ELEVEN P.M. (1928)

This silent low-budget race film is difficult to review for several reasons. Information about its release and reception is impossible to find. Even reviews of it are few and far between. The film is often called surreal, and because the bulk of the action is a dream, that label feels right, but "surreal" is a label sometimes applied to movies which are results of Poverty Row sloppiness, so any problems with visual or narrative disjunctions can be attributed to deliberate intention. For me, this hour-long movie managed to earn its surreal label until about halfway through when it totally fell apart. I basically stopped taking notes and just sat on my couch with a bewildered look on my face. The frame story makes sense, sort of. A writer named Louis Perry sits at his typewriter one evening, trying to finish a story that his publisher wants by 11:00 p.m. It has something to do with Perry's belief that life, in addition to progressing, can also decline, and that a human soul can take refuge in a lower form of life, like a cat or dog. (At first, I thought Perry was a newspaper reporter, but this seems to be a short story that the editor is waiting for.) Perry is also a part-time boxer and Roy, a promoter, is coming by at 11 to collect him for a midnight fight. Also at 11, his girlfriend June and her mother are stopping by. Perry falls asleep, his dog at his feet, and dreams a story that culminates in animal reincarnation.

Here's as much of that story as I could piece together. In the dream, Roy (the fight promoter) is shot on the street. He goes to Sundaisy, described as a "half-breed street fiddler," gives him a wad of money and asks him to use it to take care of Roy's young son Clyde. The money is stolen from Roy's coat the moment he dies, but somehow Sundaisy manages to raise the boy. Twelve years later, Clyde has become a member of a street gang and Sundaisy marries a woman named June in order to save her from a life of poverty. More years pass. June finds out that her marriage to Sundaisy isn't legal because the minister was a fraud. June runs off with someone but is deserted and lives a "remorseful life in the slums." More years pass. Sundaisy and his daughter Hope are street buskers. She is dating the writer, Louis Perry, but the grown-up Clyde, who owns a nightclub, steals her away to be a dancer. Sundaisy tries to kill Clyde but has a heart attack and dies. Later, Sundaisy returns in the form of a dog and attacks and kills Clyde. Then, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Perry wakes up in his office at 11 p.m. surrounded by all the folks who have come to meet him and were in his dream. He types up his story. The end.

There are many confusing circumstances of narrative. The same woman (Orine Johnson) plays June, her mother, and Hope. Yes, this means that June and her mother, in the frame story, look exactly alike. Over the twenty-some years of the dream story, no one ages a bit except Clyde. Many of the supporting characters look and dress alike, and if they were supposed to be differentiated, they weren't. At one point, I realized that Perry was appearing in his own dream and had no idea how he got there or how long he had been there. I'm not sure all the plot details above are accurate, but as a rough outline, it's accurate enough. This is the only surviving movie from its director and writer, Richard Maurice, who also plays Perry. Shot partly on the streets of Detroit, it's a rough and ready production, with the acting ranging from OK (Maurice as Sundaisy, Sammie Fields as Perry) to abysmal (Orine Johnson whose only expression is a hangdog look, as though she's waiting for someone to direct her). The special effect at the end of Sundaisy as the dog is primitive but it works. Despite all this, the movie, if you accept it as intentional surrealism, does exert a weird hold. The print I saw had an interesting electric guitar score by Rob Gal. It took me a few minutes to warm to it, but generally it's effective, especially in its discordant moments. For adventurous tastes. Pictured top right, Richard Maurice, the film's director, as Sundaisy; at left, Sammie Fields. [Criterion Channel]

ACT OF MURDER (1964)

