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The Day Before 2025: A Look Back At 1965(And Psycho)

posted 2 months ago by roger1 (4046)
51 replies | jump to latest

I'm in a whimsical mood.

I'm about to be able to live in the year 2025. And I lived in the year 1965. That's 60 years ago tomorrow. And I personally find it rather exhilarating to be able to "live in the present"(I'm seeing movies like Twisters and TV shows like Landman) while able to live in the past.

I was a kid in 1965, but fairly savvy about movies, taken to them a lot, already starting to make the connections among movie stars, directors, themes, etc.

Note in passing: I'm thinking that in 2025, the nostalgia folks will go more for trips back to 1985(when Back to the Future was a tre's 80''s hit with Spielberg as a producer) and 1975(when Spielberg became famous with a much more bloody and violent summer blockbuster than Back to the Future.)

But 1965? That was a long time ago. No Spielberg movies in sight.

The Best Picture Oscar Winner was The Sound of Music, which also just happened to be the highest grossing movie of all time at the time. It used to be that way sometimes at the Oscars. Oh, it happened after that, too. The Godfather. Titanic. But not Jaws. Not Star Wars. Not ET. And movies win Best Picture nowadays that hardly anyone sees.

Note in passing: I didn't see The Sound of Music until...1967. Two years after its first release. It played forever in downtown Hollywood and our family never went there. Then it played in neighborhood theaters for months on end and we STILL didn't see it. This happened a lot with movies in the 1960s. They had these long roadshow releases and then "branched out to the suburbs."

Same thing(but worse) with "Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." Opened at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in 1963. I saw it the first time -- in a re-release -- in 1967. FOUR YEARS after it first came out.

But that doesn't mean I didn't have SOME movies to see on release IN 1965.

My personal favorite of 1965 is "The Great Race." It was a "Comedia Garguantua" -- one of a select group of 60s comedies given huge budgets, spectacular location filming, big chases, "and more."

I've since given "Its A Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World" my personal favorite slot for 1963 (even though I first saw it in 1967) and surely "IAMMMMW" and "The Great Race" were "paired for posterity as "overlong, overbudgeted comedies which" -- said a more snobby breed of critic raised on Chaplin and Keaton: "not funny."

I beg to differ. Mad Mad World is VERY funny and for adults. It is Jonathan Winters' Finest Hour on screen. And there were like 10 OTHER comics in it, including 50s TV megastars Milton Berle and Sid Caesar(not so big anymore came '63.) And one Brit: Terry-Thomas ("What is this American fascination with BOSOMS?")

Terry-Thomas was also in the 1965 "Comedia Garguanta" "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" which was the DIRECT (and different) opposition to The Great Race that year. For The Great Race was all-American Warner Brother studio project -- with THREE major stars(cartoon villain Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate, cartoon hero Tony Curtis as the Great Lesile, and cartoon sexpot suffragette/feminist Natalie Wood as Maggie DuBois.) "Those Magnificent Men" was a European production with an international cast: British actors, French actors, German actors(Ol' Goldfinger himself, Gert Frobe) and in the American cowboy lead, Stuart Whitman(Hitchcock's first choice for Sam Loomis until MCA pushed John Gavin on him.)

IN 1965, I liked 'Those Magnificent Men" BETTER than The Great Race, but over the years, The Great Race simply won out -- it got played more on TV and TCM for one thing. "Those Magnificent Men" is a more rare catch.

"The Great Race" stands as one of my few "kid movies" to make my list of personal favorites. Dr. Strangelove is my favorite of 1964; The Professionals is my favorite of 1966-- those were/are both more adult in the scripting. Lemmon and Curtis in The Great Race are scripted at a very basic Good Guy/Bad Guy level pretty much pitched to children, there is no depth to them at all.

And yet, at the end of the day, The Great Race is certainly pitched to adults, too. There's the sex angle: Natalie Wood plays most of the Third Act in a lingerie teddy that goes transparent for a bit when she emerges from a pond swim. Not to be outdone from the distaff side, Tony Curtis performs his big swordfight(opposite villain Ross Martin)...with his shirt off, all sweaty tan torso.

The sex angle in The Great Race kept Daddy(via Natalie) and Mommy(via Tony) entertained while the kids went BIG for not only Jack Lemmon as the boisterous Professor Fate, but for Peter Falk as his bumbling henchman, Max.

Blake Edwards opens The Great Race with the foreward "For Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy." Tony Curtis in his egomaniacal autiobiography wrote that "Laurel and Hardy were Jack Lemmon and me," but no, Tony -- Laurel and Hardy were clearly Jack Lemmon and PETER FALK. And since they were played as a "villain team," you LOVED to see them fail.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

The First Act of "The Great Race" (with a great score by Edwards favorite composer, Henry Mancini) is basically a Road Runner cartoon -- as Professor Fate and Max keep trying to kill The Great Leslie and faliing spectacularly. Jack Lemmon IS Wile E. Coyote. "Steal from the best," Mr. Edwards.

The Great Race -- based on a REAL great race of 1908 -- takes our competing racers in their fancy cars from the East Coast of America west across the Texas desert(for a singing chauntese/barroom brawl sequence that predicts Blazing Saddles) and on to Alaska, via ice floe over the ocean, into Europe for a "Prisoner of Zenda" spoof(wth Jack Lemmon playing a goofy durnken young king as a second role) and into Paris for the final stretch(including "The World's Bigges Pie Fight.")

It cost a LOT of money to make The Great Race. It was the "Cleopatra" of comedies, insert modern overpriced movie here.

Here's a link to my further thoughts on it:

https://moviechat.org/tt0059243/The-Great-Race/58c726695ec57f0478eee372/The-Greatness-of-the-Great-The-Great-Race

The one thing I'll pull out of that for here is: I saw Jack Lemmon in person at a seminar in the 70's and he noted to the group, in passing, "I get more fan mail for Professor Fate than for any other role I played."

And well should have he. Lemmon was at that perfect age for male stars -- his forties -- when he played Fate. And Fate wore great villain clothes -- not just a black coat and hat, but gray pinstriped shirts of great style(think Paul Newman in The Sting.) He wore a great moustache, too. Professor Fate was probably the most MANLY, robust, dominating character Jack Lemmon ever played. From The Odd Couple on, Lemmon became, quite simply, too much of a weak whiny nebbist to tolerate on the screen. He switched to drama ("The American Olivier") to compensate.

Yeah, The Great Race is a FAMILY movie, from my childhood, that survives today as my favorite of 1965. It is indeed a reminder of a simpler time -- and quite funny in a BIG way and the team of "Lemmon and Falk" (with Falk a few years ahead of his turn as the Great Columbo) worth the price of admission. Along with Natalie Wood in her lingerie.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

My number two favorite of 1965...as remembered FROM 1965(as with The Great Race, I'm not talking here about movies I "saw on TV years later" ) is Thunderball. Sean Connery as James Bond.

Thunderball was "the underwater Bond." Just as On Her Majesty's Secret Service would be "the snowy mountains and skiing Bond." Its a quick mental "fix" on a Bond movie, and it wouldn't last for all that many Bond movies (You Only Live Twice as the Japan Bond movie; Diamonds are Forever was the Vegas Bond movie.)

My understanding is that while Goldfinger was the "Titanic-grossing" blockbuster of Christmas 1964, Thunderball was the "Avatar grossing" blockbuster of Christmas 1965. Bond peaked as a cultural event -- a box office giant -- with Thunderball and never really got those grosses back until the Daniel Craig era(and worldwide grosses in the Craig era are "unfair" compared to Connery's era, Thunderball really drew CROWDS, not theaters.)

I always like to point out that Connery's James Bond movies in the sixties -- even though it was still a late Hays Code censured era -- were a much more "adult" version of the series than anything that would follow. Bond (unlike previous heroes) had a "license to kill" and DID kill , a lot. Bond(unlike previous heroes) didn't end the movie getting married with children; he ended up having sex with the female lead of THIS movie, and went on to ANOTHER female lead in his next movie. (Along with Hugh Hefner and Playboy in the 60s, Bond celebrated the idea of a never-ending sex life with multiple partners.) The Connery pictures were brutal, borderline sadistic, overtly sexual. And starting with George Lazenby(a little) and Roger Moore(a LOT)...they never were again. Daniel Craig kept the brutality but lost the multiple sex partners in the main. Male domination was OUT.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I saw Thunderball at Christmastime 1965 with parents who were OK with taking the kids. It was first run at a Palace Theater and I recall the movie had an intermission of Bondian specificity: as Bond took a woman to bed, fade out to a card: "Even James Bond is entitled to a little privacy: INTERMISSION." Seemed like a cool idea to me. And no, I didn't know the Birds and the Bees yet. I figured - with all such scenes at that age -- that the couple was just going to "kiss while naked." Heh.

