There’s some­thing about cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces that were nev­er made that tan­ta­lize the imag­i­na­tion of film geeks every­where. What would the world look like if Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky actu­al­ly man­aged to make his ver­sion of Dune, com­plete with Pink Floyd score and Moe­bius designed sets? How would have Stan­ley Kubrick’s career evolved if he got Napoleon to the screen? And would a col­lab­o­ra­tion between David Lynch and Den­nis Pot­ter, which almost hap­pened with The White Hotel, be as com­plete­ly amaz­ing as I imag­ine?

Of all these ill-fat­ed projects, the one that per­haps casts the biggest shad­ow over cin­e­ma is Orson Welles’s attempt to adapt Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness. (Find Con­rad’s orig­i­nal text in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.) In 1939, Welles went to Hol­ly­wood, look­ing to con­quer film in the same way that he con­quered radio and the stage. By that time, he was already famous for his trail­blaz­ing Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Julius Cae­sar, his pop­u­lar Mer­cury The­ater radio pro­gram and for scar­ing the liv­ing crap out of the nation with his noto­ri­ous ver­sion of The War of the Worlds. So he pre­sent­ed RKO stu­dio with an auda­cious, grandiose 174-page script for Heart of Dark­ness but, after a cou­ple months of wran­gling, it proved to be just too auda­cious and grandiose for the execs. So then Welles pitched them Cit­i­zen Kane. That’s right, the film that would go down as the great­est film of all time was a plan B.

If you look at Welles’s script for Dark­ness, you can see why Hol­ly­wood might have thought twice about the project. Welles, who at that point hadn’t actu­al­ly made a movie, was propos­ing to rad­i­cal­ly shake up the gram­mar of Hol­ly­wood sto­ry­telling. For instance, the movie was to be shot in the first per­son, where what the book’s protagonist/narrator Mar­low sees is what the audi­ence sees. Robert Mont­gomery tried the same gim­mick a few years lat­er in the adap­ta­tion of Ray­mond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake with mixed results.

Hol­ly­wood’s peren­ni­al ner­vous­ness about movies with overt polit­i­cal over­tones is anoth­er rea­son why the movie got scotched. As with his mod­ern rework­ing of Julius Cae­sar (find it here), Welles took a strong stance against the rise of fas­cism in Europe. “You feel that if this film had been made, Hol­ly­wood might have been a dif­fer­ent place,” said artist Fiona Ban­ner in an inter­view with The Dai­ly Tele­graph. In 2012, she staged the first ever pub­lic read­ing of the script star­ring actor Bri­an Cox. “When [Welles] start­ed writ­ing it, fas­cism wasn’t such a big sto­ry in Hol­ly­wood, but by the time he fin­ished it, in 1939, it must have been some­thing of a hot pota­to. That was prob­a­bly the main rea­son it didn’t get made. The more I’ve looked into it, the more I’ve realised how close he is to the stuff in Europe, and not just in the obvi­ous ways of giv­ing all these com­pa­ny men that Mar­low meets Ger­man names. It’s cen­tral to the tale.”

Conrad’s sto­ry clear­ly fas­ci­nat­ed Welles. As you can see above, he adapt­ed the novel­la for his radio show in 1938. His pro­duc­ing part­ner, and leg­endary actor in his own right, John House­man spec­u­lat­ed why the direc­tor was so tak­en with Dark­ness.

We had done this Con­rad sto­ry with only mod­er­ate suc­cess on the Mer­cury The­atre of the Air, and while it was a won­der­ful title, I nev­er quite under­stood why Orson had cho­sen such a dif­fuse and dif­fi­cult sub­ject for his first film. I think, in part, he was attract­ed by the sense of cor­rod­ing evil, the slow, per­va­sive dete­ri­o­ra­tion through which the dark con­ti­nent destroys its con­queror and exploiter—Western Man in the per­son of Kurtz. But, main­ly, as we dis­cussed it, I found that he was excit­ed by the device—not an entire­ly orig­i­nal one—of the Cam­era Eye. Like many of Orson­’s cre­ative notions, it revolved around him­self in the dou­ble role of direc­tor and actor. As Mar­low, Con­rad’s nar­ra­tor and moral rep­re­sen­ta­tive, invis­i­ble but ever-present, Orson would have a chance to con­vey the mys­te­ri­ous cur­rents that run under the sur­face of the nar­ra­tive; as Kurtz, he would be play­ing the char­ac­ter about whom, as nar­ra­tor, he was weav­ing this web of con­jec­ture and mys­tery.

