KING OF THE ZOMBIES (1941)

U.S. government agent John Archer, his valet (Mantan Moreland), and his pilot (Dick Purcell), who are looking for a missing American admiral, are forced to crash land in a jungle on a Caribbean island. They are taken in by a Viennese doctor (Henry Victor) who tells them he has no radio and that they'll have to hang around a few days to catch a boat. The household is a strange one: Victor's wife (Patricia Stacey) is in some kind of mysterious trance state, his cook (Madame Sul-Te-Wan) is a voodoo practitioner, his butler Momba (Leigh Whipper) is a rather creepy fellow, and his flirtatious maid (Marguerite Whitten) convinces Moreland that the island is crawling with zombies. Victor and his niece (Joan Woodbury) are trying to bring Stacey out of her own zombie-like state; we discover later that she was the unfortunate victim of a "soul transmigration" ritual. We also discover that Victor is a Nazi spy (not a big surprise given his heavy accent and evil look) who has the missing admiral in his torture chamber. A "ghost lady" pops in and out of a room, two of our heroes get temporarily zombified, and another transmigration experiment is attempted before things get straightened out.

It's amazing how much a good, clean print can do for a Poverty Row B-film, and the print of this Monogram film shown on TCM is excellent. No one will mistake this for a classic, but once you realize that, despite the creepy sounding plot summary above, this is really an "old dark house" comedy along the lines of Bob Hope's GHOST BREAKERS, it's rather entertaining. Moreland, one the foremost black comic actors of the era, does a variation on the usual "scared underling" role he was stuck in, but here, despite getting third billing, he is basically the star and he is mostly very funny. Victor, the wicked strongman in FREAKS, is good in a role intended for Bela Lugosi. The rest of the actors are adequate to the occasion, except for Whitten who, despite being alluring, gives a very wooden performance, though she does get the funniest line: when Moreland scarfs down several pieces of pie, she calls him the "most pious man I ever met." John Archer is the father of Anne Archer. Oddly, this film actually got an Oscar nomination for its score, which, while marginally better than the usual B-movie score, is hardly memorable. [TCM]

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)

This was the first film based on Richard Matheson's classic apocalyptic sf novel "I Am Legend," but not the last; it was remade as THE OMEGA MAN in the 70's with Charlton Heston, and a third version starring Will Smith is due out at the end of this year. It was also, I imagine, a direct influence on George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and therefore almost every zombie movie that came after. The '07 version will undoubtedly be superior to this low-budget, black and white film in terms of special effects, but this is still worth seeing. There's a nice opening sequence of stark, deserted cityscapes (shot in and around Rome) before we meet Vincent Price, waking up alone to trudge through another day, hanging garlic and mirrors around his dilapidated house, then roaming the neighborhood, collecting dead bodies to burn. We learn through flashbacks that a plague of unknown origin (perhaps natural, though there is a hint that it could have been something man-made that got out of control) has swept through the world, killing people off and bringing them back as vampires who roam at night and are inactive in the day. Price, a scientist who was working on a cure, seems to have acquired a natural immunity to the plague and is, as far as he knows, the only non-undead human left on the planet. At night, alone in his house, he is surrounded by the vampires banging on his doors and windows, though so far he has been successful in keeping them out. One day, while out collecting corpses, he meets up with a woman who is one of a slowly growing group of infected people who have been able to stop the plague's progress even though they remain infected, and Price has become a legendary (hence the book's title) vampire fighter in their eyes, but not necessarily in a good way, since he's responsible for killing off several of their number. The last confrontation is grim, but there is an inkling of hope held out in the final moments. This film isn't particularly gory, but the images of scattered dead bodies on the roads and shots of grasping hands ripping through doors and windows are still a bit unsettling. There is an especially creepy scene of Price dumping bodies into a flaming pit at night. At times, I was reminded (visually and thematically) of recent films such as 28 DAYS LATER, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and CHILDREN OF MEN. Price is low-key and effective, though the score is infuriatingly loud and overripe. The film is in the public domain, and should be letterboxed, so beware shoddy DVD prints; the MGM release in the Midnite Movies series is apparently the best print out there. [TCM]

THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M (1959)

Dr. Mazali, head of a small, isolated insane asylum, and his friend Dr. Almada make a pact that whoever dies first will come back with news of the afterlife. Almada goes first, then materializes during a seance with a somewhat cryptic message for Mazali, who wants to somehow experience death without actually dying, that he will come back in three months and open the door to the beyond. Then Almada's ghost appears to his daughter Patricia, whom he had never met, tells her that a locket she's had all her life has a key in it, and that she should visit Dr. M. to learn more about her background. She arrives at the same time as Eduardo, Mazali's handsome new intern, and an attraction develops. In what seems like an unrelated plot thread, Dr. M decides that a violent female patient can be calmed down and taken out of restraints when a music box is played for her; unfortunately, when the music stops, she goes batshit again, and tosses acid in the face of an orderly. Later the scarred-for-life orderly kills her, but the police think Dr. M is responsible. I followed everything up to here, but in the end things get a little complicated. Suffice to say that there are a couple more deaths, some apparent "soul transference," and a very creepy scene of a corpse digging its way out of the ground. Despite the rather baroque plot twists, this is at heart a traditional warning story about tampering in God's domain. The whole thing is taken very seriously by all (no camp, no Hammer or AIP flourishes of overacting or supervelvet costuming), and the film has a dark tone, creepy atmosphere, and mostly solid performances. I hear that Casa Negra, the company which has been issuing Mexican horror films on DVD (in mostly spectacular prints), has gone under, which is a shame. This is definitely worth at least a rental. [DVD]

THE WITCH'S MIRROR (1962)

After I rented CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN from Netflix, this one popped up as a recommendation; it's another little gem from the golden era of Mexican horror. Elena and Eduardo live in a creepy old house with Elena's godmother, Sara, who is also their housekeeper and a practicing witch. As in a fairy tale, the witch's mirror foretells the death of Elena at the hands of her husband, who is in love with another woman. When Sara prays to her Dark Lord, she is told that she cannot prevent the death, and sure enough, Eduardo poisons Sara's milk and she dies. Eduardo marries Deborah (Rosita Arenas) and brings her home to discover that the house is haunted by Elena's ghost. When Eduardo sees Elena in the witch's mirror, he throws a lantern at it, which smashes the mirror but also causes a fire which disfigures Deborah and leads to an "Eyes Without a Face" twist: with Deborah wrapped in bandages, Eduardo steals corpses to use skin and body parts to restore Deborah's looks. There are some grisly goings-on with a pair of severed hands, and there's a nifty plot device of the witch being able to see through the eyes of an owl which just happens to be in an operating room (not very sanitary, I would think). By the end, the plot loses coherence, or to put it a nicer way, I guess you could say that a dream-like logic takes over; my plot notations concerning the end are rather vague. This is another low-budget horror film that gets by on atmosphere. The acting is about par for the course; the only cast member I've heard of is Rosita Arenas, who played another put-upon bride in CRYING WOMAN. There are some striking shots now and then, and the print from Casa Negra is in pretty good shape. A good October evening's entertainment. [DVD]

THE TERROR (1963)

This much-maligned horror flick is famous among B-film aficionados for a few reasons: 1) it was filmed mostly because Boris Karloff owed director Roger Corman a few more days of work after finishing up THE RAVEN; 2) scenes from it are used during the drive-in shoot-up climax of Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS; 3) it has an incoherent plot. All things considered, however, it isn't bad. It's true that not everything about the narrative adds up, but as in many B-films, the atmosphere helps make up for a lot of other weaknesses. In 1802 (or 1806, depending on which reference you catch), a soldier (Jack Nicholson) who has strayed from his regiment collapses on a rocky beach and is helped by a mysterious woman named Helene (Sandra Knight). They frolic a bit until she vanishes in the raging surf and a large bird attacks Nicholson (at first, I thought she had turned into the bird, but I think I'm wrong about that, even though we learn later that the bird is also named Helene--you see how point #3 above came about). He is tended to by an old woman (Dorothy Neumann), the owner of the bird and something of a witch figure who herself is tended to by the mute servant Gustav (Jonathan Haze)--but he's not really so mute; it turns out he can whisper, which is how some important plot points get communicated. Nicholson runs into the girl again that night and just as she's about to lead him into a quicksand pit, Haze pops up to save him. He whispers gruffly to Nicholson that Knight is possessed, lives in a nearby castle, and needs Nicholson's help.

The next day, Nicholson goes to the castle to ask for lodgings and is greeted by Karloff, who has a portrait on his wall of his late wife Ilsa, who looks just like Knight. Karloff admits that he killed her twenty years ago when he caught her with another man. I'm not sure it's worth recounting the rest of the plot in detail, as all the major elements are in place at this point, and narrative consistency is not this film's strong suit. At any rate, the whole thing resembles something out of Poe, specifically "Fall of the House of Usher," even including a final destruction scene, by flood rather than earthquake. One character is struck by lightning, one is not who he seems to be (or thinks he is), and, in the great final shot, one turns into a bloody, goopy mess. Karloff is fine in his somewhat limited role, disappearing for large chunks of time, which leaves Nicholson to carry the movie; he's OK but he's not the Jack we all know and love. Dick Miller, a Corman regular (see BUCKET OF BLOOD), is present as Karloff's servant. As I noted earlier, the mood is nicely established and the colors, even on the public domain print I saw, are rich, especially the electric blues which saturate many of the scenes. Despite its reputation, this makes an OK choice for Chiller Theater night.

