Cult Classics Revisited: The Stranger Collection: A STRANGER IN TOWN (1967); THE STRANGER RETURNS (1968); and THE SILENT STRANGER (1975)

While Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns were game-changers in Europe and made Clint Eastwood a star, the US releases of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) were delayed for a few years (the first two hit US theaters in 1967 and UGLY was released in 1968). By that time, the spaghetti western explosion in Italy was completely out of control, with literally hundreds being made in the years following, with every handsome Italian and ambitious young (or coasting old) American actor heading to Europe to achieve the kind of fame that Eastwood was enjoying. By 1967, Eastwood was the biggest star in Europe but back home, he was still best known for his stint on TV's RAWHIDE as few were even aware of the massive popularity of the films he'd been making in Europe. That all changed when FISTFUL finally opened in America, marking the belated arrival of a phenomenon that had already been raging in Italy and the rest of Europe for three years. American westerns were now trying to emulate the Italian ones--even Eastwood's debut as a Hollywood headliner, 1968's HANG 'EM HIGH, is heavily indebted to the spaghetti westerns--in a rare reversal of the trend pattern that usually saw Italian genre offerings blatantly copycatting what was big in America (like the later Italian EXORCIST ripoffs and post-DAWN OF THE DEAD zombie movies). The spaghetti craze reached its artistic apex with Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969), an elegiac examination of the American west that drew the iconic Henry Fonda into Italian westerns, completely shattering his Tom Joad image by playing one of the most evil figures in all of cinema, one who's introduced shooting a small child point blank in the face.

The list of American actors hopping on the spaghetti western bandwagon is endless--even a young Burt Reynolds got into the act with Sergio Corbucci's 1966 film NAVAJO JOE, and William Shatner starred in the Spanish WHITE COMANCHE (1968) during a break between the first and second seasons of STAR TREK. One such actor was Tony Anthony, a New Jersey native whose background was covered at length on this blog in a piece on his 1983 film TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. Born in 1937, Anthony had made a few independent productions and by 1967, through his producing partner Saul Swimmer, he had fallen in with Abkco Records head Allen Klein, the Rolling Stones manager who would also end up overseeing the Beatles after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein. It could be argued that Anthony's career is a classic case of smart networking, knowing the right people, and plain old dumb luck, as over the next few years, he and Swimmer would become tangential members of the Beatles' inner circle, with Swimmer directing George Harrison's CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH and Anthony working on a couple of projects with Ringo Starr. With Klein's help and a distribution deal with MGM, Anthony starred in three STRANGER films, the first two of which became surprise hits in the US in 1968. There were four STRANGER entries altogether, but MGM only released the first three, and as a result, Warner Archive's just-released STRANGER COLLECTION only includes those initial three, all directed by Luigi Vanzi under the Americanized pseudonym "Vance Lewis." Generally well-regarded by fans in their day, the films have fallen into obscurity over time, with Anthony better known today for his hand in the early '80s 3-D revival, but they're available once again, in decent if not spectacular widescreen transfers. And one of the films in particular, is a cult classic that's waited decades for rediscovery.


A STRANGER IN TOWN
(Italy - 1967; US release 1968)

Anthony's Stranger arrives in a Mexican ghost town and watches psychotic bandit Aguilar (Frank Wolff) mow down a group of military officers. The Stranger concocts a gold heist with Aguilar with the full intention of ripping him off and turning him and his gang in for the reward money, but numerous double crosses ensue, with both the Stranger and Aguilar alternately getting the upper hand. This first entry in the series looks and sounds like any other spaghetti western of the era, but like most, it lacks artistic majesty of Leone and isn't quite up to the level of Corbucci,  the other standard-bearer of the genre. A STRANGER IN TOWN is very laboriously-paced, with long stretches where not much happens, and the bland story lacks the kind of imagination and character of Leone's films and doesn't attempt any of the political subtext that was creeping into spaghetti westerns around this time, in films like Damiano Damiani's A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1968). In its defense though, it finally gets cooking in the last 15 minutes when the Stranger starts killing Aguilar's gang one by one, usually by sneaking up on them and blasting a shotgun into their face at point-blank range. The climax is so good that it almost makes you forgive the middling mediocrity of the first 70 minutes. Anthony is much more appealing here than he was in his comparitively bland '80s action star incarnation, and American expat actor Wolff, a fixture in Italian cinema and best known for his role as the doomed Brett McBain in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, is appropriately dastardly as the ruthless Aguilar. Between Anthony's looks, Wolff's curly hair, and Benedetto Ghiglia's very Morricone-esque score, if 1968 moviegoers left their glasses at home, they might be tricked into believing that it was Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonte up on the screen. The killer finale gives it a nice boost, but A STRANGER IN TOWN is really only for spaghetti western completists and Tony Anthony stalkers. (R, 86 mins)

THE STRANGER RETURNS
(Italy - 1968)

