Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1958)

"Vertigo" Scuute^ 'R<ntcHf O O O Not one of Hitchcock's best, but entertaining enough mystery, James Stewart. Kim Novak furnish marquee power. With Alfred Hitchcock at the helm and James Stewart and Kim Novak as the stars, "Vertigo" is off to a good start as popular entertainment. It is a splashy and synthetic show with some typical Hitchcock thrills and a spankingly sumptuous VistaVision-Technicolor production shot on-location in San Francisco. Grosses should be well above average in most situations. However, the Hitchcock fans who were hoping for a return of the Master's hand to something like "Rebecca" or "Notorious ", will be sadly disappointed. The celebrated director of the ingenious and the unexpected has here settled simply for the bizarre and the bogus and a grabbag of purely technical and pictorial effects. The chills are just too calculated, a bit too obvious. The script by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor is one that unstintingly takes advantage of mystery license and relies strictly on gimmick bit of terror. It finds retired detective Stewart hired by a shipbuilding magnate and friend to trail the man's beautiful wife. Miss Novak, a suicidal neurotic. Stewart falls for her, attempts to save her, but finds himself powerless, due to a vertigo attack, to stop the beauty from leaping off a church tower. Stewart cracks up with guilt, is revived when he stumbles across the Novak double, a brash salesgirl, and finally has his mind laid at rest when he discovers he's been the dummy witness to a murder: the shipbuilder threw his real wife from the tower and Miss Novak was only a dodge. Stewart is his usual self and his co-star is somewhat at a loss in her double role. Barbara Bel Geddes is good as a Vassarite girl friend and Tom Helmore is cool as the sly murderer. Robert Burks' photography is superb, with Frisco resplendently lensed. Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes nd Directed by Alfred "Hell Drivers" Hard-hitting British action entry. OK dualler. This Rank import about drifters turned truckers has some hard and gruelling scenes of warfare on the speedways. Mark it down as a good dualler for action houses. It tells, in hardhitting terms, the tale of an ex-con down on his luck who joins a gravel transporter-crew and finds himself at odds with the psychotic pace-setter, a steel-tempered goon whom the men regard as undisputed leader. The dramatic set-up as fashioned by scripters John Kruse and C. Raker Endfield has all the hokum props usually reserved for gangster epics. Stanley Baker, strong, silent, sharp-featured, is the handsome goodie and Patrick McGoohan, the monster-like baddie; both play their roles for utter intensity in a seething waterfront-of-London style. Herbert Lom takes care of the sub-plot business in which he befriends fledgling Baker only to find his girl, Peggy Cummins, falling for him. Producer S. Benjamin Fisz has provided some rough-and-tumble backdrops for the proceedings and co-scripter Endfield has directed them in a fast and furious way, occasionally hitting some high-mileage suspense. The plot, however, is deadly predictable. It winds up with Baker avenging the death of Lom and ending McGoohan's crooked dealings. rbert Lom. Produced by S. Rank Organization. 91 minutes. Stanley Ba Benjamin Fisi. Directed by C. Baker Endfield. Page 22 Film BULLETIN May 26, 1958 "From Hell to Texas" ScUiHC^ ^<lUtU^ O O PLUS Rating is higher for action houses and drive-in market. T« chase western in handsome C'Scope & DeLuxe Color. Here is a good chase-thriller from 20th Century-Fox. E|j pertly directed by Henry Hathaway with an eye for both chological tremblers and hell-for-leather shooting and starr two popular young players, Don Murray and Diane Va "From Hell To Texas" should find strong response in the a|| tion markets. And the tumbleweed ranges that sprawl han<' somely in DeLuxe Color acorss the CinemaScope screen aii sure to give it an extra pull with drive-in audiences this surr mer. Producer Robert Buckner has co-scripted with Wendaii Mayes a taut screenplay in which tenderfoot Murray accidentj kills the son of a cattle baron and is pursued across the baij lands by the latter's vengeance party. Diane Varsi is her usuji sensitive self as the girl who gives Murray love and shelter duJ ing his flight. Chill Wills, Miss Varsi's humanitarian fathejl Dennis Hopper, the dead boy 's brother, and R. G. Armstrong I the blood and thunder cattleman, provide trenchant characti| sketches. The slick Hathaway director, the acting and the vivijj pictorial lensing make this a more-than-satisfying entertailjj ment. Tension is built up by the trampling to death of Arri] strong's second son during the trackdown on Murray. In tl^| end, the beleagured fugitive risks his neck to save the cattlJ man's sole remaining progeny, Hopper, who gets caught in flaming turmoil with some warring Indians. 20th Century-Fox. 100 minutes. Don Murray, Diane Varsi. Produced by Rob^ Buckner. Directed by Henry Hathaway. ^ "Hot Spell" I SctUiteM l^aUtf Q O Plus Disappointing. Shirley Booth and Anthony Quinn will heiji b.o. returns in better class situations. Prospects not brigh. This Hal Wallis production for Paramount sets out to mall a realistically downbeat tale of domestic troubles in New O leans, but, although it has the wonderful Shirley Booth ani Anthony Quinn in the leads, it proves quite disappointinjl Grosses will be only fair and word-of-mouth will not be heljl ful. The stars' names will give it a lift in class spots. For th most part, "Hot Spell " wrangles all over the place in its hunj drum subject matter and winds like a confused soap operl Daniel Mann, directed with the grim devastation of "Coi Back, Little Sheba" well in mind, but the screenplay James Pd provided is too familiar and fuzzy an affair. What we have 't plot is the increasingly threadbare tale of a father who doesi understand his son and vice versa, a middle-aged husband w hopes to reclaim his youth in an extra-marital frenzy and mother and wife who smothers everyone with too much lov Miss Booth is touching as a woman who can't understand w she is losing her husband and why the family is breaking u As usual, she's better than her material. Quinn registers as w as possible with some rather familiar situations. Shirley M Laine and Earl Holliman are fine as the older children, Cli Kimbrough is superbly sensitive as the younger one, and Eil Heckart is appropriately daffy as the comic relief. The honori Wallis trademark is everywhere in evidence. The story revea! Quinn two-timing on his wife. Miss Booth, filled with shai that his children know, finally running off with girl only to killed on the speedway. His death brings the family togeth Shirley Booth, by Hal Wallil