1960 - STOWAWAY IN THE SKY, aka LE VOYAGE EN BALLON

A rare family film that's actually good for a change.  Stowaway in the Sky has a very light touch like the air balloon that our protagonists use to travel across France and eventually the Alps.

The story is a very simple one, a young boy, Pascal manages to stowaway on his grandfather's latest air balloon. They fly over the French countryside and narrowly miss church steeples and towers and that's about it for a plot.

 

What this film has going for it is spectacular aerial footage taken with a specially developed camera by the director Albert Lamorisse called "Helivision." This camera was sort of an early version of the "steady cam."  

 

The photography in Cinemascope is remarkably clear and steady this is wide screen camera work at it's finest.  The film took 3 years to complete and was apparently a very difficult production but the resulting film is very impressive.  A really marvelous film.

This film was written by Albert Lamorisse, the running time is 85 minutes  

1979 - ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN aka ISLAND OF MUTATIONS

A horror film as only the Italians could do it.  A survivor of a shipwreck ends up on an uncharted island that just happens to be near the underwater continent of Atlantis.  The island is ruled by a madman who has coerced a mad scientist to breed fish people in order to steal the gold from underwater Atlantis.  Needless to say the mad scientist has a beautiful daughter and somehow a voodoo priestess is mixed up in all of this.

This film borrowed from many other films.  The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Plague of the Zombies, The Island of Dr. Moreau and War Gods From the Deep.  The great thing about this film is that it just doesn't borrow (plagiarize) from all these other films, it takes scenes and situations from them and just bends them into it's own nutty story line.

 

The film stars model/actress Barbara Bach with the emphasis on model when it comes to her performance. The actor Claudio Cassinelli died young while working on another film for this director.  Then there are a couple of washed up English speaking actors, Richard Johnson and Joseph Cotton.  Johnson had acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company performing in Shakespeare but an actor still has to make the house payment.  

 

What can you say about Joseph Cotton?  The star of Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, and The Third Man.  Well Hollywood is not particularly kind to it's older actors.  I guess you take the work where you can get it.

The film was written by Sergio Martino, Sergio Donati and Cesare Frugoni, the running time is 100 minutes.

1960 - SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON - one Disney's best live action films

When the Walt Disney company put their minds to it they could make very entertaining live action films.  Swiss Family Robinson is one of their best films with most of the film shot on location in Tobago using Disney's go to English film crew and a mixed group of American and English actors.  

English actor John Miles is the head of the Swiss Family Robinson who end up being deserted on a tropical island.  American actor Dorothy McGuire is his wife.  Disney regulars James MacArthur and Tommy Sands play his grown up sons and the very annoying child actor Kevin Corcoran who like a bad cold constantly showed up in a lot of Disney TV shows, is their youngest son.  British actor Janet Munro is MacArthur's love interest and Bridge on the River Kwai actor Sessue Hayakawa is the pirate captain.  A real mishmash of acting talent.

 

The screenwriter and director threw out the original story and devised a plot that emphasized constant action and adventure.  Once the family ends up on the island the plot kicks into high gear with lots of clever and exciting scenes.  The Disney technicians slo devised an exciting action climax during the final pirate battle essentially a live action cartoon.

 

Swiss Family Robinson is quality family film making at a high level, a very entertaining film. 

 

The film was written by Lowell S. Hawley, the running time is 126 minutes. 

1932 - CHANDAU THE MAGICIAN, is 1930's escapism at it's most entertaining.

Chandau the Magician (Edmund Lowe) has graduated from yoga school where he has mastered the powers of hypnotism, teleportation and some other rather dubious mental abilities.  His first order of business is to stop the evil Roxor (Bela Lugosi).  Roxor has kidnapped a scientist in order to have him build a weapon that will destroy cities.  Chandau must also rescue the scientist's pretty daughter from a slave auction in addition to romancing Egyptian Princess Nadji.  It goes without saying for a film set in the Middle East, every actor in the cast is played by white people.

