WALK THE PROUD LAND (1956)

In 1874, John Clum (Audie Murphy) arrives in Tucson in Arizona Territory, sent by the Department of the Interior to take steps to make the local Apache population "useful citizens." The Army, embodied by General Wade, is not happy to be overridden in their mission to suppress (or, essentially, exterminate if possible) the "savage" Apache people. Clum immediately takes measures to stop Apache workers from being manacled and is thanked by the Apache widow Tianay (Anne Bancroft), who moves herself and her young son into Clum's dwelling to be his woman. He tells her he's already engaged and that his fiancée is arriving soon to be married, but she begs to be kept on as a housekeeper. Clum has soon set up an Apache police force to take care of tribal matters, replacing the Army. He also allows the arming of the police and of a handful of hunters. Former Army officer Tom Sweeny (Charles Drake), in danger of becoming a drunkard, becomes Clum's trusted associate, as does Taglito (Tommy Rall), a young Apache. General Wade and the Governor of the Territory remain unconvinced by Clum's approach, and forces within the tribe, primarily embodied by the angry young Disalin, stir up tensions as they want to join up with the exiled Geronimo and his men, who are hiding in the hills. More tension is stirred up by Mary (Pat Crowley) who arrives to marry Clum and, understandably, resents the presence of Tianay in their home. The ending, in which Clum gets Geronimo to surrender without firing a shot, leaves things in uncertainty as the Army regains control of the tribe, but Clum agrees to stay on when he is asked by the Apache chief to become a go-between.

John Clum was a real person who did, according to Wikipedia, implement self-government on reservation lands, and did have a hand in capturing Geronimo. He had a wife named Mary, though they were married back in Ohio. When he got tired of Army interference, he left for good, replaced by a string of Indian agents who were less effective. This movie has the feel of a "print the legend" story and as such, it's effective enough. I like Audie Murphy and his stoic good-guy persona works well here. The memory of watching TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON was still fresh and Murphy reminded me of a less antic version of the role that Glenn Ford plays in that tale of the American Army's attempts to bring capitalism to a post-war Japanese village. It was strange to see Anne Bancroft in "duskyface" (pictured with Murphy) and speaking stilted English as the Indian widow but she's fine. Pat Crowley has little to do in the totally predictable role of the wife who overcomes her resentment in the end. Charles Drake is likable as Murphy's sidekick, though he rather overdoes a drunk scene early in the film. Tommy Rall is better known as a dancer (Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and is not an easy fit for the role of Taglito, but he grew on me. As was par for the course, there are no Native American actors in major roles except for Jay Silverheels in the small role of Geronimo, and the men in the bad guy roles (Morris Ankrum, Anthony Caruso) don't have much to do except glower and skulk. Writer Jeff Arnold, an expert on the Old West and Western movies, concludes that even if the "facts are distorted [...] they got the overall tone right," and that feels right to me. [TCM]

BLONDES AT WORK (1938)

Reporter Torchy Blane sees a rookie cop named Regan writing her a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant. Torchy tries to avoid the ticket by letting Regan know that she is the fiancée of police officer Lieutenant McBride, but no dice. As it happens, McBride is in hot water for leaking too much information to Torchy for her scoops. He refuses to discuss cases with her, and wants her to quit her job when they marry. Of course, this makes her more determined than ever to make headlines. Department store magnate Spencer is reported missing (Torchy saw him hustled into a car while getting her ticket), then found dead. When Torchy finds out that McBride’s driver Gahagan keeps a diary that he leaves in his car's glove compartment, she encourages him to write about the cases that McBride is working on, then Torchy sneaks peeks at the diary and manages to get secret info that she makes front page news with. McBride is stumped for a while, but soon catches on, though by that point, Torchy is going full speed ahead with her meddling in the Spencer case, going so far as to eavesdrop on a jury room discussion to get info. She is jailed on contempt charges just as the case is coming to a climax, but McBride actually gives her a hand so she can still get the final scoop. This is the fourth in a series of Torchy Blane movies, with Glenda Farrell as Torchy and Barton MacLane as McBride (they appeared in seven of the nine movies). I have enjoyed some of the entries in this series of fast-paced B-movies, but this one left me cold. For starters, the mystery is handled rather haphazardly and there's not much at stake for the audience—I started to include the details of the mystery in my summary but didn't think it was worth it. The climax of the case plays out offscreen. I like Glenda Farrell OK but Torchy comes off as a bit unlikable in her single-minded drive to get scoops, not seeming to care how much trouble McBride might get into. MacLane is boring and the two have little chemistry. Busy comic character actor Tom Kennedy outshines the leads as Gahagan, and I like John Ridgely in the small role of Regan. I must admit I enjoyed seeing Torchy in jail. Some plot elements were borrowed from 1935’s FRONT PAGE WOMAN. Unless you’re a Torchy Blane completist, this is not necessary viewing. Pictured are Farrell and MacLane. [TCM]

