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There was a vogue for South Seas exotica in the late silent and early sound era, films made up of varying degrees of ethnographic revelation, social commentary, and erotic spectacle. Moana (1926), Robert Flaherty's documentary portrait of life in Samoa, is the first expression of this idealized screen fantasy (every scene was carefully staged for his cameras), and the most spectacular expression comes via King Kong (1933), which exaggerates both the primitive exoticism and the primal fears of savage tribal culture to outrageous extremes. Along the way are films as varied as White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), The Pagan (1929), Tabu (1931), and King Vidor's Bird of Paradise (1932).

You wouldn't peg King Vidor, a social realist by nature, as a natural for such a subject, and the director himself dismissed 1932 Bird of Paradise as "a potboiler." He took the assignment with no script, merely a Hawaii location, a South Seas setting, Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea set for the starring roles, and a few directives from producer David O. Selznick, new ensconced as head of production at RKO. "Just give me three wonderful love scenes like you had in The Big Parade and Bardelys the Magnificent. I don't care what story you use so long as we call it Bird of Paradise and Del Rio jumps into a flaming volcano at the finish," is how Vidor (writing in his autobiography A Tree is a Tree) recalled Selznick's request. And that's what, after weeks of waiting out tropical storms to shoot location footage in Hawaii and completing the production with Catalina doubling Hawaii, he finally delivered. So many of these films revolve around forbidden love, often (though not always) about white male adventurers intoxicated by the primal innocence in a land of plenty and a culture of easy living. And so goes Bird of Paradise, with McCrea as Johnny, the all-American sailor who (with the blessing of his paternal captain) jumps ship to spend time on a tropical island and the chief's beautiful young daughter Luana (Del Rio), who is betrothed to the prince of another island. But of course.

McCrea, in an early leading role, makes Johnny quite the strapping specimen: athletic, courageous, generous, a real boy scout but with a red-blooded passion for adventure and for love. He's the youngest hand on an all-male crew in an undefined voyage through the South Seas and the rest of the crew (not really roughnecks -- they talk more like urban wiseguys than wharf rats -- but certainly more experienced than the boyish Johnny) looks out for the guy like he's a beloved kid brother. Del Rio, the bigger star in 1932, takes top billing here as the native princess. The Mexican-American actress doesn't look particularly Polynesian, especially next to the cast of Hawaiian locals as the tribal islanders, but her dark, exotic beauty contrasts nicely with McCrea's strapping boy-next-door, and she carries herself with a sense of regal confidence and assurance that gives Luana a gravitas beyond the usual virginal innocence of such portrayals. She's no passive maiden but a resolute woman. After Johnny has been warned to steer clear of her, she takes matters (romantic and sexual; there's little difference between the two in this pre-code production) into her own hands.

Luana is a fantasy, to be sure, dancing with abandon in grass skirts and resilient flower leis (which manage to stay put through all sorts of physical activity) or discovering the joys of kissing like a teenager eager to practice at any opportunity. But she is sexually forthright, a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it with a giddy playfulness and a sense of purpose. Her nude midnight past the sailboat is like a mermaid siren teasing sailor Johnny to follow, which he most assuredly does, but the only trap here is desire and romance. (She's not actually naked, but through the haze of underwater shooting and careful backlighting, you get a comely image in motion that suggests more than it reveals.) And in the interest of fair play, McCrea is constantly stripping off his shirt and displaying his well-toned physique.

They are a frisky pair of lovers and Vidor makes their affair both physically intimate and earnestly innocent as they leave their respective societies behind to make their own Eden as a star-crossed Adam and Eve. But their societies haven't left them. As Johnny pines for the bustle of the city and the marvels of modern technology, the roar of the volcano on Luana's nearby island calls her back to her fatal destiny. It is indeed quite the potboiler tale, an echo of Murnau's more resonant Tabu with a snappy American attitude in paradise, but Del Rio and McCrea bring both an unaffected earnestness and a youthful playfulness to the film and Vidor matches them with a commitment to the innocence of their love and the inevitable tragedy, just as requested by Selznick. Paradise: found and lost.

The rights to this film, produced by David O. Selznick for RKO, fell into the public domain decades ago and it has been a familiar title in VHS and DVD bargain bins as long as such things have existed. As a result, previous editions have ranged from unimpressive to unacceptable. Kino's edition, licensed from Selznick Properties and mastered for DVD and Blu-ray from an original nitrate 35mm print preserved by George Eastman House, is not pristine but it is light years ahead of any previous release (at least that I've seen). There is minor scuffing and surface scratches throughout the print and a slight loss of contrast, but the image is otherwise crisp and the clarity enables you to see through the scratches to the beauty of the image.

The soundtrack, however, is an issue, trebly and distorted, as if a weak source has been cranked up beyond its limits. The source is aurally thin but the audio mastering just makes it worse and mars what is otherwise the definitive home video edition of the film. There are no supplements beyond a trailer.

For more information about Bird of Paradise, visit Kino Lorber. To order Bird of Paradise, go to TCM Shopping.

by Sean Axmaker

John Huston is a Hollywood director that, during his lifetime, was often reviewed on the basis of his maverick personal lifestyle. Reports from the set of his triumph The African Queen paint a picture of a man more interested in running off on safaris, than filming a movie. If Huston agonized over his work, he kept his feelings well hidden. In her book on the making of The Red Badge of Courage, Lillian Ross witnessed the destruction of a potential American classic in a studio power play. MGM so radically chopped down Huston's film that it barely reaches feature length. But Huston was the kind never to look back, and had already moved on.

