An American Werewolf In London-No-A British Werewolf In Spain-Hammer Productions’ “The Curse Of The Werewolf” (1961)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Curse Of The Werewolf, starring Oliver Reed, 1961     

No,  I am not going to use this space to further the “dispute,” the piddle that I can see old wise and wizen Sam Lowell calling his classic “tempest in a teapot” with Seth Garth over my so-called indiscretion, my faux pas if you will, about snitches, finks, you know guys and gals who squeak to the law for some reason usually to save their own asses, my expression from stir, from jail. Jesus with that “stir” I am starting to write like Seth. That came about when as I saw it Angela DeMarco in my review of Married To The Mob was ready to play ball with the law to get out from under the mob which was crowding in. I said it was in the interest of love as well since Angela had a thing for Mike the FBI guy who was following the mob and following her. That was then and this is now when I am on a different crusade and if Seth wants to make something of it, wants to wonder why I am defending who I am defending then bring it on, just bring it on. Hell, you’re the one who said I such be more assertive so live with it.     

This is the real deal I care about today. I am here to tell you that werewolves like some other furry animals like ferrets, weasels and coyotes, have taken some terrible public relations beating in novels and on the screen and I going all out to defend these poor creatures who have been misshapen by situations not of their own making. Case number one, the case before us which will serve as a not gentle reminder of what humans, what you and I have don’t to make werewolves even more hated by the general population than Frankenstein who at least had the defense that he was created by some evil genius as we celebrate the 200^th anniversary of his creation, of his first publication.

Take the poor werewolf Leon, played by a very young and hungry actor Oliver Reed before he hit Hollywood and the glamour rounds, in the film under review The Curse Of The Werewolf. A few things different here or there, maybe a mother who could have nurtured him rather than dying in his time of need or have not been so mesmerized by a wretched prisoner in milord’s castle where her own mother worked like a slave to provide for that bastard duke.  

Naturally though, or it seems natural now after I have a few reviews under my belt, a story goes with it as the short story writer and gadabout Damon Runyon used to say as a lead in to some of his work, about how I wound up doing this review, this review in defense of werewolves which before I delved into the matter I could have not given a damn about (my expression although when my editor saw where I was going with the review his said the same thing. A review which will be one of eight in this Hammer Production series which is what that studio made its nut on. When I was hired on here as a stringer by site manager Greg Green I was given the six- part Hammer Production series of psychological thrillers which the studio produced in the late 1950s, early 1960s. I had done two which were subsequently published, and which Greg said were good for a new hire.

Then office politics, the “good old boy” tradition which Greg was brought in to break up according to Leslie Dumont came to the fore when old time critic Sam Lowell saw the reviews and complained to Greg that he should have given the assignment since he had previous done a six- part film noir series that Hammer produced in the early 1950s. I was kicked off of that series unceremoniously and Sam was given the assignment. Not only that but he had the right, the effrontery really, to give his slant on the two film reviews I did to in what he called “the interest of completeness.” Worse, worse by far, was that whatever Sam’s reputation in the industry half the time he has some stringer do the review under his name again according to Leslie Dumont and that is what he wanted, wants me to do, including essentially to trash my own reviews. I complained very loudly and to “buy me off” I was assigned by Greg to do this series. (I will say as well as further ammunition since this is also well known in some circles, and I will name names if I get any blowback on this, that many times in the old days Sam would if he had some weekend tryst planned or wanted to get drunk with the boys he would just grab whatever the studio publicity department put out on a film, cut the top off and submit that as his masterpiece. Things must have been pretty lax since according to my sources they were all published here under his name.)

So here goes.          

Of course as a kid I was afraid of horror movies, afraid of Freddie Kruger on Nightmare On Elm Street and Jason in the ten million Halloween productions. I don’t remember if beyond American Werewolf in London I had seen any classic werewolf movies and that is not germane to my defense anyway. What is germane, what we all have to think through a bit is how to treat sentient creatures who have been abused and screwed up by human endeavor. The new model has come to us recently via the love affair between a mute young woman, a human, and a creature from the Amazon in The Shape Of Water. So whatever “crimes” a “monster,” a creature, a werewolf commit they cannot be held to the same standards as human beings who after all created the bad situation in the first place. I think in this film it was mainly a question of misunderstandings and spite which produced the ill effects.           

Aside from some religious, apparently Catholic teachings about the sad fates of those humans who lose their souls and hence are prime candidates for werewolf-dom, beautiful Leon really never had a chance to grow up and be somewhat normal. What can you expect when some damn Spanish nobleman showing the degeneracy of his class a couple of hundred years ago when he did some poor beggar wrong and kept him captive in his private prison and forgot about him. Forgot about him except the guy had to be fed and one of the feeders who was a young mute girl who didn’t flinch at his condition. Then as the young girl grew to womanhood the damn nobleman decided he want to take the “right of the first night with her.” She refused and found herself in the private prison with that crazed and apparently sex-starved mad man. The poor bugger died after having his way with her and when she decided to go to the nobleman to seek her revenge she killed him brutally out of hand. Good riddance.

Good riddance except, and here there is a strain of credibility, that poor girl after running away from the crime scene was found by a river by a kindly gentleman who took her in along with his wife and thereafter found that she was with child. The portents were not good when she died in childbirth and the gentleman and his wife raised Leon who exhibited some strange and bloody quirks even when young. Not good    

That was where the good gentleman went to the Church to see what could be done and was told the tale about soul lost and about the power of romantic love to conquer this beastly behavior. And it almost worked once Leon became smitten by the daughter of the guy he was working for in a winery when he came of working age. Almost but the power of evil was too strong and everything came to a head one horrible night after Leon had gone on a mad man killing spree and the towns people sought vengeance. Poor bedeviled Leon cornered, that kindly gentleman put the required by tradition silver bullet in the lad and that was the end of that poor misbegotten werewolf.

Except for one last comment that Hammer Productions known far and wide for its low- cost films must have spent about three dollars turning beautiful Leon into a raggedly werewolf that even I was not afraid of, not at all. That sentient being deserved better. And maybe Seth Garth does too but don’t tell him that.

Sure Rob Banks-As Willie Sutton Said-“That Is Where The Money Is” Chris Pine And Jeff Bridges “Hell Or High Water” (2016)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Hell and High Water, starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, 2016

I was more than happy to take this assignment from Greg Green our site manager and a guy who has proven to be a great editor over time. I am happy because I always am ready, willing and able to review a Jeff Bridge’s film ever since I first saw him way back when in The Last Picture Show and have wondered ever since why, until Crazy Hearts several years ago, he had not won an Oscar for his many great performances. I am happy also because any film that starts with a Townes Van Zandt song (Dollar Bill Blues) and a slew of other cowboy-etched efforts will immediately draw my attention. To add another point I am always happy to review a modern cowboy film where the actors, or one actor Chris Pine, who plays somber brother Toby to Ben Foster’s wild boy Tanner, remind me of the late Sam Shepard and his stoic routines playing a man of the West.

But most importantly for this film Hell and High Water I have been given an opportunity to answer back to young and up and coming film reviewer Sarah LeMoyne about something she wrote about my attitude toward snitches in her review of 1988’s Married To The Mob. There Sarah castigated me, and by implication half the older male writers at this publication because, come hell or high water, we are since corner boy days very, very squeamish about finks, you know snitches in that case by that role of one ex-wife of a mob hit man to the FBI. As Sarah said in the interest of love that woman had every right to snitch. I went crazy when she mentioned to her take when she asked my opinion. Now I get a real rebuttal since I am sure that she would not want anybody to snitch to the Texas Rangers on sexy and cowboy handsome Toby who after all was not doing it for the mob, just a job, but for his sons. Sarah can stew in her juices on that one until she replies in some future review she writes-if she gets one.                 

  

But on to the real deal, on to the “skinny” as Sam Lowell who backs me up 100% on this snitch business. Toby and Tanner, one thoughtful the other a wild boy, brothers are robbing banks to right some wrongs to their family but also as just mentioned to ensure that Toby’s sons don’t have to grow up and be dirt poor like he had grown up in rural Texas. Why banks. Well as the title to this review points out in regard to a classic statement on the matter by the famous, or infamous, bank robber when asked- “that is where the money is.” That was Toby’s plan in any case. You might ask why banks in this day in age but it seems down in prairie Texas and maybe plenty of other places as well the branches of major banks are not up to snuff necessarily on the latest security technology. So the boys play out the old Wild West banking robberies scenario to further Toby’s plan for his sons. Tanner, a jailbird is just along for the adventure, for the blood sport, for kicks and because Toby is his brother.

