MULHOLLAND DRIVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Criterion Does David Lynch Death Dream

Mulholland Drive (2001)
Dir. David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller,
Michael J. Anderson, Lafayette (Monty) Montgomery, Robert Forster,
Dan Hedaya, Billy Ray Cyrus, Chad Everett, Lee Grant, Rebekah Del Rio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The tagline for David Lynch's first feature film Eraserhead was the aptly creepy, "A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things" which, frankly, could be applied to most of his great work. Few filmmakers understand dream logic and even fewer know how to use it within narrative cinema. Lynch is the exception to all rules and he might be the best living example of a filmmaker who brings the properties of nightmare to his drama with the kind of intelligence and aplomb that most can only, if you will, dream of.

Plus, his work continues to be the epitome of cool. Better yet, it never feels dated. Yes, it can be rooted in whatever time frame its rooted in, but his technique feels timeless, which bodes well for its unending value beyond the mere ephemeral that most contemporary films are hamstrung with.

Mulholland Drive was a film that chilled me to the bone and moved me deeply when I first saw it on a big screen at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001 (one day before the 9/11 attacks, no less). Subsequent viewings in the next couple of years or so maintained the degrees of richness I'd come to expect with so many of Lynch's films.

Though screenings eventually dropped off my radar, the film itself did not and it continued to haunt me.

And then, the Criterion Collection issued a spanking new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming.

No two ways about it, Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece.

I think it's safe to say that like Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive is indeed a cinematic "dream of dark and troubling things". Lynch has, however, chosen a very simple tag line for this creepy, terrifying tale of contemporary Hollywood and billed his picture as "A love story in the city of dreams . . . "

This is clearly appropriate in more ways than one.

Set against the backdrop of the movie business, we follow the story of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a small town girl who decides to grab her shot at stardom. She's completely unprepared for the deep horror and secrets beneath the dream factory's veneer. Upon taking possession of a homey suite owned by her aunt, she discovers Rita (Laura Harring), a gorgeous amnesiac passed out in the bedroom.

Betty, being a Canadian missy from Deep River, Ontario (no less) is an especially wide-eyed, kind-hearted star-struck blond naif. She also shares the Jeffrey Beaumont obsession (Kyle McLachlan's character in Blue Velvet) with solving mysteries. Rita has been involved in an especially horrific experience on Mulholland Drive and Betty is determined to assist her new sexy brunette friend.

This not only leads to all manner of delving into hidden corners they shouldn't, but the two gorgeous lassies begin to fall in love and Lynch happily has them diving into each other's respective love pockets.

A juicy, compelling sub-plot which wends its way into the lives of our heroines (and is, in fact mysteriously and inextricably linked to them), involves wunderkind film director Adam (Justin Theroux) who is being given thug-like orders by a raft of agents and executives - all of which seem closer to the edicts of gangsters. He's been clearly used to the business vagaries of the film industry, but his refusal to play ball seems to go deeper than usual as his life starts to spiral out of control. To restore normalcy, he is eventually forced to pay a visit in the deep night to one of Lynch's scariest incarnations, The Cowboy (Lafayette "Monty" Montgomery).

Betty's ascension to stardom seems to be getting more than a few helping hands. At one audition, she plays a love scene with Jimmy Katz (Chad Everett) a cheesy soap opera actor. The assembled slime bags for the audition appear to fetishize the love scene to creepy extremes, but Betty seems naively oblivious to the weirdness of it all. Deep french kissing with Chad Everett (no less) might well have been every gal's dream come true in his TV-star heydays of the 60s/70s, but it seems almost irredeemably sickening here.

And as her detective work on Rita's behalf intensifies, the very identities of both herself and lady love begin to morph into some extremely scary places. One of the more unsettling and moving sequences involves our sapphic couple visiting a strange club where they experience a live performance by an intense blue-haired chanteuse (Rebekah Del Rio) of Roy Orbison's "Crying" in Spanish.

The film swirls deeper into a thick morass which many might find utterly unintelligible, but in actual fact, there is a fairly straightforward narrative buried beneath the layers of mystery. (Lynch provided several cheeky clues for viewers to make note of that are now all over the internet after first being published with the first DVD release, but I think it's going to be a far more rewarding experience to let the film wash over you and keep discovering its secrets on subsequent viewings.)

I much prefer the big hint in Lynch's tagline for the film. He makes it clear that our film is set in the "city of dreams" and with elements of film noir coursing throughout the picture, Mulholland Drive might be as savage an excoriation of said dream factory as Nathanael West's classic 1939 novel "The Day of the Locust" (and its flawed, but worthy John Schlesinger 1975 screen adaptation).

In that great book, its "hero" is a production design storyboard artist who has been working on a sequence entitled "The Burning of Los Angeles" and one which terrifyingly comes to life in the book's shocking climactic moments. The portrait West paints of the film business is one of greed, exploitation and misogyny. Eventually, the only way to exorcise the evil is for total destruction.

Alas, Los Angeles, or rather, Hollywood, has not really burned. In Lynch's film, the greed, exploitation and misogyny West evoked has become more further entrenched than ever. It is a world of crime and corruption - a dream factory of nightmares. One of the orders director Adam receives is to utter the simple words "This is the girl" at an audition. At one point, Betty's alter-ego (yes, her personality does morph into someone else's) utters the same words.

"This is the girl," she says.

These words could belong to any "girl" for any reason. Using elements of dream logic to tell her dark story reveals how tenuous the thread between reality, dream and waking dream actually is. In many ways this dream of dark and troubling things in the city of dreams is not unlike a death dream and death, might well be what the dream factory is ultimately all about.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

In addition to the new restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, the Criterion Collection version of Mulholland Drive contains new interviews with Lynch; Deming; actors Naomi Watts, Justin Theroux, and Laura Harring; composer Angelo Badalamenti; production designer Jack Fisk; and casting director Johanna Ray, on-set footage, a deleted scene, the trailer and a booklet featuring an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book "Lynch on Lynch".

Kino Classics: British Noir, 5 DVD Set - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw of THEY MET IN THE DARK, THE OCTOBER MAN, SNOWBOUND, GOLDEN SALAMANDER, THE ASSASSIN (aka THE VENETIAN BIRD)

One of the best Home Viewing releases of 2015 is this Kino Classics 5 movie set of British Film Noir from the 40s and 50s. There are no frilly extras, but the films, representing the darkness of Dear Old Blighty are more than enough for any fan of war-time and post-war crime cinema.

They Met in the Dark (1943)
Dir. Carl Lamac
Scr. Anatole de Grunwald, Miles Malleson,
Basil Bartlett, Victor MacClure, James Seymour
Nvl. "The Vanished Corpse" by Anthony Gilbert
Starring: James Mason, Joyce Howard, Tom Walls, Phyllis Stanley, Edward Rigby

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Debonair Mason and babe Howard
seek, romance, redemption and
some good old-fashioned Nazi-busting.

