1962 - CARPET OF HORROR, yes that is the title

As ridiculous as the title might sound this is really an old fashioned crime film in the tradition of the 1930's.  It has an evil mastermind, a criminal gang to do the mastermind's bidding, a heroic secret service agent and a damsel in distress.  The film is at times ridiculous and technically very competent film making.

Well lets get the story out of the way.  A secret agent back from India has information he intends to give to the police that will bring down a gang of criminals operating in London.  He is murdered by a drug that is dropped on to his carpet which gives out a gas that asphyxiates him, it's not as ridiculous as the title implies.  Jumping into solve this crime is another British agent who also happens to fall in love with the dead man's niece.  The British agent has a black sidekick who he almost treats as an equal although there is still a rather patronizing attitude too the black character.  

 

This is a film set in England but filmed by a German cast and crew.  The director Harald Reinl cast his then wife Karin Dor as the helpless damsel in distress.  Reinl was a good director for the most part and some of the scenes in particular a shoot out between the gang and the police in an underground tunnel is actually well staged.

 

What causes this film to be on the ridiculous side is just the atrocious dubbing of the performers from the German language to English.  You have to get past this horrible dubbing to watch this film.  Also for a film set in England it was clearly filmed in Germany.

The screenplay was written by Helmut Harun and Felix Lutzkendorf.  The running time is 92 minutes.n  

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.

1962 - ADVICE AND CONSENT, dated political drama but very entertaining

One of the better Otto Preminger films and he doesn't have a lot of good ones.  Advice and Consent is set in early 1960's Washington DC.  The story comes out of the President's desire to appoint a liberal to the Secretary of State position.  This starts a whole series of political maneuverings between the Democratic and Republican Senate.  Back in the 1960's being a "Liberal" was code for Communist.  Of course in today's political climate you could replace the word liberal with "immigrant."  

Henry Fonda is the Secretary of State candidate who seems to good to be true.  Walter Pidgeon is the Senate Majority Leader charged with getting him approved by the Senate. Charles Laughton (in his final performance before his death) plays a clever Republican Southern Senator out to defeat the nomination.  Actually the whole film is fairly well cast and it includes one of Preminger's favorite actors Burgess Meredith in a small role.

The film certainly has it's dated aspects particularly in it's treatment of as it was called back then homosexuality.  Preminger was a noted liberal but in the scenes set in a gay bar, there is certainly a large amount of sensationalized leering going on.

 

Preminger was also what was called an independent producer who for the most part kept complete control over his productions.  In fact Burgess Meredith has mentioned that between camera setups Preminger would be at his desk issuing paychecks for the cast and crew.  Preminger liked to shoot on location as much as possible so we get lots of vintage shots of 1960's Washington D.C.  He also liked to employ long extended takes.  For this film veteran cinematographer Sam Leavitt executed them with a high degree of skill considering on location photography isn't always the easiest thing to photograph.  At times Advice and Consent has the look of a documentary.  

 

Advice and Consent is a good political film which holds the viewer's interest with all the shenanigans that the senators have going on.  Does it portray a true picture of Washington D.C?  Probably not but it is a very entertaining political drama

Written by veteran screenwriter Wendell Mayes, the running time is 138 minutes.

1962 - THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, a film version of the famous Irish play

Written in the 1900's by Irish playwright John Millington Synge.  The Playboy of the Western World is in generally considered one of the highlights of the Irish theater.  In 1962 the director Brian Desmond Hurst released an adaption of the play that was filmed on location in Ireland with Irish actors.

The play is considered sort of a tragic comedy.  One night a mysterious stranger shows up at an Irish pub claiming that he killed his father after an argument.  If you think he is going to be turned into the authorities, guess again.  He becomes a hero to the village and has all the women of the village sighing over him particularly a strong willed woman named Pegeen Mike who wants to marry him.  Since this is a comedy, it turns out the father called " Da" is not dead after all.  He shows up looking for his son with the end result of shattering the Irish village's illusions about him.

 

Well the technical credits on this film are impressive.  Brian Desmond Hurst was a talented producer/director.  The cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth went on to film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cabaret and Murder on the Orient Express to name just a few. The actor Siobhán McKenna was an award winning performer.  Amusingly the titular character "Christy Mahon,"  the playboy was played by the actor Gary Raymond who I chiefly remember from Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts where he gets killed by a seven headed Hydra monster.

 

So what's the problem with this film?  Well the Irish brogue and dialog are so thick that I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what was going on and thank god the disc had subtitles.  Even with the subtitles a viewer would probably have to stay very alert to the story.  Still there is no arguing that the dialog in the film has an incredible lyrical quality to it.  At times it is very pleasing to the ears.

The film was written by Brian Desmond Hurst and Roland Kibee, the running time is 100 minutes.

