Thank you @Barbel@CoolHandBond I have only reviewed 13 Carry On films on here [out of 31] and as I only watch them when they come on the telly, the reviews are quite spread out. Maybe I should have created a separate thread for my Carry On Critiques 🤔🤔🤔 but I am still in the midst of Alistair MacLean - it is taking a while, I have to pause for breathers. But the films are repeated often on ITV and Talking Pictures in the UK, so I am confident I will catch them all eventually.
P>S> my review for Up the Kyber was only one line so it might need updating. I wrote "Outrageously hilarious" Never a truer review have I posted.
@HarryCanyon My musical knowledge is very limited and I’ve never heard of Kansas (the group, not the state 😂), I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, and I quite like this, so I’m going to search them out on Spotify 🍻
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
You'd probably dig their greatest hits compilation. Lots of good stuff on there. Otherwise, 'Leftoverture' and 'Point of Know Return' are both extremely solid albums.
It looks like a live version - but it isn't. I couldn't find a decent live recording. So you get the studio take from Deja Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Back to business, but not a Carry On masterpiece, instead I give you:
DOCTOR AT LARGE (1957)
Phenomenally popular in its day, but creaking with age now, Doctor at Large is the third of seven films based on Richard Gordon’s medical novels set in and around St Swithin’s Hospital and the adventures of its doctors, nurses and surgeons. Dirk Bogarde once again stars as the possibly incompetent Simon Sparrow and Donald Sinden returns as the definitely incompetent Tony Benskin. James Robertson Justice plays Sir Lancelot Spratt, chief surgeon and a man whose roar is worse than his bark. This time, Sparrow seeks work in General Practice and gets involved with unsuitable women at every turn, including Shirley Eaton. Pleasant, but only sporadically amusing, you can see where the Carry On team got the inspiration for their own medical comedies. Gordon’s well-observed books also spawned a long running television series. Dirk Bogarde was so upset by these matinee idol roles he sleepwalked through Doctor in Distress when forced to make it in 1963. Better things were to come from him.
The third of five Anthony Mann / James Stewart western collaborations, this one is a classic all-ends-up. Curiously, I only recently named The Naked Spur as one of my favourite westerns in a list requested by @Number24 – and then it crops up on the Great Action channel! Of course, we can debate a film’s classic status forever, but The Naked Spur certainly requires close scrutiny as it is a ferocious, intense psychological drama which transfers much of the ideas of the noir thriller into the glorious technicolour of the wild west.
Film noir tends to be oneiric, erotic, morally ambivalent, cruel and visually peculiar. While The Naked Spur doesn’t inhabit a dream-like landscape, it certainly pertains to people’s dreams. Each character wishes to better themselves, to attain a hopeful future, be it a ranch, a gold strike, a good woman or a new life in California; sometimes more than one wish imbibes the quintet. Stewart’s character Howard Kemp suffers nightmares where he dreams of the life he once had: a farm, a family, a future, all taken from him during the Civil War after his wife ran off with another man and sold his ranch. The sense of betrayal has left him embittered, lonely and vengeful of anyone who attempts to cross him. Ultimately, he wants to return to that dreamlike future-past.
Luckily, Robert Ryan’s villainous Ben Vandergroat has a $5000 bounty on his head; enough money for Kemp to buy back his ranch. Having tracked his quarry from Kansas to Colorado, Kemp enlists the help of grizzled prospector Jesse Tate [Millard Mitchell] and disgraced cavalry officer Roy Anderson [Ralph Meeker]. Initially this appears to work in his favour, as Vandergroat is apprehended, but this outlaw is a sly, deceptive bandit who uses every verbal trick in his playbook to rouse the trio into fighting each other, psychologically or physically, his main point of attack being greed, that, as Anderson succinctly puts it, Vandergroat “is just a bag of money.”
This is one of Robert Ryan’s greatest performances, a man completely at ease with his captured position, who works every angle exactly how a cornered gangster would in a noir. He sneers, sniggers and scowls his way through every frame, forever reminding us he is a dangerous cornered animal. He even uses his girlfriend to manipulate both Kemp and Anderson into believing they can either romance her [in Kemp’s case] or rape her [in Anderson’s]. Janet Leigh is perhaps a mite too modern a looking for a western, with her short blonde hair and tomboyish attitudes; she acts as if she really is a gangster’s moll in a 1940s noir, all blind obedience, sudden repentance and desirous, half-open, wetted lips. Lina’s feelings towards Kemp are initially hostile, but they soften once she learns of his sorrowful past and, in true noir style, it is her as both femme fatale and homely protective mistress who resurrects Kemp’s decency.
There’s certainly viciousness, toward horses, men, women and Native Americans. Mostly the antagonism is verbal and from the mouth and mind of Vandergroat, whose schemes are like quicksilver, burning fast and polluting everything and everyone they touch. Ralph Meeker’s impulsive, unstable Lieutenant Anderson doesn’t help matters, starting a gun battle with peaceful Indians, provoking Kemp into a tough, possibly foolhardy decisions, closing the latter’s options one-by one until the two eventually fight. Yet all the time, Vandergroat watches, his grimacing smile an expression of complete certainty. His true prey is the kindly Jesse, a man whose dreams, like those of the victim in the noir thriller, are ambiguous. Money doesn’t solve all your problems and usually creates more: if you are greedy it leads to your death. Vandergroat will administer death with as little compassion as a the Grim Reaper himself.
Forced to chase their quarry again, Kemp and Anderson track the fugitives to a canyon where Kemp climbs the gorge and uses his spurs to injure his enemy, causing Vandergroat to fall to his death. The climax is vivid and frenzied. Bronislav Kapur’s almost manic music score underlines time and again the madness that overcomes every character: a madness for money, reward and self-gratification. Here the violent, vicious notes accompany the tortures of death and battle. Overcome, Kemp breaks down. It is Lina who returns him to normality, out of his vengeful nightmare and towards his dream world: a new life in California with a pretty woman and a handful of coins and gold nuggets.