I saw this print on a DVD from Alpha whose main attraction was listed as TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN, a half-hour 1958 British TV pilot which was never picked up as a series. I'd read about this show many years ago in Famous Monsters and was glad to finally see it. Its production values are on a par with Dark Shadows, but the acting and writing are solid. Anton Diffring is Dr. Frankenstein, whom we first see sending his servants out of his castle one rainy night as he attempts to bring his monster (Don McGowan) to electric life. Alas, the monster attacks the doc and has to be subdued. Assuming the problem is that the beast has the brain of a dead killer, Diffring decides to find a normal brain. Enter a dying man (Richard Bull) whose wife (Helen Westcott) has brought him to the village to seek help from the doctor. Instead, the doctor decides to help himself to Bull's brain, putting it in the monster's head, leading to the usual consequences. The narrative appropriates elements from the Universal FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and in the opening, there's a shot of the vampire brides from the original Lugosi DRACULA. Diffring is good, though the gist of the series seems to have been to tell a new story each week of Dr. Frankenstein's experiments, so that might have gotten a bit old. Worth seeing as a novelty. [DVD]

HANGOVER SQUARE (1945)

This remarkable thriller, set in the early 1900's, begins with a panning shot down a London street and into a second-floor shop window where we see an antiques dealer knifed to death by the hulking Laird Cregar, who then sets fire to the room and leaves. As he walks down the street, he calms down and we soon realize that he has committed this act during a mental blackout; when he is especially tense and/or angry, discordant sounds trigger the blackout and when he returns to "normal" he has no recollection of what he has done, except for a nagging awareness that he has lost time. Cregar is a rather tightly-wound composer working on a concerto; Faye Marlow, his lovely friend (not quite girlfriend), has gotten her father, Alan Napier, a famous conductor, interested in his work and Napier promises that if the finished product lives up to its potential, he'll premiere the piece himself. When Cregar realizes that he came out of his blackout near the scene of the murder, he goes to Scotland Yard inspector George Sanders for help. Because the physical evidence is inconclusive, Sanders clears Cregar but keeps an eye on him, especially when Sanders himself gets interested in Marlow. While visiting a tavern, Cregar falls for Linda Darnell, a lovely but somewhat slatternly singer. He agrees to write some songs for her and he does indeed help her in her career, but at the expense of his own work on his concerto. When Marlow criticizes Cregar for wasting his talents, he suffers another blackout and tries to kill her, but is unsuccessful, though she is unaware that he was her attacker. Later, Cregar proposes to Darnell and she sneeringly turns him down; one blackout later, he hunts her down, strangles her, and disposes of the body on a large Guy Fawkes Day bonfire. As Cregar finishes his concerto, Sanders starts putting two and two together and he goes to bring Cregar in on the night he's to play his concerto. The climax occurs in the concert hall, with Cregar going mad as he plays his music to a packed house, with Sanders and police waiting at the exits.

This film is newly available on DVD in the Fox Horror Classics set, which contains three films directed by John Brahm including the better-known Jack the Ripper-thriller THE LODGER, also with Cregar. I'd seen this movie years ago, taped off cable, but the DVD print is a revelation: though it still has a bit of damage present, it is crisp and dark, unlike the muddy, grayish TV print, and sounds quite good, a added bonus in a movie in which music, written by Bernard Herrmann, plays a large role--the final concerto is actually a grand piece of music. Cregar, who died at the age of 28 not long after this film wrapped (of complications from abdominal surgery done in order to lose weight), is excellent here; occasionally his cultured voice reminded me of Vincent Price, but Price didn't have the imposing size needed for the role. The other actors, including Glenn Langan as Darnell's fiance and Michael Dyne as her pianist, are not particularly memorable, and even Sanders fades into the background whenever he shares a scene with Cregar. Brahm makes the movie a treat for the eyes: the camera moves a lot, but not ostentatiously so; each blackout scene is shot well, and the final scene [SPOILER] with Cregar playing the climax of his piece as the concert hall burns down around him, is spectacular, one of the most satisfying endings to any classic-era horror film. And speaking of horror, though this is usually described as a horror film, it's really more a rudimentary psychological thriller, though practically no attempt made at explaining Cregar's state of mind or background. In any case, this is a movie that classic movie (horror and otherwise) buffs should see. [DVD]

THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1944)

Though released by Columbia Pictures, this begins like a classic-era Universal horror film, with a foggy graveyard meeting in 1919 between a werewolf (Matt Willis) and a vampire (Bela Lugosi, though we never see his face in this opening sequence). Lugosi has been feeding on the young daughter of Dr. Gilbert Emery, head of a sanitarium. He and colleague Frieda Inescort read an article by long-dead occult expert Armand Tesla about vampirism and know what they have to do. They find Lugosi's grave and drive a long metal stake through his heart. This kills him and frees the werewolf from his curse. Inescort takes Willis under her wing and makes him a trusted assistant. We flash ahead to the present day, during WWII; Inescort is now in charge of the asylum and her son is soon to be married to Emery's grown daughter (Nina Foch). During a German air raid, Lugosi's body is unearthed and two comic-relief air raid workers find him and pull the stake out, bringing Lugosi back to life. Surprise! The vampire is actually Armand Tesla, who calls Willis back under his command and, taking the identity of a visiting professor, ingratiates himself with Inescort, the better to get access to Foch. When it becomes clear that a vampire is back at work, Inescort gets Scotland Yard inspector Miles Mander to help her flush him out.

This is essentially an unofficial sequel to Lugosi's 1931 DRACULA. Lugosi looks the same, sounds the same, wears the same outfit, has an underling in his mystical control, and once again haunts the grounds of a London sanitarium biting the neck of a lovely young woman who is soon to be wed. Though there is nothing here as wonderfully creepy as DRACULA's first 15 minutes, there are some nicely atmospheric touches, mostly having to do with omnipresent fog. Inescort makes an interesting Van Helsing character, and Foch is good, though her husband-to-be (Roland Varno) barely makes an impression at all. I like that Willis's Renfield character is a werewolf, but little is done with that idea; in fact, the sight of the wolfman always fully dressed makes for an unintentionally funny moment or two. Similarly, the wartime setting works nicely for Lugosi's unearthing, but not much else is done with it. The movie is not exactly a classic, but it's a must-see for vampire movie fans, and it's also notable as one of Lugosi's last big-studio movies. [TCM]

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957)

Autumn Russell returns to her African homestead after ten years away to visit her grandmother (Marjorie Eaton). Before she even gets to her house (which looks more like a rundown Southern plantation than an Africa manor), her driver hits a man in the road and drives away, not stopping to help; he believes he hit an undead zombie, and Russell is upset that such beliefs are still held amongst the villagers. At the same time, a trashy group of folks arrive at the coastal property to go diving for a 60-year-old sunken treasure chest full of diamonds. The leader of the pack is jackass businessman Joel Ashley; his slutty wife (Allison Hayes) is along for the ride, as is studly diver Gregg Palmer, whom Hayes smooches up right in front of her husband. Old lady Eaton (think Aunt Eller in OKLAHOMA!) isn't too perturbed by these unwanted visitors; she's even good enough to show them the graves of the various treasure-hunting parties which have arrived over the years and always not only failed to get the diamonds, but wound up dead to the last man. Eaton believes that the members of the original crew, from 60 years ago, have become zombies who protect the treasure. Sure enough, zombies begin attacking the newbies, both underwater and above ground. It seems that the zombies can also turn their victims into zombies, as they do with Hayes. The only thing that stops them is fire, which is of course difficult to produce underwater, though thanks to the resourceful Palmer, not impossible. The bad people get their comeuppance, Palmer gets Russell, and the old lady gets to give the zombies a little rest.

Who knew that John Carpenter's THE FOG was basically a remake of this little-seen, low-budget horror flick? I guess that's overstating the case a bit, but the premise of Carpenter's film is similar. The sets here are cheap and the direction unimaginative, but for the most part, the actors throw themselves into their parts with relish, especially Hayes (the cult star of ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN), Palmer (a grade-B Rock Hudson), and Eaton. Two scenes in particular are pulled off nicely: a genuinely creepy moment in a mausoleum hidden in the woods where a dozen of the zombies rise up out of their coffins, and later when the zombiefied Hayes is surrounded by a ring of candles. The underwater scenes don't seem to have been actually shot under any water at all, but what the hell, they're still fun to watch. I liked this one more than I expected to. [TCM]

THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956)

Like HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, this is a movie that I first "experienced" by way of a photo comic book which used movie stills with dialogue balloons. When I finally got around to seeing HORROR, I enjoyed it more than the comic. I can't say the same about this one, although it does have its (campy) pleasures, among which is the amusing opening, as Dr. Frank Baxter, a professor of English at USC, gives us a short, eccentric lecture about Hollow Earth theories over the centuries, even namechecking Gilgamesh in the process. Then we follow the adventures of a group of archeologists, including the beefy and sometimes obnoxious John Agar, the father-figure-ish Hugh Beaumont, and the fade-into-the-background Nestor Paiva. They are camped out somewhere in Asia (as a title card tells us) digging in the mountains. After an earthquake, they discover an oil lamp inscribed with a Sumerian version of the Noah's Ark story. We endure several minutes of rock climbing (shades of MST3K) before the men find some temple ruins. Paiva falls through a crevice into the apparently hollow mountain and when Agar and Beaumont go to rescue him, they all wind up trapped in a huge underground city inhabited by a race of remnant Sumerians who have mostly turned albino from lack of exposure to the sun. In a plot point out of H.G. Wells's "The Time Machine," it turns out that there are other survivors who have evolved (or devolved) into brutish Morlock-type creatures, the Mole People of the title, who live underground and do the Sumerians' dirty work. Because the scientists have a flashlight, the King of the albinos thinks they are gods, but the wily high priest (Alan Napier, Alfred on TV’s "Batman") thinks differently. Agar develops the hots for a non-Albino Sumerian woman (Cynthia Patrick, looking like she spends a lot of time in an above-ground beauty salon), and there's some torturing of the mole people, a human sacrifice ritual, and a last twist right out of "Lost Horizon." The background matte paintings look nice but the sets are fairly cheap. Agar is supposed to be the hero, but he's irritating, and frankly it's hard to care much about the fate of anyone, even the abused Mole People, who are basically background characters in the movie named after them. The premise is fun, but the short movie runs out of steam before the climax. [DVD]

DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (1965)

