Movie Review: On The Beach (1959)

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Cold War Drama

Director: Stanley Kramer

Starring: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, Donna Anderson

Running Time: 134 minutes

Synopsis: In 1964, a nuclear war annihilates humanity in the Northern Hemisphere. As Australia awaits the arrival of deadly radiation, Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) docks the US Navy's nuclear submarine USS Sawfish in Melbourne. Still grieving the loss of his family, Towers is introduced to Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), who is seeking a romance. Towers also meets Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) of the Australian Navy, who is struggling to comfort his wife Mary (Donna Anderson). Nuclear scientist Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire, in his first dramatic role) joins them on a reconnaissance mission to measure radiation levels over the Pacific, a journey that will reach San Francisco then San Diego, the source of a mysterious radio signal.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Nevil Shute's cautionary novel packs enormous quiet power, portraying humanity's demise through the eyes of the final set of survivors, resigned to their fate. John Paxton's script deftly avoids melodrama, instead allowing creeping dread to emerge in potent moments of realization, regret, and despair. The military, scientific, and civilian perspectives are provided equal weight through the stories of Towers, Osborn, Moira, and the Holmes family, and gradually themes of loss and lament grab hold at individual and collective levels. Director Stanley Kramer affords even minor characters (the San Francisco sailor, the Australian Navy commander and his assistant) respectful moments, and the closing embraces of finality have rarely been matched for sheer poignancy.

What Does Not Work As Well: The slow pacing allows the immensity of extinction to settle like a heavy fog, contrasting prolonged interactions with the miniscule time remaining for life on Earth, but the running length still borders on excessive.

Conclusion: Unthinkable tragedy distilled to the essence of human desire for meaningful connections.



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Movie Review: Friendly Persuasion (1956)

A family drama set during the Civil War, Friendly Persuasion explores Quaker culture with beauty and patience, unencumbered by an urgent plot.

In Indiana of 1862, Jess Birdwell (Gary Cooper) is the head of a pacifist Quaker family consisting of his wife Eliza (Dorothy McGuire), son Josh (Anthony Perkins), daughter Mattie (Phyllis Love) and youngest son Little Jess (Richard Eyer). They live on a farm, attend the local Quaker place of worship, and maintain friendly relations with neighbour Sam Jordan (Robert Middleton) and his son Gard (Peter Mark Richman), a Union soldier romantically pursuing Mattie during his furloughs.

Eliza is the more strict parent, while Jess tries to navigate pathways between religious beliefs and pragmatic day-to-day life. The couple gently clash over Jess's desire to buy an organ, and how much leeway to allow Mattie in her budding romance with Gard. Meanwhile the turmoil of the Civil War is getting closer, and Josh has to decide if taking up arms is ever a good thing.

An adaptation of a 1945 novel by Jessamyn West, Friendly Persuasion is a 137 minute travelogue introducing Quaker culture through a sympathetic lens. Michael Wilson (uncredited due to being blacklisted) wrote the screenplay, and William Wyler directs with an emphasis on rich colours, quaint settings, elegant rural scenery, and no intention of creating too much conflict.

Many scenes are ponderously long, and plot points are few, far-between and repetitive. A day out at the local fair seems to last for a day. Jess and Sam Jordan have an ongoing friendly rivalry about who owns the faster horse, and this eats up an inordinate amount of screen time. Jess and Josh embark on a trip to sell seeds and end-up at the farm of the widow Hudspeth (Marjorie Main) and her three unmarried daughters. They salivate over Josh in a mildly humorous but prolonged and ultimately inconsequential episode. Little Jess tangles repeatedly with the admittedly cute Samantha the Goose.

The Ellsworth Fredericks cinematography and music by Dimitri Tiomkin contribute to a languid sense of picturesque tranquillity.The low key adventures do serve to draw out the characters, Jess emerging as a mischievous renegade compared to his more buttoned-down wife Eliza. Josh and Mattie are both growing into free thinking adults willing to test the rules, their independent spirit nourished by their father. 

