Margalit Fox’s New York Times obituary also credits Infantino with luring Jack Kirby away from Marvel, “a coup akin to the Yankees’ acquisition of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox,” so you could even say he was indirectly responsible for my beloved Bronze Age…

In terms of actual news, uppermost in my mind is the fact that my daughter, Alexandra—whose own writing has occasionally graced this blog to a warm response—has the lead role in a movie!  Okay, yes, it’s a little indie short (shot in Frederick, Maryland) called My Second First Step that is still in post-production, and I have no idea how or when it will become accessible to the great unwashed masses.  In fact, you may be in a position to affect that outcome, since the filmmakers have launched a campaign on Kickstarter to raise money for post-production and the shooting of the companion piece, inadequate, in which her character will have a cameo.  The clock is ticking on this one, alas; if they don’t receive pledges for the required $4,000 by Saturday, April 13, then the fundraising effort collapses (but not the films).  Check out the infectiously scored teaser here.

With no books or articles to research, I’ve been a little less aggressive about Matheson news, but MGM—having rescued the rights from Eddie Murphy Development Hell at Universal—is going to be doing a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man, written by Richard and his son R.C. (or, as they put it, “Richard Matheson Jr.”), who will co-produce as part of the Matheson Entertainment deal.  Richard says the story is still relevant and calls it an “existential action movie.”  My response to such things, especially with this long-in-limbo property, is usually to yawn and say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  But if nothing else, this project has been getting lots of ink; I’ve gotten dozens of hits on my Matheson Google Alert.  So it’s great to see some attention being paid, and great to think that Richard will be back in the screenwriting saddle again…IF it happens.  Fingers crossed.

I’ve been trying to keep my hand in on the print side of things, and I am proud to report that the conclusion of my two-part article on 007’s nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, is in the current issue of Cinema Retro (Vol. 9 #25; Winter 2013); meanwhile, the good folks at Filmfax were generous enough to stretch my reprinted interview with the late Ray Bradbury over three issues, ending in #133 (Spring 2013).  And, proving that I still occasionally go to current films, I saw and enjoyed Skyfall, Django Unchained, Lincoln, and part one of The Hobbit with various family members.  I missed the Bond tribute from this year’s Oscars, but saw most of the major awards, and found it interesting that no film(s) made a major sweep this year; I was surprised that Spielberg didn’t get Best Director, yet felt that if Lincoln were going to receive one major award, it got the right one.

Last, but far from least, I would like to stress that even if new posts are few and far between for the immediate future, this blog can still serve as a good source of information and entertainment.  I may be taking concrete steps to make it more user-friendly in that respect in the days ahead, yet even now, for example, clicking on the B100 tab at the top of the page not only takes you to my list of favorite films (“Bradley’s Hundred”), but also gives you links to capsule reviews of each film.  And aside from the obvious subjects such as Matheson, Bond, and Marvel, you can search the site for various…

• stars (Humphrey Bogart, Clint Eastwood, Ingrid Pitt)
• studios (AIP, Amicus, Hammer, Toho, Universal)
• filmmakers (Jack Arnold, Mario Bava, Roger Corman, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, John Frankenheimer, Ray Harryhausen, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa)
• writers (Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, George Clayton Johnson, Nigel Kneale, Elmore Leonard, William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, Elleston Trevor [aka Adam Hall])

So dip in, click away, and see what suits your fancy; see you on campus!

Bradley out.

Who’s Responsible: Sydney Pollack (director), Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and David Rayfiel (screenwriters), Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Cliff Robertson (stars).

Why I Watched It: I like to revisit it periodically.

Seen It Before? Yes, several times.

Likelihood of Seeing It Again (1-10): 8.

Likelihood the Guys Will Rib Me for Watching It (1-10): 2.

Totally Subjective BOF Rating (1-10): 7.

