JUNGLE MAN (1941)

We meet Betty and her father William indulging in the upper-class joy of watching a yacht regatta when her fiancé Bruce announces that he and his buddy Andy are soon heading to Africa in search of the lost City of the Dead. Betty wants to go along for the excitement and, as her father's brother James is a missionary over there, they both decide to go. In Africa (after a few minutes of stock footage of hippos and crocodiles and snakes and zebras) we see Father James conferring with Bob, a research doctor who is on the verge of finding a cure for the dreaded malaka fever. When our American visitors arrive, Betty is nearly attacked by a leopard which Andy shoots, and a little later, Bob saves her from a lion. (Despite Betty coming off as strong-willed, she spends most of the movie screaming for someone to save her.) James is happy to see his brother and niece, and Betty seems happy to make the acquaintance of the handsome Bob, something which triggers a bit of jealousy in Bruce. Rounding out the group are Buck, the nervous nelly comic relief, and James' pet tiger Satan. After Bruce and Andy set out for the lost city, Bob gets news that a shipment of his fever cure has gone down with a sunken ship off the coast, just as an attack has broken out in a nearby village. He and Betty go to the village to tend to the sick as Bruce finds the lost city and snaps lots of photographs. When Bruce and Andy return to the village, Bruce has malaka fever, so Bob decides to head to the coast to try and salvage the sunken serum. He does, but on his return, Betty has the fever as well. Can Bob save them?

One of the things I liked about this and that separates it from the average jungle melodrama of the era is that there is no villain, no bad guy actively trying to sabotage either the city seekers or the doctor. Also, despite the title, there is no real Tarzan figure, though there is a former Tarzan actor, the hunky and stoic Buster Crabbe, as Bob (pictured) who, while never donning a loincloth manages to get shirtless a couple of times. It was fun to see him co-starring with Charles Middleton as Father James; their previous work together was as good guy Flash Gordon and bad guy Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials—and Middleton is passive and laconic here, looking nothing at all like Ming. Sheila Darcy makes for a colorless Betty, just as she made a colorless Dragon Lady in the Terry and the Pirates serial. For the record, Weldon Heyburn and Robert Carson are OK as Bruce and Andy, though Vince Barnett has the sadly thankless part of Buck who meets an unhappy end, rare for comic relief characters. I liked seeing the City of the Dead, which was actually the real life Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. Other viewers have noted that it feels like stock footage fills up almost half of the movie's one hour running time, but such footage is par for the course for a B-adventure film of the time. Best exchange: Bob, as he prepares to give Betty the serum, "You’re my first guinea pig"; Betty, "It's nice being your guinea pig." I liked this, but it's pretty much for die-hard B-jungle film fans (or Buster Crabbe fans) only. [YouTube]

TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS (1960/1966)

We are told that in Africa, Tarzan "befriends the weak, helps the distressed, and enforces the jungle's primitive code of justice." Tarzan, Jane and Boy live a seemingly idyllic life up in the jungle treetops, with their pet chimp Cheeta whom we see save a napping Jane from a snake. Tarzan hears a local tribe sending drum messages to warn others about a trapper in the area. Schroeder, collecting animals for circuses, accidentally wounded a native, and now he has killed an elephant and captured its orphaned baby. Tarzan frees the baby, but when Schroeder comes across Boy and Cheeta, he grabs them, holding them hostage so Tarzan will let them escape. Tarzan, however, jumps on a giraffe, calls on the other elephants to stampede, and foils Schroeder's plans. Before long, another visitor to the jungle makes trouble. Sikes is looking for revenge against Tarzan for getting his brother jailed for seven years. His associate, Lapin, is looking for the treasures of the lost city of Zaibo. Tarzan confronts them and does battle with a big thug who looks like a Turkish wrestler. Sikes tells Tarzan he's going to hunt him down to either kill him or tame him, giving him a two hour head start. Tarzan says, "He who hunts in jungle is in turn hunted," and that's exactly what happens—instead of running off, Tarzan takes to the treetops and follows Sikes. They all wind up in the ruins of Zaibo where Tarzan, as promised, enforces justice.

The history of this Tarzan oddity is a bit messy. Three pilot episodes of a Tarzan TV show starring Gordon Scott were shot in 1958 (Scott, pictured, was playing Tarzan in the movies at the time) but no network was interested, so a short feature film was put together from the pilot footage and released overseas in 1960, and eventually aired on American television in 1966. That's why this film feels a bit disjointed; the first section (roughly 20 minutes) is the Schroeder story, a traditional white trapper tale, and the last section (50 minutes) follows Sikes and Lapin in a "Most Dangerous Game" story crossed with a Lost City narrative. Jane plays little part in the proceedings, and Boy (after complaining about having to read Treasure Island) vanishes at the half-hour mark. Though obviously done on a cheaper budget than the theatrical films, this is watchable, largely due to Gordon Scott. As an actor, he's not as interesting as Lex Barker (pre-Scott) or Jock Mahoney (post-Scott) but he has an impressive physique and is pretty good at vine swinging, though I suspect that some of that is done by a stunt double. Eve Brent (Jane) and Ricky Sorenson (Boy) are bland, as are the bad guys, though Sol Gorss, as Sikes, works up some decent villainy. There appears to be freshly shot African footage that is worked in well with the studio scenes. There is an odd shot of an animal (maybe a mongoose) killing a snake included for no apparent reason. IMDb calls this a 1960 TV movie, but they're wrong—it wasn't shown on TV until six years later. Some reviewers claim that Sikes is getting revenge for Schroeder, but they have different last names, and Sikes says that his brother has spent 7 years in jail, so it can't be the same person. [DVD]

