Hammer Horror?

I often wish the studio system would turn back time (in a sense) and begin to focus on developing short films again. A wonderful way to cultivate and produce young talents (think Charlie Chaplin or The Three Stooges), it also provides the audience with fun, brief excursions into fantastic worlds before even delving into the main feature. Comedy, drama, horror and even action work nicely in shortened versions, which is why I like to highlight certain pint-sized motion pictures from time to time – today, we will look at Buster Keaton’s 1920 comedy The Scarecrow. A premier example of ingenuity and the genius of motion, the nineteen minute tale follows two farmhands (diminutive Keaton and the much larger Joe Roberts – another example of the ever-comical combo of fatty and skinny) as they vie for the hand of the youthful and pretty farmer’s daughter (Sybil Seely). The two room together in a house of contraptions – the record player seconds as a stove, bed as a solid wooden piece of furniture/piano, bathtub as a settee and so on. Perhaps even more impressive is their dinner table design – ropes hang from the rafters on pulleys, meaning that everything from salt and pepper to food and beverages are attainable from anywhere at the table (Keaton had originally developed a similar mechanism at their family’s summer home when he was just a child). When done, they have a speedy way to do the dishes as well – afterwhich the ropes disappear and a light fixture descends from the ceiling. It is a spy’s house without the spy.

An unbelievable look back at 1920's New York City, Harold Lloyd’s final silent feature, 1928's Speedy, depicts The Big Apple in all of its hopeful Jazz Age glory. Featuring mind-boggling action and footage shot around the city, including old Yankee Stadium, down Broadway at beautiful Bowling Green, Coney Island in all of its former glory (Luna Park is on full display – it was ravaged by fire in 1944 and closed for good in 1946), Union Square in Manhattan, a ridiculous stunt in Washington Square Park as well as under the Brooklyn Bridge, and so many other places, it is a sweeping look at a city that has changed so very much over the ninety years since it was filmed there. The portion set near Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village (which is actually mostly an intricate set that Lloyd built in Hollywood), features a slower paced part of the city. With it having the last remaining horse-drawn streetcar route remaining, it highlights the final place in the metropolitan that has not been replaced by the hustle and bustle of the modern age. The streetcar owner is Pop Dillon (Bert Woodruff), whose granddaughter is Jane (Ann Christy), a young woman who is dating the job hunting Harold ‘Speedy’ Swift (Lloyd) – an ardent Yankees fan.

Alfred Hitchcock once said "if it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on". A perfect example of this is the first sixteen minutes of the 1972 action film The Mechanic. Directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson (the pair, who had made one film previously, would go on to make a total of six together), the plot follows an aging hit-man in Los Angeles. The opening sixteen minutes is a masterclass in patience, restraint and telling a visual story, without any dialogue. We watch as the man, named Arthur Bishop, intricately plans his next kill. No dialogue is needed to make this an effective scene, as it captures a tense atmosphere and places us in the mind set of our lead, as we now know that he has a deft touch at killing and is not to be messed with. It is a bold choice to open a movie and it is all the richer for it.

"Grand Hotel. . . always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens". But we know this is not so. The winner of Best Picture at the 1932 Academy Awards (the only film to ever win the big prize without being nominated for any other Oscar), Grand Hotel is the first film to ever bring together a who’s who cast to create an ensemble. Breaking the mould, where studios would have had only one or two of their stars in a single film (to cut down on costs as well as avoid strife), MGM united five of their top actors. The iridescent Greta Garbo plays Grusinskaya, a temperamental prima ballerina who is depressed and disillusioned, feeling like her best days are behind her. The versatile John Barrymore plays the Baron, a man who, despite his aristocratic title, has fallen on hard times, desperate for money.