Sophie's Choice (1982)

As I prepared to blog this month about SOPHIE'S CHOICE, I tried to recall when I first became aware of the Holocaust and concentration camps. I thought we must have covered it in history class during high school. Then, I stared at the word "holocaust" and it came back to me.  It was a TV mini-series on NBC called HOLOCAUST (1978) that showed over four nights and almost eight hours the plight of a Jewish family during the Nazis reign of terror culminating in their attempt to exterminate the Jews. The mini-series provided roles for future stars James Woods and a young actress named Meryl Streep. It must have had a profound effect on me. When I traveled through Europe after college, in between visits to castles and museums and Roman arenas, I made it a point to visit a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, just outside of Munich. I wanted to see where these atrocities were committed and be reminded that as civilized as we think we are, mankind could be terribly barbaric and cruel.  Like one of the monuments built at Dachau says, "Never Again."

Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) is the most well known and acclaimed film about the Holocaust.  Before SCHINDLER'S LIST there weren't many films that tackled the subject.  But there were a few. THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959) based on Frank's actual diary and directed by George Stevens (GIANT) showed us the face and life of a young Jewish girl before she was caught and sent to a concentration camp. Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE (1980) based on Fuller's experiences in World War II in an army infantry unit from D-Day to Germany has a few scenes at the end of the film with soldiers encountering concentration camps and its horrors.  But there's another film that had a concentration camp subplot wrapped around a love triangle in New York in the late 1940's after World War II. It was SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982) written and directed by Alan J. Pakula based on the novel by William Styron. And starring in it was that young actress who appeared in HOLOCAUST.  Meryl Streep. 

My interest in SOPHIE'S CHOICE stems from one of my favorite people that I worked with in the film business. His name was Branko Lustig. He was a Croatian assistant director/production manager when I met him working on an NBC mini-series called DRUG WARS: THE KIKI CAMERENA STORY (1990). Branko had survived the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp as a young boy.  He showed us his concentration camp number tattooed on his arm by the Nazis.  One night when we complained about how cold it was during filming, Branko reminded us that on a cold night in Auschwitz, fleas would jump from cold dead corpses to warm live bodies. We never complained again. Branko would go on to become a producer and win an Academy Award with Steven Spielberg and Gerald Molen for producing SCHINDLER'S LIST.  Later, he was one of the producers on Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR (2000). Not bad for a survivor of one of the worst concentration camps during World War II. One of Branko's earliest film credits was as production supervisor for the concentration camp scenes shot in Yugoslavia for SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  I imagine the filmmakers leaned on Branko's personal experiences for the realism in those sequences.  Branko Lustig recently passed away in 2019 in his home country of Croatia at the age of 87.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a hard film to pin down.  It's a love story. It's a drama. It's a mystery. It's a tragedy. Set in New York in 1947, young aspiring writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) arrives on a bus from the South and moves into a Brooklyn boarding house known as "the Pink Palace",  intent on writing his first novel.  He becomes acquainted with his neighbors above him: Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), a research biologist prone to mood swings and his Polish girlfriend, the beautiful but fragile Sophie Zawistowska (Meryl Streep). Stingo first meets them when Nathan and Sophie have a fight. But they soon become friends, having dinner together and even taking an excursion to Coney Island. Stingo begins to learn more about his new friends. Sophie came to America after the war. Pale and anemic, trying to learn English at a night school, Sophie fainted in a library. Nathan came to her rescue, nursed her back to health and they fell in love.

Interested in meeting the fairer sex, Nathan introduces Stingo to Leslie Lapidus (Greta Turken), who appears to be as voracious for sex as Stingo but turns out to be a prude. Stingo returns to the boarding home and finds Sophie alone.  She invites Stingo to her room and reveals more of her past. She was married to an associate of her father in Krakow.  She was sent to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp for stealing a ham. Sophie's actually Catholic not Jewish. And from the cuts on her wrist, Sophie has attempted suicide. Stingo tells Sophie she can trust him with her secrets.  Nathan returns and borrows Stingo's manuscript to read. Nathan loves the manuscript. They take a walk out on the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate. Later, they celebrate Nathan's breakthrough at his research job. But Nathan's mood turns mecurial again. He rails at Sophia on why she survived the Holocaust and six million Jews died.  Sophie disappears from the house.

Searching for Sophie, Stingo visits her employer Dr. Blackstock (Joseph Leon).  Stingo discovers from Blackstock that Sophie's father was not a champion to Jews like she had told him but an anti-semitic who was friends with the Nazis. Sophie returns to the Pink Palace. When Stingo asks why Sophie lied to him about her father, Sophie reveals her darkest secrets.  We flashback to Krakow in 1938. Sophie hates her father who espouses extermination of the Polish Jews. She's arrested as a collaborator after her resistance lover is murdered and sent to Auschwitz with her two children who are separated from her upon arriving at the camp. For her language skills, she's chosen as a translator/secretary for the camp commandant Commander Rudolf Hoess (Gunther Maria Halmer). Sophie tries to win her son's freedom and almost sleeps with Hoess but she's sent back to the barracks in Block Three.

Nathan asks Stingo to meet his brother Larry (Stephen D. Newman) who Nathan says liked Stingo's manuscript. Larry reveals to Stingo that his brother Nathan is not what he seems and asks Stingo to keep tabs on Nathan. Nathan proposes to Sophie but then has a breakdown. He later calls Sophie, threatening to kill both Sophie and Stingo. Stingo and Sophie flee the Pink Palace, hiding in a cheap hotel room on the outskirts of New York. Stingo offers to marry Sophie, take her to his uncle's farm in Virginia where they could raise a family.  But Sophie tells Nathan her final secret.  When she was sent to Auschwitz with her two children, a guard told Sophie only one of her kids could stay in the camp.  The other would be sent to the gas chamber. Sophie had to make a choice. Sophie and Stingo share a night of passion but Sophie returns to Nathan and their doomed romance. 

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is about dealing with life after witnessing so much death. Sophie is like a ghost after the horrors she experienced at Auschwitz. She tries to live again, immigrating to America, learning English, attending night school to forge a new life.  Sophie was forced to make an unimaginable choice in the concentration camp that haunts her.  She's cursed in making choices.  She unwittingly chooses to become lovers with the unhinged Nathan which will lead her to more despair. She has a choice to leave Nathan for Stingo but she doesn't. Sophie grapples with the guilt of a survivor.  Why did she survive the Holocaust and millions of others including her children did not?  Nathan makes her feel alive and sexy, a temporary distraction from a past she cannot escape. Nathan has as many skeletons in his closet as Sophie has in hers.  Their passionate love affair will end in a perverse way no one could imagine.

Stingo is our guide in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  Like Stingo arriving in the big city from his southern roots, we the audience are naive to what we are going to learn about Sophie and Nathan.  Director Pakula reveals bits of information carefully, slowly, building tension as the film goes on. Pakula doesn't play his hand too early.  We observe the events unfolding at the same time as Stingo. We never learn any information sooner than Stingo. We are on this dark journey of discovery together. 

At first, director Alan J. Pakula seems an odd choice to have directed SOPHIE'S CHOICE. Pakula had made a name for himself directing paranoid thrillers like KLUTE (1971) starring Jane Fonda, THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) with Warren Beatty, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. All modern stories.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE is a period drama film and a love triangle. But SOPHIE'S CHOICE has an aura of paranoid to it as well as mystery. We know something's up with Nathan and his mood swings but we're not exactly sure what his story is.  We know Sophie carries a tremendous guilt but we're not sure what the cause of her guilt is. Pakula builds this paranoia we feel incrementally, just slightly gnawing at the back of our minds until Nathan and Sophie's secrets are revealed. Pakula would not be a prolific director and he did make other dramas after SOPHIE'S CHOICE.  But he's better know for his thrillers. In later years, he would direct THE DEVIL'S OWN (1987) with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt and PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990) also with Harrison Ford. 

The three actors at the heart of SOPHIE'S CHOICE are the key to the film's success or failure.  Pakula hits it out of the ballpark with Meryl Streep. Streep was a rising star who had already won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in Robert Benton's KRAMER VS KRAMER (1979). But Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE was one of her first full fledged leading roles and a chance to show off her skill with languages as she has to carry a Polish accent throughout the movie.  Streep's Sophie is fragile and beautiful, a survivor who's trying to move on in the world and live after the terrible horrors she experienced in a Nazi concentration camp. Like fellow actor Robert De Niro, Streep is a chameleon, willing to do anything for the part.  Her transformation between Sophie after the war and her concentration camp scenes in flashbacks are chilling.  Streep would win the 1982 Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Sophie in SOPHIE'S CHOICE.

Kevin Kline as the enigmatic Nathan is hit and miss.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE would be Kline's first feature film (although he made THE PIRATE OF PENZANCE first but it was released after SOPHIE'S CHOICE). He's charismatic and charming when Nathan's in a happier state of mind.  But when Nathan turns darker and violent, Kline doesn't quite have the dramatic weight yet to make Nathan out and out frightening. Ironically, John Cleese would select Kline to play the buffoonish Otto in Cleese's hit comedy A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988) because of Kline's performance in SOPHIE'S CHOICE. You can see some similarities in the two roles but Kline's Otto is clearly more humorous (and would win Kline an Academy Award for Best Support Actor for FISH). But SOPHIE'S CHOICE was the beginning of a long, illustrious career for Kline in films like Lawrence Kasdan's THE BIG CHILL (1983), Kasdan's SILVERADO (1985), another film with Pakula in CONSENTING ADULTS (1992), and Ang Lee's THE ICE STORM (1997).