A terrific cast, ace Czech expat Otto Heller's (Peeping Tom, The Ladykillers, Richard III) moody cinematography and the sprightly editing of Terence Fisher (the eventual director of such legendary Hammer films as The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Brides of Dracula), all contribute to making this otherwise routine wartime spy thriller, well worth seeing. Even in 1943, They Met in the Dark would have fallen into the been-there-done-that chasm of propaganda-rooted noir pictures, but it's a well produced effort that still manages to yield considerable entertainment value.

A youthful (and bearded) James Mason as a dashing and sexy naval commander, imbued with the tortured Mason-ian ennui (as per usual), is duped by a babe (secretly working for the Krauts) into delivering erroneous information which jeopardizes the lives of Brit sailors and their ship. He receives a court martial which forces him into deeper depression, but also provides the resolve he needs to tomcat his way into the heart of a plucky Canadian babe (Joyce Howard). With the Canuck lassie'e assistance, he seeks to clear his name and bring down the Nazi spies.

Thankfully, he also turfs the facial hair for the final two-thirds of the picture.

Plenty of intrigue abounds, including a nice set piece within a dark old house which yields a surprise corpse that spirals into even more seemingly insurmountable odds for our hero. The romantic chemistry twixt the debonair Mason and the luscious Howard crackles with major sex appeal and the main villain of the film is a deliciously dastardly, though (on the surface) antithetically refined Tom Walls as the show business agent Christopher Child, a Nazi pig in Savile Row finery.

The screenplay, cobbled together by no less than five credited writers, not including an unofficial sixth, the author of the original novel upon which the film is based, yields (not surprisingly) a somewhat generic work. Though the writing is strictly minor key, it's not without proficiency. Finally though, it is the fine cast and production value which render a calorically rich, though nutritionally empty appetizer to the other titles in this Box Set of Brit Noir delights.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half Stars

There's nothing more entertaining than
an amnesiac considering suicide, especially
when played by the magnificent John Mills.

The October Man (1947)
Dir. Roy Ward Baker
Scr. Eric Ambler
Starring: John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman,
Kay Walsh, Jack Melford, Frederick Piper, Joyce Carey

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Take a solid screenplay by Eric Ambler, the directorial debut of Roy Ward Baker (A Night To Remember and several great Hammer Horror classics), an atmosphere of amnesiac ennui resembling that of Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest and an astounding performance by John Mills (replete with joy, suffering, kindness, bravery and romantic yearning) and you get The October Man, a terrific British post-war offering that's ripe for re-discovery.

Mills is Jim, a chemist with a big industrial corporation who suffers a horrible head injury in a bus accident - one in which he's been entrusted with the care of a friend's child (played by Mills' real life daughter Juliet) and who dies horribly (through no fault of his own) in the crash. Jim spends a year in an asylum, wracked with amnesia, save for the recurring memories of the child's death.

Though released into the world, all is not right with our hero. His firm arranges a job for him at one of their plants in London and puts him up in a strange old rooming house. Here he tries to build his life back to what it once was, but it's not easy, especially being surrounded by a wide variety of provincially-minded fellow boarders including the horrible, old gossip Mrs. Vinton (Joyce Carey) and an extremely risible snoop and travelling salesman Peachey (Edward Chapman).

Jim eventually meets Jenny (Joan Greenwood), a sweet young woman who takes a shine to his gentle demeanour. The two begin dating and quickly fall in love. Alas, life keeps throwing curve balls at our sad-eyed hero. He befriends the doomed Molly (Kay Walsh), a fellow border who aspires to be an actress, practises lay-astrology and is the kept woman of a married rich businessman. Though she's obviously attracted to the kindness of Jim, she also sees a mark that she might be able to play for a sucker.

One night, Molly is brutally murdered and the prejudicial views against mental illness rear their ugly heads and Jim becomes the prime suspect. Jenny sticks by his side, but the odds of him being railroaded for Molly's murder increase exponentially, as do his deep suicidal tendencies.

The real killer must be found, but is Jim up to the task? The late Molly would have thought so. She dubbed him an October Man due to his astrological sign, but will the inherent qualities she saw in him be enough to avenge her death and save Jim?

I highly suggest you watch this wonderful melodramatic post-war bit of Blighty darkness to find out.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

One can never go wrong with Herbert Lom
as a greedy, villanous NAZI!

Snowbound (1948)
Dir. David MacDonald
Starring: Dennis Price, Robert Newton,
Stanley Holloway, Herbert Lom, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A motley crew of disparate personalities converges upon an isolated ski resort in the Italian Alps wherein, it is said, the Nazis hid a fortune in stolen valuables. A screenwriter (Dennis Price), a director (Robert Newton) a cameraman (Stanley Holloway), a courtesan (Mila Parély) and a Nazi (Herbert Lom) are amongst those who are all there to find the buried treasure. Much intrigue and double crosses ensue in this snowbound locale, building to a thrilling climax in which true colours are revealed and death, for some, will be imminent.

The performances, especially Herbert Lom as the villainous Hun hellbent on financing a Fourth Reich, are all delightful and the intrigue clips along at a supremely entertaining pace. There are elements of post-war darkness to be sure, but for the most part, the picture doesn't take itself too seriously and offers up plenty of fun.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Wilfred Hyde-White as Hoagy Carmichael.

Golden Salamander (1950)
Dir. Ronald Neame
Nvl. Victor Canning
Scr. Lesley Storm, Canning, Neame
Starring: Trevor Howard, Wildred Hyde-White, Herbert Lom, Anouk Aimee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Doing the math on this one, we come up with more than a few tasty post-war morsels tucked into a tale of greed and shady shenanigans. Based upon a Victor Canning novel, we're introduced to an archeologist (Trevor Howard) in Tunis. Attempting to track down some rare Etruscan items, his official visit turns into a nightmare. Amidst a group of nasty gunrunners, a sleazy local crime chieftain and corrupt constabulary, our eggheaded hero gets himself into a whole heap of trouble. He also falls in love with the gorgeous teenage proprietress (Anouk Aimee) of the hotel-bar he stays in.

It is here where we're blessed with the inimitable Wilfred Hyde-White doing his own rendition of Hoagy Carmichael as the bar's butt-puffing piano player - with divided loyalties, 'natch.

There are more double crosses than you can shake a stick at and at the centre of it all is the always-welcome presence of the dastardly Herbert Lom, here playing a big game hunter, strong-arm sharpshooter for the bad guys and general miscreant. Plenty of suspense is to be had in this nicely directed (by Ronald Neame of The Poseidon Adventure fame) thriller with a stellar blend of gorgeously shot location footage matched to studio interiors (courtesy of the legendary DoP Oswald Morris).