Critics also cite the typical Huston theme as a celebration of glorious failure, the shining example being Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Its prospectors lose everything and finish laughing at the cosmic joke played at their expense. Huston's heroes may fail but their efforts are admired, applauded: revolutionary conspirators (We Were Strangers), jewel thieves (The Asphalt Jungle), ecological guerillas (The Roots of Heaven). There are exceptions, but even some of those are deceptive. We're told that the attempt to sink the gunboat at the end of The African Queen was originally scripted to fail.

John Huston made plenty of box office flops, yet rarely a dull picture. While other great directors struggled to stay working in the new Hollywood of the 1970s, Huston adapted to new forms. His first artistic triumph of the Director's Decade is Fat City, a fascinating portrait of a core Huston loser, a washed-up prizefighter who gives the game another try. Critically applauded but passed over at the box office, Fat City can boast a terrific cast headed by Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges, and featuring a startlingly original performance by Susan Tyrell.

Writer Leonard Gardner adapted his own novel for the screen. Broken-down boxer Tully (Stacy Keach) supports his liquor habit by picking crops with the migrant workers near Stockton, California. Meeting Ernie (Jeff Bridges), an enthusiastic novice boxer with potential, Tully is inspired to try the ring again. Both fighters are represented by manager Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto), a lover of the sport who can't seem to choose a winner -- all of his hopefuls keep getting pummeled. Ernie decides to persevere despite the misgivings of his sweet girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark), even after his nose is flattened in his very first fight. Meanwhile, Tully begins a relationship with the slovenly Oma (Susan Tyrell), a garrulous, argumentative alcoholic with a voice that could peel paint. Oma takes him in while her regular man Earl (Curtis Cokes) is locked up in prison. Ruben manages to get Tully a fight with a contender from Panama named Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez). Can Tully withstand Oma's emotional onslaught, and stay sober long enough to fight?

Huston adapts ably to the new character-oriented rhythms of '70s filmmaking. His opening sequence establishes the economic stagnation in Stockton as the unkempt and unwashed Tully ventures out of his dingy flat in search of a match to light his last cigarette. Tully is basically a good egg, a man with few grudges. He fell out of shape after being cut up by an opponent who may have hidden a razor in his boxing gloves. The booze took him the rest of the way to the bottom.

Unlike the semi-docu On the Bowery or Barbet Schroeder's inebriate's epic Barfly, Fat City doesn't condemn, mock or pity the drunks at "the bottom". Tully finds a new colleague in Ernie, and both boxers have a loyal friend in their manager. Ruben is not a particularly able boxing manager, as he tends to transmit his own nervousness to his clients. A hilarious pre-fight scene sees the young fighters desperately trying to psych themselves up for victory. But no manager cares more about "his boys" than Ruben. Post-fight, with every one of his crew bruised or bandaged, Ruben hands out the beers and assures his troupe that everything will be fine the next time.

Due to the punishment he's taken and his daily consumption of alcohol, Tully is just beginning to show signs of boxer's dementia. He continues to drink, whether training or picking crops in the intense heat of the fields. But the caustic Oma is even tougher on his overall morale. The woman either drowns Tully in overstated affection or lashes out with complaints and abuse. She's a total mess but our heart goes out to her anyway. The emotional whiplash has the normally unflappable Tully throwing temper tantrums of his own. Come the big fight with the pro from Panama, Ruben must rush to dry Tully out. He enters the ring exhausted and disoriented.

Gardner and Huston emphasize the loneliness and isolation of unsuccessful professionals. As it turns out the Panamanian boxer Lucero is in even worse condition than Tully. Something is wrong with his kidneys, as he urinates blood. The man walks slowly into the stadium, dignified but always alone; it's clear that he's just hoping to get his money and go home. Lucero's nose was broken long ago, and lies flattened to one side. The big match is between two pathetic pros on the verge of collapse.

Fat City was Jeff Bridges' follow-up film after his breakthrough in The Last Picture Show. He's already intensely likeable and self-assured as a decent, if not-too-bright young athlete. Ernie barely listens to Faye's hints about marriage; he's only capable of concentrating on one topic at a time. Candy Clark's Faye is a precursor to her marvelous performance in the next year's American Graffiti. It's clear that Faye will keep Ernie and make him happy. The amazing Susan Tyrell can't be blamed if the right parts didn't come along -- there simply aren't any more like her around. An utterly unregenerate character like Oma couldn't be properly portrayed in American movies until the retirement of the old Production Code. Had Hollywood remade the classic loser noir Detour in the early 1970s, Susan Tyrell would have been the ideal candidate to fill the shoes of Ann Savage as the ferocious Vera.

With the accomplished Conrad Hall as lighting cinematographer, Fat City's look is raw and naturalistic, yet never distractingly crude. Street and bar scenes are filmed from static setups but the camera moves fluidly during the fight action. Proving that a choice film assignment heals all relationships in Hollywood, Huston's supervising editor is Margaret Booth, formerly Louis B. Mayer's editorial czar. According to Lillian Ross, Booth presided over the dismembering of Huston's The Red Badge of Courage twenty-one years before. Booth spent a long career enforcing the requirement that all MGM pictures conform to dull house conventions of continuity cutting. Interestingly, she does quite well with the relaxed, sometimes purposely slack pace of Huston's character-driven mini-masterpiece.

