When Dracula Got Hammered (Part I)

 

Note: The first week of September in the United States is recognized National Blood Donation Week. Please donate, if you can. (I promise it won't go to feed Dracula!)

 

 Quoted from Dracula FAQ by Bruce Scivally:

"After being lampooned by Abbott and Costello, it seemed the classic monsters were done for good. As the 1950's dawned, American horror movies were no longer being produced by major studios, but by smaller companies like American International Pictures and Lippert, companies that made cheap black-and-white "quickies"  for the entertainment of teenagers at drive-ins. But in England, one company decided to take a chance on reviving the old gothic monsters in lurid, living color."  

                                                                                                      -from Dracula FAQ by Bruce Scivally 

 

When the average person hears the name Dracula, it is almost always Bela Lugosi they think of, even though he only played Dracula twice; once in the original Universal movie Dracula, and then once again in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. (Those other vampires he played in movies you are thinking of right now were not Dracula, but some other vampire...) 

 

Lugosi in the original Dracula

Lugosi w/ Costello

 

 

More studious film aficionados may think of Max Schreck from the silent film Nosferatu (in which the vampire was actually named Count Orlok, but was still essentially Dracula), or Bill Skarsgård, who recently starred in a remake of Nosferatu. 2025 also saw yet another incarnation of the bloodsucker with Caleb Landry Jones, directed by Luc Besson.

Max Schreck as Orlok

Bill Skarsgård as Orlok

 

Caleb Landry Jones as Dracula

Even more obsessed fans of Dracula may recall some others from bygone days, such as Klaus Kinski, Jack Palance, Frank Langella and John Carradine in serious Dracula roles, and George Hamilton, Adam Sandler, Leslie Nielsen or even David Niven (yes THAT David Niven...) in comedic portrayals. One of the best portrayals would have to be Gary Oldman in the Francis Ford Coppola venture into the vampire legend. 

Gary Oldman as Dracula

 

But the most prolific actor in the role of the famous vampire would have to be Christopher Lee, who essayed the role in the Dracula movies that Hammer Films issued in the 60's and 70's. And without a doubt, in the opinion of your humble blogger, Lee was the scariest of the toothy menace to ever appear on screen. Lugosi was interesting, but really, he didn't really frighten me one bit. 

Christopher Lee as Dracula

 

Lee made 7 movies for Hammer Films starring as the title character, and his cohort, Peter Cushing also made films with him as Professor Van Helsing  (there were actually 9 Hammer Dracula films in total). Of course, both of them together only shared the spotlight 3 of them. Which was surprising to me because I thought they had been together in more. But then I realized that the source of that misconception was that they had indeed made many movies together, 24 to be exact, but they weren't all Dracula movies. They also were in The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy, Scream and Scream Again and House of the Long Shadows (both of those last two with Vincent Price) among others, although not all with Hammer Studios.

You could be forgiven if you thought that Hammer films only produced horror movies, since that is what the movie buff would call to mind if "Hammer Films" came up as a topic, but the fact is up until the early 50's most of the output of the studio was either comedy, science fiction or film noir. The first genuine horror Hammer film did not appear until 1955. If you'd like to check out my other reviews of Hammer films (up to this point), both of them on film noir movies you can see them here and here. Surprisingly (and unfortunately, in my opinion) this is my first foray into Hammer horror movies, however.

 

 

 

 

Dracula  [re-titled Horror of Dracula in the U.S.] (1958):

The first foray into the Hammer studios oeuvre of the Dracula saga was an attempt to translate the original Bram Stoker novel to film. As such, some of the story makes it's way into the film, although quite often the script takes some liberties. If you weren't blessed with the assignment to read Dracula in a high school English class like I was, you may not even notice some of the differences. But some of them stand out like a sore thumb.

The most striking piece of trivia about this version of Dracula is that, believe it or not, it was the first ever vampire movie to be filmed in color.  The bloody fangs of Dracula in all their red glory were on display for the first time. Hammer doesn't waste time in gently nudging you to this new color concept, either. In the first scene, directly after the opening credits, the camera focuses on a crypt with the name "Dracula" emblazoned on it, as red blood drips from somewhere off camera onto the coffin.