Released in Italy in January 1967, A STRANGER IN TOWN proved to be a surprise hit for MGM when they released it in the US in April 1968 to appreciative American audiences for whom the spaghetti western was still relatively new. By that time, Anthony and Vanzi had already made the sequel THE STRANGER RETURNS, which appeared in US theaters just four months after A STRANGER IN TOWN. The sequel is an improvement over the first film, though it also suffers from a flabby midsection that could use some serious tightening. But it opens and closes strong, and Anthony imbues the Stranger with even more quirky characterization, including a Roy Rogers & Trigger-type relationship with his faithful horse Pussy (yes, Pussy), and a sometimes whimsical attitude that almost looks like a prototype for the slapstick antics of Terence Hill in the TRINITY films and MY NAME IS NOBODY. Without ever crossing the line into outright comedy, Anthony plays the Stranger here in a decidedly offbeat way--he's not quite as sharp as the Man with No Name, and often gets himself into situations where he's unquestionably the intellectually inferior party. But there's a very amusing sequence early on that Vanzi lets play out to a comically absurd length, where two bad guys force the Stranger to dig his own grave at gunpoint, and he keeps digging and digging until the grave is twice the size it should be. One of the guys asks if the hole is too big, to which the Stranger smiles and says "No," as the two villains remain blissfully and cluelessly unaware that they're going to be sharing the double-wide grave in matter of moments. Here, the Stranger runs afoul of a gang led by El Plein (Dan Vadis), who kills a postal inspector who was their inside man on the heist of a gold shipment being transported by stagecoach. The Stranger ends up impersonating the postal inspector, again with a half-assed plan to keep the gold for himself while turning El Plein and his men in for the reward money.

It's almost the same plot as A STRANGER IN TOWN, and like that film, there's a lot of walking around and noisy mayhem that never leads anywhere until late in the film when, once again, the Stranger is pursued by an outlaw gang and does the "sneak up on them and blow them away with a shotgun" act, which is just as illogically silly and crowd-pleasing here as it was in the first film. The occasionally light tone doesn't always gel with the film's hard-hitting violence, still worth an R rating today, with Vadis' El Plein being as nihilistic a bad guy that's been in any spaghetti western. In addition to Pussy the Horse, the Stranger gets another sidekick in the form of a drunken, crazed old street preacher (Marco Guglielmi) looking for one last shot at redemption. There's also one returning character, Army Lt. George Stafford, played here by an uncredited Ettore Manni (Lars Bloch played Stafford in the first film), though he and the Stranger don't seem to know each other like they did in A STRANGER IN TOWN. THE STRANGER RETURNS suffers from a meandering middle that drags badly, but Anthony conceived the story and he was clearly attempting to take things in a different direction and make the Stranger not so much the Man with No Name/Django clone that we saw in the first film. (R, 95 mins)


THE SILENT STRANGER
(US - 1975)

After the success of A STRANGER IN TOWN and THE STRANGER RETURNS, MGM decided they wanted a STRANGER trilogy and went all in on THE SILENT STRANGER. This third film in the series took Anthony's Stranger (and Pussy the Horse) to Japan to deliver an ancient scroll to its rightful owner. Of course, being that this is a western, the Stranger ends up in the middle of a longstanding battle between two rival samurai clans--exacerbated by the meddling of an Ugly American (Lloyd Battista, a Cleveland native who would become an integral part of Anthony's stock company starting with this film), who introduces modern gatling gun technology to the samurai--in what's essentially the earliest example of an "east-meets-western" offshoot that finds the way of the samurai clashing with the American west (and naturally, the Stranger sneaks up on various samurai to blow them away with a bizarre front-loading sawed-off cannon). This would be popularized by the likes of Terence Young's RED SUN (1971), which paired outlaw Charles Bronson with samurai Toshiro Mifune, and later, during the post ENTER THE DRAGON craze, when gunslinger Lee Van Cleef teamed up with kung-fu warrior Lo Lieh in Antonio Margheriti's THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER (1976). In addition, samurai and elements of Japanese culture made it into other pre-RED SUN spaghetti westerns like Tonino Cervi's TODAY IT'S ME...TOMORROW YOU! (1968), co-written by Dario Argento, which had Brett Halsey and Bud Spencer assembling a posse to avenge the rape and murder of Halsey's wife by a sadistic Japanese outlaw chillingly played by Akira Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai, and Don Taylor's THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1970), which counted samurai Tetsuro Tamba among its titular band of heroes.

However, THE SILENT STRANGER is the forgotten film of the east-meets-western fad, though it was the earliest to actually take its hero east as opposed to bringing the east to the west. MGM was so pleased with the success of the first two films that they fully backed THE SILENT STRANGER with a big Hollywood budget and even let Anthony, who was taking a more creative role in the series and took over as producer with Klein, keep his same core group of partners, including director Vanzi (from Vanzi and Battista here to Ferdinando Baldi and Gene Quintano later, Anthony preferred to work with a close-knit circle of collaborators). Filmed on location in Japan, THE SILENT STRANGER boasts production values that are leaps and bounds ahead of the same old Almeria, Spain sets seen in the first two films and every other spaghetti western. The battle scenes between the samurai clans are staged with the enthusiastic fervor of any Kurosawa throwdown. THE SILENT STRANGER was a troubled production that used its problems to its advantage: filmed in the fall of 1968, the shoot was hit by no less than 13 typhoons in a horrifically awful weather season, but they worked it into the story and whole sequences play out in a jawdroppingly torrential downpour very reminiscent of the final battle in Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (1954). And when it's not raining in sheets, the whole area is muddy from the rain that just fell, which adds significant atmosphere and gritty, harsh realism to the proceedings. The cast and crew are battling the elements and as a result, THE SILENT STRANGER almost comes off like it's Tony Anthony's FITZCARRALDO.

