CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS (1937)

This is a bit of an oddity in the Charlie Chan series, invoking two timely real-world references: the Berlin Olympics of 1936, at which American runner Jesse Owens won four gold medals, and the German dirigible Hindenburg, which exploded with much loss of life just weeks before this movie was released. Otherwise, it's not a particularly noteworthy entry. The first twenty minutes take place in Honolulu. As Chan's son Lee (Keye Luke) is heading to Berlin to compete in the Olympics as a swimmer, Chan (Warner Oland) gets roped into helping authorities figure out what happened to a plane that vanished during a test flight for an invention that could guide a plane by remote radio control. The pilot was forced by a stowaway to fly the plane to a deserted beach where he was killed and the device taken. The spies, who now have the remote control, are on the ocean liner Manhattan, headed to Berlin where the Olympics will give cover to their attempt to sell the device to a foreign power. Also on board: the U.S. Olympic team, including Lee Chan, his gal pal Betty and her boyfriend Dick, a pole vaulter. Dick gets sidetracked by the attention paid to him by the sophisticated white fox-fur wearing Yvonne, whom we're pretty sure is one of the spies. Chan, along with Hopkins, owner of the device, and Cartwright, inventor of the device, take the Hindenburg to Berlin in order to arrive before the ocean liner. Once there, Chan and the spies play cat-and-mouse games, with Chan getting hold of the device but the spies kidnapping Lee to force Chan to give it up. But, as usual, the villains have underestimated Honolulu's finest policeman.

Though Jesse Owens is not singled out in the narrative, we do see newsreel footage of him running in the relay race for which he won a medal and we hear someone yell, "Come on, Jesse!" Footage of the Hindenburg, with the swastikas blurred out, is shown briefly, though the zeppelin trip is not a major part of the story. What story there is winds up being both convoluted and predictable, and aside from Oland and Luke, the best acting comes from the bad guys: Katherine DeMille (Cecil's adopted daughter) as the exotic Yvonne and C. Henry Gordon as Hughes, an arms dealer trying to get the remote control for himself before it can be sold to a foreign diplomat named Zaraka. Pauline Moore is nicely perky as Betty; Allan Lane is in good physical form as Dick, the pole vaulter. Other familiar faces are John Eldredge as Cartwright and Jonathan Hale as Hopkins, both of whom, despite being the inventor and the owner of the device, act a bit suspicious at times. Nine-year-old Layne Tom Jr. (pictured at left) has a couple of cute scenes as Charlie Jr., a young Chan son (whom Chan misidentifies as Son #2; all Charlie Chan fans know that is actually Tommy) and he has a running joke about his fascination with the phrase "white fox fur." The last part of the film degenerates into people running in and out of rooms, and despite the real-life references, this is about par for the course for the Oland series. I watched this over the weekend to coincide with the current winter games. Pictured at top: Oland, Luke and Gordon. [DVD]

YOU AND ME (1938)

After hearing a song about money ("Whatever you see that you really want / You may have, provided you buy it"), we see Helen (Sylvia Sidney), an employee at Morris's, a department store, catch a woman trying to shoplift a blouse, and the soft-hearted Helen lets her go. Helen is an ex-con on parole who has been given a second chance by Mr. Morris, the store's owner. In fact, Morris makes it a habit of hiring ex-cons. Another one of them is Joe (George Raft), who works in sporting goods and is sweet on Helen. She knows about his past, but he doesn't know about hers. He's fallen in love with her and on a whim they decide to get married. She tells Joe they must keep the marriage secret because it's against the store rules. It's not really but she's still on parole and can't get married. He tells her how much he doesn't like jailbirds and liars which makes her very uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Gimpy Carter (who works in the shoe department) is visited by Mickey, an old crony, who tries to tempt Gimpy into one last heist: robbing the department store. A handful of the ex-cons fall in but Joe refuses until he finds out that Helen has been lying about her past. Helen finds out about the plans, tells Morris, and the gang have a surprise when they break into the store that night: Morris is there and forces the men to listen to a lecture Helen has prepared, complete with blackboard, showing mathematically that crime, or at least the crime they're planning, won't pay enough to be worth it. Will the men listen? Will Morris forgive them? Will Joe go back to Helen, and if so, will Helen's parole status be threatened?

Some critics refer to this as Runyonesque (as in Damon Runyon, whose whimsical crime stories were the basis of the musical Guys and Dolls) and it definitely is. Except for Mickey (Barton MacLane), these crooks are a likable bunch of guys we sympathize with, even if the quickness with which they agree to pull off the robbery is a bit jarring. Sidney is quite good as the conflicted heroine. It is difficult to side with her as she continues to lie to Joe, although that is the plotline that supplies the most conflict. Raft is out of his element early on as the romantic lead, but is more convincing in the last half-hour as he reverts to his more typical criminal persona. I liked Harry Carey as Mr. Morris, and the strong supporting cast includes Roscoe Karns (whose highlight is a scene in which he threatens a little girl into liking a toy), Warren Hymer, George E. Stone, Cecil Cunningham, and Robert Cummings. Director Fritz Lang, not known for a light romantic touch, throws in some unusual scenes. There is music by Kurt Weill; the opening song, "Song of the Cash Register," is backed by impressionistic abstract montage shots of consumer goods. Later, as the crooks reminisce about the old days, "The Knocking Song" has them all chanting song-like dialogue against dark montage shots. It's an interesting moment but it doesn't really fit. Actually, the various moods of the story (comedy, melodrama, romantic comedy, noir visuals) mesh uneasily, and the happy ending doesn't exactly feel earned. But it's an unusual film for the era and is worth a shot. [Criterion Channel]

THE BLACK PARACHUTE (1944)

In 1942, the Nazis occupy a small European country led by King Stephen. Radio broadcasts from the king ask his people to cooperate with the Nazis, but the leaders of the underground movement suspect that he is being coerced into making these statements—and we discover indeed that the Nazi general Von Bodenbach is holding the king in "protective custody" and having a voice double make the broadcasts. American reporter Michael Lindley, in Europe to cover the war, is asked by resistance leaders Kurt and Erik to help free the king. He agrees and is parachuted into the country with a black parachute, supposedly less visible in the night, but the Germans still see him and try to chase him down. He gets help from a reluctant farmer and his daughter; the man Michael had arranged to contact is now dead, and the farmer is suspicious. But they offer him refuge in a cellar and then test him by undertaking a fake raid. Convinced of his loyalty, the group accepts him, and after they kill a small Nazi convoy, Michael takes the uniform and ID papers of Captain Mir and gains entrance to King Stephen’s castle. Bodenbach is fooled, but his mistress Marya knew Mir in the past and knows he's not Mir, but she doesn’t give him away. She asks Michael to take her with him when he frees the king (with the help of some resistance fighters who are present in the castle), but can she really be trusted? The title of this unassuming B-movie ultimately means nothing, as the black parachute doesn't really work. But it is kind of a cool title and the reason I watched this when it came up as a YouTube algorithm suggestion. At seventy minutes, it's about the right length for what it sets out to do, which is to tell a story about a resistance rescue. Larry Parks (pictured), who plays Michael, is not exactly the heroic type in build or voice, but he suffices for a B-movie lead. John Carradine is the Nazi general, and of course, he could do this kind of role in his sleep. Osa Massen is very good as Marya, keeping us guessing about her loyalty and motivations until the climax, though at times she sounds like Madeline Kahn's character in Blazing Saddles. Charles Wagenheim (Kurt) sounds a little like Groucho Marx. Busy character actor Jonathan Hale is King Stephen. It's a decent propaganda piece, as most wartime films were, and builds to a tense conclusion. [YouTube]

FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)

A folk music theme, sung by Kingston Trio imitators, tells us that men known as the Mighty Sons of Hercules, "once thundered through the years"; they were "men as men should be"; they "could never feel the curse of a coward's fears"; they come around "to show that might and right still survive." In a time thousands of years ago, a glacial ice cap spread south, turning some tribes into nomads escaping the cold. We see a group of sun worshipers, led by Doric and his son Aydar, build a new village, but nearby is a lake with a giant sea serpent. When it threatens Aydar and his wife-to-be Raia, wandering loinclothed muscleman Maxus (Reg Lewis) comes to the rescue, slaying the beast. But the Sun People's problems have barely begun. That night, a tribe of moon worshipers, led by the dark and hairy Fuan, attacks, burning homes, killing many of the men, and carting the women off to be human sacrifices to the Pale Goddess at a ritual to be held at the next full moon. Doric is killed and the tribe's central fire pit is extinguished. All is not well among the Moon People; Fuan's woman Moah resents Fuan for killing off her family and staking a false claim to the throne. Maxus finds the Sun People, restarts their fire (how in the world do these people not know how to make fire?), and agrees to go off and try to free their women. He does, with some help from Moah, but Fuan catches them and buries them both up to their heads in the ground. Luckily, a volcano (or earthquake, or both) erupts, saving the two. The Moon People go off to get help from a nearby tribe of cannibal barbarians, leading to a climactic battle in which Maxus and Fuan have a knock-down, drag-out fight before Fuan is killed by a gigantic stone carving of the sun.

