WHERE THE BOYS ARE

Remarkably tame by 2020 standards, WHERE THE BOYS ARE (1960) nonetheless raised quite a few eyebrows in its' day for daring to even mention pre-marital sex in what was pitched as a typical rom-com. Typical except for the fact that one of the four main characters is raped, suffers an nervous breakdown and attempts suicide by automobile traffic. 

The plot focuses on four young college girls from a midwestern women's college who decide to journey to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for two weeks of spring break. They anticipate fun in the sun and all four have one ultimate objective in mind: land a man of some kind. In the pre-women's liberation days of 1960, these four women, smart and talented as they all are, are not complete without a man. My, how things have changed.

The leader of the quartet is Merritt Andrews (Dolores Hart), an outspoken proponent of pre-marital sex whose progressive world view is put to the test when she meets and falls for Ryder Smith (George Hamilton). Ryder is Ivy League all the way, with his slicked black hair, penetrating blue eyes, dazzling white teeth and perpetual tan. Throw in his parents' spacious villa and small yacht and it's all too much for Merritt to resist. She does, however, stand her ground and demand that if she and Ryder are going to become a couple, it will be on her terms.

Tuggle Carpenter (Paula Prentiss), wants nothing more than to become a man's wife and produce many children. She's set her sights on oddball TV Thompson (Jim Hutton), a kooky intellectual who pontificates about sex while wearing a constantly changing array of goofy hats.

Angie (Connie Francis) is paired up with out-there jazz musician Basil (Frank Gorshin), who spouts impenetrable beatnik lingo. Angie is the least and weakest developed character of the bunch but Francis does get to sing the title tune and one other musical number as compensation. 

Finally, there's Melanie Tolman (Yvette Mimieux), who quickly sends signals to horny college boys that she's easy. She comes home drunk one night and eventually gets passed around by a couple of different frat rats. She ends up being raped in a motel room, after which she wanders out onto the highway in a catatonic state where cars are forced to dodge around her. 

The exteriors where shot on location in Fort Lauderdale among hordes of real spring breakers, every one of whom is white and heterosexual. There's not a black or brown face to be seen anywhere and all of the men look like future TV game show hosts. There's no apparent drug use but alcohol is freely imbibed by all. And for a movie about college kids, none of the featured cast members are remotely believable as being college age. 

However, this being 1960, when the clean cut and well groomed young men and women go out for the evening, the men wear coats and ties while the women dress in skirts and heels. And when the two weeks of fun and drama are over, Tuggle and TV and Angie and Basil head back to college while Merritt and Ryder stay behind to tend to Melanie. 

Shot in Metrocolor and CinemaScope, director Henry Levin serves up a glorious and glamorous postcard from Fort Lauderdale. It's slick and glossy looking and although pitched as a comedy, I found nothing to laugh at or with. But I have to give the film kudos for at least trying to address what everyone knew (but rarely acknowledged) was going on with college kids then (and now). 

WHERE THE BOYS ARE was remade in 1984 and in the '60s, the film served as inspiration for two other MGM films: COME FLY WITH ME and FOLLOW THE BOYS. WHERE also clearly inspired other studios to produce BEACH PARTY and PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND while Prentiss and Hutton had such great onscreen chemistry that they appeared together in three more films: BACHELOR IN PARADISE, THE HONEYMOON MACHINE and THE HORIZONTAL LIEUTENTANT. 

WHERE THE BOYS ARE is worth seeing from a sociological point of few. While it's more times than not a dreadfully antiquated bit of fluff, it does attempt to show that Spring Break, even in 1960, is not all fun and games. 

THE WARPED ONES

I was totally unfamiliar with THE WARPED ONES, a 1960 Japanese film, until it recently showed up on TCM. It sounded interesting so I recorded it and watched it this afternoon. 

Wow.

THE WARPED ONES is a head on collision between the visual styles of the then current French New Wave, with every frame of the film full to bursting with frenetic, hand held camerawork, dizzying, disorienting shots, abrupt jump cuts and edits, freeze frames and more. It's a veritable encyclopedia of mid-century cutting edge, Avant Garde film styles.

