Monday, March 18, 2024

ALIAS FRENCH GERTIE (1930)

Marie (Bebe Daniels) is the maid to a wealthy family, but she's actually Gertie, a known criminal who, one night, plans to steal some jewels from the family's safe. Beating her to it, however, is safecracker Jimmy (Ben Lyon). They recognize each other from their reputations, and he agrees to split the booty with her, but cops arrive and Jimmie gallantly takes the rap, going to jail for a year. When he gets out, Gertie is waiting for him and he assumes they will continue their larcenous ways. But when he suggests that she steal from the widow Barton, a neighbor of Gertie's, Gertie balks as she has grown to like the old lady. Detective Kelcey (Robert Emmett O'Connor) likes the two of them and, realizing how easy it would be for them to fall back into old habits, keeps a close eye on them. Eventually, Jimmy goes into legit business with a stockbroker named Matson and gives him his life savings, but it turns out that Matson is a crook and makes off with all of Jimmy's money. When Jimmy wants to go back to their old ways, Gertie resists. Officer Kelcey may hold the key to their future in his hands. A minor pre-Code melodrama with a light tone and a thin veneer of romantic comedy, this is nothing special, though what appeal it does have is due to the two leads who got married not long after this film's release. They make a nice couple (pictured at left), and in real life, their marriage lasted forty years until Daniel's death in 1971. In the 1950s, they had a popular radio show in England which led to a couple of movies and a TV show in which they played themselves (like, I assume, Ozzie and Harriet). The ending, though fairly predictable, does have a surprise which I won’t spoil. [TCM]

Thursday, March 14, 2024

THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY (1972)

There is an explosion at the Groundstar space agency and a badly injured man named John David Welles (Michael Sarrazin) runs from the facility with a computer tape he has apparently stolen. He ends up at the nearby apartment of Nicole Devon (Christine Belford) who doesn't know him but calls an ambulance. Tuxan (George Peppard, at right), head of Groundstar security, has him sent to a military hospital where he is given plastic surgery to restore his damaged face. Though Tuxan interrogates him mercilessly, he claims to have no memory of what happened, or even who he is, but he does occasionally have dreams of a young Greek woman named Anika. Tuxan arranges for John to escape, assuming he'll head for Nicole’s which he does. Tuxan has had her phones tapped (and spy cameras installed even in the bedroom), hoping to get some information about a plot to steal Groundstar secrets which they assume he is in on. Nicole takes him in out of sympathy, and he seems to truly not know anything about the plot, but soon a third party shows interest in John. Gunplay, kidnapping and torture soon ensue, along with a couple of tricky plot twists that I won't divulge. Though the movie has a sci-fi-ish vibe, it’s really a spy adventure whose twists unfold throughout the story. It does a decent job of keeping us in the dark about many points: Does John really have amnesia? If he's not John, who is he? What's his tie to Greece? Despite his seemingly sinister behavior, is Tuxan actually a good guy? When it becomes clear that there are others looking for Groundstar secrets—a government PR guy (Cliff Potts), a senator (James Olson), other government workers—what's their motivation?  And is Nicole being manipulated or is she a manipulator? All questions are answered, though issues of morality remain murky. Sarrazin is good as the average man on the run, like a Hitchcock hero who is the victim of a case of mistaken identity (but is he?) and Peppard is appropriately nasty as the chief who doesn't care what he does to get information. At one point, he admits his own phone is tapped and says, "If I had my way, every room in the country would be bugged." The ending is satisfying and I liked the movie, but everyone except Sarrazin seems to be working at half-speed. It reminded me a lot some mid-60s thrillers with mild sci-fi elements (THE POWER, THE SATAN BUG), middling production values and actors on automatic. That sounds kind of harsh, but I'd recommended this anyway. [DVD]

Monday, March 11, 2024

THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934)