Sony Pictures Choice Collection's DVD-R of Fat City is a fine encoding of one of John Huston's least-known gems. Color and sound are quite good. The song Help Me Make it Through the Night, sung by Kris Kristofferson, is heard over the title sequence.

The plain-wrap presentation plays the feature directly upon loading the disc and will recycle it until stopped. Sony released a now out-of-print standard DVD of this show ten years ago. The old disc's one advantage is that it has removable English subtitles. As with so many studio library releases today, "no frills" formatting gives hearing-impaired viewers less and less access to the old movies they love.

For more information about Fat City, visit Sony Pictures. To order Fat City, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson

Originally released as The Emperor of Peru and then retitled Odyssey of the Pacific, the surrealist tale of childhood Treasure Train (1982) belongs in a category all of its own, somewhere between children's fable and magical realist head trip.

Made by a contemporary of the notorious Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, 1973, El Topp, 1970), Spanish director Fernando Arrabal (The Guernica Tree, 1975) was a co-founder of the avant-garde performance art group the Panic Movement with Jodorowsky, and a prolific playwright, poet, novelist and director who worked with renowned 20th century creatives from Pop artist Andy Warhol to Surrealist Andre Breton.

A French-Canadian co-production, Treasure Train is a sputtering adventure tale of two siblings Toby (Jonathan Starr) and Liz (Anick) and their pet duck Federico. The brother and sister are visiting the beautiful country estate of their Aunt Elsa (Monique Mercure) and Uncle Alex (Jean-Louis Roux). They are joined in their childhood adventures by a Cambodian refugee Hoang (Ky Huot Uk) who will stay with the family until adoptive parents can be found. Each day the three children bicycle into the forest where they explore and conjure up elaborate make-believe. Toby's fantasy life is especially intense. In surreal flights of fantasy the little boy imagines himself as a race care driver, an astronaut and a potent rescuer of damsels in distress. Playing the resident female killjoy Liz chafes in irritation at her daydreamy little brother. But she also can't help being drawn into the relentless questing and fantasy life of the other children.

While Toby daydreams about a man-sized virility, Hoang flashes back to moments with his beloved mother in war-torn Cambodia. He longs to return to Cambodia and see her. In an Oedipal expression of his yearning, Hoang hopes to marry his mother, and the other children support him in that mission. A strain of darkness occasionally pops through this otherwise whimsical tale, both in the specter of the Khmer Rouge genocide referenced in Hoang's story but also in the sudden, violet tantrums that overtake Uncle Alex when the children misbehave. In one strange moment Uncle Alex hurls shaving cream at Toby in a fit of anger when the boy comes home dirty and covered in coal dust. It's one of several strange, non-sequitur fits of adult rage that add to Treasure Train's odd tone.

But the children's biggest adventure comes when they discover a grizzled old train engineer (Mickey Rooney) who refers to himself as the Emperor of Peru, living out in the forest in a train caboose converted into a home. Confined to an ornate, steam punk- style wheelchair, the Emperor is a mixture of adult menace and child-like whimsy who often joins the children in their imaginative play-acting. When the children find an enormous locomotive nearby, together they and the Engineer work to restore it to its former glory. Liz hopes to use the train to spirit Hoang back to Cambodia where he will be reunited with his mother, though history tells us that the Khmer Rouge have most likely already killed the boy's parents. The children struggle to get the train operational even as a pair of policemen threaten to roust the Emperor from his woodsy lair and haul him away to the old folk's home.

There are touches of the Felliniesque as when a traveling trio of tight-walking pierrots turn up in the forest. What might have been imagined as winsome and magical in moments such as this, instead often feels creaky and top-heavy with adult themes, such as Hoang's separation from his mother, who he believes is still in Cambodia waiting for her husband to be freed from a concentration camp. In many ways Treasure Train recalls the similarly strange, inventive mixture of doom and comedy in that other surreal kiddie chestnut, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

Ultimately fixing on the title Treasure Train was undoubtedly a way to lure child viewers. But the film exists in a strange limbo, not quite convincing as the kind of film small children would enjoy, but too plodding and, potentially, too surreal for many adults.

To order Treasure Train, go to TCM Shopping.

by Felicia Feaster

Mondo Macabro's box copy puts William Rose's The Girl in Room 2A (1974) in the sadistic, no-holds-barred company of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) - point taken, but really it's closer kin to Paul Bartel's Private Parts (1972), Pete Walker's The House of Whipcord (1974) and Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's La Residencia (aka The House That Screamed, 1969) in its chilling chronicle of an innocent young woman (former Miss Italy Daniela Giordano) whose stay in a Rome boarding house is complicated by weird apparitions, strange neighbors, disturbing dreams, madness, and murder. American sexploitation practitioner Rose teamed up with expatriate writer-producer Dick Randall (Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, 1974) for this garish and often gory putanesca, which favors spectacle and sensation over plot schematics. We never get a handle on why it is deemed necessary to drive parolee Margaret Bradley (who has been released from two weeks in a women's lock-up over dodgy drug charges that bring to mind the William Berger case of 1970) if the ultimate goal is simply to killer her as part of a Sadean ritual but The Girl in Room 2A is clearly less about the destination than it is the journey.

