FILM REVIEW OF ''MY FAIR LADY'' (1964)

Warner Brothers film studios honcho Jack L. Warner paid CBS-TV mogul William S. Paley the sum of $5.5 million to acquire the movie rights to turn "My Fair Lady" into a movie. Moreover, Paley demanded 50 percent of the film's gross once it exceeded $20 million. Incidentally, "My Fair Lady" raked in $72-million during its preliminary theatrical release. Paley stipulated also that the film could not be released until "My Fair Lady" completed its Broadway engagement. According to Warner biographer Bob Thomas, Warner actually produced "My Fair Lady," something that he had rarely done since the 1920s. Initially, Warner had sought Cary Grant for the role of Professor Henry Higgins, but Grant not only turned him down but also threatened to boycott the movie if Rex Harrison did not star in it. Warner approached Peter O'Toole who had recently starred in “Lawrence of Arabia,” but O'Toole's price including profit percentages was astronomical. Warner hired the highly respected “woman’s picture” director George Cukor, who had directed such classics as "The Women" and "Adam's Rib," to helm this 170-minute film. Cukor received $300-thousand for a minimum of 52 weeks, from January 1963 to February 1964.

At the time of its release, "My Fair Lady" (**** out of ****) generated some controversy because the star of the stage version, Julie Andrews, did not receive the Liza Doolittle role. Principally, Warner chose Audrey Hepburn over Julie Andrews because Hepburn was a recognized commodity that would attract audiences to the cinema. Hepburn had made a bundle for Warner Brothers with “A Nun’s Story.” Indeed, Warner anted up one of the biggest pay checks ever for Hepburn, paying her a cool million. For tax purposes, the studio paid the million dollars over a period of seven years. Meanwhile, Warner ignored the fact that Andrews had played Liza Doolittle in 2,281 performances on the London stage and 2, 715 performances on Broadway. Interestingly, Audrey Hepburn did not receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The 1964 Best Actress Oscar went to Julie Andrews for "Mary Poppins." Keep in mind, “Mary Poppins” was Andrews’ film debut. Reportedly, Andrews thanked Warner at the ceremonies for making her Oscar possible. According to Turner Classic Films historian Frank Miller, Rex Harrison wound up reprising his stage role as Professor Henry Higgins for $200-thousand. Harrison didn't sing a line but rather spoke his lyrics as he had done on stage. Harrison also lobbied on behalf of Andrews to get the Liza role. Veteran British character actor Stanley Holloway, the only other actor in the stage presentation, reprised his role and was a hoot as Liza's blue-collar father. Originally, Warner had sought tough guy hoofer James Cagney to play the role. Cagney had retired by then and could not be induced.

"My Fair Lady" wound up costing Warner a whopping $17-million to produce, one of the most expensive movies in Hollywood at the time. 'My Fair Lady" received the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture. The last time that a Warner Brothers movie had been accorded this high honor was in 1943 with "Casablanca" starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart won the statuette. "My Fair Lady" also brought home the Oscars for Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Costume Design, Best Adapted Musical Score, and Best Sound.

Director George Cukor's "My Fair Lady" is essentially Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's cinematic musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion." Shaw derived the idea for his play from Greek mythology. In one of Ovid's narratives, a Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion becomes enamored with a statue of a woman that he had carved out of ivory. Shaw adapted his play in 1938 for a British film that toplined Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Like "My Fair Lady," "Pygmalion" concerned a Victorian phonetician who wagers that he can teach a Cockney flower girl to speak correct English so that he can have her masquerade in high society as a lady. Wendy Hiller played Eliza Doolittle and Howard—best known for "Gone with the Wind"—was cast as Professor Higgins. Hiller and Howard both received Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Actress while Shaw actually won an Oscar for his screenplay that he wrote with W.P. Lipscomb and Cecil Lewis. Ian Dalrymple and Anatole de Grunwald also contributed to the screenplay but they never received credit, while Kay Walsh provided some additional dialogue. In 1956, Lerner and Loewe rewrote the play because Shaw's work broke two important musical conventions: the main story lacked a romance and allowed no place for an ensemble.

As in "Pygmalion," "My Fair Lady" has voice coach Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) challenges his incredulous colleague, Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), that he can train boisterous Cockney street vendor Eliza Doolittle so she can talk in proper English and fool the lords and ladies at Buckingham Palace into believing that she is a duchess. Pickering not only takes the bet but also provides the funds to dress Eliza to fit the role. For six months Higgins toils day and night working on refining Eliza so that the aristocrats at the biggest social event of the season will believe that she is royalty. Of course, before it is over, both Higgins and Doolittle grow to hate each other but inevitably the hate sweetens into love at fade out. The early scenes between Harrison and Hepburn as they argue with each other at the station are hilarious. There isn't a bad song in the lot.

According to Frank Miller, virtually every cent of the massive production budget of "My Fair Lady" appears on screen. Lerner and Loewe complained when Warner decided to lens the film on the Warner Brothers backlot in Burbank, California. Nevertheless, Warner Brothers went to extreme lengths to recreate the actual British setting. For example, the stones for the cobblestoned Covent Garden streets were manufactured one at a time, rather than the usual practice of making them all for one mold. The sets were painted and retouched by Art director Gene Allen to give some of the edifices the illusion that they had been standing for hundreds of years. He also aged Hepburn's flower-vendor costumes so she wouldn't appear too prosperous. One thing that couldn't be fixed about Hepburn was her voice. Although Hepburn had sung songs in Funny Face” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the “My Fair Lady” songs would prove to be beyond her range. The studio musical experts felt her voice wasn’t good enough. None of the meticulous rehearsals, recordings, and re-recordings passed muster. Ultimately, Warner hired ‘a voice double’ Marni Nixon to dub Hepburn in spite of the actress's extensive preparation for the part. Future Sherlock Holmes actor Jeremy Brett was cast as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Although Brett had a fine voice, Bill Shirley ended up dubbing him.

