THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH (1964)

aka DR. SYN, ALIAS THE SCARECROW (1963)

In 18th century England, along the coast of Dover, near the town of Dymchurch on Romney Marsh, a band of smugglers have managed to operate for some time, illegally seizing shipments of liquor and gold from ships in the middle of the night, and hauling the goods back to an oast house, a barn where hops are dried. The leader of the smugglers is a masked figure called the Scarecrow, who dresses as a creepy looking scarecrow with a burlap bag mask (pictured at right). He is assisted by the similarly masked Hellspite (wearing a demon face) and the Curlew (a fluffy bird face). We learn that the Scarecrow is actually Dr. Syn, the local vicar, who believes that the villagers are being "taxed out of existence and robbed of their independence" by the exorbitant taxes of King George. In Robin Hood fashion, the money from the smuggled goods is given to the villagers to pay their taxes. When General Pugh arrives in town, telling Squire Banks that he's not doing enough to try and stop the smugglers, Syn's operation is threatened, as is the livelihood of the villagers. Pugh brings in a press gang crew in an attempt to force able-bodied men to serve in the Navy, an act which would certainly stop the smuggling, but also empty the village of working men, and Syn decides he must fight back. Even the town's leader, Squire Banks, is sympathetic as his son was kidnapped years ago by such a gang. Two arrivals in town complicate things. One is Banks' son who has escaped the Navy, and the other is an American named Bates, wanted on charges of sedition for preaching freedom for the colonies. Both could help the villagers but both are being hunted down.

This was produced by Walt Disney as a three-part miniseries for his Wonderful World of Color TV show. The above summary basically covers the first hour, which ends with the Scarecrow's men victorious. In the second episode, Pugh searches out men who had been in arrears with their taxes but who suddenly had a windfall and managed to pay up, the assumption being that these men were the recipients of smuggling money. A man named Ransley becomes the smuggler's weak link, offering to rat out the others for immunity. When some men are caught and put on trial for smuggling brandy, Syn arranges for the barrels to be emptied and filled with water which results in an embarrassing loss for Pugh. Banks' son arrives in episode three; when he and Bates are captured and taken to Dover to be tortured, Syn plots to free them by dressing his men as a Navy press gang and taking the men out of the prison, more or less under the nose of General Pugh himself.

I cover the origin of the Dr. Syn character in my review of the 1937 DR. SYN, but this adaptation is based more directly on a 1960 rewritten and simplified version of the original 1915 novel. This film dispenses with an entire subplot involving Syn actually being a reformed pirate, so there are only two identities to keep up with. Losing the pirate background doesn't hurt, as there is still plenty of narrative. Patrick McGoohan (TV's The Prisoner) uses his slyboots look to great effect here as Syn, looking like he's always one step ahead of everyone around him, even if he's not. The memorable opening sequence of each episode shows the Scarecrow riding and cackling at night, but the series itself is actually a bit short on such scenes. Still, Syn is a compelling lead character, and the Scarecrow is a bit unsettling, with his costume and his loud, gruff voice (very different from Syn's soft but commanding voice). George Cole (Mipps, the town sexton who is also Hellspite) and 16-year-old Sean Scully (the squire's son, also the Curlew) are fine in support, and the Curlew’s mask is almost as weird looking as the Scarecrow’s. Geoffrey Keen (Pugh) is a solid villain; Michael Hordern is the squire; David Buck is the squire’s handsome son. I haven't even mentioned the romantic subplot, in which one of Pugh's men courts the squire's daughter, to the disapproval of the squire, but winds up providing aid to Syn and his men and gets the girl in the end. Without ads and Disney's episode intros, the TV version of this film (under the Romney Marsh title) runs a bit over two hours, but a few months before it aired in America, it was released as a 100 minute feature film in Great Britain (and later in the States) with the Dr. Syn title, cutting most of the plot of the first episode. I watched both versions and, while the feature film is better paced, I enjoyed the longer version more. Pictured at left are Tony Britton and David Buck. [DVD]

DOCTOR SYN (1937)

