GO NAKED IN THE WORLD

Anthony Franciosa and Gina Lollobrigida

GO NAKED IN THE WORLD (1961). Written and directed by Ranald  MacDougall. NOTE Some plot points are revealed in this review.

"I'd like to think someone in this family could be kind to women." -- Mary.

Nick Stratton (Anthony Franciosa) keeps re-enlisting in the Army because he is resistant to his father, Pete's (Ernest Borgnine), plans for him in the construction business. Pete feels a need to run his son's life, and in truth Nick does seem a little unfocused. But he develops a very clear focus when he falls in love with the beautiful Julie (Gina Lollobrigida), and vice versa, although she resists as long as she can. It seems Nick doesn't know that Julie is a highly-successful call girl, and Nick's father is one of her clients! 

Franciosa with Ernest Borgnine

Go Naked in the World  -- love that title! -- is an entertaining melodrama that boasts two terrific lead performances by Franciosa and Lollobrigida, who proves in this that she is more than just a very pretty face. (The only problem with Franciosa is that he seems much too sophisticated not to realize what profession Julie is in from the first.) As Pete, Borgnine gives a generally strong if imperfect performance, which is also true of Nancy R. Pollock as Pete's wife, Mary. There are nice turns from Luana Patten as Nick's sister, Yvonne, and Will Kuluva as a rather sleazy restaurant owner and friend (of sorts) of Pete's. Philip Ober, former husband of Vivian Vance, has some good moments as a former client of Julie's who takes her dancing. 

Gina as Julie

One of the best scenes in the movie has Nick going up high at a construction site -- twenty stories up -- to ask Pete for money. Pete, way out on a ledge, shows him the money, and tells him he has to come out to get it. There are a few tense moments as Nick makes his way out on the ledge. Pete's employees are not at all thrilled with his actions. 

Pollock, Borgnine, Patten, Franciosa

Although Pete can certainly be loud and overbearing -- his daughter hates him and his wife feels understandably unloved -- one can see why he would be irritated with Nick. (If Nick doesn't want his father controlling his life, he has the option of getting a job and his own place and telling him to go to hell.) Somehow Nick and Julie manage to get the money to go off to what appears to be Acapulco even though Julie has given up hooking. A hilarious moment has Pete telling Julie that she and Nick are "living in back alleys" when they're actually in an ultra-luxurious hotel room at the time! As for the tragic ending, the production code wouldn't allow redemption, as such, for Julie or a happy ending for the couple. The script is reasonably good, although the classic line from Mildred Pierce -- "leave something on me, I might catch cold" -- should never have been re-used. 

Verdict: Good performances help put over this absorbing if somewhat synthetic romance. ***. 

THE OSCAR

THE OSCAR (1966). Director: Russell Rouse.

Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd) is a low-level garment worker who sort of falls into acting because he "impresses" a lady talent scout named Sophie (Eleanor Parker). Sophie gets him a top agent in "Kappy" Kapstetter (Milton Berle), who manages to convince studio head Kenneth Regan (Joseph Cotten) to sign him to a contract even though Regan senses something off about the guy. Fane becomes a star, but keeps biting the hand that feeds him -- even though some of his remarks to those who helped him have a point. When his career starts slipping badly, he has nightmares of going back to being nobody, and hitches upon a desperate plan to nab an Oscar and put himself back on top. The Oscar does show how undeserving louts can become movie stars simply because somebody has the hots for them -- which has happened more often than anyone imagines. The movie might have had more bite had Fane been someone desperately committed to the art of acting, but this can't be confused with the far superior Career -- it's basically entertaining trash with mostly one-dimensional characters and often hokey dialogue -- and not a few tedious moments. Once Fane begins to slide, however, the pic picks up. The fact is that the narcissistic, ambitious, self-absorbed Fane is all too typical of most Hollywood actors.

Elke Sommer and Boyd

Although miscast as some low-bred tough guy, Boyd is not at all bad as Fane, and has his best moment at the very end of the movie (you almost feel sorry for him). As his pal and procurer, Hymie, Tony Bennett seems amateurish until he has some powerful moments at the climax. Jill St. John gives it a good try, but she hasn't the real acting chops to make the most of her scenes as the girlfriend Fane stole from Hymie. Elke Sommer is okay as Kay Bergdahl, a designer Fane makes a play for and eventually marries, and Berle is at least flavorful as Kappy. Eleanor Parker gives the sauciest performance as Sophie, and makes St. John and Sommer look like a couple of kittens in comparison. But Edie Adams and Ernest Borgnine almost walk off with the movie as a husband and wife who are celebrating their divorce in Mexico when they encounter Fane and Kay and re-enter their lives in an unexpected fashion. Peter Lawford has a small but significant scene where he plays a once-famous actor who is now a headwaiter at a Hollywood restaurant; Lawford is excellent and this is probably the best scene in the movie. There are some celebrity cameos and Hedda Hopper as well. One of the screenwriters was Harlan Elison, who became better known as a science fiction writer.