And for those who can't watch any thriller without one, there is, I kid you not, a wild boar hunt during the nail biting climax. Boar hunting and Herbert Lom is what one might best call, a "win-win" situation.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Eva Bartok and Richard Todd in post-war Venice

The Assassin (aka The Venetian Bird) (1952)
Dir. Ralph Thomas
Scr. Victor Canning
Starring: Richard Todd, Eva Bartok, John Gregson, George Coulouris, Sidney James

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Director Ralph Nelson ably steers Victor Canning's screenplay (from his novel) about a private detective (Richard Todd) who is sent to Venice to track down an Italian freedom fighter to reward him for his stellar work during war time. Gorgeous location photography and a haunting score by Nino Rota add up to a fine post-war noir thriller with plenty of double-crosses and a gorgeous femme fatale (Eva Bartok) to keep things delectably dark. Nelson's brother Gerald (eventual director of the "Carry On" series) handles the editing with aplomb - especially given the convolutions of the stirring plot line.

This is standard, but stirring post-war Brit suspense which keeps one on the edge of the seat thanks to a great cast and superb production value all round. Plenty of Hitchcockian touches and a Third Man-like flavour all round.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half-stars

The Kino Classics Brit Noir 5 DVD set is available via Kino-Lorber. Purchas directly from the Amazon links below and contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Unfairly Maligned Peckinpah Part 1

The Osterman Weekend (1983)
Dir. Sam Peckinpah
Starring: Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper,
Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, Cassie Yates, Craig T. Nelson. Chris Sarandon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I think the critics who trashed Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend when it first came out in 1983 were completely out to lunch about one key detail. Even though both Peckinpah and screenwriter Alan Sharp were dissatisfied with the script (based on Robert Ludlum's novel), the common critical complaint was the unintelligibility factor. My response on that front is: HOGWASH! Is the film a mass of confusion and mystery? It sure is, but none of this is detrimental to one's overall enjoyment of the film since it's the very inscrutability of the strange riddles haunting all its characters which keeps us guessing and which, is ultimately so simple, that we want to kick ourselves in the head for not getting "it".

I will admit that my first helping of the film theatrically was fraught with some disappointment at its lack of over-the-top bloodletting, but recent screenings (the DVD edition from ten-years ago and the new Blu-Ray release, both via Anchor Bay) restored my faith in Peckinpah's direction and his take on the material.

And back in the day, what in the Hell was I thinking about? The movie is incredibly violent (much of it submerged in the weird social dynamics of the "friends" who are getting together for weekend frolics) and eventually, all out nail baiting suspense and action during the final third of the picture.

In addition to all of that, there's a substantial creep factor to the whole affair which makes you feel like a vigorous scrub with a fresh, brand new loofah pad to exfoliate yourself of all the vile filth necrotizing upon your flesh.

John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) is a superstar TV journalist whose penetrating interviews are both feared and lauded by politicians and bureaucrats alike. His connections at all levels of government are deep seeded. His best friends from college include a number of successful power brokers all thriving in disparate, but successful fields and each year they have a weekend get-together spurred on by Bernie Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), a TV-news producer and John's closest friend.

This year's "Osterman" weekend is going to be a bit different for all concerned. John has been recruited by Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt), a mysterious CIA field operative. It seems Osterman and John's other pals, plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper), his snarky, coke-snorting wife Virginia (Helen Shaver), sleazily brilliant stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon) and sexy, loopy wifey Betty (Cassie Yates) are all making scads of extra dough as Soviet spies. Fassett wants to surveil the entire weekend and use John to expose his friends, but to also broker a deal to "turn" them into double agents.

John agrees to this entire mad scheme because he's a genuine patriot, but most of all, he's promised a one-on-one no-holds-barred interview with Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster), a kind of CIA equivalent to the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover.

The weekend, however, goes horribly awry - mostly because John is out of his depth. Coupled with a domestic dispute with his wife Ali (Meg Foster), his overt nervousness and the fact that he and his family are going into this after a harrowing kidnap attempt upon them by Soviet agents. Tanner is convinced all his friends know what he's up to and they in turn are besieged with their own domestic entanglements as well as fearing their old pal is using the weekend to nail them.

Peckinpah beautifully handles the sordid, nasty veneer of bourgeois excess which slowly descends into the kind of bitter acrimonious game-playing which would feel more at home in George and Martha's demented domestic set-up in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". And let's not forget that everything, every nook and cranny of John's home is outfitted with hidden surveillance cameras as our fey, chain-smoking Fassett voyeuristically observes several banks of monitors, like some mad Peeping Tom.

Tensions amongst the friends mount to extreme proportions and one can feel the potential for an explosion of violence. And when it comes, it's one shocker after another, all filtered through Peckinpah's astonishing feel for the mad ballet of carnage when men and women transform into seething, stalking beasts of prey.

Survival instinct is one thing and Peckinpah amps it up to total Red Alert, but amidst it all is a completely unhinged psychopath who will stop at nothing to extract life from anyone and everyone at all costs.

This is dazzling stuff. Of course, it could have even been far more vile and demented, but once again, poor Peckinpah was assailed by producers who refused to acquiesce to his complete vision, one which took voyeurism and vengeance to borderline extremes of surrealism. In spite of this, what's left is plenty effective.

My most recent screening of the picture on Blu-Ray was like a veil had been joyously lifted from the images and dramatic action. Upon first seeing The Osterman Weekend in 1983, the CIA surveillance methods in the movie seemed like science fiction, but nowadays, what's all on display is, quite miraculously, a chilling mirror image of both the contemporary mainstream media manipulation we're assailed with and the 1984-like invasion of our privacy. I can't help but think that Peckinpah was all-too aware that his film would be released on the eve of the actual year of Our Lord, 1984. The Orwellian undercurrent is perfectly in synch with the film's narrative, Peckinpah's taut, imaginative mise-en-scene and a kind of newfound power the film has attained in light of all that currently plagues us.

The Osterman Weekend was clearly ahead of its time.

As such, "Bloody" Sam got the last laugh on all of us.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

The Osterman Weekend is available on Blu-Ray from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada and Anchor Bay/Starz (in the USA). It ports over two key extras from the original DVD release from 10 years ago, a commentary track from by film historians/critics (and Peckinpah aficionados) Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, David Weddle and Nick Redman. Best of all is the 80-minute making-of documentary Alpha to Omega. Sadly missing from this release is Peckinpah's cut of the film. Granted, it was a crude telecine transfer of the 35mm work print, but it provided considerable insight into Peckinpah's unexpurgated hopes for the film.

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ossie-Davis does Blaxploitation like nobody ever did in this extremely entertaining adaptation of the Chester Himes novel with super dicks Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, now on Kino Lorber Blu-Ray

Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970)
Dir. Ossie Davis
Starring: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Redd Foxx, Judy Pace, Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche, J.D. Cannon, Cleavon Little

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"We may have broken some heads,
but we've never broken any promises." - Coffin Ed Johnson

Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) do what great cops do best; they always get their man and if THE MAN says, "Don't bust heads," they sure as hell make sure to bust all the heads that need busting to clean the scum off the streets of Harlem in glorious NYC.