Bloody tomb

 

Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) arrives at Castle Dracula. Ostensibly he has come to take on a role of cataloguing the library of Dracula (Christopher Lee). But at the outset we find out that, unlike the character from the Stoker novel, Harker knows full well who and what Dracula is and has come with the express intent to rid the world of this cursed fiend.

Van Eyssen as Harker

 

A woman approaches Harker and begs him to help her escape from Dracula's evil clutches. But the woman (Valerie Gaunt) is really a vampire, one of Dracula's minions (although, technically, there are no "minions" in the film. One could easily get the idea that he can only control one victim at a time, as that is all he ever seems to amass during the course of the film. However, that may not be the case, as later films imply that he has a larger following). 

Valerie Gaunt as "Vampire woman"

 

Harker ends up being bitten by both the vampire woman and Dracula, but he still retains some sense of his own independence and faithfulness to his mission as he dispatches the woman in her coffin with a stake. But, too late, Dracula has come awake and traps him in the cellar, and that's the last we see of him alive.

Death of "Vampire woman"

 

Dracula tries to get his revenge on Harker for dispatching his vampire bride by making Harker's fiancee his new victim. Lucy (Carol Marsh) has been feeling out of sorts recently and has been diagnosed with a case of anemia by her doctor. Lucy is the sister of Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough) and sister-in-law to Mina (Melissa Stribling).. The film combines characters from the novel in a seemingly haphazard fashion, but at only 82 minutes in length, I guess some concessions had to be made... The fly in the ointment of Dracula's nefarious plans, however, is the arrival of an old enemy, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). He is tasked with telling both the Holmwoods, and Lucy about the death of Harker.

Stribling, Gough and Cushing

Carol Marsh as Lucy

 

Van Helsing knows of Dracula's true nature, but he has the devil's own time in trying to get anyone to take his suggestions seriously. (What? Put garlic flowers up in the room? And lock all windows and doors after dark? And what's this all about that stupid superstition about keeping a Christian cross lying about in plain sight?) Eventually, of course, Van Helsing does convince Holmwood of the necessity, but only after his wife starts to exhibit strange behaviors.

Ultimately, of course, it appears that Van Helsing is successful at dispatching Dracula, but if you know anything about horror cinema, you know that somehow this is not the final end for our villain. You know the old saying "you can't keep a good man down"? Well, apparently you can't do it with a vampire either...

 

The film was released in it's home nation of the U.K. as Dracula, but U.S. distributors were worried that the American public might confuse it with the 1931 Tod Browning version of the character. (Although how that might happen is confusing to me... surely no one would mistake Christopher Lee for Bela Lugosi, but then maybe they were worried that people wouldn't get past the title to realize it couldn't possibly be a re-issue of the classic Universal movie...)

The film was a box office success. It originally cost £81,000 (which converts to about $275,000 in 1958 monies) and grossed well over $3 million in ticket sales. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds at 89% Fresh, pretty damn good for an independent film by still virtually untested studio. 

Both Lee and Cushing stand out in this film: Lee all the more so, because his brief scenes are memorable even in and of itself. Apparently. according to someone who has WAY more time on their hands than I do, Lee as Dracula only occupies about 7 of the 82 minutes running time of the film. Cushing, who got top billing in the credits, as needs be, occupies much more screen time, but if you want to be honest about it, you are likely to remember the villainy and  menace of Lee's Dracula more than you are of Cushing's mild sympathetic Van Helsing. 

The rest of the cast is pretty much workman like. Even Michael Gough who made a fairly big impact in the Batman movies of the late 80's / early 90's as Bruce Wayne's butler almost seems to fade into the woodwork here as Holmwood. The rest of the case don't have much impact at all. Wikipedia articles on each of the main cast members say that they are each "most well-known" for having appeared in this film. But then you don't come to a Hammer horror film for Oscar worthy performances: you come to them for the straightforward shock of the evil characters.

