IL GRIDO (1957)

In an Italian village, Irma receives news that her husband, who left her and moved to Australia years ago, has died. For seven years, Irma has kept house with Aldo, a worker at a sugar refinery, and they have a young daughter, Rosina. Aldo thinks this is good news as the two can finally get married, but Irma tells him that some months ago, "something changed"; she met and fell in love with another man. After slapping the shit out of Irma in public, Aldo leaves with Rosina and goes on the road. Their first stop is at the home of Aldo's former lover Elvia, but though there are still feelings on both sides, Aldo is too gutted by Irma's rejection to successfully rekindle the relationship. After catching a ride with a trucker, Aldo and Rosina wind up at an isolated roadside gas station run by Virginia, an attractive widow who is caring for her senile father. After an awkward beginning, Aldo and Virginia become lovers, though when Rosina sees the two making out in the dirt, she tries to run away. Soon, Virginia puts her father in a nursing home and Aldo puts Rosina on a bus back to Irma, but the two still can't get settled, so Aldo leaves, trying to find a job at a riverside fishing village where he falls in with Andreina, a prostitute. Still restless, and not able to forget Irma, Aldo goes back home only to find the town in the midst of a strike action protesting the coming of a military base next to the sugar refinery. [Spoiler!] Finding that Irma has settled down and has another child, Aldo wanders to the refinery, empty due to the strike, and climbs to the top of a tower. Irma follows him and waves to him from below. Aldo waves back but then falls to his death.

This fairly early film by Michelangelo Antonioni is like a dry run for his later, more famous 60s films about alienation: from nature, from society, from lovers, of the bourgeoisie, though here the focus is on the working class—there are no sleek well-dressed beautiful people, only rough and earthy folks who are barely getting by. Antonioni is known for his use of landscapes with interesting architecture, but here the landscapes are natural (fields and beaches) or industrial (the gas station, the refinery). The alienation being focused on is that of the working class man who can only channel his feelings of disappointment and depression into violence or apathy toward the women whom he thinks should save him. American actor Steve Cochran, who specialized in inarticulate but sexy tough guys, is excellent here, keeping Aldo just this side of sympathetic despite the poor choices he makes, though I don't think Aldo sees his situations as the results of his own choices. Alida Valli is just as good as Irma who is not a one-dimensional villain. Her reason for not marrying Aldo is not explained terribly well, but we see that her choice was not easy for her, and she retains a connection to Aldo right to the end. Dorian Gray is fine as Virginia. American actor Betsy Blair seems a little too artificially perky as Elvia, and never quite seems credible as a past lover of Aldo's. Though a fairly grim movie, there are a couple of moments of humor, including when Virginia's father teaches Rosina the Marseillaise, singing, wild-eyed, "Dynamite the mansions, stab the cowardly bourgeoisie!" which is actually close in spirit to the actual lyrics. As for the climax, some reviews refer to Aldo committing suicide, but it seems clear to me that he falls in a moment of vertigo, swaying a bit before plummeting. One theory I read is that he just doesn't have the will to stop himself, which seems about right. Also known as The Outcry. Pictured are Blair and Cochran. [Criterion Channel]

THE DEATH RAY OF DR. MABUSE (1964)

