STATE FAIR (1933)

A basic plot description of this movie sounds unbearably corny: A rural family spends a week at the State Fair; Dad hopes his hog wins a prize, Mom hopes her pickles and mincemeat win prizes, and the son and daughter hope for some romance and excitement--and everyone gets pretty much exactly what he or she wants. In fact, the 1945 musical remake is too corny and glossy for its own good, but this version (based on a novel) works surprisingly well, largely due to fine acting all around. Will Rogers, a top box-office draw at the time, plays the father in his usual laconic fashion, with his cynical sarcasm almost totally (but not quite) absent. Louise Dresser (the crazy Duke's mother in THE SCARLET EMPRESS) plays the clucking mother at perfect pitch. Their son, Norman Foster, meets up with a sexy carnival dancer (Sally Eilers), has a brief affair, and is let down gently by the worldly but kindly woman. This being a pre-Code film, their affair is presented plainly and unapologetically as sexual in nature--it's refreshingly honest but not vulgar. The daughter, played by Janet Gaynor, another big star of the early 30's, has a boring boyfriend at home, but runs around at the fair with a dashing newspaperman (Lew Ayers). The only real suspense is generated by this pair: Will Ayers give up his freedom for a simple, down-home gal? The fair is presented as a kind of liminal place where anything can happen, and the kind of excitement that such a fair had for much of the population back then is palpable, another strength of the film, even though many scenes set at the fair are clearly shot against rear projection footage. Also with Victor Jory and Frank Craven. Norman Foster went on to direct several Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan films and some episodes of the Batman and Green Hornet TV shows of the 60's. The food prize sequence could have benefited from more development, but is rushed through to give more time to Rogers' hog's shenanigans. Light and satisfying, much better than the later musical version, despite the presence in that film of some fine Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. [FMC]

NEW MOON (1940)

Many years ago, I watched an Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy operetta, didn’t care for it, and decided I didn't need to see anything else of that ilk, but I finally broke down during TCM's recent festival of musicals and watched this one. Surprisingly, it was painless and even rather entertaining. Eddy is a French duke who has been arrested for "singing seditious ditties" and as punishment is shipped out of France to New Orleans as a bonded servant. MacDonald is a rich lady who, on the same ship as Eddy, mistakes him for an officer and does a little flirting. Coincidentally, her estate manager buys Eddy as a house servant and their relationship, after a rocky start, develops at the same time that Eddy is planning a servant's revolt aboard the ship New Moon. In another wild coincidence, Eddy and his men wind up taking over a ship with McDonald and a bunch of mail-order brides. The ship wrecks on an island and the motley group of ladies and pirates learn to get along, as do Eddy and MacDonald. Eventually, the French attack, but news of the French Revolution gets through just in time to save the day and allow our couple to be happy ever after. The plot is silly, though I enjoyed the echoes of SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS in the island sequence, and Eddy is completely unbelievable as a dashing romantic figure, but he sings the famous "Stouthearted Men" quite nicely. MacDonald's "One Kiss" is a standout, as is their duet, "Wanting You," which is shot beautifully in the woods. With the leads being rather bland, it's left to the supporting players to add some spice to the film, which they do. Mary Boland, the nutty countess in THE WOMEN, is good as MacDonald's aunt; also shining in smaller roles are George Zucco, Grant Mitchell, and H.B. Warner. John Miljan is one of Eddy's more lively buddies, and Sara Edwards has a short but funny bit as a gossipy bitch who wants to buy Eddy from MacDonald. [TCM]

Two Pre-Code Doctors

MEN IN WHITE (1934) has Clark Gable as a promising intern who is torn between continuing to work long hours with his mentor (Jean Hersholt) and spending more time with his socialite finacee (Myrna Loy). Gable may have served as the archetype for many of the movie doctors who came later: he's charming and handsome, and when there's a conflict between him and an older, more established doctor (in this movie, the sinister C. Henry Gordon), the younger doctor is always right. When duty calls and Gable breaks a dinner date, Loy gives him the cold shoulder and Gable finds a night of comfort in the arms of an understanding nurse (Elizabeth Allan). Later, the pregnant and single Allan falls ill, Gable cannot save her, and Loy realizes she must give him up to his career. The film is well directed, especially Allan's hospital bed death scene and Gable's confrontation with Gordon; Gable is quite good, as he usually was in his 30's movies, though it’s a shame that Loy doesn't have more to do. Wallace Ford is a frivolous intern and Otto Kruger is an older doctor whose wife is dying of TB. There's a very nice art deco hospital office that looks like it belongs in an Astaire/Rogers musical. The movie was released just a few months before the Production Code was enforced. Most sources say that the movie runs 80 minutes, but the print that TCM shows is apparently a re-release version, running 75 minutes, with at least one obvious trim; at one point, an intern says, "We should eat, drink, and make merry," and there's a cut to a woman answering a telephone, saying, "This is Mary speaking," but her line has been erased in the TCM print. One bawdy line that made it through is an intern's complaint: "That's the trouble with love--it ruins your sex life." The plight of the pregnant nurse is unclear; we have to guess from the coded language that she's pregnant, and it’s not clear at all what she dies of. [TCM]

THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET (1931) isn't strictly speaking a doctor movie (though Jean Hersholt once again plays a doctor), but a melodrama from the well-worn "suffering mother" genre. Helen Hayes is the title character, whom we first see as a young French girl who leaves the countryside for Paris with American Neil Hamilton; he goes back to the States to attend to family business and never returns; Hayes has a baby and tries to get farmer Alan Hale to marry her, but he doesn't want to be burdened with a child. She is befriended by older friend Lewis Stone and spends some time in decent conditions as a kept woman, but it turns out that Stone is a notorious jewel thief and when he's caught, he kills himself and she gets 10 years in jail as an accomplice. When released, she becomes a petty thief and a streetwalker, sending as much money as she can to her child, being raised in a orphanage. Years later, the son (Robert Young) is a successful doctor. Hayes, ill and aged beyond her years, has been keeping track of his progress and when their paths cross, he doesn't recognize her, though he does arrange for her to get medical attention. The story is told as a flashback by Hersholt to Young's fiancee (Karen Morley) who has been behaving like Myrna Loy, but she sees things in a new light and decides to stand by her man, even though Young still doesn't know that kindly old Hayes is his mother. It's a creaky and predictable plot, a variation of which is used in the more popular MADAME X, and its short length and episodic nature work against it, but Hayes is worth seeing. Cliff Edwards and Charles Winninger have small supporting roles, and the underrated child actor Frankie Darro is Hayes' son as a boy. [TCM]

CONFIDENTIAL AGENT (1945)

I'm not usually impressed with Charles Boyer but he's very good in this underrated spy thriller set in 1937 which uses the Spanish Civil War as its background, though all the action takes place in London. Boyer is a retired concert pianist who has enlisted with the Republicans in Spain against Franco's fascists; his job is to broker a deal with the British coal industry to buy a substantial amount of coal for his side, and to keep it out of the hands of the fascists (embodied here by the always slickly sinister Victor Francen) who need it badly. Upon his arrival in London, he winds up involved with young snobbish socialite Lauren Bacall, who is coincidentally the daughter of a coal company boss. At first, their relationship is rather rocky, but soon she comes to realize the importance of his mission and, impressed with his determination, she helps him to escape police, other spies, and even her own father to fulfill his duty. Bacall was barely 21 and this was only her third film (though it was released before her second film, THE BIG SLEEP); many critics were tough on her, and the performance does seem to be an overly mannered one at first, but we're meant to see the character change and grow, and I think she does a good job, though she doesn't even try to do a British accent. Boyer is just right as an idealistic man into things a little over his head. A wonderful supporting cast includes Katrina Paxinou as a Republican hotel owner who betrays her side quite viciously, Peter Lorre as her accomplice, Ian Wolfe as the slightly wacky inventor of a made-up language called Entrenationo, Wanda Hendrix as a young hotel maid, George Coulouris as a man with an artificial hand who may or may not be a suspicious character, and Dan Seymour as a odd little Hindu man who takes copious notes on the behavior of everyone around him, who also may or may not be sinister. Much of the film has a noirish feel, with most scenes occurring at night and in thick fog. It's a bit long, dragging in the middle, but it's well worth a viewing. [TCM]

THE HOUSE ON 56th STREET (1933)

An average "long suffering heroine" melodrama from the heyday of the genre. Kay Francis is a chorus girl with two admirers: an older sugar daddy (John Halliday) and a younger but still well-off man (Gene Raymond). She agrees to marry Raymond and they live in the big house of the movie title. Halliday takes the rejection OK, but years later, when he has only a short time to live, he confronts her and asks her to return to him. She rejects him again, so he pulls out a gun and threatens to kill himself. Francis struggles with him and the gun goes off, killing Halliday. She is found guilty of manslaughter and put away for 20 years. When she gets out, her husband is dead (in WWI) and her grown daughter (Margaret Lindsay) has been told that Francis died in prison. Her mother-in-law agrees to give her a cash settlement to start a new life, but refuses to let her make contact with her daughter. Francis, whom we're told has a gambling problem, meets up with a oceangoing card sharp (Ricardo Cortez) and they pair up to fleece people, eventually getting a job in New York at a speakeasy that is opening up in the old mansion that once belonged to Francis and her husband. When Lindsay shows up and recklessly loses a lot of money, she winds up shooting Cortez. Francis is ready to take the rap, but the speakeasy boss agrees to cover things up as long as she will stay with him in the house on 56th Street forever. She agrees, escaping punishment in a pre-Code plot twist that would have been impossible a year later. The plot and acting are fine, but because the movie is so short (under 70 minutes), the first half is underdeveloped and rushed through. It is mentioned that Raymond and his rich mother were estranged at one time, but nothing is made of it, as though it were a subplot that got cut before release. Similarly, we know that Francis' father was a riverboat gambler but her gambling past is dealt with in basically one line of dialogue. It wasn't clear to me why Francis couldn't explain her way out of the manslaughter charges better--I guess because then the movie would only be 40 minutes long. Stalwart Warners comic player Frank McHugh gets co-star billing, but only has a couple of scenes early on. Francis and Cortez are the reasons to watch this; both are good doing what they do best: for Francis, wearing lovely costumes and suffering; for Cortez, being an attractive slimeball. [TCM]

THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT (1967)

