From Those Were the Days:

1936 - The critically acclaimed, experimental theatre of the air, The Columbia Workshop, debuted on CBS Radio.
12:04:51 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“The matador…the matador…me…me…”

The very first time I saw the 1964 suspense thriller Fail-Safe was back in 1989—I was working for a Ball…er, Blockbuster Video store at the time and one of the few perks of the job was that you could rent (with some restrictions) a lot of the videos absolutely free. I watched the movie because a friend of mine recommended it, remarking that it was like Dr. Strangelove “without the humor.”

Seeing it again fifteen years later, it’s still a pretty good flick—the plot concerns a group of six U.S. planes who, due to mechanical error, are given the go-ahead to fly a bombing mission into Russia. President Henry Fonda has his hands full trying to recall said planes, and is forced to order the Air Force to intercept and shoot down the planes (when the recall proves unsuccessful) in order to avert a nuclear war. (Fonda even orders the military to provide the information to the Russians to do the same.) Meanwhile, several hawks in the administration—including an anti-Communist advisor played by Walter Matthau—are demanding that Fonda commence with a full-scale attack before the Russians can retaliate.

Because Columbia Pictures was making a similar film (the aforementioned Strangelove) along the same lines as Fail-Safe (albeit in a more comedic vein), the studio ended up buying the film in order to avoid competition at the box-office. The problem, however, was that Columbia released Strangelove before Fail-Safe instead of the other way around, so the film was a box office bust. From today’s perspective, I think Strangelove is a superior movie because the ending of Fail-Safe (which I won’t reveal for those who haven’t seen it) is more absurd than the goings-on in Kubrick’s film. Still, Fail-Safe is a must-see movie—benefiting from Sidney Lumet’s tense and taut direction, a gripping script by Walter Bernstein (based on the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler) and a strong cast featuring Dan O’Herlihy, Frank Overton, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman and Sorrell (Boss Hogg) Booke. (Look for Dom DeLuise and Dana Elcar in small roles, too.)
12:04:43 PM    comment []  trackback []