This the sixth and last of the German Mabuse movies from the 1960s, and as with the rest, a vague attempt is made at connecting this film with the previous one, SCOTLAND YARD HUNTS DR. MABUSE, so this begins like the last one ended, with Prof. Pohland in an asylum muttering about the mysterious (and supposedly dead) Dr. Mabuse having possessed him. He also mentions a death ray, assumed by the police to be a part of Mabuse's infamous "testament," a number of nefarious plans to be carried out by whomever Mabuse is currently controlling. Pohland escapes and, because a Prof. Larsen is known to be experimenting with his own death ray in his laboratory on Malta, the cops (or the secret service or the spies, whatever they are), led by Major Anders, are sent to investigate and to protect, if necessary, Larsen from Pohland. Calling his project Operation Archimedes, the ray is a large mirror device that can concentrate light rays into one strong destructive ray, as Archimedes may have done during the Siege of Syracuse in 212 B.C.E. Larsen has the ray locked up securely and only he knows the code. The film quickly takes on the feel of a James Bond movie with Anders set up as a ladies man who in fact gets to flirt with at least three different Bond girls, er…, Andrers girls: Judy, one of his regular mistresses whom he talks into becoming a spy (and who winds up ensconced in a local brothel for protection); Gilda, the daughter of Prof. Larsen; and Mercedes, the exotic Eurasian secretary of the local museum keeper Botani. There are red herrings everywhere, and practically every character, even Larsen, is at some point suspected of being in league with Mabuse. There are two brothers, Mario and Jason Monta, and I was never quite sure what they had to do with the story, though the mustachioed Mario (played by Gustavo Rojo) is nice eye candy. The death ray itself is never used, but the climactic James Bondian battle plays out mostly underwater between two small armies of frogmen.

I took a lot of plot summary notes while watching, as the movie is cluttered with incident, but ultimately with all the characters, some rather illogical plot points, and few actual clues to follow, it's best just to surrender to the nonsense. Peter van Eyck (pictured above left) reappears from the last film as the hero; technically he has a different name but it doesn't matter. As in SCOTLAND YARD, he's a bit too old (he was 53 and looked every year of it) and too low energy for the role but he acquits himself nicely in a wild fisticuffs scene in a belltower. I like the running gag that, despite trying to keep his mission a secret, everyone on the island knows who he is and what he's doing. All three women are good with Rika Dialyna the standout as the perky Judy (we are led to believe that she did not have to actually do sex work at the brothel, but the possibility that she may have is in the air). Yvonne Furneaux (Gilda) and Yoko Tani (Mercedes) are also fine. Robert Beatty is Anders' boss and Leo Genn is Beatty's boss—he gets a nice scene near the end. The movie ends with the unmasked villain mindlessly repeating, "It wasn’t me, it was Mabuse," but another film was not made. The 90-minute German print is the standard version, but the disc includes an Italian dub that is twenty minutes longer. It does clarify a couple of plot points, but I also felt it dragged a bit. Overall it's fun but it has little in common with the earlier Mabuse films in terms of style or tone. Aka The Secret of Dr. Mabuse. Pictured at right are van Eyck and Gustavo Rojo. [Blu-ray]

THE SQUALL (1929)

At a farmhouse in Hungary, the Lajos family is celebrating the wedding anniversary of Josef and Maria, and the upcoming wedding of their college student son Paul to the sweet and innocent Irma. We meet Peter, a farmhand; Lena, the cook who has been saving money so she can marry Peter; Aunt Anna, a busybody, and Uncle Daniel. During dinner, a storm arrives, and Daniel says that maybe the Lord sends "the squall so we may learn the beauty of a limpid sky," just as he sends "sorrow so that we may know joy." In the middle of the storm, as a gypsy caravan has stopped outside, sexy gypsy girl Nubi shows up at their door seeking refuge from her cruel master El Moro. The family agrees to take her in and let her stay if she'll do chores around the farm. It's not long before Nubi has begun to bewitch the menfolk, starting with Peter who starts to ignore Lena and sings to his horse of his love for Nubi. Next it's Paul who starts to ignore Irma, fails his exams, and eventually steals Lena's money to buy trinkets for Nubi. Even Josef can't completely resist her charms, as Anna notices and reports back to Maria. Finally as dysfunction threatens to completely tear the Lajos family apart, the gypsy caravan returns, El Moro reclaims his woman, and the family seems to be on the verge of healing.