WARNING FROM SPACE (1956)

In a rotating spaceship in outer space, aliens shaped like starfish with a big eye in the center of their bodies are on a mission to save Earthlings from their own blunders. They send out flying saucers over Japan and try to get the attention of scientists Kamura, Matsuda and Itsobe. Citizens of Tokyo also begin to see these saucers, with some people reporting weird power glitches, and a reporter who catches Prof. Kamura lounging at the Cafe Universe (great name, awful decor) tries to get a story from him. Eventually one of the aliens (referred to as #1 by the other aliens) transmutes itself into the appearance of famous entertainer Hikari Aozora. She is rescued from a lake and brought to the attention of the scientists where she exhibits odd behavior like leaping ten feet into the air and passing through walls and closed doors. She also finds and tears up the formula for a new, powerful and deadly atomic weapon that Matsuda has been working on. We soon learn the aliens are from the planet Pryan whose orbit is exactly opposite that of Earth and they seem to have two missions. One was to stop us from building Matsuda's weapons, which Alien #1 seems to have done, but the other one is to warn us that a rogue planet (they call it Planet R) is heading our way and will crash into us, destroying Earth but also negatively affecting Pryon's orbit as well. The best way to do this might be to gather all existing nuclear weapons and fire them at the planet, but the United Nations (called the World Congress here) fights that idea—until the approaching planet becomes visible. They try it but it has no effect. Then someone thinks maybe Matsuda's secret new weapon might work, but a gangster has kidnapped Matsuda, keeping him tied up until he gives up the secret formula. Does Earth have a chance?

Online critics have noted that The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide may have influenced this low-budget Japanese film's plot, but it’s also a hodgepodge of interesting but half-baked ideas, some of which are brought up and then dropped pretty quickly. (It’s also the first Japanese sci-fi film in color, for what it's worth.) Let's get the biggest problem out of the way first: the aliens look like big Teletubbies whose costumes were made by the moms of middle school students for a talent show. They are perhaps the worst looking aliens in movie history (pictured above right). The gimmick of having Alien #1 impersonate a celebrity has promise, but little is done with it. The flying saucers being shot out of a mothership is a largely squandered idea, as are the World Congress, the gangsters, and Alien #1’s ability to pass through solids. The irony of the aliens trying to eradicate the very thing that ends up being the solution to the larger problem is never dealt with. I feel like they threw every idea they had for this movie in a hat, picked a few out, and gave them each 5-10 minutes of screen time. [Caveat: I've only seen the dubbed American print from American International which was released directly to TV in 1963, and it may differ from the original version in major ways.] Once I got done laughing at the opening scene of the aliens, I admit the movie did have a certain charm. The last section, which features some limited destruction due to the approaching planet, works up some thrills, and the scene of Matsuda tied up with a blood red sky lighting the room, looks almost like film noir. The actors are par for the course, with the only one allowed to stand out being Toyomi Karita as Alien #1/Hikari, mostly due to her being a bit glamorous. OK for Saturday afternoon fun. Note: every other review of this movie calls the aliens "Pairans" but I distinctly heard a "y" sound in there, so that's why I stuck with "aliens." Pictured at left is the transformation of Alien #1 into Hikari. [YouTube]

PAROLE, INC. (1948)

