The desert imagery was definetly an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, where The Bride goes out to Bud’s trailer and where she walks through the desert, even the music of that sequence seems influenced by Zabriskie Point. Here’s the Bootleg Trailer I cut with Quentin for Kill Bill , the opening music is the music I’m talking about.

Another thing, ZP ends with a big explosion, a similar ending , actually a very similar ending occurs in Robert Downey Sr.s GREASERS PALACE, a huge explosion and a very long shot of a sunset. In Zabriskie, Antonioni is playing with persistence of vision, the shot of the sunset is on the screen unchanging for a long time, then it suddenly cuts to black, this creates an afterimage on your retina, very cool, very painterly, kind of a Rothko type trick. Super Cool. Check it out for yourself. It’s a comment on how the message is getting through to us, Persistence of Vision is how movie work, or rather why they work.

Anyway I’m going to drive out to Zabriskie Point one of these days and check it out for myself.

Anthony Perkins is excellent too, so is Moses Gunn and a super skinny nerdy Jeff Goldblum. The way Geraldine plays all these people is amazing, it’s like she’s a ghost that can just walk into their lives, they don’t see her unless she wants them to. She actually is a kind of ghost from Tony Perkin’s past, and the way she causes Moses Gunn to fall for her is wonderful, a tough manager of an L.A. flophouse, he’s heard it all and seen it all. Nobody can break through his hard exterior except her, Emily. She has the guy loaning her money and doing chores for her in no time flat. And she is beautiful with her hair tied up in a classic style, transformed by buying a nice dress at a classy shop. this movie is kind of a paen to dedication, single minded attacking a problem, not letting anything stop you, and what a person can accomplish.

Another interesting highlight is the score, which consists of songs by the great Alberta Hunter, she was recently (when this film was made) re-discovered and made some amazing music in her later days. Another factor you’d never see in a movie today.And the movie was produced by the late great Robert Altman, a real American maverick. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him once at an early screening of The Player. I had an idea for a cut so I told Altman’s publicist, and lo and behold he liked it and implemented it. It’s fitting that he produced this film,  Alan Rudolph worked with Altman on some of his films as Assistant Director, Nahville, California Split, and The Long Goodbye.

Alan Rudolph- Super Genius
This film falls into one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite genres, female revenge movies. It is one of the most powerful types of film story out there, so compelling by it’s essence.  To me this film is the true extension of Film Noir, like Altman’s Long Goodbye, PostModern Film Noir. Future filmmakers, be inspired by this film! It shows you what a great story, excellent acting, and great storytelling technique can do, make an entertaining, thought provoking film, without special effects or zombies. Check this out.

The Picture That Saved Catherine’s Life

Bob Cummings is the perfect American everyman, sort of innocent, shocked by what he saw in WWII, messed up but a good egg. He brings to mind a comment Quentin Tarantino made to me about Joseph Cotten, “I love Joseph Cotten, he’s so weak.” Cummings is kind of in that category, but Cotten always had that down at his heels ex-Southern gentleman thing going on, Cummings is just from small town nowheresville.

This film is a kind of confluence of many strange and wonderful things. Based on a book by noir maestro Cornell Woolrich called The Black Path Of Fear, (I ordered a copy) it’s film noir pedigree could not be higher, I believe Woolrich had more novels made into film noirs than anyone else,( I include Val Lewtons The Leopard Man, and Truffaut’s Bride wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid).

The Producer Seymour Nebenzal produced Lang’s M, which Lorre starred in, the director , Arthur Ripley,was an old hand that got started in the silent days and would go on to direct Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road and found the UCLA film school. Michele Morgan, the blond femme fatale, is still alive and living in France. A friend of mine (Duke Haney)reminded me that she was having her home built while this movie was being made,  A kind of French Chalet that would go down in infamy some years later, 10050 Cielo Drive, scene of the grisly Manson murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voychek Frykowski, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent.

Michele Morgan at her Cielo Drive home

The camerman was the amazing Franz Planer, a Vienese transplant who emigrated to escape the Nazis. Planer also shot the beautiful, atmospheric noir Criss Cross for Robert Siodmak. His photography is nothing short of amazing. There is a wonderful sequence of a black limousine racing a locomotive at night , it’s a tour de force of miniatures, rear projection, great low angle shots of Lorre driving, shot through the steering wheel.

The film is in the public domain now, you can watch it on Youtube, but I just learned it was restored by UCLA and screened recently, unfortunately I missed it. Hopefully they will screen it again soon or at a noir festival.