And? Joe Turner (Redford) is a mild-mannered CIA analyst who returns from buying lunch for his colleagues at the Manhattan brownstone housing their front, the American Literary Historical Society, only to find that they have been brutally gunned down during his brief absence. For years, I have argued that those who considered Redford too much of a pretty boy to be taken seriously as an actor would do well to study his reactions here, as they escalate from shock and horror to fear for his own life and the grim determination that he is not going to be next. This sequence is a tour de force in many ways, but for me at least, the film falls into the unusual trap of never living up to those first twenty minutes.

Turner’s job is to read omnivorously, sifting through novels and articles and feeding them into a computer in search of security leaks or new ideas, and he has recently run across a mystery novel with a very curious publication history. It’s now clear that his dismissed report struck a nerve somewhere in Langley, having unwittingly uncovered something worth wiping out the ALHS, and Turner—code-named Condor—is instantly suspicious when he speaks with Deputy Director Higgins (Robertson). These suspicions are in no way allayed when his last surviving colleague, who called in sick, is killed in his home, and an attempt to bring Condor in from the cold, via a rendezvous with his section chief and an old friend, goes south in the worst way, with Turner framed for his friend’s death.

A lethal game of cat and mouse ensues as Turner, unable to trust anyone he knows, forces himself into the company of a total stranger, Kathy Hale (Dunaway), first to take refuge in her home and then, as they establish a gradual rapport, to enlist her active assistance. The very fact that Turner is an analyst rather than a field agent gives him an unexpected advantage, both because of the arcane knowledge he has assimilated over the years and because his status as an amateur makes his moves unpredictable. With Kathy’s help, he moves back and forth between New York and Washington, D.C., as he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery and avoid getting killed by Joubert (the great Max Von Sydow), a freelance assassin and sometime Company employee who oversaw the hit on the ALHS.

Although I have qualified admiration for this film, I damn it with faint praise by saying that it’s my favorite among the seven that Redford made with Pollack, ranging from the classic Out of Africa (1985) to the soporific Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and the unbearable The Way We Were (1973). If you said that their joint filmography did not augur well for a spy thriller, you’d be right, and my primary objection to the opening sequence is that the main-title theme by Dave Grusin (a lightweight if ever there was one) is too upbeat for the mayhem to follow. Likewise, by the time he shot Condor, Owen Roizman was already the cinematic poet laureate of ’70s New York for The French Connection (1971) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), yet this Manhattan lacks their edge.

It’s interesting to note that the screenplay tries to amp up the tension by halving the time-frame in James Grady’s 1974 source novel, Six Days of the Condor, and the filmmakers were clearly going for a Hitchcock vibe with that whole “an innocent man running for his life must earn the trust, and the heart, of a random woman” thing. But sadly, my lifelong antipathy for Dunaway—whose films such as The Three and Four Musketeers (1973 and 1974), Chinatown (1974), and Network (1976) I loved in spite of, rather than because of, her—blinds me to any chemistry they might have achieved. By the way, I wrote my very first press release for Grady’s 1985 novel Hard Bargains, and he was very kind to a wet-behind-the-ears publicity assistant at his first real job (at Macmillan) in the big, bad city.

Overall, I found the film a little too slick for its gritty subject matter, which is perhaps not surprising coming from impresario Dino De Laurentiis, but Von Sydow predictably tries to make the most of his limited role, and I suppose that Robertson, who always seemed a little sketchy to me, is well cast as a guy who may or may not be trustworthy, interacting nicely with boss John Houseman. This is certainly one of the better efforts from Semple, whose work oscillated from the height of the superior political thriller The Parallax View (1974) to the depths of Flash Gordon (1980) and Never Say Never Again (1983); Rayfiel worked on the Elmore Leonard adaptation Valdez Is Coming (1971). Someday, I’ll have to compare this with Grady’s book and check out his 1978 sequel, Shadow of the Condor.

Who’s Responsible: Ray Nazarro (director), Dan Ullman (screenwriter), Sterling Hayden, Eve Miller, and Barton MacLane (stars).

Why I Watched It: Hayden.

Seen It Before? No.

Likelihood of Seeing It Again (1-10): 6.

Likelihood the Guys Will Rib Me for Watching It (1-10): 4.

