1965 - A PATCH OF BLUE, a dated interracial love story.

A young blind girl sitting in the park is befriended by a black man who helps her deal with her hellish home life and teaches her independence.  Their relationship begins to develop and grow.

This film is well made and well acted.  The racial aspects of the love story are obviously dated for today  but it was the mid 1960's after all.  The acting by the two leads is at a high level.  Sidney Poitier gives his usual excellent performance.  The blind girl played by Elizabeth Hartman in her first film is very sensitive and vulnerable.

The director was Guy Green who in a previous career in film was a noted cinematographer who had worked with Michael Powell and most notably David Lean.  Green was responsible for photographing some of Lean's greatest 1940's films such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and In Which We Serve.  Green moved over to direction in the 1950's and relocated to Hollywood in the 1960's.  A Patch of Blue was a very personal project for Green, he controlled the story rights and wrote the screenplay.

 

Elizabeth Hartman perfectly captured the isolation and vulnerably of the blind girl.  Hartman was a talented performer but had a troubled personal life where she struggled with depression and ultimately committed suicide.  

 Sidney Poitier was a black actor in Hollywood who had been working since the 1950's.  He was considered a "safe" performer for white audiences.  This was a role he understandably got very tired of playing and who could blame him.   He certainly didn't sign up to play a token black character throughout his profession.  Later in his career Poitier moved into film direction with some success.

There's nothing particularly wrong or bad with this film but the story is very old fashioned.  If you can accept that it's a good drama.

The running time is 105 minutes. 

1965 - NONE BUT THE BRAVE, an anti-war film from Frank Sinatra!

This film has the you asked for it team of singer turned director Frank Sinatra and Japanese special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya one of the creators of Godzilla.

During World War II, an airplane loaded with marines crashes on a Pacific island which just happens to have a camp full of Japanese soldiers.  At first the two sides shoot it out with each other.  Gradually they arrive at a truce and learn to trust each other in order to survive on the island.  It all ends tragically in yet another blow for international brotherhood.

Obviously a personal project for Frank Sinatra since his company produced the film and he directed for the only time in his career.  The film is really a victim of the screenplay which has some simple minded ideas about war, peace and coexistence.  The film was shot in Hawaii so it does have some nice scenery. Tsuburaya obviously created the special effects for the big hurricane scene.

   

The cast has Sinatra top billed as an alcoholic medic although in reality he has a supporting role.  Big Clint Walker is the captain in charge of the marines. Walker is so tall he hovers over the Japanese actors and frankly the American actors like the giant in Jack and the Bean Stock.  Singer Tommy Sands was Sinatra's son in law so he got the part of a hardnosed Marine Lieutenant.  Apparently someone maybe director Sinatra told Sands to scream his dialog out every time he opens his mouth.  His performance is ludicrous.  I recognized some of the Japanese actors from Tora Tora Tora, The Seven Samurai and that Toho film classic Rodan. They really don't make much of an impression.

 None But The Brave is what I would call your typical anti-war film.  Everyone blabs on and on about the futility of war until they pull out their guns and start shooting at each other.  To quote a film critic, "peace is peachy but fighting is more exciting."  Needless to say this film was clobbered by the critics at the time of release.

Written by John Twist and Katuya Susaki, the running time is 105 minutes.

1965 - THE WAR LORD, attempt at an intimate epic

In the good old medieval days, a Norman Knight is sent to Normandy to rule over a Druid village.  While there he avails himself of a local custom by taking part in the right as Warlord to sleep with a newlywed wife before her honeymoon. Needless to say all hell breaks out as the locals storm the knight's castle to get her back.

This is a Universal studios film all the way.  Charlton Heston plays the knight but the rest of the cast is made up of contract players from their casting department.  Richard Boone is Heston’s second in command playing Richard Boone as usual.  Guy Stockwell was in about every Universal TV movie you could watch around this time.  Probably the biggest casting problem with this film is the female lead played by yet another Universal contract player, model/actress Rosemary Forsyth.  She is so bland and uninteresting it's hard to believe she could be a woman who fills men's hearts with "lust" much less "like" as they say.

The director was Franklin J. Schaffner who is five years from his big critical and commercial hit Patton.   Russell Metty was the cinematographer who had previously worked for Orson Welles on Touch of Evil.  The War Lord was filmed on the back lot which probably gave the studio executives a lot of say on the picture.  All said, it's an interesting if overlong film. 

 

The running time is 123, the writers were John Collier and Millard Kaufman.

1965 - THE SKULL, well made but low budget horror film

From Amicus Studios a film company that managed to make even lower budget horror films than Hammer Studios, comes one of their few films that isn't a compendium of short stories rolled together into one feature.   The Skull is a fairly decent horror film made on a tight budget but the production team was a group of British filmmakers who did a good job making something out of next to nothing.

