THE YOUNG CAPTIVES (1959)

One night at a California oil rig, a young employee named Jamie is found passed out drunk next to a blaring transistor radio. His boss kicks the radio apart and fires him so the angry Jamie impulsively beats the man to death, to the rhythm of the piston oil pump above. Cops Dave and Norm and reporter Tony find the body the next day and investigate. Meanwhile horny teenagers Benji and Ann let their hormones get the best of them while swimming in a river, and the next day they decide to head to Tijuana to get married against her parents' wishes. Figuring Ann's folks have called the police, the two avoid main roads. When they run out of gas, they meet Jamie whose motorcycle has broken down nearby. Jamie, tough-guy handsome, sweet talks the two into helping him—he'll get some gas from a nearby station if they will take him to a small town to connect with an old buddy to get the bike fixed. Jamie can cover up his psychopathic tendencies for a while—Benji and Ann are actually amused by his weird little antics—but soon at a gas station, he kills a sexy blonde who pisses him off and stuffs her body in the trunk of her car. (It's not totally clear if he was more interested in the woman or her car.) Benji gets fed up with Jamie's increasingly bizarre behavior and orders him out of the car, but Jamie pulls out a knife and threatens to cut Ann's throat. They wind up in Mexico with the cops in hot pursuit, and when Jamie suggests that he might want to marry Ann, we know we're in for a meltdown of some sort.

Essentially this is a B-movie cross between a juvenile delinquent film and a psycho killer film. It's suggested that Jamie isn't that much older than the two kids, and a fair chunk of cop conversation is devoted to the issue of the possible cause of Jamie's behavior and the promise of using rehab rather than prison to help wayward youth. The writing isn't as strong as it might be, but in other ways, this stands a notch or two taller than the average American International teen crime flick of the era. Things start a little shakily and I admit that at first, I stuck with it because the male leads were attractive. Stephen Marlo, as Jamie, wears a snug black t-shirt, has a convincing urban thug look and does a nice job of flipping back and forth between being boyishly goofy and scarily dangerous. Tom Selden (Benji) did not continue with screen acting, but he's good at being an innocent foil to Marlo's scary energy; the character seems like someone who might be in a bubblegum pop group, and he strikes a good balance between passivity and heroism. Luana Patten is wholesomely sexy and strong minded as Ann. Both of the male leads are near 30 and Patten is 20, but they're all believable as being in the same age cohort. Imagine Archie and Betty running into a psycho Reggie. The cops wind up with not much to do, but Ed Nelson and Dan Sheridan are fine, and Bonanza's Dan Blocker has a one-line role. Except for the scenes set in a police station, almost all of the movie was shot on exteriors (back roads, deserts, gas stations) that are just right. The climax is violent and effective as Jamie, wielding a knife, and Benji, with a broken bottle, get into it. Jamie looks truly crazed as he whips Benji with a car antenna, but he doesn't keep the upper hand for long. This may not be a gem, but as a second-feature teen crime film, it’s near the top of its class. Pictured are Marlo, Patten and Selden. [YouTube]

ROSES ARE RED (1947)

Peggy Ford is found dead in her apartment, a red rose clutched in her hand. In her purse is found a picture of the new district attorney, Robert Thorne, who has come into the office on a platform of cleaning up corruption. Mob boss Jim Locke isn't happy about this declaration and neither is police officer Rocky Wall who is on Locke's payroll. The picture turns out to be of a crook named Don Carney; Carney and Thorne look exactly alike, even to both having pencil-thin mustaches (it seemed to me that one mustache was a bit scruffier than the other, but it was hard to tell). As Thorne takes the oath of office in the presence of his girlfriend Martha, Carney gets out of prison on parole and stops in to see his wife Jill. As the cops put the finger on one of Locke’s men for the murder of Peggy, Locke gets a bright idea: kidnap Thorne and have Carney study him and replace him so Locke can save his criminal enterprise, which will eventually entail having Thorne killed. This B-crime film is interesting but lacks the talent and imagination to make it special. What the movie does best is the dual role business. Don Castle plays both Thorne and Carney; there's not much differentiation between the two in Castle's performances, but we manage to tell them apart. The scenes in which they meet up are effective, done not with split screen but with one character seated or standing in front of rear screen projection of the other character as they interact (as pictured). Castle is a bit lightweight but I usually like him so I cut him some slack here. Also good is Joe Sawyer as the crooked cop Rocky. Everyone else is no more than serviceable. The two female leads, Peggy Knudson as Martha and Patricia Knight as Jill, don't actually look alike but they feel interchangeable. Familiar faces in supporting parts include Paul Guilfoyle and Douglas Fowley as thugs, James Arness as a (very tall) cop, and Charles Lane as a lawyer. Jeff Chandler has one of his earliest credited roles as a killer, but all the bad guys blend together. Edward Keane, as Locke, confined to a wheelchair, is disappointingly low energy. There's not a lot of tension, though a scene in which Thorne, pretending to be Carney pretending to be Thorne, meets up with Carney's wife, is good. The ending feels a bit rushed but the final shootout is handled well. The opening murder is never really explained, and the rose (in Peggy's hand and in the title) means nothing. [YouTube]

THE PASSOVER PLOT (1976)