This melodrama displays many of the problems of early talkies: stagy setups (most every scene takes place in the big family kitchen), overblown acting, awkward enunciating from actors not used to having their voices recorded. Some viewers consider this something of a camp classic, probably due to the histrionics of Myrna Loy (pictured) as Nubi. It's true that Loy goes gleefully over the top with her dialogue ("Me good girl! Nubi do nothing wrong!") and looks sexy as hell in her darkened skin and tousled black hair—she looks like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins—and she is the main reason to watch the movie, but I'm not sure that camp is the appropriate label, as little else about the movie is campy. The rest of the cast is pretty tamped down compared to Loy. Carroll Nye, as Paul, feels a bit at sea, more mopey than excited by his misbehavior. Loretta Young (Irma) is terribly artificial in her looks and delivery, and it was difficult to work up much sympathy for her—I was actually hoping for a time that Paul would go off with Nubi, though she'd have certainly tired of him quickly. Richard Tucker (Josef), Alice Joyce (Maria) and Harry Cording (Peter) are fine, and ZaSu Pitts as Lena is even better. The storm effect looks a bit like the twister in The Wizard of Oz (this is an MGM movie). There is undistinguished direction from Alexander Korda who would become legendary as a British producer. Favorite line: Josef trying to explain to his wife about why their son is acting strange: “If it isn't love that’s bothering him, it’s sex.” [TCM]

WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? (1965)

Under the opening credits, we see the torsos of two nearly naked people as they make out very slowly in a bedroom. A little girl carrying a teddy bear looks in from the hallway, is shocked at what she sees, and runs and trips down the stairs, her bear being torn in two in the process. Next disjointed scene: a man in underwear wakes up, a pornographic novel next to him. As he caresses his body, he makes the latest in a series of obscene phone calls to Norah (Juliet Prowse), a young woman who works as a discotheque DJ in Times Square; she hangs up on him. At the small and sparsely decorated club (it looks more like a good-sized suburban living room) we meet her butch lesbian boss Marian (Elaine Stritch), Carlo, a beefy mute bouncer (Daniel J. Travanti), and a young waiter named Larry (Sal Mineo, at right). We see a drunk try to assault Norah get tossed out by Carlo, though he winds up with some knife wounds. This sets up, or adds to, an aura of potential sexual violence, added to even more when Norah calls the cops about the phone caller. Lt. Dave Madden (Jan Murray), whose wife was raped and killed, has focused unhealthily on sex crimes and, despite the presence of his young daughter in his small apartment, spends evenings listening over and over to tapes of police interviews of sex criminals. For a while, we're not sure who the caller is—even the overly intense Madden is a plausible suspect—but when Norah finds a decapitated teddy bear in her apartment one night, we learn that the caller, and the guy in the opening two scenes, is Larry. With both of his parents dead, he is the sole support of his sister, emotionally and psychologically stunted due to witnessing her brother having sex. Norah likes Larry who seems sweet and innocent, though we see him spending many nighttime hours trawling Times Square porn shops and getting upset when his sister Edie starts dressing, as he sees it, like a whore. After the teddy bear incident, Marian offers to stay with Norah, but when Norah mistakes a calming hug for a pass, Marian leaves and is strangled to death on the street by Larry, who thinks she's Norah. The climax involves a rape, a nighttime street chase, and a death. 

Most reviewers point out the lurid tone of this movie, and it is true that one might feel the need for a shower after watching this. But for me, the thing that stands out most is how much time is spent with the camera focused on Sal Mineo's body. The objectification of the female body, the basis of film studies theories of the "male gaze," is baked into the classic Hollywood movie formula, but here the male gaze is aimed at a man. In real life Mineo was a relatively open bisexual and something of a gay icon, but his character here is not presented as gay. Perhaps the director, Joseph Cates (father of Phoebe Cates), assumed that the novelty of seeing a man in tight white underwear, and an even tighter speedo in a pool scene, would help the movie stand out. Even today, a scene with Mineo, in his underwear, masturbating by grinding against a mattress, is a bit shocking. The psychological underpinnings of the movie seem suspect. There is no examination of the trauma suffered by Larry and Edie. It didn't make sense to me that Larry kills Marian when he thinks she is Norah, but doesn't try to kill Norah later when he has the chance. But this is basically pulp fiction, not a realistic case study.

