A PAIR OF BRIEFS (1962)

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

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

TAUR THE MIGHTY (1963)

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

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

THE FLAMING URGE (1953)

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

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

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

CONE OF SILENCE (1960)

American title: TROUBLE IN THE SKY

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

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

THE GRACIE ALLEN MURDER CASE (1939)

In the town of Riverford, the Vogue Perfume company is holding its annual employee picnic. Bill and Ann win the three-legged race and just as Bill is about to propose to Ann, Fred pops in to spoil the moment. The upset Bill walks away and stews by himself, but when the boss's niece Gracie shows up, Bill shares a fancy picnic lunch with her, complete with tablecloth and candles, to make Ann jealous. Gracie is a bit of a scatterbrain, but she's attractive and lively, and Bill takes her out that night to the Diamond Slipper Cafe  Meanwhile, gangster Benny the Buzzard has broken out of prison and comes to the club to see its owner, Dan Mirche, who framed Benny for his crimes in order to avoid prison. That night, Benny is found dead in Mirche's office, and when Gracie sees Bill's cigarette case near the body, she implicates him as the killer and he is taken into custody. Detective Philo Vance is soon on the case, but after Dixie, the club singer, is found dead from poisoned flowers that were sent by Vance, he may be a suspect too. Despite her good intentions, Gracie makes a comic mess of everything around her, but Vance manages, despite her "help," to clear his name (and Bill's) and solve the case.

This is an odd duck of a movie. Gracie Allen, wife and comedy partner of George Burns, took her madcap goofball act solo here with mixed results. Gracie is introduced at the picnic as Gracie Allen, but she's not playing herself exactly, that is, a comic star of radio and movies, just the boss's niece. She's constantly misunderstanding people and wrecking havoc with the English language. With Burns as her straight man, she can be quite funny. Alone, she is still funny but is a bit too much to take, especially as she's in practically every scene of the movie—though this is ostensibly an entry in the Philo Vance movie series, Vance (Warren William) doesn't show up until a half hour in, and he is largely relegated to a supporting role. I enjoyed Gracie constantly calling Philo "Fido" and her messing up the lyrics to a cute song, "Snug as a Bug in a Rug." When a woman complains that her pansies are drooping, Gracie replies, "You ought to wear suspenders." The last scene of the movie is a delightful surreal moment in which she tries to shake hands with two men at once. But really, after the 20 minute mark, I was getting a bit weary of her shtick, especially because no one around her reacts to her shenanigans as well as her husband did. Both William and Kent Taylor (Bill) have to resort to versions of just rolling their eyes in irritation, which itself gets irritating. Speaking of Kent Taylor, as I look over my past reviews of his movies, I generally find him to be OK, a decent B-lead or A-supporting player. Here, he makes a good impression in the first half hour or so, looking handsome and acting like his character might have some complexity—it's not altogether clear that he's supposed to be a nice guy. But he largely disappears from view for the rest of the movie. William also suffers a bit from being sidelined so often. Jerome Cowan is fine as Michie, and other familiar faces include Donald MacBride, H.B. Warner, Richard Denning, Willie Fung, and William Demarest. Cute as a novelty but maybe not recommended for people looking for a traditional Philo Vance mystery. Pictured are Allen and Taylor; the bottom picture is a publicity shot. [Blu-ray]

THE YOUNG SWINGERS (1963)

The Vanguard is a small jazz club run as a co-op by a group of young musicians who sing and play in a combo there. Businesswoman Jo Helton visits the place with her lackey of a lawyer (Justin Smith). She wants to buy the place to tear it down and replace it with an office building, but Rod Lauren, a singer, emcee, and co-owner (pictured at left), won't sell, saying the place is just starting to turn a profit. Smith tells Helton that the kids have a lease, and as she leaves on a business trip, she tells him to use strong arm tactics, like finding safety violations, to get the building for herself. Her niece (Molly Bee), who has just turned 21, goes to the club one night with her obnoxious boyfriend who gets in a fistfight with Rod and leaves, letting Molly and Rod do a little bonding, especially when the electricity is turned off and Rod discovers that Molly can sing—we find out later that her mother was a USO singer who was killed in a plane crash. Knowing that Smith is trying to close the club, Molly takes a job there. When Helton returns and hears her sing, she is brought to tears by how much Molly sounds like her mother, and she starts to soften her stance about the lease. But then a faulty wiring problem, which the safety inspector had pointed out, causes a fire which destroys the club. Will Rod and the gang be ruined? Will Molly and her aunt manage to reforge their relationship?

