Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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It’s widely believed that men in general gave up wearing hats with suits when JFK went mainly hatless.
If I'm perceiving your tone correctly, Mr. Willis (always a tricky thing when it comes to the written word), then you're implying that accrediting President Kennedy for the shift to men's hatlessness is misapplied. If so, you're correct.
Many sites will insist that American men started going hatless because J.F.K. didn't wear one at his inauguration. But that's a fallacy. An inspexion of the photos taken of the occasion show Kennedy wearing a silk topper (the proper headgear for his morning suit) on the ride to the inaugurtion dais with Eisenhower. (Ike also wore one.) Kennedy continued to wear it as he exited the limousine and walked toward the dais. He removed it only after ascending the steps to his seat.
Like most shifts in social behaviour, the death of men's hats was caused by gradual changes in environment and interaction. Specifically, at least three changes:
1. CLIMATE CONTROL. The development in effective central heating for buildings and automobiles made the wearing of a hat less necessary. On a cold winter's day, you leave your heated house for a minute or two to get into your heated car, drive to work, and brave the frigid temperatures for maybe another minute or so to go into your heated workplace. A hat became an unneeded accessory, like overcoats and scarves and gloves, which you rarely see men wear anymore (unless they're labouring outdoors in inclement weather). In fact, a hat became inconvenient because . . .
2. THE REDUCTION OF HEADROOM IN AUTOMOBILES. The motor cars of the 1930's, '40's, and '50's had plenty of headroom, enough for a man to wear a fedora while sitting behind the wheel. But the 1960's saw a trend of sportier-type car models that reduced the available headroom. After that, fuel consciousness led to further streamlining of automobiles, leaving a man no room to wear a hat. If he does so, he has to toss it on the passenger seat or in the back seat (which I always have to do when the Good Mrs. Benson and I go out for a night on the town). If his car is full of riders, then he has no convenient place to put it.
3. NO ACCOMMODATION IN EATERIES AND OTHER SOCIAL HOUSES. Restaurants and nightclubs used to have hat-check stands, at which a man could park his hat. Or, at least, a side closet where he could leave it. Such things have gone the way of the horse and buggy. The GMB and I have hit several five-star restaurants in town over the years, and none of them have had any kind of accommodation for hats. If it's just the two of us, I place my hat on one of the unoccupied chairs at our table. If we're in a party of four or more, I'm forced to put it under my chair. I'm stubborn; I refuse to stop wearing a hat because society makes it difficult. But most men find it's not worth the trouble.
Of course, in my discussion above, I am talking about dress hats---fedoras, Homburgs, bowlers, top hats. In the past twenty-five years or so, the baseball cap has become the mitre of the common man. And it remains securely screwed to his head, even at the dining table.
JD DeLuzio > Commander BensonAugust 3, 2024 at 6:50am
The baseball cap. It had its purpose. But I dislike the decline in diversity of hats.
As a follically-challenged chap, I often wear hats-- heads lose heat quickly in winter and burn easily in summer-- but I do not own a ball cap. I owned a fedora in the 1990s, but it wore out and was not replaced.The 2000s saw the style usurped by Angry Young Nerds. That seems to have passed. I own flatcaps for summer and other non-winter seasons and a pork pie, which gets me mistaken for Walter White.
But this is a movie thread. I finally saw Corvette Summer (1978), the movie Mark Hamill made after Star Wars. It costars Annie Potts as a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl / Wannabe Hooker. The film isn't terrible, but it's not especially good and never quites find its tone.
It also features the dumbest cops and crooks, since the crooks drive the stolen, highly and distinctly modified Stingray openly around Vegas, thinking a minor paint job will render it unrecognizable, and the cops, in fact, regularly fail to recognize it.
"A man is never fully dressed without a hat." - Adam Benson
I don't know who first uttered that phrase (Emily Post, perhaps), but I picked it up from Adam Benson when I showed him the hat I bought for my nephew's wedding back in 2007. I know it originally reffered to "dressing for dinner," but the hats I wear often draw comments and compliments, and that has become my go-to response.
Back in the '90s, I worked in a business office in which ties were required. I switched to bow ties, and was disappointed when the office dress code switched to "business casual" (an oxymoron?) shortly thereafter. I have recently taken to wearing ascots in lieu of ties.