Chandau the Magician could almost be the grandfather of Indiana Jones.  There's lots of action combined with fantasy elements and plenty of narrow escapes.  In fact you could probably argue that this film is in many ways more entertaining than that series.  It's also has a short running time something these present day overstuffed adventure epics on the streaming services constantly plague the viewer with.  These films never seem to know when to wrap it up.

 

This film has the benefit of some impressive behind the camera talent. The legendary Chinese cameraman James Wong Howe was responsible for the photography. Howe was one of the best black and white stylists in film.  The director was the famous production designer and special effects expert William Cameron Menzies. The film has an interesting look to it and for a film made in 1932 the special effects are still impressive. 

If you are looking for a visually sophisticated looking film with an amusingly naive story line you should enjoy this.  The film is action packed and fast moving even by today's ADHD standards of film making.  The film was co-directed by Marcel Varnel.  William Cameron Menzies was a great filmmaker in a lot of areas but working with actors was not one of his strong points.

The film was written by Barry Conners and Philip Klein. The running time is 71 minutes.

1954 - PRINCE VALIANT - entertaining comic book movie

 Based on a long running and I do mean long running comic strip ( 1937-1971) the story of a Viking Prince in the court of King Arthur was known for not having any dialog in the comic strip.  Instead the narrative is all in captions.  

MGM had a big hit in Ivanhoe so 20th Century Fox obtained the rights to Prince Valiant.  Daryl F. Zanuck got tough guy director Henry Hathaway to film it.  Legendary screenwriter Dudley Nichols put together a story and the film clearly was an expensive production.  Then the studio went out and completely miscast it.

 Pretty boy 50's actor Robert Wagner with his American accent was cast as the Viking prince complete with ridiculous page boy wig which was true to the comic but came off as really goofy looking.  Equally ridiculous was Sterling Hayden as a knight of the round table.  Hayden didn't even attempt a British accent and he looks extremely uncomfortable in his goofy medieval wig.  Debra Paget almost 20 years Hayden's junior was his love interest.

 

More wig silliness, Janet Leigh squeezed into a dress has to wear practically a floor length wig which she manages not to trip over.  About the only creditable actor in this film is James Mason an actual Britsh actor.

 

Henry Hathaway keeps the film moving with lots of action and fighting.  The photography by Lucien Ballard is good and the composer Franz Waxman wrote a great score.  In spite of the crazy casting decisions this is an entertaining comic book film.

The running time is a not excessive 100 minutes.

1990 - SHIPWRECKED, entertaining adolescent boys adventure story

The Disney company has their name on the top of this picture but the reality is this was a Norwegian film made with a Norwegian director and a Norwegian cast.  Disney picked up the North American release and had the film dubbed into English since movie studios believe that audiences are too stupid to read subtitles.

A very entertaining adventure film aimed at the family audience but 13 year old boys were probably the intended audience.  The film was shot in Norway, the Fiji Islands, and England.

The story concerns a young boy who has signed on to a ship as a cabin boy.  He has various adventures which involve, a storm at sea, pirates, and buried treasure.  He ends up getting shipwrecked on a deserted island and finally has a confrontation with the pirates where he fights them off with a bunch of Home Alone type traps he has devised. Along the way he meets a girl who is a stowaway on the ship in need of rescuing.

 

It's all presented in a fast moving film that races from one situation to another.  The viewer doesn't have time to think about some of the plot holes and contrivances in the story.

 The film was written by Nils Gaup, Bob Foss, Greg Dinner and .  Nick Thiel.  The running time is a fast paced 93 minutes.

2016 - THE LAST KING, a very entertaining action film

 This film is set during the Norwegian civil war of 1240.  Like most people in the United States and probably most of the world I wasn't aware the Norwegian's had a civil war.  The Birkebeinars, loyal to the King of Norway have to rescue his infant son the future ruler of Norway after the King is assassinated by some evil Norwegians.

 

The film is an extended chase with the men assigned to protect the infant king from the evil Norwegians being pursued for much of the running time of the film.  Interestingly the chase is mostly on some wacky long skis with one long pole used to steer these damn things. Just getting people to ski on these things is almost impressive as watching the exciting action scenes.