In 1780, we see a contingent of pirates drag a violent beefy mute man off a boat onto an island where they tie him to a post and put up a sign that says, "Here rot the bones of a traitor mulatto—so perish all who would betray Capt. Clegg." In 1800, we are in the village of Dymchurch on the southern coast of England near Romney Marsh. In the graveyard we see a stone for Clegg who was caught and hanged years ago. As clergyman Christopher Syn preaches in the church, he is given a note that a band of government revenue agents, led by Capt. Collyer, has landed on the coast and plans on staying in town for a while, their mission to catch members of a criminal ring who have been smuggling goods (mostly liquor) for years and making money so the citizens can pay the onerous taxes levied by the king. Syn insists that there are no smugglers, but we find out that there are, and that Syn is the secret head of the ring, hiding behind the identity of the unseen figure The Scarecrow who assigns men to meet ships on the shore at midnight and move their smuggled goods to a barn on the outskirts of town. Only Syn's assistant Mipps, the sexton and undertaker, knows his secret. But Syn has another secret we learn later: he is the dread Captain Clegg, who escaped his hanging and swore off pirating years ago to become the village clergyman. More plotlines arise that will tie together. First, we see that the lovely young orphan Imogene has eyes for the handsome young Denis Cobtree, son of the local squire, though Rash, the schoolteacher, has long been interested in her. Later, we learn that Imogene is the daughter of Clegg, and Syn has been keeping an eye on her. Finally, the mulatto, who survived his ordeal, is a member of the revenue gang and therefore a threat to Syn if he recognizes him as Clegg. A couple of other secrets will surface, and when the town doctor tells the agents that he has seen mysterious "phantoms on horseback" on the marsh at night, Collyer is sure he's on the trail of the smugglers.

Some people think that Dr. Syn was a real person who became a folk hero but actually, he was an invention of British novelist Russell Thorndike, though his stories were based on actual smuggling incidents that occurred near Romney Marsh. I've never read the books, but the character as presented here is a fascinating one, though we're rushed through the character's pirate background only as exposition. This allows the filmmakers to keep Syn likable as a Robin Hood type. Syn is played by the great British actor George Arliss (pictured above). This was his last movie and he was almost 70 when it was filmed; he has plenty of energy and comes off as at least a decade younger, but I doubt he would have been credible as a swashbuckling pirate, though he acquits himself well in a brief fisticuffs scene near the end, perhaps with the help of a stuntman. Arliss, who has a distinct long and unhandsome face, didn't make his first sound film until 1929 when he was past 60 and is largely forgotten today, though he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1930. I like him quite a bit and have reviewed many of his movies on my blog. Arliss never gave a bad performance, and though he's exactly not a scenery chewer, Arliss does tend to command most of the attention in his movies, leaving supporting players a bit at sea. Here, Margaret Lockwood is fine as Imogene; John Loder is handsome though underused as Cobtree; Meinhart Maur has little screen time as the mulatto but he makes the most of it as a physical presence, a bit like Tor Johnson would in the late 1950s. Graham Moffatt makes an impression as the simple-minded young Jerry Jerk—he reminds me of the teenage department store worker Alfred in Miracle on 34th Street. Others are adequate but don't get to shine. At 80 minutes, this starts to drag a bit in the middle but ends excitingly. Many baby boomers, like me, know Dr. Syn from a Walt Disney mini-series from 1964 that has a cult following now; I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow. [DVD]

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)

During the Civil War, three Northern soldiers (Capt. Cyrus Harding, young Herbert Brown, and Black soldier Neb Nugent) escape a Confederate military prison in Richmond during a ferocious storm and head for a hot air observation balloon to escape. War correspondent Gideon Splitt joins them, and they are forced to take a Confederate guard, Pencroft, to pilot the balloon. The poor weather forces them to stay in the clouds for days and they end up over the Pacific Ocean, crashlanding on a small deserted island. Well, it's mostly deserted in terms of people, though the men soon find two British women, the high-toned Lady Mary and her young niece Elena, the sole survivors of a shipwreck. But it's also got giant critters galore. First the men deal with a huge crab which they kill and which Gideon cooks. Then they face a giant bird-chicken thing on the rampage. Herbert and Elena get stuck briefly in a huge bee hive with a gigantic bee threatening them. The group finds shelter in a large cave they call Granite House up on a cliff. There seems to be an unseen presence who occasionally intercedes on their behalf in small ways, and when a pirate ship attacks, the presence appears and blows up the ship. Their savior is Captain Nemo, creator of the famous submarine the Nautilus (see 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), who has been assumed dead for years but has been living in his disabled submarine and using the island for experiments on "horticultural physics" that might help fight world hunger, hence the huge animals. Together they work on refloating the pirate ship to sail for New Zealand, but the island's volcano suddenly becomes active. At the same time, the Nautilus comes under attack from a huge sea creature. Can they work fast enough to escape natural disaster?

