TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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I suppose we could call lovingtheclassics a company that relies on bootleg copies, though some of their offerings are films that are in the public domain. It is not a black-and-white issue.
It looks like there's a fair number who follow them on twitter, so I would say that they have customers that trust them and frequently buy classic film products from them. I have never purchased anything from lovingtheclassics though I do appreciate the fact that they are a last resort when trying to locate obscure titles.
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What is interesting about AIP, at least in its early phase, is that it hit on the youth formula when most of the other studios were ignoring that potentially lucrative market. Now, as you stated, most all marketing is geared to this subgroup and we have the opposite problem with few films made for more mature audiences.
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Since there will be a fair number of beach films from the 60s on TCM this April, and since many of them will come from the AIP catalogue (which is now controlled by MGM/Orion), I thought it would be fun to create a thread about this Hollywood studio.
_My question: what is your favorite AIP flick?_
Most, if not all, AIP films followed this basic formula:
* Action (exciting, entertaining drama)
* Revolution (novel or controversial themes and ideas)
* Killing (a modicum of violence)
* Oratory (notable dialogue and speeches)
* Fantasy (acted-out fantasies common to the audience)
* **** (sex appeal, for young adults)
According to wiki, the AIP publicity department devised a strategy called "The Peter Pan Syndrome" which meant:
a) a younger child will watch anything an older child will watch;
an older child will not watch anything a younger child will watch;c) a girl will watch anything a boy will watch
d) a boy will not watch anything a girl will watch;
therefore-to catch your greatest audience you zero in on the 19-year old male.
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The Fredric March film version is available at lovingtheclassics.com for around fifteen dollars.
The print quality is listed as 'B,' with 'A' being the highest.
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*CHESTER MORRIS*
ALIBI (1929) with Mae Busch
WOMAN TRAP (1929) with Hal Skelly & Evelyn Brent
FAST LIFE (1929) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. & Loretta Young
THE BAT WHISPERS (1930) with Una Merkel
PLAYING AROUND (1930) with Alice White
SHE COULDN'T SAY NO (1930) with Winnie Lightner
THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA (1930) with Betty Compson
SINNERS IN THE SUN (1932) with Carole Lombard & Cary Grant
THE MIRACLE MAN (1932) with Sylvia Sidney
KING FOR A NIGHT (1933) with Helen Twelvetrees & Alice White
GOLDEN HARVEST (1933) with Richard Arlen & Genevieve Tobin
INFERNAL MACHINE (1933) with Genevieve Tobin & Victor Jory
TOMORROW AT SEVEN (1933) with Vivienne Osborne & Allen Jenkins
I'VE BEEN AROUND (1934) with Rochelle Hudson
EMBARRASSING MOMENTS (1934) with Marion Nixon & Alan Mowbray
LET'S TALK IT OVER (1934) with Mae Clarke
PURSUIT (1935) with Sally Eilers & Scotty Beckett
PRINCESS O'HARA (1935) with Jean Parker & Leon Errol
MOONLIGHT MURDER (1936) with Madge Evans & Leo Carrillo
COUNTERFEIT (1936) with Margot Grahame & Lloyd Nolan
FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE (1936) with Helen Morgan & Lilyan Tashman
THEY MET IN A TAXI (1936) with Fay Wray
I PROMISE TO PAY (1937) with Leo Carrillo & Helen Mack
FLIGHT FROM GLORY (1937) with Whitney Bourne & Van Heflin
THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND (1937) with Richard Dix & Dolores Del Rio
LAW OF THE UNDERWORLD (1938) with Anne Shirley
SMASHING THE RACKETS (1938) with Frances Mercer, Rita Johnson & Bruce Cabot
SKY GIANT (1938) with Richard Dix & Joan Fontaine
PACIFIC LINER (1939) with Victor McLaglen & Wendy Barrie
WAGONS WESTWARD (1940) with Anita Louise
