Hanoi, martes 13 [Hanoi, Tuesday 13th] (Santiago Álvarez, 1968)
Dec
13
Tue
A collage image of President Lyndon B. Johnson. His face is a hole and footage of a military burial service can be seen. DP: Iván Nápoles.
Hanoi, martes 13 [Hanoi, Tuesday 13th] (Santiago Álvarez, 1968)
Dec
13
Tue
A collage image of President Lyndon B. Johnson. His face is a hole and footage of a military burial service can be seen. DP: Iván Nápoles.
“One… two… three… four… five… seven… six… six… eight… nine… nine…”Peace, little girl [Daisy / Daisy Girl] (Sidney Myers, 1964)
Nov
3
1964
Monique Corzilius aka Monique Cozy as the Daisy Girl. DP: Drummond Drury.
– Daisy Girl
“In the next world war, I believe that both sides could stop before the ultimate destruction of cities so that both sides could retire for a period of ten years or so of post-attack recuperation, in which world wars four to eight could be prepared.”The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1966)
Sep
16
An old man in uniform, possibly a mailman or traffic warden, stands motionless in a crowd of people. He looks off into the distance. DPs: Peter Bartlett & Peter Suschitzky.
– a leading American nuclear strategist
“Truly the light is sweet; and what a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see the Sun.”The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961)
May
23
Jeannie Craig (Janet Munro) trying to cool down in a bathtub. DP: Harry Waxman.
– Peter Stenning
“Ladybug, ladybug,
Fly away home”Ladybug Ladybug (Frank Perry, 1963)
May
21
the End Of The World
In a scene evoking Ingmar Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957), one of the older girls leads the younger children in dance on top of a hill. Their teacher Mrs Andrews (Nancy Marchand) plus two of her students walk along. DP: Leonard Hirschfield.
It's another school day in rural America when the #NuclearAttack alarm starts ringing. A teacher, instructed to calmly walk the kids home, tries to keep the youngest ones oblivious of the impending doom.
children's song
While the children walk, talk and sing, this thing up there, in the sky and in the mind, grows bigger.
“You're talking about a different kind of war.”Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)
Apr
5
National Nebraska Day
General Black (Dan O'Herlihy) being briefed. DP: Gerald Hirschfeld.
The one that got bombed by Strangelove.
– General Stark
Both Lumet's Fail Safe and #Kubrick's #ColdWar comedy came out in 1964, right after the #CubaCrisis. The world was awash with the realisation that the bomb, The Bomb, wasn't merely proverbial flexing. And when crisis happens, there are two options. One is to laugh, the other is to grasp. Sadly for Lumet, and the world, his Fail Safe was released while everyone was still too busy chuckling.
Peace, little girl [Daisy aka Daisy Girl] (Sidney Myers, 1964)
One… two… three… four… five… seven… six… six… eight… nine… nine…
It was the #PoliticalAd campaign to end all political ad campaigns. Peace, little girl opens innocently enough with a little blonde girl, picking the petals of an ox-eye #daisy while counting. When the final petal's gone, the tone changes completely.
This deceptively simple propaganda film was made in support of Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign by ad agency #DBB and media consultant Tony Schwartz. It was so effective and bleak in is insinuations that the Johnson campaign was forced to pull it after only one screening.
What fascinates me is the similarity with one particular scene from James Whale's #Frankenstein (1931). The Monster (#Karloff) meets a little girl who sits on the shore of a lake, picking daisies. He approaches her, and the girl, knowing the creature is a good man at heart, invites him to play a game with her involving them tossing the daisies into the lake.
The Monster (Boris Karloff) and little Maria (Marilyn Harris) playing with daisies on a beautiful day at the lake. DPs: Arthur Edeson & Paul Ivano.
Spoiler warning
When they run out of daisies, the Monster picks up the girl who to him is as pretty and innocent as a flower, and tosses her into the water.This scene was cut and considered lost until the 1980s. Could Tony Schwartz have been aware of that scene? He was at the right age to have seen the pre-code, pre-cut version.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #SidneyMyers #LyndonBJohnson #ChrisSchenkel #MoniqueCorzilius #MoniqueCozy #RobertDryden #DrummondDrury #ShortFilm #war #peace #scaresploitation #flowers #propaganda #ColdWar #election #politics #USA #1960s ★★★★☆
“I'm strange, all right! I'll show you just how strange I am!” The Damned [These Are the Damned] (Joseph Losey, 1962)
Mar
19
National Automatic Door Day
An 11-year old boy, Henry (Kit Williams), opens a featureless door in a rock surface for a drenched King (Oliver Reed). DP: Arthur Grant.
An American tourist visiting Dorset is tricked by a prostitute, then falls victim to a youth gang controlled by volatile con King – a still very green Oliver Reed at his meanest. The trickster is King's sister, who confides in the American hoping to escape her brother's incestuous advances.
– King
The couple elopes to a nearby island, closely followed by King and his gang, where they find a group of #children, all contently living in an underground lab, with #AutomaticDoors only they can control.
They are the damned.
“A strange calm possessed me. I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before – as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light.”The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
Mar
5
National Scott Day
Scott Carey (Grant Williams) standing in a palm of someone's hand, his arms outstretched as if pleading. DP: Ellis W. Carter.
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man (1956) is an existentialist treatise.
– Scott Carey
The Incredible Shrinking Man plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.