So why then, was the film not released until 1975?  A management shake-up at MGM ended with the ousting of studio president Robert O'Brien--a strong supporter of Anthony and a big fan of the STRANGER films--and Klein aggressively taking his side, which didn't endear him or Anthony to the new people in charge. They responded to Klein's support of O'Brien by abandoning THE SILENT STRANGER and shelving it for seven years. It's a tragedy of sorts, because THE SILENT STRANGER is so good, and coupled with the momentum generated by the first two films--which aren't nearly as good-- it likely could've led to Anthony being a much bigger mainstream star than he ever would be, and the film might be cited as a great example of a Hollywood spaghetti western. Instead, by the time it opened in the summer of 1975, with new, MGM-ordered voiceover narration recorded under duress by Anthony that makes Harrison Ford's in BLADE RUNNER sound enthusiastic, the Stranger's time had passed. The buzz around Anthony had already died and the film was greeted with shrugs and dismissed as a RED SUN ripoff, when in fact, it was shot three years before that film.

After the shelving of THE SILENT STRANGER, Anthony moved on to BLINDMAN (1971), his first film with Italian director Ferdinando Baldi, who would eventually become his go-to director for his brief early '80 renaissance with COMIN' AT YA! and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. BLINDMAN, thanks largely to the presence of Ringo Starr as one of the villains (Battista was the other), would become Anthony's biggest hit in America up to that time, but again, he marched to the beat of his own drum and made a seemingly deliberate effort to avoid the mainstream machine. His next film was the departure gangster drama 1931: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK (1972), which reteamed him with Vanzi. In 1975, he decided to revisit The Stranger, this time with Baldi directing, as Anthony and his co-writer, co-star, and buddy Battista took the offbeat and increasingly surreal touches of the Stranger films and steered them straight into all-out insanity with GET MEAN, which pitted the Stranger against Vikings, barbarians, and the supernatural in what might be a dry run for TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS.  After the big Hollywood-backed SILENT STRANGER, GET MEAN was released in the US on the grindhouse circuit in 1976 by the small-time Cee Note Films. Never a prolific actor and not one to take hired gun jobs, Anthony stayed offscreen for five years until he returned with sleeper hit COMIN' AT YA!, and it's the early '80s return of 3-D for which Anthony is best known. But with these STRANGER films returning from obscurity courtesy of Warner Archive, and Blue Underground set to release GET MEAN on Blu-ray later this year, 2015 seems to be the year of the Tony Anthony renaissance, a time to re-examine a genuinely uncompromising and strangely endearing maverick who never seemed very interested in playing Hollywood games. If nothing else, it's time to discover the minor masterpiece that is THE SILENT STRANGER. (PG, 90 mins)

Cult Classics Revisited: THE FROZEN DEAD (1966)

THE FROZEN DEAD
(UK - 1966; US release 1967)

Written and directed by Herbert J. Leder.  Cast: Dana Andrews, Anna Palk, Philip Gilbert, Kathleen Breck, Karel Stepanek, Basil Henson, Alan Tilvern, Edward Fox, Oliver MacGreevy, Ann Tirard, Tom Chatto. (Unrated, 95 mins)

A longtime late-night TV favorite of horror fans back in the '70s and '80s, THE FROZEN DEAD boasts a memorably catchy title that only partially applies to the horrors contained in the entertainingly disjointed film.  Boasting more ideas than it can handle, THE FROZEN DEAD would seem to have arrived at the Nazisploitation party about a decade early, with Nazi zombie films like Ken Wiederhorn's SHOCK WAVES (1977),  Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), and Jess Franco's OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1981), to the post-SALON KITTY (1976) wave of Italian scuzz that became popular around the same time.  The trend even included the prestigious THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978), which gave us Gregory Peck as a crazed Josef Mengele trying to create clones of Hitler (as much as we should, we also can't forget a bottom-scraping Veronica Lake trying to resurrect Hitler with flesh-eating maggots in 1970's FLESH FEAST, which proved to be the star's swan song).  For the most part, however, despite its Nazi angle, THE FROZEN DEAD is more in line with the severed-headsploitation subgenre that became a strange Z-movie phenomenon in the 1960s.  The 1959 German film THE HEAD was released in the US in 1961 and soon we had THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1963) and THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS (1963), better known under its 1968 TV re-edit THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN.  Written and directed by American Herbert J. Leder (who scripted 1958's FIEND WITHOUT A FACE), the British-made THE FROZEN DEAD is still B-movie trash, but it's glossier and better-made than others of the severed head/Nazi undead ilk and boasts several iconic images that have stuck with fans for nearly 50 years.

Twenty years after Germany's defeat in WWII, Nazi Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) is living in London, still under the employ of what's left of the Third Reich, represented by the demanding General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Dr. Tirpitz (Basil Henson).  Along with his well-meaning but oafish assistant Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), Norberg is working on reanimating SS officers who have been kept in a state of frozen suspension in Germany, France, and Egypt since the end of the war, including his brother (a young Edward Fox, paying his dues before working his way up to classier fare like THE DAY OF THE JACKAL).  Thus far, he's been unsuccessful in regenerating brain activity and has only succeeded in creating a few slobbering brutes that he keeps in a dungeon in his laboratory.  Things get complicated with the unexpected arrival of Norberg's niece Jean (Anna Palk) and her friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck).  Of course, Jean has no idea what her uncle is up to or that he's a Nazi-in-hiding, and the same goes for American Dr. Roberts (Philip Gilbert), who arrives to help Norberg with his research.  When Norberg tells his benefactors that he needs a living head to conduct experiments in brain activity, the hapless Karl Essen takes matters into his own hands and kills Elsa, prompting Norberg to tell his niece that her friend just left unexpectedly.  Jean isn't buying it and has a hard time convincing Roberts that something weird is going on as Lubeck and Tirpitz get increasingly antsy about the snooping interlopers.  All the while, Elsa's still-living head starts exhibiting more capabilities than Norberg thought possible.

