NO DOWN PAYMENT

Patricia Owens and Jeffrey Hunter

NO DOWN PAYMENT (1957). Director: Martin Ritt. Colorized. 

David and Jean Martin (Jeffrey Hunter of Brainstorm and Patricia Owens of The Fly) move into a lovely post-war housing community called Sunrise Hill. Their neighbors include Jerry and Isabelle Flagg (Tony Randall and Sheree North); Troy and Leola Boone (Cameron Mitchell of Garden of Evil and Joanne Woodward); and Herman and Betty Kreitzer (Pat Hingle and Barbara Rush). The last couple seem to have the most stable and successful lives and marriage. Jerry cheats on Isabelle and puts on a bluff as a supposedly successful car salesman. Troy hopes to become the chief of police but is brutal to his wife when he is upset. Both men drink too  much. When Troy doesn't get the job he wants, he takes out his anger in horrible fashion on poor Jean Martin, who fears what her husband's retaliation might be ... 

Cameron Mitchell and Joanne Woodward

No Down Payment is an absorbing drama which looks at a variety of situations and marriages and does so with a degree of sensitivity and intelligence -- as well as some fine acting. Although she's playing in her over-familiar "poor dumb Southern waif" mode, Woodward gives one of the best performances, along with the always-underrated Mitchell. Tony Randall is a bit miscast as the sleazy lover boy and doesn't quite pull it off. Sheree North successfully subdues the "sex kitten" aspect of her persona. Robert H. Harris is given a couple of good scenes as Randall's boss. There's a very interesting sub-plot with Kreitzer's store employee, the Japanese-American Iko (Aki Aleong), hoping his boss will help him get a house in Sunrise Hill. At the time he appeared in this film, Hunter had been divorced from co-star Barbara Rush for two years. 

Verdict: Notable fifties drama with a fine cast. ***. 

ELVIS (1979)

Kurt Russell as Elvis

ELVIS (1979 telefilm). Director: John Carpenter.

Elvis Presley (Kurt Russell), inspired by black musicians, develops his own singing style and frenetic dancing movements. He rises to the top of the recording and film industry with the help of Colonel Tom Parker (Pat Hingle), but is frustrated by the insipid scripts that he is given. Marrying Priscilla (Season Hubley), whom he meets when she is fourteen, he develops a dependency on prescription drugs that alter his personality and make him paranoid. He attempts a comeback by appearing at the International Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, but will this lead to a revitalization of his career or will he fall flat on his face as hundreds of fans await his entrance?

Russell with Shelly Winters

Kurt Russell gives a terrific performance as Elvis in this long but entertaining telefilm, which also stars Shelley Winters as Elvis' mom, and Bing Russell (Kurt's real-life father) as Elvis' dad. (To keep it all in the family Kurt Russell later had a short marriage to Season Hubley, who plays Elvis' wife). There's way too much of Winters in the first half of the movie, especially as she is giving one of her kind of twitchy  and breathless performances in what one could call her fat and whiny period. Pat Hingle isn't really given much to do as Parker, his character being shunted into the background most of the time, unlike in the 2022 Elvis. 

Russell with Season Hubley

The last fifteen minutes or so of the movie are given over to Elvis' triumphant concert at the International, where Russell performs the pants out of songs like "Burning Love" and displays the King of Rock at his most energetic. Credit also must be given to Ronnie McDowell, who does a fine job providing Elvis' singing voice. Ironically, the first movie Kurt Russell ever appeared in was an Elvis flick, It Happened at the World's Fair, where the king asks a boy (Russell) to kick him in the shins. This telefilm began a long association between Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, who also directed him in The Thing and many others. 

Verdict: Good approximation of the King. ***. 

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961). Director: Elia Kazan. Original screenplay by William Inge.

In 1928 Kansas high school students Wilma Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) are a couple, although they come from opposite sides of the tracks. Bud's father is a wealthy brewer while Wilma's family is of more modest means. Bud's hormones are really kicking in, but he knows Wilma is not the kind of girl who would want to go "all the way." Wilma's mother (Audrey Christie) assures her daughter that sex is just something that women "have to put up with." Bud's father (Pat Hingle) suggests that he get , in essence, a "bad girl" to satisfy him while continuing his relationship with Wilma, but instead Bud thinks it's best to break things off with Wilma -- this decision has unfortunate consequences.

