The Exhibitor (1966)

May 11, 1966 MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR 5397 REVIEWS The famous pink paper SAVEABLE SECTION in which Experienced Trade Analysts evaluate coming product Published every second week, as a separately bound and easily saveable section of MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR, this exclusive 29-year-old service is both numerically more complete and Informatively more candid, than any similar analysis. Cumulatively numbered by film seasons (September to September). It is recommended that readers consecutively save all REVIEWS section in a permanent file. The last issue of each August will always contain a complete annual exhibit to close the season. Combined the every second week, yellow paper SERVISECTION indexes to the past 12 months' product, and the alternating every second week pink paper REVIEWS, represent a unique informative service to theatremen. Please address all inquiries or suggestions about these two service features to the Editors of MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR, 317 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, Penna. 19107. SECTION TWO Vol. 75, No. 14 May n, 1966 ALLIED ARTISTS Lemonade Joe Allied Artists ( European-made ) (Dubbed in English) Comedy 90M. Estimate: Frantic western spoof has its moments. Cast: Carl Fiala, Olga Schoberova, Vita Fialova, Miles Kopeck, Rudy Dale, Joseph Nomaz. A Tele-Net International, Inc., Pro¬ duction; directed by Oldrich Lipsky; screen¬ play by Jeri Brdeca and Lipsky. Story: Stalwart hero Carl Fiala (Lemonade Joe) saves innocent heroine Olga Schoberova and her missionary father from the villains at a notorious western saloon, earning her love. He sets the family up as proprietors of a com¬ peting saloon serving only lemonade, ruining the business of Rudy Dale. Dale’s notorious outlaw brother. Miles Kopeck, arrives on the scene and vows to rout the goodies. He guns down the sheriff, and soon the business has returned to the den of iniquity purveying whiskey and women. Kopeck attacks Scho¬ berova, and Fiala returns to rescue her. The hero resists the advances of fallen woman Vita Fialova, earning her enmity. Tricked into drinking the demon rum, which renders him powerless, Fiala is tortured by the villains who defile his spotless white suit with black ink and huckleberry jam. Fialova reforms and rescues him. Reunited with his true love, Fiala reveals himself as the wealthy son of the. wealthy owner of the lemonade company he represents. A fierce gun battle results in every¬ body’s death but our hero and heroine. Sud¬ denly, Fiala discovers via common birthmarks that the villains and the fallen women are really his brothers and sister. Papa rides to the rescue, reviving all his dead offspring through the magic power of lemonade. X-Ray: This frantic farce is a spoof on westerns as done by European film-makers. It’s a funny premise, and they do manage to garner quite a few chuckles. The first reel is really funny stuff, with a mad bar-room fight and the introduction of the lead characters. The villains, black in deed and garb, and the impossibly virtuous hero and heroine, both impeccable in white, are lampooned with every western cliche imaginable. The battles contain good sight gags. However, the performers are forced to hew to the story line, sufficiently goofy but too flimsy to support a feature film. Things tend to get more than a little repeti¬ tious, and the laughs are harder to achieve as the running time stretches. All is bathed in yellow, described as LemonColor. It’s far-out tomfoolery and may appeal to youngsters in search of wildly different spoofery. Others could find it a bit wearing. It’s hard to tell NOTICE The REVIEWS Section has been expand¬ ed to eight pages this week in order to bring reviews to readers as soon as possible. There is no Exploitation Section this week. where satire leaves off and bad acting begins, but it is easy to tell that Miss Schoberova is a beautiful, amply endowed female. Western cliches, of course, have been lampooned before, and this one doesn’t miss a trick. In a sense, we can see ourselves as Europe sees us. Ad Lines: “The Wildest, Wackiest Spoof The Screen Has Ever Seen”; “It Kids The Pants Off Westerns . . . Go-Go-Go With Lemonade Joe.” Moon wolf Melodrama 85M. Allied Artists (Foreign-made) Estimate: Program filler for duallers. Cast: Carl Moehner, Ann Savo, Helmut Schmid. Produced