"Pretty Boy Floyd" (1960) on Amazon Prime

 

      In an effort to make this the leading Herbert J. Leder online resource, today we take a look at "Pretty Boy Floyd", the only remaining title of his left unreviewed in the world of streaming. This dirty little period crime picture marks his directorial debut. Good or not so good, Leder's work is always fun to look at, even if this picture isn't quite the overstuffed, undercooked burrito of weirdness his other movie's are.

     The picture starts off in that most traditional of mid twentieth century crime film settings: the boxing gym. In the locker room Floyd viciously beats the angry husband of a woman he is sleeping with. The camera holds Pretty Boy in close-up as he wails on the cuckold, all teeth gritting rage. John Ericson inhabits the character, an ex-con boxer who likes to steal men's wive's and bank's money, with a dangerous, handsome violence.

     The boxing ring isn't where he wants to make a career, though. Floyd just wants to make an honest living as an oil field worker. When that career is cut short after his boss discovers his criminal past, Pretty Boy returns to his Oklahoma hometown. Upon arrival there, he is informed his father was shot dead, and that the man who committed the act still walks free. Broke and consumed with vengeance, he beats, then burns the man in a barn fire before setting off as a career as the "Sagebrush Robin Hood", dispensing stolen funds to Okie's in need.

     Pretty Boy's partners throughout the picture are a character actor all-star team. Peter Falk plays Shorty Williams, with whom he commits the bank robbery that restarts his crime career. As the picture progresses, the violence escalates, the bodies begin to pile up and things start to spiral out of control. Eventually, Pretty Boy partners up with his old boxing pal, Al Riccardo, portrayed by Barry Newman of "Vanishing Point" fame. A psychotic crescendo to the bloodletting is reached when they team with Machine Gun Manny (Al Lewis of "The Munster's") to spring a prisoner who is being transported to the Missouri State Pen. The job goes bad when the men accidentally slaughter the man they are supposed to rescue, along with a whole bunch of cops.

     The men who hired them for the job are unhappy and what follows is a trial scene within the Halls of Injustice. The three hoods stand before there "judges"- representatives from the world of organized crime-who decide the men's fate by kissing and passing a gun down the table at which they sit. It's a stark scene of indelible gangland mythology, and a classic bit of off-kilter Herbert J. Leder oddness.

     The acting across the board is remarkably solid, especially for a low budget crime programmer. Al Lewis is particularly great, exuding a toothy aura of barely contained wildness. Ericson, tall and sharp angled, stalks through the picture like a pompadoured undertaker. He more than holds his own, even when he's on screen with Columbo, Grandpa Munster and Kowalski.

     Leder was never more focused as a director than he is here. The cheap black and white combined with voice over narration gives the film a bold, tabloid feel. William Sanford and Del Sirino deliver a jazzy, driving score; the use of "modern" music in the context of a 1930s period piece adds a "cool" mood. It's the sole credit on both composer's IMDB page's, and a search of the web brought up no info on the men that I could find. If anyone out there knows the story behind these guy's, drop me a line!

     With an ending that is a downright haunting bit of rural death poetry, Leder creates some moments of real cinematic strength within a film that should be completely disposable. "Pretty Boy Floyd" is a film that frequently overachieves. Filled with sex, murder and robbery, it's a nasty, low-budget id of a crime picture.



   

"Escape To Witch Mountain" on Netflix and "Beyond Witch Mountain" on Youtube

 

      I've spent my long weekend doing what any normal male in his thirties could be expected to do: reacquainting myself with Disney's "Witch Mountain" franchise. As a kid I was a fan of these flicks, but man, was the subtlety lost on me. These are the darkest film's the House of Mouse ever made, showing us the world through the eye's of kid's in need of mental health care.

     "Escape to Witch Mountain" is the story of Tony (Ike Eisenmann) and Tia (Kim Richards), two orphan's suffering from PTSD. They lost both their parents in a shipwreck and recently their two foster parents have died. In order to cope with their pain, the two children have concocted the delusion that they have psychic abilities. Tom suffers from auditory hallucinations of his sister's voice, obsessively playing a harmonica to drown them out, and Tia has violent flashback's to the accident that took her parents' life. An unofficial prequel depicting the children's life with their birth parents, titled "Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell", was made a few years later.

