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Posted: |
Jul 21, 2012 - 11:49 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Here's one of my own.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP was released in 1973 by National General Pictures. It’s a pretty obscure film, given that it has an original screenplay by Michael Crichton. In fact it was Crichton’s first screenplay. The story concerns a reporter who becomes obsessed with using surveillance equipment to spy on people. The film was produced by Paul N. Lazarus III, who that same year would produce Crichton’s directorial debut, WESTWORLD. He would go on to produce such films as CAPRICORN ONE and HANOVER STREET.
The cast of EXTREME CLOSE-UP was generally unknown. It was headed by James McMullan, who had primarily done television work since the early 1960s, but had appeared as one of James Stewart’s sons in 1965’s SHENANDOAH. He would generally remain in TV throughout his nearly 40-year career. Supporting McMullan were Katherine Woodville, a British actress who came to the U.S. in the late 1960s. She did limited U.S. film work but worked in American television until the late 1970s. Third billed was James A. Watson, Jr., a black actor who has worked continuously in television since the late 1960s.
Under the working titles of “The Investigator” and “Sex Through a Window,” the film shot in the Los Angeles area under the direction of Jeannnot Szwarc. The film marked the motion picture directing debut of Szwarc, who had previously directed television productions such as “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Night Gallery.” Szwarc, who is still working in television today (“Private Practice”; “Bones”) would go on to direct such theatrical features as JAWS 2, SOMEWHERE IN TIME, SUPERGIRL, and SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE. The film sported an early score by Basil Poledouris, which has never been released.
The R-rated film had its New York opening on 16 May 1973. The critics took an exceedingly dim view of EXTREME CLOSE-UP. Variety’s “Murf” called it “a tedious sexploitationer” which “dips its toes in soft-core porno voyeurism while taking a shocked stance against contemporary private surveillance and espionage.” Cue’s Donald J. Mayerson felt that the “dull movie . . . doesn’t deliver the X-rated goodies or Hitchcock-like suspense.” Agreeing, The Washington Post’s Tom Zito felt the film “would be better named Extreme Boredom” (“Any film that manages to make sex a bore can’t be much fun.”) The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun called EXTREME CLOSE-UP “the most pointless movie of the year” in that it “revives the nervous formula of lust and shame.” In Time, Jay Cocks called the film “a lubricous, opportunistic piece of business.” And Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times felt that “EXTREME CLOSE-UP doesn’t hold up to close examination. What’s more, its cleverly calculated, deviously justified lasciviousness could be said to constitute an invasion of the viewer’s privacy itself.”
EXTREME CLOSE-UP quickly disappeared from theaters. It was re-released in 1977, by a different distributor, TAS, as SEX THROUGH A WINDOW.
Although EXTREME CLOSE-UP was not registered for copyright at the time of its release, Investigator Productions, Inc. registered it for copyright on 18 June 1985, at which time it was released on cassette by Vestron Video under the SEX THROUGH A WINDOW title. That tape is exceedingly rare, and the American Film Institute could not find a copy of the film to view for its cataloging project. However, the film currently seems to be available as a “gray market” DVD under the SEX THROUGH A WINDOW title.
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Posted: |
Jul 24, 2012 - 2:12 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO (1972) was a film directed by Jesus “Jess” Franco, one of nearly 160 films to his name. The film is an adaptation of Bryan Edgar Wallace's 1962 story “Death Packs a Suitcase” and involves a London slasher who packs the suitcases of his victims before stabbing them to death. Bryan Edgar Wallace was the son of famed English mystery writer Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace’s books seemed to be just as popular, if not more so, in Germany as in Britain, and the Danish/German company Rialto Films filmed a series of popular Edgar Wallace movies--32 London-based detective fiction movies produced from 1959 to 1972 with elements of serial thrillers, 19th century gothic novels, and horror/crime fiction elements, mostly about weird killers. Seeking the success of Rialto Films’ Edgar Wallace movies, the German company CCC Film bought the rights to the written works by Edgar's son, Bryan. The stories were usually re-written once they were adapted into movies, but they were still dubbed "B. Edgar Wallace Movies" in the hope that the well-known name would attract a larger audience. Eight such films were produced, the last of which was THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO. The film was a production of Telecine Filmproduktion and Fernsehproduktion in co-production with Fenix Films, Madrid.
