Russ Tamblyn

  • High School Confidential! (1958)

    High School Confidential! (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) The newly coined concept of the teenager was a deeply scary thing in 1950s America, and Hollywood made bank by reminding audiences of the young menace now living with them. In High School Confidential!, we go deep undercover in a “typical” high school as our protagonist (Russ Tamblyn, unforgettable) deals drugs, talks back to adults and has an interest in recreational sex. Narcotics are quickly designated as the scourge of the nation, and the plot gradually shifts into a crime thriller as it wraps up the narrative. It’s what lies aside of the main story, however, that’s most interesting. Specifically, the screenwriter’s idea of teenage slang and lingo is so dated as to appear parodic to modern audiences. The opening lines are so, so good that you just want to revel in that dialogue for a long time. It calms down shortly afterwards, although there’s an amazing bit of beat poetry later on that almost justifies the film by itself (“Tomorrow is dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king-sized drag.”). The other thing worth noting is Mamie van Doren’s performance as a sex-crazed older woman with designs on the protagonist, considerably amping up the film’s exploitation score. It’s all very enjoyable, although on a second degree unattainable to audiences who first saw this in theatres: the moralistic value of the story becomes very, very obvious by the time the film wraps up, and it feels curiously naïve in the way it both exploits teenage rebellion while (professing to) being repulsed by it. I still stand by my assertion that the dialogue is the finest thing about High School Confidential! : some people can dig Shakespearian soliloquies all day long, but give me a load of those hep-cats jazzing and I’ll be a happy square until dawn.

  • Tom Thumb (1958)

    Tom Thumb (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Producer George Pal was the SFX wizard of his time, always picking projects that pushed back the state-of-the-art in matters of cinematic spectacle. As the first project he directed, Tom Thumb isn’t that big of an anomaly in his career—we remember the Science Fiction films Destination Moon, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, of course, but he also produced (sometimes directed) some more family-friendly fantasy films like this one. An attempt to combine effect-heavy blockbuster filmmaking with the very different demands of a musical comedy, Tom Thumb may not have stood the test of time as well as Pal’s other films, but it’s still worth a look. Various techniques, such as oversized object trick photography and stop-motion animation, all help sell the illusion of the VFX side, while catchy songs do the rest on the musical side. The demands of special effects clearly constrained the final result, since the film clocks in on the much-shorter side for musicals at only 98 minutes. Ascendant stars Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers have supporting antagonist roles in here, while Russ Tamblyn seems in his element as the hero. While the seams on the special effects are now obvious, that’s part of the fun as well. Thankfully, this Tom Thumb doesn’t stick too close to the fairytale: the entire thing is bouncy, lighthearted and a joy to watch, which is not the case with all adaptations of that source material.

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) A wild blend of musical comedy and special effects, Tom Thumb takes considerable liberties with the original story to deliver a rounded old-school Hollywood experience, albeit with a heavier dose of spectacle than most films. Helmed by event-filmmaking legend George Pal, it starts with the proposition that special effects are the point of the film, and then go on to deliver a (thin) story and (ambitious) musical numbers, one of them even incorporating extensive stop-motion animation. Having a feature film with a tiny character means quite a bit of trickery and while much of that has already been done better in the years since, there’s still a charm and an earnestness to the results here that’s hard to dismiss. Good song backed by a spirited performance from Russ Tamblyn (with some supporting work from British comedy legends Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers) help sell the entire package. Comparisons with some of Disney’s family pleasers aren’t misplaced, even though Tom Thumb is often more interesting is bits and pieces rather than as an entire film.