The film's biggest name for American viewers will likely be Raf Vallone, a stocky and ruggedly handsome leading man of postwar Italian cinema who enjoyed a midlife career in such international productions as El Cid (1961), The Cardinal (1965), and The Italian Job (1969). Here, Vallone plays the disconcertingly jocund Mr. Dreese, who turns up like the proverbial bad penny as Margaret attempts to understand such queer portents as a weeping bloodstain on the floor of her room that returns no matter how many times she scrubs it away. When Margaret makes the acquaintance of American Jack Whitman (John Scanlon), whose sister once occupied Margaret's room and who is presumed (though we know better) to have taken her own life, The Girl in Room 2A inclines toward the territory of Armando Crispino's Macchie solare (Autopsy, 1973), which similarly hung on the plot point of murders camouflaged as suicides. Though it may not amount to much, The Girl in Room 2A is a diverting psychothriller, enlivened by the participation of Giovanna Galletti (from Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill, 1966), Karin Schubert (Bluebeard, 1972), Brad Harris (The Fury of Hercules, 1962) and Rosalba Neri (Lady Frankenstein, 1971) in small but pivotal roles. Berto Pisano's score is enchanting and intoxicating until it does off the reservation in the film's third act.

Mondo Macabro's all-region DVD of The Girl in Room 2A is another stunner in a rich catalog of vintage reclamations by the Britain-based outfit. Letterboxed at 1.66:1 (and anamorphically-enhanced), the image is clean and intensely colorful, with especially (and appropriately) eye-popping reds and deeply satisfying black levels. The 2.0 mono soundtrack is offered in English and Italian, although the English soundtrack is supplemented by (optional) translated Italian for those scenes cut for the film's US release by distributor Joseph Brenner. (These scenes amount to very little and probably should have been left out of this release, as they really only repeat information we already have or prolong moods that do not require sustaining.) Though Mondo boasts an uncut and uncensored transfer, alternate footage glimpsed in a supplemental theatrical trailer reveals that Schubert's death scene was filmed both clothed and unclothed - it's the clothed variant available here. Though this discrepancy does not reflect censorship, Eurocult purists beware. Also included among the extras are an 11 minute interview with leading lady Giordano, talent bios, and informative production notes that fill in a few blanks in the biography of the elusive William Rose.

For more information about The Girl in Room 2A, visit Mondo Macabro.

by Richard Harland Smith

Lester March (Jerry Lewis) is a television repairman who is also crazy about detective novels. In a story that could be pulled from one of those dime store mysteries, Lester finds himself trapped in a loopy conspiracy when he discovers he is the heir to a massive fortune in the Frank Tashlin comedy It's Only Money (1962).

A television news report announces the death of a local millionaire inventor. Unless his long-ago vanished son can be located, his millions will go to his sister, the effervescently silly Cecilia Albright (Mae Questel). Cecilia is engaged to smarmy, suntanned lawyer Gregory DeWitt (Zachary Scott) who has agreed to marry Cecilia in the nefarious hope of gaining access to her fortune. Also on the hunt for the fortune's heir, is private eye Pete Flint (Jesse White). Pete teams up with Lester -- who has just repaired Pete's TV, naturally -- to find the missing heir, who turns out to be Lester himself. Complications ensue when Gregory and his butler accomplice Leopold (Jack Weston) first get a glimpse of Lester on the grounds of the Albright mansion and decide to do away with him, thus ensuring the fortune stays in their hands.

Director Frank Tashlin and star Jerry Lewis paired up for a total of eight films. Some of the classic features of the Lewis and Tashlin team-ups are present here, including the inexplicable animal attraction Lewis's nebbish characters seem to always inspire in women. Lester, the humble, bumbling television repairman is aggressively pursued by Cecilia's personal, va-va-voom nurse Wanda Paxton (Joan O'Brien). Audiences are left to wonder if Wanda's interest in Lester is purely physical, or more motivated by his money bags.

But Wanda isn't the only one pursuing Lester. Lester also has a series of comical run-ins with mechanical devices. At various points in It's Only Money Lester is pursued by the automatic vacuum cleaners that patrol the Albright mansion environs. He is also set-upon by a vicious group of automatic lawn mowers with lacerating teeth who launch a borderline nightmarish attack on Lester in one of It's Only Money's most uniquely funny and disturbing moments.

Much of the comic meat of It's Only Money are Road Runner-style comic bits (Tashlin, after all, got his start in cartoons) where the murderously blood-thirsty butler Leopold concocts new ways to murder Lester. Exploding boats, runaway cars, threats of decapitation are all foiled by Lester who escapes more via dumb luck than anything attributable to wit or resourcefulness.

It's Only Money was the second Frank Tashlin film in which Lewis played a hapless television repair man, a profession that offered Lewis the chance to wrangle enormous, unwieldy, delicate hunks of metal and also afforded a degree of self-referentiality about TV and movie show-biz. Though certainly not the best collaboration in the Lewis and Tashlin pairing, It's Only Money has some charming moments. As the deliriously clueless potential heiress, Mae Questel (who voiced both the Betty Boop and Olive Oyl cartoon characters) lends her own brand of slapstick comedy to the proceedings. Zachary Scott is also memorable in his role as a money-obsessed creep. Dusting off the oily cad Monte Beragon he played in the iconic Mildred Pierce (1945) Scott maintains an attitude of nonchalant despicableness and amused contempt that nicely offsets Questel's lunacy.

For fans of the Tashlin and Lewis oeuvre, It's Only Money is certainly required viewing. All others will have to decide how many pratfalls, sight gags and absurdity they can stomach.