Totally Subjective BOF Rating (1-10): 7.

And? If you were going to make a Western in 1953, as Allied Artists did here, you could do a whole lot worse than entrust it to Nazarro and Ullman. The former directed scores of oaters on the large and small screens between 1945 and 1960, while the latter’s rather more diverse output also encompassed such SF offerings as The Maze (1953), BOF fave Mysterious Island (1961), and episodes of such genre series as The Outer Limits (“Cold Hands, Warm Heart”). As often noted, I watch Westerns less omnivorously, so I need a hook like a particular star or filmmaker, but we need look no further than General Jack D. Ripper himself, Sterling Hayden, who would star in Nazarro’s Top Gun two years later.

Just before the Civil War, “Bleeding Kansas” is still torn apart by pro- and anti-slavery factions, while the newly formed Confederacy is keenly aware that the Kansas Pacific Railroad now under construction will form a vital supply line for the Union’s Western outposts. Neither side wants to be responsible for starting a shooting war, so the Union declines to send troops to protect the crews, while the Confederates do everything they can—short of killing, at first—to stop them. Into this powderkeg is thrust Captain John Nelson (Hayden), an Army engineer sent undercover to help boss Cal Bruce (MacLane), his daughter, Barbara (Miller), and his train engineer pal, Smokestack (Harry Shannon).

Since the true nature of Nelson’s mission is on a need-to-know basis, the Bruces are, not surprisingly, under the misimpression that he is there to take Cal’s job, and they almost head back East, but Smokestack persuades them that with war imminent, this is no time to turn quitters. MacLane—whom I first saw as the abrasive cop Dundy in The Maltese Falcon (1941)—played so many pills in his career, and played them so well, that when I saw how prominently he was billed, I assumed he would be the villain, and I was thrilled that he got to be a good guy for a change. In fact, one of this film’s greatest pleasures is seeing him slowly begin to trust Nelson…albeit faster than love-interest Barbara, natch!

In a nice touch, when Nelson first gets to town, he sees Bill Quantrill (Reed Hadley) get attacked by three ruffians who want to run him out of town; gentleman that he is, Nelson steps in to even the odds, unaware that he’s assisting the incognito leader of the very men opposing him. In an economical 73 minutes, Ullman skillfully sketches the escalation of the hostilities between the two sides; the growing camaraderie between Nelson and the railroad crew; and his rapport with the Bruces. Smokestack adds an acceptable level of comic relief, annoying Cal with his omnipresent pipe, and several familiar faces round out the cast, including James Griffith and villains Douglas Fowley and Myron Healey.

As you’ll see in this clip from WTNH-TV, we volunteers from First Church of Christ Congregational (Redding, CT) were caught on camera during the annual Thanksgiving Basket Brigade at New Haven’s Casa Community Center.  Under the inspiring leadership of our friends at Christian Community Action (CCA), groups from various churches and other organizations help assemble food for those in need into single-family grocery bags that are combined with donated turkeys for one-stop holiday meals.  Phase one involves sorting the vast mounds of donations into categories (e.g., vegetables, stuffing, pasta/rice, beverages); in phase two, “shoppers” take bags and make the rounds from station to station so that each item is represented, while the rest of us either supply them or resupply the suppliers…when we’re not unloading further donations from trucks.

As if it’s not enough that she co-chairs the fair that brings in much of the funding for our church’s outreach programs, Madame BOF also helps coordinate this effort with our associate minister, Jack Davidson.  (And sings with me in the choir every week, and cooks for the Dorothy Day soup kitchen in Danbury, and volunteers in countless other ways, and although she’d be mortified that I’m tooting her horn, it’s her birthday today, so I have no scruples about telling you how great she is.)

You can briefly see me crossing behind the stations starting around 0:41.  The guy being interviewed at 0:48, Jeff Braun, was Jack’s predecessor, who now has his own church in Cheshire, so there is a, shall we say, spirited but friendly rivalry between the two churches over how much each group can accomplish.  This year, I’m sorry to say that the lesson was “less is more,” because the Casa Community Center has so much less room than our previous venue that most of our time, especially during phase one, seemed to be spent trying not to step on other volunteers.

