Haruo Nakajima is perhaps Japan’s most famous actor, but you wouldn’t necessarily recognize his face. That’s because from 1954 to 1972, he was the man inside the Godzilla costume for 12 consecutive films. At 87 years old, many now consider Nakajima among the most iconic suit actors in film history. We caught up with the legend who gave life to the “King of the Monsters” to find out how he took on the challenge in the original groundbreaking movie.
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 dystopian novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on an uninhabited island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 68 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–1999. The novel is a reaction to the youth novel The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding’s first novel. Although it was not a great success at the time—selling fewer than 3,000 copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print—it soon went on to become a best-seller. It has been adapted to film twice in English, in 1963 byPeter Brook and 1990 by Harry Hook, and once in Filipino (1976).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
Lord of the Flies is a 1963 British film adaptation of William Golding's novel of the same name. It was directed by Peter Brook and produced by Lewis M. Allen. The film was in production for much of 1961 though the film was not released until 1963. Golding himself supported the film. When Kenneth Tynan was a script editor for Ealing Studios he commissioned a script of Lord of the Flies from Nigel Kneale, but Ealing Studios closed in 1959 before it could be produced.
The film is generally more faithful to the novel than the 1990 adaptation.
Plot
A group of British schoolboys, living in the midst of a war, are evacuated from England. Their airliner is shot down by briefly glimpsed fighter planes and ditches near a remote island.
The main character Ralph is seen walking through a tropical forest. He meets an intelligent and chubby boy, who reveals his school nickname was Piggy, but asks that Ralph not repeat that. The two go to the beach where they find a conch shell which Ralph blows to rally the other survivors. As they emerge from the jungle it becomes clear that no adults have escaped the crash. Singing is heard and a small column of school choir boys, wearing dark cloaks and hats, appearing to be walking in pairs, led by a boy named Jack.
The boys decide to appoint a chief. The vote goes to Ralph, and not Jack. Initially Ralph is able to steer the children (all of whom appear to be aged between about six and fourteen) towards a reasonably civilized and co-operative society. Only boys holding the conch are allowed to speak during meetings or "assemblies". The choir boys make wooden spears, further reinforcing their appearance as warriors within the group. Crucially Jack has a knife, capable of killing an animal.
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The boys build shelters and start a fire using Piggy's glasses. With no rescue in sight, the increasingly authoritarian and violence-prone Jack starts hunting and eventually finds a pig. Meanwhile, the fire, for which he and his "hunters" are responsible, goes out, keeping them hidden from a passing airplane. Piggy chastises Jack, and Jack strikes him in retaliation, knocking his glasses off, and breaking one lens on the rocks. Ralph is furious with Jack. Soon some of the children begin to talk of a beast that comes from the water. Jack, obsessed with this imagined threat, leaves the group to start a new tribe, one without rules, where the boys play and hunt all day. Soon, more follow until only a few, including Piggy, are left with Ralph.
Events reach a crisis when a boy named Simon finds a sow's head impaled on a stick, left by Jack as an offering to the Beast. He becomes hypnotized by the head, which has flies swarming all around it. Simon goes to what he believes to be the nest of the Beast and finds a dead pilot under a hanging parachute. Simon runs to Jack's camp to tell them the truth, only to be killed in the darkness by the frenzied children who mistake him for the Beast. After this, Piggy explains a series of rationalizations and denials that parallel directly the Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the "five stages of grief". The hunters raid the old group's camp and steals Piggy's glasses. Ralph goes to talk to the new group using the still-present power of the conch to get their attention. However when Piggy takes the conch, they are not silent (as their rules require) but instead jeer. Roger, the cruel torturer and executioner of the tribe, pushes a boulder off a cliff and kills Piggy.
Ralph hides in the jungle. Jack and his hunters set fires to smoke him out, and Ralph staggers across the smoke-covered island. Stumbling onto the beach, Ralph falls at the feet of a naval officer who stares in shock at the painted and spear-carrying savages that the children have become, before turning to his accompanying landing party. A small boy tries to tell the officer his name but cannot remember it. The last scene shows Ralph weeping as flames spread across the island.
The film involved some of the top moviemaking professionals of the time and is considered a classic.
Major contributors included Hollywood stuntmanYakima Canutt, who, as second-unit director, shot most of the action scenes; British stuntman Alf Joint, who doubled for Burton in such sequences as the fight on top of the cable car; award-winning conductor and composer Ron Goodwin, who wrote the film score, and future Oscar-nomineeArthur Ibbetson, who worked on its cinematography. The film is noted for the phrase Broadsword calling Danny Boy, used by Richard Burton several times throughout.