Dr. Strangelove gone psychedelic (and a little gay). This is one of those crazy 60's movies that you watch slack-jawed, wondering, what the hell were they thinking? It's set in the near future (1972) and begins as a military plane is flying over Europe carrying two nuclear bombs and a mysterious "McGuffin" box of some very dangerous material (think Doomsday Device by way of the Mickey Spillane noir classic KISS ME DEADLY). With a crash imminent, the pilots must carefully deposit themselves and their deadly cargo via parachutes on a small Greek island. The two men (Colin Blakely and Tom Courtney), clad only in skimpy wet (and increasingly dirty) underpants, scamper about the rocky island trying to contact their NATO superiors while at the same time staying hidden from the populace--the fact that they can't come up with a semi-plausible excuse for their state of undress is ridiculous. Unknown to the pilots, a group of military men, thinking the pilots are dead, move in to reclaim the weapons; they claim to be hotel developers, which allows them to scatter all over the island in their search. They dress up in outrageously tight and colorful tourist garb and are assumed to be gay by some of the villagers, and eventually by Blakely, who doesn't realize that these are the men he's trying to contact. Meanwhile, all the activity causes unwanted attention from real tourists who come to the island by the boatload, including archeologist and half-hearted dominatrix Candice Bergen who carries on a brief fling with soldier Ian Ogilvy. The two bombs are discovered by the military, but the box is found and pried open by a shepherd and his wife who, finding only odd shiny spheres, throw the contents in the ocean (and, by accident, into the island's water supply). In the last few minutes, a coming apocalypse is signaled by the huge numbers of dead fish bobbing in the water, and the heedless islanders and tourists dance away that last moments of their lives, as a voice shrieks over a megaphone, "Pay attention, please!"--a heavy symbolic touch that reminds me of the end of some Spike Lee movies when characters go about yelling, "Wake up!!" Not surprisingly, none of this really comes together, but the costumes and wild frugging of the tourists are fun to watch for a few minutes, as are the underdressed pilots. Bergen is totally wasted, as is the usually dignified Sam Wanamaker as the head military man. Very tough to sit through; recommended only for die-hard fans of 60's cinema. [FMC]

Two B-Westerns

LAND BEYOND THE LAW (1937)
I watched this out of curiosity about the "singing cowboy" subgenre (in this one, the musical hero is Dick Foran) and because it has Wayne Morris in a supporting role, and I wound up enjoying this much more that I thought I would. The opening is pure bliss, as Dick and his men come riding into town singing about being the Circle Bar Boys and how they're gonna raise a little playful hell. It reminded me of something out of OKLAHOMA! There's only one other major number ("Whisper While You’re Waltzing") and a short song at the very end, so the singing part did not predominate. The film is set in Bitter Creek, a frontier town in New Mexico, which is largely a lawless state. The plot starts out as something out of LADY FOR A DAY, with the bar owner (Irene Franklin) cleaning things up and changing her establishment to a cafe (spelt "cafay" on her temporary sign) because her daughter (Linda Perry), who thinks her mother runs a respectable place, is arriving for a visit. But soon, a more traditional western plot, with rustlers trying to start a range war, takes over. Foran's father is killed and Foran enlists as sheriff to right the rustlers. Cy Kendall is the main bad guy. Foran is fine, and Wayne Morris is as handsome as he's ever been. At only an hour, this B-western was well worth the time. I'll have to catch some more of these the next time TCM airs them.

VALLEY OF HUNTED MEN (1942)
This is actually a WWII spy movie done up as a western. It's one entry in a long series of B-films featuring the Three Mesquiteers, WWI buddies who work together on a ranch in Wyoming. The line-up over some fifty movies varied; here, it's Tucson Smith (Bob Steele), Stony Brooke (Tom Tyler) and Lullaby Joslin (Jimmie Dodd). Kindly German scientist Edward Van Sloan is conducting experiments to help expand the rubber crop for the Allied war effort. Some ranchers are suspicious of him, especially after three Nazi spies escape from a Canadian jail and wreck havoc in the area, trying to sabotage the experiments. There is death and disguise and heroism, along with a lesson about not being able to tell loyalty by a person's ethnic background. Jimmie Dodd was later better known as a regular on "The Mickey Mouse Club." [TCM]

REMEMBER THE DAY (1941)

A heart-warming movie with elements of GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, SUMMER OF '42, and the Andy Hardy movies. Claudette Colbert is an elderly schoolteacher who has come to a hotel in Washington to catch a glimpse of presidential candidate Dewey Roberts (Shepperd Strudwick), who was a student of hers 25 years earlier. As she waits in the lobby, she reminisces about 1916, a year that changed her life. Dewey is just a lad (Douglas Croft) at the end of his grammar school years, nursing a crush on his teacher, Colbert. Meanwhile, another teacher that Dewey idolizes (John Payne) meets Colbert and a romance develops. She goes off for the summer to a resort farm and Payne follows her, leading to a scandal, at least in the eyes of the school principal, so Payne leaves and joins the Canadian military. At Christmas, just before he is to be sent overseas to fight in WWI, Payne returns to marry Colbert, impulsively and in secret. Croft sees the two kissing and is distraught, leading to a tearful climax in which Colbert has to say goodbye to both her man and her student. The frame story, set in the present, has potential but isn't given much time to develop. Luckily, the bulk of the film works quite well, thanks to the strong performances of Colbert, Payne, and Croft. Ann Revere is a "spinster" schoolteacher who lives at the same boarding house as Colbert, and Frida Inescort has a small role as the adult Dewey's wife. Very sweet piece of Americana. [FMC]

CORREGIDOR (1943)

A Poverty Row war movie that tried to capitalize on the tragic real-life events in the Philippines in the early days of WWII. According to the book "Star Spangled Screen," the Office of War Information gave the film's studio, PRC, a great deal of help in making the film, but it doesn't show, partly because all the government help in the world couldn't overcome a lack of imagination in direction and writing, and partly because the movie isn't really a war story or even an effective war propaganda film, but is instead a run-of-the-mill romantic triangle between three army doctors. Ellisa Landi (best known as the Christian heroine of De Mille's SIGN OF THE CROSS) is a doctor who has flown out to the island of Manoi in early December of 1941 to marry her suitor (Otto Kruger); in the middle of the wedding ceremony, the Japanese bombard the island from the air and our couple winds up on Corregidor where they run into Landi's former beau, Donald Woods. There is apparently still some spark between Landi and Woods, but we have to take that on faith since their bland acting (and, to be fair, weak writing) gives us little to go on for character motivation. Moderately more interesting is the romantic subplot between nurse Wanda McKay and soldier Rick Vallin, who are less stiff in the acting department than the leads. Frank Jenks, a familiar face from dozens of 30's and 40's films, provides some strained comic relief. The contemporary audience would have known that all concerned were doomed, as the U.S. ultimately retreated and abandoned the island to the Japanese; here, Landi is evacuated on the last boat out and we assume that everyone else will die or be held as prisoners. The movie is supposed to have a stirring epilogue written by poet Alfred Noyes, but that was missing from the print I saw on the Marathon DVD--in fact, it looks like the entire last reel except for "The End" title card was gone, so this version has an incredibly uninspiring ending with soldiers in tears hearing about the retreat. There is some newsreel footage of Japanese bombers, and some poorly done scenes of hand-to-hand combat in the jungles. Kruger has an inane grin on his face all the time, so whether he's happy, sad, or in love, he just comes off as stupefied. Landi looks like a drab Katharine Hepburn and isn't much better than Kruger. Both have given decent performances elsewhere, so I have to blame the director, William Nigh. Edgar Ulmer co-wrote the screenplay. Even as a fan of B-movie war propaganda, I was sorely disappointed in this. [DVD]

THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE (1947)

Good example of a British film noir. Trevor Howard plays a former RAF flier who drifts into a life of crime, joining a gang of black marketeers (headed by Griffin Jones) who use the Valhalla funeral home as a front for smuggling anything from booze to cigarettes. When Howard finds out they're also handling drugs, he decides to leave, but Jones frames him for the death of a policeman and he's sent away for 15 years. Howard manages to escape and work his way back to London to get revenge on Jones. The movie has an undertone of dark comedy, such as a scene at the funeral home when Jones whistles "Silent Night" as his gang members hide in empty coffins. One such scene turns from comic to serious: while on the run, Howard breaks into a rural home to get food and clothes, and the wife, instead of being scared, tries to get him to kill her alcoholic husband. He declines, but after he leaves, she goes through with the murder and pins it on Howard. Sally Gray plays Jones' rejected girlfriend, a chorus girl who winds up helping Howard. Sebastian Cabot can be seen in a small role as a bar owner. All the acting is fine; the older woman who plays the funeral home director is especially good--I think the actress's name is Mary Marrell, but I'm having a hard time confirming that. However, Jones is astonishing, in a role that is 180 degrees away from his usual light, upper-class characters. Here, a mean glare disfigures his usually handsome looks; he's a brutal sadist, particularly to women, and comes off just short of psychopathic. The climatic fight between Jones and Howard takes place on the funeral home rooftop, around gigantic R.I.P. letters. The ending (spoiler ahead!!) is not so predictable: Jones dies after falling from the roof, but with his dying breath, he continues to insist that Howard killed the cop, and all other witnesses are either dead or unreliable. Howard is taken away and there is a glimmer of hope when the inspector notes that they will continue to investigate the case to come up with new facts to help clear Howard, but his fate remains ambiguous. Recommended. [DVD]

SUSAN LENOX: HER FALL AND RISE (1931)

I've seen several Greta Garbo films and I just do not get her appeal, beyond her rather icy sensuality. This film begins promisingly, with the first few years of Garbo's life conveyed almost entirely by shadows against a wall. Her mother, a young unmarried woman, dies giving birth; the woman's father (Jean Hersholt) wants the baby to be left for dead, but the doctor refuses. The girl (Garbo) grows up under the thumb of the unloving Hersholt, and when he plans to marry her off to an older, drunken brute (Alan Hale) who tries to rape her, she runs away and meets up with engineer Clark Gable. The two fall quickly fall in love, but when Hersholt finds her, she runs away on a train and joins up with a circus as a coochie dancer. By the time Gable catches up with her, she has become, against her will, the kept woman of the circus owner and Gable, disgusted, leaves her. Her "fall and rise" commence as she does some serious whoring, eventually getting out of the gutter (where Gable told her she belonged) and into a penthouse as the mistress of a politician (Hale Hamilton). Once again, she and Gable meet up and once again, he misunderstands her situation and storms off. Garbo leaves Hamilton and follows Gable down to a rough Central American country, this time as a dancer (but not a whore) at a dive bar; a rich American man offers her security, but she waits for Gable, by now a drunken wreck, to come upon her one more time. Of course, the third time's the charm. This is the kind of overwrought melodrama that Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg could do in their sleep, but Garbo and her director, Robert Z. Leonard, can't pull it off. Leonard does throw in some nice stylistic touches (the shadows, some effective camera moves) and the sets are elaborate, but Garbo never gets further than skin deep into her character. Gable is good, smoldering and using mannerisms that wore well through his career, right up to and including Rhett Butler, but the two don't set off many sparks together. Cecil Cunningham has some fun as the circus tattooed lady. Not terrible, but nothing special, except for fans of the stars. [TCM]