Despite a sluggish, talky middle, THE FROZEN DEAD still holds up as enjoyable trash.  This was the first of back-to-back horror films that Leder made in the UK, the other being the universally-derided golem outing IT! (1967), and it does a nice job of mimicking the look and feel of a Hammer film.  Both films were released on a double bill in the US in late 1967, though for some reason, Warner Bros-Seven Arts released THE FROZEN DEAD in black & white, even though it was shot in color and shown that way to British audiences a year earlier.  The color version is what appeared on TV and on the remastered Warner Archive DVD released last fall, and with its vibrant colors, the cold, icy look of the dead SS officers, and the eerie blue on Elsa's face, it's really hard to picture much of this in black & white.  Leder's script is prone to clumsy exposition and lunkheaded visual foreshadowing--why else would Norberg have a wall lined with severed arms connected to electrodes if they weren't there specifically to strangle him at the end?--but the arms, the image of three SS officers hanging frozen, and especially Elsa's blue-lit face with her mouth gasping "Bury me!" are things not easily forgotten, and on that level, THE FROZEN DEAD scores.

Andrews (1909-1992) was a very popular headliner in his 1940s/1950s prime, but is rarely discussed these days other than by devout viewers of Turner Classic Movies.  He was never nominated for any Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes, though he had a good reputation in Hollywood, as evidenced by his 1946 Golden Apple Award for "Most Cooperative Actor."  Best known for classics like LAURA (1944), A WALK IN THE SUN (1945), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), BOOMERANG! (1947), and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956), Andrews hadn't quite fallen on hard times by 1966 but he'd hit some rough patches along the way.  He was still very much in-demand and turning up in occasional noteworthy films like Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), but his alcoholism was causing some problems and ultimately got him bounced from the A-list.  That, coupled with the sin of getting older, relegated him to supporting roles in big movies and starring roles in smaller ones.  In 1964, Andrews' 29-year-old son died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage, after which the veteran actor threw himself into his work, starring or co-starring in no less than eight films just in 1965, including the military epics IN HARM'S WAY and BATTLE OF THE BULGE, the low-budget old-timer western TOWN TAMER, the sci-fi outing CRACK IN THE WORLD, the germ-warfare cult classic THE SATAN BUG, the absurdist comedy THE LOVED ONE, and the Italian 007 ripoff SPY IN YOUR EYE.  Like many aging leading men making the transition to character actor, Andrews went where the work was, whether he was playing a Nazi mad scientist in THE FROZEN DEAD or a square family man terrorized by some crazed kids looking for kicks in HOT RODS TO HELL (1967).  He quit drinking by the early 1970s and kept busy playing old ranch owners in westerns, old generals in war movies, and on TV shows and made-for-TV movies, not to mention inevitable appearances in a 1970s disaster movie (AIRPORT 1975), on THE LOVE BOAT, guesting on various talk shows, and even popping up in GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1978), an early Chuck Norris vehicle.  Andrews retired from acting after a supporting role in 1985's little-seen JFK drama PRINCE JACK and was soon diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  He spent his remaining years in a Los Angeles-area nursing home where he was frequently visited by old Hollywood friends, including Burt Lancaster, who was visiting Andrews at the facility in 1990 when he suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered.

Andrews lends a considerable amount of credibility to THE FROZEN DEAD, playing the kind of Bela Lugosi "mad scientist" role that most actors would mercilessly ham their way through.  He doesn't even overdo the German accent, instead playing Norberg as a guy who isn't even that enthused about what he's doing.  It's worth pondering that the reason Norberg's been unsuccessful is because he doesn't want to succeed.  While some of it may be an inherent lack of interest on Andrews' part, it's actually a refreshing alternative to the usual overacting histrionics you'd expect an actor to give to such a character.  Through Andrews' portrayal, you almost get the sense that Norberg is rightfully ashamed of his past and wouldn't mind getting himself and his niece away from Lubeck, Tirpitz, and Karl Essen if he could.  Of course, Leder isn't interested in exploring the psychological elements because it distracts from Elsa, who is quite possibly horror cinema's most memorably melancholy talking head, a feat that's hard to pull off, considering it's almost always hilarious, either intentionally (RE-ANIMATOR) or unintentionally (pretty much everything else).  Leder seems easily distracted throughout, with the abrupt dropping of the Nazi zombie plot angle and the introduction of an interesting psychic subplot involving Elsa somehow sending messages to Jean via dreams that's never really explored.  Still, flaws and all, THE FROZEN DEAD earns its place in the cult movie pantheon and the Warner Archive DVD is a must-own for fans, even with no bonus features.  It looks better than ever, especially considering it's in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, was never in color for its US theatrical run and, was cropped to 1.33:1 for TV broadcasts.