What all of those eye popping visuals collide with is an incessant musical score of West Coast American jazz. Jazz music is heard throughout the film, both in a way cool, multi leveled Tokyo jazz club where black American jazz musicians are revered as gods to the soundtrack in general. The few times classical, European music is heard, the effect is jarring, after being sonically assaulted by the propulsive, never-ending jazz. 

The camera and the score become characters in the film which follows the activities of Akira (Tamio Kawachi), a street punk with no future. He's thrown in jail at the beginning of the film due to the interference of a reporter named Kashiwagi (Hiroyuki Nagato). Akira is released from jail in the company of Masaru (Eiji Go), another two-bit hood and the two of them are joined by Akira's prostitute girlfriend Yuki (Yuko Chishiro). 

The unholy trio roams the streets of Tokyo like wild animals on the prowl. They constantly scream and howl in their search for kicks. They steal a car and, while driving on the beach, spot Kashiwagi and his girlfriend Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto). They kidnap Fumiko, whom Akira then rapes, an act which sets in motion an inevitable downward spiral for all of the characters. 

To detail more would only spoil the surprises, twists and turns to come but suffice it to say that THE WARPED ONES truly lives up to its' name with an ending that is saturated with soul crushing, nihilistic irony.

THE WARPED ONES was part of a cycle in Japanese cinema known as "Sun Tribe" films. They are basically juvenile delinquent stories and while I have yet to see any more of these types of film, I doubt any of them are as deliriously intoxicating as THE WARPED ONES. 

The film was successful in Japan but it didn't' reach American screens until 1963, under the extremely misleading title THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS. No doubt members of the raincoat brigade who ponied up a couple of bucks to see it in a 42nd  Street grindhouse were extremely disappointed. 

Kudos to director Koreyoshi Kurahara, cinematographer Yoshio Mamiya, composer Toshiro Mayuzumi and the nameless genius who designed the Saul Bass inspired title credits. 

THE WARPED ONES is not a film for everyone. It's populated by unlikeable people doing very bad things and there's' not a glimmer of redemption to be seen. But if you're in the mood for something different, something challenging and daring, THE WARPED ONES is an absolute must see film. 

Highest recommendation.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT is a 1940 film produced by Warner Brothers and directed by Raoul Walsh. Some might call it a film noir. I'm rather doubtful about that appellation, although the narrative does feature a murder. 

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT is also a 1938 British film about truck drivers with a crime element. Sound familiar? Then there is THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948), an American noir directed by Nicholas Ray and CLASH BY NIGHT (1952), another noir, this one directed by Fritz Lang. Those last two have nothing in common but I have been confused more than once by the like sounding titles. Now that I've seen all three films, it should be easier to keep things straight.

While we're on the subject of truck driving movies, the sub genre includes WAGES OF FEAR, the brilliant French film from 1953, remade in America by William Friedkin in 1977 as SORCEROR. There's WHITE LINE FEVER (1975), CONVOY (1978, directed by Sam Peckinpah!) and Steven Spielberg's made-for-television masterpiece DUEL (1971). There are, of course, others but these are the ones that immediately spring to mind. 

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT starts out as a two-fisted adventure film about two brothers, Joe and Paul Fabrini (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) who work as independent truck drivers in Southern California. They owe money on their truck and are always trying to stay one step ahead of the repo man. 

The second act of the film becomes a routine drama as Joe meets and falls in love with waitress Cassie (Ann Sheridan) and Paul looses an arm in an accident. Joe accepts a job with a big trucking firm owned by his old friend and former trucker Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale). Things become complicated by the fact that Joe once had a fling with Mrs. Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino), a scheming, conniving woman who wants Joe back at any price.

The third act is where the murder is committed when Lana kills Ed and gets Joe to agree to 50% ownership of the company. She, of course, has the other 50%. But when Joe won't go along with her advances and declares his wedding to Cassie, Lana cracks and implicates Joe in the killing.  All of which sets up a dramatic courtroom finale.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT is a solid film with a cast of Warner Brothers contract players. Raft is top billed, Sheridan is second and Bogart (not yet a huge star), is third.  Alan Hale and George Tobias appeared in dozens of Warner Brothers films while Ida Lupino went on to become a noir icon both in front of and behind the camera.