Peter MacNicol as Stingo is probably the weakest of the three characters. Stingo should be more handsome, a real threat to Nathan for Sophie's attention.  But MacNicol is short of stature and not necessarily a matinee idol.  He does resemble a writer and he's a good listener for Sophie.  Stingo seems like a third wheel in many of the scenes with Sophie and Nathan. But don't fret for MacNicol.  He would get a chance to show off his language (and comedy) skills playing a creepy Carpathian professor trying to lure Sigourney Weaver to his supernatural master in Ivan Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS II.  And MacNicol would star in the hit Fox TV series ALLY MCBEAL (1997 - 2002) playing an eccentric lawyer in a law firm. 

It's ironic that Stingo is the least interesting character as Stingo is based on SOPHIE'S CHOICE author  William Styron. Styron came to New York from the Virginia to become a writer and Styron met a young Polish woman at the boarding house he lived in. He only knew her for a couple of weeks but as Styron tells it in a special feature about the film, there was something about her that felt doomed. That encounter would be the inspiration for Styron to write his novel Sophie's Choice.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an unsettling film that will stay with you hours after you watch it whether you liked the film or not.  It's subject matter of survivor's guilt and it's flashbacks to Sophie's horror in the concentration camp make it unique. Director Pakula treats the subject matter and the source novel with great seriousness and unfolds the story like a novel, taking his time to reveal the film's most powerful sequences.  SOPHIE'S CHOICE made a star out of Meryl Streep  who has become one of our greatest actresses of all time.  Pakula's casting of Kline and MacNicol to round out the triangle is daring but slightly off the mark as a whole. SOPHIE'S CHOICE is an important film of the 80s, worth checking out.

Brief Encounter (1945)

I would imagine everyone has had some kind of brief encounter in their lifetime.  I don't necessarily mean an affair.  But a time where you met someone and hit it off and wondered what if I had chosen that person instead of the person I'm currently with. Two brief encounters I recall were when I was back packing through Europe after college in 1987. I had a girlfriend (now my wife) back in the United States.  But I was traveling alone.  I would meet fellow backpackers at hostels and in trains and at tourist destinations.  There were times where I would feel a bit lonely for the opposite sex.  I met a young Australian woman at a hostel in Switzerland and we spent the day walking around the Lauterbrunnen Valley and taking a gondola to the top of the Schilthorn, a Swiss Alp.  I met another young South African woman at a hostel in Salzburg, Austria.  She was with a local girlfriend and I was with a gent from Detroit.  I like to think we hit it off.  She wanted me to stay another night at the hostel but I had my itinerary and Venice was my next stop.  In both occasions, they were nice attractive women and we seemed to hit it off.  But nothing occurred from it.  No indiscretion was pursued.  It was just companionship for a day in a foreign country.  My brief encounters would not make an interesting subject for a film.

But I was reminded of these brief encounters when director Richard Linklater came out with his BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (and two subsequent sequels).  Similar to my experiences backpacking in Europe, Hawke meets Delpy on a train from Budapest to Vienna and they strike up a conversation.  Hawke convinces Delpy to spend the day with him walking around Vienna until late in the morning where they have to decide whether they want to spend more time with each other or not. It's a great premise which had me thinking, "Why didn't I think of that for a film idea?" Well, another filmmaker and playwright had.  The great David Lean, usually associated with epic films like THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (1957) and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) began his career with small films, often based on plays by Noel Coward like BLITHE SPIRIT (1945) and BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945), one of the first important films of the post-war cinema.

Directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Noel Coward (with input by director Lean and producer Ronald Neame) based on Coward's one act play Still Life, BRIEF ENCOUNTER begins at the end of the story with our two tragic middle aged lovers housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) final goodbye after a month long affair at the Milford Junction train station interrupted by Laura's gossipy friend Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg).  Alec rushes off to catch his train. Laura rides the train home with Dolly and returns to her comfortable but bland house where her husband Fred Jesson (Cyril Raymond) waits for her while working on a crossword puzzle. As she sits in her chair by a fire, Laura's voice over remembers back on how she and Alec first met.  Every Thursday, Laura takes the train to Milford to shop, dine, and catch a movie.  While waiting to catch her train back home one Thursday evening, she gets some dust in her eye from a passing train. Alec, a general practicioner, offers to help and relieves her discomfort. It's a harmless first encounter.

The following week, they bump into each other on the street.   A week later, Laura  has one of the last seats at a diner for lunch.  Alec walks in and sees her. He sits down with her and they chat, get to know each other a little better.  The two of them end up going to catch a movie together at the cinema and then have tea at the Milford Train Tea Room before going home to their families. Alec asks if he can meet her again next Thursday. Laura excitedly agrees then feels guilty on the ride home, positive everyone can read her thoughts. She even tells Fred she met a nice doctor during her day but Fred barely listens. And so begins a series of brief encounters.

The next Thursday, Laura goes to the diner and walks by the hospital Alec works at but there's no sign of him. Only at the train station does he hurriedly show up, apologizing that  he was tied up at work all day.  But the next week, he's waiting for her.  They take a walk at a botanical garden and rent a row boat. Alec professes his love to her. The two lovers even steal a kiss on the train platform before they part. On the way home, Laura fantasizes about a different life with Alec, full of fancy dinners and elegant dress wear and ballroom dances.  But she snaps out of her fantasy as the train pulls into her station and she returns to Fred and her children.

The next time they meet, they run into a friend of Laura's Mary Norton (Marjorie Mars) who has observed them at the diner they both ate at. Laura lies again about her relationship with Alec, further adding to her guilt. Alec takes her on a car ride then back to a friend's flat he's borrowing for the night, a chance to consummate their love. But Alec's friend Stephen (Valentine Dyall) returns unexpectedly, scaring Laura who flees into the rain.  She calls Fred again and lies about her delay home. Waiting for the last train home, she tries to write a goodbye note to Alec.  Alec arrives and reaffirms his love for her but realizes that it's the beginning of the end of their affair. Alec reveals he's been offered a job in South Africa. They forgive each other for their indiscretion but agree to meet the following week one last time. On their last date, Laura and Alec take one final car ride, walk over their favorite stone bridge in the country, and sit in the train station's cafe a final time before they're interrupted by Dolly. Alec hastily leaves, Laura's last vision of the handsome doctor. When Dolly steps away for a moment, Laura almost throws herself in front of a passing train. But she resists and returns to Fred and her family.  Fred notices she's not herself and thanks her for coming back to him.

The train platform is a perfect setting for this doomed love affair in BRIEF ENCOUNTER.  Affairs, like a passing train, can be fleeting.  The steam emitting from the train's engines symbolize the growing passion these two strangers Laura and Alec begin to feel for one another. But other train sounds represent the hopelessness of this liaison.  A little bell rings in the cafe alerting that a train is pulling into the station, maybe Laura's or Alec's, signaling their blissful day or few hours of quiet romance must come to an end until next time. The train's whistle blows at dramatic moments. cutting short Alec and Laura's first kiss as if the train whistle is screaming to them stop this charade, it can never last. And yes, trains can represent a phallic symbol (see Alfred Hitchcock's last shot in NORTH BY NORTHWEST) but Laura and Alec's brief dalliance never becomes sexual although they come close when Alec brings Laura back to a friend's empty apartment.

Laura and Alec are not the only couple in love in BRIEF ENCOUNTER.  Writer Coward smartly offsets some of the sadness of Laura and Alec's affair with a comic parallel flirtation between train porter Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway) and train station cafe manager Myrtle Bagot (Joyce Carey). Albert and Myrtle are the flip side of Laura and Alec.  They flirt openly in front of everyone including Myrtle's Tea Room Assistant Beryl Walters (Margaret Barton). Albert asks her for a kiss in public and even playfully slaps her derriere. Albert and Myrtle are as public with their courting as Laura and Alec are private with their feelings for each other. The one thing the two couples have in common is they don't end up with one another at the end. But we don't feel so much anguish for Albert and Myrtle. They may come around eventually.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER would not be director David Lean's last film that involved trains. In THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, Lean blows up a bridge with a huge locomotive on it. Lean will blow up another train, this time in the desert, in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.  And a train will take Omar Sharif and Julie Christie out of Moscow to Siberia in DR. ZHIVAGO (1965). BRIEF ENCOUNTER would not be Lean's last film about infidelity either.  Ten years later, Lean would direct SUMMERTIME (1955) starring Katherine Hepburn as a single American tourist who falls in love with the handsome but married Rossano Brazzi while vacationing in Venice, Italy. And it's a train that brings and takes Hepburn out of Venice. After SUMMERTIME, Lean would move on to epic films although some would have love stories within them. 

What makes BRIEF ENCOUNTER real are the two lead actors, neither of who were outwardly famous like a Bogart and Bacall or Gable and Leigh. Both Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard seem like ordinary middle aged people.  BRIEF ENCOUNTER is told from Laura's point of view. We see her situation, stuck in a rut with her nice but passive husband and two precocious kids.  But there's no fire in her marriage.  But Celia Johnson's big eyes come to life when a handsome doctor takes an interest in her.  Johnson's eyes reveal a new spark in her personality as she embarks on this illicit affair but her eyes will also reveal sadness and pain as she and Alec know their relationship will not last.  Celia Johnson was not well known to American audiences and had done more British theater than films. Besides BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Johnson also made THIS HAPPY BREED (1944) the previous year with David Lean and was a favorite actress of playwright Noel Coward. She's not a movie star beauty but Johnson is pretty with her vivacious face and those luminous eyes.

