Trailer Not on the DVD: Star 80 (1983, Bob Fosse)

I posted a Star 80 TV spot a few years ago.  Now, from the Warner Archive VOD YouTube channel, we have what appears to be a theatrical trailer (sans billing block).  Hopefully, a widescreen Blu-ray (we can dream) or DVD of Fosse's final film is coming soon from Warner Archive.  There is an ancient, full-frame, feature-less DVD, which now seems to be OOP and quite pricey.

And, while we're on this topic, I must give a shout out to Ralph Burns for his highly effective, pop-inspired score.  The track on this trailer evokes "Tubular Bells" in a striking fashion; I can't recall if it appears in the film proper, but I assume it's a Burns composition.

More of Burns' awesome work--why was there no soundtrack LP for a BOB FOSSE film for crissakes?!--can be heard in the below scenes, to my ears, the music drawing inspiration from disco, Billy Joel, "I'm So Excited," and "On Broadway."  Love the American Gigolo vibe of the shopping scene.

These Roberts-centric scenes take on a fun, humorous quality, when taken out of the context of the larger narrative, which is, of course, quite tragic, disturbing, and unpleasant.  More than most other instances of actors essaying people who behave badly, that I can recall, Roberts plays this scumbag seemingly without any regard to how hate-able and pathetic the character and, by extension--he, comes off, resulting in a masterful performance.

This might have something to do with Roberts wanting to make his character (a statutory rapist) in the subsequent Runaway Train more sympathetic by changing him from a hardened New Yorker to a Southern country bumpkin.  And, it almost certainly impacted his future career in a negative way, as he became so associated with, and was so good at, playing a very bad guy.

At the start of the below video, Mickey Rourke preaches the gospel with regards to Roberts when he's supposed to be accepting his Spirit Award for The Wrestler.  Says Rourke, "Eric Roberts is the fuckin' man."

Mandalay (1934, Michael Curtiz)

Released only a few months before the Hays Code began to be enforced, Michael Curtiz' Mandalay (available via the Warner Archive's invaluable Forbidden Hollywood series) contains one of the more stunning "some crimes go unpunished" finishes that I can recall in a pre-Code film.  It also confirms the talents and cool of Kay Francis, which were mostly under-appreciated in her lifetime and largely remain so today (outside of Trouble in Paradise and a few pairings with William Powell).

Property of Nick.

Made at a point when she was still a top box office draw at Warner Bros., Francis plays Tonya Borodoff, sold by her gun-running boyfriend Ricardo Cortez (aka Jacob Krantz) into an upscale brothel in Rangoon, where she is ever-so-subtly referred to as "Spot White" by proprietor Warner Oland and his customer base. Taught the tricks of the trade by an elder madame (Rafaela Ottiano), and thereby gaining the upper hand with her monied male customers, she is able to get away from Nick's place with a sizable savings in her pocket and travel by boat to a place where she will be unknown: Mandalay.  And, this is when Tony (Cortez) re-enters the picture...

While not an exceptional work in Curtiz or Francis' extensive oeuvres, it does offer the aforementioned delicious, proto-EC Comics ending, something out of a Tales From the Crypt story, but about 15 years ahead of the curve.

Pre-Code mainstay Lyle Talbot, here essaying "good man tormented by his past."

Knowing a little something about Francis' career and offscreen life--her diaries reveal she was gay, or at the very least bisexual, and that she had no desire to be remembered after her death--Tonya's quest to get paid and get away from her past becomes more resonant.

Property of Tony.

"My life?  Well, I get up at a quarter to six in the morning if I'm going to wear an evening dress on camera.  That sentence sounds a little ga-ga, doesn't it?  But never mind, that's my life...As long as they pay me my salary, they can give me a broom and I'll sweep the stage.  I don't give a damn.  I want the money...When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth.  I can't wait to be forgotten." - Kay Francis, private diaries circa 1938.

One of those "up at a quarter to six" mornings.

