ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Ellemeno]

Great intermission, Dot, I dimly remember that song.  Paul, I never knew that was what Tea and Sympathy was about!

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

An Ed Wood movie. An IMDb commenter describes it thus:

The 1956 sociological study of a the serious, but rarely spoken about, problem of armed robbery of gas stations perpetrated by affluent young women in tight sweaters during the mid 1950's is one that should surely receive further serious study. The footage of the "criminal attack" on the innocent young man on lovers lane by the beautiful, but depraved, bandits is one that I found highly disturbing. The expose became even more shocking as the pulchritudinous quartet were enlisted into the service of a foreign power, and during a particularly nefarious mission to overturn chairs and tables and knock over books in a classroom, they almost succeeded in doing something terrible to our flag. Also, during the latter mission, policemen, guards, and members of the evil gang were shot during a ferocious gunfight. At the end, the leader of the gang is finally sentenced to the state penitentiary where she gives birth to an out-of-wedlock baby. She dies and the baby is rightfully made to serve out the remainder of her sentence. Meanwhile, the affluent, but self-absorbed, parents of the wayward gangster are given several severe talkings to by the same judge who sentenced their daughter, and they are told to attend church more frequently in the future. This shocking expose was written by Mr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. I for one definitely intend to give a great deal of thought to the problem of bad girls in tight sweaters.

[dot-matrix]

from filmsite.org:
Written on the Wind (1956) is generally regarded as the best of director Douglas Sirk's 1950s lush, vibrantly colorful melodramatic masterpieces. His absorbing, flamboyant, overwrought potboiler films were noted for their glossy and excessive style, soap opera-ish and brightly-colored film noirish characteristics, and exaggerated and overheated emotions. This film provides Sirk's clear commentary and critique of the underlying hollowness and shallowness of American society in the placid 1950s, and misfit lives stunted and corrupted by mental anguish, alcoholism, sexual frustration, and corruptible materialistic wealth. This vivid, gaudy and slightly campy Technicolor film, from a screenplay by George Zuckerman that was adapted from Robert Wilder's best-selling novel of the same name, centers on the frenzied dynamics within a self-destructing, filthy-rich (literally) Texas oil family named Hadley. The bourgeois, immoral, blood-poisoned, money-corrupted clan is composed of a tycoon patriarch (Keith), an alcoholic, profligate, insecure playboy heir (Stack), a lustful daughter (Malone), and their stable, responsible, less-wealthy family friend and boyhood playmate (Hudson) who supportively holds the family together. Dysfunctional tensions rise when the patriarch's booze-soaked son quickly courts and marries the company's respectable, sensible good-girl executive secretary (Bacall) and his self-pitying fears of impotency (sexual and otherwise) and jealousy - inflamed by his debauched and trashy sister - soon lead to the film's climactic shoot-out (shown in flashback in the film's opening). The film's tagline pronounced:

The story of a family's ugly secret and the stark moment that thrust their private lives into public view!

The film includes such sordid subjects as nymphomania, alcoholism, murderous jealousy and rage, phallic power and infertility, miscarriage, back-stabbing emotional blackmail, and illusory materialistic happiness.

[MaineWriter]

[Ellemeno]

Starring Russ Tamblyn. 

IMDb: Russ Tamblyn might as well face it...he will be a Jet "till his last dying day." Indelibly linked to the "womb to tomb" role of Riff, the knife-wielding, rocket-tempered, Baryshnikov-styled gang leader of the streetwise Jets in the musical film masterpiece West Side Story (1961).

Russ Tamblyn is also the father of Amber Tamblyn of "Joan of Arcadia" and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

[dot-matrix]

from IMDb:
On the mountainous frontier between British India and Afghanistan, circa 1860s, Zarak Khan kisses Salma, the youngest wife of his father, Haji Khan. Outraged, his father orders Zarak to be flogged to death but spares his life at the urging of an elderly Mullah. Zarak now leaves his village and becomes a notorious outlaw, prompting the British to assign a Major Ingram to capture him. Zarak and Ingram have several encounters, developing a grudging respect for each other. When Ingram is captured by Ahmad, one of Zarak's rivals, Zarak risks his life to save the British officer.

[MaineWriter]

Round 1955 is here....

Ready or not!

[memento]

[moremojo]

==comment==
Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's favorite film of those directed by John Sturges:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047849/

[dot-matrix]

==comment==
I don't think I have ever seen this one 


From IMDB
Classic Historical Romantic Drama
In 1815, Michael Martin, member of an Irish revolutionary society, turns highwayman to support it, and is forced to flee into outlawry. In Dublin, he meets famous rebel "Captain Thunderbolt" and becomes his second-in-command, "Lightfoot." 'Tis a perilous life, with captures, turncoats, rescues, and romance.