Throughout, Anthony Mann frames the action among the wild mountains of the Colorado Valley. The landscape becomes a character in itself, the rushing river washing those dreams away, the capes alternately bright and beautiful, then dark and brooding, the forests casting long shadows across the trails which the riders are swallowed by and emerge from, the final rock climb a ladder to the sky surrounding the bluff. Not so much strange, as eerily empty and all-encompassing. The film is shot by William C. Mellor in glorious colour, although one wishes it was in Cinemascope, and edited to a switch by George White. The brutal screenplay, which has barely a good word in it for any character to recite, was Oscar nominated and is written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom [one of ours, no less, from YOLT]. It has a strong affiliations with notions of revenge and redemption, and how they affect men and women individually as well as those around them.
At the movie’s core, of course, is James Stewart in a brilliant performance, one that displays no little lack of the decency and gentlemanship he had been noted for in the 1940s. His Howard Kemp is a western pirate of sorts, whose redeeming features only come to light when his defences are breached, by sleep, by injury, by desire. The performance initially appears very one note, but watch the small things he does: tinkling the twenty dollar coins he bribes Jesse with, the singular replies to questions, the lack of violent response when he is tipped off his horse, the manner in which he contemplatively weigh’s Anderson’s personality while reading the officer’s ‘discharge without honour’ papers. These moments, and more, reveal an actor at the very top of his game, working the script for every ounce of nuance he can find, interpreting it to provide his one-dimensional voice with a three-dimensional vista. Like those splendid sceneries, Stewart’s Howard Kemp is contradictorily cold, hot, weak, strong, brazen, timid, brutal and kind.
There’s so much to say about this film it’s difficult to know where to begin.
Ok, let’s start with the James Bond connections of which there are numerous (and I’ve probably missed some). Maurice Binder is one of the producers and his MR style fonts and layouts are used in the title and end credits, Michael Reed is director of photography, Richard Grayson, Alf Joint and George Leech are on the stunt team and in the acting credits are Christopher Lee, Michael Lonsdale, Robert Brown and Rose Alba.
Set in WW2 this is a fictional adventure with Anthony Quinn as The Basque (no other name) tasked by the Resistance in leading a scientist (James Mason) and his wife (Patricia Neal) and two children across the Pyrenees to safety, hotly pursued by Malcolm McDowell’s SS officer and band of Nazi’s. Only Christopher Lee, as a gypsy leader, attempts to speak in anything other than all the other actors natural accents. McDowell’s portrayal of the SS officer is sheer pulp hokum, all bug-eyed snarling madness, it makes Steven Berkoff’s General Orlov look positively low-key and restrained! One scene has him undressing down to his undershorts, which have a swastika emblem on them, I kid you not, as he prepares to rape James Mason’s daughter, played by the pretty and very buxom Kay Lenz.
Director J Lee Thomson is used to handling action and there are plenty of explosions and chases, along with gallons of blood. Producer Maurice Binder obviously calls in a favour from Cubby, as the avalanche scenes are nabbed from OHMSS including the howling wind sound effects.
The whole thing is ludicrous, but if you set that aside, then the movie plays out as a serviceable piece of pulp entertainment.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Clint Eastwood’s Josey Wales is a farmer from Missouri whose family were murdered by Red Leg Union bushwhackers during the American Civil War. He takes up arms as a Confederate bushwhacker and becomes a fearsome and ruthless gunfighter. After the war, he refuses to surrender and attempts to escape into Mexico, along the way picking up a stray Cherokee Indian Chief, a Navajo squaw, a wizened Kansas matriarch and her comely granddaughter, oxen, horses and a decrepit town’s kinfolk. After many bloody skirmishes, redemption appears on the horizon until the original band of Red Legs catch up with him seeking a $5000 reward.
Considered a latter day western masterpiece, The Outlaw Josey Wales is a well photographed and startlingly edited quest narrative epic in miniature form. The film is episodic and during each episode the characters learn a little more about each other and themselves. Wales is not only searching for Mexico, but a new life, a quiet place away from the killing and the memory of war. Eastwood has remarked that the film is a commentary on the USA of the 1970s, where the nation was sick of war and the climate of revenge and retribution, the lies of authority and the lack of opportunity [the Vietnam War, I assume]. That maybe stretches a point. The movie is based on the book Gone to Texas, by Forrest Carter, which I have not read, so I can’t comment on how close an adaptation it is. What I can comment on is the movie’s constant referencing of other western tropes, such as Leone’s stylised spaghetti western shootouts and rough house staging posts, Steven’s saloon confrontations, Hawks’s band of brothers holed up in a house under fire, Ford’s white man / Native American talking peace, Curtiz’s ruffian Comanchero raiders, Eastwood’s own fiery flashbacks, a posse, settlers seeking the new land, homesteaders dancing by squeeze box, the pull of domestic life, Chief Dan George repeating his turn as a wise old Injun.
A very good western with a remarkable number of minor narrative inconsistencies that you have to ignore. A healthy dash of humour takes the edge off the relentless killing. The most potent scene is between Eastwood and Will Sampson’s Comanche Ten Bears, who philosophise over life and death. After that, the final show down feels like nothing more than a bloody climax. Well directed, a fine achievement, but an empty one. It is perhaps too violent for its own benefit and while it may be anti-war, it seems to revel in the nature of warfare and suggest without justification that any man or woman can, if provoked, become violent enough to slaughter other humans. The lesson is too simplistic. The story, with its Greek odyssey narrative, never quite succeeds in being believable and is at odds with the filmmaker’s strive to be intensely realistic.
