THREE BITES OF THE APPLE (1967)

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

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

SCARLET PAGES (1930)

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

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

PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961)

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

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

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

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

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

JUNGLE BRIDE (1933)

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

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

THE UNHOLY NIGHT (1929)

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

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

MOSS ROSE (1947)

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

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

AMAZONS OF ROME (1961)

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

NIGHT WATCH (1973)

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

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

SKY HIGH (1922)

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

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

THE DOUGHGIRLS (1944)

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

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

HIS BROTHER'S WIFE (1936)

Plantations in South America are suffering through epidemics of spotted fever spread by ticks. A respected doctor (Jean Hersholt) and his young playboyish assistant (Robert Taylor) are heading down to the jungles but Hersholt gives Taylor a two-week vacation first. At a casino, Taylor meets Barbara Stanwyck and falls for her. She's a model, but casino boss Joseph Calleia wants to hire her to get wealthy customers to be fleeced at the gambling tables. Taylor and Stanwyck have an intense ten days together, and Taylor decides not to leave with Hersholt. But Taylor has to pay off a large debt to Calliea; Taylor's brother (John Eldredge) agrees to pay it off for him, but insists that he leave for South America. But when Stanwyck finds out what happened, she takes the job with Calleia and uses her earnings to pay Taylor's debt, telling Eldredge. In the jungle, the search for a cure is not progressing well and Taylor goes back to New York at Christmas for a break where he discovers that his brother impulsively married Stanwyck after which she left him and he had a breakdown. Stanwyck admits she loves Taylor and she agrees to follow him back to the jungle and wait for Eldredge to come to his senses and grant her a divorce. Meanwhile, a possible serum for spotted fever needs an experimental subject; after the first subject dies, Taylor decides to use it on himself, but Stanwyck, feeling bad for the problems she feels she's caused, injects herself with spotted fever. Unfortunately, Hersholt is out of serum. Can they produce another batch in time to save Stanwyck?

Melodramas about the romantic entanglements of doctors working on cures for tropical diseases were not uncommon in the early classic era. The most famous is JEZEBEL with Bette Davis (yellow fever in New Orleans), though the first is probably THE SEVENTH VEIL with Greta Garbo (cholera in Hong Kong). Both of those were A-level pictures with big stars. This one has star power (Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor who would get married a few years later) and was made by MGM but feels a little second-rate in writing and production. I've never been a fan of Taylor's—he comes as artificial, like he wants us to know he's trying really hard to act his ass off. This is a problem in the first half, but he becomes more natural in the last half. Stanwyck, who rarely gave a bad performance, is a bit weak here, like she was rushed through her scenes, but she and Taylor have good chemistry, even if it's difficult to accept the soap opera circumstances of the romantic triangle. This is partly because Eldredge is out of his league with the other two—his acting is OK but the character is underwritten and just not believable. There is some nicely witty banter between Stanwyck and Taylor (pictured) early on. Directed competently but drably by W.S. Van Dyke. A hit in its day, it is now a mostly overlooked item in Stanwyck’s canon. [TCM]

TARGETS (1968)

In a studio screening room, the latest horror movie starring the living legend Byron Orlock is running. The response, even from Orlock himself, is tepid and Orlock announces his retirement. Sammy, the film's young director, has a new script he wants Orlock to read and gets drunk in Orlock's hotel room trying to talk him into it. Orlock remains adamant, saying he feels like an anachronism, with the horrors of real life outdoing those on the screen. Even the actor's charming assistant Jenny can't talk him into it. Sammy passes out (and he has a fun reaction to waking up in the morning in bed with Orlock) and the next day, Orlock agrees to attend an in-person publicity event at a drive-in which is showing his new film. In a parallel plotline, we follow young, cleancut Bobby Thompson who lives in suburbia with his wife and parents. We see him buy a lot of guns and ammo and arrive home for dinner. He seems quiet and passive, almost a bit too much so, and the next day, he gets up, calmly shoots his mother and wife dead (and the grocery delivery boy) and heads out to an oil refinery where he sets his guns up and starts randomly shooting at cars on the freeway, killing several people. When cops show up, he leaves and heads to a nearby drive-in theater, the one showing Orlock's movie, and settles in behind the screen, ready to pick up his shooting spree when the movie starts. Meanwhile, Orlock and Jenny arrive at the theater just as the shooting starts and, parked near the screen, are sitting ducks for Bobby's scattershot shooting.

This is a thriller, a piece of social commentary, and a satire all in one, and it’s notable for being the first movie from Peter Bogdanovich, who directs, writes and stars as Sammy. It's also one of the last movies made by Boris Karloff who gently parodies himself as Orlock. The film being unveiled at the drive-in is The Terror, a film Karloff made with Roger Corman a few years earlier, and there is very effective use made of the juxtaposition of Karloff on the big screen and Karloff at the theater. We also see a clip of Karloff in a very early film of his, The Criminal Code, and it's identified as such which permits direct identification of Orlock as Karloff, at least for film buffs. Karloff is subtle and effective, almost but not quite playing himself—he never retired, making at least four more movies after this before his death in 1969. Bogdanovich is also good if a bit artificial at times. The most effective performance comes from Tim O'Kelly (pictured) as Bobby. His steely, blank-faced blandness is scary, and the character never changes—no attempts are made at any kind of psychological explanation for his behavior. From his first appearance at the gun shop, he's single-mindedly preparing for the shootings. He is calm with just a touch of something disturbing behind his eyes. It's a stunning performance, which makes it all the odder that O'Kelly, who mostly did TV work, left acting just two years later. Despite its grim subject matter, most of the scenes focusing on Karloff are fairly light in tone; the violence is graphic but not sensationalized. Bogdanovich went on to direct another thirty movies, but this remains one of his best. [DVD]

IKARIE XB 1 (1963)

This Czech sci-fi film is slow and serious with little action but lots of interesting sets and visuals. It's sometimes claimed that it influenced 2001: A Space Odyssey, but though some of the visuals reminded me of 2001, it's not otherwise much like Kubrick's film. Released in the States in 1964, American International dubbed it into English, retitled it VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE (or ICARUS XB 1), and gave it a twist ending to replace its otherwise fairly bland ending. In the year 2163, Ikarie XB-1, a giant spaceship manned by dozens of people, is sent to Alpha Centauri to explore a "white" planet, one which scientists think could support life as we know it. Their round-trip journey will feel like a couple of years to them but fifteen years will pass on Earth, so many of the passengers are understandably concerned about eventually reuniting with their loved ones. For long stretches, not a lot happens in terms of action or narrative incident, but the 90 minute movie did hold my attention in its presentation of the everyday lives of the passengers: we see them eat, socialize, flirt and even dance. The usual interpersonal conflicts highlighted in space travel movies of the era are present but downplayed. There's even a robot, reminiscent of Robby from FORBIDDEN PLANET. There are two action setpieces which are presented in the same serious, non-exploitative manner of the rest of the film. In the first, a couple of people are sent out to investigate a floating wreck of a ship from the 20th century which contains dead bodies but also unexploded atomic weapons. Near the end, a nearby dark star (what we would think of as a black hole, I guess) affects the behavior of the passengers, causing both deep sleep and, in one man, psychological damage. The ending, though satisfying narratively, is a little anticlimactic, and apparently the English dubbed version, which is about five minutes shorter, makes the ending surprising and a bit ironic. I would like to see the American International cut sometime, but the original (in Czech with English subtitles) is an interesting if low-key sci-fi film. [YouTube]