Now Playing: APRIL 18, 1962

Cleosploitation spreads to St. Joseph, MO:

I notice this is the same double-feature playing in one of the theaters (in Miami to be exact) where we first noticed this phenomenon last week. The films are from two different studios -- Cat from M-G-M, Bramble Bush from Warner Bros. -- so I don't know what arrangements would have to be made to pair them as a package for exhibitors. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe someone read in Variety that this particular combination did well somewhere. Let's see if they show up together again.

On the first-run front, here's one of the year's big pictures opening in Spokane WA:

I find it interesting that they had to include the little snippet of Lee Marvin identifying him as the title victim. It's as if they didn't want audiences to worry that Wayne and Stewart might shoot each other. In any event, here's the trailer, uploaded by TheMovieSceneUK.



In the second feature, two expatriate American planters annihilate guerrillas in an unidentified country in Southeast Asia. Any guesses? Brushfire was the directorial debut of one Jack Warner Jr. The fact that the film was a Paramount rather than a Warner Bros. release may be telling. In any event, young Warner never made another film.

In Schenectady NY, former western specialist Delmer Daves is back with another youth-oriented romance, continuing his streak since A Summer Place:

And here's the trailer, uploaded by TheViewMonster.


The Red Cloak sounds more up my alley. This "slashing drama" is a 1955 Italian movie that targeted the U.S. market with token Americans Bruce Cabot and Patricia Medina. The director, Giuseppe Maria Scotese, has such promising-sounding items in his filmography as Il lungo giorno della violenza and Acid -- delirio dei sensi. A subject for future study, perhaps.

Eugene OR welcomes "that team" of Jim Hutton and Paula Prentiss for another cinematic pairing.

It was their fourth outing together in the last 16 months, the third since Where the Boys Are. Apparently the teaming had something to do with both performers' height, Hutton being the only young actor who looked sufficiently tall next to the 5' 10" Prentiss. But if Hutton and Prentiss are teamed for the youth market, Jane Wyman and Clifton Webb would seem aimed at the opposite demographic. They still believed in the general audience back then.