New from Warner Archive: BORIS KARLOFF TRIPLE FEATURE

Though best known for his horror roles, the legendary Boris Karloff (1887-1969) was one of Hollywood's most versatile character actors throughout his long career on stage, screen, and television.  Warner Archive's just-released BORIS KARLOFF TRIPLE FEATURE package showcases three long-forgotten Warner Bros. obscurities from the late 1930s that feature Karloff in distinctly non-horror settings that show he's just at home in character parts and even a straight dramatic turn than he was under the Frankenstein monster makeup.  Of course, this is no secret to his fans (had the Best Supporting Actor category existed prior to the 1936 Oscars, he almost certainly would've been nominated for his shattering performance in John Ford's 1934 classic THE LOST PATROL), but the horror label followed Karloff until the end, and to his credit, he never rejected it and even when he wasn't in horror roles, producers played up that notoriety.  In the trailer for WEST OF SHANGHAI, one of the films in this set, he's referred to as "Boris (Baby-Scarer) Karloff."  In THE INVISIBLE MENACE, he's mostly in the background in a murder mystery, with his mere presence making him the chief suspect.  Karloff was bouncing around from gig to gig at various studios throughout the 1930s, running the gamut from A-list projects to C-list Poverty Row cheapies.  The three titles in this Warner Archive set are strictly B-level assembly line fare, each in the 60-minute vicinity, quickies specifically designed to be the bottom feature on a double bill.  Two of them aren't essential Karloff by any means, but DEVIL'S ISLAND presents him in fine dramatic form as a wrongly-imprisoned doctor.  Karloff wasn't tackling many horror roles during the mid 1930s and instead settled in character parts ranging from the MR. WONG series at Monogram (which, like 1932's THE MASK OF FU MANCHU and this set's WEST OF SHANGHAI, found the actor under heavy Asian eye makeup in a Poverty Row knockoff of the CHARLIE CHAN series) to several turns that saw him as a kindly, elderly, and/or doddering professor/scientist even though he was only around 50 at the time.  By 1939 with DEVIL'S ISLAND, Karloff was in one of the busiest periods of his career as a headliner, the film being one of six starring roles he had in 1939 alone (including his return to the role of the Monster in Universal's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN), followed by eight in 1940.  While the casual fan likely won't find much of interest in this triple feature set, Karloff completists will be intrigued at being able to see a trio of films that have been out of circulation for so long, and in prints that are in surprisingly good condition on top of that.


WEST OF SHANGHAI
(US - 1937)

Based on the play The Bad Man by Porter Emerson Browne, WEST OF SHANGHAI takes a while to get rolling but once Karloff appears a third of the way in, the story starts to move at a relentless clip and benefits from some genuinely unpredictable characterization and plotting.  Opening with a draggy 15-minute set-up involving the assassination of a respected Chinese general Fu-Shan (Vladimir Sokoloff) on a train that ultimately has little bearing on anything, the film has a group of Americans being held hostage at a missionary camp by outlaw warlord Wu Yen Fang (Karloff).  Some snappy repartee ensues as Fang, who never misses an opportunity to flaunt his power, matches wits with the fast-talking Americans--Fang's pidgin-English arguments with sassy Lola (Sheila Bromley) are priceless--as one of them, pushy businessman Gordon Creed (Ricardo Cortez) tries to broker a deal for some oil fields.  Creed is also there to reclaim his missionary wife Jane (Beverly Roberts), who left him years ago and has no intention of going back to him.  Directed by John Farrow (Mia's father) and scripted by Crane Wilbur, WEST OF SHANGHAI attempts the difficult task of switching bad guys midway through when we realize that for an evil warlord, Fang isn't such a bad guy, and that Creed is really kind of a dick, which is hinted at early when he gripes his way into Fu-Shan's quarters on the train, bringing along his smoking, jabbering dinner companions while the General is trying to sleep.  Karloff, under some unconvincing eye makeup, is quite funny as Fang, even though his performance sometimes hits "Mickey Rooney-in-BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S" levels of cringe-worthiness.  It's hard not to laugh at the way Fang declares Lola unattractive, but then has his feelings legitimately hurt when she disses him right back ("I no interested in you," he pouts).  Overall, despite the un-PC nature of some if its content by today's standards, WEST OF SHANGHAI is still an enjoyable mix of mystery, melodrama, and fast-talking 1930s wisecrackery.  (Unrated, 64 mins)

THE INVISIBLE MENACE
(US - 1938)

Karloff, Farrow, and Wilbur team up again for this adaptation of a play by Ralph Spencer Zink.  Barely feature-length even by 1938 standards, THE INVISIBLE MENACE is slight and forgettable, but has its moments.  When a weapons supplier is killed on an Army base, the chief suspect is civilian Jevries (Karloff), when it's revealed that he used to be a government engineer in Haiti and was imprisoned for stealing money from a safe.  It turns out the dead man is the one who stole the money along with Jevries' wife, and that's enough motive for base honcho Col. Rogers (a typically bloviating Cy Kendall).  Making Karloff the villain would be too easy, and of course he's there as a red herring, but THE INVISIBLE MENACE is a harmless enough blending of mystery and comedy that works better when it focuses on the mystery.  The comedy is provided by Eddie Craven as a doofus private and Marie Wilson as his ditzy bride who, not surprisingly, ends up being smarter than everyone else.  Wilson, with a voice that's equal parts Gracie Allen and Betty Boop, made a career out of playing dumb blondes and was best known for the title role in 1949's MY FRIEND IRMA, the debut film of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.  Karloff is largely relegated to the background for much of THE INVISIBLE MENACE, but he has some impressive shouting matches with Kendall, one of the great unsung blustery assholes of Hollywood's yesteryear.  THE INVISIBLE MENACE was released on the bottom half of a double bill with SWING YOUR LADY, a forgotten hillbilly musical-comedy that Humphrey Bogart ranked among his worst films.  (Unrated, 55 mins)

