The Harvey Girls
by George Sidney (II)
from Turner Home Ent
Musical western about a mail order bride who ditches her bashful suitor and joins a group of women intent on opening a remote whistle stop restaurant.
Format: DVD MOVIE
Sometimes lively, sometimes pokey, this Technicolor MGM musical inspires mixed feelings in aficionados of the form--except on one point. No viewer will question why "On the Atchison, Topeka, & the Santa Fe" won the best song Oscar for 1946. This is a brilliant, inventive song given an epic staging. Director George Sidney pulls out all the stops for this wowser--even Marjorie Main sings, an eardrum-testing sound. The real-life Harvey Girls were waitresses imported to the far-flung Fred Harvey Hotels, civilizing oases along the railroad lines out west. The fictional Harvey Girls is set in Sandrock, where the traveling waitresses are joined by a sort of mail-order bride (Judy Garland) whose prospective husband is a bust--he's a roughhewn rancher played by Chill Wills. Garland is in fine spunky form; unfortunately, her romance is with John Hodiak (as the owner of a dance hall), that uninspiring World War II-era lead. The film's other great Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren song is the unexpectedly melancholy "It's a Great Big World," performed in a lovely trio by Garland, Virginia O'Brien, and the young Cyd Charisse. The tall, deadpan O'Brien also does a comic take on "The Wild, Wild West" while shoeing a horse. With kewpie-faced Angela Lansbury as a bespangled dance-hall gal and Ray Bolger high-stepping through a dance solo, there are enough good people on board to keep the wheels a-turning "all the way to Californ-eye-yay." --Robert Horton
Vera Cruz
by Robert Aldrich
from MGM (Video & DVD)
"You're the first friend I ever had," grins flamboyant mercenary Burt Lancaster to lean, laconic Gary Cooper with a smile that suggests that he may be the last. They're a pair of Americans abroad looking to cash in on the Mexican revolution by selling their services to the highest bidder in this energetically cynical south-of-the-border Western. They meet cute, conning, robbing, and out-witting one another in a bit of one-upmanship that bonds the men in mutual admiration, and then team up to escort a royal convoy through revolutionary country. When they discover its secret stash of gold bullion, they revert to their old way, selling out anyone it takes to get the treasure for themselves, even each other. Played out as a seat-of-the-pants con game of shifting alliances and double crosses, this is a cheerfully ruthless tale that served as a veritable blueprint for the Italian spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. Director Robert Aldrich has a real flair for turning rogues and opportunists into deviously riveting characters, and went on to work the same sort of magic on Kiss Me Deadly and The Dirty Dozen. The cast of character actors features Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Jack Elam in the gang, George Macready as Emperor Maximilian, and Henry Brandon as the martinet German captain Danette. --Sean Axmaker
Legendary screen icons Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry) teamup for a magnificent, action-packed western from director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) and screenwriters Roland Kibbee and James R. Webb. With sweeping vistas and larger-than-life heroics,it's a tale as bold and rugged as the characters it so brilliantly depicts. Cooper and Lancaster portray Benjamin Trane and Joe Erin, two daredevil mercenaries who journey to Mexico in search of adventureand cold hard cashduring the 1866 revolution. But they get more than they bargained for when the wealthy and beautiful Countess Duvarre (Denise Darcel) hires them to escort her (and a fortune in gold!) to Emperor Maximilian's fighting forces in Vera Cruz. The trail is fraught with danger, betrayal and murder...and when Ben is swept up in the revolutionaries' fervor, he and Joe find themselves at odds with the Mexican Armyand each other!