A ludicrous title for a rather ho-hum horror film based loosely on the H. P. Lovecraft story, "The Colour Out of Space" (among other liberties, it moves Lovecraft's New England town of Arkham to England), though it works better if you imagine that it's a Poe movie. American Nick Adams has arrived to visit the Witleys, particularly the lovely young daughter (Suzan Farmer) whom he knew in college. Their property is a blasted landscape right out of Poe's "Usher" (though, to be fair, it's also described as a "blasted heath" in the original story) and the villagers shun the family. It turns out that Adams was sent for by Farmer's mother (Freda Jackson) who has become a virtual recluse due to some unknown illness; she wants Adams to take Farmer away, but her father (Boris Karloff) resents his interference. Adams and Farmer discover a greenhouse with mutant vegetation and animals caused by a glowing green meteorite which Karloff has locked up in the cellar. He believes it came from the sky as a "gift" from his devil-worshipping ancestor, but he willfully ignores the damage the rock is doing to his land, his wife, and his butler, who drops dead during dinner one night. There is an Usher-like apocalyptic climax with a burning house and Karloff gone nuts, transformed by the meteorite into a glowing, shiny-headed, putrefying monster, I suppose the very one that the title of the film wishes were dead. The cinematography (especially the use of widescreen) and color design are a bit artier than in the typical American International Poe film of the era, but little else here kept my attention. Karloff, confined to a wheelchair for most of the film, is fine; the blunt talking Adams is a nice change of pace from the usual bland hero. There are plot loopholes galore, as though the writers just gave up halfway through. One character, Helga the maid, is set up as a meteorite-poisoned madwoman who roams around the grounds, but she vanishes from the story with no explanation. Jackson's scarred features are hidden for most of the movie, but when we see them, the make-up is a big letdown. The mutant animals, in what Adams calls a "zoo from Hell," are a low-budget disappointment. Only Karloff's last transformation is at all effective (and I doubt that it's actually Karloff beneath the mask). Lovecraft fans are thrown a bone when Adams finds a book on the "Cult of the Outer Ones," though that just becomes another plot thread that leads nowhere. [DVD]

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)

Sandra Dee, a student at Miskatonic University in the New England town of Arkham, is assisting visiting professor Ed Begley, who has been working with the Necronomicon, a rare and ancient book of evil rites which resides in a glass case in the library. An intense-looking young man (Dean Stockwell) tries to borrow it for some research of his own. Begley is loath to let it go, but Dee takes a shine to the guy, and when they find out that he is a descendent of a local "warlock" who had some tragic dealings with the book long ago, they decide to let him have a look. Stockwell winds up getting a ride back to his home in the nearby town of Dunwich from Dee, who, under the influence of a drug he puts in her tea, falls asleep and spends the night. There is a nightmare rape/orgy scene filled with "Hair" rejects and filmed in trippy 60's jump cuts, and we're not quite sure if it really happened or not, but the next morning, Dee wakes up refreshed and spends a lovely day with Stockwell, who takes her to the Devil's Hopyard, an ancient stone altar on a picturesque cliff overlooking the sea, where Dee once again conks out and undergoes another nightmare rape scene in which we see that Stockwell has arcane symbols tattooed all over his torso. It soon becomes clear that Stockwell is trying to impregnate Dee with his own brand of demon seed in order to conjure up some of the ancient gods (primarily Yog-Sothoth, whose name he chants frequently). Meanwhile, a friend of Dee's (Donna Baccala) comes looking for her, and winds up confronting a horrible tentacled monster which has been locked away in Stockwell's house. That semi-invisible beast/force which, it turns out, is actually a relative of Stockwell's, escapes and ravages the countryside, leading to a drawn-out climax at the Devil's Hopyard. The ancient gods are defeated, though a last shot suggests that they are down but not out.

I think I can safely say that, to date, no moviemakers have gotten H. P. Lovecraft right. Some point to Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND as solid Lovecraft films; they are good movies but they ultimately wind up taking very little from Lovecraft. The movie that comes closest to the Lovecraft spirit is John Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, which wasn't based directly on Lovecraft at all but uses his concepts of indescribable, otherworldly gods trying to break through to this world, and the damage they do to those humans unlucky enough to be a witness to their attempts. DUNWICH HORROR, based on a Lovecraft short story, gets some of the trappings right, but can't overcome a low budget and some miscast actors. Stockwell, in a very 70's perm, is good once you get used to him, though I couldn't help but think that Anthony Perkins would have been ideal. Dee is ho-hum, but she isn't really called on to do much more than look pretty, sleep, and writhe half-naked on beds and altars. Begley and Sam Jaffe (as Stockwell's crazed grandfather) were probably hired to bring some respectability to the project, but neither one seems to have his heart in his performance. The 70's vibe dates the movie, though the sets and effects are fine, a notch above the typical American International film of the era. In fact, the scene in which the beast attacks Baccala is perhaps the most Lovecraftian in the movie; presented in short, fast edits and filmed in solarized psychedelic colors, we don't really see the creature, just an impression of slime, tentacles, and a face as it batters away at the girl. Unfortunately, we see a little too much of the creature in the climax, though it is a decent attempt at a Cthulian-type creature and not as laughable as it could have been. Les Baxter's main theme is pretty but not especially atmospheric; it kept taking me out of the movie until I realized halfway through that it sounds a lot like an Al Stewart song from the Time Passages album. I saw this years ago on a pan-and-scanned tape; it fares much better on the cleaned-up, letterboxed DVD from MGM. In fact, it was like watching a whole different movie. [DVD]

STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP (1946)

This Poverty Row horror flick begins with two men pulling the body of a young man who had gone swimming out of a swamp; he is dead with vines wrapped around his head like a noose. The townsfolk think he was the latest victim of a curse: the former ferry keeper (Charles Middleton) was lynched for a murder that he didn't commit and cursed all those responsible and their descendents until a voluntary sacrifice breaks the curse. That night, after three cranky old ladies deliver all the necessary exposition, the current ferryman (Frank Conlan) sees the ghost of the lynched man and winds up dead, also by a noose. Robert Barrat, a town leader who was involved in the lynching, thinks the curse is a lot of hooey and believes that Conlan hung himself in misguided guilt. Conlan's granddaughter (Rosemary LaPlanche) arrives and takes over the ferry operator position, against the advice of the townsfolk, and she hits it off with Barrat's son (a very young Blake Edwards). When LaPlanche realizes the Strangler is after Edwards, she decides to see if a voluntary sacrifice will save him.

This film from ultra-low budget studio PRC has been rehabilitated by current-day critics, with some even comparing it to one of Val Lewton's classic B-thrillers from RKO. I don't think it's quite up to that standard, but it's certainly worth seeing. As with many horror films, it's all about atmosphere. Much of the film has the feel of a play, taking place largely on one set, the swamp ferry crossing, with mist pumped in everywhere (or overlaid optically) to hide the sets' cheapness and to provide atmosphere in spades. Middleton (Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials) is a good villain; with his eyes circled in black and barely visible, and his image blurred, he's a genuinely creepy presence--think of the unearthly figures in CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Edwards is a bit lightweight in the acting department, so it's a good thing he went on to forge a career as a director (VICTOR/VICTORIA, the Pink Panther movies). The limited budget means we get almost no sense of the community, and given that the plot centers on a communal wrong from the past, that's a weakness. But the director, Frank Wisbar, turns this into a strong exercise in style--some of the early shots of the ferryman are reminiscent of shots from Dreyer's VAMPYR. The print on this Image DVD is not especially good, but it's probably in the best shape possible, and it's perfect viewing for an October night. [DVD]

THE 27TH DAY (1957)

[Spoilers included!] This is a science fiction movie I read a lot about when I was a kid, but I kept missing on Chiller Theater. I probably would have been much more impressed with it when I was 13; now, it just feels like a long, talky Twilight Zone episode, a Rod Serling morality tale with an improbably happy ending rather than the "gotcha!" twist that made the Serling show so much fun--though the laughable ending is worth seeing for something approaching camp value. We see a woman enjoying a relaxing afternoon on a beach in England until a gigantic shadow falls over her followed by a bright flare, and she vanishes. The same thing happens to four other average citizens around the globe (from America, China, the USSR, and Britain); they all wind up spirited away to a spaceship where a tall alien (Arnold Moss) explains the convoluted premise of the movie. His race's planet is dying and they are looking for a new home. Convinced that the nations of the Earth will eventually blow themselves up with their atomic weapons, Moss tries to make it sooner rather than later by giving each of the five humans a transparent box with three capsules capable of destroying all human life on Earth, while leaving the natural world intact so the aliens can move in. The capsules can only be triggered by the five people, each capable of destroying life within a specific radius, and will only work for 27 days. They are sent back to Earth and the alien makes a worldwide broadcast announcing the names of the people with the capsules. The Chinese woman kills herself, the British woman (Valerie French) throws her capsule into the ocean, the American (reporter Gene Barry) goes into hiding (joined eventually by French), the Russian (Azmat Janti) is hounded by his government, and the German (scientist George Voskovec) cooperates with the Allies in trying to figure out what the capsules are capable of doing.

Of course, being a cold-war movie, the primary tension is between the Russians and the Americans; Stefan Schnabel plays a Khrushchev-like villain who tortures Janti into giving up the capsules and threatens the Allies with annihilation. In the bizarre ending, Voskovec discovers that the capsules can be altered to kill only "confirmed enemies of human freedom," so that's just what he does, and of course this wipes out the Commies (who else it affects is left to us to imagine). If that isn't a "happy" enough ending for an American audience, the United Nations then invites the alien to bring his race to Earth to live in peaceful co-existence. An admirable final message, perhaps, but a dramatically unsatisfying ending, especially in an SF movie with almost no special effects (except a couple of shots cobbled from earlier films). Barry, ostensibly the leading man, does virtually nothing, heroic or otherwise (though it's interesting to see him with a mustache), and the love story between him and French is a non-starter. Ubiquitous voice-over actor Paul Frees (see MONOLITH MONSTERS below) appears on screen as a news anchor. A handsome actor named Mark Warren has two lines as a newspaper copy boy, but he has no other film or TV credits. [TCM]

THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957)

