Tentacles!

How I have lived sixty years and never seen Tentacles is a mystery to me. I've been pretty much aware of it since it first swam up on shore in 1977. But even though I went to the movies pretty regularly back then I never saw this and have never seen in it in the many decades since. I was a fan of the original Jaws and rather liked its progeny such as Orka and Piranha, but somehow this one fell through my net. Now thanks to TCM I've seen it and it's a really mixed bag of both 70's era goodness and badness. This review assumes everyone but me has seen this movie so if you haven't tread carefully.

The movie starts out pretty credibly with a camera which seems to give us only extremely limited views of the doings as the story gets underway. We start out in a cab and listen to the chatter as the credits roll and that's pretty interesting, then we switch to a mother and her child and we realize the ankle-level camera work is to give us a tentacle-view of the world. When the kid gets snatched by the mysterious intruder you know this movie will not only savage those of compromised moral standing. The innocent are on the line and the ramps up the tension pretty effectively.

Then the impressive cast shows up with wonderful voice of John Huston rumbling along as a nosy reporter and the durable Claude Akins in yet another role as a harried sheriff. Henry Fonda has a few cameos, but they are of no real consequence to the actual plot. Shelley Winters is along for the ride, her plump low-class charm making the best of a story which gives her precious little to do. And that's a main problem with this one, most folks in it don't do much. Even eventual hero Bo Hopkins doesn't get revved up for action until his comely wife falls victim to the beast. His wife is Delia Boccardo and she seems in many ways the most tragic off all the characters and gets some of the best monster scenes. Her sister played by Sherry Buchanan gets a great sequence too, but their stories feel oddly isolated from the rest of the narrative.

And what is the monster really...an octopus of apparent large size thought scale is something which is almost impossible to measure as the creature shows up here and there seemingly attracted by radio waves. A tunnel project which used high-frequencies to pursue its ends apparently roused this monster, but there is no sense that the company will pay much if any price for their misdeeds. Even the one guy who admits wrongdoing doesn't actually get sacked.

There seems to be a breakdown in the movie between the name actors and everyone else most of the time. I imagine somewhere there might be a version of this movie in which none of the name actors we recognize in the U.S. are actually in the movie. When mayhem is actually unleashed all of them are distant from it. That said, the director does manage against all odds to develop a mote of suspense in the early stages though that falls by the wayside in the finale which becomes an absolute disaster of pacing. The ending reeks of Disney's most melodramatic efforts despite a film which had a nifty hard turn to it for most of its run.

I cannot recommend that anyone actually see this movie unless like me you are somewhat a student of the time and want to see this movie as an artifact. In that regard it succeeds on many levels. There is above-average acting in places and below-average acting in lots of others. The camera work is often clever but fails to deliver in the end what it promises in the early stages. I like cheap knock off movies and I want to like this one, but it just doesn't deliver enough for me to say that.

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The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of!

I did not know that Dashiell Hammett's great 1929 detective yarn The Maltese Falcon had been adapted to comic book form until I chanced across this cover of Feature Book #48 from 1946 by the David McKay Comics company. Reports I can find are that the comic itself is pretty weak, but if the cover is any indication, it might have some of the vintage Golden Age energy which percolated up in many of those vintage comics. I'd love to read it sometime.

I consider 1941's The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and a delicious ensemble cast of morally bankrupt characters to perhaps be the perfect movie. I can watch it over and over without tiring of it. I compare it to great music which always carries you along with changes of intensity and tempo but never losing you and never wearing you thin. The Maltese Falcon is like that, a story that slithers along with fantastic pace but still is possessed of fascinating quiet scenes and character bits which delight but never fail to further the larger story.

I haven't read the novel is some years. I got a class set many years ago when teaching film as literature was momentarily in vogue in schools, but alas never got the opportunity to teach the book. I've since changed schools and had to leave the novels behind for someone else to perhaps make good use of. It strikes me just now I need to get funding and set up a unit for my current classes.

I bought the dvd above some years ago and have enjoyed it several times since. It's loaded with behind-the-scenes stuff as well as other extras.

Not the least of which are the two earlier 1930's adaptations of the Hammett novel, one titled simply The Maltese Falcon from 1931 and the other Satan Met a Lady from 1936
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Sam Spade himself had quite a life beyond the novel's ending, even ending up on radio, television and in these delightful Wildroot ads. My dad was a devotee of Wildroot, and the very name of the product evokes great memories.

This is probably my favorite cover for the novel which sadly often gets covers of limited merit (to not suggest it might have actual pulp action in it I guess).

I picked this up a few years ago largely because it had the original story as it ran in serial form in Black Mask magazine in 1929. I've got it set for reading this spring hopefully.

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The City Under The City!

The Asphalt Jungle is sober crime caper flick directed by John Huston, presenting the criminal underworld as a group of fully realized characters captured by passions they have limited control over.

The movie is ostensibly set in (and apparently shot on location in limited scenes) what is likely Cincinnati, Ohio, a city which even today has sections which are unusually dangerous. Actually it was across the river in Newport, Kentucky that crime ruled, though Newport is much diminished these days in the shadow of its more famous sister across the water, mostly famous for its aquarium.

Hayden on the streets of Cincinnati

We meet first Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) a thug with some truly scary dead eyes who pulls strong arm robberies to fund his gambling habit. His confidant is diner owner Gus Minissi (James Whitmore) a bitter hunchback who clearly carries a grudge against normal society. These two get drawn into a scheme by recently released convict Doc Riedenschineder (Sam Jaffe) who along with safecracker Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso) plot to steal millions in jewels.

Whtimore and Hayden in a dive

The plot comes undone when their financier, a crooked local magnate name Emmerich (Louis Calhearn) connives to double cross his fellow thieves setting in motion a sequence of violent solutions to myriad problems. All the time the police are attempting to close in and capture the criminals, despite some of them being on the take the whole time.

Jaffe, Hayden, Whtimore and Caruso plot

There are other fascinating characters in this gritty John Huston effort, in particular two dames. One is Doll played by Jean Hagen who clearly has eyes for Dix, but gets little comfort in return. The other chick is not even listed in the credits but is Emmerich's ditsy girlfriend played by Marilyn Monroe. Monroe did not go unnoticed for long and dominates the posters for this movie after its initial run.

Jaffe, Hagen and Hayden marvel at the loot

The movie's best feature is its calm and steady storytelling which relentlessly follows each character as they try to deal with the successes and failures of the scheme. Some die, some live, but all meet their fates with some measure of dignity. That seems to be the point, that despite their lives of crime, these are people who have come to their respective ends as a result of life's powerful rigors.

Monroe steals the scene and maybe the movie

Stand outs are Sam Jaffe, the brilliant but flawed genius who plots the scheme and Sterling Hayden who puts up the best full-blooded presentation of a hood that I've come across. His violence is evident in every move he makes, but he doesn't fall to the level of a mere hoodlum. There's more there, a tragedy which defines his every moment on the screen. The film closes out with some beautiful scenery around Lexington, Kentucky and its almost recognizable still after over sixty years. The counterpoint of the seamy underbelly of the city with the idyllic beauty of the of the country is not overstated in this fable of modern fallible men.

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