     The children are taken out of the orphanage they are housed at by their millionaire uncle (Ray Milland), who provides them the home of their dreams. "Aristotle Bolt" is the word salad name the kid's make up for him. Paranoia soon takes over and the children come to view Bolt as an evil, cartoonish villain out to exploit their imagined powers for profit.

     They run away from the mansion and soon meet up with drug dealing drifter Jason O'Day, played by Eddie Albert. O'Day roams the California coast in his camper filled with cocaine disguised in sacks labeled "Flour". Pursued by the children's family and the police, the kidnapper and his victims develop the shared psychosis that the children are in fact "alien's" from another planet who must get back to "Witch Mountain", where other "alien's" live. After ditching the cocaine from the camper during a high speed chase reminiscent of director Hough's "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry", the descent into madness continues as O'Day and the kid's believe themselves to be "flying". The picture concludes as they experience a mass hallucination of a spaceship, come to take the children back to their people. Pretty intense stuff.

    Don't even get me started on "Return From Witch Mountain" (not on streaming), made a few years later. Tia and Tony wander a burnt out Los Angeles wasteland; she a member of a violent street gang and he a terrorist threatening to blow up a nuclear plant. John Hough powerfully envisions the world of these damaged children, rivaling his work in "Legend of Hell House".

     "Beyond Witch Mountain" takes place between the "Escape" and "Return". At the start, the senile drifter "Uncle Bene" (Noah Beery Jr.) the children (now played by Tracey Gold and Andy Freeman) have been living with dies. It's unclear whether or not it's from a gunshot wound suffered earlier at the hands of the men their real uncle, "Aristotle Bolt" (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.),  has hired to rescue them. Before he dies, Benet convinces the children they must abduct a student from the nearby special needs school, who in his dementia addled state he believes to be his grandson.

     They arrive at Jason O'Day's door, filthy and starving. O'Day has been hiding out at his "brother's" cabin, surviving on fish from a nearby stream. Greg (Eric Aved), the child who Tony and Tia are after, sits uncommunicative in a hospital room, a prisoner of his own mind. A ransom is offered to O'Day by Tia and Tony's uncle, but playing hardball, he holds out. Desperately, in an effort to find his niece and nephew Bolt administers a truth serum. O'Day and the kids eventually make a violent escape and later use forged documents to steal Greg from the hospital where Dr. Molina (Stephanie Blackmore) is trying to get him the help he needs. The poor lad is convinced by Tony and Tia that he too is an "alien" and aided by O'Day, they deliver him to "Witch Mountain" aka the homeless encampment where they have been living. As the story ends, they head off down the road to gather more mentally unstable people to join their growing cult.

     Anticipating what David Lynch would do with the character of Donna Hayward in "Fire Walk With Me", while also one-upping it, all the parts in "Beyond Witch Mountain" are recast from the previous movies, with the exception of Eddie Albert. This leads one to wonder if perhaps it's all a hysterical dream of O'Day's fevered mind as he sits alone in the cabin. Though shot and released third, it's actually the second picture, further mirroring the characters' fractured psyche's

     In his autobiography "The Acres Aren't Always Greener On The Other Side", Eddie Albert called his involvement with these pictures, "The most important work of my life." Sobering portrait's of mental illness, the "Witch Mountain" (taken from an archaic term for an unsettled mind) franchise represents the artistic pinnacle of the Walt Disney company, rivaled only by Bob Crane's harrowing, semi-autobiographical portrait of one man's midlife crisis: "Superdad".

   

"Fiend Without A Face" (1958) on Hulu Plus

   

     After reviewing "It!" I felt bad about how mean I was to Herbert J. Leder. Determined to smooth things out, I decided to go back to "Fiend Without A Face", which is when we first fell in love, in hopes of rekindling our relationship. The good news is my affection for this movie is stronger than ever. This is the picture where Leder's love of mixing together strange ingredients really works well.