SATAN IN HIGH HEELS (1962)

Stacy, a buxom carnival stripper, threatens to leave before the evening show unless she gets a raise, but when her junkie husband Rudy, just out of jail, shows up with a wad of cash and wants her to go to New York with him, she steals the money and heads out to the airport alone to start a new life. The man next to her on the plane is a lonely businessman who takes an interest in her, and once in the city, he takes her to a nightclub run by Pepe, a tough but friendly lesbian who is impressed with her audition and hires her, and also lets Stacy live with her, no strings attached. Paul, the gay bartender, resents Stacy as a lucky amateur, but ends up impressed with her singing talent. Arnold, the club owner, shows up and is quite taken with Stacy much to the dismay of his mistress Felice (not to mention Arnold's wife who lives in Paris). Stacy knows Arnold can do good things for her career but she's more interested is his wastrel son Larry who can no longer rely on his father for the means to live a playboy life. Pepe warns Stacy that "Larry isn't a man" (referring, I presume, to his immaturity) and Stacy replies, "Then I'll make him one!" She sleeps with Larry, then after a confrontation with Arnold, sleeps with him as well. Just when it seems like things couldn't get more messed up, who should show up but Rudy, back on heroin and looking for Stacy.

This grindhouse film is often referred to as sexploitation but the sex is implied rather than shown, though there are a couple of semi-strip dances done by large-breasted women (Meg Myles, who plays Stacy, and real-life stripper Sabrina playing herself—and though she is apparently genuinely British, her accent sounds laughably fake). Myles, who has a good singing voice, does a song in leather brandishing a riding crop. The acting is about what you'd expect for the low budget, but Grayson Hall (a stage actor later known as Dr. Hoffman on Dark Shadows) is quite good as Pepe, and the guy playing the junkie husband (Earl Hammond) has a nice intensity going for him—he went on to a prolific career as a voice actor. Robert Yuro as Larry is a letdown with average looks and no charisma; same for Mike Keene as his dad. I enjoyed Del Tenney (Paul) who gives a relatively subtle performance as a gay man. He has a fun line when he refers to the innocent and slightly dumpy assistant Peter as a "clean cut kid," making the line the filthiest sounding one in the movie. Tenney went on to direct the cult horror film THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH. The atmosphere is sleazy throughout, but the restored version I saw looks crisp and clean. Considering that Pepe's club is supposed to be rather high-toned, there are several cutaway shots of sweaty, intense men enjoying the show perhaps a little too much. There's a great jazz score by Mundell Lowe. The ending is a bit downbeat without being depressing. Stacy, though perhaps not admirable, is never really satanic as she tries to get ahead in a world in which men always want to dominate her. Overall, worth watching, especially in the gorgeous print available on YouTube. Pictured are Tenney and Myles. [YouTube]

NO QUESTIONS ASKED (1951)

Insurance lawyer Steve Kiever (Barry Sullivan) is on the run from the cops through the nighttime city streets (film noir element #1). In a flashback (noir element #2), we see how he came to this spot. Steve is a good lawyer but not quite good enough to get the raise his fiancée Ellen (Arlene Dahl) wants to ensure the good life for them. Steve does some negotiating with his boss Manstan and with some gangsters and initiates a plan whereby the company would pay a large sum to the criminals to get insured stolen property back. The company wouldn't have to pay out an exorbitant sum to the claimants, and Steve would get a cut of the money for himself. This works and Steve buys Ellen an expensive ring, but she has already left him and married a wealthy man while on vacation. Steve keeps up his contacts and Inspector Duggan (George Murphy) thinks that Steve, though technically within the law, has triggered a crime wave. Steve starts dating Joan (Jean Hagan), a secretary at work, but when Ellen returns to town, Steve gravitates back to her (film noir element #3). While the three run into each other at a Broadway show, two women pull a big jewelry heist in the ladies room, though they wind up being men in drag (and, it's hinted, gay men). Franko, a burly crook who prides himself on how long he can stay underwater without breathing (yes, this is a 'Chekhov's gun'), has the jewels but this time, Steve may not be able to pull off his rescue job. This is a legit film noir, for the three plot elements pointed out above, and mostly because the hero is morally flawed—he is generally a good person but gets caught up in the gray area of hanging out with gangsters to enrich his bank account and may not be able to extricate himself from his mob ties. The central trio of actors are OK. Sullivan as the conflicted hero isn’t particularly compelling, though the women fare much better: Dahl as the femme fatale and Hagan as the understanding good girl who might be able to save the hero from himself. The two thieves in drag (one of whom is the busy supporting actor William Reynolds, billed for some reason as Regnolds) are fun; when they claim that their drag performances are from their background in vaudeville, one thug says, "Stick to dancing, Nijinsky!" Their drag is good though obvious from the moment we see them. Pretty average film noir. Pictured are Reynolds and Sullivan. [TCM]

