MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Five

MISTER MOSES (1965: Dir. Ronald Neame)

 

Without a doubt the most scarce film on my Mitchum list, Mister Moses is the joker in the deck and contains one of Bob's best light comic performances as a con man who helps re-locate an entire African village with the help of blonde bombshell Carroll Baker and an endearing elephant for transportation. British director Ronald Neame had originally envisioned a 24 year-old Julie Christie (Billy Liar) as Bob's leading lady but she was not yet deemed a big enough star, although that would soon be remedied with her next film Darling (1965). According to Neame, Mitchum was his usual professional self on set but did not refrain from some significant imbibing during his off hours while on the remote Kenyan locations. He also befriended the tribe of Masai warriors who were featured in the film, and enjoyed participating in many of their tribal rituals, although he didn't take to their diet of cattle blood and milk. The lively music is by John Barry who would come to be the film composer most associated with East Africa for his award-winning scores of Born Free (1966) and Out of Africa (1985). Unfortunately the availability of Mister Moses has been been sporadic at best over the years having never been released on any home video format. Due to its dated colonial attitudes it may never see the light of day and as such it remains my most sought after Mitchum movie.

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Four

THE NIGHT FIGHTERS (1960: Dir. Tay Garnett)

Robert Mitchum had many talents, actor, writer, poet, musician, drinker, but perhaps the most surprising was vocal mimic. In films such as Foreign Intrigue (1956) and Fire Down Below (1957) he affected perfect French and Trinidadian accents - he even recorded his own Calypso album in authentic Caribbean patois. For The Night Fighters Bob tried out his Irish brogue for the first time - later put to fine use in David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1971) - as an Irish Republican Army recruit who learns the hard way that love and violence can only lead to tragedy. The last of three films produced by his own company including Thunder Road  (1958) and The Wonderful Country (1959), Mitchum hired his One Minute to Zero (1952) director Tay Garnett to helm this made-in Ireland production. The film's failure to connect with audiences put the kibosh on Bob's future as actor-producer. Regardless, the casting, direction, and design of the film lend it a remarkable authenticity let down only by the cliched storyline. A quality effort that doesn't deserve its obscurity.

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Three

BANDIDO (1956: Dir. Richard Fleischer)

One of a pair of troubled films that Bob made with Dick Fleischer (see also His Kind of Woman), Bandido was written by Earl Felton (20000 Leagues Under The Sea) and originally based on a story about Pancho Villa. Plagued by production delays, script re-writes, and Mitchum's false arrest on location in Mexico for marijuana possession, this widescreen Western is better than it has any right to be, no doubt largely attributable to the unflappable skill of Fleischer, a veteran of stylish low budget noirs (The Narrow Margin, Armored Car Robbery). This time Mitchum is selling his skills as a soldier of fortune south of the border and getting entangled in the Mexican Revolution, very similar to the role he would play many years later in Villa Rides (1968). Cast as Bob's object of desire, forgotten German beauty Ursula Thiess (Bengal Brigade) may be a lovely asset but it's the film's intense action and exotic locations that keep the audience engaged. A United Artists release that has shockingly never been officially available on any home video format.

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part Two

SECOND CHANCE (1953: Dir. Rudolph Maté)

Big Bob in 3 Dimensions! A rare foray by RKO into the 3-D craze of the Fifties resulted in this soleil noir which featured Jack Palance, fresh from Shane (1953), polishing his now well established villainous credentials. Still young at age 30 Bob's smoldering co-star Linda Darnell was already in a career down turn which would see her largely retreat to Television in a few short years. Mitchum may have been marking time as he finished this last film in his RKO contract with eccentric boss Howard Hughes, but cast as a depressed prize fighter one would never know, particularly given Bob's well-disguised acting professionalism. At the time there were few men who could pose a credible threat to Mitchum onscreen and Palance was one of them, which if nothing else, manages to rescue this potboiler from obscurity. Picturesque Mexican locations also help and the 3-D climax in dangling cable cars provides vertigo inducing thrills. A satisfying trip south of the border that should get a proper restoration on Blu-ray soon.

MITCHUM MOST WANTED Part One

Even a century after his birth, Robert Mitchum remains one of cinema's all-time greatest stars. His uniquely hard-boiled screen persona effortlessly radiated both detachment and danger. A fluently instinctive performer, who was as comfortable playing lugubrious losers, as he was handsome heroes. He is an actor always worth watching, no matter how mediocre the production. My extensive collection of his films is an obsessive work-in-progress. The following are the most wanted and unavailable titles of his filmography still out of reach in North America on BLU-RAY:

THE LUSTY MEN (1952: Dir. Nicholas Ray)

Robert Mitchum did some surprisingly strong work in his early career under contract to Howard Hughes at RKO Studios. Having mostly collaborated with journeymen or rookie directors, Mitchum had yet to experience the dominant vision of true auteur, until he met Nicholas Ray. Ray was a filmmaker fascinated by the outsider. Obsessed with individualists, his cinematic legacy left us with some of the most memorable rebels of all-time (They Live By Night, In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without A Cause). Their first meeting came when director Josef Von Sternberg was fired from the film Macao (1952) and Ray was brought in to complete it. Demonstrating a largely hidden writing talent, Mitchum even collaborated on a revision of the largely nonsensical screenplay. Following that fruitful partnership they quickly went into production on The Lusty Men, a contemporary Western drama that contains the quintessential Mitchum protagonist. As broken down rodeo rider Jeff McCloud, Bob gets to play all the melancholy notes using his perfect physical instrument. With his broad barrel chest, brooding bedroom eyes, graceful gait, and laconic manner, Mitchum oozes animal magnetism from every pore. Mindful of his sexy leading man, Ray keeps all of the erotic undercurrents at a rolling boil as fiery Susan Hayward and folksy Arthur Kennedy spice up the story's tragic love triangle. One of Bob's best and a criminal omission on Blu-ray.