A LOOK Magazine story about a teenaged girl that started a Youth Club was the impetus for this project but once Lewton got involved he transformed it from a puff piece about wholesome Timmy and Jennie playing skittles in the church basement to a searing indictment of child neglect, abuse, and exploitation. This didn’t sit well with the brass at RKO, the State Department or even LOOK magazine so drastic re-editing was called for and Lewton disgusted at the end result asked that his name be taken off the project.  What remains holds clues to what might have been, Lawrence Tierney’s performance as a corrupter of youth, garage owner. Fencing stolen tires, in big demand due to War rationing. Tierney claimed in an interview that his character sold drugs to kids as well in the original version.

Dickie Moore in Out Of The Past
Dickie Moore, one time Little Rascal and the deaf mute sidekick to Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past appears and is often complaining about the treatment he gets from his father, in Lewton’s cut little Dickie offs his abusing psycho padre with a rifle.

Dickie with chicks in Youth Runs Wild
The ending really comes from out of nowhere, hacked on by a studio hatchet man, a bizarre montage about the teenaged girl that started her Youth Club, trying to shuck and grin the film back to pure propaganda niceness.  A few other noteworthy items, John Fante is credited as screenwriter, the author of the wonderous Ask The Dust, one of Bukowski’s (and mine) favorite L.A. novels. Fante knew his way around abusive, alcoholic parents, check out some of his other novels.  YRW was directed by Mark Robson, Lewton’s pet director, elevated from the editing room to the director’s chair by Lewton on The Seventh Victim after cutting several films for Lewton including Cat P_eople, The Leopard Man, and the incomparable I walked With A Zombie. Robson later repaid Lewton for his help by cutting him out of an independent production company deal and having his agent deliver the bad news.  Vanessa Brown plays an overworked, abused teenager lured into prostitution by an older wiser babe and in one scene she sports a flowery coif that I am pretty sure inspired Beth Short, the Black Dahlia to imitate.

Vanessa Brown with RKO stalwart Kent Smith

Life Imitates Art

 Short probably related to the character Brown played. Brunette, sexy beyond her young years, struggling to make ends meet, hustling drinks in Hollywood Wartime nightclubs. Fascinating stuff. But anyway you too can watch via Youtube and judge for yourself. Too bad no copy of Lewton’s original cut remains. The trims and outs were probably burned to reclaim the 20 cents worth of silver in the emulsion, just like the missing parts of Orson Wells Magnificent Ambersons.

WatchYouth Runs Wild  for yourself  on Youtube!

What a Cool Double Bill!

This is a supercool mashup of a movie. First it’s kind of an airplane drama, a group of characters on a doomed flight, a genre I like. Then it switches gears to an Alien UFO scifi story,including Alien Blob creature that speaks! Then it morphs into a Vampire/Zombie situation.

This culminates in a depressing end of the world Nihilist tale. There’s something unique about films that show the end of life on Earth, like 5, On The Beach, The World, The Flesh and the Devil, The Noah, even Target Earth and in a way the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man. A depressing spin on the mortality of humanity, something they don’t deal with in films anymore. Anyway Goke is pretty out there, the model plane work was inspirational to Quentin Tarantino and he referenced it in Kill Bill, a plane flying against a red sky. We even had some cockpit scenes just like Goke but they got cut out of the film.

Check this one out, you can see it on Hulu Plus, and Criterion has released it as part of a Japanese Horror Box Set.

A lot of fun and definitely different, go check it out. I edited it. Opens today!

Murder by Angel’s Flight!

But the film I’m writing about is not one of those.The Indestructible Man was a staple of WPIX’s Chiller Theater back in the 60’s. It is probably the film that made me fall in love with Los Angeles and want to move there. It features some of the coolest LA locations, Angel’s Flight, streets of downtown LA, the Bradbury building, where a murder is committed. Just a plethora of wonderful settings for this low budget Horrorfest. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays the Butcher, a career criminal who is executed then revived by a Mad Scientist and wants revenge. I mean you couldn’t ask for a better plot to please a 10 year old. Check this one out, it’s delicious even if it’s bad for you like hot dogs and cotton candy.

His first film score was Citizen Kane, his last was Taxi Driver, he died right after the Christmas Eve scoring session. The Taxi Driver score is one of the all time greats and it seemed Herrmann was heading into new uncharted waters with this score, if he had lived who knows what he would have come up with. The use of the harp and snare drum is so cool. I wonder if the snare was influenced by Gene Palma’s presence in the film, he is the Drummer Man, a fixture on midtown streets back in the 70’s, he’d call out the name of a jazz drummer “Louis Belson” and hit a representative lick.”Buddy Rich”, “Gene Krupa” one day his snare drum was stolen, he just played on a mailbox. NYC was full of characters back then.

But here listen to Herrmann’s theme from VERTIGO.

And here is the theme fromTAXI DRIVER.

Mario and Lucio Fulci
Here is a great documentary about the great Mario Bava. Parts are in Italian with no subtitles but a lot of it is in English(with Italian subtitles) but I really enjoyed it!  Plus they used super cool Italian film music from classic scores of the 60’s and 70’s.It’s wonderful, check it out below.

