PRIVATE PROPERTY (1960)

We see two California beach bums steal pop and cigarettes from a gas station. Duke (Corey Allen) is good looking with some surface charm; his buddy Boots (Warren Oates) is scruffy, jittery, and slow on the uptake. When Boots admits he's never had sex, Duke says he must be waiting for a "rich daddy," which upsets Boots. When they see a sexy blonde drive away from the station, they hijack a ride from Ed, a middle-aged salesman (Jerome Cowan) and get him to follow the blonde. Ed tells them they don't have a chance with her as they're from two different groups ("You can’t mate a bird with a snake"). She lives in middle-upper class suburban comfort with her husband, an insurance salesman, and the drifters break into the unoccupied house next door and watch her skinny-dip in her backyard pool. Duke hatches a plan to get the blonde "twitch," named Ann (Kate Manx), to deflower Boots, though we can tell his real goal is to snag her for himself. Posing as a landscaper, Duke slowly gets Ann to open up to him—we see she is bored by her swimming pool days and frustrated when her husband is too tired for sex when he gets home. Finally, one night while her husband is out of town (though due to get home later that night), Duke gets Ann drunk to the throbbing tune of a Bolero-type song, kisses her, and gets her ready for Boots, who can't perform. Violence at the pool ensues.

This indie B-film was given a limited release, didn't get much positive notice, then was considered lost for several years. Its rediscovery led to perhaps an overcorrection by critics and it has been hailed as a small neo-noir masterpiece. Not as great as some say, it's still worth seeing. The most striking thing about it is that it mostly doesn’t feel like a 1960 movie; it has elements in common with later films like THE SWIMMER and LAST SUMMER. Though we see no explicit sex (or violence until the final moments) the atmosphere of erotic tension and menace is held strongly throughout. Rape or assault seem assured, but that's not quite what happens. A homoerotic bond between Duke and Boots is clearly intimated, and the lulling of Ann into sexual receptivity is carried out well, without Ann being blamed for her desires. Of the three leads, Warren Oates is the one who went on to cult fame as a supporting actor, but it's Corey Allen (pictured) who carries the movie, playing a man whose smooth handsome exterior masks a streak of sociopathic danger. He went on to a long career, but mostly as a TV director and acting teacher. Kate Manx was the wife of the film's director, Leslie Stevens, best known to me as the creator of The Outer Limits; the film was shot in 10 days at the Stevens' home. Manx and Allen work well together, establishing a tense chemistry. Sadly, Manx's promising career was cut short by her suicide in 1964. 1960 was the year that PSYCHO came out, another movie with a mood of sexual menace, though that was set at night whereas most of this film takes place in the sunshine. Maybe audiences weren't ready for two such films in one year. Or maybe it's just that PSYCHO was a big studio production from an iconic director and this was a small-budget indie film that didn’t get Production Code approval, which would have limited its playdates. I'm hesitant to overpraise this movie, but it is unique and interesting. [YouTube]

SPIES STRIKE SILENTLY (1966)

Four people are sitting beside a hotel pool in Beirut: the wealthy and important Dr. Rashid; Jane Freeman, daughter of Prof. Freeman; her boyfriend Edward; and Freeman's assistant Pamela. Jane dives into the pool and when she surfaces, she is dead, stabbed in the stomach. American secret agent Mike Drum is sent to help British Inspector Craig, who is not happy about getting help from "an American who probably thinks he's James Bond." Upon arrival in Beirut, Drum is almost killed by a mustached gunman. Craig and his assistant Brook fill him in on the case. Someone has been threatening and killing a number of high-profile people who are known for their attempts to help mankind (yes, it's presented that vaguely) and Prof. Freeman, who is working to find a cure for cancer, was told his daughter would die if he didn't stop work. Mike concentrates on the case of Prof. Bergson who has been told not to go to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. When Bergson is interviewed by a reporter, Mike catches on just in the nick of time that her tape recorder is set to explode in an attempt to kill Bergson. Mike heaves the recorder away and the reporter is discovered to be under the influence of a heroin-like drug that sapped her will power and made her follow the orders of the mastermind criminal behind the recent deaths. Craig's men quickly develop an antidote for the drug, though they do not know that Pamela, from the opening scene, regularly injects herself with a drug. 

Soon we discover that Pamela is under the control of Dr. Rashid who basically just wants to "rule all mankind" (yes, it’s presented that vaguely).  Mike is caught by Rashid, strapped down in a room with psychedelic wall panels, and given the drug. He is able to take the antidote and fakes being under control, but Pamela, noticing his eyes aren't glassy and empty, catches him out. He goes under for real and is sent to Bergson's to kill him, but Craig manages to stop him and gives him the antidote. They fake Bergson's death in the press and Mike goes back to Rashid's place where he discovers a young woman named Grace is about to become a guinea pig for a new invention, a ray that will allow Rashid to implant his thoughts inside her mind—"I will be Prometheus unbound!" Rashid rants to Mike. Oddly, in another mode, the ray can also burn a person to a crisp in seconds. The climax involves someone getting fried, someone else dying in a car that goes over a cliff, and Mike and Grace (who is apparently a British agent) are allowed to go off for a two-week sex holiday at a mountain resort before their next assignments (hers involves going to Ohio!).

Yes, it’s an Italian B-movie Eurospy thriller, one of many that came in the wake of the worldwide success of James Bond. Most reviewers say that Canadian actor Lang Jeffries (at top left), who made a number of European spy and peplum movies, is OK as Mike Drum, but they agree that he was missing the charisma that might have made this character more popular. I agree with that even as I found myself liking him more as the film went on. He is handsome and can handle his fight scenes well but doesn't have the smooth charm of Sean Connery or even lesser Euro lights like Ken Clark or Brad Harris. Still, I would have watched another Mike Drum movie if one had been made. As usual, the post-dubbing of English dialogue makes it difficult to judge the supporting cast, but they're mostly fine, especially Jose Bodalo (Craig), Andrea Bosic (Rashid), and Enzo Consoli (Edward). Some plot details are rather fuzzy, perhaps because of unintentional cuts in the film. Early on, Mike hops a ride with a sexy young Black woman, uncredited, who later is caught spying on him, but she's gone before we have any idea who she is. Similarly, Grace (Emma Danieli, pictured with Jeffries above right) enters the film at the end with no explanation, seemingly so Mike will have someone to have sex with when it's all over. The jazzy score, which highlights the vibraphone, is a distinct plus, as are the fisticuff and gunplay scenes. It's not campy or bad enough to be a guilty pleasure, but I enjoyed it. [YouTube] 

THE GREENE MURDER CASE (1929)

As a gentle snow falls on New Year's Eve, the rather dysfunctional Greene family meets with the family lawyer for their annual check-up on how well the provisions of the patriarch's will are being kept. All family members must continue to live together in the Greene mansion for another five years, at which point everyone who has remained will split the estate. Widow Greene is a cranky old woman mostly confined to a wheelchair, though there is some thinking that she's exaggerating her illness. The children, Chester, Rex and Sibella, are mostly unlikable and don't like each other much, and Sibella is a total bitch to the adopted daughter Ada who is a passive little thing. After the lawyer's visit, Chester is shot to death in his room, and Ada is shot at from outside her room but is only wounded. Rex (the only one in the house who owns a revolver) seems to suspect Dr. Von Blon who is Sibella's lover, and who might be hiding information about the widow's health. Philo Vance and Sgt. Heath investigate, and suspicious behavior abounds, with a butler skulking about and a maid calling out everyone as wicked and warning of Biblical destruction in store for all. A missing pair of galoshes, some poisons from the doctor's bag, a library full of criminology books, and the theory of inherited insanity all figure in the search as the body count rises. You'll probably figure out whodunit early on, but the exciting climax is worth sticking around for. This early talkie, based on a novel by S.S. Van Dine, is the second Philo Vance film. It's rather stagy, though as it's basically an old dark house mystery, the lack of settings and camera movement doesn't really hurt it. There's not much to talk about concerning directorial style, though the climax, on the snowy roof of the urban mansion, is striking. William Powell, in the second of his four Vance portrayals, is quite good, like he's practicing for playing Nick Charles in The Thin Man a few years later. Eugene Pallette (Heath) is almost as good. Jean Arthur, in her pre-star days, is OK, but gets upstaged by Florence Eldridge as Sibella who gets some sexy posturing in. The inherited insanity idea feels a bit old-fashioned but it's a common plot point in classic-era movies. At around 70 minutes, the film is well paced, but I would only recommend it to folks already comfortable with early talkie style. Pictured are Pallette and Powell. [YouTube]

