THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE (1967)

Roger Corman, best known as a producer and director of low-budget sci-fi and horror films, got his chance here to do a big studio film. It did not do well commercially or critically, but viewed today, it holds up better than some A-films of the era. In a documentary-style fashion, it tells the story of the infamous slaughter of several members of the Bugs Moran gang as arranged by Al Capone on Valentine’s Day, 1929. The film has almost continual voice-over narration which put off some critics but which, though sometimes unorthodox (the narrator often speaks over on-screen dialogue), does help the viewer keep the large cast of characters straight. Gangsters Capone (Jason Robards) and Moran (Ralph Meeker) are in the middle of a war over selling their illegal alcohol to Chicago's speakeasies, and we are introduced to the two men, their chief assistants, gang members, and various hit men. Robards almost goes over-the-top as Capone, but it could be argued that such a portrayal is the best way to approach such a mythic villain. Meeker, who has less screen time, is more subtle in his performance. Other standouts include George Segal, Bruce Dern, Joseph Campanella, Harold J. Stone, and the handsome Clint Ritchie (pictured). It's fun to see Jack Nicholson and Corman favorite Dick Miller in cameo roles. The sets and cinematography are good; Roger Ebert criticizes the film for feeling not like the real Chicago but like a 30s movie version of 20s Chicago, but that actually makes sense, for most of us know that period more from the movies than from experience or documentary film. There is a room-destroying fight between Segal and his negligee-clad floozy that is almost slapstick in feel but otherwise there is little humor or lightness here. The violence in the film seems like it was influenced by the controversial Bonnie and Clyde, but this was actually released before that one. Worth seeing. [FMC]

CARNIVAL STORY (1954)

Jay C. Flippen has brought his American carnival over to Germany and it's a roaring success. Among other sideshow denizens, there's a bearded lady, a strong (and mute) man named Groppo, and an acrobat (Lyle Bettger) who does a daring high dive into a small pool of water. One night, handsome barker Steve Cochran (at left) gets his wallet heisted by a lovely but starving young woman (Anne Baxter); he catches up with her and instead of calling the police, offers her a job helping him brush up on his German. Soon, Cochran and Baxter are in the middle of a lustful affair, though he continues to play the field. Bettger hires her to become his partner in the high-dive act, and on the night of her debut, asks her to marry him. Cochran is fine with that, assuming that he and Baxter will continue their affair. Baxter, horrified, says she'll kill him if he touches her again. She does marry Bettger, though Cochran keeps pestering her, but one night, a rung on the high-dive ladder breaks off and Bettger falls to his death. It turns out that the diver had saved a lot of money and Baxter gets it, so Cochran tries to wheedle some money out of her—and even though they sleep together, she won't give him the money so he steals it and leaves. Baxter becomes the star of the show and the plotpoints keep piling up: she starts a mild flirtation with George Nader, a Life magazine photographer who is doing a story on the carnival; she is hurt one night attempting to do Bettger's famous somersault dive; she decides to leave the show, but comes back when she finds out that Cochran has returned; finally, Cochran admits to tampering with the ladder to kill Bettger, leading to a wild climax in which Cochran tries to strangle Baxter but has to deal with Groppo the strong man chasing him all over the carnival.

There is plenty of plot here but few likeable characters. Our sympathies are generally with Baxter but she makes her own problems worse with her erratic behavior. Cochran is slimy but sexy, and the two do have some chemistry together. Bettger is a wet noodle and there's never any doubt that he won't be around for long. Nader's character is ill-defined and seems present only to give Baxter a helping hand while she recuperates from her diving injury. The immoral behavior of Baxter and Cochran (pictured at right) gives the movie a modern feel, and the two are the only appealing actors on screen, so your enjoyment of the movie will depend on how you react the two of them. I like Steve Cochran's dark looks and blustery manner, and when he's offscreen for big chunks of the last half, I lost interest. The writing is on the level of lines like, "Until I met you, I didn’t know how rotten I was!" and "Shut up and go to bed!" The movie looks strange, having been filmed in a color process which has degraded over the years (a digital restoration would help). The best scene in the movie, aside from when Cochran and Baxter are kissing or fighting, is when Bettger and Baxter climb the ladder on the night of her debut and he tells her that she'll never forget this moment—the view of the city as night falls is indeed lovely. [TCM]

SON OF CLEOPATRA (1964)

