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]

UNTAMED YOUTH (1957)

Near a small town in Texas, young sisters Penny (Mamie Van Doren) and Jane (Lori Nelson), who are hitchhiking their way to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming famous singers, are caught skinny-dipping in a river by Sheriff Mitch and arrested, for that and for being vagrants. Cecilia, the local judge, offers them and other juvenile offenders the opportunity to pick cotton for a month at a local farm run by Russ Tropp. They’re paid for their work and they get to rock and roll in the evening in their barracks, with songs provided by Penny and by a guitarist named Bong (the rock singer Eddie Cochran). We soon discover that the judge is secretly married to Tropp, hence this arrangement, and during a labor shortage, he gets away with having cheap juvenile workers (cheaper even than migrants), making the kids work hours in the hot sun, giving them shabby living conditions, and not conducting required medical checks. We also see that Tropp has a live-in mistress, Lilibet, but when she displeases him, he boots her out to pick cotton. When the judge’s son Bob arrives home from his Army service, Tropp gives him a job, and soon Bob is flirting with Jane and, at the instigation of Penny and Lilibet, digging into Tropp's dastardly ways. Bob discovers that Tropp has been feeding the kids dog food on occasion, and one day, a sickly girl named Baby faints in the sun. Bob, ignoring Tropp's orders, takes her to the hospital where she dies and it's discovered that she was five months pregnant. Tropp offers to get Penny an audition at a local TV station, but he wants sexual favors in return which Penny won't deliver. Eventually Jane and Bob both tell the judge what's going on. Will she do the right thing and put an end to Tropp's misdeeds or will lust blind her to the situation?

In the realm of sexy teenage melodramas of the 1950s, this is OK. Mamie plays Mamie here and that's not all bad. She's got skimpy clothes, attitude in spades, and her songs are not unpleasant—one has a verse that goes, "You’re as slimy as a salamander." In another, she sings, "I get the jiggles / Everything wiggles!" Lori Nelson, as the more innocent sister, sort of fades into the background but manages to pep up when called upon to in the last third of the film. Eddie Cochran, who had a top 10 hit, "Summertime Blues" (a song most of us know now from the The Who's cover in the 70s), was killed in a car crash in 1960. His one song, "Cottonpicker," is fun, done as a mini-production number out in the fields. The very busy Lurene Tuttle (with almost 200 acting credits on IMDB, including playing the sheriff's wife in Psycho) is adequate as Judge Cecilia, though the way she ignores the goings-on in her courtroom when her son comes bouncing in is very unprofessional (and maybe indicates some mother-son issues?). Though it's hard to take your eyes off of Mamie, I was pleasantly distracted by the two darned good-looking male leads. John Russell (Tropp) has an intense and sexy gaze, making Cecila's interest understandable despite his sleazy behavior. Don Burnett (Bob) is young and handsome and charismatic but didn't have a long career—I know him from DAMON AND PYTHIAS. His character is a little slow on the uptake but is properly heroic in the end. The score by the prolific Les Baxter is appropriately loud and sexy. Jered Barclay is amusing as an aloof beatnik; in one scene, a dancing girl brushes her head against his hand and he's careful to wipe his hand on his shirt afterward. I liked this movie, but I can only recommend it to Mamie fans, or fans of 50s teenage camp, or, ya know, fans of handsome B-movie actors. At top right, Russell and Van Doren; at left, Burnett and Nelson. [YouTube]

THE INDIAN TOMB (1921)

Prince Ayan, the Majarajah of Eschnapur in India, unearths and awakens the buried yogi Ramigami, who is in a deliberate trance-like state of near death, to do his bidding. He wants to commission a British architect, Herbert Rowland, to build a magnificent tomb, "the tomb of a great love," he says, to compare with the Taj Mahal. Ramagami can transport himself across time and space in an instant, and so appears in Herbert's living room and convinces him to travel to India to take on the project. Herbert leaves a letter telling his fiancée Irene where he's gone, but some time later, the disembodied hand of the yogi appears in the room and takes the letter. Still, Irene manages to piece together where he's gone and goes after him. In Eschnapur, the prince is courtly but a bit mysterious, and we soon get some backstory that Herbert doesn't learn until later: the Princess Savitri is not yet dead. Ayan caught her having an affair with a British officer and has imprisoned her and plans on using the tomb to bury her alive, even as his soldiers are out hunting for her lover, MacAllen. Irene arrives but worried her presence will distract Herbert, Ayan doesn't let them meet. Other complications arise—Ramigami, though forced to help the prince, warns him that nothing good will come of his revenge plans; Savitri's loyal servant Mirrjha gets involved asking Herbert for help; the prince is impressed by Irene's selfless love for Herbert and seems to be attracted to her; MacAllen hides in a hut which soldiers set on fire, but manages to escape; Herbert wanders into the Pit of Penitents, actually a prison for lepers, and contracts leprosy himself. At this point, we’re only halfway through the four-hour movie and, though the pace does slow considerably, there is still plenty of action left before the climax, a chase which ends on a rope bridge over a deep gorge.