The Skull starts out with a phrenologist in the 1800's studying the heads of criminals to determine if one can identify a good or evil person.  The phrenologist decides to dig up the grave and take the skull of the Marquis de Sade (everybody's favorite sexual sadist) to examine it. Big mistake as it turns out The Skull is possessed and anyone who owns it turns into a mad killer.  Jump forward to present day England and The Skull is now owned by Peter Cushing who wants to add it to his collection of spooky stuff, another big mistake. Well you can guess where this story is going.

 

Amicus studios may have been a real cheapskate place but they did hire a decent cast.  Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark and Nigel Green.  The director is the very good cinematographer Freddie Francis who photographed a number of classic British films.  Francis had wanted to become a film director but the only projects he was attached to were horror films.  Francis ended up returning to cinematography where he worked for directors like David Lynch and Martin Scorcese which wasn't a bad way to wrap up his career.

 

There's nothing particularly terrible about this film.  It's well photographed and the actors all do their jobs, it's just nothing special.  Freddie Francis probably did about as competent a job as he could considering the budget and the story but really any reasonably decent director could have made this film.

The film was written by Milton Subotsky from a story by mister Psycho himself Robert Bloch, the running time is 83 minutes,

1965 - THE SOUND OF MUSIC, on the big screen

Revisited The Sound of Music at a revival theater on a fairly big screen, a few thoughts.

The film received bad reviews when it was released in 1965, apparently the combination of singing nuns and Nazis was just a little much for the critics to endure for a musical.  The film is incredibly saccharine and at times difficult to stomach.  Julie Andrew's character of Maria frequently grates on the nerves with her goody two shoes personality.  However I doubt any other actress could have played this part.  Christopher Plummer's sly performance as Captain Von Trapp does a lot to take the sting out of all the sentimentality and corniness of the film.

The film was produced and directed by Robert Wise and a production team that was basically the same group that had worked on West Side Story with him.  If anyone deserves credit for the success of this film, it's probably Wise who used just about cinematic trick in the book to put this film over.  Cinematography, editing and the on location filming all contributed to the success of the flm.

 

The screenplay was by a real pro Ernest Lehman,  Lehman had written North By Northwest for Hitchcock and the screenplay for the original version of West Side Story.  Lehman apparently performed some real surgery on the film's book taking out a lot of the real hackneyed stuff.

 

The Sound of Music saved 20th Century Fox Studios after the financial disaster of  Cleopatra.  However Daryl F. Zanuck got it in his head that family musicals were the future of the film business. He went on to greenlight, Hello Dolly, Dr. Doolittle and in particular Star the Julie Andrews musical disaster.  These musicals financially crashed and burned the studio yet again.

The running time is 174 minutes.

1965 - THE GREAT RACE, should have been called "The Barely Okay Race."

The director Blake Edwards had been on a roll with his successful Pink Panther films.  Edwards was considered one of the masters of screen comedy particularly when it came to slapstick humor.  Warner Brothers studios gave him a lot of money to film a tribute to the kind of physical comedy he was supposed to be an expert at.  The result was a critical and commercial flop.

Tony Curtis is "The Great Leslie," a virtuous hero always dressed in white.  His opponent is Jack Lemmon  the evil "Professor Fate," Leslie's mortal enemy.  Natalie Wood is "Maggie DuBois," a reporter and suffragette.  The film is set in the early 20th century, with Leslie and Professor Fate challenging each other to a round the world car race in early automobiles.  This setup allows Blake Edwards to load the film up with lots of gags that he probably borrowed from silent comedies.

However the film is just not that funny.  The viewer sits through one lame comedic bit after another.  The old time comics like Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd knew how to set up and pace a joke.  Edwards knows how to reuse a lot of their old situations but doesn't seem to be able to get the timing right to delivery the laughs.  This is particularly evident during an extended pie fight scene which should be hilarious but for the most part just lays there like a dying fish.

Another big issue with the film is Jack Lemmon.  Lemmon is supposed to be in the great tradition of the evil mustache twirling villain, sort of like Snidley Whiplash from the old Dudley Do Right cartoons.  But the best Lemmon can do is shout and role his eyes without actually being funny.  It's hard to believe that Lemmon was considered a gifted comedian at one time.

 

The film is supposed to be about a race but with an hour left to go in an already long film, Edwards decides to borrow the plot of The Prisoner of Zenda.  The race is completely forgotten about as the viewer watches scenes rehashed that were staged a whole lot better in the original Prisoner of Zenda film.  

To sum it up the film is almost a complete failure and kind of a mess.  To bad since this is a large scale and good looking production.  The actors with the exception of Jack Lemmon are good, the on-location photography across Europe must have been expensive, but the film's biggest issue the unfunny script finishes off the whatever fun there is to be had in watching this expensive disappointment.

