ON THIS DAY in 1903, famed FBI agent and manhunter Melvin Purvis was born. Purvis was portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2009 Michael Mann film, PUBLIC ENEMIES.
Movies
Movie reference
Trick & Treat for October 23rd:
THE MUMMY (1932; starring Boris Karloff; directed by Karl Freund)
THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940; starring Tom Tyler; directed by Christy Cabanne)
Boris Karloff’s follow-up to FRANKENSTEIN answers the unasked question, “What are you like now that you’ve come out of your shell?” The shell in this case is not the candy-coated one of a certain candy, but a very, very old mummy’s case. Within which is THE MUMMY: an equally, very, very old Mr. Imhotep (Karloff) who’d just like to sleep-in. But he’s disturbed not by the paws of a cat but by a group of British explorers. Would you be in a good mood if you were awakened from a comfy nap? No! Would you subsequently wreak havoc upon the person or persons who disturbed you? Who knows?! But you probably wouldn’t be quite as upset as Imhotep. Karloff, when not engaged in a slow pursuit of slow-moving Britishers, disguises himself as a creepy Egyptologist, with an unforgettable stare. But it’s the Mummy you’ll really remember. 
Just as there have been umpteen, needless and pointless sequels (Coconut flavor??) to the original (and still the best) M&Ms, the same is true of the Mummy franchise. One particular spinoff to the Karloff classic (although not the worst) is THE MUMMY’S HAND. The bandaged fellow in this variation is encased in more or less the same shell, but the innards are different, and any hopes of having the intrigue of the original quickly unravels. Tom Tyler is just no match for Boris, the musical score is a rehash from SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and the plot: it melts in THE MUMMY’S HAND. 
Who wants to wait until the 31st to wallow in Halloween indulgences and scary movies?! Home Projectionist doesn’t! And so we’ll have pairings of 31 Frights and 31 Bites every one of October’s 31 nights: a scary, snack size movie “trick”, and a delicious “treat” to go along with it.
If you spent most of your time watching movies this past week, you might have missed these articles here at Home Projectionist:
- Happy 95th Birthday to Joan Fontaine
- The Challenge of the Subtitle: Tanks! Tanks! Merci! Merci!
- Art imitates life: The week’s Reel History
- Tricks & Treats: 31 Frights, 31 Bites
- “You could always take a cold shower”: an Alfred Hitchcock film quiz
- RIP Sylvia Kristel
- At Long Last: THE STERILE CUCKOO
- Home Projectioning: Halloween Style
- Hollywood on the Lake: Chicago’s Essanay Studios
- Happy 130th Birthday to Bela Lugosi
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ON THIS DAY in 1935, racketeer, bootlegger and mobster Dutch Schultz was fatally shot at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey. Schultz was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1991 Robert Benton film, BILLY BATHGATE.
Trick & Treat for October 22nd:
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928; starring Conrad Veidt; directed by Paul Leni)
Based on a Victor Hugo novel, THE MAN WHO LAUGHS skirts the gray line between horror and romantic melodrama. Conrad Veidt, who of course was the sinister Nazi, Major Heinrich Strasser, in CASABLANCA, plays Gwynplaine, a carnival performer whose face is doomed to wear a perpetual, devious-looking snicker or, more accurately, maniacal grin. Gwynplaine’s father once ran afoul of King James, and Gwynplaine’s never-ending smile was the subsequent punishment doled out by the King to the boy. Young Gwynplaine is then raised by a mountebank alongside a pretty blind girl, Dea (Mary Philbin). Although Dea loves Gwynplaine dearly, he is ashamed of his hideous expression and declines marriage. However, due to Gwynplaine becoming an heir to some valuable property, royal intervention via Queen Anne ensues and the plot gets as thick as a Snickers bar. Similar in some ways to the silent classic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with Lon Chaney, this excellent film features a gruesome lead character who also happens to be one we can feel sympathy towards, and with whom we can root for. If you’re open to silent films (and you should be if you’re not) THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is packed with equal amounts of scares and sweetness. 
Who wants to wait until the 31st to wallow in Halloween indulgences and scary movies?! Home Projectionist doesn’t! And so we’ll have pairings of 31 Frights and 31 Bites every one of October’s 31 nights: a scary, snack size movie “trick”, and a delicious “treat” to go along with it.
Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia DeHaviland are the last of the great actresses from the era of classic cinema.
JANE EYRE trailer
Joan on Password against Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
On why she never speaks to her sister Oliva DeHaviland
ON THIS DAY in 1962, President Kennedy announced on national television that he’d ordered a “naval quarantine” of Cuba following the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island. This event was documented in the 1974 film, THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER, starring William Devane and Martin Sheen.
