Hot Date with Dan and Vicky

Hitchcock's second to final British film before he returned to the UK in 1972 to make Frenzy, The Lady Vanishes broke UK box office records to become the highest grossing British film to date.  It was also the first and last time Hitchcock worked with leading man Michael Redgrave.  As this was Redgrave's first feature, the renowned theater actor insisted on rehearsing scenes while Hitchcock prefer...

In 1954, Japanese film production company Toho was looking to cash in on the monster movie mania inspired by the American film Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  They conceived of Godzilla, named Gojira locally, as a way to announce the power and independence of the Japanese film industry post World War II but also as a metaphor for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American weapons of war.  T...

Elia Kazan had meant to direct Tennessee Williams' original screenplay, Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, with Julie Harris as his leading lady back in 1957.  But Kazan dropped the project and it wouldn't become a film until character actress Jodie Markell secured the rights and directed the film in 2007 with Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans, Ann-Margret and Ellen Burstyn starring.   Dan and Vicky discu...

Hot Date 60 will be music to your ears -- movie music that is.  Dan and Vicky offer their top ten lists for favorite movie soundtracks and scores.  A misunderstanding about the topic yielded some fascinating results -- Dan did mostly movie scores and Vicky mainly stuck to movie soundtracks.  There are even some movie musicals thrown in for good measure.  No titles revealed in this synopsis so it's...

Censored and banned around the world for it's frank depiction of the anonymous sexual relationship between a middle age hotel owner and a 19 year old actress, Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris nonetheless went on to gross nearly 100 million dollars and return tarnished star Marlon Brando to the top of the list of the world's greatest actors.  His co-star Maria Schneider however was not as...

Emily Watson had never acted for the camera before her career making and Oscar nominated turn in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.  The 1996 film was the first film von Trier made after founding the film movement Dogma 95 which set down specific rules for any film created under the banner - namely, no filming on built sets, no use of post-dubbed music and no CGI.  With Breaking the Waves, von T...

An all star cast populates the tiny fictional island of Gloucester Island, MA in 1966's The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.  Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, Eve Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith, Theodore Bikel and John Phillip Law appear in the Cold War comedy, actually shot in Northern California.   Along with a discussion of this madcap caper, Dan and Vicky, coming to you from W...

Snapped up by Roadside Attractions at the Sundance Film Festival for 3 million dollars in 2006, director/writer Chris Gorak's first film and passion project Right At Your Door only managed to make it into 20 venues it's opening weekend.  It would eventually deliver more than 2 million dollars in sales worldwide, enough to get him hired on the bigger budget science fiction/horror movie The Darkest...

Since the publication of Malcolm Lowry's novel Under The Volcano in 1947, Hollywood had tried in vain to adapt it for the big screen.  Artists as varied as Joseph Losey, Luis Bunuel and Ken Russell attempted to corral the novel's stream of consciousness structure and penchant for flashbacks and monologues into an accessible narrative thread.  When the property landed on John Huston's desk, his car...

Prolific Polish American director Rudolph Mate found early success in Hollywood as an acclaimed cinematographer.  For five consecutive years, from 1940-44, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.  Starting in 1950, he directed 26 films before his death in 1966, including well regarded films like D.O.A., When Worlds Collide, The Far Horizons, The 300 Spartans and this podcas...

By the time the script for Soldier landed with star Kurt Russell it had been kicking around Hollywood for almost 15 years.  Russell, testing his status as a reliable and likable lead actor, asked for a reported 20 million dollars and a year to get in shape for the role. He was granted both.  By all accounts, Russell earned his salary -- he spent 3 to 4 hours a day in the gym, completed most of his...

Movie producer Charles K. Feldman (A Streetcar Named Desire, What's New Pussycat?) was in a bind with the rights to the first James Bond novel, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale.  Albert Broccoli, Howard Saltzman and Eon Productions had beat him to the punch, releasing four successful Bond films with star Sean Connery, and using many of Casino Royale's best set pieces.  Feldman felt the only feasible wa...

Humphrey Bogart, on loan from his home studio of Warner Brothers, would often show up to the set of Columbia's 1943's war film Sahara hung over and ready for battle -- both on and off camera.  He was known to mix it up with Hungarian director Zoltan Korda, continually fighting over his character's dialogue.  Bruce Bennett, who played Waco in the film, later told Korda that Bogart was using the con...

