Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Knife in the Water (1962)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jerzy Skolimowski, story by Jakub Goldberg & Roman Polanski
Produced by Stanislaw Zylewicz
94 minutes

The biggest surprise in Knife in the Water is that the filmmaking is so in tune that the script doesn’t need surprises to hold our attention. Five years of study at the Polish Film School in Lodz led Roman Polanski to the idea for a feature length thriller to take place in a confined space, though the backdrop he selected was the Mazury lake district he’d camped and sailed. Receiving a go-ahead from “Kamera” Productions — a state owned film company in Poland — Polanski and his friends Jakub Goldberg and Jerzy Skolimowski finished a script in the summer of 1959. Skolimowski had hit upon the idea for the action to span a 24-hour period. Rejected by the Ministry of Culture on the grounds that the script had no social value, Polanski was given a year to resubmit it. By the spring of 1961, a loosening of Soviet control in the arts permitted Knife in the Water to move forward with Polanski directing.

Opening March 1962, Polish critics slammed Knife in the Water. Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka denounced it as a film that “displayed the kind of thinking for which there is no place anywhere in the Communist world.” But when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival in August, word of mouth began to build. The film arrived in the United States in October 1963 for the first New York Film Festival. A critical sensation, it even picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Knife in the Water is an antidote to contemporary thrillers stocked with psychos or dead bodies. The subtle power games between the characters build to an inevitable clash while the nautical atmosphere and attractive actors keeps the picture exciting throughout. Krzysztof Komeda composed an elegant jazz musical score that is perfect for the film’s cool decadence.

The married couple of Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) and Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) take a Sunday drive in the countryside. Affluent enough to own a car but just barely able to conceal their contempt for each other, the afternoon suddenly becomes more exciting for the pair when a 19-year-old boy (Zygmunt Malanowicz) hitchhiking in the middle of the road is almost mowed down by Andrzej. The couple gives the kid a ride to a marina, where they plan to take their sailboat out for a day and night on the lake. Seeking to flex his superiority, Andrzej invites the kid to come with them. A drifter more accustomed to the woods than the water, the boy receives training in basic seamanship from Andrzej, a sportswriter and former sailor. Krystyna seems to enjoy the presence of the younger specimen, who reveals a switchblade knife in his possession.

Sensitive to being bossed around and dominated by Andrzej, the boy guts the afternoon out, perhaps due to his attraction for Andrzej’s wife, a skilled bosun in her own right. While husband and wife cavort in the lake — leaving the boy alone on the boat when he claims he can’t swim — the wind suddenly picks up and it’s Krystyna who climbs back into the boat and gets it under control. On their way back to dry land to drop their passenger off, Andrzej runs aground and when it begins to storm, the three of them take shelter for the night below deck. Krystyna and the boy wake early and feeling threatened by the attention she’s given him, Andrzej throws the knife overboard and in the tussle that follows, makes the boy disappear below the waves as well. The couple is forced to then decide what to do.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 1,989 users: 85% for Knife In the Water

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Repulsion (1965)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Roman Polanski & Gérard Brach and David Stone
Produced by Gene Gutowski
105 minutes

In the waking moments between Alfred Hitchcock and Michelangelo Antonioni, between Psycho and Blowup, there’s Repulsion, a stark and stunning British film that’s almost certainly a thriller, though it seems to be missing a murderer. Taking place in the psyche, the picture drifts away from art and provides intense audience appreciation by piling up a couple of bodies, as well as jolts of terror so virulent you might fly out of your seat. The English language debut of Roman Polanski and star Catherine Deneuve was initiated when producer Gene Gutowski introduced the filmmaker to Compton Group, a London based exploitation picture maker. Polanski & Gérard Brach whipped up a draft for a female psychodrama in 17 days, which Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser agreed to finance for £40,000. Polanski would ultimately bring Repulsion in for £95,000.