To Find a Man (1972, Buzz Kulik)

When she discovers she is pregnant, 16-year-old Rosalind (Pamela Sue Martin) returns home to New York from boarding school and asks her childhood friend Andy (Darren O'Connor) to help her obtain an abortion.  Made just prior to Roe v. Wade, Buzz Kulik's 1972 coming-of-age-film To Find a Man offers an illuminating look into the process of getting an abortion in New York City before the landmark Supreme Court decision, while also providing some nice showcases to Hollywood veterans Lloyd Bridges, Tom Bosley, and Tom Ewell. O'Connor, who who had only a couple more acting gigs before studying law, is excellent as Andy, the brainy kid next door, a little goofy, yes, but not lacking in confidence.  He hasn't put the moves on Rosalind, but it's not because he's an awkward nerd who's afraid of girls.  It seems that it's just not his major pre-occupation, as it is for his slovenly schoolmate Pete (a chubby, long-haired, pot-smoking Miles Chapin). Rosalind is beautiful, but spoiled and not very bright, or as her father (Lloyd Bridges) puts it so delicately after a few drinks, "She's got most of her brains in her tits."  Despite director Kulik's television pedigree, a tv movie this is not!  That said, as was so often the case in the early days of the ratings system, it received a GP (later PG) rating, in spite of its having a fair share of adult language and content. 

Martin matches O'Connor with her performance and in contrast to her character's aforementioned shortcomings, she is not mean-spirited and she remains a sweet and likable presence throughout; in short, she's more complex than my description makes her sound.  The young stars' fine work culminates with the film's pitch-perfect ending in a wintry Central Park.

For fans of Glynnis O'Connor, it's a trip to see some of the same mannerisms and vocal inflections in the person of Darren O'Connor. 

Until it showed up recently on streaming services such as iTunes and Amazon, To Find a Man was sadly lost for all intents and purposes. Part of an underrated wave of teen pictures of the 1970s, of which I'd also include Jeremy (starring Darren's younger sister Glynnis), To Find a Man is moving and affecting without being overly sentimental or cloying.  It has many of the best qualities of the films of this era--progressive in its ideas, shot and performed in a docu-realist fashion, and frank while also maintaining a layer of ambiguity.  It is not saddled with the irony and myriad pop culture references of so many of the teen films of the '80s nor does it wrap everything up in a shiny bow.

Working from a novel by S.J. Wilson, veteran scribe Arnold Schulman was an appropriate choice to write the film adaptation, as he had earlier written (and been Oscar-nominated for) the original screenplay for Love With the Proper Stranger, a film which had dared to take on much of the same material nearly ten years earlier. '70s stalwarts, David Shire and Andrew Laszlo were on hand for scoring and cinematography duties respectively.  Shire's score is appropriately melancholy, but also jaunty and hummable in parts. Laszlo covers some of the same "dirty old New York" turf that he would return to in The Warriors.

Chemistry of another kind.

While the "New Hollywood" was largely the domain of young men both in front of and behind the camera, To Find a Man is refreshing in that it offers audiences a chance to see old-timers like Bridges, rather than his boys Beau and Jeff, outside of the confines of the studio era.  The work of Bosley, Bridges, and Ewell opposite young O'Connor is the highlight of the film for me, with each moving the narrative in unexpected directions.  Bridges and Ewell are particularly moving and I found myself re-watching their scenes a second time, and shedding a tear or two, as they both perhaps see something of their younger selves, or something they wished they still had, in the boy verging on manhood.  

A fine post-Sea Hunt, pre-Hot Shots performance is given by Bridges pere.

It's just one of many fine films of the era that have slipped through the cracks in terms of availability and by the fact that they haven't been written into the popular narrative of what one unfortunate written account dubbed "easy riders, raging bulls."  I guess, though, that it is the nature of such narratives to simplify and narrow the criteria so that it all can ultimately fit nicely into an hour-long made-for-IFC Channel talking head piece.

"Well, what the hell is this?!  In order to get an abortion here, you gotta make an appointment before you're pregnant!"

....anyway, have a look at Larry Karaszewski's informative "Trailers From Hell" piece on the film and rent / download the feature before it's taken down.  Thanks, Larry...where in the hell did you unearth that trailer anyway?!

It wouldn't be a "dirty old New York" movie without a little mugging.

Kulik returned to New York to shoot Columbia's Shamus the next year, including scenes on the grounds of the future, first-ever Brooklyn Whole Foods in Gowanus!

