Salt Water Shemp

 

 (ebay)

SALTWATER TAFFY-1933-Elmer Waggonbottom (Jack Haley) and Wibur the kleptomaniac (Shemp Howard) are 2 near-do wells who accidentally join the navy and get in trouble with the CP0 (Lionel Stander). It's fairly a amusing and only about 20 minutes long. A rifle routine could have influenced the famous Abbott & Costello routine but both were probably taken from vaudeville. Director Ray McCarey was the brother of director Leo McCarey, who directed The Marx Brothers in DUCK SOUP the same year.

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Polanski and Pleasence

 

CUL DE SAC-1966-Weirdo allegory art drama about a sleazy annoying gangster Richard (Lionel Stander) and his equally annoying much worse wounded partner (Jack MacGowran) who get lost in North Cumberland after a botched bank robbery. He wanders till he finds a castle occupied by an eccentric wimpy bald man George (Donald Pleasence) and his much younger slutty dominant wife Teresa (Francoise Dorleac). After his partner dies, Richard kind of takes over the place and at one point pretends to be their servant when a bunch of their friends come over. Eventually he's killed by the husband who seems to lose his mind, scaring his wife away and winding up alone and abandoned. 

Incomprehensible nuttiness by Roman Polanski made in between REPULSION and THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS.

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Happy Thanksgiving! Have A Blast.....

BLAST OF SILENCE-1961-Hit man Baby Boy Frankie Bono (writer/director Allen Baron who resembles Robert DeNiro) comes to NYC on Christmas Eve to shadow a potential hit job in this low budget film noir that for years was undeservedly over looked.

A narrator (un-billed Lionel Stander) provides cynical narration. Checking out a future hit (a minor gangster) provides great shots of New York in the early ’60’s (especially of Harlem in front of The Apollo Theater and Rockefeller Center). He buys a gun from Big Ralphie (Larry Tucker), a whispering fat guy with an apartment full of caged rats. After a Christmas walk, he meets Petey “from the orphanage”. He introduces Frankie to his sister Lori (Molly McCarthy) and he goes to their Christmas party where dances and rolls a peanut with his nose! He has a Christmas Day dinner date with Lori but kind of blows when he puts the moves on her too strongly. Meanwhile, he keeps following his prey learning his moves and routines. He then takes time to go to The Village Gate where a conga player singer named Dean Sheldon does two great songs! When Big Ralphie tries to blackmail Frankie they have a terrific, violent fight amid the escaped rats. Frankie decides he doesn’t want the hit. He’d rather make time with Lori but it turns out she has a steady boyfriend. He goes off and makes the hit but winds up shot to death on Long Island (because the mob doesn’t trust him anymore).

I really like BLAST OF SILENCE. It's gritty low budget photography really sets the mood. I read about it many years ago but never saw hide nor hair of it until it was “re-discovered” a while back. Star/director/writer Baron helmed one other feature TERROR IN THE CITY in 1964 then went into TV. The sometimes over the top narration was written by future Academy Award winner Waldo Salt. Producer/cinematographer/editor Merrill S. Brody shot CUBAN REBEL GIRLS in ‘59.

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