QUEEN KELLY (1929)

In Kronberg, the capital of a middle European kingdom, Regina V, known as the Mad Queen, nurses a "morbid jealous passion" for Prince Wolfram, known among the women of the land as Wild Wolfie. We first see him arriving at the castle at dawn, drunk and stumbling and accompanied by a pack of whores. Regina, who has had her morning bath with glasses of champagne served by her courtiers, holding her white cat against her naked breast, is furious and orders Wolfram to drill his squadron in the hot sun all day. During the march, he crosses paths with a group of orphan convent girls. One of them, Patricia Kelly, is coyly flirtatious and as she curtsies, her panties accidently drop to her feet. Wolfram laughs; she crumples them up and tosses them at his face. He smells them approvingly and tosses them back, clearly attracted to her. At the convent, the Mother Superior tells her to pray for "deliverance from worldly thoughts," but she prays to meet up with Wild Wolfie again. Meanwhile, the Queen decides to tame Wolfram once and for all, and orders their marriage to occur the next day. At midnight, Wolfram and a buddy sneak into the convent, set a small fire for distraction, and carry Patricia away to the castle where she and Wolfram share a rich dinner (she has champagne for the first time and says it’s "like drinking fireworks") and some heavy duty petting in his bed until Regina storms in with a whip, applying it first to Wolfram and then chasing Patricia around the palace. She escapes and, mortified, jumps into a river, hoping to die. She is rescued, taken back to the convent, and sent away to Dar es Salaam in East Africa to attend to her dying aunt. Patricia discovers that her aunt is the boss of a bunch of ladies "of the horizontal profession," in other words, she's the madam of a notorious brothel. Over the aunt's deathbed, as last rites are being performed, Patricia undergoes a bizarre marriage ceremony to Jan, the old, crippled, and ugly assistant to the aunt, during which she imagines Wolfram's figure instead of Jan's. In a rushed and incomplete conclusion, Pat becomes the madam (Queen Kelly of the title), Jan is killed in a barroom fight, and Wolfram eventually comes riding to her rescue to have her become his queen in Kronberg.

This silent film was the last film directed by Erich von Stroheim and it was never properly finished. The star, Gloria Swanson, was also the producer, and when she began to dislike the direction the film was taking, she and her money man, Joseph P. Kennedy, stopped production after a couple of months. A few years later, Swanson had a different ending shot, in which Pat’s leap into the river leads to her death, with final shots of a chastened and mourning Wolfram. This version was shown in Europe but was not popular, partly perhaps because of the talkie revolution. The 100 minute print now in circulation retains the original ending but because production was abruptly ended, it’s a bit raggedy and explanatory stills and titles have been inserted by Dennis Doros based on von Strohem's published screenplay. But the unfinished state of the film gives it a unique dreamlike quality and it's well worth seeing for silent film fans.

In addition to the choppy narrative, there are other problems. Kelly is a schoolgirl, perhaps eighteen years old at the most; Swanson was thirty and could perhaps pass for mid-twenties, but it's impossible to accept her as a teenager. Otherwise, she's fine here, giving a performance that blurs the character's motivations; sometimes she seems sweet and innocent, sometimes sensual and knowing. In the somewhat truncated brothel scenes, which are almost breathtakingly unsavory, she comes off as truly horrified at her surroundings and her prospects—it helps that Tully Marshall is grotesquely convincing as Jan. Walter Byron (pictured with Swanson at left) is exactly right as Wolfram: handsome, sexy, energetic, yet just weak enough that he can't bring himself to rebel against Regina for Kelly's sake. He never quite made it in sound films, though he kept acting, often in uncredited roles, until the early 1940s, and I liked him quite a bit here. Seena Owen, who retired from films in the early sound years, is good as Regina, though she's mostly called on to strike poses and glower. The sets are lovely and the cinematography is often luminous. The footage that Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, is watching at her home in Sunset Boulevard is a prayer scene from Queen Kelly. Though this wild movie has been tamed by its unfinished status, it is still a memorable viewing experience. On YouTube, the 100-minute version is the restored print, though the cut version Swanson prepared is also available; look for the hour-long version. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN ON BROADWAY (1937)