Movie reviewers at the time largely loved “My Fair Lady.” The only complaint that surfaced concerned the casting of Audrey Hepburn rather than Julie Andrews. Many critics felt that Hepburn was not credible as a Cockney flower vendor. The final note of interest in this story about this celebrated hit movie is the October 1964 premiere. Jack Warner told his publicity manager Joe Hyams the following about the premiere. “I want this to be a Tiffany operation. Everything you do must be one-hundred percent style and class, money no object. Just remember: it’s a Tiffany product.” Hyams followed Warner’s orders to the letter.

In his book “The Clown Prince of Hollywood, the Antic Life and Times of Jack Warner,” Bob Thomas described an ironic event that occurred at the benefit party afterward that mirrored “My Fair Lady.” Mrs. William S. Paley, the Duchess of Windsor and Mrs. Winston Guest chaired the benefit party and were gearing up for the cream of New York society to attend. Mrs. Paley had arranged for Jack Warner to escort her daughter at the premiere and the ball, but Miss Paley was unable to attend because she had developed a cold. Hyams got back to Warner about this complication. “Now Mrs. Paley is worried about your having someone to sit with at the head table.” Hyams and Warner huddled in the bar at the Sherry Netherland hotel in New York City at the time. Warner spotted a girl in the bar who according to Thomas was “an attractive young woman, who appeared to Hyams to be one of the high-class hookers that were allowed to work the hotel as a convenience for guests.” Warner escorted the hooker to the premiere decked out in a gown that Warner’s designer Ceil Chapman had made and they had styled the girl’s hair, too. The girl could not believe the charade that Warner was requesting her to do, but she attended the events. Again, according to Warner biographer Bob Thomas, “In the midst of the festivities, the girl in the bar arrived, looking like Eliza Doolittle.” Warner introduced her as Lady Cavendish, and everybody at the party, with the exception of Rex Harrison, believed that she was Lady Cavendish. After Warner kissed the girl good night and told Hyams to make sure that the clothes were returned, she turned to Hyams and told him. “What an unbelievable night! And you know something? I had such a good time, I’m not going to charge him.”

In his biography about director George Cukor, Patrick McGilligan classified “My Fair Lady” as the “last great studio movie . . . produced by the last great studio mogul: Jack Warner.”

REVIEW OF ''THUNDERBALL'' (1965)

The fourth James Bond movie, director Terence Young's "Thunderball," (**** out of ****) by far the most ambitious 007 escapade when it came out in 1965, is the only Bond picture that won an Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects. Scenarists Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins brought back the worldwide criminal organization SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counterespionage, Terror, Revenge, and Extortion, to menace Bond after his previous adventure against Auric Goldfinger, who had cooperated with the Red Chinese. SPECTRE was behind Dr. No in "Dr. No," the villains in "From Russia with Love" as well as here in "Thunderball." Blofeld appeared in close-ups with a white cat in his lap in "FRWL" and here at a criminal organization summit when he kills a traitor. Nevertheless, you don’t get to see his face. You just hear his ominous voice. The Bond producers let Blofeld come out into the open for the next Bond epic "You Only Live Twice."

Like the best 007 movies, "Thunderball" takes advantage of actual events and the main real life event was the loss of two atomic bombs in the early 1960s. Blofeld's number two man, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), hatches a grand scheme to steal two Atomic bombs from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and use them to hold the world for ransom. Bond villains come in three types: those like Blofeld who are criminals and want to make the world powers pay, but they don't want to destroy the world. Those villains, like Stromberg and Drax in later Bond movies "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker," who want to destroy the world and recreate civilization in their own image. Finally, there are the independent villains, like Franz Sanchez in "License to Kill," Mr. Big in "Live and Let Die," "Goldfinger," and Max Zorin in "A View to a Kill" who want to corner a market, but who have no designs of world domination. There is also a mention about the real life British train robbery that occurred in England before "Thunderball" was released. The actual train robbery netted the thieves £2.6 million. They committed the robbery on 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.

The "Thunderball" pre-credit sequence ranks one of the top five James Bond pre-credit sequences because it contains a surprise and a gimmick. James Bond and a French agent attend a funeral and the casket bears the initials JB, but the initials stand for Jacques Bouvard. Bond knew Bouvard as an assassin who had murdered two of his colleagues. He watches a veiled widow leave and climb into a limousine. She pulls the rear door shut without help from the chauffeur and the vehicle drives off. At a French château, the widow enters a large drawing room to find 007 awaiting her. He rises, expresses his condolences, and then decks the lady with a right cross that sends her flying across a table. "My dear, Colonel Bouvard," Bond informs the man in drag, "I don't think you should have opened that car door yourself." A brief but potent slugfest ensues until Bond chokes Bouvard to death with a fireplace poker. Bouvard's henchmen break down the door seconds before Bond exits. He straps on Bell Aero systems Rocket belt jet-pack and flies off to his Aston-Martin where the French agent is waiting. They shove the jetpack in the trunk. Bond activates the bulletproof shield from the trunk. Never mind that the jetpack and the retractable shield could occupy the same space, then unleashes to stream of water that knocks Bouvard's gun-toting henchmen down.