We know Trevor Howard now as one of Britain's dependable actors from the mid 40s thru the 80s appearing in films like Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN (1949), as Captain Bligh in Lewis Milestone's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962), and co-starring with Frank Sinatra in Mark Robson's VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965).  But BRIEF ENCOUNTER was only Howard's third film and his first and possibly only role as a leading man.  Movie fans will never think of Trevor Howard as a romantic lead like Cary Grant but that's the point.  Like Celia Johnson, Howard's Dr. Alec Harvey is a more realistic, modest example of a perfectly married every day man who falls in love with a married woman. We see Laura's family life helping us to emphasize with her struggle to engage and maintain an affair. We never see Alec's wife or children, making him more of a mystery.  Is his marriage so horrible that he was driven to seek out an affair.  Or was it just by chance that he encounters Laura with accidental meetings at first and slowly falls in love with this very human, flawed woman. Howard's performance as Alec is restrained, gentle, and giddy at times (ironically the two lovers see a film called FLAMES OF PASSION, an in-joke by the filmmakers). 

The other notable supporting actors are British stalwart Stanley Holloway as train porter Albert Godby and Noel Coward favorite Joyce Carey as Myrtle Bagot, our comic diversions from the serious affair between Laura and Alec going on right next to them at the train station. Holloway was a singer and comic who played the gravedigger in Laurence Olivier's HAMLET (1948) then had a nice stretch of comic performances in Ealing Studio films like THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951) and THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953). In BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Holloway plays a playful foil to Carey's Myrtle, flirting with her outrageously.  Holloway's most famous role would be as Alfred P. Doolittle (a role he performed first on the stage) in George Cukor's MY FAIR LADY (1964). 

Joyce Carey who plays Myrtle Bagot was actually a close friend of playwright Noel Coward and appeared in many of his plays as well as films he wrote including BLITHE SPIRIT and THE ASTONISHED HEART (1950) co-starring Celia Johnson. In BRIEF ENCOUNTER, Carey plays a comic busy body who manages the train station cafe, playfully bantering with porter Holloway as the films real love story unfolds around them.  A special mention should go to Cyril Raymond as Laura's nice but dull husband Fred Jesson. Fred could be portrayed as a horrible husband making it easier for the audience to understand Laura entering into an affair. But Fred is sympathetic, kind, just not particularly attune to his wife mid-life malaise.  In BRIEF ENCOUNTER'S last scene, Fred finally awakens to wife's pain, a moment almost as moving as Laura and Alec's final moments together.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER is considered one of the first and best post-war films.  Surprisingly, it was made while World War II was just winding down yet the war is never mentioned throughout the film. BRIEF ENCOUNTER is a realistic view of the highs and lows of the human heart as portrayed by two normal, every day English people.  It's a love story not often shown on the movie screen where the love is mercurial and cannot be sustained. Not all love stories have happy endings.  As in real life.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

The Hollywood western has mostly been dominated by male actors. John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood all became major stars in part from their leading roles in western films. Actresses in westerns, on the other hand, were relegated to dutiful wives, daughters of the richest man in town, or prostitutes and dance hall girls. But a couple of independent minded directors in the 1950s saw the potential for a tough, independent female protagonist as the lead in the western genre.  Samuel Fuller's FORTY GUNS (1957) starred Barbara Stanwyck as a female rancher butting heads with an ambitious U.S. Marshal and his brothers.  But Fuller's female centric western owes a debt to Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) starring Joan Crawford as a strong willed business woman fighting off rivals and a bloodthirsty posse trying to take what she's earned.

Directed by Nicholas Ray (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) with a screenplay by Philip Yordan based on a novel by Roy Chanslor, JOHNNY GUITAR flips the western genre on its head.  Instead of a male good guy and bad guy, Joan Crawford plays the lead female good protagonist clashing with a female bad protagonist Mercedes McCambridge (both women have short, boyish haircuts). And instead of a female saloon hall entertainer ala Marlene Dietrich teaming up with good guy male lead James Stewart in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939), Crawford teams up with male guitar strumming ex-gunslinger, ex-lover Sterling Hayden (THE KILLING). The main hero is a woman. The good guys wear black.  What's going on with JOHNNY GUITAR?

Director Ray reveals more exposition in the first twenty minutes of JOHNNY GUITAR than most films do in their entirety. The film opens with Johnny "Guitar" Logan (Sterling Hayden) riding alone on a ridge, a guitar strapped to his back.  In the first few minutes, Johnny will see two events vital to the film's plot: 1) a stagecoach robbery from a distance where one of the drivers is shot and killed and 2) a hill side blown up by dynamite. Johnny rides to a saloon seemingly in the middle of nowhere called Vienna's. The saloon is empty except for a few idle casino workers waiting for customers and Old Tom (John Carradine), a handyman.  Johnny's here to meet with the proprietor of Vienna's, Vienna herself (Joan Crawford). She's hired Johnny to play music at her gambling hall. But Vienna is busy meeting with Mr. Andrews (Rhys Williams). Andrews is the foreman for the railroad who's blasting the nearby hills to make way for the railroad which will come right by Vienna's establishment.  A windstorm kicks up just as posse of men and one woman show up with a dead body in their wagon.  The woman is rancher Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). It's her brother who lays dead, killed by the stagecoach gunmen earlier. 

Emma wants justice and believes she knows who the killers are.  Right on cue, the Dancing Kid (Scott Brady) and his gang consisting of Bart Lonergan (Ernest Borgnine), the sickly Corey (Royal Dano), and the young emotionally fragile Turkey Ralston (Ben Cooper) show up. It was four men who robbed the stagecoach. Emma demands Marshal Williams (Frank Ferguson) arrest them. But the Marshal has no proof. Emma's business partner in town is John McIvers (Ward Bond). Emma and McIvers want to shut down Vienna's saloon. Emma hates Vienna and they both have a past with the Dancing Kid. It's a tense situation that Johnny Guitar defuses with a little music.  McIvers gives the Dancing Kid, his gang, and Vienna twenty four hours to get out of town.

We learn that Johnny and Vienna had a relationship five years ago but their love fell apart. Johnny used to be a gunslinger but he doesn't carry a gun anymore. Just his guitar. After Johnny and Bart take care of some aggression outside (with Johnny licking Bart), the Dancing Kid and his gang ride back thru a waterfall which obscures the trail on the other side to their hideout called "the Lair." The Dancing Kid decides maybe it's time for them to relocate to California. But he wants to stick it to McIvers and Emma before they depart. Unable to sleep, Vienna and Johnny patch up their differences.  The next day, Vienna goes into town to withdraw money to pay her employees including Johnny before closing down. The Dancing Kid takes advantage of most of the town attending Emma's brother's funeral to rob the bank. Vienna begs them to stop but they don't. The Kid and his gang try to flee with the stolen money through the pass but the railroad's dynamiting prevents them.  The Kid and his gang return to the Lair except Turkey who tumbles off his horse into the brush, injured from the blast.

Vienna returns to her saloon and pays her employees.  Johnny bids Vienna farewell and rides off.  After Johnny leaves, the injured Turkey shows up.  Vienna hides Turkey just as Emma, McIvers, and their 30 hired guns show up that night. Emma accuses Vienna of staging the bank robbery with the Kid.  The posse discover Turkey hiding under a table.  Emma shoots down Vienna's candle lit chandelier, igniting the saloon on fire. They take Vienna and Turkey to a nearby bridge for a lynching. Turkey is hanged but Johnny shows up and rescues Vienna. Johnny and Vienna return to the burning saloon and escape through a mine shaft underneath the saloon.  They find their way to the Lair where Corey lets them thru.  The Dancing Kid is jealous that Johnny and Vienna are together.  Emma and McIvers stumble upon the secret waterfall. Bart, on guard duty, makes a deal with them.  As Emma, McIvers, and their posse move on the hideout, each character will have a final showdown with their nemesis. 

JOHNNY GUITAR was not a hit when it was first released but modern audiences (and French film critics) rediscovered it. JOHNNY GUITAR has a little bit of everything in it.  It's one part opera with Vienna's brightly colored outfits and the ornate interior of Vienna's saloon, lots of deep browns and oranges. Another part is sexual. Many of the characters (Emma, McIvers, Turkey) seem sexually repressed while Vienna uses her sex to acquire secrets and allies. The exploding hillsides seem to symbolize the angst and sexual frustration that almost every character carries. Although a western, JOHNNY GUITAR touches on the paranoia and witch hunt mentality of McCarthyism which was rearing its ugly head in the 1950s when the film came out. Emma accusing the Dancing Kid of killing her brother or Vienna assisting with the bank robbery with no evidence and eyewitnesses telling her it's not true yet Emma believes what she wants to believe. JOHNNY GUITAR is also an amazing adventure with a secret hideout behind a waterfall, windstorms, and mine shafts that lay hidden underneath the saloon.  Oh, and did I mention the exploding hillsides? 