     There's been a series of murder's surrounding a US air base in a Canadian farm community. An unseen "mental vampire" is killing citizens, each found with their "brain sucked out like an egg". The townsfolk suspect the nuclear power plant at the base is blame. It's being used to power a new radar system to spy on them there Russkies. Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) is our speed popping hero. "You ever try sleep instead of Benzedrine?", he's asked, "You might like it." He's determined to get to the bottom of the murders and prove it isn't the military's fault. Through his investigations he comes to know the foxy Barbara Griselle (Kim Parker), sister of the first victim. 

She works for Professor Walgate, played by Kynaston Reeves, who is just wonderful and is everything a B-movie professor should be. Sport jacket? Check. Pipe? Check. Whiskey? Check. Desk? Fireplace? How about a desk in front of a fireplace? Double check! Cummings meets with The Professor in an attempt to gain some insight into what's been going on. When it is suggested the killings may be supernatural in origin, Walgate gets super pissed off. In the end, though, we will discover he is more involved than he claims to be. 

     The execution of the murders (filmically speaking, not literally) is an example of doing the most you can on a low budget. For most of the movie the creature is invisible, so the filmmakers rely on sound design and subtle special effects, along with the death pantomimes of the actors. It's remarkably effective, and the murder scenes have a scary, brutal atmosphere.

     An ominous lumbering sound let's us know the killer is near, but it isn't only in these morbid scenes where audio is used to tell a story. A constant theme of the picture is the townspeople's unhappy relationship with the neighboring air base. To illustrate this, the sound of loud aircraft flying is often heard on the soundtrack. The most striking example of this is during the funeral for the first victim. A noisy plane flies overhead and the mourners cast their eyes skyward; the military intruding on even the most solemn of the communities moments. 

     This is a Herbert J. Leder script, so that means there's an abundance of idiosyncratic, oddball ideas. The affect of the military base on cow's milk is brought up more than once, and later it is revealed the killings are a result of the Professor's experiments in manifesting his thoughts. Using nuclear power syphoned from the base, he managed to successfully use his mind to create a living thing which has now run amok. It's the perfect metaphor for Leder, who's own work seems to suffer from runaway ideas. Indeed, the idea of a man's own thoughts being turned into enemies, gaining life beyond himself, could be seen to symbolize the relationship of an artist to their work, or even mental illness.

     Leder was originally slated to direct, but work visa issues prevented that, so veteran British cinematographer turned director Arthur Crabtree stepped in to take the reins. He ably guides the film as it progresses from atom age scare film, into a Gothic interlude in a crypt at night, until finally becoming a siege movie. The cinematography is crisp, atmospheric black and white. Take note of the scene in the autopsy room; Crabtree and cinematographer Lionel Banes evoke a creepy, ominous mood through use of shadow. 

     When the creature's finally become visible, they are crawling brains with antennae and spinal cord. The climax, in which they launch an attack on Walgate's house, where our character's are holed up, is shockingly violent and gory. Stop motion is used to animate the brain creatures, and though it ain't Harryhausen, it doesn't look terrible. The idea of gross, murderous brain's sounds funny on paper, but under Crabtree's direction it comes across as scary and intense. 

     A nuclear scare film that is also about the relationship of the military-industrial complex with civilians, the power of thought, and killer brains; "Fiend Without a Face" is the best example of Herbert J. Leder's "conceptual stew" approach to screenwriting. The mix of ideas work in harmony in a manner they just don't in the pictures he directed himself. Perhaps it's the journeyman efficiency of Crabtree that managed to corral all those elements into a cohesive whole. This picture does what a B-movie should; it introduces interesting and unusual concept's and conflict's and then solves them with monsters, guns and explosions.    

      

"It!" (1967) on Warner Archive Instant

   

     Did "Psycho" not have enough museums and Yiddish folklore for you? Then I think you may be the audience Herbert J. Leder was aiming for when he made "It!". An audience I suspect consists of one member, namely: "Herbert J Leder".