Actress Anne Longman has left the stage to live a placid life in the country tending to her garden and her husband Ralph. Their actor friend Tim, who dated Anne in the past and seems like he might be interested in an adulterous affair, is trying to talk Anne into making a comeback. She's mildly interested (perhaps in both getting back into acting and back into Tim's bed) but she and Ralph are about to indulge in what must be a singularly British pastime: vacationing by swapping homes for a week with another couple. As Anne and Ralph leave, the Petersons, the pleasant older couple they're swapping with, arrive and Anne reminds them that they'll have to attend to their dog, which is fine with them. When Anne and Ralph get to London, they find the couple's address doesn't exist. Sure enough, that evening, the Petersons, working with two other men, are ransacking the Longman house, boxing up valuable antiques to cart off in a van. In the middle of this, Tim stops by to pick up a valise he left at the house. One of the thieves punches him, but they leave in a hurry without the boxed-up valuables. Next morning when the Longmans come home, they're happy not to have been burgled, but then Anne notices that much of the furniture and knick-knacks are in the wrong place. Then they discover that Anne's beloved garden has been trampled and their chickens, canary and dog are dead. Tim visits without telling them what happened, but puts it in Anne's mind that all their food has been poisoned. We soon realize that Tim has a plan: scare Anne into coming back to the big city as an actress, and maybe even moving in with him. But you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Though this hour-long British film was apparently released in theaters, it was also shown on British TV as part of the Edgar Wallace Mystery Theater series, even though it is not based on a Wallace story. Visually, this is caught between a TV episode and a second feature B-movie. It's not terribly interesting in terms of sets or camerawork, and there is almost no background score, but it does have the occasional nice shot or camera move. It doesn't look like a film noir, but the story has that feel, and there are enough plot twists to keep a thriller fan guessing. The performances are fine, if perhaps more aimed at a TV episode. John Carson, a very busy actor (CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, lots of British television well into the 2000s) is nicely slimy as the conniving Tim, though I think that it's a mistake that we don't see Tim doing any of the house rearranging or animal killing, we just have to figure out what he's done. Even better is Anthony Bate (pictured) as Ralph—I couldn't decide if I was supposed to like him and therefore feel sorry for him being used, or not, especially since it's unclear how far things get between Anne and Tim in the city (another weak plot point). Justine Lord as Anne is the weakest of the three but she's acceptable. Busy character actor Dandy Nichols is wasted in the small role of Mrs. Peterson. The ending is particularly good, and probably not one that would have been done on American TV of the era. [Streaming]

MEET SEXTON BLAKE (1945)

During a nighttime air raid in London, a man named Russell is killed by falling debris and someone cuts off the dead man's hand. Later, that person man gets in a fight on a bridge and is thrown into the river with his body landing on a barge that is passing under. Russell's hand is found in the man's coat pocket. (The scorecard so far: 2 dead men, 1 murder, 1 amputated hand.) Detective Sexton Blake examines the body and, in Sherlock Holmes style, deduces that Russell was a foreigner and a professional photographer. At his Baker Street address, Blake and his young sidekick Tinker talk to Raoul Sudd who is engaged to Russell's sister, and is also brother to Johann Sudd, a notorious arms dealer—the dead man on the barge was an employee of Johann's. Russell had photographs of film stars which have gone missing, along with a ring that was on his amputated hand, and Blake eventually learns that the photos have, invisibly superimposed on them, a secret formula for a new super-strong alloy which could be useful as war material, and the ring contains instructions for reading the invisible formula. Blake brings the police, Inspector Vetter and his stoic sidekick Belford, into the matter; Johann shows up accusing his brother of theft; and Raoul goes missing. We meet Noddy, a waitress who is sweet on Tinker (though Tinker seems more interested in his boss than in her) and who helps sniff out a mysterious woman by her pungent perfume. The primary villain seems to be a bearded man who they all nickname ‘Slant Eyes’ but who actually goes by Dzed (or perhaps DZ, I was unsure); when Blake and Tinker are trapped in a basement by the bad guys, Dzed shoots them point blank and escapes, but it turns out that Dzed missed completely, which raises suspicions in Blake's mind. Later, Dzed knocks out a female Free French agent, then kisses her. How many people here are not what they seem?

