The Gabbo-Flamarian Combo

A Fever Dream Double Feature.

Anybody seeing James Cruze’ early talkie operetta-revue melodrama nightmare THE GREAT GABBO, must immediately despair of ever finding a partner-film, a companion piece with which it might be paired. Some films, it seems, are destined to live alone. GABBO, the tale of a horribly arrogant ventriloquist free-falling into insanity, played with barely-suppressed inertia by Erich Von Stroheim, is based on a story by the great Ben Hecht, who ran away before actually writing it, leaving script duties to Hugh Herbert, which is quite a come-down. The IMDb suggests that the H.H. in question is THIS GUY, the infamous “woo-woo” man, whose presence disgraces so many golden age movie romps, but I think the likely culprit is F. Hugh Herbert, prolific author of appalling comedies like Otto Preminger’s THE MOON IS BLUE. The same incessant smug goddamn quipping is in evidence.

So, althought the idea may have originated in the brain that powered the hand that held one-half of the pen that wrote The Front Page, what we get is at best echt Hecht. But it is 100% GENUINE HERBERT, as anyone who has struggled through its unpleasantly lengthy, static dialogue scenes can attest.

At any rate, the casting of Erich Von Stroheim as a cross-talking comedian vent act is something that must have been dreamed up on the dipso ward, and the idea of playing out Gabbo’s tragedy against the backdrop of a musical revue featuring singing insects and dancing poultry suggests a story department recruited from bedlam.

But do not despair! A worthy counterpart to THE GREAT GABBO exists, and with supreme symmetry the movie gods named it THE GREAT FLAMARION and cast Erich Von S once more as the Great One.

FLAMARION is a much better movie, since it has Anthony Mann behind the camera. It’s fascinating to watch him at work, enlivening his dubious material within a tight B-movie schedule, with tension-packed compositions and electrifying camera moves — except even he can’t really get the thing up on its feet, no matter what he does. THE GREAT FLAMARION staggers along, burdened with a script so predictable it’s perversely surprising. Von plays a variety act sharp-shooter. Mary Beth Hughes and Dan Duryea are the married stooges who stand still while he blasts cigarettes from their mouths. Hughes seduces Von, but it’s nakedly obvious she doesn’t love him. Never was a femme so fatale. We wait for her to suggest he bump off her troublesome hubby by cunningly FAILING TO MISS during the act. She does. He does. The deed done and passed off as an accident, he arranges to meet her in a Chicago hotel. We wait for her to not show up.

At this point, we get a surprise! No, she doesn’t show up. But Von does a little dance! We weren’t expecting THAT. It’s like a big hand reaching out of the screen and offering us a cupcake.

Then Von realises he’s been had and seeks revenge. He gets it, and dies.

So far, so predictable, but what puts the tin lid on it is the FRAMING STRUCTURE, which makes the outcome clear before the story has even started — Von lies dying, perforated with his own slugs, having throttled the cheating vixen. Which means the entire movie is a playing out of storylines that have already been tied up. Orson Welles begins OTHELLO with Desdemona and Othello dead and Iago in chains, but he has the benefit of more involved plotting and characterisation, plus he may have assumed the audience would have some familiarity with the story he was telling anyway. The title THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO provides a strong hint. The book-ends of THE GREAT FLAMARION constitute a different and much dumber kind of design. They testify to the faint hope of starting the movie with a bang, since if it simply played out chronologically the opening would be unbearably flat and suspenseless. Promise them murder then hope they’re too listless to leave their seats.

Mann-fans will nevertheless find much to enjoy in the sharp framing and dynamic camera moves. Von’s general absurdity as romantic lead makes him diverting, and like Bela Lugosi he can provide unexpected hilarity with sudden moments of naturalism. And, uniting the film with GABBO once more, there’s the thrill of BICKERING — both films feature prolonged, depressing scenes of married couples sniping horribly at each other, apparently a staple of entertainment in the eyes of the screenwriters.