KONGO (1932)

This wild and brutal jungle melodrama is close to being an archetypal pre-Code film, in manner and theme if not setting. Walter Huston plays a scarred and crippled big-game hunter who ruthlessly rules a small African village by virtue of his guns, his magic tricks, and his cohorts (who include Lupe Velez, later the Mexican Spitfire in a B-movie series of the 40's). He is confined to a wheelchair because of an encounter with another hunter (C. Henry Gordon) who had an affair with Huston's wife and crushed Huston's spine in a fight (and, according to Huston, sneered while doing so--Huston has the phrase "He sneered" on his wall). Now, Huston is putting the final touches on his long-planned revenge; he gets Virginia Bruce, Gordon's daughter (who was born of Huston's wife but apparently fathered by Gordon), out of a convent where she has been raised, has her taken to Singapore and forced into prostitution, then brought to Africa to be shown in her degraded state to Gordon. A doctor (Conrad Nagel) stumbles onto the scene, drugged out from chewing a wild leaf; Huston gets him under his thumb and forces him to operate to relieve some of the pain Huston still feels in his useless legs. Nagel falls in love with Bruce and conspires to help her escape, but Huston has other plans: once Gordon arrives, Huston will show him his miserable daughter, kill him, and let the villagers sacrifice the girl.

This is the very definition of unsavory material, but I mean that as a compliment here. The intensity of the performances, the unhealthy and grimy look of the surroundings (there's one particularly grotesque scene of Nagel stripped and plunged into a pond of leeches), and the perversity of the situation work together to give this a unique feel, matched in the early 30's only by the slightly less perverse SAFE IN HELL. Huston is powerful; it must have been tempting to go over the top with this melodramatic character, but Huston keeps a lid on his simmering performance which makes it all the more effective. Bruce is equally effective; when we first see her, she is a lovely blond angel, but when she arrives in Africa, she truly looks dissolute and diseased. The only false note is struck by Nagel, who is good when he's doped up, but is a little too sleekly Hollywoodish when sober and falling for Bruce. The climax has a nice little narrative twist which the viewer can probably guess ahead of time, but it still plays out well. Based on a Lon Chaney silent film, WEST OF ZANZIBAR. Highly recommended. [TCM]

GIRL CRAZY (1932)

This Gershwin musical was filled with 16 tunes (including the classics "I Got Rhythm," "But Not for Me," and "Embraceable You") when it ran on Broadway and made a star out of Ethel Merman, but when RKO brought it to the screen, they got rid of all but three songs (and had George Gershwin add a new one) and turned it into a slapstick vehicle for the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. The plot of the movie (which may or may not be the same as the stage play) is negligible: a playboy (handsome juvenile Eddie Quillan) is sent out west by his father to live on a ranch in order to cure his girl-craziness, but instead he turns the place into a dude ranch resort. Woolsey and his wife (Kitty Kelly--not the celeb biographer) head out to the ranch for jobs, driven in a taxi by Wheeler and his kid sister (Mitzi Green). There is tomfoolery involving sheriffs, romance, and hypnotism, some spicy pre-Code humor, and a happy ending for all, but as in most Marx Brothers movies, the plot is strictly secondary, with music mostly relegated to a distant third place. Wheeler and Woolsey are enjoyable, and the silly new song, "You Got What Gets Me," is fun, but it's a shame the great Gershwin score was treated so shabbily. "I Got Rhythm" has some good moments, with the club audience singing along and huge cactuses swaying to the beat, but Kelly's voice is harsh and not up to the song. Mitzi Green, only 12 at the time, does some spot-on imitations of stars like Edna May Oliver and Bing Crosby singing "But Not For Me." Arline Judge and Dorothy Lee are more than acceptable as romantic interests. The last 15 minutes consists of some well done knockabout farce. This is more lively than the Garland/Rooney version in the 40's, but probably only of interest to fans of Wheeler and Woolsey--see my review of HIPS HIPS HOORAY here. [TCM]

THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)

The movie that is widely considered to be the first talkie. It wasn't really; aside from a background score, the only time synchronized sound occurs is during musical numbers (like "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and "Mammy") some of which had a couple minutes worth of dialogue attached--the rest of the movie is silent, with title cards. However, it was the movie that proved to the Hollywood studios that talking pictures were not only feasible, but could be wildly popular. The plot concerns a Jewish boy, Jake Rabinowitz, whose father, a cantor at a synagogue, wants the boy to follow in his footsteps, but the boy, even at the young age of 13, knows he wants to sing "jazz" rather than sacred music--he already has a gig at a club under the name Ragtime Jakie. The cantor (Warner Oland) wants his son to sing "Kol Nidre" with him at a Yom Kippur service, but when the boy decides not to, the cantor gives him a whipping and the boy runs away. The adult Jakie (Al Jolson) ekes out a living singing in nightclubs (having changed his name to Jack Robin) and is discovered by singer May McAvoy. A romance keeps threatening to develop, but unless I missed something, it never really does. Jolson returns to New York years after his break with his family, about to make the big time as the star of a Broadway revue. His mother (Eugenie Besserer) is happy to see him, but Oland remains hard-hearted. The day of Jolson's Broadway opening also happens to be Yom Kippur, and with Oland on his deathbed, there's no one to sing "Kol Nidre" at the synagogue. Will Jolson stick with the show, or risk losing his big break in order to be reconciled with his father? The sentiment is piled on a bit thick, not just with the father, but also with the mother, who is torn between loyalty to her husband and wanting her son to have his wishes come true. Jolson was almost 40 when he made the movie, and looks way too old to be playing a young man getting his first break in show business. Oland is good as the cantor, and Jolson isn't bad, but Besserer engages in some of the most exaggerated silent acting I've ever seen. McAvoy, as the love interest, has little to do since the love story here is between Jolson and his parents. The best acting might be from teenager Bobby Gordon as the young Jakie. Blink and you'll miss Myrna Loy in a one-line part as a chorus girl. Historically important, but not required viewing, except for die-hard Jolson fans. [TCM]

WEREWOLF SHADOW (1972)

This Spanish horror film has been released under at least six different titles, with its most common one in the U.S. being THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN, but I'm using the title on the DVD that I watched. It's the first film I've seen by Paul Naschy, who is something of a minor legend among horror connoisseurs, and, though occasionally incoherent and shot in a rather slapdash fashion, it's good enough to make me want to hunt down some other Naschy films. Director Naschy plays Waldemar Daninsky, a werewolf character who crops up in several of his movies. This one begins with Naschy, dead on a coroner's slab; the doctors know he was rumored to be a werewolf but they remove the silver bullet that killed him anyway, and sure enough, he returns to snarling life and we get our first two deaths. Naschy then goes back to his decrepit castle (where he lives with his non-wolfen sister), and gets involved with two young women who are researching the legends of the vampire Countess Wandessa. Blood dripping from a cut (a la Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY) revives the dead Vampire Woman, who looks like a creepy bride dressed in black, and a reign of terror begins until Naschy joins in to stop it. Along the way, individual plot points don't always make a lot of sense, and traditional conventions about werewolves and vampires are discarded when inconvenient. Still, the movie has several good scenes and Naschy makes for a full-blooded werewolf, and in human form, a tormented "Dark Shadows"-type of anti-hero. Some dialogue scenes even feel like they came right out of an episode of Dark Shadows. The DVD from Anchor Bay is apparently the most complete version available. The original Spanish title is LA NOCHE DE WALPURGIS. [DVD]

Some Halloween Week Short Takes:

SHOCK (1946) is more of a psychological thriller than a horror film; a young woman (Anabel Shaw), already a bit on edge from waiting to meet her newly released POW-husband after 2 years, witnesses a murder and goes into shock. Vincent Price, the psychiatrist who is called in on her case, is the murderer (he killed his wife in a fit of rage), and when he realizes what she saw, he and his mistress (Lynn Bari) keep the woman committed and under sedation, but soon realize they'll have to kill her to keep her from talking. Competent B-movie with a nicely done dream sequence early on, and some good wicked scheming by Bari--oddly, Price actually underplays his part here in his first star-billing role, something he wouldn't do very often in the future. [FMC]

DR. CYCLOPS (1940) is a standard mad-scientist flick about a nearly-blind doctor (Albert Dekker) off in the jungles of Peru, tampering in God's domain by experimenting with, as one nearly hysterical person puts it, "the very nature of Life itself!" Actually, he's discovered a way to shrink living beings, and when a group of scientists arrive to help him, they wind up getting miniaturized and have to live by their wits to survive. Dekker is fine, looking suitably monomaniacal behind his Coke bottle glasses, but the rest of the cast is weak, particularly the deadly dull romantic leads (Thomas Coley and Janice Logan, who both left the movie business fairly quickly). What the movie has going for it is great special effects, as good and maybe better than those used 15 years later in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. Surprisingly, for a 75 minute B-movie, it’s in Technicolor and, after a few dicey moments at the beginning, the color looks quite good and proves an asset. I was a little disappointed seeing this again, as it didn't live up to my childhood memory of it, but it's worth catching. [AMC]

THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES (1966) is sometimes called the movie that re-energized the Zombie sub-genre, and may have been an influence on George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). Whether or not that's true, PLAGUE is certainly one of the better Hammer efforts from the mid-60's when they seemed to be throwing anything at the screen (gorgons, reptiles, kung fu vampires) and hoping they might start a franchise. Set in late 19th century England, the story concerns a wealthy squire (John Carson) who is killing off local peasants and resurrecting them as zombies, through a voodoo-like ritual, to work for him (shades of WHITE ZOMBIE). There is a great dream sequence, tinted green, of zombies digging themselves out of their graves. The narrative structure is similar to that of Lugosi's DRACULA, with a wife of one of the zombie hunters herself turned into a zombie. The day-for-night scenes are atrocious, as they always are in 60's horror films, and the cast is only adequate (again, par for the course), but it's still worth seeing, especially for Hammer fans. [DVD]

THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942)

When it came to horror, Fox was on the ball in 1942; in addition to the fine DR. RENAULT'S SECRET, they released this little gem directed by John Brahm who went on to make two excellent, somewhat higher-budgeted horror films for Fox (THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE) a couple years later. As you can probably tell from my previous reviews, I value atmosphere in horror, which I think can help a film overcome problems of low budget and weak writing. This has spooky atmosphere in spades, particularly at the beginning and end, which makes up for a draggy middle section. A Scotland Yard inspector (James Ellison) is called in to investigate a murder on the Hammond estate; a woman was mauled to death by some creature, and the master of the estate (John Howard) was hurt in the attack. There is a legend involving a Hammond man who committed suicide and a rhyming curse (something about not going around on a clear night when there's frost on the ground), and virtually every member of the household seems to know more than they let on about the legend and the attack: Was it a madman? A wild hound? A werewolf? The look, feel, and storyline all make this film feel like Fox's earlier Sherlock Holmes outing, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

The opening, with the camera panning about a large room to the rhythm of bells tolling midnight, sets the tone nicely. The sets (including a huge room with a multi-story stained glass window and a shadowy basement mausoleum) are effective, as is the creative camerawork by Lucien Ballard, who also worked for Josef von Sternberg and Stanley Kubrick. The acting, while not A-level, is not a liability, either. Howard and Heather Angel (as his sister) are quite good, as is Heather Thatcher as the comic relief Scotland Yard assistant (think of a louder, brassier Edna May Oliver). Bramwell Fletcher, the man driven crazy in the first few minutes of THE MUMMY, is a doctor friend of the Hammonds who seems to be hiding many secrets. Ellison makes for a drab leading man--he was mostly known for doing B-westerns--but there is reliable support from Halliwell Hobbes and Eily Malyon as creepy servants. I would say for an old-fashioned B-movie Halloween night, you couldn't do much better than watching this and DR. RENAULT'S SECRET back to back. [AMC]

THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with Ray Harryhausen movies. Actually, it's more like/dislike. His effects are always wonderful, and the movies usually sound like they'll be great fun, and often they begin well, but I'm always disappointed by the end; they wind up sunk by weak writing and acting. This is no exception, but it's probably my favorite Harryhausen movie, along with JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. It's like a western version of KING KONG, with a dash of JURASSIC PARK thrown in. James Franciscus is in Mexico, attempting to get his ex-girlfriend Gila Golan to quit a decrepit Wild West show and join his (not so decrepit, one assumes), but she's got an ace up her sleeve: a living miniature prehistoric horse that she's purchasing from a group of local gypsies. The creature comes from the Forbidden Valley, and of course, everyone winds up searching the Valley for more money-making discoveries. A legendary giant dinosaur is captured and brought to the show, but as all Kong fans will figure out immediately, plans will go awry when the beast, Gwangi, gets loose and wrecks havoc in a small Mexican town. Richard Carlson is the bad guy, Lawrence Naismith is the scientist, and Freda Jackson (the old maid in BRIDES OF DRACULA) is the Maria Ouspenskaya stand-in, warning everyone early on that there are things with which we should not tamper. The dinosaur roping scene is excellent, as is the climax, with Gwangi's reign of destruction ended in a ruined cathedral. Franciscus and Carlson have more chemistry as rivals than Franciscus and Golan do as romantic partners. A bit better than its reputation suggests, but best approached with lowered expectations. [DVD]

THE LOVES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE (1942)

This B-movie biopic (which is definitely not a horror film, but is still appropriate October viewing) isn't able to overcome its budget problems but it has its moments. Shepperd Strudwick (billed under his birth name, John Shepperd) plays Poe, who seems to have been an unhappy wretch for most of his adult life. His birth mother dies and he is adopted by the Allans; the mother (Mary Howard) is loving, but the father (Frank Conroy), who won't make Poe his legal heir, is distant and ultimately refuses to support Poe when he goes away to college. Virginia Gilmore is Poe's childhood sweetheart who winds up marrying another man (Hardie Albright) in Poe's absence. Poe stays with his aunt (Jane Darwell) while working as a writer and editor, but because he insists on fighting for extensions of copyrights, his career is derailed. He marries his cousin (Linda Darnell) and is happy for a time, but drinking and gambling soon wear him down, as does his wife's illness. The focus of the film (as announced in the title) doesn't allow for much concern for Poe's famous literary works, except for one scene that shows him reading "The Raven" to some printers. Harry Morgan (Col. Potter in MASH) is a chum of Poe's; Morton Lowery is Charles Dickens (an ally in the copyright fight); Gilbert Emery is Thomas Jefferson, president of Poe's college. The movie has a glossy look, but the writing and some of the acting betray its B status. [FMC]

REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)

This has a reputation as one of the worst horror movies of the classic movie era, and it is pretty bad, though I found it somewhat pleasurable on a "so bad it's kinda good" level. I'd love to see what the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 guys would have done with this. A plot summary makes it sound much more exciting than it is. During WWI, a Cambodian priest leads a zombie brigade for the Allies, but refuses to give up the secret for making and controlling the zombies, so a group of British soldiers and archaeologists heads to Angkor to see what they can find. Nothing much comes of the trip, but the single-minded Armand (Dean Jagger) manages to stumble on the secret formula, creates a horde of zombies he enslaves for his own use--to get the girl of his dreams--and is eventually killed by his slaves. The single best moment is very early on, when we see the zombie soldiers in action; it's all downhill from there. Most of the movie consists of choppy dialogue scenes (we're almost always told rather than shown what's happening) that are badly set up and end awkwardly as though the director forgot to yell "Cut!" (One scene fades out as an actor is still speaking his lines.)

Jagger is pretty good, giving an eccentric but effective intensity to his role, but the rest of the acting is terrible, done almost entirely by non-professionals who didn't make many (or any) other movies. Jagger's romantic rival, Robert Noland, gives one of the worst acting performances I've seen, with Dorothy Stone as the girl coming in a close second. The story gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "plot loophole"; in the war scene, it's implied that the soldiers are actually the dead returned to life, but Jagger's zombies are just people under a strong hypnotic spell. How they get that way is unclear--it involves the smoke of some powder being wafted their way, but also some ambiguous ability on the controller's part to activate his "third eye" to bring the zombies under his power. There is one potentially interesting theme in the film: Nowland points out to Jagger that he is a soft, passive man who lets others ride roughshod over him, and suggests that Jagger needs a bit of ruthlessness in his personality. When he gains the power to "zombify," he does indeed become ruthless, but this idea doesn't really get developed. There is a long trek through a swamp done in front of rear projection--at first, it just looks miserably phony, but as it goes on and on, it takes on a sort of surreal atmosphere (I'm being generous here). The director, Victor Halperin, did the earlier low-budget WHITE ZOMBIE, which had two things that helped it transcend its grade Z budget: a creepy atmosphere and Bela Lugosi. Neither of those things are present here, although according to reference sources, it's shots of Lugosi's eyes from the previous film that we see when Jagger starts commanding his zombies. Lovers of bad Poverty Row cinema need to see this one; all others, beware! [DVD]

CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970)

The American International horror flicks of the 60's and 70's are a mixed bag, but for horror fans, they are usually worth sitting through once. This one, seemingly an attempt to challenge Hammer Studios' period horror movies, is one of their better efforts. In 16th Century England, Vincent Price is a town magistrate who delights in witch hunting, even as he tells worried villagers that a supposed devil wolf roaming the area is just a mangy dog. His sons are hunky but sadistic brats who love to molest women--three women have their blouses torn open in the first fifteen minutes, making this a literal bodice-ripper of a tale! Price breaks up a meeting of witches led by Elisabeth Bergner (Olivier's Rosalind in the 1936 AS YOU LIKE IT); some are killed and Bergner puts a curse on Price's family. She conjures up a "sidhe," or banshee, a spirit that takes over Roderick (Patrick Mower), a D.H. Lawrence life-force guy who seems to be able to communicate with animals and is also bedding Price's daughter (Hilary Dwyer). After much pillage and murder, Price thinks he has escaped the curse, but there's a creepy and nicely handled final twist, which helps make up for some big plot loopholes. Quite atmospheric throughout, with lots of dimly lit castle rooms, fog, and gravestones with human faces carved on them. Bergner's craft is presented as an amalgam of Wicca, Druidism, Satanism, and voodoo; the split between the "old religion" and rationality is a theme that is brought up but mostly ignored. The credit sequence was produced by Terry Gilliam, just before his Monty Python days. An unexpectedly interesting little gem for a stormy October night. [DVD]

THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959)

On her wedding night, Beverly Garland's husband (Richard Crane) ditches her in the middle of a honeymoon train ride. Frantic, Garland can't dig up much information about him, but she does find out that his last known address is a mansion in the middle of the Bayou. The cranky old matriarch (Frieda Inescort) is no help at first, but eventually Garland finds out that Crane, who had been seriously injured in an airplane crash some months ago, recovered through the use of an unorthodox treatment (from research doctor George Macready) involving serum derived from alligators, and now Crane seems to be turning into an alligator himself, as are a couple of other research subjects at the mansion. This a straightforward B-film which looks better than most of the time because it was shot in Cinemascope, and perhaps because it was released by a major studio (Fox). The acting is fine, and even Lon Chaney Jr. does a nice job as a shambling idiot who hates gators because one tore off his hand (he's basically Cletus, the Hook-Handed and Ill-Tempered Yokel). The setting is atmospheric and the shadowy cinematography is great; the make-up is good early on, although by the climax, the complete alligator man is far more silly looking than scary. There is a strange framing device--the story is told by Garland under hypnosis; apparently she has had all memory of her past experience shocked out of her and has been living under a new identity; a psychiatrist (Bruce Bennett, who was a pretty good Tarzan in a movie serial in the 30's) has to decide if her hypnosis story is true, and whether or not she should be made aware of her previous life. OK but not essential viewing. [FMC]

DEAD MEN WALK (1943)

