Peyton Place

Starring:Lana Turner, Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn, Terry Moore, Hope Lange, Diane Varsi, David Nelson, Barry Coe, Betty Field, Mildred Dunnock, Leon Ames, Lorne Greene, Robert H. Harris, Tami Conner, Staats Cotsworth, Peg Hillias, Erin O'Brien-Moore, Mike Lally
Director: Mark Robson
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1957, Peyton Place has become synonymous with torrid soap opera. Though the novel by Grace Metalious is even more sensational, the movie provides plenty of tantalizing story turns--secrets, adultery, rape, bitter parents, frustrated teenagers, suicide, and murder. Multiple storylines deftly interweave: Allison MacKenzie (Diane Varsi), an ambitious young girl struggling with the neurotic fears of her mother (Lana Turner, in a career-reviving performance) and the neurotic fears of the boy she loves (Russ Tamblyn), while her best friend Selena Cross (Hope Lange) fights off the brutal advances of her drunken stepfather. The movie had to sanitize the novel's New England town in order to get some of the more unsavory plot turns past the censors; ironically, the glossy "normal" surface makes these events all the more shocking, paving the way for David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Peyton Place is the sensitive and poignant story of coming of age in a small New England village whose peaceful facade hides love and passion, scandal and hypocrisy.

Customer Reviews:

Peyton Place, Maine USA.......2007-06-12

This film Peyton Place was filmed in Maine, USA. It has very strong subject matter even by todays standards. It mainly is about the incest rape of teen age girl.

A lost Art.......2007-06-10

Peyton Place is one of the classics in movie making. unfortunately a lost art in comparison to today's outrageously horrid form of preserving this art. It stands up on its own as piece displaying fine writing (on its own accord), fine acting, scoring and direction. Those who are not too adversely conditioned by today's movies; who still possess the ability to appreciate the finer things will find this film a gem of the cherished type of movie making that too few of us lone for. I am a philosopher and writer of aphorisms. [...]

excellent drama.......2007-05-17

I always enjoyed this movie when I was quite younger so when it came out in a DVD, I bought it. It is hard to find a good drama these days that has the input of some of the older movies. It is great and my relatives like it too. We have a movie night and and enjoy these movies.

Sex, frustration and violence ferment under the placid surface of a small New England town..........2007-01-11

Mark Robson did a superior job of evoking the feeling of life in a nice place where "time is not measured by the clock or the calendar, but by the seasons." Robson avoids the trashy approach and presents its people in a compassionate light... There are a host of first-rate performances...

The story takes place in the late 1930s and begins as the High School's new principal, Michael Rossi (Lee Philips), arrives in town to assume his duties... In quick succession, many of the town's local inhabitants are introduced...

Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner) is an attractive widow who owns a dress shop... She runs it efficiently and persists in keeping her teen-aged daughter, Allison (Diane Varsi in her film debut), insulated from the world...

Allison's best friend is Selena Cross (Hope Lange), who lives in a shack on the wrong side of town with her worn-out mother, Constance's housekeeper Betty Field, and her brutal stepfather, Lucas (Arthur Kennedy).

There is also Russ Tamblyn, a sensitive, insecure mother-dominated adolescent; Barry Coy, the arrogant son of the town's biggest tycoon; Terry Moore, the school flirt; David Nelson, the boyfriend of Selena Cross; and Doc Swain (Lloyd Nolan), a well-liked medic... These are the most prominent characters among a large assortment of townspeople whose lives form a pattern of love, hate and destruction...

The first of the narrative's dramatic occasions is set one evening after the high school's Graduation Dance when Ted proposes to Selena and she promises to wait for him to become a successful lawyer...

That night when she returns to her ramshackle home, Selena finds her stepfather, Lucas, alone, drunk, and abusive... He attacks her, as a result of which she becomes pregnant...

Doc Swain immediately confronts Lucas with his crime, obtains a written confession from him and orders the man to leave 'Peyton Place' for good... Later, the doctor is forced to perform an abortion on Selena which he lists officially as an appendectomy...

The plot then shifts to the emotional conflict between school principal Rossi and Constance... Rossi has been making a romantic bid for Constance but she bitterly rejects his love in her continued retreat from any emotional commitment...

When Constance is told by the town gossip that Allison has been swimming in the nude with Russ Tamblyn, she confronts her daughter with the story... An angry scene follows, and the truth is revealed... Chaotic series of events follows...

'Peyton Place' is a scandalous bestseller, one of the first to reveal those nasty secrets of ordinary people... It draws nine Oscar nominations... The motion picture offers an extremely tasteful portrait of an American town, with an intelligent, sensitive concern for its characters... It is a wholly unobjectionable entertainment which retains all of the strong dramatic qualities of the novel..

Good film, so-so Special Features.......2006-06-30

As other reviewers have discussed the film in good detail, I will just say I have always enjoyed Peyton Place. It is one of the few instances where the film rises over the material presented.

However, I found the special features on the DVD to be very disappointing. The extra audio track is Russ Tamblyn and Terry Moore discussing the film (unfortunately most of the other stars are dead, so this is the best they could do). They are obviously not in the same room, so there is no interaction between them. Tamblyn's comments are okay, but Moore is constantly reminding us of the few high points of her so-so career.