For more information about It's Only Money, visit Olive Films. To order It's Only Money, go to TCM Shopping.

by Felicia Feaster

There was a vogue for South Seas exotica in the late silent and early sound era, films made up of varying degrees of ethnographic revelation, social commentary, and erotic spectacle. Moana (1926), Robert Flaherty's documentary portrait of life in Samoa, is the first expression of this idealized screen fantasy (every scene was carefully staged for his cameras), and the most spectacular expression comes via King Kong (1933), which exaggerates both the primitive exoticism and the primal fears of savage tribal culture to outrageous extremes. Along the way are films as varied as White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), The Pagan (1929), Tabu (1931), and King Vidor's Bird of Paradise (1932).

You wouldn't peg King Vidor, a social realist by nature, as a natural for such a subject, and the director himself dismissed 1932 Bird of Paradise as "a potboiler." He took the assignment with no script, merely a Hawaii location, a South Seas setting, Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea set for the starring roles, and a few directives from producer David O. Selznick, new ensconced as head of production at RKO. "Just give me three wonderful love scenes like you had in The Big Parade and Bardelys the Magnificent. I don't care what story you use so long as we call it Bird of Paradise and Del Rio jumps into a flaming volcano at the finish," is how Vidor (writing in his autobiography A Tree is a Tree) recalled Selznick's request. And that's what, after weeks of waiting out tropical storms to shoot location footage in Hawaii and completing the production with Catalina doubling Hawaii, he finally delivered. So many of these films revolve around forbidden love, often (though not always) about white male adventurers intoxicated by the primal innocence in a land of plenty and a culture of easy living. And so goes Bird of Paradise, with McCrea as Johnny, the all-American sailor who (with the blessing of his paternal captain) jumps ship to spend time on a tropical island and the chief's beautiful young daughter Luana (Del Rio), who is betrothed to the prince of another island. But of course.

McCrea, in an early leading role, makes Johnny quite the strapping specimen: athletic, courageous, generous, a real boy scout but with a red-blooded passion for adventure and for love. He's the youngest hand on an all-male crew in an undefined voyage through the South Seas and the rest of the crew (not really roughnecks -- they talk more like urban wiseguys than wharf rats -- but certainly more experienced than the boyish Johnny) looks out for the guy like he's a beloved kid brother. Del Rio, the bigger star in 1932, takes top billing here as the native princess. The Mexican-American actress doesn't look particularly Polynesian, especially next to the cast of Hawaiian locals as the tribal islanders, but her dark, exotic beauty contrasts nicely with McCrea's strapping boy-next-door, and she carries herself with a sense of regal confidence and assurance that gives Luana a gravitas beyond the usual virginal innocence of such portrayals. She's no passive maiden but a resolute woman. After Johnny has been warned to steer clear of her, she takes matters (romantic and sexual; there's little difference between the two in this pre-code production) into her own hands.

Luana is a fantasy, to be sure, dancing with abandon in grass skirts and resilient flower leis (which manage to stay put through all sorts of physical activity) or discovering the joys of kissing like a teenager eager to practice at any opportunity. But she is sexually forthright, a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it with a giddy playfulness and a sense of purpose. Her nude midnight past the sailboat is like a mermaid siren teasing sailor Johnny to follow, which he most assuredly does, but the only trap here is desire and romance. (She's not actually naked, but through the haze of underwater shooting and careful backlighting, you get a comely image in motion that suggests more than it reveals.) And in the interest of fair play, McCrea is constantly stripping off his shirt and displaying his well-toned physique.

They are a frisky pair of lovers and Vidor makes their affair both physically intimate and earnestly innocent as they leave their respective societies behind to make their own Eden as a star-crossed Adam and Eve. But their societies haven't left them. As Johnny pines for the bustle of the city and the marvels of modern technology, the roar of the volcano on Luana's nearby island calls her back to her fatal destiny. It is indeed quite the potboiler tale, an echo of Murnau's more resonant Tabu with a snappy American attitude in paradise, but Del Rio and McCrea bring both an unaffected earnestness and a youthful playfulness to the film and Vidor matches them with a commitment to the innocence of their love and the inevitable tragedy, just as requested by Selznick. Paradise: found and lost.

The rights to this film, produced by David O. Selznick for RKO, fell into the public domain decades ago and it has been a familiar title in VHS and DVD bargain bins as long as such things have existed. As a result, previous editions have ranged from unimpressive to unacceptable. Kino's edition, licensed from Selznick Properties and mastered for DVD and Blu-ray from an original nitrate 35mm print preserved by George Eastman House, is not pristine but it is light years ahead of any previous release (at least that I've seen). There is minor scuffing and surface scratches throughout the print and a slight loss of contrast, but the image is otherwise crisp and the clarity enables you to see through the scratches to the beauty of the image.

The soundtrack, however, is an issue, trebly and distorted, as if a weak source has been cranked up beyond its limits. The source is aurally thin but the audio mastering just makes it worse and mars what is otherwise the definitive home video edition of the film. There are no supplements beyond a trailer.

For more information about Bird of Paradise, visit Kino Lorber. To order Bird of Paradise, go to TCM Shopping.

by Sean Axmaker

John Huston is a Hollywood director that, during his lifetime, was often reviewed on the basis of his maverick personal lifestyle. Reports from the set of his triumph The African Queen paint a picture of a man more interested in running off on safaris, than filming a movie. If Huston agonized over his work, he kept his feelings well hidden. In her book on the making of The Red Badge of Courage, Lillian Ross witnessed the destruction of a potential American classic in a studio power play. MGM so radically chopped down Huston's film that it barely reaches feature length. But Huston was the kind never to look back, and had already moved on.