JUNGLE JIM (1937 serial)

Off the coast of Africa, a ship carrying a number of jungle animals and a handful of people founders in a storm. Lost in the wreck are the wife and daughter of a wealthy man named Redmond. Fifteen years later, as the daughter, Joan, is about to come into a big inheritance, a relative named Bruce Redmond goes to Africa to make sure the girl is dead so he can claim the money. A family lawyer has also come to Africa hoping to find Joan alive so he can help her get the inheritance due her. Redmond hires two sleazy fellows named Slade and Labat as his guides, while the lawyer hires a more pleasant fellow named Red. All the guides know of a legendary white woman who lives with the Mazumbo tribe who might well be Joan. Labat kills Red and the lawyer to get them out of the way, but Red's buddy, an explorer known as Jungle Jim, decides, with the help of his rustic sidekick Malay Mike, to avenge Red by going after Redmond, Slade and Labat. Meanwhile, in a palace in the Mazumbo village, Joan lives as a Lion Goddess—she is friendly with lions, using a call of "Simba!" to communicate with them. Joan has been raised to believe she is the daughter of a man known as the White Cobra who rules the Mazumbo people with his sister Shanghai Lil. We learn they are actually criminals on the run from murder charges but we never learn how they became rulers, especially since they never leave their primitive throne room. Jim and Mike meet and make friends with Joan while Slade and Redmond strike an uneasy alliance with the Cobra, eventually coming up with a plan to do away with Joan and get an imposter to pose as the heiress so they can split the money. Twelve chapters of complications ensue, which include attacking tigers, an earthquake, a volcano eruption, escapes by creaky rope bridges over dangerous chasms, village warriors sent to cleanse the jungle of white men, an elephant stampede, a bow-and-arrow firing squad, and the requisite gunfights and fisticuffs present in all serials.

 

What I like about this Universal serial is the fact that there are a number of different chapter situations that crop up, fighting the tendency of many later serials to engage in numbingly repetitive chapter incidents. Groups are split up and reunite, and tensions arise even between people on the same side (Slade vs. Labat, Lil vs. the Cobra, Joan vs. the Cobra, Joan vs. Jim). A fistfight scene doesn't break out until the end of chapter 4, and in chapter 6 a fairly major character is unexpectedly killed by a tiger. A pilot named Hawks flies in, literally, in chapter 9; he may be a good guy, a bad guy, or an opportunist. The cliffhangers are OK, but there is one major cheat: at the end of chapter 9, we see Jim shot in the chest by Lil as he falls out of a window, but in chapter 10, it seems he was just wounded in the shoulder, an injury which doesn't slow him down a bit. Some of the fisticuff scenes are sloppily performed, unlike those in the later Republic serials. Chapter recaps are presented as comic strip panels in a newspaper. There's a lot of animal footage, including a bizarre fight between a lion and a tiger which looks awfully real, and the tiger attacks are repetitious—occasionally, it's obvious that someone offscreen has catapulted a fake tiger at an actor who then has to wrestle with it for a few seconds. (The point of the animals in the shipwreck seems to be to allow tigers to exist in the African jungle.) Ultimately, most of these negatives are fairly minor.

In addition to the nicely developed plot, the acting is pretty good all around. Grant Withers, a busy and reliable character actor, (pictured above right) is B-movie hunky and stoic as Jungle Jim; he even gets to sing a little song ("I’m Takin' the Jungle Trail") which I think is about himself! Raymond Hatton took a while to grow on me as Malay Mike; he threatens to be overboard comic relief, but he handles it alright. Henry Brandon, one of my favorite character actors (above left), is exotically and intensely villainous as the Cobra, even though he is not very active, mostly sitting at his desk/throne and proclaiming orders. I'm sorry his character is never fleshed out, but his relationship with Shanghai Lil (Evelyn Brent) is the most interesting one in the movie. 16-year-old Betty Jane Rhodes is a little lightweight as Joan but she's fine. Al Bridge as Slade gives an overly stereotypical serial villain performance; a little better are Bryant Washburn as Bruce and Paul Sutton as Labat. I especially liked Al Duvall, the only Black actor with a speaking part, as Kolu, Joan's faithful servant who, duded up in western togs, leaves the jungle with Joan for the big city in the last scene. Though a bit rough and ready in the shooting, this is well worth your time if you're a serials fan, or just a fan of jungle adventure. [YouTube]

DANGEROUS MONEY (1946) / THE TRAP (1946)

DANGEROUS MONEY, the tenth Charlie Chan film from Monogram, begins on a foggy night on the S.S. Newcastle, on its way to Australia, as Pearson, an American treasury agent, tells Chan (Sidney Toler) that he is tracking down what he calls "hot money," money and artworks stolen from the Philippines during the war. Attempts have been made on his life, and during a festive ceremony to mark the crossing of the Equator, another attempt is successful and Pearson is knifed from behind through his chair. There is a standard suspect pool including the Whipples, snooty British missionaries; Burke, a blustery cotton salesman; Martin, an ichthyologist, and his wife; Freddie Kirk, a knife thrower who is part of the ship's entertainment; Tao Erickson and his sexy Polynesian wife Laura who own a restaurant in Pago Pago; and Rona Simmons who is having a romance with the ship's purser, George. Burke is blackmailing Rona whose papers were rigged by George and whose father was involved in the dispersal of hot material in Samoa. The ship makes a one-day stop in Samoa before heading to Australia, with the passengers roomed in a hotel. Chan has roughly 24 hours to investigate, deal with another knifing death, get past the red herrings, worry about complications caused by son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) and valet Chattanooga Brown (Willie Best), and find the killer. The strengths here are Toler's performance and the interesting setting of the ship for the first half (and one later scene in a fish museum), the weaknesses being a so-so supporting cast and a draggy pace—it feels awfully long for its 66-minute length. Good performances come from Rick Vallin (Tao), Dick Elliott (Burke), Joseph Allen (George) and Gloria Warren (Rona). Yung and Best are not especially effective as comic relief though their half-assed sleuthing does provide Chan with an important clue. Thoroughly average. Pictured at right, the eyes of the killer, though that is not the face of any actor in the movie.

THE TRAP, the eleventh Monogram Chan film, is set in a rented beach house in Malibu where a group of showgirls from Cole King's Vanities is taking a working vacation between shows. There are tensions galore. Marcia, Cole's girlfriend, is set to be the star of the new season and her imperious behavior (among other things, using the Asian girl San Toy as her personal maid) sets the others on edge. Lois, another performer, is under eighteen so technically an illegal hire. Adelaide is secretly married to the troupe's doctor, a no-no according to Cole, and Marcia is ready to blackmail her. Clementine is always on the verge of hysteria and the landlady is a cranky scold who rants about the evils of alcohol. While the women stay in the house, the men (Cole, the doc, and a press agent) sleep in bungalows on the beach. Marcia forces Lois to steal some of Adelaide's letters, then Lois is found dead. Marcia goes missing and is later found dead on the beach. San Toy, a gal pal of Chan’s son Jimmy, calls him to investigate, leading to the best scene in the movie in which valet Birmingham Brown gets the call and mistakenly believes Jimmy is the murder victim. Following the pattern of the other films, Chan and his bungling assistants eventually unmask the killer.

