THE GOLDEN EYE (1948)

Manning, owner of the Golden Eye mine in Arizona, is in San Francisco and visits a Chinatown curio shop to speak to his old friend Wong Fai. Manning says his mine and his life are in danger and he asks about getting in touch with Charlie Chan for help. While Wong phones Chan, Manning is shot at from the street but not hurt. Chan agrees to take on his case and, along with son Tommy and chauffeur Birmingham Brown, heads out to a dude ranch, The Lazy-Y, near Manning's mine. At the pool, Chan observes a rather ostentatiously drunken guest named O'Brien, who is actually police lieutenant Mike Ruark undercover, looking into why the Golden Eye has suddenly gone from being almost fallow to producing a large increase in gold, and Lt. Mike cultivates a relationship with Driscoll, the mine superintendent, to get more info. Visiting Manning's home, Chan meets up Manning's daughter Evelyn and local assayer Bartlett (who seems a bit sweet on Evelyn), and finds out that Manning had a serious injury in the mine and is recovering in his bedroom, wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, under the constant supervision of a somewhat suspicious nursing sister (in a plot point borrowed from THE LADY VANISHES). In short order, Chan and Lt. Mike discover a gold smuggling operation, with cheap Mexican gold brought in across the border and passed off as coming from a new vein of gold at the mine. Given the small number of characters, it's not difficult to figure out who is behind the operation, but how will Chan expose the guilty party?

This entry in the Charlie Chan series, featuring the fourth appearance of Roland Winters as Chan, is a bit above average if only due to the unusual Arizona setting. Winters is fine, Mantan Moreland steals most of his comic relief scenes as Birmingham, and Victor Sen Yung is, once again, son Tommy. Tim Ryan, in his second appearance as Lt. Mike is good, though his drunk scenes come perilously close to going over the top. The amateurish Wanda McKay barely registers as the daughter. There are really only two possible bad guys; as Bartlett, Bruce Kellogg gives the best supporting cast performance more or less by default, since Ralph Dunn is fairly colorless as Driscoll. The very best moment in the film is the final minute: after Chan has explained the case, Birmingham turns directly to the camera in wide-eyed wonder and says, "Ain’t that somethin'? Good gracious me!" This might not turn you into a Winters fan but it's enjoyable if you already are. Pictured are Kellogg, McKay and Winters. [DVD]

THE FEATHERED SERPENT (1948)

We open with an exposition dump presented by a group of people at a streetside cafe in a Mexican village. Professors Scott and Farnsworth were searching for a lost Aztec city but have gone missing, and this group, which includes professors, fiancées and relatives, has vowed to find them. Meanwhile, Charlie Chan, on a vacation road trip in Mexico with his number one and two sons, Lee and Tommy, and his chauffeur Birmingham Brown, find an older man collapsed in the nearby desert. It turns out he is Prof. Scott, who says that he and Farnsworth found the city but have been held captive and forced to decipher hieroglyphics which tell the whereabouts of a hidden fortune. Scott is knifed in the dark and Chan agrees to join the search since Farnsworth is a friend of his. One of the search party members, however, is the villain behind the hostage taking, though one is also a police spy in disguise. One by one, people find the secret entrance to the city and one by one, get captured by the bad guy, though there is more than one baddie in the mix. But with Chan and sons on the case, justice will prevail. The fifth of six movies with Roland Winters as Chan, this is notable primarily for being the only entry in the 47-film series to feature two sons in action with their dad. Victor Sen Yung plays the youthful and bumbling Tommy, and Keye Luke is the older "number one" son Lee. Luke played this character, also youthful and bumbling at the time, in several of the 1930s Chan films. It's fun to see the contrast here between the more mature Lee and his kid brother, and they get to kick some bad guy ass in the end. Interestingly, Luke and Winters in real life were the same age, and Yung was only eleven years younger than Winters. As in all the Winters movies (and many earlier ones), Mantan Moreland is a comic relief standout as Birmingham. I noticed here that Moreland pronounces "Tommy" as "Toe-mee"; I don't know if that is an accent thing or what, but he does it in all the Winters films. Included in the mostly colorless supporting cast is Nils Asther, whose career peaked in 1932 with The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Busy character actor Erville Alderson, who seemed to specialize in older and sickly roles, is old and sickly as the ill-fated Prof. Scott; Robert Livingston is OK as Prof. Stanley. Things begin to drag a bit in the last half, and the promise of the somewhat exotic setting is fulfilled only a bit by the Aztec temple set. Despite the title, the serpent is a tiny part of the story, and its name, Quetzalcoatl, is never mentioned. Pictured from left are Yung, Luke, Winters and Moreland. [DVD]