Bond gets himself into several tight spots in "Thunderball." At the Shrublands clinic, Colonel Lippe (Guy Doleman of "The Ipcress File") catches Bond on the exercise machine and cranks up the speed. Bond is harnessed to it and cannot stop the machine. Later, he exploits his advantage over the nurse and has sex with her to maintain his silence over the incident. Bond is trapped during a fight in a swimming pool with one of Largo's henchmen and Largo lets in the sharks while placing a shutter over the pool. Bond is nicked in the ankle during the Junkanoo parade, and later a Largo henchman almost spears him under Largo's yacht.

Adolf Celi makes a superb villain with his scimitar shaped snout, the black eye patch, and his razor sharp voice. He is despicable from start to finish, especially when he threatens to apply hot and cold torture to Domino with a burning cigarette and ice cubes. He feeds one of henchmen to the sharks when the man fails to deal with 007. Later, after the RAF Vulcan lands in the Bahamas, he refuses to cut the impostor pilot Angelo Palazzi (Paul Stassino of "Escape to Athena") free of the cockpit straps but slashes the man's air hose so that he drowns. Earlier, after the villains killed the real RAF pilot, Palazzi demanded more money because of the plastic surgery that he had to undergo to impersonate the pilot. Clearly, Palazzi's greed motivated Largo in part to kill him, but Largo is just enough of a dastard to have done it anyway to keep from paying Palazzi period.

They plan to crash land an RAF Vulcan at sea, retrieve the bombs, and camouflage the aircraft with sharks swimming around it is inspired itself. While the landing isn't that convincing, it will do, but once the plane is on the ocean floor, it looks cool. The climactic undersea battle off the coast of Miami has been vastly underrated. At the time, this represented the biggest underwater battle in cinema history; indeed, the Bond producers would mimic it in outer space for "Moonraker." Despite the continuity problems in the underwater battle, Young and second unit director Peter Hunt have a blast; even the lobster trying to avoid the fighting is amusing. All the scenes with the sharks are neat. Bond's first two encounters with Largo at the casino and later on Largo's estate where they shoot skeet are first-rate. Young keeps the tone of the film rather serious and the one-liners and puns pay off beautifully. The briefing of the double-00s in London in that cavernous room with the huge wall map is very atmospheric. John Barry's music is tops, especially the underwater music.

“Thunderball” represented the high water mark for the James Bond franchise in the 1960s. By the time that “Thunderball” appeared, everybody else had jumped on the bandwagon to produce espionage thrillers. The parody “Casino Royale” with a host of top names came out in 1967 had nothing to do with the series of films that United Artists was producing and apparently it fooled the fans who thought it was a Sean Connery James Bond picture, which it wasn’t. “You Only Live Twice” followed “Thunderball,” but the box office receipts slackened up. The 007 producers blamed Columbia Pictures’ for releasing “Casino Royale” and believed that that terrible parody may have scared away moviegoers. As far as I am concerned, the Bond pictures did not reach the high water mark until “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969) where George Lazenby replaced Sean Connery.

FILM REVIEW OF ''HALLOWEEN 2'' (2009)

No, you don’t have to be a degenerate to enjoy director Rob Zombie’s violent remake/sequel of “Halloween 2.” Director Rick Rosenthal’s original “Halloween 2” (1981) qualified as a one-dimensional, no-brainer sequel bloodbath with stabalicious Michael Myers prowling a hospital and killing everybody in sight, not always with a knife. Michael assumed a supernatural omnipotence in “Halloween 2” and he survived virtually everything, even being blinded by Laurie. Nevertheless, “Halloween 2” told us nothing new about Michael other than he derived satisfaction from killing more people in different ways. Writer & director Zombie doesn’t make this mistake with “Halloween 2” (**** out of ****) and it is virtually as brilliant and psychologically insightful as its predecessor. The cinematography and the songs, especially “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues, enhance the atmosphere of this chiller. Zombie’s “Halloween 2” is a surreal saga and a commentary about family values. This remake of “Halloween 2” is far more ambitious, gruesome, and psychological than the original.

Briefly, in the prologue, Zombie flashbacks to 10-year old Michael in the mental asylum conversing with his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie of “House of 1000 Corpses”) about a white horse that she has given him. The first thing we see is a definition of a white horse and that it symbolizes the rage of the protagonist. Meanwhile, the Michael that talks with his mom is the Michael before he retreated behind behind mask. Sure, it is unfortunate Zombie couldn't bring back Daeg Faerch to reprise his role as young Michael. According to Zombie, young Faerch had grown too old to play a 10-year old. Nevertheless, Chase Wright Vanek brings his chilly presence to the role, resembling a murderous munchkin.

Thereafter, Zombie’s “Halloween 2” replicates Rosenthal’s “Halloween 2” as ambulances deliver both Laurie and Annie (Danielle Harris) to Haddonfield Hospital where the emergency room physicians perform miracles on them, especially the hacked up Annie. Meanwhile, Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif of “Dune”) orders the coroner to lock up Michael's body until he can examine it. No sooner have the two sleazy attendants loaded Michael and driven off than they slam into a cow on the highway, killing the driver instantly, smashing up his partner, and allowing Michael to escape. At the hospital, Laurie isn’t doing so well. Laurie is frantic about Annie, and she still suffers from the trauma of having emptied a revolver into Michael. Just as she is regaining her grip on reality, Michael comes a-slashing and nobody can keep him out. He chases a hysterical Laurie during a storm around the hospital and corners her in the security guard shack with a fire axe. He chops his way into the shack, but Laurie manages to escape.

