THE GIRL MOST LIKELY (1957)

My favorite movie eras are the 30's, 40's, and 60's. This movie is a perfect example of why I tend to shy away from 50's films (too much emphasis on bright color surfaces, too much artificiality, not enough risk-taking, and mediocre acting, with good actors often placed in roles that don't suit them) and yet I continue to sample them as I sometimes find subversive pleasures which were probably not part of the filmmakers' master plan. This is a musical remake of a 40's romantic comedy called TOM, DICK AND HARRY starring Ginger Rogers (which I have not seen). Jane Powell is a dreamy young working girl who still lives with her parents, loves romantic movies, and yearns for the good life with a rich husband—her first song, sung in her bedroom, reminds me a bit of Ann-Margret's "How Lovely to Be a Woman" in BYE BYE BIRDIE. Her unambitious, stable, steady, stick-in-the-mud boyfriend is realtor Tommy Noonan; at a nighttime beach party, he sets up lounge chairs for the two of them amongst the teeming masses of couples on the sand who are making out like crazy. She rather passively accepts his proposal of marriage, but the next day, on a crazy impulse, she jumps into the water off a ferry boat, hoping to be "saved" by the owner of a nearby yacht. Instead, it's boat repairman Cliff Robertson who picks her up. He's handsome, hunky, and down to earth, and they hit it off well, but the problem is that money is not his main concern in life. Still, she becomes engaged to him without mentioning Noonan. Later, she manages to meet the real yacht owner (Keith Andes) who seems to be the answer to her dreams, and gets engaged to him. Naturally, the three find out about each other and soon she has to choose the one most likely to make her happy.

The plot has promise, as does the gimmick that we see her whimsical (and musical) imaginings of what life would be like with each one. The production numbers are well executed with choreography by Gower Champion, but the songs themselves, despite some clever lyrics, are unmemorable. The pacing is absolutely leaden in the first half, though things do pick up a bit later. Powell is a problem: she's pretty and peppy, and sings and dances fine, but she was almost 30 and looks it, and the character seems like she should be quite a bit younger. Kaye Ballard is fun as her best friend, and Frank Cady (Sam Drucker on "Green Acres") and Una Merkel play Powell's parents. A cute dancer named Kelly Brown plays Ballard's boyfriend (in real life, Brown was the father of dancer Leslie Browne who was nominated for an Oscar for THE TURNING POINT). The movie's saving grace is how darn gay it seems. Noonan, passive if not quite an obvious sissy, exclaims, when Powell says yes to his proposal, "You've made me the happiest girl in the world!" One number (I think it's called "Balboa") is full of shirtless men in short swim trunks, showing lots more skin than the women do. A Mexican-themed dance features Andes and Brown acting a tad swishy, and when Robertson goes to Noonan's place of work to check out his competition, the scene plays out like a not-so-subtle gay pick-up. Without these little delights, I'm not sure I would have stayed with the film until the end. [TCM]

BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON (1972)

This film of the early life of St. Francis of Assisi begins with young Francis (Graham Faulkner) coming home from the Crusades; the rumor is that he has turned coward, but he arrives in a state of near-total collapse with a dangerous fever. While his mother (Valentina Cortese) tends to him, we get some fractured flashbacks of his days before the wars as a son of privilege in the village of Assisi. When he finally recovers, he seems to have had a major personality change, made plain in a scene in which he scampers across a roof chasing after a bird. He catches it, holds it, and lets it go, and then teeters on the edge of the roof while a flock of birds swarms around him. He decides to give up all his possessions and live in poverty as a beggar. His father hopes taking him to church will help, but Francis has a meltdown, screaming "No!" at the giant crucifix and eventually stripping himself naked in the public square in the presence of the Bishop, saying that he has been "born again." The Bishop tells him that he is subverting "the established order," though he does seems to have at least a bit of sympathy for Francis' innocent idealism. Francis goes off to live in a ruined chapel and, with the help of a small band of followers, mostly poor and crippled, rebuilds it. That winter, his three closest friends return from the Crusades and, one by one, they decide to join him. Also joining him is Clare (Judi Bowker), a young woman he fancied in his pre-war days. When the bishop has their church set on fire, Francis and his friends go to Rome to see the Pope (Alec Guinness) to find out why the Church opposes them so violently. In the film's climax, the muddy, barefoot Francis enters the outlandishly ornate cathedral and lectures the Holy Fathers on the Gospels (the lilies of the field neither toiling nor spinning, etc.). He is run out of the church, but the Pope has second thoughts, calls him back in, and gives him his blessing by kissing Francis' feet