Tremendously influential film whose reputation goes well before it. A thriller in four episodes effectively told by director Alfred Hitchcock.
The first is the most interesting as Janet Leigh’s estate agent’s secretary decides to run off with $40,000 and make hay with her lover. Bad weather way-lays her at the Bates Motel, where creepy Anthony Perkins hides more than his aptitude for taxidermy. She ends up knifed to death in the shower. A cacophony of sound, music and vision, this excellently edited scene set the stall up for all future sudden murders and a whole slew of imitators started slashing in Norman Bates’s wake. George Tomasini does the snappy cut work and Bernard Herrmann handles the incidental score, which is sometimes a little too wild. Visually, unless Hitch and photographer John Russell play games with us [close ups feature prominently, including many of people’s eyes – windows to the soul, one wonders, by the film’s end] the look of the film is stark monochrome and fairly uninteresting. The usual tatty Hitchcock back projection is noticeable.
What draws the attention is the dialogue between Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane and Perkins’s Norman Bates, how they are subtlety describing each other’s lives, thus making fateful decisions for them both. There has been a lot of critical cultural talk about the opening scene as two lovers recline in a motel bedroom, but what may have shocked in 1960 hardly raises an eyebrow today. More pertinent are the moments of indecision expressed by Leigh as she escapes with the envelope crammed with $100 bills, how she fiddles with the packages, packs and repacks her bag twice, inadvertently draws attention to herself. It is a very knowingly directed first half, with close attention to details, excellent editing and a very fine increase in scorching tension.
The second episode involves Martin Balsam’s private detective. This one repeats almost exactly what we saw in the first. The suspense rises in the same manner and the climax, although coming faster [15 minutes as opposed to 45] is no less shocking.
The third and least interesting section has John Gavin and Vera Miles pursuing Marion and the detective to the Bates Motel and revealing the shocking truth in a climax of those sharp, scratchy violins. The dialogue, which had been swift and sharp and penetrative in the first two sections, becomes banal and the shock-value machinations are less taut – Vera Miles finding a room decorated with stuffed birds is much less creepy than Anthony Perkins suddenly, nervously peeping through a spy-hole as Janet Leigh strips for bed. Now, Joseph Stefano’s script becomes less concerned with the psychology of the players and instead delivers a series of pointers towards the eventual outcome.
There is a coda that explains Norman Bates’s state of mind, but the film could have done without that; perhaps it was only shot for the reference to the devil, as Norman’s mother considers herself the Lord of Flies [“They’ll believe me, because I wouldn’t hurt a fly”]. Perkins’s final smirk, as if to identify Norman’s persona fully with his mother, resembles that of her skeleton corpse. In a year packed full of great male acting performances, Perkins must have been gutted to miss out on any awards or nominations; he is consummately superb and thoroughly believable, so much so that – on celluloid at least – the majority of serial killers began to resemble his Norman Bates in thought, word and deed.
Psycho is not Hitchcock’s best film, but thanks to that one shocking shower scene, it will forever be associated with him.
Very good, but maybe not quite as good as one might expect.
PSYCHO is very good but definitely not my favorite Hitch. Right now, it's a tossup between REAR WINDOW and NORTH BY NORTHWEST as to which one is my favorite.
good Psycho review @chrisno1 . Cant remember if I've ever filed a Psycho report here, its such a wellknown film its intimidating to try to say something new. I like the way you break it down into acts, as they are very different. I agree the first act climaxing with Marion Cranes murder is the best part, the scenes we all remember. The rest is a bit more of a drag until we finally see the old lady and the psychobabble at the end an unneeded overexplanation. but Hitchcock liked his psychobabble.
last time I rewatched it I was over at a friends house. and the time before I'd visited that same friend, we'd rewatched the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. so a few moments after Norman Bates first appears, I blurted out "this character would make a good lead singer for Talking Heads!". and I dont think David Byrne would be offended, since their first hit single was called Psycho Killer
one thing I've read is Hitchcock made this with crew from his teevee show rather than his usual film crew, after the huge scale of North by Northwest he wanted to do a lowbudget shocker. I think this info was in that Making of Psycho book that came out a few years ago and was later itself adapted to film
last Hitchcock I watched was The Lady Vanishes (1938), while visiting my mum a few weeks ago. I liked it more than I had previously, as I accepted its an ensemble comedy with a spy-ish premise, rather than a straight spy thriller like his earlier 1930s films. My poor old mum was thoroughly confused as to why someone would kidnap the old lady, I kept saying "remember that scene at the beginning where she listens to the street musician play and memorises the melody? that was important". but even at the end, they dont explain what top secret information was somehow encoded in that melody. I tried to explain Hitchcock's notion of the mcguffin to my mum (the actual thing theyre all chasing doesnt matter, its only needed to drive the plot, thats all Hitchcock cares about) , that only made my poor old mum even more frustrated. I dont remember her getting that concerned about the content of the microfilm in NxNW, but maybe microfilm is a more acceptable mcguffin, or NxNW is just a better told story. There are definitely a few plotholes in the Lady Vanishes, such as the poisoning sequence, so best not to overanalyse the specifics of the plot.
a couple weeks ago I finally found a copy of a book called Hitchcock/Truffaut. Its a 350+pg book the dimensions of a textbook, consisting of a series of interviews Francois Truffaut did with Hitchcock over the course of several weeks, covering his career systematically from his entry into the film industry up to Torn Curtain. absolutely essential stuff, Hitchcock explains what he was trying to do with every film and offers opinions on what worked and what failed. You all need a copy. now Chris has reviewed it, I should skip ahead and see what The Master of Suspense himself says about Psycho.
