Behind the Scenes – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: The “Coming Soon” Business

I used to buy a British monthly movie magazine called Films and Filming, a cut above Photoplay and ABC Film Review but not as hoity-toity as Sight & Sound, and the first pages I always turned to were two particular sections. One was called “New Productions” and the other was “Premieres.”

Unlike now when movies open globally day-and-date, there was no way of knowing when movies would open in the UK – and they had to open in London first (hence the importance of the premiere) before they would turn up in my home city of Glasgow. Even if you were able to tap into Variety or Screen International at a library reference room and note which films had opened in the USA, that still provided no clue as to when they would open in Britain.

The Exorcist, for example, opened in the US at the tail end of 1973 but didn’t receive a London premiere until March 14, 1974. Papillon also opened in December 1973 in New York, but its London premiere was also March 14 the following year.* But there was barely a fortnight between The Great Gatsby hitting New York and premiering at the Leicester Sq Theatre in London on April 10.

I knew all this well ahead of time because I had bought the March 1974 edition of Films and Filming which came out in February. Had I sought such details in the standard media I would have looked in vain until photos of the premiere appeared.

The “New Productions” section of the March issue of the magazine told me I could expect in due course, out of 50 movies listed, the likes of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro both playing the Mafia kingpin, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Robert Redford as The Great Waldo Pepper, Robert Aldrich prison drama The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds, Arthur Penn’s The Dark Tower (later renamed Night Moves), Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Jon Voigt in The Odessa File. I had no idea when any of these would appear or even what they were about but at least I could put them on my radar.

So I am one of those guys that’s always checking online to see what’s coming up in the next few months at the cinema. These days, unless it was Dune, or a Christopher Nolan picture or a conic book franchise, I’d generally have no idea what was coming my way because the media is not interested in the run-of-the-mill product.

The Coming Soon Business is generally limited to trailers. Seeing a trailer for Digger, with Tom Cruise in Oscar-bait form, which isn’t due till October, whetted my appetite and I thought I dig into the Release Schedule section of the Imdb to see just what was coming my way.

There’s a remake of mountaineering adventure Cliffhanger starring Lily James in the Sylvester Stallone part, the French biopic of General De Gaulle, and D-Day drama Pressure (“from the makers of The Darkest Hour”). Zach Creggar (fresh from Weapons) has a new take on Resident Evil, and Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean, 2022) does the same for Sense and Sensibility starring Daisy Edgar-Jones.

Anne Hathaway is hoping to capitalize on the hot streak of The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Odyssey with thriller Verity co-starring Dakota Fanning. Former Spiderman Andrew Garfield is the British rebel leading The Uprising directed by Paul Greengrass (The Lost Bus, 2025).

Sandra Huller (Project Hail Mary) chases another Oscar nom for Fatherland. There’s a Batman spin-off Clayface. Godzilla Minus Zero is a sequel to the surprising hit of a few years back. John Lithgow stars as Roald Dahl in an adaptation of the play Giant.

Johnny Depp aims at the Thanksgiving crowd with Ebenezer and goes rogue in Avengers: Doomsday at Xmas. I Play Rocky looks like being a breakout hit. There are reprises for The Fockers in Focker-in-Law, with Ariana Grande drafted in to help out series regular Robert De Niro, and Santa Claus in Violent Night 2. Dune: Part Three has already staked out Xmas as have the third edition of Jumanji and in a clever piece of counter-programming Robert Eggers’ Werewulf.

Coming into the New Year there’s a very welcome return for The Beekeeper, another offering from M. Night Shyamalan, a reimagining of the Narnia legends, Julia Roberts in mainstream thriller Panic Carefully, and the second remake of The Thomas Crown Affair this time around with Thomas B. Jordan.

In between we can look forward to being sold various festival fare as the next-best-thing.

*In fact, I didn’t have to wait that long for The Exorcist, it opened in Glasgow in the first week of April 1974. Papillon took much longer – mid-July. The Great Gatsby opened in Glasgow on April 22^nd.

Behind the Scenes: “Supernova” (2000)

With both Walter Hill (48 Hrs, 1982) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, 1972) involved, you wouldn’t have expect this to emerge under the directorial aegis of one Thomas Lee. For the simple reason that Thomas Lee, at least in the movie directorial world, doesn’t exist. The name superceded that of Allan Smithee, the name attached to any movie where the director had removed their name. This was the result of a DGA decree that no movie could be released without a director’s name being attached.

Smithee made his debut in 1955 – but only in television – and it wasn’t until 1969 that the pseudonym was called into practise for movies – for Don Siegel’s Death of a Gunfighter starring Richard Widmark and Jud Taylor’s Fade In starring Burt Reynolds. I’ve reviewed both of these and they’re not as terrible as having a pseudonym for director may sound. Thomas Lee entered the equation after the Arthur Hiller gave the game away with his satire starring Ryan O’Neal An Allan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997).

*Here’s the toy version of the space ship. Collector’s item I’m sure.*

Quite why Supernova turned in a mega-budget production ($60-90 million) is anyone’s guess given it had begun life as a more modest number sold as “Hellraiser or Dead Calm in outer space.” The original idea was that the artefact would be returned to Earth with devastating results. It had originally been developed under the title Dead Star in 1990 – utilizing some artwork by H.R. Giger of Alien fame – by director William Malone (House on the Haunted Hill, 1999) with a budget in the $5 million range. That budget proved out of reach for the original backers and was sold to MGM/UA.

You might not have welcomed a contribution from Coppola given the mess he made of Megalopolis (2024) but he was brought once Walter Hill departed the project. Hill had arrived at short notice after original director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper, 1992) made a speedy exit with two months to go before production was scheduled and MGM was worried about an impending Actor’s Strike.

Wright wanted to shoot the entire film in zero gravity, one of many creative differences with the studio that led to him ankling the project. Along with him star Vincent D’Onofrio walked. Jack Scholder (The Nightmare on Elm St Part 2, Freddy’s Revenge, 1985) was briefly involved before MGM called upon the services of Hill who had co-written and produced Alien (1978) and two sequels. Hill did a re-write that removed most of the references to Alien. Both James Spader (Crash, 1996) and Lou Diamond Philips (La Bamba, 1987) signed up on the strength of Hill’s involvement. Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got to Do with It, 1993) turned down Monster’s Ball (2001) to do this instead, an ironic decision given Halle Berry won an Oscar for her performance in that film. It may have been the nudity that put her off and reputedly she refused to strip off along with the others when settling into their pods in Supernova. Robin Tunney (End of Days, 1999) and Peter Facinelli (The Big Kahuna, 1999) were in the rising star category.

