THE PHANTOM EMPIRE (1935 serial)

Gene Autry is a singing cowboy radio star who performs a daily show at 2:00 at his Radio Ranch, a family vacation resort. He and his band the Radio Riders play songs and perform short western dramas (which, even though the show is broadcast over the radio, they act out as though they could be seen by an audience). Autry's contract stipulates that he must broadcast every day or forfeit the show, in which case he would lose the ranch. A kids' fan club, called the Junior Thunder Riders, led by teenagers Frankie and Betsy, have meetings in a barn and adopt a slogan, "To the rescue!" which they cry out when they jump on their horses. Their name comes from a mythical group of horse riders who might still exist. Autry finds a small figure of a robed rider which is said to be an artifact of "antediluvian Americana" which may be evidence of the myth. Professor Beetson and his men arrive looking for the fabled lost city of Mu which is said to contain fabulous riches. Aware of Autry's contract, and wanting to empty out the ranch so his men can dig for Mu, Beetson kills Baxter, Autry's ranch partner, and frames Autry who goes on the run. Helped by Frankie and Betsy, Autry still manages to do his 2:00 broadcast each day from hiding. As it happens, Mu lies far beneath the Radio Ranch's land, is called Murania by its residents (forced underground thousands of years ago by glaciers) who are ruled by a strict queen, and its riches are huge deposits of radium which the Muranians have used to create wondrous inventions, including boxy (and rather clumsy) robots to perform manual chores. Queen Tika despises the world above and wants to keep Murania hidden at all costs—we see that the Muranians on horseback are the original Thunder Riders of myth, and they still ride when Murania is threatened. Autry is now sought by three parties: the professor and his men, the police, and Queen Tika who worries that the popularity of Radio Ranch will lead to her land being exposed. 

The year before the first Flash Gordon serial came this forerunner, an amalgam of adventure, western, fantasy and sci-fi. Oddly, once it gets going, it works. Gene Autry (pictured above left) plays himself, a real-life singing cowboy radio star who would eventually appear in dozens of B-westerns and record many hit songs, including the holiday tunes "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Here Comes Santa Claus." In this, one of his earliest films, acting is not his strongest talent, but I was surprised how appealing he is: he's not bad looking, his persona is one of a likable everyday sort of fellow, and once the fisticuffs get going, he acquits himself nicely (probably with the help of a stunt double), though there are noticeably fewer fistfights here than in the average serial. His delivery occasionally verges on amateurish, with frequent over-enunciating of words and some pacing problems, but some of the other actors have the same problems, especially Dorothy Christy as Queen Tika. She artificially overacts like crazy but is effective once in a while. By far, the strongest actor here is Frankie Darro (as Frankie). Seventeen when he made this film, he was a very busy child actor, having appeared in over twenty movies before his appearance here. He’s handsome, can be both cocky and personable, and is a fine actor. It's said that his small stature (5 foot 3) was an impediment to leading man roles, and he was often cast as a jockey. His co-star, Betsy King Ross (Betsy), pictured with Darro at right, is not nearly as good, but to be fair, she only made three movies; she was better known as a horse riding champion and that talent is put to good use here. I enjoyed the antics of Smiley Burnette and Peter Potter (billed as William Moore) as Oscar and Pete, comic relief band members who wind up joining Autry and the kids in their adventures. 

At four hours (12 chapters), this doesn't feel overly long, only getting repetitious in the last few chapters. The adventures take place in varied settings: at the ranch, in the surrounding desert, and in the underground land of Murania, effectively produced mostly with the use of miniatures and matte shots (see left). A form of television is used throughout as a way for Queen Tika to keep track of the outer world in general and Gene Autry in particular, though it's never explained where her dozens of cameras are located. Among the cliffhangers are a literal cliffhanger, a downed plane, and radium ray guns. Though Autry and the Junior Thunder Riders are the central heroes, our sympathies for other characters shift on occasion. The queen is over-the-top evil and wants to have Autry killed until she changes her mind (not due to romantic feelings but out of practicality). Her assistant Lord Argo is secretly fomenting a revolution, and is responsible for saving Autry from the Chamber of Death, but later becomes dangerous to all. (Autry's resurrection is an interesting scene; apparently he actually dies, and when the Reviving Machine brings him back, he spends several seconds babbling nonsensically in the Language of the Dead.) The boxy robots are unintentionally amusing until Oscar and Pete disguise themselves as robots and engage in some slapsticky humor. It’s pretty fun to see the Junior Thunder Riders yell their slogan in unison and take off for a rescue. There are a few songs, including a novelty number about the animals on Noah's Ark. The plotpoint about having to broadcast every day is downright silly, but does provide an occasional deadline that forces Autry to race against the clock. The print on the Alpha DVD I watched is not in great shape, but I have not heard of the existence of a restored print yet. Somewhat primitive but recommended for serials fans. [DVD]

