From Those Were the Days:

1933 - Charlie Chan was heard for the final time on the NBC Blue radio network after only six months on the air. Not to worry. Several revivals of the Chinese detective were on the air years later ... and in the movies and seen on TV.
11:04:51 AM    comment []  trackback []  

DVD Twilight Theater

I had last night off, so once again, I detoured from the usual OTR posts to settle in with some movies. Since I work at night, and maintain the same schedule on my off days, this means that from dusk till dawn the old DVD player is humming—because I don’t get the opportunity to see much TV in the daytime, particularly since my father in charge of the remote. Dad’s not much of a classic movie fan like me, his taste runs more to watching the History Channel endlessly (I once came in during the middle of something examining WWII and remarked to him, “You know, Dad—we won that war…it was in all the papers.”) But, perhaps I’m being a tad too snarky—after all, if he’s watching “Gardening Tools of the Third Reich,” it keeps him off the streets and out of trouble.

I posted a heads-up about an upcoming DVD release of the 1940 Columbia serial Terry and the Pirates (based on the radio show and comic strip by Milton Caniff) to the Old-Time Radio Digest a day or two ago, and Martin Grams, Jr. responded with some interesting information that I had not been clued to. Martin says that Columbia didn’t take very good care of some of their older product (which pretty much puts the kibosh on any release of future comedy shorts, like those with Andy Clyde or Schilling & Lane, I take it) and Pirates is a good example:

The end result was that the negative was damaged and very little of the serial surfaced in the form of mm reels. A few years ago, VCI went to the trouble of acquiring the best possible picture quality and with no sound originating from the reels due to the damage, replaced the entire soundtrack with a new one. That is, they hired actors to supply the voices and lip to the action on screen. As primitive as this may be, it's the only known print of Terry and the Pirates known to exist. Anyone who has a copy of this serial can easily play a chapter and realize that what they are listening to is a dubbed sound track with added sound effects and dialogue. No one has yet been able to surface a copy in its complete form with the original soundtrack.

The matinee serial has since passed into the public domain (as well as the short-lived 1952 TV series) so copies of the 1940 serial and the 1952 television episodes have been floating about very easily - but regardless of collectors and dealers who insist that their print is film chained from a 16 mm or 35 mm master, it's really the VCI release. Every time I see a dealer offering the series at a convention I attend, I ask to have it played on a TV screen and half of the time dealers say theirs came from a 16 mm print but when I listen to the sound track, I have always noticed it's the new one dubbed so to date, the only print is the VCI.

I rarely endorse VCI for their releases cause 90% of what they offer are public domain titles and you can get those very same episodes for a lower price elsewhere (and on some occassions, a better picture quality print) but for anyone wanting the best possible print of Terry and the Pirates, the 1940 serial on DVD format, VCI is presently the only place to go.

I hadn’t planned on buying this DVD—I thought there might be a few people on the list who’d be interested—but I was certainly glad to hear about this from Martin, since he most definitely knows what he’s talking about. But after reading this, I was kind of curious about a VCI DVD that I bought a good while ago—a copy of the 1961 film The Mark, which I admittedly bought on sale somewhere but I was curious to see if it was in that 90%.

I’m pleased to report that it is not (it’s even letterboxed), and it’s a movie that I recommend heartily. The Mark stars Stuart Whitman (an actor I’ve seen in countless westerns—which is not necessarily a bad thing—like The Comancheros and the vastly underrated Rio Conchos) as a recently-released prisoner who was convicted of kidnapping a ten-year-old girl with attempt to molest. Whitman is attempting to carve out a new life for himself with the assistance of his shrink (played by Rod Steiger), and it just might possibly be the best performance of his career (he received an Oscar nod for Best Actor in 1961). Whitman portrays the man as a haunted, shell-shocked individual—he reminded me of a young Robert Ryan—and he’s ably supported by Steiger (who's simply fantastic), Maria Schell, Brenda De Banzie and Maurice Denham, among others. The film was co-written by Sidney Buchman, whose blacklist experiences no doubt contributed immeasurably to the sweat-inducing paranoia through out the entire proceedings. It’s controversial material to be sure, and way ahead of its time—but worth seeking out; it’s gripping and packs one hell of a wallop.

After The Mark, I was sort of in a noir mood—so I put on one of the most underrated movies of the whole genre, The Big Combo (1955). Cornel Wilde is a police detective determined to bring down slick gangster Richard Conte, who’s pretty much the whole show here. (Never cared much for Wilde; I’ve seen furniture outact him.) I can’t believe some of the things that they got away with in this film: Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman playing a couple of ambiguously gay hit men, for starters. There’s also a memorable scene in which Brian Donlevy, who wears a hearing aid, is about to be executed by Lee and Earl and Conte takes out his hearing aid so he won’t hear the bullets—then the soundtrack goes completely silent and we see the muzzle fire blazing from machine guns. I then followed this up with another Conte outing (purely unintentional on my part), The Blue Gardenia (1953) directed by one of my favorite directors, Fritz Lang. Conte’s a newspaper columnist who’s trying to get the story on a murder that may or may have not been committed by Anne Baxter. It’s not in the same league as The Big Heat (1953) or Scarlet Street (1945), but it’s pretty darn suspenseful; Raymond Burr, Ann “Maisie” Sothern, Richard Erdman, Nat “King” Cole (who sings the title song) and George “Superman” Reeves round out the cast (Reeves is the cop investigating the murder).

Well, to finish things off I decided a little levity was in order—so I grabbed Horse Feathers (1932) from the library and proceeded to laugh like hell. I’m beginning to wonder why this movie isn’t my favorite Marx Brothers film; it’s got some of the all-time best lines of any of their movies (my favorite: “I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse”) and the great gag where Groucho, having to listen to Chico’s piano solo, stands up to address the audience: “I’ve got to stay here, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go into the lobby until this all blows over.” (Swordfish!)
10:46:35 AM    comment []  trackback []