This week on SVENGOOLIE...

[Western Guy]

Hi Bronxgirl 48. Forgive my correction but it is Patric Knowles whom Evelyn Ankers is engaged to in THE WOLF MAN. As usual, Ralph Bellamy is sans female relationship. Not that it seems to make much difference to his character. Anyhoo, he makes up for it by escaping the conflagration with Miss Ankers at the hasty wrap up of GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN.

Until the day I depart this mortal coil I will maintain that Bela Lugosi deserved a Best Supporting Oscar for his role as Ygor in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. Until maybe Robert DeNiro, no other actor so completely disappeared into a characterization.

[Bronxgirl48]

Western Guy, THANK you so much!!!! Oh my gosh, my Baby Boomer memory is really getting bad, lol. How could I forget Patric Knowles? Because I love him! He's one of my under-the-radar heartthrobs (along with John Boles) Yes, poor Ralph, ha! I think the only satisfying female relationship he ever had was the one he shared with wife Ruth Warrick in GUEST IN THE HOUSE. Theirs was an unexpectedly lusty union. (who'da thunk it??)

I couldn't agree with you more about Bela in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. It's ironic that he turned down the role of the Monster in the original FRANKENSTEIN, saying "I don't want to play a dumb brute", and rejected being buried under heavy make-up, but he out-acted everyone in SOF (Lionel Atwill a close contender. "Health resort!") with his insouciently repulsive Ygor. "They die, DEAD! I die, LIVE!" -- "Excuse me, bone get stuck in my throat!" -- "He....he does things for me..." You could see that Lugosi positively relished playing this part!

[Bronxgirl48]

It's getting late and I'm screwing up these posts....sorry!

[Bronxgirl48]

Time to make the coffee....

[Bronxgirl48]

I love Faith Domergue!

[Bronxgirl48]

Red,
I got through watching Cult of the Cobra (1955) and boy, it was amusing and enlightening. Little did I know that:

1.) In 1955 NYC did not have any tall buildings, though horses were still used to pull wagons through the streets.
2.) Marshall Thompson's worst career move was NOT co-starring with Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion.
3.) David Janssen mysteriously had NO evident acting skills prior to The Fugitive. He even walked like a dork as Rico, the Bowling Alley owner. He must have been through a heap of acting workshops, body movement classes and heartbreak between this role and his best known role as Richard Kimble, Sad Sack Extraordinaire.
4.) Ed Platt specialized in roles as CEOs of cults (See his work in Atlantis, The Lost Continent for further evidence).
5.) At midnight in the mid-50s Salvation Army Sallys went around the streets of NYC hitting up businessmen for donations after scaring the bejeesus out of them by sneaking up behind them in the dark.
6.) None of these former GIs seemed to spend much time working, though they found time to sneer at researcher nerd Richard Long's lack of a big paycheck--even though he got the only human girl these guys seemed to know--and commercial artist Marshall Thompson "made his own hours." How can we get jobs like these?

moira, to go along with the horse cart, showgirls in modern Manhattan circa 1945 when the story is set were apparently putting on Gay '90's follies on stage.

Red, I agree with your CAT PEOPLE comparison re: CULT OF THE COBRA, including a couple of Lewton "buses"

[moira finnie]

Is Diana Dors-meets-George Brent more interesting than Diana Dors-meets-Victor Mature? (in THE LONG HAUL)

Well, I think it depends on how you feel about Diana and about Brent and Mature.

While I have come to regard George "The Human Tranquilizer" Brent with considerable fondness (for roles when he looked more alert and engaged than usual), such as The Go Getter (1937) and Racket Busters (1938), his part in Man Bait as a book store owner married to an invalid is extremely passive up to the last quarter, when Diana Dors introduces a dangerously chaotic element into his life. As usual with Mr. Brent, the ladies are in the saddle, dramatically speaking.

The Long Haul was more interesting to me, even though the extreme examples of femininity that Victor Mature had to choose from were kind of laughable. Weren't there any "normal" acting women in Britain back then? The only ones the movie presents in detail veer from frumpy, stick-in-the-mud wife Gene Anderson to the ludicrously zaftig Diana Dors, who leaves a trail of excess estrogen behind her. I felt sorry for both of them, and liked Vic's "I'm just a working stiff" underplaying (well, okay, anyone with Mature's mug can't exactly underplay, but he does his best to be believable). The guy who really stole the show for me was the hyper Mr. Easy (Patrick Allen), who seemed to be courting a coronary since he popped his cork so often. Were all these guys hyped up on bennies, bad coffee, or anxiety about their masculinity?

Over the weekend, I caught Hell Drivers (1957), the director Cy Endfield's wonderful paean to trucking and testosterone for the second time. I think that we ought to start compiling a list of movies about the field of trucking as a vocation--most of the '50s ones seem to be influenced by The Wages of Fear (1953), the Method & the Kitchen Sink schools of drama. The Long Haul surely must belong on the list, several notches under Thieves' Highway (1949)--love Richard Conte and Millard Mitchell in this one and They Drive By Night (1940). Any others?

Glad you got a few laughs out of my comments on Cult of the Cobra, Babs. Do you get Me-TV? I think you would find it fertile ground for your running commentaries on entertainment.

