clore

*I am reminded of all of the parallels between the Lincoln and JFK assassinations, including the fact that John Wilkes Booth left a theater after shooting the 16th president, while Oswald went to one after killing Kennedy.* One more oddity in the Lincoln/Kennedy parallels, but one only of importance to film fans, is that in THE TALL TARGET, an agent uncovers a plot to kill Lincoln. The agent's name? John Kennedy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044105/combined

*Ummm... I thought we're not supposed to get into politics on here? Has that rule gone away?* I'm not discussing politics, I'm discussing a web site designer. Besides, even Obama himself has admitted that the web site needs some improvement. I made no comment about Obamacare itself.

*My first thought was that it's getting more like yahoo mail, which now sends pop-ups about every 30 seconds when you're composing a letter, demanding to know whether you still want to stay on the page or not.* Is that what is going on? I use AdBlockPlus, so I don't see any pop-ups, but the page does shift at regular intervals while I'm composing. It's quite annoying. I really don't care for their upgrade - it loses parts of the exchanges that I'm having with someone. It will indicate that I've gotten an additional response, but it won't display no matter how many times I click. They've adopted G-Mail's format but it's not executed as well. Plus there has been a ten-fold increase in my spam folder since they changed the format.

I think they must have hired the same firm that designed the Obamacare website to do the upgrade.

I'm seeing double on the listings of "Popular Forums" and "Popular Discussions." Maybe I'm supposed to wear 3D glasses.

*Highly doubtful they would show it again in daytime hours given all the nudity.* **Has Cousins taking off more layers of clothes yet? I keep expecting him to show up in a jock strap**

*Tough Guys , Burt and Kirk, together one last time in a comedy.* Good catch, I forgot about that one.

*It's LISTED as a comedy (though I might argue). If it is, this may be Burt's only starring role in a comedy.* There's always The Devil's Disciple The Hallelujah Trail (about as funny as a crutch though)

*Today, it's very possible both of them would be running back-to-back on TCM some night.* That's happened. A few years ago, TCM aired ATLANTIS THE LOST CONTINENT and MYSTERIOUS ISLAND back-to-back. Both featured the often seen footage of molten lava coming down a hillside. I've also seen that footage in TV shows. Most of the burning lab in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN shows up in HOUSE OF DRACULA. The latter film features a hissing cat who was stock footage from WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

I saw perhaps 30 seconds of it last week. I was watching another channel, and when the movie ended, I switched over to TCM as the Cousins documentary was in progress. The very first image that I saw was just the mouth of some filmmaker. I figured either he's in a witness protection program or he was ashamed to be associated with "The Story of Film." Or else Cousins thought: "Look at me, I'm so edgy, so innovative. This is even better than baubles."

Cecil Kellaway in THE LETTER. I'm told that he can be spotted in a long shot in a crowd scene, but otherwise, he's been edited out of the film.

If you think that's bad, check out THE MAN FROM LARAMIE. As much as I love the film, I have to mute the theme song when I watch it. The ones on the web are a bit uptempo from the dreary song heard during the film's credits.

I have a head start on you - I saw it for the first time back in August 1964 and saw it twice more before the summer ended. Before the decade ended, I saw it about six more times on a big screen and twice on TV. It's my favorite sci-fi film of the 60s and I honestly believe that it would have been much more successful had it come out in 1968, by which time sci-fi wasn't dismissed as kiddie fare since *Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage, Planet of the Apes* and *2001* had raised the bar a bit. Here are some links to Mantee columns for The Malibu Times: http://www.malibutimes.com/life_and_arts/article_2badb0d7-e133-59b6-b263-52ff85db24d0.html http://www.malibutimes.org/malibu_life/article_f578f372-8128-5e97-9fb0-87bb1cb506e0.html http://www.malibutimes.com/editorial/opinion/article_6103bbc0-5fe4-52c2-8f53-e3802dce69de.html

*Man..! I can hardly believe it's been almost 50 years since I saw him first in Robinson Crusoe on Mars.* I just watched the film in June as Vic Lundin who played Friday passed away June 29. I was actually going to watch it this past weekend with my grandchildren as I just got in a Blu Ray copy, but we had to postpone the visit until this coming weekend. You don't want to know how many times I've seen this film. I had the poster on my wall when I was a teen. I've taken others to revivals of it through the years and I've never had one person claim that they didn't like it.