The best part of JOHNNY GUITAR is how it subverts what we normally expect in a western. The supposed good guys made up of the town's leaders (McIvers, Emma, the Marshal) and their hired guns wear that symbol of evil -- black (although to be fair they were coming from a funeral. But they still act like bad guys).  The outcasts who we root for (Vienna, Johnny, the Dancing Kid) do not wear white (for good and purity) but are dressed in bright, colorful outfits (check out Vienna's lavender night gown or the Dancing Kid's green cowboy shirt).  We expect every male cowboy to carry a gun.  Johnny only carries his guitar. We're accustomed to a duel between two men in most westerns often over a woman. In JOHNNY GUITAR, the key duel will be between Emma and Vienna. Emma loathes Vienna, her jealousy of the saloon owner oozing from every pore of her body. Emma may have had a crush on the Dancing Kid. Emma must have been young, immature, and head over heels in love. Vienna seduced the Kid and stole him from Emma (or so she thinks), igniting a hatred for Vienna that fuels her bloodlust to exterminate Vienna and her saloon. We know Vienna and Emma will have to face each other with guns before JOHNNY GUITAR is over.

Movies are often remembered because of one scene or sequence. Cary Grant chased by a crop dusting plane in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) or Al Pacino disposing of his enemies at the end of Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972). JOHNNY GUITAR has a 10 minute sequence early in the film that sets in motion both the plot and every character's motivation. It's an extraordinary sequence with riveting dialogue, edited with great precision. Emma, McIvers, and their posse drag Emma's dead brother into Vienna's saloon.  Emma seeks vengeance, accusing the Dancing Kid and indirectly Vienna for her brother's demise. Vienna addresses the posse from the second floor. Emma and Vienna lock eyes and throw verbal daggers at each other. Vienna gets Emma to reveal her hate/love relationship with the Kid. McIvers and Emma reveal their opposition with Vienna's power move to build a train depot on her land and not in their town. On cue, the windstorm blows in the Dancing Kid and his gang into this maelstrom of venom. A gun battle inside the saloon seems inevitable until Johnny Guitar reveals himself, a stranger to both sides except Vienna. Johnny plays a little traditional guitar lick to soften the tension and the Dancing Kid grabs Emma for a quick dance, Emma both repulsed and excited by the Kid's audacity ("he makes her feel like a woman and that frightens her").  McIvers gives Vienna and the Kid twenty four hours to get out of town. Those ten minutes sets in motion the rest of JOHNNY GUITAR and makes us excited to see how this story will play out.

There's a reason they call them actors.  Even though Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden look like a couple that has rekindled their love during these turbulent events, in reality Crawford and Hayden didn't really like each other during the filming of JOHNNY GUITAR. But they convince us they're in love. Crawford's Vienna is tougher mentally than most of the men.  She's used her charm and guile and sexuality to build her saloon and future empire. She's not going to go quietly. Her power and sex make men like McIvers and the Marshal uncomfortable. As one of  Vienna's employees Sam (Robert Osterloh) tells his fellow co-workers, "Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not." But Vienna's a mother figure as well to her employees like Tom, Sam, and later Turkey who appears to have a crush on her (but surprise, Vienna shoots down Turkey's enthusiastic advances).  Joan Crawford is best known for her role in Michael Curtiz's MILDRED PIERCE (1945) and other melodramas but JOHNNY GUITAR seems to be the only western she made. Rumor has it Crawford was having an affair with director Nicholas Ray as they made JOHNNY GUITAR. 

I'll say it again. There's a reason they call them actors. Sterling Hayden who plays Johnny "Guitar" Logan is quoted that he couldn't play the guitar or ride a horse.  Yet his character has to do both in JOHNNY GUITAR and Hayden pulls it off convincingly.  Hayden was more familiar to movie fans in film noir films like Andre De Toth's CRIME WAVE (1953) and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956) but he seems perfectly cast as the ex-gunslinger and ex-love interest of Vienna. Hayden's Johnny Guitar is the middle ground between the boyish Dancing Kid and the seething, weary Bart Lonergan.  Hayden plays Johnny as laconic, world weary, and thoughtful. Hayden would have some memorable supporting roles later in his career in Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1963) as General Jack D. Ripper, in Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER as a corrupt police chief and in Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1974) as a reclusive millionaire.

As good as Crawford and Hayden are as the leads, JOHNNY GUITAR is stolen by two supporting actors who play the rivals of Vienna and Johnny Guitar.  Mercedes McCambridge who plays Vienna's nemesis Emma Small is the most complex character in the film and steals every scene she's in with either her curt voice or sexually repressed demeanor (her green attire in her first scene even suggests the Wicked Witch of the East). Emma is both ambitious and suffers from an inferiority complex. Although never implicitly explained (but conveyed convincingly on McCambridge's face), Emma either had a crush on the Dancing Kid or imagined that the Kid was sweet for her. Maybe the Kid played on her vulnerability. Whether the Kid really liked Emma or not, we'll never know.  He broke her heart whether he meant to or not. But Emma is positive that Vienna stole the Dancing Kid from her. Emma despises Vienna, calling her, "nothing but a railroad tramp!" Emma (along with McIvers) symbolize McCarthyism. They want Vienna and the Kid hung just by association, without any proof. She preys on the posse's fears of change and progress. McCambridge started her film career out with a bang, winning the Best Support Actress Academy Award in 1949 for ALL THE KING'S MEN.  Other credits include George Stevens GIANT (1956) and she would provide the voice over for the devil's voice possessing Linda Blair in William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973). 

In the role of his lifetime, Scott Brady as the Dancing Kid is incredible and brilliant, reminding me of a young Kevin Costner in one of his first roles in Lawrence Kasdan's SILVERADO (1984). Brady's the Dancing Kid is a ball of energy, testosterone, and boyish charm.  He shows hints of menace but the Kid is a good person deep down, loyal to his gang (even the irascible Bart).  Although a leader, the Kid will make some bad decisions. As the Kid laments, "I never do what I should." If Scott Brady looks like another actor from the 1940s named Lawrence Tierney, that's because they were brothers.  Brady changes his last name (perhaps because Lawrence was often a handful for directors and producers).  I remember Brady from television appearances in the 70s.  His later movie credits include THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) and Joe Dante's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990).  But Brady's deliciously likeable the Dancing Kid is a performance for the ages. 

JOHNNY GUITAR has an amazing supporting cast. Director Ray provides each of them with at least one good dramatic moment. Ward Bond appeared in almost every great western (THE SEARCHERS, RIO BRAVO). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Bond's McIvers is an ambiguous character. He starts out the film hell bent on kicking Vienna and the Kid out of their territory but by the end, the lies and killing have worn him down. Ernest Borgnine as the untrusting Bart Lonergan began his career playing heavies in films like FROM HERE ETERNITY (1953) and JOHNNY GUITAR but would later play more likable characters in Robert Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and try comedy on the television show MCHALE'S NAVY (1962 - 1966).  Ben Cooper (THE ROSE TATOO) who plays Turkey Ralston was a new face for me.  Cooper's Turkey is an emasculated young man with an Oedipus complex, taken under the Dancing Kid's wing. He wants to be a man, wants to sleep with the older Vienna to show her he's a man but it's all false bravado. Turkey is one of many tragic characters in JOHNNY GUITAR.  Cooper would work mostly in television after an early stint in films.

Rounding out the stellar supporting cast of JOHNNY GUITAR are screen veterans Royal Dano as Corey, the conscience of the Dancing Kid's gang and John Carradine, veteran of over 200 screen credits, as Vienna's handyman Old Tom. Dano just had one of those weathered, craggy faces meant to appear in westerns both on screen and television. In GUITAR, Dano's Corey is one of the few sympathetic characters in the film, partly because he appears to be dying from lung cancer or some awful illness. The other sympathetic character is Old Tom played by John Carradine.  It's not a showy role but Old Tom brings some humor to the film at key junctures. Carradine would work with many great film directors besides JOHNY GUITAR'S Nicholas Ray in his lengthy career from John Ford (THE GRAPES OF WRATH) to Rouben Mamoulian (BLOOD AND SAND) to Fritz Lang (MAN HUNT). And a shout out to Frank Ferguson as Marshal Williams, another emasculated man who's caught between the fury of Emma and Vienna. He's the law but he's pushed around by both sides.

Director Nicholas Ray would not have a prolific film career (cut short by bad health although he lived to be 67) but he was an auteur who's best work was in the late 40s and 1950s.  Besides JOHNNY GUITAR, his best know films include THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948), IN A LONELY PLACE (1950), and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). In JOHNNY GUITAR, Ray uses space extremely well with Cinemascope whether juxtaposing his characters within the frame in psychologically interesting ways or taking advantage of the barren landscapes to place his characters in.  The use of space should not be surprising as Ray studied under famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright before starting his film career. Ray's use of color plays a big part in the film especially the colorful outfits that many of the characters wear. Most westerns were in black and white so why not take advantage of color. 

Some final tidbits on JOHNNY GUITAR.  The beautiful locations for the film are courtesy of Sedona, Arizona with its orange and red hues highlighted by veteran director of photography Harry Stradling (GUYS AND DOLLS).  The musical score is by Victor Young who also co-wrote the film's title song Johnny Guitar which is sung briefly at the end of the film by Peggy Lee.

Moviegoers had not seen many or any stylized westerns up to when JOHNNY GUITAR came out which may explain it's initial lackluster performance both commercially and critically.  More modern directors like Sergio Leone (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY) or Sam Raimi (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) would take stylized westerns to a different level with extreme close ups and iconographic performances.  JOHNNY GUITAR led the way.  It's a western but also a psychological/sexual drama, an allegory on McCarthyism, and a good old rousing adventure. 