This fiction film is based on a controversial work of nonfiction by Hugh J. Schonfield. His theory is that the man history knows as Jesus Christ was not divine, but a mortal man who, in order to empower the Jews, planned to pose as the promised messiah, start a political movement, get in trouble with Roman authorities, fake his death when he was crucified, and reappear in public as the risen messiah. This movie, which uses Hebrew names, begins with Yeshua convincing himself that he has been called to be a messiah (men claiming to be messiahs were fairly common back then). He fasts in the desert, is baptized by Yohanan (John) the Baptist, and, with advice solicited from Yohanan, collects a group of followers who will help him usher in a new age for the Jews. (When Yeshua warns them that being a follower might be dangerous, Shimon replies, “We’ve been dying for a long time.”) His reputation for performing miracles is established when a man pretending to be blind approaches him asking to be cured. Yeshua spits in the man's face to call his bluff and the man says he's been cured to save face. Yeshua's brother Yakov and his band of revolutionaries get involved, though his group pushes the use of violence to achieve freedom while Yeshua backs peaceful methods. Yeshua carefully plots to attract enough attention from the authorities by proclaiming himself a king. He has Judah (Judas) deliberately betray him and has Yakov prepare an herbal solution that, when he's crucified, will slow his heartbeat on the cross enough to appear dead. Yakov warns him that the rusty nails in his hands and the blood loss may complicate his plan, and indeed, just as it looks like the plan is working, a soldier stabs Yeshua with a spear. When Yakov takes Yeshua to his tomb, he is still alive, but the stab wound kills him before he can make a public appearance as a resurrected messiah.

The book and movie created a lot of fuss back in the day, and I understand that the claim that Jesus was not actually the son of God would bother believers, though the idea of Jesus as a political figure was not new—in movies, it goes back as far as the 1927 KING OF KINGS. But the bulk of the action of the movie is a fairly reverent and traditional depiction of Jesus' last days. Zalman King's portrayal of Yeshua is also fairly traditional. He's alternately mild and intense; his more intense scenes tend to involve a lot of screaming which doesn't come off well. But on the whole, King sustains viewer interest as he is in almost every scene. British supporting actors Harry Andrews (Yohanan) and Hugh Griffith (Caiaphas) add acting clout. Other standouts include Scott Wilson as Judah, William Burns as Shimon, and Robert Walker Jr. as Bartholomew. Dan Hedaya, in his first movie role, is unrecognizable as Yakov. I find two problems with the movie. Firstly, it doesn’t examine the political conspiracy plot nearly as much as it should, opting instead to emphasize the canonical story of Jesus, featuring scenes of the Baptist's capture, the marketplace disturbance, and the Last Supper (or seder). Secondly, direction by Michael Campus is weak, with way too much of it shot in close-up to the point of too much claustrophobic visual framing. I got tired of seeing faces so close, so often. It's an interesting movie, though if you're hoping for blasphemous controversy, I think you'll be disappointed. [YouTube]

SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960)

At Collins College, Prof. Zorch has programmed his robotic computer Sam Thinko (SAM standing for Sequential Auxiliary Modulator) to pick a new science department head, and that choice, Dr. Mathilda West, arrives by train. The dean, Dr. Myrtle Carter, greets a chunky straitlaced woman who turns out to be Miss Cadwallader, a bra saleswoman. Dr. West (Mamie Van Doren) is a sexy blonde (measurements 40-20-32 according to Thinko) who, it is noted, looks like Mamie Van Doren. Woo Woo, the beefy lunkheaded football star, promptly faints, and Carter worries that the college will lose a forthcoming grant from wealthy alumnus Wildcat MacPherson because no one will take West seriously, but Zorch and the college's PR man George Barton (Martin Milner) take West's side, especially after they learn she has an IQ of 268 and holds thirteen advanced degrees. Also on the train are two low-level gangsters, Legs and Boomie, who are hunting down a guy named Sam Thinko whom they think is a horse race gambler who wins his bets 100% of the time. (We discover later that Woo Woo had been making bets in his sleep based on Thinko's predictions, but this plotline is completely unimportant.) Complications keep piling up. Woo Woo's girlfriend Jody (Tuesday Weld) thinks that West is out to steal Woo Woo from her and doubles her efforts to get Woo Woo's fraternity pin. Suzanne, a French exchange student, is working on a research paper on the sex lives of American men, and falls head over heels for Legs. Three science professors take West to the Passion Pit, a local nightclub and hangout, where Wildcat arrives, parachuting in by helicopter (his reputation is such that every woman who sees him runs away screaming), and West shows her skill at hypnotism by getting all the men to do a mock strip tease dance. Eventually, West admits that before she got her degrees, she was a stripper from Florida known as the Tallahassee Tassel Tosser. Barton falls for her, Wildcat falls for Myrtle, Jody gets Woo-Woo, and when Thinko has a nervous breakdown, West fixes him, then leaves town with Barton. I'm not sure what happens to Suzanne and Legs in the confusing climax, a large-scale fire extinguisher fight, but generally, there are happy endings all around.