Egypt is occupied by the Romans under the strict rule of Petronius (who paints his face and talks about his beauty). He frequently rounds up of groups of Egyptians to sell into slavery, but gangs of rebels led by El Kabir, known as the Phantom of the Desert, are engaging Roman soldiers in small skirmishes. It seems that El Kabir can be in two places at once, and that’s because both he and his brother Uro are presenting themselves as the same figure, their faces covered to hide their true identities. There is some squabbling among the rebel leaders and soon El Kabir finds out that he is not who he thinks he is: he is Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, hidden away after birth to keep him safe.  Soon, the Emperor Octavian sends Furio to investigate Petronius's problems; he is accompanied by Petronius' daughter Livia, who is briefly kidnapped by El Kabir's men after Uro is captured, tortured and killed. When she is released, she begins thinking that maybe El Kabir and his men have legitimate complaints.

This is a sword-and-sandal movie with a difference: instead of being about a mythical hero such as Hercules or Maciste, it is based more solidly in history. There really was a Caesarion, though Julius Caesar never acknowledged him as his son, and he was ordered killed by Octavian. Another difference: the hero (played by Mark Damon) is not a bulked-up muscle man but a hunky little guy with a lithe physique. The entire enterprise is a notch above the average peplum movie of the time with an engrossing narrative—the surface of which I have only scratched above—and some rounded characters. Damon (pictured) makes a fine leading man, and Livio Lorenzon as Petronious is an equally good villain. Scilla Gabel as Livia is distracting only because she looks a bit like Barbara Eden as Jeannie. There are a couple of good action and torture scenes, though at the end, the build-up to a final battle is wasted. Worth seeing for fans of the genre. This is the last of the peplums for now, but I have a few more queued up for the future. [DVD]

SON OF SAMSON (1960)

In the 11th century B.C. the Persians have conquered the Egyptians; though theoretically still ruled by their pharaoh, Queen Smedes has been installed by the Persians and when she is accused of enslaving the people, she has the pharaoh assassinated and takes over as ruler, and things go from bad to worse for the people. The rightful heir, Kenamon, has been off fighting the Persians; on his way home, Kenamon sees the muscle man Maciste (the "son" of the title, though little is made of that connection) taking a nap on some rocks when a lion attacks. The two save each other and form a bond, and Kenamon asks Maciste to help him save his people from Persian tyranny. Back in the city of Tanis, the evil Queen wants to marry Kenamon but he suspects she had a role in his father's death (and besides, he's already in love with Nofret), so she has the Necklace of Forgetfulness placed on him and he immediately becomes smitten. Meanwhile Maciste comes to town in a fighting mood but Kenamon has forgotten who he is. Maciste runs about saving slaves from death and torture, but can he get Kenamon on his side before the Queen's plans are finalized?

For the peplum genre, the Egyptian setting is a little different, and the fantasy element of the necklace is unusual though not unique; you may recall the Potion of Forgetfullness in GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON. There is a good balance between action and narrative, and some of the battle scenes are fairly graphic for the day: in the climactic battle, one man is axed in the head and dies with a comical look on his face, and another is stabbed in the face with a huge fork-like weapon. Early on is a striking scene showing Egyptians buried in the sand, some head up, some feet up. There is a sequence right out of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in which Maciste saves some slaves from being crushed during the erection of a giant obelisk. (The less said about the lion-wrestling scene, the better; do any of these sword-and-sandal movies have decent animal-wrestling scenes?) Mark Forest is acceptably built as Maciste (pictured above right with Angelo Zanolli as Kenamon), and a famous Cuban belly dancer named Chelo Alonso (at left) is fine as the queen. The print on Retromedia’s DVD is widescreen, always a plus. [DVD]

HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN (1961)

Hercules and his son Hylas (in the myths, Hylas was actually his companion—and some say, lover) have a strange vision of red smoke spreading ruin over Greece. The blind seer Tiresias tells Hercules that an evil power from the west threatens, so Androcles talks a reluctant Hercules into heading off to preempt disaster. Herc's wife, however, wants him to stay home, so Androcles essentially kidnaps the strong man—by drugging his wine—and gets him on his ship where Hylas is hiding, wanting to share his dad's adventure. A resentful Hercules is content to be lackadaisical and let others do the work until a huge storm destroys the ship; Hercules is washed up an island and Androcles is swept away. Hercules has a vision that Androcles is still alive, and as he searches the island he finds a woman who is being slowly absorbed by magic into a mountainside. At the mercy of shape-shifting Proteus, she begs to be killed, but Hercules battles Proteus (who turns into, among other things, a lion, a lizard, and a vulture) and bests him, freeing the woman, the princess Ismene from the island of Atlantis. It turns out that her mother, Queen Antinea, sacrificed her to Proteus, partly because of a prophecy that, if her daughter survives her, Atlantis will be destroyed. On the island, a priest of the god Uranus lives in a mountain and stands guard over a pool of Uranus' blood which has evil powers. Soon, Hercules starts seeing Androcles around the palace, but he's wandering in a stupor, having lost his memory, so Herc stays long enough to help his pal, and gets involved in a plan to overthrow the Queen.