Indeed, Laurie escapes by waking up. Dreams, hallucinations, and nightmares pervade “Halloween 2” and you can never be sure when each or all aren’t masquerading as reality. Michael is driven by the image of a giant white horse held on a rope by his dutiful mom Deborah, with himself standing alongside of her as an angelic 10-year adolescent. Family solidarity is important to Michael, and Michael has sworn to reunite the family, even if it means butchering Laurie like a steer. However, Zombie shows us a deeper, psychic linkage between Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Michael. When Michael (Tyler Mane of “ Troy ”) slaughters a dog and gnaws on its remains, Zombie cross-cuts images of Michael devouring the dog with Laurie eating a pizza. Psychically, Michael and Laurie are on the same wavelength and Laurie winds up at the toilet tossing her stomach because she can taste the dog meat. Without coming out and embroidering it in dialogue, Zombie tells us that it is this deep, psychic connection between Michael and Laurie as blood kin that enables him to track her down.

Life after Halloween has not been a picnic for Laurie. She spends time with her therapist (Margo Kidder of “Superman”), works at an old hippie-style coffee house run by none other than Howard Hesseman of “WKRP in Cincinnati ,” and hangs out with two trippy girlfriends who live life as if it were an endless party. Repeatedly, Laurie has lurid nightmares about Michael’s attacks, but Michael is in fact nowhere nearby. Indeed, he has gone into hiding in the woods, a kind of hibernation until a truckload of pugnacious rednecks test his resiliency and realize their error shortly before he dispatches them in the least merciful way. As in the first “Halloween 2,” Laurie has no clue that she is Michael Myers’ sister and this revelation warps her mind to no end.

The third party in this threesome is Michael’s life-long psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell of “A Clockwork Orange”) and he is wrestling with his own demons. Remember, Dr. Loomis barely escaped Michael in Zombie’s “Halloween.” Now, he has mutated into a egotist and is touting his book about Michael as he tours the country, signing copies of his tome for his fans. The media latches onto him like the leeches that they are and attributes the blame for Michael's massacres to Loomis. Loomis learns quickly that escape is not possible from either the cynical media or parents of Michael’s victims. Ultimately, Loomis seeks redemption by going back to Haddonfield when Michael comes back for Halloween.

Laurie Strode is the chief protagonist in “Halloween 2” and the film justly belongs to Scout Taylor-Compton as she struggles to survive in the wake of her debacle. She lives now with Annie and her father at their rural house. Not only does “Halloween 2” look different from its predecessor, but also Zombie emphasizes the rural quality of the area. In his remake of “Halloween,” we were trapped along with the principals in what appeared to be a rural suburb. “Halloween 2” takes us back to the woods. Michael spends his time communing with nature and the visions of his mother, the white horse, and himself as an innocent adolescent before he resumes his murderous ways.

Not surprisingly, the violence in “Halloween 2” is gruesome without being sickening. In other words, we only see Michael hack away at his victims with a knife, stomp their faces in, or cut their heads off and usually in ways that make it ugly instead of glorious. We don't see the knife contact flesh when he goes into stabbing mode. Zombie’s favorite tactic is to let Michael strike just as things are calming down and part of this involves sudden movements and things like glass or wood shattered by his fists. There are moments when the violence takes on a traumatic weight that will scare the daylights out of the squeamish while gore hounds may yawn at some of Zombie’s discretions.

“Halloween 2” is both a triumph in style and substance with an ending that suggests Zombie may pull the biggest surprise in the franchise should the saga continue.

FILM REVIEW OF ''MOSQUITO SQUADRON'' (1969)

“633 Squadron” producer Lewis J. Rachmil let “Girl Happy” director Boris Sagal recycle exciting aerial combat footage from “633 Squadron” for his generic World War II thriller “Mosquito Squadron,” (** out of ****) starring David McCallum and Charles Gray. This lackluster epic combines elements of 1964’s “633 Squadron,” principally the plywood built De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers, with 1954’s “The Dam Busters,” with a bouncing bomb designed to destroy a top secret German weapons facility. The Germans are developing the V-3 rocket, and British Intelligence has located the site in the French countryside at the Chateau de Charlon. Air Commodore Hufford (Charles Gray of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) assigns Squadron Leader Quint Munro (David McCallum of “The Great Escape”) to bomb it with special ordinance. This low-budget melodrama set in England and France has very little to recommend it. Again, 90 percent of the shots of Mosquitoes winging their way over enemy country were appropriated from Walter E. Grauman’s classic “633 Squadron.” The prefabricated screenplay by Donald S. Sanford and Joyce Perry antes up one surprise, but everything else is formula served up without verve by Sagal.

Our British heroes are streaking toward their target, a V-2 rocket launching pad, on the French coast as “Mosquito Squadron” opens, using footage from Michael Anderson’s “Operation: Crossbow.” Incidentally, Anderson directed “The Dam Busters,” too. The British manage to destroy the missile launching ramp, but a flight of Messerschmidts jump them and blow Squadron Leader David 'Scotty' Scott (David Buck of “The Mummy’s Shroud”) out of the air. Quint Munro spots no parachute at the crash site and assumes ‘Scotty’ is kaput. Scotty’s death elevates Quint to Squadron Leader. Worse, our protagonist has lost a friend who was as close to him as a brother. Scotty and Quint grew up together because Quint’s parents died and Scotty’s parents raised him. Quint even handed off one of his former girlfriends, Beth (Suzanne Neve of “Bunny Lake Is Missing”), who wound up marrying Scotty. After a reasonable period of mourning, Beth and Quint take long bicycle rides in the country.

