THE CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972)

Peter, a blind musician, overhears a conversation in a bar. The voices sound tense—Peter hears a reference to blackmail, and when one of the two, a woman who we see is wearing a white cape and hood, leaves, Peter picks up an unusual scent from her. Peter was stood up by a girlfriend named Paola, a fashion model, and the next day when she opens up a wicker basket in her dressing room, she screams and is found dead with a bloody scratch on her face. As the police investigate, we get to know other people involved: Francoise, the head of the fashion business; Victor, her adulterous husband; Susan, the white-caped woman who is also a drug addict; Helga, a lesbian model who didn't get along with Paola; and Burton, Peter's faithful valet who never trusted Paola. The police think that Paola died of a heart attack, but Peter conducts his own investigation with help from Paola's roommate Margo. This being an Italian-made giallo, many genre conventions show up: in addition to the blind character, the fashion house setting, and adultery, there are people slashed with knives, baroque methods of murder, plotholes galore (I can't really summarize the last half of the movie because I'm not clear about all the details and I have no desire to watch it again), some choppy editing, and terrible dubbing, especially when overlapping dialogue is used. We're not surprised, given the English title, that a black cat is responsible for some of the deaths, let loose with poison on its claws and attracted to the victim by a dose of a catnip-like scent. Despite the many plot problems, the ultimate solution is satisfying, though I could not tell you exactly what happened or even why all the murders were necessary. Though Anthony Steffan is top-billed as Peter, he turns in a weak performance; much better are Giacomo Rossi Stuart as the playboy Victor and Shirley Corrigan as Margo. Sylva Koscina is fine as Francoise, though she's mostly absent from the middle of the movie. Umberto Raho is nicely sly as Burton. For much of the film, there isn't much gore, only a cat's severed head (and I never figured out how it got that way or who did it), but near the climax, there is a shockingly graphic and unsettling shot of a killer slashing a woman's breasts, inspired perhaps by the shower scene in PSYCHO, that I actually had to turn away from. The Italian title translates to Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk—the baskets with the cats are covered in yellow silk. Generally, it's an ineptly written and ineptly filmed mess, but I guess you could say that about many giallo films. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA (1936)

At the Rockland State Sanitarium, an amnesiac who has been there for seven years spends his evenings playing the piano and singing arias. One night, he sees a newspaper story announcing the return of opera diva Lilli Rochelle to Los Angeles after many years away and that triggers a response: the man remembers that he was the celebrated opera singer Gravelle who was assumed to have burned to death years ago in an opera house fire. He suspects that Lilli, who was his wife, conspired with her lover, the singer Enrico Barelli, to make sure he died in the fire, and his only thought now is to get revenge as both Lilli and Barelli are in town performing the opera Carnival, with Barelli singing the part of Mephisto, for which Gravelle was known. (This backstory is revealed in bits and pieces throughout the movie.) Complicating the situation: the arrival of Lilli's young unacknowledged daughter Kitty, from her marriage to Gravelle, who is seeking to get her mother's permission to marry the handsome Phil Childers—more backstory doled out over time. Gravelle knocks out Barelli and takes his place on stage for his big aria, at the end of which, his character stabs Lilli's character as the curtain falls. After the opera, when Lilli is found dead in her dressing room, as is Barelli in his, Gravelle, now in hiding in the theater, is the chief suspect. But could it be someone else? Like Whitely, Lilli's husband who knew that she was carrying on with Barelli?; or Anita, Barelli’s wife, who knew Gravelle was present in the theater?; maybe Phil, tired of waiting for Lilli's permission to marry Kitty? Or maybe it was Gravelle all along. Charlie Chan and his son Lee help Inspector Regan solve the case.

This is an interesting entry in the Chan series. For starters, Warner Oland has a co-star who gets equal billing: Boris Karloff, who plays Gravelle (pictured above left). In fact, the film's onscreen title card reads "Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff." Partly due to the writing of the character and partly due to his own performance, Karloff is the first Chan supporting player who outshines him. You'll notice I barely mentioned Chan in the summary; although he is present throughout the whole film, and seems to have as much dialogue as in any other Chan movie, he almost fades into the background, between Karloff and the complex backstory which gets related during the first two-thirds of the film—though Oland holds his own in the few scenes he shares with Karloff. Keye Luke, as Lee, gets to spend some time in opera company costume as he helps his dad gather evidence. Karloff goes a bit over the top, but it's fully justified, seeing as he’s playing an opera singer who has spent years in an asylum. Old reliable Thomas Beck (at right) turns up in his fourth and final Chan movie as Phil, and his fiancée is played by Charlotte Henry, best known as Alice in the all-star 1933 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. William Demarest is the racist jerk of a cop who keeps mocking Chan to his face; he winds up with grudging respect for Chan but doesn't really get the comeuppance he deserves. B-talent fills out the rest of the cast: Margaret Irving makes for a bland Lilli, and Gregory Gaye (Barelli) and Frank Conroy (Whitely) don't get much to do aside from act suspicious. Guy Usher is effective enough as the inspector. The writing is about average, with some plotholes here and there; like, why are Lilli and Barelli still sneaking around together after seven years? It has an almost real-time setting, with most of the action set during and right after the performance of the opera. Oscar Levant wrote the music for the opera. Nice in-joke: the stage manager insists, "This opera's going on tonight even if Frankenstein walks in!" [DVD]

JUNGLE HELL (1956/1958)

In an Indian jungle village, people have been suffering from caustic burns after handling some shiny rocks that were dug up nearby. One of those rocks has been placed on a small stone shrine by Shan-Kar, the village high priest, and declared holy. A native child seems to be hovering near death while being treated by the priest. Sabu, the designated Jungle Boy of the tribe (which is an honor, even though his only duty seems to be guiding hunters through the jungle), takes the boy to Dr. Morrison who treats him for radiation burns. Morrison's boss in London sends Dr. Pamela Ames to the jungle to investigate and it turns out the "burning rocks" are bits of uranium, dug up inadvertently as trees are being felled to provide wood for a new stockade. An elephant hunter named Trosk arrives and rival Jungle Boy Kumar is sent to travel with him, angering Sabu and leading to some fisticuffs when Sabu finds out that Kumar has been stealing from Trosk. Trosk decides that he wants to take some of the uranium but he winds up dead in a tiger attack. Morrison half-heartedly proposes to Pamela and that's pretty much it.

After I watched SABU AND THE MAGIC RING, this came up as a YouTube suggestion. It wound up being a rather miserable movie watching experience. I don’t think it's an exaggeration to say that almost 40% of the movie is stock footage of elephants and other jungle animals and landscapes. Two of the animal attack scenes involve an actor wrestling a large stuffed plush animal. The narrative peters out anti-climactically. The backstory to the film is more interesting than the film. In 1956, an hour-long pilot episode was made for a jungle adventure TV show starring Indian actor Sabu who, after having had a decent career as a juvenile actor in the 40s, needed a comeback. The pilot didn’t sell (nor did the pilot that became MAGIC RING), but in 1958, it was padded out with stock footage to some 80 minutes and released in the States as a second feature. A year or two later, it was reworked further and released as Jungle Boy, with the added plotpoint of UFOs revealed to be behind the presence of the burning rocks.  This is the non-UFO version I watched (and oddly, it has a 1964 copyright date), but it was so bad, I don't want to track down the other film; one would think that the sci-fi element would make it better but online critics say that's not so. Poor Sabu, over 30 at the time, is the best thing about this. He is still youthful and energetic and gives his all to his performance. The other leads are sluggish and unconvincing: David Bruce is Morrison, the ostensible hero who never gets a chance to be heroic; K.T. Stevens is the colorless Pamela. George E. Stone, a familiar and likable character actor best known as The Runt in the Boston Blackie mysteries, is OK but has little to do. Sabu's real son is the little boy in the beginning, and even he's a disappointment, never acting like he's in any discomfort despite his radiation burns. For no reason, there’s a plane crash and footage of an elephant giving birth, and did I mention the mostly irrelevant stock footage that pads out the movie? IMDb gives 1956 as the United States release year, but using the Newspapers.com website, I could find no reference to it playing in theaters until 1958, though a few 1956 articles mention that Sabu was filming a TV pilot. The only point of interest I could find was that characters use the currently trendy greeting "Namaste." Do not bother. [YouTube]

