1959 - THE SCARFACE MOB, pilot for The Untouchables TV series

Desi Arnez of I Love Lucy fame was also a television producer besides being a band leader and the husband of Lucille Ball.  Arnez bought the rights to Elliot Ness's book The Untouchables and decided to make a two part television show about Ness's attempts to put away mob boss Al Capone in the 1930's.  Arnez hired Robert Stack to play Ness and character actor Neville Brand to play Capone

For a TV show from the 1950's Arnez didn't scrimp on the production values, the film has a fairly decent noir look.  Arnez hired Phil Karlson to direct.  Karlson was good at staging action and violence on relatively low budgets since he had been brought up in the world of B movie filmmaking.   The end result was a tense and violent television film which was considered fairly tough stuff for the 1950's TV audience.

 

Arnez hired Robert Stack to play tough guy federal agent Elliott Ness.  Stack adapted a monotone delivery that made him seem like he was going to blow at any moment.  In real life Elliott Ness after busting up many of Capone's bootlegging operations finally got Capone sent to prison on tax evasion  instead of running booze.

Not to overpraise this film but it's an entertaining gangster story.  You can see where it probably was an influence on the entertaining Brian DePalma remake.  Kevin Costner's performance certainly seems influenced by Robert Stack.  It's also fun to see character actor Keenan Wynn in a film

The film was written by Paul Monash, the running time is 99 minutes.

1959 - THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M, another oddballish Mexican horror film.

Another odd ball of a horror film from Mexico with a plot that can only be described as schizophrenic.  Two doctors make a vow that it one of them dies before the other he will somehow contact the living doctor and tell them what it's like on the other side which of course will turn out to be a bad idea.  

Sounds simple enough plot wise, but this is a Mexican horror film and it just can't stick to a straight narrative, it has to throw in a crazy woman at an insane asylum, some sort of weird body possession, a long lost daughter who does a sexy dance at a nightclub and finally a ghost who shows up from time to time.

 

The result of all this stuff, well it beats me, but the film is kind of fun to watch.  The film has excellent black and white photography and you can hardly go wrong watching people dig up coffins in a creepy cemetery, a scared killer on the loose and enough fake fog flowing all over the sets clearly the result of an over worked fog machine.  

 

As I indicated before The Black Pit of Dr. M like the last Mexican horror film I watched, The Witch's Mirror has moments of genuine horror and creepiness mixed in with many ridiculous situations.

The film was written by Ramón Obón, the running time is 71 minutes.

1959 - OPERATION AMSTERDAM, is half a decent war movie.

 In 1940 as the Germans began their invasion of Holland,  British Intelligence sends three agents to Amsterdam to obtain all of the industrial diamonds located in the city to keep them out of the hands of the German military.  What we have here is yet another "based on a true story" film for better or worse.

This is a frustrating film.  The first half of the film spends time with the British agents as they attempt to persuade the diamond merchants in Amsterdam to turn their diamonds over to them.  There is la lot of talk and I mean a lot of talk which really drags the film down. 

Finally we get to about the halfway point in the film where the British with the aid of the Dutch underground break into a bank holding the diamonds in a fairly decent heist scene.  The action kicks in with a great shoot out between the Germans and the Dutch.  But you will have had  to sit through a lot of jabbering to get there.

Operation Amsterdam has a lot of on location work in Amsterdam which  gives it a documentary like feel.  The film was an early role for Peter Finch who is really about the only noticeable actor in the cast.  Unfortunately Operation Amsterdam is a missed opportunity to tell an interesting war story but the poor pacing in the first part of the film really hurts the film.

The film was written and directed by Michael McCarthy, the running time is 104 minutes.

1959 - NORTH BY NORTHWEST, on the big screen

Attended a revival of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, part of the Hitchcock at 125 celebration going on in our city.  North By Northwest is kind of a turning point in Hitchcock's career, in many ways  it's the summit of his talent as a storyteller.  His decline starts with his move to Universal studios from Paramount where for various reasons he seemed unable to capture the success of his Paramount films.  After this, he films Psycho and follows it up with the interesting but flawed The Birds.  However it's all downhill from this point.