WAR OF THE PLANETS (1966)

A narrator intones this bit of profound philosophy: "The universe is endless and timeless—who knows how it all began?" This has nothing to do with the story which begins on a New Year's Eve in the future as the population of the space station Gamma 1 celebrates with dancing, drinking, and putting on spectacular tableaux shared with the other space stations of the World's United Democracies on video displays, like spacewalk acrobatics done to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," or an array of dozens of astronauts floating in space spelling out Happy New Year like a band at a college football game. But troubles are about to arise. On Earth, people are concerned that Captain Dubois of Space Command has not turned up for his shift. We see him attacked by glowing green clouds of gas, and we realize later that he has been possessed by invisible alien forces, called Diaphanoids; they are referred to as "bodiless patterns of energy" who act a bit like Star Trek's Borg in taking over individual beings (called hosting) for the greater force. A distress call from the space station Delta 2 ends the partying. Commander Mike takes a small crew, including his girlfriend Connie and his buddy Jake, to Delta 2 where they find the crew members frozen in place, not quite alive but not yet dead. When Dubois shows up on Earth, he is said to have "gone galaxy," but he's actually now a spokesperson for the aliens and heads up plans to possess some of the Delta 2 folks and dispose of the rest. There is much more to the plot but I am pretty unsure about the details, so I'll leave the summary right here.

Despite a confusing narrative and cheap effects (green gas is a lot cheaper than making dozens of alien costumes), this is fun to watch.  It's the second of four films that director Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson) made which were retroactively labeled the Gamma 1 Quadrilogy. I reviewed the first one, WILD WILD PLANET, some years ago, but I'm reviewing this as basically a stand-alone film and not trying to parse out connections of characters or places. The miniature sets, in the Thunderbirds style, are cheap and charming, as are the interior sets and costumes. The laser guns they use are basically flamethrowers. After the first 20 minutes, I wasn't always sure where scenes were taking place but I don't think it mattered all that much. The acting is exactly what you'd expect from a mid-60s dubbed Italian sci-fi movie, alternately serious, humorous and campy. American Tony Russel, who made his name in Italian films, is the commander who frequently fights with his 'feisty' gal (Lisa Gastoni). Franco Nero (best known as Lancelot in CAMELOT) is nice eye candy as the buddy. I like that Connie calls Mike out as a martinet for ordering her about. My husband and I kept referring to Capt. Tice as "big head" because his head looked ready to pop right out of his space helmet. Not suited for viewers of the current generation who take their sci-fi seriously, this is pretty close to delirious fun for the rest of us. In the picture above, Tony Russel is in the center of the crew. [DVD]

MAN ALIVE (1945)

Speed McBride comes home one night, excited to show his wife Connie his latest bowling trophy, but Connie is disappointed because she was expecting a birthday present. But Gordon, an old college friend of theirs, who had a crush on Connie in the past, shows up for a visit with a lovely bouquet of flowers for her. Gordon is recently divorced and Speed, jealous over his attentions to Connie, goes out to a bar to drown his sorrows. He meets a hobo who goes by Willie the Wino and the two get drunk together. When Speed tells him he'd give Willie the shirt off his back, he wants to prove it so the two switch jackets. Speed lets Willie drive him home, but the inebriated Willie winds up driving off a pier into a river. Speed is picked up by Kismet, a riverboat captain and they soon read in a paper that Willie's body was identified as Speed's and the world thinks Speed is dead. Instead of just going home and clearing the matter up, Speed is talked into remaining underground by Kismet so he and Speed go back to Speed's house where Gordon is being very solicitous to the widow. When the will is read, it's discovered that Speed encouraged Connie to get remarried in the event of his death, and worried that she and Gordon will do just that, Speed and Kismet, encouraged by his Aunt Sophie's belief in spiritualism, plan for Speed to pose as his own ghost. Of course, complications ensue.

