BONANZA TOWN (1951)

A guy in a black hat and face mask, whom we later discover is the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett), chases down and stops an out-of-control stagecoach, and its sole occupant, a tinker named Smiley (Smiley Burnette), is knocked unconscious. The Kid rides away to a cave and returns in a white hat as Steve Ramsay, an old friend of Smiley's. Steve, working in secret as a treasury agent, is headed to nearby Bonanza Town, hunting down an old nemesis, Henry Hardison, who has $30,000 in marked cash. The town is run by the corrupt Krag Boseman who controls Judge Dillon, and has Reed, the town marshal, killed just as Reed is about to arrest him. But Krag takes his orders from Hardison. The judge's son Bob, ashamed of his dad's behavior, has put out a call for help from the Durango Kid to lead a group of vigilantes trying to get rid of corruption. As Steve and Smiley head to town, we get a lengthy flashback (consisting of scenes from a previous Durango Kid movie, West of Dodge City) concerning Hardison's past deeds. Hardison was assumed drowned but he survived and Steve vows to get him and Krag Boseman as well. This is the first Durango Kid western I've seen, and I just discovered there are 64 more of them if I'm inclined to keep going. All of them feature Starrett as the Kid, whose real name was always Steve though for some reason his last name changed in every movie (Duncan, Carson, Wood, Mason, Reynolds, etc.). There was also a comic sidekick (often but not always Smiley Burnette) who did some slapstick bits and usually sang a couple of tunes. Bizarrely, this movie is part of a DVD set of classic-era Columbia musicals; despite two drawled ditties by Smiley, this is by no stretch of the imagination a musical, but a B-western. But it is a painless way to spend an hour in the old West watching the Durango Kid get his men—and surprisingly, not only is there no romance, but there are no women in the cast, except in the flashback. Starrett, getting a bit long in the tooth for a Western hero, made nine more Durango Kid films in the next year, retiring from the role and the screen in 1952. Burnette's highlight is wearing a fright wig to cover his shaved head (pictured).

GO WEST YOUNG MAN (1936)

The sex symbol actress Mavis Arden (Mae West) makes a personal appearance at the premiere of her new movie "Drifting Lady," claiming to be a totally different person than her onscreen self (which is pretty much just like Mae West's). But we see that is not necessarily so. Her much publicized studio contract bars her from getting married, though she has been seeing politician Francis Harrigan (Lyle Talbot) on the sly. She's not happy with Morgan (Warren William), her publicist, who is accompanying her on her PR tour and trying to keep an eye on her amorous activities. He tells her that her private life has to be an open book, and she replies, "It is, I’m just lookin' for someone to read it." Her car breaks down near a small rural town and, stranded while the car is being fixed, she and her entourage stay at a boarding house run partly by spinster lady Aunt Kate (Elizabeth Patterson). When hunky young mechanic Bud Norton (Randolph Scott) shows up to work on the car, Mavis makes a point of flirting, mentioning his "sinewy muscles" while casually checking out his ass. She promises to take Bud to Hollywood where he can try to sell the studios a movie sound invention he's come up with. Plot points pile up. While the sweet but naive Bud is quite taken with Mavis, his girl Joyce, Aunt Kate's niece, is upset. When Harrigan tries to track Mavis down, he mistakenly believes that she's been kidnapped and the press goes crazy. Starstruck housemaid Gladys (Isabel Jewell) hears the news and leads the cops to Morgan, who is not unhappy about all the fuss. In the end, as complications get cleared up, Morgan admits his love for Mavis, and she reciprocates with a kiss.

Mae West, who also wrote the screenplay, was past her prime here, at least commercially, as the restrictions of the 1934 Production Code hurt her career, and in the first ten minutes, West seems frozen in her old-fashioned persona, but once the movie gets on the road, she loosens up and delivers a likable performance, making mild fun of herself. Critics have claimed that West's leading men often came off as weak up against West, but both Randolph Scott (exuding a healthy and charming cornfed sexiness) and old pro Warren William hold their own. Alice Brady is fine as the manager of the boarding house, but Elizabeth Patterson as the aunt steals most of the scenes she's in; her fuddy-duddy surface is belied by her sharp tongue. When Gladys asks her about the concept of "It" (as in Clara Bow, the It Girl), Aunt Kate replies that her generation had It, "but we didn't photograph it and put it to music." She also says to a complaining boarder, "Oh, go stuff yourself a duck, you old fussbudget!" Other good lines: Mavis calls herself "susceptible" to love and Morgan says his job is "to make sure that she doesn’t suscept too easily"; Gladys does a Marlene Dietrich impression and when Morgan asks her to do the Marx Brothers, she says, "All at once?" and he replies, "Gradually if it's any easier for you." There are silly subplots about the government encouraging marriage and about a fake pregnancy, but in the end, it's harmless fun and goes down easy. Pictured are Scott and West. [TCM]

DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922)

In Part One of this German silent film directed by Fritz Lang, we meet Dr. Mabuse, a well-known psychoanalyst who is, in secret, a major underworld figure, as he shuffles a number of photo cards and picks one to be the disguise he's going to wear. With the help of his assistant Spoerri, whom Mabuse accuses of being “hopped up on cocaine,” he applies a white wig and beard to carry out his latest scheme: he steals a secret trade pact between Holland and Switzerland and when news of the robbery gets out, the stock market goes nuts and Mabuse is able to buy up stock cheap. He then arranges for the document to be found and sells the stock at inflated prices. Next we see Mabuse give a lecture on the success he’s had with patients by eliminating as much as possible “third-party influences” by, I assume, the use of hypnosis. We see this in action when Mabuse, in a new disguise as Hugo Balling, gains control of the rich Edgar Hull at a casino and causes him to lose a fortune to Balling. When Hull goes the next day to pay off Balling, he instead meets Cara Carozza, a chorus girl and Mabuse’s lover, who seduces Hull under Mabuse’s order. Prosecutor von Wenk suspects that Hull is the latest victim of the crime lord he calls the Great Unknown and tries to work with Hull to snare the villain. At a casino, the disguised Mabuse plays cards with the disguised Wenk, but Wenk is able to resist Mabuse's mind control, so Mabuse has Wenk gassed in a taxi, tied up, and set in the river. 

At this point, we’re roughly two hours into this 4-½ hour film. Characterization has been shallow but incidents and plot points have been coming at us fast and furious. I realized here that perhaps this movie was best experienced as if it were a serial—indeed, each half is presented in chapters just like a serial would be. In fact, it works much better as a serial, and some of the more outlandish aspects of the plot, such as Mabuse's mind control powers, are easier to accept as occurrences in a traditional serial. In other developments in Part One, we see Mabuse run a successful counterfeiting ring, employing mostly blind men; Count Told, an effete doofus, is tricked by Mabuse into cheating at cards and then exposed by Mabuse to his friends; the alluring Countess Told, who has been helping Wenk with his investigation, is captured by Mabuse. Thus ends Part One. The two-hour second part moves even more quickly, wrapping up all the plotlines, concluding with Mabuse having a breakdown into full-fledged madness and being carted away.

The character of Mabuse is well known to film buffs, mostly from Lang's sound sequel, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE, made eleven years later, which features the raving lunatic Mabuse running a major crime ring from his cell through supernatural mind control. In popular culture, this is the more famous Mabuse incarnation, partly because he was taken to be a symbolic stand-in for Hitler who was rising to power in Germany at the time. In 1960, Lang made his third and last Mabuse film, THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE, and German studio CCC produced several more or less official Mabuse sequels, some of which I'll be reviewing soon. Given that I saw TESTAMENT first, I was surprised to find in this origin film a rather different Mabuse persona. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who plays Mabuse in both movies (pictured at top right), has a tendency to go a bit melodramatic at the drop of a hat. Instead of grimly powerful, the character comes off as something of a neurotic wannabe. We have to take it for granted that Mabuse has a successful crime ring, because in most of what we see, he acts frustrated and depressed, and his mania is shown with much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair (figuratively at least). Klein-Rogge doesn't let it slip into camp and he has an expressive and threatening face. Bernhard Goetzke is both handsome and effective as the determined von Wenk, Aud Egede-Nissen is quite good as Cora who leaves the story rather sooner than I expected. The cinematography and visuals are spectacular and are always worth looking at even when the story goes a bit slack at times. The last chapter is a good playoff, with Klein-Rogge tossing off all restraint as Mabuse goes crazy. I think Mabuse's importance is in the development of the supervillain, begun perhaps with the French pulp character Fantomas and carried on through Fu Manchu, Lex Luthor, Thanos and Elon Musk. Pictured above is the dealer at the casino. [Blu-ray]

