ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Phantom shares his thoughts about a Hammer version of a classic horror character, a Bradbury story about literacy, and an adventure tale with a fine poster.



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A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)

After a tropical storm destroys their home, English parents decided to send their children back to the mother country to be raised and educated in civilized society. Somewhere on the high seas, the ship is boarded by pirates. By a fluke, the children are transported to the pirate vessel where they remain undiscovered until it is too late to return them to their caretakers.

Anthony Quinn plays Chavez, a blustering pirate captain, who is marginally competent at best. Chavez isn’t a stupid man, just one with a childish streak. You have to wonder why the crew would follow such a wildly unpredictable character until you realize they aren’t very much smarter than he.

James Coburn as first mate, Zac, is the real brains behind Quinn, the strong man who is able to whip a disparate band of cutthroats into something resembling a functioning unit. His relationship to Quinn is never fully explained as they bicker like a seafaring Abbott and Costello forever sailing toward no future other than the next ship to plunder, which is probably closer to reality than most movie pirate epics.

Once the children are discovered, Quinn decides to drop them off at the nearest port while the superstitious pirates do their best to ignore them as potential harbingers of bad luck. It doesn’t help when one of the children playfully turns the head of the ships figurehead backwards. As the crew washes down the deck, the children amuse themselves by sliding along the wet surface in their underclothing. And when Quinn admonishes them to stop, “Who’s going to mend your drawers? Not me!” They are scandalized. “You’re not supposed to mention drawers.”

With the exception of Emily, played by 11-year old Deborah Baxter, the children are a nebulous group. Emily takes an interest in Chavez and begins to follow him about, much to his increasing annoyance and confusion. Seldom speaking, always observant, she becomes the catalyst by which Chavez discovers his own humanity. Still, she remains a cypher, enigmatic to the end, due to Baxter’s effortless performance that offers little explanation for her motivations and allows the audience to fill in the answers. Baxter made only seven features and television series between 1965 and 2000. She is quite good here, although it doesn’t measure what her full range might have been.

Up to now, the movie has been a grand adventure. Once the children are delivered to Tampico to be eventually turned over to authorities while the pirates make their escape, an accident forces Chavez to return them to the ship and the story takes a decidedly dark turn.

The movie is based (somewhat loosely, I believe) on Richard Hughes’ novel. Hughes seems to infer here that the children, and by extension most children, are basically amoral, neither bad seeds nor angelic moppets, who acknowledge the adult universe but remain emotionally disengaged from it unless directly imposed upon by circumstances.

The children are able to weave in and out of society, alternately dependent and independent of the adults and completely careless about the effect they are having on the larger world around them. Under normal conditions, they thrive, mature and are replaced by the next generation. In extraordinary situations as outlined in Hughes’ novel, their effect on events can be quite the opposite.

Among the familiar faces on the voyage are Gert Frobe, Lila Kedrova and Nigel Davenport.

As directed by Alexander Mackendrick, it is spare and unsentimental in its downward spiral toward tragedy. As one reviewer on the IMDb wrote, we can be thankful that Hughes’ novel did not fall into the hands of Walt Disney.
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The Evil of Frankenstein (1964 England)

I saw this in a drive in and, although I can't say I completely hated the movie, I was appalled at the monster's cardboard makeup. Makes me long for old Jack Pierce (who probably turned over in his grave at this one) and Phil Leaky (got some issues with him, too).

It's Hammer's Frankenstein series on a serious downward slope. Cushing is always great in the way that Karloff elevated everything in which he appeared. Peter Woodthorpe is appropriately disgusting and I like Katy Wild as the mute waif. By this time the monster was little more than a stumbling prop with no personality.

The film came with a Hammer dvd, which was the only way I gave it a second look. It didn't help.

A thumb down (and three more fingers, too)
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Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

To say I was energized when I heard someone was actually (and finally) going to film Bradbury's novel would be an understatement.

Bradbury was my introduction to the world of adult literature fueled mostly by articles in Famous Monsters. For me that magazine was the bridge from childhood to an awakening knowledge of a vast universe of undiscovered wonders that ranged far beyond the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

After Bradbury there was Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov (I devoured his short stories and historical research into The Bible and the plays of Shakespeare)

I'm betting punster Forry Ackerman would be astonished to know that his juvenile oriented magazine was the beginning of my education beyond the standard classroom.

However, back to Fahrenheit 451

I still remember walking into the theater and hearing a woman comment to her companion as they came out, "That was the strangest movie I've ever seen."

In many ways, she was right. It's a cold movie, as emotionally divorced from the audience as Montag and Linda are from each other. Montag moves through his world like a sleepwalker while Linda spends most of her day watching television and vicariously living through the lives characters on what can best be described as a soap opera about terminally vacuous people.

It is only when Montag accidentally meets the radical Clarisse, who asks dangerous questions, that he begins to see wider possibilities for himself and Linda.

Oscar Werner was a great choice to play Montag with his soft spoken, Viennese accent and morose persona that perfectly fitted in with Montag's remoteness. The actor was in demand at the time, acclaimed for his work in Ship of Fools the previous year. A difficult man, he and Truffaut clashed over artistic differences during the filming and their relationship was irreparably damaged.

Julie Christie was cast in the duel roles when both Tippi Hedren and Jean Seberg became unavailable. Although it was unintentional, it intrigues us with the possibility of what Clarisse might have been like under other circumstances.

Anton Differing as Montag's chief rival at the firehouse is another of my favorite "chilly" actors. Possessed of striking features and icy eyes, Differing was typecast as a villain and wound up playing a series of Nazis and madmen. Horror movies fans will remember him as the sadistic doctor in The Man Who Could Cheat Death and the Circus of Horrors.

Incidentally, book paper does not burn at 451 degrees. Bradbury simply asked a fire chief about it and got that temperature. He liked the sound of it and never checked to see if it was correct.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Oscar Werner. Some years ago I was cast as Otto Frank in The Diary of Ann Frank. While researching the role, I recalled Werner's accent and used it for the character. I hope he wouldn't have minded.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)