Where to start? I guess with the title. Though there are some monsters here and there (none very impressive), they have nothing to do with fire. Maxus is not a literal son of Hercules; Sons of Hercules was a group title for a repackaging of some peplum movies for American television and they were all given the same title song. (See MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES.) In the original Italian version, the hero is Maciste. Reg Lewis (Maxus, pictured above) was a professional bodybuilder—this was his only speaking part in a movie, though he apparently toured in a stage show with Mae West. He didn't need to be a good actor, just have a good physique, which he does. Andrea Aureli is nicely menacing as Fuan, but no one else in the cast stands out. There are a few moderately effective battle scenes with people and boulders tossed about, and the climactic fight is well executed. The fact that it's not set in Greece or Rome is a novelty but I did miss the big palaces and stadiums of the traditional sword and sandal adventures. The presence of a cannibal tribe is promising, but nothing is done with this. The English dubbing is worse than usual, and apparently the original Italian version (the title of which is translated as Maciste Against the Monsters) is a slightly different cut. It was released in England as Colossus of the Stone Age, but never seems to have gotten a theatrical release in the United States. It's not one of the worst peplum films, but approach with low expectations. [YouTube]

GIRL WITH HYACINTHS (1950)

Lovely young Dagmar is playing piano one night at a small party. She seems depressed and after a couple of interactions with guests, she leaves for home, seeming almost suicidal as she looks longingly into a dark river from a bridge. A man passes by noticing her mood and says, "Don’t let it worry you; he's not worth it." She replies, "There is no he." At her apartment, she slumps into a chair and stares at an empty lamp hook on the ceiling. The next morning, she is found dead, having hung herself from the lamp hook. Her neighbors across the hall, writer Anders and his wife Britt, are told she left a note leaving her possessions to them. Intrigued partly because they didn't really know her all that well, they begin an investigation into her life and the possible reason she committed suicide. At her funeral he talks to a rather cold man, a banker, who might be her father and whom Dagmar's mother tried to blackmail over his possible paternity. He finds other people from her past life including Gullan, an actress who befriended Dagmar on a lonely Christmas Eve; Korner, an alcoholic struggling artist who painted a portrait of her (from which the film's title comes); and Willy Borge, a crooner who gave copies of his albums to all his lovers and says that she came from a generation that would "rather jump out a window than acknowledge our need for tenderness." Anders and Britt also meet Dagmar's former husband, a soldier named Brink. He says despite being married to her for four years, he felt he never knew her. He read a letter he found to her from a former lover named Alex, but because Dagmar insisted that there had been no other man before him, Brink felt he could not trust her and they divorced. It seems like Dagmar is going to remain a cipher to Anders as she was to most of the people who knew her, but in the end, Britt discovers the truth.

[Major spoiler follows] Though I'm disappointed that the Criterion Channel has bought into the teasing overuse of the phrase 'film noir' and included this Swedish movie, directed by Hasse Ekman, in a collection called Nordic Noir, I'm pleased to have been able to see it. Much is made of this film's narrative similarity to Citizen Kane, in that it is a search for the secret to a dead person's identity through a series of flashbacks triggered by people from the past. The sometimes stunning shadowy visual style also borrows from Kane which I think is why the noir label has been attached to this. But most of the defining themes of noir are not present. Interestingly, though Kane's 'Rosebud' doesn't really explain Kane, Dagmar's Rosebud moment at the end does, at least on the surface, explain her death. Britt discovers that Dagmar's mysterious Alex from the past was not a man but a woman; Dagmar encountered her at the party seen at the beginning and we see that scene again at the end, able to piece together at least a cursory explanation for the suicide. Apparently, Swedish audiences from 1950 went home from this movie largely unaware of what the ending meant given the absence of gay and lesbian signifiers in pop culture. Viewers today will probably pick up on the gay subtext along the way, though the ending still has a nice frisson to it. The acting is excellent throughout. Eva Henning's Dagmar (pictured)  has a melancholy tinge though she also manages to come off as both simple and complex, as both transparent and mysterious. Ulf Palme (Anders) and Birgit Tengroth (Britt) are nicely grounded as a pleasant, average couple and their scenes together are light in tone. Anders Ek is eccentric as the artist and Keve Hjelm is sympathetic as the ex-husband, despite a moment when he expresses admiration for the Nazis. Highly recommended, though not as a film noir. [Criterion Channel]

THE SHANGHAI STORY (1954)

In Shanghai, a crackdown by the Communist government occasioned by an outbreak of spy activity has a number of foreigners interned as prisoners in an emptied-out hotel. Among them: Dan, an American doctor; Paul, a seemingly harmless artist; newlyweds Emilio and Leah; Knuckles, a young sailor; and Ricki, a neutral citizen who is suspected of being an arms dealer. Also among the internees are a minister, an older man with a heart condition, and an American family. There is one internee, Rita, who has a fair degree of freedom in coming and going. Despite some possible sparks between her and Dan, he suspects that she may be the mistress of Zorek, the security officer. The story develops episodically. One of the Communist guards kills a dog for biting him on the ankle; a young girl falls ill and Dan tries to get Rita to use her influence to allow her to be taken to a hospital; an assassination attempt is made on a spy suspect. One man discovers that Paul has a radio hidden in his room, but when he excitedly tries to tell Zorek, it's assumed he is trying to escape and is shot dead. Dan figures out a way to get information out to spy contacts, but has to rely on Rita for help, not being quite sure if he can trust her. This is a B-movie cross between a spy melodrama and a soap opera. It takes place almost completely in the hotel and the two genres do battle throughout. The characters, though well differentiated, aren't all that interesting, with Paul (Whit Bissel) and Knuckles (Richard Jaeckel) brought to life the best. Ruth Roman is fine as Rita, whom you know from the beginning will wind up on the side of the good guys, but Edmond O’Brien (as Dan) is a bit stodgy and their implied romance goes nowhere. The soapy Grand Hotel elements of the film don't build convincingly, but the mild spy action scenes are pulled off fairly well. Taking place on a handful of hotel sets, the whole thing is very much like a play, though it was actually based on a novel. The director, Frank Lloyd, turned in some fine work in the 30s (Cavalcade, Mutiny on the Bounty) but in this, his next-to-last film, he seems uninspired. It’s paced fairly well and at 90 minutes, seems about the right length. Though it's not set on a train, fans of train movies, with various characters stuck together in a limited space, may enjoy this. Pictured are Jaeckel and O'Brien. [TCM]

BLIND SPOT (1947)

In his opening narration, author Jeffrey Andrews (Chester Morris) tells us that we may have seen too many movies about authors living the high life, but writing good books and writing books that sell may not be the same thing. We see a drunken and grizzled Andrews get dressed as he looks at himself in a cracked mirror (pictured at left), takes another slug of booze, and heads off to visit his publisher Henry Small, looking for a loan or an advance. Though Small is in a meeting with successful mystery writer Lloyd Harrison (Steven Geray), Andrews rudely pushes past Small's secretary Evelyn (Constance Dowling) and demands a new contract. Small refuses but gives him twenty bucks and encourages him to stop writing literary books and aim for the bestseller list. Harrison, who is himself looking for a new contract, admires Andrews' books and seems sympathetic to his plight. Andrews mumbles something about how easy it would be to come up with a plot for a locked room murder mystery then hits a bar where he relates his murder plot to the bartender, and later to Evelyn who arrives at the bar upset over Small having tried to force himself on her. Later, even more drunk, he goes to Small's empty outer office and tears up his old contract. The next morning, Small is found dead in his locked inner office and the police arrest Andrews as a suspect since the death is very much like the murder he had outlined the night before. Andrews can't remember the solution to the mystery he had dreamed up. Harrison talks the police into letting Andrews go in his custody. Trying to track down the two people to whom he told the plot, Andrews discovers that the bartender has been found dead and Evelyn has disappeared. He also finds a $500 check in his pocket from Small, indicating that the publisher had heard the whole story and liked it. He eventually finds Evelyn and suspects her (her earring is found near the bartender's body) but they strike sparks. Evelyn: "Do you really think I killed Small?"; [long rough kiss]; Andrews: "Yes." Still, the two join forces to figure out Andrews' forgotten solution and find the real killer.