CHANCES (1931)

On a foggy London night in 1914, soldiers Jack Ingleside (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and his brother Tom (Anthony Bushell) are catching a train to visit their mother while on furlough. Jack flirts with a young woman who laughingly puts him off but says she's sure they will meet again. The next day at the family mansion, Jack does see her; she's Molly Prescott (Rose Hobart), a childhood friend now all grown up. Jack doesn't remember her, but Tom does as he nursed a crush on her all these years. Jack flirts with Molly at the seaside, saying that Tom "doesn’t care a thing about girls," and they share a passionate kiss. When Mom tells Jack about Tom's unspoken feelings for Molly, Jack decides to give her up and begins openly courting a visiting girl, irritating Molly and leaving an opening for Tom to move in. When the brothers are called up for combat duty in France, Molly reluctantly tells Tom she will wait for him. On the battlefield, Tom pines away for Molly, but while on a short leave in Calais, Jack runs into Molly; they have sex on a beach and she gives him a small picture of her with a loving inscription. Back on the front, Tom sees the picture and thinks it's meant for him. When Jack tells him the truth, Tom is angry, feeling "chucked" by both of them. During a major battle, the two brothers reconcile, but ultimately only one will survive to return to Molly. This is a thoroughly average and fairly predictable wartime romantic melodrama, enlivened by good performances by the leads. Fairbanks comes off as casually likeable, and Bushell as sweet and a bit naive. Neither character comes off as completely at fault or as faultless in the situation. As is the Hollywood way in movies with two male friends butting heads over a woman, the focus is more on the men than the woman. Hence, Hobart's character is slightly underwritten but she's fine in the role. Mary Forbes is her usual reliable self as the mother. At the time, the country house set was the largest single set ever built at First National (which was part of Warner Bros.) though it doesn't draw a lot of attention to itself. The last battle scene is very well done. Overall, even if it's not a standout, I'd say it exceeded my expectations. Pictured are Bushell and Fairbanks. [TCM] 

Two INNER SANCTUM mysteries: THE FROZEN GHOST and PILLOW OF DEATH

The last two of the six Inner Sanctum movies made by Universal in the mid 1940s. THE FROZEN GHOST (1945) concerns mentalist and hypnotist Gregor the Great. At a performance one night, a drunken heckler causes trouble. Gregor puts him into a trance, whispers to himself, "I could kill him," and the man drops dead. The police clear him, saying the man was an alcoholic with a weak heart, but Gregor, haunted by guilt, breaks his engagement with his stage assistant Maura and quits his profession. His manager George gets him a job as a lecturer at Madame Monet's wax museum. Monet and her niece Nina like Gregor's company which irritates Rudi, their rather tightly wound wax sculptor, formerly a disgraced plastic surgeon, who is jealous of their attentions to Gregor. Sparks fly when Maura returns and Rudi accuses Gregor of trying to romance the young Nina. Monet goes missing; Rudi has placed her in suspended animation and hidden her away, apparently planning on turning her into a wax statue, and he plans to do the same thing with Nina. Discussing the story further would necessitate spoilers, and even though this isn't a great movie, the big plot twist is a good one. As with the other films, Lon Chaney (Gregor) is the weak link. We just don't see what it is that this lumpy lug has that would lead him to be attractive to all the female characters. But everyone else is good. Milburn Stone is George, his sympathetic manager; Evelyn Ankers (Maura) is a familiar B-movie face; Douglas Dumbrille plays a slyly eccentric police inspector. Best of all is Martin Kosleck, a specialist in playing slimy characters, as Rudi—he is convincing as a psycho and is the main reason for watching this. BTW, there is no ghost; the title comes from a reference to "freezing" both Monet and Nina. Pictured at left is Kosleck with a statue of Attila the Hun. [DVD]

In PILLOW OF DEATH (1945), young Donna Kincaid is running around with her boss, lawyer Wayne Fletcher, and Donna's Aunt Belle, a spinster whom Donna lives with, isn't happy, mostly because Wayne is married, though supposedly planning on getting a divorce. When Wayne's wife Vivian is murdered (by suffocation, hence the silly movie title), the police (and Aunt Belle) initially suspect Wayne, but Belle isn't happy when Capt. McCracken lets Wayne go for lack of physical evidence. We meet other characters: Sam, Belle's brother who plays up rumors that their house is haunted; a medium named Julian who claims he predicted Vivian's death; Belle's cousin Amelia who is a great believer in Julian; Bruce, a nosy neighbor who has a thing for Donna. There is a seance, and Wayne starts hearing his wife's voice calling to him from her tomb. This one of the best of the Inner Sanctum movies. It's basically a nicely atmospheric old dark house movie which holds out the possibility that there are supernatural goings-on. Chaney is a load of anti-charisma but he's a bit more effective here than in some of the other outings, being sympathetic while holding out the possibility that he might not be after all. Again, a good supporting cast is welcome. Brenda Joyce is OK as Donna, but better are Clara Blandick (Belle), Rosalind Ivan (Amelia), and J. Edward Bromberg as the medium. This last film in the series will keep you guessing to the end as to who is behind what. Don’t let that silly title keep you away. Pictured at right are Bromberg and Blandick. [DVD]

Two INNER SANCTUM mysteries: WEIRD WOMAN and DEAD MAN'S EYES

Back in the early days of this blog, I reviewed two of Universal’s Inner Sanctum movies, B-mysteries with mild elements of horror or the supernatural, all an hour long and all starring Lon Chaney Jr. in the lead, sometimes as a good guy, sometimes not. Designed for double feature bills, they come off today like episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Show. Most of them begin with a pre-credit scene of a distorted and disembodied head in a crystal ball (at left), defining the "inner sanctum" as the human brain, "a mass of living, pulsating flesh" which can cause a person to perform dark deeds like murder. For B-movies, their production values are good in terms of sets, cinematography, and supporting actors. But they all share two flaws: 1) weak writing that sometimes tries to either cram too much material into an hour, or to stretch out too little material; 2) the performances of Lon Chaney. Though Chaney is considered one of the big names of classic-era horror, he was actually rarely very good. In most of his roles, even in his best-known role, that of THE WOLF MAN, he comes off as oafish, artificial, and dull. His name had some box office clout and he appeared in almost 200 movies in his lifetime, mostly B- or sub-B productions. Of the films I've seen, only two feature solid performances: OF MICE AND MEN, early in his career, and SPIDER BABY, late in his career. For me, he's the biggest problem with the Inner Sanctum movies. His characters are usually supposed to be sophisticated, intelligent, and handsome or charismatic, but Chaney comes off as none of those things. Attempts at seeming vulnerable come off as self--pity. When he has voice-over narration, he delivers it in a strained whisper. So no matter how good the rest of the movie is, Chaney is a big lumbering hole right smack in the middle of the movie. Nevertheless, these movies are watchable, and sometimes rise above Chaney's presence to be pretty good.