Come hell or high water though, using that phrase again in a different context, the law, here the well-known Texas Rangers, headed by a pair of agents, one the almost retiree Marcus Hamilton, played by versatile Jeff Bridges, are on the case. The wily old Marcus has the case half figured out before noon that these robberies were planned and were aimed at a particular banking system. All they had to do was wait it on at one of the branches and the game would be over. Old Marcus proved to be right except before the end his partner was killed by the warrior king Tanner in a shoot-out scene very reminiscent of the final showdown between the character played by Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and the coppers also after a failed robbery with deaths involved. Well Tanner was doomed anyway. Toby is another story since he actually was able to succeed in his plan-in the short run. See Marcus figured him in on the caper as well but couldn’t quite get anybody else to connect the dots. He and Toby have a final verbal confrontation before the curtain closes leaving everybody to wonder what will happen next. Making me try to get Sarah LeMoyne to squirm a little over whether she would turn Toby in, snitch on the guy. For now that’s it.   

Say Do You Want To Play Ball With The Law-Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Married To The Mob” (1988)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah LeMoyne

Married To The Mob, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, directed by Jonathan Demme, 1988

As a junior, junior reviewer I have not gotten many film assignments although I have gotten plenty of other work including a ton of editing for site manager Greg Green. (An editor being, according to an unnamed source a person at this publication who cannot write, write for publication, so edits-or I might add has underlings do the work.) I was surprised when Greg handed me this old-time film, old-time to me since was not even born in 1988, Married To The Mob especially when he gave me the reason for my selection. He seems to be somewhat apprehensive about reviewing films, even spoofs like this one, ever since back in the 1970s his ace reviewer at his previous job American Film Gazette Leo LaGrange got found in a dumpster in downtown Manhattan after some pretty rough and hard-hitting comments about the mob in The Godfather trilogy. Apparently I am something like the sacrificial lamb since Greg wants me to go no holds barred here if I see fit. His idea, maybe quaint and reflecting another age, is that the mob, the Mafia-type mob as portrayed here not the crazies from the drug cartels would not hound a woman, would not let a woman get sent to the nearest dumpster just for calling them hoodlums and a cancer on society. I hope Greg is right so here goes.       

What the mob, remember we are talking strictly about the civilized mob, the Mafia guys who have been running various criminal enterprises without too much fuss since before World War I but have kept a low profile for the last few decades and have let the mal hombres of the drug cartels take the public heat, mob bosses cannot tolerate is guys lower down in the food chain stepping out of line, moving in on the boss’s women a big no-no. Young hit man Cucumber DeMarco, played by a young Alex Baldwin, who looked like a sure thing to go steadily up the food chain, made that fatal mistake when he didn’t have enough sense that God gave geese to find out whose “property” a sexy cocktail waitress who worked where the mob members hung out was, who she was giving her favors too. The boss, the boss of bosses in his locale Tony Russo, played by smooth as silk Dean Stockwell, who wound up doing a million years in jail and may still be there for all I know, yes that Tony Russo, had that kitten as his pet and so good-bye Cucumber.

Cucumber though was small potatoes in this story because the real prize for love-crazy Tony, despite being knee-deep in marriage to a wicked witch of the West, is the Cuke’s now widowed wife Angela, played by foxy Michelle Pfeiffer. Angela, unhappy with the mob life anyway, figured once her sainted husband was in the ground it was time for her to start a new life. Get away from the grifters, hit men and con men whom she loathed under her breathe. But even that escape idea is small potatoes compared to what outside forces are plotting against Tony and his boys. Naturally since that is their mandate, the FBI, is in the person of a couple of sad sack agents trying to get the goods on Tony and move up in their own food chain.

The key for the agents though is to see what moves Tony makes to lure Angela into his bed. As first they, and for our purposes really one agent, Mike, played Matthew Modine, think she is still in knee-deep with the mob so they are trailing her very closely to see what shakes out. Trailing so closely that Mike and Angela start up an attraction for each other while he is working undercover as a plumber living in her new digs. Everything tumbles forward from that premise including the problem, serious problem for Greg when I asked about it, of Angela turning fink against the mob, against Tony. That problem which seems to be an old school guy thing based on the histories of some of the writers here who would almost rather be found in that freaking dumpster than to be known as a snitch. Seth Garth normally a cool calm guy and a fountain of information and help on lots of assignments went crazy when I said in the interest of love, of having a guy who she could depend on once she found out he was FBI and got over the idea of his using her as bait did the right thing by helping catch the bad guys. Of course Angela’s turning was all that was needed to eventually snare Tony into the trap set up by the Feds, aided in no small part that jealous wife of Tony’s who had her own scores to settle. I honestly don’t think that I have been in any way disrespectful of the mob here, of the Mafia, so if you hear that I have been waylaid then point the finger directly at one Seth Garth.