THE SWORD AND THE CROSS (1958)

In 33 A.D., the Roman emperor Tiberius has sent special envoy Gaius Marcellus to Judea, a sign that Rome is not happy with the way that possible rebels are being handled by Pontius Pilate. The two biggest threats are Barabbas, bandit and political revolutionary, and Jesus, an itinerant preacher who has gathered a crowd of restless followers. On the road, Gaius and his men clash with Barabbas and they rescue Mary Magdalene, the mistress of the wealthy Anan, from abduction. She tends to Gaius' wounds, and when he asks if she'll be easy to find when he arrives in Jerusalem, she replies, "Perhaps." It turns out that Gaius and Anan knew each other back in Rome, but Gaius starts an affair with Mary who, to be fair, has a past as a courtesan—it was never clear to me if Anan actually expected Mary to be true to him (perhaps, as in the Cole Porter song, true in her fashion). Tensions increase as the Jewish crowds tear down the Roman Eagle erected outside the temple. Later, at a party thrown by Anan for Gaius, Anan makes Mary perform a lascivious dance aimed at an elderly follower of Christ who has been captured to be mocked. During the dance, Mary suddenly stares at his face and stops the dance. That evening, she sees an apparition of Jesus outside her window. She tells Anan that he must never touch her again; in fact, she wants no men to touch her. After having the old Christian freed she goes to the temple where the crowds threaten to stone her until Jesus intervenes with, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Mary's critically ill brother Lazarus dies and Jesus intervenes again, resurrecting him. From here on, it's the basic Passion story from the Bible with Gaius and Anan taking supporting roles, though it is Gaius who leads the arrest of Jesus at Gethsemane, thanks to the betrayal of Judas for thirty pieces of silver. The film ends short of the resurrection, with Mary watching the crucifixion as a storm gathers.

This Italian film is a quasi-peplum rendering of the story of Mary Magdalene, conflating her story from the Gospels as a follower of Jesus with the figure of Mary of Bethany, sister to Lazarus and Martha. As such, it's an odd duck of a film. The first half is relatively involving melodrama concerning the love triangle between Mary, Anan, and Gaius. It's clear we're to identify more with Gaius than Anan, but because this plotline is more or less derailed by Mary's slow transformation into a Jesus follower, any tension generated is dissipated. Anan (Massimo Serato) is a more interesting character, and Serato is a more appealing actor than Jorge Mistral who plays Gaius. But for me, neither character is developed very well, though I must admit I liked the ambiguity about how traditionally good or bad either one is. The young and handsome Terence Hill, better known for his spaghetti westerns of the 1970s, is Lazarus, whom we never see after his resurrection. Many critics find Yvonne De Carlo (pictured with Serato) problematic as Mary. At the time, she was 36 and a bit past her prime, though she sustained a lengthy career as a character actor into the 1990s. She gets the occasional glamor shot here, and it's not really her age that's the problem. It's that she plays this leading role very much as she played the supporting role of Sephora in The Ten Commandments, adequately but with a lack of star charisma. I came to wish that the actress playing her sister Martha (Rossana Podesta) had been cast as Mary instead. Martha's role is fairly slight, but Podesta is very good and went on to have a decent career in peplum films. There is a nice sword fight between Gaius and Barabbas (Andrea Aureli) but otherwise not a lot of action. A nice try for something a little different but not terribly compelling. Italian title: LA SPADA E LA CROCE. [YouTube]

THE WANDERING SHADOW (1920)

Wil, who considers himself the legal heir of his cousin, the recently deceased free-love philosopher Georg, is attempting to sue Irmgard, Georg's lover, so she doesn't get what Wil thinks is his inheritance. Coincidentally, he sees her on a train, looking desperate and distraught, so he decides to hold off on the suit temporarily and follows her. On the train, she gets a telegram from John, Georg's twin brother, saying "If you think you can escape me, you are surely mistaken." Irmgard arrives at a mountain village where a large wedding is taking place. She hears a death knell ringing for a monk at a nearby monastery and is told that is a bad omen. The room Irmgard has booked has been given to someone else, but with Wil's help (though he doesn’t tell her who he is), she gets a room in an inn across the river. John is soon directly on her trail, telling people she is mentally ill and needs his help. She takes off for the mountains to hide; Wil offers to help her but she says she must bear her cross alone. When she runs across a bearded shepherd up in the hills, she melodramatically announces to him, "I am looking for a path that leads away from misery." He replies that he can't point her to somewhere that doesn't exist. Standing before a statue of a Madonna and child, she prays for help. With bad weather coming, the shepherd takes her to his isolated cabin for the night. Irmgard hears another death knell and sees an image of a skeleton hand ringing the bell. Suddenly, there is an avalanche that leaves the two trapped in the buried cabin.