Critics really hate this movie but I kinda liked it. I feel like this might have been the template for the American International teen beach movies of the 1960s, with horny but innocent teenagers, B-list guest stars, and outlandish plot developments. I don't much like those films, but maybe because this feels fresher, I wound up with a sneaky affection for it. The presence of Mamie Van Doren helps. She was never going to win an Oscar, but she throws herself into her performances full throttle and she's almost always the best thing about her movies. Her bosomy blonde persona is the central joke of the first half of the movie but she doesn't play dumb because the character isn't dumb. Martin Milner is the epitome of cute cornfed innocence, tempered with common sense (or at least as close as anyone in the movie comes to common sense), though he always looks bewildered. Tuesday Weld looks great as Jody but winds up with not much to do. Woo Woo is played by Norman Grabowski, who in addition to acting was a famous hot rod designer. Louis Nye mostly just glowers behind a fake mustache as Zorch. Brigitte Bardot’s sister Mijanou is Suzanne, Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester in The Addams Family) does a W.C. Fields impersonation as Wildcat. John Carradine has a small role as one of the teachers (yes, he's in the strip dance scene) and Harold Lloyd Jr. (at left) has a two-line cameo as a cop. Conway Twitty does a rockabilly number called "Miss Mamie," and Vampira (unrecognizable out of her usual getup) has a small role. The movie's working title was Sexpot Goes to College and that's the name of the theme song, sung by Van Doren. The weirdest thing about the movie is the "extra" reel of strip tease footage near the end. Thinko has a dream that four women do strip dances in front of him, complete with bare breasts, and then grind against him dressed only in tiny panties. It's a little bit sexy. Apparently it was shot for the European release and not included in the States, though it has been added to the Warner DVD (which is the print that TCM shows). The movie is frantically paced and not everything works, but I enjoyed it—though I not sure I'd want to sit through it a second time soon. Pictured at top are Milner, Nye and Van Doren. [TCM]

THE HAND (1960)

The opening shot of a Japanese POW camp in World War II says "Burma 1946" but that seems clearly a mistake because the war ended in 1945. Three captured British soldiers are being interrogated about the strength and whereabouts of their regiment, but refuse to give any information except name and rank. Captain Roberts thinks they should get a fictitious story straight and stick to it, but before they can, enlisted men Adams and Brodie are called in to talk, and when they refuse, their right hands are cut off. When Roberts is questioned, he apparently talks and is spared the amputation. Fifteen years later, a drunk named Taplow is found passed out on a London street, his right hand recently amputated and with 500 pounds in his coat. Taken to a hospital, he says he sold the hand to a man named Roberts who had it cut off at a small rural nursing home. During the night, Taplow is abducted by two men and found dead in the Thames the next morning. The police question Dr. Simon Crawshaw, the man who performed the amputation. Taplow had been brought in under the name Roberts by someone else who then took him after the operation. When the police continue to delve into the matter, Simon kills himself in his office. His cousin Roger shows up and, though the police don’t know this, we know that Roger is Captain Roberts, the soldier who kept his hand in Burma. The police trace a phone call that Simon got just before his suicide to a boarding house where Brodie (from the opening scene), who has a hook on his right arm, lives. 

From here on in, the story absolutely falls apart and despite the many notes I took while watching, I can't give a coherent summary of the rest of the plot. Suffice to say that Roberts is a bad guy who winds up paying for his crimes in an ironic fashion. This movie gets labeled horror quite a bit, but except for the implied grisliness of the amputations (none are shown graphically though we do see at least one disembodied hand) it's not horror as much as a B-crime movie. Ultimately the whys and wherefores of the plot are never detailed so we just have to take it on faith that the Burma segment at the beginning (and reprised at the end) is the reason for all the mayhem. It's also never made clear why it took fifteen years after Burma for all this to happen. The acting is all on a par with that of Hammer supporting players without the star power of a Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, meaning everyone is competent but bland. For the record, Derek Bond as Roberts and Ronald Leigh-Hunt as the chief inspector are OK. I did enjoy a running gag in which the policeman named Dave (Ray Cooney, who also co-wrote the script with another cast member) complains to his boss about his girlfriend complaining that he keeps having to work nights on this case. Not an awful movie but difficult to recommend. Pictured are Leigh-Hunt and Cooney. [YouTube]

A SEPARATE PEACE (1972)

In 1942, with World War II under way, Gene and Finny are roommates at Devon, a prep school in New England. Gene is a serious student who studies hard and gets A’s; Finney, a handsome and outgoing golden boy, is a jock who barely studies and is happy getting by with C’s. The boys have a loose knit circle of friends who include the snooty Brinker, amusing but irritating, and the awkward outcast Leper whom Finny stands up for. They jokingly refer to themselves as a secret society, though their main activities seem to be playing lacrosse and swimming in a nearby river. One day, Finny climbs up a tall tree and challenges others to climb up with him and dive into the river. Only Gene joins him, an act which cements their friendship. Later, Finney admits that Gene is his best pal, though for his part, Gene seems to both worship Finney and resent his influence. Even when he needs to study, Gene always ends up acceding to Finny's wishes to goof off. The next time the two are at the tree, Finny dares him to climb the tree to do a double jump. Just as they're about to go, Finny falls out of the tree, breaking his leg. It's unclear what happened: did Finny just stumble or did Gene shake the tree branch, causing his fall? Recovering from the break keeps Finny out of school for several weeks, and when Gene visits him, he haltingly admits that he shook the branch, though good-natured Finny doesn't accept the confession. When Finny returns to Devon, the two reconcile and, though his jock days are behind him, Finny coaches Gene for the 1944 Olympics (which Gene suspects and we know will be called off due to the war). But Brinker, suspecting that Gene caused Finny's accident, convenes a midnight kangaroo court to get at the truth. Refusing to accept Gene's guilt, Finny goes stumbling out of the room, falls down some stairs, and breaks his leg again. Though the doctor is sure a routine operation will fix his leg, something goes wrong and Finny dies under the knife. Decades later, Gene visits the school and goes to the tree, the memory of Finny having never left him.