Despite the low budget, Polanski insisted on hiring Gilbert Taylor, who’d shot Dr. Strangelove and A Hard Day’s Night. The British director of photography amazed Polanski with his ability to calculate the amount of light needed for a given shot without using a light meter. It’s the self-assured precision of the film that holds our attention while nothing much happens for 45 minutes. Polanski dramatizes the tedium of a woman’s everyday routine and the heightened sense of her dreams so fluidly that we’re unsure what’s real and what isn’t. Praised as an accurate depiction of schizophrenia, the film is far from a clinical study and succeeds by being wet and wild with imagination. Polanski had help on his sophomore feature, with an eye catching credit sequence designed by Maurice Binder and a tumultuous jazz score composed by Chico Hamilton.

A Belgian living in London named Carole (Catherine Deneuve) ends another day at the salon where she works as a manicurist. On her walk home, the quiet girl is waylaid by Colin (John Fraser), an overeager cad who pressures Carole for a date, seemingly oblivious of her complete aversion to him. She returns to the shabby flat in South Kensington she shares with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) and is distressed to find a straight razor belonging to Helen’s lover in the bathroom. A married man who cancels the home cooked dinner Helen was preparing when he insists the couple dine out, Michael (Ian Hendry) finds his limited charms lost on Carole and suggests to her sister that she needs to see a doctor. Later that evening, sounds of Helen’s lovemaking awaken Carole and upset her.

Helen and Michael take off to Italy for a holiday, leaving Carole with cash to pay the late rent. Occupying the flat alone, her gradual descent into schizophrenia begins when she hears bells from the convent across the street tolling at midnight. So distracted at work that she cuts a client’s finger, she’s sent home. Running out of food, Carole’s delusions intensify. From the window, she sees a strange woman watching her flat. She begins to imagine cracks forming in the walls. A construction worker Carole has noticed on the walk home shoves his way into her room and rapes her. Men start visiting the flat at a very bad time for Carole, beginning with Colin breaking down the door for a chat and later, her landlord (Patrick Wymark), who suggests a way Carole could lower her rent. Both men leave the flat feet first.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 3,844 users: 87% for Repulsion

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Roman Polanski, based on the novel by Ira Levin
Produced by William Castle
136 minutes

Crafted with elegance and wit so assured that its style is nearly invisible, Rosemary’s Baby has earned its spot in discussions of the scariest film ever made. Ira Levin — whose debut novel A Kiss Before Dying was published to acclaim in 1953 — found inspiration in his wife’s pregnancy for a second novel in 1967. Film rights were obtained by William Castle, the director whose in-theater gimmicks for movies like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler involved rubber skeletons flying over the audience or electrified seats. Unable to raise financing for Rosemary’s Baby, Castle partnered with Paramount Pictures, whose production chief Robert Evans agreed to split the profits with Castle, but refused to let the shlockmeister direct. Castle accepted the role of producer as Evans convinced Roman Polanski to adapt and direct Rosemary’s Baby.

One of Polanski’s few revisions to the novel was a brilliant one: embracing psychological horror and leaving it to the viewer decide whether Rosemary was the victim of witchcraft or her own prenatal paranoia. Richly designed by Richard Sylbert, the film was shot in 14 weeks: two weeks in New York for exterior shooting around the Dakota Hotel were followed by 12 weeks of interiors on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Urban legends supported by Castle that the picture was cursed neglect how gripping Rosemary’s Baby ultimately is without using elaborate special effects to generate unease. The dream sequences are effective because like the film, they unlock irrational fears we keep locked in our subconscious. Skillfully adapted and wonderfully cast, the ending ranks among the most gloriously black of all time.

Looking for an apartment to rent, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) follow a leasing agent (Elisha Cook) up to a 7^th floor unit of the “Bramford Building” in New York. The couple ignores the stories their erudite friend “Hutch” (Maurice Evans) shares about the building’s “unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century”, including tenants whose preoccupation with witchcraft earned it the name “Black Bramford”. Rosemary and Guy hear their new neighbors — bickering through the thin partition wall — before they see them. In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets reformed junkie Terry Gionoffrio  (Angela Dorian) who was taken in by Rosemary’s neighbors and given a new lease on life. Not long after, Terry is found on the sidewalk, dead from an apparent suicide.