THE IRON CROWN (1941)

There is, we are told, a legend forgotten even by time, of an iron crown made between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades, forged from the swords of Roman emperors, embedded with great jewels and containing a nail from the Holy Cross. It was taken on a pilgrimage to Rome, and a holy voice from above proclaimed that peace, mercy and justice would follow in its journey. In the town of Kindor, the legitimate king, Licinio, wants to make peace with rival city Barbagon, but he is killed by his less noble brother Sedemondo. Barbagon is captured and much of its populace driven into slavery, though a band of rebels escape into the nearby hills. When the Iron Crown comes through his land, Sedemondo throws it down where it magically grows heavy and sinks into the ground. Licino's queen bears a daughter and the former queen of Barbagon bears a son, but because Sedemondo has made it known he wants a son, the two are switched, and eventually raised as siblings. As children, both are whipped on the arm for bad behavior, leaving each with a scar (Chekhov's scars?). Sedemondo eventually learns about the switch, and because of a prophecy from an old woman about a child of Barbagon usurping him someday, the king has the boy taken to the Valley of the Lions where it is assumed he will be killed. But in Jungle Book fashion, the lions take to him and make sure he lives to manhood. Years later, the walls of the Valley of Lions collapse in an earthquake, and the boy Arminio, now a man, meets the king's daughter, Elsa, and they start to fall in love. But for Arminio, the stronger pull is toward Tundra, the leader of the Barbagon rebels. When Sedemondo holds a tournament whose prize is Elsa's hand in marriage, Arminio enters. Meanwhile, an old prophesying woman says that Elsa will never marry and that the king will lose his throne. The rest of the movie shows how these predictions come to pass. (Meanwhile, are we ever getting back to the Iron Crown?)

I saw this on a YouTube channel called Peplum TV, but it's actually an adventure fantasy, sort of a forerunner to peplum. For a movie just under 90 minutes, there's a lot of plot packed in and I'm not sure my summary above is completely accurate, but it's close. I rather doubt that the supposed legend of the Iron Crown is real, as it sounds like an amalgam of folklore bits and pieces, but it has potential as a legend—except that the Iron Crown literally vanishes for most of film, re-entering at the very end when we've forgotten it (just as we're told time forgot it). But the rest of the narrative is engrossing enough, if fairly predictable. The handsome Massimo Girotti, impressive a couple of years later in OSSESSIONE is good here, not as muscled as later legit peplum heroes but nicely heroic anyway. Of the two leading ladies, Elisa Cegani, as Elsa, is a more traditional damsel in distress, and Luisa Ferida, as Tundra, is fairly butch and resourceful, usually the type that doesn't get (or even want) the hero. Based on movie tradition, the way the three get sorted out is a bit surprising. I liked that Arminio sometimes looked like Tarzan, Tundra looked like Robin Hood, and the rebels looked like her Merrie Men. Nice for something a bit off the beaten path. Pictured are Cegani and Girotti. [YouTube]

THE YOUNG CAPTIVES (1959)

One night at a California oil rig, a young employee named Jamie is found passed out drunk next to a blaring transistor radio. His boss kicks the radio apart and fires him so the angry Jamie impulsively beats the man to death, to the rhythm of the piston oil pump above. Cops Dave and Norm and reporter Tony find the body the next day and investigate. Meanwhile horny teenagers Benji and Ann let their hormones get the best of them while swimming in a river, and the next day they decide to head to Tijuana to get married against her parents' wishes. Figuring Ann's folks have called the police, the two avoid main roads. When they run out of gas, they meet Jamie whose motorcycle has broken down nearby. Jamie, tough-guy handsome, sweet talks the two into helping him—he'll get some gas from a nearby station if they will take him to a small town to connect with an old buddy to get the bike fixed. Jamie can cover up his psychopathic tendencies for a while—Benji and Ann are actually amused by his weird little antics—but soon at a gas station, he kills a sexy blonde who pisses him off and stuffs her body in the trunk of her car. (It's not totally clear if he was more interested in the woman or her car.) Benji gets fed up with Jamie's increasingly bizarre behavior and orders him out of the car, but Jamie pulls out a knife and threatens to cut Ann's throat. They wind up in Mexico with the cops in hot pursuit, and when Jamie suggests that he might want to marry Ann, we know we're in for a meltdown of some sort.