This is Sidney Toler's last movie—he was ill with cancer during production and died six months after production wrapped. It is often said that Toler's illness affected his dialogue delivery and that he could barely stand up so he was often shot seated. That is probably true, but for the most part, these problems are not present on screen. He does have more scenes than usual in which he is sitting down and he does feel a bit low energy (though I've felt that for the last several films), but he delivers his lines fine. Both Toler and the director managed to hide his illness quite well. In fact this film is actually better than the last two, mostly because of the unusual setting and the showgirl cast. The supporting players are a notch above the Monogram norm. Anne Nagel (Marcia), Tanis Chandler (Adelaide), and Lois Austin (Mrs. Thorne, the house mother of the girls) are all good, as is Kirk Alyn (later the first live-action Superman; pictured at left with Toler) as an investigating cop and Larry Blake as the PR man. Minerva Urecal, the queen of ornery old lady character actors, has fun as the landlady. Mantan Moreland is back as Birmingham and his rapport with Yung works well, and their antics are better integrated in the plot. As per usual, it drags in places, but works about as well as the average Monogram series entry. Not a bad way for Toler to bow out. [DVD]

MISSION STARDUST (1967)

Astronaut Perry Rhodan is heading a four-man flight to the moon to investigate a new and possibly valuable metal near a crater. A villain named Arkin is interested in their findings and has planted a spy on the team to convey information and carry out his biddings, if any. Their landing is complicated when they are yanked off course and find their communications with Earth disrupted. The moon travel vehicle is disintegrated by an alien ray and they are confronted by a platinum blonde alien woman named Thora. She takes them aboard her ship (which resembles a diving sphere on legs) and explains her problem: on a mission to find a race to breed with because her race is so old, it's "genetically used up," the ship malfunctioned and she was forced to land on the moon. She is accompanied by Crest, an old sickly man, and when tests show that he has leukemia, Perry remembers a doctor on Earth (in Mombasa) who is working on a cure. They take a smaller alien craft to Earth, landing in a desert outside Mombasa where they attract the attention of the African Federation Army who arrive with jeeps and guns to attack the craft. Arkin, thanks to his spy, knows where they are and shows up with plans to steal the craft. He also kidnaps the doctor and replaces him with a fake (accompanied by two softcore porn-looking nurses). Things don't look great for our good guys, but maybe the small group of invulnerable killer robots that Thora brought with her will help.

Perry Rhodan is a sci-fi pulp hero who has appeared in over 3000 stories published in Germany since 1961 (over a hundred were published in English in the 1970s) and he's still going strong. But Perry Rhodan fans are outspoken in their dislike of this movie, as it's not very faithful to the original character. I suspect one problem for fans is that instead of space opera trappings, this movie becomes largely a spy adventure story set in an African desert, so any cosmic doings only take place in the first half-hour and at the finale. Because of this, the movie does drag mightily in the middle, but I like the character of Rhodan—as inhabited by Lang Jeffries (pictured), he comes off as the quiet confident studly type who, by the end, is ready to volunteer himself as a breeding guinea pig for Thora's use. Jeffries did play secret agents in a number of 60s Eurospy flicks, and this makes me want to search a few of those out. If you can adjust yourself to the adventures of an spy-type astronaut, you'll like this, or at least be able to tolerate it. As I noted, the middle stretch is a bit of a chore to get through, and if the handsome Jeffries isn't your type, Essy Persson (as Thora) might be. The stunning Swedish actress made an international splash a few years earlier in I, A Woman, one of the films that made softcore porn safe for mainstream theaters. Her main job here is to look coldly sexy and act superior to everyone else, and she succeeds admirably. When the astronauts ask her how she learned English so quickly, she snaps back, "It wasn't hard to learn the babble of savages." Luis Davila, as Mike Bull, is a handsome and competent sidekick. I liked Daniel Martin because his character's name is Captain Flipper and he's not a dolphin. Also because he gets to yell at Thora, "I'll kill you, you hellcat!" The bad guy, in a Goldfinger reference, carries a puppy around. The takeoff effects are awful, though some of the miniature sets are effective, and there are some nice ray gun battles and old-fashioned fisticuffs. The only print on YouTube is pan and scan and not in great shape, but I suspect this would look much better in widescreen. [YouTube]

JUNE NIGHT (1940)

In a small Swedish town, young beautiful Kerstin (Ingrid Bergman) tries to leave her sailor lover Nils (Gunnar Sjoberg) but he takes her leaving badly and shoots her to stop her. She is badly wounded, with the bullet grazing her heart, but recovers and he is brought to trial for attempted murder. Kerstin actually pleads for leniency for Nils—he claims he actually wanted to kill himself—but she faints in court due to her still impaired state which leads to the press (specifically a reporter named Willy) calling her a "wounded swan" which seems to generate less sympathy for her. She is seen as morally loose and Nils is seen as the injured party, if not physically than emotionally. He gets a six month jail sentence and to avoid the headlines, Kerstin moves to Stockholm, adopts the name Sara, gets a job at a pharmacy, and moves into a boarding house where she rooms with Asa (Marianne Lofgren), a nurse who knows her real identity, and two other girls who sort of recognize her but can't place her. Unfortunately, one of the girls is dating Willy, the reporter, who goes to work on a new story. Asa's boyfriend Stefan gets interested in Sara. Later, when Nils is released from jail, he tracks her down and tries to talk to her, leading to another melodramatic incident. Asa and the roommates, despite Sara and Stefan's obvious attraction, close ranks to protect Sara/Kerstin from Nils and from the press.

This noirish Swedish melodrama (Swedish title, JUNINATTEN) has an interesting plot, and one that seems a bit ahead of its time as it presents the strength of feminist sisterhood. Though it feels character driven, ultimately the characters are not as strongly drawn as they should be. Even (maybe especially) Kerstin remains something of a blank. We never really know much about her background. Her possible promiscuity should not be held against her, especially when Nils' trial winds up seeming like it's judging her more than him, but it would be helpful to know more about her past. Asa is almost a more interesting character than Kerstin, though we know little about her, and her actions at the end make her something of a feminist saint. Considering Stefan's importance near the end, he is barely sketched out as a character. That kind of leaves Nils as the person we know the best, though finally his presence in the last half is more a device than anything else—once he plays his part in the climactic actions, he vanishes. The acting, despite the shallow characterizations, is good all around. Of course, Bergman shines as she always did; this was her last Swedish film before her move to Hollywood and international stardom, and she comes off as innocently sexy, not so differently than she did a few years later in Casablanca. Lofgren is very good as well, and Sjoberg does what he can in an underwritten role. Olof Widgren (pictured with Bergman) is handsome as Stefan but has little to do. Cinematographer Ake Dahlqvist, who shot a couple of Bergman's other Swedish movies, contributes a nice dark-streets noir look. Best line, as Willy tries to defend his sensationalistic reportage: "Other people's misery goes great with the morning coffee." [TCM]

THAT DARN CAT (1965) / THE LOVE BUG (1968)