"Today," Thunderball -- even with its reputation as the Biggest Bond Hit of All time -- seems overlong and slow in the pacing. The best fight in the movie(versus a man in a widow's female dress; hello Psycho) OPENS the movie, you don't get it later as in From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. Then its a lot of plot and eventually Bond heads down to the Bahamas for the main action. A fairly scary plot: the bad guys at SPECTRE (more Mafia than Soviet) hijack two nukes and threaten to blow up two cities if not paid.

After seeing Thunderball first at Christmas of 1965, I saw it again (special re-release) in the summer of 1966, in a beach community where our family summered from time to time . 9 years later, I'd see Jaws in that community -- on purposed at a first day matinee so me and the guys could still "hit the beach" right after seeing the shark movie("I dare ya.") In a similar fashion, Thunderball -- "the James Bond ocean and beach movie" merged with the beach in the summer of 1966. (I saw Hitchcock's Torn Curtain that same summer of '66 in that same beach area and I STILL remember how ridiculous it seemed to leave the bright sun and beach to go into a movie that was set in grim, gray East Germany.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

A bit more on Thunderball. EVen then(at a young age) and certainly now, I find Thunderball to have the most gorgeous SET of women of all of the Bonds -- four in all -- and in a very "sexualized" way that really wasn't allowed once the Roger Moore and beyond era set in.

The masseuse at the health spa(Molly Peters): gorgeous. The raven haired main heroine(Claudine Auger): gorgeous.(And the most gorgeous Bond Girl of them all, says I.)
The flaming red-haired villainess Lucianna Palazzi: gorgeous. Even Bond's bikini-clad spy sidekick (Martine Beswick): gorgeous. (As I recall, Bond had his way with all of them except co-worker Beswick, and ended up at the clinch, natch, with Auger. )

Connery AS Bond was equal-opportunity beefcake to all those sexy chicks(ala Tony Curtis in The Great Race). Connery is in swim trunks a lot(natch' its a beach movie) and he had "filled out" and grown more handsome in the years since Dr. No. Still an ex-body builder, with a hairy chest, but now with a movie star's charisma and command. Thunderball seems to be ABOUT how this strapping alpha male in swim trunks manages to draw beautiful women to him for evenly matched hookups, one right after another. (Yes, even the masseuse.) Because most of the cast are at the beach in swimsuits, its probably the most sexy Bond movie ever made.

One more thing about Thunderball: the main bad guy is famously white-haired, eye-patched and a bit plump: Largo (played by Italian Adolfo Celi). As someone wrote, THIS bad guy is a "field commander' who gets into the final underwater battle at the end.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Celi gets a famous scene that was famously spoofed in one of the Austin Powers movies: The serious version: Celi sits at a big table filled with SPECTRE agents reporting to an unseen Blofeld(stroking a white cat, face oscured.)
One of the agents has been skimming. There's a headfake that its ONE guy, but its the OTHER guy and he is electrocuted in his chair(as Celi doesn't even react) and the chair then lowers into the ground and comes back empty.

In the Austin Powers version, the guy in the chair is: Will Ferrell in a fez, but when HE goes down below in the chair..."he ain't dead yet." And we get his comedy vocals from down below -- "What am I doing down here? Who are you? Why do you have that GUN? OUCH! You SHOT me!") I have a nephew who when very young, could repeat that whole comedy routine to me verbatim. The Austin Powers/Will Ferrell spoof was from HIS childhood, based off a movie from MY childhood.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Crossover: I think because of a shared studio(United Artists) and maybe some shared producers, Thunderball filmed in the Bahamas around the same time that The Beatles in "HELP!" filmed in the Bahamas. Not all of HELP is in the Bahamas, but the climax is.

HELP! came out in 1965, same as Thunderball. A parent drove us to get in line to see HELP at a local cinema but...to no avail. The line snaked around the building several times. Next shows were sold out. We got driven back home. That was the power of The Beatles 1965.

But at least I had the HELP soundtrack album. With a photo of The Beatles in the Bahamas on the back. I always like the lineup of songs on that album, better,, overall, than the songs from their movie of the year before, 1964's A Hard Day's Night.(Except the title tune and Can't Buy Me Love.) They are just less famous songs, is all, less "Help" and the great "Ticket to Ride."

I DID get in to A Hard Day's Night with family in the summer of 1964. At a drive-in. I recall feeling it looked like a "foreign documentary film"(in black and white) and I wasn't really the audience for it yet. HELP was in color and action packed with spies and -- I couldn't get in.

Funny: the 1965 HELP album was a split of songs(about half the album's running time) and the instrumental score from the movie. But I put up with one to get the other - -and of courae, started simply lifting the needle to skip the instrumental stuff. But what a ripoff -- only HALF the album was Beatles songs. But they were good ones.

I finally saw HELP on the NBC Saturday Night Movie in the fall of 1968. it was "old news." But still quirky and funny in the Richard Lester directorial vision.

OK, here it comes:

March 17, 1965. I open up the LA Times to look at movie ads, as I was want to do in those days. The posters were often cool, sometimes scary (showing murders being committed), often sexy(chicks in bikinis or teddies). And here was this poster with a woman in a bra and slip: PSYCHO. "IT'S BACK." "WITH ITS BLONDE AND ITS BLOOD! THE SHOWER-BATH SCENE HAPPENS 47 MINUTES INTO THE FILM."

On March 16, the day before, i'd never heard of PSYCHO. On March 17, PSYCHO entered my life. And its never really left, has it?

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I'll compress what I've spoken of before: that the LOGO was enough to scare me. All those slashed letters. That I couldn't pronounce Psycho. ("Puh-SY-CHOW?") That I knew it was something scary and that the big man without his shirt on(John Gavin) looked kind of like Frankenstein to me. HE must be the killer.

That I was soon up and down the block hearing from kids AND parents about Psycho. Word was out: it was back. And -- said them all -- it was scary and bloody and horrible and I should never see it.

The one guy who warped me for years on Psycho the movie -- was someone's older brother who told us the BOOK's more gruesome details: "So, like, her head is cut off in the shower and this guy puts her headless body in a laundry hamper and throws the head in there to get rid of everything."

Pretty gruesome stuff -- particularly at my tender age. And I thought it was IN THE MOVIE. It would take years to get a clear bead on what WAS and what was NOT in the movie of Psycho.

I got MY mother to tell me the plot. I had to know. She grudgingly told it -- it was damn quick to tell and I remember even THEN, imagining the shower scene in all its horror and even THEN, being intrigued when the detective entered the story(of whom she said "and he goes up to the house and...well nobody ever hears from him again." I remember that I PICTURED the detective's walk from motel to house, but it was, in my mind, on level ground with more trees and fog. Hah) And she told me the fruit cellar climax and so, armed with her plot synopsis and my neighborhood's horror stories, I went on my quest for Psycho. But not yet. I had NO interest in seeing such a horrifying film.

Which brings me to Mirage, also from 1965. We went to see it on a double bill with Charade from 1963, but my parents didn't want to see Charade again(they already had), so we went into the theater when Charade was ending -- and I got to learn that Walter Matthau (whom I already l iked in movies) was the killer. Spoiler. But at least I got to see the final footchase and Matthau-killing climax.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Then we watched Mirage which -- to my young 1965 kid self -- was a VERY nightmarish thriller, what with Gregory Peck not knowing who he was and bad guys were trying to kill him and -- a nice guy trying to help him gets killed ( amiable private eye Walter Matthau -- I guess that's why they put it on a double bill with Charade) and..not a very fun experience for a kid(like when a nice little old security guard's body -- complete with bludgeoned head -- is found fully clothed in the bathtub the man's sadly small, ancient, and messy apartment.)

I saw Mirage in the spring of 1965 and it proved important in the summer of 1965 when it was given a trailer at the same "beachside" movie theater where I saw Thunderball.

Seeing the Mirage trailer was not scary(I'd seen the movie) but then came "Exciting Co-Feature" and the PSYCHO trailer began(So Universal had switched in Psycho for Charade). Hitchcock in front of the Bates Motel. I had NO interest in seeing somebody get their head cut off in a shower and the head dropped in a hamper. So I lit out of the main auditorium -- dragging a sibling with me -- to hide in the lobby until the Psycho trailer was over. But its a long trailer - wewent back in too early just in time to see a woman screaming in a shower. The obsession -- push/pull gotta see it/NEVER want to see it...kicked in.