And I can't be the only person who has noted a similarity between these two images:

RADIUM, RADIUM, WHO'S GOT THE RADIUM?

Hard to believe that it took two directors (Bobby Connolly and Crane Wilbur) and three screenwriters (Eugene Solow, Robertson White and Joseph Santley) to adapt Mignon G. Eberhart's mystery novel THE PATIENT IN ROOM 18 for the screen. 

This 1938 mystery/romantic comedy checks all the boxes in this by-the-numbers exercise in sleuthing. Patric Knowles stars as private detective Lance O'Leary. While convalescing in a private hospital, a wealthy donor is murdered and the radium that was used to treat him (by placing a block of radium, about the size of a cigarette case, on his chest), goes missing. The radium is actually hidden in a flower pot until the killer can retrieve it later. The stuff is potent enough to kill a dozen flowers over night. One wonders what it would have done to the old man if someone didn't already kill him. Two more murders are committed by the time the 59 minutes of running time are over.

O'Leary is aided in his investigation by the lovely nurse Sara Keate and there's a bevy of potential suspects. And of course, there's an inept police detective, Inspector Foley (Cliff Clark), who seems unable to solve any crime without O'Leary's help. 

True to the formula for these types of films, all of the suspects are gathered in one room for the big reveal by O'Leary but one of the murder victims appears very much alive and well to bring things to a end. 

Knowles appeared in many films over the course of his career but he's best remembered by genre film fans for his roles in THE WOLF MAN (1941) and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943). Sheridan was under contract at Warner Brothers at the time and does well here but better days were ahead for her. 

THE PATIENT IN ROOM 18 isn't a very complicated whodunnit. In fact, I correctly guessed the identity of the killer. Still it's a breezy little murder mystery with a good cast and a quick pace. 

But I still can't figure out why it took five people to write and direct a movie that runs less than hour. 

THE SLAVE

Quick, how many Stanley Kubrick films had a sequel? If you answered only one, you're wrong. Yes, his immortal 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) was followed up by 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (1984 and reviewed elsewhere on this blog). But another Kubrick film had a sequel, even if it was an "unofficial" one.

While THE SLAVE aka THE SON OF SPARTACUS (1962) is nowhere near as good as it's predecessor, SPARTACUS (1960), it's light yeasr above the last Italian produced "sword and sandal" movie I watched (THE TARTARS, also reviewed elsewhere on this blog). There are two main elements that make THE SLAVE a fairly decent little film.

The first is the presence of American bodybuilder Steve Reeves in the title role. Reeves became an international star thanks to his first two sword and sandal films, HERCULES (1958) and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959). With his dark good looks, sparkling blue eyes and chiseled, weightlifter physique, Reeves is still, in my opinion, the best version of Hercules ever seen on the silver screen (with Nigel Green's portrayal of the man-god in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963), a close second). Over the course of ten years, Reeves made a total of sixteen films in Italy, the majority of them sword and sandal features. His last Italian film was A LONG RIDE FROM HELL (1968), a sphagetti western.

In THE SLAVE, Reeves plays Randus, son of Spartacus who led a slave revolt against the "power of Rome" twenty years earlier. Randus doesn't know his true origin until midway in the film and when the secret is revealed, the action really picks up. Randus finds a short sword with a bejeweled hilt, some body armor and a helmet that looks like it's on loan from the DC comics character Dr. Fate. Donning this fabulous gear, the Son of Spartacus becomes a sort of "Zorro" of the ancient world, harrying his main enemy Crassus (who put Spartacus to death on the cross) and leaving behind his mark, a large "S" painted or carved on various doors and walls. 

The other element that makes THE SLAVE enjoyable is the direction of Sergio Corbucci, an Italian genre auteur who made various horror, sword and sandal and western films over the course of his long and illustrious career. Corbucci utilized striking compositions, inventive camera angles and unexpected camera movements all of which, in addition to fairly high production values, makes THE SLAVE a better than average adventure yarn. 

Exteriors were filmed in Egypt while interiors where shot in Rome. Reeves commands the action but he's aided by two beautiful co-stars, the treacherous Claudia (Gianna Maria Canale) and the virtuous Saida (Ombretta Colli). Claudio Gora is great as Crassus, who not only plots to capture and kill the Son of Spartacus, also schemes to challenge Julius Caesar (Ivo Garrani) himself for rule of the empire. 

If you want to see a truly great version of this material, I urge you to seek out Kubrick's SPARTACUS, a truly magnificent epic in every sense of the word. However, if you want to pass a couple of hours on a hot, lazy summer afternoon, give THE SLAVE a try. It's definitely worth seeing if you have any interest in Italian genre cinema. 

WINGS FOR THE EAGLE

 

WINGS FOR THE EAGLE (1942) is a flag-waving piece of Hollywood war time propaganda. It's a drama set in a Lockheed aircraft factory in Burbank, California shortly before the U.S. entry into World War II. The factory manufactures P-38s and Hudson aircraft and employees men and women in the endeavor. 

The story focuses on a romantic triangle comprised of Ann Sheridan (who is top billed), Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. Morgan is a draft dodger looking for easy work to avoid serving in the military. Carson is his college buddy who can't get a job at the factory and the lovely Sheridan is Carson's wife, whom Morgan is constantly making a play for. 

Supporting players include George Tobias as Jake Hanso who works alongside his son Pete (Russell Arms) at the factory. When Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7th, 1941, Pete enlists and is eventually killed in action in the Philippines. Morgan finally comes to his senses, realizes that Sheridan and Carson belong together and finally joins the Army. 

It's all very patriotic and stirring, a programmer constructed with one goal in mind: to support the war effort on the home front. As such it succeeds. Morgan and Carson are both good but Sheridan is the standout here as a woman torn between two lovers while also trying to do her part for the war.

You should note that this film was made in 1942 and there are a couple of lines of dialog that reflect the different social mores of the time. At one point, Sheridan is referred to as "free, white and twenty-one", while later she delivers a verbal jab by saying "that's white of you."

Different time, different world my friends. 

If you're a fan of WWII propaganda films, WINGS FOR THE EAGLE is worth checking out. 

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN

There is a fairly robust sub-genre of films based on the lives of famous twentieth-century musicians. I won't bother to mention them all here but among the best are WITH A SONG IN MY HEART (1952),  THE GLENN MILLER STORY (1954), THE BENNY GOOODMAN STORY (1959), THE GENE KRUPA STORY (1959) and Clint Eastwood's BIRD (1988). 

Although loosely based on the life of trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (1950), is a fictional account of a very determined (some would say obsessed) young musician named Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas). YOUNG MAN can be seen in some ways as a precursor to Martin Scorsese's underrated NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), which also featured a driven young musician embroiled in a love-hate relationship with a female singer. In fact, YOUNG MAN and NY, NY would make an outstanding double bill. 

Douglas is solid as Martin, who starts out as a young orphan who is mentored by jazzman Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez). Martin eventually masters the trumpet (all of the trumpet playing is by Harry James) and finds work with a big band where he meets singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day) and piano player Smoke (Hoagy Carmichael). Martin can only relate to life through his music and wants desperately to play music his way. 

Martin joins a prestigious night club orchestra and begins earning good money. But after playing at the upscale club, he journeys to the Village for an after hours jam with Art's band in a lesser joint. Along the way, Martin is introduced by Jo to Amy North (Lauren Bacall), an overly intelligent, hyper neurotic woman. They fall in love and marry only to find that Amy resents Martin because there's one thing that he's really good at while she has failed in a multitude of endeavors. 

Things come to a head with the dissolution of their marriage, the death of Art (Martin wasn't there to tell him goodbye) and Martin's spiral into alcoholism. He wanders the streets of New York, his arm clutching a horn that isn't there. He hits rock bottom and for a second, you think the film is going to end on a down note. But this being a 1950 Hollywood picture, Martin comes to terms with his life and abilities and begins his career anew. 

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN is greatly enhanced by the noirish cinematography of Ted D. McCord. The cast is uniformly excellent, the screenplay by Carl Foreman and Edmund H. North compelling and the direction by the masterful Michael Curtiz is first rate. 

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN is a terrific portrait of a talented, self-destructive man and his struggle to express himself with both his music and real human connections 

Thumbs up.