     Arhur Pimm (Roddy McDowell) is a curator's assistant at a museum which has just had a warehouse fire. He and the curator, Harold Grove (Ernest Clark), search the smoky, brick strew ruins. The only thing left standing among the rubble is the ashen, ghastly figure of The Golem. Grove rests his umbrella in the figures hands, soon there's a yell and suddenly Pimm has a dead boss.

     Pimm hopes to get the curator position but doesn't, and he gets suitably p.o.'d about it. The Golem is moved to the museum, and the electrician there to light it takes a moment to blow smoke in it's face. If there's anything Golem's hate worse than umbrella's it's cigarettes, so the figure falls, crushing him to death.

     Word gets out that the museum has a killer statue, which leads to boffo box office. Arthur fancies the late Harold Grove's daughter ,Ellen (Jill Haworth), and he invites her out for a drive with his mother. At first, she declines, telling him she likes him well enough, she just doesn't "like like" him. Eventually, though he guilts her into it. The car drive doesn't happen until the end of the picture, and it won't be exactly what she bargained for. An American expert, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell), is flown in and informs Pimm that the inscription on his statue is the same as that on the Golem of legend. Jim has got two things on his mind: making time with the lovely Ellen and getting The Golem back to New York. Markings from the statue are taken to a Jewish scholar, who informs Pimm they are a warning mankind will not make it into the 21st Century. Using a scroll hidden in the Golem's foot, Pimm re-animates the creature. Professor Weal (Aubrey Richards), the new curator, sees him doing this, and the Golem (Alan Sellers) is ordered to eliminate the witness. When the murder is complete Pimm has the Golem help him steal jewelry he can bring home to his dead mother.

     Oh, have I buried the lead? Yeah, Pimm lives at home in a Norman Bates-ian existence with his mother's corpse, right down to the rocking chair (a "rot-king" chair, if this were a "Tales From the Crypt comic). Writer/producer/director Leder is an odd guy; he does an unfrozen Nazi movie actually about a decapitated head of a young woman, and he does a Golem movie that's a psychological study of a necroOedipal jewel thief. There's a great dream sequence, in which an unclothed Ellen appears to Pimm, bathed in lurid red light. When he finally reaches her, though, it turns out to actually be the decaying body of his corpse mom. It's Hitchock by way of a 1950's horror comic, all shadows and colored lighting. Frustrated by both his subconscious incestuous desires and Ellen's spending time with Jim, Pimm has the Golem destroy a bridge, the aftermath of which is shown in a really bad matte painting.

     The movie never becomes as interesting and fun as it could potentially be, favoring endless scenes of dry dialogue over exploring the truly twisted psyche of the main character. More than once Pimm mentions he and his dead mother's connection to the supernatural, but again, aside from a mental bond to The Golem, nothing much is done with it. As with "The Frozen Dead", Leder introduces all these cool (pun not intended) elements and just leaves them on the table. Leder isn't enough of a maniac to take the movie he has started and push it to the limit, he's constantly pumping the brakes.

     Not until the last ten minutes, when there's a Golem prison break, followed by Pimm taking Ellen hostage and hiding out with dead old mum and his pal Golem at a castle, does the movie finally give into it's wild side. We've got Roddy McDowell lighting a woman on fire and the British army firing a bazooka The Golem who is guarding the castle. If only Leder didn't eat up the other ninety-percent of his movie with people talking in a museum. The bazooka proves ineffective, so what do you do when that happens? If you're the army in this movie, you employ a "small" nuclear warhead, of course. The ending is what you'd get if Robert Bloch had a mental condition and was 12 years old when he wrote "Psycho". This picture manages to be both insane and underwhelming at the same time. Yes, the ending is crazy, but getting there is a slow crawl. Leder's reach exceeds his grasp and one can't help but think he would have been served well by creative collaborators. The climax of this film is essentially Norman Bates vs. The World, and it's given such little screen time that it comes across as muddled and rushed. We should have gotten here at the beginning of the last third of the film and not the last ten minutes.