 

Also impressive is the location shooting in the snow and cold probably nobody's idea of a good time.  Bottom line, a great adventure film in an unusual setting.  You don't need to know Norwegian history to enjoy this film.

 

Written by Ravn Lanesskog, the running time is 93 minutes.

2025 - FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH - another day another action film from a streaming site

In the golden age of Hollywood this kind of film would have been produced by a movie studio's B-unit.  It would have been made on a tight budget, shot completely on the studio lot and feature second string actors.  But as they say times have changed.

Streaming services now produce variations of the B movie formula they now have money to burn. They can buy expensive behind the camera talent, in this case the director Guy Ritchie (who I am sure didn't come cheap).  They actually film on location and they cast what are or were considered A list stars (usually middle aged performers).  What they don't seem to have figured out is how to put together an interesting story and characters to balance the constant bombardment of action scenes for the ADD television crowd.

 

The Fountain of Youth is what I would call an internet movie.  You can sit with your computer and play solitare while simultaneously having this movie on in the background.  The actors in this case, John Krasinski and Natalie Portmann play a feuding brother and sister in search of the Fountain of Youth. 

You have to wonder who's decision it was to have Krasinski and Portmann as brother and sister it seems to me they would have been a more interesting couple as boyfriend and girlfriend but then again nobody asked me.

Guy Ritchie doesn't seem very interested in this film, with the exception of a couple of decent action scenes he's just walking through the plot to get to the finish line.  This film is clearly influenced by the Indiana Jones series, particularly that search for the Holy Grail one.  I also detect some borrowing from Howard Hawk's Land of the Pharaohs towards the end with all the running around inside an Egyptian tomb.

 

The Fountain of Youth is ultimately just another time killer of a streaming action film which it seems like I've seen a million times already.  

The film was written by James Vanderbilt who clearly watched those Indiana Jones films a lot, the running time is a very overlong 125 minutes.

1933 - KING KONG, accept no substitute

 One of the most important adventure films ever made.  King Kong came out of the imagination of two remarkable filmmakers, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.  These two men had made their reputations filming what can only  be called sort of documentary films.  Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, was about an amazing caravan of nomads in search of pastures in what was then known as Persia for their cattle.  The film had some extraordinary scenes of the hardships that these nomads endured during their migration, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, was filmed in Thailand and featured a family trying to make a living in the jungle.  This film ended with an impressive elephant stamped.

Cooper and Schoedsack eventually ended up working for RKO, where Cooper pushed the studio to make a film about a giant gorilla.  Cooper was lucky enough to find Willis O'Brian, a stop motion animation effects technician to implement his idea and with a green light from RKO studio chief David O Selznick, King Kong was born.  The rest is they say is history. A few pieces of trivia about this film

The giant gate and wall that the natives of Skull Island use to keep Kong out of their village was eventually repurposed for the escape from Atlanta sequence in Gone With The Wind the wall was burned down as Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh made their escape.

It's well know that the character of Carl Denham the movie producer looking to shoot a film about Kong was modeled after Merian Cooper.  Jack Driscoll the sailor who rescues Ann Darrow from Kong was modeled after Ernest B. Schoedsack.   Although they never really acknowledged it Ann Darrow might have been based on Marguerite Harrison who had partially financed the making of Grass, and accompanied Cooper and Schoedsack on their expedition in Persia much to their annoyance.  Marguerite Harrison was a rather remarkable woman, she had been a spy for the allies during World War I and later went on to found the Children's Hospital School in Baltimore.

RKO's special effects team pushed the limit with what they could be done with camera trickery.  For a early 1930's film, a lot of the special effects hold up very well.  King Kong has frequently been criticized  for the amount of racism in the film particularly in the scenes with the natives of Skull Island.  The film has also been cited as a metaphor for racial tensions as the film is about the destruction of the black gorilla by white men.

It’s also well known that during the climatic fight between Kong and the Air Force, the pilot and co-pilot of one of the planes are Cooper and Schoedsack blasting away at Kong.  The director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake and special effects and makeup expert Rick Baker are the pilot and co-pilot in that version.

