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Film:\u00a0Excellent<\/p>\nFilm:\u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n
Transfer:\u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n
Extras: Excellent<\/p>\n
Label: Twilight Time<\/p>\n
Region: All<\/p>\n
Released:\u00a0May 16, 2017<\/p>\n
Genre: Film Noir\u00a0\/ Desert Noir \/ 3D<\/p>\n
Synopsis: A wealthy man is left to die in the desert by his evil wife and her filthy lover!<\/p>\n
Special Features: Audio Commentary by film historian Alan K. Rode with Robert Ryan’s daughter Kisa Ryan\u00a0\/ Isolated Stereo Music Track \/ 2009 making-of featurette: “A New Dimension of Noir – filming Inferno in 3D” (X) \/ Theatrical Trailer for 2D release \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a> and www.twilighttimemovies.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Review:<\/p>\n Around 1952, Twentieth Century-Fox imported British director Roy Ward Baker\u00a0to helm a series of taut thrillers, and alongside Don’t Bother to Knock<\/strong> (1952), Inferno<\/strong> (1953),\u00a0his last for the studio before his second British career phase, is among his best work, if not one of the better 3D films to have emerged during the format\u2019s brief craze during the fifties.<\/p>\n Like Alan Dwan\u2019s\u00a0River\u2019s Edge, The<\/a><\/strong> (1957), Inferno<\/strong> is both a \u2018colour\u2019 film noir and an entry in ‘desert noir,’ but Francis M. Cockrell\u2019s script doesn\u2019t emphasize the poisonous, illicit affair between the wife of an industrialist and one of his trusted assistants; the focus is almost exclusively on the rich man himself, left to bake alive in the desert.<\/p>\n Most of the narrative comes from the internal thoughts of Donald Whitley Carson III, a spoiled brat living off the benefits earned by his forefathers. Rendered stationary due to a broken leg, Carson (the great Robert Ryan) soon realizes neither his wife Geraldine (shapely Rhonda Fleming) nor assistant Joseph Duncan (William Lundigan) are coming back to transport him safely back to a hospital, so he goes into proactive mode, determined to show the scoundrels he can beat them at their own game by upping\u00a0the odds and coming back home alive and mete out some payback fort their utter betrayal.\u00a0Never mind that he’s never done any survival training; Carson’s up for any challenge, and a he’s realist who knows if he remains on a rocky peak any longer, he’ll become buzzard food after the heat, rattlesnakes, coyotes, or bugs have taken turns on him.<\/p>\n The flash cuts to the evil couple are both brief and perfunctory: although we learn they\u2019re merely selfish, screenwriter Ward uses their\u00a0short scenes to break up the extended desert sequences with Carson, as well as create a bit of cruel irony through counterpoint. While Carson thirsts for water, director Baker cuts to the couple by a swimming pool, indulging in iced drinks; and when Carson years for food, the couple chow down on prime, meaty protein with nonchalance, if not indifference.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a tribute to Ryan\u2019s stellar acting that he not only captures his character\u2019s small victories \u2013 fixing up a splint, accomplishing a successful protein kill, using his imagination to find water \u2013 but makes the cerebral narration work, since he\u2019s essentially reading Carson\u2019s thoughts from a printed page.<\/p>\n Cockrell\u2019s script is vintage noir, and a small work of genius in the way plot and characters are delivered with economy without taking anything away from Carson’s struggle to return to civilization. The film opens as his wife and lover are in the midst of placing evidence that’ll support their faux narrative of Carson having gone off on his own after a drinking binge and a dose of verbal abuse\u00a0As his struggle becomes the central focus, the illicit lovers only appear in short vignettes, adding some pitch black humour until Carson’s willpower might guarantee a rescue, causing the lovers to trek back and finish him off.<\/p>\n The separate confrontation between Carson and his wife & assistant occur in two sequences, although only the Duncan-Carson cabin fight is action-oriented, showing off the 3D effects with various objects tossed and tumbling about in what’s an uncharacteristically vicious (but realistic) battle between to desperate & enraged men. When Carson is reunited\u00a0with his cheating wife, it\u2019s beautifully understated; since we\u2019ve seen him to be a man of few words, it make sense his victory statement to Geraldine is simple and direct.