The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)

 

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)

Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers, Una O’Connor, Forrester Harvey, Holmes Herbert, E.E. Clive, Dudley Digges, Harry Stubbs, Donald Stuart, Merle Tottenham. Screenplay: R.C. Sheriff, based on a novel by H.G. Wells. Cinematography: Arthur Edeson. Art direction: Charles D. Hall. Film editing: Ted J. Kent. Music: Heinz Roemheld. 

Of all the superpowers, including strength, speed, and flight, I think invisibility may be the most desired – and the most dangerous. The only obvious inconvenience is that for it to work, you’d have to be naked. (And as Claude Rains’s Dr. Jack Griffin suggests, you’d have to have a completely empty intestinal tract.) But the H.G. Wells novel and the 1933 film based on it seem to be designed as a warning to be careful what you wish for. The potion that gives Dr. Griffin his superpower also drives him mad, freeing him from any inhibitions against mayhem and murder. This may be my favorite among the classic Universal horror movies, more polished than Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931), less campy than Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931). Its chief flaw is that the part given to Gloria Stuart as Griffin’s girlfriend calls for her to do little more than fret and shriek. She does both well, but the role adds nothing to the narrative or the suspense. Much better are the gaggle of character actors assembled to play the villagers freaked out by the Invisible Man, especially the invaluable Una O’Connor as his landlady, whose own fretting and shrieking almost seem like a parody of Stuart’s. This was Rains’s American film debut, the more remarkable in that his face is seen only at the end of the film. He’s forced to do all of his acting with his voice, which would not have been familiar to the original audiences though it’s certainly recognizable to us today. It was enough to launch one of the great film careers. 

Vice (Adam McKay, 2018)

 

Vice (Adam McKay, 2018)

Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Alison Pill, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, LisaGay Hamilton, Jesse Plemons, Bill Camp, Don McManus, Lily Rabe, Shea Whigham, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tyler Perry. Screenplay: Adam McKay. Cinematography: Greig Fraser. Production design: Patrice Vermette. Film editing: Hank Corwin. Music: Nicholas Britell.

Vice got me to thinking that maybe Hannah Arendt got it wrong: It’s not the banality of evil but the mediocrity of evil. Dick Cheney, at least as Adam McKay’s screenplay and Christian Bale’s performance present him, was initially a vehicle for the varying ambitions of others: his wife, Lynne (Amy Adams), his mentor, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), and George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell). Cheney was like a liquid that flowed into the channels they provided him, helping create the Republican Party that would be shaped into its current form by Fox News and Donald Trump. Bale portrays Cheney as the silent menace we know from newsreels, ready to snap at any plausible idea, from redefining presidential power to making war on Saddam Hussein to sanctioning torture. But he begins as something of a naïf, not even sure which party he belongs to, and even asking Rumsfeld what the Republicans are for, which provokes gales of laughter from Rumsfeld. The problem with McKay’s film, however, is that despite Bale’s remarkable performance, Vice is overlong and confused, wavering from straight behind-the-headlines dramatization to satiric bits like a waiter (a cameo by Alfred Molina) serving up Republican agenda items to a tableful of fat cats. The narrative is chopped up with flashbacks and time jumps, and even includes an occasional narrator named Kurt (Jesse Plemons), whose identity is withheld for most of the film to provide a small but essentially pointless surprise. There’s even a bit in the middle of the final credits, in which a contemporary focus group comes to blows over the film's “political bias.” I share McKay’s obvious bias, but I wish he didn’t wear it so proudly.

Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman, 1964)

 

Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman, 1964)

Cast: Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, Rafael Campos, William Swan, Jeff Corey, Ann Sothern, Scatman Crothers, Charles Seel. Screenplay: Luther Davis. Cinematography: Lee Garmes. Production design: Rudolph Sternad. Film editing: Leon Barsha. Music: Paul Glass. 

