Archive 557

June 2025

Fast Reviews

The Mark of Zorro - 1940

Zorro (Tyrone Power) uses a fast sword and a fast horse to fight harsh governmental corruption and oppression in 1820's Los Angeles. Meanwhile, he also maintains his other identity as the lazy, wealthy and snobby Don Diego Vega, so non-threatening that Basil Rathbone (as the dangerous Captain Esteban Pasquale) doesn't suspect him for a moment while he is hunting high and low for who is the black clad, masked figure who leaves a "Z" in his wake, cut into walls, clothing and soldier's chests.

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Fast Reviews

The Woman They Almost Lynched - 1953

Two strong-willed women (played by Audrey Totter and Joan Leslie) with a knack for survival and skilled with side-arms go head-to-head in Border City, a town right on the line between Arkansas and Missouri during the American Civil War. Ruled by women and self-declared "neutral" in the war between the states, its also the place where the bandit guerilla fighting group Quaintril's Raiders have come to use the local saloon, and from there things get quickly complicated and violent.

The Woman They Almost Lynched - 1953

The Cat Girl - 1957: Barbara Shelley (as Leonora Johnson) has got a major problem on her hands: her family legend is that, when emotionally triggered, they become dangerous cats. This is hardly something that makes for a healthy and rewarding existence, and problems (whether triggered into feline anger or not) follow in the woman's path, leading eventually to a stay at an asylum and wrapped in a straight-jacket.

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El Vampiro, 1957: If you watch this film and say to yourself "Hey, they must've watched the Christopher Lee Horror of Dracula before making this version" you'll need to switch the order around because El Vampiro was first, released October 4, 1957, predating the Hammer Dracula of June 16, 1958.

The recent Blu Ray edition from Indicator for El Vampiro looks exceptionally well preserved and converted for home video. More about El Vampiro.

An original fine print of the original 1977 Star Wars screened at BFI Festival with Kathleeen Kennedy in attendance – Superherohype

The BFI Film on Film Festival

The print’s discovery came as a surprise, and quickly led to a stir amongst fans online. George Lucas infamously did not like the very first print of Star Wars (which would later be renamed to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), and would tinker with it in the years after its release. Specifically, Lucas added the now infamous opening crawl, and changed the scene in the Mos Eisley cantina, making it so that bounty hunter Greedo shoots at Han Solo first, rather than vice versa...."

Sophia Loren's role in making Greece a place for Hollywood films

She praises the island of Hydra, location of her 1957 film Boy on A Dolphin. Story at Greek Reporter

How Athens keeps alive the tradition of hand-painted movie posters

Story at le Monde 

Fast Reviews

The Adventures of Hajji Baba - 1954: A young John Derek plays the ambitious barber Hajji Baba in early 1800s Persia, full of grandiose plans for his future—much to the laughter of his customers. He makes a wager with the successful traveling merchant Osman Aga (Thomas Gomez) that he will achieve great things (by the end we will see Osman as rich, then destitute, then rich all over again). Soon, circumstances conspire to put the barber in a position where he must either live up to his bold promises—or, well, he's dead.

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Why Gone with the Wind Is Probably the Highest-Earning Film Ever

And Why the Conditions of Its Success Have Locked It into an Unreachable Position

The Billion-Dollar Caveat: There is a certain school of thought that holds Gone with the Wind (1939) as the all-time earnings champion of the film medium. When adjusted for inflation, ticket prices, distribution reach, and continual re-release revenues, the film retains an accumulated box office total that remains virtually unreachable.

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Pandora's Box

G. W. Pabst directs Louise Brooks as "Lulu" and makes a seminal cinemagraphic icon of German and international cinema.

Review of Pandora's Box - 1929

Fast Reviews

Lover Come Back – 1961: Doris Day and Rock Hudson in another war of the sexes comedy, with Tony Randall along, too, playing a part rather close to the character played by John Williams as Irving La Salle Jr., in the superior advertising world story Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), a film where Tony Randall was the star (paired with Jayne Mansfield). Here, Randall is demoted (or promoted, depending upon your point of view) to actually running an advertising firm, and trying to control and understand the firm's star advertising agent played by Hudson. Meanwhile, a competition with another firm (where Doris Day's character works) bubbles up, and with a twist right out of Pillow Talk (another Day-Hudson comedy), Hudson concocts an alternative identity as a naive' and innocent chemist working on a secret consumer product called "Vip" which Doris Day's hard-working advertising agent desperately wants for her firm.

A colorful film with well-engineered jokes, a bit more smarmy than the other Day-Hudson comedies, and with plenty of scenes in which the humor is derived simply from the camera being aimed right at Doris Day and seeing how she reacts to something (for example, when she and Hudson end up in a striptease place).

Fast Reviews

Shanghai Express – 1932: The problem with this Josef Sternberg film, though it is beautifully photographed and contains a nice panorama of characters on a dangerous ride by rail through war-torn China, is that the star, Marlene Dietrich, mugs for the camera in ways that seem directly lifted from a primitive silent film. She rolls her eyes frequently as if to help visually to enunciate her dialogue, but the eye rolling seems out of synch and she does gesticulations with her hands that also seem out of synch, as if her English language skills and her mannerisms are operating on two different levels, which is to say, the artifice of Dietrich's acting in Shanghai Express is thick and heavy.

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