And, they're cool.

Coffin Ed suavely serves up a sardonic wit, whilst Gravedigger Jones favours a more broad approach to inspiring yucks. As drawn by novelist Chester Himes, these cats have been immortalized in one of the ultimate Blaxploitation pictures of the 70s by none other than screenwriter-director Ossie Davis, one of the greatest African-American actors of all time (lovers of Spike Lee will never forget Davis as the philosophizing old man in Do The Right Thing and genre fans have long admired Davis as JFK - YES! - JFK in Don Coscarelli's immortal Bubba Ho-Tep).

Ed and Jones were perfect heroes for helmer Davis to march through their action-comedy paces. These two guys, as penned by Himes and immortalized onscreen by Davis, seem practically born with crime-fighting in their blood and they do the citizenry proud by never kowtowing to the rules imposed upon them by those uptight honkies running the NYPD and the city at large. No job is too big, small or untouchable. The People love 'em to death.

And, they're damn funny.

Call them an ebony Abbot and Costello if you must, but for whatever laughs they wrench consistently from us, they're mean buggers with lightning fists and sharp-shooting pistols, always ready for action.

Now, every good cop picture has a mystery to be solved, but the one which plagues Cotton Comes To Harlem is a doozy. The primary question that drives the picture is thus:

"Now what in the hell would a bale of cotton be doing in Harlem?"

Not just any cotton. We're talking raw, untreated and oh-so pure fluff, straight off the fields in the deep south. Buried within it is the quarry of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. A sleazy slime ball common criminal, the "good" Reverend Deke O'Malley (a deliciously ooze-dripping Calvin Lockhart) has been running what our boys know is a scam. The slick-talking man of the cloth has been running a major scam (or so our super dicks are convinced) to secure oodles of money from the good, poor, hard-working folks of Harlem in order to transplant them back to their roots in Africa and out of the mire of America which snatched up their forefathers in the first place.

Coffin and Gravedigger know better. They're convinced O'Malley, always adorned in fine clothes, jewels and living with a hot babe in a slinky pad, is going to take the money and run, run, run. Hunches, however, are not evidence and this is something our boys are going to have to beat out of a few heads. O'Malley, you see, has just collected a huge whack of dough during a rally which, has conveniently been hit by deadly, armed marauders in masks.

And the secret's in the cotton.

Damn, where's that cotton?

Davis generates a fun, slam-bang cops and robbers steam engine replete with a breakneck pace, plenty of babes, oodles of action and one of the best damn car chases on the streets old NYC - ever.

Replete with a great soundtrack, loads of laughs and sheer dogged detective work, Ossie Davis plunges us into a grand, two-fisted crime picture.

St. Jacques and Cambridge acquit themselves with aplomb and the rest of the cast is jam-packed with a who's who of African-American comic talent like Redd Foxx (Sanford and Son) and Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), plus a stalwart team of grizzled character actors including Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche and J.D. Cannon.

And then, there are the babes, the most luscious being Judy Pace, as O'Malley's wily, sharp-tongued mistress.

This great working actress should have been a much bigger star than Hollywood let her be, though as Vicki Fletcher in the famous TV nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and the one of three beauties who "love" a philanderer to death in Three in the Attic, let her prove to be no slouch in the popularity and talent department.

Blaxploitation was a long and popular sub-genre in the movies, but Cotton Comes to Harlem manages to transcend that label by being one of the best cop pictures of the 70s - period. Sadly, Ossie Davis only directed five feature films and one TV movie. He clearly had a great command of the camera and could easily dance rings round most studio hacks of the period and certainly held his own with the period's better filmmakers.

Davis delivered a lovely, but little seen drama called Black Girl and Gordon's War, a magnificently nasty action film with Paul Winfield leading a charge of Vietnam Veterans against scumbag drug dealers, pimps and other assorted miscreants. Still, Davis left behind an amazing legacy of legendary performances and with Cotton Comes To Harlem, he delivered an absolute must-see.

And, of course, there's Judy Pace.

Damn, she is fine!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Cotton Comes To Harlem is available on a gorgeously Blu-Ray that captures all the grain, grit and colour of the 70s from Kino Lorber. In Canada, the title is distributed by VSC (Video Services Corp).

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GUMSHOE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stephen Frears Debut Hardboiled Brit Kitchen Sink

Finney great as hardboiled schlub

Gumshoe (1971)
dir. Stephen Frears
Starring: Albert Finney, Frank Finlay, Billie Whitelaw, Janice Rule

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the most infuriating things is when a picture throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, and resembles a ratty patchwork quilt designed to comfort the posteriors of smelly hippies sitting on a cold, rain-soaked, mosquito-breeding patch of earth during some loathsome folk festival. On the other hand, there are patchwork quilts like Stephen Frears’s first feature Gumshoe which, like the work of a serious folk artist, is designed specifically for aesthetic scrutiny.

Frears’s long-form debut wanders between loving parodistic homage and straightforward detective drama – a picture that succeeds winningly in spite (or perhaps even because) of its desire to both comment on the form of detective fiction whilst being the thing itself. In this sense, Gumshoe comes close to satire, but because it doesn’t have a mean bone in its celluloid body (save for some of the roughing-up the genre demands) and never quite comes close to roasting the folly of humanity over an open fire in the Swift-like fashion we’ve become accustomed to, it doesn’t really earn the right to be called satire either. It earns the right, however, to be called a kick-ass picture that stays with you long after it’s unspooled.

Spinning the tale of clinically depressed schlub Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) and his obsession to parlay a photographic memory of hardboiled detective movies into his own reality, Gumshoe uses every cliché in the Warner-Brothers-RKO book. Of course, so does Eddie, and he’s the one driving the narrative – a narrative where dream gives way to reality.

When we first meet Eddie, he’s undergoing therapy and working in a seedy working class Liverpool nightclub as an emcee, bingo caller and standup comedian. Longing to be part of the world of rumpled Humphrey Bogarts where he can merrily be dispensing wisecracks, justice and indulging in kisses and repartee with a bevy of femme fatales (and potential victims of the evils of higher powers), he’s a man in search of something, anything that can help him escape what a miserable drudge his life has become. Turning 31 years of age, Eddie treats himself to a want ad in the newspaper announcing his services as a gumshoe – a private eye for whom no job is too big, too small or too dangerous. Quicker than he can spit out a hard-boiled quip, he’s offered a seemingly routine job on a case that eventually extends well beyond its simple surface intrigue.