Psycho would not resurface for over a year -- when it was scheduled and then pulled from the CBS Friday Night movie, in September of 1966.

A number of these 1965 memories were the murky, maybe too-scared memories of a kid. Over the years, I found that the "head in the hamper scene" was NOT in the movie of Psycho. (It IS in the book, along with Norman vomiting while trying to do the clean-up. Honestly, somebody should re-make Psycho by making that grotty BOOK.) I saw ALL of Charade and I saw Mirage again and I saw that the movies shared this: Universal, very good Peter Stone scripts; Walter Matthau, George Kennedy.

I developed my take on Psycho over the years(finally seeing it in 1971) and I also developed my take on Thunderball over the years- too long, too slow, but that final underwater battle was GREAT , and those women were HOT, and Connery as Bond was big and strapping enough to have sex with almost all of 'em. (I have always sort of wanted to thank my parents, especially my father, for taking me to see those sexy movies with those sexy woman -- Dean Martin's Matt Helm fantasies, too -- they had little do with the REAL women I would eventually meet, but they did create an interest in "girls" as being very interesting people to meet.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

One more thing about 1965:

In the 1964-1965 season, The Man From UNCLE appeared. It took me awhle to realize it was a James Bond knockoff, witih two men (American Napoleon Solo and Russian Illya Kuriyakin) doing the work of one. Mad Magazine did a parody with Connery's Bond as THE VILLAIN. Napoleon Solo thinks Bond is jealous but Connery's Bond says "I get more action in one MOVIE , than you get in an entire TV season."

In the 1965-1966 season, The Wild Wild West(James Bond goes West, with Ross Martin, a villain in The Great Race, as the hero's brainy master-of-disguise partner) and I Spy(Cosby and Culp as interracial spies began.) And i loved 'em ALL. An American James Bond had not really arrived AT THE MOVIES to take the mantle. (James Coburn as Flint and Dean Martin as Matt Helm got spoof movies, not tough movies.)

So TV had to do Bond in America: Robert VAUGHN (UNCLE); Robert CONRAD(Wild Wild West), Robert CULP (I Spy.) It was fun growing up with all those Bond Tv shows, with the formula: bad bad guys, sexy spy girls(none of whom could EVER be as sexual as Bond's movie women, but who were damn sexy and beautiful nonetheless.)

Came the 70's , everything changed. I saw Psycho and it didn't scare me. The TV spy shows were all cancelled and i lost my interest in TV series in general until the 80's, when I settled down, stayed home at night more, and watched Hill Street Blues, LA Law, and St. Elsewhere.

But the 60s were fun(too young to worry about Viet Nam and it never got me later) and in 1965 The Great Race, Thunderball, Help, Mirage , Charade(in re-release), and the forbidden and forboding Psycho (in forbidden-to-me re-release) were enough to make that year memorable.
Throw in Cat Ballou(Lee Marvin won a well-deserved Oscar for his drunken gunfighter) and eventually (two more years) The Sound of Music.

1965. 60 years ago tomorrow. Welcome 2025.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Looked at historically, 1965 is marked by three movies making more money than God: Sound (saving Fox), Zhivago (saving MGM), and Thunderball. Adjusted for inflation Thunderball makes $1.3 Billion., and Zhivago and Sound amke $2+ and $3+Billion respectively - I don't think Hollywood's ever had a year like it.

And these films had reverberations. Julie Christie was the breakout star of Zhivago but she won the Best Actress Oscar for Darling, an artsy, elliptical, swinging London critical fave. One of the best years for any actress ever. Connery is obviously the star of Thunderball - the biggest Bond ever to this day... but he also had a great f-bomb-using artsy desert-prison-drama, The Hill that year for Lumet. So two of the biggest stars of the year had one foot in artsy, cutting edge cinema. And dark mirrors of Bond came thick and fast: Ipcress and Spy who Came in from Cold.

To balance out the broad comedy of The Great Race and Cat Ballou, Hollywood also had some artsy satire going on with things like The Loved One (with a young Robert Morse). It wasn't a hit but it pointed the way to things like The Graduate a few years later.

Polanski got his first hit with Repulsion. Next stop, Hollywood.

In France, peak Godard arrived with Alphaville and especially Pierrot le fou. The latter put together Godard's Breathless star, Belmondo, with his muse and then recently ex-wife, Anna Karina for the first and only time. After this Godard would lose touch with the French star system, become much more political and obsessively intellectual and lose most of his mass audience for good. Pierrot le fou is ultra-smart-alecky and snotty (and bitter because it's clear that Godard is in part using the film outrageously to restage his breakup with Karina) but also ingenious and fun and beautiful/starry. An increasingly sour Godard wouldn't allow himself or his audience that much cinematic pleasure ever again.

In Italy, Fellini showed exactly where he was going after the triumph of 81/2 with Juliet of the Spirits. Fantastical surrealism full steam ahead. Italian realism showed life with the heartbreaking I Knew her Well.

Film was alive in '65 for sure.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Another couple of important 1965 releases didn't reach the US until deep into 1966 or even 1967: The Naked Prey and A Few Dollars More. In general I'd point to both of these as part of a growing drive-in, exploitation-cinema market that allowed for sleeper hits to grow and grow. These films made so much money in the US across 1966 and 1967 that studios would have to pay attention both in terms of putting in their own money (United Artists paid for much of The Good the Bad and the Ugly and you can see that money on-screen!) and in terms of which projects of their own they'd develop. A lot of the wild stuff being produced by studios from 1967 onwards has its origins around 1965-1966 when it's clear that kids are digging on Leone and Morricone and even Cornel Wilde for Pete's sake, not to mention Corman's various efforts for the time. At the same time as the big hits were bigger than ever, the times were a-changin' under the surface in the world of drive-in-circuit sleeper hits.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Another couple of important 1965 releases didn't reach the US until deep into 1966 or even 1967: The Naked Prey and A Few Dollars More.

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Briefly on The Naked Prey.

Parents took me to that "first run" in 1967 America...and it goes right on my list -- alongside "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Dark of the Sun" -- of ultraviolent movies that were much WORSE than Psycho which I was ALLOWED to see even as I was NOT allowed to see Psycho.

I saw so much bloody violence in The Naked Prey and Dark of the Sun(actually, Bonnie and Clyde was rather mild compared to thsoe two) that I was totally ready for the shower scene and the staircase scene when I finally saw THEM.

But there were differences. The Naked Prey and Dark of the Sun were "macho man movies" with the bloody combat pretty much "out in the open, bathed in bright sunshine and daylight" and I came to accept the brutality in those films as "real." There was something about the crazy Mrs. Bates and her musty and macabre world that made for a more SCARY experience. The violence was a subset of the creepy horror of the piece -- and of Mrs Bates herself.

And The Naked Prey had...naked men. Well, almost. Loin cloths most of the time(naked some of the time). And it pitted White Man Cornel Wilde(the film's director and star) against Black Men natives who were hunting him for sport which meant he just went on and KILLED a lot of those Black Men. The racial overtones were somewhat removed and flip-flopped. Wilde was one of a group of white hunters who invaded Black Africa -- and in turn were tortured and slaughtered(every one of them except Wilde) and HUNTED on foot(Wilde, ala The Most Dangerous Game.) And brutal as it was, the Africans honored Wilde as a noble opponent in the end. And a winner.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Recall that a few years after The Naked Prey in 1967(US), Carl Reiner made a "sick comedy" called "Where's Poppa" in which some modern-day blacks in NYC capture a white lawyer(Ron Liebman) and ask him "Have you seen The Naked Prey?" whereupon they stripped him naked and chased him across Central Park at night. All to COMIC effect.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

A lot of the wild stuff being produced by studios from 1967 onwards has its origins around 1965-1966 when it's clear that kids are digging on Leone and Morricone and even Cornel Wilde for Pete's sake,

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Ha. Even Cornel Wilde for Pete's sake.

--

He was an early example of a rather faded American star (he was in Best Picture The Greatest Show on Earth after all) who rather used "early indiefilm" to stake out his claim as an auteur. He made a few other movies like that, too, but The Naked Prey just seemed to STICK, in its tricky take on "race relations" (but not really) and its very natural ultra violence(Wilde killed his opponents by stabbing their pretty much naked bodies -- ala Marion Crane in Psycho.)

not to mention Corman's various efforts for the time.

