Howdy! I just wanted to let you know that my new book, Horror Unmasked: A History of Terror from ‘Nosferatu’
to ‘Nope’, will be published on Sept. 5.You can pre-order it here. It’s derived from my earlier Lost in the Dark: A World History of Horror
Film, but it is revised, expanded, and richly illustrated. It was a treat
to get to update the text and make it current for a new set of readers.
First, I had the great pleasure of publishing Lost in the Dark through the University
of Mississippi Press. In matters of getting published, I can only state that
persistence is everything. It took 100 queries on my part, 100 individual and
detailed pitches, before I succeeded. Since then, it’s been markedly easier.
The nice folks at Quarto Group read my book, and proposed a revision/expansion,
and the addition of dozens of photographs and illustrations. Sold! I got to
work on it right away, and the the result you see here. My thanks to the editors
and proofreaders – they caught a number of tiny details, imperfections that our
now expunged and will provide as definitive a text as is possible.
Here’s their very
excellent summation of the work: “From the
silent-film era to the blockbusters of today, Horror Unmasked is a fun-filled, highly illustrated dive
into the past influences and present popularity of the horror film genre.
“The horror film’s pop-culture importance is
undeniable, from its early influences to today’s most significant and exciting
developments in the genre. Since 1990, the production of horror films has risen
exponentially worldwide, and in 2021, horror films earned an estimated $580
million in ticket sales, not to mention how the genre has expanded into books,
fashion, music, and other media throughout the world.
“Horror has long been the most popular film
genre, and more horror movies have been made than any other kind. We need them.
We need to be scared, to test ourselves, laugh inappropriately, scream, and
flinch. We need to get through them and come out, blinking, still in one piece.
“This comprehensive guide features:
·A thorough discussion on monster movies and B-movies (The Thing; It
Came from Outer Space; The Blob)
·The destruction of the American censorship system (Blood Feast; The
Night of the Living Dead; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre)
·International horror, zombies, horror comedies, and horror in
the new millennium (Matango; Suspiria; Ghostbusters)
·A dissection of the critical reception of modern horror (Neon
Demon; Pan’s Labyrinth; Funny Games)
·Stunning movie posters and film stills, plus fan-made tributes
to some of the most lauded horror franchises in the world (Aliens; The
Evil Dead; The Hills Have Eyes; Scream)
“A perfect reference and
informational book for horror fans and those interested in its cultural
influence worldwide, Horror Unmasked provides
a general introduction to the genre, serves as a guidebook to its film
highlights, and celebrates its practitioners, trends, and stories.”
This analysis first appeared in Senses of Cinema in June of 2005.
Hell’s Hinges
(1916, 64 min.)
Directed by: Charles Swickard, (William S. Hart, Clifford Smith)
Written by: C. Gardner Sullivan
Produced by: Thomas H. Ince
Cinematography: Joseph H. August
It seems highly unlikely now that William S. Hart could ever have achieved the iconic status he possesses in cinema culture. Even during his heyday, he was viewed by some critics and moviegoers as stolid, horse-faced, with an emotional disposition of slight but disquieting constipation (1).
However, an aggregation of personal qualities and external circumstances propelled him to the forefront of the national consciousness. In 68 films created over a mere 11-year span (1914-1925), he crafted an authoritative and compelling archetype, and created a moral/mythic context for film Westerns that still defines the genre today.
“Hell’s Hinges” is his most emblematic film, one whose simple power and apposite impulses transcends its most egregious clichés. It is at once reactionary and revolutionary, a film in which deeply felt piety gives its bearer license to unleash Armageddon – an emblematic American gesture that would find its way into other genres, and even invade the historical realm.
Like many who upheld the mythos of America’s Old West, Hart was an Easterner. He was born in Newburgh, New York, in 1864. His father was an itinerant miller, and his impoverished family traveled widely during his childhood. Some of this time was spent in the West and Midwest, at the tail end of the frontier period.
Though it is likely that his contact with this rapidly vanishing culture was glancing and superficial, the shy, daydreaming youth later inflated these memories, beefing them up into a recalled childhood that teemed with intimate contacts with Indians and famous frontiersmen. Hart would parlay this sense of anointment into a weighty sense of self-importance and authenticity in his work.
Hart spent nearly 25 years on American stages, working himself up into the leading ranks of Broadway performers. Adept at Shakespeare, he made his name as the original Messala in the first theatrical version of “Ben-Hur”. Then, in 1905, he filled his first Western role – that of the villainous Cash Hawkins in a production of “The Squaw Man.” From then on, “audiences … associated him with cowboy characters.”(2)
In 1913, Hart was on tour in Cleveland, Ohio, when he saw his first Western film. “It was awful! … I was an actor and I knew the West … The opportunity that I had been waiting for years to come was knocking at my door.”(3) Within a year, Hart set out for California and the movie business.
By the time “Hell’s Hinges” was made, Hart had appeared in 25 films, and captured the audience’s imagination, becoming one of film’s first genuine stars. In this, he was fortunate to fall in with pioneer film producer, and former fellow thespian, Thomas H. Ince, who applied the techniques of Ford’s assembly line to the nascent movie industry, cranking out a massive amount of product in an efficient manner – presaging the Hollywood system (4).