Of all six of the films, WEIRD WOMAN (1944) is the best. It's based on the Fritz Lieber novel Conjure Wife, which was later made into a true horror classic in 1962 as BURN, WITCH, BURN. Chaney is Norman Reed, an anthropologist in the South Seas doing research for his book Superstition vs. Reason and Fact. Embedded with a native tribe, he meets Paula, daughter of a late scientist who lived with the tribe. They fall in love, get married, and settle in Reed's college town where, due to her continued beliefs in magic and voodoo, she is slow to assimilate with the other women of the college. Paula works magic to protect her husband, and indeed, when he is put forward as department head, he has a rival in the older Prof. Sawtelle who has seniority and his own book coming out, and whose wife Evelyn resents Reed's quick success. Other threats come from Reed's former love Ilona, Maggie, a grad student with a crush on Reed, and David, Maggie's frustrated boyfriend. When Reed forces his wife to destroy all her voodoo paraphernalia, bad things start happening. Sawtelle, convinced that Chaney is about to expose him as a plagiarist, kills himself, causing Evelyn to plot revenge. Maggie throws herself at Reed and when he rejects her, she files an assault complaint against him, which causes David to threaten Reed with a gun. When everything falls apart, Reed must work to figure out who is intent on destroying his life. Chaney fails to be convincing as an academic, though in the last half of the movie, he comes off better as a confused and angry man trying to keep his head above water. Anne Gwynne is a bit too bubbly to be the witchy wife. But everyone else is quite good: Evelyn Ankers as the manipulative ex, Lois Collier as the young innocent, and Phil Brown (later to play Uncle Owen in STAR WARS) as the jealous student. Best of all is Elizabeth Russell as Evelyn, the angry wife who is instrumental in both Chaney's downfall and in his eventual redemption. She has striking looks and a strong presence, and though given low billing in the credits, she has an important role and a fair amount of screen time. If you just watch one movie in this series, this is probably the one to see. Pictured at right are Collier and Brown. [DVD]

DEAD MAN’S EYES (1944) features Chaney (at left) in another role he can't quite handle, that of Dave Stuart, a talented painter. His bulk and his schlubby appearance make him look like a janitor who just happened to pick up a brush. Though he has a fiancée, Heather, daughter of the wealthy 'Dad' Hayden, his current model, the exotic looking Tanya (Acquanetta) wants him as well. Also hanging around are Nick, Heather's former boyfriend, and Alan, a psychiatrist and close friend of Dave's. One day Tanya accidentally switches Dave's bottle of eyewash with a bottle of acetic acid, and when Dave goes to clean his tired eyes after a day of painting, he uses the acid and blinds himself. A cornea transplant is possible, and Dad volunteers to donate his eyes when he dies. But with Dad still healthy, Dave breaks off his engagement with Heather, giving Tanya new hope. Then Dad is found dead and Dave is the prime suspect. Despite his arrest, the cornea transplant goes ahead. Will it be successful? Will Heather go back to Dave? And who killed Dad? Here, I noticed that Chaney goes from zero to sixty in his melodramatic outbursts; one minute, he's fairly mild, then suddenly he's growling shrilly and acting dangerous. Acquanetta gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a professional Hollywood movie. Yes, Tanya is supposed to be exotically foreign, but in every scene, she fails to come off as mysterious or jealous or crazy because the actress just stares straight ahead and stumbles through her lines. At one point, a cop sees Dave's painting of Tanya and says he's captured her "warmth and passion," two attributes that Acquanetta can't bring to the role. Jean Parker (Heather), Paul Kelly (Alan), George Meeker (Nick) and Thomas Gomez (a cop) are all satisfactory. The hour drags by with another murder and a predictable conclusion. You can skip this one. I’ll review the last two tomorrow. [DVD]

HALF WAY TO SHANGHAI (1942)

Two men in a truck, George Zucco and Lionel Royce, go crashing through a roadway checkpoint in order to board a train to Rangoon. When an official asks Zucco what he does for a living, he replies, "I’m a German spy" and they all laugh—but he is a German spy who is looking for a rogue spy (Charles Wagenheim) who is carrying a map of China's main munitions dumps which could be used by the Japanese in their war against China. The rogue spy Peale intends to sell the map to the highest bidder, but Zucco and Royce plan to take it for free. Also on the train: Kent Taylor, an engineer who worked on construction of the Burma Road; Irene Hervey, an ex-flame of Taylor's who is on her way to an arranged marriage with a rich man she's never met; Charlotte Wynters, a famous female pilot turned reporter with pro-Nazi sympathies; Fay Helm, her assistant who may not feel the same way about Nazis; and Henry Stephenson, a retired British officer. Wagenheim, realizing that Zucco is after him, hides in Taylor's compartment and winds up knocking Taylor out before Zucco enters and demands the map. But Wagenheim has hidden the map somewhere on the train and Zucco kills him and tries to frame Taylor, though a detective (J. Edward Bromberg) doesn't buy it. The map has wound up in Wynters' briefcase and she joins forces with Zucco, buying the silence of Helm who knows about the map. The climax occurs in a blackout and with a well-staged escape attempt on top of the train. This spy thriller deserves to be better known than it is. The one-hour running time and physical production mark it as a B-movie second feature, but the screenplay is solid and the acting quite good. Busy B-lead Kent Taylor is fine as a second string hero and Zucco, as usual, is a formidable villain. Bromberg and Wagenheim are standouts, and Mary Gordon is good as the mild-mannered wife of a doctor, but Charlotte Wynters is a bit wooden as the pilot. Willie Fung has a short scene as a Chinese peasant who is reading a Flash Gordon book. There are enough side plots and characters so that the film moves along nicely. As a fan of train thrillers, I quite enjoyed this. Pictured is Kent Taylor. [YouTube]

INVISIBLE AVENGER (1958)

The Shadow, aka Lamont Cranston, is a vague construct of a hero, sometimes a vigilante crimefighter, sometimes a detective. He is best encountered in the pages of the pulp magazines, radio shows and paperbacks that made him popular. There, he was a figure of mystery who could cloud men's minds, turn invisible, and creep people out with an eerie cackling laugh. For some reason, however, the Shadow has never been well exploited on the movie screen, with the possible exception of the 1994 film with Alec Baldwin, and I think it's because most of the silver screen Shadows don't have supernatural powers. In the Monogram film series from the mid-1940s and the 1940 Columbia serial, he's basically a Batman figure, a wealthy man who helps the police solve crimes. This hour-long cheapie gives him some powers but is otherwise drab and undistinguished. I suppose it's not fair to critique this as a feature film because it’s actually a two-part TV pilot that was never picked up. There's a reason that 1950s TV shows (except for I Love Lucy) have not remained in the pop culture eye: compared with recent shows, or even shows of the 70s and 80s, the 50s shows seem as primitive as silent movies do to current film fans. The sets here look like they could be knocked down by a mild breeze, the acting is quite bad, and the scene setups are downright claustrophobic, despite this being partly directed by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe. Still, I've gotten this far after having sat through the entire hour so I might as well forge ahead.

We get a shot of a New Orleans alley at night as a voice intones the famous radio show opening: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…" Pablo Ramirez is in exile, with his daughter Felicia, from his homeland Santa Cruz where his presidency was disrupted by a military coup led by the Generalissimo. Tara and Rocco own (or just hang out at, I was unclear) a jazz club called the Famous Door, but they are actually spies for the Generalissimo. Pablo gets jazz trumpeter Tony to contact his friend Lamont Cranston in New York to contact his friend The Shadow to help Pablo and Felicia. Tony calls Cranston but he is shot dead before he can finish his message. Nevertheless, Cranston and his mystic mentor Jogendra head to New Orleans. The Generalissimo executes Pablo's twin brother Victor, live on TV, in an effort to draw Pablo out, which it does. I lost track of the various comings and goings in the last fifteen minutes, but there is a nice plot twist near the end, and Cranston does help Pablo get the counter-revolution going. Richard Derr (pictured at left) makes for a sadly bland Cranston—he's not mysterious looking, not good looking, not inspiring in any way. Most of the other actors seem like amateurs, with the exception being Steve Dano who plays Tony, pictured at right. Sadly, he's killed off early on (this is also his only credited acting role). Otherwise, people either overact (Helen Westcott as Tara) or barely act at all (Dan Mullin as Pablo). Supposedly this was filmed on location but it sure looks like a bunch of cheap studio sets to me. The jazz music is OK. The invisibility effects are pretty good—Cranston, always shown in street clothes rather than as the slouch-hatted, semi-masked figure of the pulps,  vanishes completely with his shadow remaining or turns into a smudgy image, which is creepily effective. Dialogue is listless, with one memorable line from Pablo on why he must show himself again in Santa Cruz: "Courage will seep out of the people like wine from a broken bottle." That might be a good line poorly executed or a bad line well executed, but it stands out. The existence of the mentor Jogendra, who can telepathically communicate with Cranston, gave this a vague Doctor Strange feel. I can't recommend this to anyone except Shadow completists. [YouTube]