King Kong was written by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman and Ruth Rose.  The running time is 100 minutes. 

1973 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, large scale production of this often told story

The director Richard Lester who had not exactly been hitting it out of the box office park with his recent films was hired by the producer Ilya Salkind to film a large scale version of that old war horse of a story The Three Musketeers.  Lester signed on for this film and brought his usual bag of cinematic tricks with him. Lester was known for adding comedic touches and slapstick scenes throughout his films along with a kind of a frenzied editing style. Viewed today, Lester's films are in many ways period pieces of a certain film making style of the 1960's and 1970's.

You have to give the producers of this film credit, no expense was spared. On location filming was in Spain and the stunning photography came from a frequent Lester contributor David Watkin.  Watkin gave the film a beautiful glowing look.  The action scenes in The Three Musketeers were staged by a fencing master named William Hobbs.  Hobbs toughened up the sword fights with an anything goes approach to the fencing instead of the usual gentlemanly rules found in those old Tyrone Power and Erroll Flynn movies. The Musketeers just don't fight with swords, they kick, hit and at times bite their opponents.

The interesting cast was a mixture of British and American actors, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee in yet another villain role and Faye Dunaway as the evil Milady de Winter.  Raquel Welch was hired to bring more sex appeal to the film as the love interest of Michael York.  However Richard Lester got the inspired idea to have her play her part like a complete fool,  Welch is the victim of most of Lester's goofy gags as she is constantly getting knocked over or thrown around like a punching bag.  Needless to say the critics proclaimed Welch a comedic genius although it was all Lester's doing.

 

The Three Musketeers is an entertaining spectacle and it is also notorious as the film that the producer decided to split into two parts from it's original lengthy running time.  It's safe to say the actors were not amused by this since they had only signed up to act in one film not two.   Needless to say it was bring out the lawyers time when the second film now called The Four Musketeers was released.

The Three Musketeers looks great in it's Blu-Ray presentation and to give credit where credit is due Richard Lester did a very good job freshening up a story that had already been told many times.

George MacDonald Frasier wrote the screenplay the running time is 105 minutes.

1966 - TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD, another entertaining Tarzan film.

Probably time to take a break from the ape man after this Tarzan film.  Once again the producer Sy Weintraub shoots a film on location, in this case Mexico.  Weintraub made some major tweeks to the Tarzan character this time.  It's been pointed out that Tarzan is now acting more like James Bond then the jungle ape man created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  There is also a really annoying 1960's jazz score to have to put up with.

 

Weintraub also had a new actor playing Tarzan, former NFL football player Mike Henry who is needless to say is in very good shape and in these Tarzan movies these actors don't wear a whole lot of clothes.  With the exception of character actor David Opatoshu playing the chief bad guy like he was Auric Goldfinger and model/actress Nancy Kovack, the rest of the cast and the film crew were Mexicans.

The film is an entertaining action adventure. Tarzan travels to Mexico to save a young Mexican boy from an evil bad guy. The bad guy wants the boy to lead him to his jungle city which is loaded with gold.  Fortunately Tarzan is on the case and the film has lots of action.  The final part of the film was photographed at the magnificent Teotihuacan pyramids, nothing beats on location filming.

Mike Henry as Tarzan isn't much of an actor but then again he doesn't have to be.  Viewers watching this film and especially adolescent boys are here for the action highlights not Shakespearean soliloquies.  This Tarzan movie has Tarzan with his animal friends, a chimp named Dinky and a lion named Major helping out.  Apparently Mike Henry and Dinky didn't get along to well, Dinky ended up biting Henry which resulted in him getting stitches.  Henry ended up suing the producers for creating an unsafe work environment.

The film was written by Clair Huffaker who was frequently associated with John Wayne movies and other western films.  The running time is 90 entertaining minutes.

1963 -TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES, entertaining adventure film

 The producer Sy Weintraub obtained the film rights to the Tarzan character from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and had a radical idea he would actually make Tarzan films in the jungle instead of some film studio back lot.  Working on a tight budget Weintraub hired talented film crews and shot quickly on location.  Tarzan's Three Challenges was filmed in Thailand and is a nonstop action adventure story.