Right off the bat, we are given a thesis sentence, if you will, concerning the "growing menace of unwisely given or fraudulently obtained paroles." Next we see a man with multiple injuries in a hospital bed. This is Richard Hendricks, a federal agent who is recording his testimony to be used in court. We flashback to the beginning of his case, when he is tasked by the governor to root out corruption on the state parole board. When we see one of the board meetings, it's not hard to figure out that the head of the board, Holliday, is involved, as whenever there's a tie vote, he breaks the tie by voting for the parole of a shady character. Hendricks goes undercover as convict Rick Carson, a parole violator, and infiltrates the gang of Harry Palmer, a recent parolee freed by the corrupt Holliday. Palmer's wife Glenda works at the Pastime Club, a place frequented by crooks, and when Hendricks (as Carson) starts making contacts there, he flirts with the owner, Jojo Dumont, who runs an illegal gaming racket. Hendricks tries to arrange for help in getting his crime partner, Cooper, freed via crooked parole. Soon, all roads lead towards Jojo's lover Barney, a crooked lawyer who, for a fee, gets Holliday and a couple other parole board members, to rig up paroles for unworthy convicts. Double crosses, a murder, and secret recordings ensue until Hendricks is exposed and gets the shit kicked out of him. But as we know from the opening, he is saved in the nick of time by the cops and recovers to give the testimony that will put the bad guys behind bars.

Short B-film second features of the era often had either too much or not enough plot. This 70-minute movie has too much, and things get a little convoluted, though generally I was able to follow the basics. The biggest problem, however, is the lead actor, Michael O'Shea, as Hendricks. He is charisma-free and alternates between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Virtually every other male actor in the movie outshines him. Charles Bradstreet, as Palmer, is quite good but vanishes too early. Harry Lauter, James Cardwell, and Lyle Talbot, in small roles, are good. The usually reliable Turhan Bey (Barney) has little to do compared with how important he is to the plot. The two females, Evelyn Ankers (Jojo) and Virginia Lee (Glenda) are both fine. (There is literally only one other woman in the movie, Hendrick's nurse, played by Bess Flowers, the queen of bit part players of the classic era.) Much of the narrative winds up told, not shown, the sets are cheap and the direction is lackluster. I stuck with it largely for the novelty of the semi-propaganda topic of parole cheating, but you can give this a miss. Pictured is Charles Bradstreet. [YouTube]

RIGHT HAND OF THE DEVIL (1963)

Pepe Lusara (played by the film's director Aram Katcher) arrives in Los Angeles by helicopter and rents a big house for six months. The previous resident, we are told, was a research scientist who died in an explosion and not all of his body parts were found—this odd detail never comes into play again. He applies for a temp job at the downtown sports arena and cozies up to Elizabeth, the head cashier (who looks like she could be his mom). We soon realize that, thinking of himself as a criminal mastermind, he is planning a big heist at the arena. He hires four guys, none seeming very smart: Spooky, a pool hall denizen; Carter, a crook supposedly gone straight; Sammy, a jumpy junkie; and Williams, a driver. Elizabeth, carried away by his romancing, such as it is, joins in. We also see him stealing some kind of caustic acid from a nearby factory and pouring it in his tub. (Unlike the research scientist detail, this plot point will eventually come into play.) She gives him her keys and he ties her up in her office to make it look like he overpowered her to get the cash. The heist goes off fairly well, with two of the guys dressing in drag to make their escape, but Pepe betrays everyone. He escapes to Rio and lives the high life for a while, but some rough justice is delivered in the end.