This film's basic plot is based fairly closely on a Jules Verne novel which was something of a sequel to 20,000 Leagues, though the sci-fi-fantasy giant creatures were added by the filmmakers, with effects created by Ray Harryhausen, and his work, in both creature creation and combining the effects with live action, make this worth watching. It may all look a bit shabby to modern viewers, but if you turn off your expectations of glossy CGI, you'll find these effects quite compelling. As weirdly fun as the bird thing is (Harryhausen meant it to be an actual ancient being but budget concerns changed his plan), the giant beehive and bee were my favorite effects with Herbert and Elena caught in a giant hive cell, ready to either be stung to death or drowned in honey (picture at right). Exciting incidents happen often enough so that things don't bog too much. Oddly, once Nemo presents himself, the pace slows down and the excellent actor Herbet Lom is mostly wasted as Nemo who is neither terribly friendly nor terribly manic. The other actors are fine. Michael Craig makes a nicely stoic and low-key hero; Michael Callan is handsome and energetic as young Herbert and Beth Rogan is fine as his love interest Elena. It feels like Joan Greenwood, as Lady Mary, wants to cut loose and be a little campy in her privileged position, but she's been restrained. Gary Merrill (Gideon) is not an inspiring action hero type. Percy Herbert (Pencroft) and Dan Jackson (Neb) are bland in smaller roles. The film's trailer calls the sea creature a "prehistoric devil fish" but my husband identified it as a monstrous cuttlefish. It's probably the least effective of the creatures but it helps make the climax exciting. Pictured at top left are Craig and Callan. I reviewed a silent movie version of the book here. [Blu-ray]

JAMBOREE (1957)

Grace and Lew are talent agents, once married but now divorced. Grace is shopping around young Pete Porter and Lew is doing the same for young Honey Wynn. Both singers show up at an audition for talent in a Broadway revue. When neither one gets lucky, Grace has the idea of pairing the two, like a hip Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. They get a good song and a record contract, and as their first single heads to the top of the charts, the two fall in love. Despite their success, Grace encourages Pete to cut a solo record but he won't. Meanwhile, Lew, suspecting Grace of trying to pull such a stunt, talks Honey into recording a solo. When Grace finds out, she takes Pete to the studio and has him "accidentally" see her record which irritates him. During a TV marathon appearance, Grace cancels the duo performance and has Pete sing his own solo song. Pete and Honey split, Pete goes on a successful solo concert tour in Europe, and Honey releases her solo record which is not a hit. Everybody is sad and sorry, but because Grace and Lew had begun to feel romantic stirrings again, they work together to get the kids to reconcile at a major record industry convention. The road back proves bumpy, but a happy ending is in store for both couples.