Essentially this is a B-movie cross between a juvenile delinquent film and a psycho killer film. It's suggested that Jamie isn't that much older than the two kids, and a fair chunk of cop conversation is devoted to the issue of the possible cause of Jamie's behavior and the promise of using rehab rather than prison to help wayward youth. The writing isn't as strong as it might be, but in other ways, this stands a notch or two taller than the average American International teen crime flick of the era. Things start a little shakily and I admit that at first, I stuck with it because the male leads were attractive. Stephen Marlo, as Jamie, wears a snug black t-shirt, has a convincing urban thug look and does a nice job of flipping back and forth between being boyishly goofy and scarily dangerous. Tom Selden (Benji) did not continue with screen acting, but he's good at being an innocent foil to Marlo's scary energy; the character seems like someone who might be in a bubblegum pop group, and he strikes a good balance between passivity and heroism. Luana Patten is wholesomely sexy and strong minded as Ann. Both of the male leads are near 30 and Patten is 20, but they're all believable as being in the same age cohort. Imagine Archie and Betty running into a psycho Reggie. The cops wind up with not much to do, but Ed Nelson and Dan Sheridan are fine, and Bonanza's Dan Blocker has a one-line role. Except for the scenes set in a police station, almost all of the movie was shot on exteriors (back roads, deserts, gas stations) that are just right. The climax is violent and effective as Jamie, wielding a knife, and Benji, with a broken bottle, get into it. Jamie looks truly crazed as he whips Benji with a car antenna, but he doesn't keep the upper hand for long. This may not be a gem, but as a second-feature teen crime film, it’s near the top of its class. Pictured are Marlo, Patten and Selden. [YouTube]

ROSES ARE RED (1947)

Peggy Ford is found dead in her apartment, a red rose clutched in her hand. In her purse is found a picture of the new district attorney, Robert Thorne, who has come into the office on a platform of cleaning up corruption. Mob boss Jim Locke isn't happy about this declaration and neither is police officer Rocky Wall who is on Locke's payroll. The picture turns out to be of a crook named Don Carney; Carney and Thorne look exactly alike, even to both having pencil-thin mustaches (it seemed to me that one mustache was a bit scruffier than the other, but it was hard to tell). As Thorne takes the oath of office in the presence of his girlfriend Martha, Carney gets out of prison on parole and stops in to see his wife Jill. As the cops put the finger on one of Locke’s men for the murder of Peggy, Locke gets a bright idea: kidnap Thorne and have Carney study him and replace him so Locke can save his criminal enterprise, which will eventually entail having Thorne killed. This B-crime film is interesting but lacks the talent and imagination to make it special. What the movie does best is the dual role business. Don Castle plays both Thorne and Carney; there's not much differentiation between the two in Castle's performances, but we manage to tell them apart. The scenes in which they meet up are effective, done not with split screen but with one character seated or standing in front of rear screen projection of the other character as they interact (as pictured). Castle is a bit lightweight but I usually like him so I cut him some slack here. Also good is Joe Sawyer as the crooked cop Rocky. Everyone else is no more than serviceable. The two female leads, Peggy Knudson as Martha and Patricia Knight as Jill, don't actually look alike but they feel interchangeable. Familiar faces in supporting parts include Paul Guilfoyle and Douglas Fowley as thugs, James Arness as a (very tall) cop, and Charles Lane as a lawyer. Jeff Chandler has one of his earliest credited roles as a killer, but all the bad guys blend together. Edward Keane, as Locke, confined to a wheelchair, is disappointingly low energy. There's not a lot of tension, though a scene in which Thorne, pretending to be Carney pretending to be Thorne, meets up with Carney's wife, is good. The ending feels a bit rushed but the final shootout is handled well. The opening murder is never really explained, and the rose (in Peggy's hand and in the title) means nothing. [YouTube]

THE PASSOVER PLOT (1976)