Aram Katcher was a small-time character actor whose main gig was as the owner of (and chief beautician at) a beauty salon in L.A. In fact, he is credited here not just as director but as story writer, art director, and supervisor of makeup and hair styles. This very low budget film was obviously a passion project for him. There are promising elements here and there—the main idea of the story, though derivative, in particular of THE KILLING isn’t bad—but the script is sloppy, as is most of the cinematography, editing and direction. (The hair styles seem fine.) Pepe does not come off as interesting, compelling, or smart, and the heist seems to come off almost in spite of his leadership. Some viewers have noted a Peter Lorre quality to Katcher which is true when it comes to his looks, not true when it comes to his acting talent. Lisa McDonald is probably the standout (which isn’t really saying much here) as Elizabeth; she seems like an amateur who took advantage of her opportunity and gave it her best. Brad Trumbull, whom I suspect is the only real professional among the supporting players (80 credits, mostly TV), is pretty good as the driver. There is some decent gory makeup in a climactic scene. In feel, this reminded me of a couple of other super-cheap 1960s melodramas I’ve seen in recent years and liked (SATAN IN HIGH HEELS, BLAST OF SILENCE) but this one has little to recommend it. Pictured are Trumbull and Katcher. [YouTube]

THREE BITES OF THE APPLE (1967)

Stanley Thrumm is a tour bus guide, taking a small group of travelers through Italy and Switzerland. Among the tourists are an older couple who keep asking to stop so they can use a bathroom, an American alcoholic, one of the amusing kind you find in movies, and a ditzy single woman of a certain age, Angela Sparrow, who is a bit man crazy and who sets her cap for Stanley, who resists her charms without much effort. On the Italian Riviera, Stanley winds up at a casino and spends the night gambling and winning, through dumb luck, 20 million lira (about 12,000 English pounds). The lovely Carla Moretti keeps an eye on him and, when he leaves the casino at dawn, casually attracts his attention and ends up spending the day with him. Even as Stanley falls for her, we realize that she is setting up a trap to get his money. Carla follows him to Rome and romances him as she plots a scam with her ex-husband Remo that involves getting Stanley to trust them with his money so he can take it out of Italy without paying exorbitant taxes. Angela, in her rather blunt way, continues unsuccessfully to try and seduce him, and in Switzerland, Stanley and Carla wind up stuck overnight at a mountain chalet where they sleep together and, of course, Carla begins to have second thoughts about her scam. Unfortunately, Remo is not about to give up the easy money.

I found many reasons to dislike this romantic comedy. For starters, there's the silly animated credits sequence featuring Adam, Eve, and the apple—and a rather bad song about the three sung by the star of the movie, David McCallum (pictured) who plays Stanley. Character development is problematic: Stanley claims he loves his job because he loves people, but we see no evidence of that in the offhand way he treats his tourists; and the tourists are differentiated just enough so that each one gets one brief highlight scene before fading into the background. The parade of events that make up the plot—the big win at the casino, the convoluted plan to get Stanley's money, the breakdown of the ski car that forces Stanley and Carla to stay at the chalet—is ridiculous. Tammy Grimes gives a dreadful performance as the dreadful Angela. She might have benefitted from going campy, but as it is, her flirting is just embarrassing. At one point, the money is hidden inside a large stuffed dog that Stanley lets Angela hold onto, and when he needs to get it back, he enters her room at night; when he won’t get in bed with her, she files a harassment complaint with the tour company that, in the end, gets him fired. So what is there to like about this mess? Well, the three main roles are played well. McCallum’s character is inconsistent, and he plays the rather passive role as if he was desperate to escape his dashing spy character, Illya Kuryakin, from TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but his puppy dog looks made me forgive him most everything. Sylva Koscina, who first came to international fame opposite Steve Reeves in the original Hercules, looks great and gives the best performance—she is the only one I believed in as a character. Domenico Modugno is very good as her husband (and, BTW, Modugno is best known for writing the international hit "Volare"). Harvey Korman is not bad as the drunk tourist, but after a couple of early scenes, he is more or less discarded along with the other travelers. Filmed on location, the scenery is lovely, and there is a nice comic fistfight late in the film with McCallum and Modugno. I'm about to damn it with my frequently used faint praise: I can't recommend it but I'm not sorry to have seen it. Make of that what you will. [TCM]

SCARLET PAGES (1930)