Critics also cite the typical Huston theme as a celebration of glorious failure, the shining example being Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Its prospectors lose everything and finish laughing at the cosmic joke played at their expense. Huston's heroes may fail but their efforts are admired, applauded: revolutionary conspirators (We Were Strangers), jewel thieves (The Asphalt Jungle), ecological guerillas (The Roots of Heaven). There are exceptions, but even some of those are deceptive. We're told that the attempt to sink the gunboat at the end of The African Queen was originally scripted to fail.

John Huston made plenty of box office flops, yet rarely a dull picture. While other great directors struggled to stay working in the new Hollywood of the 1970s, Huston adapted to new forms. His first artistic triumph of the Director's Decade is Fat City, a fascinating portrait of a core Huston loser, a washed-up prizefighter who gives the game another try. Critically applauded but passed over at the box office, Fat City can boast a terrific cast headed by Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges, and featuring a startlingly original performance by Susan Tyrell.

Writer Leonard Gardner adapted his own novel for the screen. Broken-down boxer Tully (Stacy Keach) supports his liquor habit by picking crops with the migrant workers near Stockton, California. Meeting Ernie (Jeff Bridges), an enthusiastic novice boxer with potential, Tully is inspired to try the ring again. Both fighters are represented by manager Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto), a lover of the sport who can't seem to choose a winner -- all of his hopefuls keep getting pummeled. Ernie decides to persevere despite the misgivings of his sweet girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark), even after his nose is flattened in his very first fight. Meanwhile, Tully begins a relationship with the slovenly Oma (Susan Tyrell), a garrulous, argumentative alcoholic with a voice that could peel paint. Oma takes him in while her regular man Earl (Curtis Cokes) is locked up in prison. Ruben manages to get Tully a fight with a contender from Panama named Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez). Can Tully withstand Oma's emotional onslaught, and stay sober long enough to fight?

Huston adapts ably to the new character-oriented rhythms of '70s filmmaking. His opening sequence establishes the economic stagnation in Stockton as the unkempt and unwashed Tully ventures out of his dingy flat in search of a match to light his last cigarette. Tully is basically a good egg, a man with few grudges. He fell out of shape after being cut up by an opponent who may have hidden a razor in his boxing gloves. The booze took him the rest of the way to the bottom.

Unlike the semi-docu On the Bowery or Barbet Schroeder's inebriate's epic Barfly, Fat City doesn't condemn, mock or pity the drunks at "the bottom". Tully finds a new colleague in Ernie, and both boxers have a loyal friend in their manager. Ruben is not a particularly able boxing manager, as he tends to transmit his own nervousness to his clients. A hilarious pre-fight scene sees the young fighters desperately trying to psych themselves up for victory. But no manager cares more about "his boys" than Ruben. Post-fight, with every one of his crew bruised or bandaged, Ruben hands out the beers and assures his troupe that everything will be fine the next time.

Due to the punishment he's taken and his daily consumption of alcohol, Tully is just beginning to show signs of boxer's dementia. He continues to drink, whether training or picking crops in the intense heat of the fields. But the caustic Oma is even tougher on his overall morale. The woman either drowns Tully in overstated affection or lashes out with complaints and abuse. She's a total mess but our heart goes out to her anyway. The emotional whiplash has the normally unflappable Tully throwing temper tantrums of his own. Come the big fight with the pro from Panama, Ruben must rush to dry Tully out. He enters the ring exhausted and disoriented.

Gardner and Huston emphasize the loneliness and isolation of unsuccessful professionals. As it turns out the Panamanian boxer Lucero is in even worse condition than Tully. Something is wrong with his kidneys, as he urinates blood. The man walks slowly into the stadium, dignified but always alone; it's clear that he's just hoping to get his money and go home. Lucero's nose was broken long ago, and lies flattened to one side. The big match is between two pathetic pros on the verge of collapse.

Fat City was Jeff Bridges' follow-up film after his breakthrough in The Last Picture Show. He's already intensely likeable and self-assured as a decent, if not-too-bright young athlete. Ernie barely listens to Faye's hints about marriage; he's only capable of concentrating on one topic at a time. Candy Clark's Faye is a precursor to her marvelous performance in the next year's American Graffiti. It's clear that Faye will keep Ernie and make him happy. The amazing Susan Tyrell can't be blamed if the right parts didn't come along -- there simply aren't any more like her around. An utterly unregenerate character like Oma couldn't be properly portrayed in American movies until the retirement of the old Production Code. Had Hollywood remade the classic loser noir Detour in the early 1970s, Susan Tyrell would have been the ideal candidate to fill the shoes of Ann Savage as the ferocious Vera.

With the accomplished Conrad Hall as lighting cinematographer, Fat City's look is raw and naturalistic, yet never distractingly crude. Street and bar scenes are filmed from static setups but the camera moves fluidly during the fight action. Proving that a choice film assignment heals all relationships in Hollywood, Huston's supervising editor is Margaret Booth, formerly Louis B. Mayer's editorial czar. According to Lillian Ross, Booth presided over the dismembering of Huston's The Red Badge of Courage twenty-one years before. Booth spent a long career enforcing the requirement that all MGM pictures conform to dull house conventions of continuity cutting. Interestingly, she does quite well with the relaxed, sometimes purposely slack pace of Huston's character-driven mini-masterpiece.