Lee, who was a stickler for faithfulness to the original concept in the Stoker novel would eventually become  disenchanted with the Hammer version of Dracula. He was quoted as saying about Dracula that his regret was that he had  "never been able to present the Count exactly as Bram Stoker described him." This may have been part of what convinced him to step away from the vampire role when the second film was being produced.

 

 

The Brides of Dracula (1960): 

The second Dracula feature film from Hammer did not have Christopher Lee in it (more's the pity), but it did have Peter Cushing reprising his role as Prof. Van Helsing. Lee, for his part, was afraid of getting typecast if he were to reprise the Dracula role (among other reasons.) The script had been already plotted with the idea of Lee returning, but since he declined a new script was written, focusing more on Cushing's Van Helsing. The result was that the first script was one that even Cushing wanted nothing to do with, so I guess a panicked production team immediately cranked out a new one, one that was more pleasing to their potential star.

To draw in the paying crowd, an attempt to connect Brides to it's predecessor included the Dracula name. And, while there is indeed a vampire in the film, it is not named "Dracula", nor is there any real hint of the character being even related to the character. All you essentially get is the Van Helsing character continuing his own quest to eradicate the world of the scourge of un-dead bloodsuckers.  

The film picks up somewhere after the events in the previous film. Dracula himself is still dead (and not just un-dead, but really, really dead...) But he has left behind some remnants of his reign of terror. As the narrator at the beginning says "his disciples live on, to spread the cult and corrupt the world". 

Note: In many of the vampire film lore traditions, the descendants of the original head vampire are usually destroyed (or revert to normality, if not too far along...) when the head vampire is dispatched. (See the ending of the previous movie...) But not in the context of this film. Hammer tended to play fast and loose with the traditional rules when it came to the sequels...

The movie begins with the arrival of Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) at an inn on her way to a teaching position at a school for girls. The coachman drives off and abandons her, leaving her to the mercy of the innkeeper, but the innkeeper professes that "there is no room at the inn."

Luckily (or unluckily), the appearance of a Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) saves her from having to sleep in the stable. She takes Marianne to her castle, which is conveniently nearby. 

 

There Marianne discovers that the Baroness' son, Baron Meinster (David Peel) is also a resident at the castle.  

 

 

It appears that the Baron is being kept prisoner. He is chained up in his own lodgings in a remote part of the castle. Despite the fact that the villagers think he is dead, and the Baroness says he is nuts, the Baron convinces Marianne to steal a key from his mother's bedroom and free him. Bad mistake! Because the Baron is actually a vampire, and the shackles were what was keeping him from roaming free.

The Baron kills his mother (or more to the point, turns her into a vampire). He has an ally in a servant, Greta (Freda Jackson), who along with his mother had been luring young girls for him to feed off their blood.  With mom out of the way, the Baron has plans to get as many women for his concubine (the titular brides). He gets a couple, but his real designs are  on Marianne.

 

As usual, the fly in the ointment is the appearance of Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). Van Helsing, having dispatched the head honcho vampire, Dracula, in the previous film, is now trying to rid the world of the rest of the scourge, including Baron Meinster, whom he is aware is one of the vampires.

 

The Baron manages to lure and turn a couple of girls before Van Helsing traps him at an old mill. In the ensuing battle the Baron knocks out Van Helsing and puts the bite on him. For all intents and purposes it seems that Van Helsing may become a vampire himself, but he seems to find a way to stop it from happening. (And if it was that easy, then why doesn't he do the same thing for the victims he encounters prior to their succumbing to vampirism? This is the only quibble I have with an otherwise very entertaining entry in the series.)

 

The Brides of Dracula was released as a double feature (paired with The Leech Woman) . It was not entirely well received. Many critics were along the same lines as The New York Times crtic, Bosley Crowther, who said "another repetition of the standard tale of the vampire ... There is nothing new or imaginative about it."

On the other hand, there were a few who had some good words for it. Leslie Halliwell is quoted as saying "The best of the Hammer Draculas, with plenty of inventive action, some classy acting and good sense of place and period." On a budget of only £120,000, it cleaned up with well over it's cost. It holds a 75% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it 4th overall in the list of 9 Hammer Dracula outings.