DEVIL'S ISLAND
(US - 1939)

The only film in this set not based on a play, DEVIL'S ISLAND immediately feels grander and more cinematic than WEST OF SHANGHAI and THE INVISIBLE MENACE, and features a strong dramatic performance by a curly-haired Karloff.  Here, he's renowned brain surgeon Dr. Charles Gaudet, caught in one of those unfortunate Dr. Mudd situations when he provides medical help to a convicted criminal who escaped during transport to the prison colony Devil's Island.  With French law trumping his duty as a doctor, Gaudet himself is sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island but is set to be executed when he takes part in an attack on some abusive officers.  His life is spared when corrupt warden Col. Lucien (James Stephenson) and his wife (Nedda Harrigan) request his help when their daughter suffers a convenient head injury that requires his expertise.  With the help of Madame Lucien, who feels that Gaudet deserves a pardon for saving her daughter's life, Gaudet and some other prisoners organize an escape.  Effectively combining gritty prison drama and with a standard-issue Warner Bros. message picture, DEVIL'S ISLAND is probably the best film in this package, due in large part to it having a more consistent tone than WEST OF SHANGHAI and it doesn't keep Karloff on the sideline for the bulk of the running time as in THE INVISIBLE MENACE.  (Unrated, 62 mins)

Warner Archive Roundup

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Cult Classics Revisited: THE SQUEEZE (1977)

THE SQUEEZE
(UK - 1977)

Directed by Michael Apted.  Written by Leon Griffiths.  Cast: Stacy Keach, David Hemmings, Edward Fox, Stephen Boyd, Freddie Starr, Carol White, Hilary Gasson, Stewart Harwood, Alan Ford, Roy Marsden.  (Unrated, 107 mins)

This seedy, scuzzy British crime thriller has attained a small cult over the years but is still a largely forgotten obscurity. An early directorial effort by busy journeyman Michael Apted, then earning a name for himself with his UP documentaries, THE SQUEEZE was a late but no less effective entry in the post-GET CARTER (1971) subgenre of unrepentant UK criminal nastiness typified by the likes of VILLAIN (1971) and SITTING TARGET (1972), coated in sleazy grime, with an unusual cast, and a jarringly effective, synthy score by David Hentschel that wouldn't sound out of place in a giallo.

Alcoholic, disgraced ex-Scotland Yard cop Naboth (Stacy Keach, pulling off a convincing British accent) has just gotten out of rehab and promptly goes to the nearest pub. Toying with his buddy Teddy's (British TV comic/singer Freddie Starr, currently embroiled in the BBC/Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal) idea of becoming a private eye, Naboth almost instantly finds a job when his ex-wife Jill (Carol White) and her daughter by her new husband Robert (Edward Fox)--she left Naboth and shows little interest in being a mother to their two sons--are kidnapped and Robert, who owns a successful armored car company, is expected to pay the ransom. Head kidnapper Keith (David Hemmings), who was once arrested by Naboth and is none too happy to hear news of him poking his nose into this matter, orders Robert to kill Naboth. Also involved is Keith's boss, Irish mob kingpin and pornographer Vic (Stephen Boyd), a thuggish sadist with a mean streak.

Other than the one-sheet above, there's little evidence of Warner Bros. releasing this in US theaters (it was issued on VHS in 1987 and aired in what had to be a drastically cut version on CBS in 1988), and the Warner Archive DVD issued in 2010 doesn't carry a rating, but THE SQUEEZE is a pretty hard R even by today's standards. Keach, in a strange phase of his career that saw his early 1970s critical acclaim in films like END OF THE ROAD (1970), BREWSTER MCCLOUD (1970), THE NEW CENTURIONS (1972), and FAT CITY (1972) give way to appearances in films as varied as the Cheech & Chong comedy UP IN SMOKE, the Italian cannibal gorefest MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (both in 1978), and William Peter Blatty's THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980), which should've gotten him an Oscar nomination had anyone seen the film, turns in a brave performance that's one of his best, looking like absolute hell and spending much of the film soaked in booze sweats when he isn't letting it all hang out Harvey Keitel-style, even going full frontal in a scene where Boyd makes him strip at gunpoint. There's also some copious bloodletting late in the film, and a skin-crawling bit where Hemmings forces White to do an uncomfortable, almost too-painful-to-watch striptease for him and his goons to the tune of The Stylistics' "You Make Me Feel Brand New." 

