JOHNNY ANGEL: masterclass in the ABC of acting - Anything But Competent

Any aspiring actor frustrated at constant rejection and bitter in the belief they're not getting the breaks their talent deserves needs look no further than JOHNNY ANGEL for confirmation that life - for thespians at least - is absolutely not fair.

This obscure 1945 B-movie thriller from RKO is worth investing 79 minutes of your time in simply to savour the impressive lack of talent displayed by the film's two stars - the always reliably wooden George Raft and bland-featured Signe Hasso.  
Their reactions are so rudimentary and cliched you can almost hear director Edwin L.Marin grinding his teeth in frustration as he coaches them from behind the camera in a futile effort to get them to emote convincingly.
"Ok, George. In this scene you're thinking about some information you've just received. I need you to do your thinking face. Can you think for me?"
George wrinkles his forehead slightly and moves his eyes from side to side in a vain attempt to indicate there is some brain activity occurring.
"Now in this scene George you are filled with powerful masculine desire for the young lady you've just seen for the first time across a crowded bar. I want you to show me your deep well of desire, and really focus on this because we're shooting you in close up."
George stares straight ahead, narrowing his eyes slightly. Otherwise his facial muscles remain immobile and totally unexpressive. It could be lust or trapped gas.
Raft was never one of Hollywood's most gifted leading men but JOHNNY ANGEL cruelly highlights his limited range. His hair is more expressive than his face. At least that moves when he gets into a fight. And he gets into a lot of fights. Perhaps the hope was we'd be so impressed by his physical prowess we'd overlook his struggle with the more nuanced elements of acting.
"Ok, Signe darling. George is looking at you with lust in his heart. You're frightened. Very frightened. This man is an animal and you know he wants you and you know he's not going to be gentle about it. You know this from the look on his face. I want you to react. You're frightened, you're terrified, but you're in a crowded bar. You can't just scream and run out of there. Give me frightened, darling."

Hasso proffers a look that is more bemused than terrified, raises her hands a little and clenches her fists. It's a stance that was hackneyed back in 1921 when silent stars used it to pantomime fear, and it hasn't improved with age. Hasso is inordinately fond of the clenched fists gesture to demonstrate terror. Sometimes she holds them just above waist height, while in other scenes she'll raise one to her mouth, as if to stifle a scream. In all instances it's reminiscent of a marginally talented teenager trying out for a part in the village amateur dramatic society's production of 'The Old Dark House.'
Both stars are blown clear off screen by Claire Trevor who acts as if she's in a completely different, more professional production. She gives the material and her co-stars considerably more credibility than they deserve although even she can't convince us that her character, Lilah, would really have married the effete, simpering George Gustafson. As played by Marvin Miller, 'Gusty' is a dime store Liberace minus the jewels, furs, candelabra and musical talent.
The only cast member who escapes completely unscathed is Hoagy Carmichael. In only his second dramatic role he essentially reprises the part of 'Cricket' that he'd played so effectively in his first film 'To Have and Have Not' the previous year. It helps that his character, the ridiculously named Celestial O'Brien, is an observer to the action and mostly stays on the outside of events.
In the hands of a more balanced cast JOHNNY ANGEL could have been a tight and absorbing film noir, but the the 3 stars are so mismatched in terms of talent and ability that the glaring disparity distracts from the storytelling. I found myself more eagerly awaiting Raft's next close-up or Hasso's next reaction than the next plot twist. And I couldn't help but wonder just how bad Raft must have smelt. His character spends the entire film in the same uniform, and all those fights had to have worked up quite a sweat!
JOHNNY ANGEL was a tipping point for Raft. It was the moment at which he ceased to be an A-list leading man and began his descent into his B-movie career. Never again would he headline a prestigious Hollywood production, and it's in this context that I encourage you to consume this particular, otherwise eminently forgettable, cinematic footnote. 

PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND: it's a white bread world out there

So this is how American teenagers celebrated Spring Break in the years before they developed a fully fledged culture of their own.
If PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND is to be believed America's youth in the early 1960s seized this long weekend away from the responsibilities of university and work to let rip and behave like a bunch of boisterous future accountants and housewives.
Some went so crazy they even loosened their tie before chugging their glass a milk.

Thankfully for the reputation of the babyboomers now nearing retirement PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND is less a documentary style snapshot of life in 1963 America and more an indicator of how out of touch Hollywood was with youth culture.
Directed by a 64 year old Norman Taurog, a veteran of almost 180 films dating back to 1926, the film was a break from his main task in the 1960s - that of emasculating Elvis Presley (he'd already directed 'GI Blues', 'Blue Hawaii', 'It Happened at the World's Fair' and 'Girls Girls Girls!' and there were another 5 titles still to come).
And what he did to Elvis with those flimsy travelogues and ridiculous musical comedies, he also did to the youth of America in PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND. Ostensibly a celebration of teenage hormones it's actually about as pheremonally charged as a white sliced loaf. Despite several daring uses of the word 'sex' no one comes anywhere close to indulging in any. Emotionally the characters are still trapped in pre-pubescence, convincing themselves they've fallen deeply in love after a brief first date and agonising about how they'll survive when he returns to Los Angeles and she goes back to her job in the Palm Springs record store.
Not only does writer Earl Hamner (who also created 'The Waltons') fail to grasp the reality of teenage sexuality but he also completely neuters that other trademark of 60s youth culture - the music. While real-life teenagers were sending Little Stevie Wonder, The Four Seasons, The Chiffons and Jan and Dean to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, the faux teens (all the wrong side of 20) on the Warners backlot were singing "Bye Bye Blackbird" and dancing the Twist to the vocal stylings of The Modern Folk Quartet. To be fair, they dance The Twist to every piece of music played in the film, whether it's a folk song or a popular standard of the 1920s.
This is youth culture as envisaged by a bunch of 60 year old corporate suits clinging to the values of 1950s Eisenhower America. Their white bread vision of the world extends to the cast, all of whom are interchangeable both in looks and talent. Troy Donahue, Ty Hardin and Robert Conrad display not an ounce of personality, while the girls - Connie Stevens and Stefanie Powers - are similarly one dimensional. And don't get me started on Jerry Van Dyke - Dick's younger brother - who provides the comic relief. Let's just say he less amusing than an exploding car full of circus clowns.
Not only is the cast and the world they inhabit white bread it's also resolutely white. The college basketball team that Donahue, Van Dyke and their chums play for includes not a single African American, nor is there a Black, Asian or Latino face to be seen anywhere in the film.
Not so much escapist as delusional, PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND paints a picture of a youth culture that never really existed and thankfully was about to be swept away by the British Invasion and the rise of 60s counter-culture.

UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO: forget the title, feel the fear

Behind the prosaic yet puzzling title of this 1971 British production lies a genuinely disturbing and gripping story which succeeds in unsettling despite building to a distinctly unsatisfying conclusion.

A cherubically  handsome David Hemmings stars as naive schoolteacher John Ebony who lands his first job at the remote Chantry boarding school for boys somewhere on the English coast. He arrives halfway through the term to replace Mr Pelham, form 5B's previous teacher, who has fallen to his death from nearby cliffs.
The official verdict is that he got lost in the fog but as the boys of 5B soon make crystal clear to Mr Ebony, they murdered him after he got on their bad side and they're quite willing to do the same thing to him if he doesn't agree to their terms. His initial response is to fight back but the boys' willingness to follow up their threats with action soon forces him to yield to their demands.
Hemmings is superb as the idealistic young teacher who's slow to recognise he's way out of his depth despite the blunt warnings from his charges (always couched in the politest of terms and never failing to address him as 'Sir'), the disinterest of the school's headmaster (Douglas Wilmer), and the lack of support from his frustrated wife (Carolyn Seymour) who's struggling to adapt to her new role as a compliant spouse.

Ebony's initial enthusiasm for his new career and misplaced confidence in his ability to best his nakedly evil pupils drains away as director John Mackenzie slowly ratchets up the tension, building to a goose-bump inducing sequence where the boys target Ebony's wife to teach him a lesson. Rarely has a squash court felt like such a terrifying place.
It's tempting to describe UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO as a horror movie, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. It's more of a psychological thriller, soaked through with menace and an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. The school is just a bus ride away from the nearest town but for all intents and purposes it exists in a separate dimension, buffered from the outside world by rolling hills and those treacherous cliffs. The isolation is essential for the boys' threat to be credible. Intruders with more savvy than the Ebonys would call form 5B on their behaviour and the spell would rapidly be broken.
To call form 5B 'boys' is something of a misnomer. As with almost every film set in a school, the actors are much too old for the parts they're playing (future star Michael Kitchen was 23 at the time) but it's less of a distraction here and doesn't overly detract from the purpose of their presence. Credit is also due to Tony Haygarth (only 3 years older than Kitchen) as the cynical art teacher who takes Ebony under his wing, and embodies the disillusionment with the profession which awaits Ebony if his pupils don't get him first.
Like me, you may not fully understand or accept the final climax, and while that's disappointing it's not of a magnitude to destroy what's come before. If you can find it (and the film's not currently available on DVD) UNMAN WITTERING AND ZIGO is a rewarding and engaging watch best experienced late at night with the lights off.

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD: please god, not like this

I sincerely hope that this is not the way it all ends.
With an enormous asteroid on course to smash into planet Earth writer-director Lorene Scafaria's vision of mankind's final few weeks is irredeemably sappy, spineless and dull.

If there's anything positive to be said for her debut directorial effort (and I'm trying hard here to find something) it makes a change, I guess, from the usual depictions of imminent global extinction.   Barring one isolated, small scale riot on the block where the story's hero lives there's barely any breakdown in law and order (at least, not on the east coast of the United States), and too many people seem content (or resigned) to continuing with life much as normal. The few who plan something special display less imagination or creativity than they would organizing a New Year's Eve party.
It's all depressingly dull.
Just like the hero of our story, Dodge.
As played by a suitably sappy looking Steve Carell, Dodge is one of life's losers, a functionary in a large, impersonal insurance company, he's just been abandoned by his wife and now faces the end of the world alone. Too battered by life's misfortunes to rally himself he plods on with his daily routine despite the pointlessness of it all.
Until that is circumstances bring him together with Penny (Keira Knightley), his downstairs neighbour. She has a similarly bumpy lovelife and Dodge seizes the opportunity to rescue her from her oafish boyfriend and a rampaging mob and offers to help her find a pilot who can fly her home to England to be with her family, if she'll first go with him to find his high-school sweetheart.
And so the long, boring heart of the story gets underway.
Dodge is so bland he gives 'nice' a bad name while Penny is just implausible. Knightley is a talented actress with many strings to her bow but playing a slightly kookie free spirit with no credible reason for living in America is not one of them. She just doesn't sound right - not a single line trips convincingly from her lips - and she looks awful. Not only is she sporting the world's worst haircut but Scafaria has a habit of shooting her in profile which serves only to emphasize her underbite and give the impression of constant gurning.
When the world and every single individual in it is facing inescapable annihilation there really has to be more engaging stories to be told than that of Dodge and Penny. If the intention was sweetness the effect is saccharine - the kind that leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.