This silent movie, directed by Joe May from a screenplay by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou (based on a novel she wrote the year before), is the first of three German films based on this material. All three movies are roughly four hours long and were presented in their original runs as two separate films, released a month or so apart. I haven’t seen the 1938 version, but Fritz Lang’s 1959 remake deviates from the core material in several ways, primarily by making the architect the princess's lover. The silent version gives the Ramigami character supernatural powers, putting the movie fully into the fantasy genre. This isn't as much fun as the Lang film, but it is spectacularly made with huge sets, elaborate costumes, romance, hissable villainy, and, allowing for the silent era acting, good performances. Three leading men take the honors. Conrad Veidt (Major Strasser in Casablanca), at top right, is utterly compelling as the prince, coming off as a good and civilized man twisted by jealousy. Bernhard Goetzke is just as good as Ramigami, an interesting character who doesn't get as much screen time as Veidt but is almost as memorable. Paul Richter, later to play the heroic Seigfrid in Lang's epic film Die Nibelungen, pictured at left, gets short shrift as MacAllen, but has a couple of good scenes. I’m shallow enough to wish that Herbert and Irene had been played by younger prettier people. Olaf Fonss and Mia May are OK as Herbert and Irene; both engage in silent movie overacting, but both are energetic enough in action scenes. Lya De Putti (namechecked by Sally Bowles in Cabaret) is sexy as the doomed servant, and Erna Morena has little to do as the princess.

Among the interesting setpieces: two scenes set in a tiger pit, one of which features tigers munching on a dead body; a dance that ends in death by snake bite; the creepy leper pit featuring a man hanging upside down and another one buried to his neck in the dirt floor—the lepers are called penitents so I assume that their disease is thought to caused by sinfulness. The large sets are effective, and the costumes are occasionally dazzling, especially one with a very elaborate headdress worn by Veidt. At four hours, both halves could have been trimmed but still, I quite enjoyed both this and the Lang version. The Blu-ray from Kino has a largely ineffective minimalist score, seemingly composed of blocks of music dropped into sequences without much regard to appropriateness, but the print looks good. Just before I watched this, I read the novel, newly translated into English just a few years ago. Given the long movies made from it, it's fairly short, basically providing seed material for the filmmakers, and the ending is ridiculous, like Von Harbou hit a deadline and stopped. I don’t recommend the book but I do highly recommend both the 1921 and the 1959 films. [Blu-ray]

THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR / THE INDIAN TOMB (1959)

Originally released as separate films, these two Fritz Lang works are actually one long narrative which has been unofficially referred to as Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic. Put together, it feels like a 3-1/2 hour serial, which is meant as a compliment. German architect Harald Berger has come to the Indian kingdom of Eschnapur at the behest of Maharajah Chandra to build schools and hospitals and make improvements to his palace. En route, Berger saves a servant girl from harassment and is thanked by her mistress, the lovely dancing girl Seetha, who is headed to the palace to become a temple dancer for Chandra. The next day, Berger saves Seetha from an attacking tiger and the two form a bond which grows into a romance. Her origins are supposedly “obscure and shadowy,” but when she recognizes an old Irish folk song that Berger sings, she realizes that she is indeed half-European on her father's side. The situation at the palace is fraught. Chandra’s wife died and he has sent for Seetha as a possible replacement, angering the dead maharani’s brother, Padhu. Meanwhile, Chandra’s brother Ramigani has been plotting to overthrow Chandra and gets Padhu on his side, hoping the people will rebel if Chandra picks a commoner to be his bride. We meet Asagara, an Indian engineer who is assigned to assist Berger and who will, as sides in the conflict develop, be torn between loyalty to Chandra and being a friend to Berger. Irene, Berger’s sister, and her engineer husband Walter are on their way to assist Berger. After performing a remarkably sexy temple dance, Chandra puts Seetha up in the palace and asks for her hand. She claims to feel like a bird in a gilded cage, like the real one in her room, but the civilized Chandra insists he has no wish to force her into a quick decision, saying “haste is a European vice.” Padhu kidnaps Seetha and plans to rape her, but Chandra saves her. Now both Chandra and Berger have been her rescuers and she feels beholden to both. After escaping a tiger in an arena, Berger and Seetha go on the run with Chandra’s men racing after them. A final title card says, “For the miraculous rescue of the lovers, see the sequel.”