1962 - HELL IS FOR HEROES, a very good antiwar film

 This is a very good antiwar film.  A squad of American soldiers has to hold the line from some German soldiers.  Along with excellent battle scenes the interactions of the soldiers are well developed particularly with the heightened presence of the Germans.

The film has a great cast of character actors.  Singer Bobby Darrin is a private, James Coburn is a corporal, Nick Adams a Polish refugee from the Germans.  Even more great character actors show up, Mike Kellin, Fess Parker, Harry Guardino, and L.Q. Jones.  In a very strange piece of casting comedian Bob Newhart is a soldier/clerk now assigned to the squad.  Newhart probably has the dumbest scene in the film doing one of his comedic telephone bits.

 Probably the most fascinating performer is Steve McQueen as a former Master Sergent busted down to the rank of private.  This is a classic McQueen role, a malcontent who can't get along with anyone but is highly skilled at his occupation in this case killing Germans.  During the making of the film McQueen was quite a handful for the production.

The director was Don Siegel who was kind of a bruiser of a filmmaker guy himself when dealing with actors and studio executives.  Siegel was a replacement for Robert Pirosh the screenwriter who initially tried to direct this film but ran into major issues dealing with McQueen.  Only a tough guy like Siegel could handle him.

  

The battles are well staged and for what could have been a rah rah war movie they have a tough intensity to them.  The final battle with the Americans attacking a German pillbox is particularly intense.  To paraphrase Shakespeare there's no honor in dying in combat, you just end up dead.  Highly recommended.

Written by Robert Pirosh and Richard Carr, the running time is a tight 90 minutes.

1962 - ILEKTRA aka Electra

If every film were made as well as Ilektra, maybe the idea of sitting through classic Greek dramas written in this case by Euripides (480 BC to 406 BC) wouldn't have such an odious whiff of being force fed a "classic" play and a classic ancient Greek play in this instance.

The film was written and directed by Michael Cacoyannis a Greek theater and film director who brought a lot of storytelling skill to his best films particularly the Greek tragedies that he filmed, Iphigenia and The Trojan Women.

For this version of the Electra legend Cacoyannis had the talents of British cinematographer Walter Lassally who knew how to make a film look really good on a tight budget. The other major part of the success of this film is the actor Irene Papas.  I guess movie goers would probably remember her as part of the acting ensemble in The Guns of Navarone. Papas apparently felt that Cacoyannis was the only director who brought out the best in her acting.  In any case it's an excellent intense performance.

 

If you are a little burned out on Superhero movies and are looking for a good intelligent drama, this film might be worth viewing.  Be advised, subtitles are involved.

The running time is 110 minutes.  

1962 - THE TRIAL, film version of the Kafka novel

 If you have read Kafka's The Trial or even attempted to read The Trial, one would have to admit Welles stuck very close to the novel in transcribing it's nightmare story for the screen.  

Anthony Perkins is Joseph K, a man being pursued by the authorities for a crime he may or may not have committed.  The issue seems to be that no one will tell him what exactly he has done. Orson Welles plays his lawyer, Romy Schneider is either Welles lover or servant.  Akim Tamiroff  is another of Welles's clients who had gone bankrupt in his encounters with the law.

  

The film is full of Orson Welles's famous baroque touches using light and shadow and has some amazing tracking shots to give the story a real sense of an individual caught up in a bureaucratic mess.

 

Obviously this film is not for everyone, but I would recommend it and place it as one of the more successful films in Welles's eccentric film career.

The screenplay was by Welles and the running time is 118 minutes.

1962 - THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN, an impressive fantasy film

You should just sit back and enjoy the amazing visual and special effects that filmmaker Karel Zeman poured into his version of the Baron Munchausen legend.

Zeman takes the famous incidents in the Baron's legend and gives them their own spin starting with the visit to the Sultan, riding the cannonball, and being swallowed up by a huge fish, all very amusing stuff.

 Zeman and his team created one impressive image after another.  As has been remarked his special effects are like woodcarvings coming to life and all created in camera.

 

As usual in a Zeman film the actors are essentially puppets in the hands of Zeman's fantasy storytelling.

 

Written by Karel Zeman, Josef Kainar, and Jiri Brdecka, the running time is 85 minutes.

1962 - PANIC IN YEAR ZERO, interesting science fiction film

The actor Ray Milland occasionally directed some film and television shows.  This low budget science fiction story from American International Pictures is about a nuclear attack against the United States while a family is on vacation.  Milland is the head of the family and the film deals with their attempts to survive the attack.

 For the usual cheap AIP studios the film production is fairly decent, interesting and less pretentious than something like Stanley Kramer's On The Beach.  The film shows the breakdown of modern civilization and isn't afraid to show Milland and his son played by pretty boy Frankie Avalon, shoot people who get in their way.  The film does contain a degree of ruthlessness for an early 1060's film.