THE CURSE OF BELPHEGOR (1967)

A dance troupe is rehearsing a new ballet work inspired by worship of the legendary demon Belphegor, with the stage dominated by a large golden statue of the demon. Unsettling things begin happening. First, a set decorator standing on a ladder is spooked by the sight of a figure dressed like Belphegor and falls off the ladder to his death. Next, people on stage hear weird music coming from the statue followed by a voice predicting a series of deaths: the two theater owners, Garnier and Hubert; the writer Olivier; and the director Fred. Other characters we meet include the star, an old comic relief stage manager, and Garnier’s ward Roger. The troupe carries on and the opening goes off well, but late that night, Garnier is stabbed to death on the stage by the demonic figure, someone wearing a Belphegor mask with gold-painted hands. The cops investigate but the predicted deaths continue. Roger, who falls under suspicion because he stands to inherit the theater, gets involved with a female reporter named Claude and the two wind up at a sprawling but abandoned farmhouse where they are tortured by supersonic sound waves and held by the Belphegor figure who plans to burn them to death with a flamethrower torture device before he kills the star onstage at the climax of the ballet. I'm fairly certain that the above summary is accurate, but there is more to it than that, and I had problems following the narrative. Things get a bit convoluted with some secondary plotpoints I was unsure about: one of the characters is gay (I'm not even sure which one, maybe Fred) and has a male lover he calls Kitty, and another character is caught stealing documents, possibly in a blackmail attempt. 

The main problem: the print of the movie I saw on YouTube, supplied by Culture Tube, is in French with an English dub done by AI, and the dubbing is awful. The mouth movements are rarely matched, but that is the least of the problems. All the voices, even the older people, sound like those of bored twenty-somethings and the dialogue is frequently rushed and blurred, causing me to miss a fair amount of the story. I suppose it's better than having no English at all (the subtitles supplied were in French) but I hope this doesn’t become a trend. Because of this, I can't really judge the acting. Maurice Sarfati (Fred, pictured above right) and Noelle Noblecourt (Claude) are attractive and energetic but for the most part I can't reliably match cast names to characters. One that I could, Paul Guers as Fred, reminded me of Kier Dullea. The Belphegor figures, both the human and the statue, are effective. The somewhat unsatisfying ending seems to promise a sequel that never came. The name Belphegor was used in a famous French novel and silent serial from the 1920s but this has no relation to that. I might watch this again if a properly dubbed or subtitled version becomes available. [YouTube]

OUTSIDE THE LAW (1956)

Berlin, 1946. Johnny (Ray Danton) is in his last few days with the postwar American occupying forces. Back home, he was a convict who, along with his prison buddy Harry, was given a chance at freedom by joining the military. One night, Harry says he can't join Johnny for a beer; we then see Harry approach two men in a car and give them a package. He clearly expects some money from them but what he gets is a bullet that kills him. Not long after this, a glut of counterfeit money starts showing up in the States, and treasury agents think that Harry was involved in a counterfeit ring. When Johnny gets to Los Angeles, he is approached by T-Man Maury Saxton to help investigate with the promise that his criminal record will be wiped clean. The problem is that this necessitates him working with his father Alec (Onslow Stevens). The two have a stormy past but Johnny agrees to the job. They know the paper used for the near-perfect bills comes from Seattle, and as they narrow down the possible local purchaser, Johnny's mission is to get close to Harry's widow Maria (Leigh Snowden) to see if she knows anything. Johnny and Maria hit it off and he finds out that the two had a hasty marriage in the States before Harry went overseas and she really barely knew him. But she's friends with a shady character named Don Kastner (Grant Williams) who seems neurotically jealous of Johnny. At Papa Gomez's restaurant, Johnny and Maria have dinner and grow close, with Maria remarking on Johnny’s "deep, warm, lonely eyes" and they share a kiss. Papa Gomez lets Don know (the two have a connection that is not clear to us yet), and that night Don and some thug friends break into Johnny's apartment. The thugs beat the shit out of Johnny while Don stands in the dark with an excited leer on his face. Alec has singled out the Philip Bormann import company as the likely supplier of the counterfeit paper, and it turns out that both Maria and Don work there. Johnny heads to the office to punch out Don. When Johnny’s dad figures out that Johnny is serious about Maria, he tries to take him off the case, but Johnny won’t rest until justice is served. 