Sony Pictures Choice Collection's DVD-R of Fat City is a fine encoding of one of John Huston's least-known gems. Color and sound are quite good. The song Help Me Make it Through the Night, sung by Kris Kristofferson, is heard over the title sequence.

The plain-wrap presentation plays the feature directly upon loading the disc and will recycle it until stopped. Sony released a now out-of-print standard DVD of this show ten years ago. The old disc's one advantage is that it has removable English subtitles. As with so many studio library releases today, "no frills" formatting gives hearing-impaired viewers less and less access to the old movies they love.

For more information about Fat City, visit Sony Pictures. To order Fat City, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson

Originally released as The Emperor of Peru and then retitled Odyssey of the Pacific, the surrealist tale of childhood Treasure Train (1982) belongs in a category all of its own, somewhere between children's fable and magical realist head trip.

Made by a contemporary of the notorious Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, 1973, El Topp, 1970), Spanish director Fernando Arrabal (The Guernica Tree, 1975) was a co-founder of the avant-garde performance art group the Panic Movement with Jodorowsky, and a prolific playwright, poet, novelist and director who worked with renowned 20th century creatives from Pop artist Andy Warhol to Surrealist Andre Breton.

A French-Canadian co-production, Treasure Train is a sputtering adventure tale of two siblings Toby (Jonathan Starr) and Liz (Anick) and their pet duck Federico. The brother and sister are visiting the beautiful country estate of their Aunt Elsa (Monique Mercure) and Uncle Alex (Jean-Louis Roux). They are joined in their childhood adventures by a Cambodian refugee Hoang (Ky Huot Uk) who will stay with the family until adoptive parents can be found. Each day the three children bicycle into the forest where they explore and conjure up elaborate make-believe. Toby's fantasy life is especially intense. In surreal flights of fantasy the little boy imagines himself as a race care driver, an astronaut and a potent rescuer of damsels in distress. Playing the resident female killjoy Liz chafes in irritation at her daydreamy little brother. But she also can't help being drawn into the relentless questing and fantasy life of the other children.

While Toby daydreams about a man-sized virility, Hoang flashes back to moments with his beloved mother in war-torn Cambodia. He longs to return to Cambodia and see her. In an Oedipal expression of his yearning, Hoang hopes to marry his mother, and the other children support him in that mission. A strain of darkness occasionally pops through this otherwise whimsical tale, both in the specter of the Khmer Rouge genocide referenced in Hoang's story but also in the sudden, violet tantrums that overtake Uncle Alex when the children misbehave. In one strange moment Uncle Alex hurls shaving cream at Toby in a fit of anger when the boy comes home dirty and covered in coal dust. It's one of several strange, non-sequitur fits of adult rage that add to Treasure Train's odd tone.

But the children's biggest adventure comes when they discover a grizzled old train engineer (Mickey Rooney) who refers to himself as the Emperor of Peru, living out in the forest in a train caboose converted into a home. Confined to an ornate, steam punk- style wheelchair, the Emperor is a mixture of adult menace and child-like whimsy who often joins the children in their imaginative play-acting. When the children find an enormous locomotive nearby, together they and the Engineer work to restore it to its former glory. Liz hopes to use the train to spirit Hoang back to Cambodia where he will be reunited with his mother, though history tells us that the Khmer Rouge have most likely already killed the boy's parents. The children struggle to get the train operational even as a pair of policemen threaten to roust the Emperor from his woodsy lair and haul him away to the old folk's home.

There are touches of the Felliniesque as when a traveling trio of tight-walking pierrots turn up in the forest. What might have been imagined as winsome and magical in moments such as this, instead often feels creaky and top-heavy with adult themes, such as Hoang's separation from his mother, who he believes is still in Cambodia waiting for her husband to be freed from a concentration camp. In many ways Treasure Train recalls the similarly strange, inventive mixture of doom and comedy in that other surreal kiddie chestnut, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

Ultimately fixing on the title Treasure Train was undoubtedly a way to lure child viewers. But the film exists in a strange limbo, not quite convincing as the kind of film small children would enjoy, but too plodding and, potentially, too surreal for many adults.

To order Treasure Train, go to TCM Shopping.

by Felicia Feaster

Mondo Macabro's box copy puts William Rose's The Girl in Room 2A (1974) in the sadistic, no-holds-barred company of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) - point taken, but really it's closer kin to Paul Bartel's Private Parts (1972), Pete Walker's The House of Whipcord (1974) and Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's La Residencia (aka The House That Screamed, 1969) in its chilling chronicle of an innocent young woman (former Miss Italy Daniela Giordano) whose stay in a Rome boarding house is complicated by weird apparitions, strange neighbors, disturbing dreams, madness, and murder. American sexploitation practitioner Rose teamed up with expatriate writer-producer Dick Randall (Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, 1974) for this garish and often gory putanesca, which favors spectacle and sensation over plot schematics. We never get a handle on why it is deemed necessary to drive parolee Margaret Bradley (who has been released from two weeks in a women's lock-up over dodgy drug charges that bring to mind the William Berger case of 1970) if the ultimate goal is simply to killer her as part of a Sadean ritual but The Girl in Room 2A is clearly less about the destination than it is the journey.

