edited by Jonathan Doyle

Cloverfield [BLU-RAY] (Paramount Home Entertainment, 6.3.2008) Disguised under deliberately goofy, yet deliciously edible-sounding, aliases such as Cheese and Slusho, Matt Reeves' Cloverfield was produced and rushed into theaters under an equally appetizing shroud of secrecy. From last year's incredibly elusive Super Bowl ad to the film's viral marketing campaign, Cloverfield had everybody scratching their heads and drooling in anticipation. Aside from the as-yet untitled title and the Blair Witch-ian visual style, the film's biggest appeal was the enigmatic creature who was last (un)seen hurling the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty onto the crowded streets of New York City. All we knew about the mysterious beast was that it was big and angry. Now that the highy-anticipated project has come and gone, one question has fortunately been answered: Cloverfield was a major success. (continued)

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For some unfathomable, better-left-unexplored reason I went to an L.A. Film Festival screening a few hours ago of a newly colorized version of 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), which will come out on DVD on 7.31.07. I came out with the bitter knowledge that I'd just pissed away 90 minutes of my time on this planet because I liked the movie when I was a kid (i.e., when I had no taste) and because I was curious how good or bad this newly colorized verison might be.

The colorizing, personally supervised by stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, looks like an attempt to imitate over-saturated 1950s-style color and as such isn't half bad, but of course all colorizing makeovers are bad regardless of the care and skill involved. (The upside is that the DVD will reportedly include the original black-and-white version in both 1.33 to and 1.85.)

The film itself gets more ludicrous each time I watch it. It's hard to know where to begin because every single aspect of this film is amateurishly, sometimes comically "off" in one way or another. I can only surmise that the director, Nathan Juran, was some kind of shameless, talentless, low-budget monster-movie stooge.

Each and every line of Christopher Knopf and Robert Creighton Williams' dialogue is somewhere between painful and inept. Each and every actor (William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, Tito Vuolo, et. al.) seems to doing parodies of clueless, stiff-necked 1950s-style line deliveries. The creature -- an ugly green reptile with big whiskers and the arms and torso of a gay body builder down at Gold's Gym-- has no genitalia or waste-disposal orifices. Taylor's character (i.e, "almost a doctor") runs down a dirt road in Sicily to attend to an emergency situation wearing black high heels. An American child actor (Bart Braverman) pretends to be a Sicilian kid by imitating Robert Blake's Mexican lottery salesboy accent in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

William Hopper, Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause

And one thing about the colorizing is plain stupid. Hopper, the son of columnist Hedda Hopper, had prematurely white-gray hair in the '50s and never attempted to hide this. It's unmistakably gray (mixed in with some black) in his performance as Natalie Wood's pissy dad in Rebel Without a Cause, and yet the 20 Million Miles to Earth colorizing team decided to make his hair light-brown sandy. Not quite on the level of some technician's decision in the mid '90s to make Frank Sinatra's eyes brown in a colorized version of Suddenly! (1954), but pretty close.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on June 30, 2007 at 04:48 PM

comment #1

christian says ...

ray harryhausen just turned 87. a real film hero and legend.

they shouldn't have colorized it. the atmospheric attack in the barn is still cool as is the ymir's animation. juran could be a hired hand but he did some terrific work with THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, one of the great film fantasies.

Posted by christian at June 30, 2007 05:56 PM

comment #2

Mgmax says ...

Yeah, I was excited to buy the laserdisc some years back and then I watched it... a dud, a wan King Kong imitation, even with a good Harryhausen monster.

Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers still holds up, though.

Posted by Mgmax at June 30, 2007 05:57 PM

comment #3

Mgmax says ...

"Hopper, the son of columnist Hedda Hopper, had prematurely white-gray hair in the '50s and never attempted to hide this."

Now what would have been really cool would have been if they had colored him to the same color as his father, DeWolf Hopper-- whose skin absorbed too much of a silver-based makeup and had a distinct bluish cast in real life.

Posted by Mgmax at June 30, 2007 06:02 PM

comment #4

Joe Leydon says ...

They still try to colorize movies? Really? I thought this ended in the late '80s. Seriously.

Posted by Joe Leydon at June 30, 2007 07:01 PM

comment #5

BurmaShave says ...

It's starting again so soon. It was just in the last 50 years that Africa and Asia finally threw off the yoke of colorization and began to shape their own destiny.

Posted by BurmaShave at June 30, 2007 09:08 PM

comment #6

D.Z. says ...

"I came out with the bitter knowledge that I'd just pissed away 90 minutes of my time on this planet because I liked the movie when I was a kid (i.e., when I had no taste)"

At least you can emphasize with the Transformers/TMNT fans now. Well, not really, since, unlike Bay, Harryhausen wasn't a hack.

Joe: A few years ago, Lucas was amusingly bitching about Sony colorizing the Three Stooges, claiming the company should respect its historical value.

Posted by D.Z. at June 30, 2007 09:57 PM

comment #7

Cadavra says ...

Jeff, Nathan Juran was far from a stooge. He won an Oscar for the art direction of Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, and had a lengthy second career as a director of films both good and not so. (Most people would put 20 MILL in the former category.) He was also a tremendously gracious fellow who designed his own beautiful hillside home in Palos Verdes and lived there for decades. Next time, why not spend about 30 seconds on IMDB before mindlessly sliming someone you never heard of?

Posted by Cadavra at July 1, 2007 12:19 AM

comment #8

christian says ...

i think jeff went to 2MMTE to see if he still had a sense of wonder...

Posted by christian at July 1, 2007 12:28 AM

comment #9

cjKennedy says ...

Which was worse, the 90 minutes wasted with Transformers or the 90 minutes wasted with 20 Million Miles To Earth? I'm guessing the former.

Posted by cjKennedy at July 1, 2007 01:31 AM

comment #10

Pdorwick says ...

"...when I had no taste..."

Buddy, in light of recents comments - especially your frankly inane rants against Steven Spielberg - nothing at all has changed.

Stick to chasing celebrities, seriously.

Posted by Pdorwick at July 1, 2007 07:59 AM

comment #11

Rich S. says ...

I used to get angry and frustrated with Jeff because of his incredibly cynical turn over the last couple years. But then I read this piece. christian has it exactly right. It's one thing to see a movie you once liked and be surprised when it doesn't live up to your memories. But, when you are resorting to intentionally seeking out pieces of your childhood with the sole purpose of dissecting them and leeching out any enjoyment of them you might once have had, you truly have gone 'round the bend.

I used to be angry with Jeff about stuff like this. Now I just feel sorry for him.

Posted by Rich S. at July 2, 2007 04:52 AM

comment #12

david says ...

Hollywood Elsewhere

Upcoming

Creature Feature

christian says ...

Mgmax says ...

Mgmax says ...

Joe Leydon says ...

BurmaShave says ...

D.Z. says ...

Cadavra says ...

christian says ...

cjKennedy says ...

Pdorwick says ...

Rich S. says ...

david says ...