Robert Towne Movies
Robert Towne would prefer his appearance as the stick-like leading actor Edward Wain in the prententious Roger Corman post-apocalyptic effort The Last Woman on Earth (1960) be forgotten -- in addition to the film's screenplay, which was Towne's first. Despite this inauspicious beginning (and his follow-up starring appearance in Creature From the Haunted Sea [1961]), Towne appreciated the early opportunity afforded him by Corman, and remained with the producer/director to pen the screenplay for Tomb of Ligeia (1965) (two more scripts for Corman, A Time for Killing and Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, were heavily revised by others). From there, Towne could only go up, and this he did as script consultant for Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and as full screenwriter for Villa Rides (1967). After one more acting turn in Drive, He Said (1971), Towne made a good living as a screenwriter and troubleshooting script doctor. Towne's output ranged from the salty profanities of The Last Detail (1967) to the insightful glances at Nixon-era mores in Shampoo (1968) to the misty mysticism of The Natural (1984) to the dewy-eyed romanticism of Warren Beatty's 1994 remake of Love Affair. In 1974, Towne won a Best Screenplay Academy Award for director Roman Polanski's Chinatown. This film contained one of the few totally unhappy endings in the Towne canon -- for the most part, he prefers upbeat denouements, to the extent of overhauling the endings for the screen versions of Bernard Malamud's The Natural and John Grisham's The Firm. In 1981, Robert Towne made his directorial debut with Personal Best; more successful was the second Towne-directed effort, 1988's Tequila Sunrise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1964
Once again Vincent Price stars for director Roger Corman in The Tomb of Ligeia, the last of Corman's eight Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, a film graced by a script by Robert Towne and moody cinematography by Nicolas Roeg. Price has the creepy lead role of Verden Fell. In 1821, when Verden's wife Ligeia (Elizabeth Shepherd) dies, she is buried in a churchyard, despite the parson's objections that she can't be buried there since she isn't a Christian. Before the grave is closed, abetted by the screech of a black cat, Ligeia eyes shoot open, startling Verden, who becomes convinced that she is not dead. Months later, Lady Rowena (also played by Shepherd) is thrown from her horse and lands at the foot of Ligeia's grave. Verden tends to her and soon falls in love with her. They marry and move into Verden's gloomy Gothic abbey, where Rowena begins to have strange dreams involving Ligeia and a black cat. One night she awakens to discover a dead fox in her bed. When Ligeia's grave is exhumed, instead of Ligeia's corpse, a wax figure is discovered. Then Rowena finds, to her horror, Verden in the arms of his dead wife in a hidden room of the abbey. Having hypnotized Verden before she died, Ligeia had Verden convinced she will live forever. Verden, now possessed by the spirit of his dead wife, takes a torch to the abbey, trapping himself and Rowena in the flaming conflagration. But Christopher (John Westbrook), an admirer of Rowena, endeavors to rescue Rowena from the flames. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, (more)
- 1964
In Volume 31 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a human disguises himself as an evil alien to gather intelligence data. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
This early bit of "B"-movie fluff from Roger Corman and company is a hastily slapped-together melange of crime thriller and monster flick, laced with enough ham-fisted satire to make the entire mess enjoyable. The plot centers on a two-bit crook (Antony Carbone) who offers to transport a band of exiles from a war-torn Caribbean country -- along with a coffer of cash, which he intends to keep for himself. After killing his charges and dumping their bodies in the ocean, he blames their deaths on a sea monster told of in local legends -- a beast which eventually shows up for real. The lush tropical settings of this weekend wonder are the same lush tropical settings seen in Corman's Last Woman on Earth, which employed most of the same players as well. Corman protégé Monte Hellman served here as second unit director before embarking on his own low-budget film career. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
This weak sci-fi, post-disaster drama is about three people left alive after everyone else has been killed on earth. The trio is comprised of Harold (Antony Carbone), Martin (Edward Wain), and Evelyn (Betsy Jones-Moreland) who were underwater scuba diving when a mysterious glitch in the atmosphere depleted all available oxygen for a short period of time -- enough to kill off earth's population. The ambiance is at first eerie and increasingly ominous as the divers surface and slowly discover that no one is alive out there. Then the interaction of the two men with each other and with Evelyn (Eve?), takes over and the story veers into an odd romance drama as the two machos each try to seduce the last woman left on earth. The story was a first effort by scripter Robert Towne, whose muse was dozing at the moment, but was definitely back in form on later efforts (Chinatown, The Last Detail). Towne also co-starred here as Martin, using the pseudonym of Edward Wain. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, (more)