One of the better"Poverty Row" movies I've seen, with a great October atmosphere and a fine performance by George Zucco in a dual role. The plot is essentially an uncredited rewrite of the Lugosi DRACULA, with the angry villagers of FRANKENSTEIN thrown in for good measure. We first see Zucco as Dr. Lloyd Clayton, attending the funeral of his brother Elwyn (also Zucco--the shot of Zucco looking down into the casket at himself, before we know what's going on, provides a nice "Twilight Zone" shock). Elwyn was the wicked brother, who spent his days searching out and studying arcane occult texts; Lloyd, the good brother, actually killed Elwyn, throwing him off a cliff during an argument, though it's never quite made clear if it was an accident (as the townsfolk assume) or on purpose. At any rate, thanks to his devil-worshiping ways, Elwyn returns from the dead as a vampire to prey on his niece (Mary Carlisle). No one believes Kate (Fern Emmett), the crazy old lady who goes around telling anyone who'll listen that Elwyn is still around and up to no good, until the niece starts suffering from the time-honored effects of Elwyn's nightly vampire visits. Carlisle's drab boyfriend (Nedrick Young) teams up with Lloyd to fight the undead fiend. Zucco, who was doing supporting parts in A and B level movies in addition to his starring roles in these ultra-low budget shockers, does a great job and there are some nice split-screen effects used. Some critics might say that Zucco is a bit campy, but since almost no one else in the movie acts much at all (especially the terrible Young), Zucco has to carry the film, and he does. Dwight Frye, playing a hunchbacked variation on his Renfield role from DRACULA, tries hard, but he looks tired and bloated before his time--I didn't even recognize him at first--and indeed he died a few months after finishing the movie. Lost of shadowy atmosphere helps, and the climax, with the two brothers duking it out in a room that's on fire while the townspeople watch from outside, is very nicely done. [DVD]

THE GHOUL (1934)

For many years, this film was only available in choppy, murky prints, but last year MGM put it out on DVD with a fresh print found in England. The good news is that it looks fantastic, like it was just filmed yesterday. The bad news is that this DVD makes it clear that the movie is only so-so. It's the first film which was released with an "H" (for Horror) rating in England, but it's really more an "old dark house" thriller with a vaguely supernatural atmosphere. Boris Karloff is a dying Egyptologist who believes he has the secret to eternal life. He has a rare jewel bandaged into his hand just before he dies, and is buried in a vault with a large statue of an Egyptian god. He thinks he will rise up, place the jewel in the statue's hand, and life forever. But while Karloff is on his deathbed, his servant (Ernest Thesiger) steals the jewel. After Karloff's interment, a houseful of acquaintances, relatives, and jewel-searchers converge upon the house, including Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Richardson, Kathleen Harrison, and a bland romantic couple (Anthony Bushnell and Dorothy Hyson). Karloff does indeed rise up and goes looking for the jewel; this would seem to be a supernatural occurrence, but an unlikely "rational" solution is thrown in, in a short dialogue scene that looks like it was added at the last minute. The chief villain turns out to be Richardson, and the climax, with he and the couple stuck inside Karloff's vault when a fire breaks out, is well done. The first few minutes, as Karloff is dying, are very atmospheric and as creepy as anything in a Universal horror classic, but the rest of the movie doesn't come close to living up to that. Still, definitely worth a look. [DVD]

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961)

This Irwin Allen sci-fi adventure movie became the basis for a mid-60's TV show which I fondly remember, along with "The Outer Limits" and "Johnny Quest," as fueling my interest in science fiction when I was growing up. Walter Pidgeon is commander of the Seaview, an experimental atomic submarine. While under the sea on a test run with lawmakers and a reporter on board, the Van Allen radiation belt catches fire, threatening the entire aboveground world. Pidgeon thinks his ship can fire missiles at the belt to stop the fire, and when the U.N. is too slow to approve his action, he takes off himself to give it a shot. Pidgeon is supposed to be seen as a single-minded zealot, and he does have his opponents on board (including a mysterious person who is out to sabotage the mission), but he's generally too rational and bland to be viewed as dangerous by anyone, or even particularly compelling to the viewer. The supporting cast includes Joan Fontaine, Peter Lorre, Frankie Avalon (who sings the lovely theme song!), John Litel, and Barbara Eden, though this isn't really an actor's movie and none of them get much of a chance to shine. I also recognized Howard McNear, who played Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show. The DVD print is pristine and colorful and some of the effects are good, but it's best if you don't think too much about the science involved. This had a bigger budget than the TV series, but the series was more fun. [DVD]

THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND (1936)

An excellent if little-known horror film, one of the few that Karloff did in his native England after he hit the big time with Universal in the USA. Karloff is a scientist who has developed a method to switch the "thought content" of beings from one body to another. We see a successful experiment in which he switches the "thoughts" of a passive monkey and an aggressive monkey, and Lord Haslewood (Frank Cellier) offers him financial backing to continue his work, but during a conference of scientists, Karloff is ridiculed and Cellier reneges on his agreement. This sends Karloff over the edge and for revenge he puts Cellier's brain into the body of Karloff's crippled assistant (Donald Calthorp) and vice versa. This is roughly the halfway point in the story, and a twist follows that I don't want to reveal--suffice to say that plans go astray (as mad scientist's plans are wont to do), leading to death and destruction. There is the requisite romantic couple (John Loder and Anna Lee) who get involved, though they come off as rather bland and difficult to care about compared to the other characters. The ending is too pat for its own good, but that doesn't ruin the movie. Cellier is particularly good in what amounts to a dual role, first as the high-class Haslewood and then as Haslewood with the cripple's brain. As usual, Karloff is fine, doing one of the first of his B-movie mad scientist roles that would end up typecasting him. This one rarely shows up on cable, but is available on DVD, and would be perfect viewing for a creepy October evening. (Also known as THE MAN WHO LIVED AGAIN.) [DVD]

A DATE WITH THE FALCON (1941) & THE FALCON'S BROTHER (1942)

These two Falcon movies, the second and fourth in the series, provide a nice contrast between the two different actors who played the character. DATE has George Sanders playing Gay Lawrence, the original Falcon, a wealthy bachelor who informally helps the police investigate crimes--I did a Google search on the character and the descriptive phrase that came up most often was "freelance troubleshooter." A scientist who was about to sell his formula for creating perfect synthetic diamonds is kidnapped and later found dead. Sanders is dragged away from his fiancee (Wendy Barrie) by Inspector O'Hara (James Gleason) to work on the case and they run into the usual hot dames, tough punks, and sticky situations. In most of the early Falcon movies, sidekick Allen Jenkins provides the comic relief, but here, much of the movie is comic, which for me works well--not all Falcon fans agree. The most amusing scene has Sanders insulting a group of cops from a car so that the cops will stop the car and he can escape the clutches of kidnappers. There's a twist involving identical twins (which I figured out ahead of time), but otherwise, as in most Falcon movies, the pleasure comes less from the plotting and more from the characters and dialogue.

Unfortunately, Sanders got tired of the series after only three films, so in the fourth one, THE FALCON'S BROTHER, Tom Conway, Sanders' real-life brother, enters as Tom Lawrence, Gay's brother, to take over. Sanders goes to meet his brother arriving on a boat from South America; a man using Conway's name is found murdered in his cabin and Sanders knows it's not really him, but he lets the cops think it is so he can go about his own investigation. It's all about Nazi spies who are using a fashion magazine's covers to communicate classified information. Sanders gets a concussion and is laid up for most of the movie, leaving his brother to do the sleuthing. In the end, Sanders sacrifices himself to stop the assassination of a Mexican diplomat and Conway decides to stay in New York to be the new Falcon. The comedy is downplayed, and Gleason and Jenkins are gone, replaced by disappointing second-string actors Cliff Clark and Don Barclay. Sanders sleepwalks through his role, obviously happy to be leaving the series, and Conway is nowhere near as debonair and slyly amusing as Sanders. One bright spot is Jane Randolph as a fashion reporter who tags along with the brothers. The later Conway movies are watchable but the earlier Sanders movies, including THE FALCON TAKES OVER, are more enjoyable. [TCM]

DR. RENAULT'S SECRET (1941)

This is a B-movie with a little more gloss than usual courtesy Twentieth Century-Fox. The story combines thematic elements from ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (mad doctor, animal experimentation) with the style of "old dark house" thrillers like THE CAT AND THE CANARY, and is quite successful within its B-horror film parameters. Shepperd Strudwick (billed under his birth name, John Shepperd) arrives in a small French village to see his finacee (Lynne Roberts), who is living with her uncle, the research doctor of the title (George Zucco). Of course, we know from the title that Zucco will eventually display some dark side to his personality, but in the beginning, most everyone seems likeable, even Noel (J. Carrol Naish), an assistant to Zucco, who has a creepy look and manner about him that is difficult to pin down, though he seems more odd than sinister. The only character we actively do not like is ex-con Mike Mazurki, just out of jail and clearly ready to raise trouble. A drunk who had crashed in the motel room that was supposed to go to Strudwick is murdered and suspicion falls on both Naish and Mazurki. Naish has a sixth sense about animals, which we see when he avoids a car collision with a dog, but later when that dog is found dead, hanging from a tree, Naish is the main suspect. Strudwick soon discovers that Zucco has been engaging in some extreme experiments with animals, and Naish turns out to be the result of one of those experiments, an ape turned into a man. Does that mean that he's also a brutal killer? The hour-long film moves at a good clip, with an exciting climax. The sets and lighting add to the atmosphere (as does a short scene involving a hand reaching out of a secret wall passage), and the acting is more subtle than one usually finds in a mad scientist movie, with Zucco and Naish particularly good. The doctor's secret is revealed in an interesting fashion, not in direct flashback but through a narrated diary accompanied by photographs. This is one of those films I remember cropping up a lot on Chiller Theater back in the 60's but is harder to find today. Worth seeing. [FMC]

MR. SARDONICUS (1961)

A William Castle film which is essentially a period melodrama with some Gothic trappings being passed off as a horror movie. Ronald Lewis is an English doctor who is called to a European castle by an old girlfriend (Audrey Dalton) to attend to her husband, Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe). The baron is a rather cruel taskmaster who always wears a plain mask because his face is frozen in a hideous grimace; Lewis' job is to cure him. We see in flashback that the disfigurement occurred when Rolfe dug up his father's grave in order to get a winning lottery ticket out of his jacket; he thinks he became the victim of some kind of supernatural curse. Lewis does cure him, discovering that the problem is all psychological, and he leaves the castle with Dalton. In the end, Rolfe's servant (Oscar Homolka) gets revenge on Rolfe for his cruel ways. There's a campy William Castle opening in which he promises the theater audience that they will be able to vote near the end of the movie in a "Punishment Poll" as to whether or not Rolfe will suffer. The character is indeed not a nice guy--we see a serving girl getting tortured with leeches in an attempt to find a serum cure for Rolfe's disfigured face--but he doesn't quite strike me as evil, and the final punishment feels almost too cruel; after all, he's already lost his wife. Even though the audience was led to believe that their vote could affect the movie's ending, only one ending was ever shot, since Castle knew the audience would want revenge. The black and white movie looks OK, though not as lush as some of the Roger Corman/AIP movies this was competing with at the time. Solid, but it doesn't quite live up to its reputation. [DVD]