When Marlene Dietrich Strutted Her Stuff And Made All The Drag Queens Weep- Joseph Von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus” (1932)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Will Bradley

Blonde Venus, starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant (yes that Cary Grant), directed by Joseph Von Sternberg, pre-Code 1932  

It is amazing how you get assignments for films sometimes from the site manager Greg Green who is the guy who gives them out these days. Everybody knows, or if not then get it here now, that Phil Larkin and I had been, have been if anybody wants to take up the challenge, in a long term continuing battle royal over who is the “real” James Bond (our respective choices Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan) which has spilled over into other reviews and brought in a couple of other reviewers. A reviewer like Seth Garth who apparently really does believe that our dispute is a tempest in a teapot. Of course, Seth, an old-timer like Phil probably thinks Agatha Christie is the cat’s meow and as well from reading some of his latest reviews he seems to be in a time machine set exclusively around the mid-1960s what with him going on and on about the summer of love, acid rock and the like subjects which got the previous site manager Allan Jackson the boot-and rightly so. I won’t even mention Bart Webber’s remarks since he hasn’t written a worthy review since he found out Humphrey Bogart died.  

Here is the weird part though since the time of my last Bond film review I have not been assigned any film reviews although I have had plenty of other assignments. Some of them like covering a Klimt exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with Mark Rothko thrown and on the political front the brewing controversies around the rise of the Alt-Right which has become increasingly public around the country in the aftermath of the Charlottesville events where they laid bare their fangs. (By the way I was assigned that beat since the massive counter-demonstrations against this movement have been spear-headed by young people and had argued to Greg that giving the assignment to one of the old guard would bring in off-beat and basically negative comparisons to their “glorious” 1960s. It didn’t hurt that I mentioned that these elders would be clueless about the different way, mostly via social media platforms, that the young organize today. Nobody needed to hear about mimeograph machine leaflet production, pay phone telephone calls or plastering the world with posters at midnight.)         

The drought is over now with this film review of one of Marlene Dietrich’s early Hollywood films directed by master director and one- time husband Joseph Von Sternberg Blonde Venus (blonde by virtue of a wig in this case). It was no accident that I received this assignment since in 2017 I was down in Washington on another assignment and decided to peek into the National Portrait Gallery to see what was new something I try to do when down in the “swamp” (the only term from Trump-land which resonates with me). While there I noticed that there was an exhibition featuring Marlene Dietrich and did a short report in this space on her career and her effect on the acting profession centered on her provocative bisexual use of men’s clothing in many of her films (including here) so that she was something of a forerunner and icon for sexual liberation. Moreover Marlene had a certain style Allan Jackson (that former site manager) old me that his growing up friend Timmy Riley, now professionally a “drag queen” under the name Miss Judy Garland out in San Francisco where he runs a famous “drag queen” nightclub told him was a close runner up to Ms. Garland among that entertainment set.      

This film gives an early view of that patterned Dietrich style from the men’ clothing while preforming to that look of utter distain and boredom which she gave off. The “hook” as Sam Lowell who is a pretty cool guy even if kind of ancient and knows a lot about these early films from a lifetime of reviewing likes to tell everybody they should be looking for in a film to hang their hat on is that Marlene after marriage and a child, a young boy, finds out that her scientist husband, Ned, played by wooden stick Herbert Marshall in something of a mismatch, has developed some rare and deadly radiation problem which requires a trip to Europe and a lot of dough to help cure. Marlene to the rescue via her “talent” as a singer and entertainer.  (She can act but the singing bit is hard on the nerves according to an associate who knows a thing or two about music and declared her off-pitch in English and not quite so bad in French.)   

Well not exactly Marlene to the rescue but Nick, Nick Townsend, the fixer man and a guy smitten by Marlene for some reason, played by a very young Cary Grant so this is no slough movie. While Ned is away getting his cure, which unknown to him Nick paid for after services rendered Marlene and Nick are seen cavorting. Except Ned comes back unknown to them and demands the custody of their son. Marlene flees and through a series of further down the social scale maneuvers is the subject of an all- points bulletin initiated by Ned. She finally gives up the kid, her Johnny and she takes a few steps further down the social ladder. As she hits bottom she decides to spring back and restart her career in Europe. That is where forlorn Nick is trying to forget her until he runs into her at a concert and they start up again. No good though since she still pines for her Johnny boy. Eventually she will get him, and Ned, back to the chagrin of Nick. Along the way we get that bunch of songs that are hard on the nerves but which also makes me wonder why those drag queens love to imitate her.