On an ocean liner heading from Germany to New York City, Billie Bronson is barricaded in her bathroom by the thuggish Mitchell while he ransacks her room, looking for something he doesn’t find. As it happens, next door to her is detective Charlie Chan and his son Lee, returning from their adventure at the Berlin Olympics. They come to her rescue and later she sneaks a wrapped package into Chan’s room and it leaves the ship in his luggage. We learn that Billie’s package contains a diary that could blow the lid off of some criminal enterprises. While Charlie is the guest of honor at a police dinner, Lee catches Billie in their hotel room, looking for the package. She claims she had the wrong room by mistake, but the suspicious Lee follows her to the Hottentot Club where a number of people are interested in the diary: reporter Speed Patten who has offered to pay for her story, freelance photographer Joan Wendall, club owner Johnny, his mistress Marie, and mobster Buzz Moran who warns Billie to get out of town. Billie winds up shot dead in Johnny’s office and Lee is held by the cops until Pop frees him. Back in Chan’s hotel room, the package is gone and Mitchell (from the ocean liner) is found dead with a crumpled diary page in his hand. Chan works with Inspector Nelson and eventually gathers the suspects in a room to solve the case.

This is a fairly typical entry in the Chan series with Warner Oland and Keye Luke as father and son. There are rumors that Oland may have suffered a nervous breakdown around the time of filming, and indeed he only did one more Chan film, but he and Luke are fine here. There are several suspects, a couple of red herring clues, and a killer whose identity is a surprise. There is an interesting gimmick: the Hottentot Club hosts a Candid Camera night where patrons can bring their cameras and take candid shots of everyone in the place. This was apparently a real trend at the time, and a photograph taken at the club provides an important clue. As usual, Lee is a bit bumbling but at one point he does save Charlie from getting shot. A solid supporting cast includes Harold Huber as the inspector, Leon Ames as Buzz, Donald Woods as Speed, J. Edward Bromberg as Speed's editor, Douglas Fowley as Johnny, Louise Henry as Billie, and Marc Lawrence as Mitchell. My only real complaint about the movie is that despite the title and the use of "Give My Regards to Broadway" in the beginning, the film has no Broadway feel; with its bland, cheap sets it might as well be set in Cleveland or Kansas City. Pictured are Louise Henry and Donald Woods. [DVD]

L'AVVENTURA (1960)

Friends Anna and Claudia are about to embark on a yacht trip off the Sicilian coast with Sandro, Anna's boyfriend who has just returned from a long business trip, and two other couples. When Anna and Claudia stop by Sandro's place to pick him up, Anna and Sandro, who both seem a bit disgruntled with their relationship, engage in somewhat desultory sex, leaving Claudia pacing in the street outside. On the yacht, relations among all the couples seem a bit unsettled, with the single Claudia observing the tensions around her. At one point, Anna jumps impulsively into the water and claims to see a shark, but this seems to be just an attention-getting move. The yacht stops at a small rocky island where the passengers get out to explore, but when they regroup, Anna is missing. They search for a time, and eventually they call in police from a nearby town, and when nothing comes of the search, Sandro and Claudia, the two closest to Anna, decide to search towns on the mainland where she has supposedly been sighted while the other friends continue on their trip. In one town, they observe a would-be celebrity named Gloria Perkins trying to attract press attention, surrounded by men and proclaiming that she is a writer who feels "in touch with" Tolstoy and Shakespeare. A pharmacist who claims that Anna was in his store sends Claudia and Sandro to the town of Noto, filled with stark blocky architecture and mostly empty of people, except when Sandro leaves Claudia alone in the streets for a moment when dozens of men congregate menacingly around her. Soon Claudia and Sandro begin an affair, and the search for Anna fades into the background. The two catch up with some of the other passengers who are holding a huge party at a fancy hotel. While Claudia decides to skip most of the festivities, Sandro attends and winds up at dawn groping Gloria Perkins on a couch in the lobby. Claudia finds them, Sandro is appropriately chastened, and he ends up in tears on a bench on the hotel roof as Claudia tentatively consoles him.

