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Randolph Scott is his usual stiff but smiling self as Leo Vincey, the long-lost American heir to a British family legacy, sent by his estranged father to reclaim the legendary "Flame of Life," discovered five centuries ago by his explorer ancestor. Producer Merian C. Cooper, best known for directing King Kong, changes the locale of H. Rider Haggard's classic adventure from Africa to the Arctic (which, apart from a spectacular avalanche, looks positively stagebound), but he pulls out all stops for the magnificent underground kingdom hidden in the icy mountains, complete with a cavernous throne room with vaulted ceilings and a massive staircase that would look right at home in the Ziegfeld Follies. The cruel She Who Must Be Obeyed (Helen Gahagan) is a beautiful but icy queen driven ruthless by her centuries of loneliness. The film takes some time to get started but once She makes her impressive entrance through a mist-enshrouded arch, we're plunged into a dangerous, exotic world of strange ceremonies, human sacrifices, nefarious plots, and the gorgeous whirlwind of light that is the Flame of Life. Though the dialogue is often flat and uninspired and the performances by Scott and Gahagan rather arch (costars Nigel Bruce and Helen Mack fare much better), this grand adventure concludes with a rousing climax full of impressive set pieces and breathtaking effects. --Sean Axmaker
Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott) all grown up is fresh back from the U.S. So he does not have to have an English accent. His dying uncle points to a portrait of a 500 year old Vincey in a Prince Valiant haircut that is the spitting image of Leo. Then with old sci-fi equipment in the background he is told a tail of radiation and a woman that will live for ever; Doctor Watson (oops) Horace Holly is standing by.
For readers that are familiar with the book, you are in for some laughs. Because the Vincey explorer was only five hundred years ago all the majors can speak English (or pigeon English). There is a native scene right out of Kong and a second with a sacrifice and a ritual dance. Can it be that this is the same director, Producer Merian C. Cooper, known for King Kong?
On a more serious side the eternal questions posed in the book were replaces with a love story made for two.
Helen Gahagan is a rather unique name so I looked it up in Ephraim Kats "The Film Encyclopedia"; turns out among other things She was married to Melvyn Douglas, was the author of "The Eleanor Roosevelt we Remember" (1963). A Democratic congress woman. And was defeated by Richard Nixon in her bid or a Senate seat.
A flashy, campy fantasy-action classic
A goofy old-fashioned action film produced by Meriam C. Cooper, the brains behind the1931 smash "King Kong." Randolph Scott stars in this slightly tweaked adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's novel (in the book, the action is set in Africa; here it's in the Antarctic). Anyway, the basic plot is that a dashing young Anglo-American adventurer heads off in search of a magical fountain of life, but when he arrives at its hidden temple, it turns out the guardian is an immortal hottie (played by Helen Gahagan), who believes that our hero is a reincarnation of her long-lost lover. The first half of the film is kind of rickety and slow-moving, but once the films starts zipping to its crescendo, things get pretty fun. There's a big, silly dance number (half modern dance, half Busby Berkeley revue, with kooky ethnic elements), and some really cool special effects -- including a jumping-over-the-chasm scene that may seem familiar to fans of the first "Lord Of The Rings" film. Acting wise, this flick is campy at best -- it's not Scott's best effort (and I *like* Randolph Scott!), and Gahagan is kind of a dud; she's just not very convincing as an irresistible(...)-- couldn't they have gotten Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich instead? Still, it's a fun film... definitely worth checking out!
AN ORIGINAL SCI-FI FROM 1935.
Ancient papers lead a Cambridge professor and his friends to the lost city where dwells a queen who cannot die - until she falls in love... SHE is alternately hilarious, terrible - and essential viewing for lovers of vintage Sci-Fi flicks! H. Rider Haggard was a British civil servant who began writing to win a bet with his brother after they'd argued about what made good literature. Haggard's works included a prolific 58 works of fiction and 7 works of non-fiction. KING SOLOMON'S MINES was his first novel: his second was SHE which was written in 1887. When adapted for this 1935 flick, the locale was - perhaps mistakenly - altered from the humid wastes of Africa to the frozen wastes of the near-Arctic. The two romantic leads were originally to be played by Joel McCrea and his wife, Frances Dee. Since they proved to be unavailable, the wooden Randolph Scott and the adequate Helen Mack were cast instead. The sometimes hokey script and colourless performances from both Scott and Gahagan tend to mar the film, but not completely: they give the film an unintended campy/eclectic feeling which somehow lingers in the memory rather than offends. The stagey decor of Kor is very Art Deco and reminds one of the Radio City Music Hall & you expect the Rockettes to appear out of nowhere! It is a great relief to film connoisseurs that a print of this movie - which was actually considered lost for years - was found!
The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Ford takes great liberties... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Henry Fonda - Linda Darnell Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Polish-born actress Ingrid Pitt's erotically supercharged presence is the highlight of this double bill of vampire chills from Hammer Films. In Countess Dracula, Pitt stars as an aging noblewoman (inspired by the real-life Erzebeth Bathory) who discovers the secret to eternal youth in the veins of young virgins, while in The Vampire Lovers (based on J. Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla"), Pitt's sensuous bloodsucker seduces Hammer starlets Madeleine Smith and Kate O'Mara and incurs the vengeful wrath of Peter Cushing. Countess is the more sober of the two films, with Jeremy Paul's script and Peter Sadsy's direction playing out more like an Old Dark House mystery than Hammer horror, while Lovers' aims for comic-book thrills with plenty of nudity and violence (much of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Peter Sasdy DVD Release Date: Released the 26 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) Fredric March won an Oscar® for playing the protagonist (and antagonist) of Robert Louis Stevenson's story. Dr. Henry Jekyll is an honorable man of science, albeit frustrated at the enforced celibacy of a delayed wedding date. Hyde is the fearsome creature he turns into after drinking a potion, and Hyde's appetites (mostly expressed with Miriam Hopkins's Cockney dance-hall wench) are decidedly unrestrained. March's performance is pretty theatrical, but it's fun to watch; his Hyde twitches and squawks and lopes around like an ape in a tuxedo. Rouben Mamoulian's direction has plenty of the brio of early-thirties Hollywood, and the transformations from Jekyll to Hyde are ingenious for the time. This film followed Dracula and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Fredric March - Miriam Hopkins Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The up-and-down career of director John Milius had no finer moment than The Wind and the Lion, a dandy adventure tale. It's based on fact: An American (played by Candice Bergen) and her two children were kidnapped in 1904 Morocco by a Berber tribe, an international incident settled by President Theodore Roosevelt's "big stick" military muscle. The film's sweep and swagger are unabashedly old-fashioned, even as Milius occasionally pokes fun at the grand characters. Some of the peripheral material is sloppy, but as long as Milius keeps his sights locked on the two powerful protagonists, he's dead-on: Brian Keith makes a gutsy Roosevelt, and Sean Connery is in splendid form (with Scots accent in place--got a problem with that?) as the dashing Berber chieftain. Perhaps overshadowed... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sean Connery - Candice Bergen Director(s): John Milius DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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