My personal opinion is that I think it is better than the first one, although I may be in a minority there. (The first one comes in at #3). I am withholding my opinion of it overall until I wrap this series up later this week, but I still think it held my interest much more. Part of that may be due to the fact that I found Monlaur such an attractive female victim for the bloodsucker.  Hey, if I was the Baron I would have chosen her over any of the others as my primary future bride myself...

 

Tune in tomorrow for part II, when I will be reviewing Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.

Until next time, drive safely folks. And it is night time now, so be on the lookout for bats and charming entrancing men on the road.

Quiggy

 

   

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #35: King Kung Fu

Note: for only the second time during this event circumstances delayed my usual Sunday post by a couple of days. Sorry.

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #35: Kansas

 

The state of Kansas was established on Jan. 29, 1861 

Details about Kansas:

State bird: western meadowlark

State flower: sunflower

State tree: cottonwood

Additional historical trivia:

Helium was first discovered in Kansas.

The fist woman to be elected mayor of a town in the U.S, was Susan Salter, in Argonia in 1887. (Before women could even vote...)

Both White Castle Hamburgers and Pizza Hut got started in Kansas.

Those nutty Kansas people were the first to ever pass a law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol (before Prohibition).

Near Lebanon, there is a site that is officially the geodetic center of the contiguous United States (meaning all states not including Alaska or Hawaii). 

Famous people born in Kansas: Amelia Earhart,  Hattie McDaniel (the first black woman to win an Oscar), Buster Keaton, Kirstie Alley, (except for Steve Walsh) the original lineup of the band Kansas, Melissa Etheridge, Charlie Parker, and Vice President Bob Dole. (Note: Although he was raised in Kansas, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Texas). 

 

Movie (1987): 

Note: I'm dedicating this post to a friend of mine, Kerry, in Kansas, a fellow "cheese and sleaze" movie lover. When I told him that I was picking King Kung Fu for my choice to represent Kansas in the Semiquincentennial Movie Project, he was somewhat dismissive, suggesting I pick something like The Day After. I don't know for sure if he has even seen this movie...  If not, fire up the DVD player, Kerry!

King Kung Fu (1987):

Filmed in the astounding form of SimianScope! (Really!) 

Our story begins in China (of course), where the celebrated Kung Fu Master,  Al Funku (Jim Erickson), is preparing to send his pet gorilla and now karate master, Jungle Jumper (played by John Ballee in the cheesiest gorilla costume this side of Robot Monster), to the United States. Basically he's just dumping his problems off on unsuspecting friends, since he can no longer control the ape... (BTW, you might be tempted to be offended that a white guy is playing a Chinese guy, but he's not doing it in a ridiculously racist manner. In fact, he often drops the fake Chinese accent and just plays it straight.)

Arriving in San Francisco, Jungle Jumper, now rechristened King Kung Fu, is put on board a train to ship to the New York Zoo. But there is a stopover in, of all places, Wichita, Kansas. There the gorilla will make an appearance for the delight of the locals at the Sedgwick County Zoo. 

 

The event is announced by a reporter for the local Eyewitless News (no, that's not a typo... Eyewitless News... this is a comedy... just in case you might have been thinking horror or monster movie...) 

Watching the news are a pair of mental giants, Bo Burgess (Billy Schwartz) and his pal, Herman (Tim McGill), who are upset that the local news is using a second rate reporter when the two of them are miles ahead in talent, but apparently not so "miles ahead" that they can be employed as reporters themselves. These two hatch a plan that will make them candidates, they hope, for real employment. They plan to get a scoop that will make them local stars.

 

So what is this "scoop"? They plan to help King Kung Fu escape, later to recapture him and make headlines. IT COULD WORK!!!

