THE MAN WITH NO NAME: SINNERS AND SAINTS

Sergio Leone's magnificent trilogy A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965) and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966), all starring Clint Eastwood as "The Man With No Name", are three of my all time favorite movies. They made an international star out of Eastwood, who, prior to appearing in these films, was known for playing Rowdy Yates on television's RAWHIDE. The three films, with their breathtaking visuals, unforgettable music by Ennio Morricone, copious amounts of violence, a wicked sense of humor and a totally amoral anti-hero as the protagonist, set the template for the train load of so-called "Spaghetti Westerns" that followed.These films, produced by Italian studios with the occasional American actor, were wildly popular for the next decade or so before finally sputtering out in the 1970s. But the best of the genre remain Leone's trilogy and his stand alone masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968).

Dynamite Entertainment published a six issue mini-series in 2009 starring The Man With No Name. A collected trade paperback edition soon followed and I picked up a copy of the book yesterday for half cover price at Austin Books' Side Kicks store. The story, by Christos Gage, picks up where THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY left off and finds our hero on his own and carrying the $100, 000.00 in gold that was dug up at the end of GB&U. There are murderous groups of both Union and Confederate soldiers after him and while on the run, he finds himself the appointed savior of a besieged mission housing a battered group of priests and wounded deserters from both armies. Seems there's a treasure in the mission that both the Union and CSA renegades want and it's up to the Man With No Name and a priest (who turns out to be Tuco's brother), to turn the tide.

There's plenty of fast action, gun play (pistols, rifles and Gatling guns), dynamite explosions and laconic dialogue in this romp of a western adventure. Gage's script captures the feel and essence of Leone's cinematic universe quite well while the artwork by Wellington Dias is solid, if unspectacular. One thing is clear however. Dynamite obviously couldn't afford to pay to use an exact likeness of Clint Eastwood so the Man With No Name's face is kept in shadows throughout the story. It's no big deal, since we all know that the character is Eastwood. The only thing missing here is an Ennio Morricone score.

Thumbs up for this new adventure of an iconic Western hero.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS

Just counting on one hand (see what I did there?), I can think of at least four other films that deal with either haunted or disembodied hands. There's THE HANDS OF ORLAC, filmed twice, once in 1924 in the silent era and again in 1960, MAD LOVE (1935), which also starred Peter Lorre who features in the film at hand (ahem!), THE CRAWLING HAND (1963) and Oliver Stone's THE HAND (1981) in which Michael Caine stars as a comic book artist menaced by his own drawing hand (the actual comic art in the film was provided by the great Barry Windsor-Smith of CONAN THE BARBARIAN fame).

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), which I watched for the first time this afternoon, has an impressive pedigree. The screenplay is by genre veteran Curt Siodmak, the score is by Max (KING KONG) Steiner, Peter Lorre is impressive as a sweaty mad man and the hand special effects are quite good and convincing. SPOILER ALERT: Trouble is, the whole thing turns out to be a Scooby-Doo, with J. Carroll Naish breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience in the final scene to make sure we all know how utterly preposterous the idea of a disembodied killer hand is. The film ends on a wink, wink, nudge, nudge note which manages to undermine what, up to that point, had been an atmospheric and effective little psychological horror film.

Francis Ingram (Victor Francen), is a renowned pianist living in a small Italian village in the 1890s. He's crippled and plays the piano only with his left hand (which is adorned by a gigantic ring). The music he plays was written for him by Bruce Conrad (Robert Alda), who is in love with Ingram's nurse Julie Holden (the lovely Andrea King). Ingram's secretary, Hillary Cummins (Lorre), wants only to have access to Ingram's immense library wherein he studies all sorts of arcane lore.

Ingram's death following a tumble down the staircase sets off a battle between his various inheritors, with a conniving nephew, Donald Arlington (John Alvin) and his father showing up to claim their share of the estate, almost  all of which has been left to Julie. In the midst of all this backbiting and double crossing, the disembodied hand of Ingram appears and starts killing people off left and right. The question is, it really the hand, somehow made manifest by some unknown supernatural power or a clever scheme devised by someone in the household to serve their own ends?