We now get a long backstory flashback. Years ago, Georg, famous for his free love views, hires Irmgard as an assistant. They fall in love and she wants to marry, but he won't contradict his beliefs and says he will only take her symbolically as a "wife in free love." When she becomes pregnant, he still refuses to engage in a legal marriage so, in secret, she marries Georg's twin brother John but puts Georg's name in the marriage register so her baby will be considered legitimate. Georg learns of this and fakes an accidental death then escapes for the mountains to live alone, vowing by the Madonna statue that he will not leave the mountains until the statue walks through the snow. Back in civilization, Georg's will leaves everything to Irmgard, but John claims it as his because he is the man actually married to her. Wil feels he has a solid claim as well. Back in the present, we realize the shepherd is actually Georg. As a rescue team tries to dig out the buried cabin, the now crazed John begins throwing rocks at the rescuers, while Wil decides he wants to marry Irmgard. How will this wild melodrama end?

Some fans of director Fritz Lang consider this a strange one-off as it doesn't fit with the rest of his oeuvre (sci-fi films like Metropolis, crime films like Spies or the Dr. Mabuse movies, or his later Hollywood noir films). But Lang was no stranger to melodrama (as in the Metropolis narrative) and this is even spiced with mysticism, like The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, in the element of the death knell and the Madonna. Many online reviewers find this film hard to follow. No complete version of the film is known to exist, but the print in the Kino Classics Blu-ray set contains a handful of title cards that explain missing scenes, and this version is easy to follow, considering the convoluted nature of the narrative and its structure. This has been seen as a forerunner of the German “mountain movie” genre; it is set in the mountains, and there is a natural disaster, but otherwise it's not all that similar to those films. The whole thing actually feels rather fresh and interesting for the era: the free-love aspect, the doppelganger element, the character of Wil who goes from revenge-seeker to marriage-seeker, and the potentially miraculous set-up of the Madonna statue coming to life. The acting is generally more naturalistic than the average for the time. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, much better known later as Dr. Mabuse and the villain Rotwang in Metropolis, is Wil; Mia May makes for a rather plain Irmgard; Hans Marr is fine in the dual roles of the brothers. It takes a good ten to fifteen minutes to acclimate yourself to the narrative, but I was quite glad I stuck with this. Also released as The Wandering Image, which is a more exact translation of its German title. Pictured at top are Marr, Klein-Rogge and May. [Blu-ray]

THE WOMAN RACKET (1930)

The police raid a speakeasy called the Blue Moon and round up most of the rich patrons as they try to escape through the back. As police officer Tom Hayes makes a last check, he sees a young woman in a sparkly outfit named Julia trying to climb up a tree. She pleads with him to let her go since she was just the entertainment, not a patron. Taken with her, Tom lets her go and also starts dating her. Before long, she agrees to stop working and they get married, but in a few months, she's complaining about living on a cop's salary and wants to go back to work. Tom won't allow it, partly because he knows the manager of the club, Chris Miller, is involved in shady dealings. Eventually Julia leaves Tom and gets her old job back. She lives at the club and has a casual affair with the slimy Chris before beginning to distance herself from him for his thuggish ways. She becomes buddies with a new pianist, Rags, and his girl singer, Buddy, and when Chris starts tempting the innocent Buddy with promises of a big job in Chicago with a Broadway bound show, Julia warns him to knock it off. Soon she admits to her friends that if Tom ever asked her to come back, she would. When a patron named Wardell breaks the club's gambling bank, Chris tells Julia to take Wardell to a nearby chop suey joint and get him drunk so Chris's men can roll him and get the cash back. Feeling pressured, she does, but the evening ends with Wardell beaten into unconsciousness. Tom, alone and unhappy but not actually divorced, has been promoted to sergeant and when he arrives at the scene, he finds a compact that he gave Julia as a gift. He hides it but goes to Chris to let him know that he is under suspicion. When Wardell dies, Chris finds things getting too hot, so he gets tickets for himself and Buddy to get away to Chicago. When Julia finds out, she threatens to talk, so Chris knocks her out and stuffs her in a Chicago-bound trunk. Will Tom arrive in time to set things right? And will Julia still be alive?

This pre-Code melodrama provides a rare chance to see the silent film star Blanche Sweet (Julia) in a talkie. Her career was already in decline and she retired from the screen in 1930 at the age of 34. She's fine here, coming off as strong and energetic, and still quite attractive, and there was nothing wrong with her voice. The Irish Tom Moore (Tom) was one of the three Moore brothers—Matt and Owen are the others—who were known for their character roles in the 1930s. Though he seems a bit rough and tumble to attract a sort like Julia, he does have a forceful screen presence and is sympathetic despite his dismissive treatment of Julia. John Miljan, who specialized in slick bad guys, is OK if a bit restrained as Chris; he could have turned up the slime quotient a bit. I liked Sally Starr and Bobby Agnew as Buddy and Rags. Oddly, the last shot of the movie isn't of our main romantic couple (yes, there’s a happy ending) but of Buddy and Rags reuniting. Sweet and Starr each get a musical number, with Starr dancing with more enthusiasm than talent. Agnew gave up acting a few years later and had a long career as an assistant director in movies and TV. Stylistically, the movie is a notch above many of the other early talkies of 1930. Static shots alternate with a moving camera, though occasionally a shot is held too long or a minor flub stays in. The opening raid is shot mostly from floor view, focusing on the shoes and legs of the fleeing patrons. The climax, with some gunplay, is shot in the dark so we hear but don't see the violence. One oddity which other viewers have noticed: though the club is raided in the opening, it never seems threatened by the law later, with Tom even visiting without the intent to raid. Pictured are Moore and Sweet. [TCM]