Air Commodore Hufford sends Quint off on a reconnaissance mission to photograph the Chateau de Charlon where the British insist that the Germans are working industriously to make a V-3. V-2 rockets are falling on London and wrecking havoc. Hufford shows Quint some film footage of a bomb that bounces on any terrain, no mean feat. In real life, the bomb was the genuine article and was called a ‘Highball’ and had been designed to use on battlewagons like the Tirpitz. Meanwhile, now that the Germans realize the British are interested in their installation at the Chateau, they drop a canister of film which shows that they have gathered British POWs as hostages against any bombing runs. The revelation that Scotty is among those prisoners comes as a quite a shock to Quint. Security prevents him from telling Beth about it. Initially, nobody wants to give the Germans a propaganda coup by killing their own men. Quint devises a way to kill two birds with one stone. Not only will they destroy the laboratory tucked into an underground facility with the ‘Highball’ bomb, but also they will breach the wall at the Chateau so the French Resistance can storm the Chateau. The closest thing to a villain in “Mosquito Squadron” is a German Lieutenant named Schack (Vladek Sheybal of “From Russia with Love”) who suspects that the Allies prisoners are plotting something when they all turn out for mass on a Sunday, especially when some of them aren’t Catholic. The suspicious Sheybal shows his villainy when shoots a Catholic priest with a machine gun. The POWs overpower their guards and fortify themselves in the chapel as the Mosquitoes appear to bomb the premises.

Quint and his Mosquito Squadron destroy the underground facility, but our hero has to crash his plane. Once on the ground, Quint runs into Scotty, but Scotty cannot remember his own identity, and he sacrifices his life heroically by blowing up a German tank with a bazooka after several others have tried and failed. A wounded Quint makes it back to England and reunites with Beth. As it turns out, Beth never learned that her late husband survived the crash only to die in France as a casualty of a combined British & French Resistance operation. There is a subplot about Beth’s younger brother who has to show the film that the Germans have dropped for the benefit of our heroes. When he threatens to spill the beans about Scotty, the authorities lock him up for the duration.

“Mosquito Squadron” qualifies as a hack attempt to cash in on “633 Squadron,” “Operation Cross-Bow,” and “The Dam Busters.” Boris Sagal made a couple of memorable movies and television shows, but “Mosquito Squadron” isn’t among them. Worse, “Mosquito Squadron” was cranked out by Oakmont Productions which ground out several cheapjack World War II thrillers, including another Sagal saga “The One-Thousand Plane Raid”, “The Last Escape,” “Hell Boats,” and “Submarine X-1.” These movies ranked as half-baked epics with neither a shred of atmosphere nor credibility. Sagal has to stage several shots on a studio set, principally the drive in the country that Quint and Beth take in his red roadster to see Scotty’s bereaved parents has our stars seated in an automobile mock-up with scenery back projected behind them. Sagal generates neither suspense nor sense of urgency. The cast walk through their roles like automatons delivering uninspired dialogue written by Sanford who went on to write the equally lackluster “Midway” and Joyce Perry who wrote teleplays for juvenile television shows like “Land of the Lost.” McCallum gets the best line in the movie when Hufford asks him about the odds of the mission succeeding: “About the same as spitting in an Air Commodore's eye from an express train, sir.” In “Mosquito Squadron,” Suzanne Neve and McCallum never generate any chemistry so it is difficult to believe that they love each other. Mind you, it is always a pleasure to watch David McCallum act, but “Mosquito Squadron” gives him very little to do.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LONE RANGER AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD'' (1958)

Clayton Moore made his last official appearance on screen as the Masked Man in director Lesley Selander’s epic adventure “The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold,” (*** out of ****) co-starring Jay Silverheels as his faithful Indian scout Tonto. Selander was an old hand at helming westerns during his 40 years in films and television with over a 100 westerns to his directorial credit. This fast-paced horse opera embraced a revisionist perspective in its depiction of Native Americans that had been gradually gaining acceptance since 1950 in Hollywood oaters after director Delmar Daves blazed the trail with the James Stewart western “Broken Arrow.” Racial intolerance figures as the primary theme in the Robert Schaefer and Eric Freiwald screenplay. Having written 13 episodes of “The Lone Ranger” television series, Schaefer and Freiwald each were thoroughly familiar with the formula, but they raised the stakes for this theatrical outing. Our vigilante heroes ride to the rescue of Indians who are being murdered by hooded white hombres for no apparent reason. The mystery about the identities of these assassins and the reason behind their homicidal behavior is revealed fairly early so that you don’t have to guess what is happening.

Although the violence in this Selander saga appears tame by contemporary standards, the fact that the Lone Ranger shoots a bad guy to kill in one scene rather than wound and that a dastardly dame slays a double-crossing accomplice by hurling a tomahawk that sinks into his back between his shoulder blades was pretty audacious. The television series never went to this length, and when the Lone Ranger wielded his six-gun, he shot the gun out of the villain’s fist rather than blow him away. The other discrepancy here is the Indians lynch one of the raiders and torture him for information, but they are never brought up on charges from abducting this henchman. Douglas Kennedy didn’t have the villainous statue of Lyle Bettger who menaced the Masked Man in director Stuart Heisler’s “The Lone Ranger,” but he acquits himself well enough as a cowardly outlaw who kills one of his own henchmen without a qualm when the miscreant threatens to divulge his name and the identities of his cronies to a band of vengeful Indians.