Eadie (Jean Harlow) works at a cheap dance hall with her abusive stepfather as her boss. She and her friend Kitty take off one day for New York City where Eadie becomes something of a virtuous gold digger, vowing to remain a "good girl," but planning on marrying for money. The two become chorus girls and one night when they are hired to entertain at a party at the mansion of Frank Cousins, Eadie sets her sights on Frank. We learn that he needs money and he begs fellow businessman Thomas Paige (Lionel Barrymore) to loan him some, but Paige (whom Eadie initially mistakes for a butler) refuses. Fatalistically, Cousins gives Eadie a pair of expensive cufflinks and says he'll marry her. But instead he shoots himself at his desk. (The next day, when she tells Kitty what happened, Kitty asks, "Did someone ask you to sniff a little white powder?") Eadie is under suspicion for stealing the cufflinks, but Paige helps her out and soon, she has followed him down to Palm Beach, hoping to snag him. Kitty is not so much looking for a lasting relationship as a man in uniform—she flirts with butlers, doormen and bellboys—and says, "I’m just an old-fashioned home girl like Mae West!" When Eadie meets Tom Paige Jr. (Franchot Tone), she becomes a pawn in a father-son power game. Tom assumes that her high ideals are just for show and locks her in a bedroom with him; they kiss and she admits that he could make her "cheap and common," but begs him not, and he lets her go. The rest of the film is a screwball-style battle between Eadie and Tom in which a blackmail attempt rears its ugly head, but is defeated by what appears to be true love.

Jean Harlow, along with Mae West, was a pre-Code screen queen, and this was the first of her films to be released after the Production Code began to be enforced in mid-1934. West's career took a strong downward turn, as her persona couldn't really be sanitized or contained, but Harlow stayed in the saddle, perhaps because of her wider acting range, and because MGM was in control of her career in a way that I don’t think Paramount ever was with West. This film feels a bit schizophrenic and even though Eadie gets to keep her honor and land a husband, it doesn't feel like the right ending—I'm not convinced that the two are truly romantically compatible and will stay together. Nothing against the actors, with Harlow and Tone (pictured above) in fine form as they work up some legit chemistry. But the transactional nature of their relationship (she stays a virgin and he rewards her with marriage) never fully disappears. Patsy Kelly is delightful as the brassy sidekick—I almost think this could have worked even if Harlow and Kelly had switched roles. Barrymore is, as always, Barrymore, but he can't make his character likable. Lewis Stone (who is pretty much always Lewis Stone) plays Cousins in what amounts to a glorified cameo, and in some ways, the movie never recovers from his suicide scene. It doesn't feel as frothy as I think it wants to. See this one for Harlow and Kelly. [TCM]

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN (1957)

Did Russian dictator Joseph Stalin die in 1953? In the world of this movie, the answer is no. Instead, someone else is buried while Stalin, during his own funeral, undergoes plastic surgery and leaves for parts unknown with his nurse Greta. But first we see a scene in which he pulls a young and lovely girl out of a lineup and has her hair shorn in front of him (and much to the actress' credit, it's done for real). The tension in the scene makes this feel like a punishment, but many viewers believe it’s a sexual fetish. Maybe it's a bit of both? In Berlin, after Greta disappears, her twin sister Lili (both played by Zsa Zsa Gabor) hires American detective Steve Anderson (Lex Barker) to find her. The two, with Steve’s one-armed buddy Mischa (Jeffrey Stone), are on the chase, and have to put up with killers and kidnappers, and most fortuitously, Stalin's son Jacob (William Schallert) who hates his father. Eventually, they trace Stalin to a Greek mountain village where he might be in hiding in an abandoned monastery. Fisticuffs ensue, most notably between Lili and Greta; in other words, between Zsa Zsa and Zsa Zsa.

The home video presentation of this indulges in one my most hated strategies: calling something film noir when it's not. What it is is a crime melodrama with virtually no noir tropes present. The startling opening leads you to expect more startling moments, but in some ways, the movie never recovers from that scene, with only one more "bald lady" moment in store, again done just for shock value (by which time, it's gotten stale). Like Barker and Gabor (pictured) in the leads, the movie couldn't be more B if it tried, and it does, with cheap sets and an occasionally confusing narrative. When you get used to Barker and Gabor, they're OK. Schallert is better as Stalin's son. Maurice Manson, as Stalin and his later identity is disappointing. Natalia Daryll has her moment in the sun as the girl with the shaved head and looks genuinely afraid of the shaving. After reading the back of the Blu-ray box (and seeing the cover headline "Is Stalin Alive?") I was hoping for a camp classic. That was not to be, but as I get older, I realize that if I stick with a movie to the end, it must have something to recommend it. Here, it’s Zsa Zsa, who is, somewhat surprisingly, better than you might expect. [Blu-ray]

Monday, March 04, 2024

PICK A STAR (1937)

