Strike (1925)

Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Writers: Proletkult under the direction of Valerian Pletnev
Stars: First Workers’ Theatre of Proletkult

Index: That's a Wrap!

As propositions go, the series of seven silent Soviet Union propaganda films called Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat isn’t very high on my priority list. However, only one was made and it was the debut of Sergei Eisenstein, who came out seriously swinging.

After a quote from Lenin about the strength of the working class being organisation, part one of six promises us that “All is calm at the factory”. So far, so boring. However, then the cinematography leaps into action.

There’s a great characterful close up, a tasty dissolve, a delightfully choreographed shot of a busy hallway and a gorgeous high dolly shot through a factory floor. That’s the first twenty seconds. No, I’m not kidding.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

Director: Jack Smight Writers: John Gay, based on the novel by William Goldman
Stars: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick and George Segal

Index: 2025 Centennials.

I love plucking films I’ve never heard of out of filmographies entirely due to research. Rod Steiger was a giant of American cinema, which means that there’s no shortage of films I could have chosen to celebrate his centennial.

This is one I’d never even heard of before, but he’s both the lead and the villain, he was at the height of his powers a year after In the Heat of the Night and he plays a character who plays other characters to strangle women and taunt the police. The fact that it’s based on a William Goldman novel was just a bonus.

As the film starts, he’s Fr. Kevin McDowell, an Irish priest with red hair whistling his way down the road to visit Mrs. Molloy, widow and lapsed Catholic, so that he can drink her port, tickle her mercilessly and then strangle her to death. It’s clearly all to do with his mother.

The Wizard of Oz (1925)

Director: Larry Semon
Writers: L. Frank Baum, Jr. Leon Lee and Larry Semon, based on the story by L. Frank Baum
Stars: Dorothy Dwan, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry and Larry Semon

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the production values of this take on L. Frank Baum’s classic story don’t come close to the famous 1939 version, there’s a lot here that might surprise. And hey, they’re a heck of a step up from The Patchwork Girl of Oz in 1914, a film written and released by Baum himself!

He died in 1919 so didn’t have a hand in this but his son, credited as L. Frank Baum Jr. even though his name was Frank Joslyn Baum, did. However, it’s hardly faithful in its adaptation, even by the low standards of other versions, including 1939, which changed a lot more than the colour of Dorothy’s slippers. After all, the Wicked Witch of the West only got 26 pages in the original book!

She isn’t in this version at all and I wish that Dorothy wasn’t either. It’s not that namesake Dorothy Dwan isn’t a capable actress; it’s that the character has no substance. When we first set foot in Kansas, a clearly aged Aunt Em and a stunningly rotund Uncle Henry are working their fingers to the bone, while Dorothy has no interest in helping. She isn’t even dressed to help! She flits around gathering flowers and looking precious, as if that’s all the world ever wants. I wanted her to break a nail and pout in the corner, so I could get on with the movie.

That Man Bolt (1973)

Directors: Henry Levin and David Lowell Rich
Writers: Charles Eric Johnson and Ranald MacDougall
Stars: Fred Williamson, Byron Webster, Miko Mayama, Satoshi Nakamura, John Orchard and Teresa Graves

Index: Make It a Double.

Fred Williamson’s second Make It a Double choice is a couple of years older than Bucktown but he was already established, especially with blaxploitation staples like Black Caesar and its sequel, Hell Up in Harlem. What surprised me is that this isn’t another of them.

In fact, it rather relishes how it keeps us on the hop as to what it actually is. Sure, there’s a blaxploitation feel at points, but there’s much more James Bond, much more kung fu movie and much more general seventies thriller, the colour of the lead the most unusual aspect.

That Man Bolt is Jefferson Bolt, who’s trying to be Jim Kelly when we first see him, stripped to the waist and working through a kata even though he’s locked up in a Macao jail. He’s not Jim Kelly but he looks good anyway. And then in comes an Aussie to cut him loose and ferry him over to Hong Kong. That’s Carter.

Bucktown (1975)

Director: Arthur Marks
Writer: Bob Ellison
Stars: Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Thalmus Rasulala, Tony King, Bernie Hamilton, Art Lund and Tierre Turner

Index: Make It a Double.

I’ve reviewed Bucktown for Pam Grier’s First Thirty but it was also one of Fred Williamson’s two Make It a Double picks. While it came at a crucial time for her, it’s definitely a better film for him, giving him a good introduction then building him far more than I expected.

It initially feels like an episode of a TV show. Everything kicks right in: the opening credits, the funky music and the action. The very first scene is cops lusting after a hooker, but they rush off to beat up a black guy at the station as a train pulls in.

Getting off that train is Duke Johnson, who’s in Bucktown to bury his brother. And that’s the Hammer, who sees the cops but doesn’t do anything, just gets a cab to the Club Alabama. “Do you believe in God?” the cabbie asks him. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”

Cash on Demand (1961)

Director: Quentin Lawrence
Writers: David T. Chantler and Lewis Greifer, based on the teleplay The Gold Inside by Jacques Gillies
Stars: Peter Cushing, André Morell, Richard Vernon and Norman Bird

Index: 2025 Centennials.