Trick & Treat for October 21st:
PEEPING TOM (1959; starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer; directed by Michael Powell)
Is a marshmallow Peep really a Peep if it’s in the form of a ghost? Controversy abounds! So did it, too, with the release of this film in 1959, Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM. The knives were already out for director Powell, for whom British film critics had no great love to begin with. This despite Powell having previously made THE RED SHOES and BLACK NARCISSUS–both of which have withstood the test of time as artistic masterpieces. Today, however, opinions about PEEPING TOM rank nearly as highly as they do for those two classics.
The story concerns Mark (Boehm), a pleasant but slightly “off” young photographer. Mark, unfortunately, carries with him the legacy of the bizarre experiments his father performed upon him. As a result of those parental abuses, Mark nowadays practices his photography in a most unusual way. Not satisfied with shooting normal portraitures, Mark photographs female subjects who are in the throes of death–deaths Mark causes, murders that Mark himself commits, camera in hand. The fact that it is clear he cannot control his compulsive behavior does soften the disturbing aspects of this movie. Nevertheless it is a dark portrayal. But it’s also truly terrifying, very scary, and, like the shower scene in PSYCHO, contains unforgettable imagery–such as the faces of one or two of Mark’s victims bearing a likeness to the faces on that box of PEEPS. 
Who wants to wait until the 31st to wallow in Halloween indulgences and scary movies?! Home Projectionist doesn’t! And so we’ll have pairings of 31 Frights and 31 Bites every one of October’s 31 nights: a scary, snack size movie “trick”, and a delicious “treat” to go along with it.
ON THIS DAY in 1797, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution was launched in Boston Harbor. The ship is depicted in the 1926 silent film, OLD IRONSIDES, starring Charles Farrell and Wallace Beery.
PULL THE STRING
BELA READS TELL TALE HEART
A LOVELY YOUTUBE TRIBUTE
Trick & Treat for October 20th:
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999; with Heather Donahue)
When you first bit into a Milk Shake bar, given its name you probably thought you’d experience the taste of a real milk shake. You probably were a little disappointed that you’d been tricked. The same might go for a first viewing of this film. They apparently do not make the Milk Shake anymore. It’s this writer’s opinion that the same should go for further iterations of BLAIR WITCH. We’re supposedly watching found footage showing a trio of college kids who went on a camping trip in the woods. They ran into some trouble, and not the “I forgot to bring hot dog buns” kind. It’s all recorded on tape by a camera that, you’ll quickly see, does not have the “Steadicam” feature. (Incidentally, even though they brought a camcorder, they don’t have phones.) And so, like the more recent film CLOVERFIELD, we get something more approaching “Jitterycam”. Very quickly, we wish the witches would just do their thing and put these kids and the audience out of is nauseous misery. The movie’s totally dependent on you believing this is a documentary. Good luck with that, and good luck pretending you’re drinking a Milk Shake and not eating one. 
Who wants to wait until the 31st to wallow in Halloween indulgences and scary movies?! Home Projectionist doesn’t! And so we’ll have pairings of 31 Frights and 31 Bites every one of October’s 31 nights: a scary, snack size movie “trick”, and a delicious “treat” to go along with it.
IMDb.com
I got in a movie line once just because the line was long. “Something good must be happening,” I thought to myself. It was dark and cold outside, winter in Chicago, and I took my place, alone and shivering, Polish-speaking people in front of me, Polish-speaking people queuing up behind me. The Village Theater marquee said only “Welcome to the Chicago Film Festival.”
It turned out that the movie was SEX MISSION (or SEKSMISJA, as originally — phonetically? — titled), and I fell in love with this sci-fi/political satire comedy. If only the subtitles had done the movie justice for this lone English speaker in the room.
To be sure, I laughed as the two fumbling male protagonists awaken, after having been left in a cryogenically suspended state for 50 years. They come to consciousness and discover a world of women living in a post-apocalyptic underground compound. The story, the surprises, and the sight gags all work. Hilarity definitely ensues.
While I chuckled out loud, the Polish-speaking crowd roared, and I mean roared, with that kind of knee-slapping, tear-inducing laughter. More than a few times, the audience erupted with laughter when the simplest declarative statement appeared in English at the bottom of the screen. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, much like the hapless male characters in the movie. Oh how I wished the subtitles would have captured what the Polish speakers understood. Even though I missed most of the jokes, I still recall the sheer pleasure of being in a theater with such a connected and happy crowd.
A recent article by Anthony Paletta in The Wall Street Journal referenced the book, Is That a Fish In Your Ear?, by translator and author David Bellos. Bellos refers to English translators as “among the least-loved and least-understood language athletes in the modern world.” Their job is an art, and it’s a hard one. Not only do they translate dialogue, but they also must capture a character’s essence, create subtleties in meaning, and communicate authenticity. In addition to that, they have the added challenge of adhering to restrictive guidelines, especially in terms of space limitations that dictate the size and length of the subtitles on the screen.