Rosemary finally meets her elderly neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) when the couple invite her and Guy to dinner. While her husband is quickly won over by the magnetic Castevets, Rosemary is suspicious of the strange potables and desserts Minnie pushes on her. Good fortune finds Guy when another actor suddenly goes blind, landing him the leading role in a play. With his career taking off, he suggests they have a baby. The night they conceive, Rosemary feels faint and experiences a strange dream. At the urging of the Castevets, she leaves her obstetrician for one the Castevets recommend, Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy). Alarmed by her weight loss and abdominal pain, Hutch delivers Rosemary a book that leads her to suspect those closest to her belong to a coven of witches who are keenly interested in her baby.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 26,945 users: 83% for Rosemary’s Baby

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jeff Gross & Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Lunes de Fiel by Pascal Bruckner
Produced by Roman Polanski
139 minutes

It’s not clear whether Bitter Moon is a bad movie on accident or if its giddy banality was designed, but the end result is a debacle either way. Roman Polanski’s producing partner Alain Sarde had purchased the film rights to a 1981 novel by French essayist Pascal Bruckner titled Lunes de Fiel. Seizing on the salacious paperback cover, Polanski adapted a screenplay with Jeff Gross in Paris, while Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn drafted their own scripts separately. Titled Bitter Moon, the erotic drama was a French-English co-production shot largely at Paris Studios Cinema. While the finished film features only brief nudity and no graphic copulations, it struggled to find a U.S. distributor out of fear that it’s overall tone of degraded sexuality might draw an NC-17 rating. Fine Line Features ultimately released Bitter Moon in March 1994.

Like Showgirls, it’s arguable that the hokey dialogue and aberrant sexual situations were stuffed into Bitter Moon on purpose, maybe as a satire of holiday romances. One miscalculation is the casting of Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner. An adequate actress, Seigner lacks the charisma of Kristin Scott Thomas, who along with Hugh Grant — playing (what else?) a stiff, goofy Brit — are the redeeming factors of the picture. Peter Coyote (taking a role James Woods turned down) does such a good job basking his character in impurity that the act of watching him becomes repellent. The sexual encounters combine old fashioned sophistication with laughable sleaze, as if the men who cooked them up conducted their research at the Playboy Mansion. Vangelis contributed a musical score that comes off too overpowering for such a trifle.

Seeking a holiday after seven years of marriage, Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) set sail for Istanbul aboard a cruise ship in the Black Sea. Fiona comforts a distraught French woman in the loo and that evening, Nigel discovers her dancing in the bar, but the precocious Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) brushes off the stiff Brit. On the deck, a vulgar cripple named Oscar (Peter Coyote) reveals himself as Mimi’s husband and invites Nigel back to his cabin to tantalize him with tales of their love life. Oscar first saw Mimi on a bus between Montparnasse and Porte des Lilas. An American in Paris with grand literary ambitions, Oscar finds himself unable to write until he can reunite with his “sorceress in white sneakers”. Bumping into the apparition as she waits tables, Oscar asks Mimi to dinner.

As Oscar reveals the sadomasochistic routines the couple resorted to out of contempt for their co-dependence on each other, Nigel grows uncomfortable, but is compelled to stay and hear more. Seeking to end their relationship, Oscar concludes the only way to get rid of Mimi is to treat her as inhumanely as possible. After convincing her to have an abortion, Oscar books them a flight to Martinique, only to sneak off the plane and send her off alone. Two years later, a drunken accident cripples him. Mimi returns to Paris under the pretense of caring for her ex-lover, but uses his condition to exact a slow and bitter revenge. Oscar now gives Nigel his blessing to pursue Mimi sexually, but the Brit discovers his wife may be better suited to pushing the boundaries of marriage than he.

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Produced by Charles H. Joffe
96 minutes

Of the 39 feature films he’s directed and written so far, neither the Oscar winning Best Picture Annie Hall nor the handful of other treasures in the Woody Allen vault have the timeless magnificence of Manhattan. Allen discussed the idea of shooting a movie in anamorphic widescreen with cinematographer Gordon Willis on the set of Interiors in 1977. Their ambition was to make a movie that captured an intimacy typically blown away by epic framing and since the story would take place in New York, use black & white film stock to express the vibe of the city. Allen — who grew up in Brooklyn and was introduced to Manhattan via Hollywood movies – began coming up with scenes as he listened to Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of George Gershwin. He then wrote a script with Marshall Brickman.