---

Odd, the phases Corman went through. Mainly monster movies in the 50s. Then that weird run of Edgar Allen Poe movies with Vincent Price(and in lurid COLOR!) and then a stretch of biker and hippie movies that brought Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson to the fore.

-- At the same time as the big hits were bigger than ever, the times were a-changin' under the surface in the world of drive-in-circuit sleeper hits.

--

AND the influx of foreign films of TWO types: (1) Art films with subtitles -- mainly for art crowds in LA and NYC -- (2) "entertainments" -- DUBBED -- for American audiences to enjoy Westerns and action and horror with European roots. And let's face it, James Bond movies were pretty much foreign films back then -- made in England -- with no "American studio fakeness" and on locations all over the world.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

lot of the wild stuff being produced by studios from 1967 onwards has its origins around 1965-1966

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Totally agree.

A "thumbnail" of TWO major years in the 60's for '"the movies":

1962. Rather the final bow for American studios. Peter Bogdanovich wrote that in 1962, Warner Brothers shut down Chuck Jones Looney Tunes unit and THAT was the marker of the end of the era!

But 1962 had these movies by these old masters:

John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Howard Hawks: Hatari
Billy Wilder: Irma La Douce(his biggest hit followed mostly by flops)
Frank Capra : Pocketful of Miracles(OK, that was in '61, but it was his last movie -- by 1962, HE was over.)

AND 1962 had this run of hits and classics;

Lawrence of Arabia
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
The Manchurian Candidate

(Meanwhile , Hitchocck, who had been making a movie a year, released noting in 1962 but HAD been intended to release The Birds that year. So...I'll add him, here.)

That's 1962.

The OTHER major year is near the end: 1967

Bonnie and Clyde(with Eurofilm influence)
The Graduate(with Eurofilm influence.)
In the Heat of the Night(American racial issues.)
The Dirty Dozen(plays as a great war movie...that is anti-war.)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner(American racial issues.)

And no movie in 1967 from Hitchcock.

In between?

Well, largely those years in 1965 and 1966 when American studios bought a LOT of foreign-made movies (art films AND B entertainments) and I for one, as a young film goer, noticed that I was watching a LOT of dubbed movies with realistic photography. (Hell, I even went to see the crappy foreign spy movie "Operation Kid Brother" with NEIL Connery and some Thunderball cast members.)

This was truly the "internationalization of the movies" and Hollywood took it hard.

Hitchcock got smart: Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy were all pretty much "foreign films' done by an American studio. Hitch wouldn't return to an American film until his last one.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Looked at historically, 1965 is marked by three movies making more money than God: Sound (saving Fox), Zhivago (saving MGM), and Thunderball. Adjusted for inflation Thunderball makes $1.3 Billion., and Zhivago and Sound amke $2+ and $3+Billion respectively - I don't think Hollywood's ever had a year like it.

---

Wow. It was interesting about The Sound of Music. There had been "Rodgers and Hammerstein" movie hits before it in the 50s(Oklahoma, The King and I) and My Fair Lady(from Lerner and Loewe) had won Best Picture of 1964. But The Sound of Music seemed to just ZOOM above all those, grosses-wise and as a cultural influence. Why? All those kids? The Catholic angle? (Remember, that helped The Exorcist, too.) Certainly it had a load of great songs.

Back in the 00s with a sig other, I went to an old Palace Theater for a "sing-a-long" Sound of Music screening. It was fun in general but the START was unforgettable. This crowd KNEW who to watch this movie. As the camera floated across Austria -- mountains, castles, rivers -- and slowly lowered down from the clouds, the audience (in a comical , self-mocking fashion) YELLED AND URGED THE CAMERA ON ITS PATH:

TO YOUR RIGHT! TO YOUR RIGHT!'
KEEP GOING TO YOUR RIGHT!
GO DOWN! GO DOWN! GO DOWN!
NOW GO TO YOUR RIGHT! TO YOUR RIGHT
LOWER! LOWER! LOWER!.

(Then you could see Julie Andrews tiny figure down below on the ridge)

SHE'S DOWN THERE! SHE'S DOWN THERE! GO DOWN THERE!
LOWER! LOWER!

So when the helicopter shot FINALLY swooped into Andrews face in close-up and she started singing...the crowd went nuts with applause and screams.

That was a pretty fun movie theater experience. I recommend it if you can get it.

And I suppose that's one reason The Sound of Music was such a big hit.

On topic: when The Sound of Music and the Psycho re-release hit in 1965, critic Dwight MacDonald wrote:

"How can it be that BOTH The Sound of Music AND Psycho are such hits? Do people swerve from one extreme to the other? Or do different sets of fans take the field -- like offense and defense on football teams?"

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

And these films had reverberations. Julie Christie was the breakout star of Zhivago but she won the Best Actress Oscar for Darling, an artsy, elliptical, swinging London critical fave. One of the best years for any actress ever.

---

So often, it "all comes together" for movie actors and actresses, with commercial hits and Oscar wins hand in hand. I'm reminded of Jennifer Lawrence, who got rich off The Hunger Games at the box office while winning a (pretty early, pretty young) Oscar for a so-so performance in the so-so "Silver Linings Playbook." Same here for Julie Christie. (Hitchcockian note in passing: Julie Christie was considered for the role in Torn Curtain played by Julie Andrews. Might have raised the temperature of the piece, yes?)

---

Connery is obviously the star of Thunderball - the biggest Bond ever to this day...

---

Yes, it sure seems to be. I'm not sure how many OTHER Bonds I count among my favorites of the yearr(OK -- all the Connerys, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Craig's Casino Royale), but Thunderball really RULED from Christmas 1965 through the summer of 1966 and it seemed so much BIGGER than the three Bonds that preceded it...even Goldfinger paled in comparison.

Box office dipped for the next Connery Bond movie -- You Only Live Twice ("Bond goes to Japan and tapes his eyelids to look Asian") and Connery jumped ship and George Lazenby was OK in the VERY good On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but THAT one grossed even less.

What happened, frankly, was that the "spy movie fad" died real fast EVERYWHERE in the late 60s. All the American spy shows were cancelled, plus the British "Avengers."(No not that one.) James Bond struggled through the 70's with Roger Moore spoofing, in order, Shaft(Live and Let Die), Enter the Dragon(The Man With the Golden Gun), Jaws(The Spy Who Loved Me...with a VILLAIN called Jaws -- a rather silly villain you ask me), Moonraker(Star Wars.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Connery is obviously the star of Thunderball - the biggest Bond ever to this day... but he also had a great f-bomb-using artsy desert-prison-drama, The Hill that year for Lumet.

--

I know OF The Hill -- I"ve still never seen it -- but -- they got the F-word in there in 1965? Its always been hard to trace the first time that word made it into movies...I heard in in MASH the movie in 1970, but in a different context -- one football player yells across the line to his opponent: "That fucking head's coming right off!" and it was FUNNY and SHOCKING at the same time.

---

So two of the biggest stars of the year had one foot in artsy, cutting edge cinema.

---

Well, its been ever thus, right. I think Connery LEVERAGED The Hill by agreeing to keep playing Bond. Some years later, Connery was allowed to make a tough drama called "The Offence" in exchange for coming back one time as Bond in Diamonds are Forever.

Modernly, big rich stars take "low pay roles" in indies all the time. Tom Cruise in Magnolia.
Sandra Bullock in Crash.

---

And dark mirrors of Bond came thick and fast: Ipcress and Spy who Came in from Cold.

---

You know, my parents(bless 'em, or maybe not) took us to the Bonds AND to The Ipcress File AND to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Ipcress was cool for a kid, but not the extremely realistic and grim Spy Who Came In From the cold. Years later, I watched these movies again and got more out of them. Michael Caine in "Ipcress File" as sold as "The Thinking Man's Bond." He wore eyeglasses! He shopped at the supermarket! He cooked his own food! But..he could fight pretty good and bed a lady or two.

Keep in mind that Hitchcock, in making Torn Curtain and Topaz, was "trying to have it both ways" a realistic spy drama WITH all his fantastic Hitchcock Touches. Neither film really had "Bond-like action" THAT was in North by Northwest, but these films were "hybrids" of realism and fantasy.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

And no matter how slow and dated Torn Curtain and Topaz may look TODAY, they fit right in with the Cold War movies of 1965-1970: The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain, The Quiller Memorandum, The Deadly Affair...I often felt that Hitchocck "matched up to his times" with BOTH Psycho(William Castle horror) and Torn Curtain(Cold War spy drama.)