In 1911, we see a matron at the Good Samaritan Orphanage performing intake on the child of Mary Bancroft, and we learn that one of the rules of taking the child is that they will never tell the mother who adopts the child. In 1930, Mary has become a successful lawyer who is being pursued by district attorney John Remington. Though she enjoys his company, she avoids commitment, possibly because of her past. One night at a nightclub, Mary and John see young Nora Mason, a brightly spangled chorus girl, perform. Nora wants to leave the business and is about to elope with a boy named Bob, but her father is essentially trying to pimp her to Gregory Jackson, a theatrical producer who wants to make a star of her (and, of course, wants to force her to marry him). That night, Nora's father is shot dead and Nora has disappeared as the police search for her. The next day, in a very melodramatic scene, Nora's mother brings Nora to Mary's office and asks her to defend Nora in court. Nora admits to killing her father but won't give a reason. After some thought, Mary agrees. When she chats with John about the case, she says she thinks that Nora is protecting someone else, most likely her mother. We eventually learn that on the night of the murder, Mr. Mason was so adamant about the arrangement with Jackson that he had threatened to kill Bob. Something else happened that night as well, as we find out that Mr. Mason may have sexually assaulted Nora. Things come to a head in the courtroom (where John is the prosecutor) when it's divulged that Nora was adopted—and guess who was her birth mother.

(Spoilers follow) This pre-Code melodrama allows Nora to escape legal punishment for murder, and gives most of the characters happy endings by the fadeout, though poor Mary has to suffer through thinking that her shame of unwed motherhood may hurt her career (it probably won't), and that she will lose the love of John (she doesn't). She is also shamed by Nora for giving her up (Nora eventually forgives her). Even Nora and Bob wind up together. This is the only talking picture made by Elsie Ferguson, who plays Mary, and who played her on stage as well. Ferguson was a well known stage actress who made many silent films, but retired from movies after this. She's a bit stiff and artificial, and doesn't generate much natural sympathy for her character. Marian Nixon (Nora) is one-note sullen throughout, which, though it does fit her character, grows boring. Better are John Halliday as John (a bit dashing and always on Mary's side, even when he's fighting her in court) and Grant Withers as Bob (big nice-guy doofus). It's clear to us from the beginning that Nora is Mary's daughter, but the actual revelation is withheld until the end. The court case, however, does generate enough tension to keep us watching. Well, it will keep you watching if you are already aware of the problems of early talkies, and this one has many of them—static shots, stagy performances, an awkward dance number. Still, the vaguely presented themes of female strength and dysfunctional family dynamics may interest some. Pictured are Nixon and Withers. [TCM]

PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961)

Paris, 1957. College student Anne is taken to a bohemian cocktail party by her brother Pierre where people are talking about the death of Juan, a Spanish musician, judged to be a suicide but thought by some to have been murder. Anne becomes entangled with Pierre's friends: Gerard, an amateur theatre director who is trying to stage an avant-garde production of Shakespeare's Pericles; Philip, an intellectual forced to leave America because of McCarthyism; Terry, a woman who was Juan's lover but is now with Philip (and who has her sights set on Gerard); Jean-Marc, an old acquaintance of Anne's who has a part in Pericles. As an outsider, Anne seems more tolerated than accepted, but when an actress fails to show up for a rehearsal, Gerard gets Anne to take her place. The rehearsals, which are scattershot both in how much gets done and where they get done (a different space every day), become important enough to Anne that she skips her exams for the acting job; also important is her growing attraction to Gerard, who seems open to sleeping with any number of actresses. Meanwhile, the friends get sucked into Philip's theory that a shadowy fascist conspiracy murdered Juan for political reasons and may be after others in their group. Gerard wants a tape of guitar music that Juan made shortly before his death that he thinks would be good score material for his play, but the tape has vanished. Anne, trying to ingratiate herself with the flirtatious but noncommittal Gerard, turns detective to find the tape. Eventually, the play is picked up by a commercial producer who wants to change almost everything that Gerard has done. Gerard has to fire Anne (though she remains as an understudy) and soon, Gerard and much of the cast quit because of the conflicts with the producer, leading to the conspiracy theory becoming the focus of the characters.