Mineo is very good, convincing both as a sweet buddy to Norah and as a perverted stalker. Prowse and Stritch are equally fine, and though I had my doubts at first about Borscht Belt comic Jan Murray in a straight role, he's OK, though at times I felt as if he was just dying to bust out with a Jewish mother joke or two. Margot Bennett (Edie) was married at the time to Keir Dullea and later married Malcolm McDowell. Daniel J. Travanti (above left) is surprisingly handsome and effective in his small role. There are several location shots of Manhattan streets, the Central Park zoo, and the tawdry Times Square neighborhood that are historically interesting. There isn't much humor here, but I chuckled at a shot of a porn store window which pans across three titles: Sex Crimes in History, Fanny Hill, and a Webster's dictionary. This has the look and feel of a fairly cheap but arty grindhouse movie, but with A-ish level actors—Mineo was an Oscar nominee and Stritch later won Emmys and a Tony. Most reviews use words like lurid, unsavory, sweaty, perverted and kinky, and they all fit, but it’s also interesting and kinkily entertaining. [TCM]

THE FOURTH VICTIM (1971)

The wealthy English playboy Arthur Anderson comes home to find his wife Gladys floating face down, dead in their pool. He and his faithful housekeeper Felicity take her out of the pool and dress her before calling the police (an odd move that seems designed to signal to us something important, but it never comes to fruition except that Felicity lies on the stand to throw any possible suspicion away from her boss). This is the third wife of Anderson's to die an untimely death and the third one who has left him a big chunk of insurance money. He is found innocent (the verdict is accidental barbiturate overdose) but Inspector Dunphy is convinced that he's guilty and will slip up eventually. One night at midnight, Arthur finds a young blonde woman swimming in his pool; she's an American named Julie Spencer and she claims to be a neighbor who assumed the house was empty.  He's taken off guard by her, but she seems to be all sweetness and light, and soon the two are married. But who is that other blonde woman in a cape suspiciously lurking about both Julie's previous house and now Arthur's? On their wedding night, Julie accuses him of murdering Gladys and locks him in the attic. Later, Arthur finds out that Julie has spent time in an asylum after killing her first husband, but when he starts investigating, he finds that Julie has other secrets as well, and when the mysterious blonde woman shows up again, things get even more off-kilter.

This Italian-Spanish thriller is related to the giallo genre, though it doesn’t have the sex or gore or interesting visual style that giallo fans will expect. What it does have is a slow-burn plot that gets nicely twisty in the last 20 minutes. It also has the expected plotholes of a giallo film. The opening, with Arthur and Felicity moving Gladys' body, is not explained. Nor is it explained why she lies on the stand for him. In general, their relationship is inconsistently portrayed. Arthur's past is not gone into at all, except the very little bit that is covered at the trial It seems a minor detail, but we never see how Arthur gets out of the attic on his wedding night. It's not exactly an ugly movie but the settings (interior and exterior) don't stand out. The acting is a bit unbalanced. Michael Craig plays Arthur in a flat, almost affectless style, which does keep his character mysterious, but it also keeps him at a remove from the viewer. Carroll Baker does the opposite, playing Julie in a perky fashion that seems at odds with what we know about her. Still, I liked the two leads, and Miranda Campa as Felicity who seems to be doing what the director, Eugenio Martin, told her to do without worrying about character. Marina Malfati is the skulking blonde who is barely a character at all. So, while it's fairly colorless, a bit sluggish at times, has sloppy writing, and has acting all over the map, the ending is good and I enjoyed this. Pictured are Baker and Craig. [Blu-ray]

GASOLINE ALLEY (1951) / CORKY OF GASOLINE ALLEY (1951)