Verdict: Not exactly Eugene O'Neill but fun. ***.

THREE BRAVE MEN

THREE BRAVE MEN (1956). Director: Philip Dunne. 

Bernie Goldsmith (Ernest Borgnine) is horrified to discover that he's been summarily fired from his government job because he's been deemed a security risk due to an alleged "radical" (i.e. communist) past. He hires lawyer Joe DiMarco (Ray Milland) to defend him. Apparently Goldsmith angered some people because of his activism in minority housing (oddly, the subject of anti-Semitism is never broached). Even after a board presided over by Captain Wingfield (Frank Lovejoy) and Lt. McCoy (Nina Foch) clears Goldsmith, he still can't get his job back or get hired by anyone else. DiMarco takes the case to the Army man, Rogers (Dean Jagger), who had the board's decision reversed. Three Brave Men intelligently examines how gossip and innuendo, jumping to conclusions, and sheer sloppy investigating can ruin someone's life as it did many during the McCarthy anti-communist era. The film also has a nice subtext examining how the whole ordeal has revealed how strong Bernie's marriage to his wife (Virginia Christine) is. Still, it's all a bit matter of fact, with few nuances and shades of gray. Yet the fact that it was even made in 1956 -- years before our deplorable "cancel culture" -- speaks volumes. Dr. No's Joseph Wiseman has a notable cameo as a bigot. 

Verdict: Absorbing story of family's ruination and their struggle back. ***.

DEADLY BLESSING

DEADLY BLESSING (1981). Director: Wes Craven.

Thrown out of his Hittite community for marrying a non-believer, Jim Schmidt (Douglas Barr) farms his land with his wife, Martha (Marin Jensen). After he is killed in a strange tractor accident, Martha is visited by two close friends, Lana (Sharon Stone) and Vicky (Susan Buckner), both of whom have unpleasant encounters with the pious Hittite leader (and Jim's father), Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine). But there are other forces leveled against the women that they may be unprepared to deal with ...

A tarantula wants to make nice with Sharon Stone, who's having none of it

Deadly Blessing has some interesting things in it, but its script is disjointed and illogical. Wes Craven's direction shows no great skill -- although the snake in the bath tub is memorable, and was later sort of re-used in Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street -- and much of the acting is insufficient. Sharon Stone [Total Recall] is so mediocre that you would have imagined she'd wind up in one or two slasher films and then settle in as a salesgirl at Mrs. Field's Cookies. Marin Jensen is not much better, and Borgnine's performance borders on caricature. Susan Buckner makes a more favorable impression, as do Doug Barr and Jeff East [Pumpkinhead] as his sympathetic younger brother. Lisa Hartman is given one of the most embarrassing debuts since Jean Arless in Homicidal, and Lois Nettleton [Butterfly] certainly deserves much better material.

Marty gets religion: Ernest Borgnine

One female character in the film has a secret, but whether it's that she's really male, transsexual, or a hermaphrodite isn't made clear. There's a fast-moving "cat fight" at the end of the film. James Horner's score liberally borrows from Bernard Herrmann and especially Jerry Goldsmith, to an almost comical degree. With a tighter script and better direction, Deadly Blessing might have been a contender, but no dice. Former model Maren Jensen had few credits; this was her last feature film; Buckner's as well.

Verdict: Silly and oddball in the wrong way. **. 

THE BLACK HOLE

Yvette Mimieux and Anthony Perkins

THE BLACK HOLE (1979). Director: Gary Nelson.