Downstairs (1932, Monta Ball)

Gilbert and his then-wife Virginia Bruce snuggle for this half-sheet design.

Warner Archive's release of Downstairs (in Forbidden Hollywood Volume 6) is another nail in the coffin of that old canard about John Gilbert not having the voice for talkies.  Gilbert is downright mesmerizing as Karl, an unapologetic scoundrel who makes his living as a chauffeur for the barons and baronesses of Austria.  Gilbert not only stars in the film, he also wrote the story (which he reportedly sold to MGM for $1) upon which Lenore J. Coffee and Melville Baker's script is based.

What I find most fascinating about Monta Ball and Gilbert's film is the way it depicts the relationship of the masters (upstairs) and servants (downstairs) in this particular household, culminating with these two typically opposed sides coming together to deal with one bad egg (Karl).  Paul Lukas, who would later become a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, is appropriately cast as the household's stodgy head servant, Arthur, who has just married sweet, naive Anna (Virginia Bruce) and who takes his responsibilities to the Baron and Baroness very seriously. While he waxes poetic about the duties of the servants to their masters, Karl moves in on his new bride. Bruce is given a great speech when Arthur and Anna have it out over her dalliance with Karl, wherein she gets as close--very close, in fact--as pre-Code standards would allow to telling her husband that the chauffeur brought her to orgasm where he previously failed.  In its trim 77-minute running time, Downstairs has many laugh out loud moments, a number of which are simultaneously sad, particularly with regards to Bodil Rosing's over-the-hill cook who has fallen hard for Karl.

Other familiar faces include Olga Baclanova (immortalized a year later in Tod Browning's Freaks) as the Baroness who Karl attempts to blackmail, Reginald Owen (who earlier starred alongside Jeanne Eagels in the original The Letter) as the humorously soft Baron, and a pre-gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as Countess De Marnac.

All the perfs are fine, but this is Gilbert's show and when all is said and done, it's not Gilbert's voice and likely not his legendary tussle with Louis B. Mayer that did in his post-silent career.  No, aside from his untimely death in 1936, it's probably the fact that roles like Karl and that of Gunner Smith in Browning's Fast Workers are not easily digestible and overly likable to mass audiences.  These were some of the first and, sadly, in fact, only speaking roles that Gilbert had and they were a far cry from the romantic leads that he built his fame on. For the pre-Code aficionados this--a star playing a bastard and relishing that opportunity--is just one of the many decidedly pre-Code pleasures of Downstairs.  Aside from Bruce's aforementioned speech, there's no shortage of frank sexual talk and plenty of still-potent jokes at the expense of both the rich and poor, as well as the physically attractive and un-attactive, usually connected to one's ability, or lack thereof, to hold his liquor.  In other words, it's equal opportunity heckling.  Not to be missed.

Gilbert's got his paws all over another man's (onscreen, anyway) woman.

Rep Discoveries: 2013

Michel Constantin essays the "Parker" role in Alain Cavalier's Mise a Sac (aka Pillaged aka Midnight Raid), an adaptation of Richard Stark's (aka Donald E. Westlake) The Score.

My good friend Rupert is once again in the midst of another fun series of lists, this time focusing on "best repertory discoveries" of 2013. He's just published my list here.  Thank you again, my friend.

Parachute Jumper (1933, Alfred E. Green)

Warner Bros. pre-Code stalwart Alfred E. Green directed four films released by the studio in 1933 (six, if you include a short film and uncredited work on Central Airport).  1933 was not only the year of Green's Baby Face, perhaps the quintessential pre-Code, but also this brisk programmer starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Leo Carrillo, Frank McHugh, and a pre-stardom Bette Davis.  "Parachute jumping" only accounts for a few minutes of the film's 72 minute running time, but I guess that title was deemed most box office-friendly by the powers that be.  So, I went in expecting a Hawksian drama about the perils of a professional parachute jumper, however, in it's hour plus running time, Fairbanks plays not only the titular daredevil, but also a Marine pilot, chauffeur to a horny and rich Claire Dodd, gunsel for smuggler Carrillo, and, finally, pilot (carrying narcotics) for Carrillo.  Such were the days of the Depression when I guy would do just about anything and everything to squeak by...and all in what seems to be only a matter of days.