Kiss Me Deadly
by Robert Aldrich
from MGM (Video & DVD)
Kiss Me Deadly starts off with a bang--a young woman (Cloris Leachman) in bare feet and a trench coat runs along a highway, frantically trying to flag down help. In desperation, she finally throws herself into traffic, and the car she stops belongs to detective Mike Hammer. The pace never lets up--we're not even 15 minutes into the movie and there's already been a murder, a mysterious letter, an attempt to kill Hammer, and, of course, a warning to just stay out of it. Hammer, tired of lowlife divorce cases, smells something big and can't let it go. The film is exciting, about as dark as a noir can get, and full of skewed camera angles and mysterious whose-shoes-are-those shots. At the center, of course, is Mike Hammer, a detective so cool he can win a fight with nothing more than a box of popcorn as a weapon. Hammer knows his opera singers as well as his amateur prizefighters, and he makes the ladies swoon, but he's far from a conventional hero. In fact, he's rather emphatically not a nice guy; Hammer happily whores out his secretary-girlfriend Velma to cinch up those divorce cases and has a penchant for slamming other people's fingers in drawers. Even the bad guys know he's a sleazebag. ("What's it worth to you to turn your considerable talents back to the gutter you crawled out of?") Ralph Meeker plays Hammer's ambivalence brilliantly, swinging easily between sexy and just plain mean. Kiss Me Deadly is just terrific. Stop reading this review and watch it already. --Ali Davis
A brilliant film noir classic based on Mickey Spillane's bestseller, Kiss Me Deadly is masterfully directed by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) and hailed as one of his best (Leonard Maltin). This DVD edition of Kiss Me Deadly features the fully restored original endingwhich contains over one minute of crucial footage that clarifies decades of false interpretations. In order to illustrate the vastly different impressions left by each version, the altered/shortened ending has been included as well. When callous thugs beat Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) senseless and viciously murder the gorgeous blonde he's been trying to help, the hard-boiled detective retaliates theonly way he can: by hitting first and asking questions later. Cutting a brutal swath through the city's sleazy underside, Hammer uncovers a mysterious black container whose deadly contents not only solve the murder...but trigger an apocalyptic climax as well!
Bend Of The River
by Anthony Mann
from Universal Studios
Besides being a terrific movie in its own right--and the second entry in a remarkable eight-film series teaming director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart--Bend of the River is also fascinating as a variation on one of the greatest Westerns. With or without anyone else's knowledge, screenwriter Borden Chase reworked scenes, character configurations, and much of the structure of Red River, the screenplay of which he had cowritten (from his own novel) for director Howard Hawks six years earlier. Seeing what Hawks and Mann did with some of the same scenes--a spooky night skirmish with Indians, for instance--makes for a compelling lesson in the transformative power of directorial style.
Instead of Texas and the Chisholm Trail, Bend of the River is set in the Oregon river country, with a wagon train substituting for an epic cattle drive. Wagonmaster Stewart, a man with a secret past he's determined to redeem, rescues another, not-so-ex-renegade (Arthur Kennedy) from a lynching. Stewart finds Kennedy a powerful ally in a fight but ultimately has to face him as a mortal enemy--and to revert to his old savage ways in order to save his adopted community. Along the trail, they are variously companioned and/or menaced by the likes of slick gambler Rock Hudson (compare the Cherry Valance part in Red River) and hard cases Harry (then Henry) Morgan, Royal Dano, and Jack Lambert. There's knockout scenery, as usual with Mann, and fight-to-the-death action as bracing as a plunge into an icy river. --Richard T. Jameson
4 for Texas
by Robert Aldrich
from Warner Home Video
Rat Pack buddies Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were prized for their ability to appear relaxed on camera, but in 4 for Texas they're nearly asleep. It must have looked good on paper: reuniting the crooners and teaming them with two international sex symbols in a jokey Western under the guidance of topnotch director Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly). Ursula Andress, as a riverboat owner who hooks up with Dino, unleashes her bedroom purr to great effect, but formidable Anita Ekberg had a bad year in 1963 (she also got stuck in Bob Hope's immortal Call Me Bwana). A tasty roster of character actors is wasted, although Charles Bronson and Victor Buono are amusing as unsavory citizens of 1870s Galveston. Even the Three Stooges, in their Curly Joe configuration, wander through. After a terrific opening sequence in the desert, establishing Frank and Dean's rivalry, this one quickly goes south. --Robert Horton