MGM had big merch plans for the film. There was even a toy version of the spaceship Nightingale. Principal photography was completed in July 1998 and Hill spent 24 weeks in the editing suite.

Hill had much darker vision and a different ending in mind from the final film. MGM cut the special effects budget and, against the director’s wishes, showed to a test audience a version (the final version according to the studio) of the film minus the effects. When, predictably, the film tanked, Hill walked.

MGM returned to Jack Scholder now, worried about the negative reaction by the test audience. He directed reshoots, added humor and character development, changed the voice of the ship’s computer so it was more emotional and re-edited the picture and although it tested better than Hill’s version, MGM shelved it for a year. They tried to bring back Hill but when he demanded $5 million for reshoots they turned for reasons best known to themselves (except that he was an MGM board member) to Coppola who had not enjoyed a hit in two decades. Still, he was what would be known these days as a “visionary” and the studio assumed he could wave a magic wand. That was another $1 million on the bottom line.

Coppola recut it. He had four different endings to choose from including one where Karl (Peter Facineeli) transforms into a demonic monster and one where they would be no reprieve, no extension of evolution, for Earth. He superimposed the faces of Bassett and Spader on those of Tunney and Philips in a love scene so that the commander and doctor could have sex. Hill initially planned to accept a credit if he agreed with Coppola’s edits. He didn’t and demanded his name be removed.

MGM wanted a PG-13 certificate in the USA rather than the R-rating that the Alien films attracted. So the bulk of the sex and nudity disappeared, although that allowed the DVD to claim it was the “uncensored version.”

There had been an upsurge of interest in sci fi in 2000. Two films about Mars appeared – Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars with Tim Robbins and Red Planet starring Val Kilmer. That none of the three films did well suggests this was sci fi overload.

Supernova opened poorly in the USA and overall brought in $14.6 million in box office gross and was barely released elsewhere.

Behind the Scenes: The Imax Phenomenon

Imax is making box office waves again thanks to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), which has garnered about 20 per cent of its receipts from that format, and media seem obsessed by how long the movie can keep running in Imax, especially 70mm Imax.

Quiz question: what connects King Kong (1933) to Cinerama? Follow-up quiz question: what connects Lawrence of Arabia (the man not the film) to Cinerama? Tie-breaker: what connects Cinerama, which had its heyday in the 1950s-1960s, to the current Imax.

Merian Cooper, the producer behind King Kong, and Lowell Thomas, the broadcaster whose fame was built on the dramatic footage he took of Lawrence of Arabia during World War One, were both vital to the development of the new screen sensation Cinerama, which made its debut two years before Twentieth Century Fox unveiled Cinemascope.

Both Cinerama and Imax began as vehicles for documentaries, the cinematography they involved initially considered too cumbersome for Hollywood directors to use. Initially, also, both formats were presented in cinemas specifically designed for showing films made in the process.

But, effectively, both Cinerama and Imax followed the same business model, one that Hollywood only too readily appreciated. They were premium priced products. Whereas most items you buy are the same price wherever you make the purchase, movies followed an extended version of the way publishers sold books. Readers had to pay extra to be first in the queue for a favorite author’s latest work, the hardback version of a novel appearing about a year in advance of the cheaper hardback.

In the silent era, Paramount instituted a food chain for movie presentation. Pictures opened first in the big city center theaters at top dollar prices ($2 – the equivalent to $35 now – not unusual in the 1920s) before working their way down a dozen different pricing levels until they reached the cheapest cinemas. As the business developed, although the U.S. cinema capacity grew to around 20,000 outlets, Hollywood reckoned that 70 per cent of a movie’s income came from a fraction of those houses, primarily from the more expensive first- or second-run cinemas.

Treatment of audiences is more democratic now. All tickets cost the same and the food chain is long gone, but in the 1950s and 1960s when Hollywood was battling the beast of television it appeared that audiences could be wooed back to the movies by giving them something bigger and better – and they were happy to pay the price. Imax follows the same pricing strategy.

Cinerama was not just the ultimate in widescreen but it offered visceral thrills. Given camera point-of-view audiences raced down a rollercoaster in This Is Cinerama (1952) and were astonished to see different global vistas presented in their full glory rather than as mere backdrops to actors. And while audience response was astonishing even by industry standards, and receipts tumbled in hand over fist, the concept soon lost popularity as audiences moved on to the more dramatically-accessible Cinemascope and its imitators and by the 1960s the format was more or less dependent on the company spinning out its back catalog in endless reissues.

Hence, the move towards dramatic storylines as instanced by How the West Was Won (1962) and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), both initially presented in the premium-priced roadshow, separate performance, format. In quick fashion, too, Cinerama dispensed with the cumbersome three-lens camera and invented a single-lens alternative which made it much easier for directors.

During the 1960s Cinerama presented another eleven big Hollywood pictures ranging from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963) and Grand Prix (1966) to Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969). But as the industry hit the financial buffers at the end of the decade, the writing was on the wall, and although Cinerama invested in 35mm movies like Straw Dogs (1971) the game was over for the format by 1972.

Imax was pretty soon positioned as its natural successor, unveiled in 1970 in Japan with Tiger Child, the first purpose-built cinema opening in Toronto in 1971 with North of Superior. The screen was much bigger than anything Cinerama or 70mm had offered. It was over three times the size of Cinerama. But it was of different dimensions; where Cinerama went wider, Imax went taller.

But again, the camera was an obstacle for Hollywood use. And like Cinerama, the format’s attraction was sheer spectacle. All the initial output was documentary-based, often with an educational purpose, though soon progressing to what was termed “entertainment” (Everest, 1998) and the movies were short by Hollywood standards, often less than an hour, which permitted Imax theater operators to present a greater number of daily screenings than an ordinary cinema.

Initially, they were not specifically premium-priced, but potentially more profitable because of the number of daily showings. Theaters typically kept 80 per cent of the box office which limited cinematic entrepreneurial interest since budgets for these movies were in the $6 million-$12 million range, not low enough to easily turn a profit. The movies could run for months, but there was the same problem as before – shortage of new product.

By 1990 Imax had largely pulled out of exhibition, ownership limited to nine theaters, and out of production.

Oddly enough, it was reissue that revived Imax. Disney planned a reworked version of its classic Fantasia (1940) as a method of generating more money from a picture that had already grossed $184 million on video. Traditionally, Fantasia got its best results from limited release, its previous revival outing shown in a maximum of 500 houses. Nor did Disney agree to the usual financial terms, demanding a 50 per cent share of the box office, rather than the normal 20 per cent.