This film from Michelangelo Antonioni jump-started the European art film craze of the 1960s, along with Godard's BREATHLESS and Resnais's HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. It's often referred to as a movie in which nothing happens, though as one can tell from the summary above, things do happen, but they largely seem to be incidental things, apparently unrelated to what we assume will be the plot's engine, the search for the missing Anna. This became the first in a series of three Antonioni movies unofficially referred as an alienation trilogy, as the theme of all the films relates to the alienation we feel from our fellow humans and from our surroundings—though frankly, most of Antonioni’s films after the trilogy mine the same material. The first time I watched the movie, many years ago, it felt long and slow and, indeed, like nothing much was happening (with the narrative or the characters) because I kept waiting for the mystery of the missing Anna to be solved. This time, after knowing the outcome and having seen the other trilogy films (LA NOTTE and L’ECLISSE), I paid more attention to the visuals and the acting. Physical space, landscapes and architecture are important here, often symbolic of emotions and mental states. The scenes in Noto are the most impressive, highlighting buildings which were designed during the fascist reign of Mussolini, as opposed to the older, more classic designs we see elsewhere. The director has said that the movie is a critique of modern morality, or lack of it, though ironically the film was attacked on grounds of being immoral (adultery galore). There is no explicit sex here, though a long outdoor scene of Sandro and Claudia kissing passionately is quite sexy, and climaxed by a shot of a train barreling along beside the couple, which I took to be a satirical comment on the traditional "train through a tunnel" sex imagery. 

The two central actors couldn't be better. Monica Vitti (Claudia) is stunning looking and sensual, and her face conveys subtle shifts in her emotional states, coldly observant in the beginning, confused by her feelings for Sandro later, and finally in the end ambiguous in her moral outlook. At times, the mature looking Gabriele Ferzetti (Sandro) seems like a father figure to both Anna and Claudia, though Ferzetti was only six years older than Vitti, but he is convincingly attractive and seems a solid, settled presence to the younger women. Lea Massari (Anna) is only in the first half-hour but she haunts the rest of the film, until you realize that she no longer does. Critics often say that the dialogue here is unimportant, which isn't really true—it's more that the visuals (both backgrounds and actors' faces) carry as much of the narrative as the dialogue. But there are indeed not many memorable lines. I only noted one line in my notes: "Islands, I don't get them," says one of the passengers on the yacht. While I appreciated this movie much more the second time through, it still felt a bit long with individual scenes which could stand some trimming. But in many ways, this is a feast for the eyes and the mind, and even people who don't take to art films might get something out of this, even if it's just to say that they watched a movie where nothing happens. The title is Italian for "adventure" but is also a slang term for a fling. [DVD]

THE MAD DOCTOR (1940)

In a nicely atmospheric rainy night scene set in the small town of Midbury, a medical doctor (Ralph Morgan) is called out of his bed to attend to the wife of psychiatrist Basil Rathbone. She is sick with pneumonia but she's dead by the time the doctor arrives. Morgan finds the death suspicious but mostly because he finds Rathbone's demeanor to be cold and secretive. We discover what Morgan doesn't know, that Rathbone has a habit of marrying rich women, and he and his assistant (Martin Kosleck) kill them for their money. Though it's never made explicit, Rathbone and Kosleck are certainly lovers; Kosleck is coded as gay through his hobby of flower arranging and by lying languidly around the house in a robe, and the two constantly exchange intense glances (as pictured at left). They move to Manhattan where Rathbone soon has a lucrative practice and is called on to treat Ellen Drew, the depressed sister-in-law of a newspaper publisher. Drew's boyfriend, reporter John Howard, isn't happy with this arrangement, calling Rathbone a "half-baked soul meddler" due to his use of hypnosis, and he plans to write an expose of such doctors for his paper. But Drew's mental state soon improves, and she starts to fall for Rathbone even as Howard heads to Midbury where Morgan has done some digging into Rathbone's past and uncovered his history with wives. Can Howard piece together a compelling case against Rathbone before Drew becomes his next victim?