THE OTHER (1972)

Creepy kids with a propensity for murder are nothing special in movies these days, but this was, I think, one of the earliest films to use that theme (after, of course, THE BAD SEED and THE INNOCENTS) and possibly the first to let the killing kid off scot free. Set in the past (I'm not sure why) in a small farming town, it's the story of twin 10-year-old brothers (played by real twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky); one seems to be good and kind, well mannered and very loving to his ill, fragile mother (Diana Muldaur), while the other is spiteful and ornery, perhaps even downright evil, causing a string of deaths that appear on the surface to be tragic accidents. About halfway through the movie, there's a twist that viewers might see coming (but that I remember being shocked by when I read the Thomas Tryon novel that the film is based on) which, like in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, forces you to rethink much of what has happened before. Shyamalan uses these twists lazily, but here it's used to give some interesting psychological depth to the situation. The movie is atmospheric; even though most of it is shot in bright (if filtered and gauzy) sunshine, the darkness of the story is conveyed fully. Famous Broadway actress (and teacher) Uta Hagen is good as a grandmother who may have vaguely supernatural powers. The Unvarnoky brothers are fine but neither one made another movie. I highly recommend the book as a good October read; the movie isn't quite as good, but it's worth seeing, and I hope it gets a letterboxed DVD release soon. I suggest reading the book first. [FMC]

THE GHOST SHIP (1943)

It's October again, and time for a month of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery. This Val Lewton B-thriller is usually lumped in with the horror films he did for RKO (CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, etc.), but except for its foggy, gloomy atmosphere, it doesn't really belong in that category. If you adjust your expectations from horror to psychological thriller, you may find this enjoyable. Russell Wade, young and inexperienced, joins the crew of the Altair as 3rd officer to the middle-aged captain, Richard Dix. There are immediate omens of bad luck: Wade learns that his predecessor died of mysterious convulsions in his cabin, and a crew member is found dead (apparently of a heart attack) just before they leave port. Wade soon discovers that behind Dix's calm exterior lies a lonely person who feels it is his lot in life to remain isolated from others. Dix also has a thing for authority and can mete out sadistic punishment when he thinks it's needed. One crew member (Lawrence Tierney, later a star of many hardboiled B-noirs) dies in an apparent accident, crushed by the ship's anchor chain, though Wade suspects that Dix was responsible (because Tierney questioned the captain's authority). On shore, Wade brings charges against Dix but they don't stick and when the Altair leaves, Wade is kept a virtual prisoner by Dix. Things come to a boil in a graphic knife fight involving Dix and a mute sailor (whose voice-over thoughts have functioned like a Greek chorus throughout). Like the other Lewton/RKO movies, its budgetary shortcomings are obvious but interesting style and atmosphere (lots of well-placed shadows and fog) help; a scene involving a gigantic and deadly anchor hook that swings wildly about the deck one rough night is especially well done. Wade is fine, though Dix, toward the end of his career, is rather boringly one-note. Edmund Glover gives stand-out support as an intellectual who sides with Wade (for a while). Calypso singer Sir Lancelot, who sang throughout I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, gets in a few sea chanteys along the way. Directed by Mark Robson, who did several other Lewton B's. This movie was out of commission for almost 50 years due to legal entanglements, and therefore has a strong reputation, which it doesn't completely live up to. [Laserdisc]

End of Summer Catch-Up
Short takes on a few films:

THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (1939): This movie has remained famous, and is always associated with Don Ameche, but it's a fairly bland film and though Ameche is serviceable, this is far from his best movie role. It's a slow and sober account of Bell's life, from his early days as an inventor who also teaches deaf children to his invention of the telephone. Charles Coburn is a rich man who hires Ameche to teach his daughter (Loretta Young); she and Ameche fall in love, and Coburn provides backing for Ameche's inventing career. Henry Fonda is Watson, Ameche's assistant and recipient of that famous first phone call, when Ameche spills chemicals on his lap and calls out for help. There are some good supporting players, including Gene Lockhart, Spring Byington, and Harry Davenport, but none get a chance to shine. [FMC]

NORTHERN PURSUIT (1943): Adventurous spy story set in Canada with Errol Flynn as a Mountie who seems to turn traitor but actually goes "underground" to track German spy Helmut Dantine. Along with Flynn's girlfriend (Julie Bishop), they all head into uncharted territory to piece together a bomber to be used to attack America. There are some good effects, including an avalanche and a sub breaking through the ice in Hudson Bay. John Ridgely is a Mountie who is killed by the Nazis; Gene Lockhart has one of his few bad guy roles here and he's quite good. Overall, nothing special, though it moves along nicely and Flynn is his usual reliable self. [TCM]

SOUTH OF SUEZ (1940): Average exotic melodrama. George Tobias is a greedy diamond owner who fires his foreman, George Brent, after he sees Brent in a compromising situation with Tobias' wife (Lee Patrick), an ex-girl friend of Brent's. Then Tobias tries to cheat kindly old Miles Mander out of a land claim, and Brent takes Mander's side. When a particularly valuable diamond is found on Mander's property, Tobias kills Mander and pins it on Brent, who escapes, gets a new identity, and winds up involved with Mander's daughter (Brenda Marshall). Justice is eventually done. Like BELL above, this has a potentially interesting supporting cast, with Cecil Kellaway, Eric Blore, and James Stephenson, though they aren't given much to do. The beginning sets up a steamy atmosphere, like in Bette Davis' THE LETTER, but when the action leaves the tropics, so does the atmosphere. [TCM]

MARY STEVENS, M.D. (1933)

Some sources describe this pre-Code soap opera as being about a woman's struggle to become a doctor, but that's all over with by the beginning of the film. Kay Francis is the title doctor, who graduates with good friend Lyle Talbot; they go into practice together, but his drinking gets the better of him and after she saves his ass by operating for him when he's smashed, they go their separate ways (even though she's in love with him). Talbot marries a woman whose father is politically powerful and he gets tangled up in some shady affairs. Francis sets up a successful pediatric practice with Glenda Farrell (whose character's name is Glenda Carroll--an inside joke?). Francis and Talbot meet up again (she's on vacation, he's running from a potential scandal), become lovers, and Francis bears a child out of wedlock. Her child soon dies from an infantile paralysis epidemic on board a ship and she considers suicide--can Talbot or Farrell bring her back to her senses? The most interesting thing here is the matter-of-factness with which Francis tells Farrell that she's going ahead and having her baby. It's seen as a positive thing, but a year later, under the Code crackdown, this spin would not have been possible. Una O'Connor is a shipboard mother; Thelma Todd is Talbot's wife. Sidney Miller has a small role as a Jewish teenager whose depression over the state of the world is played for laughs, as Woody Allen would do years later in ANNIE HALL. Francis gets a Bride of Frankenstein streak of white in her hair after her baby's death. She and Talbot are fine, but it's the subject matter that kept me watching. [TCM].

Edgar G. Ulmer Day on TCM

Leonard Maltin calls Edgar G. Ulmer a "remarkably resourceful B-movie director whose works often transcended their budgetary and artistic limitations." He spent most of his heyday toiling away for PRC, a Poverty-Row studio known for producing sub-B movies very quickly (sometimes in a week or less) and very cheaply. Ulmer is remembered today primarily for two movies: THE BLACK CAT (1934), a stylish Universal horror film which was the first to pair Boris Karloff with Bela Lugosi, and DETOUR (1946), an ultra-cheapie film noir that does, in fact, transcend its circumstances of production to become a minor classic. However, on the evidence of a number of films that Turner Classic aired last week during a 100th birthday salute to Ulmer, those films were more or less flukes. Most of the rest of his oeuvre doesn't stand the test of time. In addition to the above movies, I've reviewed STRANGE ILLUSION and BLUEBEARD; what follows are some notes about a few of the other films on TCM.

TOMORROW WE LIVE (1942) has Ricardo Cortez as a underworld figure nicknamed The Ghost because he cheated death twice (and has bullets lodged near his brain and heart that he knows could kill him at any time). He keeps people under his thumb through blackmail, as with old-timer Emmett Lynn, who runs a desert diner that is largely a front for Cortez's gang of hoodlums. Lynn's daughter, Jean Parker, comes home from college for a visit and Cortez is taken with her, despite the fact that she has a fiance, professor turned soldier William Marshall. A triangle of sorts develops, with predictable results. Cortez, in the twilight of his career but still with a commanding presence, is very good, Parker is OK, and there is at times a noirish sensibility at play, but the film mostly resembles a TV drama. The overly loud background music is a mood killer.

ST. BENNY THE DIP (1951) wants to be a Capra movie (like LADY FOR A DAY). Three grifters on the run from cops after pulling a scam wind up in disguise as clergymen; trying to stay clean under the watchful eyes of the neighborhood cops and a couple of real men of the cloth, they reopen an old mission for the homeless and wind up getting reformed by their work. The cast is promising, a notch above Ulmer's usual actors: Dick Haymes, Roland Young, and Lionel Stander are the con men, and former child star Freddie Bartholomew, in his last movie role, is one of the real ministers. They are all fine, but everything else about the movie is hard to take, especially the slapdash writing and awkward camera set-ups. There are some New York City exteriors (or fake exteriors) that look good--one shot even reminds me of a scene in Woody Allen's MANHATTAN. Nina Foch, who somehow wound up in this cheapie the same year she was in the Oscar-winning AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, is wasted in an underwritten role. Dick Haymes gets a song and Young is good as always, if a looking a little weary--he died two years later.