THE BIBLE IN THE BEGINNING (1966)

In the 1960s, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis decided to make a series of movies based directly on the books of the Bible. This film, based roughly on the first half of the book of Genesis, is the only one that got made. It had a big budget, a talented director (John Huston), a number of stars, a literate and reverent screenplay (by playwright Christopher Fry), and the marketing power of a big studio (20th Century Fox). It actually was a hit, becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year in the U.S., but like Fox's earlier CLEOPATRA, the budget was so big that it didn't quite break even. It was not critically well received and its reputation has suffered ever since, and it hasn't entered the canon of religious movies that get seen on TV every year during the Easter season. What's the problem? Well, it's long, almost three hours, and after a promising opening featuring Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, the bulk of the narrative covers just two stories: Noah's Ark and the life of Abraham, called by God to more or less be the founding father of the Jews. There is a brief segment about Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, but it feels uneasily shoehorned in and adds very little to the overarching story. Though the money is up there on the screen—great sets, good cinematography, and probably the best cinematic depiction of the Noah story you'll ever see—it's almost too reverent, feeling at times like a string of Bible illustrations come to life (especially true of the Creation segment). There is little excitement or energy—John Huston's narration is bland—and to some degree, it becomes a waiting game to see who the next stars (in major parts or cameos) will be. 

It takes almost half an hour to get from the Creation (clouds, lava, blurry colors) to the expulsion of Adam and Eve, both seen naked with their naughty bits strategically covered, from the Garden of Eden. The shepherd Abel is obedient, but the farmer Cain is shown taking back for himself some of the grain meant to be burned in sacrifice to God, and God's not happy. Cain kills Abel and is doomed to be a roaming fugitive, with a literal black mark on his forehead. Years pass; God is not happy with mankind's behavior and so destroys the world with a flood, saving only Noah, whom he commands to build an ark to save his family and, as we all know, two of each animal species on Earth. This is by far the most spectacular part of the film; the ark sets are huge and the parade of animals (all real with no animatronics or CGI) is impressive. But it's also here that we realize that the storytelling is fairly inert. We know this story and nothing new is added; though John Huston is fine as Noah, neither he nor any member of his family is fleshed out to any degree. After the short Tower of Babel scene, the rest of the movie (the last 90 minutes) is taken up with Abraham and Sarah. This lapsed Catholic boy was relatively unfamiliar with their story except for the broad outlines—Sarah giving birth late in life, God asking Abraham to sacrifice their child—so I was interested in following the plot thread. Included are the stories of Hagar the handmaid, Lot leaving Abraham to eventually establish a new tribe, the fate of the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (with Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt being an especially good effect), the birth of Isaac, and the demand of sacrifice. 

George C. Scott somewhat surprisingly underplays Abraham rather effectively, but Ava Gardner (as Sarah) suffers the same fate of most of the other actors here—she doesn't get to create a character as much as enact the outlines of one, one that most viewers will already be familiar with. Richard Harris gives an eccentric performance as Cain, leaping about like a dancer, but otherwise actors like Peter O'Toole, Stephen Boyd, Franco Nero, Michael Parks and Gabriele Ferzetti are wasted; they're not bad but they're not called up to do anything special. There is a bit of tarted-up campiness in the Sodom scene, but we're led to believe that Sodom is just generally decadent. My overall verdict: some very well done individual moments here and there, but rather dull in overall affect. Most viewers would probably not choose to watch it again which is maybe why it's not run more often. As far as the title of this movie goes, the onscreen title card reads The Bible in the Beginning ..., but the posters and many critics call it The Bible ... In the Beginning. I got rid of the ellipses altogether which aren't really needed at all. Pictured at top left, Michael Parks as Adam; at right, Ferzetti as Lot and O'Toole as an angel. [Amazon Streaming]

PROJECT MOON BASE (1953)

In 1970, a trip directly from the earth to the moon is considered too dangerous for humans, but a three-person crew is about to take off from an orbiting space station on an exploratory lunar trip, taking close up photographs of the lunar surface to study the feasibility of setting up a moon base. The space agency is on guard for sabotage that might be carried out by, as a title card puts it, "the enemies of Freedom" (i.e., Russians). As it turns out, such enemies are planning such sabotage by kidnapping one of the crew members, a Dr. Wernher, and replacing him with an exact lookalike whose mission is to take control of the lunar ship and ram the space station, destroying it. Meanwhile, there is tension brewing as Gen. 'Pappy' Greene is pressured to replace the chief pilot, Major Moore, with Col. Briteis, a female. This decision doesn't sit well with either Pappy or Moore, who is bumped down to co-pilot. They may be chauvinists, but as it happens, Briteis (pronounced "bright eyes" by everyone) acts a bit like Gidget, full of teenage spunk, constantly pouting and whining. At one point, Pappy scolds her, telling her she's too big for her britches, and that she's a spoiled brat who needs a spanking. The ship takes off and Wernher tries to wrest control from Briteis but is overpowered by Moore. But the saboteur's actions cause them to waste fuel and they have to make an emergency landing on the moon. When communications with the space station fail, Moore and the chastened Wernher leave the ship to set up a radio relay on the moon's surface. Wernher falls from a moon cliff and dies, and Pappy lets Briteis and Moore know that emergency supplies will be dropped off soon and they are now the first official lunar residents. Of course, for the sake of PR, they really should be married, so the President (also a woman) performs a ceremony from Earth, and Moore and Briteis become a happy couple, ready to anchor the coming moon base.

In a happy coincidence, the Artemis II was heading for lunar orbit as I watched this so this seems like a timely review. One makes allowances for early 50s sci-fi space movies as the genre was relatively new, but even so, this has not aged well. Apparently shot in ten days, it was originally intended as a pilot for a TV series (the teleplay was by sci-fi pro Robert Heinlein) but those plans were canceled and some new footage was shot to pad it out to a bit over an hour. The sets generally look cheap though some effects are nicely done; there are shots of people on the space station walking on the ceiling and sitting on chairs on the walls, which of course brings to mind Kubrick's 2001 (pictured at right). Scenes on the moon look fairly realistic. Even the space station, the first one shown in a movie, looks good. Aside from the blatant sexism in the portrayal of Briteis and the reactions of the men to her, the most bizarre thing here is the wardrobe. The crew wear snug t-shirts, little skullcaps, and the unsexiest shortie shorts you've ever seen—though interestingly, they do get the spacesuits right for the external action. The acting is strictly TV level; in fact, one of the better performances comes from Hayden Rorke, best known as Dr. Bellows in I Dream of Jeannie. Donna Martell (Briteis) is saddled with a terribly written character and she becomes the potential feminist icon you love to hate. Ross Ford (Moore) has little to do and, sadly, doesn't look all that appealing in his tight tees (though Martell does). The only humor here is used to poke fun at the female colonel, though one of the last lines, when Moore, seeing  that needed supplies have finally landed, says, "Briteis, it’s Christmas!" But the worst thing in the movie is the short appearance of a character named Polly Prattles, an obnoxious reporter who comes off more like a gossip columnist. Only recommended for sci-fi buffs interested in the genre's history. Posters for the film call it Project Moonbase, but the film itself uses Moon Base as two words. At top left are Ross and Martell. [YouTube]

ORPHEUS (1950)

The poet Orpheus is at a poet's café in Paris, feeling ignored by the newer, hipper poets (I'm tempted to call them "beatniks" though that concept didn't exist in 1950) because he's too commercial. The hot young poet Cégeste shows up drunk and stumbling on the arms of a woman known only as the Princess. He gets into a brawl and is hit by two motorcyclists in black leather. Her chauffeur Heurtebise puts him in the back seat of her car to take him to the hospital and she asks Orpheus to come along as a witness. During the trip, the view of the landscape turns to a photographic negative and we hear odd radio transmissions ("Silence goes backward faster"; "The bird sings with its fingers") that Orpheus comes to think are beautiful if very obscure poems. Orpheus discovers that Cégeste is dead and they head to the Princess' isolated home where Cégeste is laid out on a bed. The Princess waves her hand in the air and he comes back to life. With Orpheus watching, the Princess, Cégeste, and the two motorcyclists walk through a full-length mirror into what we find out is the underworld. The Princess is death personified. Orpheus cannot follow and the next time we see him, he wakes up in a quarry with Heurtebise standing near the car. The chauffeur has been instructed to take Orpheus back to his wife Eurydice and stay with him. Though Eurydice has been worried by his absence, she also seems disturbed by his return as her friends in the League for Women don't approve of Orpheus, and he refuses to explain his absence. She is also, we discover, pregnant. Soon, Eurydice is struck and killed by the black leather motorcyclists. Heurtebise offers to take Orpheus through the mirror underworld, but he must decide who he is in love with: Eurydice or Death.