This film is derided by many as a "hippy-dippy," flower-child film, and the fact that songs by Donovan, the archetypal hippie troubadour, crop up occasionally only reinforces that label. There is a very 60's vibe to Francis's philosophy, presented as a rebellion against "the establishment"--the church, the state, the family. But I found the movie to be quite enjoyable, and much less dated than I was expecting it to be--no day-glow colors, no light show visuals, no druggy hazes, and fairly standard cinematography (though most of the men do have hippieish hair and/or beards), and even Donovan's songs sound more ancient folkie than hippie. Faulkner is very handsome and gives a solid, charismatic performance despite the fuzziness of Francis' character as written. Bowker, wispily lovely, has almost nothing to do, and is in fact absent from the film for long stretches. Supporting players Leigh Lawson and Kenneth Cranham as Francis' buddies have much more screen time. Guinness gives one of the oddest performances of his career as the Pope--I can't tell if the Pope indeed has had some kind of spiritual epiphany, or if he's crazy like a fox (it's suggested that the Pope's actions have a practical, political basis in that Francis may be able to bring the poor back into the faithful fold), or just a somewhat bug-eyed loony. The movie, shot on location in Italy, is almost always lovely to look at. I find this a much more interesting film than the early 60's Hollywood version of Francis' life with Bradford Dillman. This one is much better than its reputation suggests. [DVD]

MIRANDA (1948)

I've never been particularly fascinated by mermaids (though I was fascinated by the hunky blond Aquaman in my comic-book-reading youth), and though I remember SPLASH being OK, I also remember that MR. PEABODY AND THE MERMAID was a terrible movie, despite the presence of the wonderful William Powell. So it was with some trepidation that I approached this British comic fantasy about a man who finds a mermaid and takes her back to civilization. It turns out to be a fairly delightful film, much more interesting than the above two mermaid movies. Middle-class doctor Griffith Jones takes a solo fishing vacation in Cornwall and snags a mermaid named Miranda (Glynis Johns) on his line. When he falls in the water, she takes him to her cave and he awakes to hear her singing her siren song. She begs him to take her back to London with him so she can spend a few weeks seeing the sights she's read about in snippets of newspapers left behind in the water. He agrees, having her pose as a patient confined to a wheelchair. When they get to London, the men she meets are all enchanted with her, especially Jones' butler (David Tomlinson) and his painter friend, John McCallum. The women are another story. Jones's wife (Googie Withers) isn't terribly happy to see such a lovely young woman staying with them indefinitely and being carried everywhere by her husband. Tomlinson's wife, the family maid, and McCallum's fiancée are similarly upset to see the effect she has on their men.

Jones hires a famously eccentric nurse (Margaret Rutherford) to take on the mermaid's personal care; when Rutherford finds out the truth about Johns, she's fascinated and keeps the secret. The rest of the film consists of Johns seducing all three men (though it's unclear exactly how far any hanky-panky could actually go) between visits with Jones to the opera (where one night, she heaves herself up on the edge of her box seat and belts out an aria as good as the one just heard on stage) and the playing-out of lots of fish puns and jokes about the mermaid's cold skin and Tomlinson's big ears. Just when it seems like the mermaid has wrecked all their love lives, the men find out that she's juggling them all and they lose interest. Johns dives out into the Thames and heads out to open sea, leaving the men and women to mend their relationships. A tidy and predictable ending, yes, but with a hilarious shocker of a last shot that will make you go back to contemplating the mechanics of human/mermaid sex. The movie is frothy and sexy and all the acting is top-notch, with especially high marks going to Withers, who generally manages to avoid the brittle clichés of the jealous wife, and the very handsome Jones (pictured) and McCallum. It's based on a play, but it never feels stagy. Brian Oulton has a small role as a flamingly gay dress designer. I love the fact that there is a separate credit for the tail: "Tail by Dunlop." [TCM]