This fiction film is based on a controversial work of nonfiction by Hugh J. Schonfield. His theory is that the man history knows as Jesus Christ was not divine, but a mortal man who, in order to empower the Jews, planned to pose as the promised messiah, start a political movement, get in trouble with Roman authorities, fake his death when he was crucified, and reappear in public as the risen messiah. This movie, which uses Hebrew names, begins with Yeshua convincing himself that he has been called to be a messiah (men claiming to be messiahs were fairly common back then). He fasts in the desert, is baptized by Yohanan (John) the Baptist, and, with advice solicited from Yohanan, collects a group of followers who will help him usher in a new age for the Jews. (When Yeshua warns them that being a follower might be dangerous, Shimon replies, “We’ve been dying for a long time.”) His reputation for performing miracles is established when a man pretending to be blind approaches him asking to be cured. Yeshua spits in the man's face to call his bluff and the man says he's been cured to save face. Yeshua's brother Yakov and his band of revolutionaries get involved, though his group pushes the use of violence to achieve freedom while Yeshua backs peaceful methods. Yeshua carefully plots to attract enough attention from the authorities by proclaiming himself a king. He has Judah (Judas) deliberately betray him and has Yakov prepare an herbal solution that, when he's crucified, will slow his heartbeat on the cross enough to appear dead. Yakov warns him that the rusty nails in his hands and the blood loss may complicate his plan, and indeed, just as it looks like the plan is working, a soldier stabs Yeshua with a spear. When Yakov takes Yeshua to his tomb, he is still alive, but the stab wound kills him before he can make a public appearance as a resurrected messiah.

The book and movie created a lot of fuss back in the day, and I understand that the claim that Jesus was not actually the son of God would bother believers, though the idea of Jesus as a political figure was not new—in movies, it goes back as far as the 1927 KING OF KINGS. But the bulk of the action of the movie is a fairly reverent and traditional depiction of Jesus' last days. Zalman King's portrayal of Yeshua is also fairly traditional. He's alternately mild and intense; his more intense scenes tend to involve a lot of screaming which doesn't come off well. But on the whole, King sustains viewer interest as he is in almost every scene. British supporting actors Harry Andrews (Yohanan) and Hugh Griffith (Caiaphas) add acting clout. Other standouts include Scott Wilson as Judah, William Burns as Shimon, and Robert Walker Jr. as Bartholomew. Dan Hedaya, in his first movie role, is unrecognizable as Yakov. I find two problems with the movie. Firstly, it doesn’t examine the political conspiracy plot nearly as much as it should, opting instead to emphasize the canonical story of Jesus, featuring scenes of the Baptist's capture, the marketplace disturbance, and the Last Supper (or seder). Secondly, direction by Michael Campus is weak, with way too much of it shot in close-up to the point of too much claustrophobic visual framing. I got tired of seeing faces so close, so often. It's an interesting movie, though if you're hoping for blasphemous controversy, I think you'll be disappointed. [YouTube]

SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960)

At Collins College, Prof. Zorch has programmed his robotic computer Sam Thinko (SAM standing for Sequential Auxiliary Modulator) to pick a new science department head, and that choice, Dr. Mathilda West, arrives by train. The dean, Dr. Myrtle Carter, greets a chunky straitlaced woman who turns out to be Miss Cadwallader, a bra saleswoman. Dr. West (Mamie Van Doren) is a sexy blonde (measurements 40-20-32 according to Thinko) who, it is noted, looks like Mamie Van Doren. Woo Woo, the beefy lunkheaded football star, promptly faints, and Carter worries that the college will lose a forthcoming grant from wealthy alumnus Wildcat MacPherson because no one will take West seriously, but Zorch and the college's PR man George Barton (Martin Milner) take West's side, especially after they learn she has an IQ of 268 and holds thirteen advanced degrees. Also on the train are two low-level gangsters, Legs and Boomie, who are hunting down a guy named Sam Thinko whom they think is a horse race gambler who wins his bets 100% of the time. (We discover later that Woo Woo had been making bets in his sleep based on Thinko's predictions, but this plotline is completely unimportant.) Complications keep piling up. Woo Woo's girlfriend Jody (Tuesday Weld) thinks that West is out to steal Woo Woo from her and doubles her efforts to get Woo Woo's fraternity pin. Suzanne, a French exchange student, is working on a research paper on the sex lives of American men, and falls head over heels for Legs. Three science professors take West to the Passion Pit, a local nightclub and hangout, where Wildcat arrives, parachuting in by helicopter (his reputation is such that every woman who sees him runs away screaming), and West shows her skill at hypnotism by getting all the men to do a mock strip tease dance. Eventually, West admits that before she got her degrees, she was a stripper from Florida known as the Tallahassee Tassel Tosser. Barton falls for her, Wildcat falls for Myrtle, Jody gets Woo-Woo, and when Thinko has a nervous breakdown, West fixes him, then leaves town with Barton. I'm not sure what happens to Suzanne and Legs in the confusing climax, a large-scale fire extinguisher fight, but generally, there are happy endings all around.