Years lat­er, Welles summed up why Heart of Dark­ness nev­er got made in an inter­view with Bar­bara Leam­ing. “I want­ed my kind of con­trol. They did­n’t under­stand that. There was no quar­relling. It was just two dif­fer­ent points of view, absolute­ly oppo­site each oth­er. Mine was tak­en to be igno­rance, and I read their posi­tion as estab­lished dumb­head­ed­ness.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Next to Star Wars, David Lynch’s Dune was one of my very first intro­duc­tions to great sci­ence fic­tion film­mak­ing, and my first intro­duc­tion to David Lynch. My sci-fi-lov­ing father and I watched it over and over, along with Nico­las Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, Kubrick’s 2001, and pop­cornier fare like the Plan­et of the Apes films. Now, when I call Dune “great,” I’m ful­ly aware that many well-respect­ed crit­ics, espe­cial­ly the late Roger Ebert, hat­ed, and con­tin­ue to hate, Dune. Some fans and critics—and for the life of me I can­not under­stand why—have even stat­ed a pref­er­ence for the Syfy Channel’s mediocre 2000 minis­eries adap­ta­tion, most­ly because of issues of “faith­ful­ness” to the source, despite it look­ing, as one blog­ger apt­ly put it, “like a cross between a telen­ov­ela and a youth group stag­ing of God­spell.” This won’t stand for me. Some poor edit­ing deci­sions notwith­stand­ing, Lynch’s Dune is bril­liant. Hell, even Frank Her­bert him­self, god­like cre­ator of the Dune uni­verse, loved it.

In 1984, how­ev­er, the movie seemed des­tined for per­ma­nent obscu­ri­ty, not cult fan­dom. Lynch dis­owned it—releasing it under the name “Alan Smithee,” long­stand­ing pseu­do­nym of embar­rassed direc­tors. For its tank­ing in the the­aters, Dune appears on this list of “Great­est Box Office Bombs” for the years 1983–84, along with turds like Krull and the sequel to Sat­ur­day Night Fever. “If a film-view­er had no knowl­edge of the mas­sive­ly dense book,” the review­er notes, “the bloat­ed film made lit­tle sense.”

While I found Dune’s nigh-impen­e­tra­bly alien nature allur­ing, film-going audi­ences had lit­tle patience for it. A large part of the prob­lem, of course, is Her­bert’s invent­ed lan­guage. “With­in the first 10 min­utes,” writes Daniel Sny­der at The Atlantic, “the film bom­bard­ed audi­ences with words like Kwisatz Hader­ach, land­sraad, gom jab­ber, and sar­daukar with lit­tle or no con­text.” Con­trast this with Star Wars’ “blaster,” “droid,” and “force”—“words for made up things but they’re words that we know.” Although Stan­ley Kubrick­’s  A Clock­work Orange—with its heavy, untrans­lat­ed nad­sat slang—was a hit over a decade ear­li­er, it seems Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios felt Dune’s audi­ences need­ed prepara­to­ry mate­ri­als, and so, reports io9, they cir­cu­lat­ed a glos­sary to film­go­ers (first page at the top, obverse above—click to enlarge and then click again).

