This Sunday evening, March 14th (check your local listings for the air time for your zone),Turner Classic Movies will run Rex Ingram’s THE MAGICIAN (1926) as part of its “Silent Sunday Nights.”  If you love silent films, if you love old timey melodrama, if you love vintage movie magic and crumbly Gothic architecture, if you love mad scientists with laboratories full of bubbling beakers and twisty retorts and scenes set in the very bowels o’Hell, where demonic satyrs prance and prey and fair maidens scream at the threat to their maidenhood, then you owe it to yourself to tape, TiVo or sit up with a mug of Postum… because this movie has it all! READ MORE

If literary legend Jack Kerouac were still alive he would be celebrating his 88th birthday tomorrow. Unfortunately Kerouac left us much too early at age 47 but his work lives on. Often called the father of the Beat movement, Jack Kerouac’s jazz-fueled spontaneous writing style doesn’t easily lend itself to film adaptations. The most grievous example of this is the 1960 film adaptation of Kerouac’s short novel THE SUBTERRANEANS directed by Ranald MacDougall and produced by Arthur Freed for MGM. THE SUBTERRANEANS was the first full-length film adaptation of a Jack Kerouac novel and it’s not an easy movie to recommend. The film is badly cast and plays like a poorly misconstrued parody of the Beat Generation. It also takes extreme liberties with Kerouac’s original story. So why am writing about it? As a novice jazz enthusiast the movie appeals to the music lover in me and as someone who was born in the Bay Area, I find the San Francisco setting extremely enchanting.

THE SUBTERRANEANS was originally a semi-autobiographical story written by Kerouac in just three days and published by Grove Press in 1958. It details the brief interracial romance between Leo Percepied (filling-in for Jack Kerouac) and a young African American woman named Mardou Fox. Some of the highlights of the book include Kerouac’s description of the clubs that he was frequenting at the time and an encounter with jazz legend Charlie Parker.

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In the flurry of interviews Martin Scorsese granted running up to the release of Shutter Island, he rattled off a long list of movies he screened for his cast, including Laura, Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim. The first two were studied by DiCaprio and Ruffalo to look good in a rumpled suit (thanks to Dana Andrews and Robert Mitchum), while the last three, of course, were churned out by Val Lewton’s miraculous horror unit at RKO, a remarkable run of terror keyed off of the suggestion of violence rather than the blood and guts themselves. But the main wellspring of Scorsese’s recent box-office champ are two later Lewtons, which he also mentions: Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946) [Spoilers abound below].

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Last week, I wrote about Chicago’s role in the birth of the mainstream film industry, which is most often treated as a footnote in text books and film histories. Even less known is the city’s importance to the development of an African American cinema in which black entrepreneurs made movies for black audiences. While there are several scholarly studies on the development of an African American cinema, and many of them chronicle the early pioneers, the whole story has yet to creep into coffee-table film histories or filter into the popular consciousness.

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I’ve been taking a break from this entertaining site for a while, but I didn’t want to completely disappear during Academy Award time.  As the Morlocks have each explored their varied and fascinating takes on the season over the past few weeks, I tried to rustle up some photos on the theme.  You know how winners are supposed to always be kissing their Oscars, giving thanks to the gold statuette after they win?  The action has evolved into a glorious pop culture cliche, but if an internet photo search is any indication, either the kisses have been highly over-reported or they’re nearly mythical.  Where are all those kisses, anyway?

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The Oscars are tonight but surely the recent blog-a-thon covering that topic has quenched your thirst on that subject. Let’s move on to food, which comes to my mind thanks to my friends Chris and Huong, who are opening a new restaurant. They invited various acquaintances and family in for free meals and drinks to help them put a new staff through their paces and, of course, hopefully stimulate word-of-mouth. The restaurant business is a tough gig with high-risks and a cut-throat market. But the artistry aligned with this basic necessity is undeniable, and cinema is full of examples. Skipping past the recent Julie & Julia, I’ll focus on international or indy fare. READ MORE

Even hardcore fans of the “Man in Black” might not know that back in 1959 the bad boy of country-western music decided to dabble in motion pictures and made his film debut in a low-budget wonder entitled FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE (aka DOOR TO DOOR MANIAC). TCM Underground will unveil this rarely seen “gem” on April 9^th at 2 a.m. ET and it’s an enjoyably trashy genre mash-up that is part bank heist thriller, part home invasion psychodrama and part family sitcom in the style of “Father Knows Best.” Plus, in addition to Cash chewing up the scenery, the cast includes Country Music Hall of Famer Merle Travis as a bowling alley manager, little Ronnie Howard (who was already appearing on television in such series as “Dennis the Menace” and “The Andy Griffith Show”) and Vic Tayback, the Emmy-nominated co-star of the TV series “Alice.” It’s not their finest hour but if you’re a Cash fan or appreciate wild card obscurities like BLAST OF SILENCE (1961) or SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955), you know you must see it.        READ MORE

Here I am talking about vampires again.  In the course of our discussion last Friday about the size of fangs in vampire movies, my fellow Morlock Moirafinnie asked “What do you think of the changing effect of sunlight on various vampires over time in movie history? I always think it’s a gyp when a Dracula figure doesn’t start to sizzle when the sun’s rays hit him or her. Where do you stand, RHS?”  Of course, I could have given Moira a simple answer but why do that when I can squeeze a whole ‘nuther blog post out of the topic? READ MORE

I make no apologies for my fascination with the annual Academy Awards show. I grew up in a household filled with movie lovers and watching the Oscars was a yearly ritual in my home. My mother enjoyed making popcorn for our impromptu Oscar parties and even though we rarely had the opportunity to see all the films that were nominated each year we’d still root for our favorite performers and filmmakers to take home a gold statuette. During the yearly broadcast my mother regularly reminded me that one of our favorite actors, Richard Burton, had never won an Oscar even though he had been nominated numerous times. Together we’d shake our heads in disbelief and complain loudly about that injustice, but we continued to watch year after year knowing full well that awards aren’t always given to those who deserve them. My mother passed away in 1997 but I’ve continued our family tradition without her. It might be undeserved devotion but the pomp and pageantry of the Academy Awards show appeals to the little kid in me. I know that most of my favorite performers and filmmakers will never take home a gold statuette but I enjoy the pure spectacle of the event. Sports fans have their Superbowl and movie lovers have the Academy Awards. Oscar night represents many different things to many different people but to me it will always be an opportunity for everyone to share their appreciation for the movies and the people who make them.

My fascination with the annual Academy Awards show led me to recently read Robert Hofler’s latest book Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr. If you’re familiar with Oscar history you might recognize Carr’s name as the man who was responsible for what is widely considered to be the worst Oscar show in the Academy’s long history. Allan Carr was a flamboyant and successful Hollywood talent agent in the ‘60s who helped manage the careers of many actors including Tony Curtis, Rosalind Russell, Peter Sellers, Ann-Margret and Dyan Cannon. The book focuses on Carr’s life during the ‘70s and ‘80s when he was producing films such as the popular musical GREASE (1978) and the box-office flop CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC (1980) as well as hosting legendary parties at his luxurious Hollywood home known as Hillhaven Lodge. In 1989 Allan Carr was asked to produce the 61st Annual Academy Awards show.

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