I am pleased yet again with another B-movie discovery from the 1950s. Some call this noir, but it's not, with Johnny’s criminal past being the only noir element. It's a crime film which borders on hard-boiled, largely because of the ass-kicking Johnny gets. It's a good scene, made memorable by the almost lustful look in Don's eyes. Grant Williams (Don), pictured at left, is best known as the Incredible Shrinking Man, and though he's good in that, this is probably his best movie role—he was also a detective in the Hawaiian Eye TV series. Don is a slimy, passive, neurotic bully and Williams brings him vividly to life. The handsome Ray Danton is just as good in the lead (he's in almost every scene) but less showy role of Johnny. The treasury agents are a homogeneous bunch of white men in suits, acted in appropriately low-key fashion, but Onslow Stevens does manage to stand out as Johnny's father. Though the father-son relationship remains thorny, there is the promise of reconciliation in the final moments. As often happens in these films, the leading lady (Leigh Snowden, pictured at top with Danton) is underserved by the writing but she does work up some chemistry with Danton. I like that the father and his colleague Maury (Judson Pratt) have enough of a friendship presented that you could almost imagine a buddy movie centering on the two of them. Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) is solid as the suspicious Philip Bormann. I fear overselling this—it's no timeless classic, but I sure enjoyed it as a Saturday afternoon B-film. Online critic Colin Edwards says the movie is nothing special but is a professional and "efficiently well-made piece of entertainment" and what's wrong with that? Directed in a non-fussy manner by Jack Arnold (Shrinking Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). [Blu-ray]

JUNGLE GODDESS (1948)

In South Africa, pilot Bob (Ralph Byrd) is having a drink at Portugee Joe's when the club's singer (after singing a particularly draggy torch song) flirts with him, calling him "sweet but dangerous." Bob's flying partner Mike (George Reeves) enters the bar with a possible job for the two of them. A wealthy Johannesburg man has just died, and there's a search on for his daughter Greta who vanished years ago after a plane crash. A big reward has been promised to anyone who can find the missing heiress. Bob and Mike decide to try and soon, flying over Zambezi territory, they spy the wrecked plane and land. As they start to trudge through the jungle, a group of spear-carrying natives surprise them and Bob shoots one of them dead. The two are captured and brought before the queen of the tribe, who happens to be the long-lost Greta (Wanda McKay). Though Greta can release Mike, the tribe wants Bob to pay for his crime, and he is held to be executed in a week's time under the next full moon. In flashback, Greta explains what happened. In September of 1939, Greta, a student at a New England girls school, decides to fly home to Johannesburg before war tensions increase, but war is declared during the trip. Mechanical problems (or weather problems, it's not clear) arise and the plane crashes, with Greta the only survivor. Wandering through the jungle, she is approached by some natives "in an attitude of worship," and when Greta is able to nurse a sick girl back to health, she is acclaimed as leader of the tribe. In the present, Greta confides in Mike that she has a plan to free both of them if they will take her with them—she and Mike are falling in love. In the meantime, Bob, not aware of these plans, is working with Greta's handmaiden Wanama to escape on his own, and maybe going a little nutty in the process. When Mike tries to stop him, they engage in furniture-destroying fisticuffs during which Bob accidentally shoots another native. Mike, Bob and Greta get away, followed by an angry group of natives who don't want their queen to leave. After a nighttime rest stop, and an early morning fistfight involving unresolved tensions, Bob steals a compass and sets out on his own to find the plane. With the natives in hot pursuit, will any of them get out of the jungle safely?