The convoluted mystery that follows is, like most mysteries, secondary to the world and style of the genre itself. What really sets Gumshoeapart is that Eddie’s just a regular Joe and most importantly, his stylized patter and adventures are set against a kitchen sink British backdrop that would definitely be more at home in the "Angry Young Man" genre of the early 60s where the likes of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Tom Courtenay and Laurence Harvey railed against the injustices of working class life, but seldom found a way to crawl completely out of the muck. Eddie’s character is certainly not unlike those abovementioned anti-heroes. His ex-wife Ellen (Billie Whitelaw), a woman he will always love, left him for his own brother William (Frank Finlay), a shipping magnate who offered the sort of stability Eddie could never provide and, even to the end, has no intention of ever providing.

And, of course, in any great crime drama, betrayal always cuts deeper than anyone involved in the proceedings could ever imagine and in Gumshoe, betrayal is laid on thickly indeed, pistol-whipping Eddie constantly in the face.

This is an incredibly strange, beautiful and compelling picture. I’ve avoided detailing too much of the mystery, not so much for the continual surprises it offers, but because there is a political backdrop that, while dated, seems to have as much, if not more resonance in our contemporary world of strife and the gradual discovery of this makes for extremely engaging viewing. Also, Eddie’s family situation is one that figures very prominently in the proceedings and this is an especially poignant touch.

Save for a clunker of a performance from Janice Rule (though she looks great) as a femme fatale, the movie explodes with great acting. Finney fits his role like a glove and frankly, it might be one of his best performances in a very stellar career. As his brother Willie, Frank Finlay is the icy epitome of familial meanness.

Neville Smith’s screenplay bristles with crisp hardboiled narration and dialogue and the characters are full of delightful eccentricities and subtexts that always add to the forward movement of the convoluted, but always compelling narrative. The cinematography by Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission) dazzles with its stunning virtuosity. Blending film noir stylings with garish kitchen sink realism, this is perhaps one of the picture’s greatest achievements. The lighting and compositions are in perfect tandem with the strangeness of the screenplay and the two worlds that are often separate, but occasionally blend together, is always a visual wonder to behold. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s weird-ass score that veers from parody to homage to out and out straight up romantic old-Hollywood stylings is occasionally jarring in the wrong ways, but more often than not, hits the notes it needs to.

And last, but certainly not least, threading this altogether is Frears’ bold, yet controlled direction. He clearly loves these characters and this world. And frankly, so do we.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ Three and a half stars

Gumshoe is currently available on the Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment DVD label as part of their “Martini Movies” brand, which seems like a convenient way to lump a grab bag of catalogue titles under one banner. Alas, the banner makes no sense whatsoever with respect to the vast majority of films contained under it.

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PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Peter Weir's Classic Australian Private Schoolgirl Mystery on deluxe Criterion Blu-Ray box set.

Schoolgirls frolic with their corsets.
I'm down with this. And you?

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) *****
Dir. Peter Weir
Starring: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse,
Kirsty Child, Anne Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis,
Christine Schuler, Margaret Nelson, Dominic Guard, John Jarrett

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If you've not seen Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and know absolutely nothing about the contents of its final half hour, then you'll have the ideal conditions under which to see this extraordinary film for the first time. My own first blind helping of the picture upon its inaugural North American release during the late 1970s, proved to be so chill-inducing that subsequent viewings became even richer. In fact, I can still recall specific moments when the gooseflesh made its shivering creepy-crawl upon me. If I had known anything about the final third, I'd have still loved it to death, but that I didn't, made the love so much deeper, so truly, so madly, so deeply deeper.

Everyone Loves Miranada
Miranda Loves Everyone

What Weir doesn't hide from us is what we're about to see. The movie begins quite perfectly with the following statement in the de rigueur 70s white-on-black titles:

"On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock, near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without trace . . ."

Well, that about sums everything up, at least everything we need to know for now. There will be mystery, no doubt some suspense and, uh, schoolgirls in uniform. So far. So good.

In terms of narrative, the above statement pretty much describes the key incident in the plot that will spiral everything into turmoil. Knowing this right up front heightens our anticipatory dread. From the opening frames, gauzy, happy, David Hamilton-styled shots (the clothed/semi-clothed ones, naturellement) of pretty teenage girls romping about in their frilly nightdresses, bloomers, stockings, corsets and eventually, long, billowy white frocks, sun hats, fine gloves and twirly, tasselled parasols, this is a film that almost always presents us with watchful, fly-on-the-wall and downright fetishistic perspectives.

"Siliceous lava, forced up from deep down below.
Soda trachytes extruded in a highly viscous state,
building the steep sided mamelons."

Knowing what we know further heightens the feverish extent to which the girls are obsessed with St. Valentine's Day and their own budding sexuality. Passing exquisite handmade Valentine cards to each other, reading the inscribed sentiments privately and aloud, they are too breathlessly giddy to even properly wolf down their breakfast.

Gaiety abounds, but so does propriety and portent, the former mostly embodied in the primly coiffed headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts, carrying herself with deliciously stern diesel-dyke comportment) and the latter via the lush pan pipe tones of Zamfir on the soundtrack, dappled with lines of dialogue from the young ladies, especially those emanating from the goddess-like Miranada (Anne Lambert), words that take on the added weight they might normally not have been imbued with if it had not been for the aforementioned terse statement of fact embedded in those opening titles.

The excursion then begins in earnest, our girls accompanied by the schoolmarmish science teacher Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray) and the gentle, open, young and romantic French teacher Mademoiselle de Poitier (Helen Morse). Once delivered to the picnic grounds by horse and buggy, Weir's sumptuous imagery allows us to almost smell the delicate, perfumed aromas of all these women mixed with the natural scent of the abundant and varied flora of the site. As the ladies lazily gambol about, they are watched by two strapping young men from opposite ends of Australia's Victorian Era social strata (the nephew of two old coots picnicking nearby and their carriage driver). The gents find common ground via a shared bottle of wine and of course, their respective eyeballs glued to the variety of shapely young lassies.

Always present, strangely ever-watchful is the rock itself - huge, knobby phallus-like structures towering over everyone - ages-old daggers, jettisoned up from the molten bowels of the earth as if to penetrate the moist, open glove of blue sky and wisps of cloud. As opined by Miss McCraw, this is "siliceous lava, forced up from deep down below. Soda trachytes extruded in a highly viscous state, building the steep sided mamelons we see in Hanging Rock."

Mamelons, indeed.

The atmosphere is thick with both innocence and looming disaster: wind-up watches stop mysteriously at the same time, insects buzz amongst the flowers, the most moderate of breezes wafts through the leaves, a glistening knife plunges into a fluffy white Valentine cake. Time stands truly still as books are quietly read and naps are taken. Some lassies, however, are looking for added adventure. Miranda appeals to the kindly, liberal Mademoiselle for permission to take measurements at the rock's base so she and some of her classmates can better adhere to Mrs. Appleyard's orders to compose essays about the locale's geological properties.