In this 90 minute film, less than half of the running time is devoted to the above plot. The rest of the movie features performances from over a dozen pop music acts of the era, mostly presented with little to no context. Some are supposedly performed at the marathon, and most are introduced by various deejays from around the country, including Dick Clark. But all are performance bits that are not attached in any way to the narrative. Though pushed as a rock and roll movie, there are many genres represented. The opening credits mention fifteen acts, topped by Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis who are bona fide rock singers, but also featured are jazz legend Count Basie and country singer Slim Whitman. Some, like Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, were basically one-hit wonders. Some had no hits, like Louis Lymon and the Teenchords who were copies of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" fame; in fact, Louis was Frankie's brother.  At least one performer, the very young Frankie Avalon, went on to fame as an actor. His song, "Teacher’s Pet," has the fun line, "As long as you rate my kiss straight A, I'm at the head of the class." For my money, the best number is the opener, "Record Hop Tonight" by Andy Martin, which is fully choreographed and presented as a scene in the Broadway revue. While it's fun to see some of these artists, most of them just stand in front of the camera and sing, and don't work up the energy of that opening. Meanwhile, the names of the actors aren't even shown in the opening credits, saved instead for the end. The plot is lazy and predictable, and the actors don't seem to have been encouraged to try too hard, but I quite liked Paul Carr as Pete and Kay Medford as Grace; both had lengthy acting careers and both are able to work up personalities for their characters—a bit nerdy for Pete, conniving for Grace. Robert Pastene (Lew) played Buck Rogers in a short-lived TV series but did little else, and Freda Holloway (Honey) made no other movies. Carr seems to do his own singing, but Connie Francis dubs Honey, with "the voice of Connie Francis" given a credit in the cast list. It’s obviously a B-level production, but it was fun, and if you have any interest in mid-50s pop music, you should check it out. Pictured are Carr and Holloway. [TCM]

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE (1967)

The time: postwar (most critics say late 1940s but if there was a specific time referenced, I missed it). The place: an army base in Georgia. Marlon Brando (at right) is a major, stoic but tightly strung, who teaches classes on leadership. His wife (Elizabeth Taylor) is a sexy and gregarious bombshell who loves to ride horses. She gets nothing from her husband in the bedroom so she is indulging in an affair with another officer (Brian Keith) whose wife (Julie Harris) is still recovering from a nervous breakdown during which she cut off her nipples with garden shears. (No, it's not based on Tennessee Williams but Carson McCullers.) Her horse is named Firebird and its groom is the broodily handsome and silent army private Robert Forster. If you have any doubts about where this is going, here is an early exchange between Brando and Taylor. Brando: "Firebird is a horse"; Taylor, contemptuously, in her braying and snarling mode, "Firebird is a stallion!" Forester becomes an obsessive stalker of Taylor, sneaking into her bedroom at night and going through her underthings. He also has a tendency to stroll through the nearby woods naked, and to sunbathe naked, and to ride horses naked. Brando's eye is caught by Forster, and he thinks that Forster is flirting with him. Brando is certainly not ready to accept his homosexual feelings, though he does occasionally primp in front of a mirror when no one else is around, and cries for no reason—though being Brando, he does all this in a fairly butch fashion. One day Brando takes Firebird for a ride, but he loses control of the horse, falls off, breaks down and winds up beating the horse with a whip. The naked Forester takes the horse back to its stall, and that night at a party, Taylor whips Brando in the face. Things do not go uphill from here.

The Hollywood Production Code, which prohibited the portrayal of any number of acts that could be seen as immoral or perverse, was breaking down at this point in the 1960s, due in large part to movies like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which starred Taylor). Queerness was still seen as something unhealthy and couldn't really be presented explicitly in a mainstream film, but anyone who couldn't see it barely beneath the surface here, as it was in the 1941 novel, wasn't paying attention or had lived a very sheltered life. This may seem like an outdated story now, but even in 2026, people are still pressured to hide their queerness; if this were made today, it would surely be much more explicit in tone, imagery and incident but the fear, self-loathing, and ridicule of others would still be sadly relevant. 