Volumes have been written about Jess Franco, the Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer, and actor whose career took off in 1961 with his cult classic THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, which received wide distribution in the United States and England. Though he had some American box office success with NECRONOMICON (1967), 99 WOMEN (1968), and his two 1970 Christopher Lee films, THE BLOODY JUDGE and COUNT DRACULA, he never achieved wide commercial success. Franco moved from Spain to France in the early 1970s so that he could make more violent and sexual films than the Spanish regime would allow, and it was at this point that his career began to go downhill commercially, as he turned to low-budget filmmaking with a heavier accent on adult films. Although he produced a few well-received, low budget horror films in the early 70's, many people in the industry considered him a porn director due to the huge number of X-rated adult films he began churning out.
Set in London, THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO, which Franco co-wrote, was filmed from 15 February to 30 April 1971, primarily in Barcelona, Alicante, and Murcia Spain (with some establishing shots in London as well). It thus represents one of Franco’s last “Spanish” films before his emigration to France. Nevertheless, it was primarily a German film, co-financed by a German production company, shot in German with a German cast, and co-produced by a German. That co-producer, who was also the co-writer, was Artur Brauner, who was a writer on more than 30 films, including the German version of 1971’s BLACK BEAUTY. But it was as a producer and the owner of CCC Films than Brauner really made his mark, being involved in the production of more than 300 films. He was a producer on Vittorio De Sica’s THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1971), Franco’s SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY (1971), and Agnieszka Holland’s EUROPA, EUROPA (1990). Brauner co-produced THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO with Spaniard Arturo Marcos. The film’s score was by German jazz musician Rolf Kuehn, who provided the scores for many more Franco productions.
Starring in THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO were Horst Tappert, Fred Williams, and Barbara Rutting. Tappert, who plays the maniac villain, began acting in the mid-1950s and spent most of the next 15 years in German television. He appeared in SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY and one other Franco film in the 1970-72 period. Tappert went on to play the character "Inspector Derrick" for the German TV crime series "Derrick" (1974-1998), and through its 25-year run became the best known policeman in the history of German television. His last role before his death in 2008 was in the Michel Hazanavicius / Jean Dujardin film OSS 117: LOST IN RIO. Fred Williams, who plays a Scotland Yard Inspector in the film, was born Friedrich Wilhelm Löcherer and began acting in the early 1960s. He appeared in Fellini’s JULIET OF THE SPIRITS and was “Jonathan Harker” in Franco’s COUNT DRACULA. One of his last major roles was as a German army captain in 1977’s A BRIDGE TOO FAR. Barbara Rutting was a Gerrman actress who had been working since the early 1950s. She appeared in the Kirk Douglas film TOWN WITHOUT PITY (1961) and the WWII adventure OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965). THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO was her only film for Franco.
THE DEATH AVENGER OF SOHO was first shown at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain in October 1972. It premiered in Germany, as “Der Todesrächer von Soho” on 9 November 1972, released by Constantin Film. In Italy, the film was called “Allarme a Scotland Yard: Sei Omicidi Senza Assassino!”
No contemporary reviews of the film are available. And with no legitimate U.S. release, modern reviews are also rare. Online comments are split between a few who think the film is muddled and incoherent and a somewhat larger number who believe that the film is one of Franco’s more entertaining projects.
Listed running times for the film vary from 78 to 85 minutes, with 81 minutes being most common. One source suggests that there was a U.S. theatrical release, but no evidence of this has been found. In June 2004, the German TV station ZDF aired a new German version with end credits and a better quality. That version is likely the one that is available on a German PAL DVD, from Warner Home Video, as part of a three-film Bryan Edgar Wallace Collection. The film is also available on DVD-R from certain “gray market’ sources, and on some suspect download sites, but no legitimate U.S. version has been released.
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Posted: |
Jul 26, 2012 - 12:54 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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TAM LIN (1971), the only film ever directed by actor Roddy McDowall, turned out to be a star-crossed project. The story of Tam Lin is an ancient legend from the Scottish border region. Variants of a ballad based on the legend were collected by Francis James Child, and both Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns published versions of the story, which has intrigued folksingers into the late twentieth century. The story is about a young mortal man who is captured by the queen of the fairies until a mortal woman, with whom he has fallen in love, rescues him by holding tight to him as the queen turns him into various frightening beasts.