“The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold” opens with a recap of the masked protagonist’s origins as an ambushed Texas Ranger and his transformation into the Lone Ranger with Tonto serving as his sidekick. This opening two minute refresher is an excellent way to get a series-oriented character off to a start so that everybody, including non-Lone Ranger fans, is on equal footing. The primary plot about a gang of ruthless white wearing hoods and called—not surprisingly—the Hooded Raiders begins with them killing Indians and stealing medallions worn around their necks. The Lone Ranger and Tonto arrive too late to intervene, but they find a baby hidden nearby. Taking the baby and the dead Indian, they ride to a nearby Spanish mission supervised by Padre Vincente Esteban (Ralph Moody of “The Outsider”) and turn the infant and body over to him. Initially, the Padre has to assure an Indian maiden, Paviva (Polish actress Lisa Montell of “Gaby”), that the masked man means them no harm and is their friend. Padre sends Tonto off to town to fetch the doctor, Dr. James Rolfe (Dean Fredericks of “Gun Fever”), and Tonto promptly runs into trouble in the form of the paunchy town lawman, Sheriff Oscar Matthison (Charles Watts of “Giant”), who abhors Indians. Tonto tries to see the doctor who is treating prisoners in the sheriff’s jail and Matthison’s men start to rough him up when Rolfe intervenes and rides back to the mission.

Eventually, the Lone Ranger and Tonto are able to capture one of the Hooded Raiders, but an Indian Redbird (Maurice Jara of “Drum Beat”), and his fellow braves abduct the henchmen and take him back to their village. They stake him out and shoot arrows at him to loosen his tongue. Chief villain Ross Brady (Douglas Kennedy of “Hell’s Crossroads”) and his cohort William (Lane Bradford of “Devil’s Canyon”) ride out to the village and Brady uses his Winchester to kill his captured henchman. Little does Brady know that his henchman talked. The Lone Ranger and Tonto arrive not long afterward and reprimand Redbird for his perfidy. Redbird tells them what the man said before he died and the Lone Ranger decides to adopt a disguise so that he can learn more. He masquerades as a gentleman bounty hunter with a mustache and faux Southern accent.

Meanwhile, not only does Paviva want to adopt the orphaned infant but she also wants Dr. Rolfe to drop his masquerade as a white man. Rolfe received a medical degree and came back to act as the town’s doctor. The white population doesn’t know about his real ‘red’ blood and he has kept it a secret because he thinks that he can make more inroads posing as a white doctor than as an educated redskin with a medical degree. As it is, the whites aren’t bothered by his predilections to minister to the needs of the Indians who couldn’t possibly pay for his services. After the villains wound Tonto, Rolfe changes his mind, chastises the town, and outs himself as a Native American to everybody’s chagrin. The Lone Ranger learns about the medallions that have been stolen, but he doesn’t realize their significance until he meets the arch villainess Mrs. Frances 'Fran' Henderson (Noreen Nash of “Phantom from Space”) and explains that he wants to earn the reward that she has placed on the Hooded Raiders. Brady walks in on them and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t skedaddle. To cast suspicion off of herself, Fran orders Brady to hit her payroll so he can pay his henchmen. Nevertheless, the Ranger’s suspicions about her are raised and he learns about the meteor that destroyed one of Coronado’s Spanish expedition and the legend about the lost city of gold.

Despite its concise 83-minute running time, “The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold” lacks neither excitement nor surprises. Selander keeps the action moving ahead at a full gallop. The dialogue is largely expository rather than memorable as Schaefer and Freiwald push the plot ahead more often than spring surprises, but there is one major surprise that ties in with the good Indian theme. There is also a scene where the Lone Ranger pushes his own credo about justice available for everybody under the law at a time when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren had embarked on the high court’s landmark decisions that recognized and mitigated against the conditions surrounding racial segregation, civil rights, separation of church and state, and police arrest procedure in the United States. One thing that differentiates “The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold” from its predecessor is its epic scale with flashbacks to the age of the Spanish conquistadors with a slight bit of science fiction involved in the form of a destructive meteor. Generally, Lone Ranger stories confined themselves to the 19th century without dragging in European history. No, the Lone Ranger wasn’t the first movie to deal with Spanish conquistadors. Robert D. Webb’s “The Seven Cities of Gold” (1955) concerned the Spanish searching the southwest for the eponymous places, but Selander’s western beat Gordon Douglas’ “Gold of the Seven Saints” (1961) to the screen.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD" (2009)

Freshman director Neal Brennan’s glib, irreverent, R-rated comedy “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard” (* out of ****) qualifies as a clunker that delivers little but lame laughs about an arrogant used car liquidator. Nothing in this contrived comedy is a tenth as side-splitting as Robert Zemeckis’ supremely silly saga “Used Cars” (1980) that co-starred Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. “Talladega Nights” producers Adam McKay and Will Ferrell along with first-time scenarists Andy Stock and Rick Stempson sink their first-rate cast with nothing but stinking jokes and crude routines that flatten on impact. Nevertheless, Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, David Koechner, Kathryn Hahn, James Brolin and Charles Napier humble and humiliate themselves without a qualm. Napier is especially militant as a chauvinistic, foul-mouthed World War II veteran, while James Brolin’s masquerade as tired hubby gone gay who hits on straight guy David Koechner is more inept than funny.