Bea negative

Jon Tuska’s Encounters With Filmmakers is pretty interesting, especially the section on Welles. In the space of 48 pages he goes from defending Welles to attacking him, in a way that suggests some personal score is being settled, though what it was isn’t recorded. But it is somewhat illuminating with regards to one of the great mysteries of Welles scholarship: what IS IT with Beatrice Welles?

Welles’ daughter, who appears in his CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, has impacted on Welles’, shall we say, postmortem career in two ways. Firstly, as inheritor of his version of OTHELLO, she has made the film available in a “restored” form that is not to everyone’s liking. This version has had the music transcribed and re-recorded (Welles’ original soundtrack had been damaged when release prints were made), the voices electronically adjusted to be more in synch with the lip movements (arguably an improvement, but in no sense a restoration, since the film, dubbed from first scene to last, had always been awash with lip-flap) and printed credits inexplicably favoured over Welles’ spoken ones (the restorers apparently were unaware of the existence of the narrated opening, although it appears in Leslie Megahey’s BBC profile The Orson Welles Story, which should be essential viewing for anybody engaged in Welles scholarship — check it out on YouTube).

Secondly, Beatrice Welles has sued or threatened to sue most of the other parties engaged in restoring her father’s work. Most famously, she has delayed work on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, a late Welles film apparently all ready to be cut together into screenable form, provided somebody is willing to pay to extract the footage from the bank vault it is stored in (Welles’ chief backer was the Shah of Iran’s brother-in-law, leading to financial difficulties when the Ayatollah took command of Iran) and pay for the post-production work. Whenever a backer comes forward and shows interest, Beatrice scares them off.

But Beatrice also threatened those behind the restored TOUCH OF EVIL (which isn’t 100% perfect but is far more respectful than her own restoration of OTHELLO), causing the film to be withdrawn from the 50th Cannes Film Festival. She had absolutely no legal claim to ownership or artistic rights over this film, but Cannes being an auteuristkind of show, they pulled the film rather than deal with any controversy from the daughter of a great Palm D’Or-winning director.

Tuska ~ “He left $10, 000 each to his three daughters from his three marriages while dividing the bulk of his estate between [Paola Mori] his third wife and his mistress of many years, Oja Kodar, with an additional provision that should Paola die, then all that remained of his estate should go to Oja.”

And ~ ”Other than the cash bequests to his three daughters, Oja received the Los Angeles home and all its contents, Paola the home in Las Vegas, its contents, and whatever money would be left. Paola contested the will, in large measure I believe because of the provision that upon her death everything would revert to Oja rather than to Beatrice. A hearing was scheduled for 14 August 1986. Two days before, on 12 August 1986, Paola was killed in an automobile accident a short distance from her home in Las Vegas. Oja Kodar got everything by default.”

I think it’s understandable that Beatrice Welles, having simultaneously lost a mother and been cheated of an inheritance by fate, might have conflicted feelings towards her father. He not only divorced left her mother and was probably absent for much of her childhood, he left her a rather paltry sum and placed restrictions on her mother’s inheritance (I’m amazed that’s even legal — if you leave somebody something, isn’t it then THEIR property?) Welles was of course quite entitled to leave the bulk to Oja Kodar, who had been a loyal companion during his autumn years, in a relationship which lasted longer than any of his marriages.

Beatrice, with a mixture of love, resentment, a proprietorial feeling for her father’s work, and anger at the criticism of the restored OTHELLO, much of which came from people involved in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, is now a potential obstacle to any Welles restoration ventures — I’m amazed she allowed Kodar and Jesus Franco’s version of DON QUIXOTE (the one truly indefensible Welles “restoration”) to be screened. Perhaps the thing was so cheaply assembled that the makers were indifferent to legal bluffs.

(Film historian and filmmaker Kevin Brownlow was approached by Kodar during the QUIXOTE process. She had been driving around Europe with Welles’s rushes in a van — although as much as a third of what Welles had shot was in the hands of one of his cinematographers, who was refusing to deal with Kodar. [The Welles legacy is riven with feuds, it seems!] Brownlow looked at the material and could see no way to make sense of it. Welles had claimed the film was virtually complete, but the material was haphazardly logged and boarded, and without Welles to explain his intent, inexplicable. Brownlow regretfully passed, Kodar kept looking until she found former Welles associate Jesus Franco, who made an offer too low to refuse.)

