Classic Film Buffs - Check in Here!

Does anyone remember "The Mole People" starring John Agar? I remember seeing that a long long time ago (I must have been about 5 years old) and I always thought it was Charleston Heston playing the lead role. Another one of my favs as a child was "The Day of the Triffids". Not only was it an "end of the world" film per se but the lead character was unconscious from surgery when the "event" happened or he would have been blind. Seriously that film made me afraid to go down into our dirt floor basement for MONTHS. Strange thing is this film did not have one Hollywood STAR! It's cast was a bunch of nobodies.

 

First, hit the icon with the lil picture frame (top right)... then hit URL and paste in your address. Remove the check from the box and ENTER.

 

I type and enter the following to post a pic:

 

LOL - The only film that scared me from going anywhere was Jaws. My dad, being the wisecracker that he was, decided he'd take us to see it while we were on vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I don't think I got in the water above my knees the rest of the week.

I remember one post-apocalyptic movie that I liked when I was younger, which did star Chuck Heston, was The Omega Man. I haven't seen that film in decades, and I thought it was pretty cool when I was young, but something tells me I'd think it's total cheese dip if I saw it today.

Hey, is that messed up looking dude on the left Ward Churchill?

 

Anthony Zerbe.

 

The Mole People freaked me out. So did The Screaming Skull. I love old drive-in horror movies and catch 'em when I can.

Still feel a little guilty for what me & a bunch of girls from work did to a co-worker one time. This gal had never seen a horror movie... not even Frankenstein. We convinced her to let us pick out two scary movies and go with her to see 'em. We did a double feature... Exorcist & Jaws. That girl's not right to this day. And she doesn't speak to ANY of us anymore.

LOL

 

I like some old movies. since someone mentioned Hepburn, I really liked "Adam's Rib"

 

She was in the movie that changed my life most: Guess who's coming to Dinner.
The first time I saw it I got home barely in time for Spencer Tracy's speech at the end-which conveniently summarizes the whole story.
I liked how nearly every character had a scene alone with nearly every other character. It's hard to imagine a writer even considering how to make every pair of characters interact.
Do any of you have a favorite tv show? Consider after a full season or more whether certain pairs of characters have ever been in a one-on-one conversation.
I've tried to wrack my brain on this. I don't think the two Robinson daughters on Lost in space ever talked to each other. Did Chekhov ever talk to Scotty? Was Geoge ever alone with Elaine?
Sidney Poitier and Tracy managed to get scenes alone with nearly everyone, hearing every possible opinion. The girl was almost useless, but they put her in the right places to advance everyone else.
Great writing is what makes movies classic. Great actors elevate some films to that level. Hepburn elevated a lot of films to that level in ways others could not.

 

Gabriel Over the White House - a very positive movie where a good and decent president had to break protocal and go against the lousy congress so he could work for the people.

[video=youtube;6IISHTAMDxk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IISHTAMDxk[/video]

 

The Flight of the Phoenix
The original with James Stewart not the remake with Dennis Quaid.

 

I was thinking about those two films today. Is the science correct, especially the soldiers ending up in a big circle over a period of time? couldn't they stay roughly on course just by going toward or away fom the Sun? The age of the german would also be an issue. He was too young to be in the war but certainly a Hitler Youth. Jimmy Stewart himself might have dropped bombs on his hometown, or his father on the British guys. The irony of your life depending on a man you literally tried to kill 20 years earlier should have been a theme.
Do you think anyone has a story about George W. Bush's life depending on cooperation from an Iraqi soldier, or Oliver North on a Honduran with a grudge.

 

The science is correct. One leg is shorter than the other on the vast majority of people. As a result, walking a straight line with no visual references will unknowingly cause a person to walk in a big circle. If it was me, I'd walk at night and use rudimentary celestial navigation as a guide. Find Ursa Major, which is helpful in finding Polaris, the North star. Plus walking at night will be much more tolerable than the searing heat of the desert sun. Rest as much as possible during the day, bring some sort of canopy to create shade...but do not walk in the daylight. The night skies are just as easy to use as navigation aids if you know what to look for. It won't be precise, but will keep a person on course for a general direction with no other visual aids available.