You know you’re in trouble when the best gag in the movie has an Asian-American car salesman accepting an official bank money bag as payment for the vehicle as the customer swerves off the lot. No sooner does the salesman pop open the bag than blue paint from a canister inside blinds him. As he staggers away, he shrieks, “I feel like I just got jizzed by a smurf.” The next best joke has Piven quizzing an unsuspecting person with: “How much did the polar bear weigh?” As the puzzled respondent shrugs, Piven replies, “Enough to break the ice.” This gag gives him the opportunity to introduce himself.

Don Ready (Jeremy Piven of HBO’s “The Entourage”) makes his living selling cars that nobody else could pawn. He has been selling autos since he was a kid. He knew that he had the knack when he sold his hippity-hop ball with designer handles to another neighborhood kid for the latter’s deluxe, low-riding, plastic tricycle with streamers sprouting from the handle bars. Since then Don has been selling and he hasn’t looked back. Don has assembled an A-Team of used car sales people that include Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames of “Pulp Fiction”), Brent Gage (David Koechner of “The Comebacks”), and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn of “Stepbrothers”) who can clear car lots with their questionable tactics.

Don receives a call from Benjamin K. Selleck (James Brolin of “The Amityville Horror”) who is about to lose his family-owned used car lot to the bank. When our heroes arrive in the small California town of Temecula, Don mobilizes the local strippers, hires an obnoxious dee-jay, DJ Request (Craig Robinson of “The Pineapple Express”), who refuses to play anything that anybody requests, plants a gigantic inflatable gorilla atop the dealership, and a schedules appearance from the brother of a celebrity vocalist. They have to sell around 200 cars during the July fourth weekend. Matters are complicated somewhat by Selleck’s family, particularly his daughter, Ivy Selleck (Jordana Spiro of “From Dusk Till Dawn 3”), who is dating another car dealer in town, Paxton Harding (Ed Helms of “The Hangover”). In fact, she is Paxton’s fiancée, but this doesn’t dissuade Don from going after her and likewise. Meanwhile, Paxton’s father Stu Harding (Alan Thicke of “Alpha Dog”) wants to buy Selleck Motors so that his son can have a place to rehearse for his boy band. Don persuades Selleck not to sell, even promising him a night in the sack with Brent. Of course, Brent is happy with the prospect of such a rendezvous.

Meanwhile, Don and Ivy hit it off and she wants to learn more about him. Like most movie heroes, Don has a skeleton in his closet and he hasn’t exorcised this demon. Don lost one of his best salesmen, McDermott (Will Ferrell), during a car stunt gone wrong. McDermott dived out of a plane dressed like Abraham Lincoln and when he pulled the ripcord to his parachute, dildos flew out. Meanwhile, on the ground in the back of a car, Don is having sex with a woman in the back seat when he discovers that he has the parachute. McDermott dies and Don still feels the guilt. Eventually, Don and the ghost of McDermott with two female African-American vocalists in robes visit him and they straighten everything out.

Meanwhile, Don has abandoned his team because he feels so guilty about McDermott, but Selleck’s sales staff pulls together and they manage to sell every car on the lot, except for a sports car that was one of the many used on the “Smoky and the Bandit” movie that Selleck managed to acquire. Stu and Paxton come to take the keys to the car lot because the sports car is still on the lot. By this time, Don has gotten back and he manages to sell the vehicle to Paxton after he convinces him that he can use it as a prop in his boy band act. At the same time, another subplot concerns one of Selleck’s car dealers, Blake (Vince Vaughn look-alike Jonathan Sadowski of the new “Friday the 13th”) whose father left his mother and she had to raise him alone. Blake’s moves after he makes a successful car sale are an exact imitation of Don’s moves. Furthermore, Don hasn’t been in Temecula in for more than 20 years and Blake is 21, so Don imagines that Blake is his son. As it turns out, Blake isn’t his son, but that doesn’t keep Don from adopting him when he marries Ivy at the conclusion of “The Goods.” The epilogue informs us that Don and Ivy split up after two years and Blake moved on. While all this is going on, Babs has the hots for Selleck’s 10-year old son Peter Selleck (Rob Riggle of “The Hangover”) who has a pituitary gland problem so that he looks like a 30-year old man with a 10-year old trapped in his body. Babs stops selling cars and goes to work at a boys counseling school where Peter is set to enroll.

If this description of the plot doesn’t dissuade you from wasting your time on “The Goods,” then you may actually like this numbskull comedy.

FILM REVIEW OF ''HALLOWEEN" (2007)

You’ll have to look long and hard to find a remake more reverential to its source material than director Rob Zombie’s version of the 1978 John Carpenter classic “Halloween.” Before Zombie took on the daunting task of making “Halloween,” he had two fairly decent but horribly depraved epic under his belt with “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects.” I preferred “Corpses” over “Rejects,” and I didn’t have high hopes to the blasphemy that he would visit on the first Michael Myers outing. Surprising, Zombie’s take on Carpenter’s “Halloween” is just about the best remake that anybody could have dreamed. “Halloween” (**** out of ****)doesn’t even look like it was helmed by the same guy who made either “Corpses” or “Rejects.” Sure, Zombie made some heavyweight changes to the story, but everything comes together without a hitch. Despite all of the freaky problems that Zombi recounts on the commentary track to the unrated & uncut “Halloween,” this remake should make John Carpenter feel great and anybody who like the original “Halloween” should have a soft spot for Zombi’s remake that he not only directed but also wrote. The casting choices for the new “Halloween” are right on the money, too.

