Posts Tagged ‘Victor Mature’


Demetrius and the Gladiators

March 27th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. Delmer Daves
1954 / 20th Century Fox / 102′
written by Philip Dunne
director of photography Milton R. Krasner
origianl music by Franz Waxman
starring Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, Anne Bancroft, Jay Robinson, Barry Jones, and William Marshall
reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight Time
Demetrius and the Gladiators is available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time in a limited edition of 3000, and is offered exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment and their Amazon storefront.

Pushed into production before The Robe had even wrapped by producers content with the likelihood of that film’s success but not with the thought of wasting its expensive dressings, the 1954 sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators is understandably a bit smaller and less refined than its epic progenitor, but that doesn’t keep it from being gobs more fun. Ostensibly a religious drama about the ebb and flow of one (very) early Christian’s faith in Caligula’s Rome, Demetrius punctuates its piety with hearty helpings of good old-fashioned violent spectacle – ‘gladiators’ isn’t in the title for nothing.

Demetrius and the Gladiators finds The Robe‘s eponymous artifact – the robe worn by Christ to Calvary - in the protective custody of that titular Demetrius (Victor Mature reprising his role from the previous film) while its chief protector, the apostle Peter (Michael Rennie in another carry-over role), is away on urgent church business. Unfortunately for Demetrius the increasingly mad Roman emperor Caligula (returning player Jay Robinson in a delightfully outrageous turn) wants the robe for himself, convinced that it possesses a power that will render him literally divine. It isn’t long before the Praetorian guard are knocking at Demetrius’ door, and when a scuffle with them turns violent the devout ex-slave finds himself involuntarily inducted into Strabo’s (Ernest Borgnine!) gladiatorial academy and destined for combat in the Emperor’s private arena. There he captures the fertile imagination of Messalina (Susan Hayward as a Code-friendly variation on the nymphomaniacal third wife of future Roman emperor Claudius), who finds perverse gratification in forcing the good Christian to fight against man and beast.

Demetrius’ devotion to peace and good will doesn’t last long, however. The presumed death of his potter girlfriend Lucia (Debra Paget, The Ten Commandments) at the hand of a fellow gladiator soon has the pectoral hunk renouncing his faith and slaughtering his co-combatants wholesale, much to the delight of Caligula and his Praetorian guard, who appoint him to their ranks as a tribune, as well as Messalina, with whom Demetrius begins an affair. Meanwhile Caligula goes madder, hallucinating that the gods are walking his palace’s halls and becoming increasingly paranoid of plots (both real and imagined) against him…

Limited to just a handful of admittedly gargantuan sets and over and done with in a sight less than two hours Demetrius and the Gladiators really can’t help but feel on the small side compared to its mega-produced big brother The Robe, but it’s a distinction that ultimately works in the film’s favor. Focusing on just a few of that previous film’s surviving players and adding but a handful more, Philip Dunne’s capable screenplay works perfectly well as entertainment even as its ramshackle contrivance becomes increasingly obvious. The obligatory religious dramatics are more a means to an end than anything else, and leave poor Demetrius to seem more than a little the flake – one moment he’s ready to die for his beliefs, the next he’s tearing through Caligula’s private arena with a sword in each hand. The degree of Demetrius’ faith seems wholly dependent on the fate of his girlfriend here – an odd turn to be sure for a character whose Christianity was previously affirmed by no less than witnessing the crucifixion first hand, but it does get the action moving towards the arena, an essential development for a film whose credits spell out THE GLADIATORS at a scale considerably larger than that granted its eponymous hero.

The Hays Code may have put the kibosh on any possibility of overt blood and gore, but Demetrius and the Gladiators still offers audiences plenty of lavish arena-bound action. The show-stopper, despite the obviousness of its artifice, may be Demetrius’ first go in the arena when, after surviving a round with the King of Cartoons (a young William Marshall as Glycon), Caligula orders that the tigers be loosed upon him. A skillful blend of composite effects and stunts with trained animals make the sequence a real thrill, even when the tigers inevitably end up appearing more friendly than threatening. With skilled stuntmen and fencing instructor Jean Heramans (Scaramouche) at his disposal, all-purpose director Delmer Daves (Dark Passage, 3:10 to Yuma) proves himself more than adept in delivering Demetrius‘ big-screen action set pieces. Though essentially bloodless (Demetrius typically finishes off his opponents by bopping them on the helmet, complete with a sanitized, meatless sound effect) the choreography and set-ups are quite good, particularly when Demetrius is in his revenge-fueled dual-bladed frenzy.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is rarely great film making, but it is never less than good enough. The wonderfully erratic work of Jay Robinson, whose Caligula slithers about his palace with cool, reptilian menace, and the bosom-heaving performance of Susan Hayward, tempting enough despite being but a shadow of the notorious historical Messalina, help to elevate the show beyond the cash-in ambitions of its producers, while the much maligned Wtf-Film favorite Victor Mature seems well at home in yet another religious epic (following his turns in Samson and Delilah, Androcles and the Lion, and The Robe). This is good stuff, provided you don’t take it too seriously, and essential viewing for sword and sandal buffs.