Davis, as an out-of-work, Southern-accented stenographer whom Fairbanks dubs "Alabama," is still a ways off from her scenery-chewing screen dominance; at this point in her career, she was playing second banana to the men: Fairbanks, Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Tracy, Charles Farrell, etc.  So, it's unsurprising that she held Parachute Jumper in rather low esteem (apparently her least favorite of all her roles), but it is a kick to see her and the always reliable McHugh starving and waiting impatiently for chauffeur / handyman Fairbanks to come down from Dodd's tony apartment.  As is typical of the majority of Warner Bros. films of this era, the players move through a good many situations and scenarios--most directly inspired by the Depression and the day's related headlines--on un-flashy, minimalist sets.  The narcotics that Carrillo hires Fairbanks to fly in from Canada would, of course, be verboten in Code-enforced Hollywood, as would Fairbanks' essentially unveiled assumption that Davis is a prostitute in their first meeting, as would the lingering extreme close-up on the derriere of a drunken Nicaraguan prostitute doing a dance for a soused Fairbanks and McHugh at the start of the film.

Toodles (Frank McHugh) appears to be flipping off a truck that passes him by, but upon closer inspection, it appears to be his index finger sticking straight up.

In addition to house all-star McHugh, Nat Pendleton makes one of his almost mandatory uncredited appearances as a cop, uncredited Walter Brennan is a diner counterman, and in the most expansive of the uncredited roles, we have Leon Ames as a pilot amused by Davis' concern for aerial stuntman / parachuter Fairbanks.

The most fun McHugh had on screen?  Maybe.

The Warner Archive DVD is clean, with no major, distracting damage that I could detect.  There's a trailer as a bonus.  The disc menu artwork (seen at the top of this page in the form of the film's title lobby card), incidentally, is much more striking than the poster WA used for the cover.  I'm guessing the title card artwork may not have been used for the cover because of its horizontal orientation.

Ms. Dodd's appearance in the film is all too brief.

Tony Musante

Tony Musante, the fine character player and sometime leading man, passed away just before Thanksgiving.  As a belated tribute, I've extracted this excerpt from Dirty Old New York Subway, entirely devoted to Larry Peerce's overwrought, though not uninteresting post-Kitty Genovese drama The Incident, which marked Musante's first starring role in a feature film.

Musante later headlined the tv series Toma, which was reworked into Baretta, starring Bobby Blake. Some of his subsequent feature roles included starring in Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Fleischer's sublime The Last Run, Corbucci's The Mercenary, Stuart Rosenberg's The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Aldrich's The Grissom Gang.  He slowed down in the '80s and '90s, but was quite memorable as Nino Schibetta in the first season of Oz and later appeared in James Gray's much-admired We Own the Night.  

I had the good fortune to see Musante at Anthology Film Archives in the last year or so, on hand to discuss his work in Bird with the Crystal Plumage following a 35mm screening.  

From the pre-PG-13 days, when a GP (later PG) often indicated a film made by and for adults.

Assaut

I'm no ad man, so I guess I used this creative pitch concerning Death Waltz's new Assault on Precinct 13 LP (U.S. folks should order Death Waltz product here) as an excuse to pay tribute in video form to one of my favorite films and soundtracks.  Now that I know I did not win and was not even a finalist, I feel OK sharing my attempt publicly.

The Wayward Cloud

The good bloke who runs the Wayward Cloud, a German blog, has been kind enough to mention me in the same breath as Robin Wood (I'll take it, even if I'm not in that league!) and actually seems to have read and watched just about everything I've published here. Herr or Frau Wayward Cloud, please drop me a line and thanks again for the extremely generous coverage!

Dan Hedaya in broad daylight in Night of the Juggler.

Hey Good Lookin' (1982, Ralph Bakshi)

Given the start and stop and start nature of its production and the compromises its creator was forced to make in the process, it's fortunate that Ralph Bakshi's Hey Good Lookin' succeeds as much as it does.  With that said, due to the aforementioned production complications, Hey Good Lookin' isn't entirely successful and often has the feel of an only partially realized vision.  Long absent on DVD, the Warner Archive has filled that void with its recent 16x9 DVD-R and it was a treat to be able to revisit the film after 20 years or so when I viewed it the first time--and was underwhelmed--via a VHS rental, in the classic WB clamshell box style.

