Parkland Picks with Popcorn #7
Pop Goes: The Unseen, Starting Over, Backlash, and Castle of Blood
STARTING OVER (1979) --- Search for romance in age of anxiety that was late seventies, truth-telling to put prior proprieties behind us. Characters hail from damaged age group that is thirties leaning into forties, walking wounded, comedy by intent if mined from rejection and humiliation the stuff of presumed all who aren't happily wed, a category movies would increasingly cater to, as who’d want to watch happy couples anyhow? Burt Reynolds, divorced and bemused, stays that way for most of length, small wonder for his negotiating with deeply neurotic Jill Clayburgh, late of broken home and men unworthy of her (An Unmarried Woman), which I saw at the College Park and recall only her vomiting at a Manhattan street corner (for real? --- sure looked convincing). What of tourists that day getting their first glimpse of a picture being made and this is what they saw? Unmarried has a husband who blubbers like men had not done in films to then. I wondered if loss in love might ever bring me to so public tears. An Unmarried Woman was 1979 therapy for people who had lots more life experience than I’d so far got. Was there healing for ones what saw An Unmarried Woman? It clearly was meant to instruct us. Starting Over went down smoother even though Clayburgh plays sort of the same character. Had this actress lived, would she still be doing it? Reynolds is torn between Clayburgh and Candice Bergen, both better left alone. Ever see a movie resolution that leaves you unresolved? Starting Over has moments of what I’d suppose was truth in 1979, a scene of Reynolds having a panic attack and everyone offering him a Valium, this back when Valium was easy to get as Raisinets. Try scoring some now. Frightful to think folks popped these so promiscuously. Carefree days, the seventies. Maybe Valium or need for it gave birth to Jill Clayburgh characters. People as less-likely-to-come-together is summary statement here, a Woody Allen circumstance, only he was more for laughs, having come off then-thought 70’s masterwork Manhattan. Survivor critics have ardently walked back their words since. Kino has a nice Blu-Ray of Starting Over. As for An Unmarried Woman, I can barely find anyone streaming it.
BACKLASH (1956) --- Pulp writing needed commitment and discipline I’m not sure exists anymore. When showing up at Greenbriar seems at times heroic, I need but remind myself of men like Frank Gruber doing as much in a single morning as I’d need a week generating. It was write or don’t eat as Gruber explained in his 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle, scribe life jungly on survive-for-fittest terms, him at constant odds with not only rivals but pinch-penny market that was ten-cent monthlies leaving wake that was human wreckage panting after next ideas to fill five or ten thousand word quotas. A finished novel worth at least $250, that a virtual giveaway, would sell for take-it-or-leave $100 (take-it-or-starve more accurate). Gruber wrote and sold twenty-five novels to film companies. Backlash was one of them. He based the yarn on what appears to have been fact, at least legend. Five men seek buried gold and a sixth rides off and leaves his companions to Apache ambush. Mystery deepens when Richard Widmark shows up not for the gold, but to find treacherous Number Six. Borden Chase penned the script based on Gruber’s book, both men hep to every frontier story ever spun. Universal-International made Backlash on percentage terms with visiting star Richard Widmark, augmented by contract players and freelance outdoor vets, all expert with boots/saddle. Thought for years I knew Backlash, but turns out it was The Last Wagon, another with Widmark easy to confuse, especially among so many similar. Backlash range war opponents are Roy Roberts and John McIntire, so let it be a dogfall just so both can stay to the fade, welcome as they always were to this genre. Widmark told an interviewer decades later that he sort of liked Backlash for checks still coming in for it, him one among undoubted few not ripped off re profit participation. Action is ample but talk is more welcome from a cast that convinces, Backlash evidence that Universal kept standards high for considerable time they did westerns by yearly dozens. If B cowboys had successors it was these, only now there was color (nearly always) plus names to lure, westerns at perhaps an apex of appeal before ubiquity plus television wore the category out. Backlash comes via Kino on Blu-Ray, 2:1 ratio, a nice presentation.
CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) --- Occurs to me that black-and-white Euro chillers from the early sixties capture best the attitude and atmosphere of Victorian ghost tales penned a century before, sufficiently “old world” to differ sharp from Hollywood convention and convince us that maybe, at least over there, spooks are for real. Compare Castle of Blood with for instance House on Haunted Hill, latter slick but skittish to be serious, whereas Castle of Blood says Yes, these things happened and may still be happening at corners of the world not yet tamed by convention. Black Sunday was first among ones to whisper how truly to scare, an opening witch-burn with a devil’s mask hammered onto Barbara Steele’s face, this an affront to decorum US horror had so far observed. Black Sunday became a true test of bravery for those who’d venture to matinees, distributor American-International warning that only those “over 12” dare enter. Castle of Blood I knew was outré for being handled not by a known US firm, but by “Woolner Brothers” who relied more on bad dubbing and worse posters to promise little, though something told me in 1964 that it would score for being off even Hammer grid. Castle of Blood as gorgeously staged would look more haunted than even The Haunted Palace of a previous year, which for all its merit comforted by being familiar, Vincent Price more reassuring than frightful. Anything Americans did along scare line was undercut for mocking same on TV, Price as likely to beclown screen self with whatever once-a-week comedian hired him to guest, especially at Halloween where message was never to take ghosts seriously. Castle of Blood has a traveling writer betting tavern mates (one of them Edgar Allen Poe) that he can last through a night in bloody castle of the title, Barbara Steele along as if to assure that this libation won’t be watered. Castle of Blood was such unknown quantity in ‘64 that I could get no one to go with me to see it … their loss. Now there is 4K and/or Blu-Ray on disc, a lovely reclaim of a rarity I did not expect to see so clearly again.
posted by John McElwee at 5:18 AM
8 Comments:
Recalling a long-ago print interview with John Sayles, who directs his own films but also labors as a screenwriter / script doctor for hire. He mentioned what he called "revenge" scripts, commissioned by divorced Hollywood executives who have a story idea: divorced hero finds happiness with a better woman. The implication was that these personal fictions never got made, but on films like "Starting Over" you wonder if somebody -- producer, star, maybe even writer -- is weaving a personal fantasy or defense into the script. Burt Reynolds went on to "Paternity" and "The End", publicly declaring both to rise from personal fixations, and many a comedian has extended life-based standup into sitcoms enshrining that world view.
