“The Terror” (1963) is another Roger Corman quickie that exists only because the busy B-movie king had just finished a picture ahead of schedule and under budget (in this case “The Raven”),  the sets were still in place and one of its stars was still under contract.

With three days left to get as much additional mileage as he could out of Boris Karloff, the industrious Corman commissioned actor/screenwriter Leo Gordon and all-purpose protege Jack Hill to dash out a script and deal pages of dialogue to a quickly assembled cast that included Karloff, Jack Nicholson (another “Raven” leftover), Shirley Knight (Nicholson’s then-wife), Dorothy Neumann, Jonathan Haze, and reliable Corman regular Dick Miller.

In only his eighth big-screen role, a whiny Nicholson is amusingly unconvincing as a soldier in Napoleon’s army who becomes lost on the Baltic coast, and follows a seemingly ghostly woman (Knight) to the spooky old castle of the mysterious Baron Von Leppe (Karloff), a place which of course turns out to be a “ghastly, haunted mansion of death!”

While producer Corman took all the directing credit, B-movie lore has it that he allowed several others of his crew to take turns calling shots behind the camera, including young associate producer Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Dennis Jacob, Monte Hellman (who at least got a location director credit) and even Nicholson. It’s also been written that the crew was scrambling to finish Karloff’s scenes even as the “Raven” sets were being torn down around them.

To its credit, the film does have its few moments of suspense and chills, but mainly it’s another low-budget mess that’s a hoot to watch, made when Corman was still laboring under the great old banner of American International Pictures, which almost always promised a good time when it flashed across the drive-in screens of the 1950s and ’60s.

Now it’s available from HD Cinema Classics and Cultra in a Blu-ray + DVD combo pack for reliving drive-in memories at home or, if you’re not all that old, checking out what kind of weirdness your parents or grandparents weren’t really watching while they were making out in daddy’s T-Bird with the window speaker turned off.

- Gene Triplett

Nine years before “The Godfather” turned Francis Ford Coppola into a made man in the movie business, the Don of the B movies, Roger Corman, gave him a shot at directing his first mainstream feature.
And why not? Frugal filmmaker Corman had just wrapped a cheapie called “The Young Racers” under budget on location in Ireland and, hungry to cash in on the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” the way the equally tightfisted William Castle had with “Homicidal,” Corman decided to assign protégé Coppola the task of scripting and directing a shocker that in some way would involve the bloody murder of a half-naked young woman. It would be funded in part with leftover cash from the previous production, and proceeds from another producer who purchased the English rights to the film – $40,000 in all.
UCLA film school grad Coppola had served Corman well as an editor on “Battle Beyond the Sun” and dialogue director on “Tower of London” (both 1962), associate producer of “The Terror” and sound man on “The Young Racers” (both 1963). Coppola turned in a script almost overnight and ended up helming a fairly intriguing thriller called (inexplicably) “Dementia 13,“ about the greedy Louise Haloran (B-movie regular Luana Anders), who unintentionally causes her husband’s fatal heart attack, then schemes to have herself written into the will of her rich and crazy mother-in-law.
Shot in and around a spooky old Irish castle, and using much of the cast from “The Young Racers,” including William Campbell and Bart Patton as Louise’s weird brothers-in-law and Patrick Magee as the nosey family doctor, this gothic chiller included some impressively artful camera angles and an opening underwater sequence involving the sinking of a dead body and a diehard transistor radio that hinted at the Coppola genius that would develop in a few short years.
Still, Corman was displeased with Coppola’s failure to deliver enough graphic gore, and director Jack Hill (another apprentice who went on to make the blaxploitation hits “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown“) was brought in to add some grisly ax-murder action.
For years, “Dementia 13” has been available only in inferior, blurry, secondary copies, but Film Chest has managed to obtain the long lost original print and release a clean, clear, remastered version on DVD and Blu-ray, both in a two-disc combo package that is cause for celebration among fans of this cult favorite.
Extras are slim: a trailer, a brief comparison between the beat-up original print and the restored version, a postcard reproduction of the original poster, and that’s about it. But the picture is as sharp as the killer’s blade.
- Gene Triplett

As a child of Hollywood privilege, Sophia Coppola has built her own writing-directing career on parting the veil of glamour that we envy in our so-called beautiful people and revealing an existential ennui beneath.