Anyway here are some behind the scenes photos.

The film was written by Ernest Lehman, his only original film script.  Lehman was one of the prime movers of the film version of The Sound of Music which obviously made a bundle of money for him later in his career.

Hitchcock wasn't allowed to film much of the famous Mt Rushmore climax on location, so it was recreated at MGM studios. 

The crop duster scene was filmed in California not Illinois.  Film buffs have looked for the location for years but the area has been so built up with home construction since the early 1960's no one seems completely sure where it was filmed.

 

Another behind the scenes still from the Mt Rushmore climax.  Bernard Herrmann's score added a great deal to the excitement of this famous chase scene.

Contrary to popular belief Hitchcock's production team did film on location at Mt Rushmore before the Park Service banned him from the location.  No making fun of Mt Rushmore even for a Hitchcock film I guess.

 The last surviving member of the cast, Eva Marie Saint is 99 years old as of this date.

The running time on North by Northwest is 136 minutes but you would never know it the film really well paced.

1959 - OPERATION PETTICOAT, a World War II submarine comedy

Cary Grant's production company is behind this sort of kind of funny service comedy. Supposed comedy master Blake Edwards was hired to direct.   The then hot Tony Curtis was cast as one of Cary Grant's officers.  Operation Petticoat is set aboard a submarine called the Sea Tiger during World War II. 

After being damaged from a Japanese attack, Curtis plays that standard military character of the "scrounger" a guy who can lay his hands on parts legally or illegally that will get the Sea Tiger back into service.  After 30 minutes of this stealing the parts comedy stuff, the Sea Tiger finally goes to sea.  However on their first mission they end up rescuing a group of Navy nurses.  From this point on until the end of the film we get lots of mildly smutty sex jokes as the men of the Sea Tiger have to deal with buxom nurses squeezing their bosoms around the tight hallways of the submarine.  There are also lots of bra jokes as if sailors had never seen bras before.

Well the film was a big commercial hit when released but I would say it really hasn't stood the test of time. Blake Edwards has loaded the film up with his usual slapstick humor which doesn't really work all that well, most of the time it doesn't work at all.  The camera leering on the bottoms and chests of the nurses is kind of in poor taste. You just want to say I get it, breast jokes are sort of funny especially lots of them.

 

Cary Grant as usual brings his comedy timing and professionalism to the role of the captain.  Tony Curtis is the wheeler dealer lover boy and I guess he's alright.  Someone was smart enough to cast some decent character actors for the film.  Gene Evans, Arthur O'Connell, Virginia Gregg and Gavin McLeod are fun to watch.  The nurses are the usual bunch of Hollywood starlets as they like to say, Joan O'Brien, Madlyn Rhue, Dina Merrill and Marion Ross bring their shall we say "assets" to the film.

 

The film was written by a couple of comedy veterans, Stanley Shapiro  who specialized in early 60's sex comedies like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.  Shapiro shares a screen writing credit with Maurice Richlin who wrote silly sex comedies as well.  This film actually was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.  However Shapiro and Richlin won that year for another inane comedy the Doris Day, Rock Hudson movie Pillow Talk.  Interestingly enough Cary Grant was in one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films the same year as this piece of junk,  North By Northwest which won no Academy Awards.  Well that's showbiz I guess.

The film runs a whooping 124 minutes for what is essentially a very light weight comedy.

1959 - THE OUTLAWS IS COMING, the final Three Stooges feature film.

 After nearly 50 years of eye poking, head bashing and just the general abuse of Curley Joe and Larry by Moe, The Three Stooges finally retired.  Their last feature film was The Outlaws IS Coming.  The film is a semi funny spoof of western films, but the movie really can't measure up to their famous Columbia Studios two reel films that entertained kids in the late 50's and early 60's. 

A lot of the humor in this film is dependent on the viewers familiarity with television commercials that were airing on television at this time.  Frankly the boys now for the most part in their 60's weren't really able to perform lots of their famous slapstick routines.