SHADOWS OF THE ORIENT (1935)

Wow, am I on a bad movie kick! This one is so bad, I'm tempted not to bother anyone with news of its existence, but I sat through the whole thing so I'm gonna forge ahead. Besides, that cool title is what suckered me into watching this, so maybe my review will save others who might be equally tempted. This begins with a good scene that was duplicated in a later (and much better) Ronald Reagan B-movie, SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR, in which a pilot, smuggling a Chinese family of illegal aliens, dumps them out in mid-air to their deaths when he's attacked by another plane. The pilot, pissed when his boss won't pay him for the aborted delivery, calls the Feds and offers to give them the goods on the smuggling ring, but is shot to death just before the agents raid the Chinese restaurant which is the front for the gang. The leader, Sidney Blackmer, gets away, but agent Regis Toomey, his older sidekick (J. Farrell McDonald), and a prominent judge's daughter (Esther Ralston) try to infiltrate the gang. Many static, tedious scenes later, a climax of sorts occurs when Blackmer forces Ralston into smuggling another Chinese family, with Toomey on her tail, not realizing she's in the pilot's seat. The 70-minute movie is filled with inept photography, bad sets, and flubbed lines left in, and the lack of any background music at all only accentuates the sheer boredom of the proceedings. Even the promise of a moderately exciting air chase at the end goes nowhere. The actors, all pros who have done good B-film work elsewhere, are left at sea by bad direction and zero production values. Blackmer gets one nicely slimy, almost campy line, when he says, "Orientals have a peculiar irresistible fascination for me," but despite the promise of the melodramatic title, this one will hold no one's interest. [DVD]

THE HAT BOX MYSTERY (1947)

This Poverty Row detective film, from little-known outfit Screen Guild Productions, is dreadful, but for a B-movie buff like me, still has moments of interest. While struggling detective Tom Neal is out of his office, his secretary/fiancée Pamela Blake takes on a case for him; a mysterious man (Leonard Penn) with an obviously fake goatee says he wants her to get photographic evidence of his wife's adulterous activities. He tells Blake where to take the picture and even gives her a hat box with a hidden camera to use. However, when Blake goes to take the photo, it turns out that the box is rigged with a gun, and she shoots the wife. The DA takes her into custody, but Neal talks him into letting her go and letting him try to snare the real killer. With equal parts help and hindrance from bumbling sidekick Allen Jenkins, Neal does eventually clear Blake and the cops get Penn.

The plot is serviceable but with a weak script and a 45 minute running time, this ends up feeling more like a summary of a movie with most of the action and explanatory detail left out; other weaknesses include the cardboard sets and the grating background music. I like both Neal and Jenkins (pictured), though their best days were behind them. Jenkins was a reliable supporting comic relief figure in dozens of Warner Brothers films of the 30's (42ND STREET, MAYOR OF HELL, SH! THE OCTOPUS) whose career was revitalized later in TV. Neal, a handsome tough-guy actor who never made it out of B-films (DETOUR, FIRST YANK INTO TOKYO), was only in his mid-30s here but he's looking rather seedy already--his career was essentially over a few years later thanks to some real-life bad behavior. Blake is totally forgettable, though comic actress Virginia Sale tries hard for some laughs as a burger slinger and Jenkins' long-suffering gal. The most notable part of the film is at the very beginning, when the four leads introduce themselves directly to the camera, first in character, then with Neal giving their real names. [DVD]

TONIGHT WE RAID CALAIS (1943)