Dean Jones seems largely forgotten today, partly because he was typecast as a square, clean-cut, handsome, wholesome guy, like a TV sitcom dad. Even in the fairly smutty sex farce UNDER THE YUM-YUM TREE he comes off as sweetly innocent. Another reason may be that his fame in the 1960s and 70s was due to his work in a string of fairly average live-action Disney movies which are mostly not well remembered today. Coincidentally, I saw two of Jones' Disney movies in one week's time. The first, THAT DARN CAT (1965), was also the last of six Disney films to feature the young Hayley Mills (years later, she would appear in a few Parent Trap sequels). It was based on an adult comic thriller novel called Undercover Cat and was adapted by Disney and its director Robert Stevenson to be more family-friendly. Mills and her older sister (Dorothy Provine) are living by themselves while their folks are on vacation. The family cat, named DC, for Darn Cat—in the book, Damn Cat—has the nighttime run of the suburban neighborhood, and soon his path crosses that of two bank robbers (Neville Brand and Frank Gorshin) who are in hiding with a teller they've kidnapped (Grayson Hall who was Dr. Julia Hoffman on Dark Shadows). Hall manages to scratch "help" on the back of her wrist watch and put it around DC's neck. Mills sees it and, putting two and two together (rather too quickly to believe), calls the FBI who sends out handsome, clean-cut Dean Jones to see if Mills is onto something. Soon, a gaggle of FBI men are tailing the cat all over the neighborhood. Causing problems are Roddy McDowell, the mama's boy boyfriend of Provine, and nosy neighbor lady Elsa Lanchester, whose husband (William Demarest) tries to rein her in—think the Kravitzs of TV's Bewitched. Mills and Jones are fun, and have a good working chemistry, to the point where I wondered if they might wind up a couple despite their fifteen-year age gap (honestly, she was 19 playing a high school student but could have passed for 21, and he was 34 but could pass for late 20s). Mills has a doofus boyfriend (Tom Lowell) whose only passions in life are sandwiches and surf movies, and the film pairs off Jones and Provine in the end, despite a distinct lack of connection between the two. But, let's face it, the real reason to watch the film is the Siamese cat (or cats, apparently) playing DC. I'm not sure if it's good training or lucky camera shots, but the cat is the appealing star of the show, whether he's trotting around the neighborhood, jumping over fences, taunting a dog, or just napping on a bed. The humor is surprisingly non-juvenile—in fact, the movie as a whole doesn't quite feel like it's aimed at kids—the kidnappers form a plan to do away with their hostage though they don't get to pull it off. I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. Pictured above are Jones, Mills, and DC.

THE LOVE BUG (1968) was the last live-action film with which Walt Disney was directly involved, and it was the first Disney live-action film after MARY POPPINS to become a big hit. It's also the exception to the Dean Jones rule I mention above, as it is still fondly remembered with a sequel produced as late as 2005. Jones is a race car driver on the verge of quitting his profession who gets "adopted" by an old VW Bug which gets him to keep racing, even taking on the villainous David Tomlinson in a crazy climactic race. The car also seems to push him into a romantic entanglement with Michele Lee, a former employee of Tomlinson's. Buddy Hackett plays Jones' roommate who verges on being a hippieish mystic, and the cast includes Benson Fong (Tommy Chan in several Charlie Chan movies), TV actors Joe Flynn and Joe E. Ross. The car, named Herbie, never speaks but the non-CGI effects are pulled off fairly well and Herbie is established as a full-fledged character. Unlike most of the earlier Disney films, this is a kid-free kids' movie. It was a huge hit and spawned sequels, and kept Dean Jones (who had already played five Disney leads) in place as a Disney go-to lead for several years. Jones and Lee are good, if never really convincing as a couple. Hackett is no more irritating than usual (the exception to his irritating roles being Marcellus in THE MUSIC MAN). I'd never seen this film until now and the concept of the car, real and not animated or CGI, as a actual character seemed crazily surreal to me, a reaction I probably wouldn't have had if I'd seen it when I was 11. Other Dean Jones movies I've reviewed include ANY WEDNESDAY and TWO ON A GUILLOTINE. [Disney +]

DANGER!! DEATH RAY (1967)

Prof. Carmichael is giving a demonstration of his new invention to a group of NATO officials. He was researching uses of radiation for medicine but accidentally discovered a death ray that can not only kill but also blast through the hardest material. After the demo, two men sitting in the back of the room, Frank and Jerry, jump up and spray the room with knockout gas. The machine self-destructs and Jerry is caught in sliding metal doors and killed but Frank kidnaps Carmichael in a helicopter and forces him to build a new ray at his spy organization's hideout in Barcelona. But wait! Secret agent Bart Fargo is called away from his vacation with a couple of loose women to find Carmichael. Thus begins another 60s era Eurospy flick in the James Bond tradition, but with a lower budget, lesser acting talent, some awkward fisticuffs and a weaker script. Still, with a proper lowering of expectations, this sort of works. Gordon Scott plays Bart Fargo (a great name!). Scott was a second-tier action lead in some pretty good Tarzan movies in the 1950s and in some Italian muscleman films in the 60s. Here, at the age of 40, he still had his looks—still almost boyish—and his build (though sadly he only gets one very brief shirtless scene). He plays it a little too straight, lacking the slightly snarky or campy edge that other Eurospy leads had, but he's the main reason for sticking with this. (The other reason is a great Eurojazz score.) Like Bond, he has a flirty relationship with his boss's secretary, but in the course of action, he sleeps with two possible femme fatales: Lucille (Delfi Mauro), a bohemian artist who likes to paint topless, and Mrs. Carver (Sylvia Solar) who turns out to be the wife of a bad guy. 

Nello Pazzafini (as Frank) is a more brutal looking bad guy than Alberto Dalbes (Carver), but the best plot twist here is that Frank's bad guy buddy Al (the handsome cleancut Max Dean, aka Massimo Righi) is saved from death by Bart and flips to his side, and just in the nick of time. There appear to be two Massimo Righis out there, and IMDb gets the info on this guy wrong, saying he was born in 1907 which would make him 60 here, and this guy is nowhere near 60. There is apparently another Massimo Righi with a birth year of 1935 which seems right. In any case, Al is really the most interesting character in the movie and we come to care about his outcome. Spoiler: In a nicely done scene near the end, it looks like Al has flipped back to Frank's side, but it's a fakeout. Sadly, Al is killed off saving Bart's life, just before the finale. Bart gets trapped in Carver's villa which is equipped with remote control mini-machine guns in every room, and then Carver actually tries to use the death ray. There's another fakeout scene earlier when two sexy women sneak up on a sleeping Bart, about to do him harm, but actually they're quite friendly. The best scene might be when a goon attacks Bart in his hotel room and accidentally goes flying out the window to his death—it made me both gasp and laugh. The dubbing is not great, and Scott's performance would have been better if he hadn’t been dubbed. The miniature special effects are just terrible—when a car goes tumbling into the ocean, it's clearly a toy car thrown into a bathtub; same with a toy submarine seen earlier in the film. But obviously my affection for this genre allows me to enjoy this movie despite its faults. An Alaskan pop-punk band from the 2000s took this movie's title for its name. Pictured are Dean and Scott. [YouTube]

SHADOWS OVER CHINATOWN (1946)