By the evidence of this B-flick, Hollywood had about exhausted its imagination for SF monsters by the late 50's. This movie is better than it sounds, but here's how it sounds: the monsters are gigantic rock crystal formations which come jutting out of the earth and, despite their relative immobility, wreck havoc in a small desert town. Honest to God, that's about it. The film begins with an off-screen lecture about meteors, given by famous announcer and cartoon voice artist Paul Frees (Boris in "Rocky and Bullwinkle"). After a meteorite lands in the desert near the town of San Angelo, a man from the Department of Interior (Phil Harvey) finds an odd rock on the road and takes it back to his office to study. That night, when the rock gets wet during a storm, it start smoking and growing and the next morning, geologist Grant Williams arrives at work to find chunks of black rock strewn all over the office and Harvey dead, apparently turned to stone. Meanwhile, hot schoolteacher Lola Albright takes her kids out to the desert for a (rather boring) field trip; a little girl takes a shiny black rock home with her, dips it in a water barrel to clean it, and the next day, bingo, more death and destruction and stone people; though the little girl is alive, she is in a traumatized stupor (like the little girl in THEM!) and is slowly turning to stone herself. Williams and Albright and a geology professor figure out that when these meteorite fragments get wet, they grow and multiply and cause people to solidify by sucking all the silica out of the ground and the people. What causes the destruction, as we see during a thunderstorm, is when the monoliths grow too big, fall down, and roll around or burst through buildings. Can our heroes find a solution before these inanimate rocks threaten the world? Some of the shots of the almost-rampaging rocks are indeed effective, but still, when the monsters are giant rocks, you can only build up so much tension. Williams, best known as THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, is fine as the strong, sensible, and handsome hero, but he's the only actor to make much of an impression. William Schallert has a small comic relief role as a nerdy weatherman. IMDb says that Troy Donahue and Paul Petersen are in the film, but I guess their roles are so small that I didn't notice them. The print of this film in the Universal "Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection" is sparklingly sharp; too bad it's not a more interesting movie. [DVD]

A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)

This dark comedy is something of a companion piece to a better known film, the original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Roger Corman finished BUCKET three days ahead of schedule, so he used those days to shoot SHOP. The main character here, played by Dick Miller, is a busboy at the Yellow Dog, a beatnik coffeehouse. Although the denizens of the Dog, a group of poets, folk singers, artists, and hangers-on, are mostly portrayed as pretentious, Miller still yearns for their respect, especially because he gets belittled regularly in front of them by his boss (Anthony Carbone). He particularly wants to impress the lovely and likable Barboura Morris. Miller decides to become a sculptor and tries desperately one night to make a bust ("C'mon, be a nose!" he whines at a piece of clay). When he tries to rescue a cat stuck inside his wall but accidentally kills it instead, he covers it with clay and the next day, passes it off as a statue. The piece, called "Dead Cat," becomes a sensation at the cafe after the resident poet (Julian Burton) proclaims it a masterpiece, calling Miller a genius whose "hands have been carrying away your empty cups of frustration." When a clean-cut narc (future game show host Bert Convy) tries to arrest Miller, he bashes the cop's head in with a frying pan and suddenly he has Sculpture #2, "Murdered Man." The corpses and statues begin to pile up until the inevitable tragic ending. Though the movie works as a dark satire, I also felt some genuine empathy for Miller, which is a tribute to both his acting and the clever screenplay by Charles B. Griffith. Given the limitations of budget and time, it's amazing how much of the film works well. The supporting cast is strong, with Ed Nelson as another narc, John Brinkley and John Shaner as a couple of stoners (possible models for Cheech and Chong) and especially Burton as the pompous poet who we sort of grow to like--or at least consider the most likable beatnik in the bunch. Alex Hassilev, of the 60’s folk group The Limeliters, gets to sing a grisly folk ballad or two. Miller went on to a long career as a sort of cult actor in movies such as THE HOWLING, PIRANHA, 1941, and THE TERMINATOR. The title is in the public domain and therefore available on disc from a number of sources, but the MGM DVD sports a sparkling clean print. [DVD]

THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940)

Starting in 1939, Boris Karloff made a string of B-level "mad scientist" films for Columbia. In summary, they all tend to sound the same (Karloff is a mad doctor who sets out to help mankind but winds up going a bit nutty and becoming a menace) but most of them are good enough to warrant at least one viewing, so the old saw, "Seen one, seen 'em all" doesn't quite hold true here. Most are out on DVD now and I'll probably be reviewing a few of them this month. This one begins with a doctor (Roger Pryor) demonstrating to his colleagues his work in deep freeze therapy as a way to fight cancer--he freezes a patient (by piling blocks of ice on her torso and aiming a couple of high-speed fans in her general direction!) and leaves her in that state for up to 5 days, which supposedly will kill off the cancer cells while leaving the rest of the body unharmed. Though the experiment is considered a qualified success, Pryor is reprimanded by his boss, Charles Trowbridge, for unfairly raising the public's hope for a definitive cure. Stung by the criticism, he and his assistant (Jo Ann Sayers) head off to Canada to look for a scientist (Karloff) who had done important work in freeze therapy but vanished without a trace ten years ago. The two learn that a group of men had gone to his island home to serve him with a warrant for holding a deep-freeze patient unwillingly, and they all vanished along with Karloff. At the decrepit house, Pryor and Sayers discover that all the men are still alive, trapped in a glacier ice vault. They thaw them out (mostly by serving them lots of hot coffee!) and learn that they stayed alive all those years because of a potentially poisonous vapor that Karloff used. A plan to take this important information to the outside world goes awry when one of the men (Stanley Brown), upset when he learns he's legally dead and unable to collect on an inheritance, attacks Karloff and destroys the vapor formula, causing the doctor to go a little crazy; he kills Brown and decides to experiment on the rest in an attempt to reconstruct the vapor. Things go from bad to worse for the motley group and Karloff winds up dead, though what's different here is that the story ends with Pryor taking the formula back to his hospital and vindicating Karloff. Pryor and Sayers make a singularly unappealing pair of leads, and the trapped men all blur together, leaving Karloff by default as the only real standout in the cast. Generally, he underplays his role and remains mostly sympathetic right to the end. The ice vault set is impressive (and you can actually see the actors' breath occasionally, so it must have been a cold set). The print is in very good shape until the last reel when annoying waves of flickering light appear for several minutes. [TCM]

DEMENTIA 13 (1963)

It's October, which means it's time for a month of horror and sf flicks, and I've got a bunch in the viewing queue. This is one I read a lot about in the monster magazines of my youth. I thought the title was weird and cool, and I still do even though it doesn't make much sense; "dementia" is generally defined as a group of symptoms which result from physical changes in the brain and it's never made clear to what the title of this film refers (is the 13th dementia alcoholic? senile? vascular?). Despite being one of the first movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this winds up being not as cool as its name, though there are pleasures to be had especially if you view it, like many critics do, as a direct descendant of Hitchcock’s PSYCHO. The Haloran family is having a reunion at their Irish castle, occasioned by the 7th anniversary of the mysterious drowning death of the youngest child, Kathleen. One of the sons (Peter Read) is there from America with his wife, Luana Anders, of whom the rest of the family does not approve. In fact, she has found out that she'll be cut out of the family inheritance if he dies first, which is likely as he has a weak heart. Sure enough, while the two are out for a midnight canoe trip in a lake on the grounds, Read has a heart attack and dies. Anders dumps his body in the water and tells the dysfunctional relatives that he was called back to New York on business, hoping to keep herself in the will. After a ritual reenactment of Kathleen's funeral that the nutty family does each year, the matriarch (Ethne Dunne) faints and Anders decides to pull a scam on her, perhaps in hopes of killing her off, by making it seem as if the drowned girl is still alive and haunting the grounds. However, in a Psycho-like twist, the plot suddenly changes direction when, as she is planting creepy wind-up toys in the lake, she herself is killed by an ax murderer, and the hunt for the killer takes up the rest of the movie. The only actor aside from Anders to make any impact is Patrick Magee (the deranged attack victim in CLOCKWORK ORANGE) as the family doctor. Magee overacts as is his wont, but his presence is always welcome. William Campbell (no relation to the delightful Bill Campbell of THE ROCKETEER) and Bart Patton are the brothers, and Mary Mitchel is Campbell's fiancee. Despite the presence of an ax murderer, this isn't really an early slasher film, but more like an old-fashioned Gothic mystery. Some stylish atmosphere, but overall not that different from the run-of-the-mill B-shockers of the era. [TCM]

THE DARK TOWER (1943)

This, like CROWN VS. STEVENS, is another TCM premiere of a British Warner Brothers "quota quickie" which has rarely been screened in the States. It's a thriller with a circus setting and, though the pace slackens a bit here and there, it's entertaining. Ben Lyon and his brother David Farrar own a struggling traveling circus, with Lyon running the business end and Farrar performing in the starring acrobat act with Anne Crawford, with whom Farrar is also romantically involved. One night, down-and-out Herbert Lom comes around looking for a job; there are none to be had, but when a lion escapes and threatens the circus folk, Lom is able to calm it down and return it to its cage. It turns out that Lom, a puny, bullied kid in his youth, discovered he had an ability to control animals, and he became a hypnotist. Lyon winds up hiring him to hypnotize Crawford so she can perform a backwards highwire slide without using a balance. The act turns the circus into a big draw, but it also creates tension behind the scenes: 1) Farrar becomes jealous of Lom (who is exerting more and more control over Crawford out of the ring); 2) everyone else gets pissed off when Lyon, in order to keep Lom around, agrees to make him a full-fledged partner in the business; 3) sharpshooter Josephine Wilson in particular distrusts Lom and doesn't hide her feelings. Lom confesses his love to Crawford, but she tells him that she could never forget Farrar. He seems to back off, but instead he hypnotizes Crawford into getting tired during the climax of her trapeze act with Farrar, causing Farrar to take a fall. He is seriously injured, and no one knows the reason for the accident, though Wilson suspects Lom played a part. The circus becomes even more popular until one night when the still crippled Farrar returns to watch a new hypnosis stunt involving Crawford sitting in a chair on the wire over a flame pit. The stunt turns deadly, but not quite in the way we suspect.