Manhattan is a valentine for the other 364 days on the calendar. Allen’s intent was to make a picture more serious than Annie Hall but funnier than Interiors, “a serious picture that had laughs in it”. Manhattan fits that bill better than just about any movie you could name. Allen’s one-liners aren’t the knee slappers they may have once been, but the film’s visual and symphonic splendor are as enthralling as they ever were. Expressing the resplendence of a city as it existed mostly in his own dreams, Manhattan volleys between Allen’s contention that we’re being too tough on ourselves, while in the moments that matter most, not being nearly tough enough. Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway — far sexier in other roles — have never seemed more beautiful than they are here, while Woody gives his most nuanced performance.

Four friends gather for supper at Elaine’s. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a 42-year-old writer working on a book set in the city he adores. His 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) has more intelligence and maturity than Isaac’s ego will give her credit for. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but leaving the restaurant, reveals to Isaac that he’s become involved with another woman. Isaac is unable to offer much relationship advice as his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has taken up with a woman and is publishing a tell-all memoir about their marriage, or as she calls it, “an honest account of our breakup.” While Tracy asserts that she’s in love with Isaac, he advises the teenager to view their relationship as little more than “a detour on the highway of life.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isaac and Tracy run into Yale and his mistress: journalist and neurotic dingbat Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). She offends Isaac by disparaging all of his cultural heroes — from Heinrich Boll to Ingmar Bergman — in under a minute. Nervous about his future once he quits a job writing for a hip sketch TV show, Isaac bumps into Mary at a benefit for the Museum of Modern Art and ends up wandering Manhattan with her until sunrise. Yale develops a guilty conscience after breaking off his affair and when Isaac maintains that he’s not serious about Tracy, compels his friend to give Mary a call. Isaac and Mary leap right into a relationship, which ends up being undermined when Mary confesses she still has feelings for Yale. Realizing he made a mistake by dumping Tracy, Isaac sets out to make things right.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 16,781 users: 92% for Manhattan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the book by Corbett H. Thigpen M.D. & Hervey M. Cleckley M.D.
Produced by Nunnally Johnson
91 minutes

The Three Faces of Eve is so ridiculous that it begs for a spot on Mystery Science Theater. That may be a warning to ignore this, or an invitation to watch it, depending on your taste. The film is based on a case of multiple personality documented in a woman in Georgia known only at that time as “Eve”. Writer-producer Nunnally Johnson — who adapted The Grapes of Wrath and How To Marry A Millionaire — read the manuscript in galleys and sold Fox on purchasing the screen rights before the book’s publication in 1957. Johnson’s first choice to play Eve was Jennifer Jones, who demurred. Marilyn Monroe was considered, then Judy Garland. Joanne Woodward was a TV veteran under contract to Fox and despite having only two screen credits at that time, won the part. Woodward’s performance then won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the one and only Oscar nomination of her career.

Earnestly narrated by Alistair Cooke — who in a dash of retro style actually appears on camera to deliver an introduction for everyone in the cheap seats — the drama is thinly sketched, the psychology is poorly rationalized and the production is cheaply shot on the Fox lot, albeit in wide angle proscenium “CinemaScope” by director of photography Stanley Cortez. If given a sense of humor, the script might have been more appropriate for the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle playing Eve. That said, the saving grace of The Three Faces of Eve is Joanne Woodward, the kooky hipster chick and wife of Paul Newman who seemed to blaze a trail in independent film 30 years before Sundance or Miramax existed (her contemporary might be Toni Collette). In what would barely qualify as a movie by today’s standards, Mrs. Woodward is nothing short of beguiling.

In an on camera introduction by “Distinguished Journalist and Commentator” Alistair Cooke, we the audience are assured that the events of the movie we’re about to see are based on an account of “multiple personality” that is a matter of psychiatric record. On August 20, 1951 somewhere in Georgia, dreary housewife Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne) are referred to a psychiatrist named Dr. Charles Luther (Lee J. Cobb), Eve reports suffering from splitting headaches followed by spells in which she blacks out. Her health improves for few months until Ralph discovers $218 in clothes and shoes in their bedroom. Despite her signature on the receipt, Eve denies having purchased the items. Leaving his wife alone with their daughter Bonnie, Eve next tries to strangle the girl when she refuses to be quiet.