Having said that, it was difficult to watch this today and not feel it was old-fashioned, bordering on camp. It takes a while to get used to Brando in a closeted mode, and he gives a very mannered, performative performance (if that makes sense), but that makes some sense as the character would have been aware all the time that he was performing straight masculinity. I ended up thinking that he gave a good portrayal of a man who was constantly uncomfortable in his own skin. Taylor is a bit over the top, coming off occasionally like a somewhat less angry Martha from Who's Afraid, but nothing about the part seems to call for underplaying. Brian Keith is very good, coming off as mostly confused but well-intentioned about both his wife and his mistress. Julie Harris is vague in a vaguely defined role. Forester, pictured at left, barely gives a performance at all; he just stands around looking sexy and detached, but also a little confused about his feelings for Taylor. He's more a plot device than a character. I'm not even sure if he has any dialogue; for a while, I thought maybe his character was imaginary and that only Brando could see him. There are two other characters who are coded as gay/queer. Zorro David plays Julie Harris' effeminate Filipino houseboy who tries to protect her from reality, and is the source of the title, a reference to a peacock's eye in a painting. It's interesting that Keith seems to resent his presence, but after he leaves, Keith wishes he would come back. There's also a very minor character, Capt. Weincheck, a friend to Harris, who is seen as, if not quite a sissy, still too gentle and sensitive for military life. Brando gets a good line that gets to the core of his problem, to which he gives a tightly controlled and effective reading: "Any fulfillment obtained at the expense of normality is wrong and should not be allowed to bring happiness." I saw a full-color version of this movie, but it was originally released (in theaters and recently on DVD) in an amber-tinted version that just seems wrong-headed. [TCM]

THE CRUEL TOWER (1956)

Tom is a studly young hobo who, while riding the rails, gets beaten up and tossed off a train car. He is found by Joss, a developmentally disabled steeplejack (someone who works on towers, smokestacks and other tall structures), who takes him back to the trailer office of his employer, Stretch Clay. Co-worker Casey and Stretch's secretary Mary help Tom recover and Stretch offers him a job. Tom is afraid of heights, but Stretch tells him his duties will keep him on the ground so he accepts, though Joss hints to Tom that he should leave before evil influences from Stretch get to him. The men are rather informal about safety measures, and Stretch is known to occasionally have a few drinks before going up the water tower they're working on. We soon learn some backstory. Mary is Stretch's mistress, but Stretch has a wife whom Joss accuses him of mistreating. Stretch is also not above a casual fling with other women. Tom's fear of heights comes from an incident in his past when he couldn't save his brother from falling off a cliff to his death. The men also have sabotage problems stemming from their rivalry with Forrest and his men, though eventually, Stretch hires Rocky, a former Forrest worker. With Mary's help, Tom begins to work on the towers, but when Joss lets it slip that Casey is having an affair with Stretch's wife, things begin to fall apart for the group, and when Tom and Mary decide to leave together, Stretch tries to stop them with tragic results. This is a solid B-movie with decent acting, good location shooting at real California towers, and some nice stunt work. The tensions between the characters are sustained throughout, and at eighty minutes, the film is just about the right length. The handsome John Ericson carries the movie well as Tom, and he and Mari Blanchard (Mary) work up some good chemistry. Charles McGraw, who played tough cops and tough thugs, is good as Stretch; though we know from early on that he'll be trouble, he manages to garner some sympathy along the way until his plans lead to the death of a character. Steve Brodie (Casey) and Peter Whitney (Joss) give fine support, as does Alan Hale Jr. in the smaller role of Rocky. There's a couple of bar brawls and the climax, played out at the top of a tower, is predictable but worth sticking around for. Pictured are Ericson and Blanchard. [YouTube]

A PAIR OF BRIEFS (1962)

Tony is a frustrated junior barrister in London who doesn't make much money and spends most of his time on minor legal matters like sewage problems. Frances is the young niece of Sir John, an esteemed barrister; he has gotten her a job with Tony's firm and she is moved into Tony's office (and takes his desk). Tony resents her bubbly and privileged presence and connives to face her in court in a case involving "restoration of conjugal rights." Gladys, Frances' client, claims that she married a man named Sid during the war, lost her memory in a bombing raid, and lost track of her husband until years later. Sid, living in sin with a blond totsy, claims he doesn't know her and there was no marriage. Gladys is middle-aged and dresses plainly, though we have our doubts about her as in an early scene, we see her dressed to the nines in her apartment, then changing into dowdy clothing to go see Frances. Tony gets his roommate Hubert to give him Sid's brief and Frances is not happy to realize that she'll face Tony in court; there is animosity between them, though romantic sparks are clearly being set off underneath. In the courtroom of the serious judge Haddon, Frances gets emotional and is punished by Haddon, which leads Tony to feel sorry for her and stand up for her in court—they both loudly proclaim that "the law is an ass"—which further angers Haddon. As Frances is unable to find any concrete evidence for the marriage, Haddon finds in Sid's favor, and threatens to have both Frances and Tony disbarred. However as we have been expecting to find out since the beginning, the case of Gladys and Sid is not quite what it appears, leading to some farcical complications in the last half hour before all is settled with a happy ending for Tony and Frances.