THUNDER AFLOAT (1939) with Wallace Beery & Virginia Grey
MARINES FLY HIGH (1940) with Richard Dix & Lucille Ball
GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY (1940) with Jane Wyatt & Charles Bickford
NO HANDS ON THE CLOCK (1941) with Jean Parker & Rose Hobart
CANAL ZONE (1942) with Harriet Hilliard Nelson & Larry Parks
WRECKING CREW (1942) with Richard Arlen & Jean Parker
I LIVE ON DANGER (1942) with Jean Parker
THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME (1943) with Erik Rolf
TORNADO (1943) with Nancy Kelly
AERIAL GUNNER (1943) with Richard Arlen & Jimmy Lydon
HIGH EXPLOSIVE (1943) with Jean Parker & Barry Sullivan
GAMBLER'S CHOICE (1944) with Nancy Kelly
DOUBLE EXPOSURE (1944) with Nancy Kelly & Jane Farrar
SECRET COMMAND (1944) with Pat O'Brien & Carole Landis
ROUGH, TOUGH AND READY (1945) with Victor McLaglen & Jean Rogers
ONE WAY TO LOVE (1946) with Willard Parker & Marguerite Chapman
BLIND SPOT (1947) with Constance Dowling & Steven Geray
UNCHAINED (1955) with Elroy Hirsch & Barbara Hale
THE SHE-CREATURE (1956) with Tom Conway & Cathy Downs
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It makes me wonder where the folks who run the lovingtheclassics site obtained their copies of all those Jane Withers films and some of the Jones Family films. Perhaps they were aired overseas...?
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*BRUTE FORCE (1947)*
From Agee on September 13, 1947:
I was astounded to hear that some knowledgeable people think of BRUTE FORCE, a movie about men in a big jail, as a happy return to the melodramas of the early thirties. Maybe so, in some of the jab-paced, slickly sadistic action sequences. But there isn't a line in it, or a performance, or an idea, or an emotion, that belongs much later than 1915, and cheesy 1915 at that.
I suspect that the ideal audience for BRUTE FORCE is among men who have been shut off from the world , paying their debts to society. I am sure they were never like the men in this picture, even in their youth. But I am also reasonably sure that they think they were, and think people still are.
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I am wondering if Withers' films aired on the old AMC. A fair number of them are available at the lovingtheclassics website. They should be shown more often.
And speaking of Fox B-comedies, I would like to see the Jones family films, too.
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*THE FUGITIVE (1947)*
From Agee on January 10, 1948
John Ford's THE FUGITIVE is a solidly pro-Catholic picture about a priest, a creeping Jesus. My feelings about the Catholic Church are, to put it mildly, more mixed than Mr. Ford's. I doubt that Jesus ever crept, and I am sickened when I watch others creep in His name.
I dislike allegory and symbolism which are imposed and denature reality as deeply as I love both when they bloom from and exalt reality. And romantic photography is the kind I care for least.
Overall, I think THE FUGITIVE is a bad work of art, tacky, unreal, and pretentious. Yet I have seldom seen in a moving picture such grandeur and sobriety of ambition, such continuous intensity of treatment, or such frequent achievement of what was obviously worked for, however distasteful or misguided I think it.
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*LOTUS LONG*
ESKIMO (1934) with Ray Mala
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934) with Bela Lugosi & Arline Judge
LAST OF THE PAGANS (1935) with Ray Mala
SEA SPOILERS (1936) with John Wayne & Nan Grey
THINK FAST, MR. MOTO (1937) with Peter Lorre
PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN (1940) with Keye Luke & Grant Withers
TOKYO ROSE (1946) with Osa Massen & Keye Luke
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Jane Withers' films do not even air on FMC, at least none recently.
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*IT HAPPENED AT THE INN/GOUPI MAINS ROUGES (1946)*
From Agee on February 16, 1946:
I have a standing love affair with a good deal that is French. This film reawakened me to the fact.