 

The film was written by Arthur A. Ross with Blake Edwards taking a story credit.  For a comedy the film runs 160 minutes.

1965 - SHE , a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake

This is amazingly the seventh version of the H Rider Haggard novel.  In this version "She who must be obeyed, " is an immortal (2000 year old) queen ruling over a lost civilization in "darkest Africa."  She, named Ayesha has been patiently waiting for her reincarnated lover to return so she can take up where she left off with him.  Basically, he cheated on her a couple of thousand years ago with another woman so Ayesha stabbed him and is now waiting for his reincarnated self to return to her.

   Into this mess comes Peter Cushing playing a professor with a background in Middle Eastern legends and his friend Leo Vincey, played by pretty boy John Richardson, who surprise, surprise just happens to be the spitting image of Ayesha's dead lover.

Since this is a Hammer film, besides Cushing you can count on Christopher Lee and Andre Morell showing up.  Stunning blonde Swiss actor Ursula Andress wearing a ridiculous head piece,  plays Ayesha and a Mexican actress Rosenda Monteros is one of the handmaidens of Ayesha who falls in love with Leo Vincey, insuring  all hell will break loose again.

 

MGM financed this production so the film looks a little grander than usual for a Hammer film.  I would call this film kind of comfort food, No great shakes of a film but entertaining in it's own silly way.

 

The film was written by David T. Chantler and runs 106 minutes.  The box office was good which of course prompted a sequel called The Vengeance of She, which featured Richardson and another good looking blonde, Olinka Bérová played the now reincarnated Ayesha.

1965 - BEACH BLANKET BINGO, ok here we go.

 The fifth film in the AIP beach party series.

Linda Evans way before her Dynasty days is pop singer "Sugar Kane," who Harvey Lembeck's motorcycle hood "Eric Von Zipper" has a big crush on.  He hires bad guy Timothy Carey playing a pool hustler character named "South Dakota Slim," to kidnap her.

Frankie and Annette are back playing surfing lovebirds "Frankie and Dee Dee."

Don Rickles and Paul Lynde are on hand basically to insult everyone.

Marta Kristen is "Lorelei" the mermaid.

Singer Donna Loren plays herself performing a not bad song "It Only Hurts When I Cry." She was actually a teenager compared to everyone else in the cast.

Finally Buster Keaton and Bobbi Shaw are in this film for some reason.

Written by Leo Townsend and the director William Asher.  The running time is 98 minutes.

1965 - CRACK IN THE WORLD, good 1960's science fiction

 Scientists in Africa are drilling a hole in the Earth's core in order to release the magma which they will use to tap into an unlimited source of energy.  At one point they hit a barrier resistant to drilling so they decide to fire a nuclear missile into the hole in order to break through, bad idea as it turns out.

 This is a very good piece of what I would call mid 60's science fiction.  Obviously the effects are dated but the film still manages to whip up a decent amount of interesting visual ideas, i.e. "the crack in the world."

 

The characters in this film actually have a little character development for a change.  The older scientist played by Dana Andrews, in charge of the project is married to the former girlfriend of his chief geologist played by Kieron Moore.  Janette Scott is the former girlfriend who manages to get a lot of her clothes torn off by the end of the film, the cheesecake factor as it were.

Andrew Marton was a 2nd unit director a man usually responsible for the large scale action and battle scenes found in many movies.  Here Marton is calling the shots for the entire film.  Eugene Lorie was in charge of the production design and special effects.

The film runs 90 minutes and was written by Jon Manchip White and Julian Zimet and doesn't insult your intelligence.

1965 - MASQUERADE - entertaining comedy thriller

Entertaining comedy thriller from Basil Dearden.  Cliff Robertson and Jack Hawkins are pressed into service by the British Government to save a young Arab prince from being assassinated.  It seems the British need the oil rights to the prince's country to keep their own economy running.  

Lots of crosses and double crosses, some decent action, location filming in Spain.  This is an entertaining film that knows not to take itself very seriously.  The film also features the one of the stars of Danger: Diabolik,  Marisia Mell who is very easy on the eyes.

Since Cliff Robertson was hired on as one of the leads, writer William Goldman was called in to rework his dialog at Robinson's insistence. Probably Goldman had a lot to do with the comedic bits in the film.

Written by William Goldman and producer Michael Relph, the running time is 102 minutes.

1965 - HELP, the 2nd Beatles film.

 For the 2nd Beatles film the director Richard Lester abandoned any idea of a plot and instead went for a series of comic vignettes.  What story there is involves a Eastern cult chasing Ringo around for a sacrificial ring.  At this point in his career Lester was at his peak when it came to madcap comedy.  To cover the very thin premise of the film Lester throws in about every comic idea that he can think of. After a while the film got a little exhausting,  I wanted to finally say "wrap it up." 