A competently made WWII propaganda film which falls somewhere between a B- and an A-film. John Sutton is a British spy who is snuck across the English Channel in order to find a munitions plant and mark it so the RAF can bomb it a few nights later. On his way to finding his contact, Marcel Dalio, he takes refuge in the farmhouse of Lee J. Cobb, whose son has just been reported dead in a battle against the British. Cobb is willing to help out, passing Sutton off as his son returned from the front, but Cobb's daughter, Annabella, blames the British for the death of her brother and resents Sutton almost as much as she resents the Nazis. With the help of Dalio and Cobb, Sutton finds the plant and gets local farmers in the area to set bonfires encircling it on the night of the raid, but local Nazi Howard da Silva, by threatening Annabella's family, finds out about the plot from her. When he kills her family anyway, she sees the light and commits herself to helping Sutton accomplish his goal. The production is stagy but effective, and Sutton, mostly a B-actor, acquits himself well, though I was not as impressed by Annabella, a French actress, married at the time to Tyrone Power, who did not have a long Hollywood career. Beulah Bondi is Cobb's wife, who gets tricked by Da Silva into giving away an important secret near the climax. The most striking aspect of the plot is the active role of the women; at the climax, it's the farmer's wives who have to bond together and take care of setting the fires with Sutton. Also with John Banner (Schulz on "Hogan's Heroes") and Blanche Yurka. Directed by John Brahm with some nice but unobtrusive stylistic touches here and there. [DVD]

SEXTON BLAKE AND THE HOODED TERROR (1938)

Fictional British detective Sexton Blake is a Sherlock Holmes rip-off, right down to the bumbling sidekick, the matronly housekeeper, and a Baker Street address. He was not nearly as universally popular in the movies as Holmes, but he remained a hero in books, comic strips, and British television through the 70's. This film, which plays out more like a Saturday matinee serial than a Holmes mystery, begins in Shanghai with an attempt on the life of Granite Grant (great character name, played by David Farrar, though he only has a couple minutes of screen time) by an evil organization called the Black Quorum, led by arch-villain The Snake. Grant's friend Duvall goes to London to pass along important information about the group, but he is killed via poisoned blowpipe in Blake's apartment. With help from a French agent (Greta Gynt), Blake (George Curzon) and his roommate Tinker, who is in fact an inept tinkerer in scientific experiments, get on the trail of the Snake, actually a wealthy stamp collector (Tod Slaughter). There are many trappings of the adventure serial: the blowpipe, invisible ink messages, spying TV cameras, a creepy casino which is a front for the bad guys' headquarters, and a death chamber with snakes slithering out of the walls. Best of all is the Black Quorum who, despite knowing each other’s identities, sit around at their meetings wearing hoods (see picture). The relatively fast pace of the proceedings is a big plus here, as most of the actors are just adequate, with Slaughter doing nicely as the baddie. The Snake gets away at the end, but since Blake was only "unofficially" on the case, he doesn’t care (!). Farrar went on to low-level stardom as the male lead in Michael Powell's BLACK NARCISSUS. Good print from the British Cinema Classic B-Film set from VCI. [DVD]

CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE (1940)

Another British B-thriller with Tod Slaughter twirling his mustache and threatening to feed a man's entrails to the pigs. This one is a loose adaptation of Wilkie Collins's classic Gothic novel The Woman in White which was brought to the screen more faithfully (with Hollywood stars and a bigger budget) but with less rough flair in 1948. Here, Sir Percival Glyde, prospecting in Australia, gets word that he is to take over his family's estate in England; fellow prospector Slaughter, thinking Glyde is rich, murders him (driving a railroad spike through his head), goes to England and assumes his identity, only to discover that the estate is almost bankrupt. His only hope is to go through with a long-arranged marriage with the wealthy (and considerably younger) Laura. However, as she is in love with her tutor Paul, she is not happy with the arrangement--the brief wedding night scene is shot like a scene of torture from a Hammer horror movie--and she brings her sister Marion to live with her.