After saving a herd of elephants in Tarzan Goes To India, the ape man is pressed into service helping the new ruler of an Asian kingdom travel to his coronation while fighting off a local strongman trying to stop the rightful ruler of the kingdom.  Jock Mahoney is back as Tarzan and his opponent was Woody Strode a former NFL football player and member of the John Ford stock company.  Strode is to put it mildly in very good shape in this film and was an excellent opponent for Mahoney.

 

The film is called Tarzan's Three Challenges but it should have probably been called Tarzan's many challenges as it's just one damn thing after another for Tarzan.  An attempted assassination, a forest fire, a test of strength as two water buffalos try to pull him apart and finally a sword fight with Strode on an elevated net which has big jars of boiling oil ready to deep fry the fighter unable to stay balanced on the net.

 

It's well known that Jock Mahoney got dysentery while filming in Thailand and lost 40 pounds which gave him a very lean look during the big sword fight scene.  However the show must go on so they apparently loaded him full of drugs stuck him in front of the camera and kept on shooting.  The result of all of this is an entertaining action film with some amazing stunts and stunning scenery.

The film was written by Robert Day and Bernie Giler, the running time is a lean 92 minutes. 

1972 - THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, corny but entertaining Irwin Allen foolishness

Another film in our Gene Hackman memorial film festival.  The Poseidon Adventure is an Irwin Allen production with all of the good and bad stuff that Allen was noted for.  The Poseidon Adventure marks the beginning of the 1970's disaster cycle.  Take an improbable situation, in this case a luxury liner tipping upside down after a tidal wave knocks it over and focus on a group of survivors trying to escape before it sinks.

Producer Irwin Allen assembled what would back then be called an all star cast.  Gene Hackman is a defrocked minister who leads a motley bunch of has been movie and TV actors out of the Poseidon.  Ernest Borgnine is an LA cop on vacation with his former hooker wife played by Stella Stevens.  Red Buttons is a Haberdasher who is a lonely single guy.  Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson are a Jewish couple on their way to Israel to see their grandson and because this is a 1970's film there is an annoying little kid played by Eric Shea who you wish somebody would drown.  Naturally since this is the 1970's we get a couple of women stuck running around in hot pants in lots of gratuitous derriere shots. 

 

The director Ronald Neame who in a past life had been associated with David Lean and had filmed a lot of quality English dramas and comedies signed on for this nonsense and was probably responsible for keeping the focus on the story.  Apparently true to form Gene Hackman was not a happy camper on this production but who can blame him as he had to get doused with water and avoid explosions and fires throughout the production.  Still he turns in an excellent performance.

 

This is an enjoyable film, it keeps you watching but it's pretty dumb when you stop to think about it.  The characters are basically a bunch of stereotypes but as the film goes on you do get kind of get a vested interest in what will happen to them.  The producer Irwin Allen was really hot after this film and reached his professional peak with The Towering Inferno but it was all downhill from there.  His brand of entertaining schlock had finally worn out it's welcome.

The Poseidon Adventures has two excellent screenwriters, Wendell Mayes and Stirling Silliphant but you would never know it watching the collection of cliches they put together.  Still the  film is fun to watch.

The running time is 117 minutes, it made a lot of money.

1935 - CAPTAIN BLOOD, large scale, dated but entertaining swashbuckler

Warner Brothers pulled together this entertaining swashbuckling pirate film with a large budget.  Michael Curtiz directed and one of Warner's best screenwriters Casey Robinson adapted the book the film was based on.  The photography is excellent, the special effects and model work for 1935 were at a very high standard.  The composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a master at writing large scale symphonic scores and he provided a very entertaining one for this film.  The film really couldn't miss.

Warner Brothers took a big chance with the cast. Errol Flynn essentially an unknown actor at the time was chosen as the title character.  Olivia de Havilland hadn't even turned twenty yet and was cast as the female lead and love interest for Flynn.  But both of these performers were soon to become mainstays at the studio and were very popular with the movie going public during the 1930's and 40's.