Pat Hingle and Warren Beatty

I have to confess that when I was finished watching Splendor I had to wonder why it is so acclaimed. I think the main reason is that the film has a great, well-played and moving ending that sent moviegoers home happy. It's just that the rest of the film is well ... odd. I must say Natalie Wood gives a very good performance, although I'm not certain she quite gets across the emotional fragility of the character which might explain some of the things that happen to her. In his first film role, Beatty is acceptable, but he's too old for the part -- he was 24 at the time of filming -- and while good-looking enough, in some shots he just looks weird. I found Audrey Christie merely annoying as Wood's mother, although Hingle was better as Beatty's dad. One of the worst-played scenes in the movie is a scene in an alley when Beatty is shown his father's corpse.

William Inge

There are some good supporting performances in the film: Barbara Loden as Bud's free-wheelin' sister, Virginia; the ever-strange Zohra Lampert as a waitress Bud meets in college (going from Wood to Lampert is sort of like going from the sublime to the ridiculous!); the even-stranger Sandy Dennis as a classmate of Wilma's; Gary Lockwood [The Magic Sword] as a handsome boy who goes out on a date with Wilma with unfortunate results; Jan Norris as "bad girl" Juanita; Joanna Roos as Bud's somewhat overwhelmed and neglected mother; Charles Robinson [Brotherhood of Satan] as Wilma's more-than-friend, Johnny; and others. William Inge, whose screenplay was not based on one of his stage works, even appears briefly as a minister -- a former actor, he's fine. Of all people, Phyllis Diller [The Fat Spy] shows up in a New Year's Eve scene as Texas Guinan, making tasteless jokes about the stock market crash suicides.

From the sublime to the ridiculous? Zohra Lampert

Splendor is mostly about S-E-X, but it's also about romantic longing and the hatred that children often feel for their own parents. I'm not certain that, when all is said and done, Inge was able to lift the movie that much above the soap opera level, as some of the characters are stereotypes and not as well-developed as they could have been. A self-hating homosexual in real life -- one can't call him gay as he was not self-accepting -- Inge nevertheless understood the universality of romantic and sexual feelings just as his contemporary Tennessee Williams did. NOTE: The title comes from a Wordsworth poem.

Verdict: Some lovely things in this movie, yet ... **1/2. 

JIGSAW

JIGSAW (1968). Director: James Goldstone.

Only three years after the film Mirage came out, a remake was made for television. Like Mirage, Jigsaw was based on Howard Fast's novel "Fallen Angel" as well as Peter Stone's screenplay for Mirage. However, screenwriter Ranald MacDougall [Queen Bee] fashioned a story that contained some elements from the earlier book and movie but was basically an entirely different story. NBC found the telefilm too violent -- or mediocre -- and decided not to run it, so Universal studios released it in theaters. Although the stars were Bradford Dillman and Harry Guardino, they were basically ignored [and they both gave excellent performances, too] in the advertising in favor of freakish Michael J, Pollard, who had only a bit part really [and two short scenes] but had been nominated for an Academy Award for his turn in Bonnie and Clyde. Such is show business! The poster also made it seem as if the movie were some sort of expose of the sixties Timothy Leary-type drug scene a la The Trip, which it definitely was not.

In Jigsaw Jonathan Fields (Dillman) temporarily loses his memory after ingesting sugar cubes laced with acid [LSD]. He remembers seeing the dead body of a woman in the bathtub of somebody's apartment, and this body later turns up in his own place. He goes to private investigator Arthur Belding (Guardino), who has his girlfriend Sarah (Diana Hyland) aid them in their investigation. Fields also has a girlfriend of sorts played by Hope Lange. The private detective is really the lead character in this and there's no death plunge until the very end. Unlike Mirage, Jigsaw gives away its secrets much too early and has a much more conventional murder/cover-up plot despite the psychedelic facade. The acting is fine, however, both by the aforementioned actors as well as by Pat Hingle as an associate of Fields' and Victor Jory [The Shadow serial] as his boss. 

Verdict: Not bad, holds the attention, but nothing special either despite solid performances. **1/2.