As I'm noticing in these reviews, there's an awful lot of plot in these peplum movies, maybe to distract from the low budgets or wildly variable acting, and I'm not always sure my summary details are accurate. But overall, this is fun, full of action, colorful sets, and male and female pulchritude. There are some nice fantasy touches, such as Proteus' shape-shifting and occasional intercession by the gods (we never see them, but Hercules invokes them). The storm sequence is particularly effective, as is the climactic destruction of Atlantis—though that looks cobbled together from other film footage. Reg Park makes for a beefy and not bad looking hero, but, as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew pointed out when they showed this, he is almost comically passive for chunks of the film. Ettore Manni as Androcles and Fay Spain as the Queen are fine, though both seem a little underused. The widescreen DVD print from Retromedia looks great. [DVD]

GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON (1960)

This is a real whoop-de-doo, kick-ass, sword-and-sandal movie; my advice is to ignore the plot and the sometimes amateurish special effects and just enjoy the piling-up of action sequences. What I could follow of the narrative: Back in the pagan days, muscular hero Emilius the Mighty, nicknamed Goliath (though in the original Italian version, he's Hercules), is a right-hand man to the gods, particularly the God of Revenge. His latest chore was to bring back the Blood Diamond, stolen by the wicked King Eurito, and replace it in the head of the god's statue. But Goliath has other problems. His young-pup brother Illus is love with Thea, but Goliath disapproves because her father was responsible for the death of their parents. Illus is led to believe (by Tindaro, Eurito's wily henchman) that Goliath is jealous and wants Thea for himself (even though he is married to Dejanira), so he is talked into slipping Goliath a Potion of Forgetfulness, but it's actually poison. As if all this isn't enough for Goliath, he is told by an oracle that his brother will cause the death of Dejanira.

But the plot machinations are secondary to the action sequences, and there are plenty of those. Right off the bat, Goliath battles a fire-breathing three-headed dog, followed later by a rather teddy-bear-like bat-creature, then a teddy-bear-like bear. Later he grapples with an elephant that is about to crush Illus, destroys his own house by pulling down its pillars, and battles with Polymorphus, a centaur/satyr creature who is running off with his wife. Near the end of the film, there is a battle with the dragon of the title, and another destruction scene involving tearing apart a house from underground. The creatures are fabulous in an MST3K bad-movie way, mostly looking like Muppets (the dog) or stuntmen in ratty Halloween costumes (the bear). The first glimpses of the dragon, a stop-motion figure, aren't bad, but when Goliath actually fights it, it’s a huge kiddie-matinee puppet, and becomes the most laughable scene of the movie—and that's saying a lot. Mark Forest is muscular and stoic as Goliath, Sandro Moretti is pleasant enough eye candy in the less-hunky sidekick role of Illus, and Broderick Crawford—yes, Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford—looks completely uneasy as the wicked king. The Alpha Video DVD is letterboxed but not anamorphic, and the colors tend toward sickly greens, but I hear that the Something Weird disc is in better shape. All things considered, a fun entry in the peplum genre. [DVD]

HERCULES (1958)

Most Novembers, I've written here about the kind of fantasy movies that I recall being broadcast on TV during Thanksgiving week when I was young—what with kids being off school and most regular daytime programming pre-empted. This year I thought I'd focus on the Italian muscleman movies, aka sword-and-sandal movies, or peplum movies (meaning "tunic," or toga, as the genre, popular through the 1960s, has been dubbed) which usually feature a muscled, toga-wearing hero in some historical setting. I've seen quite a few of them, but they tend to run together in my memory, so recently I've made an effort to watch (or re-watch) some of them so I can tell them apart. I'll start with the granddaddy of peplum movies. Though there had been a handful of these epics before (most notably the silent Italian film CABIRIA which introduced the standard peplum hero Maciste), this was the first one to become a big box office hit in America when it was dubbed and released here by American International.

