Sneak Prevue Mailbag: Waiting forever just to see a movie

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

I have stood in line literally hours just to buy a ticket to see a film high on my want-to-see-list – a list that through the years has included “Earthquake,” “The Towering Inferno,” “Jaws” and “Star Wars.”

I know “Earthquake” and “The Towering Inferno” are embarrassing, guilty pleasures. But, hey, “Earthquake” played at the Joy Theater in downtown New Orleans in late 1974 accompanied by that wonderful, ear-piercing gimmick called Sensurround (“Feel it as well as see it in Sensurround”).

And I couldn’t wait to experience a real, live, 9.0-magnitude, end-of-the-world, Armageddon-is-coming earthquake in the comfort and safety of a climate-controlled movie theater. I wasn’t disappointed.

But “Jaws?” Now that’s a different story. In fact I’ll talk about my experiences with that film when I answer questions in this week’s edition of the Sneak Prevue Mailbag. As you no doubt already have discovered, the Sneak Prevue Mailbag feature moves to Fridays beginning this week.

Italian director Sergio Leone helms big screen’s best Western

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
ITALIAN MOVIE POSTER

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

From the brilliant 20-minute showdown at a train station depicted with almost no dialog to the pitch-perfect performances throughout, “Once Upon a Time in the West” is unlike any other Western ever made.

It’s also the greatest, the product of Italian director Sergio Leone – who had just completed the Clint Eastwood Western trilogy of a “Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good the Bad and the Ugly.”

Leone’s films are distinctively different from Westerns made by American film makers.

While Leone had an obvious love for the genre and was heavily influenced by such classics as “3:10 to Yuma,” “High Noon” and “The Searchers,” his films were nevertheless distinctively different.

For starters, they technically were Italian films, Spaghetti Westerns, filmed and financed on location in Europe with a European crew. The Eastwood trilogy was shot in Italian and dubbed in English for American release; Eastwood was one of the few actors to say his lines in English.