I suggest anyone trying to restore a Welles film should visit Beatrice first and get her on-side, if possible. However cantankerous and obstructive her behaviour thus far, her feelings are at least understandable. It’s a great shame that the personal hurt she has experienced is now depriving others of the pleasure of seeing her father’s films as they should be seen.

Some kind of a man.

It’s Orson Welles’ birthday! I guess it’s safe to mention since he’s already dead, and the CURSE OF SHADOWPLAY cannot harm him.

Anyway, whatever bad juju may be associated with me, Welles’ VOODOO CURSE probably outranks it. (A Brazilian witch doctor jinxed Welles’ film project IT’S ALL TRUE by plunging a dagger through the screenplay, decorated with a black feather. With Welles, the impossible stories turn out to be true, it’s the plausible ones you must watch out for.)

“I don’t want any description of me to be accurate. I want it to be flattering. I don’t think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully — not in print anyway.”

Orson Welles — thin, young and alive.

It has been TOO LONG since I actually watched a Welles film through. I’m hoping that the Edinburgh Film Festival’s Jeanne Moreau season will feature some or all of her work with O.W. I haven’t seen THE IMMORTAL STORY or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT on the big screen, ever. And I love THE TRIAL more than even most hardcore Wellesians. The programme is launched tomorrow, so I’ll be able to tell you for sure then.

UPU2?

SOUTHLAND TALES felt like just the kind of film I should be defending here, before I watched it. I fairly loved DONNIE DARKO, Richard Kelly’s debut feature, and although DOMINO, which he scripted, gave me a bad vibe and I didn’t see it, SOUTHLAND sounded weird and funny and crammed with STUFF, which is often the way I like my movies. Plus it’s had a chequered history and a lot of critical savaging, much of it fairly crass.

TV’s Mark Kermode, in particular, should be struck off the critic’s list for mindlessly panning the thing on The Culture Show. “It’s terrible,” he said, “Really terrible. Look, here’s a clip. See how terrible it is?” A twenty second clip aired, and charming but light-weight co-presenter Lauren Laverne nodded. “I see what you mean.” Absolutely no critical analysis was offered whatsoever. And it’s a film which certainly warrants a bit of analysis.

The task is complicated by the fact that the version of SOUTHLAND TALES released is not the original director’s cut — Kelly was forced to alter his vision in order to get it screened at all, after the initial very bad response. What I mainly found myself wondering as I watched was what was part of the original conception and what had been added or subtracted to try and streamline the film and make it, what? Commercial, appealing, comprehensible?

The re-edit certainly fails on all three scores, at least on first viewing. The confusing narrative is surprising because there’s so much exposition — for the first third the movie is ALL EXPOSITION. Most of it is provided by a voice-over, and that’s part of the problem. Without a dramatic situation to engage us, the V.O. seems to wash over, bypassing comprehension. It’s telling us exactly what’s going on, but it’s hard to focus, in part because it’s impossible to see how the narrator, a character in the “story”, knows what he’s telling us. Since he’s not involved in most of the action, his narration blurs the story rather than clarifying it.

I was reminded of David Lynch’s DUNE, with it’s many internal monologues by many characters, seemingly pasted in out of a desperate urge to make us understand. My favourite is when the hero’s mum comes in a door, sees that her son is alive, looks relieved, and then her V.O. helpfully states, “My son — lives!” The redundancy is sort of comical and almost Lynchian. Kelly’s narration-stream isn’t as goofy as that, probably because it’s been added in an attempt to normalise a very weird film.

While Justin Timberlake delivers the verbal afterhthoughts with more gusto than Harrison Ford did in BLADE RUNNER, the result is more like the plot-summary that comes towards the end of LADY FROM SHANGHAI. As Orson Welles wanders the Crazy House, he muses on What Has Gone Before, and we pretty much miss everything he’s saying because it has nothing much to do with the imagery, which is far more interesting. Only when the words “…and I was the fall guy!” land on the image of Welles falling over are we able to register what’s being said at all. It’s not Welles’ fault, it’s the bone-heads at Columbia who forced him to add explanations at inapposite moments, just as R. Kelly has had to do.