<\/p>\n Baker\u2019s direction is quite taut, and he\u00a0applies\u00a0the 3D process with restraint, an\u00a0approach similar to Alfred Hitchcock’s application of 3D in\u00a0Dial M for Murder<\/a><\/strong> (1954), in which we’re generally sitting near the characters in their living room. Besides the more visually dynamic cabin fight, the sole 3D trickery in the first half is comprised of a dangling rattle snake and falling rocks, the latter recalling a similar scene in Universal’s\u00a0It Came from Outer Space<\/strong><\/a> (1953).<\/p>\n Paul Sawtell\u2019s score is generally reserved for the desert scenes, perhaps to enhance Carson\u2019s struggles under the heat, and adds sonic depth to the character\u2019s narration. At times the score recalls Leith Stevens\u2019 tonal\u00a0seesaw\u00a0motif in\u00a0Destination Moon<\/a> <\/strong>(1950), but it\u2019s an effective score that captures Carson\u2019s personal and physical struggles and important personal triumphs. Twilight Time’s managed to find stereo stems of the\u00a0previously unreleased score, and when the isolated music\u00a0track is pumped through even a basic 2.1 audio setup, the magical Fox studio orchestra booms with marvelous energy.<\/p>\n Although originally\u00a0released in stereophonic sound, the mixed soundtrack on TT’s Blu-ray is straight mono, which still sounds fine, but hearing the oomph of Sawtell’s music in stereo makes one wish the original mix might have survived, or a 2.1 mix could’ve been crafted. (A prior 3D version struck for either home video or a TV airing on a local Fox channel during the 1980s reportedly had a stereo mix, but the picture elements were\u00a0grainy, suffered from soft focus, and had heavy distortion from overheated audio levels. A Spanish Region 2 DVD also exists, sporting a flat version, as with Fox’s more recent MOD DVD-R.)<\/p>\n As recounted in the Blu-ray’s making-of featurette, Fox may have spend considerable money on a 3D film shot on location in the desert with their own custom-designed camera rig, but with the studio’s eye on CinemaScope, their interest in 3D was fleeting, resulting in just a trio of productions. Inferno<\/strong> was anything but derivative, and as the interviewed film historians seem to agree, when the process was applied to genres outside of gimmicky horror and sci-fi, the results were sometimes quite memorable. Nevertheless, in spite of Inferno<\/strong>‘s creative and technical charms, the film was released in 3D in just four cities; even the included trailer sells the film as a western Technicolor\u00a0shocker, completely de-emphasizing its noir content and contemporary setting, and utterly ignoring its roots in 3D.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Inferno! In Stereo! Technicolor! 3D!<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Inferno! In 3D… but no stereo… but still Technicolor!<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Inferno! In Technicolor! … and that’s it….<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n For their 2017 disc, TT managed to unearth an extra that was wholly mothballed for what\u00a0was reportedly crafted for an aborted Fox release. (Now, Fox did<\/em> release a gorgeous BR of The Robe<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0but a similar packaged special edition of The Egyptian<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0plus more 2009 extras were mothballed before they too debuted in North America via TT.)<\/p>\n I’m not sure if the commentary also stems from 2009, but Alan K. Rode’s analysis\u00a0is fairly steady – the recurring gaps are negligible – and Robert Ryan’s daughter Lisa Ryan is heard in an edited chunk of recollections rather that in tandem with Rode. Both fixate on the actor’s stellar reputation as a shy man who opened up on camera and played complex characters during his lengthy career. The lovefest for Ryan isn’t undeserved: his long visage, so-called small eyes, and striking lines added depth to troubled characters. His specialty was villains, reluctant heroes, flawed antiheroes, and psychos, but he was never dull and often transcended generic archetypes.<\/p>\n Rode offers many great anecdotes – the John Wayne segment during The Longest Day<\/strong> (1962) shoot is\u00a0one\u00a0of the best – plus bio sketches of Ryan’s\u00a0childhood, boxing in university, film debut, political activism, and founding of a school. Attention is also paid to director Baker, co-star Fleming, and Lundigan, whose marvelous voice kept him in radio as well as film.