Meanwhile, the counterfeit Glyde has other problems piling up: 1) the saucy maid he's banging on the side is pregnant; 2) he discovers that Glyde had been secretly married and has a secret daughter, Anne, locked up in an asylum; 3) legally, he can’t get his hands on enough of Laura's money to satisfy his needs, and his lawyer tells him he'd be better off if his wife was dead. So, 1) when the maid wants him to do the right thing, he kills her, and gets to re-use his infamous line from MURDER IN THE RED BARN, "You shall be a bride--a bride of death!"; 2) when Anne's mother becomes a problem, she winds up dead as well; 3) when Glyde finds out that Anne, escaped from the asylum and haunting the property, is the spitting image of Laura, he kills her, claims his wife is dead, and sends Laura to the asylum. Luckily, Paul and Marion figure things out and come to Laura’s rescue. Though it only uses the names and bare bones of Collins's original plot, it's great near-campy B-movie fun. Slaughter goes delightfully over the top, leering and licking his lips whenever he can. No one else in the cast has a chance against him, though Hay Petrie has a bit of fun as the dastardly Dr. Fosco, who knows all of Glyde's secrets and keeps hoping for a big financial payoff instead of the promised loss of his intestines (which sadly does not happen, though Petrie's end is imaginative). Not for everyone's taste, but trashy fun if you're in the mood. The print from VCI's British Cinema: Classic B Film Collection Vol. 1 is in very good shape. [DVD]

BLACK MAGIC (1949)

In 16th century France, a young gypsy boy named Joseph sees his mother brutally executed for having the power of "second sight': he bites the hand of the man responsible, Montagne (Stephen Bekassy), leaving a scar, and as he is being tortured, he is rescued by gypsies. Years later, Joseph (Orson Welles) discovers, with some help from the famous Dr. Mesmer, that he has a powerful talent for hypnosis. He goes on the road as Count Cagliostro, becomes famous as a mystical healer, and soon runs into Montagne, who, not recognizing him, asks for his help in a complicated plot to bring down Marie Antoinette involving Lorenza (Nancy Guild), a woman who is her double. He agrees to help, but once they reach the royal court, the plots multiply and it is soon each man and woman out for his or her own interests. Though this film is thick with the trappings of French history (Cagliostro was real, and he was arrested for being involved in the infamous affair of the necklace that was instrumental in bringing down Marie Antoinette), it is apparently mostly fiction, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas (who, in the movie's framing device, is telling the entire narrative to his son, played by Raymond Burr). It's a bit slow moving but it's enjoyable to watch the tricky, complex plots play out, and the sets (many of which look like actual on-location spots) are magnificent. Welles is excellent as always, and is rumored to have co-directed with credited director Gregory Ratoff. The rest of the acting is inconsistent; Guild is just OK as the French queen but terrible as Lorenza, and is especially bad when she's acting with Welles; Frank Latimore, as her gallant lover, is rather wooden. The only other standout is Akim Tamiroff as Cagliostro's loyal associate who has pangs of conscience near the climax when he's convinced that his boss has gone off the deep end. Not screened very often, but worth catching. [TCM]

MURDER IN THE RED BARN (1935)
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (1939)

In the 20's and 30's, Tod Slaughter was well known in England as a hammy star of stage and screen melodramas, most associated with the role of the killer barber Sweeney Todd (long before the Sondheim musical). As far as I can tell, the B-movie thrillers he made through the 30's and 40's didn't take off here in the States, but with the availability of the public-domain films on cheap DVDs, he has something of a cult following these days, and I was pleased to catch up with him over the holidays. The movies are stilted and low-budget but fun if you're not expecting too much. My problem with Slaughter (pictured below) is that he looks too much like Paul Ford, the jolly actor who played Mayor Shinn in THE MUSIC MAN, so it's difficult to take him seriously as a villian at first.

MARIA MARTEN, OR MURDER IN THE RED BARN, Slaughter's first film, is based on a play which was part of his regular repertory. He plays Corder, a well-liked village squire who throws dances for all the townsfolk, even the outcast gypsies, in his big red barn. He dances and flirts with lovely young Maria Marten (Sophie Stewart) but she is loved by Carlos, a hot-blooded gypsy boy (Eric Portman). An old gypsy fortune teller sees a hangman's noose in Slaughter's future, which rather puts a damper on the proceedings, but a few nights later, Maria sneaks away to be with Corder—it's unclear what the attraction is, as she looks sweet, virginal, and about 20 years old, while he looks a bit plumb and every bit his 50 years—but their rendezvous that night results in her pregnancy. By the time she tells Corder, he's on the verge of marrying a rich woman in order to pay off some gambling debts. When she threatens to expose him, he lures her to the barn and kills her (great line, delivered with blood and thunder by Slaughter: "You shall be a bride--a bride of DEATH!") and buries her there. Carlos helps the police figure out what's what, and Slaughter gets a good gone-round-the-bend climax. Gerard Tyrell is memorable as the comic relief village idiot who keeps getting cheated out of loose change by Slaughter.

