thirdbid Reviews

Metropolis (1927)

Full-length (2½ hr) copy of Metropolis discovered and restored

[10/10 · 6 May 2010]

See "Footage Restored to Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'", New York Times (Movies) May 4th, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/movies/05metropolis.html - which includes links to a trailer for the newly restored film and a still of Fritz Rasp as the Thin Man from the recovered footage.

According to the author of the article: "for the first time, Lang's vision of a technologically advanced, socially stratified urban dystopia, which has influenced contemporary films like "Blade Runner" and "Star Wars," seems complete and comprehensible." Also Martin Koerber, a German film archivist and historian who supervised the latest restoration and the earlier one in 2001 is quoted as saying "It's no longer a science-fiction film, the balance of the story has been given back. It's now a film that encompasses many genres, an epic about conflicts that are ages old. The science-fiction disguise is now very, very thin."

Reportedly a DVD of this restored version of "Metropolis" will be released later this year after a nation wide theatrical release takes place.

The Candy Snatchers (1973)

Trivia

[22 April 2007]

Two weeks after "The Candy Snatchers" was released in Italy, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped, after which his ear was cut off and sent to a newspaper in Rome by his Italian kidnappers, as an apparent incentive for the payment of his ransom - an act that mirrored a part of the film's plot.

Regards the comment "Special Weird Appeal notice goes to Christophe as the mute hero of the tale; his performance must be seen to be believed and puts most child actors to shame; imagine a six-year-old Macauley Culkin on mushrooms and you'll get the picture."

Christophe was played by the director's son Christopher Trueblood, who was learning disabled. One of the most difficult scenes in the picture to complete was the one in which Christophe ends up having to shoot Eddy, because (much to his credit) Christopher was unwilling to just 'pretend' to kill Vince Martanaro, who was in fact his close friend - in part because of Vince's lengthy relationship with Guerdon Trueblood and his family.

Flying Padre (1951)

...sharper than a serpent's tooth?

[22 April 2007]

With regard to some of the criticisms offered in IMDb comments, Stanley was 23 years old when he made this 8:09 minute long newsreel segment in 1951. One might also keep in mind that the newsreel companies of the day, such as Henry Luce's 'March of Time', determined and controlled both the content and form of what they produced and distributed.

According to "Kubrick" by Michel Ciment: When March of Time went into liquidation, RKO bought the "Day of the Fight" (which Kubrick and Alex Singer shot in 1950) for a hundred dollars more than its production cost, but sweetened the deal by offering Kubrick an advance of $1,500 dollars for a second documentary, "The Flying Padre". (http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/milestones.html)

"Day of the Fight" had it's world premiere as a short subject (it was part of an RKO series entitled "This Is America") on April 26 1951, which is generally regarded as the date of Kubrick's official entry into the film industry - despite any earlier theatrical circulation of "The Flying Padre".

"The Flying Padre' is now available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqTlxRYt7B0)

Oldboy (2003)

Life imitates art

[20 April 2007]

Apparently: "Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui explicitly copied parts of the Korean Cannes Film Festival winner 'OldBoy' as investigators revealed Cho repeatedly watched the movie before the massacre on Monday." (Maltastar.com April 19th, 2007) See single frames from Cho's submission to NBC news and similar poses in Oldboy at http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msFullArt.asp?an=11478

In addition to winning the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Oldboy received high praise from the President of the Jury, director Quentin Tarantino, who failed in his effort to persuade other the members of the jury to give this film the Palme d'Or.

Redskin (1929)

Trivia

[25 October 2006]

"Redskin" is included in a four disk 48 film set assembled by the National Film Preservation Foundation entitled "Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film 1900-1934", which is available from Amazon.com and others.

In addition to being Paramount's last silent picture and their first color film (using two strip Technicolor), 'Redskin' was also partially filmed using an early 70mm process called Magnascope (see http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDRedskin.htm)

"Magnascope was a special projection technology that used a wide angle, 3 1/2 inch lens to project a dramatically enlarged image (30 by 40 feet) on a screen that was twice the size of the standard Rivoli screen (15 by 20 feet). Non-Magnascope portions of "Old Ironsides" were projected with a 7-inch lens. An illusion of gradual image enlargement was produced by the movement of black masking on the top, bottom, and sides of the screen to reveal more and more of the enlarged projected image." (http://www.in70mm.com/newsletter/1999/59/rivoli/theatre.htm) ...however the aspect ratio of Magnascope was still 4:3.

The first and only road that serves as the access to the top of Acoma Pueblo's 370' Mesa was constructed in 1929 by the Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation for this production.

Hollywood Horror House (1970)

Trivia

[18 October 2006]

I've never seen the final product but after shooting around Miriam Hopkins' scenes we spent several days waiting on-set to see if her health would improve enough for her to be able to work, which didn't happen. This was the first picture Gale Sondergaard did after 20 years of being blacklisted - another real pro in the cast the crew loved was Florence Lake. A wonderful moment when she shot David Garfield, who'd generally been carrying on like he was God's gift to The Biz. Steve Karkus (EFX) got even for all of us by overloading the squibs so that they went off on Garfield like artillery rounds - his reaction probably represents the best of his talents as an actor.

Gas! -Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It. (1970)

Trivia

[11 September 2006]

The scene at Acoma Pueblo where the explosion takes place (next to the 350 year old San Esteban del Rey Mission) was deliberately shot without informing any of the Pueblo residents, much less their secular and religious leaders. In anticipation of the Acoma's predictable response to their trust being violated, Corman planned for this to be the final shot at this location and was thus prepared to leave immediately after the explosion took place.

Acoma has been continuously occupied since at least 1150 A.D. and in 1929 was used as a location for "Redman", which was filmed using two strip Technicolor and an early 70mm wide screen process known as Magnascope - the production company also constructed the first (and only) road up the 367 foot high mesa to where the village and mission are located.

Truck Stop Women (1974)

Trivia

[10/10 · 6 July 2006]

Note the size of the cattle in the scene where Seago (Paul Carr) gets trampled to death in the stock trailer - when the company came to shoot this scene it turned out the livestock supplier had just sent everything he had to auction but a few yearlings, so we ended up using those and Paul did the scene on his knees (in the manure) to compensate for the cows lack of height.

Like they say: "Ya gotta' love the biz."

Also the scene where the mobsters Lincoln is machine gunned was done with live ammunition - after which a Socorro county sheriff drove up and casually asked if we were going to do any more ...becuse he thought it would be a good idea for him to block the road if we were.

Ah those were the days...

Monstroid (1980)

...during production

[1/10 · 17 April 2005]

This is a wonderfully goofy example of a self produced, written and directed vanity project ...while I was working as a crew member John Carradine commented to me (before the burning at the stake sequence): "This is the worst piece of sh*t I've ever worked on ...and I've worked on a lot of pieces of sh*t." Also An interesting moment earlier when Jim Mitchum was having trouble with his lines and started cursing in the courtyard location of the Santuario (a religious shrine in Chimayó) - at which point one of the local "vato loco" low-rider onlookers growled "...show some respect man", which apparently caused Jim to remember where he was, as he then made a very profound and heartfelt apology for his inappropriate behavior. In any case the crew did the job on deferment and were never fully paid - but came away with plenty of particularly bizarre stories - like the night we caught the producer/director's 10 year old son entertaining himself by constructing miniature Burmese tiger traps for us to break our legs in. Like they say: "Ya gotta' love the Biz..."