Lyon is his usual stuffy self, but despite getting first billing, his role is relatively minor. Farrar (best known for BLACK NARCISSUS) and Crawford are quite good as the central couple, but Lom (later Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies) shines as the mysterious Svengali figure. While not handsome, he is striking here with his short stature, dark looks, black suits, and heavy Austrian accent; he looks at times like a cross between Peter Lorre and Charles Boyer. There is some fun to be had from the comic relief figures of the portly ringmaster (Fredrick Burtwell) and his skinny, shrewish wife (Elsie Wagstaff). The characters are nicely fleshed out for a B-film like this; for example, William Hartnell, who played Dr. Who in the 1960's, plays the circus PR man and though he is not particularly important to the plot, he does come across as a fairly well-rounded character. I have no idea what the title refers to; perhaps the giant lift that Lom and Crawford use to get up to the trapeze in the final scene. The script was based on a play by George S. Kaufmann and Alexander Woollcott, but I can't imagine that much of the original remains. [TCM]

MURDER IN THE CLOUDS (1934)

Lyle Talbot is "3-Star" Halsey, a hot shot pilot for Trans America Airlines. He's sweet on stewardess Ann Dvorak, who loves him but is mildly disapproving of his showboating ways. More sensible pilot George (Gordon Westcott) also likes Ann, but mostly stays out of the way. A government man (Henry O'Neill) wants Talbot and his co-pilot, Ann's brother Tom, to take a job flying a scientist and his top-secret explosive to Washington, but when we see that an assistant (Arthur Pierson) has bugged the office and heard the conversation, we know there is skullduggery afoot. Sure enough, Westcott is a bad guy, and when Talbot is waylaid via fisticuffs over a pinball game, Westcott flies the plane instead. It explodes in mid-air and we discover that Westcott, who planned the whole thing, stole the explosive and parachuted out of the plane just before it exploded, leaving co-pilot Tom and the scientist to die. Dvorak comes upon Westcott and his cronies and they plan to get her to smuggle the explosive to Tijuana, but Talbot eventually comes to the rescue. This is a decent enough second feature, and Talbot makes a good hero, though Dvorak is rather bland as his romantic interest. The flying footage is good, even when it involves miniatures. I liked the fact that in the climactic air chase, the bad guy's plane is black. [TCM]

CROWN VS. STEVENS (1936)

Chris (Patric Knowles) is a young up-and-comer at an interior design firm run by the middle-aged Mr. Stevens. He's in love with a tramp named Mamie (who clearly doesn't deserve him) and he brings her a ring he's planning to buy for her if he gets a raise. He has the ring out "on approval" from a pawnbroker and moneylender named Blayleck, but Mamie won't give it back, and his boss won't give him a raise, so Chris goes to Blayleck's hoping to work something out. When he gets there, he finds the man dead and a woman with a gun leaving the scene, claiming she killed him in self-defense. He lets her go and takes advantage of the situation to burn Blayleck's account book so any evidence of his debt is gone. When the death makes the news, he struggles a bit with his conscience, but life goes on and he begins dating Molly (Glennis Lorimer), a client of his. While running an errand for his boss one day, he meets Doris, the boss's wife (Beatrix Thomson), and is startled to discover that she is the woman who killed Blayleck. She has a hard-luck story about needing money that her stingy husband wouldn't give her and getting in over her head with the moneylender, leading to his death. Chris agrees to remain silent, and soon Doris, who becomes something of a party girl, hatches a fairly ingenious plot to kill her husband. When Chris finds out about it, will he step in and risk exposing his own role in the death of Blayleck?

This rarely-seen early effort from British director Michael Powell was aired recently on TCM in a series of films made by Warner Brothers in England as "quota quickies," films made cheaply and quickly to satisfy a government demand that foreign studios operating in England produce a certain percentage of homegrown product. While nothing here indicates that Powell would eventually become a film legend (THE RED SHOES, BLACK NARCISSUS, PEEPING TOM), this is a briskly paced B-thriller (not, as its title might indicate, a courtroom drama) with a couple of nice plot twists and an almost noir-like feel, though this was produced a few years before the noir style would be "invented." Thomson seems too bland and subdued at first to be an effective femme fatale, but she grew on me. Knowles, who soon became a busy supporting actor in Hollywood, is remarkably handsome and appealing, even though he's playing a somewhat passive male who can't take control of any aspect of his life until the last few minutes of the film. (As young and good looking as he is here, there was a weird moment when he looked exactly like Elisha Cook Jr., the gunsel in MALTESE FALCON.) Davina Craig is a comic-relief maid who plays a crucial role in the finale--and sounds like the "Computer says No…" woman in the British comedy series Little Britain. I enjoyed this unpretentious, unheralded film, aired in a beautiful pristine print, and I picked up a new saying: "Oh, go sit on a tack or something!" [TCM]

SWEEPINGS (1933)
THREE SONS (1939)

These two movies, both based on the same novel, are old-fashioned sentimental family melodramas of the "ungrateful children are sharper than serpent’s teeth" variety. Since the '39 version is virtually a scene-by-scene remake, I'll let the plot summary of the first version stand here for both films. The story begins with the famous Chicago fire of 1871. In its aftermath, Lionel Barrymore (made up, not terribly well, to look like a young man) arrives in town to join the rebuilding boom. He founds a department store which is wildly successful; his wife has four children and dies during the birth of the fourth. Once the children are grown up, Barrymore hopes they will make him proud, with the sons going into the business and the daughter making a good marriage, but they all wind up disappointments. Gene, the oldest (William Gargan), lives the high life in Paris and comes home with a low-class woman who shoots a man while drunk, though Barrymore manages to cover up the incident to avoid scandal. Freddie, the youngest (Eric Linden), has no desire to work in retail, but falls for a lowly clerk (Helen Mack) whom Barrymore pays off to leave his son alone. When Linden openly rebels, Barrymore throws him out and he becomes a wandering bum. Burt, the quiet son (George Meeker), works diligently at his job as window dresser, but is unhappy when his father tries to promote him. The daughter Phoebe (Gloria Stuart) makes a bad marriage with a slimy European prince. The whole time, Barrymore doesn't see that the person who should be heir to the store is right under his nose: his loyal business partner. Gregory Ratoff, who undergoes several humiliations at Barrymore's hand yet continues to hope that he'll be rewarded for his years of service. At the climax, Ratoff is goaded by Barrymore into revealing that he has bought the children's shares in the business; this causes Barrymore to collapse, leading to the inevitable family reconciliation scene, with Linden winding up as the old man's last best hope. All the acting is good, with Ratoff a standout. Of the kids, Gargan and Linden get the most screen time and they're both fine. I wish the lovely and talented Stuart had more to do. Alan Dinehart, as Barrymore's brother, gets a memorable Christmas death scene, and Ninetta Sunderland (Walter Huston's wife) is good in her brief role as the matriarch.

THREE SONS is the B-movie remake. William Gargan appears in both versions, and the only major plot difference is that the uncle (played here by Gargan) is the man who gets shot by the mistress. Edward Ellis is the patriarch, Kent Taylor is the eldest son, Dick Hogan is the youngest, and J. Edward Bromberg is the ignored partner. Two young actors won parts in the movie through a national talent hunt: Virginia Vale plays the sister and Robert Stanton is Burt, who in this version wants to lead a ragtime band, and gets to sing a song. Stanton later changed his name to Kirby Grant (his birth name) and became famous as the star of the TV series Sky King. The acting is mostly fine. Ellis is no Barrymore, but he is more restrained in the role and fits it well; Bromberg is as good as Ratoff was. Gargan is only a few years older than the actors playing the sons, and the makeup used to age him isn't convincing. The earlier film is more atmospheric but the later film flows a bit more naturally. [TCM]

CORSAIR (1931)

An action melodrama directed by Roland West, who, after making a name in silent films, directed only three talkies (the other two being ALIBI and THE BAT WHISPERS) before retiring to run a restaurant. My understanding is that West was something of an early "indie" director, working just outside the Hollywood mainstream, which might explain the primitive, stagy moviemaking punctuated occasionally by the use of interesting visual style and atmosphere. We first see Chester Morris as a college football hero being flirted with at a high society party by snooty Thelma Todd. A year later, he's working for her stockbroker father (Emmett Corrigan), but isn't comfortable there, and when he refuses to cheat an old lady by selling her bad stock, he's fired (and dumped by Todd, who nevertheless remains interested). Morris and his college buddy Frank McHugh wind up working for bootlegger Fred Kohler, whose main customer is Corrigan. Soon Morris is using his ship, the Corsair, to hijack Kohler's liquor with some inside help from Corrigan's secretary (Mayo Methot) and her boyfriend (Ned Sparks); then he sells it at higher prices back to Corrigan. The insiders' method is far-fetched but ingenious: Methot uses her typewriter keys to send a Morse code message to Sparks, listening just outside the window. However, Corrigan catches on and plants bombs in champagne crates that he knows Morris will try to steal. Sure enough, he does, though he's brought thrill-seeking Todd (and her femme boyfriend William Austin) with him this time. All hell breaks loose in the well-done climactic scene, which includes a horrifying moment when the bad guys drown someone by dropping him into the ocean with weights tied to his feet. The pre-Code ending, which allows Morris to remain unpunished by the law and Todd to remain a spoiled, nasty piece of work, is quite satisfying. Methot, who never became a big star, is remembered now mostly as Humphrey Bogart's first wife. [DVD]

PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972)

A once-hot model and actress (Tuesday Weld) has been institutionalized after suffering a breakdown; her story is told in flashbacks, more or less chronologically, though in disjointed fashion, punctuated with flash-forwards to her heavily sedated life in a sanitarium. After escaping small town life in Nevada and becoming a famous model, she is discovered by director Adam Rourke and cast in a small-budget film called "Angel Beach" (sort of like Easy Rider if it had been made by Andy Warhol) which becomes a surprise hit. She marries Rourke and has a child who is brain damaged and lives away from home. Her marriage starts to fall apart and she has a few one-night stands with other men, resulting in an abortion. Her best friend is Anthony Perkins, the producer of Rourke's movies and a closeted gay man married to Tammy Grimes, who is paid by Perkins' mother to stay married to him, for appearance's sake, even though he has no compunction about sharing his beach house with hot young tricks. Feeling adrift, Weld goes back to her hometown to find herself, but finds nothing. She makes a stab at reconciling with Rourke, who is in Las Vegas shooting his next movie, but that falls through as well. She hears the story of a man who went into the desert to talk to God and was found dead of a snake bite. In the last scene, she and Perkins, in a hotel room avoiding a night on the town with friends, discuss the abyss before he takes a handful of Seconals and dies in her lap, which apparently triggers Weld's breakdown.