Sexton Blake was a British pulp fiction detective much like Sherlock Holmes: he lives in Baker Street, has a sidekick (though unlike Holmes and Watson, Blake is very solicitous of Tinker, always calling the younger man Old Son), and a friendly landlady, Mrs. Bardell, whose main character trait is making malapropisms; at one point, she worries that Blake will wind up dead and she will have to "idemnify" him in a "mortararium." As a British B-movie, it's a bit cheaper than the Holmes B-movies being produced in Hollywood at the time, but it's generally good detective fun: well-paced, nicely acted, and fairly easy to follow. The print I saw got very murky during scenes in darkness but was otherwise quite watchable. Blake is well played by David Farrar (pictured at right) who would hit a career peak a couple of years later in BLACK NARCISSUS. John Varley is handsome and nicely low-key as Tinker (anyone who calls him Mr. Tinker is told right away that it's just Tinker). Katherine Harrison is good as Mrs. Bardell, with Gordon McLeod and Cyril Smith fine as Vetter and Belford. Betty Huntley-Wright is energetic as Nobby. There's not a lot of action, but a couple of short fisticuffs scenes are pulled off well. At the end, Blake lifts his drink and says, "Here’s to the next crime!" Farrar did one more Blake film, THE ECHO MURDERS, though sadly without Tinker, though the character also appeared in TV shows and comic strips, and new stories appeared through the 1960s. [YouTube]

THE BEAST MUST DIE (1952)

Jorge Rattery, an awful bully hated by the family and friends present at his dinner table, is ranting about Felix, a guest brought to the house by Jorge's sister-in-law, actress Linda Lawson. Felix has been kicked out of the house—we don't know why—and in the middle of the rant, Jorge drops dead after taking his medicine. We see his young stepson Ronnie surreptitiously take the bottle away before the police arrive. The others at the table include Violeta, the wife, whom we learn was beaten regularly by her husband; Linda, the actress; Mrs. Rattery, Jorge's mother who didn’t like Violeta and did her own bullying by pointing out Jorge's affairs to her; Carpax, Jorge's business partner; and his wife Rhoda who was Jorge's most recent mistress. Felix is called back by the police from the hotel he was banished to. It's discovered that Felix, a writer of crime novels, wrote out an elaborate plan to kill Jorge but never enacted it (or so it seems). In a long flashback, we learn why Felix hated Jorge. Some months back, Felix was celebrating his birthday with his young son Martie on a misty night when the boy was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Felix is devastated and devotes his life to finding the guilty party. After months, he gets a break: while researching a new novel, he makes contact with the actress Linda Lawson and eventually pieces together what happened. Jorge was driving his car, trying to make out with Linda who was fighting back when he hit Martie in the fog and drove away. Felix and Linda begin an affair which is how he gets invited to the Rattery home for a weekend stay. Felix becomes close to Ronnie, who had, in addition to seeing Jorge abuse his mother, been bullied by Jorge. Felix plots to kill Jorge on a canoe at sea and writes his plans out in a diary, but Jorge reads it and is ready for him. With the attempt unsuccessful, Jorge gives Felix the boot, and we're back to where we started. Who actually did carry out the murder?

This Argentinian film noir is based on a well-known mystery novel by Nicholas Blake (pen name for the British poet Cecil Day Lewis). Its fractured narrative structure, which is very effective, differs from the novel which plays out chronologically. The book was also part of a series which featured the detective Nigel Strangeways; here, Nigel is a relatively minor character (and, if I got this right, is Felix’s lawyer, not a detective). But little unsung gem can be appreciated as a noir or a mystery or a psychological thriller. I was unfamiliar with any of the actors but they are quite good, especially Narciso Ibanez Menta (pictured) as Felix, Laura Hidalgo as Linda, Nathan Pinzon as Carpax, and Humberto Balado as Ronnie. Felix's grief feels real—a scene of Felix in his son's bedroom after the death where he finds the boy's birthday present to him is almost unbearably sad. Despite the broken timeline, the story is easy to follow, though I admit to getting a little confused when it came to the ins and outs of Felix's diary entries. Well directed by Roman Vinoly Barreto and beautifully shot by Alberto Etchebehere, the film is full of odd angles and atmospheric scenes. Felix’s birthday meal and the death of his son look like something from a Val Lewton movie. The ending is sad but satisfying. Highly recommended. [Criterion Channel]

YOUR PAST IS SHOWING (1957)