The final 40 minutes veer towards some actual drama: Confederate rebels close in on the area, and Josh is torn between Quaker principles of non-violence and the reality of an armed enemy almost at the door. Ultimately Jess, Eliza and Josh each confront mortal danger in their own way, with a broom taking the brunt of their war. Even in the midst of battle, Friendly Persuasion sweeps away any threats to familial serenity. 



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Movie Review: Pretty Poison (1968)

A psychological crime drama, Pretty Poison is a maliciously twisted tale of small-town manipulation and murder.

An awkward young man with a delusional mind, Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) is released from a mental institution after years of treatment. He was incarcerated for burning down his aunt's house, but now his parole officer Morton Azenauer (John Randolph) believes Dennis is sufficiently rehabilitated and able to reintegrate into society.

After drifting for a year and not reporting to Azenauer, Dennis finds work at a riverfront chemical factory in a small town. Vibrant high school majorette Sue Ann Stepenek (Tuesday Weld) catches his eye, and he seduces her by claiming to be an undercover CIA agent investigating a foreign conspiracy to poison the community by dumping pollution into the river. As their relationship becomes more serious, Dennis meets Sue Ann's domineering mother (Beverly Garland), who sees right through him.

But Sue Ann appears impressed and excited to be involved in espionage, and agrees to help Dennis sabotage the factory. But then a murder is committed, and the fun and games turn deadly serious.

A deceptively low-key story of damaged minds plotting mayhem, Pretty Poison explores the different faces of evil. The script by Lorenzo Semple Jr., adapting a Stephen Geller book, reveals its secrets slowly but surely, allowing malevolent intentions to seep into the community much like the pollution being released into the river. 

In an efficient 89 minutes, director Noel Black creates a sense of creeping unease. Dennis is clearly unwell, his attempts at reintegrating into society hanging by a thread. His current imagination and past record threaten his employment, and his wild CIA agent story is surely no basis for a long-lasting romance. It's only a matter of time before his life falls apart.

But like his malfunctioning brain, all is not what it seems. Just when Dennis appears to be winning Sue Ann's unconstrained affection and acting out his juvenile spy adventure, Pretty Poison embraces a stunning twist and true immorality emerges out of quaint charm. Fantasies and small lies evolve into criminal acts then violence, as acts of deceit first overlap then collide. The line separating victim and antagonist is suddenly blurred, and sexuality emerges as both a weapon of exploitation and a close companion to the thrill of criminality.

Anthony Perkins successfully transposes his Psycho-created troubled young man persona into a less secluded and more social milieu. Tuesday Weld matches him with a camouflaged and revelatory performance, creating in Sue Ann a memorable and multi-layered screen presence. 

Pretty Poison first laments the perceptible struggles of a broken mind, then gloriously surrenders to more insidious threats hiding within a community's heart.



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Movie Review: Winter Kills (1979)

A conspiracy thriller with satirical elements, Winter Kills boasts a superlative cast but fails on all other counts.

Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the half-brother of Tim Kegan, the ex-president of the United States who was assassinated 19 years prior in Philadelphia, supposedly by lone gunman Willie Arnold. Tim's rise to power was engineered by his wealthy industrialist father Pa (John Huston), who resents Nick's lack of interest in politics. The Kegan empire is managed by a technology and information hub under the watchful eye of the mysterious Cerruti (Anthony Perkins).

Now Nick witnesses the deathbed confession of assassin Fletcher (Joe Spinell), who reveals he was part of the multi-rifle hit squad that killed Tim. Nick retrieves Fletcher's rifle as evidence, and immediately his life is endangered. He seeks the help of his girlfriend and journalist Yvette (Belinda Bauer) to delve into the case, while Pa arranges for Nick to meet with a variety of shadowy characters including eccentric power broker Z.K. Dawson (Sterling Hayden) and mob boss Frank Mayo (Tomas Milian).

Nick learns about the history and Cuban connections of small-time hood Joe Diamond (Eli Wallach), who was hired to kill Arnold. But the more Nick investigates Tim's death, the less sense the entire case makes.