Bakshi's autobiographical 1973 picture Heavy Traffic has been favorably compared to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets of the same year, and Scorsese's 2nd unit on Taxi Driver later captured footage of a theater showing Bakshi's Coonskin being firebombed, so it's somewhat appropriate that Bakshi used Mean Streets co-stars Richard Romanus and David Proval in leading (voice) roles in 1977's Wizards and in Hey Good Lookin'. The latter takes place in the type of ethnic, working-class New York milieu that both filmmakers so often traffic in.   

Vinnie, in a Coney Island scene that I don't recall in the finished film.

Hey Good Lookin' began production in the mid-'70s, but wasn't completed and released until 1982.  As with Heavy Traffic, Bakshi drew on his formative years in 1940s and '50s Brownsville Brooklyn for Hey Good Lookin', which centers on the friendship of Vinnie (Romanus), ladies man and leader of the Stompers, and his best pal Crazy Shapiro (Proval).  There are a number of parallels with Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers, which though set in the Bronx in 1963, deals with a lot of the same issues: gangs and how they inform masculine codes, racial tensions, awkward teenage sex, dysfunctional father - son relationships, and the push / pull relationship the characters have with their home turf.

Part of a 1974 Warner Bros. trade ad announcing the production of Hey Good Lookin'.

Bakshi's original version of the film was split between live action and animation--which the studio objected to--and featured original music and performances by the New York Dolls.  It's a real missed opportunity that WB did not provide any historical context in the form of retrospective interviews / commentary and did not resurrect any or all of Bakshi's original footage (which supposedly survives in the studio vaults).  This Wax Poetics interview with Bakshi goes into great detail about the troubled history of Hey Good Lookin' and how its handling by Warner Bros. was affected by the fallout from Bakshi's misunderstood masterpiece Coonskin. 

For its first half, Bakshi's film is consistently entertaining and funny, as it introduces its main characters and their environment, while also including some uniquely Bakshi-an moments, as when a pile of trash converses with the trashcan next to it before the trash is happily whisked off to its final resting place by a garbage truck.  Running under 80 minutes (not so uncommon for an animated film, of course), the film's last act is rushed and not as emotionally satisfying as it should be, as the Stompers become involved in a conflict with a black gang, the Chaplins, and Crazy goes off the deep end.  Even without having the various scripts or seeing Bakshi's original version of the film, it seems clear that much of the problematic aspects of the film are due to the restraints, in terms of time and money, imposed on Bakshi as he set out to finish the project.  But even when the narrative frustrates, the visuals are beautiful throughout, and for that alone it's thrilling to have the film available in a quality widescreen print...a Blu-ray would be so much better, but I'll take what I can get.

Music consistently plays a strong role in Bakshi's films and the filmmaker has always been intimately involved with the selection and placement of tracks, even if the studios were sometimes infuriatingly short-sighted, as was the case with Columbia and American Pop.  I recall being quite disappointed in the retro '50s-by-way-of '80s score by John Madara and Ric Sandler.  It's a better than I remembered, but after reading the above-linked interview, I can't help but think of how much better this film and its soundtrack could be, particularly with the original tunes by the New York Dolls and classic doo-wop that Bakshi describes.

Crazy, Eva, Vinnie, and Roz cruising.

Warner did not release Hey Good Lookin' widely or heavily promote it and that is evident in the fact that Bakshi recalls almost nothing of the film's release, and in the theatrical trailer (included on the DVD), which is essentially just the scene of Vinnie combing his hair at the beginning of film with the film's billing block attached to it, along with a weak voiceover, which poorly sells the film and Bakshi.

Coming on the heels of Heavy Metal and Bakshi's own American Pop, Hey Good Lookin' represents one of the final examples of adult-oriented animation produced by a major studio; it's the last of Bakshi's "street trilogy," following Heavy Traffic and Coonskin.  His next film, the 1983 PG-rated fantasy Fire and Ice, would be his last until 1992's Cool World, a film bowdlerized by its studio, Paramount.