THE LIGHT AHEAD (1939), in Yiddish, is the best of the batch. The plot concerns the relationship between a crippled boy (David Opatoshu) and a blind girl (Helen Beverly) who live in a Russian village; they are in love but too poor to marry. A parallel plot involves a bookseller (Isadore Cashier) who wants the town to spend 100,000 rubles from its treasury on cleaning up a cholera-ridden river and bringing a doctor to town, but the council wants to spend the money elsewhere and let God take care of the townspeople's health. In the end, the town foots the bill for the marriage of the boy and girl (in a cemetery at midnight!) because of an old folk belief that such a ritual will rid the town of illness. Beverly is unhappy that she will be forever known as a Cholera Bride, and the bookseller helps them "escape" after the wedding to go live in a nearby town that is more "rational" and modern. Opatoshu as Fishke the Cripple is sweet-natured, with soulful eyes, and gives the best performance in any of these Ulmer films. This movie, though probably done even cheaper than the others, looks better, with some Caligari-like sets, and in general the acting and writing is a notch above as well. This is the one to seek out. [TCM]

PEYTON PLACE (1957)

I've never read the scandalous novel this film was based on, but I do remember sneaking it down from my parents' bookshelves one day and looking for the "good parts." Most of those parts didn't make it to this movie, but it's still a surprisingly effective melodrama about the secrets and passions that lie simmering just below the surface of a small New England town in the 1940's. It's very episodic, so the best way in is to approach it through the characters. Lana Turner is Constance McKenzie, a respectable widow who owns a dress shop and is raising a daughter, Diane Varsi. Turner has a weird thing about sex--one discussion between mother and daughter threatens to turn into a scene from CARRIE with Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek. Hope Lange is a poor girl who lives in a shack on the outskirts of town; her mother is Turner's cleaning lady and her stepfather (Arthur Kennedy) is a drunken brute who somehow manages to keep a job as janitor at the high school; Lee Philips, the new principal, gets interested in Turner, even though she comes on like an ice queen. Leon Ames is Mr. Harrington, the town big shot; Barry Coe is his frat-boy son (except that he joins the Army instead of going to college) and he has the hots for Terry Moore, the town slut. Russ Tamblyn is Norman, a neurotic mama's boy, and although he's stand-offish, he comes off as much healthier than most of the rest of the town's young people. Lloyd Nolan is the crusty old doctor with a heart of gold who delivers the movie's two main messages at the climax: Don’t believe everything you hear, and take care of your neighbors.

Most of the plotlines have to do with love, sex, and gossip: Turner hears gossip about her daughter swimming naked with Tamblyn and won't believe Varsi when she says it's not true; Kennedy rapes his stepdaughter and she winds up pregnant; Ames does not approve of his son's dalliance with Moore because of her reputation. There is a murder which becomes the center of the film's last third and helps to bring the moral messages into focus. The movie looks gorgeous, as good if not better than Douglas Sirk's glossy soap operas of the 50's, with some lovely Maine locations in the background. The actors are all just as sexy, handsome, and plain as they need to be, the plainest being Peg Hillias as the nastiest of the town gossips. Also in the cast are Mildred Dunnock as a frustrated teacher and David Nelson (of Ozzie and Harriet fame) as a soldier. Worth seeing, though it did make me want to see what ABC did to it when they turned it into TV's first prime-time soap opera in 1964. [DVD]

DIVORCE IN THE FAMILY (1932)

This story of the effect of divorce on a family is a vehicle for the popular 1930's child star Jackie Cooper; this is my first Cooper movie and maybe my last. The 10-year-old is not bad but he is a bit whiny and his crying scenes, which must have seemed effective to audiences of the time, don't wear so well. The movie is a kind of forerunner of the after-school specials of the 70's. We first see Cooper and his quite handsome older brother (Maurice Murphy) spending a summer vacation in the field with their father (Lewis Stone), an archaeologist. When the boys go back to their mother, they meet their new stepfather (Conrad Nagel), a rather stuffy doctor who has no experience with children. Nagel tries hard to be a good father figure, but he is much stricter than Stone and soon Cooper starts to rebel by being a pest to everyone and constantly getting in trouble. Stone, apparently legally restrained from visiting his children except for the summer month when he has custody, arranges a secret meeting with Cooper in an attempt to get the boy to settle down, but Cooper winds up running away one evening and drifting down a river; Murphy, against Nagel's orders, goes out to find him and is critically injured when his canoe hits a barge. Nagel saves his life and Stone, who was about to kidnap Cooper, realizes that the stepfather is a good egg after all. An even-handed, if hollow, attempt to deal with the issue of divorce; no one is made out to be a villain and everyone winds up accepting the inevitable changes. The mother (Lois Wilson) is an oddly passive figure due to a combination of weak writing and ho-hum acting--she's the only character whom I feel has little at stake in the situation. Some web site reviewers of the film claim that Stone is too permissive and that Cooper realizes at the end that he needs Nagel's discipline, but I have no idea where they get that from. It is a little strange that, compared with Nagel, the much older Stone comes off more like a grandfather than a father. Louise Beavers is the maid and Jean Parker is a love interest for the older boy. [TCM]

MANDALAY (1934)

This wonderful pre-Code film is practically an archetypal example of the kind of film they don’t make any more: the steamy tropical melodrama involving sex, crime, betrayal, and fabulous fashions. ONE WAY PASSAGE and RED DUST may be better films, but this is more fun. In Rangoon, Kay Francis is the lover of Ricardo Cortez, a handsome but good-for-nothing gunrunner who is in debt up to his eyeballs. In order to get help from slimy nightclub owner Nick (Warner Oland), Cortez goes up river to sell guns, leaving Francis with Oland; he forces her to become a "hostess" (a classy prostitute) at his club. She makes good at her trade, dressing in slinky silver lame and calling herself Spot White--though we hear one man suggest that she should go by "Spot Cash." Head cop Reginald Owen tries to deport her, but she blackmails him, leaving Rangoon but taking a chunk of cash from him. On a boat to Mandalay, looking to escape her past, Francis strikes up a friendship with doctor Lyle Talbot, who seems like a nice guy, but has a drinking problem. Suddenly, Cortez shows up on the run from the law and threatens to derail Francis' future happiness. The old Francis might have been dragged down by Cortez, but the new Francis figures out how to deal with him, once and for all.

Francis' lisp is quite noticeable throughout ("Wangoon," "tomowwow") but she's lovely and sexy and quite believable in her various transformations. She has great chemistry with both Cortez and Talbot, and she’s a knockout in various shiny outfits. One of her best scenes involves her figurative bitchslapping of police commissioner Owen. Michael Curtiz directed, and the beginning feels like a dry run for CASABLANCA, as the camera drifts slowly around the assorted clientele at Nick's nightclub (but instead of someone like Bogart running the saloon, it's someone like Sydney Greenstreet). Ruth Donnelly is wasted in a small supporting role of little consequence, but she gets off a great line when she complains that her husband won't let her wear sexy clothes because they make her look "nude--like a wet seal." Francis sings "When Tomorrow Comes," once clearly dubbed by a non-lisping singer, but once seemingly in her own voice. The movie came out in early 1934 and the ending, which lets a murderer off the hook, would not have been possible just a few months later under the newly enforced Production Code. Well acted, nicely shot, and lots of fun. [TCM]

LOVE HONOR AND BEHAVE (1938)

This odd little B-comedy/drama presents some strange lessons in child rearing, sportsmanship, and "wife taming," most of which would be seen as rather scary lessons today. The film is presented in two distinct "acts": the first sets up the disintegration of the marriage of Thomas Mitchell and Barbara O'Neil. They seem happy, but we see that O'Neil is a fairly passionless person, very concerned with calm surfaces and not willing to fight for what should be hers, in sports (where she's consistently happy to take second place) or in her marriage. Mitchell has just cut things off with his current mistress, Mona Barrie, but O'Neil catches him in a compromising position with Barrie and assumes the worst. Mitchell gets mad at his wife for not being madder at him, seemingly not willing to fight for him, and they split, with O'Neil getting custody of their son. The second act begins ten years later with the son (Wayne Morris) a pre-med tennis player at Yale--we're to think he's *too good* of a sport when we see him deliberately throw a tennis match because of what he thinks is an unfair call in *his* favor. After the game, he rekindles a friendship with Priscilla Lane (Barrie's daughter) and the next thing you know, he lets her talk him into leaving Yale, getting a quickie marriage, and going into business for himself by buying a washed-up soap manufacturing company. Things spiral downward for Morris, to the point where his wife slips into an affair with her ex-fiance (Dick Foran) and his own father won't give him a job after his soap company fails. In the end, Morris (with the tacit permission of virtually the entire cast) gives Lane a black eye and a ferocious spanking, which, of course, she likes (and has been angling for) because it shows her that her man is finally really a man!

Even though the domestic violence of the last scene is played mostly for laughs (with Lane fighting back and blacking Morris' eye as well), it's still a creepy and jaw-dropping scene; the spanking takes place in front of all the assembled parents and in-laws, and clearly Lane, who was just about to indulge in some extramarital sex with Foran, wants some passion out of Morris. In a way, of course, it's a clever reversal of the scene that ended Mitchell's marriage, but it still leaves a bad taste and makes it difficult to recommend this film for today's audiences. Morris is handsome and hunky, and it's a relief that even though his character is supposed to be a mama's boy (with O'Neil flat-out accused of breeding the manhood out of him), he isn't played as sissified or gay or weak, just confused and misguided. Barrie has a passing resemblance to Kay Francis, who would have been good in the part. John Litel is Barrie's patsy of a husband. It is fun to see Mitchell and O'Neil paired up here, just a year before they would play Scarlett O'Hara's parents in GONE WITH THE WIND. As with many B-movies, the writing could be stronger; the parents are built up fairly well, but Morris and Lane's characters are both inconsistent, acting the way they do just because the script calls for it. One funny line has Mitchell expressing anger over the family's passive style of arguing: "There won't be any fight--this is just a family affair--adverbs at 20 paces." [TCM]

CONTRABAND (1940)