Keach is given strong support by Hemmings, Fox, Starr, and White, but Boyd in particular, is terrific. In a major career slump at the time, Boyd, best known as Messala in BEN-HUR (1959), could've had a serious comeback with THE SQUEEZE, but he died of a heart attack on a Northridge, CA golf course before it was released.  He was just 45 years old.    He did one more film after THE SQUEEZE wrapped, playing Dracula in LADY DRACULA, a German sexploitation spoof, which pretty much represents the type of work he was getting at the end of his career. Before his sudden passing, he was set to co-star with Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, and Hardy Kruger in the action epic THE WILD GEESE, but was replaced by Jack Watson. It's best for Boyd if we just pretend THE SQUEEZE is his last film.

Apted, now 71, had his first big commercial hit three years later with 1980's COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER.  Best known for his ambitious and ongoing UP documentaries that began back in 1963 with SEVEN UP (Apted was a research assistant on the film, but eventually took over directing them), where the filmmakers catch up with a group of people every seven years throughout their life, beginning at age seven (56 UP is scheduled for an early 2013 US release), Apted has worked steadily over the last 30 years as a Hollywood journeyman with films as varied as the John Belushi romantic comedy CONTINENTAL DIVIDE (1981), the William Hurt-Lee Marvin thriller GORKY PARK (1983), GORILLAS IN THE MIST (1988), THUNDERHEART (1992), NELL (1994), the 007 outing THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999), the Jennifer Lopez thriller ENOUGH (2001), and co-directing the recent Gerard Butler surfing flop CHASING MAVERICKS (2012), which Apted took over when Curtis Hanson left the project for health reasons.

THE SQUEEZE lags a bit in the midsection before really driving it home for the intense final showdown between Naboth and the kidnappers, but it's a practically unknown gem that deserves some more recognition and is worth seeking out for fans of Keach, Boyd, and uncompromisingly nasty crime thrillers.

UK quad poster

New from Warner Archive: Special Sword & Sandal edition: THE SLAVE (1962), SANDOKAN THE GREAT (1964), and HERCULES, SAMSON & ULYSSES (1964)

Warner Archive recently released six MGM-distributed Italian sword-and-sandal epics from the early 1960s.  Inspired in equal parts by Hollywood epics like Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) and Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS (1960), but even more so by their homegrown blockbuster HERCULES (1957), the sword & sandal peplum scene exploded in Italy from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, providing a lot of work for American and Italian bodybuilders, stunning international beauties, and aging Hollywood actors and directors looking for working vacations in Europe.  Bad dubbing and decades of beat-up, horribly cropped, and pan-and-scanned TV airings served to perpetuate the myth that these were cheap, shoddy, low-budget affairs and while some certainly were, a good number of them were lavish, big-budget spectacles with gorgeous widescreen cinematography, high-end production values, incredible sets and locations, and thousands of extras.  Many of these films that have been presented on DVD thus far have been in those $10, 50-film public domain sets that use the same beat-to-hell TV prints that have misrepresented this genre for so long.  Hopefully, these six releases from Warner Archive can accomplish something in the way of reconsidering many of these films, most of which are not lost classics by any means, but were ambitiously made by talented and creative craftsmen (with a lot of future famous Italian directors on the crews) and were often richly entertaining and in their day, quite popular.

THE SLAVE
(Italy - 1962)

American bodybuilder Steve Reeves was crowned Mr. Universe in 1950, but had a difficult time getting his acting career off the ground--one of his early films was Ed Wood's JAIL BAIT (1954)--until he went to Italy and became an overnight sensation with 1957s HERCULES, with stardom following back home after the film's 1959 US release.  The huge international success of HERCULES immediately led to countless similar muscleman epics pouring out of Italy.  THE SLAVE is a SPARTACUS knockoff that reunited Reeves with two of his HERCULES co-stars (Ivo Garrani and Gianna Maria Canale) for the story of Randus (Reeves), a respected centurion in the army of Julius Caesar (Garrani).  Caesar gets word of a potential coup by the nefarious, gold-hoarding Crassus (Claudio Gora) and dispatches Randus and his loyal sidekick Verus (Franco Balducci) to visit Crassus and keep an eye on him.  In the course of his journey, Randus witnesses the cruel and unfair treatment of slaves by Crassus and his soldiers, and eventually discovers that he's the lost son of the legendary slave Spartacus, crucified 25 years earlier by Crassus.  Torn between his allegiance to Rome and his desire to free the slaves and follow in the footsteps of his father,  Randus goes full Zorro and starts disguising himself under a helmet and launching raids to free slaves and start a revolt against Crassus, always leaving his "S" mark behind.

An early effort by director Sergio Corbucci, who would go on to helm numerous classic spaghetti westerns like DJANGO (1966) and THE GREAT SILENCE (1968), THE SLAVE shows embryonic signs of the savage violence and dark nihilism that Corbucci would utilize to a greater extent in those westerns. In addition, Corbucci handles the huge production very well, with excellently-staged action sequences and swordplay, a lot of which is shot on location in Egypt. A beardless Reeves, looking like a really beefed-up Jason Patric, is a commanding hero, and even with the hammy line deliveries and the silly conclusion (you just know it'll riff on "I am Spartacus!"), THE SLAVE is on the high-end of the sword-and-sandal genre. Notable future Italian directors on the crew include cinematographer Enzo Barboni, camera operator Stelvio Massi, and second unit director Franco Giraldi. The 2.40:1 anamorphic transfer is in mostly good shape but there is some noticeable print damage and wear & tear in some scenes. Overall, a fine presentation of a very good example of this type of film. (Unrated, 102 mins)