This is mild B-movie fun, though a big chunk of suspension of disbelief is required to believe that Speed wouldn't just take the easy way out and come clean to Connie right away. Kismet's influence is what pushes him to engage in the scheme, but it's still odd that he lets it go on as long as he does. The actors all do their best. Pat O'Brien as Speed is likable; Ellen Drew (Connie) and Rudy Vallee (Gordon) are fine—though it feels a bit like a second-string cast, which of course as a 70 minute B-movie, it is. The whole thing feels overplotted, with new kinks in the proceedings popping up every ten minutes or so. The funniest moments occur fairly early: on the riverboat, a musical number is performed with cast members dressed as angels singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," so Speed thinks he's woken up in Heaven. Then he sees Kismet, dressed as a devil (pictured above) and assumes he's in Hell. Minna Gombell has a small, inconsequential role as the seance-holding Aunt Sophie. Directed competently by the prolific journeyman Ray Enright. It's hard to dislike this film if you take it as a trifle, but it could have been much more interesting (and funny) with a stronger script. [TCM]

KING OF THE ROCKET MEN (1949 serial) / LOST PLANET AIRMEN (1951)

Scientists from a research group in Oasis, New Mexico called Science Associates (SA) are dropping like flies in suspicious accidents, but we know they are the work of Dr. Vulcan, whom we only see in shadow. In one case, Prof. Drake is driving a car which is taken over remotely by Vulcan and driven over a cliff. In the latest incident, we see Prof. Millard get a verbal warning through a speaker about his death, followed by an explosion in which Millard is assumed dead. But he survives and is whisked away to a secret lab by Jeff King, one of the SA scientists, who suspects that another SA scientist is actually Dr. Vulcan. Millard continues his work on several inventions, including an atomic-powered jet pack (with a mask and control dials that say Up, Down, Fast and Slow) that will allow a man to fly through the air. King, keeping Millard in hiding, goes back to the SA board, now down to only six, and is appointed to investigate the mysterious deaths. He gets help from Burt Winslow, SA's PR man, and reporter Glenda Thomas. When a gang of Vulcan's thugs led by Dirken steal an experimental missile, Jeff dons the jet pack, flies up in the air after the missile is fired, and manages to shoot it down before it causes harm. The heroic flier comes to be known as Rocket Man, though no one except Millard knows his identity. Jeff comes to suspect Conway, the head of SA, as being a bad guy; he is but he's not Vulcan, and as he's about to tell who is, Dirken throws a knife at him. Attempts are made to steal Millard's Decimator which can melt rocks and earth, as we see in an impressive cave incident which, surprisingly, proves fatal to one of our good guys. Eventually Vulcan and Dirken get their hands on one and threaten to destroy New York City with a massive tidal wave unless they get ransom money. Can Rocket Man save the day?

Many of the more popular classic-era serials (multi-chapter adventures which could total up to over three hours) were eventually edited down to shorter feature-length films, often for showing on television. As an experiment, I decided with this serial from Republic to watch the short distillation (LOST PLANET AIRMEN) first and compare the two. For starters, both titles are quite misleading. There are no Rocket Men (ort Airmen), just a Rocket Man. He's also no one's king (though his last name is King). There is no Lost Planet involved, just Earth. AIRMEN, which is just over an hour, is fast-paced, filled with action, and is relatively coherent. ROCKET MEN, at twelve chapters, is almost three hours and has the burden of providing a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. AIRMEN cuts out a few chapters, discarding entire subplots, including one that involves the death of an SA scientist who in AIRMEN just disappears, and Glenda suspecting that Jeff is Vulcan. An entire contraption, the Sonitron, is also missing from the shorter movie. Perhaps the biggest change is at the climax. In ROCKET MEN, the tidal wave does, in fact, destroy Manhattan, with good use made of some impressive special effects scenes from the 1933 film DELUGE. The good guys still rejoice, presumably because Vulcan is killed, and the mayor proclaims that the city will rebuild (and, despite the large-scale destruction, we see there are somehow still plenty of skyscrapers still standing outside the mayor's window). In AIRMEN, Vulcan is stopped before he can inflict much damage, and the DELUGE scenes are shown merely as the imaginings of Vulcan as he plots his evil deed.