This is a nifty little low-key film noir. There aren't quite enough suspects around so the killer's identity is obvious (as is, if you've ever read a locked room mystery, the solution to Andrews' plot), but the movie is drenched in noir visuals and the acting is quite good. Chester Morris gives a far more layered performance than he was allowed to give in his Boston Blackie detective films, and he's very convincing as a drunk at the end of his rope, though he overdoes the drunk acting a bit in the beginning. In a couple of scenes in which his stubbled face is nearly engulfed in shadows, you can practically smell the sweat on his skin and the booze on his breath. Dowling was in the classic noir BLACK ANGEL and did a Boston Blackie movie with Morris the year before. Though she never broke out of B-films, she's great as the dame who may or may not be a femme fatale. Geray is convincing in a difficult role; as with Dowling, we're not quite sure how much to trust what he does and says. In addition to the opening meta-reference to movies, there's also a brief reference to THE LOST WEEKEND, the famous film from 1945 about an alcoholic writer. Thanks to TCM host Eddie Muller for bringing this to light on his Noir Alley show. [TCM]

THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1969)

Two men assault a trash truck driver, knock him unconscious, and send his truck into reverse to crash into a nightclub, killing a crime boss named Grinaldi and his bodyguard (discovered later to have been a CIA agent). Grinaldi's mistress, Revel Drue, had been sitting with him just moments earlier when she went to chat with Johnny Cain, the club owner and a former lover. Cain, who lives on a yacht, is generally known as a playboy adventurer and the day after the crash, he is called to a nighttime meeting in the offices of a department store. Grinaldi had belonged to a small group of supposedly respectable businessmen who are secretly involved in criminal activities. The men, whose group is codenamed West (for the Western United States, I presume), aren't unhappy that Grinaldi is dead, but they are worried about the motivation of the killer so they hire Cain, under threat of death, and give him 72 hours to find those responsible. A starting point: Grinaldi was in the process of smuggling a priceless Tibetan statue called Yama. Cain gets some help from Crawford, a police lieutenant who may not like Cain but is sympathetic to him. Later, the CIA, who are looking into the smuggling, strongly encourage Cain to share what he learns with them—some months ago, a Caribbean CIA outpost was blown up, with all but one agent killed, and the Yama statue may be linked to that incident. Along the way, Cain meets: Grinaldi’s widow, an amateur actress who seems pretty numbed out by booze and drugs; a tired old man named Hash who served as Grinaldi's accountant; an art history professor who works a side gig as a stripper; studly pilot Race Rockwell; and engineer Ah Ling, whose name Rockwell helpfully identifies as "oriental." We're never quite sure who can be trusted, especially the somewhat mysterious Revel. The specter of Communism becomes a MacGuffin, just like the Yama statue, so ultimately, there doesn't seem to be much at stake for the audience to care about.

This is a deliriously fun bad movie that MST3K or Rifftrax should get their hands on. The main reason for watching is Adam West who stars as Cain. West's claim to fame until the day he died was playing Batman on TV in the mid-1960s. His handsome face and oddly deadpan demeanor were perfect for this role, but he never got very far putting Batman behind him, and to his credit, he eventually embraced the stereotyping and wound up with a very long career (with almost 200 credits on IMDb), often playing himself. This was his first movie role after Batman and he's actually OK, coming off as nice-looking and almost hunky but a little dim—he frequently has sort of a dead-eyed look that works with this character, and I'm a little sorry he never got to repeat the role. Online critic Ian Jane says of West here that he’s "kinda charming in his seemingly oblivious way," and that's a great description of what I see as one of the movie's pluses. 

The real problem here is, well, everything else. Though in terms of visuals, it looks good (the Blu-ray print is spectacular), it's clearly a B-movie affair with an incredibly slapdash script that feels like it was written as they filmed, and the narrative goes off the tracks by the halfway point. Nancy Kwan (pictured above right with West) was one of the first Asian actresses to gain Hollywood stardom with her first two movies, The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song, but she was soon relegated to lesser roles and movies; as Revel (great name!) she’s good here but is basically a less tarted-up Bond girl. Very busy character actor Nehemiah Persoff keeps his dignity as the cop. But no one else comes off very well, including Robert Alda and Mark Roberts as two of the West group, and Frank Baxter in the two-line role of Race Rockwell (again, great name!). Patricia Smith overacts every moment she's on screen as the zoned-out widow. Lisa Todd, as Sugar Sweet, the art history professor, can barely say her lines, let alone give them any feeling. Buddy Greco, a legit pop singer, plays Lucky, the club performer; he handles what little acting he has to do OK, but all three of the songs he sings are just awful, with lyrics like, "I’m alive to the memory of at least a dozen mistakes, freakish little nothings" and "Abreast of the times, way out in the spaces of your mind." The fistfights are well staged; one is pictured at left. There's a great scene of a dead body slowly coming down an escalator. If I'd seen this in a grungy panned-and-scanned print, I would not have stuck with it, but in crisp, clean widescreen, it was worth hanging around until the end, even if I had to shut my mind off. [Blu-ray]

WALK THE PROUD LAND (1956)

In 1874, John Clum (Audie Murphy) arrives in Tucson in Arizona Territory, sent by the Department of the Interior to take steps to make the local Apache population "useful citizens." The Army, embodied by General Wade, is not happy to be overridden in their mission to suppress (or, essentially, exterminate if possible) the "savage" Apache people. Clum immediately takes measures to stop Apache workers from being manacled and is thanked by the Apache widow Tianay (Anne Bancroft), who moves herself and her young son into Clum's dwelling to be his woman. He tells her he's already engaged and that his fiancée is arriving soon to be married, but she begs to be kept on as a housekeeper. Clum has soon set up an Apache police force to take care of tribal matters, replacing the Army. He also allows the arming of the police and of a handful of hunters. Former Army officer Tom Sweeny (Charles Drake), in danger of becoming a drunkard, becomes Clum's trusted associate, as does Taglito (Tommy Rall), a young Apache. General Wade and the Governor of the Territory remain unconvinced by Clum's approach, and forces within the tribe, primarily embodied by the angry young Disalin, stir up tensions as they want to join up with the exiled Geronimo and his men, who are hiding in the hills. More tension is stirred up by Mary (Pat Crowley) who arrives to marry Clum and, understandably, resents the presence of Tianay in their home. The ending, in which Clum gets Geronimo to surrender without firing a shot, leaves things in uncertainty as the Army regains control of the tribe, but Clum agrees to stay on when he is asked by the Apache chief to become a go-between.