Despite the maddeningly generic and random title, this is not a horror film but a fairly nifty psychological thriller. The strongest elements here are the performances of three of the actors. The always reliable Rathbone is very good portraying a man who, if he's not actually mad, is clever and has a sinister obsession—though we're led to believe that, at least for a time, he might actually feel enough for Drew so that he won't try to kill her. Kosleck, as his companion, is perverse and slimy and great fun to watch. Morgan, often a rather heavy-handed player, is just right as the suspicious doctor. Ellen Drew is fine as the damsel in distress, but John Howard isn't particularly good as the boyfriend, let down in part by a script which keeps him offscreen for a fair chunk of the last half. He also comes off as a bit cold and passionless. I enjoyed the mostly comic supporting performances of Vera Vague (real name, Barbara Jo Allen) and Hugh O'Donnell as Drew's parents. Somewhat improbably, the murder of a night watchman at a cemetery becomes fodder for big headlines just because it's a big plot point. There's a well shot subway murder near the end. It’s a decent looking B-movie in terms of sets and atmosphere. Definitely recommended. [Blu-ray]

PLANET OF STORMS (1962)

Three Russian spaceships, each with three cosmonauts, are approaching Venus for a landing mission, two to land and one to remain in orbit. But when one is hit by a meteor and destroyed, the others make a new plan. The Vega stays in orbit with Masha on board, while the others, along with a robot named John who comes up with the plan, use a glider ship to land on Venus, to be followed by the remaining ship, Sirius. The glider lands in a swamp and loses contact with the ships; when Sirius lands, they use a hovercraft to look for the glider folks. Luckily, Venus has an Earth-like jungle atmosphere and various adventures are had. Aloysha is grabbed by the tendrils of a huge carnivorous plant but escapes. Dinosaur-like creatures are seen. A sunken but empty city is found under the ocean. A strange singing voice is heard in the atmosphere. A volcano erupts and Robot John saves cosmonauts from the lava. John brings down a huge tree to allow cosmonauts to cross over a chasm, and then plays 40's style big band music to celebrate. Evidence is found that there was humanoid life on Venus (a carving of a woman's face) and still might be, hence the singing voice. All our human cosmonauts survive and head back to earth, the robot having sacrificed himself in the lava. One last surprise awaits us in the final moments. 

Given its era, this Russian film is a decent space adventure. The effects are well done, the acting adequate, and though the Venus we encounter is nothing like we now assume Venus to be, it doesn't seem too outlandishly off course for sci-fi fans. It gets a bit talky with philosophical discussions about space and evolution and the theory that aliens may have seeded human life on Earth. It's quite episodic with each sequence fading to red as another one begins. Except for the female being stuck with staying in orbit, there are few character stereotypes in play, though Robot John (pictured) is a lot like a Russian Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. The most interesting tidbit about this is that it was bought by Roger Corman, dubbed into English and released here in 1965 as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet with some added footage featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue but the same plotline. Then in 1968 much of the Russian footage was pieced together again with new Hollywood footage shot by Peter Bogdanovich and featuring Mamie Van Doren into a TV movie called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Though the 1965 film has some fans, the 1968 version is mostly silly and unnecessary. Stick with the original. The Russian title is Planeta Bur. [YouTube]

THE ACCURSED (1957)