GOUPI is a comic melodrama about a family of wrangling, innocently cruel, frustrated, strongly individualistic peasants. Like most French films, this one is basically nearer literature than movie. But, like many, it is always supple, quick and expressive visually. In its use of dialogue and sound, it makes even the best American work look childish so far as skill with character and background and atmosphere are concerned.
At times the picture goes so wild that it suggests simply that rural life is at once the most localized and the most universal. As a whole, and more intensely, gently, and richly, it embodies France. There is no evidence, good or bad, that Pierre Very, who wrote the picture, or Jacques Becker, who directed it, were trying to do anything great. Perhaps for that reason, among many others, I thought it wiser, more beautiful, and much more fun than nine out of ten masterpieces, written or filmed.
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Yes, it is interesting to see how Agee regards NOTORIOUS when the film was first released. I think sometimes, due to nostalgia, we tend to over-rate classic movies. Though this is certainly a great picture by any era's standards.
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*GARY CLARKE*
HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958) with Robert H. Harris
DRAGSTRIP RIOT (1958) with Yvonne Lime
WILD, WILD WINTER (1964) with Chris Noel
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Add WOMAN IN HIDING on June 29th.
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Jose Ferrer would be a perfect candidate for a SUTS tribute. It wouldn't be the usual Hepburn or Grant or Stewart repeats.
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You're welcome. It's interesting to read about Bette's appreciation of Jeanne Eagels' talent.
Supposedly, JEALOUSY is lost, but I seriously doubt that. I am sure that after Warner Bros. bought it from Paramount to make DECEPTION, that they kept a copy of it somewhere. It's probably in poor condition, has missing fragments and needs restoration.
I am surprised the '29 version of THE LETTER has not aired. If they do another evening of films based on works by Somerset Maugham, it would fit right in!
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*JANE WITHERS*
BRIGHT EYES (1934) with Shirley Temple
THIS IS THE LIFE (1935) with John McGuire, Sally Blane & Sidney Toler
GINGER (1935) with O.P. Heggie
LITTLE MISS NOBODY (1936) with Jane Darwell
PADDY O'DAY (1936) with Jane Darwell
PEPPER (1936) with Slim Summerville & Dean Jagger
GENTLE JULIA (1936) with Tom Brown
WILD AND WOOLLY (1937) with Walter Brennan
45 FATHERS (1937) with Thomas Beck
CAN THIS BE DIXIE? (1937) with Slim Summerville
THE HOLY TERROR (1937) with Tony Martin, Leah Ray & El Brendel
ANGEL'S HOLIDAY (1937) with Joan Davis & Sally Blane
RASCALS (1938) with Rochelle Hudson & Robert Wilcox
KEEP SMILING (1938) with Gloria Stuart, Henry Wilcoxon & Helen Westley
ALWAYS IN TROUBLE (1938) with Arthur Treacher
CHECKERS (1938) with Stuart Erwin & Una Merkel
BOY FRIEND (1939) with Arleen Whelan
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES (1939) with the Ritz Brothers
CHICKEN WAGON FAMILY (1939) with Leo Carrillo, Marjorie Weaver & Spring Byington
THE ARIZONA WILDCAT (1939) with Leo Carrillo & Pauline Moore
GIRL FROM AVENUE A (1940) with Kent Taylor & Elyse Knox
YOUTH WILL BE SERVED (1940) with Jane Darwell, Elyse Knox & Joe Brown Jr.
HIGH SCHOOL (1940) with Joe Brown Jr.
HER FIRST BEAU (1941) with Jackie Cooper, Edith Fellows & Josephine Hutchinson
SMALL TOWN DEB (1941) with Jane Darwell & Cobina Wright Jr.
