Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars (1985)

Director: Sammo Hung
Writer: Barry Wong, based on a story by Lo Kin, Barry Wong, and Roy Sze-To
Stars: Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao

Index: The First Thirty.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars may not be quite as varied as The Owl vs. Bumbo but it’s far more schizophenic. In fact, it feels like two different features were spliced together into a new one featuring a notable all-star cast.

Half of it is an action movie and this half is fantastic stuff, even if the story behind it isn’t particularly clear. Then again, it’s the third of seven films in the Lucky Stars series of movies and it’s been rather a long time since I last saw the first, Winners and Sinners. I remember that one a lot more fondly than I’ll remember this.

Sibelle Hu is Chief Inspector Woo Ba-wah of Special Unit CID and she’s after the MacGuffin of the movie, a letter sent by Ma in Thailand to Wang Yi-ching in Hong Kong right before he’s assassinated. That’s a memorable scene right there, because he’s parasailing at the time and the trio of assassins take to the sky too, merely armed with machine guns and bazookas. Most notably, one of them is Richard Norton firmly in extra-villainous mode.

The Owl vs. Bumbo (1984)

Director: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo
Writer: Lai Ling Cheung
Stars: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, George Lam, Deannie Ip and Michelle Khan

Index: The First Thirty.

Everyone has to begin somewhere and Yeoh Choo Kheng began by becoming Miss Malaysia in 1983. She was born in Malaysia, to a senator and his wife, so grew up speaking English but only understood a little Malaysian Cantonese. So, when she was offered a TV commercial for Guy Laroche watches with Sing Long on a call in Cantonese, she had no idea who that was. That commercial led to this picture and four decades later she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, breaking a lot of glass ceilings in the process.

Of course, if you’re reading this zine, you’ll know Yeoh Choo Kheng as Michelle Yeoh and may well know that Sing Long is Jackie Chan. He isn’t in this film but it was directed by and stars Sammo Hung, who grew up with Chan in the Seven Little Fortunes group at the Chinese Drama Academy in Kowloon, so there’s a clear connection there. He’d also appear in Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars, her second film.

Sammo plays Bombo from the title, who’s a thief. This picture begins with his final job, to rob a bank, for which he’s well armed indeed, with a crazy amount of ammo, grenades and a bunch of explosives, lots of which turn out to be fake, as we discover when he strafes a fish tank with a machine gun and nothing breaks.

I Bury the Living (1958)

Director: Albert Band
Writer: Louis Garfinkle
Stars: Richard Boone, Theodore Bikel and Peggy Maurer

Index: 2024 Centennials.

Robert Kraft is the new chairman of the Management Committee of the Immortal Hills cemetery in Milford so Andy McKee, who’s been its caretaker for as long as anyone can remember, shows him around. Bob Kraft is Richard Boone, well known on TV in 1958 for his role in Medic, which landed him a 1955 Emmy nomination, but was becoming a bigger star through roles in westerns like The Tall T, Ten Wanted Men and Man without a Star, along with a new TV show for 1957 called Have Gun – Will Travel, in which he played a gentleman wandering the West as a gun for hire to help people in need. McKee, an old Scot with a thick accent whose retirement is one of Kraft’s first priorities, is Theodore Bikel, then a thirty-four year old Austrian Jew. He was born in Vienna but moved to what was then Mandatory Palestine (now Israel), learning acting there and later in London, to which he moved at twenty-one to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He racked up many European nationalities in movies. A Scot was just one more.

The easiest way to see I Bury the Living is as an unassociated feature length episode of The Twilight Zone, so it doesn’t hurt that Boone bore a resemblance to Rod Serling. He had similar rugged good looks, a similarly serious attitude and, of course, a similar suit given that Bob is also the president of the Kraft department store. The Kraft family run the town of Milford and Bob’s Uncle George, who was chairman two years prior, explains to him how they maintain their level of prestige. Every man in the family “served on every community project, board and committee that was ever created. They served for free but they did it for business.” So, even though Bob is busy with the store, he’s now going to have to dedicate a few hours a week to the cemetery. Given that most of the feature is set at Immortal Hills and we never see the store, you can imagine how well that doesn’t go for him. There’s a reason for that and it is inherently tied to the big board on the far wall of the cemetery’s office that McKee talks him through on that first fateful visit.