Be that as it may, while Jeff is speaking, you can see our awesome senior minister, Dean Ahlberg, chatting in the background to the left, and Madame BOF on the fringe—as I’m sure she would wish it—at right.  She is also visible, again at the right, around 1:06.  You can see the two of us talking in the background on the left at 1:18, and amusingly, I can tell from my body language that at that exact moment, I’m kvetching about how the surfeit of warm bodies actually reduced our productivity.  Fortunately, I’m looking a lot more benign when you get the best opportunity for M/M BOF viewing at 1:33.

As I wrote the preceding, two cats were dozing contentedly within inches of each other on the bed nearby, but the impact of that statement is lost without its proper context.  Ever since our shelter cat Mina died tragically young of unknown causes on the 4th of July, we’ve been worried that her sister, Lucy, would be lonely while we were at work all day; after all, avoiding that was the whole reason we got two cats in the first place.  So when Madame BOF heard from a co-worker about a feral cat that had wandered onto somebody’s deck and jumped up into their lap, we thought it might be time Lucy had a friend.

Sadly, the new arrival (whom we named Sally, thus repurposing Lucy’s name from that of a Bram Stoker to a Charles M. Schulz character) hasn’t gotten the memo yet.  Of course we heard all sorts of cautionary tales about how hard it can be to introduce a new cat into a household, and for the past few weeks we’ve been living the nightmare, with stalking and hissing that occasionally erupts into growling, yowling, and Tasmanian Devil-style tornadoes of fur.  They’re still not friendly, but today’s little encounter, which ended with no worse than a perfunctory, half-hearted hiss from Sally while Lucy amicably quit the field, at least gives us cause for continued hope and gratitude.

Because gratitude is what it’s all about:  gratitude that we’re well enough off to have time and money to share with others who have less, and great people with whom to do so; gratitude that we will have other gifts to share when we sing at the interfaith Thanksgiving Eve service our church is hosting this year, where the sermon will be given by none other than CCA’s own Rev. Bonita Grubbs; gratitude for our amazing daughter, Alexandra, who recently made us proud yet again with her appearance in a production of To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday by a new theatrical group in D.C., and will be joining us on Thursday; gratitude for my friends, who—like us—luckily made it inconvenienced but unscathed through Hurricane Sandy (which left all local family branches in the dark for varying lengths of time) and the follow-up snowstorm; gratitude for the continued presence of my 82-year-old mother, to whom we were able to offer, if not light, heat, or running water, then at least company and safety in numbers for much of her 11 days without power; gratitude for the rest of the extended family that surrounds us with love, even as poor Madame BOF runs the annual gauntlet of preparations for the holiday; gratitude that we can offer a “forever home” to these two beautiful cats, even if they haven’t learned to get along quite yet; gratitude that we’re both employed, even though Loreen’s hours are so demanding; gratitude that in addition to my day job, I have opportunities to pursue my real calling with things like my Cinema Retro article on James Bond (of which I still have yet to receive any copies) and my weekly contributions to Marvel University.

Well, you get the picture.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

And Happy Birthday to the love of my life.

After mulling over possible topics for some time, Gilbert settled on a subject that has long fascinated both of us, a phenomenon that—as far as we know—doesn’t have a formal name. It’s that subgenre of the biopic in which the protagonist is a historical artist of some kind, usually a writer, but instead of being a more or less straightforward account of his life, the film has him actually enter, interact with, or prefigure his own artistic creations. Gilbert was thinking in particular of this year’s The Raven, in which Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) is recruited to trace a serial killer inspired by his own stories, but amusingly, a much earlier precedent is the rock-bottom exploitationer The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974), starring a perennial BOF bête noire, Robert Walker, Jr.