Remember, this movie is primarily supposed to be taking place in the late seventies, so much of the story involves things that were topical at the time, whether or not they were still topical when the movie was completed. As such, Bo and Herman's plans to distract the crowd so they can free the gorilla involve getting Rae Faye (Maxine Gray), a female acquaintance of Bo, to do some streaking at the event. (At this late a date I may have to qualify that term... "streaking" was a fad in the seventies in which a person took off all their clothes and ran into a crowd).

Except this is a (sort of) family movie, so Rae Faye isn't actually going to strip down to the buff. She will be wearing a bikini. And just to make sure she doesn't sunburn, Bo brings along a bottle of suntan oil (which he has replaced with banana oil, and if you don't know why, perhaps you better drop out of this review now...) But Rae Faye doesn't want any suntan oil, so Bo tries to get her to wear it as perfume. Which she doesn't want any of that either...

Ultimately it takes a couple of attempts for the bumbling would be reporters to succeed in the attempt to free King Kung Fu. 

 

And even then, the plan goes awry, because the big ape escapes. Leading to the best part of the movie, the varied attempts and shenanigans that King Kung Fu and the reporters end up in during the monkey's free-for-all.

 

But if that not all of it. There is also a overly enthusiastic law enforcement officer trying to corral the escaped simian. This is done by an over the top parody performance by Tom Leahy as a witless J. W. Duke, one of the more ridiculous but also more humorous performances. (Just in case you miss it, "J. W." is doing a balls out imitation of John Wayne, and to drive home the parody, his second-in-command is named "Pilgrim"...) 

 

I don't want to give away too much of this film. Gotta leave some stuff for you to watch for yourself. Besides, some of the antics by the ape are so over the top you will probably groan. One little inducement to further whet your interest: They didn't have an Empire State Building (the battle scene from the original King Kong) or the Twin Towers (the final battle site for the 1976 King Kong), but they had the tallest building in Wichita to film a free-for-all between King Kung Fu and his foes... the local Holiday Inn, at the time the tallest building in Wichita, maybe even in the whole state... Besides. this is just a normal sized up. One of those really huge buildings would have detracted from the ape itself.

 

Is this film as funny as, say, Blazing Saddles, a parody of which I am enamored? Well, not really. But then, the whole appeal for this one is it's cheesiness, rather than it's quality humor and acting. 

The background to this film is about as strange and funny as the actual film. It was originally scheduled to be completed in time to compete with the big budget extravaganza remake of King Kong, due to be released in 1976. Unfortunately the producers ran out of money and the project was shelved.  But then, in 1987, 10 years after the fact, they must have managed to gather up enough money to finish it. The result looks quite a bit like the low budget values imbued into an average Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. None of the actors are very competent acting wise, but that's what makes the entire thing enjoyable to someone like me.

On that note, none of the actors or actresses even had a career outside of this movie. I think most of them were probably just locals that the producers talked into being a part of the film. There is one big name, however.  The part of Myrtle was played by the famous Lois Ayres. Who the heck is "Lois Ayres" you're asking? OK, the joke is on you... her extensive career outside of this film was as a porn actress... She made around 150 of them from the early 80's through the 90's. (She's fully clothed in this movie... and playing an old lady to boot, so don't get your bonnet in a bustle...)

 

A documentary I watched on the making of this film (there was a "making of King Kung Fu" documentary???) has one of the producers saying that this movie was kind of like a live action comic strip. That in essence is a great sum up. Let's face it. If you come into the film expecting a quality production, or even a low-budget quality production, you are doomed to disappointment. It is pretty much a film done by amateurs who only had a basic working knowledge of how to make a movie. (Although one of them did graduate from KU with a film degree... See, Kerry? It has a hometown connection...) The pdirector ends up saying, at the end of that documentary, that although it was not up to the best that he wanted that, in the end, he "wanted to make a movie and I did it, and not everybody can say that."

It only costs $300,000 to make, however, since it was not released nationally, only locally, it probably just barely recouped it's production costs. But in later years it has become a cult classic. As I understand it it is a fairly popular movie in Wichita. Which is kind of like saying "well, it's good, but will it play in Peoria...?" It premiered at the Crest Theater in Wichita, and according to the documentary, the crowd there liked it. I think it's probably mostly well known through word of mouth from cult lovers of cheesy low budget schlock like me, however.