There’s lit­tle infor­ma­tion on when, exact­ly, the stu­dio decid­ed this was nec­es­sary, or how they expect­ed audi­ences to read it in the dark. But it’s per­fect for home view­ing. In the dark about the pre­cise nature of a “fremk­it”? Flip on the lights, pause your Ama­zon stream or blu-ray, scroll down, and there you have it: “desert sur­vival kit of Fre­men man­u­fac­ture.” (See the pre­vi­ous entry for a “Fre­men” expla­na­tion.) For all its use­less­ness in an actu­al the­ater, you have to hand it to whomev­er was tasked with com­pil­ing this list of terms; it’s a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive crash course on Herbert’s expan­sive space epic. It’s doubt­ful David Lynch had any­thing to do with these mate­ri­als, but it’s also true that he found the world of Dune almost as baf­fling as those first audi­ences. Just above, see him in a pained inter­view on the “night­mare” that was the mak­ing of the film. No mat­ter what he feels about it, I’m one fan who’s grate­ful he endured the tor­ment.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image by Alvin Georges Biard, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Back in ’92, when I was tak­ing a French New Wave class at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, my pro­fes­sor, Ger­ald Per­ry, brought in an intense, bear­ish look­ing guy in a leather trench coat and announced him as the new Mar­tin Scors­ese. I hadn’t a clue who he was nor had I heard of his movie, Reser­voir Dogs, which was play­ing at the Boston Film Fes­ti­val. The guy, of course, was Quentin Taran­ti­no. As he talked pas­sion­ate­ly about movies, in par­tic­u­lar Jean-Pierre Melville, who’s movie Le Samourai was the inspi­ra­tion for Reser­voir Dogs’s dis­tinct sar­to­r­i­al style, I was struck by just how many f‑bombs he was able to squeeze into a 20-minute spiel.

The com­par­i­son to Scors­ese is apt. Both direc­tors took the inno­va­tions of French New Wave and adapt­ed them for a main­stream Amer­i­can audi­ence in the form of fero­cious, styl­ish crime thrillers. Both film­mak­ers also make reg­u­lar homages to the films of their child­hood. For Scors­ese, it was large­ly films from the ’40s and ‘50s by film­mak­ers like Vin­cent Min­nel­li, Michael Pow­ell, and Alfred Hitch­cock. Tarantino’s inspi­ra­tions, on the oth­er hand, were large­ly 1970s grind­house flicks.

In the 1960s, a com­bi­na­tion of the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of tele­vi­sion and white-flight from urban cen­ters great­ly reduced the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing to sin­gle-screen the­aters. A num­ber of movies hous­es, espe­cial­ly in Times Square in New York and on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard in Los Ange­les, start­ed screen­ing dou­ble and triple bills of cheap­ly made, inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced exploita­tion movies filled with sex, nudi­ty, graph­ic vio­lence and straight up sadism.

As Tarantino’s career pro­gressed, his movies became more and more trans­par­ent pas­tich­es of the grind­house movies he loved. Kill Bill is, after all, a supreme­ly enter­tain­ing patch­work of homages to Game of Death, Lady Snow­blood, Five Fin­gers of Death and dozens of oth­er Asian exploita­tion flicks. Heck, he even tried to recre­ate the expe­ri­ence of grind­house cin­e­ma by mak­ing a dou­ble-bill movie with Robert Rodriguez called Grind­house.

So when Taran­ti­no was asked to come up with a list of his favorite exploita­tion flicks for the Grind­house Cin­e­ma Data­base, it was not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing that he was very par­tic­u­lar about his choic­es. “Some of [the movies] don’t quite work,” said the film­mak­er. “For instance, Female Pris­on­er 701 Scor­pi­on, that was nev­er released any­where out­side Japan… My point being, it has to have been played in a grind­house… The same way like Hal­loween could be on [the list], but Fri­day The 13th…could­n’t, because that was a Para­mount movie.”

The movies that did make the list include hor­ror clas­sics, like The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre, Night of the Liv­ing Dead; the mar­tial arts mas­ter­piece Five Fin­gers of Death; and blax­ploita­tion flicks includ­ing Coffy and The Mack. There’s even one movie, The Lady in Red, which was writ­ten by indie film icon John Sayles. Check out the full list below.