Though the later-era serials are usually considered inferior to those of the 30s and 40s, this one is still enjoyable enough. The full serial conforms to the typical formula, with cliffhangers and fisticuffs in each chapter, generally bland characters, and a posse of bad guys in suits who are rarely differentiated from each other. Famous stunt man David Sharpe (pictured at right) does stunts here (and very well) but also has a role in a couple of chapters as a bad guy. The identity of Vulcan is, as I expected it would be, a disappointment, like the writers chose him randomly from the SA board, but Dirken, the chief thug, is well played by Don Haggerty. Tristram Coffin, often a movie villain, is Jeff, and is adequate if not compelling—in stunt scenes, it's Sharpe in the masked Rocket Man outfit. Mae Clarke (from FRANKENSTEIN and THE PUBLIC ENEMY) and House Peters Jr. are better as Jeff's sidekicks, and luckily one or both is almost always present. Clarke gets to throw a punch at a thug and Peters gets a nice bound-and-gagged scene near the end. James Craven is very good as Millard, putting a bit of life into the stock role of the helpless scientist—in the full serial, he briefly gets to wear the jet pack! Some fun lines: when the Sonitron is destroyed, Millard takes it like a champ, saying jauntily, "Well, we can build another one!"; when King reveals he's the Rocket Man, Dirken replies, "Yeah, and I'm the King of Siam!" Even though some major storylines are absent from AIRMEN, I think I liked that better, and I'm surprised at how complete it felt. Republic made two more Rocket Man movies and one TV series using the same costume but with different lead characters, including two with Commando Cody, which I'll get around to watching soon. Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that these films inspired the naming of the 70s band Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, best known for their 1971 cover of the novelty song "Hot Rod Lincoln." Unofficially known by serial fans as Rocket Man 1. [Blu-ray]

HOTEL (1967)

A couple at the New Orleans airport take their room key from the hotel they were staying at, the Saint Gregory, and having forgotten to turn it in, throw it into an ashtray where it is picked up by a professional thief (Karl Malden) who heads to the hotel, ready to begin a burglary binge. At the hotel, we see that the #3 elevator is a bit rickety but hasn't been reported yet (let’s call this Chekhov's elevator). The hotel owner (Melvyn Douglas), who laments the passing of the old days (he is, among other things, against desegregating the hotel), has to sell the hotel. His choices: 1) sell to hotel magnate Kevin McCarthy who wants to completely renovate it into a modern mechanized place full of conveyor belts, which would most likely displace most of the current workers; 2) get funding from a union, which would, of course, mean unionizing the current workers; 3) sell to a real estate company that wants to tear down the hotel and put up an office building. Douglas relies on his manager (Rod Taylor) to help him make a decision even while Taylor has his hands full with the day-to-day concerns of the guests. McCarthy and his retinue are staying in a high-class suite; he makes his assistants pray with him on their knees to make their mission a success, even as he has meetings in an open bathrobe and sleeps with his younger French mistress (Catherine Spaak). In another suite are a British duke (Michael Rennie) and duchess (Merle Oberon); we first see them sneaking up to their room by the service stairs because they're ducking a hit-and-run investigation involving the death of a child. Rennie is up for an important diplomatic post and Oberon bribes the house detective (Richard Conte) into getting rid of their car. McCarthy sends Spaak to be squired about the French Quarter for a day by Taylor so she can play spy and report back with information McCarthy can use in negotiations. She gets some info, but Taylor takes her to his apartment where they listen to jazz and have sex. In another plotline, a Black couple show up with reservations, but Douglas turns them away; it turns out they are part of McCarthy's plan to squelch Douglas' deal with the union by exposing the incident to the press. And let's not forget that elevator which hasn’t been fixed yet.