Whether due to deficiencies in the available source materials, the age of the HD transfer, or both, Demetrius and the Gladiators looks substantially weaker in its Blu-ray debut than either its predecessor The Robe or the impossibly vibrant The Egyptian - Fox’s other lavish CinemaScope religious epic from 1954. The presence of a variety of damage, ranging from minor dust and debris to larger blemishes and even a few nasty vertical scratches, indicates that at the very least Demetrius hasn’t been treated to the same level of restoration Fox has bestowed upon those other films. As such Demetrius offers perhaps the weakest HD video presentation yet for niche label Twilight Time, but I still found it an imminently watchable disc and easily the superior of past editions.

Presented at the appropriate extra-wide 2.55:1 aspect ratio, the 1080p transfer has a lower level of detail than even the limitations of early CinemaScope lenses can explain – a factor compounded by an especially course, unrefined grain structure (just compare the grain in the screenshots here to that of the DeLuxe CinemaScope The Egyptian or the Technicolor CinemaScope Picnic). While contrast is strong color saturation rarely follows suit, falling short of the sort of lushness Demetrius‘ original Technicolor prints would have exported and often lending the film a dusty, subdued appearance – the image also appears unnaturally dark and overly red to these eyes. Even with all that in mind the presentation still thoroughly trounces that of the older DVD edition (released a decade ago), and the imperfect image is free of any undue digital manipulations. Twilight Time provide their typically strong technical backing as well. The video is Mpeg-4 AVC-encoded at a healthy average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and the relatively short feature (at least by epic standards) stretches comfortably into dual layer territory.

Blu-ray screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Far less troublesome is the audio, which presents Demetrius and the Gladiators‘ original 4-track surround mix in lossless DTS-HD MA. The separation here is notable, and obviously intended for BIG theatrical projection – even the dialogue makes full use of the track’s right, left, and center channels. While the dialogue and sound effect sound as strong as can be expected from the vintage mix it’s Franz Waxman’s exhilarating score (which also incorporates themes adapted from Alfred Newman’s score for The Robe) that really wows. Waxman’s compositions are as essential Demetrius‘s epic style as its enormous sets and color CinemaScope photography, and I found his heroic opening melody bouncing about in my brain long after the imagery had faded. The only drawback on the audio front is, again, a lack of optional English subtitles. Fox’s own editions always come with a mix of them, and that they aren’t even providing Twilight Time with an SDH track is a crying shame.

Supplements are light, as expected (and advertised), with an original trailer (in SD) providing the only video extra. The only other supplement is of excellent stuff, however – Franz Waxman’s score, included as an isolated DTS-HD MA 2.0 track. The Film Score Monthly CD issue of the same is long out of print, and the importance of its addition here should not be understated. Twilight Time’s typically excellent packaging (which amusingly reverses the trend of giving the word “GLADIATORS” dominance over the name of the film’s hero) is again highlighted by a liner essay from the esteemed Julie Kirgo, who clearly has a ball discussing the film even screenwriter Philip Dunne labelled a “harebrained adventure”.

Demetrius and the Gladiators may be a harebrained adventure, but it wouldn’t have retained a quarter of its substantial appeal if it were anything else. Though loaded with compulsory attempts at evoking the pious gravitas of its predecessor Demetrius is ultimately all about seeing its eponymous hero break as many commandments as his test-of-faith (and the Code) will allow, and while the final product may never reach the dizzying heights of vintage DeMille-ian excess (Sign of the Cross this isn’t) it still offers plenty of that indelible old-Hollywood spectacle. For their part Twilight Time have offered another solid Blu-ray treatment, even if the HD materials leave something to be desired. Recommended, if for the keen lossless audio options alone.