This beautiful but often obscure film is a recasting of the Orpheus myth, in which Orpheus is allowed to go to the Underworld to bring back his dead wife Eurydice under the condition that, on their trip back, he doesn’t turn around and look at her. He does. She goes back to the land of death and he is literally torn apart by female followers of Dionysus during an orgy. This version dispenses with the finale, and indeed gives Orpheus and Eurydice a happy ending, with a less happy one for the Princess of Death. I've seen this film a few times over the years, and it's best not to read it as an exact replica of the myth, but as a dreamy fantasy that pulls elements from the myth to create a whole new narrative. It remains a movie full of ambiguity and mystery, and those elements will stymie some viewers. Roger Ebert called it that rare film that is made for "purely artistic reasons," and if you can leave yourself open to letting the visuals and the moods wash over you and let yourself think about it rather than interpret it, you might enjoy the experience. Jean Cocteau wrote and directed, and used some amazing special effects that, while perhaps seeming primitive today, are still effective: reverse motion, slow motion, film cuts, obvious rear projection. The utterly bizarre trips to and from the underworld are indeed quite otherworldly, and all of today's CGI probably could not achieve such an effective evocation of mood. The nonsense radio messages, Cocteau said, were inspired by resistance messages sent over the radio in WWII, an explanation that does not erase the effectiveness of the strange transmissions. In what is truly an art film, the acting is not the most important element, but the actors are mostly fine. I find Jean Marais as Orpheus (above left), the weak link in the cast, giving a surface performance as though he was just following the director's instructions. But Maria Caseres (Death) and Francois Périer (Heurtebise) bring some emotional depth to their mostly symbolic roles; Maria Dea is fine as Eurydice—not an especially sympathetic character—and Edouard Dermithe makes an impression in his limited role as Cégeste. I rarely felt emotionally engaged with the characters, but the visuals and the atmosphere and the odd stylistic touches (on screen and in script) make this worth watching as perhaps the archetypal art film of the 1950s. Pictured at right are Périer and Marais. [TCM]

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM (1940)

Based on the testimony of detective Charlie Chan, Steve McBirney is sentenced to death for murder, but he manages to shoot his way out of the courthouse and vows to get revenge against Chan. He heads for Dr. Cream's Museum of Crime, a wax museum with statues of infamous criminals, because Dr. Cream has a secret career: performing plastic surgery to give new faces to fugitive criminals. Meanwhile, for a radio show broadcast from the museum, Chan meets with Dr. Von Brom to debate the Rocke case. Rocke was put to death for a poison dart murder based on testimony from Von Brom, but Chan maintains that Rocke was innocent and the real killer was his partner Butcher Dagan, who was supposedly killed but might still be around. As the time of the late night broadcast nears, folks gather at the museum joining Chan, Von Brom and Dr. Cream, including Lily Latimer, Cream's assistant; Tom Agnew, the radio host and director; Edwards, an engineer; Mary Bolton, a reporter who is also dating Agnew; Carter Lane, a lawyer for Rocke's widow; and a simpleminded old watchman. We see a mysterious woman sneak in whom we suspect is Mrs. Rocke, perhaps come to see justice done for her husband. Finally, Chan's snooping #2 son Jimmy shows up to help his dad, though he mostly just gets in trouble. We see that Chan is being set up to be electrocuted at the debate table but Von Born gets it instead—except that on investigation, it's discovered that his death was actually caused by a poison dart. Could Butcher Dagen be among them?

This entry in the Chan series from 20th Century Fox is a notch above the norm. One reason is the effective setting of the shadowy wax museum at night. After the courtroom opening, the rest of the film is set solely in the museum and plays out mostly in real time. As in most wax museum movies, the statues provide a nicely creepy atmosphere and can also be mistaken for real people, and vice versa. A storm outside and flickering lights inside add to the eerie ambience. The dark single setting also helps hide the B-movie budget. This was the first Chan film with a running time of about one hour, and most of the rest would follow suit, indicating lower budgets and lower exhibition expectations. Sidney Toler and Victor Sen Yung are old hands by now as Chan and Jimmy, though Jimmy is an exceptional doofus here, and the supporting cast is so-so, the standouts being C. Henry Gordon as Dr. Cream and busy character actor Marc Lawrence (who kept acting into the 21st century) as McBirney. Marguerite Chapman and Ted Osborn are adequate as the romantic couple, as is Michael Visaroff as Von Bron. Hilda Vaughn doesn't have a lot of dialogue but has the right look for the mysterious lady trespasser. The exposure of the ultimate villain was a surprise to me, but the Chan films were not known for truly playing fair with clues or background information. As you might predict, there is a wax statue of Chan which, of course, gets mistaken for the real person at least twice, including in a fun final shot in which Jimmy gives his dad a good swift kick in the rear, thinking he's kicking the statue. Pictured are Gordon and Toler. [DVD]

YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE (1964)

We first see young Arthur Hawke in late December, working as a coal truck driver for his family's Kentucky business. He has just gotten word that Prince House, a Manhattan publishing company, wants his novel Alms for Oblivion, which he's worked on for years. Arthur arrives in New York on Christmas Eve to sign contracts. With his thick accent and boyish face, he is viewed as naive and innocent, but he holds out for more money than publisher Jason Prince first offers. Jeanne Green, the editor who first read the book and who has been assigned to work with him, takes him to her boarding house and gets him a small attic room where he can live and work on the book. That night, he goes to Prince's annual holiday party where he catches the eye of several people: Fannie, Prince's wife; Quentin Judd, a powerful book critic; Ferdie Lax, an agent; and rich socialite Frieda Winter. Though married with three kids, Frieda takes a liking to Arthur, whose nom de plume is Youngblood Hawke (she takes to calling him Bloody on occasion). Though we've seen Arthur and Jeanne strike some mild sparks, it's Frieda who winds up bedding him. His first book is a mild success, but when it stalls on the charts, Prince is reluctant to keep pushing it. With some help from Jeanne, rival publisher Ross Hodge buys out his contract and agrees to publish the second book, Chain of Command. Not only is it a big hit, but famous actress Irene Perry agrees to produce and star in a play version of Alms. Yes, we can see where this is going: eventually, success will take its toll at about the same time as his third book, which he is using to launch his own indie publishing company, is a bomb. Will the ambitious Arthur be able to pick up the pieces while still keeping the respect of his friends and associates?