We see someone leave a building and moments later, a man named Zimmerman is found dead inside, hanging from a noose. At his home, Col. Price (Donald Wolfit) is hosting an annual reunion of the survivors of a WWII French resistance unit. He gets a call from Dehmel that he has discovered the name of a traitor whose actions during the war led to the execution of Keller, the cell's leader, by the Nazis. But when Dehmel gets to the house, he stumbles in, says "There’s been a mistake," and falls over dead, a knife in his back. Thus begins this British country house mystery, similar to an Agatha Christie story, as a group of people in the house spend the evening trying to figure out who killed Dehmel, and therefore most likely who was responsible for Keller's death. Among the survivors gathered: a Polish concert pianist (Anton Diffring, pictured) who plays a particularly dramatic piece called "Prelude Without a Name," a German doctor (Christopher Lee), a professor (Carl Jaffe) and his daughter (Jane Griffiths) who may have been involved in the past with both Keller and the pianist. Two more people show up: an American army officer (Robert Bray) and his associate (John van Eyssen) whose car has broken down. But we soon discover that they are there because they were following Dehmel, so they have a stake in discovering the killer's identity. Bray and Griffiths flirt a bit (at one point, she says wearily to him, "Are you planning on making love to me, Major?"), secrets are revealed—including that Bray knew Keller in the war, and Bray is given until 7 in the morning to solve the murder. This fairly traditional mystery is stagy but well acted and has a nice dark house look to it. Wolfit, a famous stage actor in England, has first billing and is important to the first hour of the movie, but once Bray shows up, Bray becomes the focus of the narrative. Wolfit, known for some scenery chewing, underplays nicely, letting Bray do a little overacting of his own at times. Diffring does well as the highly strung musician and Lee, though in a relatively small role, holds his own. The solution and the 'mistake' that Dehmel alluded to are both clever. It's very talky and not exactly exciting, but it's a solid old-fashioned one-set mystery. Original British title: THE TRAITOR, which makes more sense. [DVD]

MURDER BY ROPE (1936)

John Herford is on trial in London for sending letters threatening to kill a man with a rope, then following through. The press gives him the nickname The Laughing Murderer because of, well, his constant laughter when asked questions. One woman on the jury holds out for a verdict of insanity, but eventually she joins the other jurors in finding him guilty and he's executed by hanging. Months later, a barber named Smith, who was the killer's hangman, gets a letter threatening death, with a piece of rope enclosed. He doesn't give it much thought, but he is attacked and nearly killed with a rope. Crime writer Alastair Dane (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who wrote a book about the Laughing Murderer, goes to see Inspector Walker who says the handwritten notes (a warning was also received by Scotland Yard) seem to be in the same handwriting as the dead killer and he calls in a handwriting expert named Hanson to study the letters. A few nights later, Dane attends a weekend party at the country house of Mrs. Mulcaire. Also attending is Sir Henry Paxton, the judge in the Herford case, who has recently received a threatening letter with a chunk of rope, though he also seems unconcerned. Others at the house party include Sir Henry's nephew Peter, his girlfriend Daphne, and actress Lucille Davine. Peter is seeking money from his uncle to stop a scandal of some sort from coming out. There is also a suspicious butler named Simpson whom Flora the maid seems secretly close to. Hanson shows up to examine the latest letter that Sir Henry got. Dane talks everyone into participating in a parlor game of sorts in which he will stage the murder scene from a play he's working on, and hopes to get Lucille to act in. Suddenly, the lights go out, Mrs. Mulcaire's necklace is stolen, and Sir Henry is discovered dead, strangled with a rope. The phone lines have been cut and the cars all tampered with, and since no contact with the police is possible, Dane and Hanson are left to investigate. 

At heart, this is a fairly traditional single-setting mystery but with some unusual touches. If you're the kind of viewer who thinks mysteries should be "fair" and that we should be able to figure things out based on clues presented, you won't like this. The solution is satisfying but can't really be deduced from the information we have. Much of the information that we do get is incomplete or confusing or turns out to be a red herring—for example, the theft of the necklace and the relationship of Simpson and Flora, which both feel extraneous to the narrative. The first five minutes in the jury room has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story except to briefly give the movie another setting aside from the country house. The house itself is a low-budget version of a country house, and the cast, for the most part, seem to have been hired for their looks as actresses or sniveling nephews or gigolos (Sylvester, a character who has almost nothing to do but look like a gigolo). Future supporting actor star Wilfrid Hyde-White is fine as Dane but his performance seems a little underdone. Standouts in the cast, though their careers went nowhere, are Sunday Wilshin (Lucille, top right), Guy Belmore (Simpson), and Donald Read (Peter, at left). An exchange that felt forced but still made me chuckle: Sir Henry is told that Lucille has "thousands of fans" and he replies, "Does she feel the heat so terribly?" At an hour, it still feels a little bit long but I found the ending worth hanging around for. [YouTube]