THE APPOINTMENT (1969)

A single lawyer nearing middle age (Omar Sharif, at right) gets dressed one morning and, looking in the mirror, thinks that he's looking more and more like his father as he ages, referring to seeing "the black nostrils of death" on his face. Driving through Rome, he is caught in a traffic jam and winds up captivated by a woman he sees walking down the street. Later, at lunch with an old friend and fellow lawyer (Fausto Tozzi), Sharif discovers that the woman (Anouk Aimee) is a high-class model and the fiancée of Tozzi. Some time later, Tozzi tells Sharif that he found out that Aimee is also a high-class call girl, or so he suspects when a friend shows Tozzi a pin he took from a hooker that is identical to a pin that Tozzi gave Aimee and she has since said she lost. Tozzi dumps her, which leads Sharif to begin dating her. Without telling her about his suspicions about her, he investigates her, going so far as to contact an infamous high-class madam (Lotte Lenya) who sets him up with someone he suspects is Aimee. Sharif and Aimee go off for a romantic weekend in Sardinia but she refuses to have sex so he leaves in a huff. He eventually is called by Lenya for an appointment with the whore he thinks is Aimee, but she never shows up. After Aimee tries to kill herself, she and Sharif reconcile and get married, and they're happy for maybe five minutes until Tozzi replants the seed of suspicion in Sharif. Sharif sets up another appointment through Lenya, and the consequences are a bit unexpected and tragic.

This may have been a well-shot movie (the director is old pro Sidney Lumet) but the print I saw on TCM was ugly, with murky browns and yellows predominating. That might have been intentional, but I suspect this forgotten movie could stand a restoration. But will anyone want to watch it? The score is lush and the melodrama is old-fashioned, though the explicitness of Sharif's suspicions are only possible due to the end of the production code. In addition to a drab look, the acting is similarly drab. The two main supporting actors, Lenya and Tozzi, are fine, but Sharif and Aimee seem to alternate between low-energy and overacting, and it's difficult to care about the tensions that attract and repel these two. At the very end, when you think that the issue of Aimee's occupation will be left up in the air, there is a twist that does answer the question and I did appreciate that, but I was still left with the unlikability of both Sharif and Aimee. [TCM]

SHIP OF FOOLS (1965)

It’s 1933. A passenger liner takes off from Vera Cruz in Mexico on a month-long trip to Bremerhaven in Germany and a dwarf on the ship (Michael Dunn, at left) talks directly to the camera about it being a ship of fools, wondering if we might recognize anyone on board. We get to know a large cast of characters. The German captain is fond of the young ship's doctor (Oskar Werner) who has a weak heart and who, despite his blond good looks, seems inexperienced in love; this is his last trip on the ship and the captain encourages him to live it up. Jose Ferrer is a loud, antisemitic German publisher who dallies with a young good-time girl and makes obnoxious proclamations about race at the Captain's dining table. An insecure and struggling young artist (George Segal) is traveling with his mistress (Elizabeth Ashley), also an artist, though they are bunked in separate cabins and seem anxious to see if a month of not having sex will strengthen their tenuous bond—though talented, he's a bit hotheaded and produces political art that she doesn’t care for. A lonely but aloof middle-aged woman (Vivian Leigh) drinks and flirts without much success. Heinz Ruhmann, a German Jew, has been ejected by Ferrer from the Captain's table where most of the German passengers sit; he shares his exile table with Dunn and later with another German who makes the mistake of mentioning that his wife is Jewish. Lee Marvin is a washed-up baseball player who has regrets. There is also a wheelchair-bound evangelist and his weakling nephew who is getting tired of pushing him around and not having a life of his own. The ship stops in Cuba to pick up hundreds of Spanish workers who have no jobs after the sugar market collapses; they are pressed in tightly in steerage. Arriving with them is a countess (Simone Signoret), being deported after taking sides with labor agitators. She asks Werner for sleeping medicine, but he figures out she is an opium addict looking for a fix. However, the two slowly bond and have a tender relationship that becomes physical—she picks up a dry medical book from his shelves and reads from it, pretending it’s "Lady Chatterley’s Lover."