In London, we see a string of visits by magazine editor Nigel Dennis to prominent persons. He threatens to expose their secrets in his magazine The Naked Truth unless they pay him blackmail money. Some do, some commit suicide, and at at least one, a member of Parliament, has a panic attack in public. We then see, in more detail, Dennis approach four other celebrities: Wee Sonny MacGregor (Peter Sellers), a simpering family-friendly impressionist and TV host; the married womanizer Lord Mayley (Terry-Thomas); mystery author Flora Ransom (Peggy Mount); and sexy model Melissa Right (Shirley Eaton). Individually, the four try to find ways to silence Dennis including sabotaging his houseboat, blowing up his car, and poisoning him with a knockout drug. Nothing works but the four wind up together at Flora's apartment. When Sonny says, "We've been killing ourselves trying to murder him," they decide to work together and, because they were able to steal his secret documents, they come up with a plan that ends up involving all the potential blackmail victims. This seems like an early entry in the black comedy genre—we see one successful suicide and one possible death at the climax—with some similarities to something like A Fish Called Wanda. The funniest bits, however, involve exaggerated performance and occasional slapstick antics. Sellers, using his talent for multiple personas, is the standout, particularly in the opening scenes of him on TV as Wee Sonny. Terry-Thomas is amusing as well doing his twit shtick. I was unfamiliar with Peggy Mount but she's quite funny as a hyperactive Miss Marple type, especially in her early suicide attempt when she jumps from her apartment window but is saved by a shop awning. Shirley Eaton (the golden girl in Goldfinger) has less to do but is quite appealing. Dennis Prince as the publisher is less obviously funny but he has his moments. Joan Sims (Flora's daughter) and Georgina Cookson (Mayley's put-upon wife) are good, and Kenneth Griffith shines in a smaller role as Porter, Wee Sonny's manager (and roommate, and possibly lover in what struck me as a heavily gay-coded relationship). At 90 minutes, it runs out of steam, and the finale is quite strange, as though the filmmakers couldn't quite decide how to end it. It's the most improbable part of the story though I ended up liking it. If you can deal with dark whimsey, this is for you. Original British title: THE NAKED TRUTH. Pictured at left, from left: Sellers, Price, Terry-Thomas, Mount, unidentified player. [TCM]

GREED (1924)

In early 20th century California, McTeague works at the Big Dipper Gold Mine. He's tough but sensitive; when he finds an injured bird and tries to rescue it, a co-worker slaps it out of his hands, and McTeague knocks the guy down into a gorge. From then on, he always keeps a pet bird or two. When an unlicensed traveling dentist named Painless Parker shows up in the area, McTeague's mother, wanting a better life for him, gets Parker to take her son on as an apprentice. In a while, he has his own (unlicensed) practice in San Francisco, and is friends with Marcus, a worker in a dog hospital. Marcus is sweet on his cousin Trina, but McTeague also falls for her, and he kisses her while she's under ether for a tooth extraction. Marcus relinquishes his interest in her and McTeague and Trina get married. When Trina learns that a lottery ticket she bought has won her $5,000, Marcus is angry, thinking that because he gave her up, he missed out on the money, but it turns out that having the money makes Trina greedy. She won't put any of it toward the household, she spends time on her bed polishing her gold coins, and McTeague has to go begging to her for some drinking money. The one thing she splurges on is a large gold tooth sign for her husband's practice, something he's wanted for a long time. Three years later, the two are unhappy, mostly because of Trina's miserliness. When Marcus reports McTeague to the Dental Board for having no license, he has to quit his practice, and his relationship with Trina goes further downhill. At one point, he brutally bites her fingers to get some money, and we're told that this incident, which results in an amputation, arouses a "morbid, unwholesome love of submission" in her (though we never really see how this affects her). On Christmas Eve, McTeague kills Trina and, as a hunted criminal, takes off with his pet bird and winds up in Death Valley, with Marcus hot on his heels. No one gets out of this alive.