There's another film that may have been an influence on HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, one that I purchased under the title THE STRANGER'S GUNDOWN, aka DJANGO THE BASTARD. Here's my user comment from the IMDb. A most unusual item for an Italian western - or for a western from any source. There were probably two-dozen films featuring the Django character first made famous by Franco Nero in Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO in 1966 - and that's just counting the ones with Django in the title. That film spawned as many imitators as the Sergio Leone film FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, and while not all featured the name "Django" in the title, there was a character with that name doing all of the shooting. From what I've seen of a sample of them, they all appear to have the commonality of a hero clad entirely in black. This one stars Anthony Steffen (Antonio De Teff?) who was previously in A FEW DOLLARS FOR DJANGO - thus proving the inspirational sources, or at least the desire to repeat their respective successes. Whatever Steffen lacks in the terms of Eastwood's or even Nero's charisma, he makes up for in his having co-authored the very original screenplay with director Sergio Garrone. Coincidentally, what this may lack in terms of originality of being yet another Django outing, it is actually more of an inspirational venture than an imitation. A gunman apparently returns from the dead to seek vengeance on those who betrayed him. Sound familiar? Does HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER come to mind? Other characters have flashbacks of him in his final moments - in the Eastwood film it is his character who has the flashbacks. Both films feature the gunman spinning around in a chair to shoot a few enemies, but actually that was more an homage on the part of Eastwood and this film's director, Sergio Garrone, to a similar scene in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. The final shot of both THE STRANGER'S GUNDOWN and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER is most similar in theme if not in actual execution - in here Django walks rather than rides away. This Django appears in rooms and locales out of nowhere, adding to the horror content - along with a music score similar to the both the Eastwood film, and especially to some Hammer horror outings. One of his calling cards is to announce his arrival with a cross designed as a tombstone - the next victim's name and his date of death is marked on it. Unlike most vengeance seekers, Django is clearly here to avenge his own death. In another scene, he sends three dispatched villains back to town propped on horses with cross-like supports behind them in order that no one realizes until they are close that these men have gone to that great round-up in the sky. The performances are what one would expect - and after all, hard to gauge via the often flat English dubbing. While Paolo Gozlino makes little impression as the head bad guy Rod Murdoch, the character's nutty brother Luke does, here Luciano Rossi provides the film's best performance with a character reminiscent of Klaus Kinski's hunchback in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE - minus the physical affliction. Luke is considered to be so stupid that his brother Rod had to pay a woman to marry him. But Luke isn't so dumb as he's able to capture Django twice - if only momentarily, but that's more than any other character manages to accomplish. Luke is clearly more crazy than dumb, but so are the guys in the Murdoch gang who play a game of catch with a stick of lighted dynamite. Much of the daylight cinematography is poorly lit, yet Gino Santini does an admirable job in the night scenes of which there are plenty. It has its slow spots, and the Civil War scenes appear to be done on the cheap, but overall the "few dollars" appear to have been spent wisely. Not that the VCI transfer helps any - there are lines and scratches, and some color distortion, but at 10 bucks for the DVD, I was happy enough just getting a widescreen transfer.

Yes, right before the last shot fired, the Marshall looks at the Preacher's face close-up and says "You!" He recognized him from the previous encounter.

*I've always seen the entity played by Eastwood in this supernatural western drama as an avenging spirit.* I've long considered the film as a supernatural variant on HIGH NOON. Sort of a Will Kane character who was let down by the town and defeated by the bad guys. Now we have the same situation of four men returning to the town from prison, but this time, vengeance is waiting - for all concerned. Eastwood would use a similar approach to tackle SHANE when he made PALE RIDER.

*I guess all this 50-year rememberance is to be expected; what gets me is that this year is exactly like 1963 daywise-does this happen often?* Often enough, although one does have to take into account such things as leap year. For example, in all of that Y2K hoopla, I recall one site claiming that you could fool your computer as leap year 2000 would all occur on the same days as leap year 1972. Think about it - how many times in your life has your birthday been on a Saturday? If there were no leap year, it would occur every seven years and all the other days would fall in the same pattern. 2014 will not be just like 1964 as there was an extra day in the latter as it was a leap year.

*I thought this would be about the movie Hurricane, (the original version.)* I thought that it was going to be one of those spam posts telling me to watch some recently released movie on-line. Once I saw that the author was a regular, that thought disappeared.

Sorry Tom, CRISS CROSS was a Universal film, not Paramount. I picked up the DVD about a year ago. A retailer here had a sale on MCA films and oddly enough, I picked that one up along with MADIGAN starring Richard Widmark. I wouldn't mind seeing the Paramount film MANHANDLED again. It has Dan along with Sterling Hayden and Dorothy Lamour and I've not seen it since 1990 or so - back when AMC was worth watching.

*That's like saying you don't expect every car you buy to run properly.* Not at all. You buy a car, you're getting one finished product. With TCM, you're getting about 300 finished products in one month. There is no way, then or now, that anyone could look at a monthly schedule for TCM and say honestly that they love every single movie on the schedule. Face it, even if TCM aired nothing but talkies made through 1960, you aren't going to like BLACK WIDOW when it pops up on the schedule.

*Thanks to clore's recommendation, I was finally able to catch up with a Dan Duryea film I had never seen before, Underworld Story.* I'm glad that you liked it. Speaking of similarities between Duryea and Widmark... You may be familiar with a show that ran in the 50s titled THE 20TH CENTURY-FOX HOUR. Most of the episodes were remakes of successful Fox feature films (often using footage from the films). When they got around to doing a remake of RED SKIES OF MONTANA, it was Dan Duryea in the role originally played by Widmark. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0501924/combined

*A lot of veteran/character actors in bit/cameo parts throughout the story. (I always crack up seeing Madge the Palmolive Lady-Jan Miner- in her bit).* Madge's husband in the film was another veteran of commercials. Here he (Bill Fiore) is with Louise Lasser in a commercial narrated by Lloyd Nolan:

I got a DVD of *Executive Action* four years ago - it cost me all of $5.79 at Amazon. I bought about 15 DVDs that day as they were all the same price - it was as if Warner Home Video was having a surplus sale. I was feeling all sorts of satisfied until my brother told me he picked up four of the same titles at Big Lots for $3.98.

*Where is Warren William or Richard Dix?* Aww, c'mon - just how often have you seen either actor in prime time on TCM? I get TCM as part of my basic service. I get about another 200 channels as part of that. I don't expect any one of them to please me 24/7. I have a couple of pay channels also, I don't expect full time gratification from them either.