You can see the serial story beats in the above summary. and I didn’t even mention the fakir rope trick act which ends with the death of Seetha’s servant girl. TIGER is paced quickly, but the second film slows things down a bit. The action largely shifts to Irene and Walter who arrive in Eschnapur and slowly suspect that Chandra’s story of Berger being off on a hunting trip is hiding something sinister. Chandra tells Walter he is to oversee the construction of a magnificent tomb for his dead love, which turns out not to be the late maharani but Seetha who will be entombed alive. Ramigani and Padhu collaborate on fomenting an uprising, with the high priest Yama brought in on the plans, though he may be a wild card. Berger spends much of the second film out of commission and Irene becomes a focus of the story. It isn’t really a spoiler to note that in the end, Berger and Seetha wind up together, but Chandra, who has been presented as somewhat sympathetic throughout, gets his own unexpected and rather moving redemption. 

Many devout Fritz Lang fans dismiss this film as empty campy spectacle without the interesting visuals and themes that are present in his more well-known films. Other fans interpret the story as being about ethnic identity, tradition, and colonialism. However, taken on its own terms, this is a very entertaining adventure. It’s quite colorful and the interior sets are spectacular; most of the exteriors were shot on location in Udaipur in India. The most talked-about scenes are two dances by Seetha (Debra Paget); the one in THE INDIAN TOMB, which involves a dangerous snake, is incredibly sexy with Paget practically naked, and in both, we can see the male viewers becoming uncomfortably aroused. Paget, probably known more for her looks than her acting, is quite good and basically carries the movie. She upstages Paul Hubschmid (aka Paul Christian) who is fine as the hero, if not as physically commanding as a typical action hero of the era. Walther Reyer is very good as Chandra at expressing his inner conflict—he likes Berger and respects him for saving Seetha from the tiger, but he’s also a royal ruler and is used to getting his way. The special effects involving the tigers and the snake are cheap and artificial but we suspend our disbelief. The original 1921 silent version, co-written by Lang but not directed by him, is on deck for watching next and is apparently more faithful to the novel written by Lang’s wife at the time, Thea von Harbou, which is on my bedstand. Highly recommended, but avoid the American version, Journey to the Lost City, which cuts the two films down to 90 minutes and, of course, is dubbed. Pictured top right are Paget and Hubschmid; at left is Paget dancing. [Blu-ray]

ZERO FOR CONDUCT (1933)

We see two boys, Colin and Caussat, on a train heading back to boarding school. They're high-spirited, playing little pranks on people, but at school, they are tamped down by administrators. The two boys bond with another student, Bruel, to become ringleaders in a movement of, if not outright disobedience, then slight disruption of the rituals and rules of the school. Tabard, a younger boy, develops a special relationship with Bruel; that relationship is frowned upon by some teachers, though the science teacher himself shows an interest in Tabard. The new class monitor, Huguet, becomes friendly with the boys as a kind of Pied Piper figure, occasionally amusing them with his Charlie Chaplin imitation and taking them into town on Sundays. Small acts of rebellion grow: the boys turn over a bed with a teacher sleeping in it; twice, Tabard tells a teacher he’s "full of shit"; a food fight breaks out over the constant diet of cooked beans. Finally, an innocent but anarchic pillow fight breaks out one night (pictured), played out partly in slow motion with pillow feathers filling the air, and the next day, during the celebration of Commemoration Day, with several dignitaries present, the four boys barricade themselves in the attic, raise a skull and crossbones flag, and throw trash from the roof.

This 45-minute film, directed by Jean Vigo, is less a coherent narrative (though there is a developing throughline) than a series of impressionistic vignettes, some realistic, some less so. One can easily see how this influenced Lindsay Anderson’s IF, a much later film about boarding school revolutionaries, although this film's anti-authoritarian tone remains light compared with the later film's sex and violence. The endings of both movies feature authoritarian celebration disrupted by students, though in IF, there is a vision of bloodshed rather than pillow feathers and trash. In 1933, the threat of anarchic behavior by children was enough to get the film banned in France, though today this movie seems almost sweet and wholesome. Though this is a sound film, the dialogue is fairly sparse and not terribly important to the story, with the exception of Tabard's scatological outbursts. Though the teachers and the headmaster, a cranky bearded dwarf, are presented as rigid and oppressive, they mostly aren't seen as cruel so much as petty and ineffective. The most startling scene is not one of rebellion: at one point, a teacher catches a boy drawing a mocking picture of him which comes briefly to animated life. In its own way, the ending is almost as surreal as the ending of IF, and I was left wondering if indeed the entire last few minutes are real or just in the boys’ imaginations. Jean Daste (Huguet) played the lead in Vigo’s L’ATALANTE, the only feature length film that Vigo made in his short lifetime. French title: ZERO DE CONDUITE. [Criterion Channel]