This is based on a novel by Joan Didion, whose books I can never get through. Most critics disparage the movie by saying the novel is better (isn't that almost always the case?), but I found this to be quite intriguing. It is a product of its time, both in terms of plot and style, but if you can get past the surface, it doesn't feel all that dated. A critic at the Strictly Film School site has noted that this film, directed by Frank Perry, bears comparison to the work of David Lynch, an interesting comment, though not one I would take too far, partly because this film has a strong narrative thread, even though it takes a while to piece together the fragments. Even after I had figured out the chronology, there were still things that weren't clear, particularly about the Weld character, her background (did she have a history of fragility or are we supposed to think that Hollywood destroyed her?), and her career (did she make more than one movie?). There is lots of dialogue in the film but little communication, which is one reason why the characters remain vague. The editing style is a mix of 60's choppiness and long single takes. Weld is very good in a role that calls for someone who seems a little detached; she doesn't so much spin out of control as wind down. Perkins is excellent, giving a tic-free performance that is miles away from Norman Bates, even though both characters do have "mother trouble," and he and Weld have great "best friend" chemistry; as I recall, they were also good together in PRETTY POISON. I wonder if this is the first Hollywood movie to use the word "dildo" (twice!) and show someone (a Marlboro Man-type actor played by Tony Young) using poppers during sex. My favorite line, from Weld in a restaurant in reaction to a comment on her "existential" performance in her movie: "Existentially, I'm getting a hamburger." [Sundance]

I AM A THIEF (1934)

Jewel thieves, romance, and murder on the Orient Express--sounds like fun, and some of it is, but for a short movie (one hour), too much of it drags. There has been a rash of jewel robberies in Paris and an insurance company, tired of making large payoffs, hatches a plan to catch the crooks by using an auction of the famous Karenina diamonds as bait. Suave Ricardo Cortez gets the diamonds, beating roughneck Texan Dudley Digges; when Cortez gets on the Orient Express (with nervous insurance man Hobart Cavanaugh), Digges joins him and eventually talks him into selling the diamonds, and they are stolen soon after. Who's behind it? There is a slew of mysterious characters on the train, including potential femme fatale Mary Astor, a perpetually arch-eyed baron (Robert Barratt), a count (Irving Pichel), and a befuddled looking old man (Ferdinand Gottschalk). Most of the enjoyment a viewer might get from this film depends on figuring out the good guys from the bad, with none of the main characters being who they seem at first to be, so I'll avoid spoilers, though if I figured out the puzzle halfway through, anyone can. Eventually, there is a murder, a gathering of suspects right out of an Agatha Christie movie, and an extra (though predictable) twist near the end. Astor looks good but seems a bit hemmed in by having to be quiet and mysterious for more than half the movie; Cortez is fine and the rest of the familiar supporting faces do their usual good, if unremarkable, work. Directed by Robert Florey, who remained a name in B-films through the 40's and later did a fair amount of TV work, including Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. [TCM]

THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS (1941)

A colorful, sentimental, rustic melodrama of life in Ozark Mountains among the moonshiners. This is not the kind of movie I would normally gravitate toward, but a friend recommended it so I gave it a shot. The film is based on a very popular novel from 1907 which had already been filmed twice and was filmed again in the 60's. John Wayne plays Matt Mathews, a strapping young man who belongs to a group of people who make their living selling illegal moonshine made in their hidden mountain stills. He believes he lives under a curse: his father left home when Wayne was a child, his mother died soon after, and he thinks he can't live a normal life until he has avenged his mother's death by killing his father. He's sweet on chirpy little Betty Field, but his dead mother fixation won't let him even consider married life until he lifts the curse. One day, a kindly older stranger (Harry Carey) arrives in the mountains just after a revenue agent has shot and wounded Field's father. Carey helps to save the man's life and Field takes a shine to him. He tells her he wants to buy land in the area, specifically Moanin' Meadow, where Wayne's family once lived, though now it's considered haunted. The mountain folk don't take kindly to strangers, but Field tells them all that Carey is her cousin, and after he saves the life of a sick child, he is generally accepted. Carey makes an offer to cranky Beulah Bondi, matriarch of the moonshiners and owner of the land; she is suspicious but he offers her enough money that she can't refuse. Wayne isn't crazy about Carey at first, but slowly warms to him. Soon, Field figures out that Carey is Wayne's father, who hopes to eventually strike up a relationship with him again; Wayne never knew that Carey abandoned his dying wife because he was serving time in prison. Carey and Field think that the mountain folk are spending too much time wrapped in the moonshine business and spending all their spare time scared of outsiders, and they set about making the acquisition of alcohol a low priority. As their crusade succeeds, the Bondi gang gets itchy, realizing that their easy living may be coming to an end. The catalyst for the climax comes when Carey pays to have old blind mountain woman Marjorie Main get an operation to restore her sight. At a family celebration, the newly sighted Main recognizes that Carey is Wayne's father, setting off a struggle for a gun that kills the sweet but simple-minded Pete (Marc Lawrence), and Wayne sets off to kill Carey. If you've seen THE SEARCHERS, you'll figure out how things end up.

I stayed with the movie, but wasn't crazy about the main performers. Wayne is a bit wooden, Field does an unconvincing job with the backwoods language and accent, and though Carey is dignified, he also never fully inhabits his role. I enjoyed more the rich supporting cast, including some actors who do a nice job working against type, like Bondi as a thoroughly nasty old lady (so different from kindly Mrs. Bailey in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and the usually lively Main in a low-key role. Lawrence, who played slimy goons in 40's noir pictures, is unrecognizable here as the damaged innocent who meets a tragic end. Filmed in Technicolor, the film looks lovely, with some of it shot on location (mostly in California), but the mountain homes look too, well, Hollywood to be effective. Field’s spacious "shack" in particular reminded me of a rustic version of a suburban home in a 50's Douglas Sirk movie. [DVD]

MIRACLE IN THE RAIN (1956)

Jane Wyman passed away yesterday; while she was highly acclaimed for her later work, from the mid-40's on, I enjoy her early work in B-films and screwball comedies more (films like FLIGHT ANGELS and PUBLIC WEDDING). This romantic fantasy set in Manhattan during WWII is very much like the lovely Judy Garland film THE CLOCK, but with a dollop of tragedy and a strong (and rather unexpected) element of the supernatural thrown in. Wyman is a pleasant young woman who has an office job with Excelsior Shoes; she lives in a small apartment with her mother (Josephine Hutchinson), a woman who has grown old and ill before her time because she never got over her husband abandoning his family several years ago. Wyman takes care of her and socializes occasionally with Eileen Heckart, a co-worker. One afternoon, while waiting for a downpour to end, a handsome, sweet-talking, and somewhat whimsical soldier (Van Johnson) strikes up a conversation with her and charms his way into an invitation home for dinner. He finds out that Wyman's father was an aspiring musician who left behind an unfinished song which Johnson plays at the piano, raising all sorts of bittersweet memories for Hutchinson. Despite the mother's warning that all men are no good, Wyman spends that Saturday on a casual day-long date with Johnson (and chaperone Heckart) which involves the theatre, dinner at a fancy French restaurant (where, unknown to Wyman, her missing father, William Gargan, plays piano) and attendance at a storefront auction where Wyman buys an old Roman coin which she gives to Johnson as a good-luck piece. They have a lovely Sunday together in Central Park; he also manages to write lyrics for Gargan's song and gets a human interest story published in the New York Times. Of course, it's all too good to last and on Monday, Johnson is called up for overseas duty; as he leaves, he tells her he'll love her forever. Three months later, after writing to him every day, she finds out that he was killed in combat. She has what would now be called a breakdown, barely able to function, and a cold she catches turns into pneumonia. She lights candles at St. Patrick's Cathedral and gets some counseling from a sympathetic priest, but also expresses her doubt about the existence of a cruel god who would take Johnson away from her. Heckart and Hutchinson try to help her, and even Gargan is inspired to return home, but she continues spiraling downward until she winds up weak and feverish on the steps of St. Patrick's during a rainstorm and has a life-changing vision, the title miracle in the rain, which shows her that love may indeed be eternal.

[SPOILER follows] There are two things that most critics dislike about this film. The first, the overly literal representation of life after death that ends the film (Johnson's ghost leaves her with the Roman good-luck coin she had given to him), is indeed hard to swallow, though the ending narration, which states that the story was told to the narrator and he wants to believe it, helps mitigate that a bit. Until the end, the film has seemed quite realistic (well, Hollywood romantic realism, in which people who look like Wyman and Johnson don't already have dates) and when realism gives way to a murky marriage of Catholic mysticism and campfire ghost story in the last moments, the audience is not prepared--unlike, let's say, the ending of fantasies like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or THE BISHOP'S WIFE, in which the fantasy world is set up from the beginning. The other problem for critics is the plethora of supporting characters and side plots: in addition to Heckart and Hutchinson, there's the father and his songwriting, the shoe company boss (Fred Clark) and his extramarital affair with one of the secretaries (Peggie Castle), a newlywed sailor (Alan King) and his chorus-girl wife (Barbara Nichols) whom Wyman and Johnson meet in Central Park, and a few others as well--future Laugh-In star Arte Johnson has a small role as an office boy. I think the colorful subplots add to the movie, though Gargan's story, which has a lot of promise, isn't developed as well as it should be. Ultimately, for me, the movie works because Wyman and Johnson are both very convincing, even better than Garland and Robert Walker were in THE CLOCK. Wyman made more acclaimed movies (JOHNNY BELINDA, THE YEARLING, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), but I like this one the best of all her later starring vehicles. [DVD]

THE STRANGE MR. GREGORY (1946)

