You really can’t blame Hollywood for wanting to get a little of what actor Mario Moreno was creating in his native Mexico.  Señor Moreno — aka Cantinflas — was the country’s premier comedian, a brash, impish, hilarious, mercurial force in their entertainment firmament.  Compared often to Charlie Chaplin and his Little Tramp character – for his vibrant physicality – and also to Groucho Marx — for his verbal talents — Cantinflas was a multi-talented sensation who began as a dancer and quickly managed to create his own unique niche in the hearts of audiences of all social classes.  His superb slapstick took him from successes on the stage to stardom in the cinema; he was often credited with securing the success of the entire Mexican film industry (alongside matinee idol Pedro Infante) during his career in the 1940s, especially.  Chaplin himself declared Moreno “the world’s greatest clown” — how could Hollywood not want a piece of that? 

READ MORE

Last Thursday TCM screened Border Incident (1949) as part of its Race in Hollywood: Latino Images in Film program (running May 5 – 11). I decided to make it a double-feature by getting the dvd for Mystery Street (1950). What do these films have in common? Both show a young Ricardo Montalbán fighting bad guys under the careful compositions of cinematographer John Alton, who deservedly earned much acclaim for his contributions to the aesthetics of film noir. READ MORE

Curvaceous, scantily clad female aliens from Venus. Monstruous beings from other galaxies. A robot with a soft spot for children. Singing cowboys. Norteño music. And lots of fighting. What could be better? LA NAVE DE LOS MONSTRUOS (aka The Ship of Monsters) has it all and is one of the more exotic genre hybrids that emerged from Mexico in the early sixties, mixing sci-fi, horror and Western elements into something uniquely original.           READ MORE

I honestly can’t account for why I became a Latinophile.  It seems doubly strange to me to be one, given that THE ALAMO (1960) was such a seminal work for me as a kid.  I grew up with the legend of those “13 days of glory” and the soundtrack to the John Wayne film (I only saw the actual movie much later) with its stirring ballads and rousing charges and wished, at the age of 7 or 8, that I could go back in time with a machine gun to help Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie defeat “the Mexicans.”  I was staunchly anti-Santa Ana and all of his uniformed “rudos” as a pre-teen – I hated their striped pants and plumed hats – and yet obviously something was working deep within me, changing me.  Maybe it was my parents’ bossa nova records, maybe it was all those boil-a-bags of Spanish rice, maybe it was finding out that BATMAN‘s archvillain “The Joker” was played by a Cuban, Cesar Romero, the “Latin from Manhattan” … I really can’t tell you. But within a few short years of my battle cry being “Remember the Alamo,” I was pumping my fist in the air with a hearty “Viva Santo!” READ MORE

Elementary school teacher Alma Bartlett was never famous, she never made a movie, or dazzled others with her wit and beauty. Yet, in her first years as a teacher in an El Paso, Texas school, she built a rapport with a gangly boy whose frequent absences from school frustrated her. The friendship they forged would last for over forty years. Her former student returned to El Paso in years to come, as he would many times. Then he would be a world famous man, renowned for his good looks and for squiring great beauties. When encountering a reporter, he would often unfold an ancient, creased report card he carried in his wallet to display with affection the time that Mrs. Bartlett had enough faith in him to pass him from sixth to seventh grade, despite his neglect of his studies. The seventh grade was as far as his formal education would take him.

Born Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso, in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico on December 11, 1905, (some sources say 1903), this boy had what most of us would characterize as a glamorous life, but he would never forget this inspiring young teacher. Alma saw something more in the Mexican-born scion of a family of Spanish matadors, and urged him “to do something with his life.” It would not be easy.

READ MORE

To coincide with TCM’s month-long series, Latino Images in Film, the n’er do wells here at Movie Morlocks will devote this week to an impassioned blog-a-thon on Latin American cinema (and Latin Americans in cinema…happy Cinco de Mayo, by the way). As it happens, my eyeballs have been drawn to a number of phenomenal Argentinian filmmakers recently, including Lucrecia Martel (whose mind-melting The Headless Woman gets a limited release in August) and the nomadic Lisandro Alonso. The lady I’d like to focus on here, though, has yet to land US distribution for either of her two superb features, and deserves far more of a spotlight: Celina Murga.

READ MORE

Many movie-goers and reviewers find remakes of hit films automatically unworthy, assuming the decision to remake was merely a case of cashing in on past successes. Especially in the current film industry, in which franchises, sequels, film versions of hit TV shows, and remakes rule, the mature audience’s tolerance for remakes must be at an all-time low. But, remaking or reworking old material has always been a part of Hollywood’s strategy to lure viewers to the box office, and a new version of an old film doesn’t necessarily mean it is without merit or interest. I recently watched all three versions of Chicago, which have their origins in a 1926 play, and while each movie uses the same plot, they all have different themes and subtexts.

READ MORE

When you hear the name Jack Carson, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  Hopefully it’s not The Tonight Show, which was hosted by Jack (Parr) and (Johnny) Carson before Jay Leno.  If you’re like me, you might initially remember that he played sarcastic wise guys, bombastic buffoons, and overbearing salesmen in all those RKO and Warner Bros. comedies, some of which were B-movies.  That like Ralph Bellamy, he seemed to play the third man out in a lot of love triangles or (like Edward Everett Horton, Donald MacBride, and others) that he was skilled in the fine art of the double-take, and could scrunch his face into various expressions to convey his character’s misbelief and emotion without words.  However, to fail to credit this actor for the performances he gave in more demanding roles – particularly in dramas – would be to give short shrift to a career that spanned more than 90 films during his 20+ working years.
READ MORE

Since Sean Connery is TCM’s featured star of the month and we are showing six of his seven James Bond films (1983’s Never Say Never Again was not available), I thought it fitting to write about the Connery that is rarely talked about – Neil. Eight years younger than Sean, Neil made his film debut in 1967 in the spy adventure, OPERATION KID BROTHER (it was also released in some territories as OK Connery, Operation Double 007 and Secret Agent OO). Cast with Connery co-stars from the Bond films, the film is an amusing attempt to cash in on the OO7 craze with the added curiosity value of Neil trying to follow in big brother’s footsteps.             READ MORE