Last night, we struck gold again with Robert J. Lippert's "Hellgate"(1952), a tremendous Western written and directed by Charles Marquis Warren, the creator of "Rawhide". Sterling Hayden stars as "Gilman Hanley", an ex-Confederate soldier turned veterinarian, settled now in Kansas with his wife. The year is 1867. A title card informs us that Kansas is a lawless state, with guerilla terrorists running rampant, bands of outlaw former Rebs who've taken to raiding rather than face defeat and surrender.
As the movie opens, Hanley is tending to a pregnant mare. His wife answers the door to a trio of unknown men who claim to be travelers, just passing through. One has been thrown from his horse, or so he says. "My ribs might be busted. We saw your vet'n'arian sign out front. I ain't got time to look for a doctor and I'm hurt bad. Can ya fix me?" Hanley wraps the guy's ribs, suggests a town doctor, and the men leave. He never questions their story, though they looked pretty rough 'n ready.
The next day, a US Army patrol comes knocking. "Did you treat a Vernon Brechene last night?" "Well, I treated a man, bandaged his ribcage, but I don't know his name." "Then can you explain this?" The Captain shows him a saddlebag found in his yard with five thousand dollars in the pouch. "And the horses in your corral have a stolen brand on their hides." This Captain knows that Hanley fought for the South during the war, and even though he's settled now, and assimilated into the Union in a respectable profession, old hatreds die hard. The circumstantial evidence is against him: treating a guerilla (though he didn't know it), and a dropped satchel with 5K inside (which looks like an escape payment). All of a sudden, Hanley is under Federal arrest for aiding and abetting a terrorist.
He gets sent to a barren desert prison known as Hellgate, in New Mexico near the Mexican border. The joint is medieval, with underground cells cut out of rock, and a sunken-into-the-ground, coffin-like bunker with cast iron doors called The Bakehouse, which does what it's name implies. The warden, an Army Lieutenant named "Voorhees" (Ward Bond) has a special dislike for guerillas: his wife and child were killed in a terrorist raid. Needless to say, once you reach such a prison camp, no one cares that you're innocent. The place is almost as brutal on the captors as the captives.
A giant named "Redfield" (James Arness) runs the six-man cell in which Hanley is placed. James Arness was a big morefrencher, and you can tell how big when compared to Sterling Hayden, himself quite sizeable but small compared to big James. But, as Hanley, he holds his own in the dungeon-like cave, and a peace is brokered. Everyone in the cell assumes he's guilty as charged. Redfield has discovered a hole in the top that leads to ground level outside, and a possible escape. But besides the armed guards, Lt. Voorhees also has a team of Pima Indians who are paid fifty bucks a head to hunt and kill escapees, and they know the desert, whereas the prisoners do not. "You don't wanna meet up with them Pimas," says a guard. "They make Apaches look like pussycats." Still, Redfield wants to chance it, but another cellmate named "Jumper" (Peter Coe) rats the plan out, to gain favor with Lieutenant Voorhees.
In between all of this, there are fistfights for supremacy, whipping-post lashings for insubordination, and plenty of trips to The Bakehouse. Did you you ever see the Civil War prison movie "Andersonville"? It came out in the late '90s. Man, was it grim, and this is nearly as bad. It shows that the Union was just as capable of war crimes (in this case, post-war) as the South. in fact, the Union was ruthless, which you have to be in war. Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground. But in the movie, even though the war is over, the guerilla bands are continuing to commit atrocities, not sparing women and children. and as a result, the retaliation against them is barbaric, which forces the viewer to consider the fact that the barbarous Lt.Voorhees lost his wife and child to guerilla terror. Thus, the movie is really about barbaric justice when used against an innocent man, Gil Hanley, and director Warren shows a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes at the beginning of the movie about Hanley's case, which indicates it's a true story.
Toward the end, disease hits the prison and the small town nearby. Fresh water is badly needed. Hanley is given one chance to redeem himself, though it's really the prison that needs redemption, and the criminals. I can't tell you what happens in the final fifteen minutes, but Sterling Hayden knocks it out of the park, and so does Ward Bond, in a horrible way.
What blows me away about this movie, and it's subject matter, is that it happened when my great-grandmother was an 8 year old girl. I have a photo from when my Dad was about three or for years old, sitting on great grandma's lap (his grandmother). She is about 65 by then (my age now, almost), and she looks entirely modern, in clothing, hairdo, expression, everything. She's a full-on Modern Woman in the photo, which was taken around 1923, and yet, when she was an 8 year old little girl, the Civil War had just ended, and lawless terrorism and medieval underground prisons were still around in this country. Which means that we were very close to anarchy just 160 years ago, at least in certain states and territories. The weird part is that 160 years seems like a long time, and it is, but then again....it isn't. Because my great grandma was born 164 years ago, and she was a Modern Lady.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "Hellgate". It earns our highest rating and the picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night's movie was "Shadow Man"(1953) another Hammer noir that is rich in atmosphere, thin in plot, and packed with red herring characters, but still very entertaining. You can't help but entertain when Cesar Romero is your star. He plays "Luigi" (no last name), the owner of a London pinball parlor. As the movie opens, a burglary is being investigated at the house of a wealthy man. Scotland Yard (pron.) "Inspector Johnstone" (Edward Overundersidewaysdown) seems to think it was staged by the man himself. Back at Luigi's joint, an old woman has fainted in the street. It's a hot day in merry old Londontown (must be all of 74 degrees), and Luigi's floor manager, a gent known as "Limpy" (Victor Maddern), helps the woman inside and sits her down. She's a fortune teller. Luigi knows her well. A police officer enters his office to ask how she's doing, just as a local thief is trying to sell Luigi some stolen trinkets for his parlor. Limpy hustles the thief outside. The script is based on a novel, but onscreen, it doesn't pan out. The whole setup amounts to nothing, except to introduce us to many characters, most of whom won't figure into the plot. The opening impression is that Luigi is a shady guy running a burglary ring out of his pinball joint, but that's not the case at all.
