Remembrance of things passé

Just when you thought there couldn’t be another angle to Baby Boomer nostalgia, not one but three new DVDs are here to tap that graying audience. Under the banner “Johnny Legend Presents,” they tackle such unlikely compatriots as Betty White, Dennis Hopper and the original cast of Star Trek in their salad days, a black and white blitz of Camelot-era pop culture, from a time before the term pop culture even existed.

    Readers of this blog will no doubt reach for Dennis Hopper: The Early Works, which contains “his very first screen appearances and the movie that made him A LEGEND!” — their quote, italics, and caps. The movie in question, Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide (1963), came out six years before Hopper’s true calling card, Easy Rider, but it did offer him his first starring role. Playing a lonely sailor hooking up with a woman who — in varying shades of Cat People — may be a mermaid, it was marketed as a supernatural thriller but actually shares more with Harrington’s early avant-garde work. It co-stars Luana Anders (later to skinny dip with Hopper, Sabrina Scharf and Peter Fonda in Easy Rider), the ethereal Linda Lawson, and the even etherealer Cameron. (Hardcore cinephiles should keep an eye peeled for brief glimpses of Bruno VeSota and Ben Roseman, veterans of the très strange Dementia [1955].) While it’s always nice to see Night Tide, the version here, though letterboxed, is a substandard print that hasn’t been digitally enhanced for widescreen TVs — which is baffling since all they sell nowadays are widescreen TVs. Don’t fret: there’s a vastly superior version of Night Tide available from Amazon.

    As if to prove the term “classic television” an oxymoron, the rest of the set is filled with four samples of early work done for the tube. Broadcast in 1955, the “Boy in the Storm” episode of the Medic series has nineteen-year-old Dennis prophetically cast as an artistic teen given to crazy outbursts and drooling fits. A kindly doctor recognizes epilepsy, and, as Victor Young’s wailing strings tug at the heart, everyone’s poised to shed a tear over his graceful fortitude. The highpoint, while far from politically correct, is Dennis convulsing in a balls-to-the-walls epileptic fit. Othello it ain’t.

    “Mama’s Boy” (1955) from Public Defender, stars Reed Hadley as the legal council out to prove Dennis acted in self defense in the murder of his pantywaist pal. From The Loretta Young Show, “Inga II” (1955) has him as a spoiled rich kid learning the ropes on a farm. While Loretta shamelessly revamps her Farmer’s Daughter character from the 1947 film, complete with hair pretzel-braided into a pair of ungainly earmuffs, the rest of the cast is a who’s who of second-tier character actors: Paul Brinegar (the idiot assistant in How to Make a Monster [1958]), post-Slip Mahoney Bowery Boy Stanley Clements, Donald (Frankenstein’s Daughter) Murphy, and the ubiquitous Kathleen Freeman. In “Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik” (1964) from Petticoat Junction (missing its theme song due to copyright complications), Hopper’s an angry Greenwich Village poet inexplicably transplanted to Hooterville, wooing one of Uncle Joe’s bimbo nieces. Even then, you could smell the madness in his wake.

    The gulf separating Dennis Hopper from Betty White is as wide as the distance between Blue Velvet and The Sound of Music. I would have used a Betty White movie for that illustration, but, for the life of me, I can’t think of one. Ms. White, who recently began moonlighting as a kitsch icon (notably as host of Saturday Night Live), is not generally regarded as an actress, comedian, singer or dancer. She is simply Betty White, an odd, untethered career unto itself. Upon glancing over the slipcase for Betty White in Black and White, I was taken by surprise. Everyone used to recognize her as a gameshow panelist, but I never knew Betty as a sitcom star in the 1950s. Morning and daytime television in my childhood was littered with reruns of nearly anything you could imagine, but Betty’s Life With Elizabeth (1952-1955), A Date With the Angels (1957-1958) and The Betty White Show (two of them!: 1954 and 1958) were never shown in my neck of the woods.

    The DVD anthology is three hours of such antediluvian Betty mania. The earlier Betty White Show was a daytime café klatch, the star occasionally appearing unscripted and working on an intimate level with the viewer — Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood for hausfraus. The one episode here finds her and bandleader Frank DeVol fêting a young girl on “Wish Day.” Visibly uncomfortable and struggling to smile and not cry, the twelve-year-old has the unenviable task of presenting one of Winston Churchill’s flunkies with a birthday present for the Prime Minister. (Apparently Winnie was too busy to drop by himself.) The later Betty White Show was a generic sitcom with Betty and Del Moore as a suburban couple prone to (surprise! surprise!) wacky misunderstandings. One of the two episodes in the collection features 50s scream queen Gloria Talbot (Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, The Cyclops, I Married a Monster from Outer Space — and the daughter in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows) as Moore’s vavavoom-ish secretary. About the business papers she’s got pressed against her hefty, missile-bra’d breasts, Moore says, “That’s quite a stack!”