Panic In Year Zero has a decent cast Along with Milland is Jean Hagen as his wife.  Hagen was Lena Lamont in MGM's Singing In The Rain.  Joan Freeman is a woman being used as a sex slave by some creepy punks and of course Frankie Avalon before he starred in the infamous "Beach" film series for AIP. 

 The film was written by John Morton and Jay Simms and comes in at a brisk 93 minutes.

1962 - HATARI, or the world of the Howard Hawk's boys club

When film critics and scholars talk about the auteur theory they frequently point to one film maker, Howard Hawks.

 

Hawks stayed fairly consistent during his working career as a director.  He liked the world of men, especially professional men out doing a dangerous job and not acting like a bunch of crybabies about it when it got tough.  The women in a Hawks film are usually very good looking and just about as tough as the men they are involved with.

Hawks and his writer Leigh Brackett developed these themes in many different pictures, such as Rio Bravo,  El Dorado, Rio Lobo and Red River to name a few.  At his best Hawks was good at working with actors and providing the audience with one entertaining scene after the other.  For a number of years Hawks was a very dependable director of very good commercial films.

 

Hatari is very much a Hawks film in that is has practically no story.  Hawks is basically interested in hanging out with a group of very cool people.  The film's action highlights involve the group catching animals in Africa to ship to zoos around the world.  John Wayne is the leader of the group and at this point is his career was older and didn't care to do love scenes with younger women.  Hawks being Hawks sets up a romance between Wayne and the gorgeous Elsa Martinelli which Hawks enjoys mainly becasuse it plays on Wayne's discomfort in his scenes with her.

Hatari is a fun film which is overlong and probably could have used a few less animal capture scenes as the film runs 157 minutes.  Still if you are in the right mood Hatari is very entertaining.

1962 - KING KONG VS GODZILLA - Toho's monster mash

I suppose it was inevitable that Toho Studio's would get their hands on the King Kong character and have him face off against their monster Godzilla.  Sure enough somebody got stuffed into a monkey suit and squared off against the guy stuffed into the Godzilla suit

This is not a very good film but it is a rather entertaining one.  As usual if you are a lover of toys and little miniatures, Toho studios exceeds at creating this stuff.  It's almost too bad that the monsters have to stomp around and destroy these beautifully detailed models.  It really was a different time in the world of special effects.   

The film was directed as usual by Ishiro Honda a good Toho company man apparently.  

This version of King Kong Vs Godzilla has additional scenes added on by some American producer who bought the rights to this film.  These scenes mostly consist of some actor pretending to be a news anchor and rehashing scenes from the movie.  They are kind of unnecessary and interrupt the flow of the film.

97 minutes, written by Shinichi Sekizawa.

1962 - IN THE FRENCH STYLE, a showpiece for actor Jean Seberg

Irwin Shaw took two of his short stories and turned them into a script for Jean Seberg.  The film is about the life and loves of Seberg as she lives in Paris from age 19 until age 24.  Seberg gets to play a teenager who matures into a young woman.  She becomes more sophisticated as she gets involved with several men and becomes a "woman of the world," as they say.

Seberg is best remembered in the film world for working with Godard on Breathless.  She started her career being discovered and abused by Otto Preminger in Saint Joan.  She had a tragic life and committed suicide at the age of 40

The director was Robert Parrish who had begun his career as a child actor and editor for John Ford.  Parrish was probably a better editor than a director since most of his films are not really anything special.  Parrish was a good story teller and has book on John Ford is one of the definitive portrayals of that director.

In The French Style is not without interest.  It's not really anything special but the story is kind of fascinating as we watch the Seberg character mature throughout the film as she journey's to her personal self discovery.

105 minutes.

1962 - SERGEANTS 3, a remake of a remake

The last film containing all of 'The Rat Pack" before Frank Sinatra kicked Peter Lawford out of the group.  This film is a remake of George Steven's Gunga Din which was a remake of The Front Page.

 The director is John Sturges who had worked with Sinatra before and had probably knew what he was getting into or should have known.  For the most part the first half of the film works pretty well since it sticks to the first half of Gunga Din.  After a while the film starts to take a toll on my patience especially with the Sammy Davis Jr. character Jonah the freed civil war slave. 

The film has nice scenery since it was filmed Utah and Sturges as usual was good at deploying his actors in rugged landscapes.

 

An OK time killer.

112 minutes, written by W.R.Burnett.

1962 - ESCAPE FROM ZAHRAIN, very entertaining chase film.

A very good action/adventure film from a decent director, Ronald Neame.

 

Yul Brynner is the leader of an Arab group attempting to bring reforms to his repressive Middle Eastern country.  Yul's escaping in an ambulance across the desert from the troops of his country's repressive government.  Along the way he picks up an eclectic group of people which includes character actor Jack Warden who is very entertaining.  OK the film is essentially a rehash of John Ford's Stagecoach but if you are going to steal steal from the best.

