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telegonus's Replies
Truly, EC. A movie to cherish, yet largely unrealistic at the climax, even as it's so exciting. The first time I saw Strangers On A Train, on the late movie, senior year in high school, I was wholly charmed, totally involved in its story. The shooting into the carousel was the icing on the cake, although I did enjoy the comical bit on the train, with the minister, in the movie's final scene.
Not for nothing was Alfred Hitchcock called the Master.
This is a great movie, and it's often not only compelling but fun and exciting to watch. For all that, the business of the policeman shooting into a crowd,--a crowd on a fast moving carousel--strikes me as wholly unrealistic and, needless to say, unprofessional. It must surely be written in the policeman's manuel, or whatever their book of rules is called, that when pursuing a dangerous criminal, even a suspected murderer, one ought never to fire a gun into a crowd, as happened in the movie; to which it should be noted "especially when, if the crowd is riding on a merry-go-round,--absolutely forbidden". This is common sense. There was no rational excuse for what the officer did. I don't think it was mentioned in the film that his career would be over, though maybe this wasn't necessary. Even if Bruno was a serial killer, had murdered sixteen people, and all the witnesses were on hand, with the police, ready to identify him, this is no good reason to shoot into a crowd of innocent people, including many children, on a carnival ride. It's sheer madness! There were surely other ways to shut down the carousel without the ensuing trauma that occurred in the film.
You're welcome, EC, and the feelings are mutual. We are, neither of us, so active on the post-Apocalyptic IMDB boards 'round and about on the Web. MovieChat's as good as any, although I have a mild preference for Filmboards, not because it's better managed or anything but due to its being busier, more classic film oriented.
Moviechat has a similar style, and much of the new and older stuff parallels the other, though this one feels more contemporary, has an "official" air to it that Filmboards doesn't have. That one's more "open season" feeling. This one's a tad like the old IMDB, not by a lot, but I think you'll agree. I think I've seen your name on other sites, notably v.2, which has a ton of old-timers from the IMDB using their real names.
I watch the Hitchcock series semi-regularly now, though they've dropped the half-hours in favor of the hour long, just to shake things up a bit. You likely know where to find it, so it's scarcely worth mentioning, but if need be, don't hesitate. I trust you're in good health.
Yes, and the title is something like Waxworks or The Waxworks. Fine cast, led by Oscar Homolka, with excellent support from Martin Kosleck and Antoinette Bower. While this is truly a Thriller, its story unfolds at a rather leisurely place (and yet menace lurks behind every door, and in every corner). Still, there are gruesome moments even early on; and the ending in a shocker. The most terrifying Thriller ep? No, not even close. Yet it has spooky charm to burn, and it's not a generic Thriller. There are small and large touches to it that make it rock and roll.
Don't let the minimalist production values fool you, or dampen your spirits. Waxworks is a winner, and it has much to offer a horror buff. It doesn't explain every damn thing that happens in the course of its running time. There's a chilling inexplicable quality to it that links it somewhat, thematically, to The Incredible Dr. Markesan, even as it tells a very different story, and deals with different themes. I believe that this waxworks entry is one of the most unsettling, if not most horrific entry in the entire Thriller series.
I doubt it. The guy didn't seem to care enough whether the younger man would live or die, escape from the prison or simply serve his time and get out. He said things that sounded good "in theory", but he was simply tormenting the younger men. All the Edd Byrnes character needed to do was play by the rules, do whatever the prison officials demanded of him, and get sprung. This sounds so prosaic, so unimaginative, yet sometimes it's best to go that route than try to beat the system.
Psycho inspires speculation in many of us. The discussions go off on all tangents sometimes, but some of us like that, maybe even love it. I've had as much fun, as good a time as any, on the IMDBPsycho boards, old and new, than anyplace else when discussing classic films. We've had some great posters heres, and lively discussions about all manner of things, mostly film-related, on these boards. For those who don't care for all the diversions, well, nobody's pointing a gun at your head and saying "go to the Psycho boards at once, read every post, even the tangential and seemingly irrelevant ones, and MAKE THEM RELEVANT you jackass". It's not there. Not anywhere on any Psycho boards I've visited and written on. Occasional complaints about OT stuff, but then, if you don't care for it, don't read stuff like that. It'll just raise your blood pressure, and we don't want that!