One rainy night, detective Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler), his son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), and valet Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) are on a bus heading to San Francisco, reading newspaper articles about some recent torso murders in which heads, arms and legs of bodies are cut off. Mechanical problems force the driver to make a stop in the small town of Emigrant Gap. It's a short stop but a man's wallet is stolen and Chan is shot at, though he is uninjured as the bullet hits a watch that was a gift from Jimmy. Tilford, a hitchhiking AWOL Marine (who has a gun in his possession) joins the company as they leave. In San Francisco, Chan visits the Bureau of Missing Persons as he seeks to help identify the latest torso murder victim, but winds up taking on another case: helping a sweet little old Scottish lady look for her missing granddaughter, Mary Conover. As it happens, that's also who the Marine (whose name might actually be Thompson) is looking for. Chan determines that the latest victim is not Mary, but at a diner, he recognizes his waitress as Mary, her hair dyed blonde. But Mary is on the run from Mike, a former associate of some sort, who turns out to have been the rainy night bus driver, whom a detective who was on the bus with Chan discovered didn't really work for the bus company. It's going to take all of Chan's skills to crack the cases of Mary and the torso killer, but we never doubt that he can. The ninth of the Monogram Charlie Chan films is a step up from the last few partly due to a script that, while still awfully convoluted, is a little more clever and easier to follow. With a number of settings—the bus, the bus station, the bureau, the diner, hotel rooms, apartments, and some exteriors as well—this doesn't have a claustrophobic feel to it. Sadly, Toler was apparently diagnosed with intestinal cancer at the beginning of filming, and the production of his last movies was adjusted to give Toler a bit less physical activity. It doesn't seem especially noticeable here, though at the end, Toler is not present for the final chase. To me, he had been seeming a bit tired of the role for some time. Victor Sen Yung is back as Jimmy after having done war duty. Some Chan fans much prefer Yung to Benson Fong (as Tommy) who had been in the last several films, but they both seemed fine to me. Bruce Kellogg and Tanis Chandler are good as Tilford and Mary, and it's great fun to have Mary Gordon, who played Sherlock Holmes' landlady in the Basil Rathbone films, present as Mary's grandmother. The title, as if often the case, is misleading, even nonsensical; only the climax plays out in Chinatown and it's in broad daylight. Pictured from left: Chandler, Kellogg, Gordon and Toler. [DVD]

THE RED HOUSE (1947)

In the backwoods village of Piney Ridge, teenager Nath Storm (Lon McCallister) is dating local hottie Tibby (Julie London) but has a crush on Meg (Allene Roberts), though high school dropout Teller (Rory Calhoun), who tells people he's good at lots of things they don't teach in school, has an eye for both girls. Meg's parents died years ago, and Pete (Edward G. Robinson), a friend of the family, adopted her. Meg lives with Pete and his sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) out of the village limits near a mysterious place called Oxhead Woods which Pete owns, and which he pays Teller to patrol with a gun to keep trespassers out. Pete, who has a wooden leg and is getting on in years, needs some help around the farm and he hires Nath to work after school. It's a long trek back home so Nath has to leave before dark, but he gets to be near Meg. On the first night, he decides to use Oxhead Woods as a shortcut home though Pete tells him not to, warning him about a red haunted house. It's windy, the path is winding, and Nath thinks he hears screams. Another night, someone pushes Nath off the path into a creek. When Meg, Nath, and Tibby go exploring in the woods one Sunday afternoon, Pete gets angry and forbids Meg from going into the woods. Two things become clear: 1) Pete has something to hide in the woods; 2) Pete is perhaps inordinately possessive of Meg. Meg continues trekking into the woods and eventually finds the red house, small and dilapidated, but before she can explore it, Teller fires warning shots at her from afar. She falls and breaks her leg and Nath finds her and carries her to safety. Soon, Nath and Meg are involved, and Tibby shifts her affections to the possibly dangerous Teller. Pete fires Nath and begins slipping into odd states when he looks intensely at Meg and calls her Jeannie. Soon, the secret of the red house comes to light and changes everyone's lives.

It's difficult to classify this film by genre. Because it was in the public domain back in the early days of VHS, it was easily available, usually in poor or incomplete prints. For some reason, I thought it was a rural romantic comedy (maybe because of the presence of the handsome juvenile actor Lon McCallister, or the bland storybook title) and I avoided it. Indeed, the movie begins like a lightweight high school romance, but a darker Gothic tone develops as Oxhead Woods is introduced and Pete begins acting suspiciously. Edward G. Robinson gives a layered performance, moving Pete from fatherly to creepy over the course of the first half of the film, and eventually into overwhelming darkness. The movie has been called horror and noir, and even compared directly to Psycho—the last scene, like Psycho's, involves a car in a swamp. It also has a dark fairytale feel, like Night of the Hunter. But it's more a psychological thriller than horror; there is menace, especially in the nicely done scenes of walks in the dark woods, but until the very end, no gore or deaths. Critics rightly praise Allene Roberts, only nineteen at the time, as the innocent but strong and independent Meg, but Lon McCallister is just as good as the similarly innocent and strong Nath. Both had relatively short careers in the movies and I would guess they are at their peaks here. Rory Calhoun has the bad boy look down pat, and singer Julie London, only 21 at the time, commands the screen as the sexpot Tibby–she would continue acting for years, but she's best known as a jazzy torch singer. Judith Anderson is wasted in the nothing role of Ellen, as is Ona Munson in a small part as Nath's mother. At 100 minutes, it feels a bit too long with some bogging down in the middle, but it's definitely worth seeing. Its working title was No Trespassing, a much better title. Pictured are McCallister and Roberts. [TCM]

YPOTRON: FINAL COUNTDOWN (1966)

Secret agent Robby Logan, wearing a tux and trapped in a room, appears to be killed by machine gun fire, but we discover that he is really testing a new bulletproof vest worn under his clothes. He leaves for a beach vacation where he makes out with several women before his fellow agent Wilson calls him back for an important mission: travel to Spain to track down a missing space scientist, Dr. Morrow, who was working on an important project called Operation Gemini for Indra, a missile company. He makes contact with Morrow's lovely daughter Jeanne, with whom the kidnappers have established communications. She is carting around a briefcase of important papers that the kidnappers may want, though she won't let Robby in on its specific contents, which establishes her as a bit suspicious. Robby follows her to Monosabre, a missile base, and a blonde totsy named Carol follows Robby—she also seems vaguely suspicious, though it turns out she works for Robby's organization. At the missile base, Robby is captured and tortured in a high speed wind tunnel. The winds begin tearing off his clothes but he is saved by Carol. Jeanne and Robby fall for each other, and we know that because of the intense way they stare at each other in a darkened nightclub as a stripper goes through her routine. It seems like there are two different groups of bad guys: a guy named Revel is in possession of Dr. Morrow, but another gang, headed by a guy named Strike (who looks like a cross between Orson Welles and Peter Lorre) who is assisted by a thuggish Goliath named Goro, is in the mix as well. Clearing this up would be a spoiler so I won't. Operation Gemini is discovered to be an outer space rocket weapon called Ypotron which will be sent up at the same time as the latest NASA Gemini mission so no one will notice it, and it will be tested by shooting down the NASA craft. Things come to a climax at the Ypotron base in an African desert where the good guys and bad guys converge. There is a second climax of sorts when, after Ypotron has been destroyed, Robby and Jeanne start to make out as we see the real Gemini rocket take off.