In Waterloo, Kansas, Joe (Jack Haley) is the local manager of a Hollywood beauty contest, with the prize being a trip to Hollywood and a role in a picture for Excel Studios. Cecilia (Rosina Lawrence) wins, but the organizer absconds with all the funds that were raised, and as Joe feels responsible, he decides to sell his garage, move to Hollywood, and send for her to try her luck. Joe winds up working as a busboy at the Colonial Club, but back in Kansas, a plane has to make an emergency landing, and one of the passengers is movie star Rinaldo Lopez (Mischa Auer). Two other passengers decide not to finish the flight and they give Cecila their tickets. She and her roommate Nellie (Patsy Kelly), accompanied by Lopez, head on to Hollywood. Lopez takes them to the Colonial Club where they run into Joe, who tries to pretend that he's part of the entertainment. His ruse fails, and when Joe tries to go after the girls to explain, he is glancingly hit the car of a studio head honcho who gives him a menial job at Excel. Rinaldo begins romancing Cecilia but jealous Joe will have none of it, and eventually, he gets her a legitimate audition.

We're obviously in B-romantic comedy territory here, so if your tolerance for sloppy plotting and enthusiastic but second-level actors is high, you might enjoy this. Haley is a likable enough comic lead and Lawrence, with whom I was not familiar, is his equal. But in the movie's credits, it's Patsy Kelly who gets first billing, and indeed, though technically she has a supporting role, she's got almost as much screen time as Haley or Lawrence, and she steals many of her scenes. The one unique aspect of this comedy is that some of it takes place on the studio sets, so we see Laurel and Hardy working on a couple of comedy bits. More amusing is Lydia Roberti as a temperamental star named Dagmar. It's not a musical, but there are a couple of songs, and in the final audition scene, we see Cecilia's number played out in her imagination as a Busby Berkeley production number (pictured at left). Unless you're a fan of Haley or Kelly, or a Laurel & Hardy completist, you can probably skip this one. [TCM]

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962)

A married couple are driving on their way to a marina for a weekend on their small yacht when a young hitchhiker steps in front of their car. The husband berates the young man but lets him ride anyway. At the marina, the husband invites the hitchhiker along, provided he helps get the boat ready for sailing. The hitchhiker somewhat reluctantly joins them, but as he helps out, the husband toys with him, playing little games of one-up masculinity with taunts flying back and forth that create a tense mood which the wife tries to ignore, although she does seem intrigued by the handsome young hitchhiker. Listening to a boxing match on the radio makes their competition more literal: a race to see who can blow up a mattress first, a game of pick-up-sticks. Eventually, the two men play the knife game, in which one person spreads the fingers of their hand on a surface while the other person jabs a knife (in this case, the hitchhiker's switchblade) quickly between the fingers, trying not to hit flesh. The knife becomes important both symbolically (one of the most obvious phallic symbols in 60s movies, next to the nuclear bomb that Slim Pickens rides in Dr. Strangelove) and literally. Finally, in the middle of the night, the men wind up fighting on deck and the boy, who says he can't swim, falls in the water and vanishes. Is he dead? Somehow in hiding? And what will the couple do now?

This was Roman Polanski's first film and still one of his best—I'm not a big fan except for Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby. It holds up surprisingly well; this could easily be passed off as the recent work of an indie director. The black and white cinematography is crisp, the small setting only feels claustrophobic when Polanski wants it to, and the acting is fine. This was the first film for Jolanta Umecka (the wife) and Zygmunt Malanowicz (the boy, pictured) and they are both excellent. Leon Niemczyk as the husband is a bit less effective, perhaps because his role as the older man whose masculine reputation is in danger is mostly on the surface, whereas the personalities of the wife and the hitchhiker both remain a bit ambiguous, with more interesting character shadings present, even if they don't come to full fruition. This is a movie in which violence is always a possibility, even if it rarely occurs, and I can see a viewer being a bit disappointed in the ending, which, while not ambiguous in terms of plot, does leave the situation of the husband and his wife wide open (though the wife seems to be on the boy's side, she also compares him to the husband, saying he is "half his age and twice as dumb"). But for me, that's one more reason why this film still works so well. [Criterion Channel]

Monday, February 26, 2024

THE NIGHT HAS EYES (1942)