Ronald Neame was known for well made entertainments and this film fits the bill.  It's fast paced, well photographed and edited.  

A modest film that just happens to be an entertaining one.

93 minutes, credited screenplay, Robin Estridge.

1962 - HERO'S ISLAND - a very odd pirate film maybe?

Well the cast is certainly interesting and unusual.  James Mason, Rip Torn, Neville Brand, Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and some actor named Kate Manx who was the wife of the writer/director Leslie Stevens.  The plot of this film has something to do with a family trying to start a new life on an island off of the Carolina coast.  They become involved with some poachers, a pirate and Neville Brand as some kind of bad ass.

Frankly this film is weird and kind of a mess.  Leslie Stevens was the creator of The Outer Limits and the auteur behind the very strange horror film Incubus a film with the dialog spoken entirely in "Esperanto" an odd ball auxiliary language.  So the viewer should know what they are getting into.

I guess this is a pirate movie since James Mason plays a pirate.  The acting is kind of stiff, the film looks like it was filmed on location the action is spotty and not particularly well staged.   Frankly Hero's Island is a real muddle.  What keeps the film going is the interesting cast at the beginning of their careers.

I can remember seeing this film at a Saturday matinee for kids of all places.  I didn't understand it at the time and 40 plus years later the film still doesn't make any sense.

94 minutes.

1962 - HOW THE WEST WAS WON, on Blu Ray

The Blu Ray producers spruced up a lot of this film, erasing most of the lines in the three camera filming process and generally cleaning things up quite a bit.  The film looks fairly spectacular at times if not completely perfect.  Of course you can't duplicate the Cinerama experience on a home screen.

The film itself was always kind of lumpy mess of a story.  It follows one family, the Prescott's as they move west with that "manifest destiny" attitude that gave white European Americans a reason
to go anywhere and take anything they wanted.  But I can be a little more charitable now since the whole story is just an excuse to film a bunch of spectacular scenes in the 3 camera process that at times still look very impressive.

MGM loaded up the film with an "all star" cast signing just about everyone they could think of but the film seems to focus mostly on two actors George Peppard and Debbie Reynolds.  Three directors were hired, George Marshall, John Ford and Henry Hathaway.  Hathaway ended up directing most of the film and apparently re-shot Marshall's footage.  Ford had a lot of trouble filming in the large screen process and the results were deemed marginal at best but nobody had the nerve to rework his footage since most people were afraid of him. 

162 minutes, written by James R. Webb.

1962 - LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is half a great film.

Considering the amount of work and the difficulties in filming in the desert with the 70mm camera back in 1962, this is an amazing film.  However I believe the problem with Lawrence of Arabia has always been the inability of Lean and his writers Michael Wilson and particularly Robert Bolt to get a focus on exactly who or what the character of  T. E. Lawrence was.

 I really can't find anything wrong with the first half of this film.  The scenes of Lawrence traveling in the desert in search of Prince Faisal and the rallying of the Arabs to attack the seaport of Aqaba are brilliantly done.  The acting, the scenery, Freddie Young's photography in the middle of the god forsaken desert are about as good as you will see in a film especially an epic like this.  The film ends somewhat satisfactory with Lawrence's return to Cairo.  I would quibble a bit with some of the first half of the film.  Lawrence is presented as if he had never traveled in the desert, the reality was that he was stationed in the middle east during World War I because of his knowledge of that part of the world.  However after the intermission the real problems with Lawrence of Arabia begin.

The second half of the film focuses on the political maneuverings of the British government and the puzzling character of Lawrence himself.  The script does not make it very clear regarding the motivation of the British government is in the middle east.  Clearly it's to have some sort of presence but what exactly?  To me, it sounds like the British and the French want to take over the middle east after World War I.  First they have to deal with Prince Faisal played with the usual "Arab horse trader" cliches by Alec Guiness spouting lots of wise old middle east cliches.   After watching the first half of a film which is essentially an adventure epic, the film stops cold for lots of talk about treaties and agreements which are probably only of interest to middle eastern history majors not the general public.

Then it's on to the utter failure to define exactly what is going on with this T. E Lawrence guy.  The film would like people to believe that he is some sort of intellectual sadist who was also a homosexual masochist with a touch of the exhibitionist in him, really?  Peter O' Toole has a great presence on screen with his deep blue eyes but David Lean has directed him to play the character like some sort of odd creepy weirdo.  The audience is also supposed to believe that Lawrence had the best interests of the Arabic people at heart but by the end of the film they come off as a bunch of clueless morons who need a nutty British officer to tell them what to do.

Lawrence of Arabia is the first of David Lean's super epics along with Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. All of these films are visually impressive and well made but they all suffer from script problems which David Lean and his writer Robert Bolt were unable to get a handle on.

228 minutes, written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson.