Watch List for 7/7/2025

 

Watched: Looking for Mr. Goodbar, A Hatful of Rain, The Drum, and Five Fingers

LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977) --- There should have been a Purple Heart awarded to Diane Keaton for toplining this massively unpleasant film. Having skipped Mr. Goodbar in 1977 (was never particularly fond of the candy either), how could I know it would disappear due to lapsed music rights, other underlies that keep so many features out of current circulation. OK to broadcast if anyone (like in this instance TCM) cares, physical media but lately to be had, Looking for Mr. Goodbar till then a London After Midnight of downer 70’s output. I took TCM’s dip, won’t call it a bad picture, too well written/directed (Richard Brooks) for that, but holy cat, was the disco decade really so ugly as this? Current Code edicts would never let it be remade today, and at over two hours, Goodbar is ultimate instance of see once being sure enough. Still there is Ms. Keaton, who having heroically done this, eventually settled into old folk rom/coms and lately an elderly cheerleader movie where she, Pam Grier, and others revived spirit of Pom Poms (another candy reference). I met her at a Manhattan paper show back when they had paper shows in Manhattan (what happened to them? I miss Manhattan paper shows). She was searching 8X10 still stacks, having just released a book of cheesy 50’s publicity photos which I complemented, the right move for she liked hearing that as opposed to talk of movies (and more specifically Mr. Goodbar?). What she goes through in Mr. Goodbar is horrific, actor abuse I’d call it. The ending is like Blood Feast with strobe lights. Club scenes make Saturday Night Fever look like The Love Bug (speaking of other then-hits). That’s where now reclaimed music is heard, this what kept Mr. Goodbar locked up from what I hear. Men that Keaton meets and picks up are dreadful creeps, all capable it seems, of killing, and once again, I’m reminded that NYC is a fair place to stay away from. Goodbar goes Taxi Driver route, speaking of another I shun seeing again. Lure of Goodbar and likes is how intelligently designed they are, but so are crocodiles and cobras. Can PTSD come of exposure to certain films, or again am I too sensitive? Can’t say for a moment I was bored, but tender sensibilities beware. Kudos to TCM for booking it, network’s value measured (by me) for odd outside pictures they go to undoubted effort bringing out of hibernation, no better example of this than Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) --- Another rarity via TCM, here is hatful of then-live TV sensibilities poured over Cinemascope width that director Fred Zinneman disdained for this occasion, but Fox chief Buddy Adler said use it, so Zinneman dutifully did. He tells the story in his book, said Hatful got anything but that in revenues (“nobody saw it” FZ recalls). Fact is it lost lots, $1.8 for negative cost, $1.2 in domestic rentals, $917K foreign, eventual loss of $957K. None of networks cared, so off to syndication where I watched at age fourteen as entre to “grown-up” fare after years of late show monsters only. Don Murray as a dope addict seemed incongruous, still sort of does. At the time of seeing him in this, there was Liberty exposure to Murray as a Roman general in Hammer’s The Viking Queen. Don, we hardly knew ye. Substance addiction gets harsh Hatful revue, no quarter for Murray’s character having got that way via damage serving in Korea (torture by Reds). A Hatful of Rain was based on a Broadway play. Anthony Franciosa was ported over from that. We’ve seen Tony overplay, but when to such extreme as this? Makes him in The Long Hot Summer look lowkey. I kept wondering why characters didn’t seek help from veteran’s services. Was such option not so readily available in 1956 when Hatful was shot? Addiction was a stigma, period and exclamation. Once tagged as a doper, you were done. Much of A Hatful of Rain was shot on New York streets, and at night. You never saw Gotham so arresting, or spooky. What a shame this stayed off TV so long in scope, let alone HD. Again, TCM to the rescue. Hatful as kitchen sink hell evokes souped-up Playhouse 90’s, and didn’t 50’s viewers get enough of those from TV? Granted the drug theme could not have been hammered so hard on home screens. Thankful for opportunity to watch, and maybe I will again, but not for a while … a long while.

THE DRUM (1938) --- Could be it was thought in the thirties that if a film must be British, let it at least have plenty of riding and shooting to lessen tedium otherwise. Alexander Korda saw merit to that and so served action he could sell worldwide, The Drum a first too for Technicolor with which Korda further enhanced prospects. He and other Brit firms lost money continually on B/W projects. To compete with Hollywood needed outlay at least close to what Yanks routinely spent, but selling in US territory was a mountain highest to scale, even good ones like Elephant Boy and Rembrandt seeing loss at final accounting. The Drum would beat that with best earnings Korda saw since The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Private Life of Henry VIII, latter bawdy after expectation where much-married Henry was center subject. The Drum got $1.8 million in worldwide rentals against $691K spent on the negative, a bargain being it was color. Less dependence on dialogue helped The Drum travel easier, foreign receipts amounting to over a million, the story centered on Empire struggle against India insurgents led by Raymond Massey, who like all best native villains, speaks impeccable King’s English having been educated alongside his to-be enemies. Tense exchanges between Massey and stalwart Robert Livesey are a particular highlight of The Drum, as is support Valerie Hobson, Francis L. Sullivan, and top-billed Sabu, a biggest star so far incubated by Korda. Bloodletting is held till a finish, then bodies drop decorously in the face of machine guns and varied explosives, this all to word-of-mouth benefit. The Drum was retitled Drums for US markets, and since multiple drums are in play, why not? Ahead would be Four Feathers and The Thief of Bagdad, both also in Technicolor, as successful, more so in fact, and evergreen for purpose of reissues through the forties. Alan Barbour wrote of going in packs wherever they played, such being high regard in which the Korda group was held. My Region Two disc of The Drum looks fine. Even better would be a Blu-Ray release, but I know not at this point who domestic-owns it.

FIVE FINGERS (1952) --- Next time you teach Great Screenwriting, if that’s even relevant anymore, use Five Fingers as power point. It’s another to tell us the war was won but by skin of teeth. Makes me nervous watching even after eighty years. Were Germans really informed of Normandy for site of D-Day, choosing to ignore it as undoubted Allied trickery? Five Fingers says yes, as later would 36 Hours, others. Then there was The Man Who Never Was where Clifton Webb led a disinformation campaign to divert Germans from spot where the invasion would happen. Enough intrigue like this and I could wonder if Germany would have believed info sourced from the White House itself, suspicion and mistrust being what they were on both sides (especially theirs we’re always told). Fun of war drama is the enemy always outwitting themselves, but how close really did Germany come to learning vital secrets? Five Fingers says close enough to have dope right from our ambassador’s Turkish headquarter, him in receipt of strategy the Germans largely ignored for not trusting data, or each other. Did we win thanks to unbridled paranoia across whole of the Axis command? James Mason is the valet who steals documents and photographs them. All this was based on fact and a book called “Operation Cicero.” Mason sells info not for treason sake but simply for money, irony his being paid all along in counterfeit currency printed by the Germans. So how much counterfeiting did they actually do during the war? Enough to eventually wreck Allied economies? Did they print phony American bills? Five Fingers should be on Blu-Ray but isn’t. Unfortunately it is a Fox picture, which means Disney owns it and you know the rest. There was a Fox “On Demand” disc released years back, merely OK but not what we’d prefer. Bernard Herrman’s score would be reason to watch even if Five Fingers were not the fiercely clever and entertaining show it is.