John Clum was a real person who did, according to Wikipedia, implement self-government on reservation lands, and did have a hand in capturing Geronimo. He had a wife named Mary, though they were married back in Ohio. When he got tired of Army interference, he left for good, replaced by a string of Indian agents who were less effective. This movie has the feel of a "print the legend" story and as such, it's effective enough. I like Audie Murphy and his stoic good-guy persona works well here. The memory of watching TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON was still fresh and Murphy reminded me of a less antic version of the role that Glenn Ford plays in that tale of the American Army's attempts to bring capitalism to a post-war Japanese village. It was strange to see Anne Bancroft in "duskyface" (pictured with Murphy) and speaking stilted English as the Indian widow but she's fine. Pat Crowley has little to do in the totally predictable role of the wife who overcomes her resentment in the end. Charles Drake is likable as Murphy's sidekick, though he rather overdoes a drunk scene early in the film. Tommy Rall is better known as a dancer (Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and is not an easy fit for the role of Taglito, but he grew on me. As was par for the course, there are no Native American actors in major roles except for Jay Silverheels in the small role of Geronimo, and the men in the bad guy roles (Morris Ankrum, Anthony Caruso) don't have much to do except glower and skulk. Writer Jeff Arnold, an expert on the Old West and Western movies, concludes that even if the "facts are distorted [...] they got the overall tone right," and that feels right to me. [TCM]

BLONDES AT WORK (1938)

Reporter Torchy Blane sees a rookie cop named Regan writing her a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant. Torchy tries to avoid the ticket by letting Regan know that she is the fiancée of police officer Lieutenant McBride, but no dice. As it happens, McBride is in hot water for leaking too much information to Torchy for her scoops. He refuses to discuss cases with her, and wants her to quit her job when they marry. Of course, this makes her more determined than ever to make headlines. Department store magnate Spencer is reported missing (Torchy saw him hustled into a car while getting her ticket), then found dead. When Torchy finds out that McBride’s driver Gahagan keeps a diary that he leaves in his car's glove compartment, she encourages him to write about the cases that McBride is working on, then Torchy sneaks peeks at the diary and manages to get secret info that she makes front page news with. McBride is stumped for a while, but soon catches on, though by that point, Torchy is going full speed ahead with her meddling in the Spencer case, going so far as to eavesdrop on a jury room discussion to get info. She is jailed on contempt charges just as the case is coming to a climax, but McBride actually gives her a hand so she can still get the final scoop. This is the fourth in a series of Torchy Blane movies, with Glenda Farrell as Torchy and Barton MacLane as McBride (they appeared in seven of the nine movies). I have enjoyed some of the entries in this series of fast-paced B-movies, but this one left me cold. For starters, the mystery is handled rather haphazardly and there's not much at stake for the audience—I started to include the details of the mystery in my summary but didn't think it was worth it. The climax of the case plays out offscreen. I like Glenda Farrell OK but Torchy comes off as a bit unlikable in her single-minded drive to get scoops, not seeming to care how much trouble McBride might get into. MacLane is boring and the two have little chemistry. Busy comic character actor Tom Kennedy outshines the leads as Gahagan, and I like John Ridgely in the small role of Regan. I must admit I enjoyed seeing Torchy in jail. Some plot elements were borrowed from 1935’s FRONT PAGE WOMAN. Unless you’re a Torchy Blane completist, this is not necessary viewing. Pictured are Farrell and MacLane. [TCM]

WARNING FROM SPACE (1956)

In a rotating spaceship in outer space, aliens shaped like starfish with a big eye in the center of their bodies are on a mission to save Earthlings from their own blunders. They send out flying saucers over Japan and try to get the attention of scientists Kamura, Matsuda and Itsobe. Citizens of Tokyo also begin to see these saucers, with some people reporting weird power glitches, and a reporter who catches Prof. Kamura lounging at the Cafe Universe (great name, awful decor) tries to get a story from him. Eventually one of the aliens (referred to as #1 by the other aliens) transmutes itself into the appearance of famous entertainer Hikari Aozora. She is rescued from a lake and brought to the attention of the scientists where she exhibits odd behavior like leaping ten feet into the air and passing through walls and closed doors. She also finds and tears up the formula for a new, powerful and deadly atomic weapon that Matsuda has been working on. We soon learn the aliens are from the planet Pryan whose orbit is exactly opposite that of Earth and they seem to have two missions. One was to stop us from building Matsuda's weapons, which Alien #1 seems to have done, but the other one is to warn us that a rogue planet (they call it Planet R) is heading our way and will crash into us, destroying Earth but also negatively affecting Pryon's orbit as well. The best way to do this might be to gather all existing nuclear weapons and fire them at the planet, but the United Nations (called the World Congress here) fights that idea—until the approaching planet becomes visible. They try it but it has no effect. Then someone thinks maybe Matsuda's secret new weapon might work, but a gangster has kidnapped Matsuda, keeping him tied up until he gives up the secret formula. Does Earth have a chance?

Online critics have noted that The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide may have influenced this low-budget Japanese film's plot, but it’s also a hodgepodge of interesting but half-baked ideas, some of which are brought up and then dropped pretty quickly. (It’s also the first Japanese sci-fi film in color, for what it's worth.) Let's get the biggest problem out of the way first: the aliens look like big Teletubbies whose costumes were made by the moms of middle school students for a talent show. They are perhaps the worst looking aliens in movie history (pictured above right). The gimmick of having Alien #1 impersonate a celebrity has promise, but little is done with it. The flying saucers being shot out of a mothership is a largely squandered idea, as are the World Congress, the gangsters, and Alien #1’s ability to pass through solids. The irony of the aliens trying to eradicate the very thing that ends up being the solution to the larger problem is never dealt with. I feel like they threw every idea they had for this movie in a hat, picked a few out, and gave them each 5-10 minutes of screen time. [Caveat: I've only seen the dubbed American print from American International which was released directly to TV in 1963, and it may differ from the original version in major ways.] Once I got done laughing at the opening scene of the aliens, I admit the movie did have a certain charm. The last section, which features some limited destruction due to the approaching planet, works up some thrills, and the scene of Matsuda tied up with a blood red sky lighting the room, looks almost like film noir. The actors are par for the course, with the only one allowed to stand out being Toyomi Karita as Alien #1/Hikari, mostly due to her being a bit glamorous. OK for Saturday afternoon fun. Note: every other review of this movie calls the aliens "Pairans" but I distinctly heard a "y" sound in there, so that's why I stuck with "aliens." Pictured at left is the transformation of Alien #1 into Hikari. [YouTube]

PAROLE, INC. (1948)

Right off the bat, we are given a thesis sentence, if you will, concerning the "growing menace of unwisely given or fraudulently obtained paroles." Next we see a man with multiple injuries in a hospital bed. This is Richard Hendricks, a federal agent who is recording his testimony to be used in court. We flashback to the beginning of his case, when he is tasked by the governor to root out corruption on the state parole board. When we see one of the board meetings, it's not hard to figure out that the head of the board, Holliday, is involved, as whenever there's a tie vote, he breaks the tie by voting for the parole of a shady character. Hendricks goes undercover as convict Rick Carson, a parole violator, and infiltrates the gang of Harry Palmer, a recent parolee freed by the corrupt Holliday. Palmer's wife Glenda works at the Pastime Club, a place frequented by crooks, and when Hendricks (as Carson) starts making contacts there, he flirts with the owner, Jojo Dumont, who runs an illegal gaming racket. Hendricks tries to arrange for help in getting his crime partner, Cooper, freed via crooked parole. Soon, all roads lead towards Jojo's lover Barney, a crooked lawyer who, for a fee, gets Holliday and a couple other parole board members, to rig up paroles for unworthy convicts. Double crosses, a murder, and secret recordings ensue until Hendricks is exposed and gets the shit kicked out of him. But as we know from the opening, he is saved in the nick of time by the cops and recovers to give the testimony that will put the bad guys behind bars.

Short B-film second features of the era often had either too much or not enough plot. This 70-minute movie has too much, and things get a little convoluted, though generally I was able to follow the basics. The biggest problem, however, is the lead actor, Michael O'Shea, as Hendricks. He is charisma-free and alternates between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Virtually every other male actor in the movie outshines him. Charles Bradstreet, as Palmer, is quite good but vanishes too early. Harry Lauter, James Cardwell, and Lyle Talbot, in small roles, are good. The usually reliable Turhan Bey (Barney) has little to do compared with how important he is to the plot. The two females, Evelyn Ankers (Jojo) and Virginia Lee (Glenda) are both fine. (There is literally only one other woman in the movie, Hendrick's nurse, played by Bess Flowers, the queen of bit part players of the classic era.) Much of the narrative winds up told, not shown, the sets are cheap and the direction is lackluster. I stuck with it largely for the novelty of the semi-propaganda topic of parole cheating, but you can give this a miss. Pictured is Charles Bradstreet. [YouTube]

RIGHT HAND OF THE DEVIL (1963)

Pepe Lusara (played by the film's director Aram Katcher) arrives in Los Angeles by helicopter and rents a big house for six months. The previous resident, we are told, was a research scientist who died in an explosion and not all of his body parts were found—this odd detail never comes into play again. He applies for a temp job at the downtown sports arena and cozies up to Elizabeth, the head cashier (who looks like she could be his mom). We soon realize that, thinking of himself as a criminal mastermind, he is planning a big heist at the arena. He hires four guys, none seeming very smart: Spooky, a pool hall denizen; Carter, a crook supposedly gone straight; Sammy, a jumpy junkie; and Williams, a driver. Elizabeth, carried away by his romancing, such as it is, joins in. We also see him stealing some kind of caustic acid from a nearby factory and pouring it in his tub. (Unlike the research scientist detail, this plot point will eventually come into play.) She gives him her keys and he ties her up in her office to make it look like he overpowered her to get the cash. The heist goes off fairly well, with two of the guys dressing in drag to make their escape, but Pepe betrays everyone. He escapes to Rio and lives the high life for a while, but some rough justice is delivered in the end.