George Reeves never quite made it to the rank of movie star, though he did find fame as TV's Superman in the 1950s, but I've always liked him in B-films. Action hero, romantic lead, villain, he could do them all. He's handsome, hunky, and charming with a glowing smile (or a nasty sneer when playing a baddie), and he's the main reason to watch this cheapie jungle melodrama which suffers from a lack of: character development, action, beefcake, cheesecake, or real danger. Actually, Ralph Byrd (Bob) is pretty good, too. He was famous as Dick Tracy in movies and serials, and he was fine in the one Dick Tracy movie I saw. Here, he's good looking (though coming in second behind Reeves) and moves convincingly from nice guy buddy to nervous breakdown heavy. I guess we're supposed to dislike him since he kills a native, with seemingly no remorse, but as he explains, all he saw was a bunch of guys coming at him with spears and he acted without thinking. Wanda McKay is terrible; how she wound up with over fifty movie (almost all of them low-budget works) and TV credits is beyond me. She looks the part but when she speaks, it's all downhill. I've seen her in a handful of films and I've never thought much of her. A more energetic woman who could actually act (Maria Montez, Dorothy Lamour, Evelyn Ankers) might have lifted this picture up a bit. Of course, the writing is also at fault—at one point, a radioactive rock called Karnacite is discovered and talked about, but that plot element comes to nothing. Greta's flashback was a noble attempt at character building, but it also comes to nothing. The plane crash, filmed with miniatures, is poorly staged, and the stock footage of jungle animals is completely irrelevant. And yet, I wound up with a bit of affection for this movie, partly since it re-introduced me to Ralph Byrd. Pictured at top are Byrd and Reeves; at left are McKay and Reeves. [DVD]

THE TELL-TALE HEART (1934)

The first sound film version of the famous Edgar Allan Poe short story does a little bit of expanding from its source to reach a length of about an hour, but it does it in ways that feel organic to the story. We begin with a man (Norman Dryden, pictured) in an asylum cell, drawing large eyes on the walls, giving the room an almost expressionistic look. His parents died when he was young and he became a sensitive artist, subject to attacks of catalepsy, becoming unresponsive and staring into space. He lives in a house with an older decrepit man (John Kelt) whom he simply refers to as a friend. The man has a bulging eye which Dryden fixates on, claiming it casts a blight on his life. But Dryden manages to have a girlfriend (Yolanda Terrell). We see the two spending a day in a park; as they stroll among the trees, Dryden sees imaginary eyes up in the branches, but is eventually distracted by kissing Terrell on a log and canoeing down a river. Kelt watches them from a bridge, not creepily but in a sweet paternal way. The rest of the film plays out like the Poe story: the boy can't escape the old man's peering eye and loudly beating heart, and one night he is driven mad and kills the man in his bed and buries him under the living room floorboards. Two policemen get reports of screams, and when they investigate, Dryden invites them in and assures them that the screams were his own from having a nightmare. But as the three enjoy a drink, Dryden cannot escape the loud beating of the old man's heart, which of course is all in his head, and he tears up the floor to expose his crime.

This low-budget film hasn't gotten a lot of critical attention, and most online viewers criticize it for being cheap and boring and slowly paced. But to me, the film feels like an artsy avant-garde experiment. The sets are definitely cheap but their stark look creates a nicely creepy atmosphere. The riverside scene is beautifully shot and contrasts well with the look of the rest of the film. Even the amateurish acting, disliked by most critics, adds a surreal tone to the movie; Kelt made a handful of appearances in silent movies, but Dryden and Terrell did not go on to carve out acting careers. Dryden in particular is disliked by current viewers, but I think he gives an effective performance in keeping with the austere look and feel of the film. I've reviewed two other versions of the film, one from 1941 which is twenty minutes and mostly narrated, and one from 1960 which is a full-length expansion of the story. All three versions held my interest and are worth seeing, especially for Poe fans. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst who later directed the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol movie. This was retitled Bucket of Blood in the States. [YouTube]

PAGAN ISLAND (1961)