Fantasia 2000 (2000) was released in 54 cinemas willing to commit to an 18-week run. While every Imax record was smashed, the picture, at a cost of $90 million, didn’t break even. But it did usher in Imax as a reissue vehicle. Disney used Imax for the 10^th anniversary relaunch of Beauty and the Beast (1992), bringing in an extra $25 million in rentals. Two years later The Lion King (1994) in Imax brought in $15.6 million and Apollo 13 (1995) $1.7 million.

Naturally enough, Disney recognized the potential for Imax for new films and made Treasure Planet (2002) in an Imax version. But the big boost came with The Matrix sequels. Both The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) were digitally remastered for Imax, the latter the first to be shown simultaneously with the ordinary print.

Cinerama and its successor 70mm were created as the original “event cinema”. Imax has just continued to carry the torch.

Nowadays, Imax is part of the release mix, bringing a hefty chunk of premium-priced box office to the overall gross and as with the 70mm output generally generating more business through selected reissue, Interstellar (2014) in particular benefitting from that development. But while other studios routinely put their biggest-budgeted movies into Imax cinemas, Nolan is unique in being the format’s champion. Most other films simply convert to Imax. The Odyssey is the first film to be made completley with Imax cameras. And it’s paid off.

It’s reckoned The Odyssey will easily eclipse Avatar, the current Imax box office record holder with $270 million. Other Imax standard bearers include Avatar: The Way of Water ($259 million), Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($214 million), Avengers: Endgame ($207 million), Nolan’s Oppenheimer ($183 million), Avengers: Infinity War ($144 million), Avatar: Fire and Ash (estimated $120 million), Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($115 million), Top Gun: Maverick ($110 million), Rogue One ($105 million), The Dark Knight Rises ($105 million), and Interstellar ($100 million) – the last two Nolan being enterprises – and Spider-Man: Now Way Home ($100 million).

Nolan is so dominant in the format that The Odyssey did not have to cede any Imax cinemas to Spider-Man: Brand New Day on its opening weekend, though that didn’t appear to harm its record box office. Imax will continue to boost The Odyssey. It can’t hold onto to its massive theater count for much longer, but when opportunities to see it in regular cinemas diminish, it will continue in Imax.

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues (McFarland, 2016) p5, 10, 12, 295, 297-298; Kim R. Holston, Movie Roadshows (McFarland, 2013 )p 112-113; James B. Stewart, Disneywar (Simon and Schuster, 2008), p346-347; “A Decade of Limited Release,” Variety, February 18, 1998, p23; “Eric J. Olson, “Fantasia Signs Up Increase,” Variety, May 24, 1999, p32; Joseph Horowitz, “A Fantasia for the MTV Generation,” New York Times, January 2, 2000; “Fantasia Hits Imax Record,” Variety, January 4, 2000, p7; “Top 125 Worldwide,” Variety, January 15, 2001, p24; “The Top 250 Worldwide,” Variety, January 6, 2003, p26.

Behind the Scenes: An Exhibitor’s Story – Allan Webb, Regent Cinema, Te Aroha, New Zealand 1973

Several years ago, I received a wonderful surprise in the post. The package had come all the way to Scotland from New Zealand, a mere 11,000 miles, and it contained the ledgers of cinemas run by legendary New Zealand exhibitor Allan Webb, whom I had befriended online. Not only did it contain lists week-by-week and day-by-day of all the programs run by Allan at various cinemas, it also detailed how much money each movie made, and, later on, the figures also included the earnings from refreshments.

Since I’ve always been interested in the minutiae of the movie business, this was manna from heaven. I had grown up in an era and an area where cinemas, at the most, changed movies twice a week (three times if you counted the occasional Sunday night horror double bill). So I had no idea how an exhibitor way down the distribution food chain managed to keep a business going.

*Allan Webb outside the Regent. Main picture, Allan Webb today.*

Since 1970 Allan Webb had been running the 250-seater Regent in Te Aroha, a small rural town (population around 3,000) in the north island of New Zealand. The cinema, which had opened in 1927, had shut down at Xmas 1969, and in Easter 1970 Allan took it over on a three-month trial basis at a rent of NZ$13 a week (enough to cover the local rates, as the owners just wanted it open).

“The place was a dump,” recalled Allan, “but I made so many improvements on a very limited budget, kept the light lows, ran a good ship and had an eccentric programming. I had circuit cinemas on either side of me getting the films much earlier.”

The cinema was licensed to show movies four days a week. When he started out, he limited screening films to Friday and Saturday. Prices for adults were 45c for matinees and 50c for evenings and for children 25c for matinees and 30c for evenings.

However, getting movies was a problem from the outset. Recalled Allan, “Te Aroha was considered to be the ‘Exhibitor’s Graveyard’ and some film distributors were very indifferent about supplying film there.” Various studios refused to supply him or their rental rates proved too high. It took years before United Artists, for example, took him on as a customer. Paramount was more amenable offering flat-rate hires ranged from NZ$6-10, with repeats NZ$5. And, initially, he had to pay in advance.

The film shown on re-opening was western Villa Rides starring Yul Brynner and Robert Mitchum which attracted 117 customers, including 51 children.

At the Regent in Te Aroha, in 1973, it would be rare to get by with just two movies showing, separately of course. In 1973, the cinema screened 176 movies including double-bills, averaging out at around 3.5 movies a week. In total the box office brought in NZ$12,557 (that’s New Zealand dollars) at an average of NZ$241.48.

The best week (beginning July 12^th, 1973) brought in NZ$611.8 split between The Cowboys (1972) starring John Wayne and The Godfather (1972).

But, as I said, it was rare for the Regent to be able to just screen two movies in a week. The second-best week (April 25^th – Easter) hit NZ$615.35 – but it required a total of six pictures to reach those figures. The sextet comprised a double bill of Bonnie and Clyde (1967)/Bullitt (1968) and separate programs featuring Disney’s The Barefoot Executive (1971), the Oscar-laden Ben-Hur (1959), French war comedy Don’t Look Now, We’re Being Shot At (1966) with Bourvil and Louis de Funes and Fred Astaire musical Finian’s Rainbow (1968).

A James Bond tribute (October 4^th), each film a separate program, comprising From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) still wasn’t enough to sate demand and Carry On Doctor (1967) was added to the mix, the seven pictures in total pulling in NZ$266.45.

On two other weeks were six films shown, with varying results. The combination – each film shown in a separate program – of comedy It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), French gangster picture Borsalino (1970), musical The Student Prince (1954), Judy Garland classic The Wizard of Oz (1939), Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland in Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra in musical High Society (1956), knocked up NZ$445.85 for the week of August 30^th.

Oddly enough, High Society also featured in the six-picture week of September 2^nd which could only manage a take of NZ$284.4 from the combined efforts of that musical, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), a John Wayne double bill of Rio Lobo (1970)/Big Jake (1971) and the horror duo of Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)/The Mummy’s Shroud (1967).