Once the SOUTHLAND V.O. thins out and the plot, whatever it is, actually gets in motion, it starts to feel like we’re getting somewhere. Generally the bits with music feel like a movie, rather than a tape-slide presentation or a very long “Previously on Lost” montage, and I started to feel like the film could be an enjoyable experience even without my fully understanding it. I like lots of films I don’t understand. As the proceedings got more fun, I started to yearn for the original version. All the attempts at clarification seemed to make for a more boring experience.

The casting is the high point for me. I always rejoice in the gurning visage of Wallace Shawn, and it was cool to see POLTERGEIST’s Zelda Rubinstein, still looking like she’s been compressed in a car crusher. Bai Ling attempts to inject sultriness into every line reading or movement, Sarah Michelle Gellar does some good porn star acting, the Rock makes his eyes go beady and does weird nervous finger movements, and Justin Timberlake is rather good. Miranda Richardson seems to have been cast for her face rather than her acting, which is quaint as she’s a magnificent actress, one of the real power-houses. But since her costume screams “Villainess!” and that’s all her character is, she really has very little she can add.

The levitating ice-cream van at the end made me think of the flying car in Alex Cox’s REPO MAN, and it seemed clear at that point that the earlier visionary punk sci-fi masterpiece (which anticipates everything from THE X FILES to Grant Morrison’s comic book The Invisibles) was a definite influence. Interestingly, Repo Man now has a comic book sequel, just like SOUTHLAND TALES.

I also thought of the movie Guido’s making in Fellini’s EIGHT AND A HALF. “Do you like movies in which nothing happens?” The idea of a film which tries to include EVERYTHING is a perversely appealing one, even if it’s doomed to fail. In a way, all films fail — they always disappoint their makers. Kelly seems to have gone into this one believing he might never be given another job, so he had to make this film stand in for an entire filmography. Ironically, it’s such a high-profile catastrophe he’s almost certain to be offered more work by the kind of producers who like to present themselves as taming unruly talents.

“The name’s Rock. Rock Rock.”

In Bruges*

*It’s in Belgium.

And it’s a pretty good film! I hate how my expectations are  lowered whenever I approach a British film, but I suppose it does allow a modest film like this to shine out. It’s a Film4 Production, therefore British, starring Brendan Gleason and Colin Farrell, therefore Irish, but set almost entirely in Bruges (whose tourist industry it should greatly benefit), therefore European. And released through Universal.

Eigil Bryld’s photography shows the city off to great effect, but Martin McDonagh’s intelligent direction keeps the scenic values working to the benefit of the film as a whole. His only error as director is to presage a long take with a glimpse of TOUCH OF EVIL on TV. Referencing that famous crane shot is rather studenty — Altman got away with it in THE PLAYER by doing it so blatantly it became a postmodern gag. James Toback did it in EXPOSED and it struck me as juvenile. It doesn’t help when the takes involved lack the complexity and bravura of Welles’ ground-breaker.

The filming is elegant and unhurried, attentive to performance, and it’s here the film scores. As two criminals laying low, Gleason and Farrell are funny and engaging, even when misbehaving atrociously. McDonagh’s script serves up skull-fulls of political incorrectness, with Farrell in particular using most of the forbidden derogatory terms, and karate-chopping a dwarf for good measure. In fairness, the little guy, Jordan Prentice, had just been promoting race war. The fact that he’s American, short, and apt to spout racist nonsense under the influence of cocaine suggests some kind of Mel Gibson spoof, but it isn’t belaboured.

Farrell redeems himself from his ALEXANDER embarrassment with an assured comic performance. The central joke of his character — an entirely unmotivated hatred for the inoffensive Bruges — never wears out, and he’s allowed some genuine pathos as well. Gleason is a marvel to behold. His great decomposing pudding of a face fully justifies the presence of 31 visual effects artists in the credits — it couldn’t have been easy to create. He earns our respect by demonstrating an unnatural ability to animate and transmogrify every fold and flap of facial flesh, but mostly CHOOSING NOT TO. In his last moments, he does things with one eye that simply defy both belief and comprehension, retracting it inwards, before extending it like a thumb, apparently looking at himself, winching it back into its pillows of skin, then somehow turning it off, apparently forever.