TAM LIN was to be the first of three pictures made as part of a co-production deal between Commonwealth United Corp. and the Jerry Gershwin-Elliott Kastner production company. Roddy McDowall said his intention in directing the film was to produce a tribute to Ava Gardner, who was then forty-seven years old. (The two had never worked together before.) McDowall surrounded Gardner with a distinguished British cast, headed by Ian McShane, Cyril Cusack, and Stephanie Beacham in her first major film role. In lesser roles were Madeline Smith (a Hammer Film veteran), Sinead Cusack (Cyril’s daughter), and Joanna Lumley. Cinematography was by Billy Williams, who photographed WOMEN IN LOVE for Ken Russell. Stanley Myers scored the film. The contemporary musical group The Pentangle sang their version of "The Ballad of Tam Lin" on the soundtrack, as well as rock-style songs, intermittently throughout the film.
During production, the film went by a number of titles, including “The Ballad of Tam Lin,” “Tom Lynn” (the character played by McShane), “Toys and Games,” and “Toys.” Filming took place from 7 July until late October 1969 on location around Peebles, Scotland, and at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, England. Unfortunately, Commonwealth United folded shortly after TAM LIN’s principal photography was completed in October 1969, and the unfinished property was acquired by American International Pictures, where it remained uncompleted. During early 1970, Roddy McDowall was occupied in filming his part in Disney’s BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS. From August through October 1970, he was filming PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW. And in late 1970 and early 1971, McDowall was filming his starring role in ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.
Finally having a break in his schedule, in mid-1971 McDowall offered personally to return to England to handle the post-production work on TAM LIN in order to get the film on the market. McDowall told a reporter that during the interim, the movie had been “cut into total mindlessness. I didn’t even recognize it. I had to go back and find whole chunks of it and replace them.” Finally completed, the film was screened for the media in late 1971. The early reviews were not favorable. Variety’s “Whit” called TAM LIN “a farfetched, contrived, sometimes way-out drama” and felt that “the production is long on interesting backgrounds and camera angles, but short on professionalism.” Hollis Alpert of Saturday Review termed it a “baleful tale,” noting that McDowall “tends to linger over his richly decadent setups.” And Arthur Cooper of Newsweek thought Ava Gardner to be “immensely miscast” and “slightly ridiculous.” TAM LIN, he said “aspires to Gothic horror but only achieves mod mischief. . . . Unfortunately, [McDowall] is fascinated with the camera; he clutters the film with lingering close-ups, freeze-frames, focus shifts, slow motion, and some shots that seem to have been photographed through the Balmain gowns that Miss Gardner wears.”
The Hollywood Reporter and Motion Picture Herald reviews list the running time of the film as 107 minutes, while the Variety review lists the duration as 104 minutes. But at any length, the reviews were dismal. In the wake of these unfavorable reviews, American International cancelled TAM LIN’s imminent premiere engagements. About a year later, the picture was accorded scattered, unpublicized bookings under the title THE DEVIL’S WIDOW, using posters that treated the film more as a horror tale than as mythology. Following one of these theatrical showings in Chicago in January 1973, Roger Ebert cracked that “The movie was finished years ago but has only been released now because it took the brains in the promotion department all that time to figure out that the movie’s original title, TAM LIN, sounded like a Cantonese restaurant.” Eventually the film was sold to television and shown with its original title, TAM LIN.
McDowall may not have been entirely happy with the version of the film that he and American International originally agreed upon. Nor was he happy that the film had gotten such little exposure. McDowall said that the picture disappeared, until it seemed that his print of the film was the only remaining one. McDowall reported that Martin Scorsese viewed the film, tracked down the copyright and with Republic Pictures, retrieved the elements of the film and restored it in 1998. The restored film reportedly tones down what may be perceived as “horror” aspects of the film, and runs closer to McDowall’s original vision. The restored version was then released on cassette by Republic in 1998. Although there is a 1971 copyright statement for Winkast Film Productions, Ltd. onscreen, the film was not registered for copyright at the time of its release. It was finally copyrighted on 30 December 1997. One source suggests that the film is to be released on DVD and Blu-ray later in 2012 by Olive Films.