<\/p>\n If there’s any criticism among the extras, it’s a lack of info on the restoration, because not unlike Scent of Mystery<\/strong>\u00a0\/ aka Holiday in Spain<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(1960 \/ 1962), the surviving elements required special care. Inferno<\/strong> has a pastel colour scheme similar to\u00a0Hitchcock’s North by Northwest<\/strong> (1959), but there’s a sense some colours had faded somewhat\u00a0over the decades, and had Inferno<\/strong> not been restored around 2008, the miracles of balancing the colours might have been quite a chore. Of the three primary colours, red seems to have been a bit weaker,\u00a0as there’s a slight sway towards green, and in wide bright shots of the desert faint residues are palpable close to the frame edges.<\/p>\n The film still looks great – the image in 2D and 3D are very sharp, and the 3D process is nicely balanced – but red may have been the primary colour that proved most challenging to keep balanced shot-to-shot, \u00a0and the restoration team deserves heavy credit for rescuing what could’ve been a lost 3D film. Inferno<\/strong> works flat, but in 3D the depth within the desert scenes add to the story’s power, magnifying Carson’s perilous journey as he must dangle downward from a rocky cliff, trek across brutal terrain, search for water, and ultimately mete out some payback in one of the most brutal hand-to-hand fights in a 1950s film.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Robert Ryan\u2019s related noir-styled thrillers include Bad Day at Black Rock<\/strong> and House of Bamboo<\/strong><\/a> (both 1955). Roy Ward Baker\u2019s Fox films include The House on the Square<\/strong> (1951), Don\u2019t Bother to Knock<\/strong> (1952), Night Without Sleep<\/strong> (1952), and Inferno<\/strong> (1953).<\/p>\n Rhonda Fleming actually starred in a trio of 3D film: Inferno <\/strong>(1953), and\u00a0Those Redheads from Seattle<\/strong>\u00a0(1953) and\u00a0Jivaro<\/strong>\u00a0(1954) for Paramount. Never a prolific actress, Fleming did appear in a number of TV and the odd feature film before retiring after 1990. Co-star William Lundigan similarly moved into TV after an already prolific career, including Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), Pinky (1949), and Love Nest (1951).<\/p>\n Francis M. Cockrill’s career was very TV-heavy (Perry Mason<\/strong>, Alfred Hitchcock Presents<\/strong>, Batman<\/strong>), but among his handful of credits for Fox are The Raid<\/strong> (1954) and On the Threshold of Space<\/strong> (1956).<\/p>\n When Roy Ward Baker returned to England, he landed the plum assignment of the Titanic disaster classic\u00a0A Night to Remember<\/strong> (1958), and several classic Hammer shockers including\u00a0Five Million Years to Earth<\/strong> (1967), The Vampire Lovers<\/strong><\/a> (1970), and Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde<\/strong> (1971). These genre classics were somewhat augured by Hammer’s more notorious oddities – the kung fu \/ vampire mash-up The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires<\/strong> (1974), and the absolute stinker\u00a0Moon Zero Two<\/strong><\/a> (1969).<\/p>\n Recommended reviews with additional info: 50s Westerns from the 50s<\/a> \/ Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings <\/a>\/ DVD Savant.<\/a>\u00a0Baker was interviewed in the October 1992 issue of Starlog Magazine (#183), and spoke of his brief time in Hollywood (see page 60 in the issue archived at Archive.org<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a9 2010; revised 2017 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n Editor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB <\/a>— \u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Inferno1953_the_lincoln_star_sun__aug_16__1953_.jpg\")
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It’s a clear indication Inferno<\/strong>‘s release history was pretty perfunctory, because even when it was restored for Blu-ray by the 3-D Film Archive around 2008, the transfer appeared on British label Panamint<\/a>‘s\u00a0Region B Blu-ray in 2014, but it took another 3 years before the film\u00a0get a release in North America. Still unique to the now region-free Panamint BR<\/a> is a 16 page illustrated booklet with info on the restoration, a teaser trailer flaunting the film’s 3D element (“Rhonda Fleming on the Wonders of the 3rd Dimension”),<\/strong> and a\u00a015 min. 2009\u00a0interview featurette as interviewed by Pat Boone (!) on a Christian-themed Praise the Lord<\/strong> show.<\/p>\n
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