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)

The music world lost an iconic rock legend in 2016 when singer David Bowie died at the age of 69. But people may forget that Bowie was also an accomplished actor who appeared in an eclectic array of films, both in lead and supporting roles and sometimes in fun or bizarre cameos (see David Lynch's 1992 TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME for the bizarre cameo). Rock stars in a way are already movie actors. Every night on stage in a music hall or packed football stadium, they give a performance, each one unique and different. Bowie first hit the big screen in Nicolas Roeg's sci-fi THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976).  He would go on to appear in Tony Scott's vampire film THE HUNGER (1983) with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon; LABYRINTH (1986) directed by Muppets creator Jim Henson; Julien Temple's ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS (1986); as Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel's BASQUIAT (1996); and in one of his last big screen appearances as inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's THE PRESTIGE (2006). 

But Bowie would also pop up in small roles or cameos like John Landis's INTO THE NIGHT (1985) as a sleazy hit man or as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988) or as himself in ZOOLANDER (2001) with Ben Stiller. Bowie would also appear in countless music videos during the MTV craze and beyond, promoting and singing his songs, playing characters like Ziggy Stardust, a medium he was well equipped for with his sense of visuals to go with his music.

One of  Bowie's films that stands out from the horror, sci-fi and music genre films he made is a World War II prison camp drama called MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983). I have chosen it as my Christmas film this year even though there's nothing Christmas-y about the film except the title. It seems like an odd choice for Bowie yet what better challenge for a rock singer seeking recognition as an actor then to try a role that's out of his comfort zone.

Directed by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima with a screenplay by Oshima with Paul Meyersberg and based on the novel The Seed and the Sower by Sir Laurens van der Post (based on his experiences as a POW), MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is set in a Japanese POW camp in 1942 Java (now Indonesia) during World War II. The film opens (and ends) on the face of Sergeant Gengo Hara (Takeshi "Beat" Kitano), a brutal but pragmatic prison guard.  He wakes up British Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti) from the barracks to show him a scandal he's uncovered.  Hara has caught a Korean prison guard Kanemoto (Johnny Ohkura) raping a Dutch prisoner De Jong (Alistair Browning). Hara is about to execute Kanemoto when the camp's commandant Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) shows up wanting answers. Yonoi is a rising star in the Japanese military. Hara's explanation will have to wait as Yonoi heads off to a military trial run by the President of the Court (Ryunosute Kaneda) and Lieutenant Iwata (Takashi Naito).  The defendant is Major Jack "Straffer" Celliers (David Bowie), a captured Brit who surrendered after a series of raids on the Japanese.  Jack is found guilty of crimes against Japan but something about Jack fascinates Yonoi. About to face a firing squad, Yonoi intervenes, finding a technicality to save the Brit, whisking Jack to the POW camp instead. 

Jack arrives at the camp only to faint from beatings by his previous captors and the heat. Yonoi inquires about Jack's past but Lawrence only knows him casually. Yonoi wants to make Jack POW Commander much to the chagrin of the current, old school Group Captain Hicksley (Jack Thompson). Yonoi forces the camp to watch Kanemoto commit seppuku (suicide). Hicksley is replaced as commander not by Jack but Lawrence.  During a roll call, Jack is discovered missing.  But he shows up soon after with food for the men and flowers for De Jong who has died after biting his tongue off during Kanemoto's suicide. The guards believe Jack is an evil spirit. Sergeant Hara discovers a radio in the barracks, accusing Jack and Lawrence of smuggling it in. As punishment, Jack is locked up and Lawrence put in bondage. That night, Yonoi's butler tries to kill Jack but Jack overpowers him and frees Lawrence. Jack wants to escape and take Lawrence with him but they're quickly caught again by Yonoi before they can even leave the camp. Yonoi wants to fight Jack. Jack knows his knife is no match for Yonoi's sword. Jack refuses further enraging Yonoi.

Both Jack and Lawrence are to be executed for trying to escape and the forbidden radio. Jack and Lawrence are placed in confinement separated by a wall where they can still converse. Jack reveals to Lawrence in flashback his betrayal of his younger brother (James Malcolm) during a hazing incident at their English boarding school that haunts him. Suddenly, guards come in and lead Lawrence and Jack to a room where Sergeant Hara waits. Hara's a little drunk. It's Christmas Eve and Hara wants to be Father Christmas to them. Hara turns Lawrence and Jack back over to Hicksley who's been reinstated as Commander of the POWs. 

Hara's disobedience enrages Yonoi.  Hara explains that he was wrong about the prisoners smuggling in the radio.  It was another prisoner who had smuggled in the radio (and Hara has executed the prisoner already). Lawrence and Jack were innocent. Yonoi orders the entire camp and even those prisoners who are sick and injured in the infirmary to stand on parade in the hot Java sun. It's a tense situation. The guards are all armed and a machine gun is ominously cocked and aimed at the prisoners.  Yonoi's about to lose control. He orders Hicksley to kneel before him.  Yonoi draws his sword, ready to execute Hicksley as an example when Jack steps up and kisses Yonoi on each cheek.  Yonoi collapses. A new Commandant of Camp (Hideo Murata) takes over.  A large group of prisoners including Hara march off to build an airstrip.  Jack's sacrifice saved the other prisoners but he pays a price for his act.  And in a touching epilogue, four years after the war, Lawrence and Hara are briefly reunited. Only their situations are drastically different.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is the classic World War II prisoner of war tale in the tradition of Billy Wilder's STALAG 17 (1953), David Lean's THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (1957), and John Sturges THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) but it's a WW II POW story made as an art film. There are no prison breakouts or the blowing up of a bridge. The biggest action in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is when Jack enrages his captors by eating some flowers he picked for a dead prisoner. But MERRY CHRISTMAS has all the elements of the POW film. David  Bowie's character Jack Celliers is like Steve McQueen's Hilts in THE GREAT ESCAPE.   He's the provocateur. Bowie's Jack gets under the skin of the Japanese authority just like McQueen got under the German brass's skin.  Only Jack kisses the Japanese Commandant Yonoi on the cheek to save his fellow prisoners. There's no digging of an escape tunnel or last minute air raid. 

Tom Conti's Col. Lawrence has the role of mediator between the Japanese guards and his fellow POWs like Alec Guinness in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVE KWAI or Richard Attenborough in THE GREAT ESCAPE.  Lawrence has an uneasy alliance with the head guard Sgt. Hara. Lawrence even speaks Japanese, acting as translator for the camp. Hara's not afraid to beat Lawrence when ordered by Yonoi or to show his dominance. But Hara is fascinated by the English and their customs. Hara believes suicide is honorable. Lawrence disagrees. But Hara thinks surrender is shameful.  Lawrence feels otherwise.  The relationship between Lawrence and Hara is one of the most fascinating parts of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE. In fact, MR. LAWRENCE is the tale of two relationships between men. Yonoi's strange fascination/admiration for Jack and the uneasy partnership between Lawrence and Hara as captor and captive.

One theme that MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE explores that you won't find in the studio made POW war films is a gay subtext.  The film opens with two men caught having sex.  But was it rape or just a prisoner and a guard lonely and seeking companionship?  The filmmakers leave it somewhat vague but both the Japanese and the Allied prisoners look unfavorably on both men, the consequences leading to death for both guard and prisoner.  Then, there's Yonoi's obsession with the blue eyed, blonde haired Jack Celliers.  Yonoi is the typical Japanese commander who believes in duty, honor, and discipline. But does he fall in love with Jack in that court room? Does he see Jack as his kindred spirit, a shining young officer like Yonoi? Jack stands up for his honor and country while on trial. He surrendered but only because the Japanese threatened to kill everyone in the village he was hiding in. When Jack is caught after freeing Lawrence, Yonoi wants Jack to fight him.  Is this Yonoi's substitute for physical contact?  Jack refuses to fight and Yonoi acts like a spurned lover. But Jack plays on Yonoi's infatuation with him at the end, publicly kissing Yonoi on both cheeks in front of his men to diffuse a tense situation.  Yonoi collapses, perhaps from ecstasy or in shock, unable to grasp the moment.  Jack has signed his death warrant but he's saved the prisoners from a possible massacre.

Bowie's Jack Celliers in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is a Christ like figure (JC - Jack Celliers; Jesus Christ), not the typical heroic adventure character of a POW war film. Traumatized by his lack of action in protecting his younger brother from bullying in boarding school, Jack repeatedly sacrifices himself to protect his fellow countrymen and comrades in the prison camp. Jack won't end up on a cross but his outcome is just as powerful. Bowie is such a striking figure with his blonde hair and angelic looks, it's easy to see why director Oshima cast him. Oshima saw Bowie not at a concert or in a film but on Broadway appearing in the play The Elephant Man that convinced him Bowie was the right person to play the physically demanding role of Celliers.

The other actor that filmgoers will recognize besides Bowie (and perhaps Australian actor Jack Thompson from 1982's THE MAN SNOWY RIVER who plays Hicksley) is Tom Conti as interpreter/liaison Col. Lawrence. Conti's actually in the film more than Bowie and as Lawrence has the unenviable task of trying to appease their captors while keeping his men alive. Conti has the perfect temperament, a calm voice amongst the insanity, only occasionally raising his voice when the situation needs it.  Lawrence's whimper when he's struck by the guards is chilling and reminds us that as good a person as Lawrence is, his life hangs by a thread like the other prisoners. Although he's had a prolific career, Conti's other best known film is probably Robert Ellis Miller's REUBEN, REUBEN (also 1983) where Conti plays a drunk Scottish poet and sports much shaggier hair than in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE.

Surprisingly, there's another musician acting in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE besides Bowie. Believe it or not, Ryuichi Sakamoto who plays the tightly wound Captain Yonoi not only composed the haunting music for MR. LAWRENCE but also co-starred and composed the music for Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR (1987) and provided the film score for Alejandro G. Inarritu's THE REVENANT (2015) starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy. 