I have a mild thing for Rod Lauren. He's not a great actor (though he can sing and even had a top 40 hit in 1960) but he has a mildly smoldering and sullen look that he puts to good use in the handful of B-movies he made, most notably the cheapie cult classic THE CRAWLING HAND. Here, his sullenness reads as broody determination which works for the movie. Its title is a bit misleading as there is not any real swinging done by anyone. The music, however, is OK. Though the combo is lightly jazzy, the rest of the numbers are either pop or folk. The front of the club has a sign announcing a Hootenanny night, but aside from two bland folky songs performed by the Sherwood Singers we see no hootenannying going on. Rod and Molly Bee (who was a country singer) each get a song, as does R&B singer Gene McDaniels who plays one of the club owners. Jo Helton gives an odd performance as the mean aunt. It's interesting that, as other viewers have pointed out, her role as a tough businessperson villain is usually played by an older man. Helton was only 30 here, though she does look a little older. But her facial expression for most of the movie is a glare of smirky irritation and it does get tiring. Even as she starts to melt a bit near the end, she still mostly smirks. I didn’t like her at first, but eventually I started to make a game out of being able to catch her without that smirk. I don't think I ever did. This short B-film has an airless TV episode feel to it, even in the jazz club. An actor named Larrs Jackson plays another owner who sings a comic novelty song which includes an impression of Walter Brennan; the actor is billed as Jack Larson, but he is not the better known Jack Larson who played Jimmy Olsen in the Superman TV series. Should you watch this? Well, it's short and predictable so as B-movie comfort fodder, maybe. Otherwise, only for fellow fans of Rod Lauren. [YouTube]

MYSTERY BROADCAST (1943)

Jan Cornell has a weekly radio show called The Crime Was Never Solved in which she dramatizes, well, unsolved crimes. The voice and sound effects cast includes her friend and roommate Smitty, and the show's sponsor is Stanley Cigarettes, in the person of A.J. Stanley and his wife Eve. Her show competes with a crime show hosted by Michael Jerome, and his show is gaining on hers in the ratings so Jan announces that her next show will be about the unsolved murder of actress Lenore Fenwick and that she will solve the case. Fenwick was found dead in a cabin on the grounds of the Crying Pines Lodge with the pages of her unfinished memoir next to her. Her producer is not happy with this development but A.J. encourages her in order to show up Michael, though Stanley's wife is not so happy. Neither is cast member Mida Kent who gives a lame excuse for not being present for the next show. Mida calls Jan later that night and asks to meet with her, but she is murdered before she can talk. Newspaper columnist Bill Burton brings Michael into the group and soon he is helping Jan investigate, and of course striking small romantic sparks with her. It turns out that Mida was present at Crying Pines the night of Lenore's death night, as was secretary Irene Hill who has gone missing. When Jan and Smitty go to the cabin to record the sound of the "crying pines," they are threatened by a mystery woman who is herself shot and killed. That woman was Eve Stanley, who was originally Irene Hill. Stanley claims to have known nothing about his wife's past, but more digging by Jan and Smitty and Michael bring stolen money and a blackmail attempt to light and Jan is able to solve the case just moments before the climax of her radio show, which she is then able to retitle The Crime That WAS Solved.