A shirtless man and a topless woman wearing a lei are found in the ocean in a lifeboat by men on a fishing boat. The woman is dead and the barely alive man tells their story in flashback. William Stanton floated on a lifeboat for nine days after surviving a tanker ship fire and washed up on a small, seemingly deserted island. But there are inhabitants: a couple dozen women, topless except for their strategically worn leis. The ruler of the women, Queen Kealoha, is not happy to see Stanton as this is a sacred island where no men are allowed except for an annual festival where men are allowed to come and have sex to propagate the race (though oddly, we see no babies or children on the island). The last time men stayed, they caused trouble and supposedly hid some treasure that was never found. However, a different festival is coming up which involves the choosing of a woman for the Sea God. This year's choice, Nani Maka, is excited about the rite, but Stanton realizes that this is basically a human sacrifice—she'll dive into the ocean and drown to ensure that bad storms stay away from the island. Stanton and Nani grow close and the queen's not happy, wanting Stanton to leave, but when a small band of native men attack on the beach, Stanton shoots them dead, saving the women's lives, and he is allowed to stay. He teaches the women a game, kissing, which is kept innocent, and which Nani isn't impressed by: after kissing her, Stanton says, "Isn't that fun?" and she replies, "I like swimming better." Eventually he falls in love with Nani and she with him, and he tries to talk her and the queen out of holding the sacrifice, but no dice. So instead he proposes to make the leap with her. The night before, the two have a homemade wedding ceremony so they can have sex (all we see is the post-coital cuddling), and when they dive, he leads her to an underwater cave where he finds the hidden treasure. Pocketing some jewels, they try to swim out to his lifeboat but she gets bitten by a giant clam (Wikipedia says this can’t happen) and dies. Stanton is left bereft with just his jewels. The end.

This was released as what they used to call a "nudie-cutie," featuring some nudity in a relatively innocent context as opposed to a "roughie" which included rape and crime and violence, and it was shown in adults-only engagements. But I would guess even back then, the raincoat crowd would have been disappointed. The women are indeed all topless but they wear multiple leis designed to mostly cover the breasts. In an early scene when a bunch of women go running across the beach, it's quite comical to see them grab hold of the leis to keep them in place. Still, some sideboobs and even nipples do get exposed—oddly, the print I saw on YouTube, which was otherwise pristine, blurred most but not quite all of the nipple presentations. Aside from the tame kissing, no sex is shown. Still, this was fairly successful (it was sometimes given the title Naked Island) and is considered by fans to be a prime example of tikisploitation, films which partook of the lost tropical island fantasies of Americans. The director, Barry Mahon, has an interesting backstory; in real life, he was involved in the incident that was fictionalized on film as The Great Escape. The only pro onscreen is Eddie Dew (Stanton), pictured at top left. According to IMDb, he would have been around 50 when he made this but looks more like mid-30s. He's a perfect sub-B-lead, moderately handsome with a decent if unremarkable physique and able to say his lines with some moderate amount of conviction. I guess I'm damning with faint praise, but he's the reason I didn't bail halfway through. The women with speaking lines are awful, especially the queen who seems to be reading much of her dialogue from cue cards. Nani Maka is played by a real-life hula dancer named Nani Maka. Her big dances around the Sea God statue are not only uninteresting but ineptly shot. Worst (or best) of all is the Sea God, a cheap-looking and wildly goofy prop that looks like it was rejected from a Roger Corman movie (see right). At an hour, it's harmless and sorta fun, with a hypnotic atmosphere of goofy amateurishness that sucked me in. [YouTube]

HARBOR OF MISSING MEN (1950)