What do a killer whale, Lucy Lui, rampaging trucks and crystal skulls have in common?  They all appear in the films on our Hot Date top ten lists.  For our milestone 50th episode we're giving some love to movies that were box office flops, hated by critics, had troubled production histories or suffered from all of the above.  A lot of people think these movies are stinkers but we're bringing them...

Australian director Russell Mulcahy had only one previous narrative film credit on his resume, 1985's Razorback, when he landed the gig directing future cult classic Highlander.  Razorback's atmosphere and muscularity and Mulcahy's experience with vivid short form filmmaking directing scores of music videos for the likes of Duran Duran, Elton John, Def Leppard and Human League, both played into hi...

John Frankenheimer took over directing duties from William Friedkin for the sequel to the Oscar-winning 1971 film The French Connection.  He got a reluctant Gene Hackman to return to star as New York City police officer Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle as well as Spanish actor Fernando Rey, the French connection himself.  Shooting took place entirely in Marseilles, France.   Dan and Vicky cover this prestige...

Alfred Hitchcock ushered in the advent of film sound with 1929's Blackmail, which became England's first talkie.  British producers, concerned they were lagging behind the Americans, who were already experimenting with sound in their films, convinced Hitchcock to film silent and talkie versions of Blackmail.   Blackmail is the second Hitchcock film discussed on Hot Date after 1948's Rope and our f...

It was an arms race at the 1964 box office between Fail Safe and the similarly themed Dr. Strangelove.  Stanley Kubrick pressured Columbia Pictures, the studio that owned both films, to release his film first.  As a result, Fail Safe, while critically  lauded, suffered under the indifference of a paying audience who thought they had already seen the definitive Cold War movie with Strangelove.  Lit...

Michael Almereyda's Cymbeline from 2015 was his second Shakespeare adaptation and his second time working with actor Ethan Hawke.  Hawke played the melancholy Dane in Almereyda's Hamlet from 2000. Here he plays the scheming sexual predator Iachimo and joins Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, Dakota Johnson, John Leguizamo, Delroy Lindo and Anton Yelchin in the star-studded cast.   Dan and Vicky take on th...

Director Jeff Balsmeyer was an American film storyboard artist itching to make his writing and directing debut.  His passion project was Danny Deckchair, a romantic comedy based on the real life adventure of California dreamer Larry Walters who tied helium balloons to a lawn chair to lift off into the sky over Long Beach in 1982.  After ten years of shopping the idea around and having recently mar...

Director John Ford hadn't seen the film Red Dust when he agreed to direct its 1953 remake Mogambo but was intrigued by the challenge of bringing his skills with filming the wide open spaces of the American West to the African serengeti.  For his male lead he chose Clark Gable, in desperate need of a hit in his middle age. Ava Gardner, who brought along contentious boyfriend Frank Sinatra to the Af...

With only a few documentaries and short films on his resume, Francesco Barilli embarked on his first narrative feature, Perfume of the Lady in Black in 1973 Italy. The film was inspired by research Barilli had been doing on voodoo rituals and cannibalism and had less in common with the traditional stalk and slash giallos Italy was pumping out at the time.  He enlisted American expat Mimsy Farmer,...

Released in Ireland in 1997 and here in the US a year later, I Went Down was one of the most successful Irish films of the year.  It's story, about low rent Dublin mobsters trading barbs and gunfire, was a departure from the more serious IRA films being produced at the time.  It has a star making turn from Brendan Gleeson, on the verge of breaking big in the worldwide box office with The General,...

For Episode 40, Dan and Vicky pick their favorite scary, shocking, sad, even funny death scenes from non-horror movies.  There are some classics thrown in the mix and some you wouldn't expect so get that Kleenex ready.  Filmmakers as varied as Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Brooks, John Carpenter and Werner Herzog get the spotlight.  Dan and Vicky even provide a few honorable mentions that didn't make...

We talk Odd Man Out, the classic 1947 British thriller from Third Man director Carol Reed.  It stars James Mason as Johnny McQueen, the leader of an Irish revolutionary group who ends up running for his life after a botched robbery attempt.  His love interest is played by Kathleen Ryan and the eccentric artist he runs into on his journey is Robert Newton.  There's Hot Date talk of Irish accents, r...