In the 1970s and 80s, the novel by John Knowles that this is based on was a canonical high school reading assignment. This gay boy read it at the age of 16 (not for a class) and found it to be a story, in large part, of homoerotic attraction: Gene can't face up to his feelings, and finds them in conflict with his resentment over how easy life seems for Finny with his looks and charm; Finny is blissfully unaware of any feelings that run deeper than friendship. But the book is more often approached as a coming-of-age story about accepting responsibility, building an identity, and preparing to become part of the wider world outside of school. The war is brought up frequently. The boys know that the draft waits for them after graduation, though for a time Finny clings to a belief that it's a fake war blown out of proportion by the government. After his accident, he becomes upset that he will not be eligible to fight. Leper leaves Devon before graduation to join the Army, but returns AWOL, plagued by mental problems that he thinks will lead to a discharge. Knowles has denied that he intended any queer reading of the story, and the book is usually taught with a focus on Gene's envy rather than any sexual attraction, conscious or otherwise. With all due respect to Knowles, I say, trust the tale, not the teller. Inchoate sexual feelings certainly play a part in the development of Gene and Finny's relationship, and the movie, filled with scenes of energetic shirtless boys and long lingering glances between Gene and Finny, seems to endorse such an interpretation. 

The movie is quite faithful to the book, but it's not an especially good movie. The director, Larry Peerce, wanted and got a mostly non-professional cast. This is the first movie role for Parker Stevenson (Gene) who went on to a long acting career. For my taste, his performance is awfully one-note, his face usually looking either confused or thoughtful, and I fail to see what about Gene caused Finny to gravitate toward him as a close friend. John Heyl (at right), who had been an actual student at the prep school where the movie was filmed, is quite good as Finny, partly because the character is more about surface charm than buried emotions. He's also got preppy good looks to burn, though in real life he turned away from acting and became a teacher. The biggest problem with the acting is that everyone except Stevenson says their lines too quickly with little variation in tone, a problem that should have been addressed by the director. Visually, it's lovely: the tree, the river, the school grounds, and the snow scenes in the last half of the movie all add atmosphere that the acting and script sometimes lack. Period detail is not especially strong. I would say that reading the book then seeing the movie is the best way to experience the story. This is not available on a region 1 DVD and the print I watched on Prime is squished a bit to fit a square screen which was really disappointing. Pictured at top left are Stevenson and Heyl. [Amazon Prime]

STRANDED (1965)

In Greece near some ruins, Jeff breaks up with Raina, telling her that in following her, he is no longer a man. After he leaves, she goes to a beach with her small dog and walks into the ocean in an apparent suicide attempt (all I could think was, what will happen to that poor dog?). Nicos, a handsome sailor, rescues her but she sends him away with no thanks. Later, in a hotel room, we discover that Raina and Jeff were part of a four-person tourist group. The other two are Bob, a handsome American, and Olivier, a handsome French painter. With Jeff gone, the other three rent a barge to go on a tour of the Greek islands, but the barge is junky with a small crew and cramped sleeping quarters, leading the three to decide to sleep on deck. Bob seems mildly interested in a romance with Raina, but when she recognizes Nicos, her rescuer, as one of the crew members, they begin a flirtation. We follow the group as they visit various islands, mostly being disappointed by them. Things we discover: Bob's father has done ruins restoration on some of the islands; Bob and Raina did one season of summer stock together; Olivier is gay and occasionally runs into some rough trade in the villages—Olivier doesn't want Bob to know he's gay and so acts a bit stand-offish with him, but Bob eventually figures it out. One night, Bob, Raina and Nicos set up a table on the beach and dine together, leading to Raina skinny-dipping late that night and to Olivier following her to the shore for a casual sexual encounter. Not terribly happy with the ports they're being taken to, the three decide to hop a Turkish barge which is larger and has more passengers (though we never see anyone else) but is in similarly grungy shape. After an evening of getting high on hashish, Olivier invites them to stay at a chateau in France; the beds are full of fleas and the connection between Raina and Bob begins to erode—though the two sleep in the same bed, they don't really bond as traditional lovers. In the end, Bob leaves and Raina and Olivier, who feels the pull of art ("I must work now while my generation is still important"), drive off down a French road.

