1962 - THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, big family movie fantasy in Cinerama

 MGM and the Cinerama corporation produced this widescreen film as a follow up to the Cinerama spectacular How The West Was Won. George Pal produced and directed the fantasy segments while Henry Levin shot the rather boring story of the brothers Grimm played by Laurence Harvey and Karl Bohm who are struggling to find acceptance as chroniclers of traditional German fairy tales.

This is a Cinerama film in every way with the usual gimmicks of enveloping the viewer's vision with shots of carriages racing down roads, tumbling down mountains and dizzying views of canyons making the viewer think he/she was about to fall into one.

Frankly the story is not so hot and George Pal has actually made better films but this is certainly an amazing viewing experience especially in the restored Blu-Ray version being released by Warner Brothers.

 

The film has a great cast, it just doesn't give them much of a story to tie the admittedly charming and entertaining fantasy sequences together.  The first sequence with the dancing princess has the athletic Russ Tamblyn and the beautiful Yvette Mimieux in a large scale musical number.  Tamblyn is a great dancer and acrobat, Yvette Mimieux is easy on the eyes but not so hot as a dancer.

The 2nd sequence is probably the best with George Pal's Puppetoons and the 3rd fantasy story has Terry Thomas and Buddy Hackett battling a dragon and Hackett battling a very poor English accent.

 

Overall this is an enjoyable film, however it could have been a better one .

 

Written by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P. Harmon.  The running time is 135 minutes.

The new Blu Ray presentation is very impressive.

1963 - COME FLY WITH ME - the old single girls on the make for a husband film.

Talk about a personal nostalgia wallow, Come Fly With Me, was a film that seemed to be in constant circulation on the CBS Thursday Night Movie when I was growing up.  I have seen pieces of this film many times.  The film was produced by Anatole de Grunwald who seemed to specialize in these multiple cast, multiple story films like The V.I.P.s and The Yellow Rolls Royce.  This cast isn't as star studded as those films, it's sort of the B squad of starlets and TV actors.

Dolores Hart is the cynical stewardess looking for a rich husband, she thinks she has scored with a European Baron played by Karl Bohm.  Bohn is actually an impoverished diamond smuggler.  If Dolores had watched more movies she would have known that Bohm played the crazed killer in Peeping Tom who stabbed women with his camera tripod.  Lois Nettleton is the stewardess who has been used and abused by married men and is staying away from nice guy Karl Malden in a very rare romantic lead part.  Nettleton was on about every TV show I every watched in the 60's and 70's.  Finally there is Pamela Tiffin who always seemed to get cast as the beautiful but wacky all American girl.  Tiffin spends most of the film trying to get Hugh O'Brian to abandon his loose moral playboy ways.

Well anyway the girls have lots of boyfriend problems as they are photographed on location in widescreen in Paris and Vienna.  Karl Malden probably comes off the best in this film.  Malden had been associated with Elia Kazan and I suppose Come Fly With Me is sort of a career comedown but hey he gets to romance a woman about 20 to 30 years younger than him.  Probably the best thing in the film is the Jimmy Van Heusen /Sammy Cahn title song but apparently they couldn't get the Frank Sinatra version so they settled for Frankie Avalon crooning away on the title track. 

Come Fly With Me was fun to watch because it is such an early 1960's film.  The weird attitudes about that sex stuff have to be heard and seen to be believed.  If a woman sleeps with a man before she is married no good will come of it.  In  Dolores Hart's case she may end up as a nun after sleeping with Karl Bohm. 

109 minutes, written by William Roberts.

1959 - JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, family adventure flic and Pat Boone

It takes around 45 minutes before Professor James Mason (who struggles with his Scottish accent), his intrepid assistant Pat Boone (with his trusty accordion), Arlene Dahl (a good looking redhead) and some big lug of a Swedish helper guy start heading down to the center of the earth. 

James Mason was clearly cast because he had done 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and after all that was a Jules Verne story and this was a Jules Verne story so why not.  He's actually pretty good.  Arlene Dahl with her flaming red hair shows up well in De Luxe Color, Fox's crappy version of Technicolor.

What are you going to say about Pat Boone the king of the covers.  You know your daughter would be safe dating this blandest of bland singers.  Boone made his singing career re-recording R&B songs, a guy with strong religious convictions, he was the perfect lead for a family film.

More terror under the earth, Pat Boone singing.

The director Henry Levin sets up the shots, calls action and probably quit everyday right at 5:00 pm so everyone could get home for dinner.  The photography is nice and pretty as the action moves between the Carlsbad Caverns and lots of phony studio sets.   The screenplay was by Charles Brackett who had worked many years with Billy Wilder.  Brackett was also the producer of Journey To The Center of the Earth.  This film is pretty standard stuff but apparently Bernard Herrmann didn't get the memo because he wrote a really superior score.

Most of the special effects are optical shots and matte paintings and they are pretty well done.  The monsters are big lizards which are optically enlarged.  This was something Irwin Allen would do in his tacky films but they actually look good here for a change. 

 
The film is fun but a long haul.  Brackett was a talented enough writer to keep the film interesting he probably should have kept it shorter.

132 minutes.