John Phillip Law, 1937--2008

Phil Nugent — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

John Phillip Law has died at the age of 70. Six foot five with blond hair, blue eyes and finely crafted features, Law worked in New York theater in the early 1960s before breaking into Hollywood films as the romantic juvenile in Norman Jewison's 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. He would go on to appear in two megaton bombs directed by Otto Preminger, the Southern gothic Hurry Sundown the acid-testing comedy Skidoo, in which he played a hippie. That project turned out to be harbinger of the career to come, as was this quote from an interview Law gave in 1966: "I've had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It's like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, 'yaaaaaa.' " He was about to have plenty of opportunities to put on his funny faces. In 1968, in one of his highest-profile roles, he appeared opposite Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), playing a blind but well-hung angel and wearing enormous, tacky-looking wings. He also starred in a failed 1971 film version of the Jacqueline Susann pulp bestseller The Love Machine and had the honor of being kissed on the lips by Rod Steiger in The Sergeant (1968). In 1974, he donned a turban to star in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, one of the better later showcases for the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

Although he slipped far down from the A-list in Hollywood, Law kept working, on TV, in oddball low-budget genre films such as Night Train to Terror, and often in Europe, where he made such films as the 1967 spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse with Lee Van Cleef. In recent years, he began to acquire a new fan base among new filmgoers who saw him as a key figure in the 1960s international cinema of the weird. (In 2001, Roman Coppola honored him as a living memento of that era by casting him in his directorial debut, CQ.) One movie that made a cult comeback through that particular pipeline is Diabolik (sometimes called Danger: Diabolik), a 1967 sci-fi comic-strip caper directed by Mario Bava, starring Law as a space-age super-cat burglar; it served as the inspiration for a Beastie Boys video (see below) and was the last film shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Law, a dedicated actor who was almost equally famous for his dedication to the Playboy mansion, could scarcely have asked for a more appropriate, and affectionate, tribute.

Saving "Skidoo" and Other Heroic Acts

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Several years ago I was deep in the research phase of a book,* a process that entailed watching a large number of movies that were not readily available on DVD or even, in some cases, VHS. I was able to find most of what I needed through tape traders, eBay and dealers in the rare and exotic, but this was an expensive, time-consuming process. Mere months after finishing the manuscript, the golden age of YouTube, Google Video and bit torrents had begun, causing me to gnash my teeth every time I stumbled upon a free-for-the-viewing version of, say, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

Still, my investigative techniques were a mere drop in the bucket compared to the archeological efforts documented in this Guardian piece on the "raiders of the lost archives" — rare film collectors like Jack Stevenson who have done their bit for film preservation from deep in the trenches. Stevenson began his collection in San Francisco in the 1980s, when adult theaters began to shut down. He would dig through piles of porn in search of those needles in the haystack — treasures like Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster — which he screens at bars and festivals.

"There is nothing definitive or encyclopedic about my collection," he says. "It's chaos. I run the original prints at shows and I don't store the prints in a temperature-controlled vault. One thing I hate about proper archives is that they preserve the films, often putting them in a deep freeze, but never show them. Films should be shown."

Stevenson refuses to transfer his finds to DVD, but other collectors are willing to delve into the murky world of copyright issues and legal loopholes, making formerly lost classics like Skidoo and the Beatles-based "musical documentary" All This and World War II available for download or free online viewing. So next time you’re enjoying your own personal copy of Death May Be Your Santa Claus, please spare a thought for the daring adventurers who made it possible.

*Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema – makes a great Valentine’s Day gift!

The Screengrab : skidoo

John Phillip Law, 1937--2008

Saving "Skidoo" and Other Heroic Acts