Doris (sociable and flirty) and Marian (a bit schoolmarmish), two teachers at a girls' school, go on holiday to the Yorkshire moors hoping to find a clue to the whereabouts of Evelyn, a teacher who vanished while hiking. On the train, Doris fakes a fainting spell to get the attention of Barry, a handsome doctor, but he has eyes for the reticent Marian. He offers to drop them off at their destination, a spot near where the missing teacher was last seen, but they insist on trekking through the misty, gloomy moors on their own. Doris steps into a small bog, Marian helps her out, and the two struggle on through a storm to a small house where pianist Stephen Deremid lives in gloomy isolation after suffering shellshock in the Spanish Civil War. He reluctantly lets them stay but asks that they lock themselves in their room, where Marian says she feels the missing teacher's presence. Next morning, floodwaters prevent them from leaving and a series of Gothic elements build in the narrative: a secret room, physical evidence that Evelyn had been in the house, Stephen having uncontrollable fits during the full moon, etc. There's also a kindly housekeeper and an eccentric handyman who has a pet capuchin monkey. It all builds to a satisfying climax (don't forget about the bogs!). As should be obvious, this is basically an "old dark house" thriller with elements of mystery, romance and horror—could Stephen be a werewolf? There’s even a skeleton in a chair as is in the later Psycho. The young James Mason (Stephen) has the brooding antihero persona down pat—he's definitely a Rochester (from Jane Eyre) figure. Joyce Howard (Marian) and Tucker McGuire (Doris) are fine as the lead women, though I was sorry when Doris left for an extended period in the middle. Also fine are Mary Clare as the housekeeper, Wilfrid Lawson as the handyman, and John Fernald as the doctor, who I wish had more to do. The ending, not quite a trick one, is satisfying. Pictured are Mason and Howard. [DVD]

Friday, February 23, 2024

THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

On a train, we see Radcliffe, a well-regarded British scientist, kidnapped and his security man killed. British intelligence is concerned about a recent "brain drain" in which several top scientists have vanished or left their jobs, and Radcliffe seems to be the latest. He also may have had some top secret information with him when he was taken. Ross, head of military intelligence, pulls cocky agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine, pictured) off of routine surveillance duty to work under Major Dalby (Nigel Green). The pressure is on as Dalby's unit might be shut down if they can't crack this case. There's a suspect known as Bluejay who deals in state secrets, and during a raid on a warehouse where Radcliffe has been kept, Palmer finds an audio tape with scratchy, unintelligible noises marked “IPCRESS.” Eventually, Bluejay agrees to hand Radcliffe over for a cash ransom, but Radcliffe is obviously damaged in some way, and when he starts to give a lecture, we hear the noises from the tape and he collapses. It's not quite a spoiler to note that IPCRESS stands for "Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex under Stress," and soon Palmer himself is caught and, in a psychedelically-shot scene not too different looking from the 2001 Stargate sequence, tortured using the IPCRESS system. Like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Palmer is made to react subconsciously to a signal when he will be triggered to become an assassin.

This is a solid entry in the 1960s spy genre, not as serious as LeCarre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and not as silly as some of the James Bond movies could get. The overall tone is light and Palmer is witty but not a clown. Caine is perfect in the role (he played two more times in FUNERAL IN BERLIN and BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN) as is Nigel Green as Dalby (who knows more than he tells). Gordon Jackson as a fellow agent of Palmer's is also quite good. Sue Lloyd is the underused love interest, and Guy Doleman nicely underplays the role of Ross, Palmer's old boss, who pops up again near the end. Director Sidney Furie uses lots of off-kilter and disorienting camera angles—some viewers find this distracting, but I thought it gave a nice flavor to what would otherwise have been fairly bland visual set-ups. For example, there is a fisticuffs scene shot through the glass in a phone booth, obscuring much of the action. There is some dry humor that enlivens the proceedings; when the stiff, business-like Ross sends Palmer to Dalby, he says in a deadpan fashion that Dalby "doesn’t have my sense of humor." There is apparently a recent TV series based on this book, which I haven’t seen, but I can recommend this version to spy movie fans. [TCM]

Sunday, February 18, 2024

SHOCKPROOF (1949)

Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight, pictured) has just been released from prison on parole for murder, having killed someone to protect her no-good thug boyfriend Harry (John Baragrey). Her parole officer is Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde), an upstanding straight arrow who lives with his blind mother and kid brother, and lets Jenny know that she'll have to toe the line under his supervision or risk getting sent back to prison. At first, the two don't get along. Griff has a pleasant demeanor but lets her know he means business, and that any associating with Harry would be a violation of her parole rules. The somewhat hardened Jenny wants to stay out of prison but she's also determined to get back together with Harry. First chance she gets, she contacts Harry and right away, she's caught in a raid at a bookie joint. Griff, who finds himself softening, keeps her out of jail and arranges for her to become his mother's live-in caretaker. Harry, who is still meeting her on the sly, tells Jenny to get Griff to marry her, which is against the rules for Jenny to do while she's on parole, and they'll have Griff in their power. Jenny does, but she also legitimately falls for Griff, and when Harry threatens to give Griff the love letters she has written to him, the two struggle with a gun and she winds up shooting him. From here on, the movie becomes a lovers-on-the-run story as Griff finds work at an oil well and the two live anonymously until the pressures of such a life build to the breaking point.