Bowie and Conti are the most familiar faces to western audiences in MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE but Takeshi "Beat" Kitano who plays Sgt. Hara steals the film for me. In the tradition of Sig Ruman's German Sergeant Schultz in STALAG 17, Kitano's Hara is the head prison guard that the POWs want to stay on the right side of.  But unlike Schultz's friendly demeanor, Hara can be brutal and cold. Yet Hara and Lawrence form an uneasy alliance when Hara isn't beating Lawrence and others with his long stick. Although they don't always see eye to eye, they respect one another. Hara seems fascinated by the English.  After he falsely accuses Jack and Lawrence of smuggling in a radio, he staves off their execution by acting as one of the West's favorite symbols -- Father Christmas. Their present from him is life. 

I want to give a shout out to an unsung hero of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE and that would be producer Jeremy Thomas. Thomas is a champion of producing interesting films by some of the most independent directors from 1980s to 2020 including Bernardo Bertolucci (THE LAST EMPEROR and THE SHELTERING SKY), David Cronenberg (NAKED LUNCH and CRASH), Terry Gilliam (TIDELAND), and Nicolas Roeg (BAD TIMING and EUREKA). Except for THE LAST EMPEROR, none of these films were especially commercial but Thomas believed in these iconoclastic directors and their vision. MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE director Nagisa Oshima had directed the art house favorite IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES in 1976 about a sexually obsessive relationship.  It's no wonder that Oshima and Thomas would team up to make MR. LAWRENCE and also the samurai film TABOO (1999). MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE was filmed in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific and New Zealand.

Singers trying their hand at acting is nothing new.  From Bing Crosby in the 40s, Frank Sinatra in the 50s, and Elvis Presley in the 60s, movies were just a natural progression for entertainers.  This tradition has continued with newer generations of artists appearing in films including Mick Jagger in Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE (1970), Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan in Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973), Cher in Norman Jewison's MOONSTRUCK (1987), Whitney Houston in Mick Jackson's THE BODYGUARD (1992) and even Bono in Julie Taymor's ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007).  But David Bowie probably has one of the most diverse film resumes and MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE is a most unexpected role from a man we're more accustomed to singing Rebel Rebel or Heroes than playing a prisoner of war in a Japanese POW camp. It shows that Bowie was not afraid to take chances and try different mediums.  He was both a rebel and a hero to generations of music and film fans.

What's Up, Doc? (1972)

Now that the tense election season is over and the poisonous campaign ads and rhetoric can be put away for at least a couple of years, it seems to CrazyFilmGuy like the time for the country to watch a comedy to bring some good old fashioned laughter back into our lives.  One of my favorite comedies is Peter Bogdanovich's WHAT'S UP, DOC? (1972) starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal although the real star of the film might be the city of San Francisco.  WHAT'S UP, DOC? was my introduction to the City by the Bay when I first saw the film on television in the 1970s (I must have seen other San Francisco set films BULLITT and VERTIGO later). The steep streets around Filbert and 22nd or the famously crooked Lombard Street captured my imagination (not to mention the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman's Wharf). I would not actually visit San Francisco for the first time until ten years later around 1983 but it's unique beauty rubbed off on me in WHAT'S UP, DOC? as Streisand and O'Neal are chased around the city by a group of questionable crooks, spies, and government agents. 

WHAT'S UP, DOC? is the perfect modern blend of Mack Sennett silent comedies with lots of physical comedy, the screwball comedies of the 1930s with its quick, machine gun fire banter, and the Warner Bros Bugs Bunny cartoons. WHAT'S UP, DOC? was made by several film artists who were at the top of their game. Director Peter Bogdanovich was the wunderkind of the early 70s fresh off the success of his previous film THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971). The inventive screenplay is courtesy of Buck Henry (THE GRADUATE) and David Newman & Robert Benton (BONNIE AND CLYDE) based on a story by Peter Bogdanovich.  And its stars Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal were young actors on the verge of stardom: Streisand in William Wyler's FUNNY GIRL (1968) and Gene Kelly's HELLO, DOLLY! (1969) and O'Neal in Arthur Hiller's LOVE STORY (1970).

It should be no surprise that WHAT'S UP, DOC? is such a synthesis of movie types as Bogdanovich started out as a film essayist and scholar, putting together a retrospective for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of John Ford's films when he was in his 20s. Bogdanovich interviewed great directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles.  In the early 70s, Bogdanovich would make three critically acclaimed films in a row: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, WHAT'S UP, DOC?, and PAPER MOON (1973).  But then whether due to ego or bad project choices, Bogdanovich would follow his string of hits with a string of failures including DAISY MILLER (1974), AT LONG LAST (1975), and THEY ALL LAUGHED (1981).  Not until 1986's MASK starring Eric Stoltz, Cher, and Sam Elliott would Bogdanovich find commercial and critical success again.  Check out the podcast The Plot Thickens narrated by TCM's Ben Mankiewicz to hear Bogdanovich's incredible and candid life story.

But back to WHAT'S UP, DOC?  The film follows the exploits of four identical plaid overnight cases that contain different contents and are accidentally mixed up during one night and the following day at San Francisco's Bristol Hotel. Bag #1's contents are U.S. top secret papers that Mr. Smith (Michael Murphy) has stolen. He's followed by government agent Mr. Jones (Phil Roth) who drags a bag of golf clubs with him as his cover. Bag #2's contents contain the wealthy Mrs. Van Hoskins (Mabel Albertson) diamond jewelry. She brings them to the Bristol where German hotel clerk Fritz (Stefan Gierasch) and the hotel's house detective Harry (Sorrell Booke) plan to steal her jewels and fence them to some crooks. Bag # 3 contents are paleolithic rocks that Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) believes prehistoric man used to make music.  The absent minded Bannister and his fiancee Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn) are in town from Ames, Iowa for a convention and a chance to win $20,000 in grant money for his thesis. Which bring us to Bag # 4's owner -- the free spirited Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand).

Judy is just looking for a free meal and a place to hang out when she comes across Howard in the hotel's gift shop. Upon first setting eyes on him, Judy literally hijacks the good looking but distracted Howard Bannister and his life.  Howard heads for the Congress of American Musicologist Convention without Eunice who has a headache. The president of the American Musicologists Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton) is awarding a $20,000 grant to either Howard or his Croatian counterpart the unctuous Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars). Howard walks in to discover that Judy is pretending to be his wife (calling herself "Burnsie") and charming Larrabee and the other musicologists with made up tales about Howard. Then, the real Eunice shows up. Only Judy has taken her name tag. Eunice fights her way in. Realizing that he may have a better chance of winning the grant with Judy by his side, Howard does the unthinkable. He denies knowing Eunice to Larrabee and the security guards.  They drag a screaming Eunice out of the convention room.

Howard sheepishly returns back to his hotel room after the dinner, positive he's lost both Eunice and the grant. He discovers Judy taking a bath in his room.  Meanwhile, in the hallway and adjoining rooms, the battle over the various plaid overnight cases goes on between Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, and Harry the hotel detective.  Eunice calls Howard for an apology and overhears Judy's voice. Eunice storms over to investigate.  Judy sneaks out onto the balcony where she nearly falls to her death.  Howard can't turn the television volume down and accidentally rips the cord out of the wall, starting a small fire that will bring the San Francisco fire department to Howard Bannister's hotel room, further thrashing it. 

The next morning, the hotel manager (John Hillerman) arrives at Howard's room to escort him out of the hotel for destroying his room and most of the floor. Howard presses down but the elevator takes him to the top floor where he finds Judy sleeping on a piano. They're falling in love.  On his way out of the hotel, Howard and Judy learn from Larrabee that Howard has won the grant. Larrabee invites Howard and Judy to his Russian Hill house to celebrate.  Howard and Judy each carry a plaid overnight bag.  Mr. Smith discovers that the plaid bag he carries is the wrong bag.  And so begins the third act that begins with Mr. Jones, Mr. Smith, and the gang of jewel thieves converging on Larrabee's party to claim the correct plaid overnight bags and ends with Howard and Judy grabbing all four bags and fleeing first on a bicycle and then a stolen VW Bug from a wedding party, chased through the steep and crooked streets of San Francisco and Chinatown by everyone. All parties end up in the San Francisco Bay. The motley crew wind up in night court where Judge Maxwell (Liam Dunn) is about to throw the book at all of them until a surprise witness saves the day...I mean night.

In essence, WHAT'S UP, DOC? is a live action Warner Bros cartoon with Barbra Streisand as a human Bugs Bunny and Ryan O'Neal as the gullible and increasingly frustrated Elmer Fudd.  Director Bogdanovich tells us so in so many ways.  The title WHAT'S UP, DOC? is one of Bugs Bunny's favorite catch phrases and one of the wascally wabbit's best cartoons (which plays on the airplane as O'Neal and Streisand fly away at the end). When Streisand as Judy first makes contact with O'Neal's Howard, she's chewing on a carrot and quips, "What's Up, Doc?" to Howard (who also happens to be a doctor). The sight gags and pratfalls and the final car chase all have the feel of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  All that is missing is an anvil to fall from the sky and land on Eunice's head or a box of TNT with Acme, Inc. stamped on its side to explode at Larrabee's posh home.