Given his head (and grossly underpaid) by Ince, Hart brought new qualities to the Western, which previously had been known best for chases, scenes of gunplay, and the broad emotionalism of actors such as “Broncho Billy” Anderson (another New Yorker, nee Max Aronson). Although the theme of the bad man achieving redemption through sacrifice was not unknown in the Western, Hart’s restrained gravity on screen gave new weight to as-yet-uncliched figure of the domesticated outlaw.
Hart’s subdued intensity was a marked change from the over-the-top histrionics of his predecessors. His practiced skill at manipulating an audience was honed through his incessant film work. Though his hamminess breaks through at times, the essential, “manly” stillness of his screen persona would be imitated by countless followers – most notably John Wayne.
Hart’s performances were also imbued with the sentiments of the Victorian era – giving a strangely stilted, almost Puritanical bent to even his most vicious characters. In the Hart universe, women are either catspaws of evil or vessels of light, to be spurned or worshipped. Children are devices to rouse pity and inspire sacrifice. In “Hell’s Hinges,” the simple cowboy film becomes a vehicle for an epic confrontation between good and evil.
The actions of men, or their tragic inability to act, dominate here. “Hinges” opens with the depiction of an anti-hero in unique garb – that of a minister. “Bob” Henley (Jack Standing), seen preaching to an assembly of adoring women, is characterized in the film’s intertitles as a mother-dominated, “weak and selfish youth.”
His superiors see seem as unable to stand up to the harsh demands of a city parish, and decide to send him West, “where the people live simply and close to God.” This is in keeping with the common cultural assumption of the time that the West was a more “real,” elemental place, simpler yet more challenging, a place where Darwinian processes could work themselves out unhindered. (Henley, told of this decision, fantasizes briefly about ministering to some lovely, flirtatious senoritas.)
Accompanied by his not-so-subtly-named sister Faith (Clara Williams), Henley finds himself in, not Hell, but a remarkable facsimile thereof. (The brother/sister relationship eerily echoes Hart’s own life. Frequently engaged, briefly married, he spent most of his life with his sister Mary Ellen, who jealously tended him. (5)) An introductory gunfight, taken in an overhead long shot, emphasizes the chaotic, antlike scurrying of the town’s inhabitants.
As was common in the Old West, Placer Centre – better known as Hell’s Hinges – is dominated by the pleasure palace of Silk Miller (Alfred Hollingsworth), who is characterized with casual racism as part Mexican, part snake. As the town’s Mephistopheles, he will bring all his evil talents to bear on destroying Christianity and its followers.
Hart is Miller’s confederate Blaze Tracey, who is indicated as wicked mainly by smoking, drinking, and grinning. (He shoots up a tin can that’s been decorated with a caricature of the new preacher – a nice metaphor for the relative flimsiness of Henley’s character.)
Tracey’s resolve to run the preacher out of town is stymied by his instant attraction to Faith. His poleaxed gaze at her is accompanied by the intertitle: “One who is evil, looking for the first time on that which is good.” At that point, the film’s double set of parallel actions kicks into gear. Henley’s fall is inevitable, as is Tracey’s rise and redemption. Later, in contrast to Henley’s salacious earlier fantasy, Tracey has a vision of the proverbial old rugged cross.
Like a war campaign, the town’s two sides invade each others’ territories. Miller’s soused and rowdy patrons swarm into the barn in which the town’s churchly folk, the “petticoat brigade,” hold their first service – until Tracey forces them out at gunpoint. Later, when Henley is seduced by Miller’s Dolly (Louise Glaum), the church folk, led by Tracey, march into Miller’s saloon as a body and retrieve their fallen shepherd. (One of the strongest shots in the picture is an angled shot that of Tracey marching down the main street toward the camera with the unconscious Henley draped over his shoulders.)
The spiritual coterie builds its church, with Tracey’s help – his conversion process is punctuated by a simple, affecting scene of him reading the Bible, cigarette in one hand, bottle of whiskey at his side. Ironically, Henley’s turn to drink renders him a near-imbecile, and when the town rowdies shout, “To hell with the church! Let’s burn her down!”, Henley gleefully snatches up a torch and leads the way.
A pitched battle results in Henley’s death, the expulsion of the faithful, and the immolation of the church – in one of the film’s many powerful images, Faith weeps over her brother’s corpse in the foreground, while behind, smoke boils and hurtles, wind-whipped, from the isolated figure of the burning house of worship.
The final sequence is undoubtedly what propelled the film to eventual inclusion on America’s prestigious National Film Registry in 1994. “Killin’ mad, and with a gun in each hand,” Tracey, who’s been conveniently out of town during the battle, hears of its outcome from a ragged band of refugees (what happens to the expelled “petticoat brigade”? we are never informed) returns to settle the score.
His extermination of Miller is offhand – blink and you’ll miss it. Filled with a new-found, (self) righteous vengeance, Tracey becomes a bloodthirsty, vindictive embodiment of both the “social gospel,” a popular 19th-century kind of spiritual Manifest Destiny, and its coefficient, “muscular Christianity,” which basically gave its proponents license to whip the tar out of scoffers, nonbelievers, and those of other faiths.
