July 1960 saw the introduction of the 50-star flag of the United States of America, one year after Hawaii was welcomed as the 50th State. It ended with the Woolworth's counter officially serving its first Black customer and the Republicans naming Richard Nixon their nominee for President of the United States. Meanwhile, at the movies, one of cinema's greatest franchises began its eight-film, four-year run, cementing its star as the King of Horror...
Among other film releases, of course:
From the Terrace
release: July
dir/pr: Mark Robson
scr: Ernest Lehman, from the novel by John O'Hara
cin: Leo Tover
Young Philadelphian Paul Newman cuts himself off from his family and seeks his own fortune; he marries wealthy Joanne Woodward but his ambitions take him away from home, and they grow more embittered towards each other. Other stuff happens? Not really, I mean there are affairs and scandal and Felix Aylmer is a big boss and Newman gets to make a nice speech at the end about the shallowness of Money. Myrna Loy is called upon to Act Drunk and nothing else, and it's kind of embarrassing to watch. Newman is just about to get interesting, it's strange how many movies between him and Woodward just do not work.
The Bellboy
release: July 6
dir/pr/scr: Jerry Lewis
cin: Haskell Boggs
A series of gags following the life of a bellboy at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Well, anything filming on location in South Florida gets an extra star in my book. Jerry Lewis plays both the silent bellboy and, at one point, himself, losing the "funny" voice he usually torutures us with in favor of his deeper natural one...and for the first time, I'm enjoying a Jerry Lewis film! Wow! He nudges a bit too hard, maybe, but at least he's actually funny this time.
Battle in Outer Space
release: July 8
dir: Ishirō Honda
pr: Tomoyuki Tanaka
scr: Shin'ichi Sekizawa, story by Jôjirô Okami
cin: Hajime Koizumi
Aliens start fucking with Earth from a base on the Moon, so Japan and the United Nations send astronauts to stop them! Anticipates the niftyness of seeing international iconography destroyed by spaceships, parasitic puppeteering of a human, and signals coming from the moon, all of which would be key elements in 1996's Independence Day. Watch it for the retro effects.
The Lost World
release: July 13
dir/pr: Irwin Allen
scr: Charles Bennett and Irwin Allen, from the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
cin: Winton C. Hoch
In which an audibly sick Claude Rains, future Bond Girl Jill St. John, future Felix Leiter David Hedison, and some others get lost in South America to find some still-living dinosaurs. One of those flicks that puts wigs on lizards and gators, projects them enlarged behind the actors, and calls them dinosaurs - which I adore, frankly, seeing those beady-eyed mecha-goblins roam about without a care in the world is unnerving. What makes the movie frustrating is all these idiot people populating it: rash decisions made with no lessons learned, annoying sexist stereotype of a female, and the only lives lost are the non-whites...not even the villains! Surprising bummer to watch.
Dinosaurus!
release: July 20
dir: Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.
pr: Jack H. Harris
scr: Dan E. Weisburd / Jean Yeaworth, original idea by Jack H. Harris
cin: Stanley Cortez
The dinosaur trend continues, but this time, they're coming to us, as construction on a harbor expansion on a Caribbean island unearths the frozen - and not quite dead - remains of a Brontosaurus, a Neanderthal, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While The Lost World put real reptiles in drag, Dinosaurus! relies on the tried-and-true art of claymation. Does a lot of work in building the community, I feel like you're introduced to 20 characters by name and occupation, you know everyone's relationship to each other...it's almost too much, we're still meeting people well within the climax. Cutesy.
House of Usher
release: July 20
dir/pr: Roger Corman
scr: Richard Matheson, from "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
cin: Floyd Crosby
Also known as The Fall of the House of Usher. This was the first of the cycle of Roger Corman-Edgar Allan Poe films; all but one (The Premature Burial) starred Vincent Price. I owned all the DVDs, and now I own all the BluRays through the Vincent Price Collection from Shout Factory!. Price's performance in this, as in the others, is the reason to watch: as the tortured Roderick Usher, the anguish of his existence is in every grimace, every glance, every stiff movement. Even the colorless hair was Price's idea, to emphasize the man's lifelessness and sensitivity to all stimulation. The rest of the production meets his standard, too: the sets, filled with cobwebs, covered in dust, the Ushers may as well already be dead; the score is sweeping, surprisingly romantic at times, chilly and offbeat at others; the sound design, every creak we hear, every scream, every echo, is increasingly amplified so that we may experience Usher's own aural Hell. It's one of the best Poe adaptations there is.
Tomorrow, two more Corman classics and another Best Picture nominee...
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