Though shot in black & white, this fits right in with the many other glossy and colorful soap opera melodramas of the era, from A SUMMER PLACE to IMITATION OF LIFE to PARRISH to THE CARPETBAGGERS. The arc of rise, fall and redemption is predictable, though here the rise happens so quickly that we get little sense of his hard scrabble past. There's a subplot involving his mother's legal wrangle with relatives over land rights, but it's only there so she (Mildred Dunnock) can be present for a couple of emotional incidents midway through, including a laughable scene where she walks in on Arthur and Frieda, fully clothed, kissing—Frieda's reaction is so extreme, you'd think that Ma walked in on the two of them naked in the middle of a drug-fueled orgy. The production values are solid, and the acting, while not Oscar-caliber, is effective. James Franciscus (above) is charming enough and ridiculously handsome (if you like vanilla blonds, which I do) as Arthur, though one online critic notes rightfully that he lacks that undefinable thing called star power. Warren Beatty, who was originally sought for the role, might have made a bigger splash, but Franciscus is fine. As good and maybe better is Suzanne Pleshette (pictured at left with Franciscus) as Jeanne who is believable as the wholesomely sexy heroine. French actress Genevieve Page (Frieda) is not terribly charismatic, and her character never seems to be either having fun or suffering much, even when her adolescent son, who has a bit of a hero-worship crush on Arthur, dies tragically. Among the many familiar players to get some face time: Mary Astor as the actress, Lee Bowman as Prince, Edward Andrews as the critic, Eva Gabor as Prince's wife, Don Porter as the agent, and Kent Smith as Frieda's husband. There isn't a lot of humor, but I liked Pleshette's line when Franciscus scolds her for smoking too much: "I like to cough." Based on a novel by Herman Wouk which was based in part on the life of author Thomas Wolfe. I enjoyed this, but largely because I was enjoying so many close-ups of the shiny dirty blond hair and ultra white teeth of the leading man. [TCM]

EL aka THIS STRANGE PASSION (1953)

During a symbolic foot-washing ceremony at a church in Mexico City (probably for Maundy Thursday during Easter week), the wealthy Francisco catches the eye of the lovely Gloria. Actually, it's her feet in high heels that we first see as the camera pans across the feet being washed by the priest. A spark is ignited and the two encounter each other again later at church. She's engaged to Raul, a friend of Francisco's, but is won over by Francisco's attentions, even though he compares love at first sight to being hit by a poisoned arrow, and marries him. He is charming but inflexible; two things we learn about him early on are that he is engaged in a years-long legal struggle to get back some family land, and when his butler assaults a maid, Francisco fires the maid. After the marriage, we briefly jump forward in time a few years. Gloria sees Raul and tells him how miserable her life is, and starts a flashback to the last few years. Though Francisco is still well-regarded by his friends and by the parish priest, he is neurotically jealous and paranoid—even on their wedding night, he accuses Gloria of thinking of Raul when they kiss—keeping Gloria mostly locked up in the large, bizarrely styled and well-appointed house. His idea of taking her out for a good time is not to go to the movies or a racetrack, but to a cathedral where he takes her to the bell tower and, in an unmotivated fit, tries to throw her to the ground. When he thinks she's flirting with a new young lawyer, he viciously beats her. A pattern of violent paranoia followed by abject apology goes on for years. Raul is horrified and befriends her. When Francisco thinks he sees Gloria and Raul meeting for a romantic assignation at a church, he has a breakdown which finally ends Gloria's torment.

This film by director Luis Bunuel is a festival of psychological and sexual peccadilloes. As well-adjusted as Francisco appears on the surface and to the people around him, he is clearly a sick man. He's a puritanical virgin when he meets Gloria, and some critics imply that he may be impotent. In a most bizarre scene, he enters Gloria's room at night, apparently intending to sew her vagina shut though he doesn't. The penultimate scene is equally strange. When he enters the church and finds out that the couple he has followed is not Gloria and Raul, he hallucinates that the congregation and the priest are laughing at him. Gloria does not escape some judgment. Though Francisco spends some time gaslighting her, even turning her mother against her, it is odd that she doesn't try to leave him sooner. Even Raul notes that but also that she may actually enjoy suffering. The movie has a great Gothic feel and the acting is top notch, with Arturo de Cordova (pictured) both hateful and charismatic as Francisco, Delia Garces both sniveling and strong as Gloria, and Luis Beristain as the long-suffering Raul. The ending is a bit strange but satisfying. [Criterion Channel]

BAIT (1954)

An urbane older man (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) tells us he's famous then ushers us into a projection room. He's the devil, though he admits he rarely takes physical form and instead plants himself as a voice or suggestion in the minds of men. He proceeds to show us the following story which illustrates his point. In a small town in the California mountains, young studly John Agar has agreed to work with an older misfit Serbian (Hugo Haas) to locate a gold mine. Years ago, Haas and his partner Waltzer found a mine but on the way into town to make a claim, they got stranded in a snowstorm. Waltzer died while Haas, who was suspected by townspeople of letting him die, survived but couldn't find the mine again. While buying supplies at the general store, Agar hits it off with attractive blond single mother Cleo Moore. Haas tells Agar that she's no good, but Haas, who spends his free time praying and reading the Bible, seems to have similar feelings about her. The two men, along with Agar's dog Mike, move into an abandoned cabin in the mountains and start their search. After a few weeks (and much praying by Haas), they find the gold mine. Agar wants to make a claim but Haas, worried about claimjumpers, wants to stay over during the winter and mine the gold. During a visit to town, Haas and Agar discover that Moore, who has been delivering groceries to the mine, has been fighting off physical advances from skeevy men. Haas hatches a plan. He asks Moore to marry him so she can live with them. She agrees and moves into the cabin, though he and Moore have no intimate contact. But we soon discover that his real plan is to get Agar all hot and bothered so he'll put the moves on Moore and Haas can kill him, claiming to be an aggrieved husband, and get all the gold for himself. With winter coming, they know they'll be snowed in and tensions begin to mount, but despite a kiss or two, Agar and Moore manage to avoid temptation. Haas moves forward with his plans: he poisons Mike the dog, then during a snowstorm, offers to go to town to get supplies. What he really does is stick around and spy on Moore and Agar, waiting for the moment when he can legitimately shoot Agar.

This is another B-melodrama from director Hugo Haas featuring himself and blonde bombshell Cleo Moore (see HIT AND RUN and STRANGE FASCINATION). Usually Haas is a middle-aged loser who gets the hots for bad girl Moore; she’s usually not as bad as her reputation would have it, but she does get tangled up with a younger hotter man. That formula is in full play here and it proceeds just as you would expect. Everything about this is B-level. The script could have used another draft, as the story and characters seem more sketched in than fully developed. The sets are sparse, though with a general store and a raggedy old cabin as the only settings, not much is really called for. I like Cleo Moore and she's fine here as the mostly good girl who is mistakenly believed to be a bad girl. Haas is serviceable, nothing more, as the scheming bad guy. I can never decide if I like Agar. He's usually reliably hunky (and a bit wooden with an occasional over-the-top outburst), but his looks are odd—he plays handsome characters but his looks are actually a little quirky, like the two halves of his face don't quite match up. He also has a smirk that can come off as either sarcastic or psycho and it's not always clear which he's intending. Here, like Haas, he's adequate. We occasionally get snatches of interior monologue from Haas, like the writers couldn't figure out how else to convey the information he provides. The devil opening has nothing to do with anything; it's like Hardwicke owed the producers a day's work so they fit him in here. I liked this OK but can't get enthusiastic about it. Pictured are Agar and Moore. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN SHORT TAKES 1935

CHARLIE CHAN IN SHANGHAI (1935)

On a ship to Shanghai, detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) plays leapfrog with a group of children and sings them a song about Emperor Fu Manchu—likely an inside joke referring to Oland's portrayal of Fu a few years earlier. As he disembarks he finds a note stuffed in his coat pocket warning him away from the city. His secret mission in Shanghai is to assist Sir Stanley Woodland and his investigation into an opium smuggling ring. But at a dinner honoring Chan that evening, Woodland is killed by a hidden gun in a box intended to be opened by Chan. According to Woodland's secretary, Philip Nash, the gun wasn't in the box the last time he checked. That evening, a shadowy figure sneaks into Chan's hotel room and shoots him as he sleeps, but Chan has anticipated such an attack and the bullets just hit a bunch of pillows under a sheet. Charlie, his son Lee (who just happens to be in town on business) and American agent James Andrews work together to solve Woodland's murder and break the opium ring, but the evidence begins pointing toward friendly, clean-cut Philip, much to the distress of his girlfriend Diana who is Woodland's daughter. This is slightly above average for the Chan films of the era. Warner Oland displays a fun side in his opening scene with the children, and Keye Luke (Lee) gets to engage briefly in some fisticuffs. Chan admits to being 60 though Oland was actually 55 and would not live to see 60. Jon Hall (still using his birth name of Charles Locher, pictured at right) is handsome and stoic as Philip, and manages to keep us wondering for a while if he's a good guy or a bad guy; Irene Hervey is fine as Diana as is Russell Hicks as Andrews. Production values are still fairly high at this point in the series, helping to make this worth watching. [DVD]