Plot
In the winter of 1943-44, U.S. ArmyBrigadier General George Carnaby (Robert Beatty), a chief planner of the second front, is captured by the Germans when his aircraft is shot down en route to Crete. He is taken for interrogation to the Schloss Adler, a fortress high in the Alps of southern Bavaria. A team of commandos, led by Major John Smith (Richard Burton) and U.S. Army RangerLieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), is briefed by ColonelTurner (Patrick Wymark) and Admiral Rolland (Michael Hordern) of MI6. Their mission is to parachute in, infiltrate the castle, and rescue General Carnaby before the Germans can interrogate him. MI6 Agent Mary Elison (Mary Ure) accompanies the mission in secret, her presence known only to Major Smith.
Early in the mission, the two NCOs, MacPherson (Neil McCarthy) and radio operator Harrod (Brook Williams), are mysteriously killed; but Major Smith is unperturbed, keeping Lt. Schaffer as a close ally and secretly updating Rolland and Turner on developments by radio. After seeming to give up and allowing themselves to be captured, Maj. Smith and Schaffer, being officers, are separated from the three remaining members of the group — Thomas (William Squire), Berkeley (Peter Barkworth) and Christiansen (Donald Houston). Smith and Schaffer kill their captors; blow up a supply depot, and prepare an escape route for later use before hitching a ride on a cable car—the only approach to the castle. Mary, posing as a maid, had been brought into the castle by Heidi (Ingrid Pitt), a deep-cover MI6 agent working as a barmaid in the nearby village; Major von Hapen (Derren Nesbitt), a Gestapo officer whom Heidi has been cultivating, becomes infatuated with her. Mary helps Schaffer and Smith to climb up a rope and in through a window overlooking the castle's cable car station.
Carnaby's interrogation, carried out by General Rosemeyer (Ferdy Mayne) and Colonel Kramer (Anton Diffring), is underway when the three NCOs arrive and reveal themselves to be German double agents. Smith and Schaffer intrude, but Smith then forces Schaffer to disarm and establishes himself as Major Johann Schmidt of the SD, the intelligence branch of the SS. He exposes the true identity of "General Carnaby" — that of Cartwright Jones, an AmericanCorporal. He also claims that Thomas, Berkeley and Christiansen are British impostors. To test them, Smith/Schmidt proposes they write down the names of their fellow agents/conspirators in Britain, to be compared to the personal list in his pocket (having discreetly divulged the name of Germany's top agent in Britain to Kramer, who silently affirms it). After the three finish their lists, Smith reveals his own to Kramer, which is in fact blank. When Kramer realises he has been bluffed, Smith and Schaffer re-secure the room, the former finally revealing the mission's true objective: to uncover the identities of German spies operating in Britain.
Meanwhile, Mary, while preparing the explosives, is visited by von Hapen. He takes her to the castle's cafe and persuades her to recite the tale of her assumed identity. Finding faults in her story, he investigates and happens upon the meeting over Carnaby's interrogation just as Smith finishes his explanation. Von Hapen puts the room under arrest, but is distracted by Smith crossing between himself and Schaffer, enabling Schaffer to draw his silenced side arm and kill him and the other German officers. The group then escapes with Thomas, Berkeley and Christiansen as prisoners. Schaffer sets explosives to create diversions around the compound, while Smith leads the group to the radio room, where he informs Rolland of their success. They then battle their way to the cable car station, sacrificing Thomas as a decoy. Berkeley and Christiansen attempt their own escape in a cable car, but Smith, after a roof-top fight with its passengers, destroys the car with an explosive, hurling himself onto a returning cable car and subsequently riding back down with the others. They abandon the car mid-descent to avoid a party of armed Germans and to reunite with Heidi, boarding the bus they had prepared earlier as their escape vehicle. With enemy soldiers in hot pursuit, they wreak havoc by exploding booby traps on the road to thwart the pursuers and finally escape on a disguised extraction plane, where Col. Turner is waiting for them.
Smith briefs Turner on the mission and confirms a suspicion he and Rolland had shared since before the start: that Turner is the Nazi's top agent in Britain, whose name the late Colonel Kramer had agreed to before. Turner had been lured into participating so MI6 could expose him, with Smith's trusted partner Mary and the American Schaffer, who had no connection to MI6, specially assigned to the team to ensure the mission's success. Turner intends to shoot Smith with a STEN Gun given to him by Rolland, only to be told by Smith that the firing pin had been previously removed. Deciding to save face, Turner is permitted by Smith to commit suicide by jumping out of the plane without a parachute.
The film draws many plot elements from the novel, including Japanese gathering intelligence from the submarine's trash. One key difference is that the novel places Richardson ashore recovering from a broken leg and working on the torpedo exploder problem when Bledsoe dies in the sinking of USS Walrus, Richardson's first command.