Critics really hate this movie but I kinda liked it. I feel like this might have been the template for the American International teen beach movies of the 1960s, with horny but innocent teenagers, B-list guest stars, and outlandish plot developments. I don't much like those films, but maybe because this feels fresher, I wound up with a sneaky affection for it. The presence of Mamie Van Doren helps. She was never going to win an Oscar, but she throws herself into her performances full throttle and she's almost always the best thing about her movies. Her bosomy blonde persona is the central joke of the first half of the movie but she doesn't play dumb because the character isn't dumb. Martin Milner is the epitome of cute cornfed innocence, tempered with common sense (or at least as close as anyone in the movie comes to common sense), though he always looks bewildered. Tuesday Weld looks great as Jody but winds up with not much to do. Woo Woo is played by Norman Grabowski, who in addition to acting was a famous hot rod designer. Louis Nye mostly just glowers behind a fake mustache as Zorch. Brigitte Bardot’s sister Mijanou is Suzanne, Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester in The Addams Family) does a W.C. Fields impersonation as Wildcat. John Carradine has a small role as one of the teachers (yes, he's in the strip dance scene) and Harold Lloyd Jr. (at left) has a two-line cameo as a cop. Conway Twitty does a rockabilly number called "Miss Mamie," and Vampira (unrecognizable out of her usual getup) has a small role. The movie's working title was Sexpot Goes to College and that's the name of the theme song, sung by Van Doren. The weirdest thing about the movie is the "extra" reel of strip tease footage near the end. Thinko has a dream that four women do strip dances in front of him, complete with bare breasts, and then grind against him dressed only in tiny panties. It's a little bit sexy. Apparently it was shot for the European release and not included in the States, though it has been added to the Warner DVD (which is the print that TCM shows). The movie is frantically paced and not everything works, but I enjoyed it—though I not sure I'd want to sit through it a second time soon. Pictured at top are Milner, Nye and Van Doren. [TCM]

THE HAND (1960)

The opening shot of a Japanese POW camp in World War II says "Burma 1946" but that seems clearly a mistake because the war ended in 1945. Three captured British soldiers are being interrogated about the strength and whereabouts of their regiment, but refuse to give any information except name and rank. Captain Roberts thinks they should get a fictitious story straight and stick to it, but before they can, enlisted men Adams and Brodie are called in to talk, and when they refuse, their right hands are cut off. When Roberts is questioned, he apparently talks and is spared the amputation. Fifteen years later, a drunk named Taplow is found passed out on a London street, his right hand recently amputated and with 500 pounds in his coat. Taken to a hospital, he says he sold the hand to a man named Roberts who had it cut off at a small rural nursing home. During the night, Taplow is abducted by two men and found dead in the Thames the next morning. The police question Dr. Simon Crawshaw, the man who performed the amputation. Taplow had been brought in under the name Roberts by someone else who then took him after the operation. When the police continue to delve into the matter, Simon kills himself in his office. His cousin Roger shows up and, though the police don’t know this, we know that Roger is Captain Roberts, the soldier who kept his hand in Burma. The police trace a phone call that Simon got just before his suicide to a boarding house where Brodie (from the opening scene), who has a hook on his right arm, lives. 

From here on in, the story absolutely falls apart and despite the many notes I took while watching, I can't give a coherent summary of the rest of the plot. Suffice to say that Roberts is a bad guy who winds up paying for his crimes in an ironic fashion. This movie gets labeled horror quite a bit, but except for the implied grisliness of the amputations (none are shown graphically though we do see at least one disembodied hand) it's not horror as much as a B-crime movie. Ultimately the whys and wherefores of the plot are never detailed so we just have to take it on faith that the Burma segment at the beginning (and reprised at the end) is the reason for all the mayhem. It's also never made clear why it took fifteen years after Burma for all this to happen. The acting is all on a par with that of Hammer supporting players without the star power of a Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, meaning everyone is competent but bland. For the record, Derek Bond as Roberts and Ronald Leigh-Hunt as the chief inspector are OK. I did enjoy a running gag in which the policeman named Dave (Ray Cooney, who also co-wrote the script with another cast member) complains to his boss about his girlfriend complaining that he keeps having to work nights on this case. Not an awful movie but difficult to recommend. Pictured are Leigh-Hunt and Cooney. [YouTube]