The Enforcer
by Raoul Walsh
from Republic Pictures
Humphrey Bogart stars as a crusading district attorney working against the clock to prosecute a mob boss in this suspenseful picture that should appeal to crime completists and fans of the iconic actor. Based on actual court cases, the plot unfolds largely in flashback as Bogart reviews his case against vicious racketeer Everett Sloane, who has killed off anyone that has threatened to testify against him. Capably directed by Bretaigne Windust (with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's most suspenseful moments, including the nail-biting conclusion), The Enforcer's standard law vs. the mob plotline benefits greatly from its unusual structure, as well as Bogart's solid presence and a terrific supporting cast, which includes an early turn by Zero Mostel. The opening narration is provided by Estes Kefauver, who was chairing a Senate investigation into organized crime at the time of the picture's release. --Paul Gaita
Force of Evil
by Abraham Polonsky
from Republic Pictures
Based on an obscure crime novel titled Tucker's People, Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil has attained classic status since its release in 1948, when film noir was thriving on the fringes of the Hollywood studio system, where the shadowy attributes of noir were allowed their fullest expression. Which is to say, this gritty drama is drenched in greed, cynicism, and corruption of the soul, as embodied by John Garfield in one of his most memorable roles. He's perfectly cast as Joe Morse, a lawyer whose connection to a ruthless racketeer has nearly destroyed his sense of morality. His participation in a rigged numbers racket could prove disastrous for his high-strung older brother (superbly played by Thomas Gomez), whose small-time policy bank stands to go broke when the rigged numbers pay off--a financial windfall for Joe's powerful boss at everyone else's expense.
Joe's corruption is tempered only by remnants of guilt and his redeeming attraction to Edna (Marie Windsor), his brother's secretary, whose common decency gnaws at Joe's rotten conscience. But before Joe can rise from his self-made hell, Force of Evil takes him to the darkest pit of tragic humanity--a downward spiral perfectly expressed through George Barnes's exquisitely stark cinematography. In style and substance, this is quintessential noir, its plot unfolding with uncompromising toughness and intelligence. More's the pity, then, that director Polonsky was later victimized by the Hollywood blacklist, curtailing a promising career for two decades until Polonsky directed Robert Redford in 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. It seems only fitting, then, that Polonsky's remarkable debut is now recognized as one of the finest dramas of its kind. --Jeff Shannon
Winchester '73
from Timeless Media Group
John Drew Barrymore, son of legend John Barrymore and father of Drew Barrymore, stars in this TV remake of the 1950's classic James Stewart western. Two brothers, one an officer and the other an ex con, compete for possession of the famed repeating rifle of the title, a Winchester '73. Co-starring Joan Blondell, John Dehner and Dan Duryea.
New Orleans
by Arthur Lubin
from Kino Video
This little-seen, 1947 drama is a treat for jazz fans, thanks to an otherwise creaky, if nobly intentioned story built around the music's Crescent City genesis that provides an ample excuse to turn the camera on authentic jazz greats. Nick Duquesne (Arturo De Cordova) is a Bourbon Street charmer whose gambling club provides the mythic stomping grounds for none other than Louis Armstrong, whose vocalizing sweetheart Endie, played by none other than Billie Holiday, proves no slouch herself. A newly arrived debutante, Miralee (Dorothy Patrick), arrives in New Orleans and falls first for the music and then for the roguish but ultimately gallant Nick. The movie follows knee-jerk plot machinations revolving around her family's efforts to excise Nick from her life, her own dream of mingling jazz and classical music, and the gambler's transformation into a jazz promoter.
The script works in the squalor and much of the geography of Storyville and the French Quarter, even providing a contrasting look at the genteel parlor music being played in "respectable" casinos, and the casting telegraphs the production's reverence for jazz. Satchmo's other musical partners are equally serendipitous, including Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Bud Scott, Zutty Singleton, Meade "Lux" Lewis, and Red Callender. A brief arc late in the film adds Woody Herman and his orchestra.
When the musicians are featured, New Orleans is a frequent delight, with Armstrong as magnetic as always, and Holiday endearing. As an actress, she's a terrific singer, and luckily Lady Day's dialogue is far briefer than her featured vocals. The DVD version boasts additional period shorts showcasing Armstrong (1932's "A Rhapsody in Black and Blue") and Holiday's "Symphony in Black" from 1935). --Sam Sutherland
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