I watched a killer Italian western by director Giorgio Ferroni from 1967. Starred someone named Giuliano Gemma. Great location shots in Spain and Italy! The “Wanted” theme is great and funny at the same time, not too far off from “Branded”
It’s been awhile, so time to rewatch the most beautiful horror film ever made, Dario Argento’s Suspiria from 1977. Co-Written by Asia Argento’s mother, Daria Nicolodi (star of Mario Bava’s Shock), it stars relatively unknown actress Jessica Harper and features many great obscure cast members like Joan Bennett (Fritz Lang film-noir actress), Alida Valli (super creepy in this film, she was in the 1949 film noir The Third Man), Udo Kier (Warhol’s Dracula and Doctor Frankenstein), and Stefani Cassini (from Bertolucci’s 1900).
This was the final Technicolor film. The colors used in this film make every scene look like a beautiful painting. They bought up all the remaining Technicolor film stock to film this so they had to be very economical with the stock they had. It has the best Italian prog soundtrack of any film, courtesy of Goblin and Argento himself.
But what most interested me this time around was the architecture. Harper meets Kier at the BMW Headquarters in Munich, an incredible modern building designed to look like a 4 cylinder engine. The exteriors of the dance school were the Haus zum Walfisch, an incredible 16th century building. But most fascinating, the interiors were all Art-Nouveau. These were most likely sets entirely created in the film studios of Italy.
I watched this famous film noir from 1946 to again get a view of old Los Angeles. Directed by George Marshall, written by Raymond Chandler, starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Leave It To Beaver’s Hugh Beaumont. Great location shots like the Mirimar Hotel. I read that the studio had Chandler change the ending, so they end up with two red herrings for the murderer instead of the expected one.
I wanted to see this original Vincent Price version of House on Haunted Hill because they used the famous Frank Lloyd Wright Ennis House for the exteriors. The poster above does not resemble the house in the film at all. Actually, it is an odd choice as the Wright Mayan-inspired modernist house is not scary. It is no doubt used because it was a convenient choice as this house shows up in over 20 or more Hollywood films.
Directed 1959 by the always interesting William Castle, it was billed as being filmed in Emergo, which was a skeleton on a string that flew out at the audience during a key scene. It was fun to watch for the scene where this would have happened.
The exteriors of the Ennis House were great as expected, of course the interior of the house didn’t even remotely emulate the FLW house. The original house is one of the four famous concrete patterned-block houses that Wright built in the ’20s in LA. For the film, they placed the occasional patterned block around the interior set, to connect the shots.
This film made a lot of money, which inspired Alfred Hitchock to make Psycho. Psycho then inspired Castle to make Homicidal, which is almost as good as Hitchcock.
Rewatched this classic film noir from 1944 from director Billy Wilder, as it has many location scenes in LA that I wanted to scope for an LA visit I plan on doing soon, including interiors in the Bradbury Building. The screenpay was cowritten by both Wilder and Raymond Chandler, so the dialogue is always so mesmerising that I had to keep rewinding to watch the background scenery that I missed.
Samurai films are just as good as westerns. I just watched Beat Takeshi’s film Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsmen. I was thinking of going through the whole Zatoichi series, but instead of starting from the original 1962 film, I picked “Beat” Takeshi Kitano’s award winning version from 2003. And it stars the director himself. Beat Takeshi was a Japanese TV stand up comedian before moving into film. This film mixes gruesome swordplay with grim drama and a little comedy.
Been on a bit of a Bird bender, so I just watched this great BBC “Legends” special, The Story of Charlie Parker. It has the two only known clips of Charlie Parker playing ever filmed.
Wow, I knew this 1968 spaghetti western by director Sergio Corbucci was gonna be good, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this good. Italian actor Franco Nero, as a Polish(?!?) gunslinger and war strategist for hire in revolutionary Mexico. American actor Tony Musante plays the revolutionary. Jack Palance is here too, in a psychotic role, of course. A great bulletfest with a streak of humor running through it.
Saturday afternoon watched this rare kinescope of a 1959 TV performance of Miles Davis and orchestra performing on something called the Robert Herridge Theater. They do So What (with Coltrane, no Adderley), plus some Gil Evans’ orchestra numbers from Miles Ahead. Incredible footage, all the more fun to watch Davis step aside as soon as his part is done to have a smoke!
Just watched this revisionist western on Doc Holiday, directed 1971 by Frank Perry. All Gunfight at the OK-Corral films are revisionist, as none seem to try too hard to get things right, this one least of all. But I don’t care, it’s a great gritty ’70s film, shot in beautiful Andalucia, Spain, just like all the great spaghetti westerns. And it stars Stacy Keach, Faye Dunaway and even Denver John Collins, brother of Judy Collins!