Lost

Dog Days

Lost
USA 1982
Directed by Al Adamson
Severin Blu Ray Zone A

Although it’s not the last footage he shot for a potential movie, Lost is the last film that Al Adamson directed that got any kind of commercial release and it’s one of those films which seems to have been missing in action for some time. Indeed, the 16mm 1.37:1 print which Severin have scanned in and preserved for this, the final stop in their brilliant Blu Ray boxed set, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, isn’t in the best shape when compared to some of the other, much older films in this collection.

The film carries on in the direction that Adamson found himself going at this point in his life, with a pleasant and heartwarming (at least in its intention) family film, much like the far superior Carnival Magic was (reviewed here) but, for my money, this just wasn’t as engaging a film as that one.

The film stars the main male protagonist of that previous film... sorry, I meant the main male ‘human’ protagonist of that film, Don Stewart as Jeff Morrison, a new husband from a family who has just been divorced. Playing his new wife is none other than Sandra Dee as Penny Morrison (yes, that Sandra Dee, the once teen star immortalised in a song from Grease decades after her time in the spotlight) and the film is about both them and the real main protagonists of the picture, her eleven year old daughter Buddy (played by Sheila Newhouse) and their dog Skipper (played by Skipper The Dog).

The family have just moved to the mountainous wilderness of Utah to start a farm in a beat up old shack to make a fresh start for themselves. And it goes through several clichés you would expect from that set up... Buddy is not getting on well with her ‘new father’ and missing her divorced dad, the whole ‘town folks having a hard time trying to start a farm’ situation but being befriended by the locals, the kid being teased at school and, the old classic, helping out on the neighbouring farm and rescuing the horses during a fire.

And then, around half way through the film, Buddy runs off with Skipper and gets lost in the mountains for three days while her family worry about her and join various search parties to try and rescue her. More clichés, of course, such as being washed away in a river, reuniting with her dog, catching her own fish, nearly being killed by a cougar but escaping in a similarly perilous river and ultimately befriending an old man in the wilderness, who is a guest appearance by the one and only Jack Elam.

Of course, all is well in the end but the film is just a whole lot more clumsier than I would expect from even Adamson, with some choppy editing which I suspect is as much to do with not getting coverage on the shots and scenes as it is to do with anything else. He and his cinematographer do try though and there are some interesting shots within the smaller aspect ratio which are well done, such as where they use the cross sections of big window frames from outside the cabin to frame the face of one of the actors in one square while another actor stands way behind and to the left, taking up the length of two squared off window sections, thus pushing the depth of the shot. So, yeah, there’s nice stuff in it but it mostly just felt sloppily done, I have to say.

The acting was all pretty good though. Probably the best one in it was Skipper The Dog although, you do get that common thing happening in canine starring movies where the dog is looking off shot to their owner, waiting for a visual cue as to what they have to do next in the scene (this seems to happen with humans in porn movies a lot too, from what I can remember). In fact, there’s one annoying moment when Buddy and Skipper are on their lonesome on a mountain where, if you check out the bottom left corner of the shot, you can see the shadow of the dog’s owner moving around from off frame.

The music is a bit too syrupy and generic for my liking and, truth be told, it kinda works against the images in some ways. I couldn’t find a composer's credit so I’m guessing the producers used needle drops from a music library for this one, like a fair few of Adamson’s past films. It’s not something which stays with you in any way and I certainly couldn’t find a uniting theme or connection to any of the pieces used throughout the course of the movie.

And I’m not sure I’ve got too much more to say about Lost other than I’m wondering if it’s a somehow cursed film because this was the last released feature film for Al Adamson, Sandra Dee, Ken Curtis, William Kerwin and Sheila Newhouse (as the eleven year old Buddy, it was also her first screen role and she did quite well so I don’t know why nobody used her again). It’s not a film I would really recommend to anybody but it is a milestone for me because this means I’ve finally watched the huge boxed set of Adamson’s films that Severin put out (and sold out of fairly quickly) last year. Tomorrow, I hope to put up one final review which will serve as both an overview of the box contents plus an index link to my reviews for all the other films to be found in this Severin edition (for anyone who wants to read through them all).

High Noon

From Miller To Post

High Noon
US 1952 Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

High Noon really is one of the all time great American Westerns. It’s been a fair few decades since I’d watched it last (I used to love it as a kid) but I recently bought my father the new Eureka - Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray and, of course, I sat down to watch it with him. I was blown away all over again by it’s stark, black and white photography, the driven Dimitri Tiomkin score with the important song Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling and some interesting actors doing their thing - including Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly (later Princess of Monaco), Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr (the monster man is billed here as simply Lon Chaney, for some reason), an uncredited Jack Elam and, not forgetting, the screen debut of one Lee Van Cleef... as one of the four men gunning for Cooper’s Marshal character Will Kane.