Aram Katcher was a small-time character actor whose main gig was as the owner of (and chief beautician at) a beauty salon in L.A. In fact, he is credited here not just as director but as story writer, art director, and supervisor of makeup and hair styles. This very low budget film was obviously a passion project for him. There are promising elements here and there—the main idea of the story, though derivative, in particular of THE KILLING isn’t bad—but the script is sloppy, as is most of the cinematography, editing and direction. (The hair styles seem fine.) Pepe does not come off as interesting, compelling, or smart, and the heist seems to come off almost in spite of his leadership. Some viewers have noted a Peter Lorre quality to Katcher which is true when it comes to his looks, not true when it comes to his acting talent. Lisa McDonald is probably the standout (which isn’t really saying much here) as Elizabeth; she seems like an amateur who took advantage of her opportunity and gave it her best. Brad Trumbull, whom I suspect is the only real professional among the supporting players (80 credits, mostly TV), is pretty good as the driver. There is some decent gory makeup in a climactic scene. In feel, this reminded me of a couple of other super-cheap 1960s melodramas I’ve seen in recent years and liked (SATAN IN HIGH HEELS, BLAST OF SILENCE) but this one has little to recommend it. Pictured are Trumbull and Katcher. [YouTube]

THREE BITES OF THE APPLE (1967)

Stanley Thrumm is a tour bus guide, taking a small group of travelers through Italy and Switzerland. Among the tourists are an older couple who keep asking to stop so they can use a bathroom, an American alcoholic, one of the amusing kind you find in movies, and a ditzy single woman of a certain age, Angela Sparrow, who is a bit man crazy and who sets her cap for Stanley, who resists her charms without much effort. On the Italian Riviera, Stanley winds up at a casino and spends the night gambling and winning, through dumb luck, 20 million lira (about 12,000 English pounds). The lovely Carla Moretti keeps an eye on him and, when he leaves the casino at dawn, casually attracts his attention and ends up spending the day with him. Even as Stanley falls for her, we realize that she is setting up a trap to get his money. Carla follows him to Rome and romances him as she plots a scam with her ex-husband Remo that involves getting Stanley to trust them with his money so he can take it out of Italy without paying exorbitant taxes. Angela, in her rather blunt way, continues unsuccessfully to try and seduce him, and in Switzerland, Stanley and Carla wind up stuck overnight at a mountain chalet where they sleep together and, of course, Carla begins to have second thoughts about her scam. Unfortunately, Remo is not about to give up the easy money.

I found many reasons to dislike this romantic comedy. For starters, there's the silly animated credits sequence featuring Adam, Eve, and the apple—and a rather bad song about the three sung by the star of the movie, David McCallum (pictured) who plays Stanley. Character development is problematic: Stanley claims he loves his job because he loves people, but we see no evidence of that in the offhand way he treats his tourists; and the tourists are differentiated just enough so that each one gets one brief highlight scene before fading into the background. The parade of events that make up the plot—the big win at the casino, the convoluted plan to get Stanley's money, the breakdown of the ski car that forces Stanley and Carla to stay at the chalet—is ridiculous. Tammy Grimes gives a dreadful performance as the dreadful Angela. She might have benefitted from going campy, but as it is, her flirting is just embarrassing. At one point, the money is hidden inside a large stuffed dog that Stanley lets Angela hold onto, and when he needs to get it back, he enters her room at night; when he won’t get in bed with her, she files a harassment complaint with the tour company that, in the end, gets him fired. So what is there to like about this mess? Well, the three main roles are played well. McCallum’s character is inconsistent, and he plays the rather passive role as if he was desperate to escape his dashing spy character, Illya Kuryakin, from TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but his puppy dog looks made me forgive him most everything. Sylva Koscina, who first came to international fame opposite Steve Reeves in the original Hercules, looks great and gives the best performance—she is the only one I believed in as a character. Domenico Modugno is very good as her husband (and, BTW, Modugno is best known for writing the international hit "Volare"). Harvey Korman is not bad as the drunk tourist, but after a couple of early scenes, he is more or less discarded along with the other travelers. Filmed on location, the scenery is lovely, and there is a nice comic fistfight late in the film with McCallum and Modugno. I'm about to damn it with my frequently used faint praise: I can't recommend it but I'm not sorry to have seen it. Make of that what you will. [TCM]

SCARLET PAGES (1930)

In 1911, we see a matron at the Good Samaritan Orphanage performing intake on the child of Mary Bancroft, and we learn that one of the rules of taking the child is that they will never tell the mother who adopts the child. In 1930, Mary has become a successful lawyer who is being pursued by district attorney John Remington. Though she enjoys his company, she avoids commitment, possibly because of her past. One night at a nightclub, Mary and John see young Nora Mason, a brightly spangled chorus girl, perform. Nora wants to leave the business and is about to elope with a boy named Bob, but her father is essentially trying to pimp her to Gregory Jackson, a theatrical producer who wants to make a star of her (and, of course, wants to force her to marry him). That night, Nora's father is shot dead and Nora has disappeared as the police search for her. The next day, in a very melodramatic scene, Nora's mother brings Nora to Mary's office and asks her to defend Nora in court. Nora admits to killing her father but won't give a reason. After some thought, Mary agrees. When she chats with John about the case, she says she thinks that Nora is protecting someone else, most likely her mother. We eventually learn that on the night of the murder, Mr. Mason was so adamant about the arrangement with Jackson that he had threatened to kill Bob. Something else happened that night as well, as we find out that Mr. Mason may have sexually assaulted Nora. Things come to a head in the courtroom (where John is the prosecutor) when it's divulged that Nora was adopted—and guess who was her birth mother.

(Spoilers follow) This pre-Code melodrama allows Nora to escape legal punishment for murder, and gives most of the characters happy endings by the fadeout, though poor Mary has to suffer through thinking that her shame of unwed motherhood may hurt her career (it probably won't), and that she will lose the love of John (she doesn't). She is also shamed by Nora for giving her up (Nora eventually forgives her). Even Nora and Bob wind up together. This is the only talking picture made by Elsie Ferguson, who plays Mary, and who played her on stage as well. Ferguson was a well known stage actress who made many silent films, but retired from movies after this. She's a bit stiff and artificial, and doesn't generate much natural sympathy for her character. Marian Nixon (Nora) is one-note sullen throughout, which, though it does fit her character, grows boring. Better are John Halliday as John (a bit dashing and always on Mary's side, even when he's fighting her in court) and Grant Withers as Bob (big nice-guy doofus). It's clear to us from the beginning that Nora is Mary's daughter, but the actual revelation is withheld until the end. The court case, however, does generate enough tension to keep us watching. Well, it will keep you watching if you are already aware of the problems of early talkies, and this one has many of them—static shots, stagy performances, an awkward dance number. Still, the vaguely presented themes of female strength and dysfunctional family dynamics may interest some. Pictured are Nixon and Withers. [TCM]

PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961)

Paris, 1957. College student Anne is taken to a bohemian cocktail party by her brother Pierre where people are talking about the death of Juan, a Spanish musician, judged to be a suicide but thought by some to have been murder. Anne becomes entangled with Pierre's friends: Gerard, an amateur theatre director who is trying to stage an avant-garde production of Shakespeare's Pericles; Philip, an intellectual forced to leave America because of McCarthyism; Terry, a woman who was Juan's lover but is now with Philip (and who has her sights set on Gerard); Jean-Marc, an old acquaintance of Anne's who has a part in Pericles. As an outsider, Anne seems more tolerated than accepted, but when an actress fails to show up for a rehearsal, Gerard gets Anne to take her place. The rehearsals, which are scattershot both in how much gets done and where they get done (a different space every day), become important enough to Anne that she skips her exams for the acting job; also important is her growing attraction to Gerard, who seems open to sleeping with any number of actresses. Meanwhile, the friends get sucked into Philip's theory that a shadowy fascist conspiracy murdered Juan for political reasons and may be after others in their group. Gerard wants a tape of guitar music that Juan made shortly before his death that he thinks would be good score material for his play, but the tape has vanished. Anne, trying to ingratiate herself with the flirtatious but noncommittal Gerard, turns detective to find the tape. Eventually, the play is picked up by a commercial producer who wants to change almost everything that Gerard has done. Gerard has to fire Anne (though she remains as an understudy) and soon, Gerard and much of the cast quit because of the conflicts with the producer, leading to the conspiracy theory becoming the focus of the characters.