Other episodic setpieces involve a flamenco dancer (Jose Greco) and his largely female troupe, some of whom Greco pimps out to passengers. The evangelist's nephew falls for one of the dancers, then is disillusioned when she asks him for money before she lets him in her room. A rich couple insist on having their bulldog sit at the Captain's table at dinner; when two beastly children throw the dog overboard, a Spanish woodcarver from steerage (whom Segal has been chummy with) jumps over to save it, which he does at the cost of his own life, but the couple only care about the dog. Leigh leads an officer (Werner Klemperer) on but dismisses him, and he tells her she will end her years sitting at sidewalk cafes with a paid escort. A drunken Marvin comes on to her, but when he assumes she's a whore, she beats him and throws him out of her room. When Ruhmann seems not at all concerned about the status of Jews in Germany, Dunn berates him and he replies, "There are a million Jews in Germany—what are they going to do, kill all of us?" By the end, as they disembark in Germany, some stories are tied up, others are not, and the coming Nazi horrors are foreshadowed. Dunn turns to us again and corrects his opening remarks: "What has all this to do with us? Nothing."

Based on a novel by Katherine Anne Porter, drawn from an actual trip she took, this film is often criticized for being a puffed-up and overlong all-star vehicle (sort of true), or a Grand Hotel imitation set at sea (definitely true). At 150 minutes, it is certainly too long by almost a half an hour, but its length does give the various characters and stories room to breathe, with Signoret, Werner and Leigh given the most focus—those three also give the best performances, though most everyone is good. Michael Dunn, who got an Oscar nomination, is especially fine and deserved more screen time; because he functions as a kind of Greek chorus, his character is the only one that is never fleshed out. Segal and Ashley, early in their careers, are sexy and charismatic. Charles de Vries is good in a one-note but effective performance as the nephew. Leigh, in her last screen performance, feels a bit artificial at times, like she's giving us a reheated version of Blanche DuBois, but that is sort of what the character calls for. She has a moment near the end where she slips in a Scarlett O’Hara simper that is perfection. Signoret and Werner (pictured at right) give well-measured performances that could have tipped over into overdone sentimentality, but they never do. The blustery Ferrer strikes the only false note. The ship sets look real enough; it's obvious that it was all shot in a studio with ocean backgrounds, but that's not bothersome in this melodrama. Stanley Kramer directed in widescreen black & white and you really don’t miss the color. Set aside an afternoon for this, overlong but not painfully so. [TCM]

HAMLET (1964—Russian version)

This visually stunning film from Russian director Grigoriy Kozintsev may be the best film adaptation of Shakespeare that I've seen. I imagine it helps to have some familiarity with the original play; this is in Russian with English subtitles, and I don't know if the subtitles are taken directly from Shakespeare—the most famous speeches and lines are, but I wondered if some lines were translations into English of the Russian translations (written by Doctor Zhivago author Boris Pasternak) of the original. Partly because my eyes were dazzled by the visuals, I occasionally had a hard time keeping up with the subtitles, but I know the play so I had no problem keeping up. The performances are all solid. I think Hamlet is a difficult role because the text leaves it open to so much interpretation. The play has famously been described as being about a man who can't make up his mind—I won't do a full plot summary, but basically Hamlet spends the whole play trying to decide when and how to take revenge against Claudius (Hamlet's uncle) who killed the king (Hamlet's father) and married the widowed queen (Hamlet's mother). The general consensus among the play's characters is that Hamlet, who is acting acting strange from the start, goes insane, but is he really or is he faking it? The famous phrase about there being a "method to the madness" comes from this play, but it's not always clear how much of Hamlet's behavior is deliberate method. Some actors have made him almost playful at times, others make him fixate on revenge more seriously, and some play him as psychologically confused. Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy leans into the confusion. His performance is not especially layered but it is effective enough. At nearly 40, he’s a bit too old for the part of the student prince, but most other major films have featured actors between 35 and 40 in the role (Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson) so we're used to that—in fact, Ethan Hawke in the modern 2000 adaptation is probably the youngest big screen Hamlet at thirty. Smoktunovskiy goes the naturalistic route, with his monologues delivered as voiceovers, and gives the part the gravitas it needs. The other actors are fine, though none really stand out except for Anastasiya Vertinskaya who is the best Ophelia I've seen, handling the sad downward spiral of the character with restraint and believability. 

But as I've noted, it's the look of the film that will impress you. Much of the movie is shot on outdoor locations, hence hills and beaches and fields galore. The traveling players' play is performed in an outdoor setting and it works well. The very impressive castle looks for all the world like a real castle but it's apparently a set that took six months to build. Much if not most of the action takes place at night, taking advantage of the stark black and white cinematography. In widescreen, the deep focus shots are remarkable. One online reviewer noted a resemblance to the style of Ingmar Bergman, and that is emphasized by the leading man's blond hair and Max von Sydow look. The voiceover "To be or not to be" soliloquy starts with Hamlet looking right at the camera, then walking along the castle walls against the tumult of the sea next to him. The appearance of the king's ghost is a fantastic visual effect. At two and half hours, the text has obviously been cut, but as far as I'm concerned, no harm has been done. A beautiful and powerful movie. [YouTube]

THE KING AND THE CHORUS GIRL (1937)