CHARLTON HESTON: MASTER OF DISASTER Part Four

TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976: Dir. Larry Peerce)

As he approached his 53rd year Charlton Heston was having one of the most commercially successful periods of his career, but even he must have known it was the spectacle of disaster that had lured audiences to Airport 1975, and Earthquake, rather than his aging star persona. It wasn't just his hairpiece that was getting less convincing, so were his days as a romantic lead. Realizing this, Heston embraced his middle age by segueing into mostly father figure and supporting character roles. 1976 would be the tipping point and a very busy year for him, having already starred in two films opposite James Coburn, the brutal Western The Last Hard Men, followed by the large cast WWII epic Midway. Continuing his connection with Universal Pictures, Heston accepted an offer to play the smaller yet pivotal role of the Los Angeles Police Captain dealing with a lone gunman at a championship football game in the LA Coliseum. Written and produced by the same team who had previously done the made-for-TV docudrama 21 Hours at Munich about the Israeli hostage incident at the 1972 Olympics, this was the third in a sniper film cycle following Targets (1968), and The Deadly Tower (1975), both inspired by the 1966 Charles Whitman shootings in Texas. Director Larry Peerce, whose New York Subway hostage thriller The Incident (1967) is a textbook example in low budget suspense film-making, expertly ratchets up the tension as a random collection of football fans inexorably march towards their tragic fate. Peerce wisely insisted, over studio protestations, that the killer remain both unknown and unknowable, mostly depicted as an anonymous series of fidgeting hands, point of view camera shots and obscured angles. This puts the audience in an exceptionally uncomfortable position, accentuating the anxiety of its chilling terrorist scenario. Composer Charles Fox doubles down on the dread with an eerie score that at times channels the oeuvre of Jerry Goldsmith, but appropriately when the violence erupts, the music becomes unnervingly absent save for the startling crack of a rifle being fired. The irresistibly intense John Cassavetes co-stars as the saturnine S.W.A.T. team leader whose appetite for deadly retribution contrasts with the more reasoned response of Heston's cop, an exchange given added irony by Chuck's future real-life appointment as president of the NRA. With its shocking R-rated bloodletting the film was a stand-out among the more family friendly horrors of most of its genre, perhaps being responsible for a cool reception at the box office. Audiences were just not interested in witnessing a bloodbath and mob panic that had no discernible entertainment value other than pure terror. Dismissed at the time as a fear-mongering exercise in cinematic ballyhoo, Two Minute Warning can be especially disconcerting for post 9-11 viewers whose commonplace experience with murderous rampages have only increased in the intervening decades. BLU-RAY

CHARLTON HESTON: MASTER OF DISASTER Part Three

EARTHQUAKE (1974: Dir. Mark Robson)

"An Event" indeed. The one two punch of Airport 1975 and Earthquake would make 1974 the biggest box office year of Charlton Heston's career. Once again hitching his wagon to another of executive producer Jennings Lang's disaster film juggernauts, Heston, after a crucial amelioration of his character's infidelity in the shooting script, delivered his expected gravitas and physical prowess in the role of beleaguered engineer Stewart Graff. He is joined by a carefully chosen array of low wattage stars including: Ava Gardner, his middle-aged former co-star from 55 Days at Peking (1963), Quebecoise ingenue Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days), Canadian cowboy Lorne Greene (Bonanza), Soul cinema superstar Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and the ubiquitous George Kennedy (Airport). Lang and producer/director Mark Robson knew that spectacle was the main attraction for an audience gorged on destruction and carnage, so they decided to put cinema patrons right on the fault line itself. Their invention was the sound system "Sensurround" a low frequency extended-range bass noise generator that could simulate the vibrations of an actual earthquake. Newly installed in dozens of cinemas across North America, this unique sensory experience left audiences both shaken and stirred by a genuine visceral reaction to the terrifying tremors depicted on screen. The script, originally conceived by Mario The Godfather Puzo and revised by neophyte screenwriter George Fox, is cleverly constructed to take advantage of numerous picturesque Los Angeles locations while at the same time thriftily staging large scale physical effects within the safety zone of the studio backlot. The most unsung member of the creative team however was matte artist Albert Whitlock, a genius with a paint brush on glass. His background depictions of downtown LA convincingly reduced to ruins, gave the film an essential sense of scale and apocalyptic threat. Not since the 1950s, when 3D and Cinerama were the dominating cinema gimmicks, had Hollywood created such a mercenary thrill ride motion picture, blatantly sacrificing character, dialogue and plot on the altar of cataclysm. Sensurround was subsequently used by Universal Pictures for only three more films: Midway (1976) also starring Heston, Rollercoaster (1977), and Battlestar Galactica (1978), all to diminishing effect. Judged purely by its gross profits, Earthquake would be the peak of the disaster film cycle and Charlton Heston now its undisputed star attraction. Two more films would complete his quintet of catastrophe, but they would take the genre into new and different directions, not always where the public wished to follow. BLU-RAY