Confiding to Dr. Luther that she hears voices, Eve suffers a spell in her psychiatrist’s office and a new personality emerges. Giving the name “Eve Black”, this side of Eve is a party girl who expresses contempt toward Ralph. Dr. Luther’s colleague Dr. Day (Edwin Jerome) is prepared to pronounce her a faker, but when the spells continue, Eve is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling Eve Black is no threat to her other personality, Eve White is released, but her husband struggles to accept his wife’s illness. When Eve Black reasserts herself and goes out on the town, Ralph hits her. Placed under therapy, Eve reveals a third personality. Giving the name “Jane”, this side of Eve balances her disparate poles and even begins dating a new beau (Ken Scott). Searching for answers, Dr. Luther places Jane under hypnosis and digs into her past.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 70 users: 91% for The Three Faces of Eve

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

In Cold Blood (1967)
Directed by Richard Brooks
Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the book by Truman Capote
Produced by Richard Brooks
134 minutes

Richard Brooks’ screen version of the “non-fiction novel” by Truman Capote opened the same year as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, so if there’s a debate about which 1967 film had the greatest impact on future of motion pictures, In Cold Blood is not in that debate. The murder of the Clutter family never warrants the thousands of man hours that were dedicated to analyzing and recreating the crime, but the film illustrates how a gifted actor, composer and cinematographer can elevate material into something magnificent. Ignoring suggestions by Columbia Pictures that Steve McQueen & Paul Newman play Perry Smith & Dick Hickock, Brooks cast unknowns in Robert Blake & Scott Wilson and tried to inject as much realism as possible into this true crime story, shooting at some of the actual locations and casting participants in the 1959 murder trial as extras.

Playing a natural born killer itched by the occasional impulse to do good, Robert Blake is brilliant. Quincy Jones composed a jazz score that initially seems inappropriate for heavy drama, but the music keeps the viewer off-balance, unsure of how we’re supposed to feel about what’s happening. The best reason of all to revisit In Cold Blood is the cinematography by Conrad Hall, one of the most vivid examples of the harsh beauty he would become renowned for. In terms of precision, lighting a black & white movie is like being called up to pitch in the majors and Hall was one of the league’s superstars; few movies using monochrome film stock or widescreen framing utilize the medium as gorgeously as In Cold Blood. Largely forgotten in spite of the number of actors he directed to Oscars, Richard Brooks brings intelligence and a point of view to the examination of a motiveless crime.

Stepping off a Greyhound bus in Kansas City with a guitar and most of his possessions in a box, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) makes an urgent call to the Kansas State Penitentiary, hoping the pastor there can put him in touch with a friend whose guidance he desperately needs. Instead, smooth talking ex-con Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) picks him up, violating Perry’s parole by returning him to Kansas. Dick is eager for Perry’s help breaking into a home 400 miles west in the town of Holcomb, where according to a former cellmate of Dick’s, farmer Herbert Clutter has $10,000 or “maybe more” locked in a safe. Chewing Aspirin for chronic leg pain he’s suffered since a motorcycle accident, Perry resists going along with the robbery, but is talked into it by Dick, who has never killed anyone and covets Perry’s experience in that area.

When Clutter, his wife, 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin) and 15-year-old son are found shot to death, FBI agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) begins pursuing leads. With no shotgun shells and no fingerprints to work from, the feds catch a break when Dick’s cellmate comes forward to offer information in exchange for a reward. Dreaming of sunken treasure, Perry drags Dick down to Mexico, a trip his partner finances by cutting phony checks along the way. Missing his gravely ill father (Jeff Corey), Dick compels Perry to return with him to Kansas. Arrested in Las Vegas for a stolen car, the men are interrogated by Agent Dewey and his men. Also hovering around the case is reporter Bill Jensen (Paul Stewart) who is obsessed by the senselessness of the crime and seeks answers of how something like this could happen.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,891 users: 83% for In Cold Blood

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Directed by Don Siegel
Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring and Richard Collins (uncredited) and Sam Peckinpah (uncredited), based on the magazine serial by Jack Finney
Produced by Walter Wanger
80 minutes

One of the most beloved of the science fiction B-movies that attacked the 1950s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a testament to how a powerful story and an appealing cast can elevate an otherwise awful mess into a classic. Originally published in Collier’s Magazine as a three-part serial beginning in November 1954, Jack Finney’s source material captured the imagination of producer Walter Wanger, who was coming off a personal scandal, prison term and even worse, a commercial calamity in 1948 with Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. Languishing in a deal at Allied Artists for Walter and Harold Mirisch, Wanger and director Don Siegel made box office lemonade with a prison reform picture titled Riot On Cell Block 11. When Wanger pitched the studio The Body Snatchers, AA purchased the screen rights.

