NEVER FEAR (1950)

We see Guy and Carol, a dance duo at the beginning of a promising career, in a nightclub doing a fencing number. The next day on the beach, Guy (Keefe Brasselle) proposes to Carol (Sally Forrest) who happily accepts. But at their next rehearsal, she gets dizzy and feverish and collapses, and is eventually diagnosed with polio. Unable to walk, she is taken to a rehabilitation center where her prognosis is unclear. She encourages Guy to find a new partner but instead he becomes a real estate agent and says he’ll wait for her. In the center, Carol is bitter and impatient with herself and others, and swats away the attentions of the handsome, wheelchair-bound Len (Hugh O’Brien). However, as she begins to make progress, she warms to him. Then Guy visits, still waiting for her, though now she swats him away by screaming, “I’m a cripple!” which brings contemptuous looks from the able-bodied partner of other patients. At her 21st birthday party, Guy breaks the news that he has found a new dance partner and is about to go on tour. Suddenly Len seems a lot more attractive, but is he still interested? This medical melodrama, a genre that was big in the 1950, gets points for mostly downplaying the drama and adopting a quasi-documentary style—much of it was filmed at the Kabat-Kaiser Institute in Santa Monica with real patients as extras, including a fascinating wheelchair square dance. But what isn’t downplayed is Carol’s self-pitying attitude, which I’m sure is realistic but which also bogs the middle of the film down. Sally Forrest got good notices for her performance, but she was unable to parlay that into a solid film career and left the screen in 1956 although she appeared in a few TV parts later. For what it’s worth, her movements make the character’s disability seem real. Brasselle, another marginal 50s name, is fine as is O’Brien. This is Ida Lupino's first credit as a director; she'd been acting in movies since the 1930s and continued to do so into the 1970s. Her touch here is impersonal with little manifested in the way of style or strong storytelling, though she went to make the tense little thriller THE HITCH-HIKER and forged a strong career as a television director. Pictured are Forrest and Brasselle. [TCM]

THE PREVIEW MURDER MYSTERY (1936)

At World Attractions movie studio, star Neil Du Beck is finishing filming a bullfight musical, Song of the Toreador, a remake of a silent film that starred Edwin Strange, a popular silent actor who died mysteriously before the arrival of sound. Neil's leading lady is Claire Woodward, who was married to Strange but is now married to the director, E Gordon Smith. Neil is a little on edge as he's been getting notes warning him that he won't live to see the premiere of his movie. The studio's PR man, Johnny Morgan, is called in to investigate on the premise that the notes are part of a publicity stunt, but nothing turns up, except that the press gets wind of it and breaks the story on the night of the film's sneak preview. The film seems well received, but as the audience applauds, Neil is found dead in his seat from poison put in his bicarbonate. A few days later, Claire, shooting another film, is almost killed when she is shot at from a blank gun that was loaded with real bullets, and another threatening note is found. The police lock down the studio to investigate while allowing filming on various projects to continue. Meanwhile, Johnny and his secretary Peggy, a horoscope fan and potential girlfriend, snoop around on their own. They set up a trap that snaps a picture in the dark of someone who looks like the late Edwin Strange—has the actor returned from the grave, or is someone masquerading as him to cause havoc?

A few months ago, Turner Classic Movies paid tribute to B-movies of the classic era, and they showed this film from the Paramount library that I'd never heard of, but I'm glad I watched. The hook behind the plot is that we get to see life inside the studio gates, and though the premise of a multi-day lockdown is a bit far-fetched, it works. Reginald Denny (Johnny) was a very busy character actor at the bigger studios (Rebecca, the original Of Human Bondage, the 1936 Romeo and Juliet) but was just as busy in B-films; he played occasional leads but is best known to B-buffs as Algy, Bulldog Drummond's sidekick in a series of movies. Frances Drake (Peggy) had a relatively short career, retiring in the early 1940s, best known to me as the damsel in distress at the hands of Peter Lorre in Mad Love. They're supposed to be the leads here, but they wind up overshadowed by supporting actors such as Rod La Roque (Neil), Gail Patrick (Claire), Ian Keith (Smith), and George Barbier (a studio head). Part of this is due to the fact that Johnny and Peggy don't take center stage until almost a third of the way into the movie, and part of it is due to the writing—as characters, the leads just aren't terribly interesting. We see brief glimpses into a number of movies being shot, the most interesting being what looks like a Caligari-like horror movie with Henry Brandon (pictured) as a character called The Bat Man, a few years before the Batman superhero we all know was created. The actor Charlie Ruggles appears as himself very briefly. This is no neglected gem of mystery or suspense, but it works nicely as a fun novelty. [TCM]