Clémence Poésy, Farrell’s romantic interest, is charming, distinctive looking, and hypnotically watchable — she may be the HARRY POTTER kid who has the strongest chance of adult stardom. Jordan Prentice manages to make the “racist dwarf” character sympathetic as well as surly, and transcends his role’s starting point as a swipe from LIVING IN OBLIVION.

And then there’s Ralph Fiennes. Looking more and more like Leonard Rossiter, and playing a role that could easily have been a pale imitation of Ben Kingsley’s terrifying turn in SEXY BEAST. Fiennes plays the part as if that worry hadn’t occurred to him. Although his cockney accent always has an artificial quality (some real ones DO) he’s effective, menacing, and very funny, something I hadn’t known he COULD be. Although a friend who worked with him has called him “the most boring man alive”, he’s certainly compelling on the screen.

Peter Serafinowicz as Ralph Fiennes / Leonard Rossiter.

His appearance does pose problems, however. The amusing script spends its first half replaying Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. When Fiennes shows up, it slowly becomes an action thriller. And the action doesn’t build, sustain, dazzle with spectacle or obey the rules of logic. Having dismissed the idea of shooting Gleason in public, Fiennes pulls a gun and starts blasting at Farrell in full view of swarms of tourists.

But the flaws aren’t enough to wreck it altogether — the film is still witty and gracefully made even when it’s a bit off-track. And it’s a first feature. So there’s hope.

“Lots of midgets have offed themselves. I hope yours doesn’t, otherwise your film’ll be fucked.”

My Mum’s capsule review ~ “Sweary but good.”

And yes, the MPAA confirms the second part: “pervasive language”.

Charlton Heston, actor

Fiona came into the room early in the morning and told me that some famous Hollywood person had died.

Then she came into the room and told me that Charlton Heston had died and I realised the earlier incident was a dream. I’ve never had deja vu like that before. Weird.

Then, as Edinburgh was briefly swamped by snowflakes the size of nachos, I began to think I must commemorate the great Chuck’s passing.

My first, dark thought, was that Heston’s Altzheimer’s had in some way, tragic though it was, aided his reputation. At least with me — I no longer thought of him as a wingnut and a gun-nut, but as a victim of an illness. Reagan’s senility never affected me that way. In some way I always wanted to like Heston. I know his illness had nothing to do with his arch-Republican stance, which preceded it by decades, but in some unreasonable way the illness erased my image of Heston as spokesman for opinions I loathe. It helps that, despite his right-wing views he was a supporter of the civil rights movement and an eager collaborator with the liberal Orson Welles and the politically somewhat complex Peckinpah.

I thought of my favourite Heston performance, in Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY. Heston can really play arrogance and aggression. In the same director’s BEN-HUR he’s stuck with trying to play nobility, which can’t be acted at all, only embodied by the right actor in the right role. The impossible task turns Chuck in on himself and, always prone to self-consciousness, he becomes stiff and monumental (I still can’t picture anybody else in the role though).

Wyler pulled one of his nasty tricks in a scene where Heston struggles with Carroll Baker. Heston traps both her tiny wrists in one of his great bone-sculpture hands and she tries to pull away. WW privately instructed her to break free of Heston’s grasp, while taking Heston aside and telling him to on no account allow Baker to get away. After a couple of takes, her wrists were red-raw, and there’s a real tremor in Heston’s voice as he struggle with her — he’s not a happy actor, but it works for the character. It’s a rare moment of seeing a human being instead of an icon. It makes me like Heston that playing this scene upset him so much — but he also respected Wyler for getting the effect.

Oh, and I love his last scene in Lester’s THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, where he dismisses Michael York’s D’Artagnan with a little wave of his hand. One doesn’t normally think of Chuck as a WITTY actor, but he respected Richard Lester and maybe the gesture was scripted or suggested. Anyhow, he does it beautifully.