As ridiculous as this movie is, it is all done with intentional comedy, unlike A*P*E*, which was made as a serious attempt at cashing in on 1976's King Kong. 

Well, folks, that wraps up my Kansas entry. Hope to get back on track for my regular Sunday posting for the next one.

Quiggy

 

 

Announcing The Back in Black: Another Film Noir Blogathon

Anyone who has been a reader of The Midnite Drive-In knows how much I like the film noir theme. It is one of the types of movies that inspired me to become a film reviewer in the first place. My first ever blogathon that I ran was a Film Noir Blogathon back in 2016. It's been 10 years since that blogathon, so I thought it was high time to address the issue again. 

Film noir is something that I typically describe to the novice as being films where the good guys are not much better than the bad guys with the exception that the good guys have a moral compass. That may be a rather simplistic definition, of course, and not all movies that are classed as film noir could actually fit into said description. But it serves as an introduction to the genre, for me, nonetheless.

The heyday of film noir was in the 40's and 50's, but the essence of the theme has been used in films classed as "neo-noir" (Chinatown, Body Heat, L.A. Confidential), "future (or sci-fi) noir" (Blade Runner, Dark City, Upgrade), and even sometimes "comedy noir" (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)

My friend Rachel (Hamlette) shares an avid love of this classic genre. So we created this blogathon to celebrate what is one of the more intriguing (and accessible) themes in film. Although some genres tend to have a somewhat limited fan base (not everyone loves science fiction or horror), I think the film noir genre is one that even someone whose primary love is, say, musicals can get into.  

For the purposes of the Back in Black Blogathon you are encouraged to write about your favorite film(s) that exhibit the essence of film noir as it's theme. If you need help, any movie listed here (from the classic era) will automatically be accepted. But since we are including neo-noir and sci-fi noir (and other variations I may be missing), feel free to make your choice from elsewhere. For example: I am going with the 1988 remake of the classic D.O.A. (neo-noir) and The Thirteenth Floor (sci-fi noir) as two of my non-classic choices.

My co-host, Hamlette, created some fantastic looking buttons for this blogathon. Feel free to use one on your blog to promote this blogathon.

 

 

 

  

Let Hamlette or me know of your choices. There are plenty of options, so only one blogger per movie. But there is room for diversity. If someone has already chosen The Big Sleep another blogger could include it as part of an overview of Humphrey Bogart film noir films. And, if the whim hits you, you can choose to make multiple posts. (I'm doing 3 myself...)

So to sum up, the rules are:

1. Choose your movie(s) and let us know of your choice.

2. Promote the blogathon on your blog.

3. Let one us know when the blog is posted.

4. Above all, have fun. 

 

The Back to Black: Another Film Noir Blogathon blogroll:

The Midnite Drive-In: Out of the Past (1947), D.O.A. (1988) and The Thirteenth Floor (1999) 

Hamlette's Soliloquy: The Asphalt Jungle (1950) 

Make Mine Film Noir: Murder, My Sweet (1944) 

Cinematic Scribblings: Such a Pretty Little Beach (Une si jolie petite plage) (1949) 

 

Love and War

 

 This my entry in the Ingrid Bergman Blogathon hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema.

 

 

There is probably no film in cinema history that has more iconic lines than Casablanca. In the list of AFI's 100 Years...100 Quotes, 6 of the 100 classic lines are from the film:  

"Here's looking at you, kid." (# 5) - Rick

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." (# 20) - Rick

"Round up the usual suspects." (# 32) - Louis

"We'll always have Paris." (# 43) - Rick

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." (# 67) - Rick

 

and of course: 

"Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'." (#28) -Ilsa

 

(BTW: You may already know it, but Rick's later quote in the film is NOT "Play it again, Sam!" The actual quote is: "You know what I want to hear. You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it!" Which may, somehow, explain why the quote doesn't make it into the top 100...)