Clearly, this offspring of directing master Francis Ford Coppola is uniquely positioned to comment on the essential emptiness of movie-star wealth and fame. And in “Somewhere” (as in “Lost in Translation”) Coppola brings to bear her finely honed sense of irony and whimsy to create a minimalist visual poem on the down side of celebrity.

The glacial pacing, elegant melancholy and spare, formalized audacity of Coppola’s approach might be off-putting to some who expect moving pictures to always be moving, moving, moving. And hardcore cynics might scoff at a filmmaker who concerns herself so ardently and artfully with the emotional travails of pampered movie stars.

“Somewhere” opens with a wordless, astoundingly visceral image of a privileged life going around in meaningless circles. In partial frame on a barren California speedway we see a black Ferrari revving round and round the track apparently with no point. But that’s just the point.

The driver is hunky, thirtysomething actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff, fashionably stubble-faced and disheveled). He’s a star between movies, separated from his wife and biding his time in shabby-chic comfort at the funky Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip.

Not much of overt drama happens in Coppola’s snail-paced tale. Johnny hangs out, drinks, smokes cigarettes, talks on the phone, entertains two blonde-bimbo pole dancers in his room. Without a role to play, he seems like an empty vessel.

It’s only when Johnny’s 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning, displaying heartbreaking grace) comes to visit that the movie star stirs from his torpor. In the film’s most affecting scene, Johnny takes Cleo to her ice skating lesson and watches in detached admiration as she skates her routine with the wobbly loveliness of a newborn fawn.

Later, Cleo’s mom calls in the grip of her own crisis and Johnny steps up to be parent, albeit in rarefied Hollywood style. They hang out and cook eggs Benedict; he whisks her away to a wacky Italian press junket (shades of Antonioni). Being with Cleo is the closest Johnny comes to being fully alive.

But, as the film’s open-ended conclusion sadly suggests, Cleo’s calming presence might not be enough to save Johnny from the velvet clutches of his celebrity.

What happens to Johnny after this quietly profound time with his daughter is open to speculation. Perhaps in the cosmic cycle of his Hotel California life he can check out anytime he likes, but he can never leave. Somewhere in “Somewhere” is a clue pointing Johnny the path away from nowhere.

- Dennis King

Most people would guess that an historical accounting of cinema shot in the Sooner State would just about fill a pamphlet, but John Wooley has filled a revelatory and richly readable 309-page book with facts about rolling film in red dirt country.

“Shot in Oklahoma: A Century of Sooner State Cinema” reveals a long record of movies filmed in the Land of the Red Man, dating as far back as 1904. That was the year inventor Thomas Edison himself, the American movie studio pioneer, sent a film crew to Oklahoma’s 101 Ranch near Ponca City, seeking to capture authentic Western atmosphere on celluloid.

Many people who’ve lived in Oklahoma for any significant length of time might recall that Francis Ford Coppola brought young unknown actors such as Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane to Tulsa to film “The Outsiders” and “Rumblefish” (both released in 1983), based on novels by Oklahoma author S.E. Hinton. They might also be aware that director Barry Levinson brought Cruise back to Oklahoma, along with Dustin Hoffman, to shoot scenes for the Oscar-winning “Rain Man” in 1988, and that the big-budget disaster movie “Twister” (1996), with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, was shot in Wakita, Guthrie and several other state locations. And that’s about all that most folks know.

Fascinating details

But meticulously researched details of many older and/or lesser-known features shot in the Sooner state make for fascinating and informative reading, especially for film buffs and movie trivia fans who live here.

The book’s cover, for example, is taken from a poster hawking a low-budget 1950 Western called “Rock Island Trail,” a Republic picture shot mostly in Hollywood, with some outdoor action scenes filmed along a stretch of abandoned railroad track near McAlester. Its star, Forrest Tucker, is pictured leaping from the front of a locomotive with a six-gun in his hand and a savage look on his face. Great cover. Enhances the book’s title perfectly.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans filmed 1946′s “Home in Oklahoma” around the Arbuckle Mountains, and Roy and Dale actually came back to the Sooner State and got married on a cattle ranch in the area the very next year.