Richard Willis > Commander BensonAugust 3, 2024 at 5:13pm
THE REDUCTION OF HEADROOM IN AUTOMOBILES.
Here's a movie reference. In 1975, when the original Jaws debuted, I saw it in a drive-in. When Chief Brody is baiting the shark, we suddenly see it in all its glory. My head hit the car's ceiling.
I saw Corvette Summer at the theater, and I re-watched last year (see above... somewhere). More recently (last night) I watched...
GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE: This special effects extravagana is a direct sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong and is the fourth film in Legendary Pictures' "Mosterverse." It has a complex plot and is like the previous film, but cranked up to eleventy-twelve. There is also a surprise third monster (well, it came as a surprise to me); actually, there are a total of four "big guns." If you liked the previous movies in this series, you should like this.
Captain Comics > Jeff of Earth-JAugust 3, 2024 at 5:25pm
We just watched GxK as well. My wife pronounced it silly, and she's not wrong. But i'm always gonna enjoy a Big Monster movie.
Godzilla x Kong is dopey fun. I caught up with it on an airplane. Not the best viewing experience, but I wanted a movie where it wouldn't matter if I couldn't make out all of the dialogue, and it definitely fit the bill.
Scratched Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf (1961) off my bucket list Saturday. My wife pronounced it "dumb." I have to say that, like with the other Hammer monster offerings I've watched so far, they're far inferior in script, makeup and direction to the 1930s Universal movies.
Somehow I expected big things from Oliver Reed, but not only was he just as whiney and self-sabotaging as Lon Chaney Jr., his werewolf wasn't very athletic. They really should have had an acrobatic stuntman do those building-climbing scenes. And the man-to-werewolf transition scenes were pretty lame. Again, Universal did it better years earlier. At one point he tore his shirt half-off, but not entirely off, and in later scenes I realized why: The white shirt made him easier to see on top of buildings. Also: the more shirt, the less makeup they had to do.
I did learn about Yvonne Romain. According to Wiki, I'll be seeing a lot more in future Hammer movies of her and her (checks notes) 28-22-26 figure. Seriously? Now that's a special effect. She was mute in this movie, which makes me wonder about her speaking voice. Or acting skills. Not up to snuff yet? Or just the role as written?
Various stills show her being threatened or carried by the Oliver Reed werewolf, despite them not having any scenes together in the movie. (She was his mother, who died in childbirth.)
I looked up the other main actors, but didn't learn anything worth sharing.
This is the only werewolf movie Hammer made. I guess it didn't burn up the box office. Anyway, Curse of the Werewolf is another movie where I saw a given still a million times without ever having seen the movie. So now I have the context for this:
I finally saw Curse of the Werewolf a few months ago. I don't think Oliver Reed had much experience (or juice) that early in his career. Most of his work was uncredited up until then. The woman shown in photos with the werewolf is Catherine Feller (his girlfriend Cristina), not Yvonne Romain (his mother). They both have black hair but Feller's is much shorter. Some comments in the IMDB Trivia talk about their using Romain in photos with Reed for marketing because of her ample cleavage but I can't find any. Having Yvonne Romain not speak was just a choice. She was born in London and had speaking parts in other movies.
I respectfully disagree! Feller has brown hair, modest bust and a long neck, and I'm hard pressed to find photos of her with the werewolf. Virtually all the publicity stills I find, and one poster made from a still, are of Romain. I'm between desktops this weekend or I'd make a visual argument.
And I did look up the principals, so I know Romain was born in London, of Maltese background. And I know she had talking roles before and after. I was just wondering if her character was written mute because the story required it, or because she had the wrong accent or something. Upshot is I'm looking forward to hearing her speaking voice, which will come along in future Hammer movies. As to Werewolf, I thought she was probably one of the better actors. Heck, given that she had to act wordlessly, she may have given the best performance in the movie.
As to Oliver Reed, from other movies I'd seen I expected him to overpower every scene he was in. But as you say, he was pretty young here, and while prettier to look at than Lon Chaney Jr., he didn't add much more.
Addendum: I was able to copy some photos today:
Here's Catherine Feller in Curse of the Werewolf.
Here's Yvonne Romain in Curse of the Werewolf.