The Student Prince was also part of a five-picture week (April 23^rd) which rustled up NZ$364.9 thanks to World War Two POW drama The Great Escape (1963), weepie Love Story (1970), and a Beatles double bill of A Hard Day’s Night (1964)/Help (1965).

It was virtually impossible sometimes to guess which films would draw an audience and which would not. The most dependable performers turned out to be the British Carry On comedy series. During the year Carry On Henry (1971) ran as a main feature. So did Carry On Doctor (1967) and Carry On Loving (1970) – so successful it was rebooked as a main feature later in the year. Carry On Camping (1969) was teamed, in the same week, with both Carry On Up the Jungle (1970) and Carry On Screaming (1966). Acting as supports were Carry On Cowboy (1965) and Carry On Constable (1960).

John Wayne was another banker. Apart from the previously mentioned The Cowboys, the Duke turned up in Chisum and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). Rio Lobo and Big Jake had both played, separately, as main features before being brought together in a double bill. Clint Eastwood was beginning to dog his footsteps, the entire spaghetti western trio was shown, as was Where Eagles Dare, Kelly’s Heroes, Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), Dirty Harry (1971) and Play Misty for Me (1971).

Richard Harris as A Man Called Horse (1970) also received a repeat booking – the second time as a support to Shalako (1968) – while the sequel Man in the Wilderness was screened. Other westerns in the exhibition mix in 1973 were: They Call Me Trinity (1970), Dustin Hoffman as Little Big Man (1970), Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune in “eastern-western” Red Sun (1971), James Stewart and Henry Fonda in The Cheyenne Social Club (1970), Elvis Presley as Charro! (1969), Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Wild Rovers (1971) starring William Holden, Robert Mitchum in The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969), 100 Rifles (1969) with Jim Brown and Raquel Welch, The Great Bank Robbery (1969), Jim Brown in El Condor (1970), God Forgives…I Don’t (1967), Burt Reynolds as Sam Whiskey (1969), Gregory Peck in The Stalking Moon (1968), Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in Shalako and Lee Van Cleef as Sabata (1969).

The Regent could rely on westerns. Several of those shown in 1973 had returned for a repeat performance. Shown in the period 1971-1972 were: A Man Called Horse (twice), Shalako (twice), The Stalking Moon, Two Mules for Sister Sara, 100 Rifles, Little Big Man, God Forgives…I Don’t. The Carry On films were as commonly repeated.

“It’s a wonder I survived with so many weak titles and getting them so late,” said Allan. “Many of the films I showed didn’t screen anywhere else, but they were very good films. The first year was sustainable but by the end of the second year, it was dire. I asked Paramount for Love Story but was told it was frozen until the next year. I pleaded and said I probably wouldn’t be there next year, so I got it at a rental of 50 per cent for a Friday and Saturday night at Xmas and it filled.

“From then on people started to come back. I also agreed to show it in the January holidays at 50 per cent as part of the deal. The Godfather – shown in 1973 – resulted in the biggest take over the seven years I ran the cinema.

“British comedies always played to good sized audiences as well as the ‘big’ films. Double features of two ‘B’ movies or one ‘B’ film and a popular repeat would usually perform satisfactorily on a Friday. Popular films could be repeated several times and often coupled up with other ones.

“The programming was considered to be fairly obscure, but it worked. A lot of films were played especially for the few days it operated.” Two films held the single session attendance record – Easy Rider and Helga which both played to capacity.”

“It was the school of hard knocks, but I learned a lot on how to survive.”

Allan Webb sold the cinema in 1977. He was awarded the Queen’s Medal in 2014 for services to the New Zealand film industry. He had run The Regent in Te Awamutu for 48 years.

Behind the Scenes: Selling Sex Plain and Simple, “The Vampire Lovers” (1970) Pressbook

These days you’d call The Vampire Lovers a genre mash-up. The main problem with mixing up the genres is explaining to the audience what they’re going to see. The marketeers solved the issue of selling this to both the horror audience and those who didn’t care in what form female nudity and sex came at them. The problem was if you targeted the sexploitation market, which was quite straightforward, you were going to miss out on a heck of a lot of big city first run business.

So Hammer/AIP came up with a clever plan. They would tag the female vampires “blood nymphos.” Exhibitors weren’t provided with much more of a hook than the prospect of naked female bloodsuckers and, as if were a James Bond picture, a battalion of female beauties kitted out not in the traditional bikini but in diaphanous gowns.

*The cover of British fan mag ABC Film Review.*

The marketeers reckoned, correctly, that the media were not going to fall in line by publishing juicy snippets regarding the stars or interesting details from the production, so nobody bothered in the Pressbook of drumming up much in the way of that, hoping that photos of said beauties, in as much disarray as newspapers would accept, would do the trick.

The best they could come up with was suggesting exhibitors hold a midnight screening. However, the gender switch was played up. “Do you know what a vampire looks like?” was the headline marketeers were hoping for, expecting to generate column inches or public interest in the cinema lobby by pointing out, vampires could be of either sex.

The rest was standard vampire marketing fare – deck out the cinema with fangs, capes and such, dress up staff. Cinemas were encouraged to stick teaser posters on abandoned buildings and fences.

Luckily, by this point, while mainstream media ran shy of the “permissive society”, fan magazines were less rigid in their attitudes. The traditionally staid ABC Film Review was happy to go down the diaphanous route and magazines like the more liberal Continental Film Review regularly featured nude pictures of stars inside. The conservative Photoplay made hay by playing up the licentiousness of the movie.

Humor rarely worked in Pressbooks, but here the awful pun was in evidence on the cover, “Cut yourself a slice of profit and get ahead” (Get It?).

But the bulk of the promotional work came from the adverts. Taglines included “Taste the deadly passion of the blood nymphs.” And “Not for the mentally immature.”

“Torture crypt of the blood nymphs…hiding an erotic nightmare of tormented lusts that throb in headless undead bodies,” could not have provided a more obvious target.

“Even the loveless can love…even the dead can desire.” And, as usual, the ad team would take the best of the taglines and mix them up, so you’d end up with “An erotic nightmare of tormented lusts…where even the lifeless can love…even the dead can desire.”

“Even the dead can love…and with lifeless lips drain the living of their passion and their blood.” Throw in “A bloodstained tale of terror and revenge…an erotic nightmare of the undead” and “Terror and torture embrace in ungodly blood lust.”

“Beautiful temptress or bloodthirsty monster…she’s the new horror form Hammer.”

Interestingly enough, while the diaphanous and traditional cleavage made a continuous appearance, in many of the posters there was little evidence of female-on-female activity.