In the novel, the conflict between Richardson and Bledsoe begins while they are reconditioning the old USS S-16 (SS-121) in the Naval Submarine Base New London. In the novel, the mutinous attitudes of the crew are an extension of Bledsoe's earlier rebelliousness, while the film provides them with no comparable context. The film adds an action sequence in which Richardson commands his boat through a wild night of surface action against a Japanese convoy.
At Gable's insistence, the film has Richardson taken seriously ill before being relieved of command so Gable would not be perceived as playing a less than dominant character.
In the film, the Eel does not ram the Japanese lifeboats. The US Navy, which helped with the film's production, may have been concerned with reviving memories of a 1943 incident in which Dudley W. Morton was accused of shooting into lifeboats while commanding Wahoo.The Novel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Silent,_Run_Deep
Bosley Crowther, writing in the New York Times, called it "a straight tale of undersea adventure, all-male and all-submarine ... [that] has the hard, cold ring of truth", with "dangerous adventures are severely, nail-bitingly tense" until "the ultimate showdown ... that keeps one forward on the chair." To the extent that the events depicted might appear hard to believe, he cited the credentials of the novel's author and noted that "they look more like the real thing in good old black-and-white." In addition to Gable and Lancaster playing the leads, the film also features Jack Warden as well as the film debut ofDon Rickles. Robert Wise directed.
Beach did not think highly of the film. He later said that the film company bought only the title and was not interested in producing an accurate depiction of the theme and plot of his novel.[citation needed]
Plot
The World War IIU.S. Navysubmarinecommander P.J. Richardson (Clark Gable) has an obsession with the Japanesedestroyer that has sunk three boats in the Bungo Straits, including his previous command. He persuades the Navy Board to give him a new submarine command with the provision that his executive officer, also known as the XO or the "exec", be someone who has just returned from active sea patrol. He single-mindedly trains the crew of his new boat, the USS Nerka, to return to the Bungo Straits and sink the destroyer, captained by a crafty ex-submariner nicknamed Bungo Pete. Richardson's executive officer, Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster), is worried about the safety of his boat and his crew. Bledsoe is also seething with resentment at Richardson and the Navy leadership for denying him command of the Nerka, which he believes should have been his.
Richardson begins to drill the crew on a rapid bow shot, in which a submarine shoots at a destroyer moving in for the kill "down the throat" (i.e., at its bow coming head-on), which is normally considered a desperation shot due to the extremely narrow profile of the target. He then bypasses one target only to take on a Japanese destroyer using a bow shot. The crew is outraged as it discovers that Richardson is avoiding legitimate targets in order to enter the Bungo Straits undetected in direct contradiction to his mission orders. Soon after engaging Bungo Pete, they are attacked by aircraft that had been alerted to their presence and waiting in ambush. The submarine is forced to dive and barely escapes destruction from depth charges. Three of the crew are killed, and Richardson suffers an incapacitating skull fracture. The submarine also narrowly escapes what the crew mistakenly believes to be one of their own torpedoes doubling back on them. By sending up blankets, equipment, and the bodies of the dead, they convince the Japanese that the submarine has been sunk. Bledsoe uses Richardson's incapacitation to assume command and set course for Pearl Harbor.
While listening to Tokyo Rose proclaiming the sinking of their boat, the crew is mystified that the Japanese are able to identify several of them by name. Bledsoe realizes that the Japanese have been analyzing their trash and decides to turn that to his advantage. Since the Japanese believe the Nerka has been sunk and the Nerka will not give away its presence by jettisoning trash, he returns to the Bungo Straits to fight the Akikaze destroyer, which the submarine defeats only to be subjected again to a mystery torpedo. Richardson deduces that it was not the Akikaze alone which had been destroying U.S. submarines but a Japanese submarine working in concert with the destroyer. He orders the boat into a dive just seconds before a Japanese torpedo races by. The Nerka then forces its adversary to surface and destroys it, achieving the revenge that was Richardson's personal mission. Richardson dies from his head injury and is buried at sea.
One critic later summarized the plot after it had been replicated in other submarine films:
[T]he Executive Officer hates the Skipper and smolders valiantly in that compressed environment with the tacit complicity of the crew until the Old Man just plain old blows his stack and then we have a shouting match and, as is the way with guys, things get better and we outwit the [you supply it] luring there beyond in the somber depths to sail home at last....
This four and a half minute video uploaded by YouTuber Mat Bergman celebrates the life’s work of legendary visual effects man Ray Harryhausen who has sadly died at the grand old age of 92. His work influenced generations of creative film guys and the one that’s probably etched in your mind most vividly is the seven skeletons coming to life in Jason and the Argonauts or Medusa turning men to stone in Clash Of The Titans. Classic stuff.
This creature list compilation features every one of Harryhausen’s animated creatures made for feature films, presented in chronological order. Feast your eyes.
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