The Good, Bad & Ugly of PATTERNS

PATTERNS (Blu-ray)

1956 / 83 min

Film Masters

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Mr. Paws😺

The boutique label, Film Masters, is mostly known for releasing older films that have been largely forgotten. Many are low budget - sometimes really low budget - obscurities that’ll never be mistaken for lost masterpieces. But whether it’s an overlooked gem or Corman-cranked cheapie, these discs generally boast great restorations and bonus material that’s often more informative and entertaining than the movies themselves…

…which makes this release of 1956’s Patterns a little perplexing. Written by Rod Serling (based on his teleplay for a Kraft Television Theatre episode that aired a year earlier), it’s a genuinely great film. And if all you know of Serling are his classic, genre-bending series, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, it’s something of a revelation. Instead of a sci-fi tinged allegory or creepy slice of horror, the film is a compelling drama of corporate greed and office politics. 

But atypically, this Blu-ray is just a bare-bones disc with no bonus material or even a supplemental booklet that usually accompanies Film Masters releases (which I’ve always enjoyed). Considering Patterns is the work of one of the 20th Century’s most influential screenwriters, surely it’s deserving of some retrospective analysis and/or appreciation (if even just an audio commentary). Additionally, the actual video transfer isn’t quite up to snuff. For most of the running time, the picture and sound quality is decent, if unremarkable, until the key final scene, which suddenly turns noticeably murky and muddy, almost as if someone forgot to finish the job.

Bad vibes only.

Still, Patterns is a film worth discovering, with Van Heflin as Fred Staples, the newest executive at Ramsey & Company, a powerful industrial corporation. He’s initially hired to work alongside longtime vice president Bill Briggs (Ed Begley), whose compassion for others is the polar opposite of the company’s ruthless president, Walter Ramsey (Everett Sloane), relentlessly driven by profit and expansion, which leads to considerable conflict with Briggs. But Ramsey’s conniving agenda all along has been to push Briggs out by making him miserable enough to resign, then replace him with Staples as the new VP. This puts Staples in a moral quandary since he and Briggs have become close friends and partners. 

Though Fielder Cook’s direction is merely perfunctory, Sterling’s story and screenplay crackle with sharp dialogue and complex characters, bolstered by excellent performances from Heflin, Begley and Sloane, the last of whom is wonderfully hateful. Even devoid of a music score or much in the way of melodramatic flourishes, Patterns is a consistently engaging film that holds up to repeated viewings, even if it hasn’t yet gotten the Blu-ray release it deserves.