The original “Halloween” contained a brief prologue about murderous Michael Myers, but Zombie devotes almost 40 minutes to setting up the action that takes place some 15-years after Michael breaks out of person. Actually, apart from the extended prologue that scrutinizes Michael’s early years, Zombie doesn’t make any radical departures from the John Carpenter & Debra Hill screenplay. As the story unfolds, we find ourselves in a battlefield of a household with Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombi of “The Devil’s Rejects”) preparing breakfast for young 10-year old Michael (Daeg Faerch of Dark Mirror”), her second husband Ronnie White (William Forsythe of “Once Upon A Time in America”), her teenage daughter Judith (Hanna Hall of “Forrest Gump”), and her infant daughter Laurie. Ronnie is a foul-mouthed reprobate who cannot give his stripper wife a hard enough time and he has nothing but contempt for young Michael who he constantly refers to as a faggot. Although Zombi doesn’t go into details, Michael slices up his pet rat in the first scene before Deborah dispatches Judith to bring him downstairs for breakfast. If the merciless barrages of profanity that Ronnie launches at him are not enough, Michael has to endure ridicule from school bully Wesley Rhoades (Daryl Sabara of “Spy Kids”) who shows him a newspaper strip joint clipping about his mother and makes several sickening comments about her to his face. This fracas in the boys’ restroom attracts the attention of school principal Chambers (Richard Lynch of Cyborg 3”) and Chambers later discovers a dead cat in a plastic bag in young Michael’s locker.

An angry Deborah comes to the school at Chamber’s request and refuses to believe that her angelic son could be a sadistic little brat who tortures helpless animals. Later, Michael stalks the slimy Rhoades and attacks him the woods with a big stick and beats him to death. Back at home, Michael wants to go trick or treating, but nobody wants to take him. Mom has to strip at the joint and Judith wants to make out with her boyfriend. Again, Michael must suffer through another profane barrage from the evil Ronnie. Eventually, Ronnie runs out of steam and falls asleep in his recliner. Zombi does a splendid job of showing young Michael’s dejection as he sits outside the house and watches other trick or treat while his mother has to strip to support her family. Zombi uses the pop tune “Love Hurts.” Michael snaps, goes back inside, duct-tapes Ronnie to his recliner and slashes his throat. Meantime, Judith’s boyfriend shows her his Halloween mask, which is a replica of the one from the original “Halloween.” Later, Michael stabs the boyfriend to death and finishes off his sister. Naturally, Deborah is devastated when she comes home. Earlier, at Michael’s school, a psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell of “If”) had been called in by Chambers.

Michael is sent to a mental asylum where he endures hours of interviews with a sympathetic Loomis, but Michael gradually retreats behind the masks that he makes rather than discuss his life. Deborah gives up all hope and commits suicide while watching home movies of Michael. At this point, about 40 minutes has elapsed and Zombi has done a simply brilliant job of providing Michael’s back story. Fifteen years elapses and Loomis has to throw in the towel where Michael is concerned but not before he authors a book about the evil that is Michael. The next time we see Michael, he has grown into a powerful, seven-foot man. Mind you, in the hands of anybody else, this sudden transformation into a walking redwood tree would be hilarious, but it actually works for Zombi. Michael (Taylor Mane of “Troy”) escapes after a couple of crazy redneck attendants invade his room with a catatonic female inmate and brutally rape her while calling virginal Michael a faggot. Michael snaps again. He kills both of them and then massacres everybody else, though we never see him kill the female patient. Any sympathy that we might have conjured up for Michael vanishes when he kills the one orderly, Ismael Cruz (Danny Trejo of “Con-Air”), by drowning him. Michael sets out to track down Baby Boo who has grown up to become Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton of “Sleepover”) who lives with her foster parents, Cynthia Strode (Dee Wallace of “10”) and Mason Strode (Pat Skipper), back in Haddonfield.

The asylum alerts Dr. Loomis about Michael’s escape and he heads to Haddonfield to alert Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif of “Dune”) who doesn’t believe a word. At this point, Zombi makes some minor changes, but basically replicates Carpenter’s “Halloween,” even with the scene involving the boyfriend wearing the white sheet like a ghost as he has sex with Brackett’s daughter. Meanwhile, Laurie has no idea that she is being stalked until all hell breaks loose and Michael comes after her. Before he embarks on his second killing spree, Michael recovers the mask from his old home and takes his mom’s cemetery tombstone. He catches Laurie’s friend but he doesn’t kill her in a refreshing change of pace. The last 20 minutes are simply tour-de-force with Michael stalking Laurie and Loomis hot on their trail. The cast is superb, even in the minor roles with “Monkees” star Micky Dolenz playing a gun salesman and Sybil Danning as the asylum nurse that young Michael slaughters with a fork. A number of other good thespians flesh out the cast in minor roles with effective performances. Look for Sid Haig and Bill Moseley in cameo along with Udo Kier and Clint Howard. The music is pretty much the same and you can see excerpts from Howard Hawks “The Thing” and Bela Lugosi from “White Zombie.” One of the ironic scenes occurs after Michael returns to Haddonfield and he gets to watch the ending of “The Thing,” the same movie that he started watching on the night he snapped and went on a murder spree. Here he invades another house and watches the scene without a word while a little girl sits in front of him watching the movie without a clue that hulking Michael stands within an arm’s reach of her. Rob Zombie’s remake of “Halloween” is nothing short of brilliant and he deserves to have praised heaped on him. He shows incredible restraint in duplicating Carpenter’s legendary chiller and looks as if he were deliberately soft pedaling what could easily have been a savage yarn.