There was greater emphasis on the woman as a terrifying image, which, of course, was not in itself groundbreaking.

Behind the Scenes: “The Guns of Navarone” (1961)

It’s time to celebrate the 65^th anniversary of The Guns of Navarone – world premiere on April 27, 1961, in London and New York opening on June 22, 1961. Although the picture set a new benchmark in high-octane entertainment, a fast-moving war thriller packed with twists and a genuine all-star cast, it was far – very far – from the sure thing it appears in retrospect.

For a start, U.S producer Carl Foreman, a victim of the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, was unable to assemble any of the talent he had set his heart on. He lost his preferred male cast of William Holden and Cary Grant and original scriptwriter Eric Ambler, the thriller writer famed for The Mask of Dimitrios and other novels.

He had a registered a major publicity coup by engineering the screen debut of opera diva Maria Callas, one of the most famous people in the world, but she also dropped out as did his other initial choice for leading lady. On top of that, once filming began he lost his director, Alexander Mackendrick, who had not only achieved a critical and commercial success with the British Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1951) but also crossed the Atlantic to make the acclaimed The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, to prove he could handle big Hollywood stars.

On top of that David Niven nearly lost his life during production and by the time the picture appeared Gregory Peck had suffered so many box office flops that he was a potential liability. And Foreman’s own marriage was in trouble.

It was a wonder it was made at all for Foreman was nobody’s idea of a sure thing. Although he had made his name as a screenwriter with three Oscar nominations for Champion (1949), The Men (1950) and High Noon (1952), his career was in ruins after being slung out of America for his supposed communist sympathies. He set up in London where he wrote screenplays under pseudonyms. But in 1956 won a four-picture production deal with Columbia at a time when that studio was investing heavily in making films in Britain to take advantage of the government’s Eady Levy (effectively, a tax rebate) and cheaper costs. But his first film, The Key (1958) with William Holden and Sophia Loren flopped in the U.S. Columbia persevered, seeing Foreman as the man to tackle its biggest-ever European production.

The Guns of Navarone almost fell at the first hurdle. Foreman’s first choice of location was Cyprus which was threatening to erupt into a civil war. At the last minute, he changed his mind and shifted production to Rhodes. Foreman, who also acted as screenwriter, made considerable changes to the book by British bestselling thriller writer Alistair Maclean, not least of which was introducing female characters to a story that had been resolutely all-male.

There was tension on set – four-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck was annoyed at sharing the screen with two winners David Niven (Best Actor for Separate Tables, 1958) and Anthony Quinn (twice Best Supporting Actor for Viva Zapata, 1952, and Lust for Life, 1956). Replacement director J. Lee Thompson (Ice Cold in Alex, 1958) managed to sink a ship on loan from the Greek navy. The Actor’s Strike in Hollywood nearly forced the departure of the two younger stars.

The set for the titular guns was the largest ever built, costing £100,000, and even though that proved a design miracle, that, too, was not exempt from disaster, having to be rebuilt after a thunderstorm destroyed part of the set. The injury to David Niven was so severe he nearly died, putting the production in jeopardy. Even when the film approached completion there were other obstacles in the way, composer Dmitri Tiomkin (The Alamo, 1960), for example, demanding a record fee and Foreman locking horns with Columbia over his insistence on launching the picture as a roadshow, request which was ultimately denied, and one of the reasons for the film’ release delay,

I’ve written a book about The Making of The Guns of Navarone. Originally published in 2013, it has been revised with over 30 illustrations added for a new edition to tie in with the 65^th anniversary – available both in print and Kindle versions.

If you’re interested in this kind of book, you might like to know that I’ve also written The Making of The Magnificent Seven.

Behind the Scenes: The Long Run, Part Two, 1974-1976

The idea of opening a “summer” picture in the middle of winter would have appeared anathema to movie distributors. A movie that relied on sun, sea and sand might prove a bit of brightness in the gloom of a British winter, but a movie that relied for its effect on that critical element of summer, that thousands of people would have be happy to swim in the sea and potter around on boats, might have lost a considerable part of its market by such poor timing. Except the movie in question was Jaws.

Although it opened in the summer in the United States, it didn’t reach British shores until December 1975, one of the greatest examples of building on the phenomenon of the longer you make an audience wait the bigger the response. By 1975 in Glasgow, Scotland – as with everywhere else in the U.K. – the new era of movie distribution was long consolidated. Big movies were held over in the city center’s biggest cinemas until fully played out, and only then moving into the suburbs or the surrounding towns. But as much as Jaws followed the new distribution path, it also broke the rules.

Paramount had decided not so much to limit the movie’s exposure at the ABC1 but to temper it. It could carry on at that cinema as long as it wished, but after a 13-week run in 1976 (it had opened a few days before the end of 1975) at the ABC1, other cinemas were permitted to book it. But on one condition. They had to agree to an unprecedented four-week run. That didn’t stop the ABC1 trying to milk more from the golden goose and it continued there for another five weeks.

By this point, Glasgow was accustomed to blockbuster movies playing like gangbusters. In 1974, The Sting re-teaming Paul Newman and Robert Redford had lasted 15 weeks at the ABC1, while the La Scala had hosted 13-week runs of both The Exorcist and Papillon starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman (all three pictures, it should be pointed out, had opened in the U.S. the previous year. Swashbuckler The Three Musketeers had enjoyed 10 weeks at the Odeon complex. Notching up seven weeks were Robert Redford as The Great Gatsby at the ABC2 and an unexpected hit, the double bill of Busting/I Escaped from Devil’s Island at the Odeon.

Clint Eastwood’s first Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force raced to six weeks at the ABC1, as did compilation feature That’s Entertainment at the ABC2 and Disney’s new animated feature Robin Hood and, separately, a reissue of Peter Pan (1953) at the Odeon. Hitting the five week mark in 1974 in Glasgow were movies as diverse as Don’t Look Now starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie doubled up with The Wicker Man at the Odeon 1, Bruce Lee epic Way of the Dragon at Odeon 2, Barbra Streisand comedy For Pete’s Sake at the Odeon 1, Roger Moore in Gold at the Odeon 2, and another in Odeon 3 sexploitation category Secrets of a Door to Door Salesman/Climax.

Prior to the arrival of Jaws, the notion of the extended long run had been established in Glasgow thanks to the short-lived disaster movie boom. Earthquake, in Sensurround, starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner and an all-star support attracted audiences for 30 weeks at the ABC2 while it was 21 weeks at the ABC1 for Paul Newman and Steve McQueen fighting The Towering Inferno with William Holden and Faye Dunaway providing even more stellar support. Charles Bronson’s vigilante killer in Michael Winner’s Death Wish shot up 12 weeks at the La Scala while The Who’s rock opera Tommy directed by Ken Russell with an all-star cameo cast notched up three fewer weeks there.

