1. This film ran today on the Movies! TV channel (a free channel) and this is why I like Movies! -- its willingness to unearth wonderful old stuff like this and air it free of charge. Too bad the network's commercials are so idiotic, frequent, and noisy.
2. Someone here writes, "Why would Olivia de Havilland accept a role like this?" Well, because she was an actor. Actors want to act. Female actors in their 40s and 50s don't get offered many roles.
3. James Caan is splendidly hammy. What a beautiful young man he was. But he was also amazingly stiff and armored in the shoulders and chest, and therein resided the source for many of his future problems with substance abuse (or so would opine Wilhelm Reich).
4. Jeff Corey plays George Brady, the vagrant dude, nicknamed "Repent." (Does the "Repent" tattoo on his hand owe a debt to the tats on Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter"?) Corey was one of the great character actors of his generation (see also his work in "Butch Cassidy", etc. etc.). He was also a distinguished teacher of acting, maybe the best-respected such teacher in Hollywood in the '60s and '70s. Among his students: Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams.
5. There's something about a nylon pulled over the face that's just flat-out scary on a primal level.
6. Early in the film there's some pot-smoking going on in a car. This is by no means the first pot ever smoked in a movie but I'm wondering if it's maybe the first explicit, obvious case of pot smoking in a movie since the 1940s. There's an interesting list at Wikipedia called "List of Films Containing Frequent Marijuana Use" that supplies a bit of background - there was apparently a gap in pot use in movies between the '40s and the '60s. ("Lady in a Cage" doesn't qualify for the list because its pot scene is brief.)
7. The sequence at the end, where cars drive by and no one pays attention, seems to have been inspired by the Kitty Genovese murder case, which transpired in '64 and shocked the nation, and quickly interested Hollywood (Perry Mason had a Genovese-inspired case in '65). The Genovese incident was complicated and awful, half horror, half urban legend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese
8. This film plus "The Incident" (which came out a year later) = a good double feature at the drive-in.
9. Caan's demise in the film - splendidly weird!
10. My thumbs are up for this watchable, trashy, fun picture.
2. Someone here writes, "Why would Olivia de Havilland accept a role like this?" Well, because she was an actor. Actors want to act. Female actors in their 40s and 50s don't get offered many roles.
3. James Caan is splendidly hammy. What a beautiful young man he was. But he was also amazingly stiff and armored in the shoulders and chest, and therein resided the source for many of his future problems with substance abuse (or so would opine Wilhelm Reich).
4. Jeff Corey plays George Brady, the vagrant dude, nicknamed "Repent." (Does the "Repent" tattoo on his hand owe a debt to the tats on Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter"?) Corey was one of the great character actors of his generation (see also his work in "Butch Cassidy", etc. etc.). He was also a distinguished teacher of acting, maybe the best-respected such teacher in Hollywood in the '60s and '70s. Among his students: Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams.
5. There's something about a nylon pulled over the face that's just flat-out scary on a primal level.
6. Early in the film there's some pot-smoking going on in a car. This is by no means the first pot ever smoked in a movie but I'm wondering if it's maybe the first explicit, obvious case of pot smoking in a movie since the 1940s. There's an interesting list at Wikipedia called "List of Films Containing Frequent Marijuana Use" that supplies a bit of background - there was apparently a gap in pot use in movies between the '40s and the '60s. ("Lady in a Cage" doesn't qualify for the list because its pot scene is brief.)
7. The sequence at the end, where cars drive by and no one pays attention, seems to have been inspired by the Kitty Genovese murder case, which transpired in '64 and shocked the nation, and quickly interested Hollywood (Perry Mason had a Genovese-inspired case in '65). The Genovese incident was complicated and awful, half horror, half urban legend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese
8. This film plus "The Incident" (which came out a year later) = a good double feature at the drive-in.
9. Caan's demise in the film - splendidly weird!
10. My thumbs are up for this watchable, trashy, fun picture.