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Two British diplomats, an American, and a female missionary are kidnapped while trying to escape a political revolution in India and flown to the mountains of Tibet where they are welcomed into a hidden lamasery (or monastery) called Shangri-La, which proves to be a place that is as difficult to leave as it is to find. The question Hilton poses is, Why would you want to leave, if you had found paradise? The story merges character and ideas to paint a complex portrait of a man (Conway, the elder of the two diplomats) who is neither hero nor coward and none the better for it: though he deserves his new-found peace and happiness (after surviving the trenches of World War I and his exemplary public service following the war), the only way to preserve it is to be what he is not, as he discovers in what can only be described as the intellectually exciting climax to this outstanding novel. A novel that is, as well, Hilton's pointed yet rather gentle critique of modern life -- frantic, chaotic, and violent; Shangri-La, his alternative, is built on the principle of moderation in all things, including moderation itself, a place as equally suited to the pursuit of philosophical as physical pleasure. And while Hilton makes a number of good points about how humans do (and, conversely, should) conduct themselves, he is wise enough to show us, in dramatic fashion, that paradise, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Modern readers should note that this book is hardly one that would comport well with any feminist ideal. The novel has been adapted twice for film, first (and most famously) by Frank Capra in 1937, then as a musical in 1973.

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Southern Gothic set in New Orleans about two maiden sisters, their chronically cash-strapped brother (Dean Martin), and his suspicious young bride (Yvette Mimieux). Kicks off with Martin returning to the family home, mysteriously flush with money somehow linked to a dark-haired woman Mimieux saw him with in Chicago. Then it gets complicated. How did Martin get the money? Was he, Mimieux wonders, paid by her mother to marry her? Why is only one of Martin's sisters (Geraldine Page) all a-flutter to see her brother again, while the other (Wendy Hiller) is much more cautious about his visit? And who is that dark-haired woman? Based on a play by Lillian Hellman, but "opened up" nicely for film by director Hill. All the actors are good, the dialogue is smart enough (and funny at times), but the whole overwrought movie is held back by the very thing that holds it together: the mystery, which just gets more sordid as it goes along. By keeping their cards so close to their vests, Hill and screenwriter James Poe aren't able to penetrate very deeply in any direction, which makes for a fairly weak drama but a compelling mystery. Features a horrific scene of violence toward the end, one that leads into the scene depicted on the (remarkably misleading) poster.

++

Three girls from the sticks come of age in the big city; Chicago, in this case. One is a bored country girl who would like to find an exciting man, one is just religious enough to want to wait for the right man, and the third is so messed up she doesn't want any man, ever. Naturally they hook up with all the wrong guys. It seems a little odd that this book about women, written by a woman should make such a case for misogyny, but oh these girls are stupid. Of course, then you remember how young they are and how innocent, and you can't help but hate the men who would take advantage of them. Most of them are hateful anyway, though, which explains the subversive purpose of the book, and its particular pulp genre, for one of the girls eventually discovers the sweet release of the love that, once upon a time, dared not speak its name. True to form, the novel covers a good deal of sordid ground, delving into such topics as premarital sex, drug use, rape, unintended pregnancy, and a creepy sort of would-be incest. Yet, for all that, this book is neither raw nor particularly messy; it is, in fact, remarkably restrained, almost impersonal. Not by design, but because Taylor is only capable of scratching the surface of her subject matter and her characters. Worse, she writes as though she'd made a deal with the Devil: guilt-free lesbianism in exchange for the tacit acceptance of every other lifestyle, however odious. The reader has nothing to hang his (or her) hat on: if the girls themselves condemn nothing, what can the reader do? Except perhaps write a review of the book condemning it as a travelogue of depravity that, somehow, against all odds, manages to work out all right in the end. Republished by the Feminist Press in 2012, as The Girls in 3B.

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It is significant that this film credits screenwriters Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash, and John Twist with the "adaptation" of Helen's story without mentioning any single source for their interpretation. As told by numerous authors throughout the years, Helen's story is a mythic mess, one that is so unclear that, for all we know, Helen may have been a fully-grown woman who was complicit in her own "abduction," or a 10-year-old child, the victim of kidnapping and rape. Robert Wise and his screenwriters, however, pull from a variety of sources (including their own imaginations) to give us a coherent version of Helen's story that hits a number of familiar passages and lines with pleasing regularity. The crux of it all is the abduction of Helen (Rossana Podestà), a Greek princess, by Paris (Jacques Sernas), a prince of Troy, an act that unites the rulers of the Greek city-states, who set sail (in a thousand ships) to lay seige to Troy. In this version, Paris is sailing on a mission of peace to Sparta when he is tossed overboard in a storm. He is found washed ashore by Helen, who, along with her slaves (including a young, suggestively randy Brigitte Bardot), nurse him back to health. In less time than that, Paris and Helen have fallen in love. When Helen's husband, the king Menelaus (Niall MacGinnis), imprisons Paris, Helen helps him escape, and it is ostensibly to protect her from advancing soldiers that Paris takes her with him back to Troy, and inadvertently starts the Trojan War. (One major departure here from earlier stories of the war is the idea that Helen's abduction simply provides a convenient pretext for the Greeks to attack, they being more interested in Troy's gold than Helen's honor.) As historical epics go, this is not an exceptional film, but it is a solid piece of work, with good (if uninspired) acting and direction, and a well-paced story that covers a lot of ground in two hours. If some of the sets and props fail to capture the poetry of romantic myth, this is off-set by one that does: the famous Trojan horse. Perhaps the best shots in the film occur just after the departure of the Greeks, as the bacchanalian celebration of the citizens of Troy gives way to a slowly emptying courtyard where stands the giant wooden horse that will be their destruction.

