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A few months ago I saw his final (TV) movie The Tracker from 1988, a western starring Kris Kristofferson and with an exciting electronic score by Sylvester Levay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUg5HkpWMc0 Levay had only good things to say about Guillermin. I don't think I have seen other films by him. RIP Mr.Guillermin.
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I'm in total agreement about Never Let Go. Sellers gave a great no-holds-barred performance as the bad guy, Lionenl Meadows. An extremely brutal man trying to maintain a veneer of respectability, but just can't contain his innate visciousness. Another Guillermin flim I liked a lot was The Guns At Batasi. Another great performance by Richard Attenborough. Additional accolades to The Guns At Batasi and Never Let Go. Plus the 1965 Rapture The 1957 Guillermin-directed & Tristram Cary-scored Town On Trial has been on my wish list for a while - so it's time for me get this one. Hope to someday see more of Guillermin's earlier British films, such as The Whole Truth and The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England. Does any FSMer know anything about Guillermin's mid-'50s involvement with Spanish co-productions (such as Tormenta and Thunderstorm) starring Linda Christian and/or Carlos Thompson? R.I.P. Mr. Guillermin.
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Posted: |
Sep 30, 2015 - 10:55 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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I've been a fan of many of John Guillermin's films. But I'm generally unfamiliar with his early work. His first film as director, 1949's HIGH JINKS IN SOCIETY, did not get a U.S. release. His second film, 1950's TORMENT, was released in the U.S. as PAPER GALLOWS. The film was a story of two brothers, both writers of crime novels, one a fine, upstanding gentleman and the other a moody, neurotic, psychopath. John Wooldridge scored the film.
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Does any FSMer know anything about Guillermin's mid-'50s involvement with Spanish co-productions (such as Tormenta and Thunderstorm) starring Linda Christian and/or Carlos Thompson? In my opinion, despite the fact that there are two separate entries for the films in the IMDB, TORMENTA (“Storm,” in Spanish) and THUNDERSTORM are the same film. They basically share all major production credits. Another clue is that someone has entered “Franco Vich Production Inc.” into the IMDB as one of the Spanish-sounding companies that produced TORMENTA. In clearing up the confusion, it helps to know that Hemisphere Films Ltd., which produced THUNDERSTORM, was a company operated by Mike Frankovich, the husband of THUNDERSTORM’s producer Binnie Barnes. The film was shot on location in the village of Mundaka (Bizkaia), Spain from late April to late July 1955. Given Mexican-born Christian’s popularity with Spanish-speaking audiences, I suspect that both an English-language and a Spanish language version were produced, with Guillermin and Alfonso Acebal alternating the direction. Both Guillermin and Acebal are credited on the Spanish poster below (the only feature film for which Acebal is credited as director). But the American prints, which were released by Allied Artists in 1956, credit only Guillermin. Note also that the Spanish poster properly spells “Frankovich.” Allied Artists had a pre-production involvement in the picture's making. The story concentrates on Linda Christian’s character of “Maria,” a woman who is rescued from the sea near a small fishing village. She is a tall, blonde, fair skinned and slim woman who ends up the center of attention for all the men of the town. Her presence threatens the town’s way of life, as she becomes much of a distraction. A British DVD of the film was just issued this past May.
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1957’s TOWN ON TRIAL was a crime drama filmed in England. The film opens with a sequence in which a handcuffed man is taken to police headquarters and recounts the events that led up to his committing murder. Throughout the sequence, the camera focuses only on the actors' torsos, avoiding their faces so that the murderer will not be revealed until the end. Similarly, during the film, the killings are shown from the murderer's point of view, concealing his identity from the audience. Tristam Cary scored this film, which was produced by Marksman Films, Ltd. for Columbia release.
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THE WHOLE TRUTH was a 1958 murder yarn, based on the 1955 play of the same name by Philip Mackie. It was filmed at the Walton Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Romulus Films, Ltd. had bought the motion picture rights to Mackie's play, intending to film a co-production with Twentieth-Century Fox which would co-star Stewart Granger and his then wife, Jean Simmons. But the deal fell through, Donna Reed replaced Simmons, and the film ended up being released by Columbia. Mischa Spoliansky scored the film.
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Written by Bryan Forbes, I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE (1958) was the true story of how a low-ranking British officer was recruited to impersonate Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery to mislead the Germans about his intentions before the Normandy campaign. The film opens with a written prologue that begins “The story you are about to see is the story of one of the boldest deceptions of our time in which Meyrick Clifton James, late of Her Majesty's Pay Corps, re-enacts his own real-life role.” John Addison provided the score. NTA acquired the film for American distribution and opened it in the U.S. in early 1959, under its original title. Despite its success in Britain, I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE did not fare particularly well at the American box-office, so later in the year, NTA changed the film’s title to HELL, HEAVEN OR HOBOKEN, and paired it on a double bill with another 1958 British World War II drama, BATTLE OF THE V-1, which NTA retitled as MISSILES FROM HELL.
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TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE was the first film by producer Sy Weintraub. He would make Tarzan adventures, including the popular television series, throughout the 1960s. Guillermin co-wrote as well as directed the film, which many of the contemporary reviewers and modern critics regard as the best feature in the series. Douglas Gamley scored the 1959 film, which was shot in Kenya.
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Guillermin directed Peter O’Toole in his first major role, in THE DAY THEY ROBBED THE BANK OF ENGLAND. The Bank declined to give permission to film its vaults for security reasons, so the sets were based on sketches and old prints from the British Museum of the vaults as they looked in 1900. Edwin Astley scored the 1960 film.
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coincidentally, the current issh of CINEMA RETRO has a cover story on KONG. JG added a lot to the KING legend with his heartfelt and exciting version. rip JG brm
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