This Jacques Rivette film, though shot in 1958 and thereby one of the earliest of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) films, wasn't released until late 1961 due to post-production and financing problems, so it was late to the party, coming after influential films by Godard and Truffaut. The movie was generally overlooked at the time as not experimental enough for the Nouvelle Vague audience but not narratively traditional enough for a popular audience. At 140 minutes, this is awfully long and I admit that a more interesting visual style might have drawn me in more quickly. It seems to go through several stages: in the beginning, it feels like a character study of somewhat unmoored and unsatisfied people; then the production of the play takes center stage, so to speak, along with the slowly developing relationship between Anne and Gerard. The last third has something of a film noir feel, especially with the MacGuffin of Juan's tape, and we begin to think that the paranoiac beliefs of Philip and Terry might not be delusional. The film ends as an existential thriller (minus traditional crime movie thrills, though not without another death or two). The ending leaves us mostly satisfied while still mired in ambiguity. The discussions of fascism are uncomfortably relevant in the current political situation—the conspiracy is referred to as a "dictatorship syndicate" in which "all will be sacrificed to efficiency, the state, and technology." For much of the film, I thought the whole thing was going to be a kind of intellectual game played among bored bohemians (and I think that could have worked). The actors were not familiar to me but all were fine, especially Betty Schneider as Anne, Giani Esposito as Gerard (pictured), the most interesting character as, for a while at least, he seems the most grounded, and Daniel Crohem as Philip. I found the focus on Paris (lots of location shooting) to be a bit vague so the title is lost on me. (An opening title quotes poet Charles Peguy: "Paris belongs to no one.") Some critics suggest watching this film twice to get the most out of it, and I liked this enough to not be opposed to a re-viewing in the future. [Criterion Channel]

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

We see Episcopal minister Richard Burton begin to deliver a sermon on self-control to his congregation but he proceeds to lose control himself and rants about people turning their backs on compassion and instead encouraging scandal. Burton, who had been found in a compromising position with a young Sunday school teacher, is eventually locked out of his church, but not, as he is at pains to note to anyone in earshot, defrocked. He winds up as a tour leader and we see him next with a busful of middle-aged Baptist women in the Mexican village of Puerto Vallarta. The leader of the group (Grayson Hall) is a strident moralistic spinster who is also serving as the chaperone to an attractive teenage girl (Sue Lyon). Hall and Burton are constantly at odds, largely over his attentions to Lyon, who more than encourages his behavior, and when she finds Lyon in Burton's hotel room one night, she tells him she's going to call the tour guide company and get him fired. The next day, in an attempt to stop the company from contacting him, Burton has the bus driver (Skip Ward) more or less hijack the group to a resort a few miles out of town run by an old friend (Ava Gardner). Though she's closed for the season, she agrees to take them in, as well as welcoming two other wanderers: a struggling artist (Deborah Kerr) and her 97-year-old grandfather (Cyril Delevanti), a poet who is clearly on his last legs as he tries to finish one final poem. Tensions seethe, with Gardner accusing Hall of being a predatory lesbian with her own designs on Lyon, and Kerr trying to enlist sympathy so she and her grandfather can stay on despite having no money. The next day, Ward rebels and takes the women back to town, leaving Burton, Gardner and Kerr to their own devices that night, with Burton and Gardner working thorough an attraction even as Burton thinks about suicide (taking, as he calls it, "the long swim to China") The grandfather finishes his poem and dies, though the others have more upbeat endings.

This Tennessee Williams play has been opened up nicely, only betraying its stage roots in the final section. The amped-up melodramas of Williams work best on symbolic levels and this is no exception. Everyone overacts, but as the narrative rarely feels naturalistic, this is not out of place. Ava Gardner comes off the best, larger than life but having a real personality. She also gets to smile quite a bit, which no one else does, and she's the only character to see everyone for what they are. Burton (pictured with Gardner) is good even as he chews the scenery as a man tortured by his inadequacies. It feels like he took his acting here and cut it down by half to get to his excellent performance as George a couple years later in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Hall overacts the most, amplified by getting a lot of closeups, though her performance is fairly effective and she is missed in the last section of the movie. I'm not always a big fan of Kerr; she's satisfactory here but underacts, throwing off the balance of the performances. Delevanti, who was in his mid-70s, looks and acts every bit of 97, and young Skip Ward is fine as the bus driver. That leaves 18-year-old Sue Lyon, who became a star in Lolita. She's not bad but she’s a bit of a weak link. She's very one-note, and it's hard to tell if she's supposed to be a nymphomaniacal bad girl or a misunderstood innocent. A more experienced actor might have brought more nuance to the part. The title refers to an iguana that two of Gardner's houseboys have captured and tied up to be killed for food later, and that Burton ends up releasing. Exactly what the iguana is supposed to stand for wasn't clear to me. There's a nice line well delivered by Burton when Hall almost becomes hysterical when she comes upon Burton and Lyon in the water in their underwear: "What did you think we were doing out there? Spawning?" I also liked the scenes with the two swarthy and sensual houseboys, especially one in which they dance uninhibitedly with Lyon. There is also what I assume is one of the first references in a mainstream Hollywood movie to marijuana. Directed in a fairly plain fashion by John Huston. At two hours, it's too long, but it's worth sticking with. [TCM]

JUNGLE BRIDE (1933)

On a passenger liner, drunken young man Gordon Wayne is singing and playing on deck to the mild delight of other passengers. Less happy about the performance is Doris Evans; her brother is locked up back in the States for murder but she's sure that Gordon is the guilty party, so she and reporter John Franklin, to whom she is engaged, are hoping to bring Gordon to justice. In the middle of Gordon's carousing, the ship collides with something, takes on water, and sinks. The next morning, four passengers have washed up on an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa: Gordon, Doris, John, and Gordon's buddy Eddie. John is immediately angry about the presence of Gordon, but Eddie suggests that they'll have a better chance at survival if they can all get along. Like a pre-Code Gilligan's Island, the four manage to provide themselves with shelter and food (mostly of the vegetable kind), and Doris and John agree to a temporary truce with Gordon. Over the next couple of months, Gordon proves to be resourceful by patching up their lifeboat and fighting a wild lion that attacks Doris, and Doris starts to truly thaw towards him, so much so that they eventually sex it up. Some wreckage from the ship drifts in with the mortally injured captain clinging to life. As his last living act, he agrees to marry Gordon and Doris then asks them to set him out to sea on a burning funeral pyre—he is of Viking stock, he claims. John confronts Gordon and the two men duke it out just as a ship sees the funeral fire and comes close to the shore to investigate.