It begins with a bucolic scene of a shepherd gently piping to his sheep until suddenly a woman tears through in a runaway chariot. Luckily Hercules (Steve Reeves) is strolling by and saves her by ripping up a tree to put in her horses' path. As it happens, the woman is Princess Iole (Sylva Koscina), daughter of King Pelius of Iolcus, and that's where Herc is heading, having been asked by the king to train their men in the skills of warfare. She tells Hercules that it's rumored that the previous king was assassinated, and Jason (the rightful heir) and his tutor Chironi vanished that night along with the Golden Fleece which is symbolic of legitimate rule, and which also has the name of the king's killer written on it in blood. Herc discovers Jason (Fabrizio Mioni), now grown, and the king gives them three months to go find the Golden Fleece. They survive a storm at sea, spend some time with a tribe of Amazons, and face down a bunch of dark, bestial men and a dragon before they get the Fleece and return to Iolcus where Jason can take his place as king.

This mish-mash of mythological themes and stories contains more than I've noted above, including a fight with the Cretan Bull (a very sorry-looking sequence) and a lion, run-ins with oracles, some help from Ulysses, the tearing-down of pillars, and the presence of many loinclothed young men engaged in acts of physical prowess. Even though Steve Reeves' name became a codeword for "bad musclebound acting," he’s OK here—some who came after were much worse. Koscina (who had a lengthy career in Italian cinema and Hollywood B-movies) and Mioni (who did not; both pictured above) are both fine in the main support roles. Though it's not a big-budget movie, it looks pretty good, perhaps due to Mario Bava's presence as cinematographer, just before he struck out on his career as a director (BLACK SUNDAY, DANGER: DIABOLIK, and one of the best peplum films HERCULES AND THE HAUNTED WORLD). And finally, a widescreen version of this movie is available from Retromedia, so if you've only seen this pan-and-scanned, you haven't really seen it. Certainly one of the best of the peplum films. [DVD]

THE LOVES OF PHARAOH (1922)

This silent German film from Ernst Lubitsch may be the oldest film I've reviewed here. It is definitely a relic in terms of acting (either overdone or underdone) but it's been beautifully restored with rich color tinting and is lovely to watch. The title is an exaggeration: the pharaoh, King Amenes (Emil Jannings) only has one love but she causes quite a bit of trouble. Samlak, the king of Ethiopia, arrives wanting to sign a peace pact with the Egyptians and offers his daughter Makeda as a bride. But trouble is in store when Ramphis (Harry Liedtke), an Egyptian architect, rescues Theonis (Dagny Servaes), a Greek slave to Makeda who was being mistreated. The two go necking at an ancient Egyptian version of a moonlit lover's lane, but when they stray onto treasury property, which is strictly forbidden, they are caught and sentenced to death. As Ramphis is about to be crushed beneath a huge stone slab, Theonis agrees to give herself to King Amenes if he will spare Ramphis. The King agrees and frees Ramphis but tells him that Theonis has been executed. Meanwhile, Samlak wants Theonis back as a slave; one thing leads to another and soon the Ethiopians are on the warpath.

There is some fun to be had here in this early example of a historical epic. The sets are spectacular and the battle scenes are impressive. The acting, as I noted, is all over the place. Actually, I prefer the actors like Liedtke who overact occasionally to Jannings who underplays the lead role—pretty much all he does is glower and look askance; his passion for the slave girl barely registers. But the restoration of the film is amazing. No complete print exists so this was pulled together from three different prints, but aside from the fact that a handful of scenes are missing and represented by stills and explanatory titles, it feels all of one piece. This won't convert anyone over to silent film fandom, and it doesn't feel at all like a Lubitsch movie (glossy, whimsical, romantic), but I enjoyed it. [TCM]

THE FAMOUS FERGUSON CASE (1932)