Jim 'Brooklyn' Gannon runs a charter boat business from Key West and he also currently has a side gig helping a guy named Hugo smuggle stolen jewels into the States from Havana. While Brooklyn's clients are catching a big fish, Brooklyn snatches a hot water bottle out of the water thrown there from a nearby boat. Inside it are jewels which Brooklyn will be paid $500 dollars to deliver, but he is snatched off his dock by thugs and taken to a rival smuggler named Danziger who offers him $2,000 to deliver the jewels (along with some crates of illegal arms) to Capt. Koretsky on his boat the S.S. Dardanelles, and Koretsky will give him an envelope with $30,000 to be taken to Danziger. He agrees, and that night when he boards Koretsky's ship, he is surprised to find Danziger's secretary Mae and her 'brother' Frank (probably actually her lover) on the ship. They say they were sent by Danziger to go back to Key West with him to ensure the money is delivered. But actually, the two hijack Brooklyn's boat and steal the $30,000 for themselves. Brooklyn leaps off the boat and Mae assumes he'll drown before he can get to shore, but he's picked up by a small boat called the St. Nicholas belonging to Greek sponge fisherman Corcoris and his son Philip. They take him with them to Tarpon Springs and he meets the rest of the family: Mama, son Christopher and sister Angelike (a Greek version of Angelique). Danziger is told by Mae that Brooklyn stole the money, so he has thugs out looking for Brooklyn so he stays with the family and helps them celebrate the Greek Orthodox feast of Epiphany. In a time-honored ritual, the bishop throws a large gold crucifix into the water and the young men of the parish jump in to retrieve it. Philip gets it but when another guy grabs it from him, Brooklyn jumps in and takes it back, earning the respect of the Corcoris family. In short order, Brooklyn is wounded by Danziger's thugs and opts to join Corcoris for a two month sponge fishing expedition during which, once again, Brooklyn steps in to give much needed help on a dive almost gone wrong. Eventually back in Key West, Brooklyn tries to let Danziger know what really happened, though Mae and Frank try to stop him.

In terms of production and acting, this is an hour-long run-of-the-mill second feature B-movie. Sets are adequate, acting is fair, and visuals are uninspired. But the narrative is a notch above average. The whole Corcoris family plotline is a bit unusual with its emphasis on their religious background. When Brooklyn gets the gold crucifix for the family, Mama gives him a crucifix necklace which ends up saving his life when a bullet fired at him is deflected by it. (BTW, the Tarpon Springs Epiphany ritual is real, and the scene in the movie looks at least partly taken from actual ritual footage.) The religion message is not oversold—Brooklyn says he is not religious and the family never actively proselytizes—but it's an interesting aspect of the plot. Richard Denning (pictured) is his usual mildly wooden self but that works with the underdeveloped persona of his character. Aline Towne is attractive but a bit flat as Angelike, and Barbara Fuller isn't given much to do as Mae. The best performances are from Steven Geray as Papa Corcoris, Paul Marion as Philip, and Percy Helton as Rummy, Brooklyn's older sidekick. George Zucco, one of my favorite character actors, is Danziger (he looks a bit like Abe Vigoda) but is, like Barbara Fuller, underused. Christopher, one of the Corcoris sons, is crippled due to a shark attack, but this is never explored—he mostly just sits in a wheelchair and listens to the conversations. The YouTube prints are murky, and an early scene on the boat is almost completely obscured by darkness. [YouTube]

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

In 1937 New Orleans, Dr. John Cukrowicz works at a state asylum where he is honing his skills in neurosurgery (called "psychosurgery" by his boss, Dr. Hockstader). He gives a demonstration for a small audience of students, performing a lobotomy, and is noticeably frustrated by what he calls the "primitive surgical conditions" under which he has to work. When the wealthy Violet Venable reads an article in the paper about his work, she contacts Hockstader, offering to fund a new wing of the building if John will consider performing a lobotomy on her niece Catherine. The backstory: Violet's son Sebastian, a sensitive boy who considered himself a poet and artist, took long summer vacations with his mother. But last summer, with the aging Violet not up to a trip, Sebastian went traveling with his lovely cousin Catherine. He died under mysterious circumstances on a Mediterranean island; the coroner's report says he had a heart attack while walking on the street, but Catherine witnessed something different which has driven her into a mental institution. John visits Catherine and finds her sane enough in conversation until she is pushed to recall Sebastian's death; she says it happened at the hands of a mob of homeless boys, then becomes hysterical. John agrees to treat her but not necessarily with surgery. Catherine, in the presence of John and Violet, is eventually able to relate what happened last summer, and in doing so, moves herself toward health but drives Violet to a breakdown.