“Huzzah,” says I, “make it so,” and sent him off on his merry way to put pen to paper…but a funny thing happened on the way to the blog. First, he put it on the back burner to write his nice article on Person of Interest for SF Signal (to which I believe Drax gets the credit for steering him), where he had already rhapsodized about Douglas Trumbull and, God bless him, gotten further exposure for his interview with me regarding Richard Matheson on Screen. I was honored to do a little modest blue-penciling on all of those, as well as his long-awaited biopic piece…which, since much of its content was decidedly fantastique, he then decided—with my blessing, naturlich—to pitch to SF Signal, where it has now appeared..

So I’m still waiting for my guest post from Gil, but that’s fine. The longer I wait, the more exposure my little buddy gets (on a real website, yet), which was sort of the idea in the first place. You go, boy!

Part II: Why Ellen Ripley is the cat’s pajamas, and other stories

So…“Ripley, you say?  Tell me more.”  (See Part I here.)

Well, aside from the obvious factor that Alien is one of the most respected movies ever made and most of the other aforementioned action/sci-fi films featuring female action protagonists are….not….there are subtle but key differences between the leading ladies that set them miles apart from one another in terms of how much I consider them positive steps forward for women.  And for my money, the most pervasive of these is something rather invisible to the viewer:  the fact that Ellen Ripley was never supposed to be an “Ellen” at all, but rather a man.

Now I know that sounds like a reason for me to be the opposite of excited about this character, and I understand why you would think that.  After all, why wouldn’t I want a character designed from the ground up to be a woman who still stood on her own?  Well, that would be excellent, and if I find a great example, I will absolutely let you know.  But especially considering that this is an older movie [Ahem.  ---BOF], the filmmakers’ ability to remain true to the character even after turning the he into a she is quite remarkable.

The reason why this gender swap actually makes her such a great female role model is not that she becomes an overly masculine character (because that is obnoxious in a totally different way), but that her gender does not matter at all.  Pretty much every detail about her character is gender neutral, and so she is stripped of all the stereotypes and overcompensations we heap on any character written explicitly to be a badass female action hero.  She does not need to go to great lengths to prove herself as a badass, she does not need to be dressed in a skin-tight leather suit to show how “fit” she is, she does not need to be seduced by the man she trusts so much only to find out that he’s working for the enemy…no, none of these things is necessary because she just IS who she is.

As a matter of fact, the examples I extracted of why Ripley is such a great feminist character come just as much from what she does not do or have done to her as from what does happen. Or, to put it in a different light, it is in how much she is not really any different from any other crew member on board the Nostromo.

Walking into the film, there is not even any real reason to believe she is going to be the one who survives.  We all consider that a given now, but at the time it came out, I would bet that it was kind of a surprise.  As a relative unknown, she isn’t first-billed.  Meanwhile, Tom Skerritt is the captain and the first-billed, so, had I not been about 7 years old when I first saw it and incapable of making those kinds of logical assessments, I would have put my money on him.  She’s also not the only female on board, so she does not stick out as an anomaly and her presence as a female does not require any explanation.  We immediately accept it as fact that in the 22^nd century, women are considered pretty capable to do these kinds of jobs, just as men are.  As a matter of fact, everyone in the crew is pretty much just in it for themselves; they are characters written for the sake of being characters, and not for the sake of making some big statement about the coexistence of whites and blacks, males and females, lions and sheep….you get the picture.  Add in the fact that most of the actors are also much older than your average sci-fi/action hero, and you get a pretty perfect formula for realistic characters instead of idiotic young hot-shots driving us all crazy.  But I digress…forgive me; I just love this film so much.

There are so many examples of things that they could have done wrong with this character but never did that it is hard for me to list them all.  Yet I must try, so here are just a few:  first and foremost, she is not just dumb, sensitive, and emotionally fragile every time something goes wrong.  In fact, she fights back against her colleagues when they want to bring Kane back on the ship in complete disregard of her very valid concerns about contamination and the unknown.  She is not just callous about it, as it’s never an easy call to insist upon leaving a crew member behind, but she is practical, rational, and, yes, struggling a bit with the decision.