Despite its sex farce title, this is a delightful little romantic comedy that brings to mind the Tracy/Hepburn battle of the sexes movie Adam's Rib. The screenplay is fairly clever, though if you pay attention to Gladys's first scene, you’ll be a step ahead in eventually sorting things out. The way things work out at the conclusion is ingenious, if a bit predictable. But the real reason to watch this is the acting. I've seen a number of movies recently starring the very handsome and charming Michael Craig, and he's never been as handsome or charming as he is here as Tony. He handles light comedy very well, and manages to act a bit befuddled at times without coming off as an ass. Mary Peach (Frances) also handles the comedy well, though she wears out her welcome a bit in the main courtroom scene with her naive and unsuccessful attempts to hide her courtroom inexperience. Craig is very good at showing us his growing attraction for Peach. The strong supporting cast is anchored by James Robertson Justice as the bearded bear of a judge; he manages to suggest an occasional twinkle in his eye despite his fierce courtroom behavior. Ron Moody, best known as Fagin in Oliver, overdoes a bit the obnoxious goofiness of Sid, whose string of monkey jokes ("Beat it, as the monkey said to the egg whisk") never stops. Brenda de Banzie is better as Gladys, the apparently pitiful and wronged woman who eventually displays much more fortitude. In smaller roles, John Standing as the roommate Hubert (pictured above with Craig) and Liz Fraser as Sid’s mistress stand out nicely. Future Laugh-In star Judy Carne has a small role as an exotic dancer who apparently uses a vacuum cleaner in her act. My favorite line: when a gay hotel manager says combatively to Tony, "If that's the truth, I’m the Queen of Sheba," Tony replies, "I don't give a damn what you do in your off duty time!" I guess I’m a bit prejudiced here because of my current crush on Michael Craig, but I quite enjoyed this. [YouTube]

TAUR THE MIGHTY (1963)

The king of Surupak sends his Black slave Ubaratutu to invite the muscular hero Taur (called Thor in the English dub in this Italian movie) to the wedding of his lovely daughter Illa to the handsome youth Syros. Got it? But when Taur and Ubaratutu get to Surupak, they discover the land ravaged, homes destroyed, and rotting corpses lying on the ground. Warriors of Kixos have caused the destruction, killed the king, and taken a number of prisoners including Syros, Illa and her sister. Taur and Ubaratutu head for Kixos on a rescue mission and discover Syros, now a prisoner in the mines. Taur frees him and leaves Ubaratutu in his place; "The worst they can do is whip you," says Taur comfortingly. In a subterranean chamber, the two discover Afer, a woman who has been chained up for eighteen years. She tells them how, years ago the evil high priest El Khad usurped the royal line and had the actual heir, just a child, killed. But Afer saved the lad and made a mark on his chest to identify him as the heir before sending him away. She identifies the mark on Syros, so added to Taur's mission is the installation of Syros as the proper king. But there's a false queen, Akiba, whom El Khad has kept doped up and docile all these years so she will do his bidding. Taur is captured and forced to fight Ubaraturu to the death, but the crowd signals mercy. Next, Taur is put to a test in which he is tied to two bands of horses to be pulled apart, during which Queen Akiba seems to get turned on, but his brute strength saves him. Our heroes have more adventures, climaxing in a plot to get a mining operation that uses the heat of a volcano to make the volcano itself explode, hopefully killing off the bad folks and saving the good folks, and leaving Syros and Illa to marry and rightfully rule Kixos.