Lorre steals the show with his portrayal of a man gradually being driven insane by his own devices and guilt. The cinematography by Wesley Anderson is moody and director Robert Florey uses several well executed crane shots to great advantage. It can be argued that THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS isn't really a horror film, thanks to the explanation at the end. This being a Warner Brothers film, the supernatural is only used as a plot device and a phony one at that. But I bet if this same material had been produced at the same time at Universal, it would have been a bonafide horror shocker. Worth seeing if you're a genre fan. For others, your mileage may vary.

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Robert Bresson's A MAN ESCAPED (1956) ranks as one of the greatest escape from prison movies ever made. All of you who think SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) is a great film really need to cool your jets and watch this spare, laser focused masterpiece. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier), a French resistance fighter, is imprisoned in Lyon by the Nazis during WWII. We first see his hands, fidgeting, as he sits in the back seat of an automobile on the way to prison. The confines of the car are cramped, claustrophobic and Fontaine attempts a daring escape. He's thwarted, beaten, handcuffed and sent to prison where he immediately starts planning and executing a slow, methodical and painstakingly detailed escape. Bresson keeps his focus entirely on Fontaine and his plan throughout the film. There's no back story, no sub plot, no romance, no interaction with his faceless German captors. Bresson and cinematographer Leonce-Henri Burel constantly show us Fontaine's hands as he works with the material available to enact his escape. All of the shots in the cell are tight, cramped, suffocating. Even when Fontaine manages to leave his cell, the camera never goes wide. Everything is tightly shot and composed until the final frame. What happens next? That's of little or no concern to Bresson. The unrelenting gaze here, the entirety of his attention and ours is on one thing and one thing only: escape. A MAN ESCAPED is a brilliant, audacious film that manages to create an incredible amount of suspense while celebrating the unbreakable, indomitable will of one man who must be free. This breathtaking masterpiece of the French cinema gets my highest recommendation.

Special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull, who cut his teeth on Stanley Kubrick's monumental 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), directed only two science fiction films but they are solid, respectable works that are both thought provoking and visually spectacular. His first, SILENT RUNNING (1972), is an ecological fable played out among the planets of our solar system while BRAINSTORM (1983), is an exploration of the impact of a highly advanced technology on the humans who interact with it. Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) and Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) develop a device that records all of the sensory input of one person onto tape which can then be played back and experienced as a virtual reality through the use of first a helmet, then a more efficient visor. Anything a person experiences can be recorded and played back for someone else to live. Experiences such as hang gliding, riding a roller coaster, surfing, horse back riding, etc, are recorded and made available for playback. Even sex. And when Lillian unexpectedly dies while wearing the recording helmet, her death is captured on tape. Michael is obsessed with playing the tape to experience Lillian's death vicariously but his loving wife and fellow scientist Karen (Natalie Wood) and project director Alex Terson (Cliff Robertson) won't allow it. Of course he plays the tape and experiences the beyond before being yanked back to reality by the steadfast love of his wife (just as William Hurt was saved by Blair Brown in the climax of Ken Russell's ALTERED STATES (1980)). The technical gimmick of BRAINSTORM when it was theatrically released was that all of the scenes of "reality" were shot and presented in standard 35 mm format. Whenever the film went into "virtual reality" mode, the aspect ratio expanded to 70mm, filling the entire screen with a huge, immersive image. Of course, that visual device loses some punch when watching the film on a television screen but the prints still adhere to that standard/wide screen/standard format. BRAINSTORM was, of course, sadly the last film Natalie Wood made. She died during production and one can't help but wonder how different the film could have been had she lived. Nonetheless, BRAINSTORM is a first rate piece of intelligent cinematic science fiction. Thumbs up. 

