... and Dorothy Lee is getting annoyed at the daily reminders floating around the Shades of Gray offices.
Meanwhile, Loretta Young is getting ready to help delivering gifts to all the good boys and girls as this year's Santa's Helper!
Showing posts with label Loretta Young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loretta Young. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Monday, December 23, 2019
Christmas is almost here...
… and Loretta Young found a spot here at Shades of Gray that hadn't been decorated yet.
If you're not done decorating for Christmas yet, you better get to it!
If you're not done decorating for Christmas yet, you better get to it!
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Read the Review, Watch the Movie: 'Seven Footprints to Satan'
The subject of the following review was released to movie theaters exactly 90 years ago today! (The Year of the Hot Toddy is truly a year of happy coincidences. When I initially chose this movie from among the many Thelma Todd-featuring films I'll be writing about during 2019, to watch at this point, I didn't realize I would have the opportunity to post the review to coincide with such an anniversary!)
Seven Footprints to Satan (aka "Satan's Stairwell") (1929)
Starring: Creighton Hale, Thelma Todd, Laska Winter, Sheldon Lewis, Sojin Kamiyama, William V. Mong, Angelo Rossitto, Nora Cecil, Dewitt Jennings, Loretta Young, and Charles Gemora
Director: Benjamin Christensen
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars
While he is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis (Hale) and his girlfriend (Todd) are find themselves victims of a kidnapping during an elaborate heist at an exclusive art auction... and then things go from bad to nightmarish.
"Seven Footsteps to Satan" is one of those films that's hard to review without spoiling it. I think it really works best if you come to it cold, not knowing really what to expect... because the impact of the film revealing what it's really about and begins to spiral into fantastic and creepy weirdness is all the greater. (You THINK you're watching a crime drama, but then....)
With that in mind, all I can say about the film is that in addition to an impressive, fast-moving and twist-laden storyline, the film sports creative camera work and editing (I especially like the way wipes are used), spectacularly elaborate sets, elegant costumes (mostly evening gowns and tuxes but the other outfits that show up are really neat), excellent monster make-up jobs, and some really fine acting from the principals in the cast.
I thought the performance by star Creighton Hale, who, once again, is a bespecled and unlikely hero, was excellent. Unlike the comedic character he played in "The Cat and the Canary", here he's quite competent and extremely brave at every turn. Actress Thelma Todd, also impresses, showing that she was as good a dramatic actress as she was a comedienne.
By the way, The film has a very large supporting cast (so large, in fact, that it sometimes feels like costar Todd is just another face in the crowd), but among them we have Loretta Young standing out with a memorable performance in one of the film's most intense and frightening scenes, and an honest-to-god Asian actor playing a sinister Oriental Mystice, Sojin Kamiyama. (Maybe someone forgot to tell the Danish director that he should use white guys in make-up for the Asian characters.)
"Seven Footprints to Satan" was one of three silent thrillers/horror films directed by Benjamin Christensen for American studios, and until just a few years ago, it was believed to be lost. Now, however, several versions are available to watch online. None are of stellar quality, but given how many of these great old movies are gone forever (or hard to access because they've not yet been digitized and released online or on DVD), lovers of this sort of material are lucky we're getting this much.
If you like silent movies, especially ones of the more "trippy" variety, you need to watch "Seven Footprints to Satan". I highly recommend the version I've embedded below: It's the complete film, it's it was digitized from filmstock that was in relatively good shape, and it features an all-new, modern musical score that adds greatly to the experience.
By the way, if there's a film that could do with a remake, it's this one. It's got all KINDS of elements that would appeal to modern audiences, especially lovers of horror films. (Hell, I think this film may even be an ancient ancestor of the Torture Porn subgenre!)
Seven Footprints to Satan (aka "Satan's Stairwell") (1929)
Starring: Creighton Hale, Thelma Todd, Laska Winter, Sheldon Lewis, Sojin Kamiyama, William V. Mong, Angelo Rossitto, Nora Cecil, Dewitt Jennings, Loretta Young, and Charles Gemora
Director: Benjamin Christensen
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars
While he is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis (Hale) and his girlfriend (Todd) are find themselves victims of a kidnapping during an elaborate heist at an exclusive art auction... and then things go from bad to nightmarish.
"Seven Footsteps to Satan" is one of those films that's hard to review without spoiling it. I think it really works best if you come to it cold, not knowing really what to expect... because the impact of the film revealing what it's really about and begins to spiral into fantastic and creepy weirdness is all the greater. (You THINK you're watching a crime drama, but then....)
With that in mind, all I can say about the film is that in addition to an impressive, fast-moving and twist-laden storyline, the film sports creative camera work and editing (I especially like the way wipes are used), spectacularly elaborate sets, elegant costumes (mostly evening gowns and tuxes but the other outfits that show up are really neat), excellent monster make-up jobs, and some really fine acting from the principals in the cast.
I thought the performance by star Creighton Hale, who, once again, is a bespecled and unlikely hero, was excellent. Unlike the comedic character he played in "The Cat and the Canary", here he's quite competent and extremely brave at every turn. Actress Thelma Todd, also impresses, showing that she was as good a dramatic actress as she was a comedienne.
By the way, The film has a very large supporting cast (so large, in fact, that it sometimes feels like costar Todd is just another face in the crowd), but among them we have Loretta Young standing out with a memorable performance in one of the film's most intense and frightening scenes, and an honest-to-god Asian actor playing a sinister Oriental Mystice, Sojin Kamiyama. (Maybe someone forgot to tell the Danish director that he should use white guys in make-up for the Asian characters.)
