Synopsis:
Nerd. Milquetoast. Klutz. These are just three of the many undesirable words that can be used to describe Professor Julius Kelp. But all that changes when the chemistry expert invents a potion that transforms him into a suave, sexy chick magnet, whom Julius aptly names Buddy Love. Unfortunately, there’s one side effect: Buddy can’t control when he’ll change back into Julius, an event that always happens at inopportune times. How will Julius/Buddy resolve his Jekyll-and-Hyde dilemma?

2.90GB | 1h 47mn | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E952E3E65D0416A/The.Nutty.Professor.1963.576p.BDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French, Spanish (muxed)

The post Jerry Lewis – The Nutty Professor (1963) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Independence is a crucial part of the legend of John Cassavetes, the original Method actor turned DIY filmmaker. For that reason his early forays into studio directing — he made 1961’s “Too Late Blues” for Paramount and 1963’s Stanley Kramer-produced “A Child Is Waiting” for United Artists — are usually thought of as footnotes at best, or compromised failures at worst (a view that has been ascribed to Cassavetes himself).

But even in these minor works, the Cassavetes touch — the delicate way of handling emotional messiness, the tough but ultimately generous view of human behavior — is unmistakable. The rarely seen “Too Late Blues,” new to DVD from Olive Films, is an especially resonant work, a parable about the price of artistic independence and the conflicts of ego and idealism — in other words, something like a confessional manifesto from the emerging director, 31 when he made it.

Cassavetes’ first film, “Shadows” (1959), was groundbreaking, and not just for being the story of an interracial romance, shot on location in the bohemian quarters of New York City with a largely nonprofessional cast — few other films have so completely changed the face of American cinema. Unlike its French counterpart,Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” “Shadows” did not launch a new wave, but its urgency and freshness became synonymous with the spirit of American independent film, manifest in era-defining works over the years from “Mean Streets” to “Stranger Than Paradise.”

Like “Shadows” (available in Criterion’s five-film Cassavetes boxed set) and “Johnny Staccato,” the short-lived private-eye TV series (1959-’60) that starred Cassavetes, “Too Late Blues” is set in the nocturnal jazz-music world. Cassavetes co-wrote the screenplay of this second directorial effort, with Richard Carr, a writer on “Johnny Staccato.”

The anguished hero, John “Ghost”Wakefield (Bobby Darin), is the pianist leader of a jazz ensemble whose members pride themselves on playing “what we want to play,” even if that also means playing in empty parks and old folks homes. Things begin to look up when a producer shows interest, and when Ghost starts dating Jess (Stella Stevens), a fragile aspiring singer whom he pries away from the sleazy clutches of his agent (Everett Chambers, a producer of “Johnny Staccato” and later “Columbo,” in an indelible, cold-eyed performance).

But one bad night in a bar — an absorbing 20-minute sequence that amply displays Cassavetes’ gift for generating scenes rife with contradictory cross-currents of emotion and psychology — brings all of Ghost’s insecurities to a head, leading to a painful break with Jess and the band. Before long he’s working the easy-listening lounge circuit and trapped in a perverse relationship as the kept boy toy of an aging socialite.

Cassavetes had to make a few compromises on “Too Late Blues,” though the experience was, by all accounts, not as traumatic as on “A Child Is Waiting,” which was taken away from him at the editing stage. His main concession, apart from a rushed schedule, was in casting — for the lead roles he had envisioned Montgomery Clift and Gena Rowlands, his wife and regular leading lady, a pair of actors who surely would have been sensational together.

But the studio’s choices were more than respectable: Darin is a surprise in his first nonsinging role, willing to appear both arrogant and weak, and Stevens, a sex symbol and underappreciated actress, proves her range and nerve. The cast also includes Cassavetes’ friend and frequent collaborator Seymour Cassel.

Much has been made of the link between jazz and Cassavetes’ modernist, seemingly free-form cinema, and the connection was obvious in the early days. “Shadows” used a Charles Mingus score and the terrific music in “Too Late Blues,” scored by David Raksin, was performed by jazz greats including Benny Carter.

All the talk in “Too Late Blues” of integrity and authenticity seems even more significant in light of the career Cassavetes went on to forge. Despite a certain mannered slickness, the film is proof of his inability, even under clear constraints, to make anything less than a deeply personal work.

After “A Child Is Waiting” he spent the next few years acting — his return to filmmaking, with”Faces”(1968), a film made completely on his own terms, marked his reinvention as an independent artist, and it kicked off a remarkable run (five more self-financed films, up until 1977’s “Opening Night”) unlike anything in American movies before or since.