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Posted: |
Jul 29, 2012 - 12:42 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST was an 87-minute adventure film that concerned a teenage boy who is intent on finding his brother, an adventurous newspaperman who disappeared in the mountains of the Philippines while investigating a drug-smuggling ring. The film was written and produced by William Copeland, who was 59 at the time. Copeland had done only a little prior screenwriting, most of it for the short-lived 1955-56 TV series “Brave Eagle,” a western told from the Indians’ point of view, which had starred Keith Larsen as a Cheyenne chief. Directing the film was Michael Du Pont, who was related to the Du Ponts of the Du Pont de Nemours chemical company. Michael had entered film production as co-producer on a film called HANDS OF THE STRANGER (1962), which was directed by Newt Arnold and featured Michael in a small role as “Dr. Ken Fry.” Du Pont’s only other directing credits are for the unknown films ETHAN (1964) and THE BLOODLESS VAMPIRE (1965), both of which were filmed on location in the Philippines. All of them saw only limited theatrical release at best. As mentioned in a post above, Hershel Burke Gilbert scored the film, with orchestrations and arrangements by Ernest Hughes. Gilbert also collaborated on a song “Has Anyone Seen Chris?," with William Copeland and Hughes. A second song, "Filipina Filipina," had words and music by William Copeland and Angel Pena.
THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST was filmed on location in the Philippines. Starring were Gary Merrill and Jon Provost, who headed up a primarily Filipino supporting cast. Merrill had been acting on-screen since the late 1940s and quickly had major roles in 1950’s ALL ABOUT EVE and TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH. By the mid-1950s he was almost exclusively in television work, appearing in TV anthology series like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Zane Grey Theater.” This continued through most of the 1960s, with TV guest star roles and a regular role in the quickly cancelled 1964 series “The Reporter” broken up by the occasional low-budget film such as RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE and DESTINATION INNER SPACE (both 1966). By the late 1960s, feature roles were more regular, with Merrill appearing in the Glenn Ford western THE LAST CHALLENGE, Elvis Presley’s CLAMBAKE, and George Hamilton’s THE POWER.
A child actor since the age of 3, Jon Provost is forever linked with the TV series “Lassie,” which he began in 1957 at the age of 7. He appeared in nearly 250 episodes of the series, which ended its run in 1964. He then appeared in two widely divergent films prior to THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED (1966) and THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES (1970). THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST was also an early film of Leo Martinez who is a Filipino actor/comedian and director. Martinez would appear in a number of 1970’s Philippine-filmed exploitation films such as BAMBOO GODS AND IRON MEN and TNT JACKSON. He is currently the director general of the Film Academy of the Philippines.
The G-rated THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST was the first film released by Shermart Distributing, whose few other releases were of the “adult” variety. The film’s first confirmed showing was in Biloxi, Mississippi, on 23 June 1970. It generally received a quick playoff in suburban theaters. There are no contemporary reviews of the film to be found. Both TV Guide and The Motion Picture Guide rate it at one and a half stars.
It would be another four years before Gary Merrill appeared on the big screen again, in 1974’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN. After a small part in the 1977 Marlo Thomas-Charles Grodin film THIEVES and some late 1970s TV movie roles, Merrill would leave acting. He died in 1990 at age 74 with more than 100 roles to his credit. Jon Provost would not appear onscreen again until 1989, when the 39-year-old took a supporting role in the TV series “The New Lassie.” He received a Genesis Award for Outstanding Television in a Family Series for an episode he wrote focusing on the inhumane treatment of research animals. Provost celebrated his 50th anniversary as “Timmy” with the release of his autobiography, Timmy’s in the Well, which was issued in paperback in 2010.
THE SECRET OF THE SACRED FOREST has never been issued on home video in the U.S. William Copeland Productions, Inc. still holds the copyright on the film, a 16mm copy of which resides in the Library of Congress.
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Posted: |
Jul 30, 2012 - 7:31 PM
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By: |
dan the man
(Member)
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These days you very seldom see those 1970's films made by Sunn international and the like on cable TV, they made good money in their days in movie houses across America for a week or Two, they would saturate the airways with commercial ads on both Network and local TV stations, some of these semi obscure films were , THE LINCOIN CONSPIRACY, BEYOND AND BACK,IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK,IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS, ETC ETC, any comments?
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