Here via Youtube you can watch a movie that scared me to bits as a young impressionable child, Mario Bava’s CALTIKI Il MOSTRO IMMORTALE. Bava took this project over from Riccardo Freda and did an excellent job. There is plenty of his ingenious in camera effect work to check out. And the use of a cows stomach as monster influenced many filmmakers, like David Lynch in ERASERHEAD. Check it out.

I have not seen enough of his films and this one inspires me to see more, how about a Major Retrospective of his work! Maybe they can get one of his other masterpieces, his daughter Isabella to emcee it. And this film is available on Netflix streaming.

The Great Cutter! George Tomasini!
He worked in many genres and they all came out great, his fantasy work with George Pal, The Time Machine, The Seven Faces Of Dr. Lao, Houdini. All great. I was watching Cape Fear with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, end credits roll, edited by George Tomasini. Plus he edited a major share of Hitchcock’s Hollywood output. Everything from Rear Window to The Birds, including Psycho with it’s famous shower scene. Anyway I will one day soon write a piece just about George. So when I checked out Mr. Tomasini’s IMDB page I saw a film listed I had not seen, The Turning Point. I thought, ” I’ll have to check that out one of these days.” Then I was cruising around the internet and ran into a blog about Bunker Hill, On Bunker Hill, this site features great images of the old neighborhood that stood just north of downtown before it was demolished. A real dreamscape used as backgrounds by many film noir masters. I then found a link to Angel’s Flight Goes To The Movies, and there was A Turning Point! Then to top it off it’s on Netflix streaming! So I checked it out. Directed by super talented William Dieterle, the man behind such classics as The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Portrait of Jennie, this is a really well written story, excellently paced by Tomasini, it has some incredible scenes, including one of the best assassinations ever filmed. A crooked cop trying to do right is set up for a hit, and the shooter is then shot by two truck driving killers(one of whom is the Professor from Gilligan’s Island). There’s a lot of great location photography all over Bunker Hill.

And a climactic scene at what I think is the old Olympic auditorium, a boxing match featuring an appearance by the second most decorated veteran of WWII, Neville Brand.

This was two years after D.O.A. where Brand tortured Edmond O’Brien, Edmond is sort of the star of The Turning Point but really it’s William Holden. Check this gem out, great writing, directing and editing and all on Netflix streaming!

Maestro Of Psychic Cinema! William Dieterle

This is a film I’ve heard about for many years and now finally it can be seen, thanks to Netflix streaming. Written by the great Terrence Malick a couple years before he directed his masterpiece Badlands, Deadhead Miles is a paean to the open road, a picaresque tale of two and eventually one traveler. That one traveler is played by Alan Arkin, a terrific performance and one of the weirdest Southern accents ever. Arkin is the driver of the big rig of destiny. Beautiful cinematography, 35mm, rich color,awe inspiring landscapes, 1971 locations make this movie a kind of low ball visual feast. And a cool country music score, by Tom T. Hall. A great supporting cast, including some real gems.

But the reason I knew about this movie is that a friend of mine worked on it. Bud Smith, great editor of such films as The Exorcist, Putney Swope, Cat People, Zoot Suit, Sorcerer, Personal Best and many other films, told me about his time on Deadhead Miles. Bud was hired to edit the film, he stayed in Los Angeles while the crew shot on location and sent the film back. Bud cut the film as it came in. At the end of the shoot the director took a few weeks off to recuperate from the rigors of a road movie. When he came into the editing room Bud was ready with his first cut of the movie. They screened it. The director said,” Can you take that all apart and put it back in dailies?” Bud said, ” You mean there’s nothing in there that you like?” ” Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” “Well, I guess you got the wrong guy to work on your film.” And with that Bud left. Tony Bill , the producer, wisely duped Bud’s cut before having it disassembled and after a little while Mr. Bill fired the director. The new editor used Bud’s original cut for a lot of the film which then languished in obscurity until now. So check it out, a unique film.

Mike Kaplan, flanked by Two Giants Of Film, Abraham Polonsky on the left, Mike Hodges on the right
Mike Kaplan , a very cool film executive, filmmaker and all around maven reminisces about his days working with Stanley Kubrick : HERE

I am fortunate in having met Mr. Kaplan a few years ago through a mutual friend, Robert Downey Sr. Mike took Bob and me to a screening of Robert Altman’s excellent film The Player. Altman was there and was very gracious, Mike was working with him on the marketing of The Player. Mike also was instrumental in getting the wonderful Croupier released here in the US, an excellent film by the supercool Mike Hodges. It launched the career of Clive Owen. So check out Mike’s Tales of Kubrick, they’re great stories, insights into one of the 20th Century’s great Film Artists.