My Dad, since passed, was an infantryman in WW2. After the war, he bought a house in Chicago and set up bids for anyone wanting to renovate it. A carpenter showed up with a thick German accent...apparently this carpenter was a former Luftwaffe member in Hitler's Reich. Turned out to be a fantastic carpenter, and my Dad was happy with the work.

Strange World indeed...a few years prior, those two were mortal enemies....

Wars end and I suppose at some point you get over the grudges., ideally at least, though I do not think Arabs and Israelis will ever get along...ever.

Not to get too far off topic.

 

There is a similar movie with related concerns. A group of people (elderly scientist, pretty woman, man with rifle and two healthy men) crash in a jungle. They find a well and cave, coconut trees and edible lizards. One of the men takes a bunch of coconut shells filled with water and walks away. Eventually he reaches the ocean and soldiers who don't care about the others.
Meanwhile the scientist has an idea. Each day the two remaining young men fill coconuts with water and bury them, going as far as they can, then return. The next day they do it again, drinking only from the first day's coconuts. This was to continue until they reached a better place or a rescue.
The guy with the rifle made the other guy keep going alone and not return after two days, but would that plan work and how would it be impacted by uneven legs since they were on solid ground rather than sand and had no clue which direction was best?

 

I love the great classics such Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, and many others. And since some of you have used this thread to politicize the classics, here's one of my favorites that deals with the menace of Republicanism and the proper way to change the world:


[video=youtube;QcvjoWOwnn4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4[/video]

 

Excellent classical movie with many social and biblical implications:

 

another great classic with social implications that I watched recently:

 

I'm working my way though all the best Film Noire movies. I love the dark and sinister atmosphere, the moral complexity, the tense, pessimistic world on display.

One of the best and most under-rates is 'Detour', from 1945, as haunting and strange as it gets.

 

Code:

It is interesting sometimes how some movies have influenced politics. For example, in discussing the global warming movement, one should not underestimate the impact of the film "the arrival". It is not to say the producers of the film treated the subject of alien contact seriously. On contrary, they approached this possibility lightly, with lots of sarcasm, and the main underlying clause explored in the movie were the stiff and swift repercussions and penalties applied by the government against anyone who does not go along with its vested agenda, and the filmmaker used the alien theme only as a convenient metaphor. It is further proof the makers of the film produced a satire and treated the subject lightly, that they sold the rights to make a sequel, "the arrival II" to Canada which predictably butchered the franchise with a signature Canadian soundtrack (2 minutes into the movie you could tell it was Canadian from the soundtrack alone), lame and absurd plot, failed special effects and notoriously failed actors. Did I mention no sense of humor at all? On top of it, "the arrival" paid loose homeage to John Carpenter delivering the same anti-establishment message while mocking "the x files", whereas "the arrival II" took x files seriously and clearly drew main inspiration from this megaflop.

Now, it can be guessed there were some activists who believed in the alien activity on earth and they got pissed off about how the movie mocked their core beliefs in such alien activity and partially under the film's influence decided to abandon the activism in the ever elusive search for aliens which the film mocked, and replace it with activism against co2 which the film seemed to have supported, even though mocking the connection between deliberately pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and aliens. But they did it resorting to authoritarian methods calling any critics loons in the same way Zielinski was dealt with in the movie. This stemmed from conflicting feelings of having some of their concerns confirmed in the cult film, mixed in with rage over having their core beliefs mocked and ridiculed. When it comes to satires, liberals really have thin skins.

 

It is a mystery to me how
The Yakuza (1974)
remains forever buried.
Good story.
Robert Mitchum
Ken Takakura who also appears in Black Rain. Yup, same guy looks like he hardly aged.
Brian Kieth stinks as usual.
Herb Edelman carries his role and a young Richard Jordan. And James Shigeta too.

​

"Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia."

[video=youtube;Uf7z4FfYF44]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf7z4FfYF44[/video]​

Moi

No ​

 

I liked the old black and white movies. Bogart, Bacall, Lore, Price, Barrymore...... where actors really practiced their skills and relied less upon special effects
The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man...etc.......................

 

Love those old film noir movies such as "The Fat Man":


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoUNpapkwQc



The dance scene is one of my all time faves.