The film's biggest name for American viewers will likely be Raf Vallone, a stocky and ruggedly handsome leading man of postwar Italian cinema who enjoyed a midlife career in such international productions as El Cid (1961), The Cardinal (1965), and The Italian Job (1969). Here, Vallone plays the disconcertingly jocund Mr. Dreese, who turns up like the proverbial bad penny as Margaret attempts to understand such queer portents as a weeping bloodstain on the floor of her room that returns no matter how many times she scrubs it away. When Margaret makes the acquaintance of American Jack Whitman (John Scanlon), whose sister once occupied Margaret's room and who is presumed (though we know better) to have taken her own life, The Girl in Room 2A inclines toward the territory of Armando Crispino's Macchie solare (Autopsy, 1973), which similarly hung on the plot point of murders camouflaged as suicides. Though it may not amount to much, The Girl in Room 2A is a diverting psychothriller, enlivened by the participation of Giovanna Galletti (from Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill, 1966), Karin Schubert (Bluebeard, 1972), Brad Harris (The Fury of Hercules, 1962) and Rosalba Neri (Lady Frankenstein, 1971) in small but pivotal roles. Berto Pisano's score is enchanting and intoxicating until it does off the reservation in the film's third act.

Mondo Macabro's all-region DVD of The Girl in Room 2A is another stunner in a rich catalog of vintage reclamations by the Britain-based outfit. Letterboxed at 1.66:1 (and anamorphically-enhanced), the image is clean and intensely colorful, with especially (and appropriately) eye-popping reds and deeply satisfying black levels. The 2.0 mono soundtrack is offered in English and Italian, although the English soundtrack is supplemented by (optional) translated Italian for those scenes cut for the film's US release by distributor Joseph Brenner. (These scenes amount to very little and probably should have been left out of this release, as they really only repeat information we already have or prolong moods that do not require sustaining.) Though Mondo boasts an uncut and uncensored transfer, alternate footage glimpsed in a supplemental theatrical trailer reveals that Schubert's death scene was filmed both clothed and unclothed - it's the clothed variant available here. Though this discrepancy does not reflect censorship, Eurocult purists beware. Also included among the extras are an 11 minute interview with leading lady Giordano, talent bios, and informative production notes that fill in a few blanks in the biography of the elusive William Rose.

For more information about The Girl in Room 2A, visit Mondo Macabro.

by Richard Harland Smith

Lester March (Jerry Lewis) is a television repairman who is also crazy about detective novels. In a story that could be pulled from one of those dime store mysteries, Lester finds himself trapped in a loopy conspiracy when he discovers he is the heir to a massive fortune in the Frank Tashlin comedy It's Only Money (1962).

A television news report announces the death of a local millionaire inventor. Unless his long-ago vanished son can be located, his millions will go to his sister, the effervescently silly Cecilia Albright (Mae Questel). Cecilia is engaged to smarmy, suntanned lawyer Gregory DeWitt (Zachary Scott) who has agreed to marry Cecilia in the nefarious hope of gaining access to her fortune. Also on the hunt for the fortune's heir, is private eye Pete Flint (Jesse White). Pete teams up with Lester -- who has just repaired Pete's TV, naturally -- to find the missing heir, who turns out to be Lester himself. Complications ensue when Gregory and his butler accomplice Leopold (Jack Weston) first get a glimpse of Lester on the grounds of the Albright mansion and decide to do away with him, thus ensuring the fortune stays in their hands.

Director Frank Tashlin and star Jerry Lewis paired up for a total of eight films. Some of the classic features of the Lewis and Tashlin team-ups are present here, including the inexplicable animal attraction Lewis's nebbish characters seem to always inspire in women. Lester, the humble, bumbling television repairman is aggressively pursued by Cecilia's personal, va-va-voom nurse Wanda Paxton (Joan O'Brien). Audiences are left to wonder if Wanda's interest in Lester is purely physical, or more motivated by his money bags.

But Wanda isn't the only one pursuing Lester. Lester also has a series of comical run-ins with mechanical devices. At various points in It's Only Money Lester is pursued by the automatic vacuum cleaners that patrol the Albright mansion environs. He is also set-upon by a vicious group of automatic lawn mowers with lacerating teeth who launch a borderline nightmarish attack on Lester in one of It's Only Money's most uniquely funny and disturbing moments.

Much of the comic meat of It's Only Money are Road Runner-style comic bits (Tashlin, after all, got his start in cartoons) where the murderously blood-thirsty butler Leopold concocts new ways to murder Lester. Exploding boats, runaway cars, threats of decapitation are all foiled by Lester who escapes more via dumb luck than anything attributable to wit or resourcefulness.

It's Only Money was the second Frank Tashlin film in which Lewis played a hapless television repair man, a profession that offered Lewis the chance to wrangle enormous, unwieldy, delicate hunks of metal and also afforded a degree of self-referentiality about TV and movie show-biz. Though certainly not the best collaboration in the Lewis and Tashlin pairing, It's Only Money has some charming moments. As the deliriously clueless potential heiress, Mae Questel (who voiced both the Betty Boop and Olive Oyl cartoon characters) lends her own brand of slapstick comedy to the proceedings. Zachary Scott is also memorable in his role as a money-obsessed creep. Dusting off the oily cad Monte Beragon he played in the iconic Mildred Pierce (1945) Scott maintains an attitude of nonchalant despicableness and amused contempt that nicely offsets Questel's lunacy.

For fans of the Tashlin and Lewis oeuvre, It's Only Money is certainly required viewing. All others will have to decide how many pratfalls, sight gags and absurdity they can stomach.

For more information about It's Only Money, visit Olive Films. To order It's Only Money, go to TCM Shopping.

by Felicia Feaster