If you’ve been tuning in regularly, you’ll have seen the written extracts from Moonlight Shadows, my unfinished Lon Chaney Jr book (here and here)… recently, by way of producing some new work samples—because I really need to upgrade my portfolio soon—I did a new version of the cover for the book. (No, I’m not thinking about finishing the book off! But never say never…)
Note: a follow-up to this post, here is another entry from my Lon Chaney Jr filmog/biog book, Moonlight Shadows, which I’ve worked on occasionally since 2009, and which frankly I shall probably never finish. Anyhow–enjoy! Would you like to see more of these? Let me know.
Produced by Jack Leewood for Associated Producers, Inc. Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Screenplay by Orville H Hampton (story by Hampton & Charles O’Neal). Music score by Irving Gertz. Cinematography by Karl Struss. Makeup by Ben Nye & Dick Smith. Special effects by Fred Etcheverry. Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.
Technical: 2.35:1, black and white, RCA mono. Running time: 74 minutes. Production: April 13 to late April 1959. Release: July 16 1959 (US).
With Beverly Garland, Bruce Bennett, Lon Chaney, George Macready, Frieda Inescort, Richard Crane and Douglas Kennedy.
Using hypnosis, Dr Lorimer (Bruce Bennett) discovers his nurse, Jane Marvin (Beverly Garland), has a troubled past repressed with amnesia. It’s revealed that long ago, her new husband, Paul (Richard Crane), disappeared on their wedding night after receiving a mysterious telegram. He had just told her he’d earlier sustained severe injuries in an accident, from which he seemed to have recovered miraculously. She devotes her time to tracking him down, which leads her to a large estate in the swamplands of the deep South. It turns out he received experimental treatments from Dr Sinclair (George Macready), using extracts from alligators in an attempt to harness reptilian healing powers. This resulted in long-term side-effects.
Lon’s final American horror role of the ’50s came with The Alligator People. Following the success of a certain other cross-species mutation story, The Fly (1958), it was conceived as the B-feature for a double-bill with Fly‘s imaginatively-titled sequel, Return of the Fly. Both were Associated Producers films, in association with & distributed by Fox.
Read More »The Alligator People (1959)
This is by way of an “extra” to my Viewings postings (the one for the fourth quarter of 2021 is coming up in January). Anyhow: Burt Lancaster.
Burt Lancaster with Ava Gardner—his screen debut in Robert Siodmak’s superlative THE KILLERS (1946).
Read More »Burt Lancaster Season
In Brief: this is the write-up of The Defiant Ones prepared for the on-off book on Lon Chaney Jr, Moonlight Shadows. Feedback is very welcome!
Produced by Stanley Kramer for Lomitas Productions, Inc. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Screenplay by Nedrick Young & Harold Jacob Smith. Music score by Ernest Gold. Cinematography by Sam Leavitt. Edited by Frederic Knudtson. Distributed by United Artists.
Technical: 1.66:1, black and white, Westrex mono. Running time: 96 minutes. Production: late February to early April 1958. Premiere: September 24 1958 (NY).
With Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Lon Chaney, King Donovan and Claude Akins.
Two convicts—one white (Tony Curtis), one black (Sidney Poitier)—in a Southern chain gang are being transported in a van when the vehicle crashes. They escape, and what follows is a story of the tensions between the two, being forced to flee cross-country together―mostly through swamplands―until they find a way of breaking the four-foot chain that binds them.
Read More »The Defiant Ones (1958)
Well, I’ve left the blog unattended for aeons again. Just wanted to sneak in before this year is over and done with.
Hasn’t been a very good year, apart from the Bowie stuff. Chaotic, frustrating, lacking in any of the progress or affirmation I’m looking for.
And then, on November 25th, the author Joel Lane, who’d become a very good friend of mine in recent times, passed away suddenly. His delayed funeral, which I attended, was on December 23rd.
The January 2012 Lodge meeting—Joel is at the back, partially obscured. The others are Steve Green, me and Theresa Derwin.
Read More »Happy 2014
Just slightly longer than a couple of days since my last posting, but hey, after leaving it for six months, this is quite punctual.
I’ve been busy since moving site to new server, tweaking and revising. Special emphasis on the Portfolio (go look)—the visual sections are now slideshows. And much more up-to-date. It’s easier to maintain & update for me, too. So I’m pretty happy about that.
Well, anyhow—one of the things I’ve been doing is working on a book! Those of you, if there are any, who’ve been visiting for aeons and have an obsessively long memory might recall me talking about Hard Luck City before. You can buy it NOW on Amazon UK and Amazon US.
HARD LUCK CITY cover. Pencils by Gene Colan. Colours by Randy Sargent.
Read More »Hard Luck City
I said I would comment on my recent reading, so there!
If you’re looking for an extensive account of the production of the 20th Century’s greatest British film, Charles Drazin’s effort is well worth it. In Search of The Third Man (2000) can’t be faulted in terms of research and detail.
However… I think I saw question marks over the bits where Drazin got into more subjective areas—for instance, the pointless comparisons of director Carol Reed with Hitchcock, providing a rather meaningless and impertinent excuse to be critical of Hitch (for repeating himself endlessly and never taking chances, etc.). It’s true that Hitch had formulae, just as it’s true that Reed really didn’t… he didn’t make any two films alike, nor did he have a particular way of doing things that attracts special viewer recognition… but I don’t believe this can be made into a virtue any more convincingly than it could be seen as a failing. Hitch catches some heat for no good reason.
As does Orson Welles. Taking no chances is a bad thing in this book, but being a maverick with a healthy, independent ego is also apparently a bad thing! Welles is surely the anti-Hitch, though they both have in common the tragic flaw of not being Carol Reed. Welles acolytes have occasionally tried to suggest that OW practically directed and wrote The Third Man himself, but this is a senseless claim. The highly relevant fact that Welles personally made no such claim is dismissed by Drazin as false modesty! I mean, what was Orson to say to make the author happy? Highly puzzling.
Read More »In Search of the Third Man (2000)
Another warm, though not excessively bright, day. The hot stuff is coming! As you can see, I’m making a token effort to get in the mood for the weather… alas, less clothing only tends to prove I need to lose a few pounds. *sigh*
I’ve been thinking about money a lot again recently. I’m not stressing over it, though. I still want to be able to earn some cash from writing at some point—the recent writing I’ve done has been heaps better than any of my earlier work—but it’s going to be a slow road ahead unless I get lucky. (BTW: I’m talking about journalism, not creative/fiction stuff, which is a lost cause to all but the stubbornly dedicated and hugely prodigious.)
So the rat race beckons a little again. I’m resisting. At this exact moment in time, life is fairly comfortable, so I’m not letting the pressure bring me down. In some ways, though, I think the routine of a regular job would benefit me: it would break my horrendous sleeping patterns, for instance. I keep fairly busy—I do most of our shopping these days, as mom’s health is not great and she wants to hold down her part-time job for as long as she can. So I don’t feel useless. But an income can boost a person’s self-esteem and routine isn’t always a bad thing. Hmmm.
Read More »In the Mood
Just picked up the book Shades of Noir, a collection of essays on the subject from a modern perspective.
Read More »Shades of Noir