I have to disagree about The Haunted Palace. I saw it in first release. Saw it as part of all night AIP horror fests where the use and re-re-re-use of stock footage became blatantly apparent (the same with Universal's 1940s FRANKENSTEIN & MUMMY films). Nonetheless that film quietly horrified its audience every time. Watching 5,000 people get terrified by a movie is a long lost experience today when "big" theatres barely seat 100.
Phil Smoot considers the Barbara Steele legacy:
Other than Mask of Satan aka Black Sunday,
is there another Barbara Steele film that ranks up there with Castle of Blood ?
I leave out The Pit and the Pendulum, which has that great close with her imprisoned, as that film stands on its own.
I have 88 Films blu of The Whip and the Body and Radiance blu of The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock,
and
I don't think much of either of those 2.
Plus her small part in that Michael Reeves thing Revenge of the Blood Beast (among other titles for this one),
and I would not show it to a friend I wanted to keep
- Phil
'Backlash' is a superior Western entertainment, and much like 'Star Wars' - in its own way, of course.
She is also in Fellini's '8 1/2'.
I thought she was just fine in Piranha!
Dan Mercer shares some terrific insights re Gail Russell's life and career (Part One):
The still of Gail Russell from "The Unseen" suggests why she became a star, if briefly. Her face is beautiful, with large, expressive eyes, refined features, and full, sensual lips, and framed in lustrous chestnut hair. There is something else, however, taut with apprehension, like a thin layer of early-winter ice, her delicacy and seeming fragility in the process of being overwhelmed. You note her vulnerability as a saving grace in the film and so it is. There are men who would interpose themselves between such a woman and whatever distressed her, and women who would comfort her as they would a sister or friend, or if they were in her plight, should want the solace offered by a man or another woman. This would have been her appeal.
All actors must experience a degree of fear and apprehension for exposing themselves before the camera. Joan Fontaine became a star after playing women in such pictures as "Rebecca," "Suspicion," and "The Constant Nymph," who were somewhat shy and vulnerable. Those who knew her found that somewhat amusing, since her own intellect and sophistication were more like that of Rebecca than the Second Mrs. DeWinter. Nevertheless, she appreciated the guidance and protection a good director could provide. Her Tessa in "The Constant Nymph" was a remarkable performance, an adolescent girl sensitive and wise in some ways but still a girl becoming a woman, with all her inexperience and insecurity. Years later, she referred to the help she received from the director, Edmund Goulding:
"Eddie knew the problems of actors and he solved them--the need for reassurance, to feel part of the whole. To be cosseted, to be aware of the subtleties of the role, to be gently, kindly guided. He did this for me in 'The Constant Nymph.'"
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
It is said that Gail Russell suffered stage fright to an almost pathological degree and that, on the advice of someone, she turned to alcohol to escape it. Far from escape, however, it became another kind of prison, eventually destroying her career and then her life.
What she feared, however, may have had as much to do with what lay behind the camera as the camera itself. She was just 18 years old when she was signed to a contract by Paramount. Then as now, the lure of success in the movies was used by some as a snare to take advantage of young, inexperienced women and men. Years later, when John Wayne was going through an acrimonious divorce, his wife accused him of having an affair with Russell. Wayne denied it, saying that some women were forced to the casting couch and that Gail Russell had had some bad experiences as well, but that he had hired her on her merits for his production of "Angel and the Bad Man" and had sought to protect her from her own anxieties. He said that his wife's accusations were baseless and a shame, since Gail had already gone through so much.
"Angel and the Badman" was John Wayne's first production and was in many ways a labor of love. The story was an unusual one, about a rough, violent man falling in love with a young Quaker woman and having to decide whether to continue with his old ways, even when they might be justified by the circumstances he found himself in, or to give them up, as she would have him do, even though he might have to pay for it with his life. The screenplay was by Wayne's friend, James Earl Grant, who would also direct the picture, his first such assignment. Obviously, it was something Wayne believed in, to accept the risk of playing against type in his first production and to entrust the direction of it to someone inexperienced in that regard yet fully cognizant of the story, since he had created it.
As Penelope Worth, the young Quaker woman in the picture, Gail Russell is extraordinary. Her playing is subtle yet direct, very sweet and yet not without an awareness of the complexities and dangers the Quaker life posed. There is a wonderful openness to her, as though what we see is not so much a performance as a revelation. The effect is quite magical.
This is certainly her best performance and one that indicated not only a beauty but an acting talent that should have provided her with a career of great success and much celebration. That it proved to be almost the last expression of something of real worth suggests that for the first and last time she found the protection and comfort that would allow her to truly give a performance. If she could but have known it, the character she played was not so very far removed from her own and just as vulnerable to the ways of a world that were so contrary to it.
Such is an irony but also a pity.
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