With the French teacher's blessings, four of the girls begin their trek into the woods. Miranda turns around to deliver a wave to Mademoiselle. We know something the film's characters don't and allows for Miranda's wave to be infused with all the properties of a farewell. As the film follows the four ladies higher and ever-higher up the rock, maze-like pathways and dark, cave-like openings feel as Pied-Piper-like as they are ever-watchful - POVs taking on even more intensely fetishistic interest in these sweet young things as they're sucked up by the vortex in the sky.

"Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place," says Miranda.

And so, they do.

A piercing scream, a mad rush through canted angles of foreboding - some manner of evil has overtaken the proceedings and Picnic at Hanging Rock soon reveals a mad, desperate attempt to clutch at the straws of clues that become even more obtuse as they're examined and followed. Repression begets hysteria and director Weir delivers frustration, sadness and a mystery so haunting that we know only one thing for sure - truth is in the details, but in life, details are virtually meaningless unless they have some genuinely logical connection.

This, though, is the power of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Truth, even if we know it as such, is ultimately elusive and if anything, we think that maybe the answers to the mystery are hidden in plain sight, but life, as in the movies, can't always be so simple. As Miranda says in the first spoken lines of the film: "What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream." With those words, Weir plunges us into a film that might well be the closest cinematic equivalent to an infinity mirror that's ever been created.

The view is exposed by recursive means. It recedes into a tunnel of mystery upon mystery upon mystery that feels like there's simply never going to be an end in sight.

How creepy, how disturbing and how terrifying is that?

Plenty.

GORGEOUS Criterion Box-Set

Picnic at Hanging Rock is available in an astounding dual format box set from The Criterion Collection. Like another recent Criterion release (Red River), its presentation is clearly a vanguard that few, if any, will be able to approximate. Personally supervised by director Peter Weir, the film has been remastered via a high-definition digital film transfer. The multi-disc box includes an interview with Weir, a brand new documentary on the making of the film, a 1975 on-set documentary, A Recollection . . . Hanging Rock 1900 and a lovely booklet featuring a superb essay by author Megan Abbott and an informative excerpt from Marek Haltof’s 1996 book "Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide". There's a new introduction by David Thomson, author of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" that many will find illuminating, but I suggest to those who've not seen the film to not watch it until afterwards. (This, obviously goes for all of the added value features.) As with their release of Red River, Criterion has again outdone themselves with the whole package. There are two extras that catapult the box into some kind of home entertainment immortality. The first is the inclusion of Homesdale, Peter Weir's hilariously vicious 1971 black comedy.

The second is a brand-new paperback, previously O.O.P. in North American, of Joan Lindsay’s classic of Australian literature that the film uses as its source. This is a truly great book which I'd never read before and after watching this version of the film a couple of times, I dove between the book's covers and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, it's a magnificent supplement to the film and offers added illumination to the great mystery it and the film recount.

THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Documentary Portait of Trouble in Nietzschean Paradise Flawed, But Worth Seeing

The Galapagos Affair:
Satan Came To Eden
Dir. Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine (2013) ***
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen
 Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgard, Josh Radnor

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"...I looked and saw the sand. Alive, all alive, as the new hatched sea turtles made their dash to the sea, the birds hovered and swooped to attack, and hovered and swooped to attack, they were diving down on the sea turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing their undersides open, and rending and eating their flesh." - Mrs. Venable from the Tennessee Williams play Suddenly Last Summer

When the negative to Alfred Hitchcock's The Empress of Floreana was lost to a fire in a shed on the backlot of Paramount Pictures, the Master of Suspense would rue the day he had his trusty camera assistant dispatch the precious materials to this secret location. Hitch feared that the studio's already cold feet about the daring film would become even more frigid and he simply did not trust leaving any of it to the care of the climate controlled vaults. He even ordered all still negatives be stored there too, along with screen tests, all the requisite costume and lighting tests and even the storyboards. With only two-thirds of the film in the can, Paramount ordered the production to wrap and instead, cashed-in on the insurance policy to cover the losses.

Able to apportion company overhead to the policy, Paramount actually profited on the claim. The studio's gain, so to speak, was cinema's loss. Brimming with sex, sadomasochism, adultery, violence and, of course, murder most foul, the film was based upon the true story of Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Cary Grant in a dyed blonde flattop haircut), an obsessive Nietzschean philosopher and scientist who fled German society in the 1920s with his devoted, subservient mistress Dore Strauch (Joan Fontaine) and settled on the uninhabited Galapagos island paradise of Floreana. Here the couple's once passionate love dwindles as Ritter transforms into a controlling, mean-spirited introvert and Dore is forced to seek companionship with the only living thing on the island that will pay attention to her - a donkey.

Unfortunately, word of the couple's flight made it back to the Fatherland and soon, another German family, the Wittmers (Joseph Cotten and Claudette Colbert), decide to follow in their footsteps. Ritter sees this is as the ultimate intrusion upon his desire to be free of all human interaction - so much so, that when the pregnant Mrs. Wittmer experiences a painful, dangerous labour in the cavern Ritter has set them up in as a home, he only grudgingly, and at the last minute, agrees to help - in spite of the fact that he's a skilled physician who swore to the Hippocratic Oath.

Adding insult to injury, a third party invades the island, the Baroness Von Wagner (Grace Kelly) and her two boy-toys (Tab Hunter and Martin Landau). The Baroness has plans to erect a massive tourist hotel on the island, though as the tale progresses, it's suspected that she's a fraud, a con artist on the lam. Tension intensifies as the Baroness begins to make eyes at Ritter and Mr. Wittmer. This infuriates their significant other and wife, as well as the boy toys. All are plunged into the roiling, seething waters of jealousy and betrayal.

Floreana also becomes host to Captain Alan Hancock (Thomas Mitchell), a well-heeled commander of a shipping vessel who fancies himself a filmmaker of exotic locales in the Schoedsack and Cooper tradition (both of whom were amalgamated into the Carl Denham character in the legendary RKO production of King Kong). Hancock decides to make a movie about the Baroness in which she stars as herself. Neither Strauch nor Mrs. Wittmer will participate in the other female role, so the Baroness convinces one of her boy toys (the one played by Martin Landau) to take the other female role in drag. Hancock's film, The Empress of Floreana is shot, much to everyone else's consternation.

The tropical vat of illicit couplings and envy boils over and soon, the horizon is clearly pointing to murder.

That this is a true story is all the more phenomenal. What would have been even more phenomenal is if the events described above actually were the contents of a lost Hitchcock film (or even one that was truly made). No, dear reader, that bit is a flight of Key To Reserva fancy on my part. (Reserva is Martin Scorsese's 2007 extended promotional film for Freixenet Cava champagne that presented a "lost" Hitchcock film and so superbly done, it fooled even the biggest movie geeks - myself included.)