On Blu this week: Two from Twilight Time

March 12th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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On March 13th limited edition home video label Twilight Time will be releasing the latest in their Blu-ray line, one deep catalog release each from the libraries of 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures:

First up is 20th Century Fox’s lavish extra-wide 2.55:1 CinemaScope follow-up to 1953′s The Robe, the 1954 sword and sandal smash Demetrius and the Gladiators starring Wtf-Film favorites Victor Mature, Michael Rennie, and Ernest Borgnine, and directed by Delmer Daves (the original 3:10 to Yuma). From ScreenArchives:

DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS (1954) (PRE-ORDER) (BLU-RAY)
Starring: Victor Mature, Michael Rennie, Richard Egan, Ernest Borgnine, Susan Hayward, Debra Paget, Jay Robinson
Directed By: Delmer Daves
Composed By: Franz Waxman

VIDEO: 1080p High Definition / 2.55:1
AUDIO: English 4.0 DTS-HD MA
LANGUAGE: English
1954 / Color
101 MINUTES
NOT RATED
NTSC REGION FREE
Limited Edition of 3,000 Units

“Spectacle, action, sex, and reverence.” — The New York Times

“Compelling screen story, and equally compelling direction…the trial of a man’s faith by the temptations of an amoral woman and a pagan Rome.” — Variety

“Spiffing gladiatorial combats…it’s a lot of fun.” — Time Out Film Guide

The thrilling sequel to The Robe (1953), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) follows the further adventures of the Christian slave Demetrius (Victor Mature), sentenced to servitude as a gladiator in the Roman arena. There, his faith is tested in to-the-death combat and by the wiles of the seductive Messalina (Susan Hayward)—all under the obsessive eye of the mad Emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson). Director Delmer Daves brings epic sweep to the tale, supported by the bravura score of Franz Waxman (available here as an isolated track).

Enjoy the extensive Julie Kirgo liner notes and film art packaged with the Blu-ray disc.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is available as a limited Blu-ray edition of 3000, retail price $29.95, and is currently purchasable exclusively through Twilight Time partner ScreenArchives.com.

Arriving the same day is Richard Brook’s Academy Award-nominated 1975 western Bite the Bullet, starring Gene Hackman, Candace Bergen, James Coburn, Jan-Michael Vincent, and Ben Johnson, with a musical score from Alex North (Dragonslayer). From ScreenArchives:

BITE THE BULLET (1975) (PRE-ORDER) (BLU-RAY)
Starring: Candice Bergen, Ian Bannen, Dabney Coleman, Gene Hackman, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, Jan-Michael Vincent
Directed By: Richard Brooks
Composed By: Alex North

VIDEO: 1080p High Definition / 2.35:1
AUDIO: English 5.1 DTS-HD MA
SUBTITLES: English SDH
LANGUAGE: English
1975 / Color
131 MINUTES
NOT RATED
NTSC REGION FREE
Limited Edition of 3,000 Units

“A finely crafted, epic Western…a film that reexamines and reaffirms the Western myth. Brooks is a proven master.” — Roger Ebert

“An excellent, literate action drama probing the diverse motivations of participants in an endurance horse race.” — Variety

In Bite the Bullet (1975), writer/director Richard Brooks (The Professionals) gives us a Western on a grand scale, focusing on a 700-mile horse race across the bleakly beautiful landscape of the American Southwest. Entrants battling desert and mountain, freezing cold and blistering heat—not to mention their own inner demons—include a former Rough Rider (Gene Hackman); his old comrade-in-arms, now a gambler (James Coburn); a feisty onetime prostitute (Candice Bergen); a weary saddle tramp (Ben Johnson); a wealthy English toff (Ian Bannen); and an arrogant kid (Jan-Michael Vincent) looking to make his reputation. Featuring a score by the one and only Alex North (available here as an isolated track).

Enjoy the extensive Julie Kirgo liner notes and film art packaged with the Blu-ray disc.

The Bite the Bullet limited edition Blu-ray retails for $34.95 and, like Demetrius and the Gladiators, is currently purchasable exclusively through Twilight Time partner ScreenArchives.com. Be sure to follow Twilight Time on Facebook and Twitter to receive the latest release news and updates, and check back here as well – Wtf-Film will have comprehensive coverage of both releases available as soon as our copies arrive.


Twilight Time: The Egyptian

February 23rd, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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The Egyptian is available on Blu-ray (and DVD) in a limited edition of 3000, and is offered exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment and their Amazon storefront.