"Seven Footprints to Satan" was one of three silent thrillers/horror films directed by Benjamin Christensen for American studios, and until just a few years ago, it was believed to be lost. Now, however, several versions are available to watch online. None are of stellar quality, but given how many of these great old movies are gone forever (or hard to access because they've not yet been digitized and released online or on DVD), lovers of this sort of material are lucky we're getting this much.
If you like silent movies, especially ones of the more "trippy" variety, you need to watch "Seven Footprints to Satan". I highly recommend the version I've embedded below: It's the complete film, it's it was digitized from filmstock that was in relatively good shape, and it features an all-new, modern musical score that adds greatly to the experience.
By the way, if there's a film that could do with a remake, it's this one. It's got all KINDS of elements that would appeal to modern audiences, especially lovers of horror films. (Hell, I think this film may even be an ancient ancestor of the Torture Porn subgenre!)
 |
| The heroes and villains of "Seven Footprints to Satan" |
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Underrated Orson Welles thriller
The Stranger (1946)
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, and Loretta Young
Director: Orson Welles
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars
A US government agent, Wilson, (Robinson) is on the trail of Franz Kindler, a psychopathic genius who made the Nazi concentration camps the efficient centers of death they were. No pictures exist of him, but when Wilson traces Kindler to a small Connecticut town, clues start mounting that well-liked newcomer to town college professor Charles Rankin (Welles) who just married the beloved daughter of the town's leading citizen, Mary (Young), is in truth Kindler.
"The Stranger" is a greatly underrated Orson Welles movie. It's a little slow in the wind-up, but once it gets gong, it moves along its suspenseful story-track with great deliberation and all of the elements working together in perfect time, just like the mechanisms of the clocks that Rankin and Kindler both enjoy working with.
Full of great acting, great camera work, and a perfectly paced story that first keeps the audience guessing and then keeps them on the edge of their seats as it builds toward its spectacular finale high atop the town's clock tower. Welles is in top form here, both as an actor and a director, and if you are a fan his work, of "film noir", or if you enjoyed recent films like "A History of Violence", you need to track down a copy of "The Stranger."
(Trivia: This was the only film Orson Welles produced/directed that turned a profit, primarily because he stayed on schedule and under budget for this one and only time.)
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, and Loretta Young
Director: Orson Welles
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars
A US government agent, Wilson, (Robinson) is on the trail of Franz Kindler, a psychopathic genius who made the Nazi concentration camps the efficient centers of death they were. No pictures exist of him, but when Wilson traces Kindler to a small Connecticut town, clues start mounting that well-liked newcomer to town college professor Charles Rankin (Welles) who just married the beloved daughter of the town's leading citizen, Mary (Young), is in truth Kindler.
"The Stranger" is a greatly underrated Orson Welles movie. It's a little slow in the wind-up, but once it gets gong, it moves along its suspenseful story-track with great deliberation and all of the elements working together in perfect time, just like the mechanisms of the clocks that Rankin and Kindler both enjoy working with.
Full of great acting, great camera work, and a perfectly paced story that first keeps the audience guessing and then keeps them on the edge of their seats as it builds toward its spectacular finale high atop the town's clock tower. Welles is in top form here, both as an actor and a director, and if you are a fan his work, of "film noir", or if you enjoyed recent films like "A History of Violence", you need to track down a copy of "The Stranger."
(Trivia: This was the only film Orson Welles produced/directed that turned a profit, primarily because he stayed on schedule and under budget for this one and only time.)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Too much bloat weakens 'A Cause for Alarm!'
Cause for Alarm! (1951)
Starring: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling and Irving Bacon
Director: Tay Garnett
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
A delusional, bed-ridden man (Sullivan) writes a letter to the district attorney's office in which he claims his wife (Young) and doctor (Cowling) are plotting to kill him. As he reveals this to his wife, his weak heart gives out. She has just given the letter to the mailman, and she launches into a frantic series of attempts to recover it, before she ends up being framed by a dead man for a murder she didn't commit.
"Cause for Alarm!" could be an exciting--and even thrilling--little movie, but it is about 15 minutes too long. It drags a bit in the beginning and it sags in the middle. It needed to be more concentrated in order to fully capture the dread of the main character and to drive home the sense of ever-closer doom that is closing in on her as more and more people seem to grow suspicious of her, and she fails in her attempts to retrieve the letter.
The acting in the film is good all around (even if Young's constant hysterics get a bit tiring) and the technical aspects of the film are very well-done, particularly the lighting of the film's climactic scenes. The only problem with the film is its bloated, drawn-out script.
Starring: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling and Irving Bacon
Director: Tay Garnett
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
A delusional, bed-ridden man (Sullivan) writes a letter to the district attorney's office in which he claims his wife (Young) and doctor (Cowling) are plotting to kill him. As he reveals this to his wife, his weak heart gives out. She has just given the letter to the mailman, and she launches into a frantic series of attempts to recover it, before she ends up being framed by a dead man for a murder she didn't commit.
"Cause for Alarm!" could be an exciting--and even thrilling--little movie, but it is about 15 minutes too long. It drags a bit in the beginning and it sags in the middle. It needed to be more concentrated in order to fully capture the dread of the main character and to drive home the sense of ever-closer doom that is closing in on her as more and more people seem to grow suspicious of her, and she fails in her attempts to retrieve the letter.
The acting in the film is good all around (even if Young's constant hysterics get a bit tiring) and the technical aspects of the film are very well-done, particularly the lighting of the film's climactic scenes. The only problem with the film is its bloated, drawn-out script.
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