And both The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Torn Curtain had to do with the Iron Curtain and escaping from East Germany to West.

Modernly, we've gotten some "nostalgia" Iron Curtain thrillers: Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, the (good) movie reboot of The Man From UNCLE...

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

To balance out the broad comedy of The Great Race and Cat Ballou, Hollywood also had some artsy satire going on with things like The Loved One (with a young Robert Morse). It wasn't a hit but it pointed the way to things like The Graduate a few years later.

---

I saw The Loved One not on release(too indie, too "naughty") but many years later. Interesting stuff. Jonathan Winters playing it rather straight. Rod Steiger's gay "Mr. Joyboy" (held out in some circles as how Norman Bates -- from Robert Bloch's novel -- SHOULD have been played, and the actor who should have played him.) The send up of the funeral industry was pretty taboo stuff then.

Another thing about Cat Ballou: Lee Marvin played two roles -- good guy and bad guy, and THAT probably helped him win his Oscar. But the bad guy was barely there, he got it done almost ENTIRELY from his drunken good guy.

I've always kind of liked that passel of "Hollywood character guys" who won Oscars in the 60s: Lee Marvin, Martin Balsam, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, Jack Albertson. Ira like they all hung in there and got rewarded. Soon the acting Oscars would go more "internationale."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Polanski got his first hit with Repulsion. Next stop, Hollywood.

---

"Repulsion makes Psycho look like a Sunday School Picnic" was the critic's blurb in an LA Time ad of the year. (But then "Psycho makes Suddenly Last Summer look like a Sunday School Picnic was a 1960 ad. Ha.)

Repulsion used the straight razor as weapon that Hitchcock rejected for Psycho. I suppose being a "foreign film" alllowed from the more sickening weapon.

I saw Repulsion once, years ago and while I was impressed enough...it truly was more in the art category than a conventional thriller, and I can barely remember the murder scenes.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

In France, peak Godard arrived with Alphaville and especially Pierrot le fou.

---
Here swanstep, you "take over" with knowledge of foreign films that I do not have ("Mainstream Man" remember?) But as always I READ about those movies, and especially about Godard.

---
The latter put together Godard's Breathless star, Belmondo, with his muse and then recently ex-wife, Anna Karina for the first and only time.

---

I DID see a few films with Belmondo as he made his "crossover" French films for American audiences. The key one was Truffaut's "Missisisippi Mermaid" with Catherine Deneuve ("The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away.") It was a Hitchcock-like thriller, too.

I always thought that Belmondo had that Steve McQueen thing going -- rugged AND cute, in the same face. Wiry. A little less handsome than McQueen though. Belmondo had a mainstream foreign action hit with "That Man From Rio" and a nifty little cameo in Casino Royale -- the 1967 superspoof, not the 2006 Craig toughie.

---

After this Godard would lose touch with the French star system, become much more political and obsessively intellectual and lose most of his mass audience for good.

---

Yeah. The issue (NOT problem) with art firm directors, particularly of a political bent is that they can decide to go "all the way art, all the way political" and they lose their shot at the mainstream. Which is kind of the point.

--

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Pierrot le fou is ultra-smart-alecky and snotty (and bitter because it's clear that Godard is in part using the film outrageously to restage his breakup with Karina) but also ingenious and fun and beautiful/starry. An increasingly sour Godard wouldn't allow himself or his audience that much cinematic pleasure ever again.

--

In Italy, Fellini showed exactly where he was going after the triumph of 81/2 with Juliet of the Spirits. Fantastical surrealism full steam ahead. Italian realism showed life with the heartbreaking I Knew her Well.

---
Well, as I keep saying, I've got some years ahead of me to catch up on my reading AND catch up on "movies I never saw." A dip in the foreign film pool may be just the thing. "A different stimulation of my brain."

CONT

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I always thought that Belmondo had that Steve McQueen thing going -- rugged AND cute, in the same face.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Belmondo was also the Tom Cruise of his day because he made a public point of doing all his own stunts. I recently watched one of his OK '70s cop movies, Fear Over The City (1975), a.k.a. The Night Caller and his stunting is *insane* - so much stuff up on rooftops and ledges and on top of trains where it's clearly him....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpi0t4UqRmI

---

That's some good stuff! And he is impressive. Thoughts:

Tom Cruise did a scene like that on the supersonic train through the "chunnel" under the English channel in the first Mission Impossible. Except it was all very well disguised process screen work(the days of Arbogasts staircase fall were long gone.)

Steve McQueen did a similar chase, climb and ride on the elevated train in Chicago in his final film "The Hunter" (1980.) He's somewhate slower and less athletic than Belmondo in HIS version. But -- he was 49 ...and , he would die at age 50 of cancer.

The scene looks a lot like the elevated train part of the car/train chase in The French Connection --right down to the bad guy.

AND: the shootout twixt Belmondo and the bad guy on the train: innocent passengers caught between them aren't given much deference, thoujgh none of them get killed. Still: its kinda funny how much the passengers are ignored and put at risk.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Another thing about Cat Ballou: Lee Marvin played two roles -- good guy and bad guy,

Brilliant performance and one of the best Oscar wins ever in my view - Marvin playing against type and in two roles, and hilarious.Great movie generally I think. Fonda sexy as hell, so many funny parts, great high-concept songs, great flash-backy structure. I adored it on Saturday-afternoon tv as a kid, and watching it again recently, it still works as an adult. I'm always heartened when I see Cat Ballou's influence on later movies. The Farrelly brothers leaned on it extensively for There's Something about Mary, and made bank, and Billy Crystal's City Slickers which also made bank, took a lot from it too. CB is a stonking good-time classic for me.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Cat Ballou. Pleased to see that you like that one, swanstep -- you are hard to please and its always a surprise to hear "mainstream" things that you like.

But I agree about Cat Ballou. What a lot of fun that one is. Triggered some warm memories and food for thought.

---

Brilliant performance and one of the best Oscar wins ever in my view - Marvin playing against type and in two roles, and hilarious.

---

His "second role" the bad guy who wears a metal nose because his REAL nose was bit off in a fight -- is a nice bit but not in the movie all that much(even as he is important to the story.) Its the drunken broken-down gunslinger that got Lee his Best Actor Oscar, I think.

The most Best Actor-ish scene for Marvin is when he first shows up having been hired by Jane Fonda to fight the bad guys. Fonda and her "gang" of comic guys(Dwayne Dobie Gillis Hickman and the underrated Michael Callan) are disappointed in this old drunk -- he literally misses the side of a barn showing off shooting prowess -- but as he is allowed to drink from a bottle, he gets more and more TOUGH, more and more NORMAL, more and more brave ---talking about the good old days and his sad decline - its one of those long Oscar-baiting soliloquies that Oscar voters love.

As he finishes his "Oscar-bait speech," Marvin shows GREAT shooting prowess, hitting everything everywhere from every direction -- and then in putting the gun back in his holster, the booze kicks in and his pants fall down and he sways around in a drunken stupor and collapses.

I have a close male relative, a little younger than me, and I watched that scene with him years ago, and to THIS DAY, I remember how hard he laughed when Marvin's pants fell down and he staggered around. and fell down. I always HEAR that relatives laugh when I see Marvin's pants drop today.

But you see...Marvin did that at the END of a great long speech with plenty of actorly power.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

And for a straight gag scene:

Someone has been murdered. They are in an open casket,surrounded by candles. Fonda and her gang surround the dead man's casket.

Marvin staggers in drunk. They shush him.

Michael Callan: Can't you see what's going on here?
Marvin focusses through his stupor, summons up some thought, and...sings:
Marvin: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...

Big laughs.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Great movie generally I think.

---

It was a "sleeper," I think. It is very low budget for a comedy, and very low budget for a Western(much of it was shot in a TV series Western town I think.) Though they got to go on location for some of it.

"Cat Ballou" is REALLY cheaper than "The Great Race"(which was more for kids anyway) and shows you how "guerrilla warfare filmmaking" can deliver laughs just as big as "Comedia Gargantua."

