His ‘Killers’ and ‘Heroes’

UCLA Film Archive’s outstanding Don Siegel retrospective continues tonight with Siegel’s terse 1964 remake of “The Killers.” Though it’s best remembered as the final film of Ronald Reagan, in a rare bad-guy role, he is but part of a formidable ensemble cast. In this Hemingway-based tale, a pair of killers for hire (Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager), who suspect that their latest target (John Cassavetes) had once been involved in a lucrative heist, track down the loot, which leads to Reagan’s character and his mistress (Angie Dickinson). The result is a vigorous exploration of the question of honor among thieves.

“The Killers” is followed by one of Siegel’s most distinctive films, “Hell Is for Heroes” (1962). This World War II saga centers on one of Siegel’s atypical heroes (Steve McQueen), a rebellious soldier sent to an infantry squad near the Siegfried Line. The squad, under the command of a well-respected sergeant (Fess Parker), has established a camaraderie alien to McQueen’s taciturn Reese. Yet when the weary squad is sent back into battle, it is Reese who understands what must be done.

Based on Richard Carr’s adaptation of a Robert Pirosh story, the film is daring in that Siegel must sustain interest during a considerable lull before the storm, and accomplishes this with sharp characterizations by the cast, which includes Bobby Darin, Harry Guardino, Nick Adams, Bob Newhart, James Coburn and Mike Kellin.

The Siegel retrospective concludes with three well-known films of the director’s later career, starting Saturday with the 1968 police procedural “Madigan,” starring Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda. The next night is a sly and amusing double feature: “The Beguiled” (1971), which finds a wounded Union soldier (Clint Eastwood) recovering in a Southern girls school, and “Charley Varrick” (1973), in which Walter Matthau plays a small-time bank robber who hits upon the perfect crime.

Less familiar is Saturday’s “Private Hell 36” (1954), an intricate film noir co-written by producer Collier Young and his ex-wife Ida Lupino, who stars with Howard Duff, her then-husband, and Steve Cochran. Duff and Cochran are LAPD detectives who trace a marked $50 bill from a heist in New York several years earlier. It leads to a sultry nightclub singer (Lupino) and a clutch of clever complications.

Girls’ night

Outfest Wednesdays presents “Girls’ Shorts,” a lively program from the recent Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, at the Egyptian. Roberta Marie Munroe’s “Dani & Alice” delves forthrightly into domestic violence in lesbian relationships. The other shorts are comedies: Leanna Creel’s “Prom-troversy” imagines what would happen if a prom queen at a Midwestern high school attempted to take the only out lesbian student as her date. Guinevere Turner’s hilarious “Hung” imagines what it would be like for five lesbians to have penises for a day. Liz Lachman’s jaunty “Getting to Know You” features an intense serial dater of beauties who gets an unexpected life lesson. The heroine of Jennie Livingston’s witty and accomplished “Who’s the Top” wishes her sweet-natured lover would dominate her. Unavailable for preview: Claudia Lorenz’s “Hi Maya,” in which two older women encounter each other in a hair salon after many years.

Tales of horror

The sixth edition of the American Cinematheque’s Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction continues with “The Mask of Fu Manchu” (1932), screening Saturday at the Egyptian after “Frankenstein” (1931). Whereas “Frankenstein” is a timelessly poignant classic, “Fu Manchu” is unintentional high camp. Amid MGM’s trademark splendor, a bunch of idiotic Brits take off for the Gobi Desert to beat the infamous Dr. Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) in breaking into the tomb of Genghis Khan to steal his golden mask and scimitar -- for the British Museum, natch. After allowing the Brits to do the dirty work, Fu Manchu snatches the mask and scimitar, with which he intends to anoint himself the new Khan and cause “the East to arise.”

Adapted from the Sax Rohmer novel and directed by Charles Brabin, the film is unabashedly racist paranoia. The inevitable triumph of Western good over Eastern evil was never so wonderfully unconvincing.

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Screenings

Don Siegel retrospective

* “The Killers” and “Hell Is for Heroes”: 7:30 tonight

* “Madigan” and “Private Hell 36”: 7 p.m. Saturday

* “The Beguiled” and “Charley Varrick”: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA campus

Info: (310) 206-FILM

Outfest Wednesdays

“Girls’ Shorts”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-FILM

Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction

“Frankenstein” and “The Mask of Fu Manchu”: 8 p.m. Friday

Where: Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-FILM