It may come as something of a surprise to the most frequent readers of this site to find that if this humble non-believer has a soft-spot for any one genre of cinema, it’s the grandiose religious epic that flourished in the mid-20th century. I grew up enraptured by airings of Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and so on, and even in my more jaded adulthood it’s impossible for me to pass on anything baring the names of Wyler or DeMille. Adapted from the novel by Mika Waltari and released in late 1954 as a giant-sized thematic follow up to the earlier success of The Robe (which received its own direct sequel in the same year’s Demetrius and the Gladiators, which is due from Twilight Time next month) Michael Curtiz’s The Egyptian is a religious epic of another color entirely, and though it may be concerned with the workings of a civilization long before the time of Christ that doesn’t keep it from being preoccupied with the faith born of him.

Taking place during ancient Egypt’s brief experiment with monotheism, The Egyptian tells the story of an orphaned child Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom) who, under the tutelage of his adopted father, grows to be a skilled physician. Sinuhe struggles to find success until a chance encounter lands him in the good graces of the new Pharaoh Akhnaton (Michael Wilding), a worshiper of the sun god Aten who uses his newfound position to promote his faith. As quickly as the young doctor finds acceptance he goes astray, his obsession with Babylonian temptress Nefer (Bella Darvi) leading him to be banished from the kingdom for shirking his responsibilities. Accompanied by the sly but loyal Kaptah (Peter Ustinov) Sinuhe finds a fortune, but little fulfillment, abroad, and after years in exile returns to an Egypt in turmoil. His childhood friend Horemheb (Victor Mature), now commander of the armed forces, has his eyes on the thrown, and with the backing of the high priests seeks to violently oppress the practice of Atenism…

As was Waltari’s source novel, The Egyptian is as concerned with drawing parallels between the practice and purging of Atenism and the plight of the early Christians as it is with convincingly portraying Egypt during the 18th dynasty, and the combination of the two make it one of the more unusual of the classic religious epics. The Chrstian allusions are obvious, with the Ankh serving as a surrogate for the cross and the intricacies of Sinuhe’s story hinting strongly to that of Moses from the Old Testament. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the production is its focus on the tenets of the faith as opposed to the incidents of its history, and it offers messages of forgiveness in favor of the usual violent spectacle.

In terms of production this is another top-flight effort from the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck, marked by stunning color CinemaScope production design (at the original extra-wide 2.55:1) and bolstered by one of the best scores of its kind – contributed by not one but two of the medium’s greatest composers, Alfred Newman (The Robe) and Bernard Herrmann (Cape Fear). Still, its a handful of key supporting performances that really make the film so memorable. Jean Simmons is as enchanting as ever as a tavern maid selflessly devoted to Sinuhe – even the sultry Darvi is no match for Simmons’ understated elegance – while John Carradine makes a memorable bit appearance as a philosophical grave robber. Best of all may be the late great Peter Ustinov (Quo Vadis), whose wry, dry portrayal of the charming one-eyed vagabond Kaptah effectively steals the show. “Alas, no physician can restore my eye,” he says to Sinuhe, with as much humor as tragedy. “My first master put it out when I drank a jar of beer and refilled it in a manner which displeased him.”

The Egyptian was a box office disappointment upon release, and unlike its CinemaScope predecessors, The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators, has dwelt in relative obscurity in the near 60 years since. As such its home video presence has been rather limited, and up until now dominated by a pricey letterboxed laserdisc edition from the early ’90s. Thanks are deserved to Twilight Time for making the film newly available for the digital age (and doubly deserved for graciously providing me with a review copy so long after the fact), and in an edition that’s as definitive in its quality as I imagine possible.

Twilight Time were offered Fox’s latest restoration of The Egyptian for their Blu-ray release, the label’s inaugural venture into HD, and the visuals here are, for all intents and purposes, flawless. Detail improves modestly but appreciably over the limitations of SD, but, as I find myself saying so often of these classic releases, its the texture of the thing that really impresses. The image is alive with unspoiled grain rendered with such precision that the filmic feel of it is retained even under the closest of scrutiny. Indeed, the image is deserving of the highest compliment one can pay to such a release – this doesn’t look like video, it looks like film. I’ve no idea as to the condition of the elements at the time Fox undertook their restoration, but if it was anything short of pristine then their efforts do nothing to belie it. The ravages of age are kept well at bay and the DeLuxe color seems impossibly vivid, making this one of the most attractive images I’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing.

