Tag: Sam Jaffe

They Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore

photog Current Events, Movie Reviews, OCF Classic Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , ,

Today I watched the old movie “Gunga Din” for like the trillionth time.  And it has all the same silly things going on every time I see it.  The gags are telegraphed, the sentiment is slapped on with a cement trowel, the improbabilities are piled to the sky.  You name it.

But watching the three leads; Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. go through their paces as Kipling’s three sergeants is a never-ending treat that I can watch several times a year probably until they finally bury me.  It’s a joy to behold.

And the picture works as both a comedy and an adventure story.  And the supporting cast (including an elephant named Annie) provide plenty of support and opportunity for our heroes to search for treasure, destroy British Army discipline, romance the girl or save the day.  And you know, I think I like the fact that even when it was being made, the British Raj was already a sore point for the social justice types but this movie plays up the “white man’s burden” aspect of the story even more than needed to match the historical era.

Sam Jaffe’s Gunga Din really is a minor role right up until the critical juncture in the story where he saves the day.  But he does give the regimental bhisti his due.  And the actors portraying the army officers and the officious Bertie Higginbotham, all acquit themselves with the expected amount of British bluster.

So, what makes this movie fun?  Despite the well-acted lead characters, I think the success of this movie is thanks to the unflagging action, both comic and adventure.  The heroes are constantly fighting savage tribesmen, jumping off cliffs into rivers, breaking out of jail by means of elephant powered building demolition and fighting their way through a saloon full of Scottish highlanders.  They only slow down when poisoning Bertie Higginbotham at an engagement party.  Armies of strangling Thuggees are no match for these soldiers three as they roll out their “three musketeers / all for one and one for all” routine to frustrate the Thug Guru’s master plan to defeat the British and restore India to the greatness it had known before Alexander the Great had slapped it around in the fourth century BC.

So, I have to state which of the three sergeants is my personal favorite.  Now Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s Sgt. Ballantine is never in the running.  He’s the romantic lead and thereby much abused by his fiancée’s humiliating attentions.  And despite the excellent work done by Cary Grant as the ebullient Sgt. Archibald Cutter I have to give the win to Victor McLaglen’s Sgt. MacChesney.  Just on the strength of the facial expressions that he manages when the Colonel confronts him with the prospect of Bertie Higginbotham replacing Ballantine, I’d have to give him the prize.  But there are just so many great scenes where he steals the show.  Even pleading with an elephant using “baby talk” to get it to take medicine always cracks me up.  And it really is McLaglen with his hand in the elephant’s mouth.

So why can’t they make movies like this anymore?  I don’t think it’s the actors.  There are plenty of those who could perform these parts.  It’s the writers and directors.  Either they can’t or won’t give us good stories.  Maybe the producers just won’t allow them.  But whatever it is, that’s where we are.  And I can live with that.  I have my DVD and it’ll last for longer than I will.

“Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , , , ,

The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film noir co-written and directed by John Huston.  It stars Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Sam Jaffe with a supporting role for Marilyn Monroe.  Sam Jaffe plays “Doc,” a criminal mastermind who was recently released from prison and is now recruiting a team to steal a million dollars-worth of gem stones from the safe of an upscale jewelry business in the unnamed mid-western city in which the story takes place.  Local racket boss Cobby points Doc to Alonzo Emmerich (played by Louis Calhern) as the fixer who can finance the caper and line up the fences to sell the jewels.  He also finds him a getaway driver (James Whitmore as Gus Minissi), a safe cracker (Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli) and a “hooligan” (Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley).

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

As the team assembles Doc privately discusses with Dix his distrust of Emmerich and tells him that he will depend on Dix to protect the loot in case Emmerich attempts to double-cross them.  There is a subplot around a dirty cop; Lt. Ditrich who receives protection money from Cobby but is being pressured by the police commissioner to find Doc.  And we learn more about Emmerich’s personal life and his problems.  Emmerich has an aging bed-ridden wife and a young beautiful girlfriend; Angela Finlay (Marilyn Monrie) that he keeps in a love nest downtown.  And maybe not coincidentally he’s broke and can’t fund the heist.  But his associate     Bob Brannom; a hard-boiled private detective who doesn’t see crime as an obstacle to making money, talks Cobby into fronting the heist expenses and throws in with Emmerich in a plan to steal the jewels and leave the heist team out in the cold.

At this point we watch the team in action.  And it’s like clockwork.  Right up until the point when the nitroglycerin blows the door off the safe.  Somehow the blast triggers an alarm at a bank down the block from the jewelry store.  And when the security guard shows up at the back door Dix flattens him with one punch to the jaw.  But his gun flies out of his hand hits the ground, discharges and shoots Louis Ciavelli in the gut.  Gus takes Louis home and tries to get a doctor who will keep his mouth shut about the gunshot wound while helping his friend.  Meanwhile Doc and Dix show up at Emmerich’s to transfer the loot and get their cut.  But when Brannom sticks them up Dix shoots it out with him.  Dix is wounded in the side and Brannom ends up dead.  Doc convinces Emmerich to fix his mistake by using his legitimate connections to work a deal with the insurance company to get $250,000 in return for the return of the jewels.

Meanwhile the police have offered a reward for the capture of Doc whom they assume is responsible for the theft.  A witness comes forward saying that Doc had been seen entering Cobby’s gambling house and Lt. Ditrich is given an ultimatum to find Doc.  Ditrich slaps Cobby around until he confesses and gives up everyone involved in the heist.