The deposed King Alfred VII is living a dissolute life in Paris with his only two subjects, Count Humbert and Duchess Anna, who act as his servants. One morning, Alfred lies in bed, seemingly dying but actually hungover—he never has any fun because, as the Duchess says, it takes him "three days to pass out, three days to come to," then Humbert notes, "And then it's always Sunday." His doctor diagnoses him with acute boredom. They take him out to the Folies Bergère where he is smitten with Dorothy, a chorus girl who he thinks is flirting with him by flashing light in his face with a small mirror, though it turns out that she flashes that light at whoever happens to be sitting where he sat. Attracted to her, he asks her over for dinner, but when she arrives, he's already forgotten about her and is asleep in bed. The next day, to goad Alfred, Humbert tells him that Dorothy never even showed up, which intrigues Alfred who is used to getting what he wants. Humbert and Anna contact Dorothy and enlist her in a plan: Anna thinks that Alfred needs someone who will resist him in order to come back to life, and she agrees to be the resister. Their first date at her place is a disaster because he's already drunk when he shows up. He passes out on her bed and she goes to his apartment to sleep. Slowly he warms up to her, and she to him, but when she realizes that a King would most likely not marry a commoner, she gets Humbert to hire an American waiter to pose as her fiancé to help her break things off. As you might expect, there is eventually a happy ending for the king and the chorus girl who are last seen heading to Niagara Falls.

This is, for the most part, a totally average 1930s rom-com, in many ways not that different from more modern iterations today on the Hallmark Channel. The script was co-written by Groucho Marx, and many critics find it disappointing that it's so pedestrian. But I suspect he was brought in as a joke doctor to work on the screenplay by Norman Krasna. Some of the lines are fairly Marxian: "How did you find Belgium?"; "I didn’t look for it." When Dorothy says to Humbert that there is no royalty in America, he replies, "A smart, well-dressed royalty is awfully good for the tourist trade." There is also a fun running gag about an ancestor who was Alfred IV & V. These bits are sprinkled throughout the movie, but the actors' delivery doesn’t always do them justice. Joan Blondell, as Dorothy, is quite good, as is Edward Everett Horton as the scheming and dithering Humbert. Mary Nash is a bit bland as Anna, though it's nice to see Jane Wyman in a small role. Fernand Gravet (who later went by Gravey) is a letdown as the King—he seems to be trying to throw himself into the part, but he's all surface, no depth. He only made a handful of movies in Hollywood, with his biggest role as Johann Strauss in THE GREAT WALTZ, but he had a long career in French films up to his death in 1970. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy who went on to better things, like THE WIZARD OF OZ. Pictured are Nash, Gravet, and Horton. [TCM]

THE ROCKET FROM CALABUCH (1956)

Prof. Hamilton (Edmund Gwenn), an American rocket scientist, is unhappy that his work is being used for warlike ends, so he walks away one day and secretly goes to the Spanish island of Calabuch to live a simple existence. When he arrives on the beach, Juan, a small-time smuggler, sends him into the village to take a small package to a man nicknamed Lobster. Lobster happens to be in jail, and the police chief (and military leader) Matias throws Hamilton in jail with Lobster, assuming he's a smuggler as well. Matias seems like a hard ass at first (we see him marching soldiers dressed in ancient Roman garb about town in an army drill), but it turns out not so much: the lock on Lobster's jail cell is broken, so Lobster and Hamilton can basically come and go at will—and because Lobster is the only projectionist in town, his presence is necessary on movie night. We meet the various charming and eccentric inhabitants of the town, including Matias's daughter Teresa who plans to elope with Juan; Elisa, the schoolteacher who has her students sing their multiplication tables; Vicente, who takes days to paint a name on a canoe on the beach; Fermin, a sad sack soldier left out in the elements to guard against an imagined threat from the sea. There is also a lighthouse keeper who plays chess over the phone with the village priest; a bullfighter to comes to the village for a festival with an older, lazy bull who manages to chase the bullfighters into the sea, and a fireworks maker who ends up getting some help from Hamilton for a festival display that they hope will win the village a prize. As in other movies filled with odd but good-hearted townspeople (Ealing comedies like TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT and WHISKY GALORE, any number of Frank Capra movies, the TV show Northern Exposure), there aren't really any bad guys, and everyone comes together at the end to try and save the outsider from a menacing force—in this case, the US government helicopter that arrives to take Hamilton back home.

I was unfamiliar with the Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga, but he displays a fine, light touch here; you occasionally expect things to move in the direction of magical realism, but it never goes that far. Gwenn, in his last film role, is fine, often coming off in personality like Kris Kringle (MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET), even going so far as to play matchmaker for Lobster and the schoolteacher. It's disappointing that, though it appears that Gwenn is reciting his lines in Spanish, a different actor dubs him, who sounds nothing like Gwenn. The only other actor I was familiar with is the Italian Valentina Cortese as Elisa. Lobster, the main secondary character, is played well by the handsome and charismatic Franco Fabrizi. The various plotlines are easy to follow, though I never figured out what was up with the Roman garb in the opening scene. This is a light and charming film (which is predictable in its unpredictability, if that makes sense) that should be better known. Pictured are Fabrizi and Gwenn. [Criterion Channel]

SADDLES AND SAGEBRUSH (1943)