Besides paying tribute to Bugs Bunny, WHAT'S UP, DOC? is a homage to one of Bogdanovich's favorite directors Howard Hawks (the character Howard Bannister is named after him) and one of Hawks best known screwball comedies BRINGING UP BABY (1938). Ryan O'Neal's character Dr. Howard Bannister is BRINGING UP BABY'S Cary Grant character David Huxley. Both are handsome but scatter brained doctors. Bannister is a musicologist. Huxley either a zoologist or paleontologist (depending on which synopsis you read). They both wear glasses. Judy in WHAT'S UP, DOC?  first accidentally rips Howard's dinner jacket. Later, she tears his pajamas.  In BRINGING UP BABY, it is Katherine Hepburn's character Susan who's dress is ripped.  The female leads in both WHAT'S UP, DOC? and BRINGING UP BABY are smart, independent women.  Streisand's Judy is college educated (although she's been kicked out of every college she attended) but her school smarts help her out when dealing with a group of over educated, undersexed musicologists.  Hepburn's Susan Vance is an heiress with a pet leopard.  Both are beautiful but irritating to their male counterparts before eventually falling in love. 

Bogdanovich and his writers last tip of the hat in WHAT'S UP, DOC? is to the silent film comedies by the likes of Mack Sennett, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Sennett, a producer and director who ran his own studio during the silent film era, is credited as "the king of comedy" with films full of slapstick antics (pie fights) and crazy car chases (sounds like WHAT'S UP, DOC? doesn't it?) often starring the Keystone Cops. Set pieces on Howard's hotel floor with spies, government agents, and hotel detectives sneaking into various rooms (appearing and disappearing behind hotel doors all in perfect repetition) searching for the plaid bags or everyone converging at Larrabee's house are full of slapstick hijinks. And the car chase through the steep up and down streets of San Francisco has all the hallmarks of a Mack Sennett comedy complete with two workmen carrying a large plate glass window across a busy street, trying not to break it as they avoid speeding cars only to have the window broken by a seemingly innocent window washer.

Like young stars Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in BRINGING UP BABY, director Bogdanovich chose two up and coming actors for the lead roles in WHAT'S UP, DOC? Barbra Streisand had made a name for herself as a musical leading lady with FUNNY LADY but Bogdanovich saw her as a funny leading lady in her role as Judy Maxwell. Judy is charming, vivacious, flirtatious, annoying, exasperating but always with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. WHAT'S UP, DOC? would further cement Streisand as a rising star in the 70s. She would follow WHAT'S UP, DOC? with her most dramatic role to date in Sydney Pollack's THE WAY WERE WERE (1973) co-starring with Robert Redford (Streisand would sing the Academy Award winning song of the same name).  Besides acting, Streisand would become an accomplished director with films like YENTL (1983) and THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991) with Nick Nolte.  If you weren't a fan of Streisand, you will be after her winning performance in WHAT'S UP, DOC?

Cary Grant had a lean, acrobatic body perfect for screwball comedies.  Ryan O'Neal's body is more like a middleweight boxer. Yet O'Neal pulls off the Grant like role as the befuddled Dr. Howard Bannister in WHAT'S UP, DOC? complete with horn rimmed glasses and distracted performance. O'Neal is hilarious whether struggling to remove his bow tie from his neck for half the film or trying to catch up to the sheer audacity of Judy commandeering his life. O'Neal was fresh off the melodramatic hit LOVE STORY. After that serious role, you would imagine O'Neal didn't have an ounce of comedy in him but he's spot on as the flustered musicologist. Bogdanovich and O'Neal would team up again the next year for another hit PAPER MOON. O'Neal would play a Depression era con artist and co-starred with Madeline Kahn and O'Neal's daughter Tatum O'Neal (who would win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress).  

Streisand and O'Neal have great chemistry in WHAT'S UP, DOC?, one of the keys to any screwball comedy and DOC'S success. They would try to capture that magic again seven years later in Howard Zieff's THE MAIN EVENT (1979) with Streisand as a bankrupt entrepreneur who becomes the manager to a washed up boxer (O'Neal) she acquired as a tax break. The film had the catchy tag line "A Glove Story" and was a moderate hit, proving audiences still enjoyed seeing Streisand and O'Neal together.

Any good screwball comedy needs a great supporting cast.  WHAT'S UP, DOC? is the first feature film for the wonderful Madeline Kahn who plays Howard's overbearing fiancee Eunice Burns. Eunice is the female/male prototype we become familiar with in comedies-- the insufferable friend/boss/fiancee/authority figure that suffers comedic humiliation time and time again.  Eunice loses Howard to Judy but has a happy ending as she finds solace in Frederick Larrabee by the film's end. Kahn would rejoin Bogdanovich and O'Neal the following year for PAPER MOON. 

WHAT'S UP, DOC? has a six degrees connection to Mel Brooks troupe of comedy actors he favored in his films. Madeline Kahn who made her debut in WHAT'S UP, DOC? would be one of Brooks' favorites actresses appearing in BLAZING SADDLES (1974), YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), and HIGH ANXIETY (1977) often as sexy vamps instead of the prim and mousy Eunice in WHAT'S UP, DOC?  Kenneth Mars who plays Howard's adversary Hugh Simon in WHAT'S UP, DOC? first appeared in Brooks THE PRODUCERS (1967) and nearly steals YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN as the one armed Inspector Kemp. Mars was fantastic with foreign accents. John Hillerman (BLAZING SADDLES) as the Hotel Manager and Liam Dunn (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN) as Judge Maxwell in WHAT'S UP, DOC? would also be members of Brooks stock company. Surprisingly, I thought Austin Pendleton who plays Frederick Larrabee had to have been in a Mel Brooks film.  Pendleton did make another film with Ryan O'Neal in Bud Yorkin's THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER (1973) but no Brooks film. And Michael Murphy who plays the secret government papers thief in DOC was a favorite of director Robert Altman appearing in Altman's MASH (1970), MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), and NASHVILLE (1975). Look for early bit roles in WHAT'S UP, DOC? by Randy Quaid, M. Emmet Walsh, and John Byner. One thing is for sure. Bogdanovich and Brooks knew how to cast funny actors for their films.

Streisand doesn't perform in any big musical production numbers in WHAT'S UP, DOC? but she does sing Cole Porter's You're the Top during the opening credits. Bogdanovich also ingeniously weaves Porter's Anything Goes as piano lounge music in the hotel lobby early in the film. And film connoisseur Bogdanovich has Streisand and O'Neal sing a piano duet of As Time Goes By from CASABLANCA (1943).  CASABLANCA was a Warner Bros production and WHAT'S UP, DOC? was financed and distributed by...Warner Bros.

Laughter is the best medicine and boy does the world need plenty of laughter these days. WHAT'S UP, DOC? is a throwback comedy to comedies even farther back.  It's clever, witty, and something that's hard to find these days - clean. There's no bathroom humor. It's sophisticated humor mixed with cartoon and slapstick visuals. 

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

We take it for granted in today's modern cinema that it's common place for super heroes to face off against one another like Iron Man, the Black Panther, and the Black Widow versus Captain America, Hawkeye, and Ant Man among others in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (2016) or BATMAN VS SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016). But the concept of a movie franchise having more than one of their characters appear together in a film has its origins with Universal's Movie Monsters series. In particular, it started with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) where the Frankenstein monster encounters Larry Talbot aka the Wolf Man, the first time two of Universal's monsters appeared together in the same film.

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN in a way is a sequel to the successful THE WOLF MAN that was released two years earlier in 1941 although it really comes after THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942) but more on that connection later.  THE WOLF MAN'S screenwriter Curt Siodmak who created much of the werewolf lore returns as the screenwriter for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. George Waggner who directed THE WOLF MAN stepped into the producing chair for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN and handed the directing reins over to Roy William Neill, a capable director no stranger to atmospheric films having directed some of my favorite Sherlock Holmes films around the same time including THE SCARLET CLAW (1944) and HOUSE OF FEAR (1945). FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN returns several actors from THE WOLF MAN although not all of them in the same roles.  Lon Chaney, Jr is back as the tormented Larry Talbot and Maria Ouspenskaya as Talbot's surrogate mother, the gypsy woman Maleva.  But Patric Knowles and Bela Lugosi who had minor roles in THE WOLF MAN return as different but meatier characters in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN including Lugosi in his first turn as Frankenstein's monster. Tying the entire Universal Monster Universe together is the under appreciated Dwight Frye who had iconic supporting roles as Dr. Frankenstein's assistant Fritz in FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and as the fly eating Renfield in DRACULA (also 1931). But Frye's brief period of horror film glory would fade and by 1943 Frye had but a minor role as the villager Rudi in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. Frye would die that same year, much too young.

The film opens in Lanwelly, Wales where two grave robbers (Tom Stevenson and Cyril Delevanti) break into the crypt of the Talbot family on a full moon to steal jewelry and money from the corpse of Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr). But they're in for a big surprise when Talbot awakens (more on why he's not a skeleton to come), grabbing one of the grave robber's hands. Talbot's found unconscious later on a village street, his skull fractured.  He's treated at Queen's Hospital in Cardiff where he's interviewed by Dr. Frank Mannering (Patric Knowles) and Inspector Owen (Dennis Hoey). The patient claims to be Larry Talbot, whose been dead for four years. He tells them he turns into a werewolf which gets Talbot a one way ticket to a straight-jacket. While Mannering and Owen visit Lanwelly to investigate Talbot's claim, Talbot turns into the Wolf Man that night, sneaking out of his hospital room to murder a policeman. After visiting the crypt and finding Talbot's body missing and one dead grave robber, Mannering calls to check on Talbot and learns he has escaped his confines back in Cardiff.