Shot in 19 days on a $300,000 budget — $2 million in today money — Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a hit in spite of its studio, which hoping to sell more tickets, mangled Ellsworth Fredericks’ 1.33:1 compositions by cropping the frame to fit RKO’s “SuperScope” format of 2:1. They also inserted a prologue and epilogue that gave the film a resolution far more upbeat than what Siegel intended. The conceit of alien pods stripping human beings of their individuality while they sleep is seductive in how easily it can apply to any number of social or political paranioas, while Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter appear to have a blast as the doomed couple. A stiff voiceover narration kills the suspense and makes it difficult to stay on edge about anything in the film, but with so little money for special effects, the original Body Snatchers plays like a drum tight film noir as opposed to a silly sci-fi movie.

A psychiatrist (Whit Bissell) is summoned in the middle of the night to treat to a raving lunatic being held by police at a local hospital. The wild-eyed Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) insists that he is not insane and begging to be listened to, begins his story. Returning from a two-week conference to his practice in the idyllic town of “Santa Mira”, Dr. Bennell’s nurse Sally Withers (Jean Wiles) reports that several of his patients have demanded to see the doctor, only to later cancel their appointments as if everything was fine. On their way back from the train depot, Dr. Bennell almost mows down a boy running away from his mother; apparently, he’s scared to go to school. At his office, Dr. Bennell is reunited with a recently divorced college flame named Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter).

Becky is troubled by a cousin who claims Becky’s uncle is no longer her uncle. Santa Mira’s psychiatrist Dr. Kauffman (Larry Gates) reveals that he’s had a dozen patients suffering the same hysteria, which he theorizes is due to stress over world events. Dr. Bennell and Becky have their romantic evening cut short when his writer friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) and wife Teddy (Carolyn Jones) summon them to their home, where the body of a strange being with a resemblance to Jack is laid out on a pool table. Dr. Bennell later discovers imitations of them hatching from seed pods in the Belicec greenhouse, where it becomes clear that aliens lacking emotion have replaced townsfolk while they sleep. With the phone company and police already fallen victim, the couples try to stay awake long enough to get help.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5,280 users: 81% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring our friends the pod people.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Produced by Robert H. Solo
115 minutes

Whether drawing up a ballot of Best B-Movies, Best Science Fiction Films, Best Remakes or even Super Cinema of the ‘70s, oddly enough, the intoxicating 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would land on any of those lists. Based on a 1954 novel by Jack Finney, the 1956 film version hit multiple zeitgeists in its day, arriving at a moment when Americans seemed obsessed with invasion, whether from outer space or the U.S.S.R. Directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted by W.D. Richter, the remake boasts far more insidious wit, characters as contemporary as they are compelling and a brilliantly pitch black ending that in its own way, puts a stake through the heart of the ‘60s. It’s gleefully written, perfectly cast, jarringly made and more than three decades later, looks a lot like a minor masterpiece.

The Body Snatchers beautifully exploits a paranoia that seems wired into the American psyche: fear that others are coming to eliminate your way of life. The 1978 version could be interpreted as a warning against feminism or urban alienation, take your pick. Kaufman cast thoroughly offbeat performers in Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and too cool for school Leonard Nimoy; as opposed to movie stars, their survival is far from assured. Kaufman employs discordant camera angles and sound effects but instead of horror, focuses on the characters and their doomed love affair, making the story intense without much in the way of gore or cheap scares. Michael Chapman handled the stark lighting while Thomas Burman and Edouard Henriques executed the unsettling makeup effects.