Rivetingly, Tracey backs the saloon’s ne’er-do-wells into a corner and shoots down the oil lamps, turning the building into an inferno (“Hell needs this town, and it’s goin’ back, and goin’ damn quick!”) Shooting down those who try to bolt, he holds the men at gunpoint until the last possible second, then allows them to flee. Remaining behind, Tracey then seems to break focus, wandering distractedly, the flames leaping up behind him. Some judicially placed flares of combustible material to the rear give Hart a hellish nimbus. It’s almost as though his descent into violence has temporarily transformed him into a demon as well, later echoed in Eastwood’s similar climax in 1992’s “Unforgiven.”
Hart strides out of the building and into the streets, moving toward the camera robotically, a death-dealing machine, like some ur-Terminator. Cowpokes and dance-hall girls scatter amid the swirling smoke, “like vague demons in some primitive hell,” (6) as the entire town burns to the ground. There is redemption for Hart alone, and it’s savage. In a peculiar foreshadowing of the Vietnam experience, he destroys the village in order to save it.
No wonder so many claimed the director’s credit for the film – although Charles Swickard is officially credited, it is generally acknowledged that Hart directed at least most of the film, with the help of long-time assistant Clifford Smith. Ince took credit for helming the fire scenes, (7) but the extraordinary strength of the film’s compositions can probably credited to Colorado-born photographer Joe August, who shot over 40 of Hart’s films and went on to be an Oscar-winning cinematographer of such Hollywood classics as “The Informer,” Laughton’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and “Gunga Din.” (8) The climactic fire sequence was shot “day for night,” although prints without the colored gels that indicate day and night scenes make this difficult to remember.
At film’s end, Tracey takes up Henley’s body, and Faith’s hand, leading her into the distance. Though there is a conventional happy ending in sight, what’s gone before has tainted it, and thrown the film’s premise out of joint. Slaughter and wholesale destruction is sanctified by religion … or is it? In this wildly popular film, the audience got to have its cake and eat it too – a dangerous addiction that would crop up, for better or worse, again and again in American cinema.
-- Brad Weismann
Brad Weismann, a cinephile and former comedian, is a journalist, arts writer and playwright who lives with his wife and children in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
1. As cited in “Shooting Cowboys and Indians,” A.B. Smith, pg. 183
2 Smith, pg. 160
3. “My Life East and West,” Hart, pgs. 198-199
4. “The Complete Films of William S. Hart,” Diane Kaiser Koszarski, pg. xv
5. “William S. Hart: Projecting the American West,” Ronald L. Davis, passim.
6. “The Western,” Fenin and Everson, pg. 91
7. “The War, the West and the Wilderness,” Kevin Brownlow, pg. 270
8. Arthur Edelson, www.theasc.com/magazine/aug04/founding/page3.html
Did you know Bogart and Brando almost co-starred in this early noir by Nicholas Ray? I look at a flawed movie that helped Ray prepare for his masterpiece, "Rebel Without a Cause," and that eerily presaged the cultural shift in consciousness that became America's Generation Gap. Thanks to Senses of Cinema for the opportunity to talk about this painfully awkward yet important and overlooked work.
For my friends at Australia's Senses of Cinema, my essay on Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film "Scandal":
Shubun/Scandal was the final film legendary director Akira Kurosawa made before catapulting to international fame with Rashomon (1950). As such, it is a waypost that points both to the past and to the future in the director’s work. This uneven yet vital offering chafes uncomfortably against its genre conventions while it offers moments that presage Kurosawa’s glorious output to come.
Scandal, his tenth film, neatly demarcates the first third of Kurosawa’s directorial career, an apprenticeship that began in 1936 (1). It had taken a few years after World War II’s end for Kurosawa to move out from under the shadow of the censorship imposed by both the Japanese authorities and those of the American Occupation. Scandal, ironically, would focus on the dark side of newfound freedoms, specifically the freedom of the press.
Kurosawa created a trio of gritty, hard-hitting, socially conscious dramas – Yoidore tenshi (Drunken Angel, 1948), Shizukanaru ketto (The Quiet Duel, 1949) and Nora inu (Stray Dog, 1949) – just prior to Scandal. All three films featured the signature acting presences of Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura (and Scandal would be the eighth Shimura/Kurosawa collaboration). These two remarkable performers would maintain positions at the centre of Kurosawa’s repertory company for years to come.
Critically, Scandal has frequently been dismissed as a “courtroom potboiler” (2), a “curiously unbalanced film” (3), and a “sentimental melodrama” (4). Yet a look with fresh eyes reveals a divided but still powerful cinematic document, a hybrid of pessimistic social critique and redemptive fable.
The impetus behind Kurosawa’s choice of subject was his anger over what he termed the “verbal gangsterism” of gossip magazines, which sprang up like weeds in post-war Japan. Suddenly free to print stories about celebrities, with little regard for the truth, these publications ran roughshod over reputations – a significant shock to a formerly closed and highly structured society. As Kurosawa states: “This was not freedom of expression, I felt, it was violence against a person on the part of those who possess the weapon of publicity. I felt that this new tendency had to be stamped out before it could spread.” (5)
The film begins in the countryside in winter. “You an artist, mister?” is the first line of dialogue, spoken by one of a comic trio of country bumpkins as they watch the protagonist, Ichiro Aoye (Mifune), paint the mountain landscape in front of them in a decidedly non-representational manner (he later refers to comparisons of his work to that of Maurice Vlaminck, the early-20th-century Fauvist painter). Aoye is the stereotype of the bold, noble, two-fisted avant-garde artist (reflecting, perhaps, Kurosawa’s own background in art), right down to his pipe and motorcycle.