This Italian Eurospy film has fairly low budget production values and muddled plotlines, but the hero is a handsome square-jawed dirty blond, and there is a nice twist in the last half hour that keeps viewers interested even as we still may not be clear on who's who. Most sources credit the lead character, played by Argentinian actor Luis Davila (credited as Luis Devil), as being named Lemmy Logan, but the English dub I watched clearly calls him Robby, and to make matters more confusing, the title card refers to the hero as Mike Murphy, Agent 077 (which is the name of a character that Davila played a year earlier in Espionage in Tangier) and the film’s title is given as Mike Murphy vs. Gemini. (For more confusion, the original Italian title translates as Agent Logan: Mission Ypotron.) At any rate, Davila (pictured) is the main reason to watch this—he's a good looking, B-movie stud and is handy at fisticuffs, especially in a great knock-down drag-out fight with Goro at the climax. Gaia Germani is fine as Jeanne, but she's outdone by Janine Reynaud as Carol who, in one scene, communicates important information to Robby by blinking her eyes in Morse Code. There is a somewhat confusing backstory involving the fact that during the war, Morrow saved Robby from being experimented on in a Nazi concentration camp. It's mentioned in passing, but winds up being important in a clever way at the climax. The score is peppy and light, perhaps a bit too light at times, and the theme song, performed by a British band called The Sorrows, has lyrics that explain what Ypotron (pronounced “Eeep-Po-Tron’) is. The bulletproof vest from the first scene does get used, as does a cigarette case full of eye-stinging powder and a device that causes all the phones at a hotel registration desk to ring at once as a distraction. It’s harmless fun for a Saturday afternoon. [YouTube]

HERE'S FLASH CASEY (1938)

The frat boys at Moo Moo Moo house are upset that the popular boy Flash Casey is leaving college before graduation. He's worked his way through college as a photographer and was relying on winning a photo contest but never heard back. But his roomie, a freshman named Joe, accidentally threw away the notice that he'd won. After getting a spanking from Flash, Joe finds the notice and the prize money of $100, so Flash can graduate after all. In the big city, Flash applies for a job at the Globe Press and doesn't get it, but heading for the elevator, he literally runs into reporter Kay Lanning  and they click enough that sparks fly. At this point, things start happening at such a fast pace, I wasn't always sure where plot points were coming from, but here we go. Flash temporarily gets a job at the Globe, though editor Blaine only hires him long enough to get hold of and suppress a picture he took of Rodney Addison, son of the Globe's owner Major Addison, kissing sexy French dancer Mitzi LaRue, of whom his father disapproves. Flash is taken under the wing of seasoned photographer Wade and also becomes friendly with Pop Lawrence who runs the struggling photo magazine Snap News, which Major Addison also owns. Photographer Gus Payton takes pics for Snap but gives the best ones to Blaine who hopes to drive Lawrence out of business. A gangster named Ricker sets Payton up with a camera shop as a front for a business in which they develop people's photos and keep copies of scandalous ones to use for blackmail. Once Flash sneaks some photos at a high society charity event, things move even faster. In the last fifteen minutes, Major Addison gets shot, Kay gets kidnapped, Flash gets photos of the bad guys, then leaves his camera in a drug store phone booth. Wade and Lawrence both step in to help Flash, fisticuffs occur, Ricker and his men are captured, and it appears that Flash and Kay are headed to the altar. 

This hour-long B-film is crammed full of incidents, to its detriment if you're following plot but to its benefit if you just want speedily delivered dialogue and a string of quick action scenes. I watched this because Eric Linden (Flash, pictured above) is a favorite juvenile actor of mine. He was in over thirty movies (B-movie leads, A-movie supporting parts) in the 1930s, but never made the transition to adult roles and retired from films by the age of 32. He has cute boyish looks but an oddly strong New York accent that kind of clashes with his face. He's mostly a rather passive presence in films, and though he's OK in his action scenes here, he seems a bit awkward. Still, I liked him well enough and, at the age of 28, he could still pass for college age. I'm not sure what the opening fraternity scene is doing here. Except for Flash, none of the characters involved remain in the movie. Maybe they just needed some padding to get to second-feature length. Boots Mallory (Kay) had a short and undistinguished movie career; she's fine here, but this was her last credited role. She wound up with two famous husbands: William Cagney (brother of James) and later the actor Herbert Marshall. The only supporting player I recognized was Joseph Crehan (Blaine) who has nearly 400 credits on IMDb. I liked Cully Richards as Wade. There's a cute blond frat brother in the beginning; IMDb identifies him as Sven Hugo Borg, but that may be an error. Flash is based on a pulp magazine character called Flashgun Casey, but this Flash bears little resemblance to the crime photographer of the magazines. This is watchable but it would have been better with about ten more minutes to let the plot breathe. [YouTube]

EXPENSIVE HUSBANDS (1937)

Laurine (Beverly Roberts) is an actress undergoing a downswing in her career. We meet her at a polo game with her agent (Allyn Joslyn) where she presents the winner, her friend Ricky (Gordon Oliver), with a trophy. She then decides to leave Hollywood and take a bit of a vacation in Vienna, hoping to attract enough new attention to land a film. At her hotel, a handsome waiter named Rupert (Patric Knowles) takes a shine to her but muddies his water a bit when he tells her that he can see from her performances that she's never really been in love. He mentions that he needs 200 shillings and she leaves him a tip in that amount. Later, Joe shows up advising her to marry a count as that strategy has worked for an actress who got a role that Laurine wanted. They place what amounts to a want ad looking for a marriage of convenience with a count, and who turns up but Rupert, a count who, like Laurine, is apparently down on his luck. He's hired, getting a lump sum of money and a regular allowance as long as they're married, with no other obligations. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, they start to actually care for each other, but she wants to return to Hollywood to make a movie and he wants her to stay in Vienna and give up her career. She makes the movie and during a publicity tour, Rupert shows up. It turns out that he actually doesn't need her money; he needed the 200 shillings to pay off his debts to meet the conditions of a will that left him a fortune. But two engage in deceitful behavior for a while before truths come out and things get settled in standard romantic comedy fashion.

One IMDb reviewer notes that this Warner Bros. B-movie, a screwball comedy wannabe, feels like a low-rent version of a frothy comedy that Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland probably turned down. The script is mostly OK, though the complications are not terribly believable. Knowles (who would appear with both Flynn and de Havilland in ROBIN HOOD the next year) is the best thing in the movie. He's handsome and charming and always has a smile of some kind, goofy or otherwise, on his face, and he's just right for the role. Roberts, on the other hand, is not very good. She's bland and unable to inhabit the character, and the two don't have much chemistry. She does get a good line, however; when asked to speak up, she says, "If I spoke my thoughts, the censors would cut them out." Joslyn and Oliver are both fine, though their roles are fairly unimportant, especially Oliver's—he is introduced as a possible major character, but mostly vanishes after the first scenes. Knowles made me want to like this but I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the characters. Pictured are Roberts and Knowles. [TCM]

THE RED DRAGON (1946) / DARK ALIBI (1946)

THE RED DRAGON, the seventh Charlie Chan film in the Monogram series, begins in Mexico City where attempts are made to steal some secret papers of scientist Alfred Wyans relating to the existence of new elements discovered during atomic bomb research. Wyans' secretary Dorn asks police chief Carvero to contact Charlie Chan, now working for the government in Washington, but Dorn is shot dead at his desk during a lunch party, typing out a cryptic 7-character message on his typewriter as he dies. One gun shot is heard but two bullets are found, and tests reveal that neither bullet was fired from a gun. Suspects at the luncheon include a Countess who sings in nightclubs, a Nazi propagandist, and a smuggler. Of course, most of these people aren't quite who they seem, even Wyans, and Chan (Sidney Toler) arrives in Mexico City to sort things out, along with his son Tommy (Benson Fong), and valet Chattanooga Brown (Willie Best). A crucial clue is a bottle of a rare Chinese ink called Red Drago found on Dorn's desk, which had been sold to Wyans by Iris Ling, a Chinese artist. A remote control method of shooting a gun (which almost claims Chan's life) is uncovered before a dragged-out gunfight and chase wrap up the mystery. Despite some good gimmick ideas, this film largely becomes a dreary parade of unconnected scenes, enlivened by some comic relief scenes with Tommy and Chattanooga (though one feels Mantan Moreland's absence as Birmingham) and a cute scene of Charlie on a dance floor, doing an "elderly rhumba" with Iris Ling. Highlights in the so-so supporting cast include Fortunio Bonanova (as Carvero), George Meeker, and Carol Hughes. I reviewed this several years ago here.