However when you were looking for something on TV that was just plain funny, these were your guys. They would never be confused with Ernest Lubitsch, Charlie Chaplin or Max Linder but in a lot of their short films they were good.

This film was written by Elwood Ullman who worked on many of their comedies.  The running time is a painless 89 minutes.

1959 - THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE , aka Sampo

Another large scale mythological fantasy film from Aleksandr Ptushko.  This film complements my previous viewing of his large scale Russian epic Ilya Muromets.

The film was photographed in wide screen in Finland on some impressive wilderness locations.  The special effects are fairly decent for a 1959's film.

The story once again is a larger than life tale involving and evil witch capturing the sun which plunges the world into winter and darkness.

If you have a fondness for this type of epic film this and Ilya Muromets are worth a look

The screenplay is by Väinö Kaukonen Viktor Vitkovich and Grigori Yagdfeld.The film exists in many different versions, I watched the 91 minute edit.

1959 - THE HANGING TREE, a western late in the career of Gary Cooper

Produced by Gary Cooper's production company and directed by the very underrated  Delmar Daves, The Hanging Tree is one of those "adult" westerns that were popular in the late 1950's and early 60's.

 Veteran cowboy actor Gary Cooper is a frontier doctor with a mysterious past.  He sets up practice in a boom town where all the citizens appear to have gold fever.  The film is essentially a character study masquerading as a western.  The interactions between Cooper's doctor character, Cooper's servant and a Swiss immigrant played by European actress Marie Schell are the emotional center of the story.

The film also has an impressive supporting cast with Karl Malden as a crooked prospector and George C. Scott in his first appearance as a faith healer.  Ted McCord was the cinematographer, the film has excellent photography on magnificent locations in the state of Washington.

 

The film was written by Wendell Mayes and Halsted Welles, the running time is 107 minutes.

1959 - HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, classic French new wave film holds up very well.

This film was a big deal when it came out in 1959, as it was considered one of the best of the French New Wave films.  It was the director Alain Resnais first feature film and he demonstrated an impressive use of film technique.  

Hiroshima Mon Amour is carefully and elegantly made, this isn't some foreign film where Goddard and his cameraman Raoul Coutard are running around Paris shooting on the fly, the camera work, editing and staging are carefully and deliberately considered.

The story is about a French actress involved in a one night stand with a Japanese architect while making a film in Hiroshima. The time spent with the architect triggers memories of her own involvement with a German soldier during World War II.

 

Emmanuel Riva plays the actress and she has quite the striking presence whether interacting with her lover or just wandering the streets of Hiroshima at night. Riva was apparently a private person and didn't do a lot of films, focusing on a stage career instead.

A key film when one talks about "foreign art films."  The screenplay was written by Marguerite Duras and runs 90 minutes.

1959 - COMPULSION, based on a true story

This thinly disguised story of Leopold and Loeb is turned into a reasonably compelling film shot in widescreen black and white.  Leopold and Loeb were clearly a gay couple,  homosexuality in this film is made to seem like about as big a crime as the murder they commit.  

Leopold and Loeb got it into their heads that they were intellectually superior individuals.  To prove their superiority they decided to commit the perfect murder.  Of course in real life their perfect crime unraveled and they went on trial for murder.  They were defended by the famous defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Orson Welles plays Darrow, he was apparently a big pain in the ass on the set.  The director Richard Fleischer had to use every trick in the photography book to match the continuity during the trial scenes with Welles.  Welles apparently was extremely uncooperative while filming his scenes.

An interesting film is not really a great one.

103 minutes.

1959 - SLEEPING BEAUTY, on Blu Ray

Walt Disney went back to the well with another fairy tale story.  Disney had very good luck in the past adapting these types of stories.  This time The Disney studio spent lavishly on Sleeping Beauty, animating it in CinemaScope at a then record breaking budget of six million dollars.

Sleeping Beauty is one of Disney's most beautiful films.  Every scene looks incredible.  The design of the film is stunning with the visual qualities of the film always in the foreground.  Unfortunately this lush pictorial beauty tends to overwhelm the characters and more importantly the story.

