"You think that when you die you go to heaven. You come to us." Ok, the quote is from the sequel but the malevolent menacing Tall Man and his silver spheres embody the perilous threat across 5 films. Happy 40th Anniversary.

Short-lived black & death that would regroup as CELTIC FROST. Happy 35th Anniversary.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the publication debut of RAPTURE magazine (1959). The final print issue was Mar 1974. [The picture on the cover is also the same used on 'HONEY' magazine's first issue in 1962].


MARCH 1959 ON THE WORLD STAGE Films by director Billy Wilder are always efficient and often funny but their wryness has an odd flavour. Evidently he knows much about writing films and directing them – and in SOME LIKE IT HOT he has again done both jobs, and done them well but he seems to be ignorant about the more fastidious susceptibilities of his audience or atleast he makes a point of flouting them. Sometimes this has meant that a Wilder film, for all its brisk competence was made unnecessarily unsympathetic by some peculiar stroke of harsh and even repellent cynicism. And sometimes his works just induce that discomfort which comes from seeing an exhibition of bad taste. This may be the result not of unawareness but of deliberation as Mr. Wilder, whose films are successful and frequent may have found that the flouting of our nicer susceptibilities is just what most of us want. Be that as it may, SOME LIKE IT HOT is a bit uncomfortable. Not that there is anything downright offensive about the female impersonations which for the greater part of this fare, are undertaken by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis; it is only that the vulgarity is a bit insistent – and persistent. And for all it's pratfalling, the film does have a rather slight unsettling historical background that hints of impending parallel doom. With it's February 1929 timeline, time is up for the last remnants of Gatsby-esque dreaming where that oasis is about to dry up in the faded mirage of memory. In the later months to come, the magic mirror of the Jazz Age will shatter into the broken shards of the shocking Wall Street Crash that will give rise to a decade of crippling miserable Depression. Putting that uncomfortable gloom aside, the story such as it is, is about two down-at-heel male musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago who having been the unwilling witnesses of a gangland murder (a St. Valentine's Day massacre, no less). They disguise themselves as bewigged, brassiere padded, garter belted women and join an all-girl band in order to escape from mob boss George Raft, as "Spats" Colombo, and his attendant gunmen. The female band includes Marilyn Monroe who is even sweeter, more pathetic and possibly, more Monroe-like than ever in her revealing attire as the deliciously desirable singer Sugar Kowalczyk, aka "Sugar Kane". Bound for Florida on a train, the traveling trio delight in shenanigans, and once arrived at their swanky Miami Beach hotel where they'll be playing, among the guests are Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III, the most susceptible of millionaire mama's boys in search of a wife. Full of flash, flare and flamboyance, Mr. Brown merrily pursues the (disguised as Daphne) Mr. Lemmon with relentless worship, while Mr. Curtis (in disguise as Josephine) pursues Miss Monroe (out of disguise) as a playboy Shell Oil heir complete with Cary Grant voice. And then Mr. Raft and a splendid collection of Hollywood’s henchmen-heavy hoods (including Edward G. Robinson Jr.) show up at the same vacation spot, and bob in & out of the story amidst the collection of infatuation, intimacy, furtiveness and fright. The pace is fast and the humour -– especially Mr Lemmon’s –- is often hilarious. It is pleasant to meet again such old familiars as Mr. Raft and Mr. Brown. And Miss Monroe as always is irresistible. Even when as in this instance, she is being ruthlessly presented as a caricature of herself – another example of the Wilder touch. In an unusual sense she is almost the picture's third impersonator with her fragile presentation of fantasy. All dressed up and every whichever way to go, SOME LIKE IT HOT is a funny and farcical, slapstick screwball film even with its subversive crossdressing semblance a bit high.