For the technically minded, The Egyptian is presented in its original 2.55:1 aspect ratio via an AVC-encode that just flat out kills. The feature and audio (three tracks) is spread comfortably across a little over 40 GB of a dual layer BD-50, with a lofty average bitrate of 34.7 Mbps dedicated to the video alone. Encoding deficiencies, if any, are negligible, and I noticed absolutely nothing untoward in my examination. This is another of those discs that could be played theatrically with no one being the wiser – high praise indeed.

The only feature audio is a robust DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix (the original presentation would have been in 4-track stereo). The Egyptian is dominated by its drama, with very little of its 139 minutes devoted to outright action, and as such it is the magnificent score from Herrmann and Newman that really benefits from this lossless encoding. You’ll hear no complaints from me on that front, and the rest of the dialogue and effects come through perfectly well. There are no subtitles.

In terms of supplements this is the best of the bunch for Twilight Time’s releases, and includes an excellent feature commentary track from historians Alain Silver and James Ursini (a duo who have provided such commentaries for a good number of other classic film releases). Otherwise you have the option to listen to Herrmann and Newman’s isolated score – presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo. The only other on-disc extras are a rough original theatrical trailer (SD) and similarly rough trailers for a few of Twilight Time’s other DVD releases. The package is fine looking all around, dominated by the poster image featuring all three of the film’s leading ladies (Simmons, Darvi, and the previously unmentioned Gene Tierney), and comes with another superb booklet of liner notes from Julie Kirgo.

The Egyptian is certainly a strange film, but a good one, and far less concerned with the sensationalism that preoccupies so many of its ilk. For shear looks its expansive 2.55:1 CinemaScope production design is tough to beat. The only real drawback for Twilight Time’s Blu-ray is its price – $39.95 retail, still a sight less than the old laserdisc – but if you can bite that bullet you’ll have a terrific release on your hands. Recommended!


Kiss of Death

February 6th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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rating:
company: 20th Century Fox
year: 1947
runtime: 99′
country: United States
director: Henry Hathaway
cast: Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy,
Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark,
Taylor Holmes, Howard Smith,
Karl Malden, Anthony Ross
writers: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer
and Eleazar Lipsky
cinematographer: Norbert Brodine
music: David Buttolph
dvd company: 20th Century Fox
release date: December 6, 2005
retail price: $14.98
disc details: Region 1 / NTSC / dual layer
video: 1.33:1 / full screen / progressive
audio: Dolby Digital 1.0 mono (English, Spanish)
Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo (English)
subtitles: English, Spanish
special features: Feature commentary by
Alain Silver and John Ursini, theatrical trailer,
stills gallery, promotional trailers for other Fox Noir
(Call Northside 777, House of Bamboo, Laura,
Panic in the Streets, The Street With No Name)
order this film from Amazon.com


Plot: An ex-con back in prison for a jewelry heist squeals on the mob that hired him after learning that his wife has died in his absence.

What a great film!  Victor Mature last paid visit to this site via Hal Roach Sr. and Jr.’s original cavemen-versus-dinosaurs epic One Million B.C., which cast and typecast Mature as the stoic slab of manhood he would play time and again throughout his career (Samson and Delilah, Demetrius and the Gladiators and so on).  Henry Hathaway’s location-bound neo-realist noir requires far more of Mature as a performer than any of those efforts did or would, and the actor, cast against then and future heavies Brian Donlevy (Beginning or the End, The Quatermass Xperiment) and Richard Widmark (Panic in the Streets, The Bedford Incident), proves time and again that he can pull it off with chops to spare.

Mature plays Nick Bianco, a decent man forced by unfortunate circumstance into a life of crime.  His past is checkered, his father was shot dead by police when he was just a kid and he spent time in prison as a young adult.  His wrap sheet is enough to keep him from finding a steady job in post-war New York, so Bianco turns to pulling contract heists for the local mob.  On Christmas Eve a jewelry store hold-up goes sour, and Nick finds himself on the street in front of the Chrysler Building with a policeman’s bullet in his leg.  Assistant D.A. D’Angelo (Donlevy) offers Nick is offered a plea deal, but he refuses it, getting 15 years in Sing Sing while his accomplices go free.