Many critics see this as an update of the old warhorse GRAND HOTEL which follows various characters and their interlocking relationships over the period of a couple of days. Here, however, there is a central character, Taylor, who is far more charismatic and interesting than any of the guests. The two main plots (McCarthy's machinations and Oberon's attempt to save her husband from the law) are fairly predictable, and Spaak is the only one to get a fleshed-out backstory. In Malden's sideplot, he is stuck with grinning idiotically as he creeps about in rooms and runs from the cops. His predictable story runs out of steam quickly. That leaves Taylor carrying the movie, and he is almost successful. Taylor is handsome, charming, and dynamic, though his character is awfully flat considering we're supposed to identify with him. Taylor, far and away, does the best acting here, with Oberon and Rennie doing OK. Spaak feels like she's sleepwalking through her part, and McCarthy doesn't have the gravitas to make his character seem serious or threatening. There are some nice side turns by Clinton Sundburg, Alfred Ryder and Harry Hickox (the anvil salesman from The Music Man), and jazz singer Carmen McRae is good in a small role as, yes, the singer in the hotel's bar—she and Taylor show hints of an interesting relationship that isn't examined. Oddly, I feel like this movie is a bit too short. A couple of side stories are glimpsed (in addition to McRae, there's a bell captain who meddles in things and a couple of rich lads who invite whores up to their room for a party) that might have been interesting. There are a handful of location shots in New Orleans but they don't amount to much. Still, the hotel sets are effective. The ending is not especially satisfying, with the Rennie/Oberon story left with loose ends, but the last scene is nice. Directed by Richard Quine, a character actor in the 40s who became a rather undistinguished director in the 50s (except for Bell, Book and Candle). Based on a bestseller by Arthur Hailey (Airport). The whole thing is lazily involving if not engrossing, but I’d watch it again for the sexy Rod Taylor (pictured). [TCM]

LOVERS AND LOLLIPOPS (1956)

Ann is a young widow who lives in Manhattan and works as a model. She has a 7-year old daughter named Peggy who is entering a mildly bratty phase. One night, Ann goes out with Larry, an old friend who has just returned from a few years working as an engineer in South America. Larry buys Peggy a toy boat which she insists on taking with her as they head out for a day on the town. At the Museum of Modern Art, Peggy proves to be a bit of a handful, eventually floating her boat in a pool in the sculpture garden and needing help getting it out. Generally, it seems like Peggy has taken to Larry's presence and he and Ann start to talk about a future together, with Larry willing to talk to his bosses about transferring to Manhattan. The two start spending more time together and Peggy, possibly threatened by the growing relationship, starts acting out around Larry. She hides from him in a beach parking lot, then disobeys orders not to take all the lollipops out of a beach bag (she tries to stuff them all in her mouth, then plants them in the sand). On a trip to Macy's toy department with Larry to pick out a new toy, Peggy dawdles on purpose which irritates Larry. When they get home, Peggy claims that Larry slapped her (he didn't) which causes Ann to slap her. It seems like Peggy might be successful in spoiling Ann and Larry’s relationship, but after a break of a couple of days, Larry tries one last tactic: a new puppy.

This is a very low-budget film, shot on location on the streets of New York with a small cast and post-dubbed dialogue. The directors, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, had a fluke hit a couple years earlier with a similar child-focused slice of life story called Little Fugitive. This didn't have the same success and it's a bit rough around the edges, but it has mild charms. The acting is deceptively good all around, with the three leads seeming very natural, all probably fighting the temptation to exaggerate their feelings and actions as in a typical Hollywood film. Peggy's acting-up never leads to anything dangerous; when she hides in the parking lot, I was sure there would be drama, but she doesn't run out in the path of a car, and Larry refuses to overreact to the situation. Of course, this means the movie lacks some energy and tension—there was no doubt in my mind that lonely Ann and nice-guy Larry would wind up together. Cathy Dunn (Peggy) never made another movie but she certainly shows low-key promise here, being cranky and irritating without overdoing it. Lori March (Ann) went on to soap operas. Gerald S. O’Laughlin (Larry), a favorite tough-guy character actor of mine, does a nice job as the suitor, sensitive to Ann's situation and not willing to give up on winning over the mercurial daughter. One nice situation has Peggy see a hippopotamus named Larry at the zoo; later she draws the hippo and his name in chalk on the sidewalk, but when Larry shows up, she tries to erase the name, afraid that he'll think she was insulting him by comparing him to a hippo. I'm glad I saw this low-key film but it won't be everyone’s cup of tea. [YouTube]

JUST IMAGINE (1930)

