Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1958)

"TtlR Tlllllicl Of l.llMl" I SeUCHC^ ^cUlK^ O O O Swift and naughty adaptation of the Broadway comedy. Strong for big city audiences, but maybe "too strong" for hinterlands. Doris Day, Richard Widmark head cast. The suburban and adult metropolitan markets can look forward with glee to a smart and saucy display of marital relations as they affect the scotch-and-samba set. Blithely performed by Doris Day and Richard Widmark and zestfully staged by Gene Kelly, "The Tunnel Of Love ' proves one of the merriest explorations M-G-M has made in years. Adapted from the successful Peter De Vries novel and play, this chicly tailored blackand-white CinemaScope offering has wisely left intact almost all the IKeiv Yorker-ish gag lines and even most of those bawdy barbs which delighted Broadway audiences. In fact, probably the most striking feature Joseph Fields and Martin iMelcher ha\e gi\en their production is its freewheeling directness, at least verbally, with such Hollywood-shrouded tidbits as pregnancy, infidelity and the cocktail party se.x-recruiting station. The script, which is also the work of Fields, spills some affably amoral humor over these subjects and quite often works to a point of highly polished hilarity. Flowever, although nothing e\er becomes pictorially offensive, (there being no "hot" skirmishes before the camera), the exhibitor is warned that some less sophisticated patrons in the hinterlands may take a dim \iew of the glibly ribald proceedings. Be that as it may, the charade-like theme presents the stars' adventures as a childless couple awaiting the adoption of an infant, during which we learn Widmark is looked upon as something of a Westport freak, i.e. an incorrigibly faithful husband. One afternoon, however, after a major tift with Miss Day and a huge assist from a philandering neighbor. Gig Young, the monogamous mate goes on a joy ride with social worker Gia Scala and awakens the next day in a motel thinking he has slept with the dame. So, following the old comedy of errors bit, our hero also assumes the girl's enciente condition is his fault and that the child he and Miss Day later adopt is the offspring in question. When Miss Day, struck by the awesome resemblance, thinks so too and starts to move out, it only remains for Miss Scala to set the record straight: her own husband is the child's father, etc. Miss Day is warm and lilting, Widmark surprisingly good in a Tom Ewell sort of characterization. Miss Scala undeniably enticing and Young an exurbanite rake in perfect pitch. Doris also sings two sparkling numbers along with The Esquire Trio backgrounds, photography and fashions have an authentic station wagon touch. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. 98 minutes. Doris Day, Richard Widmark. Produced by Joseph Fields and Martin Melcher. Directed by Gene Kelly. "Windom's Way" fairly satisfying British entry for art houses. James Ramsay Ullman's sprawlingl\' romantic novel of a dedicated English doctor to the underprivileged in the wilds of a Far East island, has been brought to the screen by the Rank Organization with a conciseness and a compassion not found in the original. It stars two popular British performers, Peter Finch and Mary Ure, both of whom give finely wrought character studies, and has been directed by Ronald Neame with dramatic care. Lushly mounted in Eastman Color and photo [ More REVII graphed in the turbulent scenic settings of (Ceylon, "Windom's Way" should chart a profitable enough path through the art circuit and in select class houses. However, for all its expert underplaying, the immaculate technical trimming producer John Bryam has fostered and the amply literate script of Jill Craigie, the film only rarely catches fire and only fitfully gives audiences a sense of the profound passions supposedly tearing at the heart of the humanitarian hero. Obviously this is a work of intelligent cinematic craftsmanship, one that offers a topical warning to the West about economic imperialism ha\ing had its day and sketches in the marital difficulties of the stars, but one which for the most part remains impeccably dry. Occasionally director Neame works up suitable tensions between the natives and the rubber plantation owners and ably pivots Finch as both the worker's doctor and their mediator with the unyielding overseers. And before the film finishes a riot and revolt have broken out with tragedy tied to both sides. In these sequences a lot of stampeding e.xcitement spills on the screen with a vigorously exact editing job and a loud and vital background score. Tale follows Finch to island, his beloved status with \illagers and involvement with their labor problems, later dwelling on his relationship with estranged wife Miss Ure and winding up with battle between landowners and natives, signaling the end of Colonial rule. Miss Ure is fine as the troubled wife and Finch gives a commanding portrayal. Rank Organliatlon. 108 minutes. Peter Finch, Mary Ure. Produced by John Bryam. Directed by Ronald Neame. ■"Blood of the Vampire" Scc4uee44 1^<itcH^ O O PLUS British horror import has ample ballyhoo angles. This Uni\ersal-International release ma\' ^ery well be the bloodiest horrorama the English have yet sent us for the ghouland-gore market. W^here, if heavily exploited, it should do well enough. Yet curiously enough for all its hemoglobin feasting it rarely shocks, being for the most part a somewhat pallid, mid-Victorian spook show with a loose-ends plot about a Bavarian prison doctor who sacrifices the inmates' lives for his transfusion experiments and also to keep himself alive. It seems years ago his experiments caused ignorant folks to execute him as a vampire; secretly restored to life he finds he needs constant rechanging, hence the blood-letting murders. Written by Jimmy Sangster, the evil genius behind "Curse Of Frankenstein " and Horror Of Dracula ", and directed by Henry Case, this Eros Films Production (Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman) floods its Eastman Color screen with all manner of nightmare trappings, from poor drudges going mad in ratinfested cells to unlucky confederates stretched out on operating tables in a gruesome lab replete with skulls, beating hearts in glass barrels and ice-encased zombies. Outside these walls a pack of blood-thirsty hounds lie in wait for any foolhardy escapee, while inside the doctor's loyal ape of a servant, dressed to the hilt in harrowing makeup, shoves the knife into any dissenter. The plotting is abetted by a malevolent star performance from Donald Wolfit as the medical sanguinarian. Vincent Ball is nicely controlled as the young doc incarcerated to aid Wolfit in his mad experiments and Barbara Shelley is pretty enough as the sweetheart who becomes Wolfit's housemaid in order to help her lover. Universal-International. 87 minutes. Donald Wolfit. Vincent Ball. Produced by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman. Directed by Henry Case. on Page 12 ] Film BULLETIN October 13, 1958 Page 11