This indie film, written and directed by Juleen Compton, who also plays Raina, got virtually no mainstream exposure in the United States, despite it feeling very much akin to the 1960s European new wave work of Godard or Antonioni. It does, however, come off like an American knock-off, which is not necessarily damning with faint praise. This feels like a marker for a new indie movie road that wasn't followed. The experiments in style feel rote, like something Compson did because it was expected. For example, the opening scene of Raina and Jeff arguing is presented mostly silent, until we hear an outburst of Jeff's. Then we hear Raina reply, but her lips don't move. Was that due to technical fudging or was it on purpose? Another time, Bob plays a banjo then stops, but we continue to hear it. Later, there are two short sequences in which the movement is choppy, as if frames were cut out at random. This definitely seems to have been done on purpose, but its meaning remains obscure. Similarly, the hash smoking scene is shot with distorting lenses. I rather like the "slice of life" feel of the narrative, beginning in the middle of the collapse of a relationship we know nothing about and ending with the futures of all three main characters up in the air, despite the apparent resolution of the Bob/Raina storyline (it felt a little like Brian leaving Sally at the end of Cabaret). There is an interesting sequence set in a diner/bar which may or may not be a gay establishment—Raina is the only woman there and Olivier pals around comfortably with the other men. Raina dances to the boppy pop song "Ya Ya" by Lee Dorsey and the men are entranced but remain distant.

The acting is about on a par with the other new wave films of the time, but it's difficult to judge the performances because of the superficial way the characters are written. Compson is fine as Raina, but she's not consistent in her actions, and her half-hearted suicide attempt feels against her nature (BTW, the dog remains with her throughout). Her sexuality is a part of her story but refreshingly, her sexual nature is not her be-all and end-all—mostly, I guess, she's seen as needing freedom at the expense of many other things. Gian Pietro Calasso is fine as Olivier, avoiding easy stereotypes in the portrayal of a confused gay man. (Calasso's brother Roberto was a famous Italian writer.) Alkis Giannakas is the handsome and occasionally shirtless Nicos who, despite his importance to the first half of the movie, more or less vanishes by the end. The outlier is Gary Collins, later a TV actor and talk show host, as Bob. He's a rather vanilla blond collegiate type—Collins was 27 but his character's age seems younger than that—and though I had my doubts that he would fit in with the other indie/Euro types, he provides a good balance in the cast. He is presented in a fairly neutral fashion, neither mocked nor envied, and though he clearly has affection for Raina, he is not swept away by passion (no one in the movie is, though Olivier has the potential to be). It's 90 minutes, and the first hour is well-paced, though things bog down near the end. Still, I was pleased to discover this unusual and unheralded film. Pictured are Collins (the blond), Compson and Calasso. [Criterion Channel]

VIRIDIANA (1961)

As Viridiana is about to take her vows to become a nun, the Mother Superior suggests that she take time to visit her sick uncle, Don Jaime, who has financially taken care of her for years. She has little affection for her uncle though she never says why. She also has no taste for the physical—at her uncle's house, she sleeps on the floor on a bed of thorns and can't bring herself to milk her uncle's cows. For his part, Don Jaime clearly lusts after Viridiana. He tells her that she looks like his wife, who died on their wedding night. On the last night of her visit, he gets her to put on his wife's wedding dress, then he drugs her coffee and carries her to bed, intending to rape her. He doesn't go through with it, but the next morning he tells her she's no longer a virgin and should give up on taking her vows. She goes to leave anyway, but in short order, her uncle commits suicide, hanging himself with a jump rope; she inherits the farm portion of his estate and decides to stay; and Don Jaime's bastard son Jorge arrives to take over the main house. He brings a girlfriend who leaves when she sees that Jorge has eyes for Viridiana, but a servant named Ramona has eyes for Jorge. To commit herself to Christian work despite not taking her vows, Viridiana opens up her part of the house to a flock of beggars, including a leper, but soon they have taken full advantage of her kindness and one drunken night while Jorge is gone, they occupy the main dining room and have a debauched feast, accompanied by the "Hallelujah Chorus" and climaxing with a parodic shot of the beggars reenacting Da Vinci's Last Supper. The beggars tie up Jorge when he returns and one tries to rape Viridiana. In the end, the police arrive to break things up, and in the last scene, Viridiana seems to have given up all thoughts of piety. She enters Jorge's room where he is playing cards with Ramona. She joins them as a pop song says, "Shake your cares away" and Jorge says, "The first time I saw you, I thought, my cousin and I will end up shuffling the deck together."

You can use Google to gather background on the anti-clerical director Luis Bunuel and the reception of this film in Spain (long story short: government censors passed the film until they realized how much it was mocking Christianity). For all the controversy this stirred up back in the day, the film actually seems relatively mild now until the final near-orgy. Even then, the problem isn't so much any graphic visualization as it is the mocking of both the poor and the church that claims to want to help them. Characterization is not Bunuel's strong point here as the proceedings are largely symbolic, but the performances are nicely fleshed out. The gorgeous Silvia Pinal anchors the movie with her strong but subtle performance. Very little that happens causes any change in Viridiana's placid exterior, right up to and including the conclusion. Fernando Rey (the uncle) and the handsome Francisco Rabal (Jorge) are effective as the two debauched males. The original ending, which was objectionable to the censors, had Viridiana entering Jorge's bedroom and closing the door. This approved ending, however, is even more salacious as it promises not just extramarital sex but a threesome. Pictured are Rabal and Pinal. [TCM]

THE WET PARADE (1932)