[Spoilers are inevitable.] This psychological Gothic drama is based on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams which is fairly open about its themes of incest, homosexuality, sex trafficking, and revenge, all presented in dialogue rather than onstage action. But because the movie was produced under the strictures of the Hollywood Production Code (weakening but still present), most of the above must be interpreted by the audience from between the lines and from incomplete visual imagery. Sebastian was a hedonistic homosexual who used his mother to procure young men and boys for sex overseas. We're told that Sebastian treated these people as though they were "items on a menu." When Mom became older and less useful in procurement (a word used by Catherine), he got his young cousin to accompany him. At the end of that last Mediterranean trip, Catherine said he had tired of the dark-skinned boys surrounding him and, "famished for blonds," wanted to head to the Nordic lands. We're not sure what triggers the climax, but as Sebastian tries to get away from the boys on the beach and the streets, they chase him to a ruined temple where he is surrounded, mutilated, and partially eaten by the poor street youths. We assume that he paid the boys for sex and that his leaving the island would have cut off a supply of cash. The story, as told by Catherine near the end of the film, is visualized though not explicitly—the boys encircle him and he is dragged down to the ground, his grasping arm rising briefly above the churning mass. Though the language of sexual behavior is not used, an audience member today would have to be willfully ignorant not to pick up what has happened. As far as I'm concerned, the phrases "items on a menu" and "famished for blonds" are more evocative than using words like "gay" or "promiscuous" would have been. 

The first time I saw this, sometime in the 1980s, I was disappointed as I was watching it for titillation and scandal, and by that era, it just didn't cut it. But this time around, I was much more impressed. Gore Vidal's screenplay (with Williams co-credited) is talky but fascinating. Things feel padded out in the middle, but the first half hour, which mostly consists of a long scene of dialogue between Katherine Hepburn (Violet) and Montgomery Clift (John), both pictured at top right, is thrillingly acted by Hepburn, who brings to mind the heiresses of The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby mixed with the drug addled Mary Tyrone of Long Day's Journey Into Night (which Hepburn would film a couple of years later). Elizabeth Taylor (Catherine), pictured at left, chews the scenery, especially in the last 15 minutes which is largely a monologue from her about what she witnessed, but it's called for. She and Hepburn are forces of nature and we'd be disappointed if Taylor held back. Clift is less impressive as he spends most of the movie reacting to others, but he's fine. Gary Raymond, whom I mostly know from TV as the British sergeant in the 60s war drama The Rat Patrol, is effective in a small role as Sebastian's weasley brother George, though Mercedes McCambridge is mostly wasted as Sebastian's weak mother. I liked seeing character actor Albert Dekker, the bespectacled mad scientist in Dr. Cyclops, as John's boss. Hepburn gets a startling moment when she describes watching, with Sebastian, an incident on the Galapagos Islands in which flesh eating birds blacken the sky as they eat newly hatched baby turtles off the beach. She says Sebastian saw the "face of God" then, which nicely sets up Sebastian's own fate. Catherine, the truth teller, leaves us with two memorable tidbits: that perhaps "love is using people" and that we are like "children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks." I admit I chuckled a bit at that, but it stuck with me. Highly recommended as long as you're up for two hours of talk and great acting. [TCM]

SIEGE OF SYRACUSE (1960)

Between Carthage in North Africa and Rome in Italy is Sicily, in the Mediterranean Sea, and the city of Syracuse. Under King Hieron, Syracuse had remained neutral while Rome and Carthage fought during the Punic Wars. But now, in 213 B.C.E., with the Carthaginian fleet in tatters, Hieron worries that Rome may try to invade Syracuse. Clio, the king's daughter, is engaged to Archimedes, respected mathematician and inventor. While experimenting with a large device of lenses and mirrors that can focus the sun's rays into a light ray that sets fires when aimed properly, Archimedes accidentally burns up the clothes of Diana, member of a traveling dance troupe, who has been skinny dipping in a nearby stream. Mistreated by Gorgia, her incest-minded stepbrother and leader of the troupe, Diana falls for the kindly Archimedes and eventually, he falls for her, and when she becomes pregnant, he decides to call things off with Clio. But when Diana, forced on a crowded galley by Gorgia, gets kicked by an overzealous guard, she's knocked out and when she wakes up, she has amnesia, remembering nothing about her past. In Rome, she becomes the wife of nobleman Marcellus; Archimedes, having no idea what's happened to her, goes ahead and marries Clio. Twenty years later, as Rome makes plans to attack Carthage from Syracuse, Hieron has died and the pretender to the throne, none other than the sinister Gorgia, sends Archimedes to Rome to forge new alliances. He recognizes Diana and meets his grown son Marcus, now a centurion helping to lead the coming siege of Syracuse. Eventually Archimedes uses a bigger version of his light ray weapon to set fire to Roman ships. After a brief siege, Marcellus is killed and Diana is left with Archimedes to contemplate the future.