Having overcome a bizarre three-year production history involving drug and soft-core porn money, a murdered producer, and multiple shutdowns due to financial problems, Winter Kills is still a lavish production with a gorgeously rich aesthetic. Director William Richert and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond create grand sets suitable for the unconstrained wealth of the Kegan family, including mansions and private hospital and hotel rooms consistent with the rewards of infinite income backed by hidden corruption.

And the luxury surrounds a cast brimming with talent. Almost every role is occupied by a recognizable name, with none other than an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor making a silent appearance in a couple of key scenes late on. Toshiro Mifune, Dorothy Malone, Richard Boone and Ralph Meeker are among the other performers adding depth and interest in every corner.

But unfortunately, the adaptation of Richard Condon's book falls short where it matters. Winter Kills is intended as a satirical jab at Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories with an added layer of thrills and shocking moments, but never gets the balance right. Too often Richert's script plays straight, dour, and dumb, people dying all around Nick, his life endangered at every turn, and every revelation erasing what went before it. What may have been intended as dry humour contracts into emotionless crustiness.

The self-defeating foolishness of various overlapping and contradictory conspiracy scenarios is the point, but Richert never pauses long enough to properly celebrate the moment. The film blurs into a succession of irrelevant names from the past and present pointing the finger at each other, then dying, with no consequence or impact.

Meanwhile John Huston as Pa is given free rein to munch the scenery with an exhibition of absolute power filled with absurdist winks. Huston appears to be in a movie all his own, none of the other characters sharing the twinkle in his eye.

With Nick maintaining a fast investigative pace and Jeff Bridges shirtless about 50 percent of the time (and sometimes altogether nude), Winter Kills maintains a wacky watchability, but only as witness to the curiously constructed narrative carnage.

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The Movies Of Anthony Perkins

All movies starring Anthony Perkins and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

On The Beach (1959)

Psycho (1960)

Pretty Poison (1968)

Someone Behind The Door (1971)

The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Murder On The Orient Express (1974)

Winter Kills (1979)

ffolkes (1980)

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Movie Review: ffolkes (1980)

A routine action flick, ffolkes (also known as North Sea Hijack and Assault Force) enjoys a stellar cast hampered by a wet noodle of a script.

In England, Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore) runs a private team of counter-terrorism operatives specializing in marine missions. He is asked by insurance giant Lloyd's of London to prepare contingency plans for a possible future threat against offshore oil platforms. Sure enough, a few months later a team of terrorists disguised as reporters gain access to the North Sea supply boat Esther, with Captain Olafsen (Jack Watson) and his crew forced to comply with orders from terrorist leader Lou Kramer (Anthony Perkins) and his goons.

Using Esther's supply mission as cover, Kramer's diving team surreptitiously place explosives first around drilling rig Ruth, then also around the much larger oil production platform Jennifer. Kramer demands a £25 million ransom. The British Prime Minister turns to Admiral Francis Brindsen (James Mason) to lead the counterstrike, and he reluctantly teams up with fflokes to deal with the threat.

After the relative success of The Wild Geese, ffolkes (an old English name spelled with two lower-case f's) followed as another British collaboration between director Andrew V. McLaglen and star Roger Moore, with a dash of American name recognition this time in the form of Anthony Perkins. With Moore just a bit past his prime as James Bond, ffolkes was also an attempt to tweak his image. Here he is an eccentric cat-loving, humourless and bearded misogynist, still equipped with the one-liners but delivered with a stern arrogance rather than a knowing wink.

While no action film is expected to be fully free of plot holes, the Jack Davies script is particularly inept. Some ransom fundamentals are utterly absent: Kramer never gives instructions as to how he wants the money delivered, nor does he reveal how he intends to make his getaway on the open seas. Kramer's background and motivation are similarly vacant. Perkins is left with nothing to do but sit on Esther's bridge with a singular expression (boredom?) hissing the same ultimatums.

Moore and Mason don't fare much better. A long and dull stretch features ffolkes and the hapless Brindsen doing nothing on board Jennifer, ffolkes literally knitting as they wait for the climax to arrive. The premise of the British government turning over the entire operation to a privateer and then allowing ffolkes to issue orders to the Prime Minister strains all credibility. Something about budget cuts is unconvincingly mumbled.