 

{As an added note: there are several great lines that don't make the list. My favorite is when Rick tells Ugarte: "I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one."}  

 

Casablanca had some interesting background. As Roger Ebert noted in a review he wrote "no one thought they were making a great movie". At the time it was just another movie. Elsewhere I noted that there were some 50 movies in production at the time. This was just another film. It had no expectations of having the impact that it ended up having. 

Now, before we go on, I just want to point out that virtually nothing I could write about in discussing this movie could be considered new. In 80+ years of dissecting this film, everything that can be said already has been said in terms of its power and impact. The only things that can be considered new in this post is the effect the movie and facts behind the production had on me personally. 

For instance: During my foray into the background I found out that "As Time Goes By" almost didn't make it in to the film. Considering how impactful and memorable the song is (along the same lines as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz, which was also almost removed from its film), it makes one wonder how much different the film would have been without it.

The composer from the film, Max Steiner, didn't care much for the song and lobbied to have it removed. However, by this time much of Bergman's scenes in the film had already been filmed, and Bergman had since had her hair cut for her next film. Re-shooting her scenes without the iconic song would have been economically unfeasible,  so Steiner instead ended up incorporating the song into the orchestral portion of the soundtrack instead.

One of the more interesting tidbits I found while researching: "As Time Goes By" was released as a song several years before and basically went nowhere with the public. But after it became a part of this film it enjoyed a phenomenal revival. The original version (done by Rudy Vallée) was re-released and topped the charts, 13 years after its original release.

 

  

Casablanca (1942):

"With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But, not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up - Paris to Marseilles... across the Mediterranean to Oran... then by train, or auto, or foot across the rim of Africa, to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here, the fortunate ones through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon; and from Lisbon, to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca... and wait... and wait... and wait." 

 

Thus we are introduced to the movie proper. It is my opinion that Casablanca is probably one of the greatest World War II films that doesn't have a single shot fired by army against army on a battlefield. 

The stage is very limited in that respect. 95% of the film takes place solely in Rick's Café Américain, a bar owned by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). Rick is an expatriate, formerly of the United States, who has been living for some time in Casablanca. In a previous life he had been involved in some political intrigue, but now he is supposedly trying to live a quiet life as a "neutral" citizen. As he states often over the course of the movie "I stick my neck out for no one".

 

This despite the fact that he has some passing "friendship" with some of the less scrupulous citizens of the city, including Ugarte (Peter Lorre). Ugarte approaches Rick and asks him to hold on to some papers he has "acquired". It is obvious that the papers are some exit visas that Ugarte got when a couple of German couriers had been murdered.

 

The opening setup for the film is to establish Rick as having no allegiances to anyone, including the French prefect, Louis (Claude Rains), who is a stooge for the Vichy France government in Casablanca. And, of course, not for Ugarte either. When the German leaders come to town and Ugarte is arrested by the French police, Rick refuses to help, thus Ugarte ends up being killed trying to escape later in the film.

 

The reason for Rick's hard-hearted outlook on life appears shortly. 25 minutes into the movie pass before we ever meet Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). It is not immediately revealed where these two had connected in their past, but the tension between the two is overtly shown from the very moment that Rick realizes that Ilsa has wandered into his "gin joint".   

 

The introduction of the reunion is the result of Ilsa asking Sam (Dooley Wilson), the piano player of the bar, to play "As Time Goes By".  She apparently knew him from sometime in her past (it is still not revealed of her connection at this point...) Rick had previously told his piano player to never play it and is incensed that the man disobeyed his order, but is immediately confronted with the presence of Ilsa. You can feel the somewhat subdued animosity Rick has towards Ilsa; not, as it would seem initially, a loss of emotional connection with her, but as we learn later a sense of betrayal that he has never quite gotten over.

 

Ilsa, for her part, still has an emotional attraction for Rick. Even though at this early point we don't know of their past connection, you can still see in Ilsa's face that she knows Rick and still holds a love for him. Note: It's hard to talk about this movie in the context of it's progression without delving into later developments that still, as yet, are unknown. Thus, when I talk about early interactions in the film, I have in mind what comes later shading my perception.