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You don't for one second buy the premise that the lovely Ava Gardner is a part British, part Indian woman but that's the role she's cast in in BHOWANI JUNCTION (1956). Directed by George Cukor, this is an old-fashioned exotic melodrama set in India in the days immediately after World War II. India has won its' independence from Great Britain and the British military is beginning its' gradual withdrawal from the country. This leaves a power vacuum that will be filled by either the pacifistic followers of Gandhi or the more violent Communist forces. Victoria Jones (Gardner) has three loves during the course of the film. The first, Patrick Taylor (Bill Travers), is another part British, part Indian outcast, a man who doesn't belong to either country. That relationship ends when Victoria sees him a bigoted racist. Her second paramour is Ranjit Kasel (Francis Matthews), a Sikh who desperately loves Victoria and wants her to convert to his religion. She admires and respects him but can never quite come to fully love him. Finally, she falls for Colonel Savage (Stewart Granger), who not only wins her heart but rescues her from the clutches of a Communist terrorist. MGM wanted to film BHOWANI JUNCTION on location in India but the Indian government demanded complete script approval and a percentage of the box office, neither of which the studio would agree to. Instead the film was shot on location in Pakistan and sound stages in Great Britain. BHOWANI is a colorful, widescreen historical epic with a compelling story and two very appealing leads. Thumbs up. 

Following immediately upon the surprise success of BLACULA (1972), SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM (1973) finds the titular vampire (once again played by the magisterial William Marshall), revived by a Los Angeles voodoo cult. There's plenty of the usual hugger mugger in this second and final entry in the BLACULA series. Bonus points for featuring beautiful blaxploitation icon Pam Grier, while straight arrow Don Mitchell is the hero and Michael Conrad is a police detective investigating the craziness. There's more vintage music, cars and clothes and while everyone gives it their best, SCREAM isn't as fun as the first film. The lovely Barbara Rhodes (who would have made a great Pat Savage in a DOC SAVAGE film), is wasted early in the film as a vampire's victim. She's given nothing to do except scream her head off. Worth seeing if you're a fan of the first film or '70s blaxploitation cinema in general but not for everyone.

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By the time director Phil Karlson made BEN (1972), his best work was far behind him. Although his cult classic WALKING TALL (1973), offered some redemption, Karlson's best work was in the 1950s when he made a series of tough, two-fisted films noir including KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952), 99 RIVER STREET (1953), TIGHT SPOT (1955), 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955), and THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955). His two Matt Helm films, THE SILENCERS (1966) and THE WRECKING CREW (1969), were smarm fests for star Dean Martin. And BEN? Lord help us, BEN was a movie about an intelligent rat. A direct sequel to the surprise hit WILLARD (1971), BEN finds the title rat befriending an uber obnoxious lonely young boy, played by Lee Montgomery. Ben and his rat friends protect young Danny from bullies and cause other mayhem in Los Angeles before finally being roasted in the sewers beneath the city by LAPD cops with flame throwers (shades of THEM! (1954)). Genre vet Kenneth Tobey has little to do, Joseph Campanella is a frustrated police detective with a smoking problem, Arthur O'Connell is a newspaper report who is never seen reporting, young Meredith Baxter is Danny's older, teenage sister and Michael Jackson sings the Academy Award nominated title song. Thumbs down.

I grew up in the sixties and seventies and I've always had a special fondness for the cycle of "blaxploitation" films that were produced in the 1970s. I was a teenager at the time and while I didn't have access to all of the films (some of which never made it to Austin area movie houses), I loved the ones I was able to see. Sure, most of them are bad but they're a fond reminder of some of the best years of my young life and I unabashedly and unashamedly admit to liking them. Even the blaxploitation horror film BLACULA, a modern day spin on Dracula with a largely black cast. William Marshall is actually quite good in the title role. He brings a commanding presence to his portrayal of a cursed African prince resurrected into 1970s Los Angeles. The women, Vonetta McGee and Denise Nicholas, are lovely, there's a square jawed hero played by Thalmus Rasulala while Gordon Pinsent (a really bad actor and the token white man among the leads) is a hapless police detective. Extra points for featuring the great character actor Elisha Cook, Jr, as a hook-handed morgue attendant, who becomes a victim of one of the vampires. With wild clothes, vintage cars, and a decent amount of "soul music" on the soundtrack, BLACULA is a first rate guilty pleasure. Thumbs up.