We’ve all experienced the humorous slip up with a subtitle. When there’s a mistake we understand, we smile and forget. Some are classic bloopers, like the one cited in the article of the amusing French translation gaff from Peckinpah’s CROSS OF IRON. The “exclamation of ‘Tanks! Tanks! appears in subtitle form as “Merci! Merci!’.”
Mistakes will be made, as they say. How many times have we been unintentionally fooled or misled?
The future brings us a potential slippery slope. Thanks to today’s technology, there are now open-source subtitle platforms emerging, like Amara, which provide for on-line collaborative subtitle creation.
In our global village, access to translation of videos will open doors of communication like never before. But if subtitling done by professionals is such a painstaking, nuanced, and challenging task subject to errors and failure in interpretation, what will actually be lost in translation when amateurs and volunteers provide the lexicon? What will happen in a brave new world when translation may not be quite right, when the wrong, and possible incendiary words, are added to images?
I worry.
It took me years to find a copy of SEX MISSION. It became a sort of obsession. Every time I met someone Polish (which is easy to do in Chicago), I would feel a need to explain the incredible way the audience responded to the film that night.
At long last, I got a lead. A friend of a friend of a friend who operated an auto repair shop might have a copy. What luck! I remember wandering into the garage and introducing myself to a man who didn’t speak English. He was bored with my eagerness. Gripping a filterless stub of a cigarette between his oil-stained fingers, he casually handed over the tape as if it were nothing. I was thrilled to tuck the black plastic case into my purse and hurry home, anxious to sit down and watch the movie again, just to see if it was as clever as I had remembered it.
Unfortunately, the tape had been recorded off of another tape or broadcast, and only about the top third of the letters of the subtitles appeared on the screen.
I watched the movie anyway. I longed for the laughter.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow
ON THIS DAY in 1944, General Douglas MacArthur, who’d said “I shall return”, fulfilled his promise, returning to the Philippines for the Allied reclamation of the islands from Japan. The 1977 film, MacARTHUR, starring Gregory Peck, chronicled this event.
Trick & Treat for October 19th:
ATTACK OF THE 50 FT. WOMAN (1958; with Allison Hayes; directed by Nathan Juran)
It’s a shame that the Amazing Colossal Man perished in a tragic fall from atop Hoover Dam in 1957. Nancy Archer and the colossal Glenn Manning had something in common besides enjoying long walks. More importantly, the attacks Nancy inflicts on her hometown (and on us) during this film might have been prevented. In what might be one of the most unbelievable of all 1950s sci-fi movies (which is saying an amazingly lot), Nancy (Allison Hayes), the wife of the wealthy, philandering Harry, goes on quite a tear when she discovers Harry at a local diner with the town floozy, Honey Parker. Harry quickly discerns that Nancy has a big chip on her shoulder–a chip that in fact is literally a city bus.
You see, there was this alien spaceship Nancy happened to see one day. Out of this spacecraft stepped a weird alien (is there any other kind?), dressed like a Frenchman from the 1600s. Astonishingly, authorities do not believe Nancy’s story. Her encounter with the alien left some minor side effects–namely that she’s a bit taller. Which would be fine except that she’s about 45 feet taller. Always a fussy clothes shopper with nothing to wear, Nancy’s really in a pickle now, settling for a very large beach towel. She also has a newfound problem with trees and houses, and decides to do some urban renewal. Nowadays, Nancy could turn her bad luck and her unique new assets into a lucrative movie/TV deal, and possibly a very large Playboy spread. This being 1958 however, Nancy and her sarong must be dealt with by the use of force. This is a whopper of a tale for sure. But if you can suspend disbelief for 90 minutes, it’s one with some sweet, funny rewards.
Who wants to wait until the 31st to wallow in Halloween indulgences and scary movies?! Home Projectionist doesn’t! And so we’ll have pairings of 31 Frights and 31 Bites every one of October’s 31 nights: a scary, snack size movie “trick”, and a delicious “treat” to go along with it.
Good evening. Do you have a reservation? Never mind, none is needed. Seems that one of our guests, a Miss Marion Crane, checked out late last night, and her room has just become available. It will require some housekeeping service, but our young man, Norman, is attending to that right now. While you’re waiting, enjoy this quiz. It’s all about PSYCHO and Janet Leigh, the guest who didn’t stay.
Good luck, Mr. Thornhill, wherever you are…
Take the Quiz!(*The quiz title was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest: “Something wrong with your eyes?” “Yes”, says the sunglass-clad Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant), “They’re sensitive to questions”. To Roger’s question about what could a man do with his clothes off for 20 minutes, Eve Kendall answers, “You could always take a cold shower.”)
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