On an exploratory trip in space, a ship discovers what at first appears to be a derelict vessel floating near a deadly black hole. But inside this huge ship, the Cygnus, the crew come across Dr. Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell of Return From the Ashes), who claims to be the only survivor. Reinhardt is determined to actually take the Cygnus inside the black hole and hopefully discover some of the secrets of the universe. Dr. Durant (Anthony Perkins) is anxious to go with Reinhardt on the trip, but psychic Dr. MacCrae (Yvette Mimieux)  and the others -- Captain Holland (Robert Forster), Lt. Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), and Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) -- desperately try to talk him out of it. The Black Hole features some fine scenic design and FX, but its schizoid script, tediously stretched-out climax, unfortunate comedy relief involving cute robots playing video games and the like, and a disappointing finale (reportedly the Disney studio ran out of either time, money, or both to create the Black Hole sequence in the intended manner), make this a disappointing effort to say the least. Slim Pickens [Night Gallery] and Roddy McDowall [Fright Night] voice the two overly precious robots who help the team and seem modeled on R2D2 from Star Wars. A lot more could have been made of the fact that some of Reinhardt's "robots" actually turn out to be sort-of lobotomized crew members. Some of the more exciting scenes involve an asteroid shower and a harrowing journey through a tunnel. The acting is generally good (even if Perkins is doing his usual "spooky" routine), with Schell taking top honors.

Verdict: Good idea just misses. **1/2.

THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE

THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968). Director: Robert Aldrich.

"I make movies -- not films!"

Apparently this movie was based on an old TV drama, with the script rewritten and turned into a theatrical feature. Dying agent Bert Langner (Milton Selzer) has discovered another young woman, Elsa (Kim Novak), who resembles the late, great [Garbo-like?] movie star Lylah Clare (also Novak). He takes her to Lylah's old producer, Lewis Zarken (Peter Finch), who lives with Lylah's old dialect coach Rossella (Rossella Falk), and they concoct a scheme to have Elsa play Lylah in a filmic biography of her life. But what to do about Lylah's death scene? Apparently she fell off of a balcony after discovering that the man she was about to go to bed with was actually a woman, but that's too scandalous to ever tell the truth about. Making matters worse, Elsa seems to be possessed by the spirit of Lylah at inopportune moments. There's a lot of intriguing material in Lylah Clare, but it's all junked up by a very trashy and utterly superficial screenplay. The sexual ambiguity of many of the characters makes the film seem dated instead of hip. Lewis and Rossella, both of whom seem to have been in love with Lylah, make disparaging remarks about each other's sexuality. [When it comes to the subject of homosexuality, this movie is definitely of the "sick, sad, ashamed and repressed" variety.] Another problem with Lylah Clare is that it says cynical things about Hollywood that have been said many times before even by 1968.

Kim Novak is not bad as Elsa/Lylah -- she appears to have been dubbed as Elsa -- but she's saddled with the fact that both characters are one-dimensional. Peter Finch has just a little more to work with as Lewis, and he's fine, as is Milton Selzer, who was probably given one of his best movie roles in this. Ernest Borgnine as a hollering producer is excellent, and Rossella Falk is equally vivid, but the actor who makes the best impression is Coral Browne, who plays venomous entertainment/gossip columnist Molly Luther (modeled on The Hollywood Reporter's Radie Harris, who also had a leg brace).The scene when Elsa/Lylah tells off Molly at a party is the best one in the movie, but, sadly, Legend of Lylah Clare is generally not even as entertaining as it should be.

Verdict: More a freak show than a serious drama. **.

ICE STATION ZEBRA

ICE STATION ZEBRA (1968). Director: John Sturges.

Commander James Ferreday (Rock Hudson) is called in when there is an accident at a research station in the North Pole. He is to take a nuclear sub with a full crew on a rescue mission, only he is told by Admiral Garvey (Lloyd Nolan) that the men at the station aren't the real reason for the trip -- he is to take aboard an enigmatic gentleman named Jones (Patrick McGoohan) who knows what's really going on but won't say. It all winds up with a confrontation with Americans and Russians over a major prize hidden at the station. One has to wonder if Alistair MacLean, who wrote the novel upon which this was based, was a fan of the old TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, as this plays like an extended episode of that show with one of their typical plot lines. The film looks good and has some exciting scenes -- an escape from a rapidly closing fissure, for instance, as well as a bit when a sabotaged torpedo tube lets in ice-cold sea water -- but it runs much too long and doesn't sustain suspense or tension. Rock Hudson gives what can charitably be described as a low-energy performance, but other cast members, such as McGoohan and Ernest Borgnine [as a Russian!] are better. The movie resists all attempts at pathos even when heroic or sympathetic characters are killed. Alf Kjellin is vivid as Colonel Ostrovsky. [Although Kjellin had a lot of acting credits, he is perhaps better known as a frequent director of such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.] Released in Cinerama and Super Panavision.

Verdict: Has possibilities but tries too hard to be a "big" movie when it isn't. **1/2.

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965). Producer/director: Robert Aldrich.

