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Posted: |
Nov 1, 2014 - 12:08 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In 1970, after producer Philip A. Waxman had purchased the film rights to John B. Sanford’s 1935 novel “The Old Man's Place,” it was announced that writer Abraham Polonsky, who had worked with Waxman on Universal's 1969 production TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE, would write the script and direct. It was also announced that the film would be shot in Spain, that Robert Blake would star, and that the film would be titled after the novel. In the end, none of that happened.
Although the film’s working title was “The Old Man's Place,” the release title had to be changed because Columbia Pictures had already registered that title back in 1962. Even before Polonsky’s name was mentioned in connection with the project, Waxman had signed Stanford Whitmore (YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, 1964) to write a script, and so Polonsky dropped out. Directing chores were taken over by Edwin Sherin, his second film after VALDEZ IS COMING. In a concession to the Hollywood unions, Waxman agreed to skip Spain and film entirely in northern California. And Robert Blake was also no longer associated with the project. Instead, the film offered early roles for William Devane and Michael Moriarity, who made his feature film debut in the picture. (Arthur Kennedy starred.) Charles Gross, who had scored Sherin’s VALDEZ IS COMING, provided the music.
Updating the 1935 novel to the present, the film concerned two disillusioned Army buddies returning home from war, in this case Vietnam. Under the title GLORY BOY, Cinerama Releasing opened the film in New York on 29 June 1971, to poor reviews. The Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris declared that the film was one of the “characteristically bad movies of the ‘70s” that “concern themselves very pretentiously with the problem of evil in a disintegrating social unit” while simultaneously “exploiting plot elements involving rape and murder.” And Roger Greenspun of the New York Times termed GLORY BOY one of those “obscure” “films that by their own confusions and inadequacies fail to make the kind of sense they so clearly intend.” Even so, a few reviewers, like the New York Daily News’ Wanda Hale, were favorably disposed towards the “simply-made” and “modest little film.” She attributed the “forcefulness” of the “highly charged drama” to Stanford Whitmore’s “solidly-constructed, extremely literate” screenplay, and to Edwin Sherin’s ability “to draw fine, sensitive performances from his cast.”
Nevertheless, following the generally negative critical reception, the film was withdrawn from distribution. It was re-released in 1972 as MY OLD MAN’S PLACE, with a new advertising campaign. But viewing the unchanged film in early 1972, the Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas found it to be “Awkward and devoid of any discernable style” and termed it “a fine opportunity largely missed.” However, looking at the film from a modern perspective, Leonard Maltin finds it to be “Not profound, but moody and interesting.”
Edwin Sherin would never direct a feature film again, and spent the next 35 years in television and the theater. MY OLD MAN’S PLACE was released on VHS by Prism Video, but has never had a DVD release. The film is now controlled by M-G-M.
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Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw wrote his one act play “Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores” in 1913. It tells the story of a prim British officer named to the court of the sexually uninhibited Catherine the Great of Russia. The play was first produced in London in 1913 and had brief runs in the U.S. in 1916 and again in 1936. The only U.S. television production of the play (there have been two British TV versions) was a live staging for NBC in May 1948, directed by TV pioneer Fred Coe and starring, in her TV debut, Gertrude Lawrence as Catherine and Micheál MacLiammóir as Patiomkin, a prince of the Russian court.
But the most famous incarnation of the play was the British film GREAT CATHERINE starring Peter O’Toole as the British officer, Jeanne Moreau as Catherine, and Zero Mostel as Patiomkin. Jack Hawkins was also in the cast, but his voice was dubbed in the film, as the actor had lost his voice due to surgery for throat cancer in 1966. Produced by O’Toole’s own company, the film was shot at London’s Shepperton Studios in 1967, and was released in Europe in 1968. It did not open in New York until early 1969. GREAT CATHERINE was directed by British television director Gordon Flemyng, who had also done a few prior features (DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS, THE SPLIT). It was scripted by Hugh Leonard (INTERLUDE, 1968). The film marked the final film score of Dimitri Tiomkin, not a note of which has been released.