The score was adapted from the Tchaikovsky ballet.  The film's director Clyde Genonimi is credited as the supervising director but really this type of animated project is the result of many artists and technicians.

The film runs a brisk 75 minutes. 

1959 - THE HORSE SOLDIERS, John Ford's Civil War drama

A big budget Civil War film.  John Ford was a noted Civil War history buff but for various reasons the film didn't really meet anyone's expectations.  The chief problem seems to be the script.  Although it is "based on a true story" for whatever that's worth. 

 

 The Horse Soldiers is about a Union raid into the deep South around 1863.  The inclusion of a love interest for John Wayne in the film and a very contrived conflict between Wayne's Union Colonel and William Holden's doctor is really hard to believe and adds nothing to the story.

Still it's an entertaining film.  Ford is able to muster some of his strength's in composition and the cinematographer William Clothier has given the film a beautiful golden look.  This is a professional piece of film making.  Let's face it they can't all be masterpieces from John Ford.  But he did know how to tell a story.  Most John Ford fans don't really care for this film, but it's good on it's own merits.

119 minutes,  John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin,.

1959 - SHADOWS - John Cassevettes first film

A film that is an acknowledged "classic" of the independent film movement.  This should strike fear into the hearts of any film lover.  Early independent film means, grainy black and white footage usually filmed in 16mm, poor editing and questionable acting from what is usually a nonprofessional cast.  Shadows has all of these things.

Shadows apparently existed in two versions.  The first was supposedly a meandering improvisation.  Cassevettes reworked this version and added scripted scenes and cut the running time down.  So Cassevettes's title card at the end of the film is somewhat misleading.

But this is a very remarkable piece of work.  Just the New York City atmosphere alone is worth viewing this film.  This film is positively drenched in the feel of late 50's New York.  The acting may be kind of rough but it certainly contributes to the authenticity of the film.

Shadows must have seemed like a real change of pace for critics and serious film goers when it was released.  1959 was the year of North by Northwest and Rio Bravo.  But is was also the year of commercial dreck like Pillow Talk, Operation Petticoat and The Shaggy Dog.

1959 - Ten Seconds to Hell, is subpar Aldrich

In probably a match made in Hell.   Robert Aldrich teamed up with Hammer Studios to make this film about a bomb disposal unit working in Berlin at the end of World War II.  Aldrich cast Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance and Martine Carol.  In a typically perverse Aldrich move, Jeff Chandler who usually played good guys is the bad guy and Jack Palance who usually played bad guys is the good guy.  Marine Carol was sort of a "oh la la" Marilyn Monroe sex symbol because in movies you always have to have a girl.

The plot involves a bomb disposal unit of ex German soldiers who one by one get blown to smithereens by unexploded British bombs.  The tension arises from figuring out who will survive this suicidal job.

The chief problem with Ten Seconds to Hell is that it is kind of boring.  The bomb disposal scenes should have had almost a Hitchcockian approach to ramping up the suspense but curiously these scenes are completely lacking in any kind of interest or tension.  Supposedly Hammer Studios was so disappointed in the finished film that they removed about 30 minutes from Aldrich's original cut.  Aldrich felt that this made the film incomprehensible but after viewing this film and in particular the scenes involving the disarming of the bombs I don't think adding 30 minutes to the running time would have helped this story.

Robert Aldrich was always a director who liked his films a little over the top.  In this case it would seem that in spite of Jack Palance's rather eccentric performance, the finished film was just to conventional for such a dramatic subject.

93 minutes

1959 - THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII,

Muscle man Steve Reeves, is a Roman soldier returning to his old hometown of Pompeii after duty in Palestine.  He runs into a lot of political intrigue with some evil Pompeiians who are framing the Christians for murder and looting sprees.  Reeves gets to the bottom of things and figures out who is framing the Christians.

However the Christians are rounded up and sent to the arena to get eaten by the lions.  Just when things couldn't get worse Mt. Vesuvius erupts which resolves the whole mess by destroying everything in sight.