WHITE SUN OF THE DESERT (1969)

Asia, the early 1920s. The Russian Civil War is ending and a soldier named Sukhov is slowly making his way across a desert near the Caspian Sea (in what is now Turkmenistan), daydreaming of his wife back home. He almost literally stumbles across Sayid, a man buried up to his neck in the sand (pictured below) and left to die by the bandit Dzhavdet. Somewhat reluctantly, Sukhov digs him up and Sayid, who wants revenge against Dzhavdet, decides, out of gratitude, to follow Sukhov as a helpmate even as he occasionally leaves to try and find the bandit. When they meet up with a Soviet patrol, Sukhov is put in charge of taking the abandoned harem of the warlord Abdullah to a village on the coast, away from Abdullah who has already killed a couple of the wives and wants to kill the rest. In the village, the only Russian left is Pavel, a former customs agent who is more or less barricaded in a building with his wife and a lot of weaponry. Pavel is cranky and often drunk, but he takes to the young Russian soldier Petrukha because he reminds Pavel of his late son. Sukhov tries to free the women of the harem, putting up a sign outside of the museum building where they are staying that says Dormitory of Liberated Women of the East, but instead they declare themselves all to be wives of Sukhov (though Petrukha has fallen in love with one of them). When Sukhov realizes that Abdullah will be heading for the village because there is an abandoned boat near the shore that he and his men could use to leave, he plants explosives rigged to blow the boat up 42 seconds after it is started up. Abdullah shows up and his wives get trapped in a huge empty oil tank, but we know it’s just a matter of time before gunplay erupts and someone starts that ship for an explosive climax.

In Russia, this is a famous film (cosmonauts watch it the day before a takeoff) but it's barely known in the West. It belongs to the Ostern genre, essentially, an Eastern western, and with its deserts and ghost towns and horses (and camels), it does feel like a 60s-era western. I found it delightful, an odd word to use perhaps for a movie which has violence and bloodshed, and in which not all the good guys survive to the end. But the visuals are gorgeous, the characters eccentric, the lead handsome and heroic, and the story easy to follow and not always predictable. Sukhov (Anitoliy Kuznetsov) is not immediately likable, and neither is Sayid (Spartak Mishulin) or Pavel (Pavel Luspekayev), but we warm up to them after a time, though Sayid remains fairly mysterious (and, technically a spoiler, he never finds his bandit, so he still has a goal at the end). The proceedings have a surprisingly light feel, and humorous bits are sprinkled throughout. At not quite ninety minutes, the movie rarely lags, even as it doesn't feel like it's moving at a breakneck speed. The relatively spare sets are appropriate for a place that at times has a slightly dreamy and surreal atmosphere. This is one to search out. Pictured at top right are Kuznetsov and Nikolai Godovikov (as Petrukha). [Streaming]

THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE (1961)

In Berlin, an Interpol agent on a train is killed by a man with a prosthetic leg. The agent was carrying important papers concerning a Chicago crime syndicate which was reaching out to a Berlin crime ring for some nefarious purpose. Inspector Lohmann, who was about to leave on a family vacation, is called in to spearhead the investigation, and Washington sends FBI agent Joe Como to help. They are joined by journalist Maria Sabrehm, and they discover a clue on the body of a dead gang member. The book. by a local priest named Briefenstein has a chapter about the myth of Dr. Mabuse, a master criminal who died insane several years ago. When our investigators visit the priest, a voice claiming to be Mabuse's comes from the church speakers warning them to lay off. Plot points and incidents come fast and furious from here on out. The apparently resurrected Mabuse is behind a plot to use a hypnotic drug to turn a wing of inmates at a nearby prison into mindless zombies who will respond only to Mabuse's orders, and those orders are to blow up some nuclear reactors on a coming Friday the 13th in order to get the world's attention. The drug was invented by Maria's father, an inmate, and we find out that Joe might actually be a Chicago mobster named Nick. There are car crashes, explosions, more murders, the threat of death by drowning, and more false identities in play before Mabuse is unmasked and dies (again) in a train collision—or does he?