Two for the Road (1967)

Director: Stanley Donen
Writer: Frederic Raphael
Stars: Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney

I had never heard of Two for the Road before plucking it out of Stanley Donen’s filmography for this project, but I’m very happy that I did. It’s technically a British film, but the funding came from a Hollywood studio—20th Century Fox—and it was primarily shot in France, so it’s an international picture and that’s highly appropriate because it feels like an international film, a romantic comedy obviously influenced by the French New Wave. It was shot in 1966 and, while it certainly looks like it was shot in 1966, it also feels like it could have been made yesterday because it’s that timeless; and let’s be honest, how many films shot in 1966 can you say that about? It wasn’t much of a commercial success, making back $12m on a $5m budget, but it was highly regarded by the critics. More than one has described it as Donen’s best movie, even though he also directed Singin’ in the Rain; it’s often been described as having Audrey Hepburn’s greatest performance; and Henry Mancini has claimed that his theme is his personal favourite from his work.

Clearly I should take a look at it to remember Donen and his career, on what would have been his centennial; he came pretty close to celebrating it too, passing in 2019 at the age of 94. The lead actors are Hepburn and Albert Finney, the latter of which was fresh from the success of Tom Jones and the former very close to her initial retirement, with only Wait Until Dark following it until a much anticipated return a decade later in 1976’s Robin and Marian. The most important name, though, at least to this particular picture, is that of Frederic Raphael, who wrote the original screenplay. It’s not exactly autobiographical, but it was sparked by a road trip that he and his wife took through France, some of the script taken from things that they did but much of it taken from things that they didn’t do but could well have done in a parallel universe. He received an Oscar nomination for his work, the film’s only nomination as Hepburn was nominated for Wait Until Dark instead, but he lost to William Rose for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951)

Director: William Marshall
Writer: Errol Flynn
Stars: Errol Flynn, Micheline Prelle, Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead and Victor Franken

Index: The First Thirty.

It’s a shame that Adventures of Captain Fabian isn’t a better movie to wrap up the First Thirty of Vincent Price, but, as we all know, he went on to much better things, not least the horror genre that turned him into an icon. At least that gives me a start for this review, because it would otherwise be awkward.

This ought to be an Errol Flynn film, partly because he’s the star, top billed and in the title role, but also because he wrote the screenplay. It may be telling that he never wrote another one, though he did write whatever counted as a script for Cuban Rebel Girls, his final feature which is so utterly bonkers I included it as my Q for Quickie chapter in my first book, Huh?

However, he simply isn’t notable here. The film establishes itself before he shows up, but he does have an impact when he does. He’s an older seafarer, not remotely as ripped as he is in the poster but still dashing and charming. However, he’s also annoyingly calm, whatever else is happening at the time, leaving every bit of drama to his co-stars.

He also vanishes again for a while, as events play out, because he isn’t the protagonist, just a character who sticks his nose into something he shouldn’t and thus enables a whole bunch of chaos and heartbreak. What’s telling is that, had he left well alone, we wouldn’t have a film but a lot of fictional people would still be alive. Is that what Flynn saw as adventure?

Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950)

Director: Charles Lamont
Writer: Howard Dimsdale, based on a story by Stanley Roberts and Howard Dimsdale
Stars: Donald O’Connor, Gale Storm, Walter Brennan, Vincent Price and Eve Arden

Index: The First Thirty.

Vincent Price is the best thing about most of the films in this book, whether they’re bad or good or great, because he began fully formed as an actor and demonstrated his versatility quickly. However, I’d suggest that he isn’t the best thing about this one, even with most of the best dialogue thrown his way.

That’s because, while his character, a hack of a travelling showman called Tracy Holland, is crucial to the plot’s existence, he isn’t that important to where it goes. This is obviously intended to be a showcase for its star, Donald O’Connor, and the scene stealer this time out is Walter Brennan, in one of the largest roles I’ve ever seen him take. He’s no sidekick here!

Cactus Creek is apparently right here in my home state of Arizona and it turns out to be the immediate destination for all the core cast.

Champagne for Caesar (1950)

Director: Richard B. Whorf
Writers: Hans Jacoby and Fred Brady
Stars: Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm, Vincent Price, Art Linkletter and Barbara Britton

Index: The First Thirty.