In doing that, it's almost like they were trying to "kill" it. TOL didn't stand a chance against Gleason. It was a marvelous show, and they should have treated it with more respect, although the changes in behind the scenes personnel, the creative people involved in it, caused a decline that likely alienated the show's most ardent viewers,--my take.
It was probably okay with Rod, although my sense is that it lacked his "social consciousness", with race, Holocaust and, more broadly, social and economic injustice not on the front burner, as they so often were on The Twilight Zone.
The Outer Limits was, in terms of the issues it dealt with, more purely cerebral, a Thinking Man's series, while the Zone, while it went there, was geared more toward the Common Man than the educated professional, or, where younger viewers, teens, for instance, were concerned, more "honors" student, Advanced Placement, than just plain average kids.
The only thing about the [i]Midnight[/i] episode that I like is that it feels like it was made for another series (it was), and that it doesn't have the usual Harry Lubin music cues (not in itself a virtue, just odd). Nor does it feature familiar players (though many [b]OSB[/b] eps didn't). None of these factors improve the quality of this pallid entry, however they do, or rather, on first viewing, did, keep me watching. I did miss John Newland's urbane presence and beautiful diction.
You may be right. I recall only the Johnny Cash opening from my childhood. Since then the musical openings seem to bounce about as to who the singer is, and lately it's been mostly Cash, second season thus far. The singer of the opening song matters to me (and I suspect most viewers) as of less importance than the quality of the episode it introduces. I like Frankie Laine, who owns Rawhide's opening, prefer Cash for The Rebel, a gloomier show than most; westerns, I mean. A wonderful, sensitive, well thought out TV series The Rebel was.
Excellent episode, and thanks for mentioning it. The fight at the end of the show was riveting. Ricardo Montalban, not one of my favorite actors, rose to the occasion, as actor as well as, in the episode itself, fighter, splendidly going at it with Marvin, who early on looked much bigger and stronger, and yet Montalban seemed to literally grow over time as he fought. Strong stuff back in the day, and even today, nothing to sneeze at.
Yup, EC, old Hollywood went for the homeliest faces and often strangest bodies ( I'm channeling Tod Browning's Freaks here). From the early talkies, and probably earlier still, there was the heavy set English actor Lionel Belmore, he of the cotton wool hair, richly on display in the first few Frankenstein films. Also odd looking, in the first (1931, I mean) Frankenstein film, Frederick Kerr, memorable by his fez and the rather large pipe he was smoking in his first scene).
I'm getting far afield from the TV series Thriller here, though they used some great faces (and/or makeups) on the show, notably Harry Townes, dreadfully aged, and looking like a rotting corpse; the ancient Ottola Nesmith, actually more formidable looking than Townes despite the age and gender differences; the slight, diffident Milton Parsons; and the splendid, robustiously hammy Jeanette Nolan, whether playing a witch or just looking like one.
Oscar Homolka was magnificently, charismatically homely in Waxworks, providing an interesting contrast with handsome, Tarazan-to-be Ron Ely and lovely Antoinette Bower. Diminutive Martin Kosleck gave this episode a kick in the pants. Reggie Nalder did same for Terror In Teakwood, with Guy Rolfe as the magisterially tall and dignified concert pianist. I didn't care much for this episode the first time around. Repeat viewings came to impress me, as the episode is visually striking.
Thanks, Greenbudgie. I suppose it doesn't matter THAT much whose voice they used for the elder Craven in The Raven (hey, a rhyme!). It sounded like Dierkes to me, or a channeling of his kind of voice. That was a spooky few moments in the film, and maybe the only ones that gave me a "startle" in the entire movie. Its "lightness" was obvious from the first scene. In this, director Corman played fair with his younger viewers, while in the previous year's Tales Of Terror, its mostly serious tone was dictated by the (to my ten year old's eyes) opening shot of the house on the cliff, which actually frightened me before any actors showed up. TV's Thriller had a few (mostly opening shots) like that.
