RIP Director Richard Fleischer

plus, maureen stapleton didn't direct compulsion! what a great movie. orson welles and bradford dillman and dean stockwell tearing shit up!

and maureen stapleton didn't direct 20,000 leagues under the sea either! what a beautiful movie. kirk douglas is one nimble motherfucker in that flick.

That 'owned' word comes to mind.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is all about Mason as Nemo.

I remember being disturbed by seeing Bronson shoot up a huge consignment of melons in Mr. Majestyk, but I've never seen it ... or Compulsion, Boston Strangler, Mandingo etc. Hey, James Mason was in Mandingo too!

Mandingo is at leeast a partly successful corrective to Gone with the Wind. The audience was too spooked to laugh much. Queasiest fight-to-the-death scene ever.

10 Rillington Place is pretty good until the last half-hour or so; it's a little overappreciated.

I sincerely hope that with the release of Mandingo on DVD that some revisionism regarding its status as a 'so-bad-it's-good' camp classic will begin to take place... it was heartening to hear that nervous giggling die down after about 15 minutes when it became clear that the movie was no corny sex-and-slavery romp, was no easy candidate for Mystery Science Theater-type derision, but instead a serious and agonized attempt to grapple with a period in American history that it seemed was still too hot to handle. Director Richard Fleischer’s unadorned, direct style is the perfect approach to this material, and the result is a movie that gets under the skin of blacks and whites, in 1975 and in 2008, and lives there, coalescing into a depiction of our country’s subconscious, as likely as any depiction of its subject ever made to claim authenticity, genuine insight into the way things must have been.

http://sergioleoneifr.blogspot.com/2008/06/slifr-top-100-mandingo.html

so he's the Douglas Sirk of racial politics?

didn't notice he died!

20,000 leagues is so great!

don't understand the first line of the first post. dude was totally a household name, and i'm not a movie buff by any stretch.

Not a household name to me--I thought this thread was gonna about one of those guys who made cartoons.

I'd like to have visited those households.

(he was son of one of cartoon Fleischers)

as Leopold/Loeb movies go, Compulsion > Rope

Saw Mandingo last night -- oh man. Not sure I'll go as far as Kehr and Robin Wood in their enthusiasm.

it's not great, but certainly a corrective to GWTW's odious worldview.

Ken Norton had one of the 20th century's most beautiful bodies.

Agreed.

It wasn't sensationalist, exactly, but the movie had me in knots anticipating the next eruption of violence.

Anybody rep for The Last Run, which is coming from Warner Archive? George C. Scott, hopped-up BMWs, Sven Nykvist, European locales...

Just enjoyed his appearance in Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff.

you can sorta see why Fox was high on Joan Collins in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. (?Glenda Farrell is a great long sigh as her mother.)

saw 20,000 Leagues on the big screen for i think the second time ever -- design/effects, Mason overpower seal antics.

i watched 'the new centurions' recently -- george c scott & keach are both p good, plot prob tries to do too much, cover too large of a time period; is def v 'workmanlike' directing or w/e but i wouldnt say much of it really stands out

of the first preview screening of dr doolittle in minneapolis that did not go that great - "I'd be mystified if i came into the theatre and didn't know what the picture was and the first scene was a guy riding a giraffe."

Anybody rep for The Last Run, which is coming from Warner Archive? George C. Scott, hopped-up BMWs, Sven Nykvist, European locales...

― The Man With The Flavored Toothpick (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:02 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

should be far better; backstory/wiki is compelling tho

Production history[edit]
John Huston was the original director for The Last Run. However, Huston and Scott, who previously worked together on the 1966 film The Bible: In the Beginning, had fights on the set. Huston walked off the production and he was hastily replaced by Richard Fleischer.[2] Scott also had fights with French actress Tina Aumont, who was originally cast as the killer’s girlfriend. She also quit the film and was replaced by Trish Van Devere, an American actress. Scott and Van Devere fell in love during the production. However, Scott was married at the time to Colleen Dewhurst, who was also in the film. Dewhurst and Scott divorced after the production concluded, and the actor married Van Devere (who became his third wife).[1]

there are also few things in life less uncomfortable imo than watching neil dimond in blackface in the jazz singer remake

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Singer-Robert-Davi/dp/B00COH89G4/ref=sr_1_5?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1453606089&sr=1-5&refinements=p_lbr_directors_browse-bin%3ARichard+Fleischer

oh you kid

Jerry Lewis did wear blackface in his late '50s TV version, i think

james mason imo was born wholly to deliver the urgent purr "you'll be fighting at close quarters with the most tenacious of all sea beasts"

for sure

i will refrain from any Mandingo quotes

Check out this very good, if disguised, James Mason imitation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8f_XCH3zmM

During a talk I attended at my university last week, the speaker made the claim that Mandingo > Django Unchained. Should I just watch the damn thing already?

there are also few things in life less uncomfortable imo than watching neil dimond in blackface in the jazz singer remake

But one of them is Larry Olivier's "Am I Jewish enough for you" rabbi in the same picture, oy!

blu of The Vikings! ive never seen the whole thing

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-vikings

I made it through The Vikings, which is certainly great to look at (Jack Cardiff) and alternatively funny and exhausting to listen to. Ernie Borgnine certainly didn't hold back (GALES OF DRUNKEN LAUGHTER).

Kirk is a queasy antihero (his rapist father's son), and Tony Curtis is a slave named Erik, so Terry Jones was watching closely.

I only know that scene where Kirk walks on the oars.

The Narrow Margin showed up on TCM recently. Wondering if it’s time to rewatch

is The Boston Strangler worth checking out?

Tony Curtis's most scenery-chewing performance from what I remember. Actually that's all I remember, as the rest of the film has slipped from memory. This thread bump reminds me I must rewatch Red Sonja some time.

Trapped (1949) is not a lost masterpiece, but it was plenty diverting last year at Noir City DC. Lloyd Bridges looked extraordinarily like he does in Airplane! ("Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit cooperating with the Feds"?).

The Boston Strangler is also noteworthy for its use of split screen technique, which was trendy at the time - you also see it in such films as Grand Prix and The Thomas Crown Affair from that period.

I remember being terrified by the trailer for that. Seems like there were some mysterious visuals with maybe some kind of voiceover maybe not and then finally a shot of Tony in some kind of creepy burglar getup holding up his hands as if ready to strangle, iirc.