I'm still reading about his silent films which I mostly havent seen. His origins in silent film are fundamental to how he made film all his life, as he believed storytelling should be primarily visual. Theres always clever quotable dialog in his films, but thats to reveal character or for pacing, his ideal is the important information should be shown, not told. Of course sometimes he does overexplain in dialog, as in that final scene from Psycho that Chris didnt like. That may also explain why my mum was so frustrated by the Lady Vanishes
something you BondFans want to know: Hitchcock resented the Bond films for stealing his style with the spyfilms, thats why he tried to do such very different films in the early 60s, he felt everybody else was imitating what he did best (so he says, but the timing doesnt work does it? Psycho was before Dr No, and he still made two more spyfilms in the late 60s)
OK maybe this isnt the real Alfred Hitchcock, but here is John Candy impersonating Alfred Hitchcock giving us his opinion on Psycho: his greatest film and probably the scariest movie ever made!
Thanks for that info @caractacus potts . There is a documentary film of Hitchcock / Truffaut , I believe. That McGuffin business is always a bit tricky to figure.
@HarryCanyon in terms of pure suspense, Rear Window is fabulous, the set up is amazingly straightforward. North By Northwest is for sure his most easily accessible work. My personal favourite is Notorious, a dark sexual thriller of much intrigue, deep character and gripping tension. Somewhere on this thread is my extremely detailed review.
That Trauffaut Hitchcock book is great stuff, the real deal.
Didn't Hitch make Psycho as a black comedy or was that him pulling our leg? He said it was like the switchback (?) ride at a fair ground, people laugh and shriek with fear and appreciation. The finale of the psychobabble being a satire of that kind of movie of the time, when misdeeds had to have some shrink talk to explain them, a bit like those warnings at the beginning of teen exploitation films. It's the sort of nod to the audience that Tarantino does.
A teenage friend of mine decades ago (when I was a teen) derided Psycho - he preferred the sequel - but said when he watched it again and decided - without prompting - to enjoy it as a comedy, he said he really got into it. Just one pov of course.
I know it's very well regarded and often listed as Hitch's 'best' film, but I just have too many issues with it. It's extremely slow, Stewart's character comes off as a creepy stalker, and that ending is a groaner. I know this is heresy, but I actually prefer Brian DePalma's BODY DOUBLE which is essentially a sleazy remake of VERTIGO.
Psycho is more than a very good film, it’s an absolute classic. Not only did it influence the beginning of the psychotic serial killer slasher movies, it broke several taboos such as running blood as a life is flushed away, the actual depiction of a toilet (I believe the first film to show one). It was a first in having the lead star die in the first half of the running time. It mixed the thriller genre with horror and black comedy. It may not be Hitchcock’s best movie, but it is the most influential movie he ever made.
@Barbel hits the nail on the head by naming his favourite Hitchcock movie, not the best, my favourite being The Birds.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I've never seen Obsession, but Body Double is a combination of the plots of Rear Window and Vertigo, set in the world of porn. Frankie Goes to Hollywood show up while the hero is undercover at a porn shoot and perform Relax! outrageous slick 'n' sleazy 80s stuff
de Palma revisits the Vertigo concept again in Black Dahlia, where a detective falls for a woman who looks exactly like the murder victim
heres some of what Hitchcock had to say about Psycho in Hitchcock/Truffaut
he chose to film it in b&w because he didnt want the composition dominated by cherry red blood in the murder scene
the opening scene with Marion Crane and her lover was meant to be realistic rather than tittilating, as opposed to previous more stylized love scenes. He'd have preferred if Janet Leigh didnt wear a bra as that was a compromise away from realism (hey who wouldnt prefer that?)
the first half is an escalation of crimes or sins which the viewer comes to accept before being asked to accept something even more shocking: first the premarital sex, then the theft, then the killing.
The viewer is manipulated into first sympathising with the thief through various suspenseful moments as she flees town, then after she is dead, we experience the story from Normans point of view and end up hoping he doesnt get caught by the snoopy police!
the real reason he didnt want viewers entering the theatre late was not the shock ending, but because the topbilled star disappears so quickly: viewers would have been wondering where Janet Leigh is rather than immersing themselves in the story
the staircase scenes where we finally see the old lady were deliberately shot from above so the audience wouldnt start to supect the truth. If she'd been shot from behind, a viewer would immediately ask why cant we see her face, that must be important. but as shot from above, the emphasis is on the sudden shocking violence
the bit where Marty Balsam falls backwards down the stairs was nearly as complex to film as the shower scene and required multiple process shots
Hitchcock says he doesn't care about the subject matter or the acting, but takes pride using pure cinematic technique to provoke an extreme emotional response from so many people
he produced it himself for $800,000-, and it had made $15 million at the time of the interview
Need to see OBSESSION again. Can't recall too much about it but yeah, BODY DOUBLE is an amalgam of several Hitchcock tropes with the central throughline really mirroring many facets of VERTIGO.
Lots of really, really interesting camera elements in BODY DOUBLE. I'm hit or miss on De Palma's films in general but the man certainly knows how to block his shots in interesting ways. If he has has a fantastic script, you can get something like THE UNTOUCHABLES out of him. If you don't...well, you get about 50% of his other films. The less said about BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, the better.
BODY DOUBLE is worth watching, but I don't want to make you think that it's some sort of 'lost classic' or anything. It's the best and the worst of DePalma's cinematic sensibilities with some really graphic violence and nudity in it. The overall narrative really is a 'best of Hitchcock' throughline that even features a really fun split second cameo by DePalma in a mirror.
Comments
Seconded. Enjoying them immensely…umm…Carry On Chris!
Jack Douglas’s “act” was tiresome then, today it’s unwatchable.