Erich von Stroheim made this silent adaptation of Frank Norris's novel McTeague. His cut was nine hours; the studio, MGM, pressured him to reduce it to four, then MGM released it at two hours. I saw the two hour version many years ago and thought it was a great work. Since then, TCM commissioned a restoration of the four hour version. None of the cut footage still exists, but as was done with Frank Capra's Lost Horizon some years ago, film preservationist Rick Schmidlin used production stills and a copy of the script to "restore" two hours worth of story, mostly consisting of subplots that had been totally removed by MGM. The result, despite its good intentions, winds up feeling more like a visual essay about a movie rather than a coherent and engrossing narrative. The subplots are fairly obvious comments on the main plot. One involves a junkman who becomes obsessed with valuable gold plates his wife claims to own; his obsession ruins their lives in much the way that Trina's ruined hers. The other subplot focuses on an older man and women who live next to each other in McTeague's apartment building. The two lonely people pine for each other and eventually pair up with little concern for money; he has money but she doesn't care. This is a dark and depressing story, though Stroheim's inventive camerawork and incident-filled script keeps it from bogging down. The ending is a gut punch, even though we know where it's going. The acting is excellent. Gibson Gowland makes McTeague a brute, but one that we still sympathize with for much of the running time; ZaSu Pitts, known more for comedy, does a similar thing with Trina; at various points, it seems like she might shake herself out of her greed but she never does, and when she's touching her gold and dreaming of money, an almost sexual energy takes her over. Jean Hersholt (of the Oscar's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which is still given) is good as Marcus, though overshadowed by the leads. If you get a chance to see the 2-hour film, grab it (it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime). The longer version feels padded and enervated compared to it. Pictured are Pitts and Gowland. [TCM]

YOUNG CASSIDY (1965)

This biopic of the early years of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey never mentions his real name, calling the main character John Cassidy, though it uses the real name of his first play, The Plough and the Stars. In researching the film, I discovered that the movie is based on O'Casey’s autobiographical writings, which were written in the third person, using the name John Cassidy for himself. It seems to fit the recent term ‘autofiction,’ for a memoir that is, to some degree, fictionalized. In early 20th century Dublin we meet Cassidy (Rod Taylor) as a rough and tumble young man, living with his mother and sister. He seems to have talent as a writer but he works as a ditch digger. Soon he falls in with some revolutionaries and at the instigation of his friend Mullen, starts writing pamphlets at night for the Irish Citizen Army (the IRA, I assume), an underground group looking to throw off the tyranny of the British. During a strike riot, he escapes arrest by darting off with a young beauty (Julie Christie) with whom he has a brief affair. But he also begins a longer relationship with Nora (Maggie Smith), a bookstore owner. She catches him stealing books and takes them from him, but later sends him the books as a gift. Though Nora seems a bit chilly and staid, she warms up as they begin dating. The episodic narrative follows Cassidy's life over the next several years (it's difficult to say how much time is passing as the movie goes along); his sister dies, basically of extreme poverty; his brother, an actor, joins the British army; Mullen, who becomes his roommate, eventually deserts Cassidy; Cassidy himself comes to abandon violence, channeling his fervor for Irish independence into a play which comes to the attention of the founders of the Abbey Theater, the poet Yeats (Michael Redgrave) and Lady Gregory (Edith Evans). Despite an audience uprising at its opening—it's seen as vulgar and insulting to the Irish, with one woman yelling, "There are no prostitutes in Ireland!"—Yeats and Lady Gregory continue to encourage him, and he finds international fame, though in the final scene, Nora decides that he no longer needs her and stays behind as he heads overseas. 

I knew nothing about O'Casey before I watched this, and I’m not sure I know much more now, though paradoxically I do feel like I know the fictional John Cassidy. In the person of Rod Taylor, Cassidy does come to life as a fairly rounded character: handsome, husky, energetic, boisterous, loyal, intellectual, and capable of tenderness. But based on the biographical bits I've read about O'Casey, this doesn't strike me as very revealing of the real man. Taylor is, if I'm not mistaken, in every scene in the movie and he does a smashing job holding the center. I always like Taylor but this might be his best performance. Maggie Smith (pictured at left with Taylor), before she became a superstar, is delightful as the complex Nora, managing both the aloof and earthy aspects of the character. Redgrave and Evans are fine in what are basically star cameos as the only identified public figures in the movie. Other cast standouts include Flora Robson as Cassidy's mother, whom he mourns deeply; Phillip O'Flynn as Mullen who casts off Cassidy because he doesn't have the courage of his convictions; and Jack MacGowran as Archie, the brother, played as mild comic relief. The Irish situation that forms the political and historical background for the film is left ambiguous at best (another reason why I don't think this is a success as a movie about O'Casey), so the more you know about the times, the more centered you'll be. The movie is serious but has many lighter moments including a bar brawl, a 15-minute fling Cassidy has with a married woman, and a scene in which the Irish Army members argue about uniforms. The opening credits call this a John Ford film, though it was directed by Jack Cardiff; Ford shot a few days of material, but was too ill to continue. Some critics lament the fact that it doesn't have the feel of a Ford movie, saying he would have made the action scenes longer and more compelling, but as it stands, I find it quite watchable and would recommend it. [TCM]