Gasoline Alley is a comic strip focusing on the Wallets, a suburban family consisting of patriarch Walt, his wife Phyllis, and his children Skeezix (a foundling that Walt adopted before he got married), Corky and Judy. It began in 1918 and is still running. It's known partly for its gentle vision of small town America, and also known for letting some of the characters age to some degree. Columbia produced two B-films based on the strip, probably hoping for a 1950s Andy Hardy series which didn't materialize. In the first film, we get a little background about Walt before we catch up to him in the present day. Skeezix (Jimmy Lydon) is married to Nina and runs the Fix-It Shop, an auto repair service. Judy is in high school and still lives at home. Corky (Scotty Beckett, at left) is away at college and surprises his folks by bringing home a new wife, Hope, and breaking the news that he's left college and wants to find a job in town. While living with Mom and Dad, Corky tries a number of what Walt considers to be menial jobs, including as an underwear model, a job which introduces the flirty female model Carol as a possible temptation to Corky. Finally Corky settles into a dishwasher job at a restaurant, but when he discovers that a nearby rundown diner can be leased, he talks the restaurant chef Pudge into quitting with him and revamping the diner. Walt is, again, judgmental about his career, but when Skeezix finds out that Pudge is a former soldier friend, he agrees to put money in the place. Hope joins Corky at work, they clean the place up, rename it Corky's Diner, and it slowly becomes a success. There are, of course, complications. One slimy regular customer flirts with Hope even as Carol re-enters the picture by trying to hang out with Corky. When they're about to lose the diner to investors who want to buy the property and tear the diner down, an customer named Haven, who is interested in developing a parking lot on the diner's property, steps in with some money to save the day.

The second film, despite being named after Corky, is equally concerned with Skeezix's auto shop. While Skeezix was on a long vacation, his business partner started including TV sales and repairs in their advertising, then was called away for National Guard duty, leaving no one at the shop who knows the first thing about televisions. Meanwhile, Hope's black sheep cousin Ellwood shows up. He's friendly but has no visible means of support. Invited by Walt to stay indefinitely, even though Hope warns the family about him, Ellwood proves to be a know-nothing blowhard who manipulates all around him. He lies about being a football star, an engineer, and a restaurant chain manager. Feeling sorry for him, Corky gives him a job at the diner; he promptly manages to blow up an oven. When Ellwood claims to know all about cars and TVs, Skeezix lets him work at the auto shop, but when he uses a fuel "power pill" he's developed to give a car extra power, more explosions and damage occur. He fakes a back injury in order to keep staying at Walt's house, but when Corky and Judy find out, they plan a stunt to get him out once and for all. 

These are cute little B-films and I'm a bit sorry the series didn't continue. Had they been made in the 1940s, they probably would have, but by the 50s, these movies were very much like the family sitcoms people could see for free on television. Scotty Beckett is boyishly appealing and natural as Corky. He was a prolific child actor in the 30s and 40s (he was in many of the Our Gang shorts) but by the late 40s he had gained a reputation as a drinker and carouser, and by 1957 his career was over—he wasn't yet 30—and he died before he hit 40. IMDb has more information about his tragic life. I've always liked him (NANCY GOES TO RIO, A DATE WITH JUDY, and as the sidekick Winky in the Rocky Jones sci-fi TV series) and he's good here as a B-lead. Jimmy Lydon had a long career as a juvenile, and kept acting into the 1980s. He pairs well with Beckett as the more serious but still likable brother. Gordon Jones as Ellwood is a bit too effective; I intensely disliked his character which I guess means Jones did a good acting job, but Ellwood is so obnoxious, I was hoping he would be killed in one of his explosions. Don Beddoe as Walt is almost unlikable in the first movie, as he constantly undercuts Corky's ambitions, and his character is less crucial to the second film. Standouts include Dick Wessel as Pudge, Byron Foulger as Haven, and John Dehner as a participant in Corky's climatic scheme in the second movie. The various wives mostly fade into the background, leaving Virginia Toland as Carol as the femme standout. There’s a shot from the Kirk Alyn Superman serial (also a Columbia production) on TV in a repair shop scene. I'm glad that the YouTube algorithm suggested these to me. Pictured above right are Beckett and Lydon. [YouTube]

HERCULES THE INVINCIBLE (1964)