A SEPARATE PEACE (1972)

In 1942, with World War II under way, Gene and Finny are roommates at Devon, a prep school in New England. Gene is a serious student who studies hard and gets A’s; Finney, a handsome and outgoing golden boy, is a jock who barely studies and is happy getting by with C’s. The boys have a loose knit circle of friends who include the snooty Brinker, amusing but irritating, and the awkward outcast Leper whom Finny stands up for. They jokingly refer to themselves as a secret society, though their main activities seem to be playing lacrosse and swimming in a nearby river. One day, Finny climbs up a tall tree and challenges others to climb up with him and dive into the river. Only Gene joins him, an act which cements their friendship. Later, Finney admits that Gene is his best pal, though for his part, Gene seems to both worship Finney and resent his influence. Even when he needs to study, Gene always ends up acceding to Finny's wishes to goof off. The next time the two are at the tree, Finny dares him to climb the tree to do a double jump. Just as they're about to go, Finny falls out of the tree, breaking his leg. It's unclear what happened: did Finny just stumble or did Gene shake the tree branch, causing his fall? Recovering from the break keeps Finny out of school for several weeks, and when Gene visits him, he haltingly admits that he shook the branch, though good-natured Finny doesn't accept the confession. When Finny returns to Devon, the two reconcile and, though his jock days are behind him, Finny coaches Gene for the 1944 Olympics (which Gene suspects and we know will be called off due to the war). But Brinker, suspecting that Gene caused Finny's accident, convenes a midnight kangaroo court to get at the truth. Refusing to accept Gene's guilt, Finny goes stumbling out of the room, falls down some stairs, and breaks his leg again. Though the doctor is sure a routine operation will fix his leg, something goes wrong and Finny dies under the knife. Decades later, Gene visits the school and goes to the tree, the memory of Finny having never left him.

In the 1970s and 80s, the novel by John Knowles that this is based on was a canonical high school reading assignment. This gay boy read it at the age of 16 (not for a class) and found it to be a story, in large part, of homoerotic attraction: Gene can't face up to his feelings, and finds them in conflict with his resentment over how easy life seems for Finny with his looks and charm; Finny is blissfully unaware of any feelings that run deeper than friendship. But the book is more often approached as a coming-of-age story about accepting responsibility, building an identity, and preparing to become part of the wider world outside of school. The war is brought up frequently. The boys know that the draft waits for them after graduation, though for a time Finny clings to a belief that it's a fake war blown out of proportion by the government. After his accident, he becomes upset that he will not be eligible to fight. Leper leaves Devon before graduation to join the Army, but returns AWOL, plagued by mental problems that he thinks will lead to a discharge. Knowles has denied that he intended any queer reading of the story, and the book is usually taught with a focus on Gene's envy rather than any sexual attraction, conscious or otherwise. With all due respect to Knowles, I say, trust the tale, not the teller. Inchoate sexual feelings certainly play a part in the development of Gene and Finny's relationship, and the movie, filled with scenes of energetic shirtless boys and long lingering glances between Gene and Finny, seems to endorse such an interpretation. 

The movie is quite faithful to the book, but it's not an especially good movie. The director, Larry Peerce, wanted and got a mostly non-professional cast. This is the first movie role for Parker Stevenson (Gene) who went on to a long acting career. For my taste, his performance is awfully one-note, his face usually looking either confused or thoughtful, and I fail to see what about Gene caused Finny to gravitate toward him as a close friend. John Heyl (at right), who had been an actual student at the prep school where the movie was filmed, is quite good as Finny, partly because the character is more about surface charm than buried emotions. He's also got preppy good looks to burn, though in real life he turned away from acting and became a teacher. The biggest problem with the acting is that everyone except Stevenson says their lines too quickly with little variation in tone, a problem that should have been addressed by the director. Visually, it's lovely: the tree, the river, the school grounds, and the snow scenes in the last half of the movie all add atmosphere that the acting and script sometimes lack. Period detail is not especially strong. I would say that reading the book then seeing the movie is the best way to experience the story. This is not available on a region 1 DVD and the print I watched on Prime is squished a bit to fit a square screen which was really disappointing. Pictured at top left are Stevenson and Heyl. [Amazon Prime]