Charlton Heston headed up another disaster movie, sequel Airport 1975, which crash landed for eight weeks at the ABC1. The latest James Bond opus The Man with the Golden Gun in Odeons 1 and 2 lifted seven weeks. The Odeon 3 drafted in further dubious movies – The Night Porter with artistic aspirations and starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and, separately, The Devil Within Her with no artistic credentials and the unlikely casting of Brits Juliet Mills and Richard Johnson for seven-week stints. Norman Jewison’s violent sci fi Rollerball starring James Caan hit six weeks at Odeon 1. At the five-week level were Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and an all-star cast in Murder on the Orient Express (ABC2), Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (La Scala), sequel The Four Musketeers (Odeon 1), a second Mel Brooks’ offering Young Frankenstein (Odeon 3), John Wayne as Chicago cop Brannigan let loose in London (Odeon 1), another Disney reissue Lady and the Tramp (1955) and Mandingo (ABC1).

Jaws was not, in fact, the longest-runner in Glasgow city center in 1976. That honor went to Jack Nicholson’s Oscar-winning turn in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest which clocked up 23 weeks at the Odeon. An unusual long-run contender appeared out of left field. Low-budget weepie The Last Snows of Spring without any marquee names ran for an unprecedented 14 weeks at the Classic. The 70mm reissue of Gone with the Wind (1939) returned in style to the ABC2 for a further 10 weeks. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman investigating All the Presidents’ Men scored seven weeks at ABC2 and then a further five at the Scala 2 (the La Scala having been twinned and renamed the Scala.)

Demonic adventure The Omen with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick stung the Odeon 1 and Odeon 2 for a total eight weeks. A rerun of The Exorcist lingered for seven weeks at Scala 2. Lee Marvin and Roger Moore in Shout at the Devil were good for six weeks at Odeon 1, as was Charles Bronson as The Streetfighter at the Odeon 1 and 2 combined, Clint Eastwood western The Outlaw Josey Wales at ABC1 and Dustin Hoffman thriller Marathon Man at ABC2. King Kong five weeks plux X from previous year.

Five-weeks runs were achieved by Peter Sellers vehicle The Return of the Pink Panther at Odeon 1 and another crime spoof Murder by Death at the Odeon 3

Taking three weeks as the definition of the long-run, this form of exhibition had grown exponentially during the decade. In 1970 only three movies enjoyed runs of three weeks or more. The following year the number had jumped to 11 and then nudged upwards to 13 in 1972. Growth in 1973 remained modest – a total of 17 movies hitting the target or better. But by 1974 the number was 25 and the following year it rocketed to 35, with 36 the total in 1976.

Behind the Scenes: Gangster As Hero, Selling “Dillinger (1973) – Pressbook

AIP made no bones about how it was pitching this one. It was selling notorious 1930s gangster as a hero, a folk hero perhaps, a narcissistic character perhaps, but still someone audiences could root for, just as the American public had back in the day when the only way to beat the system was via crime.

“The Gangster’s Gangster” sang the taglines, as if Dillinger was held in extraordinary high esteem by his fellow robbers, to be mentioned in the same august tones as Al Capone. Where Bonnie and Clyde (1967) used romance to leaven the killing, Dillinger preferred charm. Dillinger felt the people he robbed should be honoured to be robbed by such a status symbol as himself.

“His sole ambition was to be the best bank robber in the world,” rang out another of the taglines. He was “the last of the outlaws.” His robbing spree was only curbed after being “betrayed” and hunted by a “friendless” lawman. If the marketeers’ idea was to squeeze every ounce of pity from the audience for the ruthless gangster, they certainly did their best.

The Pressbook/Campaign Manual from AIP ran a handsome 28-pages in A3.

It helped that star Warren Oates bore a remarkable resemblance to Dillinger. He played the role without any make-up or prosthetics. Oates wasn’t as yet a big enough star for the writers of the Pressbook to focus the entire marketing efforts on him. He was recognized primarily as a character actor despite being touted as the “new Humphrey Bogart.”

Rancher’s son Ben Johnson was a better bet, having just picked up the Oscar for The Last Picture Show (1971) and it was another Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman who played the woman who double-crossed the gangster that led to his execution.

In fact, writer-director John Milius was reckoned to be a more attractive publicity vehicle than either Oates or Johnson. Certainly, the article about him too precedence. But then he did have a winning turn of phrase. “I consider John Dillinger to be a folk hero,” claimed Milius, “just as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and Buffalo Bill were immortalized. Dillinger…won a tremendous following because people who were scrounging for the bare necessities of life had no love for the strongholds of finance.”

*One of these is an actor, the other a gangster. Which is which?*

Oddly enough, Dillinger wasn’t born in poverty. He was the son of a prosperous grocer and known as “the cutest kid on the block.” Like he was in a swashbuckler, he would vault over the bank rail. He never wore a mask. He was determined to make his name as a bank robber and anonymity would not suit.

The advertising was limited to three spreads – the bold “gangster’s gangster” with a machine-gun-toting Dillinger and a “nobody did it like Dillinger” tagline; a second one with provided him with a biography and set him up as a good guy; and the final one which including details of his cohorts.

There was plenty meat for cinema managers to feed journalists, plenty of the detail about the filming to arouse local interest. Eight stunt men, many specialists in particular fields like car crashes or falls, were involved and nine antique cars wrecked in car chases or riddled with bullets from Thompson sub-machine guns or Browning automatic rifles. All were pre-1934 models and included three Fords, a Franklin, an Erskine and a Studebaker costing $1,200.

And another 15 vehicles came from the Horseless Carriage Club of Enid, Oklahoma, where the movie was filmed. Real-life modern gangsters though local cops would be so preoccupied with the filmmakers that they could get away with a couple of robberies.

When it came to smashing up the windscreens the director was heavily involved, hammer in hand. Since the window screens lacked safety glass this was a straightforward, enjoyable, chore. Seven gallons of Jerry Cash’s Special Formula Blood, ten times as much as was usual for an actioner, was purchased. The gangsters got through over 150 pieces of weaponry including 88 Springfield Model ’03 rifles, 40 handguns, 25 shotguns and rifles, eight sub machine guns, four automatic rifles, three Lewis machine guns plus a howitzer. They fired off 50,000 rounds of blanks.