Here are some Curse of the Werewolf movie stills, which the sources assure me are all Yvonne and Oliver:
This still became a movie poster.
And I ran across this photo as well: Yvonne Romain with Sean Connery! Something called The Frightened City.
Replies
It’s widely believed that men in general gave up wearing hats with suits when JFK went mainly hatless.
If I'm perceiving your tone correctly, Mr. Willis (always a tricky thing when it comes to the written word), then you're implying that accrediting President Kennedy for the shift to men's hatlessness is misapplied. If so, you're correct.
Many sites will insist that American men started going hatless because J.F.K. didn't wear one at his inauguration. But that's a fallacy. An inspexion of the photos taken of the occasion show Kennedy wearing a silk topper (the proper headgear for his morning suit) on the ride to the inaugurtion dais with Eisenhower. (Ike also wore one.) Kennedy continued to wear it as he exited the limousine and walked toward the dais. He removed it only after ascending the steps to his seat.
Like most shifts in social behaviour, the death of men's hats was caused by gradual changes in environment and interaction. Specifically, at least three changes:
1. CLIMATE CONTROL. The development in effective central heating for buildings and automobiles made the wearing of a hat less necessary. On a cold winter's day, you leave your heated house for a minute or two to get into your heated car, drive to work, and brave the frigid temperatures for maybe another minute or so to go into your heated workplace. A hat became an unneeded accessory, like overcoats and scarves and gloves, which you rarely see men wear anymore (unless they're labouring outdoors in inclement weather). In fact, a hat became inconvenient because . . .
2. THE REDUCTION OF HEADROOM IN AUTOMOBILES. The motor cars of the 1930's, '40's, and '50's had plenty of headroom, enough for a man to wear a fedora while sitting behind the wheel. But the 1960's saw a trend of sportier-type car models that reduced the available headroom. After that, fuel consciousness led to further streamlining of automobiles, leaving a man no room to wear a hat. If he does so, he has to toss it on the passenger seat or in the back seat (which I always have to do when the Good Mrs. Benson and I go out for a night on the town). If his car is full of riders, then he has no convenient place to put it.
3. NO ACCOMMODATION IN EATERIES AND OTHER SOCIAL HOUSES. Restaurants and nightclubs used to have hat-check stands, at which a man could park his hat. Or, at least, a side closet where he could leave it. Such things have gone the way of the horse and buggy. The GMB and I have hit several five-star restaurants in town over the years, and none of them have had any kind of accommodation for hats. If it's just the two of us, I place my hat on one of the unoccupied chairs at our table. If we're in a party of four or more, I'm forced to put it under my chair. I'm stubborn; I refuse to stop wearing a hat because society makes it difficult. But most men find it's not worth the trouble.
Of course, in my discussion above, I am talking about dress hats---fedoras, Homburgs, bowlers, top hats. In the past twenty-five years or so, the baseball cap has become the mitre of the common man. And it remains securely screwed to his head, even at the dining table.
The baseball cap. It had its purpose. But I dislike the decline in diversity of hats.
As a follically-challenged chap, I often wear hats-- heads lose heat quickly in winter and burn easily in summer-- but I do not own a ball cap. I owned a fedora in the 1990s, but it wore out and was not replaced.The 2000s saw the style usurped by Angry Young Nerds. That seems to have passed. I own flatcaps for summer and other non-winter seasons and a pork pie, which gets me mistaken for Walter White.
But this is a movie thread. I finally saw Corvette Summer (1978), the movie Mark Hamill made after Star Wars. It costars Annie Potts as a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl / Wannabe Hooker. The film isn't terrible, but it's not especially good and never quites find its tone.
It also features the dumbest cops and crooks, since the crooks drive the stolen, highly and distinctly modified Stingray openly around Vegas, thinking a minor paint job will render it unrecognizable, and the cops, in fact, regularly fail to recognize it.
"A man is never fully dressed without a hat." - Adam Benson
I don't know who first uttered that phrase (Emily Post, perhaps), but I picked it up from Adam Benson when I showed him the hat I bought for my nephew's wedding back in 2007. I know it originally reffered to "dressing for dinner," but the hats I wear often draw comments and compliments, and that has become my go-to response.