The second movie that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger worked on together is a surprisingly light spy thriller, set in the first months after England declared war on Germany, that occasionally calls to mind Hitchcock (39 STEPS, THE LADY VANISHES). Conrad Veidt is the captain of a Danish ship which is waylaid overnight by the British at a contraband control port. Valerie Hobson is a passenger who has been a thorn in Veidt's side for much of the trip. When he discovers that Hobson and another passenger (Esmond Knight) have stolen two landing passes and headed for London, Veidt sneaks off the ship, determined to return the two by morning. He catches up with Hobson and it turns out that she's a British spy trying to meet her contact to pass along important information. The two make their way through London at night, which is under blackout due to German bombing raids, and wind up kidnapped by Nazi spies. The first half is a little too drawn out, but the last half, with the kidnapping, Veidt's escape, and his attempt to backtrack to free Hobson and find Knight, is fairly exciting. One fun scene occurs at a Danish restaurant (the Six Vikings) where Veidt is able to get a free meal for himself and Hobson; later, Veidt returns there and gets the owner and waiters to act as his "posse" in his search for Hobson. Other locales include a cinema, a couple of nightclubs--including one called the White Negro where a production number almost occurs--and a warehouse in which a company called Patriotic Plaster Products is storing hundreds of small busts of Neville Chamberlain. Of course, these busts come into clever play during the climactic shootout. Hay Petrie (who reminds me in looks and voice of Claude Rains) is quite good in the dual role of the restaurant owner and his brother, first mate on Veidt's ship. Peter Bull (the Russian ambassador in DR. STRANGELOVE) has a minor role but a funny scene; when Veidt says his name is Hans Anderson, Bull says he and his two ruffian accomplices are the Grimm brothers, which becomes a running gag. Much of this takes place in pitch black surroundings and because the print on the DVD is not in the best shape, some details are lost. Not quite up to Hitchcock, but fun, and a must for Michael Powell fans. [DVD]

THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT (1966)

I have no idea what possessed me to watch this, as I'm not really a Doris Day fan and I haven't had much luck with 60's spy spoofs, but this wound up being surprisingly enjoyable in fits and starts, even if it doesn't all work together very well. Day is a PR woman at an aerospace research corporation who gets tangled up (literally, by getting caught in a fishing line) with scientist Rod Taylor, who is working on a super-secret gizmo (called Gismo). They fall in love just as Day falls under suspicion of being a Russian spy (she makes strange daily calls to Vladimir, who is actually her dog--long story, never mind). The uneven first half develops as a screwballish romantic comedy which might have worked better with Rock Hudson instead of the fairly wooden Taylor. The last half picks up as the movie turns into a slapstick spy chase.

Day is fine, but the supporting cast (mostly made up of TV players) is largely what makes this worth watching. Dick Martin is Taylor's associate and friend, and he's every bit as good as Tony Randall was in the Day/Hudson movies--Martin should have made an extra career (after comedian and TV director) as a comic second banana in movies  Arthur Godfrey, in one of his very few movie roles, is quite credible as Day's father, who runs a glass bottom boat business--I don't understand the movie's title as the boat plays only a minuscule role in the proceedings. George Tobias and Alice Pearce, Mr. & Mrs. Kravitz of TV's "Bewitched," play similar parts here. Other TV stalwarts include Edward Andrews, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise, and Ellen Corby, but Paul Lynde steals the movie with a hilarious drag turn toward the end (which also includes a cameo by Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo); the second-best scene has Dick Martin, Edward Andrews, and a big champagne bottle in bed together. There is also a mildly amusing Jetsons-type kitchen scene and an overlong speedboat escapade. The title song, set to the old folk song "Mockingbird," is catchy, and Day even sings a verse of "Que Sera Sera." I doubt there's a big demand for this on DVD, but it really should be seen letterboxed, as it's shown on Turner Classic Movies. [TCM]

GREENWICH VILLAGE (1944)

One of the sillier of the Fox showbiz musicals, late in the cycle; even being in color doesn't help liven this one up. Don Ameche is a would-be composer of classical music from the Midwest who visits New York in 1922 and becomes enamored with Greenwich Village, the artistic, bohemian section of Manhattan (in much the same fashion as Ewan McGregor falls in love with the bohemians of MOULIN ROUGE, though the colorful crazies in that movie seem much more authentic than the bland types on display here). Nightclub owner William Bendix wants to back a Broadway revue and Ameche takes on the task of writing the music. He falls in love with singer Vivian Blaine (who definitely shows more personality than Fox's usual ingenue Alice Faye) and that's about it for the plot, except for a half-hearted story thread in which Ameche thinks he's being taken advantage of by Blaine and Felix Bressart. Carmen Miranda drifts in and out the proceedings as a fake fortune teller who winds up in the show, and B. S. Pully (best known for his unusual name and for playing a gangster in GUYS AND DOLLS) is the doorman. One of the more interesting things about the film is who was left on the cutting room floor. A group called the Revuers was hired to perform a couple of numbers, but both were cut out and we only see them in the background of a couple of scenes. Among the Revuers were future hit show writers Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and future Oscar winning actress Judy Holliday. The musical numbers are OK, with the best ones being a dance routine by the Four Step Brothers, and a very fun bit featuring seven uncredited black musicians who come springing out from behind instruments to play and dance. The atmosphere is distinctly un-bohemian, which hurts the film; the only touches of local color are a couple of mannish women and artists in glasses and goatees. [FMC]

THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUTH (1930)

This early talkie will mostly appeal to fans of Loretta Young and Myrna Loy. It's certainly watchable, and it's sort of fun to see the plot careen back and forth between melodrama shaded with humor and coming of age story, with some hints of almost incestuous attraction in a May-December romance. Conway Tearle plays a middle-aged bachelor who has, with the help of two other older bachelors, raised the son of a friend (who died when the boy was only 6). Now the boy, affectionately nicknamed The Imp (David Manners) is turning 21 and he's engaged to be married to Loretta Young, daughter of Tearle's housekeeper. The Imp is a callow youth (after all, he's played by David Manners) and he skips a carefully planned birthday dinner to spend the night carousing with Kara, a sexy, golddigging nightclub singer (Myrna Loy). She thinks the boy has a big inheritance and so agrees to marry him when he asks her, but what she doesn't know is that Manners has very little money at all. Young finds a love letter from Loy to Manners, but Tearle covers up for Manners by saying it was written to him (they both have the same first name). This ploy, however, upsets Young even more--it turns out that she has been nursing a crush on the older man for some time. Tearle goes though an elaborate charade to keep the truth from Young, not realizing all the time that Young is miserable. Everything works out in the end for most of the characters: Young winds up with Tearle; Loy marries a rich daddy from Paris; Manners has no one, but has grown up from the experience.

It's a 1930 movie, so it's a little stiff and stagy, in production and acting. Loy is wonderful, like a breath of fresh air whenever she's around, glittery and sexy and dangerous. Manners is his usual rather awkward self (when he's staring with lust at Loy, he looks rather like Harpo Marx during his drunk scene in THE COCOANUTS) but he has the leading man looks needed for the part. Young is not as good as she would be in later movies; both she and Tearle are rather stiff. It could be intentional because both characters have been hiding emotional secrets from each other and everyone else, but I think that's a generous theory. The feelings of the 18-year-old Young for the 50's-ish Tearle and vice versa are fairly obvious from the beginning (and that Young lives in the house--and I think also works for Tearle--is what makes it feel almost like incest), but some more background of the characters would be helpful. All the exposition is crammed into a long dialogue scene in the first ten minutes of the movie. I would particularly recommend this to Loy fans--it's always fun seeing her as a kind of femme fatale (as she was in several of her early films) and contrasting that image with her good-girl/wifely image later in her career. [TCM]

GRAND SLAM (1933)

I know absolutely nothing about the game of bridge, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this light romantic comedy, a forerunner of the later screwball genre. Paul Lukas is Peter Stanislavsky, a waiter at a Russian restaurant where all the help are also musical performers. He winds up as a fourth in a bridge game with pretentious bridge expert Ferdinand Gottschalk; Lukas thinks that bridge is a silly game and decides to use his own system which he claims will stop couples from squabbling while playing the game. The system seems to work and Lukas gets Frank McHugh (who ghostwrote Gottschalk's book) to ghostwrite his own; the book is a wild success and Lukas and his wife (Loretta Young) become known as the nation's "Bridge Sweethearts" until things fall apart when the system starts to fail and McHugh's role as ghostwriter becomes known. The movie climaxes at a bridge showdown between Lukas and Gottschalk which is broadcast nationally over the radio. Knowledge of bridge rules isn't needed here, though I do wonder if we're supposed to think that Lukas really does have a good system, or if he (and Gottschalk, for that matter) is just pulling a fast one on the American public. Glenda Farrell is McHugh's scatterbrained girlfriend--I usually like her, but she's rather shrill here and not an important part of the movie. Roscoe Karns is the radioman who does commentary on the final bridge game. Cat-eyed Helen Vinson is perfect as the scheming woman who almost breaks up Lukas' marriage--in this pre-Code movie, they could get away with having Lukas actually be unfaithful but still be worthy of getting back together with Young. At 67 minutes, it ends at just the right point. [TCM]

STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE (1939)

Before I saw this movie, I knew nothing about the real life Henry Stanley and David Livingstone except that famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" I don't know how factual this movie is, but it is entertaining and it does give an interesting, if certainly Hollywoodized, glimpse into an era (1870's) and a milieu that is rarely explored today in movies. Spencer Tracy plays Stanley, a reporter for a New York paper who is sent by his editor (Henry Hull) to Africa to find the missing missionary Livingstone (Cedric Hardwicke). One expedition, backed by a British paper and headed by its publisher (Charles Coburn), has come back claiming that Livingstone must be dead, but with no solid proof. Stanley and his sidekick pal (Walter Brennan) head off for Africa, most of which had not yet been mapped out by "white men." After a long and challenging trip, they find Livingstone, happy (if not terribly healthy) serving as medical doctor to a village of natives. Stanley stays with him for a while and helps him in his work, then returns to England bearing maps and documents in Livingstone's own hand as proof of his safety. However, the Royal Geographic Society, egged on by the London publisher, refuses to sanction Stanley's information, setting the stage for a climactic courtroom-like battle.

Tracy nicely underplays his part, though occasionally, especially in some of the African scenes, that acting strategy starts to come off as passivity or disinterest. Hardwicke is good, though his make-up always looks like make-up. Coburn is his usual blustering self and makes the most of his showdown with Tracy. Richard Greene is Coburn's son, who has returned from the original expedition in ill health and who sides with Tracy in the authentication dispute. Nancy Kelly is a young woman on whom Tracy has a romantic but ultimately platonic crush. Henry Travers has a couple of nice scenes as Kelly's father. Kelly's face is not exactly traditionally beautiful but interesting; she seems to have gotten bogged down in B-movies (I remember her as the title character in the thriller THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK) until her last hurrah as the mother in THE BAD SEED. Though all the scenes with the actors were filmed in Hollywood, there is some footage that was shot by a second unit on a safari in Africa which makes the film feel more real than the Tarzan films. My only real complaint is that we don't really get to know much about Stanley as a character, which is more the script's fault than Tracy's. [FMC]