Actually, I have to say, I didn’t realise this was Van Cleef’s debut until after I watched it again and looked him up. I mean, it’s a pretty rare debut. Okay, so he’s not the bad guy... Frank Miller (played by Ian McDonald) or even the main villain of the three gunfighters waiting for Frank to return to town on the noon train (that would be Frank’s brother Ben, played by Sheb Wooley)... but he has a large portion of the opening credits solo, while he gets ready and joins the other two gunmen to ride to the railway station. He really looks like a villain and, with his scarred face and wild eye reactions, which feature a couple of times in the film, I have to wonder if Sergio Leone maybe looked at this film long and hard over the years before making the actor a household name and using him in two of his famous Spaghetti Westerns. When we think of those Leone movies, we think of the stylised poses, the expressive eyes and the constant waiting and... well, it’s all here in High Noon, long before the Italians started doing it, mostly, better than the Americans. Or at least as interestingly. As the three wait for the train, you will certainly be reminded of Leone’s later masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West and I would bet this is one of the films he looked at for inspiration.

The plot, if you’ve never seen the film before, goes something like this...

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) marries his quaker lover Amy (Grace Kelly) but finds out that the murderous Frank Miller has just been released from jail (from up north!) and is returning on the noon train to get together with his fellow thugs to gun down the marshall in an act of revenge and then, as implied, take over the town with their hoodlum ways. The town’s folk try to get Mr and Mrs Kane to leave in a buckboard but Kane soon turns back to pick up his tin star (the new marshal doesn’t get into town until the day after) and try to get help to fight off these four cold blooded killers in an attempt to protect the community. Amy doesn’t understand this course of action and tells him she will be on that noon train when it arrives. His former girlfriend, the Mexican Helen Ramírez (played wonderfully by Katy Jurado) also ends things with the marshal’s deputy, played by Lloyd Bridges. She is also set to leave on the noon train.

Meanwhile, in a searing metaphorical indictment of the Hollywood anti-communist black list as experienced by one of the producers about to be put on that list, Kane calls on the various friends and acquaintances in town, only to be met with inaction or untenable conditions to the required help. Bridges character quits over the matter and, even the one man qualified enough to help, changes his mind just before the villains show up. Which leaves just Kane and, as one of two strong female characters in the film, his wife Amy... who shows up to aid him in ways which I won’t spoil for you here if you’ve never seen it.

And it’s a staggeringly good movie. There are probably a fair few moving camera shots in the film but the absolutely beautiful 1.33:1 black and white photography set ups coupled with the pacing make the film appear static and, it has to be said, feel somewhat claustrophobic, as the characters and audience count down the minutes until the train gets into town. Which is something the audience can actually do in this film because, aside from some stuff at the start (and we’re only talking minutes), the entire film is shot... or at least edited... in real time. The various shots of clocks of all shapes and sizes included in the visuals to give you a constant reminder (and surprisingly accurate one, considering how a Hollywood movie is shot) of just how long you’ve got until the shooting starts... underlined by the fairly regular, tick tock percussion of the main title theme which, actually, I think was the first time a movie song had been written into the actual score to add emphasis. Can you imagine a Bond film that didn’t do this? Well, okay, there have been a few of them over the last decade but they’re all the poorer for it.

It’s also a film of mounting tension and unsaid or understated plot points. Nothing is directly said and, though there are some dense sections of scenes heavy with dialogue, a lot of the film plays out like a silent movie in terms of lack of conversation and it’s stronger for it (something else I suspect Sergio Leone learned from films like this). For instance, it’s never explicitly stated that Helen is the marshal’s ex but, as various comments are thrown about a picture is painted that she has history with the main antagonist of the film and you can piece together that the main protagonist, Will Kane, got her out of some problems before hitching up with her himself. It’s something an audience can sew together in their mind, just as Will’s new wife Amy does about half way through the film.

So, yeah, brilliantly minimal but carrying a lot of meaning in a way which almost seems a forgotten art in Hollywood nowadays, where teen audiences have lit a fire which ignorantly blazes through the subtlety of the art of cinematic implication and helped boil things down to a lowest common denominator of clear but stifling explanations and clarifications before the latest heroic incarnations can even get their clothes on. In this way the film is, perhaps, of its time but, honestly, it also feels strikingly timeless, especially with it’s criticisms of the common people on the street failing to do their duty and arguing their way out of harms way by justifying their stance in inventive rhetoric which never, quite, seems all that convincing.

And that’s me done on High Noon. One of the all time great movies that Hollywood ever put out and as entertaining a film as you’re likely to see. It holds up really well over the years and this new Blu Ray from Eureka is stacked with some interesting extras which, alas, I probably wont have time to watch for a very long time, if ever. But, as a recommendation, my dad absolutely loved it too and so do I and I reckon it’s a ‘must see’ for any fans of the art of the medium in general. Do not forsake this new release of an all time classic Western because, honestly, you’d be missing out.