Aoye is on his way to a mountain spa. A beautiful voice draws the men’s attention, and mounting the hill and emerging into the frame is Miyako Saijo (Yoshiko “Shirley” Yamaguchi), a prominent singer on her way to the same destination as Aoye, who offers her a lift on his bike. This innocent favour is spotted by two journalists for the gossip rag Amour, who then trail the duo to the resort and snap photographs of them that make them appear to be involved sexually with each other.
Yamaguchi seems a perverse pick for a role as a demure, publicity-averse artist. The actress and singer, referred to by some as the “Judy Garland of Japan”, was embroiled in controversy for much of her career. Manchurian-born, she was one of the era’s “seven great singing stars” and was featured in a number of pro-Japan Chinese propaganda films made during World War II. After the war, she was nearly executed for treason – until her Japanese birth certificate was made public (6). (After a few more years in film, Yamaguchi became a successful journalist and politician, and her life story became a hit Japanese stage musical.)
Once the unscrupulous paparazzi have gotten their “scoop”, the scene shifts permanently from open-air pleasures and simple artistry to the gritty city streets and entanglement with the law. The plot cranks along predictably. Amour goes to press with its faux-expose, “Love on a Motorcycle”. Aoye sees a wall plastered with his and Saijo’s image, putters over to the magazine’s shabby offices (the chicken-wire interior walls reinforce the viewer’s sense of entrapment), and punches out the publisher. Soon we are exposed to a wry Capraesque back-and-forth, as publisher and artist issue salvoes at each other to an ever-growing crowd of reporters and cameras.
Still, bits of Kurosawa magic leap out at us. Aoye decides to sue, but can’t convince Saijo to join him. In two beautiful shots, Aoye’s hand snatches up his goggles and gloves, and then he powers away from our point-of-view, sailing in a serene downhill curve parallel to a set of streetcar tracks.
25 minutes into Scandal we meet the character that, according to many critics, derails the film (7). Takashi Shimura plays Hiruta, a weak and self-loathing shyster who looks up Aoye in his drafty, Bohemian studio in the hope of taking up his case against the magazine. “Even scoundrels know the law”, he says, foreshadowing his betrayal to come.
Hiruta leaps out at the viewer for two reasons – one, the magnificent and nuanced performance by Shimura, and two, the relatively flat characterisations that surround him. Kurosawa has dropped a real human being into a forest of cutouts, and Hiruta begins to run away with the picture. Kurosawa cites his inspiration for Hiruta in a man he met in a bar years before – a figure with a bedridden, tubercular daughter who went on and on about his unworthiness compared to her (8). Hiruta, too, has a sickly, saintly child, who Aoye meets inadvertently. Her state convinces him to hire Hiruta.
Meanwhile, a revealing scene with Saijo takes place. Her manager encourages her to embrace the ramifications of the scandal, citing increased ticket sales for her upcoming concerts. Saijo snaps out of her demure state long enough to baldly exclaim the film’s credo: “I don’t want popularity without respect. I won’t be a freak on display!”
But Hiruta is soon seduced by Amour’s publisher into taking money to throw the case. In a shot that neatly parallels that of Aoye’s earlier departure on his motorcycle, a drunken Hiruta, loaded with ill-gotten gifts, is returned to his ramshackle house in an Amour distribution truck. In a lengthy scene, Hiruta attempts to hide this latest moral slide from his daughter, but her tuberculosis seems to have given her psychic powers. Soon Hiruta is babbling his confession to her – “In order to stay undeceived, I had to start deceiving others” – until he passes out at her bedside.
Through to the end of the film, the battle between the by-the-numbers suspense plot and the story of Hiruta’s suffering continues. Clichés such as Hiruta guiltily turning his daughter’s picture to the wall in his office, or a tearjerking scene in which Aoye and Saijo give Hiruta’s daughter a splendid Christmas concert, are interspersed with inspired moments. The sprightly sequence of Aoye’s delivery of a fully decorated Christmas tree to Hiruta’s home on his motorcycle, and the despairing face of Hiruta peering through his own window, his dying daughter’s smiling face reflected in the pane, are marvellous.
Later, Hiruta and Aoye make a drunken expedition to a local dive. (A jab at the influx of American influence is made when the scene opens, with patrons singing “Buttons and Bows”, a top American pop song of the day.) There, stalwart Kurosawa regular Bokuzen Hidari (best known as sad-sack villager Yohei in Shichinin no samurai [The Seven Samurai, 1954]) plays a drunk who speaks of the New Year with a slurred resolve to change his ways. Soon, he and Hiruta and the rest of the bar’s inhabitants break into “Auld Lang Syne” as the camera gracefully swoops round them. Critics such as Donald Richie see this and other aspects of the film as dry runs for Kurosawa’s subsequent masterpiece, Ikiru (Living, 1952) (9).