OPERATION ATLANTIS (1965)

This goofy chunk of 1960's Eurospy adventure begins in Rome with George Steel, our handsome American James Bond stand-in, having his Japanese vacation derailed by agreeing to work with the RIU, an international uranium research group. Somewhere in North Africa there is a plot of land rich in uranium and an evil mastermind named Ben Ullah has plunked himself and his cohorts (including a kidnapped research scientist) down on the land and surrounded it with a radioactive forcefield. Descendants of the mythic land of Atlantis also live there and possess some futuristic devices like a gun that encases people instantly in ice and then disintegrates them. Steel is supposed to defeat the baddies and get the land for the RIU. That is pretty much it for the plotpoints I was able to follow. As usual, I took fairly copious notes as I was watching but I realized halfway through the movie that my notes were incoherent so I stopped. (I think, but I’m not sure, that the Atlanteans were just a Communist Chinese scam.) Still, I got some enjoyment out of this mess. For starters, there's John Ericson (pictured) as Steel; he's handsome and moderately hunky, and he looks like he actually knows what's going on throughout the story. There are at least three sexy women whose roles in the adventure remained ambiguous to me, and whose names I couldn’t quite figure out. The first is a busty blonde stewardess whom we see at the beginning and the end (and I think a little bit in the early middle). The second is a woman possibly named Fatima (Maria Granada) who is with Steel the most and who seems to switch from good to bad and back. There's a Queen of Atlantis figure (maybe played by Erika Blanc?). 

There's a thug who kills people with a gigantic metal claw device—nifty but a bit unwieldy to cart around. There's a previously unknown element called Rubidium, native to the asteroid belt, that can make people temporarily insensitive to pain and heal wounds instantly and is used as a torture device. People, including two of our hero's women, get packed into trunks and flown in the baggage hold of passenger planes. Clunky spacesuits are worn by the good guys to get past the forcefield, which itself is sometimes deadly and sometimes not. Steel has a radio transmission device implanted in his elbow. There's a mild catfight scene which Steel watches with a bemused and possibly aroused look on his face. I think this happens twice. Steel gets spritzed, in public at a nightclub, with a knockout drug and carried out, raising  no one's suspicions—I think this is when he gets packed in a trunk. There's an OK car chase. Near the end, there's even the destruction of Atlantis, ineffectively presented, followed by a concluding scene. The print on YouTube, in faded color, has no subtitles and the dialogue is occasionally murky which is why I was unclear about some of the names. I almost gave up on this a couple of times but John Ericson pulled me through. Your mileage will differ. BTW, IMDb spells the hero’s name as Steele, but in the movie, he spells it out as S-T-E-E-L, so that’s what I went with. [YouTube]

ELLERY QUEEN AND THE PERFECT CRIME (1941)

Storms and flooding threaten the South Valley Power Company dam. John Matthews, head of the company, gets word that the dam will break. He lies to stockholder Ray Jardin and tells him that the dam is sound, but Matthews then sells his stock and that of his son Walter. The next day, after the dam bursts, Walter, who is dating Jardin's daughter Marian, finds out that because of what his father did, Jardin has lost his life's savings, as did his valet Henry. Walter verbally attacks his father, then using the money he saved, goes to the auction of Jardin's estate and, with his friend Ellery Queen as a front, buys it all to give back to Jardin. The next day, when Walter goes to visit his father to try and make peace, he finds him dead in his study, a knife in his chest, and he himself is knocked unconscious. Ellery's dad, a police inspector, suspects Walter because of the bad blood between father and son. But in Matthews' house, there are two other suspects: Matthews' flighty sister Carlotta (whose life seems to revolve around her pet monkey Togo) and Matthews' lawyer Anthony who claims that Matthews was in the process of disinheriting Walter and leaving everything to Carlotta, who happens to be Anthony's lover. Good motive, right? But the police discover that the knife wound didn't cause Matthew’s death, poison did, and that he was probably killed out on a patio and dragged into the study, which puts Walter back under suspicion. There is also a sinister looking Chinese servant around. Even the monkey comes under suspicion. Can Ellery work with his dad, clear his friend and find the real killer?