Cowboy Lucky Randall (Russell Hayden) is hangin' with a gang of singin' cowboys (Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys) when he gets an offer to work as a hired gun and bodyguard for Krag Savin (William Wright) in the frontier town of Pinon City. Savin claims he needs protection from a group of violent squatters living illegally on land outside the town, but Lucky's comic relief sidekick Cannonball (Dub Taylor) thinks the setup sounds suspicious so he follows Lucky. In Pinion City, Savin says that Lafe Parker is stirring up the squatters and needs to be fought, and he sends his men to the Parker ranch to set fire to the land. Lafe goes into town looking for a showdown with Savin but is wounded by Blackie, a Savin henchman. Lucky and Cannonball get the lowdown from Parker and his daughter Ann (Ann Savage). The squatters are actually legitimate homesteaders, but Savin and his men have been rustling cattle and fencing off grazing land in an attempt to claim the land for themselves. Lucky shifts his allegiance to Parker and Ann, deals with an ambush by Savin's thugs (resulting in two of them shot and two of them captured by lasso) and sends a telegram to the state capitol to find out the legal status of the land. Knowing the reply will confirm the free range status of the land, Savin's men rob the mail stagecoach that contains the reply. Lucky, Cannonball and Ann seem to be defeated, but Bob Willis and his gang arrive to help save the day.

At less than an hour (and with at least ten minutes taken up with songs), this B-western zips along quickly. It's nothing special but it's a good example of its genre, the singing cowboy western. It is predictable but there is a certain pleasure in watching the gears turn, as there is with most genre films. Russell Hayden does not cut a particularly strong heroic figure (he could be sturdier and better looking) but he's OK. Ann Savage, who hit B-film femme fatale icon status thanks to a fierce performance in DETOUR, is fairly bland here. You just have to go with flow as far as Bob Willis and company, well known performers of Western swing who released over 100 singles during their career, with a handful hitting #1 on the country charts. They perform five songs here, including "Hubbin' It," which was used as the title for a biography of Willis. I'm not sure what that phrase means; it seems to be a version of "keep on keepin' on' or "humping" in terms of struggling along with a heavy load: "It's your wagon load / Keep right on hubbin' it / Down that lonesome road." The songs don't further the plot, they're just like little distractions. William Wright, a B-actor who was in around 40 movies in the 1940s, is a little wooden as Savin. I very much liked Dub Taylor as Cannonball. He was in hundreds of movies and TV shows, and I think of him as a classic-era M. Emmet Walsh. Takeaway line, in defense of the settlers: "It's the sweat of the little man that makes this country great." Pictured are Hayden and Taylor. [YouTube]

HERCULES AND HYLAS AGAINST THE CAT-MEN OF MERCURY (1962)

Burly Hercules and his young blond ward Hylas are enjoying a relaxing swim on the shore of Photia Island when a contingent of battered and tattered men from the town of Phallogos beg for help. Cat-human mutants—full grown men with cat faces and furry bodies—have been ransacking the town at night and hiding in the hills in the daytime. No one knows where they came from, though guards Stephanus and Gordano reported seeing a bright light in the sky the night before the first attack. Those who have tried to stop or capture them wind up hypnotized into immobility by the swishing of the Cat-Men's tails. Even worse, Queen Newmara has apparently fallen in love with one of the Cat-Men, Felixus, and is rumored to be planning to let the city be overrun by the mutants. Hercules and Hylas accompany the men back to the city where Hylas is immediately kidnapped by the Cat-Men and held for ransom in the hills. Queen Newmara takes Hercules' mind off of rescuing Hylas by mixing him cocktails made with the Gin of Forgetfulness and making out with him in the daytime even as she hides the hairy, lithe Felixus as her midnight lover, leaving poor King Reg lots of time for his hobby, astronomy. But it is Reg who discovers strange flashes of light coming from the planet Mercury, apparently in communication with Earth. Could the Cat-Men have arrived from Mercury as a pre-invasion force? And can Hercules pry himself from the charms of Newmara to save both Hylas and the city?

This may be the first science fiction peplum movie (but not the last, with HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN coming two years later), though some argue that 1956’s FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE was more peplum than sci-fi. The planet Mercury wasn't officially recognized until the 1500s, but it's called by that name here—of course, when have muscleman movies ever been sticklers for facts? If you take away the element of alien invaders, this is a run-of-the-mill sword and sandal movie: oiled, muscled men in togas; evil queens in flowing robes, a populace in trouble. One difference: the shiny silver spaceship, hidden in the hills, in which Hylas is held captive. Mark Forest is an impressively muscled Hercules; Angelo Zanolli, with his hair dyed silver blond, is a cute but broody Hylas. In myth, Hercules and Hylas were lovers, though that is mostly covered up here, except for the hints we get from the way Herc melts when Hylas bats his baby blues at him. And, of course, there's the final scene: with Queen Newmara packed away in the silver spaceship which Hercules flings back into the heavens, Herc picks up Hylas and takes him to the royal bedroom where, as far as we know, Felixus is still present and waiting for company. Cassandra Cassamassima, in her only screen credit, is appropriately buxom and flirty as the queen. Pictured are Zanolli and Forest. This is getting a special April 1st airing on TCM so catch it while you can.