    Betty’s Life With Elizabeth, on the other hand, transcends camp, unwittingly mining its humor from the tense undercurrent running through a strained marriage. Each episode is broken down into three unrelated vignettes, introduced through the used-car-dealer smile of host Jack Narz. The couple (Betty and Moore) appear immune to the verbal slings and arrows they fire at one another, mostly on a claustrophobic living room set that could double as a jail cell. Yes, it’s a comedy, but the repressed anger within Betty’s Elizabeth, laughing to herself over private, unshared jokes, is evident in enough barbed giggling, smirking and teasing to lay the groundwork for a freshman-year psychology thesis on rage and self-loathing.

    The most outré of the three DVDs combines Star Trek with the wild west in the two-disc set, Trek Stars Go West. 1950s and 60s television was overrun with Cowboys & Indians, long before the term Native American was coined, when schoolbooks and common opinion never equated their wholesale slaughter with genocide. In keeping with the times, network programming favored simpleminded scenarios, mundane problems and easy solutions. Common plot elements running through the shows offered here, for example, have less to do with political or racial issues than with the workaday lives of white dudes, their honor amongst themselves, and the ceaseless trouble instigated — on the farm, on the ranch or in the saloon — by pesky womenfolk.

    A braided Leonard Nimoy is onscreen only briefly as a conniving Comanche in an episode of Tate (1960). Written by Harry Julian Fink, the show is chockablock with the same brand of simmering stoicism he later brought to his Dirty Harry characters. After being a major nuisance to the locals, the future Mr. Spock is scalped (offscreen, ‘natch) by a very young Robert Redford. We’re then treated to Nimoy as a sourpuss saloon manager/pimp in “The Ape,” a 1960 Bonanza (also missing its theme song) which attempts to, well, ape Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as hulking Hoss (Dan Blocker) plays George to Cal Bolder’s Lennie — dumb and dumber — six years before Bolder fell into the abyss of Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Again from 1960, Nimoy is a gun for hire in a town lorded over by a bullying land baron in “Shorty” from the forgotten Outlaws series. Sharply written by Daniel Mainwaring, it revisits the themes of power and intimidation prevalent in his screenplays for Out of the Past, The Big Steal, The Hitch-Hiker, The Phenix City Story, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

    There’s also a two-part Outlaws, “Starfall” (1960), a restrained William Shatner co-starring with Edgar Buchanan (Petticoat Junction’s Uncle Joe), John (Attack of the Puppet People) Hoyt, Warners regular Barton MacLane, Jack Warden (!), Cloris Leachman (!!), and Victor (King Tut) Buono. They’ve disinterred a 1949 installment of The Lone Ranger with DeForest (‘Bones’) Kelley; and a 1957 broadcast of Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans with James (‘Scotty’) Doohan grossly overshadowed by Lon Chaney Jr. as Chingachgook. The pot of fool’s gold at the end of this black and white rainbow, however, is the full color feature film White Comanche (1968). Shot on the cheap in Spain, it stars Shatner as twin half breed brothers. One’s virtuous, the other a peyote-swilling renegade lording over a band of sycophants, or: Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks versus Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, minus the talent (and budget). Joseph Cotton is there too, but by the time he wanders in, you may think you’ve lost your mind.

To order online, click:

Dennis Hopper: The Early Works

Betty White in Black and White

Trek Stars Go West

Ridin’ that rainbow to Cloudsville

Linda Lawson sings. She was Mora the Mermaid in Night Tide. Bio info provided before and after the track.

I’d walk a mile for a Cammell

Duffy (1968) Written by Donald Cammell and Harry Joe Brown Jr.; directed by Robert Parrish and produced by Martin Manulis; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 101 minutes.

Doubtlessly inspired by the apparent success of the Warner Archives, Sony has announced their own line of made-to-order releases from Columbia Pictures. A canny business move, these on-demand DVDs (rather, DVD-Rs) work like heroin on a vulnerable collector’s market willing to shell out twenty- to twenty-five bucks per title on films which, if mass produced, would be gathering dust in the five-dollar bin at Walmart, a fate many of them weathered years ago when they were released on VHS. As of yet, none are on hand for rent or instant viewing at Netflix.