Though there are some pleasures to be had here of the Poverty Row pre-Code fashion, the script is so badly patched together that a coherent plot isn't really one of them. We get virtually no backstory about the murder that Gordon is accused of (and it's not really a spoiler to note that he's not guilty after all) and we don’t learn how the four wound up on the liner together. I'm pretty sure that John is a reporter but he refers to himself as an "officer" as well, implying he has the force of the law behind him. The action might take place on an island or just a shoreline; it makes more sense as an island, but there is a full complement of jungle animals around them, including monkeys, lions, hyenas, and hippos, with, of course, the monkeys providing occasional mild comic relief along with Eddie. (The lion fight, by the way, is a definite highlight.) In the end, when the ship finds them, we're told that it will be back in two weeks to get them, leading Doris to refer to that time as their honeymoon. But what about John and Eddie who are absent from the last scene? And why does it have to come back—there wasn't room for four extra people on the ship? The acting is of average B-film quality. Charles Starrett is a credibly handsome and hunky hero; he went on to a long career in westerns of the 1940s and 50s. Anita Page (Doris) was a big name in the silent era, but by the mid-30s, she had left the screen. She's fine if perhaps a bit artificial at times. Kenneth Thomson is completely negligible as John, and Eddie Borden only slightly less so as comic relief Eddie. When he and Gordon argue near the end of the film, their reconciliation is shot with them looking like they're just about to kiss, and frankly, they have a little more chemistry than Gordon and Doris. The sinking of the ship looks the Titanic disaster as staged by high school students. Straight male reviewers make much of a brief moment of bare sideboob from Page; sadly, no such nudity occurs with Starrett. Very mild fun. One online critic says it should have been called Beach Bride, and I'm inclined to agree. Pictured are Starrett and Page. [YouTube]

THE UNHOLY NIGHT (1929)

The fog in London is so thick, people are advised not to go out after dark. Lord Montague is mugged but escapes. At Scotland Yard, he says he heard a hard tapping sound just before the attack, and learns that four men killed recently were former members of his WWI regiment. He tries to be whimsically humorous but can't hide his fear. Sir Rumsey talks Montague into inviting the remaining men of the regiment to a reunion at his house the next night. As they arrive, we see a seance being conducted by Montague's sister, Lady Violet, and her lover Dr. Ballou. (It’s noted that a green ghost might haunt the house though nothing is really done with this detail.) Rumsey thinks Ballou's input as a psychiatrist might be helpful. The men all arrive in their old uniforms and mostly in good spirits except for Mallory, a man with shellshock whose face was horribly scarred in the war. Most of the men drink and sing and try to have a high old time, but when Mallory is found strangled to death in a small sitting room, a chill descends. Lady Efra shows up, the daughter of a member of the regiment who was deemed a traitor and is now dead. His will leaves his money to her and to the living members of the regiment, and of course, for every one who dies, that means more money for the rest. The men of the regiment all spend the night at the house, and the next morning Mallory's body is missing. More horrific, however, is that the other men are all found dead in their bedrooms, leaving only Montague and Lady Efra alive. Another seance is planned by Lady Violet in the hopes that at least one of the dead soldiers will show up and solve the case.

For a modern audience, the problem with this early talkie will be the single set (almost all of it takes place in a couple rooms in the house) and the primitive camera moves and staging. But for film buffs, the pluses outweigh the minuses. For a start, the atmosphere is nicely creepy, and a tracking shot late in the movie of all the dead men remains startling. The acting is also good. Roland Young (Lord Montague) is one of those actors whose presence is always welcome. He is so charming and likeable, it's difficult to imagine that he's the villain, which makes it all the more effective when suspicion falls heavily on him. He has a weakness for brandy and soda ("First one today," he says every time he pours one). The men of the regiment (including John Loder and Philip Strange) for the most part are not individualized much, and Dorothy Sebastian (pictured with Roland Young) gives a somewhat overwrought performance as Lady Efra. Ernest Torrence (Ballou) and Boris Karloff in the relatively small but important role of Efra's lawyer are OK. Both of the seance scenes are memorable—the first one involving a floating head. Trigger warning: a dog is killed (off-camera). Directed in journeyman fashion by Lionel Barrymore; at least one flubbed line is left in. Undistinguished as a director of talkies, Barrymore switched to full-time acting a couple of years later. Though aspects of the climax are predictable, it's still fun to see it play out. [YouTube]

MOSS ROSE (1947)

In Edwardian England, Rose Lynton is a chorus girl who goes by the name Belle. Her fellow dancer Daisy has been acting jumpy and secretive, and one night Belle sees her leave with a man in a hansom cab. The next day, Daisy is found dead, having been drugged and strangled. Next to her body is a Bible with a pressed moss rose, which is currently out of season, inside. Belle tracks the stranger from the night before down, the wealthy Michael Drago, whom she sees dining with his mother, Lady Margaret, and his fiancée Audrey. Belle sends an anonymous tip to Inspector Clinner about Michael, but then tries to blackmail Michael. She doesn't want money, however; she wants the chance to live at his country estate for a week or so just to see how the other half lives. Explaining to his mother and fiancée that he is paying Belle back for a favor, Michael brings her to the house. Audrey is, of course, irritated, but Lady Margaret is more gracious. Meanwhile, Clinner visits the house and discovers that Lady Margaret grows flowers in a greenhouse, including moss roses. Belle finds out that Audrey has bought several bibles at a nearby bookstore. Soon enough, Michael and Belle realize they are in love, another irritation for Audrey, and the stage is set for tension and another murder before justice is done. 

This Gothic melodrama is enjoyable enough as long as you don't think too hard about the details. There are plotholes, some having to do with a lack of backstory, including Michael's unsavory involvement with Daisy. It's not clear why Belle suddenly believes that Michael is innocent (and once we think that too, some tension disappears) except that she has to for the plot to move forward. Though the underlying motive for the murders becomes clear, there is never an explanation for the Bible and the rose, unless I missed it. But the basics of the Gothic thriller, including shadowy visuals, are here and mostly carry us past the implausibilities. The acting is weak. Peggy Cummins (Belle) has a remarkably artificial British accent; I assumed she was an American actor trying too hard, but she's Irish; they should have let her speak in her natural accent. Victor Mature (Michael) is as thick and wooden as he usually is, and isn't able to strike any realistic sparks with Cummins. Vincent Price (Clinner) is also rather artificial and seems a bit under-rehearsed. The only bright spots are Patricia Medina as Audrey (good enough that I wish she had more to do) and Ethel Barrymore as the mother. Even she doesn't always hit the right notes, but she comes through in the climax. Ultimately, this is pretty average in every way. I wanted to like it more, but it's low energy and drab. I seem to be talking myself out of recommending this, but if you happen to run across it some afternoon, it's painless. Pictured are Price and Barrymore. [DVD]

AMAZONS OF ROME (1961)

In 476 B.C. Rome is fighting for its existence against the combined forces of the Etruscans, the Greeks, and some barbarians. Drusco, the barbarian leader, casually eats his snacks while he sets his men against the troops of the Roman soldier Horatio. Etruscan leader Porcenna wants a truce, with Rome to send 1000 hostages, including women. Rome agrees, and lots of blaring trumpets announce the truce—and when one of the barbarians sees the women with their dolled-up hair and short skirts, he says, "Hey, this war's gonna be fun!" Drusco, overseer of the female prisoners, falls for Clelia. Lucilla, an Etruscan woman who had been captured by Rome some time ago, wants a stronger vengeance against the Romans even as Porcenna advocates for a lasting peace. Soon, the female hostages, fearing that drunken soldiers will assault them (which is just was Lucilla wants), escape and in the final battle, Drusco throws his support to the Romans. I learned a strange lesson from this movie: in the peplum genre: a better made movie is not necessarily a better movie. This film has strong production values, a fairly literate script, and a big name star (Louis Jourdan as Drusco), but this slicker and glossier movie isn't as much fun as a more rough and ready production might be. Jourdan, much better known at the time as a charming gentleman in movies like Gigi and The Swan, doesn't have the build or carriage of a peplum hero, let alone a barbarian. Sylvia Syms, also known for more civilized roles, is not right for the part of Clelia—at times, she reminded me of Julie Andrews, partly due to the dubbed voice. The few battle scenes, at the beginning and end, are OK, and I liked Ettore Manni as the one-eyed Horatio.  The title is a bit weird; the women do wind up being warriors, but the original Italian title, Le Virgini di Roma, translates as Virgins of Rome, which generally seems more appropriate, though I agree with one online reviewer that darn few of those gals are probably still virgins. Pictured are Syms and Jourdan. [YouTube]

NIGHT WATCH (1973)

