BLOODY DEVILS</a>, <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2012/08/satans-sadists.html">SATAN'S SADISTS</a>, <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2010/03/robert-dix-five-bloody-graves.html">FIVE BLOODY GRAVES</a>, and <a href="http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2014/06/first-archive-bagful.html">FORBIDDEN PLANET</a>. His Sgt. Castle slowly melts Anders down into not being so feisty and aggravated... But that's skipping ahead...<br>

cop, douglass dumbrille, jack younger, jazz score, larue farlow, maury dexter, merry anders, neo noir, robert dix, russ bender, sixties, willard parker

MERRY ANDERS CNEMA: WITH ROBERT DIX IN 'AIR PATROL'

Terrific Fox DVD Cover Art YEAR: 1962 In AIR PATROL, one of many low-budget movies directed by Maury Dexter, the wheels of justice move ...

DANA ANDREWS AND CAESAR ROMERO WORK IN 'DEEP WATERS'

dana andrews, dean stockwell, drama, jean peters, kids

DANA ANDREWS AND CAESAR ROMERO WORK IN 'DEEP WATERS'

Future Joker from BATMAN meets the Old Guy from QUANTUM LEAP How very easily DEEP WATERS could have been a sappy childhood melodrama, ri...

JMT

Written by James M. Tate / 8/30/2016 / No comments / counter culture , drama , drug culture , george c. scott , leonard gaines , paul schrader , peter boyle , prostitute , reb brown , season hubley , seventies

Written by James M. Tate / 8/29/2016 / No comments / gene wilder , tribute

Written by James M. Tate / 8/27/2016 / No comments / dennis quaid , edmond o'brien , eighties , fifties , film noir , jazz score , neo noir , remake

Written by James M. Tate / 8/26/2016 / No comments / anne francis , dana andrews , disaster , efrem zimbalist jr. , john kerr , joseph pevney , keenan wynn , melodrama , rhonda fleming , romance , sixties , troy donahue , warner archives

Written by James M. Tate / 8/24/2016 / No comments / action , adventure , david carradine , moonshine , seventies

Written by James M. Tate / 8/21/2016 / No comments / earl holliman , fifties , film noir or melodrama , heist , jack palance , lee marvin , perry lopez , remake , shelley winters

Written by James M. Tate / 8/20/2016 / No comments / action , adventure , alfred hitchcock , espionage , forties , george sanders , joel mccrea , laraine day , martin kosleck , war , world war II

Written by James M. Tate / 8/19/2016 / No comments / dana andrews , disaster , drama , elizabeth taylor , fifties , peter finch , romance , suspense , warner archives

Written by James M. Tate / 8/16/2016 / No comments / anne francis , dana andrews , drama , drive-in , jazz score , jeffrey hunter , neo noir , nicolas coster , richard kiel , romance , sixties , strother martin , thriller , troy donahue , viveca lindfors , william conrad

Written by James M. Tate / 8/15/2016 / No comments / claude reins , courtroom drama , joey heatherton , nick adams , richard chamberlain , sixties

Written by James M. Tate / 8/14/2016 / No comments / dana andrews , elia kazan , fifties , film noir or melodrama , forties , fritz lang , lee j. cobb

Written by James M. Tate / 8/09/2016 / No comments / cold war , dana andrews , dick foran , fifties , film noir or melodrama , jacques tourneur , marilee earle , mel torme , politics , thriller

Written by James M. Tate / 8/08/2016 / No comments / barbara stanwyk , drama , fifties , james cagney , small town , teen

Written by James M. Tate / 8/06/2016 / No comments / charles bickford , dana andrews , film noir or melodrama , forties , henry fonda , joan crawford , otto preminger , wrong man

Written by James M. Tate / 8/04/2016 / No comments / cop , douglass dumbrille , jack younger , jazz score , larue farlow , maury dexter , merry anders , neo noir , robert dix , russ bender , sixties , willard parker

Written by James M. Tate / 8/03/2016 / No comments / dana andrews , dean stockwell , drama , jean peters , kids

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