This is a decent film noir, if never quite as hard-boiled as some noir fans might like. It’s a bit notorious for its weak cop-out ending but that doesn't ruin the film. I've never been very interested in the work of Cornel Wilde; his facial features don't fit together very pleasingly and his acting is so-so. Here, he plays a lightweight average guy who, in honored noir fashion, gets into a situation over his head because of a woman, but he plays everything on the surface, leaving us with very little sense of psychological turmoil underneath. John Baragrey is fine as the baddie, but the real reason to watch this is Patricia Knight, who was Wilde’s wife in real life. She's beautiful with a wholesomely sexy look that you just know is hiding true femme-fatale-hood. She gets to be both blond and brunette in the course of the film, and she looks good both ways. Her performance is so good, you wonder why her career didn't last—this is the third of only five movies she made before she left the business. Douglas Sirk, later known for his glossy color melodramas of the 50s, directs in a straightforward way. The original script, by Samuel Fuller, had a more violent and downbeat ending, and would have rung more true to the story, but the studio wanted a happy ending, no matter how unlikely. The word is that Sirk refused to shoot the last scene, so someone else did it. This is not a masterpiece but for most of its run time, it's a perfectly respectable noir melodrama. [TCM]

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

QUICK BEFORE IT MELTS (1965)

Oliver (Robert Morse) is a reporter for Sage Magazine, whose slogan is The Magazine that Thinks for You. He's dating Sharon, the boss’s daughter. When his boss sends him to Antarctica to embed himself with the workers at a research station, he tries to get Sharon to sleep with him, but she steadfastly refuses to have sex before marriage. His companion on the trip is photographer Pete (George Maharis) who is a gregarious playboy whom we first see being tossed out of a car by an angry woman fed up with his behavior. Despite their different personalities, they bond quickly when they meet before heading to New Zealand, both promising to forget about women for the duration, which is just as well as the admiral in charge of the South Pole operations (James Gregory) hates women. But the plan falls apart when Oliver falls for a half-Maori woman named Tiare (Anjanette Comer) and Pete falls for Diana Grenville-Wells (Janine Grey), the first woman with a hyphen in her name that he's ever met. At the South Pole, they soon acclimate to their surroundings: -50 degrees temperatures, a penguin who delivers messages round the camp, a seal who needs to have its temperature taken. They meet Mickey (Michael Constantine), a friendly Russian scientist, and our boys agree that getting him to defect could be the story that would make them well known. Meanwhile, starved for female attention, Oliver and Pete talk the admiral into bringing in a planeload of women as a publicity stunt, and of course, they make sure that Tiare and Diana are on that plane. Complications, some of a slapstick sort, ensue.

Though this is based on a novel, the whole thing feels like the creators just dumped a bunch of comedic and/or satiric situations together in a blender and hoped for the best. At times it's entertaining, mostly due to the actors, but the narrative is loose and baggy, and I just couldn't bring myself to care much about the characters and their outcomes. Maharis is top-billed and he's handsome and, depending how you feel about playboy types, charming, but Morse is more central to the story—this was a couple of years before HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS would make him (briefly) a leading man, so Maharis has slightly more cachet, thus first billing, and also seems more comfortable on screen. They work surprisingly well together and are fun to watch. The other performances that work well come from James Gregory (Inspector Luger on Barney Miller) as the hard-assed military man, Bernard Fox as a friendlier military man, Michael Constantine as the Russian, and Yvonne (Batgirl) Craig as Sharon. Comer, who went on to a long if undistinguished career, doesn’t really make much of an impression as the exotic Tiare. Norman Fell plays a rival reporter and the craggy-faced Howard St. John is amusing as Morse's boss. There is some second-unit location shooting involved here, but the actors almost certainly never left the studio, which is OK. There's an absurd but amusing bar fight scene, and of course, the penguin (who the men call Milton Fox because, well, that's his name!) steals all his scenes. Best line: when the boss calls his daughter and Morse answers, the boss asks what he’s doing there. Morse replies, "Trying to seduce your daughter," to which the boss wishes him luck. Mildly funny, but not recommended to folks who aren't already fans of 1960s sex farces. Pictured are Morse and Maharis. [DVD]