Seeking escape from the surface of a dying world, alien spores drift into space and reach the Earth’s atmosphere, raining down on the city of San Francisco. Taking home one of the strange pink flowers than begin to bloom, biologist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) recognizes the pollinization of two different species to create a third. Unable to pry her dentist boyfriend Geoffrey (Art Hindle) away from TV sports, Elizabeth shares her discovery with Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a health inspector and her close colleague at the Department of Health. Geoffrey’s alienated behavior the next morning prompts Elizabeth to follow him. Distraught by the sinister changes she begins to detect in her boyfriend and in the city around them, Elizabeth is assured by Matthew that a friend — pop psychologist Dr. David Kibner — will have a logical explanation.

At Kibner’s book signing party, Matthew and Elizabeth meet up with another one of his friends, struggling poet Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum). While Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) reveals that six of his patients swear that loved ones have changed into something less human, the doc believes our fear of commitment is at the root of the hysteria. Returning to the mud baths he operates with his New Age spouse Nancy (Veronica Cartwright), Jack drifts off to sleep and is wakened to his wife’s screams when she discovers a dormant being with an uncanny resemblance to her husband growing in one of the stalls. Matthew rushes to Elizabeth’s house and wakes her before she too crumbles to dust and is replaced by an imitation. The two couples realize that most of San Francisco is no longer who they appear to be and fight to stay awake long enough to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 404 users: 89% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Tightrope (1984)
Directed by Richard Tuggle*
Written by Richard Tuggle
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Fritz Manes
114 minutes

Like a quarter shining in the gutter, Tightrope could stand a polish, but if you catch it on a rainy afternoon or late at night, this unabashed B-movie offers spills and thrills aplenty. Escape From Alcatraz scribe Richard Tuggle took his cue from a series of unsolved rapes in the Bay Area. His research resulted in a cop thriller sold to Clint Eastwood under the condition the screenwriter be allowed to make his directorial debut. Tuggle’s struggles on the set threatened his job security on day 1, but DGA guidelines — amended after Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman as director of The Outlaw Josey Wales with himself — mandated that Tuggle remain on and receive a credit for directing. Whether you believe Eastwood collaborated with Tuggle from there or it was more likely the other way around, whoever directed Tightrope managed a good film that occasionally flirts with being a very good one.

Tightrope could either be considered a Cannon Films styled cop thriller like Cobra or Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects made with a real script and much better actors, or it could be considered just another Cannon Films styled cop thriller. The business of a serial killing rapist on the loose in a Red Light District is routine, repetitive and almost completely indistinguishable for a hundred other bad movies and TV shows. Where the picture shows life are its domestic scenes — where Eastwood’s chemistry with his 11-year-old daughter Alison glows — and the cop’s relationship with a rape counselor played by Geneviève Bujold. Eastwood relocated the script from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the offbeat French Canadian actress proves as alluring as the city itself. The killer is given no substance, but since the family he menaces is something we care about, at the very least, Tightrope provides a riveting ride to the finish.

In New Orleans, divorced police captain Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) cancels plans to watch the Saints game with his two young daughters (Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck) when a prostitute is found strangled to death in her home. When another working girl turns up drowned in a bathhouse, rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) presses Block to involve her office in the investigation. Prowling the brothels of The Big Easy to interview prostitutes, Block finds the time to indulge his dark side with a popsicle sucking tart (Rebecca Perle) and a nurse (Margaret Howell) among others moonlighting in the sex trade. Personal items Block leaves at his nocturnal activities — handcuffs, a necktie — begin to turn up alongside the bodies of the prostitutes he’s frequented.

Once she complains to City Hall about his lack of cooperation, Beryl Thibodeaux receives a visit from Block at the non-profit rape center she runs. The cop later seeks Beryl out at her gym and over an oyster lunch on the Mississippi, bluntly shares his attraction for her. She accepts his invitation to go trick or treating with his girls in the French Quarter and receives their approval to continue dating their dad. Meanwhile, Block and his partner (Dan Hedaya) trace glass fragments at the murder scenes to a local beer bottling plant. The killer responds by visiting Block’s daughters, killing their nanny and almost strangling Block. The cop narrows his manhunt onto one suspect in particular, but while he’s staking out the man’s apartment, the killer goes hunting for Beryl.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11 users: 82% for Tightrope

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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