At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!
The Long Ships
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 137
1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95
Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic
Art Director: Bill Constable...
The Long Ships
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 137
1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95
Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic
Art Director: Bill Constable...
- 8/6/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mill Creek and Kit Parker have raided the Columbia vault once again in search of Noir Gold from the ‘fifties. Their selection this time around has a couple of prime gems, several straight crime thrillers and domestic jeopardy tales, and also a couple of interesting Brit imports. They aren’t really ‘Noir’ either, but they’re still unexpected and different. The top title is Don Siegel’s incomparable The Lineup, but also on board is a snappy anti-commie epic by André De Toth. Get set for a lineup of impressive leading ladies: Diana Dors, Arlene Dahl, Anita Ekberg — and the great Colleen Dewhurst as a card-carrying Red!
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Volume 3
The Shadow on the Window, The Long Haul, Pickup Alley, The Tijuana Story, She Played with Fire, The Case Against Brooklyn, The Lineup, The Crimson Kimono, Man on a String
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1957 -1960 / B&w...
Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Volume 3
The Shadow on the Window, The Long Haul, Pickup Alley, The Tijuana Story, She Played with Fire, The Case Against Brooklyn, The Lineup, The Crimson Kimono, Man on a String
Blu-ray
Mill Creek / Kit Parker
1957 -1960 / B&w...
- 9/10/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
By Lee Pfeiffer
Over the last year the entertainment industry has suffered incalculable losses of talented people. Some of them hit home personally, as is the case with producer Euan Lloyd, who passed away this weekend in London. I first met Euan in 1978 when I was attending college in New Jersey. I had the enviable gig of being the film critic for the campus newspaper, which afforded me the opportunity to routinely attend press screenings of forthcoming films in New York, which was a stone's throw across the river from my native Jersey City. I had read about the upcoming release of "The Wild Geese" which seemed to promise a "too-good-to-be-true" cast composed of some of my favorite actors (Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris above all) in the kind of gritty, macho British war flick that I had become addicted to ever since seeing "Zulu" at age 8. To...
Over the last year the entertainment industry has suffered incalculable losses of talented people. Some of them hit home personally, as is the case with producer Euan Lloyd, who passed away this weekend in London. I first met Euan in 1978 when I was attending college in New Jersey. I had the enviable gig of being the film critic for the campus newspaper, which afforded me the opportunity to routinely attend press screenings of forthcoming films in New York, which was a stone's throw across the river from my native Jersey City. I had read about the upcoming release of "The Wild Geese" which seemed to promise a "too-good-to-be-true" cast composed of some of my favorite actors (Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris above all) in the kind of gritty, macho British war flick that I had become addicted to ever since seeing "Zulu" at age 8. To...
- 7/4/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Richard Fleischer's Viking saga is a great star showcase: for the grinning one-eyed Kirk Douglas, sullen one-handed Tony Curtis and the heavy-breathing, two-breasted Janet Leigh. Jack Cardiff gives us the fjords of Norway, lean and mean Viking ships, and a brain-bashing acrobatic castle assault designed to out-do Burt Lancaster. With Ernest Borgnine ("Ohhh-dinnnn!!"), James Donald and Alexander Knox. And as the old song goes, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got Frank Thring. The Vikings Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 114 min. / Street Date March 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, James Donald, Alexander Knox, Maxine Audley, Frank Thring. Cinematography Jack Cardiff Production Designer Harper Goff Film Editor Hugo Williams Original Music Mario Nascimbene Written by Calder Willingham adapted by Dale Wasserman from a novel by Edison Marshall Produced by Jerry Bresler Directed by Richard Fleischer
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...
- 2/16/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A line-up of Eon greats at the National History Museum in 2002, where Syd was promoting his autobiography. (L to R): Ken Adam, Syd Cain, Peter Lamont and Michael G. Wilson. (Photo copyright Dave Worrall. All rights reserved).
By Lee Pfeiffer
Syd Cain, the respected art director and production designer, has died at age 93. Syd's death is a personal loss to many of us at Cinema Retro who considered him a friend. His remarkable career included a long association with the James Bond films. He began on the very first film, Dr. No, in 1962 as art director, working with the legendary production designer Ken Adam. When Adam wasn't available for the second film, From Russia With Love, Syd took over for the art direction and production design duties. Syd was billed as the production designer for the 1969 Bond classic On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, playing a crucial role in...
By Lee Pfeiffer
Syd Cain, the respected art director and production designer, has died at age 93. Syd's death is a personal loss to many of us at Cinema Retro who considered him a friend. His remarkable career included a long association with the James Bond films. He began on the very first film, Dr. No, in 1962 as art director, working with the legendary production designer Ken Adam. When Adam wasn't available for the second film, From Russia With Love, Syd took over for the art direction and production design duties. Syd was billed as the production designer for the 1969 Bond classic On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, playing a crucial role in...
- 11/21/2011
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Ansco Color! How shall I sing thy praises? You were a cheap-ass alternative to beautiful, cumbrous three-strip Technicolor, and what you lacked in radiance and romance you made up for in smeary murk. But it's hard to know: since you saved the studios money by dispensing with a negative at all, producing a positive print from which dupes were made, lowering the quality threshold, and since like nearly everything that's been used to capture moving images, you were not chemically stable, it's hard to know if the blurry, shadowy forms that have come down to us in such films as The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949) accurately reflect the original look.
The movie, adapted from the same convoluted Georges Simenon novel as Julien Duvivier's moody La tête d'un homme (1933) casts Charles Laughton as Inspector Maigret, with Franchot Tone as a rather well-observed psychopath, and Burgess Meredith as a hapless suspect.
The movie, adapted from the same convoluted Georges Simenon novel as Julien Duvivier's moody La tête d'un homme (1933) casts Charles Laughton as Inspector Maigret, with Franchot Tone as a rather well-observed psychopath, and Burgess Meredith as a hapless suspect.
- 1/19/2011
- MUBI
Donald Hamilton’s Serious Spy Becomes a Bond Parody
By Matthew R. Bradley
When JFK revealed his fondness for the James Bond books by Ian Fleming, and 007—ably embodied by Sean Connery—struck box-office gold with Dr. No (1962) and its sequels, the resultant “Bondmania” set off a spy craze manifested in everything from atmospheric adaptations of Len Deighton and John le Carré to tongue-in-cheek secret agents on screens small and large. Perhaps the most successful of the latter was Matt Helm, a singing and swinging spy played in four films for Columbia Pictures by Rat Pack member Dean Martin, who unlike Connery shared in the profits from the outset via his own company, Meadway-Claude Productions. The former partner of Bond producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli - Irving Allen - was playing catch-up after deeming Fleming’s work unworthy of filming, which speeded his breakup with Broccoli. But ironically, his quartet...
By Matthew R. Bradley
When JFK revealed his fondness for the James Bond books by Ian Fleming, and 007—ably embodied by Sean Connery—struck box-office gold with Dr. No (1962) and its sequels, the resultant “Bondmania” set off a spy craze manifested in everything from atmospheric adaptations of Len Deighton and John le Carré to tongue-in-cheek secret agents on screens small and large. Perhaps the most successful of the latter was Matt Helm, a singing and swinging spy played in four films for Columbia Pictures by Rat Pack member Dean Martin, who unlike Connery shared in the profits from the outset via his own company, Meadway-Claude Productions. The former partner of Bond producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli - Irving Allen - was playing catch-up after deeming Fleming’s work unworthy of filming, which speeded his breakup with Broccoli. But ironically, his quartet...
- 7/8/2007
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
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