After the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962), a cruel and ugly word, “hagsploitation,” was coined to denote a new subgenre in which aging movie stars were cast in films that subjected them to all manner of abuse. The stars were all women, of course. Male movie stars like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart were allowed to keep playing tough guys and cowboys and even romantic leads until the end of their careers. But actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Olivia de Havilland were stripped of their glamour in movies like Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) and Lady in a Cage, which bridged the gap between psychological drama and horror movie. Lady in a Cage is a deeply unpleasant movie, with a pervasively nihilistic view of human beings. Its opening scenes, before we even meet our protagonist, Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland), feature a young girl tormenting an apparently unconscious woman lying on the sidewalk and a shot of traffic swerving around a dead dog in the street. Soon, Cornelia, who is recovering from a broken hip, has sent her coddled son, Malcolm (William Swan), off on a long holiday weekend, only to be trapped by a power failure in the elevator she has installed in the stairwell of her house. She has an alarm bell, but no one hears it except a ragged wino, George Brady (Jeff Corey), who breaks into the house and begins to plunder it with the help of his friend Sade (Ann Sothern). When they visit the fence (Charles Seel), the loot catches the eye of Randall (James Caan) and his cohort, Essie (Rafael Campos) and Elaine (Jennifer Billingsley), a trio of psychopaths. They proceed to make life hell for Cornelia; in addition to looting and destruction they discover a letter that Malcolm has left for Cornelia in which he threatens to kill himself unless she stops coddling and smothering him. Randall takes the opportunity to suggest that Malcolm is gay and that mother and son are incestuous lovers. Mayhem ensues, and the film ends bleakly. And yet it’s a strikingly effective movie, one that feels out of time, anticipating by many years some of the darker films by directors like Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke. 

Atlantis: The Lost Continent (George Pal, 1961)

 

Atlantis: The Lost Continent (George Pal, 1961)

Cast: Sal Ponti (as Anthony Hall), Joyce Taylor, John Dall, William Smith, Edward Platt, Frank DeKova, Barry Kroeger, Edgar Stehli, Wolfe Barzell, Jay Novello, Paul Frees (voice). Screenplay: Daniel Mainwaring, based on a play by Gerald Hargreaves. Cinematography: Harold E. Wellman. Art direction: George W. Davis, William Ferrari. Film editing:  Ben Lewis. Music: Russell Garcia. 

Before there were computers to mess around with, before motion capture and CGI, George Pal was known as a master of practical special effects: using models and miniatures, stop motion and camera tricks in the films he produced in the 1950s – classics like Destination Moon (Irving Pichel, 1950), When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Maté, 1951), and The War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin, 1953) – and the ones he directed, including Tom Thumb (1958) and The Time Machine (1960). But by the time he got to Atlantis: The Lost Continent, the crumbling studio system no longer was willing to foot the bill for his brand of sci-fi and fantasy. Pal was reduced to borrowing footage from older films like Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951) and The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskin, 1954), and even his own The Time Machine to piece out the scenes of the destruction of Atlantis. Keen-eyed watchers of the movie have recognized some of the props and set decor from older films, such as the giant pagan idol that dominates one scene; it had been warehoused after use in The Prodigal (Richard Thorpe, 1955). Tom Thumb had featured stars like Russ Tamblyn, Peter Sellers, and Terry-Thomas, and The Time Machine starred the up-and-coming Rod Taylor, but the cast of Atlantis: The Lost Continent is decidedly second- and even third-tier. It would be the last theatrical film for John Dall, who had never quite made it to major stardom, and the male lead in the film was a Philadelphia songwriter named Sal Ponti trying to break into acting as Anthony Hall. He wound up in small roles on TV series, as did the female lead, Joyce Taylor. So all in all, Atlantis is a decidedly second-hand affair, with some narrative gaps and a lot of sword-and-sandal clichés. Still, Pal was no slouch at making do with what he had on hand, and while the movie is no sleeper hit or even cult classic, it has some entertaining moments. 

Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970)

 

Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970)

Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michèle Breton, Johnny Shannon, Anthony Valentine, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Stanley Meadows, Allan Cuthbertson, Anthony Morton. Screenplay: Donald Cammell. Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg. Art direction: John Clark. Film editing: Anthony Gibbs, John Smedley-Aston. Music: Jack Nitzsche. 

I’m so used to seeing James Fox as a proper upperclass Brit in films like A Passage to India (David Lean, 1984) and The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993) that it took me a while to identify him with the kinky gangster Chas he plays in Performance. In fact, it’s a role that writer and co-director Donald Cammell intended for Marlon Brando. But Fox, with his veneer of handsome self-assuredness, fits the film perfectly as the foil for MIck Jagger’s sybaritic rock star, Turner. It’s a film about outlaws from two worlds, the criminal Chas and the artist Turner coming together on the artist’s turf. It’s also a kind of Götterdämmerung for the swinging ‘60s, made during the ‘60s but held from release until the selfish ‘70s by a squeamish studio, its sex and nudity edited out but restored, at least partially, later. It’s visually and narratively challenging, with time- and place-switching editing to the point that it still provokes exegesis. It launched co-director and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s career, and it may have doomed Cammell’s. In short, it’s some kind of important film, but no one has ever been able to pin down exactly why. The very definition of a cult film.