This movie is a follow-up to THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE; I hesitate to call it a sequel though some might label it such. Mabuse was present in the previous film as a different character, but as per the title he returns here, unmasked only in the last few minutes, and he's played by the same actor (Wolfgang Preiss) who played the Mabuse figure in THOUSAND EYES. How he's still alive is not explained. Gert Frobe, who played the inspector in the previous film, is the inspector here; he has a different name, Lohmann, the name of Mabuse's nemesis in the 1933 TESTAMENT, but he's basically the same character with the same personality, perhaps a little less bumbling. That makes this film a more or less direct sequel to the 1933 film, I guess. Confused yet? It’s easy to ignore all the previous Mabuse films and just go with the wild and crazy flow here. The transfer of the Mabuse series to the German krimi genre, started with THOUSAND EYES, is mostly complete here; most mystical elements from the earlier films are gone—we find out that Mabuse's commands are sent to his zombies via earpieces they all wear. Lex Barker is Joe or Nick (who also uses the name Bob to infiltrate the prison wing) and he makes a good hero, though not as flashy at fisticuffs as he might be, and Daliah Lavi is a fine female lead, never quite becoming a romantic interest, though a makeout session does occur which is interrupted by the police. Joachim Mock is Voss, the handsome assistant to Lohmann; Werner Peters is Bohmler, one of Mabuse's chief associates; Fausto Tozzi is the suspicious prison warden; the beefy Ady Berber, who was a pro wrestler (think Tor Johnson), makes an impression in the small role of a zombie who meets a spectacular end. Speaking of which, there is a fairly graphic death scene with a person getting smashed against a brick wall by a truck, a fairly graphic death by flamethrower, and Joe and Maria get stuck in a locked room which begins filling up with water. There’s also a knockout gas attack and an ending ambiguous enough to allow us to expect a sequel. Pretty fun. Pictured at top right, Wolfgang Preiss; at left, Lex Barker. [Blu-ray]

THE HOUSE OF FEAR (1939)

A radio host is about to go on his show to drop a bombshell story when a couple interrupts and begs him not to continue. Suddenly the host drops dead and we discover we're watching a play called Dangerous Currents. But the host, played by actor John Woodford (for whom the theater is named), is really dead. The show is stopped, the body moved to a dressing room and the police called. But when the coroner arrives, the body is missing, which halts the investigation in its tracks. Joseph Morton, the theater owner, closes the theater, though his brother Robert, who always needs money, isn’t happy about the plan. A year later, a producer named McHugh leases the theater intending to restage the play with most of the original cast, despite rumors that the theater is haunted by Woodford's ghost. In the theater as everyone gathers, McHugh gets a phone call warning him not to stage the show; it's then discovered that the phone hasn't been hooked up yet, so the call had to have come from inside the theater. Two new actors have to be hired: a gold-digging dimbulb actress named Gloria who latches onto the perhaps equally dim Robert, and a new leading man named Carleton who starts to get written threats signed by Woodford—even though a decomposed body assumed to be Woodford's is found on the premises. We also find out that McHugh isn't really a producer but a policeman eager to solve the Woodford murder. He does but not before another murder and a nifty climax on the reopened show’s opening night. This is a remake of the silent film THE LAST WARNING and it's very faithful, even using some of the same character names. The original is more atmospheric whereas this one has the drabber feel of a B-movie, which it is. But it's still fairly fun. The leading man, William Gargan (McHugh), is one of my B-lead favorites. The director, Joe May, made many hits in Germany before the Nazi takeover, but in Hollywood was only able to find B-movie work. His direction here feels uninspired but adequate. Good support is given by Alan Dinehart and Robert Coote as the Morton brothers, Harvey Stephens as Dick Pierce, the actor who eventually takes Woodford's place, and Dorothy Arnold as Gloria. El Brendel and Tom Dugan provide mild comic relief as two stagehands. Though the plots are nearly identical, both movies are worth watching. Pictured above is Gargan. [YouTube]