This Jacques Rivette film, though shot in 1958 and thereby one of the earliest of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) films, wasn't released until late 1961 due to post-production and financing problems, so it was late to the party, coming after influential films by Godard and Truffaut. The movie was generally overlooked at the time as not experimental enough for the Nouvelle Vague audience but not narratively traditional enough for a popular audience. At 140 minutes, this is awfully long and I admit that a more interesting visual style might have drawn me in more quickly. It seems to go through several stages: in the beginning, it feels like a character study of somewhat unmoored and unsatisfied people; then the production of the play takes center stage, so to speak, along with the slowly developing relationship between Anne and Gerard. The last third has something of a film noir feel, especially with the MacGuffin of Juan's tape, and we begin to think that the paranoiac beliefs of Philip and Terry might not be delusional. The film ends as an existential thriller (minus traditional crime movie thrills, though not without another death or two). The ending leaves us mostly satisfied while still mired in ambiguity. The discussions of fascism are uncomfortably relevant in the current political situation—the conspiracy is referred to as a "dictatorship syndicate" in which "all will be sacrificed to efficiency, the state, and technology." For much of the film, I thought the whole thing was going to be a kind of intellectual game played among bored bohemians (and I think that could have worked). The actors were not familiar to me but all were fine, especially Betty Schneider as Anne, Giani Esposito as Gerard (pictured), the most interesting character as, for a while at least, he seems the most grounded, and Daniel Crohem as Philip. I found the focus on Paris (lots of location shooting) to be a bit vague so the title is lost on me. (An opening title quotes poet Charles Peguy: "Paris belongs to no one.") Some critics suggest watching this film twice to get the most out of it, and I liked this enough to not be opposed to a re-viewing in the future. [Criterion Channel]

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

We see Episcopal minister Richard Burton begin to deliver a sermon on self-control to his congregation but he proceeds to lose control himself and rants about people turning their backs on compassion and instead encouraging scandal. Burton, who had been found in a compromising position with a young Sunday school teacher, is eventually locked out of his church, but not, as he is at pains to note to anyone in earshot, defrocked. He winds up as a tour leader and we see him next with a busful of middle-aged Baptist women in the Mexican village of Puerto Vallarta. The leader of the group (Grayson Hall) is a strident moralistic spinster who is also serving as the chaperone to an attractive teenage girl (Sue Lyon). Hall and Burton are constantly at odds, largely over his attentions to Lyon, who more than encourages his behavior, and when she finds Lyon in Burton's hotel room one night, she tells him she's going to call the tour guide company and get him fired. The next day, in an attempt to stop the company from contacting him, Burton has the bus driver (Skip Ward) more or less hijack the group to a resort a few miles out of town run by an old friend (Ava Gardner). Though she's closed for the season, she agrees to take them in, as well as welcoming two other wanderers: a struggling artist (Deborah Kerr) and her 97-year-old grandfather (Cyril Delevanti), a poet who is clearly on his last legs as he tries to finish one final poem. Tensions seethe, with Gardner accusing Hall of being a predatory lesbian with her own designs on Lyon, and Kerr trying to enlist sympathy so she and her grandfather can stay on despite having no money. The next day, Ward rebels and takes the women back to town, leaving Burton, Gardner and Kerr to their own devices that night, with Burton and Gardner working thorough an attraction even as Burton thinks about suicide (taking, as he calls it, "the long swim to China") The grandfather finishes his poem and dies, though the others have more upbeat endings.

