The Wade Williams Collection yields another ’50s sci-fi notable, Monogram Pictures’ ambitious space travel movie filmed in glorious green-challenged Cinecolor. Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz sign up for a semi-suicidal space expedition, but instead of murderous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crabs, waiting for them on Mars is the glamorous, mini-skirted Marguerite Chapman. It’s core sci-fi fun from early in the Golden Era. The Film Detective adds a commentary, two new featurettes and an insert booklet; the film itself is lovingly restored to its original Cinecolor brilliance.
Flight to Mars
Blu-ray
The Film Detective
1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 72 min. / Street Date July 20, 2021 / Available from The Film Detective / 24.95
Starring: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat, Russ Conway, Edward Earle, Everett Glass.
Cinematography: Harry Neumann
Production Designer: Ted Haworth
Film Editor, Associate Producer: Richard Heermance
Special Effects: Jack Cosgrove, Irving Block, Jack Rabin
Original Music:...
Flight to Mars
Blu-ray
The Film Detective
1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 72 min. / Street Date July 20, 2021 / Available from The Film Detective / 24.95
Starring: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat, Russ Conway, Edward Earle, Everett Glass.
Cinematography: Harry Neumann
Production Designer: Ted Haworth
Film Editor, Associate Producer: Richard Heermance
Special Effects: Jack Cosgrove, Irving Block, Jack Rabin
Original Music:...
- 7/17/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Everyone notices the eyes first, languid, those of a somnambulist. Robert Mitchum, calm and observant, is a presence that, through passivity, enamors a viewer. His face is as effulgent as moonlight. The man smolders, with that boozy, baritone voice, seductive and soporific, a cigarette perched between wispy lips below which is a chin cleft like a geological fault. He’s slithery with innuendo. There’s an effortless allure to it all, a mix of malaise and braggadocio, a cocksure machismo and a hint of fragility. He’s ever-cool, a paradox, “radiating heat without warmth,” as Richard Brody said. A poet, a prodigious lover and drinker, a bad boy; his penchant for marijuana landed him in jail, and in the photographs from his two-month stay he looks like a natural fit. He sits, wrapped in denim, legs spread wide, hair shiny and slick, holding a cup of coffee. His mouth is...
- 9/29/2017
- MUBI
Joan Crawford controls every aspect of this glamorous, Oscar nominated noir about a murderous marriage double-cross. Good acting enlivens a by-the-book, gimmick-laden plot, with every moment designed to flatter the star.
Sudden Fear
Blu-ray
The Cohen Film Collection
1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 110 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / 34.99
Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston, Touch Connors, Bess Flowers, Taylor Holmes, Lewis Martin, Arthur Space.
Cinematography Charles Lang
Film Editor Leon Barsha
Art Director Boris Leven
Original Music Elmer Bernstein
Written by Lenore Coffee, Robert Smith from a novel by Edna Sherry
Produced by Joseph Kaufman
Directed by David Miller
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Joan Crawford movie Sudden Fear is an efficient and stylish thriller. Although it’s technically film noir, its story of a two-way murder frame-up is sublimated to the actress’s overpowering personality. It’s the first movie where Crawford was able to...
Sudden Fear
Blu-ray
The Cohen Film Collection
1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 110 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / 34.99
Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston, Touch Connors, Bess Flowers, Taylor Holmes, Lewis Martin, Arthur Space.
Cinematography Charles Lang
Film Editor Leon Barsha
Art Director Boris Leven
Original Music Elmer Bernstein
Written by Lenore Coffee, Robert Smith from a novel by Edna Sherry
Produced by Joseph Kaufman
Directed by David Miller
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Joan Crawford movie Sudden Fear is an efficient and stylish thriller. Although it’s technically film noir, its story of a two-way murder frame-up is sublimated to the actress’s overpowering personality. It’s the first movie where Crawford was able to...
- 12/3/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Our weekly feature in which a writer answers the question: if you could force your friends at gunpoint to watch one movie or TV show what would it be? Why do I love film noir? Why does anyone? After all, it's a genre that seems to confirm that people are horrible, that the world is painful, and that we will let each other down given any opportunity. Film noir has a world-weary worldview, but I would stop short of calling it cynical. I am many things as I reach the halfway point of my fourth decade on Earth, but I am not cynical. I love film noir because while it may reflect a cynical world view, the reason it hurts is because there is still some small light, some tiny hope, some sense of optimism. If you're truly cynical, there's nothing the world can do to disappoint you. Me, I...