Roaming through the countryside as he is wont to do, the bare-chested Hercules saves Telca from attack by a (rather tired-looking) lion. It turns out that Telca is the daughter of King Tedeo. The king offers Telca as a wife to Hercules if he will destroy the dreaded dragon of the mountains and bring back one of its teeth, which will become a magical amulet, though its power can only be used once. Hercules kills the dragon but when he returns to Telca's tribe, he finds the village in ruins, most of its people, including Telca, carted off by the warriors of the underground city of Deimos. (Hint as to the film’s climax: Deimos is underneath a volcano.) Babar, a comic relief doofus sidekick, tells Hercules that the Deimosians engage in human sacrifice, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of their victims in order to retain their strength and bravery (and for the women, beauty). They have a wicked and ruthless queen, Ella, who relies on her military leader Kabol for advice. Melissa, Kabol's daughter, resents Ella for usurping what she thinks should be her position, and for a while, it seems like she will be an ally to the captured Telca. Soon Hercules is captured and sentenced to be pulled to death between two elephants, but he withstands the torture and even saves the life of Ella when the elephants go on a rampage. Herc becomes an object of lust for Ella, but Melissa soon kills Ella, blames Telca, and basically takes the throne for herself, with Telca to be bled slowly to death. Herc discovers a way to set off the volcano, leading to a big free-for-all fight as lava flows (looking like strawberry jam the consistency of blood) threaten everyone. 

Very often, the effectiveness of the strongman hero is what determines the effectiveness of a peplum movie. Dan Vadis, as Hercules, pictured, has a decent build and does sweating and straining pretty well, especially in the elephant scene, but he has a flat frat boy face and a wispy Amish-looking beard that is several shades lighter than the hair on his head—he looks a bit better without the beard in THE TRIUMPH OF HERCULES made the same year. Though Vadis appeared in several sword-and-sandal films in the 60s, I would place him in the second tier of shirtless hero stars. This movie's bland title works against it; Hercules vs. the Cannibal Women would have been more exciting and actually accurate. Overall, it feels like everyone involved was working at half-speed. The storyline involving the flesh-eating and blood-drinking people of Deimos had lots of potential, but it's not developed much at all. Ken Clark, a tall, blonde, fuzzy, often shirtless hunk who is normally an asset in European films of the 1960s, plays Kabol with dark hair, a Fu Manchu mustache, and fully clothed, and he has little to do—such a disappointment. Jon Simons is completely ineffectual as Babar. The trio of main female characters are not bad but only Carla Calo as Ella stands out. Speaking of which, it's a bit weird to have characters named Ella and Melissa in ancient times, though I assume that this is the fault of the English dub. In the States, this went directly to television (as Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness) in the Sons of Hercules series. Best experienced on a lazy summer day with beer and pretzels. [YouTube]

BOMBAY CLIPPER (1941)

In Bombay (current day Mumbai), roaming reporter Jim Montgomery (William Gargan) is excited to get back to the hotel room of his fiancée Frankie (Irene Hervey), but she's pissed off that he has stood her up twice and she's planning on going back to San Francisco by herself. Jim arranges with his boss to take a desk job back in the States in exchange for following one more story: track a package of diamonds belonging to a maharajah that is secretly being taken out of India to Manila on the Bombay Clipper, a passenger plane which is laid out like a train, with overnight compartments and a lounge area. We discover that the jewels are being sent as a gift to Great Britain to be used in the war effort, but there may be spies on the plane (i.e., Nazis) trying to intercept them for their own nefarious use. Among several others on the plane: the Landers, a pleasant married couple; Mrs. MacPherson, a jolly older Scottish lady; Tom Hare, a disgraced pilot accused of cowardice in a newspaper story written by Jim; Capt. Chundra, the possibly sinister radio officer whom we saw earlier attack Jim in his hotel room; a steward named Paul; and George Lewis, the courier with the jewels. The jewels are stolen by an armed man named Lamb, and Paul shoots him dead. For safe keeping, Jim puts the jewels on Lamb's body which, when they land for a stop in Singapore, winds up in a morgue, and negotiates with Lewis for an exclusive story when they get to Manila. The passengers are all questioned by the police and put up for the night in a hotel. Lewis, who has obtained the jewels, drinks poisoned coffee and dies, but manages to slip Jim the jewels. Then it's on to Manila as the bad guys get down to business, with Jim at one point shoved out of the plane and saved by Chundra, who it turns out is an agent for the Indian government. Finally, the bad guys hijack the plane and Jim enlists Tom, the disgraced pilot, to help. At not quite one hour, this little B-spy film is diverting enough, though one might wish for a tighter script—there are loopholes and unexplained bits. The movie's action is limited to a couple of hotels and the fairly spacious plane, giving it the feel of a train movie. Gargan is his usual spunky and irreverent B-hero self, and though Hervey plays second fiddle, she's fine. The good supporting cast includes future star Maria Montez as Mrs. Landers, Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson in the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies) as the Scot, Turhan Bey as Chundra, Phillip Trent as Hare and Lloyd Corrigan as Lewis. The cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, was later nominated for two Oscars. Pictured are Gargan and Trent. [YouTube]

MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN (1940 serial)

At night, a noted criminologist is shot dead on a city street as he arrives to visit Governor Bronson with information about the mysterious Doctor Satan, the man behind a major crime wave. Later that night, Bob Wayne visits Bronson who had been his guardian and mentor. For the first time, Bronson tells Wayne the story of his late father, a cowboy named Smith who became a masked vigilante called the Copperhead; he wore a chain mail hood and fought against criminals who had slipped through the justice system (pictured at left). Bronson gives him the Copperhead mask, and moments after Bob leaves, a man named Corbet arrives with a threatening note for Bronson. The note bursts into flames and Corbet shoots the governor dead. Bob reenters the office and kicks Corbet's ass as the police arrive, with reporters Speed Martin and Lois Scott. They discover that Corbet is wearing a device strapped to his chest (a "control disc") that allows Dr. Satan to see his every move and communicate with him. It also allows Satan to electrocute Corbet before he can tell all. What we discover by the end of the first chapter is that Dr. Satan is constructing an army of robots, but needs a new remote control cell that has been invented by Lois Scott's father, an inventor. For the serial's fifteen chapters, the narrative throughline involves Satan forcing Prof. Scott to make new remote control cells to install in a large robot that will do Satan's bidding, with Bob (as himself and as The Copperhead) and Speed and Lois—and occasionally Prof. Scott's spunky secretary Alice—hot on his trail. 

Film historians often point to this as a turning point in the development of the serial. With a few exceptions, notably 1936's Flash Gordon, most serials to this point were straightforward westerns or adventures. Here, something of a superhero element came into play. The script, for Republic Pictures, was begun as a Superman serial but when Republic lost the rights, it was turned into a masked hero story with echoes of Batman, whose first stories were published just six months before this serial began filming. The hero's last name, Wayne, is the same as Batman's Bruce and his first name may have been inspired by Bob Kane, the creator of Batman (whereas it's possible that reporter Lois' name was a leftover from Superman's Lois Lane). It’s not completely clear to me why Bob feels the need to have two identities since he doesn't change clothes (just takes off his jacket) and doesn't try to hide his voice. The mask does eventually strike fear, or at least discomfort, in the heart of Dr. Satan's thugs. In the serial’s final minutes, Bob reveals to his friends that he is The Copperhead, though there is no indication that he intends to continue in his life of crimefighting—we never find out what it is that Wayne does for a living.