In the year 1980, people have numbers instead of names, they use one-person planes instead of cars (a bit like the Jetsons do), they need governmental approval to marry, and they get children from vending machines on the street. John Garrick is in love with Maureen O’Sullivan and meets her in mid-air as their two planes hover to discuss their situation. Another man (Kenneth Thomson) has applied to marry her, and as Garrick has been judged the less impressive of the two, Thomson has been given priority. She loves Garrick, but he has only a couple of months to do something in his field (he's a pilot) that will make him stand out above Thomson. To help him forget his troubles, Garrick's roommate (Frank Albertson) takes him to see a scientist resurrect a man who died in 1930—he was struck by lightning while playing golf. The man (El Brendel), rather like Woody Allen in Sleeper, is reanimated and is confused and astonished by the future world, and Garrick and Albertson take him in. Meanwhile, another scientist tells Garrick about a spaceship he has built and suggests that if Garrick could fly it to Mars, that might be enough to get him married to O'Sullivan. The roommates take off, with Brendel as a stowaway. On Mars, the three get involved with King Loko and Queen Loo Loo, discover two different tribes of beings, witness an elaborate dance scene performed around a huge idol, and finally make it back home where Garrick is praised for his trip and gets to marry O’Sullivan. 

You would think an early talkie sci-fi musical would be fun, if only as a period piece, but this ludicrous mess is hard to take. The only reason I sat through it was the fabulous set design. Apparently a big chunk of the films' budget went to its look: the modern apartment, the New York cityscape (looking much like the city in Fritz Lang's Metropolis), the scientific labs, the Martian landscape. The plot seems to have been thrown together in a few days to justify the visuals. In fact, the weak plot may be a consequence of the film being a musical, with the narrative seen as relatively unimportant compared to the songs and production numbers. The Mars sequence, which has a convoluted and forgettable plot, features a spectacular number, the abovementioned dance with the giant idol which was reused in the original Flash Gordon serial. It also contains a running joke that would not have been possible under the Production Code a few years later: the king of Mars is apparently gay and has a thing for El Brendel. The funniest line in the movie is when Brendel realizes that he's being flirted with and says, in reference to the queen of Mars, "She’s not the queen, he is!" In the end, Loko returns to Earth where they just might wind up as together as Garrick and O’Sullivan. Another standout line: When Garrick complains to a spinsterish census taker about the unfairness of the law, she replies, "The Marriage Act, like the Volstead Act—a noble experiment." (Prohibition, the Volstead Act, was still the law of the land in 1930.) The songs are unmemorable, El Brendel's shtick is quite dated (though I did laugh at a few of his bits), Garrick is flat, and O’Sullivan is given little to do, which leaves Albertson and Marjorie White, as his girlfriend, as the bright spots in the film. They are both energetic and amusing, which the leads are not. It doesn't help that the only available print, one shown on the Fox Movie Channel some years ago, is in poor shape. For the visuals alone, this might be worth restoring, but I won't hold my breath. Many critics have done political and cultural readings of the film, particularly as concerns the low status of women reflected in the future, but I can't work up the energy to participate. For me, this movie is all about the sets. In the photo above, Albertson and Brendel at to the left and Garrick is to the right. [YouTube]

REVOLT OF THE BARBARIANS (1964)

In 300 A.D., northern areas of Rome are besieged by, well, revolting barbarians. Darius and his men of the 10th legion are on their way home to Rome after months of battle when they are stopped by Claudius, an emissary of the emperor, and given a new task: head to Gaul and stop the systematic robbery of gold, intended for the soldiers' payroll, by the raiding barbarians. The legion heads to the town of Trivero where Darius and his buddy Marcus disguise themselves as merchants. They get to know Demetrius, head of the city; Livia, who is anti-Rome because Romans were responsible for the death of her father; her aunt Augusta, a woman of indeterminate loyalty; Brutus, the head of the Praetorian Guard. There is more going on here than we see on the surface: it appears that the gold pieces (which are marked with a distinctive 'X') are being stolen by barbarians who are being controlled by Demetrius, and Darius sees the coins turning up in Trivero. Claudius orders Darius and his men to stage a fake gold delivery as bait for catching the bandits. It turns out there is a conspiracy apparently headed by Brutus, but Darius suspects that he has higher-ups controlling him, as a series of double-crosses confirms.