Modest B-thriller from Monogram, though in acting and looks, it's a cut above their usual low-budget fare. Edmund Lowe, the Mr. Gregory of the title, is a mystic; we first see him with his assistant (Frank Reicher) as he is brought out of the Kalamudra Death Trance, a state of suspended animation which he can stay in for days. He's a magician by trade and one night, he meets Jean Rogers backstage and becomes smitten. At a party, he shows her husband (Don Douglas), as a parlor trick, how to tie a rope into a deadly garrote for easy strangling. Later in the evening, Lowe tries to lay a love trance on Rogers. Douglas punches him, though it has no effect on Lowe, who has become more or less invulnerable (except, as he says to Reicher, to "the hangman's noose or an assassin's bullet"). The next day, Lowe sends a dozen roses to Rogers with a note that he will send one less rose each day he has to wait for her. Understandably, this freaks her out a bit and soon Douglas goes to Lowe's place to tell him to lay off. However, after Douglas leaves, Reicher finds Lowe dead, garroted with a rope. *We* know all about that goofy Death Trance, so it's no surprise when, after Douglas is arrested, Lowe shows up again as Gregory's twin brother, Lane Talbot (why the different last name, I never figured out). In that guise, he gets Douglas off the hook by telling the court that his brother was a dangerously insane man, which also gets him in Rogers' good graces until she begins to suspect a rat. With some help from her friend (Marjorie Hoshelle) and a lawyer, Lowe eventually gets his comeuppance. The sets are much better than in the typical Monogram programmer, and it undoubtedly helped that this print, shown on TCM, is in remarkable shape, much cleaner than any other Poverty Row film of the era that I've seen. I haven't particularly liked Lowe before--I especially didn’t like him as the lead in CHANDU THE MAGICIAN--but he's fine here, nicely slimy and creepy. There are plot holes, and scenes that fade out about 10 seconds later than they should, but as an hour-long diversion, it does its job nicely. (IMDb says the film is also known as THE GREAT MYSTIC.) [TCM]

FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1961)

A colorful but bland account of the life of the famous saint. Parts of it work well, but there is too much gravitas here, as though the filmmakers were telling the life of Jesus, or perhaps remaking THE TEN COMMANDMENTS without any sense of humor or spectacle or even camp. In the 13th century, Pope Innocent III (Finlay Currie) is enlisting men to defend the papal kingdom of Sicily. Francis (Bradford Dillman), the carousing son of an upstanding merchant, volunteers to go, along with Paolo (Stuart Whitman), a Sicilian count living in exile in Assisi, but along the way, Francis hears a disembodied voice telling him to turn back. Sure that he's hearing the voice of God, he decides to obey; he is arrested for desertion and is scorned by Paolo, though after the war, Francis's friend Clare (Dolores Hart) talks Paolo into pardoning all deserters. Francis's father (Eduard Franz) throws a party in an attempt to reintegrate his son into the life of the town, but the passive and unworldly Francis baffles everyone. He throws off the trappings of his old life and begins begging for stones to build a new church, and with it a new order of clergy who desire to live in "extreme poverty" as Christ did. He and his little band of monks go to Rome to get papal permission to officially exist in the eyes of the church; the Pope, who has seen Francis in a dream, gives his blessing.

The rest of the film is a colorful, nicely filmed, but dramatically inert pageant of scenes from Francis's life: he loves children and blesses their pets, seems to be able to communicate with wild animals, rejoins the Crusades in order to bring peace to the Holy Land, and (in the film's best scene) tries to convert a Sultan (Pedro Armendariz) by claiming that God will allow him to walk through fire unharmed. He returns home to find his Franciscan order taken over by others (portrayed at first as almost evil but later as just misguided) who have started down the traditional road of collecting money and property to make his order like all the others. Unable to fight, he lives out his last years as a hermit, fasting and going blind. He collapses in a cruciform on the ground, with stigmata, has a reconciliation scene with his old friend Paolo (who has finally gotten over the fact that Clare dissed him to enter a convent, following Francis's lead), and dies. The very last shots, his funeral procession, are the most striking of the film, with flocks of birds following along through the dawn skies (or twilight, I wasn't sure). The acting is so-so, mostly because of the slack characterizations. Dillman is OK; he comes off like a beefier, less intense Anthony Perkins, and in fact Perkins' intensity might have made him a better (if almost certainly creepier) Francis. Hart has a nothing role, though it's worth noting that just two years later, the actress became a nun in real life. Whitman is the only actor who gets to express much emotion, but he's rather wooden. The location shooting is helpful, but doesn't make it worth sitting through. [FMC]

JUNGLE BOOK (1942)

I must admit that I've never read the Rudyard Kipling classic this film is based on; in my youth I did read a Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation and later saw the Disney version, though my memories of both are dim. This Alexander Korda film looks wonderful, with decent sets shot in lovely Technicolor, but feels a bit awkward in the telling. The narrative, set in and around an Indian village, is framed as a tale told by Buldeo, an old man (Joseph Calleia), to a couple of British tourists. He tells them that "the book of life" is the story of man's war with nature, and we flash back many years to when there were plans to expand the village if the surrounding jungle could be "beaten." One day, a toddler runs away and gets lost in the jungle while his father is attacked and killed by a tiger. The boy winds up in a wolf den, is raised by the wolves, and can communicate with the other animals, such as panthers, snakes, and elephants. Grown into young manhood, the boy (Sabu), on the run from Shere Kahn, the killer tiger, stumbles into the village, naked, barking, and howling. Calleia believes the village should not accept him, saying he has the evil eye, but his mother (Rosemary DeCamp) recognizes him as her lost son and takes him in. She names him Mowgli and teaches him human speech and customs. He takes a liking to Calleia's daughter (Margaret O'Rourke) but her father still distrusts the boy and does everything he can to run him back into the jungle. When Sabu and O'Rourke meet for a moonlight rendezvous, they discover a treasure guarded by a snake; Calleia gets wind of this and he and his greedy friends plan to find the riches for themselves. They do, but ultimately Sabu and the animals make them pay. The biggest obstacle here is that real animals are used and were clearly shot separately from most of the actors, so human/animal interaction is minimal. Most of the movie was shot on elaborate sets, which look fine, though some location footage is rather shakily incorporated here and there. Sabu, only 18 when the film was released, is perfect in the role of the wild boy who is tamed briefly but realizes he cannot be happy in the world of mankind. He appeared in several other jungle epics in the 40's but his career waned as he aged; this may be his finest moment. It's a little startling to see Swedish character actor John Qualen as an Indian barber. Ralph Byrd, later Dick Tracy in the movies and on TV, and Ralph Puglia also appear. I don't think kids today will enjoy this much, but film buffs will appreciate Sabu and the lavish Technicolor, and the huge fire and animal stampede at the film's climax. [DVD]

ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945)

I've been very much enjoying the little-known and rarely seen B-films from Columbia that TCM has been showing recently, but this one tried my patience. Perhaps because it had such a promising beginning, atmosphere to burn, and an interesting central plot device, its eventual downturn into tedious contrivance and too much talkiness bothered me more than it should have. It does begin quite well, with Nina Foch walking on what looks like a San Francisco bridge at midnight in billowing fog. She looks disoriented and a cop who approaches her suspects that she's thinking of jumping, but she assures him she's not. Still, she doesn't seem to be sure what she's doing until she sees a man getting out of a cab, attacked by two other men, one with a knife. She screams, the attackers run, and suddenly, she wakes up in her room at the Rustic Dell Inn. Two men burst in to see if she needs help, and one, William Wright, is the man she saw being attacked. Foch and Wright, both involved in war work and both on employer-ordered vacations, hit it off; when he's called to San Francisco, he asks her to come along. However, he gets orders from his boss (Otto Kruger) to take a top-secret packet to Hong Kong, so they have to cut their tentative courtship short. German spy Konstantin Shayne overhears enough of their conversation to set a trap for Wright. Sure enough, he winds up in a cab with Shayne and another thug, and sure enough, Foch winds up on the foggy bridge just in time to scream and stop Shayne from killing Wright. At this exciting point, we're barely halfway through the movie, but it's all downhill from here. Wright and Foch go looking for the packet, which got tossed off the bridge into either the Bay or onto a ship that may have passed under them, Shayne and his spies come after them, Kruger has to deny knowing Wright, and so on to fill out the last half hour. The locked room climax, with Wright and Foch tied up in a room filling with gas, does have a fairly ingenious solution, but getting there, the plot fills up with ridiculously contrived situations to get all the characters in the various places they need to be. Wright is a handsome and reasonably effective leading man, but he would remain a supporting player in B-movies until his untimely death 4 years later from cancer. Foch, later nominated for an Oscar, is at sea here, possibly because of the wishy-washy script. None of the supporting players register, though Shelly Winters has a very brief bit as a taxi driver. It's interesting that the dream premonition is never explained away. If this one airs again, catch the first half, then nap during the rest. [TCM]

I BURY THE LIVING (1958)

Richard Boone is a local businessman who is reluctantly about to take his turn as the manager of the local cemetery, a largely ceremonial post, he is assured, which will just take a few hours of his time a month. Theodore Bikel, the old Scottish caretaker (yes, you will immediately think of Groundskeeper Willie!), is about to be forced into retirement, though even with a pension, he doesn't want to leave. He shows Boone a wall map of the cemetery on which white pins designate a plot reserved for someone, and black pins designate a plot with a buried body. A newly married couple show up to buy their plots, but Boone accidentally sticks black pins in the map instead of white pins, and the next day, he hears that the couple were killed in a car accident. Struck by the eerie coincidence, he randomly sticks a black pin in a plot reserved for a Mr. Isham, and soon we see Isham die, apparently of a heart attack. A distraught Boone tells friends, police, and his fiancee (Peggy Maurer) about his weird power over life and death. They encourage him to continue experimenting with the pins in an attempt to show him that he's just imagining things, and a trio of prominent local men, including his own uncle, offer themselves as guinea pigs; when Boone uses black pins in their plots, all three indeed wind up dead. Cooped up alone in the cemetery office, a nearly suicidal Boone wonders what will happen if he takes out the black pins of the recently dead and replaces them with white pins. Sure enough when he does, we see the plots dug open, empty inside. The resolution is predictable, though the "how" aspect is not well explained.

