|
Two
Before Zero
|
 Basil Rathbone and Mary Murphy |
 Basil Rathbone |
Two before Zero was produced in Chicago at the Fred A. Niles studio by Motion Picture Corp. of America. The stars, Basil Rathbone and Mary Murphy, began filming in February 1962; the film was completed in March 1962. Reginald J. Holzer, MPCA president, spent some months negotiating distribution rights. Ellis Films eventually acquired the U.S. distribution rights, and the film was released in the United States on October 31, 1962. It was the only film ever directed by William Faralla.
According to the April 2, 1962 issue of Box Office, producer Fred Niles said the film was not a message picture nor was it militant radical nor liberal. He said it presented interpretation of facts as they were, aimed at broadening the American public's awareness of Communism's threat to western freedoms.
Variety reported that Two Before Zero made such a dismal showing in New York that the picture was stopped after six days. In those six days it earned a measly $6000.
International Film Distributors acquired the rights for international distribution. Under the title Red Hell, the film was released in the United Kingdom in 1964. Russian Roulette is another alternate title.
Arch Music of New York purchased the music rights. Sid Siegel composed the music for Two before Zero. In an interview, his wife Carrie said, "I remember everything feeling very dark, almost sinister, around our house when he worked on that film. The music was written in a minor key and sounded so gloomy."
Two before Zero was released on DVD in the USA on November 20, 2008. The Alpha Video version was released in 2019.
| Two Before Zero Anti-communist tract. A mixed exploitation prospect. Two Before Zero is a hybrid documentary on Bolshevik behavior and the Orwellian implications of Communism. It is simplified and emotional, intended to exploit boxofficewise present day East-West tensions. It will find a presold type of spectator in selected situations. Turned out by Motion Picture Corp. of America, a Chicago outfit, and released by Ellis Films. "Zero" employs Basil Rathbone and Mary Murphy in stagey, self-conscious symbolic roles, laced with clips parading the top communist names, past and present and a grisly recital of Soviet atrocity over the years. Rathbone, as the figure of History, and Miss Murphy, who seems intended to symbolize American innocence, are staged somewhat like ancient Greek drama. Their duolog, which also serves to narrate the pic, is embarrassingly "arty," incomplete in historical analysis, and at times inaccurate as to facts. It has been produced with technical competence The actors do the best they can with their lines, but the fault is not to be found in the stars. Pit. —Variety, October 24, 1962 |
"Hurried into theatres only days after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when fears of Russia were at an all-time high in the US, this gloriously wrongheaded 1962 anti-Communist diatribe mixes a surreal framework, a ponderous history lesson and inflammatory documentary footage from private overseas collections. ... Basil gives his socio-politically clueless companion a Far-Right overview of Russia's horrific past. ... There's plenty of risible dialogue and leaden propaganda though. Detailing the evil face of Communism, while embracing the format of a John Birch sponsored episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Rathbone valiantly tries to keep us from drifting off throughout this snoozefest, but his commanding voice can only go so far." —Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema
 lobby card |
 lobby card |
"Basil Rathbone is the symbol of Communist double-talk who tries to explain the meaning of 'dialectical materialism' to Mary Murphy, who is the symbol of a naive woman of average intellect. Rathbone presents the backgrounds and causes of the Russian Revolution, when the Tsar and his family were slaughtered, Lenin and Trotsky rose to power and, following the former's death, the Stalinist take-over. Also shown are the Spanish Civil War, which aided the Communist cause, the rape of Hungary, the cunning of Red China and, finally, the threat of Castro's Cuba." —Box Office, November 19, 1962
|
Anti-Red Film at the Palace Two Before Zero, at the Palace Theatre, has drifted in on the recent wave of newsreel compilations on Communism and the like. The biting, pedantic tones of Basil Rathbone detail the growth of Communism while Mary Murphy, her face masked in childlike naivete, reacts to his cold, cynical narration by reiterating that she is a woman made not to grasp political complexities, but to be loved. The resulting dialogue seems out of place against film clips depicting the evolution of Communism from the Marxist theories of dialectical materialism to the power-hungry craving of Lenin, Stalin and Krushchev. The pictures speak for themselves, lingering over stomach-churning views of purge victims. The superfluous theatrics of the Rathbone-Murphy dialogue detract from the inherent power of such pictures. For the sake of drama, the facts are oversimplified in an attempt to force Miss Murphy (and the audience) to feel hatred and finally despair. Fortunately she rises to the situation, counteracting these emotions with a passage from the psalms beginning: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want ..." The film strips themselves, obviously worked over, warrant interest in spite of the dramatic coating (pierced by a persistent reminder that the time is two minutes before zero, zero presumable representing atomic holocaust), which appears to be hopefully aimed at box-office profit. Had it maintained a strictly informative purpose, the film might have scored at something more than at the box office. —Kathleen Carroll, The New York Daily News, November 1, 1962 |