CHARLIE CHAN'S SECRET (1935)

Allen Colby, heir to the Colby fortune, was returning to San Francisco from Hawaii but is presumed dead after a shipwreck. His body is not found, but Charlie Chan, helping with the investigation, finds his briefcase and a note indicating his life had been threatened. Chan heads to San Francisco to report to the family. Matriarch Aunt Henrietta is a financial backer for a spiritualist group and if Allen is indeed dead, the group will inherit his sizable share. Hanging around the house: daughter Alice and her reporter boyfriend Dick; daughter Janice and her husband Fred; the family attorney; a scaredy cat butler; and a cranky handyman. Allen returns home but is killed by a thrown knife before anyone sees him. That night Carlotta of the spiritualists holds a seance to contact Allen; his eerily glowing face is seen in the room, but when the lights are turned on, his dead body is found. As Chan works to get to the bottom of the murder, an attempt is made on his life, and later another family member is killed. But per the title, Chan does have a secret that might help him break the case. Warner Oland is nicely energetic as Chan, and though it's not quite an old dark house movie, it might count as an “old dark room” movie as much of the action takes place in an atmospheric study where two seances take place. There are no Chan sons present but the butler (Herbert Mundin) is sort of a sidekick fixture who assists Chan a couple of times and provides comic relief. Decent support comes from Charles Quigley as Dick, suspiciously chipper; Edward Trevor as Fred, suspiciously glowering; and Henrietta Crosman as Henrietta. Pictured are Oland and Trevor. [DVD] 

EASY TO LOVE (1934)

Married couple Adolphe Menjou and Genevieve Tobin enjoy evenings out with friends Edward Everett Horton and Mary Astor, who seem to have a casual flirting arrangement that never gets too serious. In fact, Horton admits that he only sees Astor so he can be near Tobin. Menjou, however, is carrying on a secret affair with Astor; they meet every day for an hour at 2:30 for what Menjou says are polo practice sessions. Tobin, though still in love with her husband, is unhappy that the two have separate bedrooms, saying, "We’re married, we're just not married." When Tobin discovers that Menjou is not showing up for his polo practice, she gets suspicious and hires a detective who reports that Menjou spends his time at Astor's apartment, so Tobin gets Horton to accompany her to Astor's place on a seemingly innocent visit. Menjou hides in a closet while Tobin, knowing he's there, goes on to Astor about looking for a love nest for her and Horton. Menjou, of course, is pissed, saying that though he loves Astor "as a woman," he still loves Tobin as a wife, and when a divorce seems inevitable, their daughter (Patricia Ellis) hatches a plan: she announces that, since her parents' marriage didn't work, she might as well go off and live with her boyfriend (Paul Kaye) without the benefit of clergy. In a final scene, Menjou and Tobin confront Ellis and Kaye, snuggled up together in bed in a hotel room, and a happy ending is in store for all—though I'm not 100% convinced that Menjou has really learned his lesson.

This pre-Code film feels like a forerunner of the screwball comedy genre with its fast pace, witty dialogue, and overtones of adultery and reconciliation. At just an hour, it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome. Menjou and Horton hit all their predictable marks with professionalism, and Astor, though good, feels a bit underused. I have seen Tobin in several movies and, while I generally think she gives good performances, I never find her particularly memorable, lacking in star charisma. Here, she sounds a bit like Billie Burke at times, and though she's fine, I once again find my memories of her in this film fading already after just a few days. Hugh Herbert, Guy Kibbee and Robert Greig give their usual strong supporting performances. In fact, Greig gets a standout moment: early on, when Menjou blames his recent fatigue on polo, Grieg says, knowingly, "Polo can be a little strenuous, particularly if you do it every afternoon." Another good line: Menjou, on finding Ellis and Kaye in the hotel room, "They're in bed together and they’re not married!"; Astor: "How enterprising of them." That's a line that they probably could not have gotten away with after the implementation of the Production Code. Same with the entire Menjou/Astor affair plotline. Fun movie with a meaningless and generic title. Pictured are Horton and Astor. [TCM]

MY SISTER EILEEN (1942)

This property has a long history. Ruth McKenney wrote a series of stories which appeared in The New Yorker in the 1930s about herself and her sister, two young women living in Cleveland, Ohio who moved to New York City, with Ruth trying to become a published writer and her younger sister Eileen trying to break into acting. They were presented as fiction but were based on their real lives. (Autofiction, anybody?) A collection of those stories was published in 1937 as My Sister Eileen. In 1940, material from the last two chapters which focused on their time in New York was turned into a hit Broadway play. While it was still running, Columbia turned it into a movie with Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair as the sisters. A stage musical adaptation, Wonderful Town, with music by Leonard Bernstein, was a hit in 1953. A completely different musical movie, titled My Sister Eileen, was released in 1955. Later it became a one-season TV show with Elaine Stritch. Under review here is the 1942 movie. Though I've not seen or read the original play, this is probably fairly faithful to it as almost all the action is set in the girls' one-room apartment. The film begins in Columbus, Ohio as Ruth, working for the Columbus Courier, writes a rave review in advance of her sister's stage debut in A Doll's House. Eileen is replaced at the last minute and when the false review runs, Ruth is fired. The two head to New York (perhaps because, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere), and rent a basement apartment in Greenwich Village with lots of problems. The feet of people walking along the sidewalk are constantly visible, as are pestering kids and drunks, and a streetlight shines in at night. The beds are hard. There is rumbling and noise from subway repair blasting from under the floor. 

They have to deal with occasional visits from a psychic (a hooker in Production Code disguise) who used to live there. They become friendly with a dim but hunky football player who calls himself The Wreck (and is constantly singing, "I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech"); he's married but asks to live in the girls' kitchen for a couple of days while his in-laws visit—they don't approve of the Wreck and don't know that they're married (in the play, the two are in fact not married; the movie marriage is another sop to the Code). Ruth gets involved with the editor of The Manhatter (read: The New Yorker) who works to get her published, while any number of men become enchanted by the blonde and curvy Eileen. The climax features Ruth and a conga line of Portuguese sailors who have docked at the piers. All is more or less resolved at the end. This has a screwball pace which gets tiring after a while, but the performances anchor the film. Rosalind Russell couldn't be better as Ruth as she balances finding a job with protecting her sister and falling in love with the editor. Janet Blair is fine as Eileen, playing her in a not-quite scatterbrained fashion. With my propensity for handsome supporting men, I quite liked Gordon Jones, running around in a sweaty tank top (at right), as the Wreck. Brian Aherne, as the level headed editor, sometimes disappears into the background with all the crazy antics that take center stage. George Tobias is the Greek landlord, and others making an impression include Grant Mitchell, Elizabeth Patterson, Allyn Joslyn, and June Havoc. I’ll try to track down the 50s musical one of these days. Pictured top left are Aherne and Russell. [TCM]

THE SCARLET WEB (1954)

James Warren is released from six months in prison and is picked up by a Mrs. Dexter. She says he looks like the kind of man who is not afraid of a spot of danger and wants to hire him to get a letter of her husband's away from a blackmailer. She sets up a rendezvous that evening with her and her husband Charles to discuss the matter. What she doesn’t know is that he’s actually Jake Winter, an insurance investigator who was in prison working undercover to discover the location of some stolen jewels. He reports to his main office only to find that his boss, a gruff guy with whiskers, has been replaced by Susan Honeywell, a lovely young woman. He’s a bit patronizing to her, but then he starts trying to charm her and she shows signs of responding. But that night at his rendezvous, Mrs. Dexter drugs his drink and he passes out. When he wakes up, he has a knife in his hand, Mrs. Dexter is gone, and a dead woman is present in the apartment. He goes to get help from Susan. His fingerprints were found on the knife so she agrees to hide him and help him clear his name. It turns out that the dead woman is the real Mrs. Dexter, and the woman who drugged him is Charles Dexter's mistress. Dexter's secretary is protective of her boss, but Simpson, Dexter's clerk, is more forthcoming and Jake learns that the mistress's name is Laura Vane. More interestingly, Susan finds out that Dexter had taken out a big life insurance policy on his wife just a few months ago. They figure out that Laura killed Mrs. Dexter and is planning on heading to Buenos Aires with Dexter when the insurance money comes through. Then Susan discovers that Dexter is planning on making the trip alone. Can Jake and Susan clear Jake's name before Dexter gets away?

