Richiamo d'ottobre

Pleasing piece of yesteryear, a whimsical, contrived, and often extremely silly comedy from (of all people) director Joseph H. Lewis. Terry Moore is brash and appealing playing a headstrong, stubborn eighteen-year old girl facing a sanity hearing after her boyfriend, a campus psychologist, publishes a paper detailing her 'delusional' belief that a racehorse named October is her beloved deceased uncle come back to life; her relatives, greedy sorts who have been cut out of the last will of the lass's eccentric aunt, hope to put the kid away, but all she really wants is to race the horse in the Kentucky Derby! Typically overstuffed screenplay by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank has lots of lickety-split talk, a courtroom sequence played at breakneck speed, but much affection for its characters as well. Moore, with her red hair, wide eyes and fashionable jodhpurs, looks like Nicole Kidman's sassy kid sister; she often struggles with her reactions, and she's so alert that at times she appears to be staring blankly, however she acquits herself nicely with this role, and her romantic scenes with Glenn Ford are sweetly screwball. The big race finale isn't given the same care as the rest of the picture (it's pushed along and then cut a bit short), but then this isn't a teary, sentimental piece and the sub-plots are neatly tied up. Good fun! **1/2 from ****

Despite it's innocuous title, 'The Return of October' was definitely a joker in the pack of the career of Joseph H. Lewis.

Columbia had seen fit to lavish a handsome Technicolor production on this innocuous piece of whimsy, which although often erroneously described as a fantasy owes more to the thirties comedies of Frank Capra and more recent productions like 'Miracle on 34th Street'; complete with a concluding courtroom scene on behalf of a ghoulish trio of in-laws set on proving the heroine - who as played by Terry Moore probably owes much to Katherine Hepburn in 'Bringing Up Baby in being similarly oblivious to the havoc she wreaks - delusional and thus mentally incompetent to inherit Aunt Martha's fortune.

When I came across this video (on the old GoodTimes budget label) in a Half Price Books in Tacoma, WA, my initial shock came from the fact that the film was directed by none other than cult auteur Joseph H. Lewis (GUN CRAZY, THE BIG COMBO). The fact that it was shot in Technicolor and starred one of Columbia's two contract leading men (the other being William Holden) makes me assume that this must have been a prestige picture for the studio that year. In all honesty, it's not very good, with a contrived courtroom finale that recalls the previous year's MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET for all the wrong reasons. A brief synopsis of the relevant plot points: greedy relatives are trying to cover up the fact that they've squandered a dead aunt's fortune by getting niece Terry Moore declared insane, based on the fact that she thinks her horse is her reincarnated uncle (isn't it funny how in films of this period people can be declared insane on the flimsiest of premises? maybe not so funny, though, if you were Francis Farmer). Glenn Ford is a doctor of philosophy who is researching the relationships between animals and humans (whatever) and his boss at the university thinks that a paper he's writing about Terry's 'delusion' will be a big seller and bring in lots of publicity and money for their foundering school (yeah, maybe in the Bizarro Universe). Terry Moore is cute but not a very good actress, over-emoting in her scenes with the horse to the point that you begin to think that, Yeah, this chick IS crazy. The late, great Glenn Ford is, as always, charming and essentially decent, though he hasn't at this point fully developed the comedic skills that would serve him much better in the '60s. There are some trademark Joseph H. Lewis shots here and there (early in the film there's a view of Terry and her uncle up in a stand observing a horse on a track shot from a ground level POV, framed by a white wooden railing; a lengthy automobile conversation between Moore and Ford recalls, if vaguely, similar scenes in GUN CRAZY between Peggy Cummins and John Dall), but is of interest on a stylistic level only for completists of the director's work. Still, that trained cat is pretty amazing (though it does look slightly narcotized in some of its scenes).

I think it is interesting to know, and most people don't, but this was the first movie using real jockeys in the horse-racing scenes. My father was one of those jockeys, James Cassity. I have never seen this movie. If anyone knows how I can get a DVD of this I would greatly appreciate it. A lot of the horse-racing movies from this era were campy and by todays standards, the acting is probably quite lacking, especially because a lot of the information about the racetrack was not accurate; this is one of the reasons that I would love to be able to see this movie. Not only because my father was in it, but to see just how accurate they were in portraying the the racetrack portions of it.

I am very surprised by the reviews for "The Return of October", as they are mostly positive. None of them really say that it's a bad movie...and i sure feel it really is pretty bad and embarrassing to watch!

Terry (Terry Moore) is a young woman being raised by her uncle who loves horses and horse racing. The old guy is pretty sick, however, and soon dies. As for Terry, she soon sees a horse at an auction and almost immediately assumes it's her uncle....reincarnated as a horse!

Now this is NOT the only strange things about Terry. When she meets up with Professor Bassett (Glenn Ford), their 'meet cute' is pretty awful...with Terry accusing him of stealing $5 from her and calling a cop on him AND getting him a speeding ticket...both of which are HER fault. In fact, every time he's around Terry, the poor Professor ends up having his life disrupted...including getting him to buy that race horse. She promises to repay him but can't...and to recoup the university's money he spent on the 'uncle', the university agrees to not fire him IF he writes a paper about this kooky young woman. What no one knows is that Terry's extended family are crooks and they're going to use her delusion to have her institutionalized.

This film makes "Mr. Ed" seem like an episode of "Masterpiece Theatre"! Why? Well, the film is so frequently kooky and utterly ridiculous by comparison. I just cannot believe the folks in the movie could do this without feeling a LOT of embarrassment.

Now I am NOT saying this story might not have been able to work. Heck, I enjoy the Francis the Talking Mule movies...and they are pretty silly. But the writing for Moore's character, in particular, makes her seem less kooky and cute and more just annoying and obnoxious. Her delivery throughout the story sure didn't help either. Overall, a film just too silly for me to take seriously in any way...and one of Glenn Ford's films I am pretty sure he regretted making. How could he be proud of this...and, especially, his courtroom theatrics towards the end of the movie!