By the way, Butch Cassidy figures in this story -- played by "old guy" Arthur Hunnicutt. I guess you could say Butch Cassidy was "in the air" back then. He figured not only in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but in the ultra-violent The Wild Bunch(named after a Cassidy gang.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Fonda sexy as hell,

---

Man, Jane Fonda in the 60s: none hotter. As she herself noted, she rather matched her personality to her husband at the time. Her husband at the time was Roger Vadim, the ladykilling French maker of many sexy movies(with Brigitte Bardot before Fonda) and Jane was quite willing to play up her sexual side. She made Barbarella for Vadim.

Sidebar: Jane Fonda debuted in movies in 1960. The campus comedy Tall Story, for director Joshua Logan not too long after he it big with South Pacific. This was a much smaller, black-and-white tale with plenty o' irony:

Jane Fonda plays a cheerleader out to nab a basketball star(Anthony Perkins!). She's out to get her "MRS degree" and willing to do anything to get Tony to go for her. (Jane Fonda in cheerleader outfits. Oh, man.) She's...subservient!

Famously, Tall Story is "Anthony Perkins final film before Psycho." Released earlier in 1960. Perkins LOOKS exactly like he does in Psycho, SOUNDS exactly like he does in Psycho..and he's frankly, kinda wrong for the all-American basketball boy. Norman Bates was a much better fit.

"Tall Story" ends with Perkins and Fonda married..and taking a shower together.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

so many funny parts, great high-concept songs, great flash-backy structure.

---

The songs are peppy and fun, they are a real pacemaker for the film and the duo singing them ended up quite poignant in 1965:

Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye.

Nat King Cole, all by himself, was a vocal legend. He didn't really NEED Stubby Kaye by his side. But it worked.

The poignance: Cat Ballou was released in 1965. Nat King Cole DIED(of cancer) in 1965. And he died pretty much around the time Cat Ballou came out(right before? same day? soon after?)..so the movie automatically had emotion: Nat King Cole's last songs.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Oscar-wise, this passel of wins:

1965:

Lee Marvin, Best Actor
Martin Balsam, Best Supporting Actor(A Thousand Clowns)

1966:

Walter Matthau, Best Supporting Actor(The Fortune Cookie).

1967:

Rod Steiger: Best Actor(In the Heat of the Night)
George Kennedy: Best Supporting Actor(Cool Hand Luke)

It went like this for me:

Marvin, Balsam, Matthau and Kennedy had all been toiling in TV and supporting roles for years. Marvin became a major star using his Best Actor win; Matthau became a major star using his Best Supporting Actor win(which, Matthau said, was really for a leading role.)

Marvin and Matthau were different, but the same. They were the same in lacking pretty boy looks and becoming stars a little too late in middle age(their looks, especially Matthau's would fade.) They were diffrfent in that Marvin became an action lead but Matthau went to comedies. EXCEPT Matthaus did SOME action in Charley Varrick, The Laughing Policeman and The Taking of Pelham 123.

Meanwhile, Martin Balsam remained stuck in the supporting ranks, but almost always in MAJOR movies (Hombre, Little Big Man, Catch 22.) (And yeah, he was better in Psycho, in a better part, than in A Thousand Clowns, but that's showbiz.)

George Kennedy -- being bigger and taller than Martin Balsam -- had a few years as an action star, a Western star, and dramatic lead but -- pretty much shifted to TV leads and movie support.

And Rod Steiger? Everybody was sure that HE, and not Lee Marvin, would win Best Actor for 1965(The Pawnbroker). Rod was hurt to lose for 1965, pleased to win for 1967 (In the Heat of the Night.)

Me, I enjoyed watching ALL of those guys in movies back in the day. They had character star quality.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Funny: the 1965 HELP album was a split of songs(about half the album's running time) and the instrumental score from the movie.

That was the US-only Capitol Records version of the album, everywhere else got 2 full sides of Beatles stuff including 'Yesterday' (a US #1 later), a song that Paul wrote on the piano as 'Scrambled Eggs' while they were making the movie (Paul tortured his bandmates with 'Does anyone know where this melody I heard in a dream is from?' and finished the lyrics for it only after the film wrapped so it doesn't appear in the film.)

Most people (including me) never actually heard the original US Help! album. It sounds quite cool actually - according to wiki about half the instrumentals are orchestral fantasias of earlier Beatles hits like 'Hard Days' Night' and 'From me to you'.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Funny: the 1965 HELP album was a split of songs(about half the album's running time) and the instrumental score from the movie.

That was the US-only Capitol Records version of the album, everywhere else got 2 full sides of Beatles stuff

---

Yes, it seems like once CDs arrived, we started getting BOTH American albums and British albums from the Beatles and for me, this threw things way out of whack.

For MY memories were ONLY of the American albums, with THOSE songs in THAT order, and not THOSE OTHER songs additionally and in THAT order.

As I recall, A Hard Day's Night -- the American movie version -- ALSO had instrumentals. But the instrumentals (straight from the movie soundtrack) were more "intense" on the Help album.

Here are the Beatles tracks on the American movie-tie-in Help:

Help!
The Night Before
Ticket to Ride
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
I Need You
Another Girl
You're Going to Lose That Girl

That's it. 7 songs.

But I just looked up the "Help" album on some Wiki and man -- 14 songs! But some of them ended up on Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and Rubber Soul in America. Oh, well -- I'll go with the 7 songs above. They are all I played in 1965 from MY copy of the movie tie-in Help album.

Broken down this way:

The two radio hits: Help! and Ticket to Ride
Upbeat rockers: The Night Before, I Need You, Another Girl, You're Going to Lose That Girl
Slow and sad: You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Dylan-influenced?)

"Ticket to Ride" got a "slow cover" by the Carpenters that made it sad indeed. "I Need You"(by George Harrison) got a muscular and robust Tom Petty cover.

The Beatles didn't have a movie other than Help in 1965, but they had other songs. I guess Yesterday debuted in '65, and I remember a truly bouncy rocker "Eight Days a Week," blaring out over the public pool sound system near the beach. Nice days.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Most people (including me) never actually heard the original US Help! album. It sounds quite cool actually - according to wiki about half the instrumentals are orchestral fantasias of earlier Beatles hits like 'Hard Days' Night' and 'From me to you'.

---

True. Recall that I had the album in 1965 but didn't see Help (and on network TV) until the fall of 1968 so FINALLY all those disembodied instrumental tracks got "context" (like some of the music went over a chase on a ski run, and a "parade march" went over...a parade march. Ha.)

That 1968 showing of Help on NBC (during November, a sweeps month for ratings) demonstrates how rapidly the Beatles literally changed their tune in the 60s. The "Help" album songs are pretty much "early Beatles" with harmonies and guitars and "bounce." Well, November of 1968 -- as Help debuted on TV -- was when The White Album came out! What a difference in music, sound, and style only three years had made!

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Help!
The Night Before
Ticket to Ride
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
I Need You
Another Girl
You're Going to Lose That Girl
--------
That's a brilliant batch of songs - 5/7 are standards now and the best of them are kind of purest alpha-dog Lennon starting to feel less sure of himself, confronting the new, more complicated world he's in with complicated, interesting girls who are driving him mad, and so on. It's perfect.

BTW someone on youtube has assembled a playlist corresponding to the original US version of Help!.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa61V_ErwsrFLdTj_tGGapPKsMDz2Q97D&si=jZ5AoxtCiuQ2u7uS
I've really enjoying all the - very John Barry-ish, Bond-y!; shows how big Bond was at the time- orchestral inserts. The non-US version of Help! feels likes a normal Beatles Album whereas US-Help! is fully committed to the whole fun-movie-side-project idea and in that sense is more expressive of the lark the movie started out as.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

BTW someone on youtube has assembled a playlist corresponding to the original US version of Help!.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa61V_ErwsrFLdTj_tGGapPKsMDz2Q97D&si=jZ5AoxtCiuQ2u7uS
I've really enjoying all the - very John Barry-ish, Bond-y!; shows how big Bond was at the time- orchestral inserts.

---

IMDb says the instrumental music was by an uncredited Ken Thorne. That's the Barry-sounding stuff I guess.

That's a great nostalgic YouTube page for me, but this: The album indeed opens with a powerhouse rehash of the James Bond theme and a big finale -- which, on the album ,IMMEDIATELY slams into "Help!" . Well in this YouTube version, the bang-up opening just...stops.. You have to click again to get to "Help!" and(in my case) skip some ads first. It kinda ruins the effect of the album opening BUT -- it was too great to hear those instrumentals again.

--

The non-US version of Help! feels likes a normal Beatles Album whereas US-Help! is fully committed to the whole fun-movie-side-project idea and in that sense is more expressive of the lark the movie started out as.

