Black Gate

Treasure Island (1934)

Swords in hand, swashbucklers strode across the silver screen throughout the silent era, especially in the Twenties, when Hollywood budgets grew large enough to encompass grand historical spectacles. Then sound came in circa 1930, and swashbucklers went out, in part because early microphones didn’t record well outside, so most of the first “talkies” were filmed on interior sound stages — not the best venues for historical action.

But historical adventure films were saved by the insatiable American (and for that matter, European) appetite for Westerns. Rootin’, tootin’ horse operas had to be shot outside, so the problem of miking away from a sound stage had to be solved. By 1934, the technical issues had been sorted out, and swashbucklers were back on the screen, led by a trio of hits in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the first talkie version of Treasure Island. This week we’re going to enjoy a look at the latter, and follow it up with two other notable Thirties swashbucklers.

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Vendetta of a Samurai (Japan, 1952)

If American and European film fans recognize only one Japanese actor, it’s the great Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997), who came to prominence in the west for his collaborations with director Akira Kurosawa — not just the historical films such as Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), and Yojimbo (1961), but also Kurosawa’s acclaimed crime movies such as The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and High and Low (1963).

Mifune had a broad range, with the ability to inhabit a wide variety of characters of all sorts, though he had the kind of classically handsome face with regular features that often limit actors to matinee idol roles. A broadly physical actor when the role required, at need he could convey deep emotion by subtle changes of facial expression. Mifune was an ambitious actor who acknowledged few limitations, and he worked with many other leading directors other than Kurosawa, often co-producing on projects he felt strongly about. This week we’re taking a look at three of his lesser known features, movies that exhibit considerable diversity just in the genre of chambara swordplay films.

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The Giant of Marathon (Italy/France, 1959)

When you think of Italian cinema, probably the first thing that comes to mind are its great dramatic directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini. But you wouldn’t be reading this fine website devoted to genre fiction if the second thing wasn’t Italy’s action films, the Spaghetti Westerns, such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from the decade of 1964-74, and the historical epics from the decade before that, the so-called peplum or sword-and-sandal adventures. The latter movies, with their sword-swinging action heroes, fall inside the ambit of this article series, where we frequently try to draw you attention to them, little known as many of them are to American or British film fans. Here we are again this week, with three more you ought to know about.

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

In Brooklyn during World War II, a pair of black widows were luring men to their deaths. They preyed upon older, lonely men without family or close friends. With a “Room for rent” sign hanging in the front window of their idyllic-looking home, they fed arsenic-laced wine to their victims. A male relative who lived with them buried the bodies in the basement, with no one the wiser. The women were in fact little old ladies: think Aunt Bee as a serial killer.

But a nephew came over and found a body in window seat – the thirteenth victim. He slowly realized that his two loveable old aunts were killers. Then, his brother, a murderer on the lam from the police, showed up with his lackey in tow. It’s a hardboiled, true crime story that curiously, is largely forgotten today.

Just kidding! It’s actually Arsenic and Old Lace, a smash stage play that became a popular movie starring Cary Grant, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre. The play ran on Broadway for 1,444 performances and is still in wide use today.

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