"Sir Cedric Hardwicke as King Priam, Torin Thatcher as Ulysses, Niall MacGinnis as Menelaus, Stanley Baker as Achilles and many more make broad sweeps and eloquent gestures. But they are strictly two-dimensional -- like the film." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, January 27, 1956

****

In sum, a romantic mystery coupled with its personal and practical aftermath, as those left behind cope with the fate of four college girls who, on Valentine's Day, 1900, during an outing to Hanging Rock, a volcanic formation in Australia, wended their way toward the top of the rock, where three of them disappeared and the fourth ran away screaming. The larger portion -- the investigation and the differing ways the tragedy affects the lives of those touched by it -- is well-constructed to maintain suspense, but frankly it isn't what makes this movie so haunting and so memorable. That distinction belongs to the first third of the film, recounting the mystery itself, which Weir evokes with rare poetry: a combination of gorgeous photography, portentous atmosphere, and pointed (if yet ambiguous) dialogue. Based on a novel (by Joan Lindsay), but not an actual event.

"Horror...may be a warm sunny day. the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times, February 23, 1979

"Russell Boyd's cinematography unfolds in a series of images so lush and chimerical that they seem less the product of his camera than the result of brush-strokes by the elder Renoir." - Ed Roginski, Film Quarterly, Summer, 1979

**

Infinitely better and more involving than the later Nicolas Cage film in spite of a much-too-young-looking Kirk Cameron playing TV journalist Buck Williams, which (among other things) gives the film an amateurish feel that it can never quite surmount. Enjoyable nevertheless, in a guilty pleasure sort of way. When 150 million people disappear from the face of the world, Buck links a new technology that allows food to be grown virtually anywhere with a couple of greedy businessmen and a prideful contender for the Secretary-Generalship of the United Nations and comes up with the Biblical Rapture in progress. Helping him are a once-lustful airline pilot and his initially disbelieving daughter. The story continues in Left Behind II: Tribulation Force and Left Behind: World at War, all of which are based on the series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, who, by the way, like the critics, generally disliked the films.

**

The Night People are two couples looking to inject some excitement into their mundane lives who begin playing practical jokes on themselves and the police in the dead of night. Finney’s intriguing premise degenerates quickly into a revenge match between the couples and an exceptionally stupid and violent cop, a yokel from Oklahoma. This rather short novel reads like a reject from the sixties/early seventies, when its radical, cop-hating attitude might have stirred sympathy from like-minded hippies. Likewise, Finney’s characters and dialogue seem ripped from one of the author’s own essays into nostalgia, harking back to a time well before any of them were born; plunked down in 1977, they come off not as sophisticated, but rather as silly, stilted, and thoroughly unbelievable.

"...Night People may offer some vicarious Thousand-Clownsy pleasure to three-piece-suiters who dream of breaking out, climbing bridges, and bopping cops." - Kirkus Reviews, Oct. 14th, 1977

**

Competent drama of passengers and crew of small plane discovering what they're made of after storm forces them down in South American jungle where headhunters are only one of their worries.  With Rod Steiger as a killer on his way to a firing squad, Anita Ekberg as a kept woman en route to her new job as a whore, and several others, each with problems of their own.  Nothing outstanding here, although Ekberg is certainly arresting.  Filmed once before, also by Farrow, as Five Came Back (1939).

*****

Stellar adaptation of the book by lawyer and Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker (writing as Robert Traver) that was itself based on one of Voelker's real-life cases. Stars James Stewart as defense attorney who accepts the case of Army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) accused of murdering the man who raped his wife (Lee Remick). Not that there's any doubt the lieutenant did it; the question is whether or not the lawyer can get him off on a bogus plea of temporary insanity. Where the book lacked suspense, the movie has no such weakness, thanks to Preminger's taut direction, a sparkling script by Wendell Mayes, and gripping performances, including those of George C. Scott, who plays one of the prosecutors, and Murray Hamilton as a hostile witness. Follows the book quite well, but includes one significant change to a secondary character that, frankly, is all for the best. With a score by Duke Ellington, who appears in a roadhouse sequence, and (the film's only mistake) real-life lawyer Joseph Welch as the judge. Briefly banned in Chicago for its language, the movie comes off even today as unusually frank and realistic.

**

First adaptation of V. C. Andrews' poorly written yet hugely popular book about four kids -- the products of an incestuous union -- forced to live hidden away in an attic while their destitute mother tries to wheedle her way back into the good graces of her rich, religious father.  Not as bad as the book, but not very good, either; and while it tries to solve some of the former's most egregious problems -- ridiculous dialogue and the lack of any convincing reason why the kids don't simply escape -- it can't quite overcome the feeling that, despite what we're told, these supposedly perfectly normal kids might have been genetically shortchanged in the gray area of their own personal attics.  Unbelievable and, given the horror of the situation, ridiculously superficial.  Posts but never delivers the book's most controversial scene, and features a drastically altered ending.  With Kristy Swanson and Louise Fletcher.