The soused duo then stumble back past a pond near Hiruta’s home (a call back to the polluted urban fen that plays a central symbolic role in Drunken Angel). The water reflects the starry sky – a quietly miraculous shot that foreshadows Hiruta’s redemption, at least until he yells “Merry Christmas!” for the eighth time and passes out at its verge. The movie then returns to a tone of business as usual. The trial progresses. It turns out that Aoye, at least, knows that Hiruta is cheating him, but hangs on to give him a chance to prove himself. The sudden off-camera death of Hiruta’s daughter pushes him to reveal his complicity with the defendant, saving the day for his slandered clients at the cost of his career and reputation. One scandal drives out another.
Indeed, the upbeat Hollywood-style conclusion – Aoye states to yet another gaggle of pressmen after the trial that Hiruta’s redemption means that “a star came into existence” – is undercut by the final sequence. Hiruta plods forlornly past the pasted-up handbill images of Aoye and Saijo, now torn and tattered. He is as forgotten as all the fuss that blew over him.
Kurosawa’s crusading effort ultimately came largely to naught (he states that “Scandal proved to be as ineffectual a weapon against slander as a praying mantis against a hatchet”) (10). However, Shimura’s agonised, over-the-top portrayal of Hiruta sets the stage for his more restrained and more affecting performance as the similarly meek bureaucrat Watanabe in Ikiru two years later.
Scandal combines several key aspects of Kurosawa’s cinema: his social conscience, his magnificent eye, and his feel for character. All the elements, unblended, are there. That it does not hang together seamlessly makes the quantum leap he made with Rashomon all the more astonishing.
Endnotes
Stuart Galbraith IV, The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Faber and Faber, New York and London, 2001, p. 29.
Michael Koresky, “Eclipse Series 7: Postwar Kurosawa”, The Criterion Collection: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/627.
Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, 3rd ed., University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1996, p. 69.
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2000, p. 180.
Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography, trans. Audie E. Bock, Vintage Books, New York, 1982, p. 177.
Galbraith, pp. 123-125.
Stephen Prince, The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1991, p. 75.
Quentin Tarentino's new film, "Inglourious Basterds," opened Friday. At 12:01 a.m., to be precise. I was there, in spirit at least, ready for action with the fanboys. (Remember, fanboys grow up to become aficionado-men.)
What is it about men-on-a-mission films that's so seductive? Is it the thrill of watching the execution of a cunning plan? The fascinations of watching specialists in death-dealing and espionage assemble? The barely-suppressed homosexual subtext?
All of the above. Aggression and male bonding go hand-in-hand, and men seeking escape relish a film full of violence and explosions, without those pesky female characters that slow things down with "relationships" and "dialogue" -- unless of course they are villainous seductresses or shapely allies.
Tarentino's affection for the subgenre is no secret. The men-on-a-mission subgenre is perilously close to the "caper/heist" subgenre -- one that the director already examined in "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992, and glancingly referenced with a feminist twist in "Pulp Fiction" -- Uma Thurman's character talks about the TV pilot "Fox Force Five."
Both categories deal primarily with codes of masculinity and honor, but in this case, the protagonists aren't criminals subverting a corrupt and vulnerable system, but a group of cynical pros and/or a "rag-tag bunch of misfits" that go above and beyond the call of duty -- in order to kick ass.
The roots of the movement spring from several sources. First, there are the patriotic, propagandistic World War II-era dramas such as "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" (1943, Dir: Delmer Davies), "Sahara" (1943, Dir: Zoltan Korda) and "Objective Burma!" (1945, Dir: Raoul Walsh) that outlined heroic struggles against the enemies of freedom, emphasizing bravery, teamwork and sacrifice.
Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" from 1954 is another key development. Its tale of compassionate mercenaries who aid a poor village in repelling bandits inspired John Sturges' classic Western adaptation, 1960's "The Magnificent Seven" -- which cleaned up at the box office and spawned three increasingly inept sequels of its own.
The third stream of influence issues straight from Howard Hawks, the Golden Age directing genius who was notably a "man's man" and promulgated the tight-lipped tough-guy buddy ethos in films such as "Only Angels Have Wings" (1936). Disgusted by Fred Zinneman's 1952 "High Noon," in which Gary Cooper seeks help from townsfolk who won't lift a finger to help him face a bad man out for revenge. Hawks determined to make his own statement.
According to Grant Tracey in Images Journal, "Hawks disliked the film intensely and felt that Cooper acted inappropriately: a professional never asks amateurs for help, a professional is 'good enough' to do the job himself, or with the aid of fellow right-thinking professionals."
Hawks' "Rio Bravo" (1959) does precisely that, with John Wayne's sheriff scorning offers of assistance from "amateurs" against the bad guys. The film proved so successful that it spawned two Hawks-helmed remakes: "El Dorado" in 1966 and "Rio Lobo" in 1970.
Then came Alistair MacLean. The prolific Scottish thriller novelist wrote the template for the men-on-a-mission saga with "The Guns of Navarone" in 1957. Its adaptation onto celluloid four years later under the direction of J. Lee Thompson put all the elements together, triggering an avalanche of similar projects, most set during World War II.
So raise your glass to the following selections. For better or worse, they typify the film fantasy of a violent job well done:
Operation Crossbow (1965) Dir: Michael Anderson. With George Peppard, Tom Courtenay, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Paul Henreid. Those damned Germans are building rockets in Peenemunde -- they've got to be stopped!
Bad Guy: Anthony Quayle.
Babe: Sophia Loren.
Quote: "If you can just get inside that research site, then you will have made great leaps and bounds towards the target."