The film received mixed reviews when Warner Bros. released it in the U.S. While calling GREAT CATHERINE “a pretty creaky affair,” the Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas still found that Jeanne Moreau’s “pouty sensuality and droll tongue-in-cheek approach make her a perfect Catherine.” And although he knocked the film for being “too talky” and “awkwardly assembled,” he praised it as being “civilized” and “offering intelligent, beautifully spoken conversation.”
Much harsher was the New York Daily News’ Wanda Hale, who thought the film was “plain silly . . . a big, noisy, brawling bore.” She was also unimpressed by the three stars—“You can’t like Peter O’Toole and Jeanne Moreau. But if you like Mostel as an actor, keep your illusions and don’t see him in this film.” Hale, however, was contradicted by the New York Times’ Howard Thompson, who declared that GREAT CATHERINE “moves with style, wit and dialogue that could have come only from George Bernard Shaw.” Thompson also found the film to be “stylishly piloted by its director” as well as being “beautiful in its lavish décor, costumes, and color photography.” But most of all, Thompson praised the “great clown” Zero Mostel, whose “glorious hamming” “makes the picture.” “Whether he is raging, whining, denouncing Voltaire, funneling wine or baiting the Empress, the picture is his—and Shaw’s, in that order.”
Director Gordon Flemyng would direct one more feature film, 1970’s THE LAST GRENADE, then return to directing television up until his death in 1995. Although GREAT CATHERINE has appeared on Turner Classic Movies in recent years, it has never been released on any home video format.
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Posted: |
Nov 5, 2014 - 4:12 PM
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By: |
alleybj
(Member)
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1972’s THE PUBLIC EYE was bursting with name-brand talent. It was the final film directed by the famed Carol Reed (“The Third Man;” “Oliver!”). The film had a well-known cast, headed by Mia Farrow, Topol (coming off his success in “Fiddler On the Roof”), and Michael Jayston (the male lead in “Nicholas and Alexandra”). Writer Peter Shaffer based the screenplay on his own 1962 stage play, something he would also do for the later films “Equus” and “Amadeus.” Although producer Ross Hunter was the one who had originally purchased the play for adaptation to the screen, it was legendary producer Hal Wallis who eventually produced the film, after he made his move from Paramount to Universal in the early 1970s. And composer John Barry scored the film.
Nevertheless, despite all this, the film was met with nearly unanimously negative reviews when it debuted in mid-1972. Only Judith Crist saw merit in the film, which she described as “a sort of nostalgic thirties-forties comedy, smooth, sophisticated and heart-warming, the kind of thing Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas and Fred MacMurray would have tossed off.” She particularly cited Shaffer, who “enlarged his play for the big screen with style and imagination;” Reed, who “keeps so light a hand on the proceedings that the sweetness never cloys;” and the cast of Farrow (“utterly charming”), Topol (“finely bravura”), and Jayston (“perfect”).
But it’s been impossible for anyone to tell which critics were correct, since the film has been unseen for 40 years. Although Universal still holds sole rights to the film, there has never been a video release in any format. However, this may be another case where the rights-holder to the film did not hold the rights to the underlying source material, in this case Peter Shaffer’s play. If I am reading the copyright records correctly, it appears as if Universal Pictures Company, Inc., as successor-in-title to Peter Shaffer, Ltd., finally obtained the rights to The Public Eye in December 2008. So perhaps the way is now clear for some type of release of the film.
Available in Japan as Follow Me, and it streamed on Netflix for awhile
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Posted: |
Nov 10, 2014 - 11:35 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Before receiving world-wide fame and recognition for his 1969 political thriller “Z,” Greek director Costa-Gavras had made two previous features. He worked with the male leads of “Z,” Yves Montand and Jean-Louis Trintignant, in his first feature, the 1965 crime drama THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER (Compartiment Tueurs). Simone Signoret starred in the film, which was based on the novel by Sébastien Japrisot. Michel Magne scored the film. Four tracks from the score were released on a French EP, and resurfaced on a 2004 Universal France CD devoted to Magne’s music.