 

But then, even the most clueless reader of this piece probably knows a good portion of the film already. But in the spirit of fairness I will say spoiler alert! at this point, and recommend you watch the movie before proceeding if you haven't already seen it. 

The basic fact at this point is that Ilsa and her husband, Victor (Paul Henreid) have come to Casablanca to obtain letters of transit to allow Victor to escape Europe to America, where his services as a freedom fighter for people under Nazi rule can be put to real good use. Thus the exit visas that Ugarte earlier asked Rick to hide for me become the central "MacGuffin" of the film.

We eventually find out about the connection between Rick and Ilsa from the days before the Germans invaded Paris. They had a love affair. But just as they were about to depart Paris for safer places away from the now Nazi occupied Paris, Ilsa had left Rick standing at the train station with no idea about where Ilsa was. Only now we find out that Ilsa had discovered that her husband, Victor, whom she thought had been killed, was still alive. As a result she reconnected with Victor without revealing to Rick the nature of her departure.

 

Rick, who still has a deep affection for Ilsa, struggles with a dilemma. Should he allow Ilsa and Victor to have the exit visas and escape together, or should he try to wangle the situation so he and Ilsa can escape, essentially leaving Victor high and dry? The interesting fact of the script for the film is that it was being rewritten constantly, so not even the stars knew how it would eventually turn out until the day of shooting the final scene. Bergman tried to get director Curtiz to clue her in, but he kept it even from her, thus making Bergman have to work on the fly as to whom she was more dedicated, Rick or Victor. And this helped to make her performance in the role that much better.

Another interesting tidbit: The scene where the locals sing out the French national anthem in an attempt to drown out the Germans who are singing an anthem of their own has some profound background. The producers used a lot of refugees from countries that had been taking over by Germany, and the emotional impact of the scene has a greater impact due to the cast actually being displaced from their native country by the Nazis at the time. 

 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had a rule in place that prevented an actor or an actress from being nominated twice in any category, thus Bergman was nominated for Best Actress for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls, while leaving the Casablanca role on the sidelines. The Best Actress Award eventually went to Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette, but one wonders how the voting might have turned out if they had gone with the Ilsa role instead. Not that Jones for her role in the film she won the Oscar wasn't great; she might have won the Award anyway. And really, the Academy missed the boat in at least one other category that year. Casablanca was nominated for 8 awards but only won 3 of them (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay). But I personally agree with Danny Peary who, in his book Alternate Oscars, declared that Bogart should have nabbed the Best Oscar over Paul Lukas' winning role in Watch on the Rhine. 

Casablanca was one of the films in the first batch of 25 movies to be preserved in the National Film Registry in the US. It has only a 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, leaving it just shy of that coveted 100% rating, and it got mostly rave reviews at the time. One particular review by somebody writing for The New Yorker, however only called it "pretty tolerable" and "not quite up to Across the Pacific". There is the scapegoat to blame for the film not having a 100% rating, in my opinion.  (The wikipedia article that I read quotes that from Aljean Harmetz's Round Up the Usual Suspects, which I don't have in my collection, so I can't call out the writer by name, even if I was inclined to do so... which I probably wouldn't have anyway...) 

A book I do have in my collection, Kenneth Turan's Not to Be Missed: Fifty Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film,  sums up my feelings about this film better than a writer of my meager abilities ever could:

"How these complicated personal and political dynamics evolve, how they play off each other in continually unexpected ways, is the source of Casablanca's fame and success... Hollywood in it's prime knew how to put despairing, overpowering. elevating big love on the screen as well as any cinema ever has, and if that isn't enough to make Casablanca a classic, I don't know what is." 

The film is #2 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list, just behind Citizen Kane. Other lists have it at least in the top 5. As far as classic cinema I would rank near the the top, although if you are a fan of this site you know there are several others I would rank higher overall, just because my tastes generally run more towards the types of films that classic reviewers would disdain. Even so, I would at least have it in the top 10 overall on that list.

Well, folks, time to wrap it up and take the old Plymouth back to the safety of free country. Drive safely.

Quiggy