The Heroes of Telemark (1965) Dir: Anthony Mann. With Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Michael Redgrave. Those damned Germans are making "heavy water," essential for atom-bomb production, in Norway -- they've got to be stopped!
Bad Guy: Anton Diffring (one of the all-time great Evil Nazis).
Babe: Ulla Jacobsson.
Quote: "Don't you ever make the mistake by underrating the Germans. By any means."
The Professionals (1966) Dir: Richard Brooks. With Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Ralph Bellamy. When Mexican bandits kidnap a rancher's wife, a team of experts are sent south to get her back.
Bad Guy: Jack Palance.
Babe: Claudia Cardinale.
Quote: "So what else is on your mind besides hundred-proof women, 90-proof whiskey, and 14-carat gold?"
The Dirty Dozen (1967) Dir: Robert Aldrich. With Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Clint Walker, Trini Lopez. Twelve condemned Army criminals are given the chance for a pardon if they survive a secret mission to parachute behind enemy lines and kill most of the German High Command.
Bad Guy: Robert Ryan (and he's supposed to be on our side!)
Babe: Dora Reisser.
Quote: "Killin' generals could get to be a habit with me."
Where Eagles Dare (1968) Dir: Brian G. Hutton. With Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Michael Hordern. In another MacLean adaptation, commandos must parachute behind enemy lines to rescue an American general -- or is he?
Bad Guy: Derren Nesbitt (and isn't that Anton Diffring back there?)
Babes: Mary Ure, Ingrid Pitt.
Quote: "Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy, over."
Ice Station Zebra (1968) Dir: John Sturges. With Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, Patrick McGoohan. ANOTHER MacLean adaptation, this one set during the Cold War. A submarine mission to rescue injured scientists at the North Pole is a cover for the retrieval of a spy satellite.
Bad Guy: Alf Kjellin as Col. Ostrovsky.
Babe: Not one woman in the entire film.
Quote: "The incident is close-ed."
Play Dirty (1968) Dir: Andre de Toth. With Michael Caine, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green, Harry Andrews. Leery petroleum exec must join British mission to destroy German oil supplies in North Africa.
Bad Guy: Richard Harris, who got fired from the production early on.
Babe: Vivian Pickles as "German Nurse."
Quote: "Sometimes you need to learn that playing by the rules gets you nowhere."
The Devil's Brigade (1968) Dir: Andrew McLaglen. With William Holden, Cliff Robertson, Vince Edwards, Claude Akins, Richard Jaeckel, Harry Carey Jr., Carroll O'Connor, Michael Rennie, Dana Andrews. Americans and Canadians gotta get along in order to take impregnable Nazi fortress in Italy.
Bad Guy: Paul Busch.
Babe: Gretchen Wyler.
Quote: "Faith moves mountains. It doesn't take them."
Five for Hell (1969) Dir: Giancarlo Parolini (as Frank Kramer). With . . . um, never mind. Nutty G.I.s have to steal secret plans from Nazis -- behind enemy lines, of course. Bad Guy: Klaus Kinski.
Babe: Margaret Lee.
Quote: "Certo, Fraulein."
Kelly's Heroes (1970) Dir: Brian G. Hutton. With Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland, Carroll O'Connor, Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, Stuart Margolin. The perfect, one-time-only intersection of mission film, caper flick and dark counterculture comedy -- complete with hippie tank unit. Watch for the spaghetti-western parody sequence at the end.
Bad Guy: Karl-Otto Alberty.
Babe: None visible.
Quote: "We got our own ammunition, it's filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes... pretty pictures."
Too Late the Hero (1970) Dir: Robert Aldrich. With Cliff Robertson, Michael Caine, Denholm Elliott, Ian Bannen, Harry Andrews. An attempt to recreate the success of "Dirty Dozen" with the Japanese instead of the Germans as the target.
Bad Guy: Ken Takakura.
Babe: Nope, sorry.
Quote: "Sometimes I feel like I should just give up the ghost and be done with it!"
Raid on Rommel (1971) Dir: Henry Hathaway. With Richard Burton and not much else. Commando raid on Tobruk goes awry, and officer must utilize misfit medical unit instead. Bad Guy: Wolfgang Preiss.
Babe: Danielle De Metz.
Quote: "I don't care whether you pay her off in lollipops or cut out her tongue with a dull knife. She's your responsibility."
The Eagle Has Landed (1976) Dir: John Sturges. With Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Anthony Quayle, Jean Marsh. This time, it's the Germans who play dress-up and try foolhardy attempt to kidnap Winston Churchill.
Bad Guy: Donald Pleasance -- as Heinrich Himmler!
Babe: Jenny Agutter.
Quote: "My God, you're a German!"
Inglorious Bastards (1978) Dir: Enzo G. Castellani. With Bo Svenson, Fred Williams, Ian Bannen. The inspiration for Tarentino is an awful low-budget "Dirty Dozen" knockoff, complete with bad miniature work and naked machine-gun-toting SS women.
Bad Guys: Numerous, and constantly leaping about in death throes.
Babe: Debra Berger.
Quote: "How's it going there, Colonel?" repeated 8,000 times as said officer tries to steal gizmo from V-2 prototype.
The Wild Geese (1978) Dir: Andrew McLaglen. With Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Roger Moore, Hardy Kruger. Mercenaries must rescue imprisoned African leader -- their job becomes much tougher when they are betrayed.