    Less the Holy Grail of Donald Cammell’s sketchy oeuvre than one of its many missing links, Duffy (1968) is a psychedelic heist film making a long overdue debut on home video. (As far as I know, it never came out on tape.) Props to Sony/Columbia for recognizing the absence, and providing such a clear, rich looking transfer. As with the others in the Warner and Columbia catalogs, it’s short on bonus features outside of a trailer. Who cares? As a longtime Cammell fan, I was happy just to see the thing in its entirety. Those who don’t share my enthusiasm, however, may want to proceed with caution.

    On the one hand, Duffy is an eye-popping relic from that momentary lapse when a conservative mainstream grappled with all things mod, a dangerous cultural turning point that found us getting hammered with chartreuse Nehru jackets, paisley bellbottoms and tea shades — trendy items any true hipster wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. It’s also where Cammell, a psychic descendant of the Pre-Raphaelites, may have found solace in the prevailing fashions and ethics. The commercial hook in his story was an elaborate robbery, hot stuff back when people were still going on about Rififi (1955) and Topkapi (1964), and enough to secure a high profile three-James cast: Coburn, Mason and Fox. Along for the ride is newcomer Susannah York, playing an ornamental sex object who, we’re told, “may be a hooker but not a slut.”

Fox and York in Duffy; click to enlarge

    He’s credited for co-writing the screenplay with Harry Joe Brown, Jr. (Harry Sr. produced all of those cool Randolph Scott-Bud Boetticher westerns in the 50s), but the more compelling aspects of Duffy revolve around its proximity to Cammell’s own personal life. There are thinly veiled references to his father and brother David, and glimmers of the hedonism to come in Performance (1970), which he’d soon start filming with Nicolas Roeg. Still inexperienced as far as the studios were concerned (after an aborted career as a portrait painter in the 50s, his only previous film credits included a brief appearance as a tourist asking directions in Eric Rohmer’s La collectionneuse [1967] and collaborative work on the screenplay for The Touchables [1968]), the thirty-four-year-old Cammell did not direct Duffy — Robert Parrish did, and delivered something decidedly different than we imagine its author would have allowed. Prior to Duffy, Parrish was an actor (John Ford’s Mother Machree [1928], Chaplin’s City Lights [1931]), and climbed his way up the production ladder, first as sound editor (on Young Mister Lincoln [1939] and others for Ford), film editor (for Ford, George Cukor, Lewis Milestone, Max Ophüls; winning an Oscar for Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul in 1947), and kicked off a thirty-two year career as a director with Cry Danger in 1951. Fifty-two-years-old when Duffy was made, it’s easy to see Parrish scratching his head over such groovy idioms as “Can you dig the scene, man?” and “This happening just isn’t my bag, baby.”

    If Cammell’s to credit for the plot and characters, he has two half-brothers — one an underachiever with improbable corporate aspirations (played by John Alderton), the other a bohemian fashion whore averse to manual labor (James Fox) — cooking up a scheme to rip off millions from their conniving, emotionally distant father (James Mason), part of whose fat bank account is the net result of their dead mothers’ inheritances. They and their situation may not bear direct similarity to David and Donald; nor their father, the poet, author and Aleister Crowley biographer Charles Richard Cammell, but it’s safe to assume Donald drew from personal experience to flesh out the screenplay. There’s a direct reference to the Cammell family’s history in shipbuilding (their fortunes were lost in the Great Depression) as Mason’s loot is in transit on one of his company’s cruise ships — a vessel prophetically named after the Egyptian god Osiris, a character Cammell himself later portrayed in Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising (1972).

    Alderton and Fox enlist the services of the title character, an American expatriate, avant-garde sculptor and thief living in Tangiers (James Coburn), where most of the action takes place once we’re away from the sons’ London digs. Cammell was reportedly dissatisfied with Parrish’s direction, but Duffy has moments of rhythmic beauty and craft, such as this casual introductory shot of Coburn arriving at a destitute village bordered by a bustling oasis of suntans, bikinis and cocktails:

    Then at the zenith of his popularity, the lanky and toothsome Coburn starred in five major releases between his breakout role in Our Man Flint (1966) and Duffy two years later: What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966); Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) — one of the decade’s more colorful titles; In Like Flint (1967); the Western comedy Waterhole #3 (1967), in which a rape is dismissed as “assault with a friendly weapon”; and The President’s Analyst (1967). He arrived at an interesting characterization for Duffy, whose contradictory persona is left open for interpretation. An artist, capitalist, nonconformist, pot smoker, peace lover, gun owner, analytical thinker, cigarette smoker, zealous about his morning meditation, drinker, playboy, con artist — meat, potatoes and tofu — and the most grounded character in the story. He’s also an American whose sheer brain power and charisma enable him to float above his less intelligent Moroccan neighbors and bungling British cohorts, evidence of Cammell’s mounting disdain for old world European values (he was born in Scotland) and an increasing awareness of Colonial strong-arm imperialism. It’s worth noting that the lead character in early drafts of Performance was an American gangster (with Marlon Brando slated to star) not far removed from Duffy, a role that later evolved into a Cockney crime enforcer ultimately played by Fox.