I was intrigued that a Western project called “Osage,” starring, among others, Tulsa Western swing ace Johnnie Lee Wills and actress Noel Neill, who would later play Lois Lane on the first “Superman” TV series, was shot in part around Pawhuska, but never completed.

I was surprised to learn that parts of the wildcat oil boom drama “Tulsa” (1949), starring Robert Preston and Susan Hayward, were shot on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and even a small bit of John Ford’s 1940 film version of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” — a book vehemently denounced by Sooner citizens and politicians alike for its depiction of Dust Bowl Okies — was quietly filmed around the Beckham County courthouse in Sayre.

Fun stuff from Wooley, one of the most prolific and popular of Oklahoma writers, a former Tulsa World entertainment writer, novelist and author of many music- and movie-related books and articles rooted in Okie culture. “Shot in Oklahoma” is published in paperback by the University of Oklahoma Press with a list price of $16.95.

— Gene Triplett

Prolific Tulsa author John Wooley should limber up his autographing arm as two movie-related books he penned are coming to bookstores this spring.

On March 15, Wiley Publishing released Wooley’s new biography, “Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares.” On April 7, the University of Oklahoma Press will issue Wooley’s book, “Shot in Oklahoma: A Century of Sooner State Cinema.”

“Wes Craven” draws on Wooley’s interviews with the director and on exhaustive research to provide an absorbing portrait of the cult film director who gave us “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Scream” and other iconic horror films. In a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, Craven’s works, which often mounted masterly examinations of the nightmarish nexus of dreams and reality, have employed pithy themes cloaked in the conventions of populist horror fiction.

Wooley’s book provides fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about the director’s films, as well as keen critical analyses of the philosophical and psychological foundations for Craven’s body of work.

“Shot in Oklahoma” is billed as an engaging ride through Oklahoma’s untold cinema history. It ranges through a period when movie pioneer Thomas Edison shot westerns at Oklahoma’s 101 Ranch near Ponca City and advances through the era when Francis Ford Coppola came to Tulsa (with young actors such as Matt Dillon and Tom Cruise) to film “The Outsiders,” based on local author S.E. Hinton’s young adult novel. And along the way it touches on many high-profile Hollywood films that employed the Sooner state as soundstage – films as diverse as “Where the Red Fern Grows,” “Twister,” “UHF,” “Elizabethtown” and “Rain Man.”

Through in-depth research and interviews, the author also reveals unsung aspects of the state’s early all-black films shot in Oklahoma’s African American towns, films starring American Indian leads and low-budget slasher movies created in Oklahoma that transformed the home-video movie business worldwide.

Supported by vintage photographs and an in-depth filmography of more than one hundred movies shot in Oklahoma, the book serves as the first comprehensive survey of the Sooner state’s rich and colorful history as a thriving on-location film player.

John Wooley, formerly entertainment writer with the Tulsa World, has written, co-written or edited more than 20 books, including the recent novel, “Ghost Band,” and the nonfiction book “From the Blue Devils to Red Dirt: The Colors of Oklahoma Music.”

- Dennis King

Billy Wilder, along with Preston Sturges, was among Hollywood’s first “hyphenates,” a screenwriter who in the highly stratified studio system of the 1930s managed to cut deals that allowed him to direct his own screenplays. Hence, a writer-director.

That’s just one of numerous groundbreaking accomplishments this German-born film pioneer chalked up in an amazing career that ranged from 1929’s “Hell of a Reporter” (as writer) to 1981’s “Buddy Buddy” (as writer-director). These and other highlights are detailed in the definitive biography “Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder” (The University Press of Kentucky, $39.95), by Gene D. Phillips.

The 464-page book interweaves facts of Wilder’s life – he fled Berlin because of his Jewish heritage and sought refuge in America when Germany came under Nazi control – with details of his quick ascendancy in Hollywood from the ranks of staff screenwriter to the coveted position of writer-director.

Drawn from archival records, voluminous correspondence between Wilder and his antagonists and collaborators, a lengthy interview with Wilder himself, and interviews with many of his colleagues, Phillips’ book weaves together various elements into a story that feels both scholarly and highly entertaining.