[Western Guy]

Bronxgirl48, as much as I admire Lugosi and consider him underrated in so many of his cinematic endeavours {"The Black Cat" and "The Invisible Ray" - in addition to "SoF", of course) I am glad he turned down the role of Frankenstein`s creation back in `31. Karloff made the role his own both in projecting terror and pathos. It`s just like I could never imagine Karloff taking on the role of Count Dracula. Each actor found his niche in an iconic characterization and as fans we are all the better for it. It`s as if Karloff had taken on the role of `The Invisible Man`. Can see it but Claude Rains is the voice behind the bandages . . . as Lon Chaney (Jr.) is the Wolf Man we all know and love.

[ChiO]

I think that we ought to start compiling a list of movies about the field of trucking as a vocation

CONVOY (Sam Peckinpah 1978)

DUEL (Steven Spielberg 1971)

[ChiO]

And just to get it in -- even though it's not about trucking as a vocation, the catalyst for the climax is the use of trucking in carrying out a vocation -- WHITE HEAT.

[moira finnie]

And just to get it in -- even though it's not about trucking as a vocation, the catalyst for the climax is the use of trucking in carrying out a vocation -- WHITE HEAT.

Good ones, ChiO. I'd forgotten about Convoy, but Duel certainly belongs there. Cody Jarrett's Trojan horse tanker certainly marked a novel approach to transportation (and thievery).

[MissGoddess]

Wasn't Burt Lancaster some kind of truck driver in Kiss The Blood Off My Hands?

[Bronxgirl48]

David Janssen, looking death in the face:



moira, I don't get Me-TV, instead I haunt YouTube for all the marvelous schlock. Following your lead, other interesting things I learned from CULT OF THE COBRA: nurses leave hospital windows half-open during thunderstorms so their patients can get some fresh air; also, it doesn't pay to pick up The Book of Cults (with an "s", but it probably should be "sssssss") since the only one mentioned in this heavy volume seems to be, yes, the cult of the cobra. (There's even a helpful illustration of one on the cover)

I haven't seen Brent in a lot of stuff, but for me he's far from tranquilizing: there's a sort of sinister undercurrent going on if you can believe it, unlike, say, a Hugh Beaumont or Robert Cummings, the Sedation Twins. I love George in JEZEBEL, and with my limited knowledge of his work, think it's his best performance. I can see Diana Dors eating passive, gentlemanly Brent alive, lol, whereas with Victor there's more of a battle-of-equals going on between two healthy animals. Mature's wife in THE LONG HAUL was positively insufferable. I love Dors! She's got the same sort of natural yet self-aware vulgarity I find in Elizabeth Taylor at her most lushly outrageous. Diana, late in her career, played a fat witch in some British devil-worship movie, and Dors was wonderfully creepy but funny at the same time. She really seemed to enjoy this role, lol.

My favorite trucking movie has to be THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, where I first fell in love with George Raft.

Doesn't Anna Magnani in THE ROSE TATTOO have a husband who drives a truck?

[Bronxgirl48]

Bronxgirl48, as much as I admire Lugosi and consider him underrated in so many of his cinematic endeavours {"The Black Cat" and "The Invisible Ray" - in addition to "SoF", of course) I am glad he turned down the role of Frankenstein`s creation back in `31. Karloff made the role his own both in projecting terror and pathos. It`s just like I could never imagine Karloff taking on the role of Count Dracula. Each actor found his niche in an iconic characterization and as fans we are all the better for it. It`s as if Karloff had taken on the role of `The Invisible Man`. Can see it but Claude Rains is the voice behind the bandages . . . as Lon Chaney (Jr.) is the Wolf Man we all know and love.

Yep, I agree, because...."it's fate, baby, it's fate!" I just can't imagine any other actors substituting in those movies -- you stated this case eloquently, Western Guy! Now, Karloff had a wonderfully lugubrious voice (to match his sculptured face and bony body) that totally inhabited THE MUMMY. (he WAS Ardeth Bey!) but I don't think Boris could ever have vocally nailed the exhilarating psychosis and withering humor Claude brought to THE INVISIBLE MAN.

I'm one of the few people who actually think Lon wasn't that badly cast in SON OF DRACULA. While no aristocrat, to put it mildly, lol, Chaney does bring a certain feral, bullying quality to the vampire I always find surprisingly frightening.

[Western Guy]

Yes Bronxgirl48, you do bring up a good point regarding Lon Chaney's Count Alucard. He certainly is the complete physical opposite of John Carradine's later vampire incarnation. My major problem with Chaney in the role is . . . his voice. He sounds just too proletarian to be completely convincing as an aristocratic count. His final plea (I might be a bit off in my quote since it's been a while since I've seen the pic) as his coffin burns really makes my point, I think: "Put it out, I tell yuh!" Chaney does manage to pull it off as the lycanthrope Larry even if the dialogue exchanges between him and dad Claude Rains are the vocal equivalent of the physical disparity between Lon and John's Dracula's. Chaney did do some good work in the genre (and I'm grateful to him for bringing life to my childhood monster hero The Wolf Man) but I confess I prefer Lon in his more "human" roles, particularly Lennie (of course) and as the old sheriff in "High Noon" - and here I will again (maybe) go out on a limb and say that that small role (speaking specifically of the scene where Sheriff Howe explains his reasons for not siding with Gary Cooper against the baddies) showcased some of the best acting I can remember seeing and should have garnered for Lon a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod. He was equally convincing and affecting as "The Golden Junkman" (for which he surely deserved an Emmy).

Sad that even in their "straight" roles genre actors were overlooked by the Academy. Should I mention Karloff in "Targets" . . .