This hour-long British B-film has two good performances to anchor it. Griffith Jones is fairly dashing and charismatic as Jake, and Hazel Court is sexy and sly as Susan. Their relationship, a little adversarial at the beginning, becomes one of trust and respect and, eventually, romance. Neither actor was a big box-office name but both are usually standouts as supporting players. Here they're the leads and they're quite good. Zena Marshall is fine as the attractive and dangerous Laura; Molly Raynor is the cranky secretary, and Ronald Stevens has a couple nice scenes as Simpson. It's a talky movie with lots of information passed along as expository dialogue. But there is a little effective action, and one fun scene in a salon where Jake finds that Susan is sprucing up her looks to impress him. Her gay comic relief hairdresser (David Stoll) promises not to make her "too fluffy," which amuses Jake. I always like Jones and he and Court have a good chemistry, and the film's tone remains light—it's too bad this didn't become a series. Pictured are Court and Jones. [YouTube]

STRANGE INTERLUDE (1932)

In a small university town in New England after World War I, Nina Leeds (Norma Shearer) is still grieving the death of her boyfriend Gordon in the war, with particular distress over the fact that her father discouraged them from marrying before he went overseas out of misplaced jealousy, wanting to keep Nina for himself. She became a nurse for convalescing soldiers in Boston, but gained a reputation for sleeping with them, so she has returned home. Also back in town is Charlie Marsden (Ralph Morgan), a mama's boy who has nursed an unrequited love for Nina for years. Dr. Ned Darrell (Clark Gable), a colleague who also has an unspoken crush on Nina, thinks that she needs to get married and suggests Gordon's boyhood pal Sam (Alexander Kirkland) as the groom. They marry and afterwards, Sam's mother tells Nina the family secret of which Sam is not aware: inherited insanity runs in the family, and she suggests that Nina should, behind Sam's back, find a man to impregnate her instead of Sam. She enlists Ned who fulfills his duty, though the two then realize they're in love. She names her son Gordon (if you didn't know by now, Freud would have a field day with this narrative) who grows up sensing Ned's love for his mother and resenting it. Charlie figures it all out and, somewhat masochistically, remains in Nina's social orbit, suffering silently. Years later, as a college student, Gordon (Robert Young) wins a sailing competition and Sam, proud and excited, drops dead of a stroke. Gordon announces his plan to marry his girlfriend which Nina thinks is too conventional a life plan. By the end, Nina comes to the realization that she and Ned gave up happiness for Sam, Ned leaves so Gordon's resentment of him won't fester, and Nina is left with the sad, passive Charlie as her only companion, someone she assumes has "passed all desire," not knowing that he will pine for her forever.

This dysfunctional family melodrama is based on a somewhat experimental play by Eugene O’Neill—it's famous for its gimmick of having characters stop while delivering dialogue, turn to the audience, and speak asides, baring their real thoughts which are often very different from what they are expressing verbally. For the film, the actors stop speaking and the asides are delivered as voiceovers—the gimmick is explained at the beginning of the film, and Charlie delivers a line about spoken words being "just a mask" for our true selves. It's rather awkward especially when the asides have to be delivered quickly so as not to interrupt the flow of the action. The actors' faces sometimes go into contortions of varying emotions as the aside rambles on, causing some unwanted comical moments. I guess I got used to it but it remains disruptive all through the two-hour film (the play ran almost five hours, sometimes performed with a dinner break). The actors seem a bit at sea, especially Ralph Morgan (Charlie) who has the burden of a larger share of these asides, at least in the beginning. The best acting comes from Gable, and Shearer is good in scenes with Gable, though largely due to the writing we never really see what is so appealing about Nina that she has such a hold on all these men. The characters come off as a seething knot of neurotics and my sympathy for them was worn to a nub by the end. A scene near the end with Nina and Ned bidding farewell to Gordon is just plain laughable. As might be expected with an adaptation of a highly theatrical play (O'Neill wrote the screenplay), quite a bit is told rather than shown which blunts some of the emotional effectiveness of the situations. Still, I recommend this to fans of the era and the stars, which also include May Robson and Maureen O'Sullivan.  And to anyone looking for a novelty. Pictured are Gable and Shearer. [TCM]

THE GHOST THAT WALKS ALONE (1944)

A radio soap opera called The Tender Hour is being performed live with lead actors Sue and Whitney as the romantic couple, and Enid and Cedric as supporting players. But sound effects man Eddie has his mind on his wedding later that day and messes up a couple of sound cues. Macy Turner, the producer and Enid’s husband, fires Eddie but Enid insists on him being re-hired. Macy thinks that Cedric has designs on his wife, leading to some tension. Eddie and Sue leave to be married, then go to a lodge in the woods run by his sister Milly. When Macy discovers that the Tenderfoot Shoe Company has threatened to pull their sponsorship of the show, he insists that the cast and crew, along with Beppo, a writer, head out to the lodge to rehearse all week, horning in on Eddie and Sue’s honeymoon. Milly allows them to stay, even though the lodge is officially closing for the season. Also in the lodge: Tom, a sinister looking handyman, and Cornelia Coates, a nutty old lady with a propensity for sleepwalking reveries in which she thinks she's Lady Guinevere. In the night, Eddie leaves his room to make sure his sound effects trunks are safe; when he returns, someone has switched the room numbers on the doors and Eddie enters Whitney’s room thinking it's his. Instead of Sue, Eddie finds the dead body of Macy in the bed. Roomies Cedric and Beppo help him put the body in a trunk and take it to the basement. Eddie runs into Cornelia walking in her sleep and accompanies her on her reverie; Sue sees them and thinks that Eddie is already being unfaithful to her. The next morning, Eddie discovers that Macy's body is missing. The sheriff is called by Whitney, who never came back to his room the night before, and soon everyone is a suspect in a murder that no one can prove actually happened.

A couple of online writers have compared this B-movie comic mystery to a Scooby-Doo episode with Eddie as Shaggy. I've actually never seen an entire episode of that show, but that seems right. The story is fun but the script is weak and full of plotholes, and it's the acting that carries one through. Arthur Lake (Dagwood in the Blondie movies) has a sweet but scatterbrained thing going on here as Eddie and it works well, though one does wonder how he wound up with a smart and attractive woman like Lynne Roberts (Sue). Because Janis Carter (Enid) is top billed over Roberts, I assumed that Sue was going to be a villain but both she and Carter remain what they seem in the opening. Carter is fine but is not any more important to the plot than Roberts, so I guess the billing was a contractual thing. I was not familiar with the rest of the cast, but they’re mostly fine. Arthur Space (Cedric) and Frank Sully (Beppo) as the roomies are good comic sidekicks and, frankly, have more chemistry together than Lake and Roberts. Matt Willis is creepily thuggish as Tom. I was less impressed with Ida Moore as the nutty Cornelia but that may just be a reaction to her character who seems superfluous and only needed for a final punch line. Among the plotholes: the idea that the entire crew would intrude on a honeymoon to rehearse a 15 minute soap opera episode is silly; it’s never explained why Cornelia is still staying in the lodge; the absence of a couple of the characters for a while is not explained. As most online viewers note, the title is nonsense. Though one character mentions ghosts in passing, there is no ghost, walking or otherwise, and no character suspects one. I got mild enjoyment out of Lake, Space and Sully but otherwise it’s a minor effort from the Columbia B-movie unit. Pictured are Jack Lee (as Macy) and Lake. [YouTube]