Along with biographical background, the book includes plot synopses, quotes, anecdotes and trivia from some of Wilder’s most challenging films. Wilder (1906-2002) directed some of the most acclaimed movies in Hollywood history, including 1950’s “Sunset Boulevard,” 1954’s “Sabrina,” 1955’s “The Seven Year Itch,” 1957’s “Witness for the Prosecution” and 1959’s “Some Like It Hot.”

His earlier films, 1943’s “Five Graves to Cairo” and 1945’s “Double Indemnity” earned several Academy Award nominations, and 1945’s “The Lost Weekend” took home Oscars for best picture, director, and screenplay. During the 1960s, Wilder continued to direct and produce controversial comedies, including 1964’s “Kiss Me, Stupid” and 1960’s “The Apartment,” which won Oscars for best picture and director.

Wilder often clashed with the studio powers over strict production codes and conservative ideologies, and Phillips duly notes the filmmaker’s lifelong maverick tendencies.

“Although Wilder made comedies as well as dramas, his satirical purpose was the same in film after film: to expose the foibles of human nature to the public eye,” the author writes. “To stimulate audiences to serious reflections about the human condition. It has been said that if a satirist like Jonathan Swift had lived in the twentieth century, he would have written screenplays for Billy Wilder.”

Phillips is author of other film-related books, including “Beyond the Epic: The Life & Films of David Lean” and “Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola.”

Several other fine biographies of Wilder have preceded Phillips’ book and it appears the author brought no major new revelations to light with this sprawling tome. But for students and fans of this witty, urbane and slyly subversive moviemaker, without a doubt one of the most influential directors in Hollywood history, “Some Like It Wilder” is a well-informed and well-told addition to any library of movie greats.

- Dennis King

Movie critics’ “best” lists are quirky and highly personal at best. Top 100 lists from various film associations are arbitrary and debatable. Even the numerous readers’ choice lists of the best movies ever made can be maddeningly fickle.

Perhaps the closest we’ve come to a comprehensive, scholarly and objective list of America’s most meaningful films is the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, the National Film Preservation Board’s systematic effort since 1988 to identify and list the most “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films” in U.S. history.

Now, film scholar and writer Daniel Eagan has compiled a fascinating and highly entertaining guide to the registry’s riches, “America’s Film Legacy: An Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry (Continuum Books, $39.95). It’s a voluminous tome that demands a place on every true film buff’s bookshelf.

The criteria for inclusion in the registry is necessarily broad, and many of the works included, while historically significant, might not be widely considered “great.” For instance, the registry begins with the obscure 30-second silent short, “Blacksmithing Scene,” from 1893, which ironically dovetails neatly with the Coen Brothers’ 1995 Oscar-winner “Fargo” and its famed wood-chipper sequence.

In between, Hollywood classics (“Citizen Kane,” “Casablanca,” “All About Eve,” “The Godfather,” “Toy Story” and so on) sit side-by-side with cartoon shorts, documentaries, industrial and student works and obscure art films (with titles along the lines of “Czechoslovakia 1968,” “Fatty’s Tintype Tangle,” “Jenkins Orphanage Band (Fox Movietone News)” and “Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers”). Newsreel and home movie footage chronicling historic events, such as the Hindenburg disaster and the Zapruder film of John Kennedy’s assassination, are also on the registry.

Eagan faithfully lists complete casts and credits for each entry and includes a brisk historical or interpretive essay for each film. These are loaded with pithy background information, ranging from thumbnail biographical sketches of key players to juicy behind-the-scenes anecdotes about on-set feuds, screenplay rewrites and final-cut battles. Particularly readable are Eagan’s own, often contentious, assessments of each film’s artistic merits (Robert Altman’s films he deems “glib and cruel,” and “Citizen Kane” he characterizes as “a delightful stunt with the appeal of an eager puppy”).

Francis Ford Coppola hails Eagan’s book as a work that “doesn’t just explore the films on the registry, it ties together the past and the present, showing how the great movies of today can be built on the those of an earlier era.”

Eagan appears to be a film buff and writer particularly suited to this monumental task. He has worked for Warner Bros., MGM and other studios as a researcher and story analyst. He edited “HBO’s Guide to Movies on Videocassette and Cable TV” and “MGM: When the Lion Roars.” And his work has appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, The Nation and Film Journal International.

In “America’s Film Legacy,” Eagan easily proves himself a film encyclopediast of the first order.

- Dennis King