Nick, good guy that he is, is more than happy to serve the time for the crime he knows he committed, and is led by shady (or shyster, as D’Angelo puts it) lawyer Houser into believing that his wife and two young daughters will be taken care of.  He couldn’t be more wrong.  After an affair with Nick’s old cohort Rizzo his wife takes a nosedive into alcoholism and depression, eventually snuffing out her miseries in a gas stove.  Nick doesn’t find out until well after the fact, and concerns over the welfare of his children, now in an orphanage, and a visit from his former babysitter Nettie (Coleen Gray in her first billed role) convince him that helping the assistant D.A. might be the right thing to do after all.

Ratting on his cohorts in the Christmas Eve jewelry store job is small stuff, and soon Nick is put on the job of squealing on slick mobster Tommy Udo (Widmark in his Academy Award-nominated screen debut), a squirrelly sociopath Nick first met while awaiting trial in the Tombs.  The gig works, and Nick gives D’Angelo all the evidence he thinks he needs to put Udo away on a murder wrap.  Bianco goes on with his life, marrying the much younger Nettie and living with his kids in Queens under an assumed name.  But it isn’t long before D’Angelo is calling again, demanding that Nick shed his secrecy and testify in the Udo case, a guaranteed conviction we already knows is going to swing the other way.

With the sadistic Udo back on the streets, Nick knows that it’s only a matter of time before he gets an unwanted knock on his door.  Realizing that D’Angelo will be of no help, Bianco puts his family on a train to the country and goes out to find Tommy himself to settle things once and for all.

Kiss of Death is best remembered, and perhaps rightly so, for the hilariously sadistic breakout performance of Richard Widmark as the demented hood Tommy Udo.  With sunken eyes, a slicked-back hair piece and a constant giggle, Udo is more of a cartoon caricature than a human being, but even caricatures can be dangerous.  Udo is the man Houser calls when there’s dirty work that needs doing, and when the lawyer is led to believe that Nick’s old friend Rizzo is squealing on the mob it’s Udo he sends in to fix things.  And fix them he does, wrapping Rizzo’s wheelchair-bound mother with electrical wire and sending her on a face-first trip down her tenement’s stairs.  Widmark’s performance is absolutely electrifying here, and he imbues Udo’s human weasel (undoubtedly an inspiration for Judge Doom’s henchmen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) with enough raw power to make him a believable threat, even when so obviously physically outmatched by co-star Mature.

Though he can’t help but be upstaged by Widmark in his gravy role, Mature is no push-over.  At 6 foot 2 inches tall he looks a bit like Gulliver after his landing on Lilliput when decked out in his suit tie (perhaps an intentional move to make the family man look all the more out-of-place as a criminal), but his emotions are spot on and in the final confrontation with Widmark he more than holds his own.  It’s interesting that even in noir Mature can’t escape Biblical associations, and his sinner-turned-martyr is followed by a good deal of Christian symbolism.  Prison bars cast shadows that form crosses in at least two scenes (one of them across Mature’s face) while he is seen centered beneath another (this one in a stained glass window) when he visits a Catholic  orphanage with D’Angelo and his cop assistant.  When it comes time for the cops and robber to take their seats in a waiting room, Mature sits directly below a painting of Christ, and a nun working the orphanage, much to the embarrassment of the assistant D.A. and his friend, has to ask which of them is the ex-con father.

While much of the symbolism looks to have originated with director Hathaway (Call Northside 777, True Grit), it extends well into the Hecht and Lederer (and possibly the Lipsky source story, though I’ve not read it to check) as well.  The assistant D.A. who saves Mature from prison is named Louis D’Angelo (Louis ‘of Angels’) and Mature himself plays a character named Bianco (white), re-enforcing his overall goodness.  It’s never terribly overbearing and no one will ever confuse Kiss of Death for a Christ allegory, but it’s interesting to point out all the same.


Veteran director Henry Hathaway plays the early events as realistically as possible for a dramatic film, showing us through the procedure of Mature’s confinement and ushering us through a series of real locations.  The drama will seem dated for anyone happening upon it today, but seeing the Tombs, the D.A.’s office, and Sing Sing and its workshops alive on the big screen helps.  The documentary style on display, with its high-key lighting and straight compositions, stands in for that classic noir aesthetic for the first two acts, not that it hampers the suspense (an early scene of Nick trapped in an elevator is superbly claustrophobic).  The change arrives with a call from D’Angelo informing Nick that Tommy Udo has beaten his murder wrap, and from here on out fans of low-key noir stylings will find themselves in familiar territory.  Hathaway ramps his crime drama into a slick thriller in the third act, and his direction of Mature, crushed by the realization that his work with D’Angelo was for nought and turned paranoid by fear for his family’s well being, is exceptional.