Back in the '90s, I worked in a business office in which ties were required. I switched to bow ties, and was disappointed when the office dress code switched to "business casual" (an oxymoron?) shortly thereafter. I have recently taken to wearing ascots in lieu of ties.
THE REDUCTION OF HEADROOM IN AUTOMOBILES.
Here's a movie reference. In 1975, when the original Jaws debuted, I saw it in a drive-in. When Chief Brody is baiting the shark, we suddenly see it in all its glory. My head hit the car's ceiling.
I saw Corvette Summer at the theater, and I re-watched last year (see above... somewhere). More recently (last night) I watched...
GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE: This special effects extravagana is a direct sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong and is the fourth film in Legendary Pictures' "Mosterverse." It has a complex plot and is like the previous film, but cranked up to eleventy-twelve. There is also a surprise third monster (well, it came as a surprise to me); actually, there are a total of four "big guns." If you liked the previous movies in this series, you should like this.
We just watched GxK as well. My wife pronounced it silly, and she's not wrong. But i'm always gonna enjoy a Big Monster movie.
Godzilla x Kong is dopey fun. I caught up with it on an airplane. Not the best viewing experience, but I wanted a movie where it wouldn't matter if I couldn't make out all of the dialogue, and it definitely fit the bill.
Scratched Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf (1961) off my bucket list Saturday. My wife pronounced it "dumb." I have to say that, like with the other Hammer monster offerings I've watched so far, they're far inferior in script, makeup and direction to the 1930s Universal movies.
Somehow I expected big things from Oliver Reed, but not only was he just as whiney and self-sabotaging as Lon Chaney Jr., his werewolf wasn't very athletic. They really should have had an acrobatic stuntman do those building-climbing scenes. And the man-to-werewolf transition scenes were pretty lame. Again, Universal did it better years earlier. At one point he tore his shirt half-off, but not entirely off, and in later scenes I realized why: The white shirt made him easier to see on top of buildings. Also: the more shirt, the less makeup they had to do.
I did learn about Yvonne Romain. According to Wiki, I'll be seeing a lot more in future Hammer movies of her and her (checks notes) 28-22-26 figure. Seriously? Now that's a special effect. She was mute in this movie, which makes me wonder about her speaking voice. Or acting skills. Not up to snuff yet? Or just the role as written?
Various stills show her being threatened or carried by the Oliver Reed werewolf, despite them not having any scenes together in the movie. (She was his mother, who died in childbirth.)
I looked up the other main actors, but didn't learn anything worth sharing.
This is the only werewolf movie Hammer made. I guess it didn't burn up the box office. Anyway, Curse of the Werewolf is another movie where I saw a given still a million times without ever having seen the movie. So now I have the context for this:
I finally saw Curse of the Werewolf a few months ago. I don't think Oliver Reed had much experience (or juice) that early in his career. Most of his work was uncredited up until then. The woman shown in photos with the werewolf is Catherine Feller (his girlfriend Cristina), not Yvonne Romain (his mother). They both have black hair but Feller's is much shorter. Some comments in the IMDB Trivia talk about their using Romain in photos with Reed for marketing because of her ample cleavage but I can't find any. Having Yvonne Romain not speak was just a choice. She was born in London and had speaking parts in other movies.
I respectfully disagree! Feller has brown hair, modest bust and a long neck, and I'm hard pressed to find photos of her with the werewolf. Virtually all the publicity stills I find, and one poster made from a still, are of Romain. I'm between desktops this weekend or I'd make a visual argument.
And I did look up the principals, so I know Romain was born in London, of Maltese background. And I know she had talking roles before and after. I was just wondering if her character was written mute because the story required it, or because she had the wrong accent or something. Upshot is I'm looking forward to hearing her speaking voice, which will come along in future Hammer movies. As to Werewolf, I thought she was probably one of the better actors. Heck, given that she had to act wordlessly, she may have given the best performance in the movie.
As to Oliver Reed, from other movies I'd seen I expected him to overpower every scene he was in. But as you say, he was pretty young here, and while prettier to look at than Lon Chaney Jr., he didn't add much more.
Addendum: I was able to copy some photos today:
Here are some Curse of the Werewolf movie stills, which the sources assure me are all Yvonne and Oliver:
This still became a movie poster.
And I ran across this photo as well: Yvonne Romain with Sean Connery! Something called The Frightened City.
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