     "It!" is a weird mash-up of disparate influences: "Psycho", Jewish legend, psychic abilities and nuclear apocalypse. Fun on paper, but unremarkable in execution, "It!" continually threatens to be a psychotic good time, but unfortunately waits until too late in the proceedings to stop taking it's medication.

   


     

"The Amazing Captain Nemo" (1978) on Warner Archive Instant

   

     The pre-credit sequence in "The Amazing Captain Nemo" is a fantastic moment of gonzo 70s television. A rumpled, cardigan clad Burgess Meredith stands on the bridge of his TV movie style sci-fi submarine, a metal demon-masked first mate by his side.

He has the President of the US on the video phone and makes to him the most alliterative of ransom demands: "One billion dollars in gold bullion in a buoyant capsule...", or he destroys DC with a nuke. Then, as proof he's not screwing around, he has a guy in what can best be described as a monkey fetus mask blow up an island. Roll opening credits. It's the kind of delirious high point most movies spend their running time never reaching. I was scared that it would be all downhill from there; 90 minutes of talky boring-ness. My fears were misguided.

     While engaged in "war games" (as a screen graphic informs us), Tom Franklin (Tom Hallick) and Jim Porter (Burr DeBenning) discover the Nautilus, with Captain Nemo (Jose Ferrer) in a state of hibernation inside a smoky glass tube. Soon, Nemo awakens and they inform him who they are: "We're with the US Pacific fleet, sir. Special assignment: underwater." Special assignment: underwater? This movie has seven credited screenwriters (including the legendary Robert Bloch). Seven screenwriters and that line is fully indicative of the level of dialogue on display throughout.

     Nemo is convinced to delay his planned excursion to search for Atlantis in order that he may help these guys and their boss (Warren Stevens) thwart Prof. Waldo Cunningham's (Burgess Meredith) doomsday plan. It should be noted that the POTUS was given a week to comply with the Professor's demands and they ask Nemo for help sometime during day number seven. What was their plan if they didn't find a preserved nautical character from classic literature? What were they doing for the other six days?

     Cunningham once again threatens the President, and once again the President sits there, staring at him, saying nothing. The Commander-In-Chief doesn't utter a single word. He just stares back. It's really odd. Soon, Nemo is aboard the Professor's ship and we go into full post "Star Wars" rip-off mode: there's laser battles, robots, and set design that looks like "Star Wars" if Kenner made the sets. Also, there has to be an ersatz Darth Vader, so we've got Tor (Med Flory...who died earlier this year, and who I just saw on the big screen a couple hours ago at a showing of "The Nutty Professor"...man, I would've loved to have interviewed that guy), who is giant, metal headed, semi psychic and sounds like the love child of James Earl Jones and Solomon Grundy (from "Super Friends"). He says things like: "Aliens must die." and "Nemo is back on Nautilus."

     No sooner has Nemo shot Cunningham's rocket out of the sky, than we are sent into another adventure. It seems the US has dumped nuclear waste at the bottom of the sea and now we expect the good Captain to help us seal it off. Coincidentally, The Professor also wants this nuclear junk: "Let's go fishing! Let's catch some radioactive fish we can feed to my nuclear power plant!" On this trip Nemo is joined by Dr. Robert Cook (Mel Ferrer...no relation), a scientist who is hooking up with his granddaughter (not really...she's actually "Kate", played by Lynda Day George, as she puts it, "I'm a nuclear physicist, I'm trained to deal with nuclear problems.") Ol' Robert Cook turns out to be evil and there's a great pseudo sword fight betwixt the Ferrer's that ends when Jose stabs Mel in the crotch which leads to him getting electrocuted.

     This is truly an "and then" movie, with no concern for background, character or fancy plotting, only with getting to the next bit of action. The missile is destroyed AND THEN Nemo has to navigate a minefield AND THEN his oxygen is cut AND THEN there's a sword fight AND THEN he has to fool The Professor with a "clone" Nautilus AND THEN he finds Atlantis AND THEN ... . "The Amazing Captain Nemo" is a crappy yellowing pulp paperback that you got for free and can't put down. It plays like an old serial edited together, only this time in the 1970s. This makes more sense when you realize this movie is three episodes of Irwin Allen's would-be follow up to "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" stuck together with scotch tape.