She is also respected and taken seriously by the majority of her colleagues, or at least to the degree that any of them take one another seriously.  She has legitimate professional conversations and opinions that are taken into consideration just like anyone else’s.  This may seem like a small thing, but subtle does not equal unimportant.  This is also reflected in a different way later on when Ash starts to have his meltdown.  The filmmakers are not at all shy about letting a female character get beaten up, which is a pretty bold decision.  Again, she is treated as an equal member of the crew, right down to how much she is punched in the face when someone gets out of control.

Another thing that I feel very adamantly about is that badass female characters are still realistic, and this is another example of something they did not mess up with Ripley.  She gets scared and nervous.  Everyone on the entire ship gets scared and nervous (except for Ash but, well, you know…).  There is no reason for her just to melt down in tears every time something happens, nor is there any reason for her to be verging on sociopathic in her inability to show empathy or emotion.  She displays the perfect balance for any action hero—male or female—between anxiety and strength.  And yes, that does mean she loses it a few times (such as when she is speaking to Mother and finally hears the ship say that the crew is viewed as expendable).  Wouldn’t you?  I know I would, and I know most men would, too.

And finally, perhaps my favorite way in which they did not ruin Ripley was by resisting the urge to make her a hyper-sexualized character or hyper-feminine character visually.  There is basically nothing sexy about how they presented this character—she’s dressed in one of the ugliest uniforms ever, covered in true grit for most of the movie, and gets sweaty and gross like any real person would.  Yet that’s not to say that Ripley is not still sexy to some (most?) people, because a line of fan boys (and girls) that could probably wrap around the Earth a few times would rightfully argue that point with me…and I would agree with them.  The point is that there is simply no concerted effort to build up her sexual appeal; she just is an attractive woman, and the fact that she gets out there and gets the job done with such competence probably doesn’t hurt.

And yes, she is in her underwear (gasp!) at several points during the film, and sometimes for a substantial amount of time.  But I would be more annoyed if she wasn’t.  It is established right from the get-go that they all go into hyper-sleep in their skivvies.  So why would she be any different just because she’s a female?  Even the final scene of the film in the escape pod is perfectly reasonable considering the circumstances and the flow of the film.  We are supposed to be calming down with her and becoming vulnerable with her before the final blowout.  We would feel off, as an audience, if she was fully dressed…all by herself in an escape pod…about to go into hyper-sleep.  It just wouldn’t make any sense, and we would immediately know (as a first-time audience) that the show wasn’t over.  I have no problem with putting a female character in her skivvies for the greater purpose of the film—only when it’s gratuitous do we have an issue.

Now, to get back to reality for a second:  did they actually go out of their way to make this character an amazing feminist role model?  Hell no.  They made the decision to cast Ripley as a female because they wanted to break up the male-dominated genre and bring in more viewers, which means selling more tickets and, you guessed it, making more money.  But, once again, that is exactly how her character became so great.  It seems to be in the act of deliberately making a character female that we run into trouble, and so having it be little more than an afterthought is actually the perfect scenario.  Gender bias never really came into play until later on in the series, when the character had already been largely developed.

On that note, you can catch a glimpse of what might have been when you look at the writing of the character Lambert, whom I consider a much more traditionally “female” character.  She’s still pretty great, because this is still an excellent movie in every other respect in addition to Ripley, but she meets your expectations of a female character in an otherwise masculine world.  She doesn’t do a whole lot in comparison to everyone else to help get rid of the alien, gets extremely emotional at various points in the film, wants just to leave rather than fight it, and becomes paralyzed and hysterical with fear when the alien shows up at the end.  Now, that’s not to say that those aren’t very realistic things that some people would absolutely do in response to such a situation.  However, had she been the only female on board (as she originally was supposed to be), it would have been a really obviously gendered choice to have her be the only one who does all of those things.  Let’s be frank:  in real life, women are not the only people to behave like that, and a large proportion of women would not behave like that either.  Plus, I have read that, apparently, Veronica Cartwright rather agreed with my analysis of her character, though she did ultimately take the part because they talked her into it, so I can’t be that far off.  [And, that said, performed her high-strung role brilliantly.  –BOF]