This is not uninteresting, but if you're new to the peplum genre, this may not be the one to start with. The presence of oiled-up musclemen and people in togas are two of the primary criteria for the genre; here, you will find togas but no muscles, or even bare male chests, muscular or otherwise. Roland Carey, as Darius (pictured), is an OK hero that we can root for, and he's handy with a sword, but he is strictly of average build, as is Marcus (Gabriele Antonini). The women are attractive but not as buxom as one might expect. Once you get past the physical glitches, the rest is entertaining enough. The plot is a tiny bit more complicated than usual, and the sword fights are pulled off well, if a bit padded out at times. The soundtrack, as with most Italian movies of the era, is completely dubbed, not only in English speech but with background noises done by foley artists as well, but here the foley department went a bit overboard, with, for example, the sound of two men running sounding like horses clomping. When horses actually are clomping, the sound is overwhelming. There is a musical theme used in some of the fight scenes that is reminiscent of the Rumble music from West Side Story. Ultimately, the title has little meaning, as any barbarian revolt is secondary to the actual intrigue. [YouTube]

DOCKS OF NEW ORLEANS (1948)

In the only scene in this movie set at the title location, two suspicious looking men, Grock and Pereaux, try to stop a shipment of chemicals from going to South America, but the ship is too well guarded. Meanwhile, LaFontanne, the head of the chemical company, calls on Charlie Chan, fearing a "secret enemy." The chemical, a variation of perchloric acid which can be used as a weapon, was produced in a partnership with Castanaro and Von Scherbe, On the morning that Chan is to meet with LaFontanne, Castanaro and Von Scherbe show up at the office and demand that LaFontanne sign an agreement that ensures that, if one of the partners dies, the others will get his share of the profits. He is reluctant but does eventually sign. Then, LaFontanne has a new visitor: Oscar Swenstrom, the inventor of the chemical, who feels cheated by the partners because he won't get a share of the profits. LaFontanne's secretary (and niece) Rene calls the cops, but by the time they get there, LaFontanne, who went into his office to listen to a radio concert, is found dead, possibly of a heart attack. When Chan arrives, he figures out that poison gas was actually the culprit, but how it happened and who did it are unclear. There end up being four parties of interest: 1) the remaining partners; 2) Grock and Pereaux (and a woman who calls herself the Countess) who are after the formula for the chemical; 3) Swenstrom (and his opera singing wife whom we never meet but who is mentioned more than once); 4) the niece Rene who had a chunk of the partnership, and the office manager Thompson who is Rene’s tagalong buddy. Chan is on the case with help from the cops—and hindrance from his son Tommy and chauffeur Birmingham Brown.

The generally accepted Charlie Chan film canon consists of over forty films made between 1931 and 1949. Three different actors played Chan. The first and best known is Warner Oland; after his death, Sidney Toler took over, followed by Roland Winters. Winters, who seemed the least yellowface Chan. is often regarded as the least of the three (partly because his movies, made by Monogram, had the lowest budgets, sometimes being shot is just a week or so), but in an attempt to look at him with fresh eyes, I found that he's not bad. He doesn't have the spark that Oland had, but he also is less lethargic than Toler was—Toler did his last few Chan films while suffering with cancer, but even before that, Toler was not terribly energetic. In this, the second of six Chan films that Winters starred in, he tries to follow the Oland template of quiet dignity with occasional subtle snark directed at those who underestimate Chan's talents. Black comic actor Manan Moreland played Birmingham in several Chan movies, and despite usually being depicted as scared and bumbling, he is usually a highlight of the films, as he is here. His interplay with Victor Sen Yung (as Tommy, also a bungler) is fun—they even get to do a short song, "The Chop Suey Boogie," on violin and piano. He also does a funny double-talk bit with Haywood Jones (fine in the only movie he ever made). The rest of the cast is adequate, mostly a bunch of middle-aged white guys in suits and hats who can be difficult to distinguish from each other. John Gallaudet is good as the police captain, as are Virginia Dale (Rene) and Rory Mallinson (Thompson). If you're familiar with the concept of Chekhov's gun, the opera singing wife who sings on the radio is the Chekhov's gun here. There's not a lot of action but the clever climax plays out nicely. The movie is basically an uncredited remake of MR. WONG DETECTIVE, an earlier Monogram movie. Best lines: one impatient character, wanting Chan to cut to the chase, says, "Forget the parables, Chan!" and later, "Never mind the platitudes, Chan, talk!" Of course, Chan wouldn't be Chan without those platitudes and parables. More Roland Winters coming up soon. Pictured are Moreland, Winters and Sen Yung. [DVD]