DARK ALIBI, the eighth of the Monogram Chans, begins with a bank robbery during which a guard is killed—the explosion of the vault is one of the better Monogram special effects scenes. Attention shifts to the boarding house of the bad-tempered Mrs. Foss who makes a point of taking in ex-convicts. Harley, who lives at the house with his adult daughter June, is arrested for the murder of the guards because his fingerprints were found at the scene. He insists that he spent the last four hours locked up in a theatrical supply warehouse where he was summoned by a note from his former cellmate who it turns out has been dead for years. Harley had kept his past as a convict a secret from his daughter, but she is determined to clear his name. However, he is found guilty and sentenced to death. With only nine days to his execution, June, her boyfriend Hugh who is a prison guard, and Tony, a public defender, seek help from Charlie Chan, accompanied by son Tommy and valet Birmingham Brown. Luckily, most of the suspects still live in the boarding house. Overall, this is a bit better than The Red Dragon, partly because Mantan Moreland is back to banter with Benson Fong, and he gets to do his unfinished sentences comedy bit with his vaudeville partner Ben Carter, as they did in THE SCARLET CLUE, though Moreland has to do one too many scaredy-cat routines. Chan calls his son and valet his "sitting assistants," a gag which continues into the next movie. Toler is still effective as Chan, and there is OK support from John Eldredge, George Holmes, Tim Ryan and Milton Parsons. By this point, it is definitely getting harder to tell one film from another, which I suppose happens to most detective movie series that run long enough—even the A-film Thin Man series runs into this problem. A little more energetic than the previous entry. Pictured above are Carter, Fong, Toler and Moreland. [DVD]

THE BEAST OF BORNEO (1934)

We're told that orangutan (or orang as it is mostly referred to here) means "man of the jungle," an ape named by the Dyaak natives of Borneo for being the closest to a human being. We then see hunter Bob Ward, who captures animals for zoos, try to snag an adult orangutan but instead winds up with a baby whom he adopts and calls Joe. Next, we see Prof. Borodoff in London doing experiments trying to prove a new theory of evolution by getting a human reaction from an ape—the experiment involves some kind of liquid or serum and it's never clear exactly how it works. Borodoff needs an adult orangutan so he and his assistant Alma head to the island of Borneo where a man named Van Der Mark joins them and suggests they hire Bob as their hunter. At first Bob refuses as he is completely against the capture of apes for vivisection, but Borodoff lies to him and says he won't be doing that. Just in case, Alma pretties herself up and attempts to seduce Bob. We don't know how far she gets as there is a sudden cut to the whole gang preparing to enter the jungle. Darmo, a native guide, comes along with his wife Nahnda who attends to Alma. Right off the bat, Borodoff complains to Alma that Bob has an "almost womanish solicitude" toward animals and natives, calling him an "incurable sentimentalist." Alma, whose seduction must have met with a favorable response, replies that he is instead an incurable humanitarian. The group spends three weeks trekking through the jungle (or, green hell as they call it), hearing the native "telegrams," or loud drumming, spreading the news of the white incursion. Eventually they come across an orangutan up in a tree that they try to starve down. Borodoff tells Alma he's in love with her and is jealous of her attentions to Bob. They capture the ape by using gin-soaked fruit, but when Borodoff makes it clear that wants to cut open the ape's brain, Bob rebels, leading to an action-filled climax.

This cheapie is par for the course for a Poverty Row studio (DuWorld): a slack narrative, lapses in plot and character, amateurish acting, and stock footage (apparently film shot in Borneo for an earlier film, East of Borneo, was used here, not always logically). Yet for all that, it holds a certain appeal for fans of the genre. A lot happens in its one hour running time, even if it doesn’t always make sense, and the bad guy gets his due at the end. The real orangutan used in the film is passive and looks fake, and the fake one is shot from afar and through brush so it sort of seems more real than the real one. Some melodrama involving the native couple crops up to take up some time. The actors are not terrible though most did not go on to have long careers. Eugene Sigaloff is appropriately villainous as Borodoff, though a little more scenery chewing would have been welcome. John Preston (Bob, pictured above) and Mae Stuart (Alma) fulfill the leading romantic roles despite a lack of chemistry or charisma. Alexander Schoenberg shows promise as Van Der Mark, but he vanishes from the movie early on. I rather liked that the seduction remains offscreen as it allows us to use our naughty minds. The sound the orangutan makes is patently false and annoying; one online reviewer refers to it as the sound a large constipated man might make in the bathroom, and that's pretty close. Ultimately, I found enough moments so that I wasn't sorry I watched it. [YouTube]

THE PHANTOM (1943 serial)

Professor Davidson and his small entourage arrive at the village of Sai Pana, looking for the lost city of Zoloz. There may be a treasure buried there, but Davidson is more interested in it as an archeological find. Along with him are his niece Diana, her fiancé Geoffrey Prescott, an assistant, Byron Anderson who may be more interested in the treasure than anything else, and a guide named Larkin who also may be hiding his true colors. Davidson is relying on a map of Zoloz which is engraved on seven pieces of ivory of which he has three. Local hotel keeper Singapore Smith agrees to sell him the three pieces he has, which leaves one central piece yet to find. But we discover that Smith is secretly in league with Bremmer, the kindly local doctor who is actually a spy who wants to find Zoloz so he can build a secret airstrip—we're never told who he works for, but given the era, he's probably a Nazi. As these plot strands come together, we also follow a separate story. Deep in the jungle, The Phantom, the masked, costumed, and supposedly immortal peacekeeping leader of several native tribes, is hit by a poison dart. Knowing he will die soon, he sends a telegram to his son to come to Sai Pana and take over his duties. It turns out that Prescott is the Phantom's son, and he leaves Davidson's group to take over as the Phantom, with only the Phantom's two loyal associates, Moku and Suba, to help him. Bremmer's men are the thugs behind the attempted assassination and soon Davidson's group heads into the jungle, searching for the last map piece, which is perhaps in the hands of a capricious tribe leader named Tartar. The bad guys follow, hoping to get to Zoloz before Davidson, and all are accompanied by the Phantom who has to be on his toes to protect Davidson and Diana while also keeping peace among the jungle tribes.

The Phantom is a comic strip character created in 1936 by Lee Falk. The strip is still running as of summer 2025. He's a benign white protector of an African tribe who is also known as The Ghost Who Walks. He wears a domino mask and dresses like a superhero; in fact, he was apparently the first comics character to don a skintight costume. The Phantom line goes back to the 1500s, and the natives believe he has remained alive all this time, though actually, the costume and duties of the Phantom have been passed down from father to son for generations. He has no superpowers, but is smart, physically strong and agile, and good with guns. Little of this backstory is present in this serial, which unlike the comic strip, seems not to be set in Africa, but most likely, South America or Mexico, based on the Mayan looking sets and the skin color of the natives. The fifteen chapters of this serial are full of plot and incident, which makes this much less repetitive than most serials, though it also muddies the narrative waters a bit. There are several settings, including Sai Pana, Zoloz, a couple of other hidden cities, and the open-air throne room of The Phantom. Various characters come and go, most notably the Tartar king who can shift from bad guy to good guy quickly. As in any good (or even bad) adventure serial of the era, there are fisticuffs galore, gun battles galore, and cliffhangers galore (involving dangerous animals, avalanches, raging fires, quicksand, and poison gas). There is almost too much going on to keep track of, but as long as you know the good guys from the bad guys, you can follow along easily.