 

I believe that "Psycho" is one of the greatest films ever made. No, I believe
it's the greatest film ever made. "The Searchers" comes close but Hitch
created the cinematic masterpiece of all time.

 

I agree. During the B&W era there were far more "good" actors. I don't
mean that there aren't good actors today. There are. However, they can't
compare to Bogey, Cagney, Bacall, Loy, Colbert, Stewart, Wayne and
on and on.

I seriously dig film noir.

Curious, do your mean Peter Lorre? You wrote Lore and I'm not familiar
with that name.

 

sorry, typo, yep Lorre.............
I just watched a couple of "Thin Man" movies last night...................

- - - Updated - - -

North by Northwest, Rear Window...............
and let's never forget Cagney, Rooney, Garland...........the cinema greats

 

I can improve it!




Alfred Hitchcock was not known for mistakes, but he made a few during his long career and they are the kind of mistakes superlative people make.
In one of his early films: Sabotage, he chose to develop his career specialty of suspense with a long tense sequence in which a boy travels across town to deliver a package containing a time- bomb. The boy has no idea what he's carrying and doesn't attempt to peak (though that would be traditional). He swings it as he travels and closeups of the package remind the audience of what is happening. It will explode at the scheduled time no matter where it is. The boy is delayed several times as he crosses town, becoming increasingly aware that he might be late but unaware of the consequences. Near the end he is delayed by a man demonstrating a new toothpaste. He grabs the boy and forcibly brushes the boy's teeth. When released the boy sprints the rest of the way and...the bomb explodes killing only the boy.
The intended victims were innocent but do not appear in the film. Though the audience would not want unseen innocent characters killed they certainly didn't want the boy killed. They worried a long time only to see their worst fears become reality.
In the process however Hitchcock perfected the art of suspense, and he described it in a documentary decades later. Show the bomb, let them know it's scheduled to explode in five minutes while people are talking about baseball, but no one must be hurt by that bomb.
Hitchcock's second major error came a few years later in Foreign Correspondent. A man is killed in a clever way that was duplicated in real life,
The third error was in making his classic Psycho. Having the most famous cast member get killed a third of the way through the movie was radical, but that wasn't his mistake.
Hitchcock was determined to make the best horror movie ever and it's hard to argue he failed, but in the process he cast the film perfectly. Every character exactly fits the part and they all did their jobs flawlessly-and that's the problem.
Prior to the shocking death of Marion Crane viewers have met six additional cast members: her lover Sam Loomis, a secretary played by Hitchcock's own daughter, her boss, a rich businessman (whose money she stole), a creepy policeman and a used car salesman, but only Sam (John Gavin) appears again. The story could have been just as powerful, and more emotional, if it had proceeded differently.
What if the scenes following Norman Bates' disposal of the body had gone differently? The businessman could have interrogated her boss. Her boss, under stress could then interrogate the secretary until she-in tears-reveals that Marion had a lover in California. Sam would be doubly shocked to learn of her disappearance and possible theft. Then her sister could have joined him in retracing her route. Possibly a flashback or voiceover would give Marion additional lines.
Along the way they meet the policeman and he again questions the used car salesman. Later the policeman could have a few minutes of remorse when he discovers he caused her death by telling her to use a motel for safety. Then Norman kills him.
The fourth mistake came a few years later in the movie Torn Curtain (1966). Spy movies were everywhere then. James Bond, Matt Helm and our man Flynt were circling the world killing villains in creative ways, then making bad jokes then escaping in a high-tech machine. British television featured Secret Agent and The Avengers. Americans watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Hitchcock instead presented Paul Newman as a scientist who pretends to defect to East Germany to discover what the enemy knows. In the middle of the film he finds his plans discovered by a real agent and they begin to fight in a farmhouse as an elderly lady watches. Newman was strong and healthy, but it was such a mismatch his opponent fought with one arm. The lady stabbed the man in the chest. He started using both arms but kept fighting. It wasn't until they dragged him to the stove and put his head in the oven that he passed away.
Hitchcock had made his point: it's hard to kill a man. The error was that the rest of the movie was a letdown. If a movie has only one fight scene it has to be at the climax.
Great professionals make great mistakes, and only once.