This story of the effects of both alcohol consumption and prohibition begins in 1916 Louisiana as Chilicote (Lewis Stone), once rich and respected, has descended into an alcoholic haze, stumbling in and out of bars. His daughter Maggie (Dorothy Jordan) tries to take care of him and gets him to stop drinking for a month, but he backslides, loses a huge amount of family money while gambling drunk, and commits suicide in a pigsty. At his funeral, when friends toast his memory, Maggie has an outburst, ranting against alcohol. Her brother Roger (Neil Hamilton, pictured below left), a writer, heads to New York City and stays in a hotel managed by Kip Tarleton (Robert Young) who runs the place for his aging father (Walter Huston), who himself has become an alcoholic—we see him take money meant to buy Bromo Seltzer for a tenant and use it to buy booze. Kip is a teetotaler and his mother prays for prohibition, and in a couple of years, she gets her wish. By now, Maggie has come to New York to check up on Roger who has become quite a drinker himself. Prohibition doesn't stop everyone from drinking as bootleggers step in to keep an underground supply going, using copies of legitimate liquor labels on their bottles even as the odds of much of that alcohol being poisoned increase. When Kip's mother tries to keep her husband from drinking from a bad jug, he attacks her and beats her to death. Kip and Maggie, united in an anti-alcohol stance, get married and Kip takes a job as a Prohibition enforcement agent. As he collects evidence, he has to learn to drink alcohol himself, and his partner Abe notes the irony that Kip had to "join Prohibition services to get his first drink." Ultimately, Prohibition doesn't work as people keep drinking, in private and in illegal speakeasies, and bad booze causes illness and death. The film ends in a kind of limbo, with Kip urged by his dying partner (shot in a raid) to get out of the service to take care of Maggie and their newborn son. The last line of the movie has Kip hoping that, by the time their son is grown up, "they’ll have it all figured out."

Historically speaking, this is an interesting document for a couple of reasons. The first is that it was made and released while Prohibition was still the law of the land but with the Democratic Party platform that year calling for repeal, change was in the air. Secondly, the movie avoids taking a strong stand about the issue of Prohibition. Certainly the fates of several characters make strong anti-booze points, but Prohibition is not seen as an effective solution. The film is based on a novel by Upton Sinclair which was apparently more pro-Prohibition than against. I think the movie works best as a mini-family saga. At two hours, it bogs down here and there, and two of the best performances, by Stone and Huston as the booze-soaked patriarchs, are limited as both characters leave the narrative prematurely, with Chilicote dying and Tarleton sent to prison. But 25-year-old Robert Young, in one of his earliest featured roles (he is billed below many of the other actors but arguably has the lead role in the narrative) is very good; he doesn't overdo the clean-living innocence of the character and is very good as a gung-ho crimefighter who slowly realizes that his work may not be terribly effective at fighting the effects of booze on society. 

Dorothy Jordan (pictured with Young at top right) is sidelined for much of the film as the long-suffering daughter and sister. Neil Hamilton's role starts off strong but his plotline is largely lost in the muddle. Jimmy Durante, as Young's partner, provides comic relief in a mostly serious role, and is OK, even getting a good death scene (though he uses his signature "ha-cha-cha" bit too many times). There are good turns from Wallace Ford as a buddy of Roger's, Myrna Loy as a good time floozy, Emma Dunn as Chilicote's wife, Clara Blandick as Tarleton's wife, and John Miljan as Kip's boss who is against Prohibition but does his sworn duty to uphold the law. At one point, it's observed that, under Prohibition, "peach fuzz kids are getting loaded at high noon," certainly not the intent of the law. Despite the tragedies of excessive drinking, we really do get the feeling by the end that Prohibition didn't help, and may have made this social problem worse. [TCM]

MODERATO CANTABILE (1960)

aka SEVEN DAYS ... SEVEN NIGHTS

Anne, the wife of a factory owner in a small French town, is with her young son Pierre as he takes, without enthusiasm, a piano lesson from Miss Girard in her apartment above a small diner. Girard has to continually prompt Pierre to play his piece "moderato cantabile," that is, in a moderate and melodic fashion. Suddenly they hear the awful scream of a woman from the diner. Investigating, Anne sees that a woman has been murdered by her lover. A crowd gathers, including Chauvin, an employee at Anne's husband's factory. They lock eyes, and later, in conversation, she admits she is obsessed with finding out what led to the murder. Chauvin agrees to dig around for information; he thinks she is bored and looking for vicarious adventure, and the same might be said for Chauvin. He follows Anne (usually accompanied by Pierre) around town. Eventually the two meet up at an abandoned house, and he tells her—most likely making up the details—a story of how the couple met, how she became bored with her life (perhaps an echo of how Anne feels in her marriage), and how, he guesses, she asked to be killed. Anne and Chauvin continue meeting, clearly growing attached to each other, but never consummating their relationship. One night at a fancy dinner party that her husband is giving, Anne gets drunk, embarrasses herself with awkward comments, and leaves the house, finding Chauvin alone in the empty diner. They talk; he notes that they have had seven days and nights together but that this must end and he must go. Their last anguished words to each other: he says, "I wish you were dead"; she replies, "Now I am." As he leaves, she lets out a long scream just like the murdered woman did at the beginning of the film. Her husband's car pulls up and he takes her back home.