This is a fairly fun hour-long B-mystery from Republic which remains light on its feet, in both tone and pacing. Ruth Terry (Jan) is only OK in the main role, outshone by Mary Treen as Smitty; nowadays, Smitty would be the lesbian best friend but here she's just an unsophisticated working girl. Frank Albertson (Michael) is good but unfairly top-billed; he and Terry do work up some chemistry, but to the movie's credit, she remains the primary sleuth while he mostly waits in the background for the right moment for a kiss (which, in the last scene, is comically timed at a full minute by the radio show staff). Nils Asther has a small role as (what else?) an exotic gigolo type and Wynne Gibson is fine as Eve Stanley. Francis Pierlot plays the eccentric Mr. Crunch, supervisor of a newspaper morgue (yes, a misunderstanding of that word pops up for comedy). Charles Hayes and Kirk Alyn show up in bit parts as handsome policemen whom Smitty flirts with. Addison Richards does what he can with the ill-defined role of Bill Burton. The nighttime scene at Crying Pines is nicely atmospheric, and the whole thing goes down pleasantly. Pictured are Albertson and Terry. [Streaming]

THE INVISIBLE DR MABUSE (1962)

The Metropol Theater, which seems to specialize in Grand Guignol operettas, is presenting a show called "The Dancer, the Executioner and the Clown" which climaxes each night as the dancer is executed by guillotine. After her head drops in a basket, the curtains close and the dancer, Liane, comes out to take a bow. Watching her every night from a box is an invisible admirer; all we see is a pair of binoculars hanging in the air, pointed at the stage. One night, FBI agent Nick Prado, who is scoping out the theater as a possible hotbed of bad guys involved with the super-secret Enterprise X, sees the binoculars and chases after the invisible figure. Prado winds up backstage where he is trapped by some set flats, sent down a trap door, and tortured by what appear to be stagehands, led by a clown. They accidentally kill Prado, much to the anger of their leader who is only seen in shadow. Nick's body is packed into a theatrical trunk and sent to the docks to be shipped out, but the dock workers are on strike, so dogs sniff out the corpse and his death makes the headlines, which irritates the Shadowy Guy even more. Fellow FBI agent Joe Como comes to Berlin to investigate. Enterprise X is the work of a Dr. Erasmus; it can make people invisible, and in fact, the invisible fan of Liane's is Erasmus as his face is horribly deformed from a car accident, not Shadow Guy, But Shadow Guy wants to get his hands on the invisibility device to create an invisible army which he will use to commit a major crime on December 8th. Como and Inspector Brahm think it sounds like a plot by the evil and insane Dr. Mabuse, but isn't he dead? At the end of the previous Mabuse movie, Mabuse appears to die in a fire, but his body was not found, which left the possibility of a sequel open. This is that sequel which brings back Lex Barker as American FBI agent Joe Como and Wolfgang Priess as Mabuse. Otherwise, however, this works as a standalone pulp fiction story of a mysterious crime lord who orders his henchmen around in a plot for eventual world domination. Someone tries to kill Como (doesn't work) and Liane (also doesn't work), and the invisible army does indeed come into being, but in the end, Mabuse is stymied in a spectacularly fiery climax (Priess only appears as Mabuse in the final scene) and carted off to an asylum as hopelessly insane, leaving the door open for yet another Mabuse tale. Barker is OK, as is Karin Dor as Liane. I missed Gert Frobe as the inspector, but otherwise this is a well paced and well shot action thriller, even if the Mabuse connection has weakened a bit by now. Pictured are Dor and Barker. [Blu-ray]

THE FURY OF ACHILLES (1962)

