The Best Of Benny Hill

1974
Directed By John Robbins


SYNOPSIS
A best-of compilation of the long-running BBC TV series The Benny Hill Show released into theaters.

MY THOUGHTS

The Best of Benny Hill is a silly look at the classic TV show. It showcases all of the comic's most memorable strengths: silly songs, bawdy innuendo, mangling the English Language, poking fun at the upper class, and of course, chasing half naked women around.


The film could easily draw a comparison to Monty Python's first feature And Now For Something Completely Different, which also was a best-of of their series. The Pythons re-shot all of the sketches for the film and as a result, much of the film lacked the timing and punch of delivering the material fresh before a live studio audience. Benny Hill, on the other hand, just used the existing footage from the series, so that was not an issue.

I am so glad I never got to see this on the big screen. The primitive analog video would look absolutely horrible transferred to 35mm film and blown up to fill a cinema screen. It doesn't even look that great on DVD.

It looks bad and some of the humor is dated, but the film delivers a great variety of fun and is a great way to discover (or remember) the magic of Benny Hill.

Virginia City

1940 - Warner Brothers
Directed By Michael Curtiz


SYNOPSIS

Union Officer Bradford (Errol Flynn ) escapes from a Confederate prison with knowledge of a Confederate plot to ship gold to bolster their war-torn nation and leads a mission to stop it. Confederate Captain Irby (Randolph Scott) is leading the secret mission that will ship the gold from Virginia City, Nevada to the south. Both sides must contend with a dastardly Mexican bandito (Humphrey Bogart) who will stop at nothing to get the gold.

MY THOUGHTS

An entertaining B-movie... except it's an A-picture.

Michael Curtiz was well versed in action films, having directed all of Errol Flynn's 'swashbuckling films' like The Sea Hawk, Charge Of The Light Brigade and The Adventures Of Robin Hood (among others.) The action of a western is only a little bit different and he excels at this as well. The action looks great making the film look a lot better than it actually is.

The script is less as exciting. It's another very routine and predictable good conquering bad story. There are a few surprises along the way (like Flynn's prison sentence at the end,) but those are quickly tidied up.

Errol Flynn lacks the charm that made him a star and comes across rather bland. The character is a fairly bland one to begin with, so there was little for him to spice up... especially the romance.
Flynn's character's romance with Miriam Hopkins completely lacks the spark and chemistry of his several onscreen parings with Olivia De Havilland. The film would have done alright completely jettisoning this subplot and further developing the main plot to create something more original than a tacked-on romance to interest female viewers (who probably wouldn't be keen on seeing a western anyway.)

Surprisingly, Humphrey Bogart does OK as a Mexican. He's got the accent down pat but sadly doesn't have the menace or the screen time that even his basic supporting gangster characters did at the time. This was one of his final supporting roles and would soon graduate to lead roles by the end of the year.

The film makes great use of the many familiar faces of the Warner Brothers stock company who all shine in brief roles.

Virginia City is an entertaining and serviceable western but lacks much spark or originality.

Book Review: Hollywood's Made To Order Punks

Hollywood's Made To Order Punks: The Complete Film History Of The Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids and Bowery Boys
By Richard Roat, 2009



I bet no one involved in the making of the 90+ films in the Dead End Kids/Little Tough Guys/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys series figured that people would still be enjoying these films 50-70 years after they were made... let alone writing books about them!

The two previous books written on the subject "The Films Of The Bowery Boys" by David Hayes and Brent Walker (1984) and "From Broadway To The Bowery" by Leonard Getz (2006) both kept the films front-and-center. They gave detailed info on the 90+ films and some criticism. Tacked on at the end, were a few biographies of the actors who made those roles famous.

Author Richard Roat turns the table on that format and features the biographies up-front. Since he became a fan in the 1960s, he ran the Bowery Boys fan club and sought out many of those actors and formed friendships with them via letters, phone calls and in-person meetings.
Who better to present them as people rather than as film characters?
From all six original Dead End Kids to guys who played an East Side Kid just once... everyone is given a space and their life story is told.



Instead of his opinion on each film, Roat obtained permission from Variety Magazine, to use their reviews. It's an interesting (and often humorously unkind!) look back at how the films were viewed by critics of their day.

The book is amply illustrated with photos from Mr. Roat's collection. Most I'd never even seen before.

My only criticism is the book features several grammatical and spelling errors that a good editor should have noticed. A few minor (insignificant) factual errors are also present.

This book helped me to understand these actors more as people, which is what the two previous books lacked... and it is exactly what I was left wanting after reading those books.

Book Review: The Lost One - A Life Of Peter Lorre

The Lost One - A Life Of Peter Lorre
By Stephen D. Youngkin, 2005



Youngkin delivers an extremely detailed biography of the always-great character actor Peter Lorre.

His life is traced from his early days to his theater work with Bertolt Brecht to M. Lorre escaped the Nazis and did two films with Alfred Hitchcock before settling in America, where he quickly found work and got fame as Mr. Moto. He moved to Warner Brothers and got parts in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca among others... and later found parts in noir films and late in his career... in films like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Lorre was known for playing menacing characters on the screen.. but was a prankster and a true artist (as well as a drug addict) in real life. This book delves into both his on-screen and off-screen lives equally.

The book is exquisitely detailed. Most of his films are covered in detail... even the most forgettable. Seemingly anyone he worked with who offered an opinion about Lorre in the press or in interviews with the author is featured.

An extensive (150+ pages) appendix is included detailing his stage/film/television credits, a bibliography, notes, list of interviews and an index. Dozens of rare photos are also featured.

This is clearly something that took the author decades to put together and it comes across as a labor of love.

If you're a fan of Peter Lorre or want to know more about the golden age of Hollywood... I recommend this heartily.