Howard Hughes - The Great Aviator: Special Edition

Presumably cashing in on the new movie The Aviator, we are given here a two-disc package titled The Great Aviator.

But it's not a totally blatant rip-off. In fact, for fans of bad cinema and mad Americans, it's a very desirable package, with a blissful excess of both badness and madness. We are given first a documentary on the life of Hughes, and then get the chance to see two complete movies from his years as Hollywood film producer -- the famous (or infamous) The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell, and The Sins of Harold Diddlebock starring silent-screen comic Harold Lloyd.

First, the madness. The Great Aviator - Howard Hughes is a straight-down-the-line, relatively factual account of the life of America's first billionaire.

Hughes inherited a squillion dollars, and invested enough of it wisely to be able to keep spending it. He invested predominantly in aircraft development, property and gambling, and his empire just grew and grew.

He used his seemingly limitless funds to pursue his hobbies of flying, which he did foolhardedly but pretty well, lusting after pretty and ever-younger women, in which he succeeded extremely well, and making Hollywood movies, which he did extremely badly. In fact, most of his movie-efforts veered wildly from drama to farce - he was the king of bad-taste schlock.

His affairs with Hollywood stars and starlets were legendary. My own favourites Ginger Rogers and Jean Simmons were at different times linked with him. So were Ava Gardner, Jean Peters, and Katherine Hepburn. The documentary notes that as he got older, his women got younger. He moved from stars to starlets, and then to would-be starlets. Towards the end of his public life, he'd take teenage hopefuls and 'groom' them personally for months or even years, in strict seclusion.

The documentary shows such renowned follies as the Spruce-Goose, the World War Two giant wooden troop-carrying aircraft on which he wasted millions of development dollars, only to see the war end before it could be put into service.

One reason was his obsessive behaviour disorder. He couldn't stop interfering with the plane's design and construction, adding years to its development cycle, and millions to its cost. The same was true of Hughes as a film-producer. He couldn't resist interfering at every turn, insisting on expensive reshoots, sacking directors, wasting time and money at every turn.

However, he did two great things for the motion-picture industry. He ensured that Robert Mitchum still had a career after his bust for marijuana. He personally visited Mitchum in gaol to assure the great Hollywood actor that his career was only on hold. And he kept his promise, and Mitchum, on release from gaol, became a bigger star than ever.

And he introduced Jane Russell's oustanding talents, both of them, to the world, by casting the 19-year-old big brunette in The Outlaw, a comic saga about legendary bad-boy Billy the Kid.

He did everything possible to make Russell as big a hit as those talents deserved, by even going to the extent of personally designing a special cantilevered bra to present them to the global cinema audience. Russell later claimed Hughes's creation was uncomfortable and she never wore it. And watching her bob about vigorously in The Outlaw, I'm inclined to believe her.

Hughes was an extraordinary mix of dynamic business acumen and ruthlessness, idealism and painful obsession. The documentary reveals how most of his bad points were redeemed at the end of his bizarre life, when he willed most of his huge fortune to charity, for medical research.

The doco is pretty pedestrian in the way it's told, but the story it tells is fascinating. It shows just how far a madman with a compulsive behaviour disorder can go, if he has millions of dollars behind him. And it could only happen in America, the land of the (wealthy) free.

Quality of the documentary is acceptable, given the vintage of much of the material from which it's drawn -- old stock photographs, newsreel footage and other variable-quality stock.

The two-channel mono soundtrack is adequate as far as comprehensibility is concerned, but does nothing to augment the documentary. There's no attempt to introduce drama through effective narration or use of music. Much of the documentary footage is pretty static due to its age; a lot more could have been done with the audio-track to inject drama and excitement.

The main extra feature is in fact the highlight of the package -- the complete 116-minute long 1943 movie The Outlaw starring Jane Russell as Rio McDonald, Jack Buelen as Billy the Kid, Thomas Mitchell as Pat Garrett and Walter Huston as Doc Holliday.

This is a wildly improbable, often inadvertently comic drama which really serves in the main to launch Jane Russell's ample bosoms onto the world -- something we should thank Hughes for. Without them, we'd never have gained the classic pairing some years later of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in one of the all-time classic musical-comedies, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Apart from Jane Russell's bosoms, the main star is Walter Huston, father of renowned director John Huston. Walter was always good screen value, and here he manages to almost compensate for the movie's ludicrous plot and banal dialogue.

Lots of people claim The Outlaw as one of their favurite movies, on the 'it's so bad it's good' basis. And it is fun viewing on that basis -- though Howard Hughes did succeed in making some right stinkers way below The Outlaw's basement-level, including the John Wayne vehicle The Conqueror in which the old Western ham actor tries to convince us he's Genghis Khan.

Picture quality is acceptable for its vintage, though there are some abrupt scene-jumps and signs of wear. The soundtrack is noisy at times, but adequate. One odd note is the use of totally inappropriate music by Tchaikovsky -- though maybe that choice is totally appropriate, since the plotline of the movie suggests that the love-affair between Billy the Kid and Jane Russell's character Rio is really getting in the way of an equally intense relationship between Billy and Doc Holliday -- and between Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett for that matter. There's something for everyone here.

The second extra is a movie written and directed by Preston Sturges as a vehicle for bringing out from retirement the veteran silent-film actor Harold Lloyd. The Sins of Harold Diddlebock is as tortured and as unfunny as its title. Its 90 minutes are unfunny torture, showing that Harold should have been left in peace in his retirement home. It's slow and unsubtle -- totally dreadful stuff. Sound and picture quality is mediocre.

Not much better are the six original theatrical trailers given here of Howard Hughes productions, all in average to poor condition; all in fullscreen. We have trailers for 'The French Line', 'The Las Vegas Story', 'Flying Leathernecks', 'Son of Sinbad', 'Underwater' and 'Jet Pilot' -- the last being another atrocious John Wayne vehicle which has gone down in history as a Hughes fiasco to rival 'The Conqueror'.

There's a Filmography, listing all the movies in which he featured either as director or producer or both - view only if you're not allergic to turkeys.

And then there's one of the more bizarre extras I've seen -- a text list of 'locations' in Hughes's life. Here's the address of the Coconut Grove, where he met one of his major career-bonks, Ginger Rogers. The address of several of his Las Vegas properties. The address of his childhood home, with the admonitory note 'do not disturb the occupants'. Very odd -- as compulsive as its subject.

At its moderate price, this two-disc set is worth the purchase-price for getting hold of one of the classic bad movies of old Hollywood, The Outlaw. This really is, once you settle into it, quite entertaining viewing just for its crass dialogue, unbelievable scenario and its frequent glimpses of Jane Russell's great talents as she tumbles in the hay and every other imaginable locale.

The documentary is just ok, but worth viewing the once. The movie featuring Harold Lloyd is disposable garbage.

Overall, it's a real mixed-bag. But there's enough of value here to make it worth considering.