Thank you @Barbel @CoolHandBond I have only reviewed 13 Carry On films on here [out of 31] and as I only watch them when they come on the telly, the reviews are quite spread out. Maybe I should have created a separate thread for my Carry On Critiques 🤔 🤔🤔 but I am still in the midst of Alistair MacLean - it is taking a while, I have to pause for breathers. But the films are repeated often on ITV and Talking Pictures in the UK, so I am confident I will catch them all eventually.
P>S> my review for Up the Kyber was only one line so it might need updating. I wrote "Outrageously hilarious" Never a truer review have I posted.
That reminds me of Ford Prefect's review of Earth- "Harmless" - needing updating so he planned to change it to "Mostly harmless".
@HarryCanyon My musical knowledge is very limited and I’ve never heard of Kansas (the group, not the state 😂), I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, and I quite like this, so I’m going to search them out on Spotify 🍻
Cheers!
You'd probably dig their greatest hits compilation. Lots of good stuff on there. Otherwise, 'Leftoverture' and 'Point of Know Return' are both extremely solid albums.
That Kansas track is good, but I prefer this:
It looks like a live version - but it isn't. I couldn't find a decent live recording. So you get the studio take from Deja Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Back to business, but not a Carry On masterpiece, instead I give you:
DOCTOR AT LARGE (1957)
Phenomenally popular in its day, but creaking with age now, Doctor at Large is the third of seven films based on Richard Gordon’s medical novels set in and around St Swithin’s Hospital and the adventures of its doctors, nurses and surgeons. Dirk Bogarde once again stars as the possibly incompetent Simon Sparrow and Donald Sinden returns as the definitely incompetent Tony Benskin. James Robertson Justice plays Sir Lancelot Spratt, chief surgeon and a man whose roar is worse than his bark. This time, Sparrow seeks work in General Practice and gets involved with unsuitable women at every turn, including Shirley Eaton. Pleasant, but only sporadically amusing, you can see where the Carry On team got the inspiration for their own medical comedies. Gordon’s well-observed books also spawned a long running television series. Dirk Bogarde was so upset by these matinee idol roles he sleepwalked through Doctor in Distress when forced to make it in 1963. Better things were to come from him.
THE NAKED SPUR (1953)
The third of five Anthony Mann / James Stewart western collaborations, this one is a classic all-ends-up. Curiously, I only recently named The Naked Spur as one of my favourite westerns in a list requested by @Number24 – and then it crops up on the Great Action channel! Of course, we can debate a film’s classic status forever, but The Naked Spur certainly requires close scrutiny as it is a ferocious, intense psychological drama which transfers much of the ideas of the noir thriller into the glorious technicolour of the wild west.
Film noir tends to be oneiric, erotic, morally ambivalent, cruel and visually peculiar. While The Naked Spur doesn’t inhabit a dream-like landscape, it certainly pertains to people’s dreams. Each character wishes to better themselves, to attain a hopeful future, be it a ranch, a gold strike, a good woman or a new life in California; sometimes more than one wish imbibes the quintet. Stewart’s character Howard Kemp suffers nightmares where he dreams of the life he once had: a farm, a family, a future, all taken from him during the Civil War after his wife ran off with another man and sold his ranch. The sense of betrayal has left him embittered, lonely and vengeful of anyone who attempts to cross him. Ultimately, he wants to return to that dreamlike future-past.
Luckily, Robert Ryan’s villainous Ben Vandergroat has a $5000 bounty on his head; enough money for Kemp to buy back his ranch. Having tracked his quarry from Kansas to Colorado, Kemp enlists the help of grizzled prospector Jesse Tate [Millard Mitchell] and disgraced cavalry officer Roy Anderson [Ralph Meeker]. Initially this appears to work in his favour, as Vandergroat is apprehended, but this outlaw is a sly, deceptive bandit who uses every verbal trick in his playbook to rouse the trio into fighting each other, psychologically or physically, his main point of attack being greed, that, as Anderson succinctly puts it, Vandergroat “is just a bag of money.”
This is one of Robert Ryan’s greatest performances, a man completely at ease with his captured position, who works every angle exactly how a cornered gangster would in a noir. He sneers, sniggers and scowls his way through every frame, forever reminding us he is a dangerous cornered animal. He even uses his girlfriend to manipulate both Kemp and Anderson into believing they can either romance her [in Kemp’s case] or rape her [in Anderson’s]. Janet Leigh is perhaps a mite too modern a looking for a western, with her short blonde hair and tomboyish attitudes; she acts as if she really is a gangster’s moll in a 1940s noir, all blind obedience, sudden repentance and desirous, half-open, wetted lips. Lina’s feelings towards Kemp are initially hostile, but they soften once she learns of his sorrowful past and, in true noir style, it is her as both femme fatale and homely protective mistress who resurrects Kemp’s decency.
There’s certainly viciousness, toward horses, men, women and Native Americans. Mostly the antagonism is verbal and from the mouth and mind of Vandergroat, whose schemes are like quicksilver, burning fast and polluting everything and everyone they touch. Ralph Meeker’s impulsive, unstable Lieutenant Anderson doesn’t help matters, starting a gun battle with peaceful Indians, provoking Kemp into a tough, possibly foolhardy decisions, closing the latter’s options one-by one until the two eventually fight. Yet all the time, Vandergroat watches, his grimacing smile an expression of complete certainty. His true prey is the kindly Jesse, a man whose dreams, like those of the victim in the noir thriller, are ambiguous. Money doesn’t solve all your problems and usually creates more: if you are greedy it leads to your death. Vandergroat will administer death with as little compassion as a the Grim Reaper himself.