After an opening crawl warning about the evils of using scavenger journalism to sell newspapers, we meet young Bruce Foster (Tom Brown) who runs the paper in the small town of Cornwall with some help from his girl friend Toni (Adrienne Dore). It seems to be common knowledge that wealthy Mrs. Ferguson is having an affair with banker Judd Brooks, and when Mr. Ferguson arrives home early from a business trip, he almost catches the two of them. That night, Ferguson is shot to death and his wife is found bound and gagged. She claims that robbers broke in and gives police a description of them, but some believe that she and her lover may have committed the crime and made look like robbery. The news, reported by Bruce in the local paper, brings a flock of big-city reporters to town. One batch, led by the slightly seedy Bob Parks (Kenneth Thomson), is out to make as many scandalous headlines as possible, and they wind up railroading the DA into charging Mrs. Ferguson despite virtually no physical evidence. The others, led by Martin Collins (Grant Mitchell), are disgusted by Parks' tactics. In the middle is Maizie Dickson (Joan Blondell), Parks' former lover; she hangs out with Parks and the scandal mongers but her heart is with Collins' group. When Maizie realizes that small-town Toni is falling for Parks, she tries to intervene, but can’t stop their affair. But the real question is, can Bruce, the small-town reporter, find out the truth behind the murder which the big-city pros seem disinclined to find?

This is another Warner Bros. movie, like FIVE STAR FINAL from the year before, that takes a critical view of the newspaper business. That earlier film focused on scandal sheets that dig up old dirt just to sell papers. In this one, the "bad" reporters actually influence the way the case is handled by the state, rushing to judgment for the sake of headlines. This is worth seeing for a number of reasons. It moves along at a nice clip, the plot takes a couple of unexpected detours—especially the thread involving Blondell—and the performances are quite good. Brown (pictured with Blondell above) looks like he's 15, but he does a nice job at seeming both charmingly naïve and slyly clever. Thomson, an actor with whom I was not familiar, is good as the world-weary, slightly decadent type—we discover that he doesn't even write his own copy anymore. Leon Ames stands out in the small role of Brooks, the lover. [TCM]

THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968)

This is a doozy, folks, in the so-bad-it's-almost-good category. Lewis Zarken (Peter Finch) is a retired movie director; years ago, he was known for a sting of films that made a star out of Lylah Clare (Kim Novak), but on their wedding day, Lylah died under mysterious circumstances—she either fell or was pushed from a flight of stairs in Zarken's mansion, and was either running from an assailant or was engaging in an extramarital fling with another woman. Now some twenty years later, press agent Bart Langer (Milton Seltzer) has discovered a young would-be starlet named Elsa (also Kim Novak) who bears a striking resemblance to Lylah. Dying of cancer, he approaches Zarken about making a movie about Lylah that would star Elsa. At first skeptical, Zarken soon decides not only to make the movie, but also to mold Elsa to be another Lylah.

That plot has promise, but the film is tonally all over the place. It can’t decide if it's campy satire, straightforward melodrama, or a ghost story, so it winds up being a bit of all three, to its detriment. The movies it most conjures up are VERTIGO (instability of identity, male re-creating lost female) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (eccentric old movie personalities), and had director Robert Aldrich shot for one or the other as a model, the movie might have worked. Whenever it's dealing with the movie business, which is often, the script feels like the fever dream of an oversexed 14-year-old who has no idea how Hollywood works. When it's trying to be a relationship drama, the characters are maddeningly vague, particularly Zarken who comes off sometimes as villainous and sometimes as just misunderstood. Fairly soon after Elsa enters Zarken's house, she begins to occasionally slip into the deep Germanic accent and over-the-top vampishness of Lylah, to the point where it feels like she's being possessed by a spirit. Yet few other people seem to notice this or comment on it—is this something that’s only observed by Zarken, or is this really a possession story?

As a whole, the movie is a mess, but many of the parts are enjoyable. The backstory of Zarken and Lylah is clearly based on Josef Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, and watching the way Zarken's relationship with Elsa plays out has its moments. Novak is sexy, Finch gives it his all—though honestly, it would have been more fun if he had gone over the top more often—and Seltzer provides solid, quiet support, though his character is no more realistic than the others. Rossella Falk plays Finch's assistant, who apparently had a thing for Lylah (I'm thinking on the order of Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA, but dialed down very low). Ernest Borgnine is good as a studio boss who hires Zarken to make the film, and a young Michael Murphy is his son who becomes a protector of sorts to Elsa. The movie is stolen by Coral Browne (pictured at right) as a crippled gossip columnist who can make or break Elsa's reputation before even one frame of film is shot. She's only in two scenes and her presence is missed throughout. Also with Gabriele Tinti as a hunky but sleazy Italian gardener and eventual bedmate of Elsa's. I can only recommend this movie if you have a healthy tolerance and/or love of bad movies. [TCM]