All that said, everything described, save for my imaginary dream cast (and director, 'natch), is the compelling mystery thriller of a documentary that's been expertly crafted by directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. Using the writings of the principal participants in this genuine adventure in the Encantatas (and voiced superbly by a fine cast including Cate Blanchett), a wealth of archival materials, still photos, newspaper/magazine clippings, actual home movie footage (including that shot by the real Captain Hancock), The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden is a documentary feature that has you sliding off the edge of your seat as you follow this astonishing, riveting tale (with your jaw occasionally hitting the floor).

The movie incorporates newly shot footage of life in the Gslapagos now, including interviews with current residents and even several living descendants of the aforementioned parties. Though there's some great stuff in these sequences, the lurid narrative employing the archival materials and narration almost seems like it would have been enough to render a terrific picture. Alas, the modern stuff, more often than not, just seems to put occasional stops to the otherwise gorgeous flow of the proceedings.

This, however, is not enough to drag the movie down irreparably and you'll be treated to a very strange, creepy and often suspenseful picture. And yes, there is a movie buried in here that Hitch himself would have done wonders with, but Geller and Goldfine acquit themselves admirably enough in presenting a torrid real-life melodrama that keeps you fascinated and guessing to the end.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden is a Kinosmith Release which opens at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on April 11-18, 2014 and throughout the rest of Canada on a platform release. For further info, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

VERONICA MARS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Movies are getting so awful that too many feel like bad TV.

*NOTE* I couldn't believe how awful this movie was. After I wrote this review, I did a quickie Google and discovered a whole lot of background info that makes me hate this movie even more. I'm especially happy to watch movies without knowing anything (or as little as humanly possible) about them and even happier to not write the pieces with pre-conceived notions (well, as best as one can in this day and age). I'm also happy I don't watch TV or trailers, nor read reviews, puff pieces or press kits before I see movies and write about them. In spite of what I now know about this horrendous excuse for a "major" motion picture, I'm even happier to stand by this review without amending it to reflect any of the ghastly information that now roils about in my brain like some rogue tapeworm bent on total ingestion.

Beneath my Beautiful Golden Tresses is, uh, nothing - reflecting, of course,
the collective total I.Q. of my loyal fans who love me without even thinking
about it, because happily, they can't think. Kinda like me. Tee-hee-hee!!!

Veronica Mars (2014)
LOWEST FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL and DINING LOUNGE
Dir. Rob Thomas, Starring: Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni
Review By Greg Klymkiw


What in Christ's name is this movie? Why was it made? Who is it supposed to please? How can any major feature film be so awful? How can a respected studio like Warner Brothers attach themselves to a feature film that seems, for all intents and purposes, to be little more than a vapid, incompetently crafted television drama stretched out to an interminable length?

I normally would have walked out of something this dreadful after two minutes, but I was, frankly, so utterly agog at the film's wretchedness and inconsequence I girded my mighty loins and nailed my feet to the floor.

The first ten (or maybe longer) minutes of the movie is some of the most ludicrous expositional material I've ever seen in any movie - ever. At least it seemed that way. Incomprehensibly shoehorned and top loaded into the picture is a putrid miasma of horrendously written voice-over that explained a whole whack of information so quickly that all I could really glean from it was that the main character was once a teenage private detective in a small California resort town and now, many years later, finds herself in the big city looking for a job as a lawyer in a high-profile firm.

The voice-over, however, is not only incomprehensible, but so flatly delivered by Kristen Bell, the purported actress in the title role, that when she finally opens her mouth by way of interacting with other characters, her delivery is as fake and vapid as the dialogue implanted in her brain via microchip. It's impossible to believe she could even graduate from the scuzziest community college with a certificate in septic sanitation maintenance, let alone garner a degree in Psychology and then (I guffawed) Law.

When it appears that an old friend (we're supposed to know he's an old friend because the movie tells us in the aforementioned expositional voiceover) is being charged with murder, our heroine hightails it back to her hometown and we're forced to suffer through a lugubrious series of perfunctory TV-style murder mystery machinations, punctuated every so often as Veronica reunites with a myriad of characters introduced to us in the said same aforementioned expositional voiceover and at this point, we still don't really know who anyone is as none of them appear to resemble characters in a movie other than the fact that the movie, via the - ahem - said same aforementioned expositional voiceover - tells us they're characters.

The only thing for sure is that our title character knows who they are.

The movie continues to plod mercilessly through one of the most uninteresting murder mysteries ever committed to film and we're forced to tolerate a hit parade of mostly no-name actors who look like they're delivering lines by rote in an overlong failed television pilot. There are minor appearances - extended cameos - by real actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and James Franco, who all provide ever-so brief oases from the dreadful semi-sitcom-styled acting.

Most egregiously, we have to experience a solid performance, in spite of the horrendous script, from Enrico Colantoni who seems like he deserves a more distinguished career than playing second fiddle to Kristen Bell whose only claim to fame was making poor Jason Segel's life miserable in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and prancing around in her knickers in the kitsch-fest Burlesque. I can't, sadly remember ever seeing Colantoni in any features films of note, but he appeared in a great Canadian short film called Winter Garden from earlier last year. If the Gods are smiling, he might still knock us on our butts with work in a terrific feature with a great role and real writing. In the 70s, he'd have had a decent shot as a leading character star a la Gene Hackman, but nobody makes movies like that anymore other than Quentin Tarantino. Hmmmmmmmmm. If I were Colantoni's agent, I know who's door I'd be knocking on.

As for direction - what direction? Rob Thomas, the no-name first-time feature director (well, I assume it's a first feature since I try to see every feature that opens and I'd remember the name of anyone so bereft of talent) proves that he can direct bad overlong television, but he clearly can't even do it competently. His coverage is so pathetically generated I'd hazard a guess that he might actually be the directorial equivalent to Mr. Magoo.

Earlier I asked who this movie is for. I saw it with a whole mess of tween and teen girls and their mothers. They all seemed to know what was going on and squealed with delight at every character introduction and reference to plot points regurgitated later on in the movie from the ludicrous - you guessed it - said same aforementioned expositional voiceover.

Christ, I felt like I was sitting through those wretched Sex and the City movies. Though Veronica Mars is thankfully without the equine Sarah Jessica Harper braying throughout the movie, I was even more appalled to see such young ladies in the audience shovelling this crap down their gullets. It's one thing seeing bovine forty-something women screeching over Sex and the City, but here we're talking about the next generation.

All I can do is sigh and continue to mourn at the cultural decline of Western Civilization.

"Veronica Mars" is not, it seems, in that wide of a theatrical release via Warner Bros. but mostly available on VOD.

SPELLBOUND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Zaniest Collaboration Twixt Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick and, for good measure, Ace Screenwriter Ben Hecht, Genius Production Designer William Cameron Menzies, Floridly Overwrought Composer Miklos Rozsa and the biggest WTF in movie history, Salvador Dali.