---

Well, I owned (or was gifted) the HELP US version in 1965, that's what I remember, that's what I grew up on so...I'll just have to ignore the UK version -- yet love the songs on THAT album that ended up on DIFFERENT albums in America.

And I really, really, REALLY love that group of songs on the US Help. I don't know why, but its just about the most "fun" Beatles music to me, in one package.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

A "sort of sidebar" on the director of Help! -- Richard Lester.

I can't say I've seen all his work, but I saw A Hard Day's Night and Help -- various times after their release and when I was older -- and I really like to connect to them to two other films from the 70s:

The Three Musketeers(1974)
The Four Musketeers(1975)

Those two musketeer movies were, famously "one movie chopped into two" leading to lawsuits from the stars who felt they only got paid for ONE movie.

But if you group these four movies together: A Hard Day's Night, Help, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers -- you find a REAL auteur in there: Richard Lester, who plays all four movies to a great comic effect in which all the actors improvise and mumble and make weird noises and even the action is eccentric and offbeat (the swordfights in the Musketeer movies are clumsy, brutal things, with the fighters using their sword handles as clubs sometimes and fists and even knees brought into the fights.)

Those four movies ALONE put Richard Lester on the map for me. I understand that his adult and dramatic "Petulia" is a big favorite(George C. Scott romances...Julie Christie) and I recall a LITTLE of his directorial style leaking into one of the Superman movies he did.

That is all except: I do so love those four movies, I'll watch them anytime. And Peter Bogdanovich wrote a guest movie review for some magazine on The THree Musketeers in 1974 in which he wrote:

"Remember: there weren't three musketeers. There were four musketeers. Just like there were four Marx Brothers. And four Beatles."

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

There was a big doc. about Faye Dunaway released recently, Faye, that had some strange omissions. It didn't discuss the Musketeer movies at all (although it included a few seconds from them in montages), it also didn't mention or show any images from either Little Big Man or Eyes of Laura Mars. These were hits or important movies or both! Weird. The doc. was done in close cooperation with Dunaway so I guess that they got filed under 'Stuff D. didn't wanna talk about'. The doc also doesn''t press her or get into specifics with her about her 'bad on set' reputation, super-pro Bette Davis calling her the worst in her 50 years in the biz, and so on. A sheepish 'I was a bit bipolar back then' is sort of allowed to pull the curtain over everything.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

There was a big doc. about Faye Dunaway released recently, Faye, that had some strange omissions.

---

I watched the doc on HBO, so I think that's the one you are talking about. In which case: didn't they show a clip from the Tonight Show in which Bette Davis got away with saying something REALLY negative about how horrible it was to work with Faye Dunaway?

I think they used the clip to at least "put that out there." Plus: Bette Davis was so cantankerous herself, particularly in her later years -- consider the source?

Anyway, I'll assume its the same doc in responding to you:

It didn't discuss the Musketeer movies at all (although it included a few seconds from them in montages), it also didn't mention or show any images from either Little Big Man or Eyes of Laura Mars. These were hits or important movies or both! Weird. The doc. was done in close cooperation with Dunaway so I guess that they got filed under 'Stuff D. didn't wanna talk about'.

---

Yes, I thought that was a "clilps ownership" thing in the main.

In the 1970s, Barbra Streisand was the reigning movie superstar(and recording superstar) but..Faye Dunaway seemed to be the default woman for MOST "regular movies" and opposite these male stars:

Dustin Hoffman Little Big Man
George C. Scott Oklahoma Crude
Jack Nicholson (Chinatown -- one of her "great ones" alongside Bonnie and Clyde and Network)
Paul Newman AND Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno(she'd been Steve's girlfriend in The Thomas Crown Affair, she was Paul's in this one.)
"All Those Musketeers"(Michael York, Oliver Reed mainly.)
Robert Redford(Three Days of the Condor)
William Holden (Network -- Faye finally wins a Best Actress Oscar.)
Tommy Lee Jones(Eyes of Laura Mars -- when he was just starting out)
Jon Voight(after his Best Actor win -- The Champ.)

Shirley MacLaine had Faye's position in the 60s...acting against all the male stars of the time.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

And two that Faye did NOT make:

The Wind and the Lion: she pulled out(claiming exhaustion -- I believe her!) so Candice Bergen got to play opposite Sean Connery. (And in the 70's, Bergen WAS "back up casting" to Faye Dunaway in working with a lot of men.)

Family Plot: Hitchcock offered that to EVERYBODY(getting none of his choices except maybe Barbara Harris) and Dunaway actually confirmed that, but got it wrong: "I turned down that Hitchcock movie about kidnapping children or something horrible like that." Not children. I assume she was asked to play the Karen Black part. She did Network instead. Good call.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

The doc. was done in close cooperation with Dunaway so I guess that they got filed under 'Stuff D. didn't wanna talk about'.

---

Probably. Unless maybe hard to get clips. But it WAS her production.

---

The doc also doesn''t press her or get into specifics with her about her 'bad on set' reputation, super-pro Bette Davis calling her the worst in her 50 years in the biz, and so on. A sheepish 'I was a bit bipolar back then' is sort of allowed to pull the curtain over everything.

---

Well, its odd: there are lots of tales of Faye Dunaway feuds and tantrums on various 70's movie sets but -- she worked all the time. 'They hired her all the time.

I think the bottom line is: Hollywood producers and directors know how to work with divas - male AND female. They get paid the big bucks to do so.

I've been reading a book by Barry Sonnenfeld call "Best Possible Place at the Worst Possible Time" (the feedline to a joke. Answer: tampon. Him, not me.)

Sonnenfeld was a cinematographer on lots of movies before switching to being a director.

HIs directing career pretty much ended with the megabomb Wild Wild West so he can dish out some gossip in this book. He names names a lot.

So this:

When Kathy Bates won the Golden Globe(not the Oscar yet) for Misery, she thanked director Rob Reiner AND cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. Problem was, Sonnenfeld was now working as a director on his first film -- The Addams Family -- starring Anjelica Huston as Morticia -- and Bates had beaten Huston at the Golden Globes. So Huston sat in her trailer for five hours, didn't come out. Barry begged Kathy Bates "If you win the Oscar for Misery, please dont thank me. I'm still working on the Addams Family. " Barry then writes about winning the Best Actor Oscar: "She did. She didn't mention me." And it saved him.

So...THERE's some diva behavior...just from Anjellica Huston.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

On the male side, Barry reveals just how rough, tough and horrible Gene Hackman was to directf(on Get Shorty). He writes "Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones both have terrible tempers. (Barry worked with Jones on Men in Black.) Basically, they are the same guy, but don't tell them that. And they worked together on The Package and hated each other."

Ha. So its not just female divas.

Some crossover: I'm ALSO reading Al Pacino's autobio. Unlike "Barry," he's not mean about anybody but he DOES say that it was hard getting Gene Hackman to connect with him when they did "Scarecrow" together(I LIKE that movie,paired the stars of French Connection and Godfather right after both.)

Anyway, Pacino had an accident and was hospitalized and Hackman came to see him, tried to explain his tough upbringing: his dad deserted the family, his mother died in a house fire when he was young. That, said Hackman is why he was hard to know. (Hackman told Barry more simply: "I hate being me.")

But that's the thing: Hollywood people HIRE Faye Dunaway, they HIRE Gene Hackman(when he was active), they HIRE Tommy Lee Jones -- and they get paid big bucks to work with them and maybe make millions with hits.

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

Relatedly, Jerry Schatzberg, director of Scarecrow recently did a great Criterion closet segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHzWP5Pj2wM
and Barry Sonenfeld recently did one that was even better:
https://youtu.be/Td2060BoCAk?si=ytn-I4V7I4OuRb7P
These guys both radiate charm and intelligence. It's a reminder that being a good, fun hang is part of the story of success for a lot of people in commercial film.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Relatedly, Jerry Schatzberg, director of Scarecrow recently did a great Criterion closet segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHzWP5Pj2wM

---

Wow! Schatzberg is 97 in that clip...actually able to stand up in that closet room and rather sharp. This continues to give hope to folks like me who are getting old....but not THAT old. Here's hoping.