Forced to chase their quarry again, Kemp and Anderson track the fugitives to a canyon where Kemp climbs the gorge and uses his spurs to injure his enemy, causing Vandergroat to fall to his death. The climax is vivid and frenzied. Bronislav Kapur’s almost manic music score underlines time and again the madness that overcomes every character: a madness for money, reward and self-gratification. Here the violent, vicious notes accompany the tortures of death and battle. Overcome, Kemp breaks down. It is Lina who returns him to normality, out of his vengeful nightmare and towards his dream world: a new life in California with a pretty woman and a handful of coins and gold nuggets.
Throughout, Anthony Mann frames the action among the wild mountains of the Colorado Valley. The landscape becomes a character in itself, the rushing river washing those dreams away, the capes alternately bright and beautiful, then dark and brooding, the forests casting long shadows across the trails which the riders are swallowed by and emerge from, the final rock climb a ladder to the sky surrounding the bluff. Not so much strange, as eerily empty and all-encompassing. The film is shot by William C. Mellor in glorious colour, although one wishes it was in Cinemascope, and edited to a switch by George White. The brutal screenplay, which has barely a good word in it for any character to recite, was Oscar nominated and is written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom [one of ours, no less, from YOLT]. It has a strong affiliations with notions of revenge and redemption, and how they affect men and women individually as well as those around them.
At the movie’s core, of course, is James Stewart in a brilliant performance, one that displays no little lack of the decency and gentlemanship he had been noted for in the 1940s. His Howard Kemp is a western pirate of sorts, whose redeeming features only come to light when his defences are breached, by sleep, by injury, by desire. The performance initially appears very one note, but watch the small things he does: tinkling the twenty dollar coins he bribes Jesse with, the singular replies to questions, the lack of violent response when he is tipped off his horse, the manner in which he contemplatively weigh’s Anderson’s personality while reading the officer’s ‘discharge without honour’ papers. These moments, and more, reveal an actor at the very top of his game, working the script for every ounce of nuance he can find, interpreting it to provide his one-dimensional voice with a three-dimensional vista. Like those splendid sceneries, Stewart’s Howard Kemp is contradictorily cold, hot, weak, strong, brazen, timid, brutal and kind.
A magnificent western.
THE PASSAGE (1979)
There’s so much to say about this film it’s difficult to know where to begin.
Ok, let’s start with the James Bond connections of which there are numerous (and I’ve probably missed some). Maurice Binder is one of the producers and his MR style fonts and layouts are used in the title and end credits, Michael Reed is director of photography, Richard Grayson, Alf Joint and George Leech are on the stunt team and in the acting credits are Christopher Lee, Michael Lonsdale, Robert Brown and Rose Alba.
Set in WW2 this is a fictional adventure with Anthony Quinn as The Basque (no other name) tasked by the Resistance in leading a scientist (James Mason) and his wife (Patricia Neal) and two children across the Pyrenees to safety, hotly pursued by Malcolm McDowell’s SS officer and band of Nazi’s. Only Christopher Lee, as a gypsy leader, attempts to speak in anything other than all the other actors natural accents. McDowell’s portrayal of the SS officer is sheer pulp hokum, all bug-eyed snarling madness, it makes Steven Berkoff’s General Orlov look positively low-key and restrained! One scene has him undressing down to his undershorts, which have a swastika emblem on them, I kid you not, as he prepares to rape James Mason’s daughter, played by the pretty and very buxom Kay Lenz.
Director J Lee Thomson is used to handling action and there are plenty of explosions and chases, along with gallons of blood. Producer Maurice Binder obviously calls in a favour from Cubby, as the avalanche scenes are nabbed from OHMSS including the howling wind sound effects.
The whole thing is ludicrous, but if you set that aside, then the movie plays out as a serviceable piece of pulp entertainment.
I didn't like it at all and thought it was terrible. A waste of a bunch of good actors.
The billing is overelaborate. Almost every trick is used, pointlessly.
Sub-Alistair MacLean. If memory serves, it had rather a neat climax; other than that, yeh, ludicrous is a good word.
THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976)
Clint Eastwood’s Josey Wales is a farmer from Missouri whose family were murdered by Red Leg Union bushwhackers during the American Civil War. He takes up arms as a Confederate bushwhacker and becomes a fearsome and ruthless gunfighter. After the war, he refuses to surrender and attempts to escape into Mexico, along the way picking up a stray Cherokee Indian Chief, a Navajo squaw, a wizened Kansas matriarch and her comely granddaughter, oxen, horses and a decrepit town’s kinfolk. After many bloody skirmishes, redemption appears on the horizon until the original band of Red Legs catch up with him seeking a $5000 reward.
Considered a latter day western masterpiece, The Outlaw Josey Wales is a well photographed and startlingly edited quest narrative epic in miniature form. The film is episodic and during each episode the characters learn a little more about each other and themselves. Wales is not only searching for Mexico, but a new life, a quiet place away from the killing and the memory of war. Eastwood has remarked that the film is a commentary on the USA of the 1970s, where the nation was sick of war and the climate of revenge and retribution, the lies of authority and the lack of opportunity [the Vietnam War, I assume]. That maybe stretches a point. The movie is based on the book Gone to Texas, by Forrest Carter, which I have not read, so I can’t comment on how close an adaptation it is. What I can comment on is the movie’s constant referencing of other western tropes, such as Leone’s stylised spaghetti western shootouts and rough house staging posts, Steven’s saloon confrontations, Hawks’s band of brothers holed up in a house under fire, Ford’s white man / Native American talking peace, Curtiz’s ruffian Comanchero raiders, Eastwood’s own fiery flashbacks, a posse, settlers seeking the new land, homesteaders dancing by squeeze box, the pull of domestic life, Chief Dan George repeating his turn as a wise old Injun.