The Beatles are portrayed as a very nice bunch of guys not adverse to having a few beers at a London pub.  They are actually extremely likable and have a nice screen presence.  Lester was smart enough to surround them with some very funny performers, Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Roy Kinnear (who was in about every Lester film), and Victor Spinetti.  This helps the film a whole lot.

 

Probably the chief selling point of the film are the songs which the Beatles wrote for the film, amazingly they are all classic Beatles songs.  The presentation of the songs uses a lot of jump cutting and wild staging something that was almost a forerunner of the modern music video.

 

The film was written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood. It runs 92 minutes

1965 - THE HEROES OF TELEMARK, Anthony Mann's last completed film

No wimp actors allowed in Anthony Mann's last completed film before he died. Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris are clearing freezing their butts off on location in Norway during the filming of this story during the winter months.

The film is based on a true story of Norwegian saboteurs blowing up a "heavy water" factory which the Nazi's were using to develop the atomic bomb during World War 2.  I would say based on is to put it mildly somewhat of a long stretch.  The screenplay wants to incorporate a love story, a spy story and finally a war film.

In spite of the film's shortcomings, Anthony Mann still stages the action scenes with his usual skill.  Shooting on location really brings an almost documentary like reality to the film.  Frankly it looks cold and very foreboding in Norway during the winter.

An interesting fact, Kirk Douglas was the producer of Spartacus and fired Anthony Mann and replaced him with Stanley Kubrick while filming that epic.  Douglas apparently felt guilty about the whole affair and years later tried to pay Mann back by starring in this film.

 

The film was written by Ben Barzman and Ivan Moffat the running time is 130 minutes.

1965 - MORITURI, its got Brando

 It's World War II.  Marlon Brando is a German forced by British Intelligence to help the Allies capture a German ship full of rubber.  Yul Brynner is the anti-Nazi captain of the ship.  Trevor Howard in a small role is Brando's superior.  The film is basically a battle of wits between Brando and the Nazis on board the ship.

Frankly Brando is the whole show here.  He sneaks around like a cat burglar and plots to take over the ship.  Brynner was always an interesting performer but he's really no match for Brando in the acting department.

The film has some very good black and white photography from cinematographer Conrad Hall one of the best in the film business.  Interestingly, in a small role is comedian Wally Cox, Brando's one time roommate when he was performing on the stage in New York.

 

The screenplay was by old Hollywood pro Daniel Taradash. The running time is 123 minutes.

1965 - THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL, big budget western comedy

 This large scale western/comedy wanted to be another Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but it's not really very funny.  The Hallelujah Trail was a disaster for the filmmaker John Sturges who up to this point was considered one of the best directors of action films during the 1960's.

Somehow Sturges got it in his head that the public wanted to see these kind of large scale epics.  The problem was that Sturges had never demonstrated any particular skill with crazy comedies throughout his career.

Although The Hallelujah Trail is generally considered a failure as a film I enjoyed it for the technical skill that the production team brought to the film.  Nobody knows how to stage a film in the great outdoors like John Sturges.

 

This epic film has an epic length, 165 minutes.  It was written by John Gay who usually wrote dramas.

1965 - OPERATION CROSSBOW, an attempt at a realistic James Bond film.

In the middle of the James Bond spy movie craze. Every film studio had to have some kind of spy movie.  Out comes this British film about the World War II German V1 and V2 rocket program.

 As the Germans perfect their "flying rocket bombs", the British mobilize their secret agents to stop them.  This involves casting practically every British character actor in the United Kingdom. All my old acting favorites show up in this film, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Richard Johnson, Tom Courtney, Richard Todd, Ferdy Mayne, Anton Differing, Anthony Quayle,  the list is endless.

 

 The producer throws a couple of ringers into the mix.  Sophia Loren, who gets top billing and George Peppard clearly cast for the American market.  Loren's husband Carlo Ponti was the producer.

The director tries for a semi documentary approach but the script can't entirely avoid going down the road of melodrama and coincidence.  Still this is a really good looking film and lots of stuff blows up at the end. 

A couple of minutes on the internet is probably in order to read about the real Operation Crossbow mission.  It's actually kind of fascinating how the British managed to deal with the V1 and V2 rockets during the war.

The writers were Emeric Pressburger (under an alias, Richard Imrie for some reason), Derry Quinn and Ray Rigby.

116 minutes.

1965 - THE SATAN BUG, on Blu Ray

On Blu Ray this superior thriller looks very good with ace cinematographer Robert Surtees and director John Sturges location scenes looking fantastic.

The commentary by DVD review pro Glenn Erickson has some amusing insights.  Apparently Sturges was preparing The Hallelujah Trail during the film and The Satan Bug did not have his full attention much to the annoyance of the cast.

Still, you would never know Sturges was preoccupied during the filming the film turned out to be a superior thriller.

114 minutes, written by James Clavell.