The Phantom is played by Tom Tyler, who had appeared earlier in the Captain Marvel serial, widely recognized now as one of the best classic-era serials. I found Tyler quite wooden in that title role, and he's a bit wooden as Prescott in the first chapter, but he's masked for most of the movie so his unchanging facial features aren't a problem. He’s tall and sturdy and well-built, looking both attractive and menacing in his costume. The only other actor to get screen credit is Jeanne Bates who is adequate as Diana (who forgets about her missing fiancé rather quickly). Frank Shannon (Dr. Zarkov in the Flash Gordon serials) is so-so as Davidson. Better is Kenneth MacDonald as Bremmer whom we know from the get-go is no good, but who successfully hides behind his good guy persona right up to the end. MacDonald gives him a little more personality than most serial villains have. John Bagni provides solid support as Moku, and Guy Kingsford is so very slimy as the treacherous Byron—it takes several chapters for him to become a full-on baddie but he is nicely cowardly and whiny throughout, looking like someone you'd like to slap for no reason. Standouts among the many, many bad guys who pop in and out are Sol Gorss as Criss, the most active of the thugs, Joe Devlin as the sweaty Singapore Smith, and Anthony Caruso as Count Silento, who is not as important to the plot as his fancy name might suggest. The best cliffhanger is the one involving a rickety footbridge over a mountain gorge.

I took pages of notes while watching, but didn't need many of them for my review, so here are some odds-and-ends observations so I don't feel like I wasted my notetaking time: Suba, the assistant of the Phantom whose job is to create a literal smokescreen for the Phantom to make his appearances and disappearances to the tribe, looks a bit like Jeff Goldblum; Prescott's pet German Shepherd Devil (played by Ace the Wonder Dog) gets quite a bit of screen time and is good at looking dangerous; a couple of major incidents, including the death of Blackie (a character who is talked about but never seen), occur offscreen—maybe they ran out of money?; I may have missed something, but it seems like Bremmer knew all along where Zoloz was and didn't really need the map; I chuckled at one scene when the Tartar king slugs one of his guards and calls him a clumsy fool; speaking of the Tartar king, I never figured out if Tartar was his name or the name of his tribe. I watched the first two chapters of this many years ago and lost interest, but now that I'm more acclimated to the serial genre, I quite enjoyed it. The VCI DVD is OK but it could stand a nice restoration. Above left, Tom Tyler with Ace the Wonder Dog. At right, Tyler and John Bagni [DVD]

THE MAN WITH A CLOAK (1951)

In 1848 New York, young innocent country girl Madeline Minot arrives from Paris, looking for Charles Thevenet, the rich grandfather of her lover Paul, a revolutionary who needs money to continue his activities back home. At a tavern, the penniless alcoholic poet Dupin (the titular cloaked man) helps Madeline find his address but she is distressed by her reception. Thevenet, though supposedly dying, is an unpleasant old curmudgeon being attended to by his arrogant housekeeper Lorna and his unfriendly butler Joseph. When Madeline asks Joseph what is causing the old man's death, he replies, "His life." Lorna and Joseph are expecting to get money when Thevenet dies, and are aware that, if the old man gives money to Paul, they may wind up mot getting what they see as their fair share. Suspicious of Lorna, Madeleine gets Dupin to help her investigate Thevenet's situation. Worried that Lorna may be poisoning the old man's medicine, they have it analyzed to find that it's neither nor medicine poison but sugar water. Thevenet calls his lawyer to change his will to leave his money to Paul, then plans to kill himself with a poisoned brandy, but he has a debilitating stroke just after attending to the will and the lawyer winds up dead, having drunk the brandy instead. The will goes missing, though Thevenet, unable to speak, tries to communicate the will's hiding place to Dupin, put somewhere in the room by his pet raven. After the old man dies, all concerned are looking for the will, though Dupin has the advantage, if only he can decipher Thevenet's last clues.

This is a period psychological thriller with a twist; it's technically a spoiler, but every reviewer and summary writer mentions it, and most viewers will figure it out fairly early on: Dupin is actually Edgar Allan Poe, a struggling unknown poet, though Thevenet appears to own a volume of Poe's poetry, from which Dupin reads a portion of The Raven out loud. In real life, Poe was well known by 1848 and died just a year later. The presence of Poe (using the name of his detective character Auguste Dupin) is mostly a gimmick that has little importance to the plot, but Joseph Cotten is fine in the role, wisely underplaying throughout, though it does feel strange that the alcoholic poet never acts drunk in the least.  Leslie Caron is serviceable as Madeline, but the real star of the show is Barbara Stanwyck as Lorna—because she looks every bit the secretive villain, she also effectively underplays her role. A flirtation of sorts develops between her and Dupin but goes nowhere. Almost as good is Louis Calhern as Thevenet; he makes the old man quite unlikable but still somewhat sympathetic. Villion, the pet raven, is fun; Joe De Santis is the thuggish butler, Margaret Wycherly is the cook, and an unrecognizable Jim Backus is an Irish bartender who lets Dupin drink without paying. A nice near Gothic feel is generated by the sets and cinematography. Pictured are Cotten and Stanwyck. [TCM]

THE SCARLET CLUE (1945)

On a dark city street, detective Charlie Chan, doing wartime work for the government, meets up with his police contact Captain Flynn, an old friend, who has been trailing a suspect named Rausch who is after some radar secrets. Flynn was obvious in his tailing, spooking the guy on purpose, but Rausch's bosses discover the surveillance and kill Rausch on a tugboat. Clues lead Chan, his son Tommy and valet Birmingham Brown to the Cosmo Radio Center where a radio soap opera, sponsored by a waffle mix company run by cranky old Mrs. Marsh, is being rehearsed. Among those present: Brett, the studio manager; Diane Hall, an actress whose stolen car was seen near the site of Rausch's murder; other actors including Horace Karlos, an old Shakespearean ham whom we learn loves to wear costumes and disguises; and a "janitoress" named Swenson with a suspiciously thick Swedish accent. We soon find out that Brett is the man who stole Diane's car and killed Rausch, but he has never seen his boss—he gets his orders by phoning someone who then phones someone else who then replies to Brett via teletype machine. (Though a good gimmick, this also allows the viewer to guess the identity of the boss fairly quickly.) Also in the Cosmo Radio building is the Hamilton Laboratory where radar research is ongoing, and where a large and elaborate weather tunnel, which can produce cold, heat, wind and rain, is located. Following is a death in an elevator in which, by remote command, the bottom drops out (and Birmingham barely survives such an occurrence), and deaths by poisonous gas initiated by the lighting of a cigarette. After the weather tunnel wreaks some havoc, Chan soon dopes it all out with some help from a surprising source. This fifth entry in the Monogram run of Chan films (I have no idea what the title refers to) is a bit of an uptick in the series. Though the supporting cast is still mostly composed of lesser known talents, they do decent jobs, with special notice going to I. Stanford Jolley (Brett), Helen Deverell (Diane), Virginia Briassic (Mrs. Marsh), and Robert Homans (Flynn) who played cops, bartenders and watchmen in literally hundreds of 30s and 40s movies. Horace Karlos seems intended to conjure up images of Boris Karloff, but the character is largely a red herring. Sidney Toler, Benson Fong and Mantan Moreland repeat as the central trio of Charlie, Tommy and Birmingham, and Moreland has some fun engaging in an old vaudeville routine with fellow comic Ben Carter in which they converse by not letting each other finish their sentences. Having said that, the comic relief is at times a bit too much. Luckily, between the various characters, the plot strands, and the bizarre methods of murder, this one kept my interest throughout. In the picture above, Moreland is on the far left with Toler and Fong at far right. [DVD]