The set-up for this psychological thriller, some of which we learn as exposition throughout the film, is as follows: The wealthy Ellen Wheeler lives with her second husband John in a London townhouse whose back windows look out over the back of a dilapidated house. Next door lives Mr. Appleby, a retired businessman who spends a lot of time in his garden and seems a bit wistful about the fact that the Wheelers' house used to be owned by his family. Staying with the Wheelers is Ellen's college friend Sarah who will be heading to Glasgow in a few days to take a new job. In the meantime, Sarah is carrying on a lunchtime affair with a married man named Barry—and all we see of him is his bare ass in a bathroom scene. Ellen's first husband Carl died in a car crash which also took the life of his young mistress, an event that drove Ellen to a nervous breakdown, and John thinks she’s still emotionally fragile as she suffers from visions and nightmares about the crash. One night during a storm, Ellen looks out the window and between lightning flashes sees, across the yard through a shuttered window, a man with his throat cut propped up in a wingback chair. Almost hysterical, she calls the police but they find no one. The next morning, Ellen discovers that, during the night, Appleby has planted some trees in his yard in a plot that's big enough to bury a body in (Rear Window, anyone?). Ellen sees a light in the house out back and eventually sees another dead body, this time of a woman. She hounds the police, even getting them to dig up Appleby's trees (with no body underneath), but her deteriorating mental state soon leads Inspector Walker to start ignoring her calls. Then she finds the possessions of Carl, which she had picked up at the morgue, in her desk drawer. Is someone trying to drive Ellen permanently crazy? She agrees to see Tony, a psychiatrist friend of John's, and he recommends a trip to a Swiss institution for a therapeutic rest. Ellen agrees but seems to think that something is not right about the situation. She's proven correct, but what it is that's not right may not be what we think is not right.

Some sources refer to this as Elizabeth Taylor's only horror movie (she plays Ellen); it's not really horror but instead a Gothic thriller with echoes of GASLIGHT and the underrated 1967 GAMES. It's atmospheric and fun with a twisty plot that, even when you think you've figured it out fairly early on, has another twist or two in store. Taylor, stuck in a long rut of rather small-scale movies that were box office flops, is quite good, though some may think she chews a bit too much scenery in her moments of hysteria. Many critics find Laurence Harvey in general to be a cold and ineffective actor (I've only really liked him in The Manchurian Candidate) and he's both of those things here; his coldness works for the character, but he delivers a low-energy performance. To be fair, Harvey had an operation for stomach cancer during production and died a year later, but physically he looks in fine shape—occasionally he looks like Leonard Nimoy. Perhaps he's deliberately underplaying to balance out Taylor's occasional overplaying, but I think it hurts the character. Supposedly, George Maharis was originally cast as John and I think he would have been a better choice. Billie Whitelaw is excellent as Sarah, a tricky role which she plays at just the right pitch. The movie is really a three-hander, though Bill Dean is nicely rumpled and peeved as the inspector, and Robert Lang makes the most of his small role as Appleby. We know almost nothing about the background of the characters of John and Sarah and that feels like a weakness. Actually, even Ellen’s background doesn’t get much filling out beyond the loss of Carl. There are some plotholes, and I think the movie even pulls a visual cheat or two on us to keep its final twists hidden. The finale is literally full of blood and thunder. Visually it's an ugly movie, murky at times, but overall this is a fairly enjoyable thriller. [TCM]

SKY HIGH (1922)

Grant Newbury is an immigration agent whom we first meet as he stops a driver heading through the desert near Calexico at the Mexican border. He forces the three women passengers out of the car and pulls off their wigs to reveal that they are Chinese men being smuggled into the States. The leader of the smuggling gang, and the man Grant hopes to find and arrest, is Jim Frazer, and we soon learn that Frazer has a ward, Estelle Holloway, who has just graduated in Chicago and is coming out west to visit her guardian (whom she calls Guardy). He arranges to meet her at the Grand Canyon where he has stashed some 200 Chinese men who are smuggling in "jewels and laces." Estelle and her friend Marguerite, accompanied by a chaperone, Marguerite's brother Victor, head out to stay at a hotel near the Canyon. Grant goes undercover in Calexico and gets a job with Frazer's group, headed by his chief henchman Bates, and winds up in the Grand Canyon helping to guard the Chinese men. When Grant tries to sneak away to inform his bosses about the smugglers, Estelle is assaulted by Victor and runs off into the Canyon, getting lost and falling into the river. Grant saves her and installs her in a small cave on a ledge overnight. By the next day, Bates has figured out that Grant is a spy and as he searches for him, Bates finds Estelle and takes her with him, leading to a confrontation that involves a horse chase down the steep Canyon walls. Grant escapes, gets to a nearby town, and enlists a pilot to fly him over the Canyon to drop him in the river in order to save Estelle and capture Bates.

The bulk of this silent film was shot on location in and above the Grand Canyon, and the stunt work, much of it done by the star, Tom Mix (Grant), is impressive. The aerial footage is a bit primitive, but supposedly this was the first time that such a filming had been attempted. Tom Mix was a wildly popular Western star, though by the sound era, he was in decline and worked mostly in radio, and this is the first one of his movies I've seen. He seems awfully average as a cowboy type, nor especially good-looking or charismatic, but he fills the hero role adequately. Slightly better are Eva Novak (Estelle) who was a frequent co-star of Mix's, and Sid Jordan (Bates) who glowers well and has a forerunner of the 1970s clone-style mustache (pictured). The movie’s running time of one hour ensures a quick pace. The shots of people running up and down the Canyon walls and rocks are exciting, as is the horse chase—at the end of which, the horse takes a nasty spill but gets up again, seemingly no worse for the wear. The newly added musical score on solo piano by Ben Model, is unobtrusive, which is meant as praise. The Blu-ray restoration which TCM showed is astonishingly clear and sharp, with few flaws or splices. [TCM]

THE DOUGHGIRLS (1944)

During World War II, there is a major housing shortage in Washington D.C. because of an influx of bureaucrats engaging in war work. Newlyweds Jack Carson and Jane Wyman arrive at a packed hotel as Carson has a job working for the Administration of Inter-Bureau Coordination. But their bridal suite is still occupied by the previous couple, John Ridgely and Ann Sheridan, who can't find any housing. As it happens, Wyman and Sheridan are old friends from their chorus girl days and they work out an arrangement. Alexis Smith, another old pal, shows up with Craig Stevens, so all three women agree to share the suite; their men aren't so happy but there seems to be no other solution. Soon, however, bigger problems raise their heads. Ridgely's former wife has decided not to finalize their divorce, leaving him and Sheridan in marital limbo; the justice of the priest that performed Wyman's marriage turns out to have been a burglar who posed as the justice; Stevens has a marriage license but couldn't actually get married to Smith because he was quarantined with measles. So now the three couples are not legally married, and as they continue to occupy the room for weeks, the bill becomes too big for them to afford. Add to the mix a Russian lady sniper (Eve Arden), a well-meaning society matron who wants the three women to volunteer to take care of some newborn babies, Carson's boss (Charlie Ruggles) who develops a crush on Wyman, an egocentric radio host and a few more folks who keep bursting into the bridal suite when not expected. After many farcical incidents and misunderstandings, a triple wedding climaxes the proceedings.

If you've ever wondered what it means when critics call a movie stagebound, this is a perfect example. With the exception of a handful of short scenes, the entire action of the movie takes place in the bridal suite, presented as though on a stage. In fact, the movie is based on a hit Broadway comedy and very little opening up is attempted here. This is a wacky farce, and though the pace rarely flags, it does become tiring watching everyone jump through their hoops, with most of the dialogue spoken like it consists entirely of punch lines. Luckily the cast is mostly up to the demands of farce, especially Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith and Eve Arden. Arden has the showiest role, speaking in an exaggerated Russian accent and meddling in everyone's affairs, ultimately being fairly useful; she even gets a song! Wyman's role is the most laid-back of the three leads so she tends to get upstaged, as do John Ridgely and Craig Stevens, but virtually everyone is fine. John Alexander and Alan Mowbray are good in small roles, as is Joe DeRita (who became one of the Three Stooges in the 1950s) who does a cute recurring vaudeville bit as a man desperate for a nap. Smith and Stevens got married not long after the film wrapped. The director, James V. Kern, directs blandly though the action remains easy to follow. I actually felt physically tired after about an hour of this, and the movie goes on for another forty minutes, but if you like full-out farce, this is fairly well done. Pictured from left: Sheridan, Smith and Wyman. [TCM]