This Tennessee Williams play has been opened up nicely, only betraying its stage roots in the final section. The amped-up melodramas of Williams work best on symbolic levels and this is no exception. Everyone overacts, but as the narrative rarely feels naturalistic, this is not out of place. Ava Gardner comes off the best, larger than life but having a real personality. She also gets to smile quite a bit, which no one else does, and she's the only character to see everyone for what they are. Burton (pictured with Gardner) is good even as he chews the scenery as a man tortured by his inadequacies. It feels like he took his acting here and cut it down by half to get to his excellent performance as George a couple years later in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Hall overacts the most, amplified by getting a lot of closeups, though her performance is fairly effective and she is missed in the last section of the movie. I'm not always a big fan of Kerr; she's satisfactory here but underacts, throwing off the balance of the performances. Delevanti, who was in his mid-70s, looks and acts every bit of 97, and young Skip Ward is fine as the bus driver. That leaves 18-year-old Sue Lyon, who became a star in Lolita. She's not bad but she’s a bit of a weak link. She's very one-note, and it's hard to tell if she's supposed to be a nymphomaniacal bad girl or a misunderstood innocent. A more experienced actor might have brought more nuance to the part. The title refers to an iguana that two of Gardner's houseboys have captured and tied up to be killed for food later, and that Burton ends up releasing. Exactly what the iguana is supposed to stand for wasn't clear to me. There's a nice line well delivered by Burton when Hall almost becomes hysterical when she comes upon Burton and Lyon in the water in their underwear: "What did you think we were doing out there? Spawning?" I also liked the scenes with the two swarthy and sensual houseboys, especially one in which they dance uninhibitedly with Lyon. There is also what I assume is one of the first references in a mainstream Hollywood movie to marijuana. Directed in a fairly plain fashion by John Huston. At two hours, it's too long, but it's worth sticking with. [TCM]

JUNGLE BRIDE (1933)

On a passenger liner, drunken young man Gordon Wayne is singing and playing on deck to the mild delight of other passengers. Less happy about the performance is Doris Evans; her brother is locked up back in the States for murder but she's sure that Gordon is the guilty party, so she and reporter John Franklin, to whom she is engaged, are hoping to bring Gordon to justice. In the middle of Gordon's carousing, the ship collides with something, takes on water, and sinks. The next morning, four passengers have washed up on an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa: Gordon, Doris, John, and Gordon's buddy Eddie. John is immediately angry about the presence of Gordon, but Eddie suggests that they'll have a better chance at survival if they can all get along. Like a pre-Code Gilligan's Island, the four manage to provide themselves with shelter and food (mostly of the vegetable kind), and Doris and John agree to a temporary truce with Gordon. Over the next couple of months, Gordon proves to be resourceful by patching up their lifeboat and fighting a wild lion that attacks Doris, and Doris starts to truly thaw towards him, so much so that they eventually sex it up. Some wreckage from the ship drifts in with the mortally injured captain clinging to life. As his last living act, he agrees to marry Gordon and Doris then asks them to set him out to sea on a burning funeral pyre—he is of Viking stock, he claims. John confronts Gordon and the two men duke it out just as a ship sees the funeral fire and comes close to the shore to investigate.

Though there are some pleasures to be had here of the Poverty Row pre-Code fashion, the script is so badly patched together that a coherent plot isn't really one of them. We get virtually no backstory about the murder that Gordon is accused of (and it's not really a spoiler to note that he's not guilty after all) and we don’t learn how the four wound up on the liner together. I'm pretty sure that John is a reporter but he refers to himself as an "officer" as well, implying he has the force of the law behind him. The action might take place on an island or just a shoreline; it makes more sense as an island, but there is a full complement of jungle animals around them, including monkeys, lions, hyenas, and hippos, with, of course, the monkeys providing occasional mild comic relief along with Eddie. (The lion fight, by the way, is a definite highlight.) In the end, when the ship finds them, we're told that it will be back in two weeks to get them, leading Doris to refer to that time as their honeymoon. But what about John and Eddie who are absent from the last scene? And why does it have to come back—there wasn't room for four extra people on the ship? The acting is of average B-film quality. Charles Starrett is a credibly handsome and hunky hero; he went on to a long career in westerns of the 1940s and 50s. Anita Page (Doris) was a big name in the silent era, but by the mid-30s, she had left the screen. She's fine if perhaps a bit artificial at times. Kenneth Thomson is completely negligible as John, and Eddie Borden only slightly less so as comic relief Eddie. When he and Gordon argue near the end of the film, their reconciliation is shot with them looking like they're just about to kiss, and frankly, they have a little more chemistry than Gordon and Doris. The sinking of the ship looks the Titanic disaster as staged by high school students. Straight male reviewers make much of a brief moment of bare sideboob from Page; sadly, no such nudity occurs with Starrett. Very mild fun. One online critic says it should have been called Beach Bride, and I'm inclined to agree. Pictured are Starrett and Page. [YouTube]