Though I haven't seen this comparison in other commentaries on the film, this struck me as an existential (and mildly masochistic) version of David Lean's romantic wartime classic Brief Encounter. Over the seven days of the relationship between Anne and Chauvin, all they do is meet and talk; they barely even touch each other. I don't think they even smile at each other; their facial expressions are always tense and guilty. His stories about the diner couple are clearly being spun just so they'll have an excuse to meet up. As in Brief Encounter, not much happens on a narrative level, though the couple in the earlier film seem to come much closer to having a physical relationship than Anne and Chauvin ever do. But Jeanne Moreau (Anne) and Jean-Paul Belmondo  (Chauvin) do a lot of effective smoldering with their eyes and body language. They are attractive and intense actors, and even when the movie's pace bogs down, they remain interesting to watch. Aside from the little boy, the only other character with much presence is the piano teacher (Colette Regis) who disapproves of the boy's recalcitrance and ends by saying she will no longer give him lessons. The look of the movie matches the mood: gray and gloomy. It's based on a short novel by Marguerite Duras and it retains a literary feel throughout. I admit to almost giving up on the long-feeling 90 minute film but Moreau and Belmondo kept me with it. [YouTube]

FRANCIS (1950)

Francis the Talking Mule was the star of a successful little B-movie franchise for Universal in the early 1950s. The Mr. Ed television series of the 60s adapted the same idea of a domesticated animal who talks but only to one particular person. Francis was played by a mule called Molly and voiced by character actor Chill Wills, but the real star of movies was Donald O'Connor, who was 25 but looked a bit younger, as Peter Stirling, the guy Francis talks to. In Burma during the war, Peter, a second lieutenant, is separated from his platoon and stuck in place during a Japanese attack. An Army mule named Francis starts talking to him and gets him out of danger and back to headquarters. He tells his superiors about Francis, but the mule refuses to talk to anyone else and Peter is sent to a psychiatric ward when he spends his days in basket weaving. Despite having no qualifications, Peter is assigned to be a G2 clerk, working in intelligence. At the same time, Miss Gelder, a sexy French woman, arrives looking for sanctuary after being separated from her father. Francis begins feeding information to Peter who acts on it, capturing enemy soldiers, discovering a secret Japanese observation post, and warning of an imminent enemy air attack. He is lauded for his efforts, but each time, he insists that Francis deserves the credit, and each time, he is sent back to basket making. Eventually Francis finally agrees to talk to General Stevens because, being a military mule, he feels he must follow orders. Francis gets press attention, and Gelder is revealed to be a spy (a Tokyo Rose-type broadcaster). Francis is flown to the States as a celebrity, but winds up with Peter, now a small town bank teller. O'Connor (pictured with the mule), who is personable and believable as the somewhat hapless soldier, did five more Francis movies (and did Singin' in the Rain in the middle of them), with Mickey Rooney doing a final one before the series ended. Ray Collins is fine as a colonel, as is John McIntire as the general. Chill Wills voices the mule as an ornery cuss, not as a cutesy Disney character. I probably won’t seek out any more of these, but this was fairly painless fun. [TCM]

TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931)

Barbara Stanwyck, a gum-chewing tough gal, works at the Palais de Dance, a dance hall where men pay the working girls a dime to dance with them. Stanwyck is popular but her boss says she lacks animation and rhythm, blaming it on her troubles with her would-be boyfriend (Monroe Owsley) who lives at Stanwyck's boarding house and has, despite being unemployed, run up some gambling debt. The upper-class Ricardo Cortez comes in one night and, smitten with Stanwyck, just wants to sit and talk to her. He gives her a hundred dollar tip and she asks Cortez to give Owsley a job, which he does, as an accountant at Cortez's firm. Though Cortez continues to dote on Stanwyck, giving her money and a new dress, she decides to marry Owsley. It's easy to see where this pre-Code melodrama is going—Owsley slips into heel mode, losing money at gambling, hiding it from his wife, and staying out till all hours with disreputable pals and loose women. Stanwyck goes back to work at the dance hall and occasionally chats with Cortez who is still in love with her. When Owsley embezzles money from Cortez's firm and is about to be caught, Stanwyck visits Cortez at his high-rise apartment and asks for $5000. Cortez knows he's being played for a chump ("The only love letter to write to a woman: pay to the order of…") but gives it to her anyway. Owsley takes the money and replaces the embezzled amount, then proceeds to berate Stanwyck, assuming she compromised herself. Stanwyck is stuck between the jealous weakling husband and the loving but disillusioned Cortez. What to do?

The credits tell us that this movie is based on the popular song "Ten Cents a Dance," about the rough life of what was called a taxi dancer. It's depressing, telling of torn dresses, trampled feet, only running across "pansies and rough guys," and being too tired to go to sleep back at home. But after the first ten minutes or so, this movie leaves the taxi drivers and their troubles behind and becomes a predictable melodrama about a woman torn between loyalty to a heel and attraction to a rich guy who may think he can buy her for himself. But the outcome is never in doubt, partly due to the casting. We know Stanwyck will stay pure and true to herself (unlike in the infamous BABY FACE of 1933 in which she sleeps her way to the top); Owsley is pinched and passive (and weirdly looks a bit like Pee-Wee Herman) and is clearly not worthy of Stanwyck, whereas Cortez, who sometimes played bad guys, is rich, handsome and dignified, and is willing to wait for Stanwyck to come to her senses. Both actors are good, but Stanwyck is always worth watching—her characters are strong and smart (sometimes street-smart) and she can usually make even one-dimensional characters (like this one mostly is) interesting. Best line, Stanwyck to Owsley: "You're not a man—you're not even a good sample!" Pictured are Cortez and Stanwyck. [TCM]

FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON (1975)

We see blue-tinted footage of a moon landing, but when an astronaut comes out of the vehicle, he is dragging an unconscious astronaut out who is left on the moon. We see a man named Blackmann at Mission Control shouting instructions. Then we see a woman wake up. She has apparently been dreaming of a movie she saw years ago called Footprints on the Moon. The woman, Alice, a translator living in Italy, discovers she is missing any memory of the last three days and is in danger of losing her job. She then finds strange things in her apartment including a torn-up postcard of a hotel on the Turkish island of Garma, and a bloodstained dress in her closet. She also has visions of an Oriental room with stained glass windows featuring peacocks. Visiting Garma hoping to find answers, she winds up facing more mysteries. People on the island remember her but as a redhead named Nicole. A handsome young man named Harry gets chummy with her, and she vaguely recognizes him, but she hears more unsettling things about Nicole and her paranoid behavior and finds the red wig she wore on the island as Nicole. Visions of the moon movie and the peacock window continue. By this time, I was worrying that lots of details were accumulating that would all not amount to much. Well, we do eventually get a surface explanation of what’s going on, and it turns out that Harry knew her briefly years ago when they were teenagers and and interacted with her a few days earlier as Nicole. When Harry takes her to his family's house, she sees the peacock windows. Is Alice having a breakdown? Is she suffering from some past trauma? Are her paranoid feelings justified?

If you like your psychological mysteries wrapped up tight, this is not the film for you. [I'll try to avoid obvious spoilers, but I do need to bring up a couple of plot twists.] We get some answers in a lengthy sequence at the end, but those are potentially undercut by the visuals of the last few minutes, which leaves open the possibility that the sinister Blackmann (a cameo from Klaus Kinski, and how much more sinister can you get?) is real and not an old movie memory. This, however, brings up unanswered questions. I feel like most of the puzzle pieces are there but there's maybe one missing. My theory, and one which I have not seen voiced online yet, is that Alice is experiencing some past sexual trauma, as we see a flashback which implies that Harry and Alice had sex in their teenaged past. It's not presented as coerced, but still it's there as a plot thread that isn't worked into the narrative. If you can deal with an ending that leaves you to interpret the situation, I recommend this. The director, Luigi Bazzoni, filmed in the Turkish town of Phaselis which allows him to indulge an attention to architecture and physical place that rivals Antonioni's, and the visuals, though mostly caught under cloudy skies, are attractive. The Brazilian Florinda Bolkan (Alice/Nicole, at top left) gives a one-note performance (that note being confused paranoia) but it's called for her, as her character's background remains largely obscure—if it was a little clearer, the ending would be clearer as well. British actor Peter McEnery (right) is nicely laid back as Harry, which balances out Bolkan's more intense performance. [BTW, virtually all online sources including IMDb refer to his character as Henry, but in the English version I watched, they were clearly saying Harry. Plus, there is a quick shot of him wearing a necklace that says Harry.] The Oscar nominated Russian actress Lila Kedrova has the only other substantive role as a tourist who remembers Alice as Nicole. Some giallo lineage is claimed by some critics because Bazzoni directed a well regarded giallo called The Fifth Cord, but there is little sex or gore, and it's not really a whodunit. I'd never heard of this but it came up in YouTube's algorithm for me and I'm glad to have run across it. The print I saw was clear and sharp, but I think that may have been taken down, and the one that is still up is presented with awful widescreen distortion. Avoid that one. It’s been released recently by a British company on Blu-ray. [YouTube]

THE NIGHT OF THE PARTY (1934)

Newspaper magnate Lord Studholme is throwing a party in honor of Her Serene Highness Princess Amelia of Corsova. Among the guests: Guy, Studholme's secretary; Peggy, Studholme's daughter who is in love with (and might already be secretly married to) Guy; Peggy's friend Joan whom Studholme is trying to blackmail into having an affair; Chiddiatt, a flamboyant writer whose work is always trashed in Studholme's papers. Eventually, police commissioner Sir John Holland, Joan's father, shows up. The group plays a party murder game with all guests playing characters using information given to them on a card. One person is assigned to be the victim and one to be the investigator who interviews everyone and tries to figure out who the killer is. But during this game, the lights go out and a real dead body is found: Lord Studholme. With almost everyone at the party having a grudge of some sort against him, Sir John has his work cut out for him as he investigates for real. This feels like an average Agatha Christie mystery (though it was based not on Christie but on a play by Roland Pertwee who wrote dozens of British films in the 30s and 40s) and it does indeed play out like you'd expect, although the suspects are all let out of the house, and the finale is set in a courtroom instead of a drawing room, and there is a surprising climax. With a running time of one hour, it's compact, feeling like an episode of the modern-day Poirot series, with a full half-hour set up for character development before the murder occurs. The acting is solid all around. Leslie Banks is fine as Sir John; other standouts include Malcolm Keen as Studholme, Ian Hunter (pictured) as Guy, and the always eccentric Ernest Thesiger as the eccentric writer. This is an early film from Michael Powell done mostly in a workmanlike style, though with some nicely fluid camerawork. Entertaining if predictable. Retitled The Murder Party for American release. [YouTube]

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]