And the Pressbook came with two pages of ideas with which cinema managers could attract attention. Antique car clubs were an obvious target for marketing tie-ins as were gun shops. Cinema managers were urged to mount lobby displays using borrowed weaponry. Dressing up usherettes as gun molls and encouraging customers to attend in 1930s costumes would have been cheap promotional devices as well as suggesting clothing stores feature 1930s fashions – which had proved a winner for Bonnie and Clyde. .

“Wanted” posters might be borrowed from police stations. Many banks cooperated with the filming so these were viewed for further cooperation. Cinemas might dress up a “Lady in Red” and have her walking the sidewalks and then loitering in front of the cinema, in imitation of the role played in the picture by the real Lady in Red. A Dillinger tie-in paperback was available in drugstores and retail outlets.

Behind the Scenes: Cinemas Unshackled, The Long Run Beckons

In the 1960s the only way a movie could be guaranteed a long run at a city center cinema anywhere across the globe was if it fell into the roadshow category. Then the long run world was your oyster, runs of three months were standard, six months common, a year or more easily attainable. Outside of a handful of major cities of the size or prestige of New York and London, the same did not hold true of the general release. Most opened and closed in a city center theater within the week. A holdover extending a run to two weeks was rare and unless you were James Bond don’t think of a month.

That all changed in the 1970s, in part due to the gradual dearth of roadshows, in part due to the arrival of the duplex or triplex, in part due to the rise of the blockbuster and determination of studios to keep movies in the biggest and most expensive cinemas for longer to milk potential box office, and in part due to a sea change on the part of distributors. For my own entertainment I had, some time back, tracked on a weekly business all the cinemas in Glasgow so I can comment with some authority, using the many examples I had found, on the altered situation in the 1970s in that city, still, per capita, the biggest cinema-going city in Britain and, most likely, Europe.

The differences were not so obvious in the first two years of the new decade. Only seven movies in 1970 achieved runs of three weeks or more and the longest run – eight weeks – was for the roadshow Cromwell, the opening picture at the new Odeon 1. Next came a distinct outlier. Arthouse the Cosmo saw opportunity in the reissue double bill of The Graduate/The Thomas Crown Affair and held it over for seven weeks. Blockbuster Airport flew to six weeks at the Odeon 2. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ran for four weeks at, respectively, the ABC 1 and the La Scala. True Grit at the ABC1, Mash at the Odeon 2 and A Man Called Horse at the ABC1 held out for three weeks. (You’ll maybe note that the westerns were a bit late arriving in Glasgow given that in the U.S. they had been summer pictures in 1969. But distribution lags were still common in those days, little sign of global day-and-date.)

The next year saw a distinct improvement. Of the 12 movies I’ve noted, all ran for four weeks or more (rather than the three-week topline of 1969). One little film took the city by storm. Today, Love Story, without any notable stars, would be considered a sleeper hit. Such was its success Stateside that Paramount drove a hard bargain in Britain, demanding a bigger share of the spoils. So instead of landing at the ABC1 or ABC2, the normal home for the studio’s pictures, it went into the La Scala where it ran for an unprecedented 26 weeks.

One of the interesting aspects of concentrating on a particular city is that it reveals the individuality of its audience. Trends that are invariably deemed national tend in the U.K. to have a southern bias – Scotland, for example, accounts for less than 10 per cent of the British population. So, comparing the performance of pictures in Glasgow to the rest of the country throws up anomalies.

Glasgow’s next longest-runner – knocking up 10 weeks at the Odeon 2 plus three weeks at the smaller Odeon 3 – was bloody revisionist western Soldier Blue. Next came Barbra Streisand comedy The Owl and the Pussycat with seven weeks at Odeon 1. But that’s only if you’re sticking to the mainstream. Glasgow had also shown a predilection for the tawdry, not to say the exploitational. The Nun of Monza starring Anne Heywood and sex documentary Naughty also both managed seven weeks, the former at the Gaumont, the latter at the Odeon 3.

Sean Connery heist picture The Anderson Tapes snared five weeks at the Odeon 1. The La Scala held onto Woodstock for four weeks as did the ABC1 with Michael Caine thriller Get Carter, Dustin Hoffman as Little Big Man, another revisionist western, and Alistair MacLean’s Puppet on a Chain while at the Cosmo it was Tales of Beatrix Potter and The Anatomy of Love.

But it was the next year that brought the real explosion. You’ll remember it as the Year of The Godfather. But it didn’t have it all its own way in Glasgow. Though it ran for 14 weeks switching between the ABC1 and ABC2, that tally was matched by Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry at the ABC1. Sean Connery’s return as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever resulted in 11 weeks at the Odeon 1. The French Connection II logged six weeks at Odeon 2 while another sexploitation number I Am a Nymphomaniac did the same as Odeon 3. Barbra Streisand-Ryan O’Neal madcap comedy What’s Up, Doc? was good for five weeks at ABC1. Hitting the four week mark were Yul Brynner in western Catlow (in a double bill with The Jerusalem File) at Odeon 2 and Stanley Baker thriller Innocent Bystanders at Odeon 1. Glasgow audiences were less keen on Shaft and Straw Dogs, both just worth three weeks at the ABC1 and Odeon 2, respectively.

But by now the long run die had been well and truly cast. By 1973, movies were allowed to reach their full potential in Glasgow city center. There was a last hurrah for the roadshow when Norman Jewison’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar – without a marquee name in the cast -knocked up 17 weeks at the ABC2. But that only shaded Roger Moore’s first outing as James Bond in Live and Let Die with 16 weeks at Odeon 2. Another musical roadshow, The Great Waltz, headlined by unknowns, raced to 12 weeks at the ABC2.

There was a sense that the Odeon complex was playing it clever by booking the controversial Last Tango in Paris, headlining none other than Marlon Brando, huge again after The Godfather, in its smallest screen, the Odeon 3. The move paid off as the picture lasted 12 weeks.

Unsurprisingly, the first of the decade’s disaster pictures The Poseidon Adventure sailed along at the Odeon 2 for nine weeks. But few expected thriller Day of the Jackal, star Edward Fox hardly a marquee name, to run for equally as long at the ABC2.

Yet another roadshow, musical Lost Horizon, a remake of the non-musical original – with an all-star cast of Peter Finch, Liv Ullman, Michael York, George Kennedy and Olivia Hussey – held onto seven weeks at the Odeon 1. Stanley Kubrick’s controversial A Clockwork Orange (more than a year after its London launch) notched up six weeks at the ABC1 as did Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter. Sarah Miles as Lady Caroline Lamb went for six weeks at ABC2. Showing for four weeks were Lady Sings the Blues at the Coliseum, and reissues Cabaret and Mary Poppins at the Odeon 3 and Odeon 2, respectively.