I agree on the three stars of The Raven and their voices, EC, and I'd like to add the actor whose voice was used for Price's dead father (in the coffin) and who, as I remember (maybe wrongly) grabbed price by the neck and warned him to BEWARE in a fittingly sepulchral tone, and who sounds somewhat like the weird looking character actor, John Dierkes, whom you may remember from The Thing From Another World and the tall lean Ryker brother in Shane. He was at least as tall as Price, appeared to be afflicted by acromegaly, though he wasn't so scary plug-ugly looking as horror actor (and cult figure) Rondo Hatton.
It is.
I think that Tiomkin's score is a beautiful piece of work, especially if one listens to its "symphonic version", all of a piece. The quieter, more wistful moments are beautiful, actually enhance the louder, more strident parts of the score IMHO. As to what you called the cartoonish stuff, well, it's not like Dimitri was co-director of the movie.
Maybe the producer asked for "lighter" or more humorous moments, and that's what he got. Those moments lighten the movie's load, as it were. They may sound more than a bit "dated" by today's standards, but WTF. [b]The Guns Of Navarone[/b] is a great movie (of its kind), and the audience needed a few "breaks" now and then, from its overall seriousness, I mean, and they got a few.
As to casting Charlton Heston over Peck as Mallory, I don't think it would have worked. He wasn't yet a superstar when the film was made. His screen presence was strong, almost too monolithic for a picture of "many moods". Gregory Peck was rather a wooden actor, too, but he was a more known commodity when the film was in its planning stages. There were occasions when he was even a bit "funny", as when he chews out David Niven, which as I see it, actually enhances the scene. Peck wasn't always a wholly serious actor, while Heston generally was.
I love this movie, loved it the first time I saw it, went to see it again when it was first released at least three times. It's a "guy movie", and boys, prepubescent, especially, dug the fact that the presence of women in the movie was slight (no romance, to speak of, albeit an interesting vibe between the Quinn and Pappas characters). James Darren was a popular singer around the time the film was made. I guess he was there for the younger women and girls in the audience. He didn't take up much time.
One character who confused me was Stanley Baker's. I didn't know the actor then, being a young American boy, thus I was confused as to who "this Stanley Baker guy" was supposed to be in the movie. For a log while my best guess was Anthony Quayle, whom I liked as an actor. Wrong. When I realized who Baker actually was it was like a WTF moment for me, as in "why does this guy even get a credit?". He seemed like such a peripheral character (to this at the time nine year old kid). I scarcely noticed him at all. (Spoiler ahead: when he was killed at the end that seemed to be his purpose, his job, as it were, in the film: the good guy who died. Okay, Darren bought it, too, but I guess they had to show that the commando guys were human, after all, so the ones one cared less about were "sacrificed"). Anthony Quayle's character didn't get a lot of time for character development, though his presence was essential early on (he was the "lucky" guy after all).
But the film's flaws, such as they were, struck me as minor quibbles I had with [i]Navarone[/i]. They didn't waste much time, nor did they slow the movie down. A minute or two more or less for Darren or Baker wouldn't have greatly harmed or improved the quality of this action-adventure picture, which to my way of thinking was close to perfect as it was.
Good way to put it, Adam6. They pulled out all the stops as the hour longs progressed. Unlike the hour long half-season of [b]The Twilight Zone[/b], the Hitchcock people knew they had to find a groove. It wouldn't be a good idea to just take a half-hour idea and make an hour from it with padding. The hour long Hitch series grew into itself. Even the first episode, with Gig Young as a compulsive gambler, worked well as drama if not much suspense, and I like it. The casting of Robert Redford as Gig's younger brother worked nicely, and these two skilled players worked well together.
The gay guy could have done more. I know he wasn't the type, but most of us aren't. If he could have stood up with someone else, [i]for[/i] someone else, that would make two. One more, and the thugs would be outnumbered. They needed a leader in that car, and there wasn't one.
[b]The Incident[/b] is a great film, and it holds up to to repeat viewing. I agree with those posters who have questioned whether in real world terms a bunch of New Yorkers riding in a late night NewYork train would have been so passive as the the ones in this film. One thing worth mentioning is the bad luck of the demographics of the particular group of people presented in this film. It was Vietnam era, and all they would have needed here would be a tough Vietnam veteran who was capable of action who [i]wasn't[/i] (effin') wounded and things would have played out very very differently quite early on, and likely other capable males would have been emboldened and taken as well. It takes just one to get the ball rollin'.