A VERY YOUNG LADY (1941) with Nancy Kelly & John Sutton
GOLDEN HOOFS (1941) with Charles Buddy Rogers
THE MAD MARTINDALES (1942) with Marjorie Weaver, Alan Mowbray & Jimmy Lydon
YOUNG AMERICA (1942) with Jane Darwell
JOHNNY DOUGHBOY (1942) with Henry Wilcoxon & William Demarest
FACES IN THE FOG (1944) with Paul Kelly
MY BEST GAL (1944) with Jimmy Lydon
AFFAIRS OF GERALDINE (1946) with Jimmy Lydon
DANGER STREET (1947) with Robert Lowery & Lyle Talbot
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*THE IRON MAJOR (1943)*
From Agee on November 20, 1943:
THE IRON MAJOR is a respectful, rather dull picture about the football coach Frank Cavanaugh. Such able, unintellectual, cagy teachers are very much worth talking about, but all the talk here is in words of less than one syllable. All you get is Pat O'Brien's nicely controlled performance and a few pretty period-shots of Worcester, Mass.
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*J.D. CANNON*
COOL HAND LUKE (1967) with Paul Newman & George Kennedy
HEAVEN WITH A GUN (1969) with Glenn Ford & Carolyn Jones
THE 1,000 PLANE RAID (1969) with Christopher George & Laraine Stephens
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*NOTORIOUS (1946)*
From Agee on August 17, 1946:
NOTORIOUS lacks many of the qualities which made the best of Hitchcock's movies so good. But it has more than enough good qualities of its own.
Hitchcock has always been as good at domestic psychology as at thrillers. Many times he makes a moment in a party, or a lovers' quarrel, or a mere interior shrewdly exciting in ways that few people in films seem to know.
His great skill in directing women, which boggled in SPELLBOUND, is functioning beautifully again. I think Ingrid Bergman's performance here is the best of hers that I have seen.
One would think that the use of the camera subjectively, that is as one of the characters, would for many years have been as basic a movie device as the close-up, but few people try it and Hitchcock is nearly the only living man I can think of who knows just when and how to.
He is equally resourceful, and exceptional, in his manufacture of expressive little air-pockets of dead silence. He has a strong sense of the importance of the real place and the real atmosphere; the shots of Rio de Janeiro are excellent and one late-afternoon love scene is equally remarkable in its special emotion and the grandeur of excitement it gets away with, and in communicating the exact place, weather and time of day.
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Thanks, Kyle. I completely agree, citing all the reasons you listed in your post, that the films featuring immigrants in June are probably not part of the Race and Hollywood series.
Perhaps the Race and Hollywood series will resume in July. I am still hoping for a set of Jewish-themed films, as I think that would be very interesting.
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So glad to see this thread today. I just watched THE LETTER (1929) last night.
Before the film starts, there is a disclaimer that the audio is missing from the first few minutes but that the rest of the sound is well intact and that (these are their words), this is a good opportunity to see Jeanne Eagels' _amazing_ performance. They actually call it 'amazing' before the film starts. With a set-up like that, you wonder what you are in for, and if someone can live up to such hype. She most certainly does.
Jeanne Eagels is amazing in this film because of how forceful she is with the character's dialogue and intensely desperate actions. She also brings a fragile quality to the role that makes her seem completely believable to the jury when she is in fact lying through her teeth about killing her lover.
The film varies significantly from the 1940 remake (where Bette Davis gives an equally powerful interpretation), because without a morals code, she gets off at the end and is free to cause more destruction without anyone killing her for her crimes...which is how I think Maugham really envisioned the character.
Interestingly, Bette appeared in the remake of Jeanne's other talkie made at Paramount called JEALOUSY, with Fredric March. It was renamed DECEPTION and Bette costarred with Claude Rains.
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*CORVETTE K-225 (1943)*
From Agee on October 8, 1943:
CORVETTE K-225 is an unusually decent and unpretentious, but not very interesting, semi-documentary about Corvette K-225. Some of it, made in Canada and on the North Atlantic, is fresh and pretty to see; even genuinely moving. The more violent stuff, though well-contrived, is strictly studio, and suffers by comparison.
an older child will not watch anything a younger child will watch;
Adventures in Miscasting
in General Discussions
Posted
I love the title of this thread. And I like reading the replies here. I hope this thread stays on page one for a long time.