"Scarecrow" is from taht amazing movie year of 1973. I saw it first run. The film having Hackman from The French Connection and Pacino from The Godfather together as a buddy team on screen looked like a surefire hit, but the movie was too indie-film, gritty, improv and scattered to have impact, I guess. A bit depressing, too. But I liked it. Hackman got top billing cuz of his Oscar I'll guess.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

and Barry Sonenfeld recently did one that was even better:
https://youtu.be/Td2060BoCAk?si=ytn-I4V7I4OuRb7P
These guys both radiate charm and intelligence. It's a reminder that being a good, fun hang is part of the story of success for a lot of people in commercial film.

--

Its funny to see Barry Sonnenfeld(who I'll call Barry for short) in such proximity to reading his new Hollywood book. Its his second -- and I'll be going to get his first. The dish is supreme -- again, he names names -- but he also reveals extreme technical knowledge about cinematography that obviously made him a director who had THAT advantage over other directors.

So he's a mix of a "technical" director and a "people handling" director.

A little more dish on Get Shorty:

In the final scene, both Harvey Keitel and Penny Marshall make cameos as themselves -- she as a director and Keitel as an actor.

Barry notes: Penny made sure to tell me "I just want you to know that I'm doing this cameo as a favor to Danny (Devito)...not for you." Ha.

As for Keitel, he thought he was doing a WORDLESS cameo and was upset that he had a line, so he said the line too QUIET...until cajoled into reading it out loud.

The argumentative Gene Hackman, Barry notes, would memorize his lines perfectly only to be confronted with Travolta having memorized nothing and blowing everything. So cue cards were brought in for Travolta. As they did another take on a scene, this exchange:

Travolta: So where were we, Gene?
Hackman: At the top of your cue cards, John.

I suppose I should be reading books on world history and economics, but Holllywood stuff is just too fun, still. You're right, swanstep -- a guy like Barry made his bones being able to hang out, schmooze and fight the suits(his book is certainly one of those "I'm the hero" POVs but he's self-deprecating enough.)

--

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Al Pacino's book is "nice" -- in his voice (no ghost writer is credited) but lacks the detail of Barry's book. Pacino hits on a few points about himself that are interesting. One is that he was on drugs and alcohol for most of his career, but like other great actors, that didn't stop him from giving great performances and he's lived into his 80s . Movie star wealth will do that BUT..he reveals that he really went damn near totally broke in the years he quit movies (between Revolution in 1985 and Sea of Love in 1989.

It was sometimes lover, sometimes pal Diane Keaton who brought Pacino the script for Sea of Love and pushed his comeback with it. Its a sexy script with a love interest for Al...but Keaton didn't want to play THAT...she just thought the love story would be good for HIM. Keaton also accompanied Al to banks and other places to help him get money to get back on his feet -- a bunch of major 90's movies got him nice and rich real quick like. Movie stars.

And how about that Diane Keaton...love affairs with a bunch of the male stars of the 70s, eh? Woody, Warren, Jack(I think), Al..

Also funny: Al was instructed by Coppola to have lunch with Marlon Brando on the set of The Godfather. The hospital room set where the wounded Don Vito recovers. As Al talked to Brando, Brando remained in bed, add saucy Chicken Caccatore WITH HIS HANDS, and lacking a napkin, smeared the sauce all over the white sheets with his hands. Al thought: So movie stars get to act like this, eat like this? But Brando said "you'll be alright kid," so it worked out.

Barry and Al. Vastly different perspectives on Hollywood. Barry's book says more, but Al's is a nice read.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Speaking about Hollywood power, Barry talks about asking "director" Danny DeVito if they could get more days to film "Throw Momma From the Train"(a psuedo remake of Strangers on a Train.")

Said DeVito:"As a director I have no power to get those extra ten days at all...but as a movie star, that's a different story." They got the 10 days.

Which is why Al Pacino bounced back from unemployment and bankruptcy in the 80s', and became a big star all over again in the 90s. (Godfather III, an Oscar for Scent of a Woman, Oscar noms for Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross, and my favorite movie of 1993..DePalma's Carlito's Way, with a truly unrecognizable and great Sean Penn.)

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Note in passing: I'm thinking that in 2025, the nostalgia folks will go more for trips back to 1985(when Back to the Future was a tre's 80''s hit with Spielberg as a producer) and 1975(when Spielberg became famous with a much more bloody and violent summer blockbuster than Back to the Future.)

But 1965? That was a long time ago. No Spielberg movies in sight.

--

I return to note that 1995 seems to be getting ITS due -- early in 2025 - with the 30th Anniversary of the grim and gripping thriller "Seven" or "Se7en."

Which reminds me: to me the 90s movies(a decade I LOVED) almost entirely sounds in memory as a decade of THRILLERS. Hitchcock's primacy as a producer-director of thrillers sounded in EVERYBODY making thrillers in the 90s, and several of them won the key Oscars that Hitchcock never did -- particularly not for Psycho:

1990: Kathy BATES wins for playing a psycho in " Misery.
1991: ANTHONY Hopkins wins for playing a psycho in Silence of the Lambs(at one ceremony he was named as Anthony PERKINS and joked "I should have come on stage in a shower curtain."
1991: Robert De Niro is Oscar nominated for a psycho role in the remake of Cape Fear. Robert Mitchum was not nominated for a more interesting version of the same psycho in 1962.
1991: And "Silence of the Lambs" did it all -- got all the wins that Psycho SHOULD have gotten: Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay. (Psycho was only nominated for Director among those.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

But back to the 90s in general. Scorsese was a "crime" guy a lot, Tarantino(newly arrived) was a crime guy exclusively, and others got into the act:

1990: Goodfellas, Misery
1991: Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear
1992: Reservoir Dogs, My Cousin Vinny(a courtroom comedy about a murder trial); Unforgiven(a Western with a noir feel.)
1993: Carlito's Way(almost DePalma's final hit/great film; Mission Impossible 1 was); Jurassic Park(a "monster movie" muchly for kids, but a thriller at heart.)
1994: Pulp Fiction (two stars are born -- QT and Sam J-- while other stars are revived -- Travolta and Willis.
1995: Se7en(David Fincher's first thriller before many more?) Casino(Scorsese's glossier and flashier quasi-remake of Goodfellas) Heat (Pacino Meets DeNiro)
1996: Fargo(the Coens get into the act with a violent accent comedy.) Mission Impossible 1
1997: LA Confidential(my favorite film of the 90s) and Jackie Brown(my favorite QT movie) all in one year, plus the amazing experiment Face/Off (Travolta gets to play the hero AND the villain in the same body), Even ConAir for all-star action.
1998: The Big Lebowski(The Coens again for comedy) Gus Van Sant's Psycho("The Experiment that succeeded by failing") and the ultra-violent opening of Saving Private Ryan.
1999: The Matrix(the thriller goes CGI-crazy and Deep Think), The Green Mile(Stephen King's horror tearjerker)
Fight Club(there's a little Psycho in that one.)

Yep, when I think the 90s I think how THIS thriller fan(me) got something good every year (I even found Van Sant's Psycho a magnetic pull of a movie -- I obsessed over it in tandem with the original.)

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

A little bit on the NATURE of those 90s thrillers.

You could say that they all "brought Hitchcock back with a vengeance" (in a more sophisticated way that DePalma's quasi-remakes) but someone would answer: wait a minute...Hitchcock said he REFUSED to make gangster movies and..Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction,Casino, Heat, LA Confidential, Jackie Brown...ALL gangster movies(or at least "crime movies.")

Well, it turns out that Hitchcock approved TONS of gangster stories for his half-hour and hour TV shows. I watched one again the other day called "A Piece of the Action" and the gangster menace is terrifying and palpable. Certain sympathetic characters playing poker with gangsters face execution on even the SUSPICION of cheating.

At the end of the day Hitchocck seems to have been MAINLY a maker of spy films(the pre-war 30s, the WWII forties, the Cold War 50s and 60s)...with a "side trade" in movies about psychopaths, each of them among his best: The Lodger, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Psycho, The Birds(psycho birds), Frenzy.

The "psychopath" side of Hitchcock sounds in the 90s n Misery, Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear, and Se7en(and I'm sure I've missed some other thrillers.) Not to mention Van Sant's Psycho.

The "spy" side of Hitchocck in the 90s sounds in Mission:Impossible 1(the only one IN the 90's, by Hitchcockian Brian DePalma) and Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. There's some of NXNW in The Martrix(innocent guy thrown into conspiracy.) And The Bourne films were waiting in the 00s.

But I'm fairly confident that Hitchcock sounds equally in Goodfellas and Casino and Pulp Fiction. The characters may be gangsters, but the mix of horror and comedy and set piece murders is tres Hitchcock.