by Wolf Brauner and Mar¬ tin Nosseck; directed by George Freedland and Nosseck; screenplay by Freedland. Story: Veterinarian-zoologist Carl Moehner allows his dog. Wolf, to be used in a space project studying survival techniques in outer space. He had found the dog as a pup, only to lose it in a flood in the frozen north. Later, he saw the dog again, and the animal led him to Ann Savo, whom he rescued from a preci¬ pice. This brought about a deep friendship, complicated by the fact that Savo was be¬ trothed to Northern woodsman Helmit Schmid. When Wolf is to be returned to earth, they' discover that he will land in Arctic ter¬ rain near Savo’s home. Moehner returns there and persuades Schmid to help him search for the capsule. During their trek through the snow, the jealous Schmid attacks Moehner and accidentally falls to his death. Moehner rescues his dog and returns to Savo. X-Ray: This starts out as a space adventure but soon becomes earthbound via a trite and rather dull romance between a scientist and a gal from the frozen north. Some location shoot¬ ing above the Arctic Circle provides inter¬ esting backgrounds, but the film has little else to offer. The title is misleading in that it leads one to believe the emphasis will be on space explorations. The low budget offering of in¬ determinate origin is suited best to fill out the program in double feature situations. Per¬ formances, direction, and production are stan¬ dard. The dog is a handsome animal but he is all too quickly shot into space, and things go downhill after his human co-stars take over. Ad Lines: “Moonwolf . . . An Adventure From The Front Pages Of The Space Age”; “Adventure And Romance From The Frozen North To The Farthest Reaches Of The Uni¬ verse.” The Party’s Over Allied Artists (English-made) Estimate: Moody “beatnik” drama is inter¬ mittently interesting. Cast: Oliver Reed, Clifford David, Ann Lynn, Catherine Woodville, Louise Sorel, Ed¬ die Albert, Mike Pratt, Maurice Browning, Jonathan Burn, Roddy MaudeRoxby, Annette Robertson, Mildred Mayne, Alison Seebohm, Barbara Lott. Produced by Anthony Perry; executive producers. Jack Hawkins and Jules Buck; directed by Guy Hamilton; screenplay by Mark Behm. Story: Young American Louise Sorel is the spoiled daughter of industrialist Eddie Albert. While visiting London, she falls in with a group of beatniks led by Oliver Reed. They live only for “kicks,” and Reed is fascinated by Sorel, the only girl he can’t possess. Albert sends his protegee, Clifford David, also Sorel’s fiance, to bring her back from England. The band of beatniks leads him a merry chase, trying to make a fool of him and keeping him from contacting Sorel. Catherine Woodville, most sensible member of the pack and ashamed of their more thoughtless deeds, tries to help David, and they fall in love. David gets varying stories about Sorel’s disappear¬ ance, and Albert arrives to help in the search. Sorel is found dead, and David learns the truth. She had too much to drink at a party, and fell to her death from a gallery. One of the beat¬ niks, thinking she was only dazed, made love to her. Realizing what he had done, he com¬ mitted suicide. David keeps the truth from Albert, allowing, him to think Sorel died acci¬ dentally. Reed determines to tell Albert what happened and force him to admit that his daughter was no better than any of the other young rebels. At the last moment, he can’t bring himself to commit the callous act. David and Woodville have each other, and the party is over for the pack. X-Ray: This moody drama brings together as unpleasant a group of youngsters, with few exceptions, as has ever graced the screen. This is not to say that the film has no impact, or that it is poorly made or performed. On the contrary, there is a grim fascination to the senseless, pointless behavior of these young rebels living for “kicks” — bored and cynical about a world they did not make — a world which seems to have no relationship to their lives. Their existence is vacuous, drifting, sense¬ lessly violent. The bridge between their genera¬ tion and that of their parents is a long and tortuous one and they have no desire to navi¬ gate it. Their relationships with one another are casual, cruel, and possible only because no one expects or demands anything from anyone else. This is a meaty subject. The dramatic framework, which is rather trite and only spasmodically interesting, is weak. The un