"Two Before Zero is the movie of the week end. Primarily a documentary this film is an attempt to trace the history and explain the motives of Communism from Karl Marx to the present. ... A great deal of startling footage is used, much of which has not been seen before." —The Mendocino Beacon, February 7, 1964
 one-sheet poster |
 newspaper ad |
 Poster in Spanish |
"The case against communism in Two Before Zero successfully uses film records of events in Europe leading up to the present Communist crisis. It dramatizes the historical facts in a vivid way that brings the story into focus. ... Attempting to explain the philosophy on which communism is based, the film delves behind the double talk of Communist leaders and lays bare the results—atrocities mostly—of various attempts to conceal the true nature of the international Communist movement. ... Throughout the film there runs a strong thread of contrast between the Democratic way of life and Communism." —Jane Corby, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 1, 1962
| Two Before Zero "TWO BEFORE ZERO," which came to the Palace yesterday, leaves a disturbing feeling, despite its sincerity, that it is more an opportunistic endeavor than the result of unmitigated dedication. For this combination of newsreel footage and editorializing by a pair of visible narrators describing the birth, rise, growth and direful threat of Communism, is more a familiar tract than a startling revelation. With Basil Rathbone, dressed in judicial robes before a large volume on a lectern, and Mary Murphy, attired in flowing, white virginal robes, as, we presume, the personification of the eternal woman asking questions about Communism, Mr. Rathbone explains Communism's history and implications. The dialogue, delivered in portentous, often satirical tones, is pointed and cutting but sometimes too high-flown for the shots it is supposed to underline. Unfortunately, some of the footage, culled from a variety of German, Russian, American and other sources, has been seen before and it is, sadly enough, not too striking on occasion. Coming on the heels of such recent feature-length compilations as "We'll Bury You!" and "Secrets of the Nazi Criminals," as well as the many documentaries on allied subjects viewed since the end of World War II, "Two Before Zero" makes its plea for vigilance and steadfastness seem vaguely redundant. Starving children, cadavers in Katyn Forest and Communist duplicity are horrible, soul-shattering facts but "Two Before Zero" does not make them especially dramatic or educational to the reasonably well-informed. —Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, November 1, 1962 |
"By now anybody who is without information about the general nature of Communism must have spent the last half century in a cave. ... What's new about Two Before Zero is an attempt by Basil Rathbone and Mary Murphy to explain dialectical materialism, using the film episodes to illustrate their points. Dialectical materialism is a philosophical concept upon which theoretical communism is based, all right, but it is not the villain of today's world politics. Our present problem is Russian nationalism rather than Hegelianism. Mary has a well-done moment at the end, however, reciting 'The Lord Is My Shepherd' with pleasant effect." —Louis Cook, The Detroit Free Press, May 17, 1963
 Basil Rathbone |
 Basil Rathbone and Mary Murphy |
From the back cover of the Alpha Video DVD:
"Famed film historian Peter Cowie once called it 'quite one of the oddest films I have ever seen.' Two Before Zero is a truly bizarre docudrama that could have only been made during the height of the Cold War. On a darkened stage, two figures — one an intimidating black-robed demagogue portrayed by Basil Rathbone, the other an innocent beauty in a diaphanous gown played by Mary Murphy — argue the merits of communism and capitalism. Accompanying their debate is (sometimes shockingly graphic) footage of the Russian Revolution, the death of Lenin, the rise of Stalin, the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Hungary, and Castro's takeover in Cuba. Occasionally Rathbone will interject such bizarre statements as 'in Russia, women do not have legs ... officially, that is' and 'it was a Russian, not an American, who invented baseball, hula hoops, hot dogs, safety pins, radio, television, motion pictures, jazz music, and Jayne Mansfield!' It soon becomes abundantly clear that these two individuals are meant to represent the United States and the Soviet Union. At the time of Two Before Zero's release, Rathbone's days as Sherlock Holmes were long behind him, but he was still in high demand as an actor in horror films. Basil had just appeared in Roger Corman's Tales of Terror alongside fellow horror legends Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, and he would reunite with them the following year for Jacques Tourneur's The Comedy of Terrors (1963, also featuring Boris Karloff.) His autobiography In and Out of Character was also published in 1962, and would become the basis of a one-man show, 'An Evening with Basil Rathbone,' that successfully toured the United States. How Basil then came to be involved with a film as unusual as Two Before Zero is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself. His co-star, Mary Murphy, is best remembered as the innocent small-town girl who redeems Marlon Brando's Johnny in The Wild One (1953). William Faralla had previously been an assistant director on TV shows like Ozzie and Harriet (1956-1957) and Zane Grey Theater (1956-1959), but nothing in his filmography points to anything quite as strange as Two Before Zero. The film was also released under the titles Russian Roulette and Red Hell."
..
|
.
|
Two Before Zero is available on DVD
|
.