Next, we meet "Mrs. Barbara Gale" (Kay Kendall), the stunning, Sean Young-in-'No Way Out'-looking, wife of the wealthy robbery "victim". Her husband is really an in-debt gambler, she's his much younger trophy who's neglected and bored. She has a big, buff, butt-chinned boy-toy who has caused a ruckus at Luigi's place by calling Limpy a "cripple". Luigi has rightly roughed the big boy up for that, and now he's contrite. He asks to borrow Luigi's fortune-telling marionette box for a party, to be thrown by his girlfriend, Mrs. Gale (whose hubby knows she cheats and doesn't care). So, Luigi brings the marionette box over, and now Mrs. Gale falls for him, because Cesar Romero out-suaves a young buck any day of the week. The boy toy disappears, and we never see him for the remainder of the movie.
Now, Luigi and Mrs. Gale are in love, and he's met her husband and his gambling pals, but has no respect for them and feels no guilt for stealing her. But then, in front of his pinball parlor, he sees a sailor assaulting a woman who appears to be drunk. He decks the guy, then runs the woman off. "Leave now! Go home!" he yells. Why is he so vehement?
We learn that she's a local good time gal named "Angeli" (Simone Silva). A fellow Italian, she seems to know Luigi, as well as Limpy, who's never had a girlfriend and who keeps portraits of beautiful women pinned to the wall of his shabby apartment. Mrs. Gale is one of them. This drunken Angeli is another. Although Luigi deplores her, she treats Limpy with something approaching respect. She even offers to go to the movies with him, for which he shows up at the theater with flowers and a box of chocolates. But she never arrives.
Back at Luigi's, Limpy is sweeping up after closing time, when a phantasmagorical sequence takes place. All of a sudden, the parlor comes alive, like in "The Twilight Zone", with jukeboxes blaring, Jack-in-the-Boxes laughing, pinballs pinging, and here comes Angeli again, dancing through the aisle. She beckons to Limpy, but is she real or a dream? How did she turn on all the machines at once?
Well, it's that kind of movie; all atmosphere and little sense. In fact, we have no idea that a plot even exists until Angeli turns up dead at the 55 minute mark. Non-horror Hammer is all about atmosphere.
It's pretty clear by now that Luigi isn't the murderer, but he carries the body out, in his arms ala Frankenstein, in broad midnight, where anyone could see him. He calls Limpy to pick him up to dispose of Angeli, but the cops see them and bring them to the station, where Edward Overundersidewaysdown gives them both the 3rd degree.
In between all of this is a love affair between Luigi and Mrs. Gale. Luigi uses a ruse to escape police custody, and hides out in an upstairs room of the European jeweler next door. Now, he's a fugitive. Limpy, meanwhile, is trying to lay the blame for Angeli's murder on Mrs. Gale, and it will all come down to ten minutes of exposition in this strangely executed but well-done movie (if you ignore the supposed plot).
Sometimes, when you know the studio, and the time period, you can throw off initial expectations: "Okay, it's Hammer 1954. Forget the plot, just watch it for fun." And in that way, "Shadow Man" earns it's 6.0 IMDB rating. Cesar Romero is a big reason for that high number. It must have been in his contract never to play a bad guy, until he got to The Joker. No one else can hold a candle to Cesar in that role, but we like him in his suave form better. Two Bigs. If it had a plot it would be Two Huge. The picture is razor sharp. ////
And that's all for tonight. My blogging music was "Houses of the Holy" by The Four Zeppelini Brothers. Speaking of them, and especially Jimmy Page, have you ever noticed how the solo to "Stairway to Heaven" follows the same descending chord pattern as Jimi's solo on "All Along the Watchtower"? In fact, you could overlay Page's solo in place of Jimi's, and vice-versa. A guy on Youtube has done the former, but the comparison occurred to me before I saw it. I was listening to "Watchtower", and when the solo came up, I thought: "That reminds me of something." A day or two later, I knew what it was. I'll bet you Page deliberately used that chord pattern, and Jimi's solo, as a marker, then did his own (admittedly great) version. So that makes "Stairway" a double-plagiarism song: first for the opening (borrowed from Spirit), then for the solo (from Jimi). Here's another one that occurred to me: "Highway Star", as borrowed (or ripped-off, take your pick) from "Born To Be Wild". Think about it: the chugga-chugga opening riff, and then the title. Steppenwolf: "Get your motor runnin'....head out to the highway." Deep Purple: (chugga-chugga) "I'm a Highway Star!"
So, there you have it. And Ritchie has even admitted taking the bassline from Ricky Nelson's "Summertime" and turning it into the riff for "Black Night". And to bring things full circle, he demonstrates, in a video available on Youtube, how Jimi also borrowed from "Summertime", for his opening riff to "Hey Joe."
So Jimmy Page borrowed from Jimi who borrowed from Ricky Nelson, and Ritchie borrowed from Ricky and Mars Bonfire.
Finally, John Kay, in an interview, says that Mars Bonfire has made between $150,000 and $250,000, every year since 1969, for "Born To Be Wild". A quarter million a year, for more than half a century, for one song.
I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment