THE CURSE OF BELPHEGOR (1967)

A dance troupe is rehearsing a new ballet work inspired by worship of the legendary demon Belphegor, with the stage dominated by a large golden statue of the demon. Unsettling things begin happening. First, a set decorator standing on a ladder is spooked by the sight of a figure dressed like Belphegor and falls off the ladder to his death. Next, people on stage hear weird music coming from the statue followed by a voice predicting a series of deaths: the two theater owners, Garnier and Hubert; the writer Olivier; and the director Fred. Other characters we meet include the star, an old comic relief stage manager, and Garnier’s ward Roger. The troupe carries on and the opening goes off well, but late that night, Garnier is stabbed to death on the stage by the demonic figure, someone wearing a Belphegor mask with gold-painted hands. The cops investigate but the predicted deaths continue. Roger, who falls under suspicion because he stands to inherit the theater, gets involved with a female reporter named Claude and the two wind up at a sprawling but abandoned farmhouse where they are tortured by supersonic sound waves and held by the Belphegor figure who plans to burn them to death with a flamethrower torture device before he kills the star onstage at the climax of the ballet. I'm fairly certain that the above summary is accurate, but there is more to it than that, and I had problems following the narrative. Things get a bit convoluted with some secondary plotpoints I was unsure about: one of the characters is gay (I'm not even sure which one, maybe Fred) and has a male lover he calls Kitty, and another character is caught stealing documents, possibly in a blackmail attempt. 

The main problem: the print of the movie I saw on YouTube, supplied by Culture Tube, is in French with an English dub done by AI, and the dubbing is awful. The mouth movements are rarely matched, but that is the least of the problems. All the voices, even the older people, sound like those of bored twenty-somethings and the dialogue is frequently rushed and blurred, causing me to miss a fair amount of the story. I suppose it's better than having no English at all (the subtitles supplied were in French) but I hope this doesn’t become a trend. Because of this, I can't really judge the acting. Maurice Sarfati (Fred, pictured above right) and Noelle Noblecourt (Claude) are attractive and energetic but for the most part I can't reliably match cast names to characters. One that I could, Paul Guers as Fred, reminded me of Kier Dullea. The Belphegor figures, both the human and the statue, are effective. The somewhat unsatisfying ending seems to promise a sequel that never came. The name Belphegor was used in a famous French novel and silent serial from the 1920s but this has no relation to that. I might watch this again if a properly dubbed or subtitled version becomes available. [YouTube]

OUTSIDE THE LAW (1956)

Berlin, 1946. Johnny (Ray Danton) is in his last few days with the postwar American occupying forces. Back home, he was a convict who, along with his prison buddy Harry, was given a chance at freedom by joining the military. One night, Harry says he can't join Johnny for a beer; we then see Harry approach two men in a car and give them a package. He clearly expects some money from them but what he gets is a bullet that kills him. Not long after this, a glut of counterfeit money starts showing up in the States, and treasury agents think that Harry was involved in a counterfeit ring. When Johnny gets to Los Angeles, he is approached by T-Man Maury Saxton to help investigate with the promise that his criminal record will be wiped clean. The problem is that this necessitates him working with his father Alec (Onslow Stevens). The two have a stormy past but Johnny agrees to the job. They know the paper used for the near-perfect bills comes from Seattle, and as they narrow down the possible local purchaser, Johnny's mission is to get close to Harry's widow Maria (Leigh Snowden) to see if she knows anything. Johnny and Maria hit it off and he finds out that the two had a hasty marriage in the States before Harry went overseas and she really barely knew him. But she's friends with a shady character named Don Kastner (Grant Williams) who seems neurotically jealous of Johnny. At Papa Gomez's restaurant, Johnny and Maria have dinner and grow close, with Maria remarking on Johnny’s "deep, warm, lonely eyes" and they share a kiss. Papa Gomez lets Don know (the two have a connection that is not clear to us yet), and that night Don and some thug friends break into Johnny's apartment. The thugs beat the shit out of Johnny while Don stands in the dark with an excited leer on his face. Alec has singled out the Philip Bormann import company as the likely supplier of the counterfeit paper, and it turns out that both Maria and Don work there. Johnny heads to the office to punch out Don. When Johnny’s dad figures out that Johnny is serious about Maria, he tries to take him off the case, but Johnny won’t rest until justice is served. 

I am pleased yet again with another B-movie discovery from the 1950s. Some call this noir, but it's not, with Johnny’s criminal past being the only noir element. It's a crime film which borders on hard-boiled, largely because of the ass-kicking Johnny gets. It's a good scene, made memorable by the almost lustful look in Don's eyes. Grant Williams (Don), pictured at left, is best known as the Incredible Shrinking Man, and though he's good in that, this is probably his best movie role—he was also a detective in the Hawaiian Eye TV series. Don is a slimy, passive, neurotic bully and Williams brings him vividly to life. The handsome Ray Danton is just as good in the lead (he's in almost every scene) but less showy role of Johnny. The treasury agents are a homogeneous bunch of white men in suits, acted in appropriately low-key fashion, but Onslow Stevens does manage to stand out as Johnny's father. Though the father-son relationship remains thorny, there is the promise of reconciliation in the final moments. As often happens in these films, the leading lady (Leigh Snowden, pictured at top with Danton) is underserved by the writing but she does work up some chemistry with Danton. I like that the father and his colleague Maury (Judson Pratt) have enough of a friendship presented that you could almost imagine a buddy movie centering on the two of them. Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) is solid as the suspicious Philip Bormann. I fear overselling this—it's no timeless classic, but I sure enjoyed it as a Saturday afternoon B-film. Online critic Colin Edwards says the movie is nothing special but is a professional and "efficiently well-made piece of entertainment" and what's wrong with that? Directed in a non-fussy manner by Jack Arnold (Shrinking Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). [Blu-ray]

JUNGLE GODDESS (1948)

In South Africa, pilot Bob (Ralph Byrd) is having a drink at Portugee Joe's when the club's singer (after singing a particularly draggy torch song) flirts with him, calling him "sweet but dangerous." Bob's flying partner Mike (George Reeves) enters the bar with a possible job for the two of them. A wealthy Johannesburg man has just died, and there's a search on for his daughter Greta who vanished years ago after a plane crash. A big reward has been promised to anyone who can find the missing heiress. Bob and Mike decide to try and soon, flying over Zambezi territory, they spy the wrecked plane and land. As they start to trudge through the jungle, a group of spear-carrying natives surprise them and Bob shoots one of them dead. The two are captured and brought before the queen of the tribe, who happens to be the long-lost Greta (Wanda McKay). Though Greta can release Mike, the tribe wants Bob to pay for his crime, and he is held to be executed in a week's time under the next full moon. In flashback, Greta explains what happened. In September of 1939, Greta, a student at a New England girls school, decides to fly home to Johannesburg before war tensions increase, but war is declared during the trip. Mechanical problems (or weather problems, it's not clear) arise and the plane crashes, with Greta the only survivor. Wandering through the jungle, she is approached by some natives "in an attitude of worship," and when Greta is able to nurse a sick girl back to health, she is acclaimed as leader of the tribe. In the present, Greta confides in Mike that she has a plan to free both of them if they will take her with them—she and Mike are falling in love. In the meantime, Bob, not aware of these plans, is working with Greta's handmaiden Wanama to escape on his own, and maybe going a little nutty in the process. When Mike tries to stop him, they engage in furniture-destroying fisticuffs during which Bob accidentally shoots another native. Mike, Bob and Greta get away, followed by an angry group of natives who don't want their queen to leave. After a nighttime rest stop, and an early morning fistfight involving unresolved tensions, Bob steals a compass and sets out on his own to find the plane. With the natives in hot pursuit, will any of them get out of the jungle safely?

George Reeves never quite made it to the rank of movie star, though he did find fame as TV's Superman in the 1950s, but I've always liked him in B-films. Action hero, romantic lead, villain, he could do them all. He's handsome, hunky, and charming with a glowing smile (or a nasty sneer when playing a baddie), and he's the main reason to watch this cheapie jungle melodrama which suffers from a lack of: character development, action, beefcake, cheesecake, or real danger. Actually, Ralph Byrd (Bob) is pretty good, too. He was famous as Dick Tracy in movies and serials, and he was fine in the one Dick Tracy movie I saw. Here, he's good looking (though coming in second behind Reeves) and moves convincingly from nice guy buddy to nervous breakdown heavy. I guess we're supposed to dislike him since he kills a native, with seemingly no remorse, but as he explains, all he saw was a bunch of guys coming at him with spears and he acted without thinking. Wanda McKay is terrible; how she wound up with over fifty movie (almost all of them low-budget works) and TV credits is beyond me. She looks the part but when she speaks, it's all downhill. I've seen her in a handful of films and I've never thought much of her. A more energetic woman who could actually act (Maria Montez, Dorothy Lamour, Evelyn Ankers) might have lifted this picture up a bit. Of course, the writing is also at fault—at one point, a radioactive rock called Karnacite is discovered and talked about, but that plot element comes to nothing. Greta's flashback was a noble attempt at character building, but it also comes to nothing. The plane crash, filmed with miniatures, is poorly staged, and the stock footage of jungle animals is completely irrelevant. And yet, I wound up with a bit of affection for this movie, partly since it re-introduced me to Ralph Byrd. Pictured at top are Byrd and Reeves; at left are McKay and Reeves. [DVD]

THE TELL-TALE HEART (1934)

The first sound film version of the famous Edgar Allan Poe short story does a little bit of expanding from its source to reach a length of about an hour, but it does it in ways that feel organic to the story. We begin with a man (Norman Dryden, pictured) in an asylum cell, drawing large eyes on the walls, giving the room an almost expressionistic look. His parents died when he was young and he became a sensitive artist, subject to attacks of catalepsy, becoming unresponsive and staring into space. He lives in a house with an older decrepit man (John Kelt) whom he simply refers to as a friend. The man has a bulging eye which Dryden fixates on, claiming it casts a blight on his life. But Dryden manages to have a girlfriend (Yolanda Terrell). We see the two spending a day in a park; as they stroll among the trees, Dryden sees imaginary eyes up in the branches, but is eventually distracted by kissing Terrell on a log and canoeing down a river. Kelt watches them from a bridge, not creepily but in a sweet paternal way. The rest of the film plays out like the Poe story: the boy can't escape the old man's peering eye and loudly beating heart, and one night he is driven mad and kills the man in his bed and buries him under the living room floorboards. Two policemen get reports of screams, and when they investigate, Dryden invites them in and assures them that the screams were his own from having a nightmare. But as the three enjoy a drink, Dryden cannot escape the loud beating of the old man's heart, which of course is all in his head, and he tears up the floor to expose his crime.

This low-budget film hasn't gotten a lot of critical attention, and most online viewers criticize it for being cheap and boring and slowly paced. But to me, the film feels like an artsy avant-garde experiment. The sets are definitely cheap but their stark look creates a nicely creepy atmosphere. The riverside scene is beautifully shot and contrasts well with the look of the rest of the film. Even the amateurish acting, disliked by most critics, adds a surreal tone to the movie; Kelt made a handful of appearances in silent movies, but Dryden and Terrell did not go on to carve out acting careers. Dryden in particular is disliked by current viewers, but I think he gives an effective performance in keeping with the austere look and feel of the film. I've reviewed two other versions of the film, one from 1941 which is twenty minutes and mostly narrated, and one from 1960 which is a full-length expansion of the story. All three versions held my interest and are worth seeing, especially for Poe fans. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst who later directed the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol movie. This was retitled Bucket of Blood in the States. [YouTube]

PAGAN ISLAND (1961)

A shirtless man and a topless woman wearing a lei are found in the ocean in a lifeboat by men on a fishing boat. The woman is dead and the barely alive man tells their story in flashback. William Stanton floated on a lifeboat for nine days after surviving a tanker ship fire and washed up on a small, seemingly deserted island. But there are inhabitants: a couple dozen women, topless except for their strategically worn leis. The ruler of the women, Queen Kealoha, is not happy to see Stanton as this is a sacred island where no men are allowed except for an annual festival where men are allowed to come and have sex to propagate the race (though oddly, we see no babies or children on the island). The last time men stayed, they caused trouble and supposedly hid some treasure that was never found. However, a different festival is coming up which involves the choosing of a woman for the Sea God. This year's choice, Nani Maka, is excited about the rite, but Stanton realizes that this is basically a human sacrifice—she'll dive into the ocean and drown to ensure that bad storms stay away from the island. Stanton and Nani grow close and the queen's not happy, wanting Stanton to leave, but when a small band of native men attack on the beach, Stanton shoots them dead, saving the women's lives, and he is allowed to stay. He teaches the women a game, kissing, which is kept innocent, and which Nani isn't impressed by: after kissing her, Stanton says, "Isn't that fun?" and she replies, "I like swimming better." Eventually he falls in love with Nani and she with him, and he tries to talk her and the queen out of holding the sacrifice, but no dice. So instead he proposes to make the leap with her. The night before, the two have a homemade wedding ceremony so they can have sex (all we see is the post-coital cuddling), and when they dive, he leads her to an underwater cave where he finds the hidden treasure. Pocketing some jewels, they try to swim out to his lifeboat but she gets bitten by a giant clam (Wikipedia says this can’t happen) and dies. Stanton is left bereft with just his jewels. The end.

This was released as what they used to call a "nudie-cutie," featuring some nudity in a relatively innocent context as opposed to a "roughie" which included rape and crime and violence, and it was shown in adults-only engagements. But I would guess even back then, the raincoat crowd would have been disappointed. The women are indeed all topless but they wear multiple leis designed to mostly cover the breasts. In an early scene when a bunch of women go running across the beach, it's quite comical to see them grab hold of the leis to keep them in place. Still, some sideboobs and even nipples do get exposed—oddly, the print I saw on YouTube, which was otherwise pristine, blurred most but not quite all of the nipple presentations. Aside from the tame kissing, no sex is shown. Still, this was fairly successful (it was sometimes given the title Naked Island) and is considered by fans to be a prime example of tikisploitation, films which partook of the lost tropical island fantasies of Americans. The director, Barry Mahon, has an interesting backstory; in real life, he was involved in the incident that was fictionalized on film as The Great Escape. The only pro onscreen is Eddie Dew (Stanton), pictured at top left. According to IMDb, he would have been around 50 when he made this but looks more like mid-30s. He's a perfect sub-B-lead, moderately handsome with a decent if unremarkable physique and able to say his lines with some moderate amount of conviction. I guess I'm damning with faint praise, but he's the reason I didn't bail halfway through. The women with speaking lines are awful, especially the queen who seems to be reading much of her dialogue from cue cards. Nani Maka is played by a real-life hula dancer named Nani Maka. Her big dances around the Sea God statue are not only uninteresting but ineptly shot. Worst (or best) of all is the Sea God, a cheap-looking and wildly goofy prop that looks like it was rejected from a Roger Corman movie (see right). At an hour, it's harmless and sorta fun, with a hypnotic atmosphere of goofy amateurishness that sucked me in. [YouTube]

HARBOR OF MISSING MEN (1950)

Jim 'Brooklyn' Gannon runs a charter boat business from Key West and he also currently has a side gig helping a guy named Hugo smuggle stolen jewels into the States from Havana. While Brooklyn's clients are catching a big fish, Brooklyn snatches a hot water bottle out of the water thrown there from a nearby boat. Inside it are jewels which Brooklyn will be paid $500 dollars to deliver, but he is snatched off his dock by thugs and taken to a rival smuggler named Danziger who offers him $2,000 to deliver the jewels (along with some crates of illegal arms) to Capt. Koretsky on his boat the S.S. Dardanelles, and Koretsky will give him an envelope with $30,000 to be taken to Danziger. He agrees, and that night when he boards Koretsky's ship, he is surprised to find Danziger's secretary Mae and her 'brother' Frank (probably actually her lover) on the ship. They say they were sent by Danziger to go back to Key West with him to ensure the money is delivered. But actually, the two hijack Brooklyn's boat and steal the $30,000 for themselves. Brooklyn leaps off the boat and Mae assumes he'll drown before he can get to shore, but he's picked up by a small boat called the St. Nicholas belonging to Greek sponge fisherman Corcoris and his son Philip. They take him with them to Tarpon Springs and he meets the rest of the family: Mama, son Christopher and sister Angelike (a Greek version of Angelique). Danziger is told by Mae that Brooklyn stole the money, so he has thugs out looking for Brooklyn so he stays with the family and helps them celebrate the Greek Orthodox feast of Epiphany. In a time-honored ritual, the bishop throws a large gold crucifix into the water and the young men of the parish jump in to retrieve it. Philip gets it but when another guy grabs it from him, Brooklyn jumps in and takes it back, earning the respect of the Corcoris family. In short order, Brooklyn is wounded by Danziger's thugs and opts to join Corcoris for a two month sponge fishing expedition during which, once again, Brooklyn steps in to give much needed help on a dive almost gone wrong. Eventually back in Key West, Brooklyn tries to let Danziger know what really happened, though Mae and Frank try to stop him.

In terms of production and acting, this is an hour-long run-of-the-mill second feature B-movie. Sets are adequate, acting is fair, and visuals are uninspired. But the narrative is a notch above average. The whole Corcoris family plotline is a bit unusual with its emphasis on their religious background. When Brooklyn gets the gold crucifix for the family, Mama gives him a crucifix necklace which ends up saving his life when a bullet fired at him is deflected by it. (BTW, the Tarpon Springs Epiphany ritual is real, and the scene in the movie looks at least partly taken from actual ritual footage.) The religion message is not oversold—Brooklyn says he is not religious and the family never actively proselytizes—but it's an interesting aspect of the plot. Richard Denning (pictured) is his usual mildly wooden self but that works with the underdeveloped persona of his character. Aline Towne is attractive but a bit flat as Angelike, and Barbara Fuller isn't given much to do as Mae. The best performances are from Steven Geray as Papa Corcoris, Paul Marion as Philip, and Percy Helton as Rummy, Brooklyn's older sidekick. George Zucco, one of my favorite character actors, is Danziger (he looks a bit like Abe Vigoda) but is, like Barbara Fuller, underused. Christopher, one of the Corcoris sons, is crippled due to a shark attack, but this is never explored—he mostly just sits in a wheelchair and listens to the conversations. The YouTube prints are murky, and an early scene on the boat is almost completely obscured by darkness. [YouTube]

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

In 1937 New Orleans, Dr. John Cukrowicz works at a state asylum where he is honing his skills in neurosurgery (called "psychosurgery" by his boss, Dr. Hockstader). He gives a demonstration for a small audience of students, performing a lobotomy, and is noticeably frustrated by what he calls the "primitive surgical conditions" under which he has to work. When the wealthy Violet Venable reads an article in the paper about his work, she contacts Hockstader, offering to fund a new wing of the building if John will consider performing a lobotomy on her niece Catherine. The backstory: Violet's son Sebastian, a sensitive boy who considered himself a poet and artist, took long summer vacations with his mother. But last summer, with the aging Violet not up to a trip, Sebastian went traveling with his lovely cousin Catherine. He died under mysterious circumstances on a Mediterranean island; the coroner's report says he had a heart attack while walking on the street, but Catherine witnessed something different which has driven her into a mental institution. John visits Catherine and finds her sane enough in conversation until she is pushed to recall Sebastian's death; she says it happened at the hands of a mob of homeless boys, then becomes hysterical. John agrees to treat her but not necessarily with surgery. Catherine, in the presence of John and Violet, is eventually able to relate what happened last summer, and in doing so, moves herself toward health but drives Violet to a breakdown.

[Spoilers are inevitable.] This psychological Gothic drama is based on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams which is fairly open about its themes of incest, homosexuality, sex trafficking, and revenge, all presented in dialogue rather than onstage action. But because the movie was produced under the strictures of the Hollywood Production Code (weakening but still present), most of the above must be interpreted by the audience from between the lines and from incomplete visual imagery. Sebastian was a hedonistic homosexual who used his mother to procure young men and boys for sex overseas. We're told that Sebastian treated these people as though they were "items on a menu." When Mom became older and less useful in procurement (a word used by Catherine), he got his young cousin to accompany him. At the end of that last Mediterranean trip, Catherine said he had tired of the dark-skinned boys surrounding him and, "famished for blonds," wanted to head to the Nordic lands. We're not sure what triggers the climax, but as Sebastian tries to get away from the boys on the beach and the streets, they chase him to a ruined temple where he is surrounded, mutilated, and partially eaten by the poor street youths. We assume that he paid the boys for sex and that his leaving the island would have cut off a supply of cash. The story, as told by Catherine near the end of the film, is visualized though not explicitly—the boys encircle him and he is dragged down to the ground, his grasping arm rising briefly above the churning mass. Though the language of sexual behavior is not used, an audience member today would have to be willfully ignorant not to pick up what has happened. As far as I'm concerned, the phrases "items on a menu" and "famished for blonds" are more evocative than using words like "gay" or "promiscuous" would have been. 

The first time I saw this, sometime in the 1980s, I was disappointed as I was watching it for titillation and scandal, and by that era, it just didn't cut it. But this time around, I was much more impressed. Gore Vidal's screenplay (with Williams co-credited) is talky but fascinating. Things feel padded out in the middle, but the first half hour, which mostly consists of a long scene of dialogue between Katherine Hepburn (Violet) and Montgomery Clift (John), both pictured at top right, is thrillingly acted by Hepburn, who brings to mind the heiresses of The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby mixed with the drug addled Mary Tyrone of Long Day's Journey Into Night (which Hepburn would film a couple of years later). Elizabeth Taylor (Catherine), pictured at left, chews the scenery, especially in the last 15 minutes which is largely a monologue from her about what she witnessed, but it's called for. She and Hepburn are forces of nature and we'd be disappointed if Taylor held back. Clift is less impressive as he spends most of the movie reacting to others, but he's fine. Gary Raymond, whom I mostly know from TV as the British sergeant in the 60s war drama The Rat Patrol, is effective in a small role as Sebastian's weasley brother George, though Mercedes McCambridge is mostly wasted as Sebastian's weak mother. I liked seeing character actor Albert Dekker, the bespectacled mad scientist in Dr. Cyclops, as John's boss. Hepburn gets a startling moment when she describes watching, with Sebastian, an incident on the Galapagos Islands in which flesh eating birds blacken the sky as they eat newly hatched baby turtles off the beach. She says Sebastian saw the "face of God" then, which nicely sets up Sebastian's own fate. Catherine, the truth teller, leaves us with two memorable tidbits: that perhaps "love is using people" and that we are like "children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks." I admit I chuckled a bit at that, but it stuck with me. Highly recommended as long as you're up for two hours of talk and great acting. [TCM]

SIEGE OF SYRACUSE (1960)

Between Carthage in North Africa and Rome in Italy is Sicily, in the Mediterranean Sea, and the city of Syracuse. Under King Hieron, Syracuse had remained neutral while Rome and Carthage fought during the Punic Wars. But now, in 213 B.C.E., with the Carthaginian fleet in tatters, Hieron worries that Rome may try to invade Syracuse. Clio, the king's daughter, is engaged to Archimedes, respected mathematician and inventor. While experimenting with a large device of lenses and mirrors that can focus the sun's rays into a light ray that sets fires when aimed properly, Archimedes accidentally burns up the clothes of Diana, member of a traveling dance troupe, who has been skinny dipping in a nearby stream. Mistreated by Gorgia, her incest-minded stepbrother and leader of the troupe, Diana falls for the kindly Archimedes and eventually, he falls for her, and when she becomes pregnant, he decides to call things off with Clio. But when Diana, forced on a crowded galley by Gorgia, gets kicked by an overzealous guard, she's knocked out and when she wakes up, she has amnesia, remembering nothing about her past. In Rome, she becomes the wife of nobleman Marcellus; Archimedes, having no idea what's happened to her, goes ahead and marries Clio. Twenty years later, as Rome makes plans to attack Carthage from Syracuse, Hieron has died and the pretender to the throne, none other than the sinister Gorgia, sends Archimedes to Rome to forge new alliances. He recognizes Diana and meets his grown son Marcus, now a centurion helping to lead the coming siege of Syracuse. Eventually Archimedes uses a bigger version of his light ray weapon to set fire to Roman ships. After a brief siege, Marcellus is killed and Diana is left with Archimedes to contemplate the future.

Often included on lists of peplum movies, this is really a would-be historical epic produced with a peplum budget and a peplum mindset on the part of the filmmakers. The sets and costumes are generally quite impressive, and the acting isn’t bad. Rossano Brazzi is commanding as Archimedes (presented here as having political power in Syracuse though he apparently did not) and Sylva Koscina is fine as Clio. The surprise for me was Tina Louise (Ginger on Gilligan's Island) as Diana, pictured above. Of course, she has the looks to pull off the part, but also, after a shaky few minutes in the beginning, she pulls off the acting well. She's also the only character to age well over the twenty year story span; the others don't age at all, especially noticeable with Archimedes. At two hours, this has some very talky rough spots and very little action until the end. Archimedes' heat ray is mentioned in some historical texts and legend has it that it was used in battle at Syracuse. If this was 90 minutes instead of 2 hours, I would have enjoyed this more. [YouTube]

THE BLUE LAGOON (1949)

On a ship headed for Australia, a man named Reynolds dies and is buried at sea. His young son Michael is cared for by a sailor named Paddy, to be turned over to the American consulate when they arrive in Auckland. The boy is discovered to have whipping welts on his back and may not be mourning his father very much. He spends a lot of time with the only other child on board, Emmeline, and when the ship catches fire, the two, along with Paddy and Emmeline's caged bird, wind up in a canoe, the only survivors, and eventually wash up on an uncharted island. They find skeletons in a cave, not a good sign for their survival, but the three manage to scrape together some shelter and have plenty of food from fish and vegetation. Paddy, a heavy drinker, is freaked out by a huge skull-shaped rock, falls off a cliff and dies, leaving the two children on their own. Ten years later, the two adolescents have survived admirably, reading some books they had with them, including a manners manual, and collecting "beads" they find in the sea which are actually pearls. Two con men pass by the island in their boat and come to shore, realizing the riches in pearls available. One tries to force Michael to dive for the pearls, while the other sneaks Emmeline off to the boat for a more nefarious purpose. In a nicely done sequence, the two crooks wind up shooting each other dead. Deciding civilization is not for them, the two soon discover love and sex. They hold a wedding ceremony as described in the manners book and soon Emmeline bears a child whom they name Paddy. After surviving threats from an octopus, a snake, and a destructive storm, they decide to take off in a handmade canoe, hoping to be found by a passing ship. They are, but in an ambiguous ending, the baby is still alive though Michael and Emmeline appear to be dead.

Back in the day, I saw the 1980 remake of this, with the sexy leads Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins (both skimpily clad and occasionally naked). It was a big hit but got little critical respect. I have only hazy memories of it, mostly of enjoying looking at Atkins (who was of legal age at the time, though Shields was only 14, with her nude scenes done by a body double). This version, based on a 1908 novel, has much less focus on sex and more on a kind of society vs. nature situation. Jean Simmons is very good as Emmeline; she was 20 but can pass for younger, and she has star charisma already. Many viewers don't care much for Donald Houston as Michael, calling him wooden, but I think he’s quite natural in the role, enacting his character's idea of what a stalwart grown-up man should be. They're both good looking and play their coming of age in a non-sensational manner; they are viewed by one of the crooks as being "the rude clay of humanity." James Hayter and Cyril Cusack are fine as the crooks. The movie benefits from good cinematography and from being filmed partly on location in Fiji, though there are scenes that look like they were done on the Gilligan's Island set. Hard to find, as Paramount apparently bought the rights when they filmed the remake and have never released it on home video, though the print on YouTube is in good shape. [YouTube]

DARKENED ROOMS (1929)

At a boardwalk carnival, Madame Silvara is a mentalist, fake but convincing, and when a customer wants her to take a "spirit photograph" of his dead girlfriend, she goes down the boardwalk to photographer Emery Jago and gets him to fake a picture. In Emery's shop, Ellen, a young out-of-work chorus girl, has come to have some publicity pictures made but faints from hunger. Emery feeds her and hires her as an assistant; her first job is to pose as the spirit behind Madame Silvara, with her face blurred in a ghostly way. Soon Emery decides that spiritualism might be an easy way to supplement his income so he and Ellen get into the racket with some help from Silvara. She sends them to the upper-class home of Joyce Clayton, who wants to get in touch with her aviator boyfriend who died in a crash. In a darkened room, Emery and Ellen hold a seance and claim to make contact, but Joyce's current boyfriend Billy turns on the lights and claims the whole thing is a fake. However, Joyce is a believer and goes to the boardwalk for another session. Ellen, worrying that Emery's interference will just prolong Joyce's misery and scotch things with Billy, hires Bert, an actor friend, to throw an unexpected kink into the seance, hoping that Emery will give up the act. Though not exactly a comedy, this hour-long melodrama is light in tone which works somewhat against the spiritualism plot but works for character development. Evelyn Brent, a star of silent films, is featured in one of her first talkies as Ellen and is quite good. Neil Hamilton (pictured), also transitioning to sound films, is just as good as Emery. Both are youthful, good looking and appealing, and they have nice chemistry. Though they did appear in films together again, they weren’t ever paired up like they were here, which is a shame. Gale Henry, known as a comic actress in many silent shorts, is fine as Madame Silvara. Sammy Bricker has a fun little comic relief role as a sailor who keeps dragging new girls into Emery's studio to have pictures taken. For the record, Doris Hill is Joyce and David Newell is Billy. Wallace MacDonald is Bert; he played in many silent films, but wound up as a prolific B-film producer in the 40s and 50s, mostly for Columbia. An enjoyable hour. [YouTube]

MURDER OVER NEW YORK (1940)

Charlie Chan, on a plane heading to New York City for a police convention, chats with Scotland Yard inspector Drake who is after a saboteur named Narvo. He has tracked Narvo's wife to New York and is looking for help from her. Also showing up in the Big Apple is Chan's pesky son Jimmy. At a party for Drake given at the apartment of aircraft executive George Kirby, Drake winds up dead, poisoned by a tetrogene gas pellet—surprisingly, it's Jimmy who identifies the newly developed gas—and his briefcase of secret documents goes missing. Following the conventions of the mystery genre, the guests at the party all become suspects. There is Fenton, an old friend of Drake's who treats the murder as a personal inconvenience; Jeffrey, a business associate of Kirby's; Ralph Percy, an airplane designer; actress June Preston; Boggs, the somewhat shady butler; David Elliott, a chemist who was working with tetrogene and may have been the last person to see Drake alive; and, of course, Kirby. Eventually Narvo's wife shows up, using the name Pat Shaw; she has left Narvo (and is now involved with Elliott) but worries that she is being followed by Narvo and his Hindu associate Ramullah. Police inspector Vance has the bright idea of bringing in a dragnet of all Hindu men in the city, leading to a comic scene in which one Hindu man is revealed to be a non-Hindu con man. In the somewhat improbable climax, Chan and Vance gather all the suspects onto a plane on which a capsule of tetrogene has been hidden the night before. Will there be a mass murder over New York?

Some years ago, during my first viewing of the Chan films on the Fox Movie Channel, this was one of my favorites due to the airplane climax. Now, however, that scene isn't quite enough to boost the film much above a B-minus. The plot, as is often the case, gets muddled and there are almost too many characters. But there is an unusually strong supporting cast. A few of my favorite character actors are present: Ricardo Cortez, who played both good guys and villains, is Kirby; the British actor Melville Cooper is appropriately obnoxious as Fenton; the British John Sutton is Jeffrey; busy B-movie lead Kane Richmond is Percy; Robert Lowery, who played Batman in a 1949 serial, is the chemist Elliott. As is sometimes the case in Chan movies, the females (Marjorie Weaver and Joan Valerie) are weaker, partly because their roles seem underwritten. Sidney Toler (Chan) and Victor Sen Yung (Jimmy) are fine, though Jimmy is more irritating here than usual. The likable Frank Coghlan Jr. (Billy Batson in the original Captain Marvel serial) has a small but noticeable role. Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges is the fake Hindu man. Donald MacBride, who played cops in dozens of classic-era films, is Vance. The first fifteen minutes, as the case is being set up, are good, as are the last fifteen; it's in the middle that things bog down a bit. Pictured are Cortez, Richmond and Toler. [DVD]

THE SECRET OF THE LOCH (1934)

In a small Scottish village, Joe, perhaps slightly inebriated, runs into a tavern one misty night claiming to have seen the legendary Loch Ness Monster, a giant sea serpent creature that supposedly lives in the Scottish lake. There has been a rash of sightings lately and people who have gone underwater looking for it have not returned. In London at a conference of morphologists, Professor Heggie claims the beast is real and that it's a relative of a dinosaur. His fellow scientists laugh him off the stage, but Jimmy, a reporter, smells a good story and follows Heggie back to his village. Lots of other reporters have had the same idea, but Jimmy gets a leg up by breaking into Heggie's house and flirting with his granddaughter Angela. He gets on the good side of Angus, Heggie's beefy assistant, by wearing a tartan tie of the MacNockie clan (a tie which he filched from a girl at his newspaper) of which Angus happens to be a member. With nothing concrete to go on, Jimmy gets fired by his boss and told that only an interview with the monster will save him. Heggie hires a diver to look for the serpent one night, but he runs into some trouble and his air hose comes to the surface without him. Heggie is charged with negligence in the diver's death and Jimmy, who now is in love with Angela, decides to take a dive himself and settle the matter. 

The Loch Ness Monster has been a pop culture phenomenon since 1934 when a British newspaper published a photograph of the monster, a blurry shot of what looks like a toy dinosaur coming out of the water. This film, which came out at the end of 1934, appears to be a quickie attempt to exploit that photo's popularity. Though a handful of sightings were reported before the 1930s, it wasn't until the photo and a separate account of a sighting became news, perhaps because of the building of a new road which gave more access to the loch, that Nessie became a legend. This is mostly a comedy, despite the death of the diver, with humor provided by the village locals and the morphologists. In the last few minutes, Jimmy does indeed see the monster (an iguana photographically enlarged and matted into an underwater shot) and later a group of men see it rise up out of the loch, in a shot that looks very much like the newspaper photo. Seymour Hicks, a distinguished stage actor known for playing Scrooge in an early sound version of A Christmas Carol, is Heggie, and he doesn't seem to be too happy in the role. Frederick Peisley, however, throws himself into the comic romantic lead as Jimmy (pictured), and Gibson Gowland (the star of GREED) is fine in the semi-comic role of Angus. Nancy O'Neil has the underwritten part of Angela. In the 70-minute movie, we don't even get near the loch until the 50-minute mark, so don't watch this expecting a serious sci-fi, adventure, or horror film, though the murky atmosphere of most of the scenes is effective—with some of the murkiness due to the age of the unrestored print. As a novelty, and as the first film about the monster, it's kind of fun. As far as other movies on the subject, there haven't been many, with the most well-known one being a Scooby-Doo cartoon movie made for video in 2004. [YouTube]

SCOTLAND YARD HUNTS DR. MABUSE (1963)

aka DR. MABUSE VS. SCOTLAND YARD

The fifth of the Dr. Mabuse German reboots from the 1960s begins with Mabuse dead, as he was at the end of the fourth film, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE. The supernatural has usually been an element of the Mabuse films, often obliquely or ambiguously, but here we see the spirit of the crime lord Mabuse possess Prof. Pohland, an asylum director, and direct him to spread “panic and chaos.” After that, however, it’s mostly a straightforward crime melodrama. In fact, given that the plot is based on a story by Edgar Wallace’s son Bryan, it's very close in look and feel to the German krimi movies of the era, as the earlier THOUSAND EYES and RETURN were, with a sci-fi element. It begins in Hamburg. Inspector Vulpius is upset that Mabuse's infamous "testament," the scribbled documents that he wrote in the throes of madness and which contained plans for future criminal plans, has been destroyed. A train derailment frees a prisoner, Cockstone, whom Pohland uses to help refine a new and dastardly invention by Prof. Lawrence: something that looks like a camera but is actually a mind control device. When aimed at someone's head, that person will follow whatever instructions they are given (verbal orders transmitted to the person somehow), though the control fades when the subject sleeps. Cockstone kills Lawrence and Pohland moves his operations to England, where he sends his henchmen out with the devices, triggering a major crime wave of robbery and murder and suicide. Vulpius follows and teams up with Scotland Yard man Bill Tern to stop Pohland's reign of terror. Though this feels very little like a Mabuse movie, it’s fun as a crime movie, well paced and exciting. 

Few cast members from the earlier Mabuse movies are present here. Peter van Eyck is a bit lightweight and even a bit too old for part of Tern, without the energy of Lex Barker, the lead in the last two films. Werner Peters, who played minor roles in previous films, is fine as Vulpius, though I do miss Gert Forbe from the previous movie. One of the oddest characters in a Mabuse movie (or, for that matter, in a krimi) is Tern's elderly mother, played by Agnes Windeck, who gives herself nightmares from reading crime novels but is very helpful to her son with her off-the-wall insights. Even odder is Klaus Kinski, a regular in the Edgar Wallace krimi films, playing Joe, a fellow Scotland Yard detective. His stock-in-trade is playing tense neurotics, and here, though he's a good guy (except briefly when he is put under mind control), he still looks like he might just snap any minute. Walter Rilla reprises his role from TESTAMENT as Pohland, the Mabuse stand-in, and is very good. Sabine Bethmann plays a half-hearted romantic interest for Tern. The best scene is one in which a hangman, about to execute a prisoner, is forced through mind control to hang himself. Even though the reboot movies move further and further from the mood of the Fritz Lang Mabuse movies, they are still worth seeing. I’ve got one more to go. Pictured are van Eyck and Kinski. [Blu-ray]

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT (1938)

Mr. Byers, the head of a big advertising agency, sends Waldo, a young underling, out to find Bruce Keene (Preston Foster), an unreliable ad executive who spends too much time in bars and not enough in his office. When he's found, he gets fired, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Penny (Sally Eilers), who is a secretary at the same agency. That night, Bruce draws a kind of combination caricature/rebus on a wall at a restaurant that impresses the owner, and Penny, and eventually Mr. Byers who rehires Bruce to do a campaign for a new cereal called Tantalizing Tasties. One a week, he'll draw a picture puzzle to be published as a newspaper ad, and contests will be held to solve the puzzle with a big cash prize each week. But to enter, contestants must include a boxtop from the new cereal. When the promotion pays off, the cereal is a hit, but Bruce starts hitting the taverns pretty hard. Penny hires small-time crook Softy Blane to kidnap Bruce and take him to a health farm to dry out, but Devers, Blane's boss, decides that cornering the market on puzzle answers would make for some easy money, so he breaks Bruce out of the farm and kidnaps him for real, keeping him making the puzzles. Eventually Penny figures out, from clues in the pictures, what's happened to Bruce and goes to the police. A fairly slapstick finale of guns and fists leads to Devers' capture, and to Bruce proposing to Penny. This is a mild little romantic comedy with crime overtones that never gets too terribly serious. Apparently, it's built around an actual fad of the time for picture puzzles—you might think that would date the movie badly, but it actually gives it a nice novelty appeal. Foster and Eilers play off each other well, but it's the supporting cast that makes this movie fun: Cecil Kellaway, Guinn Williams, Richard Lane, Arthur Lake and Jack Carson. There’s a song with a cute title: “Put Your Heart in Your Feet and Dance,” and there's a fun line from Williams to a flirting Lorraine Krueger: “You’d love anything that had biceps.” Pictured are Foster and Lane. [TCM]

JUNGLE QUEEN (1945 serial)

In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, Germans are worried about access to Europe through Africa and a number of Nazi spies are sent to Tambosa in British Middle Africa. Their mission is to take control of the Tongghili, a group of tribes coexisting under their ruling judge Tonga. When he is killed, the tribal elder Godac, by virtue of his possession of the powerful Sword of Tongu, is set to name a successor. The Nazis get the cooperation of Maati, who will serve as their puppet ruler, but Kyba is also in the running. Lord Bell, head of British espionage and known by most only as Mr. X, has agents in Tambosa trying to figure out who the Nazi leaders are and counteract their efforts among the locals. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy is listening in to all conversations in Mr. X's office and he reports to Dr. Elise Bork, outwardly the respected head of an experimental farm but actually a spymaster, and her associate Lang who maintains direct contact with Maati. Meanwhile, Pam Courtney comes to Tambosa looking for her father, an explorer who has vanished; she has been tasked by Mr. X to get her father to help in their efforts to find the Nazis. Two unofficial American agents, adventurer Bob Elliot and his auto mechanic buddy Chuck Kelly, meet Pam on a plane and the three pool their efforts to find and stop the Nazi spies. A wild card in all this is Lothel, the mystery queen of the jungle, who can walk through fire unharmed (as pictured at left), can appear and disappear at will, is invulnerable to bullets, and tries to influence the Tongghili to choose Kyba as the new leader. When that seems to fail, she works with the Allies to find and defeat the Nazis.

This is a 13-chapter serial and most of the above summary is made clear in the first two chapters, which leaves eleven more chapters to fill. On the plus side, this has the look of a relatively high-budget B-film with good sets and some twisty plot points. For the most part, it doesn't keep repeating story bits like many serials do. On the other hand, the writing is not great. Far too much activity is talked about rather than shown, with people constantly announcing who they are, where they are, what they've just done and what they're planning on doing. Each chapter has a cliffhanger but the next chapter begins with exposition, usually expressed in dialogue, often in England or Berlin, before we see how the cliffhanger works itself out. There are plenty of plot holes. For example, we never understand the importance of the Sword of Tongu aside from its being a symbol of power. I kept wondering why the bad guys didn't just construct a fake one, and in fact, long about chapter 12, someone does. Lothel, the title character, is quite strange. In terms of being a great white protector of the Tongghili, she's sort of a Tarzan figure. She seems to live in the back of a cave chamber which is filled with fire and used as a place of justice—accused criminals are sent to the fire chamber and told that the innocent will survive. No one ever does except Lothel; in every chapter, we see a clip of her, dressed in diaphanous robes, leaping through the fire and emerging in the throne room to make important proclamations. Her origin is never even touched on. There are a number of characters, some (like the sinister bar owner Tambosa Tim) only present for a short time. Some of the Nazi henchmen, such as Drake and Weber, are important briefly before they are sacrificed.

The acting is fairly weak. Our hero, Edward Norris (Bob), is OK in the crunch but not quite as heroic looking or acting as he could be, definitely not up to the standards of Kane Richmond or Buster Crabbe. Eddie Quillan (Chuck) is mostly comic relief with an occasionally heroic scene. Lois Collier (Pam) fades into the background. Ruth Roman (known later for Strangers on a Train and lots of TV including Knots Landing) has a nice otherworldly look and demeanor as Lothel, but when it comes down to it, doesn't have much to do except flit about in her fireproof nightgown. Douglass Dumbrille (Lang), Clarence Muse (Kyba), and Napoleon Simpson (Maati) are fine, and the best performance comes from German actress Tala Birell as Bork. Though she gets stuck in her own repetitive bits, she's convincing as the chief villain who also has to appear pleasant and innocent. It's a rarity to have a female as the main Nazi and she's up to the task. I like the fact that some of the Black characters, mostly Maati and Godac, have actual agency and aren't just mindless followers or henchmen. I liked this a little less than I wanted to, but the Blu-ray print has been nicely restored, even if some of the early chapters are a little faded looking in terms of clarity. As a whole, it's awfully talky though rarely boring, and probably not one for a viewer new to classic era serials. Pictured above right are Norris and Quillan. [Blu-ray]

THE NIGHT OF THE SCORPION (1972)

Oliver Bromfield feels guilty over the death of his wife Helen some months ago. She fell through a second-floor railing in the family mansion in what was found to be an accidental death, but Oliver, an alcoholic, fears that he caused the death while in a drunken haze. Sara, Oliver's widowed stepmother, has always had a thing for Oliver and tries to talk him into living with her, but he moves out anyway. He soon marries Ruth and brings her to live in the mansion. The jealous Sara begins spying on Oliver and Ruth's lovemaking by peering through a hole in a clock against the wall. Also in the house: Jenny, Oliver's fragile sister who was engaged in an affair with Helen, and Clara, a maid who may know more than she tells. The suspicious atmosphere in the house sends Ruth to talk to the family doctor who also has mild concerns about Helen's death—he testified that she was prone to dizzy spells but that was a lie because he was protecting Oliver, or perhaps Sara, if one of them was responsible for Helen's fall. Soon Ruth has reason to believe that her life may be in danger when some milk she was going to drink is lapped at the house cat and the cat dies. But, whoa, later Ruth sees the cat alive—is she starting to snap just like Oliver might have snapped? Ruth's uncle Edward visits, but it turns out he is actually a detective she has hired to investigate the family. This has all been very gothic soap opera in tone, but in the home stretch, a giallo trope (a black-gloved killer slashing throats) crops up. Still, the gothic soap opera strain of the story wins out and the film ends predictably. Critics who expected this Italian/Spanish co-production to be a sexy gory giallo don't like this film, but since I approached it as gothic, I was less disappointed. It's no great shakes on any level (too talky and slowly paced, with people not really doing anything for long stretches, though the visuals are occasionally interesting) but I kept watching. Jose Antonio Amor (pictured) has a nicely dissolute look as Oliver, keeping us on our toes about his guilt; the women—Nuria Torray (Sara), Daniela Giordano (Ruth), and Teresa Gimpera (Jenny)---all seem a bit interchangeable. The opening funeral scene felt like it came right out of a Hammer movie. Ultimately, the whole thing seemed to me like a Dark Shadows story arc and on that level, I enjoyed it. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN’S MURDER CRUISE (1940)

Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard visits Charlie Chan in his Honolulu office. Duff is traveling incognito on the trail of a strangler who is apparently one of ten folks on a four-month world cruise run by a man named Suderman (Lionel Atwill). The last leg of the trip will leave soon for San Francisco and Chan agrees to help, but when Chan leaves his office briefly, Duff is strangled to death by an intruder and Chan is determined to finish Duff's case. He visits the hotel the cruise group is staying at where a Mr. Kenyon is found dead, a small bag of thirty coins found in his hand. Chan makes a connection to Judas' thirty pieces of silver from the Bible and assumes a betrayal motive for the murders. Other cruise members include Kenyon's nephew (Robert Lowery), a somewhat acerbic socialite (Cora Witherspoon), her secretary (Marjorie Weaver) who is flirting with Lowery, an archeologist (Leo G. Carroll), a playboy, and an older couple who believe in signs from the unseen world. Of course, it wouldn't be a Charlie Chan movie without one of his sons tagging along—here it’s #2 son Jimmy who stows away on the ship once it takes off. We see a heavily bearded man skulking around the ship, obviously someone in disguise, who eventually strangles another passenger before Chan ropes all the remaining cruise members together in San Francisco to unmask the strangler. This is one of the better Sidney Toler Chan films, partly because it has a fast pace and fairly straightforward plotting (based on one of the original Chan novels, Charlie Chan Carries On, which was adapted to film in 1931 but is now considered lost). Like most of the Chan movies from Fox, the supporting cast is strong, especially Lowery, Witherspoon, Atwill, and Carroll. Charles Middleton, the villain Ming in the Flash Gordon serials, is the meek husband to the occult inclined wife. Jimmy (Victor Sen Ying) gets an amusing slapstick moment as he goes slipping and sliding through a hallway and collides with a steward carrying a full tray of food. The opening scene is a fun bit in Chan's office as Jimmy and his younger brother Willie comb through Pop's mail to find Willie's disappointing report card, which it turns out Chan has already seen. Not quite top rank Chan, lacking an interesting atmosphere, but enjoyable. Pictured are Atwill, Yung and Toler. [DVD]

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1962)

I've been reviewing the 1960s Dr. Mabuse films here recently. You should go to Wikipedia or IMDb for the full background of the character, but I will note that this is the fourth in the rebooted German series from CCC Studios from the 1960s, and a remake of Fritz Lang's 1933 film of the same title. At the end of the previous film, the criminal mastermind Mabuse has gone insane and been committed to an asylum, filling his hours by constantly scribbling indecipherable notes and sketches. This film begins with a couple of daring and clever robberies: gold is stolen from an armored car, a diamond exchange is robbed, and paper used for printing money is taken from a train (this for a smaller gang of blind men who work as counterfeiters). Inspector Lohmann thinks that the crimes betray the touch of Mabuse, but asylum director Pohland takes Lohmann to see Mabuse, safely locked away and single-mindedly scribbling in his cell. Jonny, a boxer, is recruited to join the criminal gang whose orders are given to them in a secret passage room by a shadowy figure, though Jonny hides his new job from his girlfriend Nelly (who I really only mention because she is played by future star Senta Berger). Halfway through, we discover that Mabuse has Pohland under his hypnotic power, and it's Pohland who passes his criminal plans along to the gang. The gang members try not to kill or harm the innocents who get involved in their crimes, but one gang member who turns out to be spying for the cops is, in the movie's best scene, killed by a backward-shooting gun. The last fifteen minutes are a wild and wooly climax involving the electrical torture of Lohmann and by the end, both Mabuse and Pohland are dead, though based on the evidence of the previous films, they're probably not.

This is my favorite of the 60s Mabuse movies so far. Lang fans may not love it as it generally eschews the mystical feel and expressionist look of the 1933 original, though the possibility of telepathic communication is presented, but it's fast moving, coherent, and presents the gang members as competent crooks rather than evil geniuses. With the Mabuse mystique as a fairly minor element—unlike in some of the other movies, Mabuse doesn't come across here as a threat to humanity—it may be best viewed as a traditional crime melodrama, lacking (for better or worse) the almost spy-movie feel of the previous Mabuse entries as there is no handsome studly agent here, just the somewhat schlubby Lohmann, played superbly by Gert Frobe in his third appearance in the series. Wolfgang Preiss, again, plays Mabuse though with limited screen time, and Walter Rilla is very effective as Pohland. At one point, he delivers the great line, "We are not a humanitarian organization—dead bodies are part of our business." Some genuinely amusing comic relief is provided by Harald Juhnke as Lohmann's assistant who keeps positing crime solutions based on movies and novels. Also with Helmut Schmid as Jonny and Charles Regnier as Mortimer, the nominal gang leader. Though the 1933 original is a better movie (and a darker one), this is exciting and fairly fun. Released in the United States in 1965 as The Terror of Dr. Mabuse. Pictured are Frobe and Juhnke. [Blu-ray]

THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH (1964)

aka DR. SYN, ALIAS THE SCARECROW (1963)

In 18th century England, along the coast of Dover, near the town of Dymchurch on Romney Marsh, a band of smugglers have managed to operate for some time, illegally seizing shipments of liquor and gold from ships in the middle of the night, and hauling the goods back to an oast house, a barn where hops are dried. The leader of the smugglers is a masked figure called the Scarecrow, who dresses as a creepy looking scarecrow with a burlap bag mask (pictured at right). He is assisted by the similarly masked Hellspite (wearing a demon face) and the Curlew (a fluffy bird face). We learn that the Scarecrow is actually Dr. Syn, the local vicar, who believes that the villagers are being "taxed out of existence and robbed of their independence" by the exorbitant taxes of King George. In Robin Hood fashion, the money from the smuggled goods is given to the villagers to pay their taxes. When General Pugh arrives in town, telling Squire Banks that he's not doing enough to try and stop the smugglers, Syn's operation is threatened, as is the livelihood of the villagers. Pugh brings in a press gang crew in an attempt to force able-bodied men to serve in the Navy, an act which would certainly stop the smuggling, but also empty the village of working men, and Syn decides he must fight back. Even the town's leader, Squire Banks, is sympathetic as his son was kidnapped years ago by such a gang. Two arrivals in town complicate things. One is Banks' son who has escaped the Navy, and the other is an American named Bates, wanted on charges of sedition for preaching freedom for the colonies. Both could help the villagers but both are being hunted down.

This was produced by Walt Disney as a three-part miniseries for his Wonderful World of Color TV show. The above summary basically covers the first hour, which ends with the Scarecrow's men victorious. In the second episode, Pugh searches out men who had been in arrears with their taxes but who suddenly had a windfall and managed to pay up, the assumption being that these men were the recipients of smuggling money. A man named Ransley becomes the smuggler's weak link, offering to rat out the others for immunity. When some men are caught and put on trial for smuggling brandy, Syn arranges for the barrels to be emptied and filled with water which results in an embarrassing loss for Pugh. Banks' son arrives in episode three; when he and Bates are captured and taken to Dover to be tortured, Syn plots to free them by dressing his men as a Navy press gang and taking the men out of the prison, more or less under the nose of General Pugh himself.

I cover the origin of the Dr. Syn character in my review of the 1937 DR. SYN, but this adaptation is based more directly on a 1960 rewritten and simplified version of the original 1915 novel. This film dispenses with an entire subplot involving Syn actually being a reformed pirate, so there are only two identities to keep up with. Losing the pirate background doesn't hurt, as there is still plenty of narrative. Patrick McGoohan (TV's The Prisoner) uses his slyboots look to great effect here as Syn, looking like he's always one step ahead of everyone around him, even if he's not. The memorable opening sequence of each episode shows the Scarecrow riding and cackling at night, but the series itself is actually a bit short on such scenes. Still, Syn is a compelling lead character, and the Scarecrow is a bit unsettling, with his costume and his loud, gruff voice (very different from Syn's soft but commanding voice). George Cole (Mipps, the town sexton who is also Hellspite) and 16-year-old Sean Scully (the squire's son, also the Curlew) are fine in support, and the Curlew’s mask is almost as weird looking as the Scarecrow’s. Geoffrey Keen (Pugh) is a solid villain; Michael Hordern is the squire; David Buck is the squire’s handsome son. I haven't even mentioned the romantic subplot, in which one of Pugh's men courts the squire's daughter, to the disapproval of the squire, but winds up providing aid to Syn and his men and gets the girl in the end. Without ads and Disney's episode intros, the TV version of this film (under the Romney Marsh title) runs a bit over two hours, but a few months before it aired in America, it was released as a 100 minute feature film in Great Britain (and later in the States) with the Dr. Syn title, cutting most of the plot of the first episode. I watched both versions and, while the feature film is better paced, I enjoyed the longer version more. Pictured at left are Tony Britton and David Buck. [DVD]

DOCTOR SYN (1937)

In 1780, we see a contingent of pirates drag a violent beefy mute man off a boat onto an island where they tie him to a post and put up a sign that says, "Here rot the bones of a traitor mulatto—so perish all who would betray Capt. Clegg." In 1800, we are in the village of Dymchurch on the southern coast of England near Romney Marsh. In the graveyard we see a stone for Clegg who was caught and hanged years ago. As clergyman Christopher Syn preaches in the church, he is given a note that a band of government revenue agents, led by Capt. Collyer, has landed on the coast and plans on staying in town for a while, their mission to catch members of a criminal ring who have been smuggling goods (mostly liquor) for years and making money so the citizens can pay the onerous taxes levied by the king. Syn insists that there are no smugglers, but we find out that there are, and that Syn is the secret head of the ring, hiding behind the identity of the unseen figure The Scarecrow who assigns men to meet ships on the shore at midnight and move their smuggled goods to a barn on the outskirts of town. Only Syn's assistant Mipps, the sexton and undertaker, knows his secret. But Syn has another secret we learn later: he is the dread Captain Clegg, who escaped his hanging and swore off pirating years ago to become the village clergyman. More plotlines arise that will tie together. First, we see that the lovely young orphan Imogene has eyes for the handsome young Denis Cobtree, son of the local squire, though Rash, the schoolteacher, has long been interested in her. Later, we learn that Imogene is the daughter of Clegg, and Syn has been keeping an eye on her. Finally, the mulatto, who survived his ordeal, is a member of the revenue gang and therefore a threat to Syn if he recognizes him as Clegg. A couple of other secrets will surface, and when the town doctor tells the agents that he has seen mysterious "phantoms on horseback" on the marsh at night, Collyer is sure he's on the trail of the smugglers.

Some people think that Dr. Syn was a real person who became a folk hero but actually, he was an invention of British novelist Russell Thorndike, though his stories were based on actual smuggling incidents that occurred near Romney Marsh. I've never read the books, but the character as presented here is a fascinating one, though we're rushed through the character's pirate background only as exposition. This allows the filmmakers to keep Syn likable as a Robin Hood type. Syn is played by the great British actor George Arliss (pictured above). This was his last movie and he was almost 70 when it was filmed; he has plenty of energy and comes off as at least a decade younger, but I doubt he would have been credible as a swashbuckling pirate, though he acquits himself well in a brief fisticuffs scene near the end, perhaps with the help of a stuntman. Arliss, who has a distinct long and unhandsome face, didn't make his first sound film until 1929 when he was past 60 and is largely forgotten today, though he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1930. I like him quite a bit and have reviewed many of his movies on my blog. Arliss never gave a bad performance, and though he's exactly not a scenery chewer, Arliss does tend to command most of the attention in his movies, leaving supporting players a bit at sea. Here, Margaret Lockwood is fine as Imogene; John Loder is handsome though underused as Cobtree; Meinhart Maur has little screen time as the mulatto but he makes the most of it as a physical presence, a bit like Tor Johnson would in the late 1950s. Graham Moffatt makes an impression as the simple-minded young Jerry Jerk—he reminds me of the teenage department store worker Alfred in Miracle on 34th Street. Others are adequate but don't get to shine. At 80 minutes, this starts to drag a bit in the middle but ends excitingly. Many baby boomers, like me, know Dr. Syn from a Walt Disney mini-series from 1964 that has a cult following now; I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow. [DVD]

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)

During the Civil War, three Northern soldiers (Capt. Cyrus Harding, young Herbert Brown, and Black soldier Neb Nugent) escape a Confederate military prison in Richmond during a ferocious storm and head for a hot air observation balloon to escape. War correspondent Gideon Splitt joins them, and they are forced to take a Confederate guard, Pencroft, to pilot the balloon. The poor weather forces them to stay in the clouds for days and they end up over the Pacific Ocean, crashlanding on a small deserted island. Well, it's mostly deserted in terms of people, though the men soon find two British women, the high-toned Lady Mary and her young niece Elena, the sole survivors of a shipwreck. But it's also got giant critters galore. First the men deal with a huge crab which they kill and which Gideon cooks. Then they face a giant bird-chicken thing on the rampage. Herbert and Elena get stuck briefly in a huge bee hive with a gigantic bee threatening them. The group finds shelter in a large cave they call Granite House up on a cliff. There seems to be an unseen presence who occasionally intercedes on their behalf in small ways, and when a pirate ship attacks, the presence appears and blows up the ship. Their savior is Captain Nemo, creator of the famous submarine the Nautilus (see 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), who has been assumed dead for years but has been living in his disabled submarine and using the island for experiments on "horticultural physics" that might help fight world hunger, hence the huge animals. Together they work on refloating the pirate ship to sail for New Zealand, but the island's volcano suddenly becomes active. At the same time, the Nautilus comes under attack from a huge sea creature. Can they work fast enough to escape natural disaster?

This film's basic plot is based fairly closely on a Jules Verne novel which was something of a sequel to 20,000 Leagues, though the sci-fi-fantasy giant creatures were added by the filmmakers, with effects created by Ray Harryhausen, and his work, in both creature creation and combining the effects with live action, make this worth watching. It may all look a bit shabby to modern viewers, but if you turn off your expectations of glossy CGI, you'll find these effects quite compelling. As weirdly fun as the bird thing is (Harryhausen meant it to be an actual ancient being but budget concerns changed his plan), the giant beehive and bee were my favorite effects with Herbert and Elena caught in a giant hive cell, ready to either be stung to death or drowned in honey (picture at right). Exciting incidents happen often enough so that things don't bog too much. Oddly, once Nemo presents himself, the pace slows down and the excellent actor Herbet Lom is mostly wasted as Nemo who is neither terribly friendly nor terribly manic. The other actors are fine. Michael Craig makes a nicely stoic and low-key hero; Michael Callan is handsome and energetic as young Herbert and Beth Rogan is fine as his love interest Elena. It feels like Joan Greenwood, as Lady Mary, wants to cut loose and be a little campy in her privileged position, but she's been restrained. Gary Merrill (Gideon) is not an inspiring action hero type. Percy Herbert (Pencroft) and Dan Jackson (Neb) are bland in smaller roles. The film's trailer calls the sea creature a "prehistoric devil fish" but my husband identified it as a monstrous cuttlefish. It's probably the least effective of the creatures but it helps make the climax exciting. Pictured at top left are Craig and Callan. I reviewed a silent movie version of the book here. [Blu-ray]

JAMBOREE (1957)

Grace and Lew are talent agents, once married but now divorced. Grace is shopping around young Pete Porter and Lew is doing the same for young Honey Wynn. Both singers show up at an audition for talent in a Broadway revue. When neither one gets lucky, Grace has the idea of pairing the two, like a hip Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. They get a good song and a record contract, and as their first single heads to the top of the charts, the two fall in love. Despite their success, Grace encourages Pete to cut a solo record but he won't. Meanwhile, Lew, suspecting Grace of trying to pull such a stunt, talks Honey into recording a solo. When Grace finds out, she takes Pete to the studio and has him "accidentally" see her record which irritates him. During a TV marathon appearance, Grace cancels the duo performance and has Pete sing his own solo song. Pete and Honey split, Pete goes on a successful solo concert tour in Europe, and Honey releases her solo record which is not a hit. Everybody is sad and sorry, but because Grace and Lew had begun to feel romantic stirrings again, they work together to get the kids to reconcile at a major record industry convention. The road back proves bumpy, but a happy ending is in store for both couples.

In this 90 minute film, less than half of the running time is devoted to the above plot. The rest of the movie features performances from over a dozen pop music acts of the era, mostly presented with little to no context. Some are supposedly performed at the marathon, and most are introduced by various deejays from around the country, including Dick Clark. But all are performance bits that are not attached in any way to the narrative. Though pushed as a rock and roll movie, there are many genres represented. The opening credits mention fifteen acts, topped by Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis who are bona fide rock singers, but also featured are jazz legend Count Basie and country singer Slim Whitman. Some, like Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, were basically one-hit wonders. Some had no hits, like Louis Lymon and the Teenchords who were copies of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" fame; in fact, Louis was Frankie's brother.  At least one performer, the very young Frankie Avalon, went on to fame as an actor. His song, "Teacher’s Pet," has the fun line, "As long as you rate my kiss straight A, I'm at the head of the class." For my money, the best number is the opener, "Record Hop Tonight" by Andy Martin, which is fully choreographed and presented as a scene in the Broadway revue. While it's fun to see some of these artists, most of them just stand in front of the camera and sing, and don't work up the energy of that opening. Meanwhile, the names of the actors aren't even shown in the opening credits, saved instead for the end. The plot is lazy and predictable, and the actors don't seem to have been encouraged to try too hard, but I quite liked Paul Carr as Pete and Kay Medford as Grace; both had lengthy acting careers and both are able to work up personalities for their characters—a bit nerdy for Pete, conniving for Grace. Robert Pastene (Lew) played Buck Rogers in a short-lived TV series but did little else, and Freda Holloway (Honey) made no other movies. Carr seems to do his own singing, but Connie Francis dubs Honey, with "the voice of Connie Francis" given a credit in the cast list. It’s obviously a B-level production, but it was fun, and if you have any interest in mid-50s pop music, you should check it out. Pictured are Carr and Holloway. [TCM]