There are several elements here that put this serial a notch above average. The villain actually is physically involved in the events that play out (kidnappings, car chases, fist fights) instead of just wearing a sparkly robe and giving out orders from a hidden location, though he still does plenty of controlling and observing from afar. There is a wide range of situations and cliffhangers on varied sets—sometimes in rooms, sometimes outside, once in an underwater diving chamber, in cars and trucks, and in secret passages. There is even a room with walls that push together, as used in Star Wars. The best cliffhanger plays out on the tall scaffolding of an oil refinery, bringing to mind the climax of White Heat. Speed gets a control disc strapped to him; if he tries to take it off, he'll blow up, and a clever if wildly far-fetched solution occurs to Bob. The robot is clunky but fairly effective. It can crush people to death in its dangly arms, though it’s fairly slow moving and I kept wondering why people didn’t just dart past it. Nicknamed the water heater robot by some critics, you can see it again (sometimes in the exact same footage) in other Republic serials such as Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Busy character actor Eduardo Ciannelli gets rare top billing here as Doctor Satan (no other name is ever given for the character) and he's good if a bit one-note in his mustache-twirling (metaphorically) villainy. Robert Wilcox (pictured at right) is a bit problematic as Bob Wayne. He's handsome and often broody looking, which works, but he also tends to deliver his lines in a flat tone as though he's trying hard to remember them. After the first chapter, he doesn't get to develop much of a character beyond his single-minded but low-energy drive to avenge Bronson. (Remember him? He’s rarely brought up again.) In her scenes as Lois, Ella Neal looks like an amateur desperately trying to please the directors, the prolific team of William Witney and John English. Alice, who comes and goes, is played in her only movie appearance by Dorothy Herbert who was a stunt horsewoman in rodeos; her biggest scene here involves an escape on a horse which is quite impressive. William Newell as Speed has a goofy comic-relief face but is usually serious and on task. Charles Trowbridge, always a welcome face in 1940's films, is Bronson and sadly only in the first chapter. The stunt work is always dynamic, making the fisticuff scenes in each chapter something to look forward to. Two fairly famous stuntmen appear with their faces hidden: Dave Sharpe is the hooded Copperhead during stunt scenes, and Tom Steele is the robot (he's also briefly seen as a henchman). At 15 chapters and four and a half hours, this is one of the longer serials, but watched over the period of several days, it held my interest, and the last chapter is particularly good with a well shot climax in which Satan gets his punishment. There is a 100 minute condensed version made for 1960s television called Doctor Satan's Robot, but so much material is missing and the editing is so choppy that I don’t recommend it. [Blu-ray]

THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN (1946)

Father Walsh has been troubled about an affair involving two antique Bibles and a rare da Vinci painting called The Walls of Jericho. He calls Manhattan newspaper columnist Gilbert Archer, an old friend, for advice, but when Archer arrives at the church, he finds Walsh’s sister Catherine in tears as she has just found Walsh dead in the rectory, apparently having hung himself. Archer is sure that he would not have killed himself and as the police investigate, so does Archer. The first suspicious figure is Patricia Foster who had claimed she was supposed to meet with Walsh that night to pass along greetings from old friends in San Francisco, but Archer soon catches her in a lie and she is revealed to be Laura Browning who has a family tie to the da Vinci painting. Other interested parties include Bishop Martin, who knew that Walsh was troubled; the Stokers, a married couple who are interested in the two Bibles; and Helms, a book collector. It turns out the Bibles are supposed to have clues as to the whereabouts of the painting. Another murder complicates things, as does a romantic attraction between Archer and Laura. The exhumation of a long-dead body provides a final push toward the solution to the death of Walsh. This is a solid low-key murder mystery with a good B-movie cast. The story is easy to follow and the pace is quick, with Lee Bowman providing a nice light touch as Archer; the character is likable and competent, and it's too bad that other Gilbert Archer movies didn't follow. Marguerite Chapman (Laura) is fairly bland, upstaged by old pro supporting players like George Macready, Lee Patrick, J. Edward Bromberg, Miles Mander, Edgar Buchanan, and Jonathan Hale. At least one online critic compares Bowman unfavorably to Bogart as Sam Spade, but that's hardly a valid point; Archer is nothing like Spade, even though Lee Patrick, who played Bogie's secretary in MALTESE FALCON also plays Bowman's secretary (and, of course, Archer's name is the same as Spade's dead partner). I enjoyed this as a rare example of a 40s mystery that makes no stab at all at trying to be a film noir. Pictured are Buchanan and Bowman. [YouTube/DVD]