Of all the lead characters in the continuing detective series of the classic era, Ellery Queen is perhaps the most generic. He's basically a playboy who unofficially helps his inspector father solve cases. Queen was created by two authors who used the pseudonym of Ellery Queen, and in the books, he is known as a writer who writes about the cases he works on. Here, he just seems to be helping out an old friend. Ralph Bellamy, who did not impress me as Ellery in the same year's PENTHOUSE MYSTERY, is again not especially impressive—he does nothing to put a unique stamp on the part. Charley Grapewin, again playing the father, is equally bland. It's up to the supporting cast to liven things up, and to be fair, Ellery doesn't seem to have much more screen time than anyone else. Spring Byington, always a delight, is the dotty Carlotta who may not be as dotty as she leads people to believe. Sidney Blackmer, a low-key old reliable who frequently looks like he has something devious on his mind, comes close to stealing his scenes as the lawyer. Old timer H.B. Warner is good as Jardin, and Douglas Dumbrille is fine in his limited time as Matthews. Margaret Lindsay (pictured with Bellamy) has a couple of nice moments as Queen's sidekick secretary, and John Beal is Walter. Not to spoil things, but one of the big plotlines winds up disappointingly being a red herring, and the actual solution is a bit of a letdown. As for the monkey, I've never understood the appeal of sidekick monkeys in movies (or on TV as in Friends). I understand their presence in jungle movies, but even there, they usually irritate me more than they entertain me. Of all the Ellery Queen actors I've seen, including Bellamy, William Gargan, Eddie Quillan and Donald Cook, the best is probably Jim Hutton who played him on TV. [YouTube]

LOVE AND DEATH IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS (1972)

An ornithology professor has rented a villa in the country and, while out birding, finds some discarded and tangled audio tapes. He takes them back to the house, plays them, and pieces together, through flashbacks, a sordid tale involving the previous tenants. Flame-haired Azzurra is living in the villa with her new husband Timothy, a concert pianist. Her handsome brother Manfredi stays with them, but the situation in the house grows uncomfortable as we see Azzurra and her brother engage in flirty behavior, including a kiss. Manfredi leaves but returns weeks later with Viola, a blonde girlfriend. As a mutual indifference grows between Azzurra and Timothy, Azzurra starts spending more time with Manfredi. At some point, Azzurra tries to kill herself in a bathtub but is saved by Viola. Soon Azzrurra and Viola are on the verge of getting physical. Azzurra starts seeing a therapist named Martin (the tapes the professor is listening to are recordings of their therapy sessions) who, it's made clear, is attracted to her. The chronology of the narrative is fractured, so I was sometimes unsure of what was happening when, but in the last fifteen minutes, a brutal revenge plot of murder plays out that comes to involve even the professor. Between the broken timelines, the incest, the insanity and the blood, this is surely crazy-ass cinema. I'm saying that mostly as a positive thing. It's Italian and has sex and murder, so it's often considered a giallo, but until the end, it didn't feel like one to me. It's more a kind of Gothic melodrama (without a Gothic look). The leads are all attractive and acting-wise are adequate. Erika Blanc, an actress associated with giallo, plays Azzurra; Orchidea De Santis is Viola; Rosario Borelli (aka Richard Melville) is Timothy. Best is the handsome German actor Peter Lee Lawrence, who later made a name in spaghetti westerns before his untimely death at 30 of brain cancer, as Manfredi, the most interesting character, though it must be said that character is not a strong element of the plot. I'm not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but at one point, Azzurra tells Manfredi that he is not her blood brother, but a bastard who was brought to live with her family. This may or may not be true, but it doesn't lessen the incest vibe, since they did indeed grow up living as siblings. The fragmented chronology is confusing and probably unnecessary, but the general plot outline is discernable, and a creepy vibe is sustained nicely. Is this really giallo? I feel it’s not, but it's maybe giallo adjacent. Pictured is Peter Lee Lawrence. [YouTube]