The Greeks are in the tenth year of their siege of Troy, the city behind impenetrable walls. With the army stalled out, the Greek leaders (Agamemnon, Ulysses, Achilles and his close friend Patroclus) take to plundering cities along the coast, and in Lyrnessus, in addition to food and supplies, they take women, among them Criseide, a maiden at a temple to Apollo, for Agamemnon, and Briseis for Achilles. The women seem at various times to be irritated or pleased with their men, though Briseis tries to stab Achillies in the back, not realizing that he is invulnerable, and her knife strikes sparks but does not penetrate his skin—the story of him having one vulnerability (famously, his heel) crops up on occasion but never really comes into play here. An oracle has let it be known that Achilles will die at Troy but not before he kills the Trojan warrior Hector, and Briseis eventually warms to him. The father of Criseide calls on Apollo for help and Apollo sends a huge storm and several days of an unknown pestilence to the Greeks. Criseide is returned but Agamemnon takes Briseis from Achilles, which causes the petulant Achilles to refuse to fight. When Hector's men attack, Patroclus dresses up in Achilles' battle garb; Hector kills him but Achilles gets his revenge, and the movie ends with Achilles still alive and handing over Hector's dead body to his father King Priam. This film, inspired by the Iliad, is basically a high-class peplum rather than a full-fledged epic. It seems to have had a decent budget for a peplum and it's almost two hours (which is definitely too long) but it's serious in its retelling of Achilles' story. There are robes and swords and sandals, and the women are done up in way too much 60s style hair and makeup, especially Cristina Gioni as Patroclus' woman. Gordon Mitchell (Achilles) certainly has the physique for a fighter (he is shirtless at times to show this off), though his face is hard and unattractive and his acting is just adequate. Jacques Bergerac, a handsome French actor better known for romantic parts (pictured at right), is better as Hector. For the record, Mario Petri is Agamemnon and Ennio Girolami is Patroclus. There are several big battle scenes but some of the swordplay is on the weak side, with swords just glancing off the bodies of soldiers as they fall to the ground, though the Achilles/Hector battle at the end is well done. Unlike some other Trojan War films, this one does feature supernatural actions of the gods, even if we only see gods onscreen very briefly. Generally, it's impressive without being exciting or engrossing. [YouTube]

GHOST OF THE CHINA SEA (1958)

Luzon, 1941. The people of the Philippines are "pretending to be at peace" even as the Japanese are carrying out a drawn out invasion. Justine Woolf runs a plantation that she is unwilling to leave despite supply disruptions, distant bombing rumbles, and warnings from both Rev. Edwards and her hired hand, the cynical Martin French. But eventually, Japanese planes strafe her fields, killing many workers and causing the rest to leave, with only Edwards, French and her part Japanese bookkeeper Hito remaining. They escape into the jungle and, though briefly captured, are freed by American sailor Larry Peters, whom French assumes is a deserter. Nevertheless, they follow Peters to a seized but damaged Filipino boat Peters calls the U.S.S. Frankenstein. They set sail looking for an island refuge, along the way picking up fuel and guns and a handful of freedom fighters. French is a fairly obnoxious bully who always thinks everyone else is in the wrong, but through Justine, we come to see him as a damaged and conflicted soul and he slowly comes to trust others. The main conflict in the group, between Edwards and French, concerns the act of killing—Edwards preaches against it but French sees it as a necessity. After a number of small skirmishes, our survivors end up a sure target for a Japanese ship, and they'll need a miracle (or the American Navy) to get out alive.

Though I’d never seen this movie, it felt very familiar to me, and I realized later that it's a lot like BATTLE AT BLOODY BEACH, an Audie Murphy war adventure made a couple of years later. One subgenre of war movies, cheaper to make than large-scale battleground movies, involves a small group of people, sometimes soldiers, sometimes civilians (and sometimes a mix of both), making their way past enemy soldiers to arrive at safety. These two movies are good examples, both made with B-movie budgets several years after the war, and both fostering a bit more in the way of character development than is possible in the films with a wider scope. This movie is nothing special but still worth watching. Location shooting in Hawaii is helpful, though honestly some of it still looks like studio work. The acting is average. David Brian, a familiar character actor who specialized in westerns and melodramas, gives a one-note performance in what is, to be fair, a one-note role as French. Lynette Bernay (Justine) and Noman Wright (Rev. Edwards) are bland in their stereotypical parts. Jonathan Haze (Peters) is a notch better, giving his sailor character some personality. Poor Wright is given to dimestore philosophizing. At one point, he talks about needing "corners and shadows in which to think" and later describes their plight as that of being "phantoms on a spectral ship, tracking the moon through the river of time, [becoming] a ghost of the China Sea." The movie could have used either more or less of that kind of semi-poetic atmosphere. Pictured above are Brian and Bernay with an unidentified actor to their left. [YouTube]