Bad Guy: Stewart Granger (and he's supposed to be on their side! Sounds familiar?)
Babe: Rosalind Lloyd.
Quote: "Good luck to you, you Godless murderers."
Force 10 from Navarone (1978) Dir: Guy Hamilton. With Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, Edward Fox, Carl Weathers. The "Navarone" gang are back together, fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia.
Bad Guy: Franco Nero.
Babe: Barbara Bach.
Quote: "You're Nicolai . . . you're the man who blew us in Greece!"
The Dogs of War (1980) Dir: John Irvin. With Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely. Mercenaries are paid to depose African dictator so that a pro-West one can take his place.
Bad Guy: Illario Bisi-Pedro.
Babe: JoBeth Williams
Quote: "Everybody comes with me, goes home."
Attack Force Z (1982) Dir: Tim Burstall. With John Phillip Law, Sam Neill, Mel Gibson. Aussie commandos must rescue plane-crash victims from Japanese -- as well as defector with secret that could end the war.
Babe: Sylvia Chang.
Saving Private Ryan (1998) Dir: Steven Spielberg. With Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel, Matt Damon. D-Day squad must find and bring home the last surviving brother of fallen soldiers.
Bad Guy: Joerg Stadler.
Babe: Nah.
Quote: "James, earn this . . . earn it."
Black Hawk Down (2001) Dir: Ridley Scott. With Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Sam Shepard. Somalia, 1993. A plan to kidnap warlord's lieutenants leads to a disastrous firefight in Mogadishu.
Bad Guy: The entire population of Mogadishu, evidently.
Babe: Nix.
Quote: "Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way."
This analysis piece first appeared in Senses of Cinema in September of 2005.
Porky’s Duck Hunt
by Brad Weismann
Porky’s Duck Hunt (1937 USA 7 mins)
Source: NFVLS Prod Co: Warner Bros. Prod: Leon Schlesinger Dir: Fred (Tex) Avery Anim: Virgil Ross, Robert Cannon, Robert Clampett (uncredited) Mus Dir: Carl W. Stalling Voice: Mel Blanc (Porky, Daffy), Billy Bletcher (Upstairs Neighbour, Bass Fish)
Cast: Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, “Rin-Tin-Tin”
Even icons have to start somewhere.
Just as film divas of flesh and blood began their careers with humble bit parts, so did that of that temperamental, greedy, cynical waterfowl, Daffy Duck. And the unassuming cartoon short in which he first appears, Porky’s Duck Hunt, is significant not only as his debut, but as the launching point for the snappy, smart-ass tone that would separate Warner Bros.’ cartoons from its competitors, and keep their work relevant and resonant today.
American animators in the 1930s were a scruffy, itinerant bunch. Most bounced around from studio to studio, serving apprenticeships in the cartoon production houses of such figures as Walt Disney, Walter Lantz (best known as the home of Woody Woodpecker), the Fleischer Brothers (Betty Boop, Koko the Clown), and Disney’s once and future partner, Ub Iwerks. Serendipitously, an irreverent and rowdy crew came together at Leon Schlesinger Productions, in a ramshackle, bug-infested back-lot bungalow that later earned the affectionate sobriquet of “Termite Terrace” (1).
For a time this group included such leading lights as Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and Bob Clampett, all working under the loose supervision and raucous inspiration of Fred “Tex” Avery (who lost the vision in one eye during an office paper-clip fight!). The team enjoyed that most happy of fates to be found inside any corporate structure – they were largely ignored. Left to their own devices, they began gradually and collectively to shrug off the sickly-sweet sentimentality of the Disney studio’s approach, as well as the nominally logical, linear, kid-oriented whimsies that emerged from other rivals’ drawing boards.
In terms of structure, Porky’s Duck Hunt uses elements of both the “hunted-outsmarts-hunted” paradigm that dominated “Warner Bros. cartoons” (although that studio ultimately owned the characters, Schlesinger was, in essence, an independent contractor until Warners bought him out in 1944) until its demise, and the hodgepodge “riffing” technique that was in common use up to that point. This latter “attack” would take a generic subject (the city, hunting, hospitals) and wring all the gags the creators could out of it.
The opening of Porky’s Duck Hunt has a Pickwickian resonance to it. To the jaunty musical strains of “A-Hunting We Will Go”, the camera pans right across an assembly of objects – a manual on “How to Duck Hunt”, and several empty boxes labelled One Sure Fire Shotgun, One Wear-Well Hunting Suit, Assorted Duck Decoys, and 25 Shells. We then find our hero, Porky, admiring himself in a full-length mirror in his otherwise tumbledown apartment.
Porky would be the last of the studio’s harmlessly “cute” leading characters. His toddler-like appearance, clumsiness, and gentle disposition marks him as a figure geared to appeal to preliterates. Even his stutter contributes to the pity the audience may have felt for him. Joe Dougherty, Porky’s original voice, was genuinely afflicted with one, and in this film, Mel Blanc “plays” Porky for the first time, retaining the character’s distinctive speech impediment.
Poor Porky is all thumbs – he frightens his pet dog, and then accidentally blasts a hole in his ceiling. This prompts a knock at his door, and a punch in his face, from his upstairs neighbour, who displays the buckshot hole in his pants as he turns to go back upstairs.