 

Captain Blood is mostly entertaining with lots of colorful characters and interesting locations.  The action never lets up with sword fights and everyone's favorite pirate movie scene two ships blasting at each other with their cannons.  It's true swashbuckling film making. 

 

Probably the worst thing to say about this film is that it is very dated even for a film set in the 1600's.  A lot of the plot has to do with the character Peter Blood being forced into slavery by the King of England, escaping and becoming a pirate fighting against the English.  By the end of the film the screenwriter has had to spend a lot of time juicing the plot to get Captain Blood back fighting on the side of the English and become a true English patriot again.  All fairly ludicrous stuff but that's Hollywood story telling after all.

The film runs 119 minutes.

1962 - TARZAN GOES TO INDIA, very entertaining adventure film

Jock Mahoney is Tarzan No. 12 if someone is keeping count.  Tarzan Goes to India was now being produced by Sy Weintraub who had the novel idea of actually filming a Tarzan film in jungle locations.  The director was Englishman John Guillermin who was apparently a real tough guy on a film set.  Guillermin had a long career in England and America.  His strength was filming adventure and action films.  Guillerman had previously shot Tarzan's Greatest Adventure on location in Africa.  For Tarzan Goes to India, Guillerman filmed in India, a big change from the usual studio back lot phoniness.

In this adventure (no. 24 in the Tarzan series if for some reason you are keeping count), Tarzan flies into India jumps out of the plane into a lake swims to a palace where he meets the daughter of of an old Indian friend who is trying to save a herd of elephants.  It seems the elephants are in a portion of a hydroelectric dam flood zone which some evil Westerners are building.  When the water is turned on it will flood out the valley and kill all the elephants.  You know these Westerners are evil since one of them is played by perennial bad guy Leo Gordon at his bad guy snarling best.

 

This film is essentially non stop action with Tarzan fighting off Leo Gordon, poison snakes, rouge elephants and man eating tigers, all while running around barefoot.  The film is an excellent "boy's own" adventure film with no silly romantic plot to distract the story.  Overall a very fast moving film with nice on location photography and lots of elephants stepping on stuff

The film was written by Robin Hardy Andrews and John Guillermin, the running time a brisk 88 minutes.

1964 - VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, 11 Days to Zero

Kicking around in my DVD collection is the first season of Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Let's take a quick look at the pilot episode for this series.

The first season of this series was shown in black and white on television but the producer Irwin Allen was prescient enough to film it in color since the remaining seasons were broadcast in color.  Irwin Allen was what I guess you would call a character.  He was drawn to science fiction and fantasy themes but as an actual producer he was kind of a cheapskate.  Allen was known for reusing footage from other episodes of his TV series and any movie he could lay his hands on. The later seasons of his TV shows tended to get more ridiculous plot wise as the look of the series got cheaper.

For the pilot episode 11 Days to Zero, Allen actually cast interesting actors.  Richard Basehart was Admiral Nelson the inventor of the submarine Seaview.  David Hedison played Captain Lee Crane.  It should be a tribute to these two actors that they kept a straight face during the run of the series when faced with a series of ridiculous monsters.  Giant sea plankton, a giant manta ray, a giant jellyfish and who could forget the unforgettable heat monster that threatened the Seaview during the series run.

The pilot episode of 11 Days to Zero was written and directed by Irwin Allen himself.  A close examination of the episode shows that it was a rehash of Allen's 1961 movie version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Allen cleverly loaded the story up with lots of stock footage from that film and stuck in a decent guest star, in this case Eddie Albert who was able to stir up a little character conflict.  The pilot is enjoyable mostly because it's fun to see how many scenes he lifted from the movie and stuck in this episode.

Probably the coolest thing about this series was always the submarine Seaview itself.  It has a pair of wings in the back of it and the famous windows in the front.  Inside the Seaview itself it's like living in a Hilton.  Everything is spacious and very bright.  I have no idea if this design is even practical but for a 10 - 12 year old kid it's probably the ultimate in cool.

 

Obviously Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was no Star Trek but as a simple and at times very silly adventure series it entertained.

The running time for 11 Days to Zero is 52 minutes.