     Captain Nemo plumbs the depths of murky 70s optical effects, oftentimes looking like toys being filmed in a dirty aquarium. According to IMDB, Cunningham's ship actually is a toy, a modified version of a "Space:1999" vehicle. As for the Nautilus, it's a reconstituted miniature from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (again, credit to IMDB). The live action underwater scenes directed by Paul Stader, though, are excellent. Well shot and engaging, I prefer the underwater shoot outs in this movie to similar scenes in the infinitely more well regarded "Thunderball". I have weird taste (or lack of) sometimes.

     Jose Ferrer does the most he can with what he's given here, delivering his lines with a bearded stoicism. Burgess Meredith on the other hand, appears to be having a freakin' blast, wrapping his teeth around the dialogue and relishing it. Whenever he's onscreen there's a sense of mania that's intoxicating. Also, fan's of "Magnificent Seven" and "One, Two Three" take note: The "German James Dean" himself, Horst Bucholz, shows up as King Tibor of Atlantis. I couldn't help but think while watching him, what a perfect "Sub-Mariner" he would have made.

     "The Amazing Captain Nemo" arrived one year after "Star Wars", and the scenes aboard Cunningham's ship give reason to suspect they were trying to graft on some George Lucas elements in order to appeal to audiences. Whereas "Star Wars" transcended it's pulp roots to become something monumental, this movie stays closer to the small scale cheap fun of those old serials, and that's just fine by me. It's a joyful, low-budget affair and when it's limitation's show, you don't laugh in derision, instead you smile along with it. This is exactly the kind of movie I want to watch on a rainy weekend afternoon. Based on the pattern established, I'm going to assume that within a minute of the ending Nemo was cast into another quest which somehow ended up involving the nefarious Professor Cunningham and that even now the two are doing gleeful battle in a never ending repetitive cycle.

Richard Kiel (1939-2014)

   

     Ladies and gentlemen, Eegah and Jaws have left the building. This has been a tough stretch for those involved in classic MST3K episodes: first "Mitchell" director Andrew V. McLaglen goes, and now the titular star of "Eegah!"  My most indelible memory of Kiel is not from his Bond film appearances, but as The Monster in the "I Was A Teenage Monster" episode of "The Monkees". As a kid who was a huge fan of both classic monster movies and The Prefab Four, it was the perfect mix of stuff I liked.

     Kiel worked extensively in television in the 60s and 70s. Quite a few of his appearances are available through Hulu (which is a great, unsung resource for classic television):

"I Spy": A Few Miles West of Nowhere (1968)

"Emergency!": I'll Fix It (1974)

"The Fall Guy": That's Right, We're Bad (1981)

"Twilight Zone" : To Serve Man (1962) (also available on Netflix)

"It Takes A Thief": The Galloping Skin Game (1968)

"I Dream of Jeannie": My Hero (1965)

"My Mother, The Car": A Riddler On The Roof (1966)

     Additionally, Hulu has the un-riffed version of

"Eegah!" (1962)

     as well as another team up with Arch Hall's Jr. and Sr. (with cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond!):

"The Nasty Rabbit" (1964)


     and a colorized version of his first film credit

"The Phantom Planet" (1961)

but why not just check out the uncolorized version here:

     Netflix doesn't have as much of the big man, but they do have "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", which Kiel appeared on twice.

     As well as the Hollywood sports comedies "The Longest Yard" (1974) and "Happy Gilmore" (1996)

"The Frozen Dead" (1966) on Warner Archive Instant

"I'm as good a Nazi as I was 25 years ago."

     Sometimes, after a tough night at work, you just want to go home and watch a movie about an unfrozen Nazi army. This was my thinking when I decided to watch "The Frozen Dead". Unfortunately, the picture is a bit of a bait and switch.

     Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) is a Nazi scientist living on a British estate with his assistant Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), and his bald, staring manservant Joseph (Oliver MacGreevy). The doctor has been conducting experiments trying to reanimate frozen Nazi soldiers. He has not been fully successful in this and is a man surrounded by his failures. There is a dungeon filled with his half-brained test subjects and we learn that even the nimrod Joseph was a failed experiment, as well. Hey, at least he got a butler out of the deal.

     Soon, the Third Reich come knocking and inform Norberg that they want him to reanimate the 1500 frozen Nazi "elite" that lie in wait around the world. Now don't get yourself too excited thinking how great that movie would be-the one about unfrozen fascist hordes descending on mankind-because you don't get that one. We have Dr. Norberg (and writer/producer/director Herbert J. Leder) to blame. Because, as he we learn, he kind of sucks as a scientist. Besides never successfully bringing back a frozen kraut with a working brain intact, he also at one point screws up another brain when Karl bursts through a door and startles him. If this dude wasn't such a sub par Nazi mad doctor, we wouldn't have had to wait 43 years for "Dead Snow". Thanks alot, Dana Andrews.

     The movie we get is about the severed head of a young woman. Norberg's niece, Jean (Anna Palk), arrives home at the estate with her friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck). In order to procure Herr Doktor a head to experiment on, Karl drugs Elsa and then has her killed by the most violent of the reanimated subjects (played by Edward Fox...yes, "Day of the Jackal" Edward Fox. According to his IMDB page he "claims to have never worn jeans"). Norberg is eventually joined by an eager American scientist Dr. Ted Roberts (Philip Gilbert), who gets too much screen time. Also, there's a Nazi woman hiding in town, Mrs. Schmidt (Anne Tirard), who has a swastika carved into her face. She wears a life mask of her own unscarred visage in order to hide her shame and gets too little screen time. This flick excels at doing nothing with the supremely cool and creepy elements it introduces. The bulk of the movie concerns the plight of poor Elsa's head. Bathed in blue light, the severed head effect looks like an EC comic. The cinematography is lurid and colorful, and is served well by the HD presentation

     Elsa sits tragically in the basement, whispering and trying to mentally contact Jean. It would seem that through the doctor's tinkering she has gained psychic abilities. This leads to without a doubt the best scene ever to feature a bitchy argument between a Nazi mad scientist and his assistant about whether or not the psychic, animated head they are keeping is negatively affecting the mindset of the half-witted unfrozen soldier's they have captive.

     "The Frozen Dead" starts off promising us "Shock Waves", but ends up delivering "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". Once I got over the fact this wasn't the flick I was anticipating, I enjoyed it. It feels like a horror comic book come to life and Elsa is a truly weird, unsettling presence. Also, who can hate a movie with a climax involving a decapitated head mentally controlling a wall of severed arms?

   

Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

   

The comedy god's have been cruel indeed this past month, which has seen both Robin Williams and now Rivers depart from this world. There's quite a bit of her work available streaming. The real treasure trove is over at Hulu, where 65 episodes of her 1968 talk show "That Show" are available. Guests include Jerry Lewis, Joel Grey, Johnny Carson and Soupy Sales. If that doesn't appeal to you, you're reading the wrong blog.

Hulu:

"That Show" (1968)

"Don't Start With Me" (2012), stand up special (available on Netflix as well)

Netflix:

"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" (2010), documentary

"Spaceballs" (1987)

here's Mel Brooks hosting "The Late Show" when "Spaceballs" was released:

"The Muppet's Take Manhattan" (1984)

Andrew V. McLaglen (1920-2014)

     Andrew V. McLaglen passed away on Saturday at the age of 94. I know him as the director of "Mitchell", my favorite episode of MST3K. He also directed a sequel to Peckinpah's "Cross of Iron", "Breakthrough", which is available on YouTube in it's entirety. I bought it on VHS a few months ago at the Goodwill store, I think I'll give it a spin in his honor.

    This guy was king of the WWII sequel, as he also did a sequel to "The Dirty Dozen" called "The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission", and that's available on Warner Archive Instant.