    Reviews at the time were understandably mixed. Writing for the New York Times, A.H. Weiler considered Duffy “a fairly charming diversion,” and found Coburn “an unbelievable delight.” Whereas Pauline Kael thought it was “a cheat at every turn,” and called the actor “a spastic zombie.” Depending on how you look at it, both are correct. The middle and latter part of the 60s were inundated with commercial mainstream films striving to capture the mood of a turbulent era. But for every success like A Hard Day’s Night (1964) or Blow-Up (1966), there were dozens of lesser works that felt instantly outdated. In too many ways, Duffy suffers from that same obsolescence; but as a piece of the puzzle that is Donald Cammell, it’s an invaluable steppingstone to one of the strangest careers in modern cinema.

For further (and immensely entertaining) study in Donald Cammell, I recommend reading Mick Brown on Performance (Bloomsbury, 1999) and Colin MacCabe’s Bfi Film Classics: Performance (Bfi Publishing, 1998). By then, if you’re really hooked, continue with Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side (Fab Press, 2006), a disappointing biography by Rebecca and Sam Umland; and make every effort to see Kevin MacDonald and Chris Rodley’s priceless documentary, Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998).

Adventures in Bollywood: “Chamma Chamma”

That’s Urmila Matondkar heading the procession in the “Chamma Chamma” number from China Gate (1998, and no relation to Sam Fuller’s China Gate). I’ve yet to see the film (it’s up next on my Netflix queue), but Jessica directed me to this clip which piqued my interest! Gotta love it when the guys in their work clothes jump in!

Available from Amazon.

Adventures in Bollywood: “Dil Se”

Manisha Koirala and Shahrukh Khan in Dil Se; click to enlarge.

Will the callow young reporter from Radio India (box office heartthrob Shahrukh Khan) flow with convention or follow his passion toward an uncertain destiny? Dil Se (1998) is a political romantic drama about impulse destroying those who wander from accepted norms — a familiar Bollywood theme, where prearranged marriages and regimented family values are offered as safeguards from the misery of longing for something you’ll never have. The object of his affection is Manisha Koirala playing an elusive, demure mystery figure secretly tied to destructive forces; while the family has him slated to marry Preity Zinta’s handsome but less intriguing hausfrau in waiting. She talks a good game about being a liberated female in India, but it doesn’t prevent her from modestly calling sexual intercourse “hunka bunka hunks.” That may sound ludicrous, but writer-director Mani Ratnam recognizes such subtly distinct quirks that enrich characters. He also has an elaborate dance number set on top of a moving train. This isn’t MGM in the 50s; this is a real train on real tracks covering real ground… where the twenty or thirty dancers could go flying if the conductor jams on the brakes for any reason.

Available from Amazon.

Eric Rohmer & Barbet Schroeder, mid ‘60s

Via BarbetSchroeder.com; click to enlarge.

Where I’d rather be right now…

…idyllic moments from Barbet Schroeder’s More (1969).

Beam me up, Scotty!

Via Modest Tones; definitely click to enlarge.

A sensual obsession

Wandering about the Chiller Theatre Expo last Friday, who should fellow Flickhead Nathan Schiff run into but the one and only Theresa Russell. “Next to Raquel Welch,” he gushed, “she’s my all-time favorite babe!” (Apologies for that secondary status, Theresa, but boys will be boys.) He says that the tantalizing actress (Straight Time, Black Widow, Impulse) “looks absolutely incredible!” Truth be told, she’s had him on the hook since 1980: “I’ve been obsessed with this babelicious piece of perfection since Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession.” That picture was directed by her ex-husband, Nicolas Roeg, who also featured her in Eureka, Insignificance and Track 29. “Her smile,” Nathan confesses, “melted me to slag!” Looking over her oeuvre, I found little to connect Theresa to the Chiller Theatre Expo outside of an appearance in the TV remake of Earth vs. the Spider (2001) in which her character (Trixie) is married to Dan Aykroyd. But we’re just glad she was there! Click photos to enlarge.

Art by Paul Rader

Paperback cover art by Paul Rader via Buxz; click to enlarge.

Wendy, I'm home . . .

‘Jack’ with Stanley and Vivian Kubrick in the Overlook loo, via Big Fun; click to enlarge.

B.C. baby

Raquel between takes on One Million Years B.C., via Vivir en Tucson; click to enlarge.