A very good western with a remarkable number of minor narrative inconsistencies that you have to ignore. A healthy dash of humour takes the edge off the relentless killing. The most potent scene is between Eastwood and Will Sampson’s Comanche Ten Bears, who philosophise over life and death. After that, the final show down feels like nothing more than a bloody climax. Well directed, a fine achievement, but an empty one. It is perhaps too violent for its own benefit and while it may be anti-war, it seems to revel in the nature of warfare and suggest without justification that any man or woman can, if provoked, become violent enough to slaughter other humans. The lesson is too simplistic. The story, with its Greek odyssey narrative, never quite succeeds in being believable and is at odds with the filmmaker’s strive to be intensely realistic.
PSYCHO (1960)
Tremendously influential film whose reputation goes well before it. A thriller in four episodes effectively told by director Alfred Hitchcock.
The first is the most interesting as Janet Leigh’s estate agent’s secretary decides to run off with $40,000 and make hay with her lover. Bad weather way-lays her at the Bates Motel, where creepy Anthony Perkins hides more than his aptitude for taxidermy. She ends up knifed to death in the shower. A cacophony of sound, music and vision, this excellently edited scene set the stall up for all future sudden murders and a whole slew of imitators started slashing in Norman Bates’s wake. George Tomasini does the snappy cut work and Bernard Herrmann handles the incidental score, which is sometimes a little too wild. Visually, unless Hitch and photographer John Russell play games with us [close ups feature prominently, including many of people’s eyes – windows to the soul, one wonders, by the film’s end] the look of the film is stark monochrome and fairly uninteresting. The usual tatty Hitchcock back projection is noticeable.
What draws the attention is the dialogue between Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane and Perkins’s Norman Bates, how they are subtlety describing each other’s lives, thus making fateful decisions for them both. There has been a lot of critical cultural talk about the opening scene as two lovers recline in a motel bedroom, but what may have shocked in 1960 hardly raises an eyebrow today. More pertinent are the moments of indecision expressed by Leigh as she escapes with the envelope crammed with $100 bills, how she fiddles with the packages, packs and repacks her bag twice, inadvertently draws attention to herself. It is a very knowingly directed first half, with close attention to details, excellent editing and a very fine increase in scorching tension.
The second episode involves Martin Balsam’s private detective. This one repeats almost exactly what we saw in the first. The suspense rises in the same manner and the climax, although coming faster [15 minutes as opposed to 45] is no less shocking.
The third and least interesting section has John Gavin and Vera Miles pursuing Marion and the detective to the Bates Motel and revealing the shocking truth in a climax of those sharp, scratchy violins. The dialogue, which had been swift and sharp and penetrative in the first two sections, becomes banal and the shock-value machinations are less taut – Vera Miles finding a room decorated with stuffed birds is much less creepy than Anthony Perkins suddenly, nervously peeping through a spy-hole as Janet Leigh strips for bed. Now, Joseph Stefano’s script becomes less concerned with the psychology of the players and instead delivers a series of pointers towards the eventual outcome.
There is a coda that explains Norman Bates’s state of mind, but the film could have done without that; perhaps it was only shot for the reference to the devil, as Norman’s mother considers herself the Lord of Flies [“They’ll believe me, because I wouldn’t hurt a fly”]. Perkins’s final smirk, as if to identify Norman’s persona fully with his mother, resembles that of her skeleton corpse. In a year packed full of great male acting performances, Perkins must have been gutted to miss out on any awards or nominations; he is consummately superb and thoroughly believable, so much so that – on celluloid at least – the majority of serial killers began to resemble his Norman Bates in thought, word and deed.
Psycho is not Hitchcock’s best film, but thanks to that one shocking shower scene, it will forever be associated with him.
Very good, but maybe not quite as good as one might expect.
PSYCHO is very good but definitely not my favorite Hitch. Right now, it's a tossup between REAR WINDOW and NORTH BY NORTHWEST as to which one is my favorite.
good Psycho review @chrisno1 . Cant remember if I've ever filed a Psycho report here, its such a wellknown film its intimidating to try to say something new. I like the way you break it down into acts, as they are very different. I agree the first act climaxing with Marion Cranes murder is the best part, the scenes we all remember. The rest is a bit more of a drag until we finally see the old lady and the psychobabble at the end an unneeded overexplanation. but Hitchcock liked his psychobabble.
last time I rewatched it I was over at a friends house. and the time before I'd visited that same friend, we'd rewatched the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. so a few moments after Norman Bates first appears, I blurted out "this character would make a good lead singer for Talking Heads!". and I dont think David Byrne would be offended, since their first hit single was called Psycho Killer
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chris says: by the film’s end the look of the film is stark monochrome and fairly uninteresting
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one thing I've read is Hitchcock made this with crew from his teevee show rather than his usual film crew, after the huge scale of North by Northwest he wanted to do a lowbudget shocker. I think this info was in that Making of Psycho book that came out a few years ago and was later itself adapted to film
last Hitchcock I watched was The Lady Vanishes (1938), while visiting my mum a few weeks ago. I liked it more than I had previously, as I accepted its an ensemble comedy with a spy-ish premise, rather than a straight spy thriller like his earlier 1930s films. My poor old mum was thoroughly confused as to why someone would kidnap the old lady, I kept saying "remember that scene at the beginning where she listens to the street musician play and memorises the melody? that was important". but even at the end, they dont explain what top secret information was somehow encoded in that melody. I tried to explain Hitchcock's notion of the mcguffin to my mum (the actual thing theyre all chasing doesnt matter, its only needed to drive the plot, thats all Hitchcock cares about) , that only made my poor old mum even more frustrated. I dont remember her getting that concerned about the content of the microfilm in NxNW, but maybe microfilm is a more acceptable mcguffin, or NxNW is just a better told story. There are definitely a few plotholes in the Lady Vanishes, such as the poisoning sequence, so best not to overanalyse the specifics of the plot.
a couple weeks ago I finally found a copy of a book called Hitchcock/Truffaut. Its a 350+pg book the dimensions of a textbook, consisting of a series of interviews Francois Truffaut did with Hitchcock over the course of several weeks, covering his career systematically from his entry into the film industry up to Torn Curtain. absolutely essential stuff, Hitchcock explains what he was trying to do with every film and offers opinions on what worked and what failed. You all need a copy. now Chris has reviewed it, I should skip ahead and see what The Master of Suspense himself says about Psycho.