The other special feature is the show done by AMC's Hollywood Backstory on the film - and like other Backstory's, overly dwells with sensational tidbits (especially Lana Turner's ordeal when her daughter killed her mob boyfriend).

Get the DVD for a good quality presentation of a favorite film, but not to learn anything substantive about it.

Average customer rating:

romantic soap of the 50s
Great sequel to Peyton Place
Good follow-up on its own merits
Classic - Peyton Place
Gossip, Gossip, Gossip

Return to Peyton Place
Starring: Mary Astor , Joan Banks , Helen Bennett , Bill Bradley , and Harry Carter (II)
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B00074DY16
Release Date: 2005-02-22

Description

Carol Lynley stars as Allison, whose book about her neighbors at Peyton Place creates problems for her family. Tuesday Weld, Jeff Chandler co-star.

Customer Reviews:

romantic soap of the 50s.......2007-06-03

no lana turner but whit eleonor parker and mary astor.
romantic nice movie of the 50s

Great sequel to Peyton Place.......2007-02-15

Return to Peyton Place begins with Rosemary Clooney singing the beautiful title song,(she sings it faboulously, and she is featured here because her then husband Jose Ferrer is the director (also see his State Fair..a hilarious mess) the Franz Waxman melody that enhanced so much of the 1957 film, Peyton Place. Then you get a whole new cast, and Carol Lynley, writing a book about Peyton Place with Jeff Chandler. She and he are 'artists", and they have to deal with Mary Astor, a pillar of morality in Peyton Place. Her performance is not to be missed; it is a thorough lesson in screen acting, lessons she shared with Bette Davis years before. If you are curious about how to dominate a low end script, watch Ms. Astor do it.

Then there is Tuesday Weld, who should have been cast as Allison but is Salina Cross and very good in her scenes with Mary Astor. She(Weld) has some harrowing moments in trying to defend herself from charges of lustiness with certain folk in Peyton Place. Eleanor Parker is the new Connie and she is not as good as Lana Turner, but she has moments with Lynley that define a new kind of melodrammatic acting..so over the top Everest would be a mole hill here. . Also, Lucianna Paluzzi is here, with her Italian ways,her accent is so thick she is mostly incomprehensible, and she is driven to ,literally, the heights and depths of despair.Her scenes with Mary Astor are seering moments of sado-masochistic behavior. Bret Halsey, an actor with incredible limitations, is puddy for Mary Astor, who plays his mother. Robert Sterling as Parker's officious husband, and principal of Peyton Place High School, is an unintentional bore and has odd facial expressions and an aversion to E. Parker that makes one wonder.

The ending of Return To Peyton Place is a treasure of great and bad acting..terrible direction, and incredible style and talent, complments of Ms. Astor, on how to do the whole thing and take the film away from everyone.

There's a lurid quality to it all, and this sequel is not as polite as the first Peyton Place(a very good film). This sequel shows Peyton Place to be a really disturbed town within, like Black Rock in Bad Day At Black Rock.
The mentality of all of them is small and pornographic, and Allison's book about the past goings on is the sum total of the town itself,illiterate, mean spirited and low vibration, and Allison is like this herself, splitting infinitives, her verb tenses all mixed up, and her continuous pouting and constant referral in every crisis to sexual repression. The book (written in the film)is, in an odd way, the best the town could ever do in this regard. In this sense Allison is more Peyton Place than anyone else; she is proud of her bad book, and wants to build a new Peyton Place on it.

See this film on DVD, and enjoy all of its craziness. You will not forget Mary Astor. Also check out the talk shopw scene with Lynley and the dubbing of the host by Jose Ferrer..unbelievable, and this man worked with David Lean.

Good follow-up on its own merits.......2007-02-13

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It has a stellar cast & is an engrossing sequel to the original. The plots are interesting & the actors are talented & enjoyable to watch. It isn't fair to compare it to the original. The original was great, but then so is this contribution to the film series. I would recommend it to be watched back-to-back on a sunday afternoon, it would make for a fun marathon. Myself, I'm not at all a fan of sequels, but Carol Lynley, Jeff Chandler, Mary Astor & Brett Halsey deserve kudos for their meat & potatoes performances in this production. I'm very pleased it's finally on DVD.

Classic - Peyton Place.......2006-11-05

If you liked Peyton Place, you will love this movie. Jeff Chandler does a great job portraying "the publisher" of Allison's book as well as her lover for the moment. This also has a variety of things happening in Peyton Place that you will find interesting.

Gossip, Gossip, Gossip.......2005-11-07

It isn't mandatory that you watch Peyton Place before Return To Peyton Place as the actors are different and some of the characters did not reappear in the sequel. I watched both back to back and Return To... was just as glossy, trashy and colourfully slick as its predecessor. With a story like this, taking place in a small town full of characters, there are more than enough stories to interweave. The audio commentary of Sylvia Stoddard is a great supplement to this dvd. (see also The Best of Everything) She related stories about Tuesday Weld, Mary Astor and Grace Metalious among many others. This is a well-produced melodrama and I recommend it on that basis.

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