- 4/6/2015
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
Out of the Past
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
USA, 1947
Director Jacques Tourneur knew how to make the most out of a little, particularly when he was working in collaboration with producer Val Lewton (see Cat People, 1942, I Walked with a Zombie, 1943, and The Leopard Man, 1943). So when Rko gave this master of the low-budget picture a comparatively larger budget and a top-notch screenplay (by Daniel Mainwaring—as Geoffrey Homes—based on his own novel, “Build My Gallows High”) the result was one of the finest of all film noir.
Starring Robert Mitchum as Jeff and Jane Greer as Kathie, Out of the Past is built on a premise that is one of the defining characteristics of noir: the inevitability of an inescapable past. Such a device was often integral, with the repercussions of one’s recent deeds coming back to haunt them, but relatively rare was...
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
USA, 1947
Director Jacques Tourneur knew how to make the most out of a little, particularly when he was working in collaboration with producer Val Lewton (see Cat People, 1942, I Walked with a Zombie, 1943, and The Leopard Man, 1943). So when Rko gave this master of the low-budget picture a comparatively larger budget and a top-notch screenplay (by Daniel Mainwaring—as Geoffrey Homes—based on his own novel, “Build My Gallows High”) the result was one of the finest of all film noir.
Starring Robert Mitchum as Jeff and Jane Greer as Kathie, Out of the Past is built on a premise that is one of the defining characteristics of noir: the inevitability of an inescapable past. Such a device was often integral, with the repercussions of one’s recent deeds coming back to haunt them, but relatively rare was...
- 9/2/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Movies such as Out of the Past are what movie blogging should be all about. While it's undoubtedly important to keep up with the new titles hitting theaters, finding hidden gems within the glut of watered-down, mass audience studio releases, it's just as important to look into the past and find the movies that have shaped cinema into what it is today... or, at least a reminder of what great cinema used to be, and is now mostly (un)seen within the confines of independent releases. As someone who only started delving deep into cinema's rich history about eleven years ago I still pay attention to a variety of sites and bloggers, hoping to hear of films I've never heard of or seen, something to shake up the monotony. Typically this comes in the form of a Criterion Collection release, the gold standard (at least domestically) in ensuring classic cinema remains alive,...
- 8/25/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Out of the Past
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
U.S.A., 1947
Sometimes, there is no eluding one’s past, regardless of how hard one tries. The reasons are numerous. Perhaps the emotional and psychological weight of an event in one’s life are too great to shake off. In other instances the shackles exist because an individual is condemned to spend years actively correcting previous errors in judgement in the hopes of earning long sought after redemption. There exists another set of circumstances, the most deceptively simple of the lot, that being when a person merely walks away from an embarrassing, shameful and deeply regrettable episode, but deliberately creating separation from their history is no guarantee that the old ghosts will acquiesce to letting them be. When one least expects it, a new challenge presents itself from…Out of the Past.
Jeff Baily (Robert Mitchum) has...
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
U.S.A., 1947
Sometimes, there is no eluding one’s past, regardless of how hard one tries. The reasons are numerous. Perhaps the emotional and psychological weight of an event in one’s life are too great to shake off. In other instances the shackles exist because an individual is condemned to spend years actively correcting previous errors in judgement in the hopes of earning long sought after redemption. There exists another set of circumstances, the most deceptively simple of the lot, that being when a person merely walks away from an embarrassing, shameful and deeply regrettable episode, but deliberately creating separation from their history is no guarantee that the old ghosts will acquiesce to letting them be. When one least expects it, a new challenge presents itself from…Out of the Past.
Jeff Baily (Robert Mitchum) has...
- 3/22/2013
- by Edgar Chaput
- SoundOnSight
Out of the Past
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas
USA, 97 min – 1947.
“I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end.”
In Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) owns a gas station, in a small California town. He has been courting local girl, Ann (Virginia Huston), despite the disapproval of her parents. Out of nowhere, Jeff’s past comes knocking in the form of a henchman, who orders Jeff to meet with gangster,...
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas
USA, 97 min – 1947.
“I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end.”
In Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) owns a gas station, in a small California town. He has been courting local girl, Ann (Virginia Huston), despite the disapproval of her parents. Out of nowhere, Jeff’s past comes knocking in the form of a henchman, who orders Jeff to meet with gangster,...
- 2/28/2013
- by Karen Bacellar
- SoundOnSight
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