This has the reputation of being among the worst of the 60's Italian peplum movies, but honestly, image quality and dubbing problems aside, it's actually a great deal of fun. The film is predictable, playing out like a catalog of peplum tropes: a hero dragged into a rescue situation (Taur/Thor, apparently originally meant to be named Tarzan before a lawsuit threat); a young and handsome but less hunky sidekick (Syros); another fairly hunky sidekick who provides occasional comic relief (Ubaratutu); a wicked villain (El Khad); an ambiguously wicked partner (Akiba); a village reduced to ashes; trials that allow the hero to strain (and show off) his muscles; attempts to seduce the hero; and some decent effects, including the destruction of a rope bridge and the final eruption of the volcano. The British Joe Robinson, as Taur, was a wrestler before he started acting, and after his career ended, became a martial arts teacher. He had a nice build, not as lumpily muscular as some peplum heroes, but his bland modern looks work a bit against his hero persona. Harry Baird, as Ubaratutu, is almost as hunky as Robinson but is saddled with a comic relief part with racist overtones: he has a slave mentality and he's a coward—at one point, his teeth chatter so much from fear that the bad guys almost find his hiding place. To be fair, white actors also played such parts, but the vibe with a Black actor feels a little disturbing. Still, he's good in the role. Alberto Cevenini and Thea Fleming are attractive as Syros and Illa. In the end, Taur promises Ubaratutu that more adventures are ahead, and indeed the two appeared together again in 1963's THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN, a lesser effort. The circulating print, on DVD, streaming, and YouTube, is pan-and-scan and a bit murky, but I'd rewatch this if a good widescreen print surfaced. At top right, Robinson; at left, Baird and Robinson. [Amazon Streaming]

THE FLAMING URGE (1953)

A narrator gives us an odd and very general thesis statement: everyone is different and we all react to things differently, and anyone we meet might be at the mercy of great compulsions we don't understand. Meet Tom Smith (Harold Lloyd Jr., at right), a rather intense looking young man who arrives by bus in the town of Monroe, Michigan. Looking for a new start, he rents a room at a boarding house and gets a job selling ties at a department store, but his first day on the job, he hears a fire engine siren and seems positively aroused, eventually running from the store. The secret he's trying to put behind him is that he's a compulsive fire chaser; whenever he hears a siren, he hems and haws until he goes racing after it and watches the fire being fought. His immediate boss, Mr. Pender, looks askance at this but doesn't fire him (pardon the pun), just tells him to try and control himself. Tom finds out that Chalmers, the store owner, is a fire chaser himself, having installed a fire pole in his second story office to use for his chasing escapades. Chalmers' drive isn’t as all-consuming as Tom's but Chalmers asks Tom to try and withstand his urge. At the fires, Tom becomes buddies with a fire-chasing German Shepherd named Robby and soon has struck up a friendship with Charlotte, the dog's owner. She has a boyfriend, the goofy, prank-playing Ralph, but she and Tom grow close over time. Unfortunately, a spate of fires plagues the town and Tom falls under suspicion for setting them just to see them burn. He tells Charlotte his secret, and she gives him a sealed letter to read the next time he feels the firechasing urge. The letter, telling him that she loves him and is sure he can beat the obsession, seems to work, but the fires continue. Can Tom find out who the real fire bug is before he gets run out of town?

There’s a lot to attend to in this seventy-minute B-film that, oddly, was not made by Ed Wood despite having some similarities to Wood's style and themes. On the surface, it's kind of an off-kilter Andy Hardy movie; despite the talk of obsessions and pyromania, it does have an innocent, almost sweet atmosphere to it. But right off the bat, Lloyd's performance works against the cute small town feel—he plays Tom with a burning-eyed intensity that threatens to send the movie into darker territory, possibly with murder and madness in store. That doesn't happen, but there is another reading which has been posited by several viewers: the "flaming urge" of the title might be homosexuality. Though Tom doesn't exactly have a stereotypical gay manner, he is clearly not experienced at dating women. At one point, a bow tie display he makes is called "flamboyant" as an insult by Pender. When he confesses his problem to a co-worker (an Irish guy who, for no reason, busts out in song at one point and is sometimes quite handsy with other guys), he suggests that his obsession will only go away when Tom gets married and has to take on responsibilities. In a very strange moment, Ralph pulls a prank on Tom by shaking his hand with a big glob of whipped cream that splooshes all over the place. Then there's the phallic fire pole that both Chalmers and Tom use to chase a fire. A climactic fire breaks out in a men's changing booth on a beach where we have caught a glimpse of half-naked boys. At a store picnic, a man tells his wife that he’d been talking to "Mr. McKay, who is in men's underwear," and the wife replies, "Well, I should hope so!" The fact that Lloyd was gay in real life only adds fuel to the (pardon me again) fire.