	
John Cassavetes - (1961) Too Late Blues.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	2.26 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 019 kb/s
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https://nitro.download/view/22895823B1D2F49/John_Cassavetes_-_(1961)_Too_Late_Blues.mkv

https://rapidgator.net/file/c82e79592cbdde747ba7b9d78f99e563/John_Cassavetes_-_(1961)_Too_Late_Blues.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post John Cassavetes – Too Late Blues (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Cable Hogue is a prospector who is abandoned in the desert, with no water, by his so-called partners. Nearing death, he discovers a natural spring and he’s soon at the nearest town to register a land claim. There he meets a pretty local prostitute, Hildy. Back at his claim site, he christens it Cable Springs and opens a stagecoach station where the horses can be watered and the passengers fed. Hildy soon joins him but only temporarily as she has dreams of moving to San Francisco and setting herself up there in her own popular line of business. Things are going well for Cable when, to his delight, his former partners show up. This time he’s prepared for them. When Hildy returns after a long absence he’s ready to pack it in and make his life with her but as is so often the case, fate intervenes.

+Commentary by Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle

3.01GB | 2h 01m | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D55E9D1A7A092AF/Sam_Peckinpah_-_(1970)_The_Ballad_of_Cable_Hogue.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Sam Peckinpah – The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Everyone is talking about Synanon House… Where Dope Fiends Fight Their Way Back

A dramatization of the goings on at a drug rehabilitation home. Filmed at the original Synanon House in Santa Monica, California.

Letterboxd review:
In 1964, the federal government began to investigate Synanon, a California-based corporation that claimed to be able to do the unimaginable, and cure drug addiction. Eventually, it was revealed that the organization was an abusive cult, one which intentionally broke the will of residents, and punished those who dared to leave or question its actions with violence. Most troubling, arguably, were the brutal, “attack therapy” sessions that could last up to three days, and were later recognized by the organization’s founder as a form of brainwashing.

In 1965, Richard Quine produced and directed a film about the organization for Columbia Pictures. Called simply Synanon, it celebrated the group so enthusiastically that Quine was allowed to shoot in Syanon’s original headquarters, obviously with the organization’s full support. Starring Edmond O’Brien as founder Chuck Dederich (credited on IMDb as having the “idea” for the film), it attempts to walk a line between junkie-sploitation and laudatory docufiction, depicting the bad junkies as shiftless and not particularly trustworthy, and the good ones as needing the abuse heaped upon them in the group sessions referred to in the movie as “Synanons,” rather than the far more alarming, real life label of “The Game.”

Watching Synanon is a jaw-dropping experience for its unflinching celebration of a brutal cult, and particularly its depiction of Dederich, the alcoholic mastermind between the organization’s brutality, violence, and profit-chasing, as a true believer, someone harried by a state government that cares more about the letter of the zoning law than it does all of the people being helped by this heroic figure. When the film ends, we’re told in an on-screen note that Dederich has triumphed over the interference of California to “build Synanon into a national movement,” and that as of 1965, “there are hundreds of people working and growing with Synanon — living, because of Synanon.”

Elsewhere, the cast of Synanon offers a wild collection of generations. Alex Cord plays lead addict Zankie Albo with literally zero charisma, which means that his flirtations with recovering girl junkie Joaney Adamic (Stella Stevens, as usual far better than the material deserves) are predatory and terrifying — though of course she responds to them as if no man has ever before said anything to her as hot as, “you look like a chick.”

There to represent the older generation, meanwhile, are O’Brien, who doesn’t look like Dederich, but reproduces his physical presence reasonably well, and Richard Conte as Reid Kimble, Dederich’s second in command, hilariously skeevy for a guy I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to think is on the straight and narrow. The way Kimble and Dederich interact is amusingly contrived, leaning aggressively toward hip and casual in an effort to emphasize the fact that this is a social organization, not a medical one — and that Synanon isn’t like all of those square groups out there, man, who claim they know how to help you get off the junk. Sometimes, their scenes together almost work, but that’s because Conte and O’Brien are pros, not because the writing is any good.

Also around in supporting roles are Eartha Kitt, a real life Synanon supporter who is sadly underutilized, Chuck Connors (reliably very tall), and my favorite child of a director whose acting career was criminally short, Solomon Sturges, who, in his one, six second scene, shows more easy, natural charisma than Cord does in the entire damn movie.

Everyone should probably watch this because it’s so fucking weird, given what we know how about the organization.

	
Synanon.1965.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 43 min
Size: 	1.91 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	716x464 ~> 858x464
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 414 kb/s
BPP: 	0.303
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E36551F64768335/Synanon.1965.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Quine – Synanon (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.