This ability to conserve the purest form of the character rather than allowing her to fall into either heavily gendered direction is thanks in large part to the deft hand of Ridley Scott’s direction and the rest of the behind-the-scenes folks responsible for the original Alien film, as unfortunately we progressively lose this element of Ripley’s character as the series goes on.  But that’s another story for another day.  For now, suffice to say that this is my rationale for believing that Ellen Ripley is the greatest female action hero of all time.  Agree or disagree with me as you will, because this is just one woman’s opinion, but I hope that my analysis and opinion has been informative or eye-opening for at least some of you, and that you may go forth to new action/sci-fi films with a bright, shiny new perspective on female characters in tow.

If you like what you see here, look for my next post on Daddy BOF’s site in the near (but not too near) future, this time looking at the next stage of Ripley’s progression in Part III: Where Alexandra laments the immense popularity of Aliens.

Lom starred in the original London production of The King and I in 1953, and appeared with Sellers and Alec Guinness in the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955); his film credits also include the original Night and the City (1950), Fire Down Below (1957), Spartacus (1960), and El Cid (1961). Hell Drivers (1957) featured the actors later known for portraying agents James Bond (Sean Connery), John Drake (Patrick McGoohan), and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum), while I Accuse! (1958) was an account of the real-life Dreyfus Case directed by its star, José Ferrer, and scripted by the late Gore Vidal. But in later years, Lom was increasingly typecast in genre movies, e.g., Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), the infamous Mark of the Devil (1970), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), Asylum (1972), —And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), The Dead Zone (1983).

From Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966) to Masque of the Red Death (1989), Lom made a dozen films with writer-producer Harry Alan Towers, often featuring the latter’s wife and producing partner, then known as Maria Rohm. Most notable were Jesus Franco’s 99 Women (1969) and Count Dracula (1970), two versions of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (1974 and ’89), and adaptations of Oscar Wilde (Dorian Gray, 1970) and Alistair MacLean (River of Death, 1989). Count Dracula added Professor Van Helsing to Lom’s literary and historical roles: Napoleon (The Young Mr. Pitt, 1942 and War and Peace, 1956), Herod Antipas (The Big Fisherman, 1959), Captain Nemo (Mysterious Island, 1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), Simon Legree (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1965), General Huerta (Villa Rides, 1968), and the apostle Barnabas (Peter and Paul, 1981).

“Herbert’s death really affected me,” Maria told me. “I liked him very, very much. I loved him in all his roles, he had a great screen presence, and he was a true gentleman of the old school. We used to talk for hours about the world, aristocracy, and the terrors of WWII, which had affected him so sadly. When Herbert went to London at the beginning of the war [fleeing the Nazis], he took his then girlfriend with him, whose papers were not in order, and she was sent back and died. I don’t have any anecdotes as Herbert was not a man of antics. Even in Isfahan [where the ’74 Indians was shot at the remote Shah Abbas Hotel in the Iranian desert], where all kinds of trouble went down, Herbert always managed to keep out of any unpleasantness. He was so very proper and genteel, cultured and most enjoyable to be around. He had studied philosophy before he left for London.”

Now, I appreciate a good plug as much as the next guy, but when I started to dip into the blog, I discovered that we have an astonishing array of interests in common, not least of which is a certain Mr. Matheson, who seems to be quite ubiquitous on Sergio’s site.  Just looking through his most recent posts, I see such familiar names and topics as Agatha Christie, Terence Fisher, Quiller, Dying Room Only, Fredric Brown, Sidney Lumet, Robert Culp, Vertigo, Evan Hunter, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Ray Bradbury, John Frankenheimer, No Way Out, James Bond…well, that’s plenty.  On top of that, he’s a big fan of John Dickson Carr, whose Dr. Gideon Fell mysteries I have loved since I was a kid, so start clicking!

And, speaking of plugs, check out my main man Gilbert Colon’s awesome piece on Person of Interest and the Dark Knight Trilogy at SF Signal.

Up next, when time permits, some thoughts on the passing of Herbert Lom.