1. The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre
2. Dawn of the Dead
3. Night of the Liv­ing Dead 
4. Hal­loween
5. Coffy
6. Rolling Thun­der
7. Five Fin­gers of Death
8. The Mack
9. The Girl From Star­ship Venus
10. The Last House On The Left
11. Mas­ter of the Fly­ing Guil­lo­tine
12. Wipe­out
13. The Street Fight­er | Return of The Street Fight­er | The Street Fight­er’s Last Revenge (“You just have to kin­da con­sid­er all three of them togeth­er.” — QT)
14. The Psy­chic
15. The Lady in Red
16. Thriller: A Cru­el Pic­ture
17. Sus­piria
18. Ham­mer of the Gods
19. The Sav­age Sev­en
20. The Pom Pom Girls

You can find two of the films list­ed above – The Street Fight­er and Night of the Liv­ing Dead — list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The image above was tak­en by Georges Biard.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Bruce Lee died in 1973 just before the pre­miere of Enter the Drag­on — the high­est gross­ing movie of that year. Lee’s sud­den and mys­te­ri­ous death left a huge void that stu­dios scram­bled to fill. Some shady Hong Kong pro­duc­ers start­ed crank­ing out kung fu flicks star­ring decep­tive­ly named actors like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai or, com­bin­ing two ‘70s tough guys in one name, Bron­son Lee. Amer­i­can stu­dios start­ed mak­ing movies like Black Belt Jones star­ring Enter the Drag­on co-star Jim Kel­ly. It was in this con­text that Amer­i­can pro­duc­ers acquired the Japan­ese karate thriller Gek­i­tot­su! Sat­su­jin Ken star­ring Shinichi Chi­ba and renamed it The Street Fight­er. The movie became noto­ri­ous for earn­ing an X‑rating sole­ly for vio­lence, and it turned its lead, rechris­tened Son­ny Chi­ba, into a cult idol. You can watch The Street Fight­er above, poor­ly dubbed and in the wrong aspect ratio. Just as it was prob­a­bly screened at your local grind­house the­ater back dur­ing the Ford admin­is­tra­tion. (The film, by the way, is in the pub­lic domain.)

The movie’s sto­ry is a typ­i­cal tale of man­ly hon­or, revenge and betray­al, where men set­tle their dif­fer­ences with their fists and women — the “good” women, any­way – sim­per on the side­lines. Chi­ba plays Ter­ry Tsu­ru­gi, a badass street thug. Sure, he might be a world-class jerk, espe­cial­ly after he sells one dead­beat client into pros­ti­tu­tion, but he’s a jerk with a code of hon­or. Of course, you don’t watch mar­tial arts movies – or almost any Japan­ese movie from the 1970s, real­ly – for its pro­gres­sive stance on gen­der rela­tions. You watch them for the ass kick­ing. And on that front, The Street Fight­er deliv­ers. So when Tsug­uri gets hired to pro­tect the beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of a dead oil tycoon from a nefar­i­ous band of gang­sters, you know he will do just that, even if it involves throw­ing punch­es, deliv­er­ing gory eye gouges and, in one mem­o­rable scene, rip­ping the tes­ti­cles clean off of a rapist. The movie’s relent­less vio­lence and gen­er­al nihilism made The Street Fight­er a hit, spawn­ing a hand­ful of sequels – Return of the Street Fight­er, Sis­ter Street Fight­er and Street Fighter’s Last Revenge. The movie also made at least one major fan: Quentin Taran­ti­no.

Taran­ti­no loved the movie in a way that only the reign­ing uber-nerd of ’70s exploita­tion movies could: he made ref­er­ences to it in his works. Clarence and Alaba­ma watched The Street Fight­er and its sequels in True Romance. Taran­ti­no even cast Chi­ba as Han­zo, the ace katana mak­er in Kill Bill. In the run up to his 2007 dou­ble bill with Robert Rodriguez, Grind­house, Taran­ti­no placed The Street Fight­er 13th on his list of favorite exploita­tion flicks, above Dario Argento’s gial­lo clas­sic Sus­piria but below the absolute­ly bonkers Mas­ter of the Fly­ing Guil­lo­tine.

You can find The Street Fight­er list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.