The film was well-received upon its release in the U.S. by Seven Arts in 1966. Tony Mastroianni of the Cleveland Press declared that “Five or 10 years from now, connoisseurs of murder mystery motion pictures will be calling THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER a classic. What might have been a merely routine thriller has been elevated to something far better through tightly paced direction and the sort of casting and acting generally reserved for big budget dramas.” As for the cast, Mastroianni found that Yves Montand (who was married to Simone Signoret) “makes of his character a very real person,” and Signoret displayed “electricity in her acting and presence.” Looking at the film from a modern perspective, Leonard Maltin finds it to be a “quick-paced atmospheric police-chasing-mad-killer movie. Nicely photographed by Jean Tournier [THE TRAIN, 1965]” with “original action.” THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER was named Best Foreign Language Film of 1966 by the National Board of Review.
Costa-Gavras’ second film was 1967’s SHOCK TROOPS (Un homme de trop), which starred Jean-Claude Brialy (KING OF HEARTS, 1966) and Bruno Cremer. The film focused on a group of French resistance fighters during World War II. Costa-Gavras used the same cinematographer and composer for this film as he had in THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER. Michel Magne again had four tracks from his score released on a French EP, but those have never been reissued on CD.
James Bond producer Harry Saltzman acquired SHOCK TROOPS for distribution through United Artists. When the 110-minute film opened in Paris in April 1967, Variety’s “Mosk” felt that the film “has a little too much of everything. It gets repetitious and lacks a true heroic and character edge. Drastic pruning would help. . . . The direction keeps the cameras moving, relies on close-ups, and mixes smart action patter with rhetoric to lose the suspense needed. Too busy and overdone, this has some brash action but not enough coherence and drive to keep it from sagging throughout its overblown length.”
Despite this, SHOCK TROOPS was nominated for the Grand Prize at the July 1967 Moscow International Film Festival. And it received a somewhat warmer welcome when it was released in the U.S. in the fall of 1968, in a shortened 105-minute version. The New York Times’ Howard Thompson declared that “If the dynamic visual quality and explosive, slam-bang speed of the last half of the French-Italian co-production, dubbed into English, were matched by dramatic unity, this import might have been fine. It has a brilliant director in Costa-Gavras, a past master in locomotion, and a splendid, predominantly male cast of countryside fighters.” Thompson found that “the first half, hardly pausing for breath, is confusing in its scrambled vignettes,” “But when the story, also adapted by Mr. Costa-Gavras from a novel by Jean Pierre Chabrol, starts boiling over at about midpoint, it explodes with a fury and drive that are almost paralyzing. The men are natural, limber and truly heroic. But Mr. Costa-Gavras fails because he did not pull the film tauter at both the start and the curiously antiseptic fade-out.” In the U.S., SHOCK TROOPS barely played outside of New York.
Despite the overwhelming success of “Z” and Costa-Gavras’ later films, such as STATE OF SIEGE (1972), SPECIAL SECTION (1975), MISSING (1982), and BETRAYED (1988), his first two films have never received a video release on any format. THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER is controlled by Warner Bros., and SHOCK TROOPS is owned by M-G-M.
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A GUNFIGHT
dir.Lamont Johnson
?
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Posted: |
Nov 10, 2014 - 5:32 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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A GUNFIGHT
dir.Lamont Johnson
?
1971's A GUNFIGHT was a convoluted co-production. A European consortium of Dimitri de Grunwald and Alberto Caraco had originally offered to finance the production in Spain, and was offering $1.7 million for distribution rights in Europe. But in March 1970, it was announced that Ronald Lubin and Harold Jack Bloom's Harvest Productions, in conjunction with Kirk Douglas' Bryna Productions, would receive $2 million in financing from the Jicarilla Apache tribe for A GUNFIGHT, thus keeping production in the United States, rather than abroad. The tribe had oil, natural gas, and timber on its land and other diverse financial interests, and the business deal with the film producers received the approval of the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Producer Lubin used as many Apaches as possible on the film crew, since no Native Americans appear in the cast of the film, which is about two veteran gunfighters squaring off in the film's climax, set in a bullring. A GUNFIGHT was shot on location in New Mexico.