“Charlton Heston” by Stump, from the album A Fierce Pancake.

The pyramids were in construction,
The pharoah glowed with satisfaction,
But then to his immense surprise,
His empire fell before his eyes.
A hundred thousand busy slaves,
Downed their tools and stood and stared.

The Red Sea walls stood like a canyon,
The pharoah pulled up in his wagon,
And saw within those walls of glass,
A herd of whales go racing past.
A hundred thousand fishy tales,
Crossed his mind about the day.

Then Charlton Heston put his vest on.

The broken tablets had been mended,
The golden calf had been up-ended,
And old folk sitting round the fire,
Would talk of voices from the sky;
Babies sailing down the Nile;
The recipe for locust pie;
A hundred thousand frogs per mile –
We’d always ask them to describe,

How Charlton Heston put his vest on.

Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal;
Shalt not commit adultery.
Boils the size of fifty pee,
Lights! Camel! Action!

Bushes that refuse to burn.
See these sandals hardly worn.
Raining blood, raining bread,
The night we painted Egypt red.
Thou shalt not covet; shalt not lie;
Thou shalt not bonk your neighbour’s wife.
The recipe for egg fried lice;
A hundred ways to kill a fly;
Love your daddy, love your mummy;
Put your bread in milk and honey.
Loved his fish, he did, he did,
Never beat the wife and kids.
Slouch though desert, slouch through sand,
Until we reach the promised land.
Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal;
Shalt not commit adultery.
Boils the size of fifty pee.
Lights! Camel! Action!

The Chills #3: “Look out!”

Some scenes make you feel like your brain has been extracted, and carved into a crude trumpet, and some Jazz Angel is blowing the most beautiful celestial music through its neural passages. It is then that we speak of The Chills.

Roger Livesey goes to heaven.

Regular Shadowplayer Alex Livingstone nominates this classic sequence from Powell & Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (AMOLAD for short), which ably shows off Pressburger’s superb story construction (one thing Powell definitely needed help with), Roger Livesey’s authoritative-but-loveable performance, Jack Cardiff;s cinematography (with Christopher Challis shooting second unit on the bike crash) and oh, many many other things. Alex wrote:

i nominate the bit in a matter of life and death where roger livesey crashes his motorcycle and dies, only to turn up in heaven and save the day. i can’t watch it without my breathing getting disrupted - i always wind up gasping and a bit wet-eyed, as if i’ve stuck my head into a supermarket freezer and inhaled really hard

on a more puerile note, when marius goring meets roger livesey for the first time he makes a little noise of agreement like someone honking a clown’s nose

Into each film some rain must fall, and I would regretfully note that Bob Arden’s scene in the ambulance with Kim Hunter is maybe one of only two ropey performances in P&P’s oeuvre — but hey, he’s in good company, the other is Laurence Olivier in FORTY-NINTH PARALLEL as a French-Canadian trapper with what sounds like a Pakistani accent. It’s a cameo that makes P&P fan David Mamet thank God that Olivier was prevented from starring in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (because Winston Churchill didn’t approve of the script).

Arden was later thrilled to be cast in MR ARKADIN by no less than Orson Welles (according to my friend Lawrie Knight, a drinking buddy of Arden’s), then less than thrilled when the film took years to open in the UK, and even less than less than thrilled when his own performance in it was singled out for unflattering comment. But Arden is arguably effective in that role: for whatever reason, Welles seemes to have aimed to make Arden’s character as unappealing as possible, and he exploits all Arden’s worst qualities, both physical and performaive, to do it.

Arden never became a star, but he earned a regular living playing Americans in British films for the rest of his days.

Roger Livesey is terrific in THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, but really he owes Powell his place in cinema. Nobody else would cast him at first — extraordinarily, they didn’t like his voice.

Lawrie didn’t really have warm memories of Livesey. When they met, Lawrie was a junior assistant on AMOLAD and Livesey asked him what he’d done in the war. When Lawrie said he was in the air force, Livesey ’sort of made a face, and said “That explains it.”‘

Lawrie never knew what was behind this hostility, but I just found out. Good old Wikipedia:

At the outbreak of World War II, Livesey and Jeans were among the first volunteers to entertain the troops before he volunteered for flying duties in the R.A.F. He was turned down as too old, so he went to work in an aircraft factory at Desford aerodrome near Leicester to “do his bit for the war effort”.