Vincent Price apparently had a serious soft spot for Champagne for Caesar. When I asked his daughter, Victoria Price, to choose two movies from his expansive filmography to review for my Make It a Double project, she immediately chose this one. She said it was his favourite of all his films.

That’s initially a little surprising for a bunch of reasons. It’s not a horror movie, it’s not well known and it’s not a Vincent Price movie per se. He’s third billed after stars Ronald Colman and Celeste Holm, though he does get a small caricature at the bottom of the poster. No, he’s not Caesar. Caesar’s standing on his head.

However, the longer the movie runs and the more frustrated his character gets as a rather odd corporate villain, Burnbridge Waters, the more it becomes obvious just how much fun he was having making it.

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

Director: Samuel Fuller
Writer: Samuel Fuller
Stars: Vincent Price and Ellen Drew

Index: The First Thirty.

It took sixteen films for Vincent Price to get top billing, with Shock, and it took eleven more for him to get it again, with a low budget gem from cult director Sam Fuller. Like Bagdad, I’ve seen this one before. Unlike Bagdad, I’m happy to watch it again.

“To the state of Arizona!” is the toast as this film begins and that’s because it’s Valentine’s Day 1912 and we’re finally part of the union as the 48th and last continental state. John Griff is giving this toast and he follows up with “to a real lover of Arizona, my friend James Addison Reavis.” And everybody present is shocked.

They’re shocked because, while Reavis is the lead character here, he’s not the hero; he’s the villain. And we promptly go into flashback to a rainy night outside Phoenix forty years earlier to find out why.

Bagdad (1949)

Director: Charles Lamont
Writer: Robert Hardy Andrews, based on a story by Tamara Hovey
Stars: Maureen O’Hara, Paul Christian and Vincent Price

Index: The First Thirty.

OK, so this wasn’t as bad as I remembered it from a previous viewing in 2007, but it’s not a good film by any standards and it has to rank alongside Brigham Young and Up in Central Park as the worst of Vincent Price’s First Thirty.

Of course, he’s easily the best thing about it, though he really didn’t need his right eye to be glued shut to make him seem sinister and corrupt as Pasha Ali Nadim. He also narrates the film, because, of all the stars in Hollywood at the time, he was surely the one best suited to pronounce Scheherezade correctly.

The biggest problem with the film is that it isn’t the Arabian Nights fantasy that it might be mistaken for. It’s a generic story of intrigue in an exotic locale, Bagdad, the largest city in the world during the Islamic Golden Age, and here somewhere where “all unbelievable things are possible”, apparently including the overt rear projection. It might have worked as an indie distraction on a B-movie budget and in black and white, but it doesn’t have the substance to work as a Technicolor blockbuster.

The Bribe (1949)

Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Writer: Marguerite Roberts, based on the short story by Frederick Nebel
Stars: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price and John Hodiak

Index: The First Thirty.

Here’s another Vincent Price movie that I’d never even heard of, though it turns out that I have seen parts of it, in Steve Martin’s comedy nod to film noir, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. He takes his name of Rigby from this film and the whole Friends and Enemies of Carlotta angle is taken from its location, Carlotta being a town on the Central American island of Los Trancos.

Of course, this is the original and it wants to be taken seriously, a little too much if Rigby’s got anything to say about it. That’s Rigby the American cop, in the form of Robert Taylor, who’s sent to Carlotta to find out who’s behind a war surplus racket.

Apparently someone’s buying lots of scrap, but someone’s including good airplane motors in the shipments, which are then shipped out of the country, where they’re conditioned and sold. That’s millions of dollars in profit, none of it taxed, and if there’s anything that’s more un-American than taking money from Uncle Sam, I don’t know what it is.

There are only two suspects, so Rigby looks at them first when he gets to Carlotta in the guise of a fisherman. Apparently, nobody goes to Carlotta except to fish. Or to steal airplane engines, of course. They’re a married couple, Tugwell and Elizabeth Hintten. Tug flew down with the airline, but lost his job so now tends bar at Pedro’s and drinks himself into a stupor on his day off. Liz sings there and well too, but we only get a couple of songs. Tug is played by John Hodiak, Liz by Ava Gardner.