     He even did an unofficial sequel to "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Return From the River Kwai"

     Both Netflix and Hulu have "McLintock!", his 1963 comedy western with The Duke available to stream. The Duke made the same amount of movies with McLaglen as he did with Howard Hawks: five.

"The League of Gentlemen" (1960) on Hulu Plus

     Four years before "Seance on a Wet Afternoon", Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes teamed for the entertaining heist picture, 1960's "The League of Gentlemen". This was a year before Forbes made the leap to directing, when he was making his living as a writer and actor. He scripts and co-stars, while British film industry stalwart Basil Dearden directs.

     It's the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) and the group of men he assembles to carry out a heist. There's an economy of storytelling to the beginning of this picture. In a series of brief scenes each character is established: Major Peter Race (Nigel Patrick) is hosting gambling parties, Major Rupert Rutland-Smith (Terence Alexander) is a cuckolded shell of a husband, Captain "Padre" Mycroft (Roger Livesey) is hiding out posing as a priest and carrying around a case of dirty books, Captain Martin Porthill (Bryan Forbes) is a playboy shacking up with an older woman, Captain Stevens (Kieron Moore) is running a gym and being blackmailed, Captain Frank Weaver (Norman Bird) is a milk drinking sad-sack living with his obnoxious wife and father-in-law, and Lieutenant Edward Lexy (Richard Attenborough) runs a shop fixing radios and gambling machines.With deft strokes of writing and directing we see these characters in three dimensions, with no wasted time or effort.

     "I had a bloody good war", says Rutland-Smith to his wife early on in the picture. When the men first assemble together with Hyde, he goes around the room giving the background of each man and we learn that these "gentlemen" are a group of scoundrels and traitors, perverts and murderers. As it turns out, they did not have a bloody good war. Hyde later explains why he chose who he did, Race is a transport officer, "Weaver genius with explosives, Lexy, a radio king, Mycroft, absolutely first class quartermaster, and the other three, good trained soldiers. Ruthless..." He has formed his own criminal battalion of disgraced vets. It's the type of picture John Sturges (who Attenborough would act for in "The Great Escape") did so well, the story of a group of men coming together to do a job.

     Forbes' script, specifically the first half, is endlessly charming and funny. There are no throw away lines, it's all in service of plot and character. As the story moves forward, though, the screenplay is forced to move into the mechanisms necessary of a heist picture and things get a bit less interesting.

     Dearden directs with a straightforward style and light touch, his main focus is to always keep the audience entertained. The sequence in which the men steal gun's from an army base is a perfect example. Half the men pose as higher-ups doing a spot inspection of the base's food, while the other's steal the arm's. We cut back and forth between the comic scenes of the inspection and the tense scene's of the gun heist. This is a film that wants the audience to smile while they are on the edge of their seat's.The climatic bank heist scene is wonderfully atmospheric and intense. It's a smoke bomb and gas mask laden affair that hearkens back to Siodmak's "Criss Cross" and Lang's "You Only Live Once".

     The movie's portrayal of women is fairly abysmal. Every woman is either a slut or a shrew. This is a "man's movie" where there is no concern for the fairer sex. This is crystallized in a moment when Race asks Hyde about his wife, to which he replies, "I regret to say the bitch is still going strong."

     For a picture that starts off with such strong characterizations, it never really does much with the character's once they are established. The friendship of Race and Hyde is the only real relationship it builds and there's never any real conflict among the men. There's not one single performance that stands out beyond the other's, as the entire ensemble acquit themselves quite nicely. Hawkins, Patrick and Livesey are the most memorable, also it's fun seeing Attenborough play a wolfish, pinstripe attired cad.

     We never feel the stakes are high in this movie, it's too charming for that, it's main concern is with being an entertainment, and in that it succeeds. That being said, we root for the men to pull of the job, so it accomplishes the main requirement of a heist picture. It's just that I wanted to care about these characters more, I wanted there to be more gravity. "The League of Gentlemen" is a delightful piece of cinema, but it can't be considered one of the great crime pictures.  

   

Oh yeah, and check out this Oliver Reed cameo!!