What we have here is kind of a cut rate version of I Claudius with some destruction stuff thrown in for good measure.  The volcano stuff at the end of the film isn't too bad the rest of the film is only so so.  This film is basically for people who enjoy these cheesy Italian "sword and sandal" epics/

100 minutes.

1959 - THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, more of the same

Another monster is on the loose full of radioactivity in this very derivative science fiction film that steals from about every plot and situation from every other previous giant monster on the loose film up to this time.

The main films that this lack of monster inspiration seemed to borrow from are Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  The director/writer Eugene Lourie was also the director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms so he was essentially stealing from himself in this film.

Some of the special effects particularly the monster rampage in London were done by Willis O'Brien the special effects guy behind King Kong.  However the very cheapness of the film particularly the monster who never moves his mouth really kill any effective moments the stop motion animation might contribute to the film.

The film has as it's lead Gene Evans one of Sam Fuller's regulars.  Evans usually played dog face soldiers but here he's a clean shaven marine biologist it's all very odd.  Well I've seen worse films.

80 minutes

1959 - LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, a good western

Kirk Douglas is the sheriff looking for the men who killed his Indian wife.  Anthony Quinn is his former friend who's son is the one who killed Douglas's wife.  Quinn runs the town of Gun Hill like a western despot.  Douglas comes to Gun Hill to arrest Quinn's son and has to wait until the Last Train From Gun Hill can get him out of town.  

 The film has two larger than life personalities completely dominating the story.  Kirk Douglas who snarls throughout the film and Anthony Quinn who seems to be ready to blow with some kind of smoldering parental anger.  The two of are also competing to see who can be the bigger bad ass.

Produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by John Sturges.  This is a good looking production with lots of well directed action scenes.  A quality product all the way

94 minutes, written by James Poe.

1959 - TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN or SPACE INVASION OF LAPPLAND or HORROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN or INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE

This silly science fiction monster on the loose story is nice and short and actually kind of fun.

A middle aged scientist, his very hot niece and a horn dog geologist are called up to Lapland, Sweden of all places to investigate a UFO and apparently some sort of 20 ft high monster stomping around the area.  The usual space monster destruction occurs along with the hot niece running around screaming as she is chased by this lumbering monster.  You get the picture

What makes this film so fascinating is the setting, Lapland.  There is a lot of on location filming in Lapland of all places.  I can tell you this is not a place I would choose to live,  there is snow and lots of it.  It's even more amazing that some guy in a cut rate Chewbacca costume is out stomping around in this frozen wasteland destroying houses and tents (obviously built to a smaller scale) pretending to be a space monster.  The bottom line, some interesting scenery but it looks very cold out. 

The film has a directing credit by Virgil Vogel, but it's hard to believe this competent television editor/director and one time mentor to Steven Spielberg was involved in much of the film.  At several points during the film,  the boom mike is clearly visible which only adds to the fun.

81 minutes

1959 - THE INDIAN TOMB, part 2 of Fritz Lang's Indian adventure epic

The second part of Lang's Indian epic, picks up where part one left off with the lovers, exotic palace dancer Seetha and German architect Harold Berger attempting to escape Prince Chandra the ruler of Eschnapur.  As you can see from this one sentence plot description we are not exactly in the world of documentary realism here.  

As in part one The Tiger of Eschanpur, Lang is playing this extremely old fashioned adventure story absolutely straight.  Lang was working with better budgeted films than he had been given in quite a while.  The result was this two part film that deliberately courted the story lines and situations of the old fashioned adventure epic.

A major highlight of this film is the bizarre cobra dance with a nearly nude Debra Paget dancing in an underground Indian temple which features a gigantic statue of a woman with enormous breasts.  We are now in a strange fantasy film world which is about as fantastic as Lang's Nibelungen Saga.

Fritz Lang's Indian films are probably just to "out of it" and plain weird to appeal to a modern audience used to a Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson spectacle.  However these Indian films are interesting pieces of narrative by a major artist who probably knew more about the art of storytelling then those three could ever begin to understand. 

102 minutes. Screenplay by Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou and Werner Jörg Lüddecke.