I'm still reading about his silent films which I mostly havent seen. His origins in silent film are fundamental to how he made film all his life, as he believed storytelling should be primarily visual. Theres always clever quotable dialog in his films, but thats to reveal character or for pacing, his ideal is the important information should be shown, not told. Of course sometimes he does overexplain in dialog, as in that final scene from Psycho that Chris didnt like. That may also explain why my mum was so frustrated by the Lady Vanishes
something you BondFans want to know: Hitchcock resented the Bond films for stealing his style with the spyfilms, thats why he tried to do such very different films in the early 60s, he felt everybody else was imitating what he did best (so he says, but the timing doesnt work does it? Psycho was before Dr No, and he still made two more spyfilms in the late 60s)
OK maybe this isnt the real Alfred Hitchcock, but here is John Candy impersonating Alfred Hitchcock giving us his opinion on Psycho: his greatest film and probably the scariest movie ever made!
Thanks for that info @caractacus potts . There is a documentary film of Hitchcock / Truffaut , I believe. That McGuffin business is always a bit tricky to figure.
@HarryCanyon in terms of pure suspense, Rear Window is fabulous, the set up is amazingly straightforward. North By Northwest is for sure his most easily accessible work. My personal favourite is Notorious, a dark sexual thriller of much intrigue, deep character and gripping tension. Somewhere on this thread is my extremely detailed review.
NOTORIOUS is excellent, agreed.
A shout out for "Vertigo", my favourite.
That Trauffaut Hitchcock book is great stuff, the real deal.
Didn't Hitch make Psycho as a black comedy or was that him pulling our leg? He said it was like the switchback (?) ride at a fair ground, people laugh and shriek with fear and appreciation. The finale of the psychobabble being a satire of that kind of movie of the time, when misdeeds had to have some shrink talk to explain them, a bit like those warnings at the beginning of teen exploitation films. It's the sort of nod to the audience that Tarantino does.
A teenage friend of mine decades ago (when I was a teen) derided Psycho - he preferred the sequel - but said when he watched it again and decided - without prompting - to enjoy it as a comedy, he said he really got into it. Just one pov of course.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I know it's very well regarded and often listed as Hitch's 'best' film, but I just have too many issues with it. It's extremely slow, Stewart's character comes off as a creepy stalker, and that ending is a groaner. I know this is heresy, but I actually prefer Brian DePalma's BODY DOUBLE which is essentially a sleazy remake of VERTIGO.
Do you mean "Obsession "?
Psycho is more than a very good film, it’s an absolute classic. Not only did it influence the beginning of the psychotic serial killer slasher movies, it broke several taboos such as running blood as a life is flushed away, the actual depiction of a toilet (I believe the first film to show one). It was a first in having the lead star die in the first half of the running time. It mixed the thriller genre with horror and black comedy. It may not be Hitchcock’s best movie, but it is the most influential movie he ever made.
@Barbel hits the nail on the head by naming his favourite Hitchcock movie, not the best, my favourite being The Birds.
I like that one, but as you say a favourite doesn't = the best.
harry says: I actually prefer Brian DePalma's BODY DOUBLE which is essentially a sleazy remake of VERTIGO.
barbel says: Do you mean "Obsession "?
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I've never seen Obsession, but Body Double is a combination of the plots of Rear Window and Vertigo, set in the world of porn. Frankie Goes to Hollywood show up while the hero is undercover at a porn shoot and perform Relax! outrageous slick 'n' sleazy 80s stuff
de Palma revisits the Vertigo concept again in Black Dahlia, where a detective falls for a woman who looks exactly like the murder victim
heres some of what Hitchcock had to say about Psycho in Hitchcock/Truffaut
Need to see OBSESSION again. Can't recall too much about it but yeah, BODY DOUBLE is an amalgam of several Hitchcock tropes with the central throughline really mirroring many facets of VERTIGO.
Lots of really, really interesting camera elements in BODY DOUBLE. I'm hit or miss on De Palma's films in general but the man certainly knows how to block his shots in interesting ways. If he has has a fantastic script, you can get something like THE UNTOUCHABLES out of him. If you don't...well, you get about 50% of his other films. The less said about BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, the better.
We've seen different films, cos I've not seen "Body Double" (though I'm now wanting to) and you guys haven't seen "Obsession". C'est la vie.
BODY DOUBLE is worth watching, but I don't want to make you think that it's some sort of 'lost classic' or anything. It's the best and the worst of DePalma's cinematic sensibilities with some really graphic violence and nudity in it. The overall narrative really is a 'best of Hitchcock' throughline that even features a really fun split second cameo by DePalma in a mirror.
THE HARD WAY (1980)
International assassin John Connor (Patrick McGoohan) has finally decided to quit his profession and retire.
(I am not a number...I am a free man.)
His controller McNeal (Lee Van Cleef) wants him back for one last job.
John Connor refuses.
McNeal and his crew coerce John Connor to do the job by threatening to harm his estranged wife.
What follows is a grim tale of retribution.
This a dark and cold movie, with very little dialogue and great intensity.
Directed by Michael Dryhurst with a run time of 89 minutes, this made for TV movie is a crime classic.