Often included on lists of peplum movies, this is really a would-be historical epic produced with a peplum budget and a peplum mindset on the part of the filmmakers. The sets and costumes are generally quite impressive, and the acting isn’t bad. Rossano Brazzi is commanding as Archimedes (presented here as having political power in Syracuse though he apparently did not) and Sylva Koscina is fine as Clio. The surprise for me was Tina Louise (Ginger on Gilligan's Island) as Diana, pictured above. Of course, she has the looks to pull off the part, but also, after a shaky few minutes in the beginning, she pulls off the acting well. She's also the only character to age well over the twenty year story span; the others don't age at all, especially noticeable with Archimedes. At two hours, this has some very talky rough spots and very little action until the end. Archimedes' heat ray is mentioned in some historical texts and legend has it that it was used in battle at Syracuse. If this was 90 minutes instead of 2 hours, I would have enjoyed this more. [YouTube]

THE BLUE LAGOON (1949)

On a ship headed for Australia, a man named Reynolds dies and is buried at sea. His young son Michael is cared for by a sailor named Paddy, to be turned over to the American consulate when they arrive in Auckland. The boy is discovered to have whipping welts on his back and may not be mourning his father very much. He spends a lot of time with the only other child on board, Emmeline, and when the ship catches fire, the two, along with Paddy and Emmeline's caged bird, wind up in a canoe, the only survivors, and eventually wash up on an uncharted island. They find skeletons in a cave, not a good sign for their survival, but the three manage to scrape together some shelter and have plenty of food from fish and vegetation. Paddy, a heavy drinker, is freaked out by a huge skull-shaped rock, falls off a cliff and dies, leaving the two children on their own. Ten years later, the two adolescents have survived admirably, reading some books they had with them, including a manners manual, and collecting "beads" they find in the sea which are actually pearls. Two con men pass by the island in their boat and come to shore, realizing the riches in pearls available. One tries to force Michael to dive for the pearls, while the other sneaks Emmeline off to the boat for a more nefarious purpose. In a nicely done sequence, the two crooks wind up shooting each other dead. Deciding civilization is not for them, the two soon discover love and sex. They hold a wedding ceremony as described in the manners book and soon Emmeline bears a child whom they name Paddy. After surviving threats from an octopus, a snake, and a destructive storm, they decide to take off in a handmade canoe, hoping to be found by a passing ship. They are, but in an ambiguous ending, the baby is still alive though Michael and Emmeline appear to be dead.

Back in the day, I saw the 1980 remake of this, with the sexy leads Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins (both skimpily clad and occasionally naked). It was a big hit but got little critical respect. I have only hazy memories of it, mostly of enjoying looking at Atkins (who was of legal age at the time, though Shields was only 14, with her nude scenes done by a body double). This version, based on a 1908 novel, has much less focus on sex and more on a kind of society vs. nature situation. Jean Simmons is very good as Emmeline; she was 20 but can pass for younger, and she has star charisma already. Many viewers don't care much for Donald Houston as Michael, calling him wooden, but I think he’s quite natural in the role, enacting his character's idea of what a stalwart grown-up man should be. They're both good looking and play their coming of age in a non-sensational manner; they are viewed by one of the crooks as being "the rude clay of humanity." James Hayter and Cyril Cusack are fine as the crooks. The movie benefits from good cinematography and from being filmed partly on location in Fiji, though there are scenes that look like they were done on the Gilligan's Island set. Hard to find, as Paramount apparently bought the rights when they filmed the remake and have never released it on home video, though the print on YouTube is in good shape. [YouTube]