Although there is a copyright statement on the film, A GUNFIGHT was not registered for copyright at the time of its release. This oversight led to the issuance of any number of gray market VHS tapes of the film over the years. Finally, in 1991, Harvest and Thoroughbred Productions filed for and received a copyright on the film. This has drastically cut down on the number of gray market DVDs of the film, although some can still be found.
Since Paramount does not control the film, this is the likely reason why there has not been any official U.S. release from either Paramount or its licensees (Legend Films, Olive Films) over the years.
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Since I mentioned in a previous post about why some classic television series aren't on D.V.D., here's some television specials, films or miniseries that aren't on D.V.D. or Blu Ray:
"A Hatful Of Rain" - the '68 adaptation produced by David Susskind that featured Peter Falk, Herschel Bernardi, Sandy Dennis, Michael Parks and Don Stroud.
"The Mystic Warrior" - the '84 miniseries that has yet to see a D.V.D.-R. release from the Warner Archive Collection.
"Amerika" - the controversial '87 television miniseries that was released on V.H.S. by Anchor Bat Entertainment, but no D.V.D. release.
"The Sullivan Years" - the first (and in my opinion, the best) retrospective on "The Ed Sullivan Show" that was produced by Sullivan's production company, was heavily edited to an hour when it was rebroadcast in '75.
Hello,
Thanks for these suggestions. In the future if you could please list one at a time, it will make it much easier for me to research, find the necessary artwork and post them on the Pinterest Board much faster.
All of these are now posted. I could find no reference to "The Sullivan Years" per se so I listed The Ed Sullivan Show instead. I know there are some compilations out there but with so many of these shows produced we can always have more.
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Still not on Blu-Ray: Mulholland Drive , Justice League: Unlimited seasons 1 & 2 , The Blood of Heroes (international cut), 24 seasons 1-5 , Carnival of Souls (original), Oscar & Lucinda , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Hi,
Many titles will probably never be released on Blu-ray. We may hope to have some of the titles wanted on video released on DVD (or Blu-ray of course) with many more going to the former category than the latter. If you think that some of your suggestions are not on either format, please list them one at a time for the Pinterest Community Chest Board so that I can research its availability, and look up the artwork and information on the title, before posting it in a timely fashion.
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Available in Japan as Follow Me, and it streamed on Netflix for awhile
Would you happen to know if the DVD in Japan is in English and if it has REMOVABLE Japanese subtitles?
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Posted: |
Nov 12, 2014 - 12:48 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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George Schaefer was a television director and producer who, beginning in 1954 during the Golden Age of Television, directed numerous live and taped TV adaptations of Broadway plays for NBC's “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” Schaefer made his feature film directing debut in 1969, with the police thriller PENDULUM. The film starred George Peppard, Jean Seberg, and Richard Kiley. Walter Scharf scored the film, but none of his music has been released. During location filming in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The resulting riots in the capital caused the film company to wrap early and return to Los Angeles. Visible in some shots, buildings are burning and smoke is obvious.
The critics swung both ways on PENDULUM when Columbia Pictures opened the film in January 1969. A slight majority agreed with Newsday’s Leo Seligsohn that the film “takes the easy way out, burying its ambitious theme [civil liberties vs. law enforcement] in a contrived old-fashioned mystery story which cops out on the basic question it raises.” Concurring, Roger Ebert faulted the film for being “so badly written and indifferently directed that it degrades its subject.”
But PENDULUM had its supporters, as well. New York’s Judith Crist said that the film was “handled with intelligence and a recognition of the many issues involving personal rights and community obligation, the freedom of the individual and the curbs society may impose thereon for its survival. Stanley Niss has neither slicked up nor sloughed off these issues in his original screenplay.” And the New York Times’s Howard Thompson called PENDULUM “a vividly persuasive drama of crime detection and legal jurisdiction . . . But the movie’s real novelty and worth is its flavor of healthily cynical realism combined with an entirely credible flow of humanity. Much of this, unquestionably, comes from the graphic and detailed direction of George Schaefer.”
PENDULUM was nominated as Best Picture of the Year by the Mystery Writers of America for their annual Edward Allan Poe Awards. Although the film was issued on VHS and laserdisc, it has never had a legitimate DVD release.
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