Other reissues clocked up notable runs for oldies – three weeks apiece for Doctor Zhivago at the La Scala, The Ten Commandments at the Coliseum and the double bill of Soldier Blue/Carnal Knowledge at Odeon 3.

Behind the Scenes: All-Time Top 40

Waterloo (1970) holds on to the top spot but the Alistair MacLean revival gathers pace. The Satan Bug (1965) makes the biggest surge, shooting up to second spot, with Ice Station Zebra (1968) in fourth spot past The Guns of Navarone (1961) which drops slightly to sixth.

I’ve extended this from a Top 30 to a Top 40 so there are a goodly number of new entries. The previous rankings are from December 2025.

(1)Waterloo (1970). No doubting the effect of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in increasing interest in this famous flop that had Rod Steiger’s French emperor squaring off against Christopher Plummer.
(5) The Satan Bug (1965). The problems facing director John Sturges in adapting the Alistair MacLean pandemic classic for the big screen.
(2) In Harm’s Way (1965). Otto Preminger takes off the gloves to expose problems in the American military around Pearl Harbor. John Wayne and Kirk douglas head an all-star cat.
(7) Ice Station Zebra (1968). A complete cast overhaul and ground-breaking special effects are at the core of this filming of another Alistair MacLean tale. Second Alistair MacLean outing for John Sturges.
(3) Man’s Favorite Sport (1964). Howard Hawks back in the gender wars with Rock Hudson being taken down a peg by Paula Prentiss.
(4) The Guns of Navarone (1961). Alistair MacLean created the template for the men-on-a-mission war picture. Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn topline. Nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director (J. Lee Thompson) and Screenplay (Carl Foreman) and enough jeopardy throughout the filming to qualify for a movie of its own.
(8) Barbarella (1968). Jane Fonda was fourth choice after Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren and Ira von Furstenberg. Should never have been directed by Roger Vadim who was out of favor with Paramount. One of the first movies to be given a global simultaneous release.
(6) Battle of the Bulge (1965). There were going to be two versions, so the race was on to get this one to the public first. A Cinerama number.
(10) Mackenna’s Gold (1969). Tortuous route to the screen for Carl Foreman-produced roadshow western, filmed in 70mm Cinerama, with an all-star cast including Omar Sharif, Gregory Peck and Telly Savalas.
(15) The Misfits (1961). Robert Mitchum turned down the male lead. Clark Gable failed the medical, both Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe had drug problems. It went 40 days over schedule and half a million over budget.
(24) The Wicker Man (1973) at the Box Office. A flop on initial release, U.S. release delayed, it took a long long time before the movie achieved both cult status and came out of the red.
(9) Cast a Giant Shadow (1965). Producer Melville Shavelson wrote a book about his experiences and this and other material relating the arduous task of bringing the Kirk Douglas-starrer to the screen are told here.
(12) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). First envisioned nearly a decade before, Henry Hathaway western finally hit the screen with John Wayne and Dean Martin.
(14) The Trouble with Angels (1966). Less than angelic Hayley Mills sparring with convent boss Rosalind Russell. Directed by one-time star Ida Lupino.
(11) The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked under Leather (1968). Cult classic starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon had a rocky road to release, especially in the U.S. where the censor was not happy.
(13). Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Richard Fleischer dispenses with the all-star cast in favor of even-handed verisimilitude.
(16) The Bridge at Remagen (1969). British director John Guillerman hits trouble filming World War Two picture starring George Segal and Robert Vaughn.
(17) For a Few Dollars More (1965). Sergio Leone sequel to first spaghetti western brings in Lee van Cleef to pair with Clint Eastwood.
(20) Bandolero! (1968). Director Andrew V. McLaglen teams up with James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch to fight Mexican bandits.
(20) The Collector (1963). William Wyler’s creepy adaptation of John Fowles’ creepy bestseller with Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar.
(13) Sink the Bismarck! (1960). Documentary-style British World War Two classic with Kenneth More exhibiting the stiffest of stiff-upper-lips.
(18) Bandolero! (1968). Director Andrew V. McLaglen teams up with James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch to fight Mexican bandits.
(19) The Train (1964). John Frankenheimer replaced Arthur Penn in the directorial chair to steer home unusual over-budget World War Two picture with Burt Lancaster trying to steal art treasures from under the nose of German Paul Schofield.
(17) How The West Was Won (1962). First non-travelog Cinerama picture, all-star cast and all-star team of directors tackling multi-generational western and all sorts of logistical problems.
(New entry) The Way West (1967). Burt Lancaster, James Stewart and Gary Cooper were the original cast. Charlton Heston turned it down. Robert Mitchum couldn’t make up his mind. Director Andrew V. McLaglen claimed it had been savaged by the studio.
(New Entry) The Stalking Moon (1968). Should never have been made, according to existing legislation, even with Gregory Peck’s participation long delayed in part due to original director George Stevens pulling out.
(New Entry) “Barbieheimer” Recalls the Old Double Bill. The perfect double bill aimed to attract different segments of the audience.
(New Entry) Judgement at Nuremberg (1961). Laurence Olivier was first choice to play the role taken by Burt Lancaster. United Artists was not at all keen on the proposition. Innovative use of the camera. Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift overcame personal problems while Marlene Dietrich was acquainted with one of men on trial.
(New Entry) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Sean Connery, Jack Lemmon and Brigitte Bardot turned it down. Director Norman Jewison thought Steve McQueen “completely wrong” for the part.
(New Entry) The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Sam Peckinpah was fired. Spencer Tracy quit. Sharon Tate declined.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Booed at the Cannes Film Festival. Denied a release in the U.S., even with Omar Sharif as star and after being heavily edited by MGM. Only shown on American TV. The biggest financial flop of Sidney Lumet’s career.
(New entry) The Birds (1963). Hitchcock sets an apocalyptic tone as Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren are trapped by feral flocks.
(New entry). Number One (1969). Charlton Heston as ageing pro football player desperately trying to hold onto to fame and its trimmings. Directed by Tom Gries.
(New entry) Hollywood Bloodbath. Why 200 movies were scrapped or shelved.
(New entry) Breathless / A Bout de Souffle (1960). The French New Wave made its name on the back of Jean-Luc Godard’s thriller starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
(New entry) The Top 40 Movies at the 1950s Box Office.
(New entry) The Man in the Middle / The Winston Affair (1964). Robert Mitchum is the titular guy in trouble.
(New entry) Yul Brynner vs Kirk Douglas on Spartacus (1961). The battle to bring the Roman rebel to the screen.
(New Entry) Puppet on a Chain (1970). More Alistair MacLean thrills. This time in Amsterdam and that boat chase.
(New Entry) The Glass Is Greener (1960). Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons play the infidelity games.