As you can tell by five minutes in, this is Twilight Zone material, and would have worked better as a half-hour show instead of a 76-minute movie. Boone is fairly good, especially when he starts to go a bit nuts. Bikel, an Austrian who was only in his mid-30s, cannot pass for an old Scottish man; his accent is outrageously thick, as is his old-age makeup and his acting. He seemed so fake that I was sure that the character would wind up being someone disguising himself as an old Scottish caretaker, but I was wrong. The plot has intimations of the supernatural, and for a brief moment, you think that you'll get to see some of the undead stalking around the badly-done day-for-night graveyard, but no such luck. What the movie does have in spades is atmosphere; as other viewers have pointed out, this looks more like a film noir than a horror movie, and as in a Twilight Zone show, most of it occurs on just one or two sets. The wall map of the cemetery looks a little weird from the beginning, with the white pins looking practically phosphorescent in the dim lighting. As Boone starts to unravel, the map, seen from his point of view, appears larger and larger until it takes up the entire wall, dwarfing Boone (not a small man). There are other subjective shots of clocks and pins and gravestones that are nicely done. Still, I got restless several times during the middle of the film, so I can't give this a full recommendation. [TCM]

THE INTERNS (1962)

Even though doctor movies have been part of Hollywood's output since at least the onset of sound, this one, helped along by the popularity of TV dramas like "Ben Casey," probably started the fad for medical soap operas--both "The Doctors" and "General Hospital" started their TV runs the year after this film came out, and this film itself was spun off into a sequel in '64 and a one-season hour-long TV drama in 1970. The movie follows a group of handsome young male interns (and the nurses they chase) through their first year at New North Hospital; to be fair, there *is* one female intern (Haya Harareet), thrown in almost as an afterthought to provide a feminist viewpoint to antagonize a chauvinist pig doctor. James MacArthur (Dan-O on "Hawaii 5-0") is the quiet, sensitive type who is set up with a nurse (Stefanie Powers) whom all the docs assume is loose because she sports a hickey on her neck, but it turns out that the mark came from a child she was watching in the hospital nursery. She's really a nice girl, but conflict arises when she decides she wants to see the world and he wants to settle down. Nick Adams is a loudmouth joker who is tamed when he falls for a terminally ill patient from a poverty-stricken island in Indonesia. Cliff Robertson strikes up a relationship with a fashion model (Suzy Parker); when she asks him for help to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy (this was back when abortions were illegal), he steals the drugs from the nurses' station, an action which proves disastrous to his career. Michael Callan is a high-strung ball of fire who, despite having a long-time high society girlfriend, begins a flirtation with an older nurse as a way of getting an "in" to study with a doctor he admires.

Much of the narrative takes place between Christmas and New Year's, and a big holiday bash at a nurse's apartment is really the centerpiece of the film; its comic highlight is when a Russian nurse (Carroll Harrison) who is typically demure and inhibited comes alive with a few drinks in her and does a striptease, egged on by all. The main medical sideplot involves an older man dying slowly from a disease which will eventually paralyze him while his mind remains intact. His wife becomes a regular visitor among the interns and his situation is the trigger for a discussion of mercy killing; sure enough, he is eventually found dead of poisoning and the interns who were privy to his case are suspended from consideration for residencies until the case is solved. This causes tensions to run high and gives Callan a showy scene in which he has a public breakdown. Often, the movie has a beach party feel, despite the absence of bikinis or an ocean. The acting is all fine, with Callan and Adams standouts. Telly Savalas is the pig doc who almost causes Harareet to throw in the towel and leave the profession; Buddy Ebsen, John Banner (Sgt. Schultz on "Hogan's Heroes"), and Connie Gilchrist are featured, and in a very small role, you may recognize Mary Grace Canfield, who played Ralph the carpenter in "Green Acres." Watchable, if undeniably a dated period piece by now. [TCM]

THE MARINES FLY HIGH (1940)

This was made before America entered WWII, but while the studios were churning out lots of propagandistic military stories in anticipation of our involvement in the war. Even in 1940, this story of buddies who wind up rivals for the same girl must have seemed awfully cliched, and unfortunately, the B-aspects of the production don’t allow anything about this version to stand out. The leading men, both a bit past their prime, are Richard Dix and Chester Morris. An opening crawl tells us that the story is set in the past, when foreign countries often looked to American armed forces to help shore up law and order in the face of revolution and lawlessness. Dix is a Marine in an unnamed Central American country, part of a force trying to root out a shadowy revolutionary bandit, El Vengador, who, with his band of men, has just pulled off a raid on a cocoa plantation owned by Lucille Ball. Morris is a lieutenant who has just arrived in the country and is bunking with Dix. The two get along well until Ball comes between them. She has been dating Dix, so Morris' initial flirtation falls flat, but after an old flame of Dix's (Steffi Duna) arrives in the area, Ball decides to give Morris a whirl. The romance and adventure plotlines come together rather predictably, though the climactic battle, with a band of Marines trapped in a small town by the bandits, is quite exciting. I especially like the way that Dix, buzzing the area in a plane, gets messages back and forth to the men on the ground, with notes wrapped around wrenches that are delivered ingeniously. In the supporting cast are John Eldredge as Ball's foreman (and given his sinister looks from the get-go, it's not a spoiler to say that he's not what he seems), Dick Hogan and Horace McMahon as Marine buddies, and Kirby Grant (later Sky King on TV) as a lieutenant. Ball is, as usual in this stage of her career, a bit too low-key to be effective (see YOU CAN’T FOOL YOUR WIFE, a B-comedy made the same year); Morris and Hogan come off best, with Dix too old and sluggish to be believable as a man who is romantically entangled with two young women. [TCM]

BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1964)

Steve McQueen was a dashing anti-hero leading man of the 60's who to this day epitomizes the essence of "cool." I've only seen a couple of his films (the "cool" GREAT ESCAPE and the much later, deliberately "uncool" ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) so I decided to rent this one which was recently released as part of a boxed DVD set. The story is basically warmed-over Tennessee Williams, set in windy Texas grasslands instead of steamy New Orleans neighborhoods. Lee Remick is a woman with a young daughter taking a bus trip to Columbus, Texas. She's hoping to settle there and wait for her husband (McQueen) who has been in jail since before their daughter was born. She's befriended by a local cop (Don Murray) who helps her get a job and to rent a small house. Remick is surprised to discover that McQueen has been free on parole for some time and didn't send for her. The reason is another woman, not a mistress, but his foster mother, the nasty Miss Kate, who abused him when he was young and now insists that he go to night school instead of singing and playing guitar in a rockabilly "string band," which is what he wants to do, and what he thinks will lead to fame and success. Miss Kate, an invalid whom we only glimpse briefly near the end of the film, threatens to have him jailed in violation of his parole if he doesn't follow her wishes. McQueen is glad to see his family but is still trying to hash out his future and, as one can predict from early on, he makes mostly wrong choices (involving drinking, violence, and dealing with Miss Kate) leading to a sad (though not tragic) ending.

McQueen is good as a man who, thanks to an ultra-masculine exterior, seems strong, but who is actually a wounded neurotic with lots of demons swirling around inside him. Creepy harpsichord music plays in scenes which evoke memories of McQueen's past. I think Miss Kate's house looks a little like Mother Bates' home in PSYCHO, and that may be intentional--though McQueen's not a killer (and probably not a cross-dresser). Murray is very good as an example of the other side of the masculine stereotype: if McQueen is a rowdy and restless misfit, Murray is a quiet, sturdy, settled type (he was much more like McQueen in his debut film role in BUS STOP). I was rooting for Murray to sweep Remick off her feet, but this isn't that kind of movie. Things drag a bit in the middle, but the climactic action, triggered by the death of Miss Kate, is compelling, and a scene toward the end of McQueen running desperately after a speeding truck in a last stab at escape (from his past, from the law, from his obligations) is quite effective. The stark black and white cinematography sets the mood nicely. Remick was always an underrated actor and she's especially fine here. One thing that doesn't work is McQueen's singing; he is obviously lip-synching to someone else's voice, and he does a bad job of it. To make it worse, the director, Robert Mulligan, shoots his songs in close-up which just accentuates the artifice. This is not exactly the "cool" McQueen on display in this film, but he generally does a fine job and this is worth seeing. (IMDb says Glen Campbell plays a band member). The title song is catchy little number. [DVD]

DANGER FLIGHT (1939)

Pilot "Tailspin" Tommy Tompkins (John Trent) has founded a boy's club, the Scouts of the Air, with the intention of 1) keeping kids out of trouble, 2) getting kids interested in aviation, so that 3) they might become fliers when their country needs them (approximately two years hence, as it will turn out). Tommy befriends tough kid Whitey (Tommy Baker), an orphan whose older brother Mike (Dennis Moore) is a small-time thug and part of a fairly inept gang led by Dawson (Julius Tannen). When the gang tries but fails to hijack Brown's payroll delivery being made by car, Brown hires Tommy to fly the money out. However, in the middle of a bad storm, Tommy is asked instead to fly needed medical supplies to some dam workers. He does, using his only parachute to get the supplies to the ground, then crash lands. Just as searchers, including Tommy's buddy Skeeter (Milburn Stone), are ready to give up, Whitey and his fellow Scouts discover him and save the day. Whitey's heroic deed makes headlines and brother Mike plays on his ego to get him to help in a new scheme to get the ever-elusive payroll, involving a model airplane that can send out smoke signals. The ruse works, and Whitey and Tommy wind up prisoners in a basement until Tommy figures out how to rebuild a busted model plane and send his own message to the cops.

This is a pretty obscure little flick, one of four programmers made by bargain basement studio Monogram in 1939 featuring the comic strip character Tailspin Tommy, who had previously been the focus of two Universal serials. In look and feel, this is no worse, and maybe a smidge better, than any average adventure serial of the day, and the movie does feel like part of a serial, given that the story breaks down into two specific "chapters." The plane scenes, especially the storm, are handled acceptably. Baker and Moore are fine, and it's fun to see Tannen, whom many viewers will recognize as the "talking picture" demonstrator in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Stone makes a good if underused sidekick, but the weak links are Trent, who is boring, and Marjorie Reynolds as his girl, who is both boring and bad. She is known mostly as the love interest in HOLIDAY INN, and she's absolutely wooden in both films. The Alpha DVD print is in very bad shape, especially during the first reel--the picture quality gets better, but the sound remains spotty. The film seems clearly aimed at the kiddie matinee crowd of the day, but given its limitations, it's fun enough for an hour's entertainment. [DVD]