McLaglen does better in a short but moderately effective final assault, not everything going according to plan and ffolkes having to improvise on the fly to rescue the mission. Even then, contrived sloppiness is needed to manufacture cheap thrills.

ffolkes offers a reasonably intriguing premise, but does not capitalize.

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Movie Review: The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

A semi-biographical western, The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean takes a relatively lighthearted look at a legendary character.

Gambler and outlaw Roy Bean (Paul Newman) arrives in lawless Texas territory west of the Pecos River. Roughed up at an isolated whorehouse, he is helped by Mexican girl Maria Elena (Victoria Principal) and single handedly disposes of his aggressors. Reverend LaSalle (Anthony Perkins) is passing through the area and helps bury the bodies. Finding a thick textbook of Texas law, Bean installs himself as the local judge. He converts a group of outlaws including Tector Crites (Ned Beatty) into his team of Marshalls, and runs the local saloon as his own courthouse.

Bean is obsessed with celebrated east-coast singer Lillie Langtry (Ava Gardner), adorning his walls with her images and following her news through the New York Times. Gradually a community grows around the rough law-and-order halo provided by Bean. Over the years Bean and Maria Elena adopt a bear, and he grapples with crazed outlaw Bad Bob (Stacy Keach) and conniving lawyer Frank Gass (Roddy McDowall).

Very loosely based on the antics of the real character (who also featured in such films as The Westerner from 1940), The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean is amiable but never quite gets its tone right. Director John Huston steers star Paul Newman towards fluffy Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid territory, complete with a silly romantic musical interlude featuring a frolic with Maria Elena and a pet bear as the prop instead of the bicycle.

The problem is that the John Milius script wants to be somewhere else entirely. According to this screenplay, the only thing notable about Roy Bean is his crusty and caustic character, a self-appointed lawman quick to shoot outlaws in the back and hang others without a second thought. The smooth, suave and charming Newman struggles badly with crusty and caustic, saying the words but unable to overcome his instinctive charm.

Despite the fundamental piece of miscasting, Huston manages to construct a decently enjoyable western. The film is episodic, which in this case helps. Bean's obsession with Langtry and his low-key relationship with Maria Elena are the only constants. Other events and characters come and go in a series of vignettes, some drawn from history and others clearly inflated by legend or totally made up. Huston never dwells for too long in any one place, and the two hours pass swiftly.

The opening sequence is a highlight, with Bean barely surviving a lynching and coming back with a vengeance to clean out the vermin. Later Huston injects sharp humour with a depressed drunk who is allowed to shoot-up the place until he takes aim at the wrong target and suffers the consequences.

The film also carries the requisite look. The setting is remote, dusty and even as a community grows around Bean's courthouse, Huston maintains a desolate frontier aesthetic. Judge Roy Bean may have created his own version of civilization, but it was always rough between the edges.

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Movie Review: Someone Behind The Door (1971)

A slow-paced psychological crime thriller, Someone Behind The Door is a French production set in England that offers some intriguing moments, but then over-thinks its own boundaries and drifts into the silly sphere.

In the small English town of Folkestone near Dover, Doctor Laurence Jeffries (Anthony Perkins) is a neurosurgeon with an interest in psychology. When a stranger (Charles Bronson) suffering from severe amnesia is found wandering among the sand dunes and dropped off at the hospital, Laurence takes him to his own home, claiming that he will try to help. Hesitantly, the stranger accepts the hospitality despite the doctor's somewhat creepy behaviour.

Laurence's wife Frances (Jill Ireland) asserts that she is off on a trip to London to visit her brother. Actually she is travelling to Paris to meet her lover Paul (Henri Garcin). Laurence is aware of his wife's infidelity, and starts to plot a complex revenge, using the stranger's lack of memory as an opportunity to have another man do the dirty work.