The police go to arrest Emmerich and he shoots himself to death rather than go to jail.  They arrest Gus and go looking for Louis but he has already died of his wounds.  Dix has a girlfriend Doll who hides him and Doc while the police search the city for them.  Doc decides to head out on his own and catches a cab that will take him to Cincinnati.  But stopping off at a café he indulges in watching a young woman dance provocatively to a jazz tune a little too long and a couple of state troopers recognize him and arrest him.  Dix and Doll drive out of town, heading for Dix’s boyhood home in Kentucky.  But Dix has been slowly succumbing to his gunshot wound and just as he reaches the farm his family used to own, he collapses and dies.

This sounds like a pretty wild story and it is.  But it’s very well done.  Jaffe, Hayden, Whitmore and Calhern do a splendid job portraying their characters and selling the plot.  And even the secondary characters like Monroe and Caruso are very strong and provide an entertaining atmosphere for this noir.  I may be biased but I’ve always thought this was one of the best crime dramas ever made.  And this was done in the days when the Hays Code limited the amount of violence that could be displayed in a motion picture and when special effects were basically non-existent.  I would say this movie gets my highest rating for fans of crime and noir films.

The Dunwich Horror (1970) – A Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , ,

(War Pig loves really bad sf&f movies.  This one’s for you War Pig.)

This movie is so monumentally bad that I feel compelled to dissect its awfulness so that we can learn something from it.  First of all, look at the date.  1970 is something of a low water mark in American cinema.  Now granted this was produced by American International Pictures and they only ever made really cheap and schlocky movies.  But that sets the stage for how this movie became what it was.  Next, the story is an old H.P. Lovecraft story so the cost of buying the movie rights must have been pretty close to zero.

Next take a look at the actors.  Sam Jaffe and Ed Begley were actual actors at one time but their careers were coming to an end and they probably really needed the money.  Dean Stockwell was a young guy whose career had begun as a child actor in the big studio system but with that system now a thing of the past he would earn his daily bread working in schlock and it suited him.  Sandra Dee was a product of the post war teen movies of the late fifties and early sixties.  She had played all the Gidget and Tammy parts and was now too old to be the girl next door.  This was what was next on her ride to oblivion.  It’s also funny to see that before she got some big screen parts in movies like the Godfather and Rocky, Talia Shire had a small role in this stinker.  So, there are some actual actors in this movie.  But what can they do with this thing?

And finally, what is the plot?  Well, in the original Lovecraft story Wilbur Whateley, played by Dean Stockwell, and his monstrous twin are the product of some kind of bizarre ritualistic impregnation of their mother by one of the Great Old Ones, Yog-Sothoth.  The book chronicles the attempt by Wilbur to use the Necronomicon to allow Yog-Sothoth to break through from his own dimension and conquer Earth and eat all the humans for lunch.

But the geniuses at American International Pictures decided that what Wilbur wanted was to go for another generation of Yog-Sothoth baby making and Sandra Dee would be the baby mama.  The monster brother is still in the plot but it seems like a sort of dangling appendage that nobody knows what to do with.

Ed Begley is Dr. Henry Armitage, a university professor who has a copy of the Necronomicon and is Sandra Dee’s boss.  He will try to save her life and foil Whateley’s diabolical plan.  And to round out the cast Sam Jaffe is “Old Whateley,” Wilbur’s grandfather who seems to have inexplicably changed his mind about being an evil servant of the Great Old Ones and now just runs around warning everyone about how dangerous everything is.  Comically they’ve painted thick black eyebrows on his face.  He sort of looks like Groucho Marx in that sense.

Well, before you know it Wilbur convinces Sandra Dee to come to his groovy farmhouse and drink some tea and after he pulls the distributor cap off her car’s motor, she has to spend the night.  She has dreams that look like they were filmed with my kid brother’s super 8 movie camera.  Semi-naked hippies who look like rejects from the Manson family hopped up on hair tonic and looking for love chase her around.  It’s quite ridiculous.  When she wakes up, she shares these dreams with Wilbur and we can see that it’s all having the hoped-for result.  She’s looking for some Yog-Sothoth action.  So, Wilbur brings her up to an oceanside cliff with an altar where she will wear some kind of poncho-like garment that allows the cameraman to show us the side of her leg and butt for what seems like hours.  And Wilbur spreads her legs apart and props the Necronomicon against her groin while he reads passages to Yog-Sothoth.

At some point Wilbur’s brother breaks out of his room and eats about five people including Talia Shire.  We never really get a good look at him.  He’s got tentacles and eyes and I don’t know what else.  He makes guttural noises and he has problems with his adenoids for sure.

Finally, Ed Begley shows up at the cliff and he and Wilbur posture and spout meaningless syllables at each other.  Begley’s babbling proves to be the stronger and Wilbur’s head bursts into flames and he jumps off the cliff.  We briefly see what might be Yog-Sothoth appear as a cartoon character suspended over Sandra Dee’s groin before he disappears.  Then Ed Begley helps her off the altar and the movie ends but as it ends, we see an image of a fetus near Sandra Dee’s belly.  Yog-Sothoth scored again!

So, there it is.  It’s embarrassing to admit I even made it to the end of this awful waste of time.  As far as I know Talia Shire is the only living victim of this terrible thing.  I imagine it still haunts her.  Maybe her rich brother Francis Ford Coppola can buy the rights to the movie and destroy every copy so their family’s shame can end.  I’ve never been a big fan of Lovecraft’s prose.  His imagination was fertile and the images he came up with were vivid.  But his prose style was lackluster.  But even he deserves better than this.  The Dunwich Horror was one of his better stories.  Maybe someday someone will do a decent job of making a movie of it.  This was not that movie.