"The little men with the slide rules and computers are going to inherit the earth."

This movie gets right into the action, without taking time to even introduce its characters, as a plane develops problems and then crash lands in the desert with veteran pilot Frank Towns (James Stewart) at the helm. However, there's plenty of time to meet the survivors during the rather slow early sections of the film: Towns second-in-command, Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough); by-the-book but admirable Captain Harris (Peter Finch); crazy Cobb (Ernest Borgnine); haughty engineer Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger); and others. During the strangely uninvolving first half of the film you keep hoping that Ursula Andress or Raquel Welch will come parachuting into the scene and all of the men can fight over her, and at least something will happen, but it's not that kind of movie. Instead the film develops an interesting plot line wherein Dorfmann insists that by using the remaining parts of the plane he can build another craft that will take the men out of the Sahara before they die of thirst or starvation. Towns thinks that the plane he'll build won't ever get off the ground. Dorfmann has a rather startling and darkly amusing secret, however. There's a tense sequence involving some Arabs who may or may not be friendly, but the climax when the "phoenix" takes off is surprisingly brief. And there's a lot more that you could quibble about. Stewart seems a bit miscast and out of his element -- although certainly not bad -- as the somewhat defeatist Captain Towns, but Attenborough, Finch, and Kruger are superb, and Dan Duryea, George Kennedy, Ronald Fraser and the others aren't exactly slouches. Like Lifeboat, The White Tower and many other movies Phoenix deals with the cliche of ruthless German efficiency, an aspect that was kind of tiresome, being done to death, by the sixties.   

Verdict: Eventually builds in intensity and interest; some wonderful performances don't hurt. ***.

VIOLENT SATURDAY

VIOLENT SATURDAY (1955). Director: Richard Fleischer. 

While a group of criminals gather in Bradenville to plan and commit a robbery, we are treated to vignettes about some of the townspeople. The problem with this caper movie is that it wants to be something else, a small town drama, with the robbery almost being incidental (it fact it takes place in only a couple of minutes). The soap opera gets in the way of the caper story, and the look at small town life -- a man (Richard Egan) with a philandering wife, a librarian (Sylvia Sidney) with debts, a mousy bank manager (Tommy Noonan) who's sort of a peeping tom -- isn't all that interesting. There are so many actors hardly any of them really get a chance to shine. Victor Mature is the nominal hero; Stephen McNally is the head of the crooks; Ernest Borgnine is an Amish farmer [!]. J. Carrol Naish and Lee Marvin are as flavorful as ever as two members of the gang. Virginia Leith is a pretty nurse who arouses passions before becoming The Brain That Wouldn't Die. A much better Richard Fleischer film is Fantastic Voyage. 

Verdict: Not worth the time it takes to tell. **.

JUBAL

JUBAL (1956). Director: Delmer Daves.

Shep Horgan (Ernest Borgnine) is a kindly if clueless rancher who gives a drifter named Jubal (Glenn Ford) a job, but trouble takes the form of another hand, Pinky (Rod Steiger), who takes an instant dislike to Jubal. Matters aren't helped when Horgan's overheated wife Mae (Valerie French) takes a shine to Jubal, even though she's already dallied with Pinky. This all leads to melodramatic but not very interesting complications. This silly sex-western has okay performances but the soap opera plot is predictable and the ultimate effect is tedium. A sub-plot with a group of religious wanderers and a pretty gal that Jabal falls for (played by Felicia Farr) doesn't help much. Charles Lawton Jr.'s cinematography is wonderful, however. Charles Bronson has a small role. Valerie French later wound up in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Verdict: No jubilation in Jubal. **.

THE DEVIL'S RAIN

THE DEVIL'S RAIN (1975). Director: Robert Fuest.

A small town is beset by a satanic cult run by Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine), who has indoctrinated several members of the Preston family into the cult against their will. Mark and Tom Preston ( William Shatner and Tom Skerritt) do their best to fight Corbis after their mother (Ida Lupino) and others have succumbed. It all leads to a seemingly interminable climax where the title downpour melts all the satanists into blobs of flesh and putty. Keenan Wynn and Eddie Albert are also on board. The performances are certainly good, but the movie has no horrific or taut atmosphere and director Fuest never really works up enough suspense. The satanists all sport pasty faces with empty eye sockets and look like -- pun intended -- Hell. But isn't the whole point of devil worship to improve your life and, presumably, your appearance? It's enough to make one wonder why anyone would have willingly joined the group.

Verdict: We won't tell the Devil if you don't watch it. **.