SANDOKAN THE GREAT
(France/Italy/Spain - 1964)

Reeves also stars in SANDOKAN THE GREAT, the first of four 1964 SANDOKAN films in two simultaneous franchises, one with Reeves and the other with American actor/director Ray Danton.  Released in the US in 1965 by MGM, SANDOKAN THE GREAT gets off to a clunky start and is relentlessly talky for a long time before it starts to pick up.  There's a lot of solid action sequences throughout, but there's also a lot of padding and it could stand to be at least 20 minutes shorter.  Reeves' Sandokan is the son of a Malaysian sultan who's been imprisoned by nefarious British colonials led by the sneering Lord Guillonk (Leo Anchoriz).  To gain leverage, Sandokan and his band of rebels kidnap Guillonk's niece Mary Ann (Genevieve Grad), with the British in hot pursuit through the treacherous jungles, which gives director Umberto Lenzi a chance to frequently cut to stock footage of wild animals.  And of course, Mary Ann sees her uncle's evil ways as she and Sandokan fall in love. Sandokan and his rebels face an angry tiger, a traitor from within, stampeding elephants, poisonous snakes, a monsoon, and a native tribe sporting some of the most cringe-inducing blackface ever seen on screen.  You can actually see it rubbing off during some action scenes. There's some rousing excitement in the machine gun-and-dynamite-filled climax after Sandokan & Co. get some help from a newly-acquired wacky chimp sidekick, but the pace is just too draggy and the film too long.  Some tightening would've made it much more enjoyable.

Lenzi, now 81 and retired from filmmaking since 1992, was a career journeyman who went wherever cinematic trends took him, starting in adventures like SANDOKAN, going to post-DIRTY DOZEN "macaroni combat" films in the late '60s and a few gialli in the early '70s, and then really making his mark with cop thrillers in the mid-to-late '70s and finally with cannibal jungle gorefests in the early '80s.  It's interesting to see, from the copious nature stock footage to the journey through the jungle to Mary Ann being abducted by a tribe of headhunters, just how much SANDOKAN THE GREAT plays like one of Lenzi's later cannibal thrillers like EATEN ALIVE and CANNIBAL FEROX (aka MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY), minus the extreme gore, the graphic nudity, and the reprehensible onscreen animal killings (SANDOKAN does have one brief shot of a slaughtered pig that doesn't look faked).  Also with Andrea Bosic, Rik Battaglia, Maurice Poli, Enzo Fiermonte, and eagle-eyed Eurocultists will also spot an uncredited Dakar (ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE) as one of Sandokan's followers.  The very nice 2.40 anamorphic transfer looks to be in better overall condition than THE SLAVE, but THE SLAVE is the better film by far.  (Unrated, 110 mins).


HERCULES, SAMSON & ULYSSES
(Italy - 1964)

Despite his association with Hercules, Reeves only played the character twice: in the first film and its sequel HERCULES UNCHAINED, both directed by Pietro Francisci.  Numerous other actors stepped into the role over the next several years, sometimes officially and unofficially.  Kirk Morris (real name Adriano Bellini) starred as Maciste, another mythical muscleman, in a series of HERCULES knockoffs that often became HERCULES movies through the wonders of English dubbing or false advertising.  Morris finally got to legitimately portray Hercules in Francisci's 1964 muscle mash-up HERCULES, SAMSON & ULYSSES.  Here, Hercules, Ulysses (Enzo Cerusico), and others are sent by King Laertes (Andrea Fantasia) to find and kill a giant sea monster (which just looks like a seal shot in extreme close-up, with dubbed-in roars).  After completing that task, they get lost at sea and end up in Judea, where Samson (Iranian muscleman Iloosh Khoshabe, using the name "Richard Lloyd"--he also did several films under the awesome moniker "Rod Flash") is hiding because of a bounty placed on his head by evil Philistine King Seren (Aldo Giuffre, best known as the booze-soaked Union captain in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY).  Samson hatches a plan to confuse King Seren into mistaking Hercules for Samson, which prompts Seren to hold all of Hercules' companions hostage and he gives him three days to find Samson, with Seren's queen Delilah (Liana Orfei) in tow.  Hercules finds Samson, and the two duke it out before deciding to join forces and take on King Seren.  HERCULES, SAMSON & ULYSSES is dumb, brainless fun, full of melodramatic dubbing, styrofoam bricks and boulders, and arrows that make a sci-fi laser sound when fired.  It takes Hercules and Samson an hour to meet up, and the titular trio only come together in the closing minutes.  An underused Ulysses is held hostage for much of the film, but it's he who discovers that Hercules and Samson are about to walk into a Philistine ambush.  Hercules and Samson taking out the Philistine army by lifting a gigantic stone temple and tipping it on them is hysterically funny, as is the sight of a bunch of Greeks struggling to row a ship under Hercules' supervision, when Hercules could probably row the thing on his own.  Despite some obviously cheap effects, this looks very good in this remastered 1.78 anamorphic transfer, with its massive sets and beautiful locations. (Unrated, 86 mins)

Other Italian sword & sandal epics in this Warner Archive batch include THE TARTARS (1961) with Orson Welles and Victor Mature; GOLD FOR THE CAESARS (1963) with Jeffrey Hunter and Ron Randell, and DAMON AND PYTHIAS (1962) with Guy Williams and Don Burnett.