Richard Vernon may well be one of the least famous names whose centennials I’m covering this year but his is a familiar face to me from British film and television and I’m very happy I pulled this feature out to celebrate his life and career because it’s a hidden gem that I’ve never seen before.

It’s a Hammer but not a horror, as a strange sort of polite but nonetheless brutal heist film that ends up doing the same job as A Christmas Carol, a surprise I was not prepared for.

It’s a fourth opportunity for the leads, Peter Cushing and André Morell, to work together in film and in a fourth genre but with the power dynamic neatly reversed from The Hound of the Baskervilles two years earlier.

And it’s a remake that was made by many of the same hands. It was originally a teleplay for Theatre 70, a drama series produced by ATV, a year earlier, the episode called The Gold Inside. Morell and Vernon reprise their roles and the director, Quentin Lawrence, does likewise. The Cushing role was played by Richard Warner.

The Rebel Rousers (1970)

Director: Martin B. Cohen
Writers: Abe Polsky, Michael Kars and Martin B. Cohen
Stars: Cameron Mitchell, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd

Index: The First Thirty.

Oh dear, oh dear. Going strictly by the dates of release, Jack Nicholson ended the sixties on his highest note thus far, with Easy Rider being his first bona fide classic and bringing his first Oscar nomination, but he started the seventies on his lowest note thus far, with this debacle.

I’ve seen it before and reviewed it too, and it remains just as bad as it’s always been, but it’s a little more interesting when seen in context of Nicholson’s career.

The first important thing to know is that it wasn’t shot in 1970 in the wake of Easy Rider. It was shot in 1967 at the peak of outlaw biker movies but only released in 1970 in the wake of Easy Rider. It has more in common with Hells Angels on Wheels that was actually released in 1967, hardly a great outlaw biker movie either but a heck of a lot better than this with a far better part for Nicholson.

Lady of the Night (1925)

Director: Monta Bell
Writer: Adela Rogers St. Johns and Alice D. G. Miller
Stars: Norma Shearer, Malcolm Mac Gregor and George K. Arthur

Index: That's a Wrap!

I wasn’t expecting to like Lady of the Night as much as I did, especially as I had seen it before and didn’t rate it highly back in 2006. I’ve also never been a huge fan of Norma Shearer, who was the biggest female star at MGM back then, only partly because she was married to Irving Thalberg, their head of production.

However, she’s highly impressive here in a double role, as the eighteen year old versions of the two babies we meet at the beginning of the film. One is born poor, her father already in handcuffs as her mother names her Molly; Judge Banning soon sentences him to twenty years. The other is born rich, to the very same judge, her name being Florence.

Shearer delineates these two characters in a number of ways and, while I’m still puzzled as to why nobody who meets both ever chooses to comment that they look stunningly alike, I never confused them once, even though they are actively compared often, including in their very first scenes.

Easy Rider (1969)

Director: Dennis Hopper
Writers: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern
Stars: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson

Index: The First Thirty.

Well, here’s the gamechanger, the film that made Jack Nicholson a star, even though he’s not in it for as long as I remembered and then not until almost halfway. His role here landed him an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor, a real wake-up call to someone who had been writing and producing films to diversify after a decade of bit parts and B-movies.

It’s been fascinating to watch him grow as an actor, from the weak lead of The Cry Baby Killer and The Wild Ride to entertaining support in The Broken Land and Flight to Fury to the best thing about the movie in Back Door to Hell and Hells Angels on Wheels.

It’s also been fascinating to see so much of those earlier movies combining here. It’s like he was waiting for the counterculture to show up to see what he could do. This film too feels like the natural child of acid westerns like The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, outlaw biker movies like Hells Angels on Wheels and drug movies like Psych-Out and Head.

The Monster (1925)

Director: Roland West
Writer: Willard Mack and Albert G. Kenyon, based on the play by Crane Wilbur
Stars: Lon Chaney and Johnny Arthur

Index: That's a Wrap!

Here’s an interesting movie, but not for the reasons we expect. I’m up for anything that’s got Lon Chaney in the cast, but he doesn’t do much in this film and he overdoes what little he does. His other two extant 1925 movies are notable for him rather than other people; this one isn’t worth watching for Chaney alone.

However, it’s absolutely worth watching for fans of director Roland West, made before The Bat and The Bat Whispers and outdoing both of them on the old dark house front. In fact, this outdoes The Old Dark House, which wouldn’t be made for another seven years anyway. Once it gets moving, every scene seems to feature at least one and often two or three different old dark house tropes arriving so quickly that we can’t close our eyes in case we miss some.

It does take a little while to get moving and much of that is because, while Chaney was the big name, it’s really a Johnny Arthur vehicle, a comedy horror with him getting scared at any opportunity that arises but somehow making it through to be the hero anyway. In that way, it’s as much a precursor to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as The Old Dark House.