This all might make the movie sound more fun than it is. The primitive visual style, mismatched stock footage of fires, and the lackluster acting of most of the cast all work against it. Though a bit creepy at times, Lloyd is actually pretty good—he never breaks character, and though not instantly likable, you do end up sympathizing with him. Cathy Downs is less interesting as Charlotte, not exactly sleepwalking but not fully engaged. Jonathan Hale (Chalmers) and Bob Hughes (the Irish fellow) are fine, though Byron Foulger, with nearly 500 credits on IMDb, is a bit lackluster as Pender. I found this film after seeing Lloyd in MARRIED TOO SOON, and if this could be restored like that film was, it might come off better. As it stands, the DVD and YouTube prints are pretty shabby. Still, if you're in a what-the-hell mood, you can watch this, laugh at it good-naturedly, and feel fine afterwards. [YouTube]

CONE OF SILENCE (1960)

American title: TROUBLE IN THE SKY

In a courtroom inquest in London, barrister Arnold Hobbes, working for Atlas Aviation, the company that makes the Phoenix jet, argues successfully that Captain Gort, and not the plane company, is responsible for the crash of a Phoenix during takeoff in Ranjibad, India, which resulted in the death of Gort's co-pilot. Gort is upset with the verdict as he prizes his reputation as a careful, by-the-rules pilot, claiming that the fault had to do with the suggested parameters for takeoff speed established by Phoenix. Gort's daughter Charlotte is particularly critical of the courtroom decision, though examiner Hugh Dallas does clear him for future flights. Hugh and Charlotte get interested in each other, leading some to think that Hugh was too easy on Gort during testing. Captain Judd thinks the middle-aged Gort should be put on desk duty, and airplane designer Pickering, who is working on a new version of the Phoenix, resents suspicions that the plane was at fault. During a stormy landing in Calcutta, Gort's window breaks open though he handles the situation well. Later, however, Judd finds a bit of hedge in the undercarriage of the plane, indicating that Gort was coming in too low. What Gort, Hugh and Judd don't know is that other pilots have figured out that the unstick (basically, lift-off speed) parameters indeed need adjusting and have been doing so unofficially. Hugh eventually figures out that the bit of telltale hedge was left on the plane from Ranjibad, but by then it's too late; one more tragic accident occurs before people start to realize that all along, the problem wasn't Gort.

Don't come to this movie with expectations of a traditional disaster film. Though we do see the Calcutta incident in detail, no other carnage is shown. Instead, this is a story of flawed people all basically trying to do the right thing. Judd and Pickering are set up as possible villains, but neither one has bad intentions and both think they are doing the right thing in casting aspersions toward Gort. Gort is sympathetic, but it does seem plausible that he should be retiring. Hugh and Charlotte are well-intentioned, but they might be blinding themselves due to their own prejudices. Even the cold-blooded barrister Hobbes is eventually willing to realize he might have been wrong. The movie is nicely paced and well shot with good acting, so we don't miss the disaster scenes we might have been expecting. Handsome leading man Michael Craig (pictured) anchors the film well as Hugh, and Bernard Lee is especially good as Gort, someone we need to be uncertain about for a time—he's good at coming off as both professional and a little nervous. Peter Cushing interrupted his string of Hammer horror films to play Judd, and Elizabeth Seal is fine if unmemorable as Charlotte. George Sanders has what amounts to a fleshed-out cameo as the barrister, and doesn't need to stretch his talents much to play the stuffy and arrogant Hobbes. The original British title refers to a blind test in which the pilot must navigate using only an audio signal. Gort passes the test, but it has little to do with the movie's plot. Gordon Jackson and Noel Willman are also present. Overall, good ensemble acting and just the right amount of tension. [YouTube]