Talbot wanders into a gypsy camp where he's reunites with Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) whose son Bela turned Talbot into a werewolf in THE WOLF MAN. Maleva tells Larry she's heard of a man who might be able to help Talbot with his curse. With just a horse drawn carriage, Talbot and Maleva travel from Wales to the Bavarian like village of Vasaria. But the man Maleva is looking for, Dr. Frankenstein, is dead, according to the local bartender Vazec (Rex Evans). His castle lays in ruins beneath a dam above the village. Vazec kicks them out of his establishment. Talbot turns into a werewolf again and kills a local blind girl. Chased by the locals including Vazec, Franzec (Don Barclay) and Rudi (Dwight Frye), Talbot hides in the decrepit castle where he stumbles upon a frozen Frankenstein's monster (Bela Lugosi), entombed in a block of ice.

Talbot breaks the monster out of his icy tomb. He searches for the good doctor's diary with no luck but finds a photo of Dr. Frankenstein's daughter, the Baroness Elsa Frankenstein (Ilona Massey) in a secret safe. Talbot contacts Vasaria's Mayor (Lionel Atwill) about purchasing the ruins so he can meet the Baroness and inquire about her father's papers on life and death.  The Mayor invites Talbot and Elsa to the Festival of the New Wine celebration that night.  Dr. Mannering shows up at the party, following Talbot's rampage through Europe, intent on curing him. Talbot reveals to Mannering about Frankenstein's papers, piquing the doctor's interest. Frankenstein's monster wanders into the festival, nearly causing a riot.  Talbot grabs the monster and whisks him away on a carriage out of the village. Mannering pledges to Elsa to kill the monster.

Elsa takes Mannering to her father's decaying castle. Talbot and the monster are hiding there from the townspeople. Elsa shows them a secret compartment where her father's diary lies. Mannering rebuilds the laboratory in his quest to cure Talbot by drawing the Frankenstein monster's energy to rid Talbot of his werewolf curse. But Mannering falls into the trap that Elsa's Frankenstein family has fallen into of playing God. Elsa begs Mannering to forget his plan and just kill the Frankenstein's monster. Down below in Vasaria, the townspeople see those familiar flashing lights up at the ruins. As Mannering begins his experiment to save Talbot, the full moon emerges changing Talbot into the Wolf Man. The Wolf Man and the monster begin to fight.  As Mannering and Elsa flee, the bartender Vazec blows up the dam, bringing thousands of gallons of water onto the two monsters, destroying the castle ruins and apparently killing the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster (but we know better, right?). 

If you're looking for iconic horror atmosphere FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN is the film for you. Grave robbers, a spooky mausoleum, a dead man who comes back to life, castle ruins (with a dam, waterfall, and turbine next to it no less), icy catacombs, a decrepit laboratory waiting to roar back to life, and the prototype European village nearby are the classic horror ingredients that director Neill and screenwriter Siodmak provide. And where else will you find in the middle of a horror film a musical sequence during the Festival of the New Wine with the goofy song Faro-La, Faro-Li (Song of the New Wine) and lyrics like "Life is Short, Death is Long!" FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN covers all the bases.

Like the recent superhero duels, the Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man start out friendly enough. Talbot rescues Frankenstein from his icy prison. The monster tries to help Talbot find his master's papers on life and death. Even when Frankenstein wanders into Vasaria during the festival, starting a riot, Talbot pushes him onto a cart and races the monster out of town to save him. But their friendship can only go so far. After Elsa cuts the power to Mannering's experiment, fearing he's making Frankenstein strong again, Talbot transforms into the Wolf Man and Frankenstein breaks out of his restraints. The two titans of Universal Horror battle it out WWW Wrestling style as Vazec blows up the dam (a nice miniature by the special effects team) causing a torrent of water to cascade onto them and the castle ruins. It's a magnificent finale, reminiscent of Frankenstein dying in the burning windmill at the end of FRANKENSTEIN or the Frankenstein's bride pulling the lever to destroy the castle in BRIDE OF FRAKENSTEIN (1935). 

So the chronology for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in the Monster series is interesting. Just like the Marvel Universe mapped out a timeline for its superheroes progression and eventual team-ups, Universal had the same plan for its monsters. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN appears to be a sequel to THE WOLF MAN but the introduction of Frankenstein in the film follows his demise in THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN which came out after THE WOLF MAN.  At the finale of GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, Frankenstein's monster becomes blind after Ludwig Frankenstein's (Cedric Hardwicke) failed experiment to put the brain of Igor into the monster. So per Siodmak's screenplay for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, Lugosi played the monster as blind. This explains Lugosi sticking his arms out when walking (which would unintentionally become the standard for the monster in later Universal films).  He cannot see. But he could talk.  After filming was completed, the movie was previewed.  Audiences laughed at Frankenstein speaking Lugosi's Hungarian accent. All of Lugosi's dialogue was muted after the disastrous preview. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN would be released soon after and became a huge hit. But movie fans would never realize (except a few brief shots where Lugosi's mouth is moving but no sound comes out) that Lugosi's performance is based on the monster's blindness. 

After the success of two horror monsters in one film, Universal would milk this idea for all its worth. The next year HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) would come out. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN would have not two but three monsters (Lon Chaney Jr as the Wolf Man, Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's monster, and John Carradine as Dracula).  Boris Karloff (who had played Frankenstein's monster three times previously) would star but as the deranged scientist. 1945 would switch the house from Frankenstein to HOUSE OF DRACULA (also directed by Erle C. Kenton) and return all three monsters again.  Next, to spice things up (and add some comedy to the tired formula), Universal would unleash ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) starring the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello mixing it up with the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr again), Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange again) and Bela Lugosi in his last appearance as Dracula. Director Stephen Sommer who would successfully reboot THE MUMMY franchise in the early 1990s would try his magic again with VAN HELSING (2004) that turned Dracula's arch nemesis Van Helsing into an action hero (Hugh Jackman) who faces off against a werewolf, the Frankenstein's monster, and Dracula. Although it was received with mixed reviews, VAN HELSING was a loving homage to Universal's Movie Monsters and the crossover concept that began with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. 

Although Lon Chaney Jr is clearly the star of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, blonde bombshell Illona Massey gets top billing as the Teutonic Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, daughter to Ludwig Frankenstein. The Hungarian born actress was projected to be a singing movie star but found her way onto supernatural films like THE INVISIBLE AGENT (1942) and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. Check out her Heidi-like twisted braids for the film.  Patrick Knowles as Dr. Mannering is not the typical Frankenstein type doctor. For most of the film, he's caring and thoughtful, not crazy like other Dr. Frankenstein's such as Colin Clive or Basil Rathbone. He briefly acquires the God complex once he gets around the previous Frankenstein's lab equipment but Elsa quickly knocks some sense in him. Knowles began his career as the next Errol Flynn but ended up making several films with Flynn, usually as his brother or buddy i.e. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1937). 

Lon Chaney Jr still seems to care about the role that made him famous as Larry Talbot in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN after his success in THE WOLF MAN. By 1943, Chaney Jr had played Dracula, the Mummy, and even Frankenstein's monster in THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN a year earlier with co-star Lugosi returning as Igor. Chaney could have slept walked through his Wolf Man role but he still brings empathy to the tormented character. Only in the later films like HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA did Chaney seem bored by the Wolf Man character.

Bela Lugosi would play Frankenstein's Monster just once. He might have been drawn to the role with the chance to play the monster as a speaking creature even if blind. But as mentioned earlier, test audiences for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN did not buy Lugosi's accent for the monster. His dialogue is lost on the cutting room floor and his interpretation as the monster watered down although he still brings a sly component to the monster. Lugosi was still a name and added cache to the already impressive cast. Horror film veterans Lionel Atwill (DOCTOR X) as the Mayor, Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, and Dwight Frye as townsperson Rudi make nice contributions to the film. And director Neill brings a couple of his favorite bit players from his Sherlock Holmes series to FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN with Dennis Hoey once again playing an inspector (he played Inspector Lestrade in the Holmes films) and the heavy (in weight and character type) Rex Evans (PURSUIT TO ALGIERS) as the bartending, dam busting Vazec. 

Some last fun monster odds and ends. One of the great mysteries in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN is why isn't Talbot decomposed after four years of death when the graverobbers open his crypt. He's still human. Neither writer Siodmak or director Neill provide an explanation.  Horror fans have attributed Talbot's lycanthropy giving him a sort of suspended animation that allowed Talbot to appear normal. Dr. Mannering and Inspector Owen don't question it so why should we?  Surprisingly, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN is the first film that actually shows the moon transforming Talbot into the Wolf Man.  The original THE WOLF MAN never showed the moon at all. Talbot just turned into a werewolf when he saw a pentagram on one of his victims. Director Neill decided not to always show Talbot go through the entire werewolf transformation (via time lapse) except for the first time in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN.  My hunch is to save time and propel the plot faster. In later werewolf metamorphosis, Talbot is partly changed already.  An economical move by a director who shot the film in 28 days.

The cross over film that we're accustomed to today like the Hulk appearing in THOR:RAGNAROK (2017) or Iron Man/Tony Stark showing up in SPIDER MAN: HOMECOMING (also 2017) owes its origins to the creative minds behind the Universal Monster series beginning with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. As successful as FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN was both financially and creatively, it was also the beginning of the end for Universal's horror films which were about to run their course. World War II was soon to end and the horrors of war would abate meaning audiences no longer needed make believe horror to distract them.  But what a way to go out with the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster fighting to the death on screen while symbolically Universal was fighting to keep the Monsters series alive.