The scene quickly shifts to the wild, as Porky cautions his dog to “be very, very quiet” – foreshadowing Elmer Fudd’s lisping catchphrase in his appearances with Bugs Bunny (and sometimes Daffy Duck). The gags, good, bad and indifferent, begin to flow. A single duck flies overhead, prompting a phalanx of hidden hunters to emerge, blasting away – and missing. A dog-headed, cross-eyed hunter (the soundtrack dredges up “I Only Have Eyes for You” – Carl Stalling’s nimble manipulation of pop tunes is displayed here) brings down a brace of airplanes.
Finally, Daffy enters the picture, landing amid a raft of decoys and quacking. Porky winks at the camera – not the first time the fourth wall will be broken here. He wades out under the surface of the lake and pops up, getting the drop on Daffy. The duck cringes but remains in place patiently, so that the joke will play out (the gun squirts a harmless stream of water). Already we are in new territory. This is vaudeville, not naturalism. Avery and company seem to have an unstoppable need to transcend the conventions of the still-new medium. To mockingly play to the audience is the most effective way to get that audience to subvert its expectations, a tendency that only grows as the years pass at Termite Terrace. Now we are complicit with the animators – and now there’s a reason for adults to keep an eye on the screen as well.
More tangential joking breaks up the flow of the narrative. Daffy alighting on an unlikely floating barrel of booze leads to its blasting, transitioning to a chorus of drunken fish crooning “On Moonlight Bay” in close harmony. Later, a hand holding a sign will point out “This is an electric eel, folks”, right before Daffy swallows it and lights up – a contemptuous deflation of a bad joke.
Daffy’s first speech erupts from another interruption. Porky downs Daffy, his dog makes like a retriever (“Go g-g-get him, R-R-R-Rin-Tin-Tin!” exclaims the ecstatic swine). When the two animals return, it is Daffy who has rescued the unconscious pooch. Quickly, he whips out a sheaf of paper and cries, “Hey, that wasn’t in the script!”
Daffy replies, “Don’t let it worry you, skipper – I’m just a crazy darn-fool duck! HOO-HOO! HOO-HOO!” And away he goes, strutting, flipping and bouncing away across the surface of the lake. Clearly, after this, anything goes. Although Daffy was destined to change from pure zany to disgruntled egotist, the foundation of the basic driving conflict in Warners animation shorts is here. Hunter and hunted, predator and prey – only the damned quarry won’t cooperate! The Elmer/Bugs, Tweety/Sylvester, Road Runner/Coyote dynamic is established. (In fact, a loose remake of this film made the following year, Porky’s Hare Hunt, gives us a rabbit that, two years later, will crystallise into the Bugs Bunny we know and love.)
Later in the film, Porky again draws a bead on Daffy. The gun won’t fire. Tsk-tsking, Daffy takes the gun from Porky, fixes it, and returns it. “It’s just me again!” Daffy announces. “HOO-HOO! HOO-HOO!” Even the target’s assistance can’t facilitate his demise.
The seeds of the transition of Porky from leading man to sidekick is in that exchange. Daffy’s relentless putdowns and humiliation of Porky, as well as his grandstanding, turns Porky into a comic foil – a role he would play to perfection in such outings as Chuck Jones’ Drip-Along Daffy (1951), Deduce, You Say (1956) and Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century (1951). Only in his few appearances as the disgruntled owner of a nervous, mute Sylvester (Jones’ Scaredy Cat, 1948, Claws for Alarm, 1954, Jumpin’ Jupiter, 1955), or as the unwilling master of the little-remembered but strongly conceived Charlie Dog (Jones’ Little Orphan Airedale, 1947, The Awful Orphan, 1949) will he get to re-exercise any kind of dominance.
As Porky’s Duck Hunt plays out, the padding becomes more apparent. Porky’s shooting a hole in his boat prompts Joe Penner to rise from the water, delivering his then-familiar catchphrase “Wanna buy a duck?” (2) Porky jackhammers himself into the ground with the force of his firing. Finally, Porky’s dog swallows his duck call and begins to hiccup-quack, and the two flee for home, pursued by shot and shell.
Porky returns home. Continuity is completely abandoned – it bears no resemblance to the apartment Porky left at the beginning of the cartoon. Outside his window, a flock of ducks led by Daffy display themselves, in spite, as a shooting-gallery menagerie. Porky aims, but his final impotence is underscored when he discovers, “D-d-d-d-doggone it! No more bullets!” He throws the gun to the ground – and of course, we get a reprise of a blast through the ceiling, and the neighbour’s angry retaliation.
All in all, the introduction of Daffy, as well as the full debut of Blanc (the defining voice talent of his generation) and the intimations of the “license” to come, all make this short a groundbreaking effort.
Endnotes:
1. Camera Three: The Boys from Termite Terrace, CBS-TV documentary, 1975, passim.
2. Joe Penner (nee Josef Pinter), 1904-1941, was an American vaudeville and radio comic who enjoyed a brief but spectacularly large burst of fame during the years 1933 and 1934. His famous non sequiturs “Wanna buy a duck?” and “Oh, you NAS-ty man!”, as well as his nyuck-nyuck laugh, made him the first comedy star of the radio era. See entry on Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0672101/bio.
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