Spellbound (1945) *****
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck,
Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, Michael Chekhov

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Of the four official collaborations between producer David O. Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock, I've always considered The Paradine Case the worst, Notorious the most romantic, Rebecca the best and Spellbound the most utterly insane. The latter description of the latter film is entirely appropriate since it's a murder mystery set in an asylum wherein psychoanalysis is utilized to discover deep meaning in a recurring dream (designed, no less, by surrealist Salvador Dali) in order to find out exactly whodunit.

If this isn't insane, then I don't know what is.

Spellbound also has the distinction of being wildly, deliciously melodramatic, almost crazily romantic and when it needs to be, thanks to the genius of the Master himself, nail-bitingly suspenseful.

Selznick was responsible for bringing Hitchcock to America and signing him to a longterm talent contract. For much of their association, Hitchcock was lent out to other studios, which suited him just fine as he was able to do his own thing without having to tolerate (what Hitchcock perceived to be) the constant interference of the famous auteur producer of Gone With The Wind. Of the four aforementioned collaborations, Notorious was eventually sold outright to RKO in the midst of production while the other three proved to be one of the most dynamic producer-director battlefields in movie history.

Hitchcock and Selznick detested each other. Hitch thought of Selznick as a meddling vulgarian whilst Selznick viewed the portly Brit as a mad genius who needed his sure and steady hand (or psychoanalysis, if you will).

The Chilly Ice Goddess Must Melt.

To this day, Rebecca, a virtually flawless film that more than ably sets the stage for Hitchcock's extremely mature latter work (notably Rear Window and Vertigo) is casually (and sadly) dismissed by the Master of Suspense in the famous interviews with Francois Truffaut as not really being "a Hitchcock film", but rather, "a David O. Selznick film". In many ways, it seems to me that Spellbound might well have been the most ideal collaboration between the two men. Selznick wanted desperately to make a film that extolled the virtues of psychoanalysis (which he felt had been an enormous help to himself - though there appears to be no proof he ever really "got better" as Selznick's maniacal megalomania followed him to the grave). Hitchcock wanted to make a great suspense film and was certainly drawn to the notion of psychoanalysis being used to unravel a mystery.

Add to this mix, the magnificent talent of Hollywood's best screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, The Front Page, Scarface and among many others, Wuthering Heights) and Salvador Dali to design the dream sequences and you've got a picture that guaranteed success. (And yes, it was a multi-Oscar-nominee/winner, though not for Hitch, and a huge hit at the box office.)

Hitchcock, purportedly refused to have anything to do with Dali's dream sequences (other than adhering to their imagery as scripted for purposes of the plot) and they were ultimately directed by the ace production designer/director William Cameron Menzies (Gone With The Wind, Things to Come). The hearty cinematic stew that is Spellbound also features a most flavourful ingredient, a great over-the-top score by the legendary Miklos Rozsa - replete with plenty o' theremin usage. Gotta love the theremin!

NYMPHOMANIAC - Hubba Hubba!

What this ultimately yielded was a wonky, intense, romantic and thoroughly engaging murder mystery wherein the director of an asylum in Vermont, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), is being forced into an early retirement to make way for a younger, more vibrant head head-shrinker Dr. Anthony Edwardes (the handsome, sexy, stalwart Gregory Peck). The asylum's ace psychoanalyst, Dr. Constance Peterson (the mouth-wateringly gorgeous Ingrid Bergman) is so committed to her work, that most of her colleagues view her as an impenetrable Ice Goddess.

This chilly demeanour, however, stands her in good stead in the results department and she's probably the only person who can adequately handle the asylum's most over-the-top nymphomaniac (Rhonda - "hubba hubba" - Fleming).

But even ice is susceptible to eventually melting and soon, Constance gets definitely hot and bothered and drippingly wet as she succumbs to the rugged, manly charms of Dr. Edwardes. Even more tempting is that on the surface, this stiff rod of manhood is the sort of gentle pansy-boy Constance needs.

Deep down, he is sensitive and most importantly, he is… wait for it - in pain.

Yes, pain!

He needs a good woman for more than amorous attention, he needs her to PSYCHOANALYZE him. When it becomes plain he's not all he's cracked up to be and might, in fact, be a murderer and impostor, it's up to the head-over-heels healer of heads to solve the mystery lodged in Dr. Edwardes's mind.

This is all, of course handled with Hitchcock's trademark semi-expressionistic aplomb and untouchable knack for rendering suspense of the highest order. There isn't a single performance in the film that isn't spot-on (Leo G. Carroll is suitably and alternately sympathetic and malevolent, whilst Peck acquits himself admirably as the troubled leading man), but it's Ingrid Bergman who really carries the picture. Her transformation from Ice Queen to a sex-drenched psychiatrist with a delightful blend of matronly and whorish qualities is phenomenal. She's mother, lover and doctor - all rolled into one magnificent package. And she's never looked more beautiful. Selznick knew this better than anyone and Hitchcock himself knew all too well how to compose and light for beauty.

In one of Selznick's delightful memos from when he first brought Ingrid Bergman to America he wrote:

"...the difference between a great photographic beauty and an ordinary girl with Miss Bergman lies in proper photography of her – and that this in turn depends not simply on avoiding the bad side of her face; keeping her head down as much as possible; giving her the proper hairdress, giving her the proper mouth make-up, avoiding long shots, so as not to make her look too big, and, even more importantly, but for the same reason, avoiding low cameras on her...but most important of all, on shading her face and invariably going for effect lightings on her."

Damn!

They don't make movies like this anymore! And, sadly, they don't make producers like Selznick anymore.

Some things, however, never change. How Ingrid Bergman was nominated the same year for an Oscar for her luminous, but limp-in-comparison performance in The Bells of St. Mary's over Spellbound is yet another mystery of the Oscars we all must put up with.

Not to put too fine a point on it - but, I must - Spellbound is, indeed, spellbinding and it's easily one of the great pictures by both Masters - Selznick and Hitchcock.

"Spellbound" is now available on Blu-Ray via 20th Century Fox/MGM. The copious extras are a mixed bag. A commentary with film historians Thomas Schatz and Charles Ramirez Berg is a real disappointment compared to the great Marian Keane commentary on the Criterion DVD. These guys are all over the place with spotty info and critical analysis bordering on the, shall we be charitable and say, rudimentary. There are a series of docs including one on the film's place as the first to deal with psychoanalysis, a backgrounder on the Salvador Dali sequences, a cool interview with Hitchcock conducted by Peter Bogdanovich and a really delightful doc on Rhonda Fleming. There's a Lux Radio play version of the movie with Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli and a trailer. The movie looks wonderful on Blu-ray, but I have to admit to preferring the care taken with the Criterion DVD transfer which ultimately has a better grain structure and seems closer to 35mm without all the over-crisp qualities that high definition adds/detracts when it comes to older films. I, of course, continue to be in the minority in this belief. That said, I am very happy with the few Hitchcock Blu-Rays that have been released to Blu-Ray. The transfers are impeccable and genuinely maintain the "film" look without too much digital interference (of the aesthetic kind).