My only real complaint is with the framing and the ending, which smells of studio tampering, not that either of these things keeps the film from succeeding.  The film is bookended with narration from Nettie, who offers a bit of useful backstory in the beginning and adds a happy high note to the otherwise grim finale.

Those worried about spoilers should skip this rest of this paragraph. Nick ends them film prostrate on the ground, shot half a dozen times in the gut by the vengeful Udo, with the three-time-loser immediately apprehended by police for the assault and locked away for good.  As Nick is shuffled into an ambulance, obviously on his way out, Nettie’s narration chimes in to let us know that he, in no uncertain terms, survives.  Here we fade to a stock shot of New York seen at the beginning of the film, then the ending title.  There’s ample evidence here to indicate that Nettie was not originally intended to be the framing device, and the Nick did not actually survive.  It seems far more likely that assistant D.A. D’Angelo was set to be the original framework for the piece, particularly given that the source story was based on the experiences of its author Eleazar Lipsky, a former prosecutor.  It’s food for thought certainly, but as I said, not enough to ruin the picture.


Kiss of Death gets exceptional treatment as part of the Fox Film Noir collection, with the black and white feature and supplements spread over a hefty 7.5 gigs of disc space.  The progressive transfer is excellent for such an old catalog title, with tight 1.33:1 framing and healthy detail.  Contrast looks appropriate if a little boosted and a fine layer of that beloved film grain is present throughout.  Damage is limited but still present, mostly as dust and speckles but occasionally as more obvious chemical imperfections.  It’s never enough to really distract from the viewing and I suspect this is the best the film has looked in a good long time.  Audio is available in three flavors, English in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono and 2.0 stereo, and Spanish in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono.  Recording on all three is crisp, and I didn’t note much difference between the stereo and monophonic tracks.  Subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

Fox offers up a feature commentary track from Alain Silver and John Ursini as the chief supplement for the disc.  While short on background information and high on observations of things that will be pretty obvious (at least I hope so) to most viewers, the pair still offer up some good information – certainly worth a listen and not nearly so pointless as some other tracks I’ve come across (Once Upon A Time In The West, for instance).  The other supplements are pretty standard issue, a theatrical trailer in good shape, a still gallery, and a collection of trailers for other Fox Noir titles (including Panic in the Streets, starring Widmark, and Call Northside 777, directed by Hathaway).

This is a great disc from Fox, currently on sale at 60% savings (a bargain price of just $5.99) at Amazon.com.  Fans and film buffs in general are encouraged to indulge.  As for the film, what more need be said?  It’s a landmark performance from then-newcomer Widmark and one of the best from the underrated Mature, all wrapped up in a fine crime drama by director Hathaway and writers Hecht, Lederer and Lipsky.  The fine score is so good we’ve heard it thrice, with the opening theme recycled for Elia Kazan’s Gentlemen’s Agreement and the less upstanding 3D attraction Gorilla At Large (insert your own canned ape sound effects here – they did).  Excellent stuff, and highly recommended.


One Million B.C.

June 26th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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United Artists [1940] 80′
country: United States
director: HAL ROACH / HAL ROACH JR.
cast: VICTOR MATURE, CAROLE LANDIS,
cast: LON CHANEY JR., JOHN HUBBARD

Producer / writer / director Hal Roach was nothing if not prolific, with over 1100 production credits to his name and writer and director credits each numbering over 150. Having worked predominantly in the highly profitable genre of comedy since first stepping into the industry in 1914, he moved on to higher end productions in 1937, resulting in such classics as the TOPPER films and OF MICE AND MEN, as well as the odd prehistoric spectacle reviewed here today.

ONE MILLION B.C. begins with a brief modern framing sequence, in which a friendly professor relates his interpretation of some cave drawings to a group of rain-drenched hikers – but the rest of the film is based squarely in a fantasy prehistory in which primitive man walked the same world as the dinosaurs. Tumak [strapping young Victor Mature in his first starring role] is a young hunter and son of the leader of the Rock people, who spend their days watching their friends fall off of cliffs and fighting over whatever food they happen to come across. After a slight disagreement with his dictatorial father, Tumak is banished from the tribe and cast, unconscious, into a river near their cave home.

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