The rejection must have rankled! Poor Roger. But that failure to attain active service is what made him available to star in COLONEL BLIMP, and thence to IKWIG and AMOLAD. And thence to immortality.

More suggestions for pulse-pounding, spine-tingling moments of cinematic greatness will be cheerfully received.

Things I Read Off the Screen #498

Last night Fiona and I watched THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE, a cheesy B sci-fi yarn directed by Robert “Corridors of Blood” Day and we couldn’t stop laughing at the titular astronaut’s “awed” expression as he goes beyond the infinite:

I don’t think Spielberg would hire him.

The film was not so much interesting for what happened in it (Quatermass rip-off with and incredibly protracted opening set-up, half the film, it felt like — reminds me of late period Hammer films when the producers started writing them, and sure enough, turns out this was written by producers*) as for what you could read.

Opening credits. Edited by Peter Mayhew? THIS Peter Mayhew? I guess that might explain why it’s on the primitive side. Wookiee’s aren’t known for their mastery of Russian montage.

I was psyched to read that there would be Electronic Effects, and I was NOT disappointed. It’s my opinion that most movies could be greatly improved by the addition of Electronic Effects. Even LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS could be gussied up by a Moog.

Roger Delgado was The Master in Dr Who — here he plays the Mexican consul, in an entirely unnecessary scene which might be intended as comic relief but they forgot to make it funny.

Sheree Winton was Dale Winton’s mother. For those of you outside the UK, Dale Winton appears as a game show host in a hallucination in TRAINSPOTTING — the role he was born to play. In real life, he IS a hallucinatory game show host.

Space Positioning!

Just beautiful. Lumbering shadow shuffles across blood bank signage, a great B-monster moment.

Space Medicine?

The fathead from the top ends up like this (cosmic rays — maybe Stan Lee or Jack Kirby saw this flick?), and it’s actually quite moving.

“Doctor? I’ve been searching for you… Everything seems strange and dark… I couldn’t find you! … Under this stuff, I feel like I’m suffering from some terrible disease… like I got no blood in my veins… I have no memory… Only an instinct to stay alive…until I found you… I’ve been groping my way through a maze of fear and doubt…”

With the dialogue delivered in agonized gasps, through an inflexible rubber mask, the scene attains a kind of cheap poetry, to use Orson Welles’ expression (describing stage magic at its best).

*Producers are just as likely to be good writers as directors, perhaps even more so. Unfortunately, they’re also in a position to hire themselves as writers, even when nobody else would ever consider them capable of writing ANYTHING. I don’t have a solution to this, beyond the utopian dream that people should be honest with themselves about their own abilities, or maybe seek a second opinion.

A ribbon of dream…

What’s ORSON WELLES doing in this illustration from a 14th century alchemical text?

(He’s wearing one of his false noses, but we still recognise him!)

Quote of the Day: BIG

 

On collecting a young Orson Welles for lunch:

‘He and Virginia, the beautiful young wife he had found in Chicago the previous year, had moved into a curious one-room residence on Riverside Drive. I went there one day to collect Orson for lunch. He said he had been working all night and when I arrived he was still in his bath — a monstrous, medieval iron cistern which, when it was covered at night with a board and mattress, served them as a marriage bed. Orson was lying there, inert and covered with water, through which his huge, dead-white body appeared swollen to gigantic proportions. When he got up, full of apologies, with a great splashing and cascading of waters, I discovered that his bulk owed nothing to refraction — that he was, in reality, just as enormous outside as inside the tub which, after he had risen from it and had started to dry himself, was seen to hold no more than a few inches of liquid lapping about his huge, pale feet.’ ~ John Houseman, Unfinished Business.

Welles at this point had not really started putting on all that weight, so when Houseman is going on about his “enormity”, as a good friend of mine pointed out, it’s not absolutely certain what he means…