Severe memory loss is always a warning sign of a plot looking for a cheap device to play with, and Someone Behind The Door is no different. The stranger's amnesia is an empty vessel filled by Dr. Jeffries to concoct his revenge fantasy, but the script (co-written by director Nicolas Gessner) veers into extreme convolutions requiring plenty of suspended disbelief. Past the manipulation of a confused soul, Jeffries' plot simply does not hold together, and the amount of explaining he would be required to provide overpowers any limited amount of cleverness he may think he is demonstrating.

Gessner does succeed in setting a deliberate, slow and thoughtful pace, Someone Behind The Door at least allowing its two main characters time to plot, assess, and shape each step in their chess game. The setting of an interesting house in a sleepy seaside town is a plus, and the film demonstrates good potential as a stage production.

The acting is more entertaining than good. Charles Bronson stretches more than usual as the stranger, a character struggling against total amnesia and not even aware of his own name. It's quite the different role for Bronson, and despite frequently dropping into close-to-camp territory, he has fun conveying confusion, frustration and uncertainty. Perkins is expressionless, but his eyes work overtime to reveal the dark plotting going on behind the passive face. And Jill Ireland, in a relatively small role, appears more fetching and vibrant compared to most of her other performances in Bronson vehicles.

Someone Behind The Door ends with confrontation, anger and violence, the best laid plan reduced to a single heartbeat connecting two desperate people who have run out of options. It's more artistic than realistic, the person behind the door ultimately less important than the person in the mirror.

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Movie Review: Psycho (1960)

A masterpiece of horror film-making, Alfred Hitchcock invents the spooky slasher genre and packages it with lust, larceny, and the mother of all personality disorders. Psycho is disturbing, terrifying and unforgettable.

Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is having a steamy affair with married man Sam Loomis (John Gavin). Desperate for money, she steals $40,000 in cash from her Phoenix-based employer and heads for the highway towards California. After an unwelcome encounter with a highway patrol officer, Marion takes the back roads and finally stops for the night at the isolated Bates Motel. She is the only guest at the 12 room facility, while owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) lives with his reclusive mother in the large mansion overlooking the motel.

Over dinner, Norman takes an unhealthy interest in Marion, while she notices that Norman's shrill mother seems to still have an unusually stringent hold on him. After dinner, Marion is attacked and brutally knifed to death while taking a shower. A private investigator (Martin Balsam), Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) and Loomis are soon snooping around the Bates Motel and the adjoining mansion, trying to uncover what happened to Marion.

Hitchcock starts Psycho with illicit love, progresses to theft, marches into multiple murders, and ends with an examination of the damage that severe psychosis can cause. As the film progresses, the unfolding criminal acts gain in intensity and damage, until Hitchcock finally takes us into the murderous mind, busy constructing its own reality and capable of unimaginable horror.

The shower murder is rightfully one of the most celebrated scenes in the history of the movies. With rapid editing heightened by Bernard Herrman's shrieking music score, the knife is never shown to make contact with Marion, and only the killer's stabbing arm is ever revealed. By showing less yet willing the eye to imagine more, Hitchcock creates terror more with what is imagined than what is actually seen.

The Bates family mansion, brooding on the hill above the motel, is a classic setting for resident evil. The dark and mysterious house, with Norman's mother holding court in the upstairs window, oozes unadulterated malice, and Hitchcock maximizes its impact by keeping most of the action in its shadow. Few scenes in Psycho take place inside the house: most of the dastardly deeds, from murders schemed and committed to bodies dumped in the swamp, take place under the mansion's approving gaze.

Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh create roles that became forever intertwined with their names. Perkins is simply chilling as Norman Bates, a character pretending hard to be normal but clearly afflicted with an odd behavioural disorder that just cannot be properly pinpointed.

Leigh is superb in portraying a conflicted Marion, easily seducing a married man but unable herself to resist the temptation of easy money. Marion regrets her actions when a seemingly straightforward road journey starts to unravel. She eventually makes the decision to return to Phoenix and make things right, but her criminal act has already condemned her to a grotesque destiny.

Psycho is an encounter with a deeply unhinged individual skulking in the most ominous of locales. The genius of Hitchcock lies in making Norman Bates a compelling character worth conversing with, and the Bates Motel an instantly recognizable, must-visit destination to shower in.

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