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW is set in 1880 France, where the police are stymied by a series of murders and robberies supposedly committed by a wolfman, whose horrible face appears at the window just before the murder occurs (a good special effect for the day). When a bank is robbed by the monster, the rich Chevalier (Slaughter) agrees to make a large deposit to help save the bank, but in return he asks the bank manager for his daughter's hand in marriage. However, the young lady is in love with a lowly bank clerk (John Warwick), so Slaughter incriminates Warwick in the robbery. Meanwhile, Warwick knows a doctor who is experimenting with re-animating dead beings; this plot thread comes into play in the main narrative when Warwick proposes bringing back a recently dead victim of the "wolfman" so they can identify the killer and clear his name. It's no spoiler to note that Slaughter is behind the "wolfman" racket, though the secret of the face at the window and the way in which Slaughter is unmasked are both worth sticking around for. Neither of these are exactly horror movies; they're more Gothic-tinged crime thrillers, but they're fun discoveries, especially the first one, and I may delve further into Slaughter's work in the future. [DVD]

THANKS A MILLION (1935)

Fred Allen's traveling band gets stuck on a rainy night in a small town and happens upon a political rally for windbag politician Raymond Walburn, who is running for governor. His tiresome speech has the audience members trickling out in boredom, but when singer Dick Powell gets up and does a song, the reaction is electric. Allen agrees to have the band peform at all of Walburn's rallies, but Powell soon gets fired for being too good--the crowds start to leave after he's done, not sticking around for the often-inebriated candidate. Party boss Alan Dinehart sees a good thing when it's in front of him and asks Powell to run for governor instead, as a figurehead for the party. He agrees to do it, assuming he'll lose but hoping to get some good exposure for his singing, but soon he's ahead in the polls. Powell and the band enjoy the ride, but when the party tries to make his sign a contract promising specific state office appointments as favors, he rebels.

First of all, I must cry "Yikes!" at the fortuitous arrival of this film on Fox Movie Channel so close to the time that Illinois's Blagojevich scandal broke. It's always fun when a little-known classic-era flick becomes relevant to our 21st-century affairs. I had never heard of this film, but it's a little gem; the political satire, though broad, is fun, the songs are decent, and I enjoyed seeing hunorist Fred Allen, who I mostly know from reruns of early-50's episodes of What's My Line on Game Show Network, in a rare acting role; he's quite good, and I'm sorry he didn't do more sidekick roles like this. Dick Powell is at an interesting place in his career here: he'd just pushed past the "lead juvenile" part he could do in his sleep (the early 30's Gold Diggers films), but hadn't yet found his tough-guy niche (1944's MURDER MY SWEET). I found him quite handsome and charming here; his leading lady, Ann Dvorak, is fine in a less substantive role, and Walburn is very funny as the popeyed drunken politician. Also with Patsy Kelly and Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. A romantic stumbling-block plotline involving the party boss's wife fliriting with Powell is too half-hearted to work, but the rest of the film is quite enjoyable. [FMC]

MY YEAR IN CLASSIC MOVIES:

Below is my list of the 10 classic movies I saw for the first time this year which were either among the best or most interesting (not necessarily the same):

BLONDE ICE (1948)--Delirious nonsensical Poverty Row film noir with no stars but a ton of action involving bad people acting badly. Almost as good as DETOUR (which I reviewed this year, but had seen before).

THE BLUE LIGHT (1932)--Not the best of the German Mountain movies, but one that stays in the mind due to its imagery.

CRAIG'S WIFE (1936) and HARRIET CRAIG (1950)--Two versions of the same story, with enough differences in the plot points and performaces to make them both worth watching; Rosalind Russell ('36) and Joan Crawford ('50) are both excellent.

CULT OF THE COBRA (1956)--B-thriller about a woman who can turn into a cobra hunting down some GIs who desecrated a cult ceremony. Bland and ultimately disappointing, but different enough to make it worth a viewing, especially in its first 15 minutes.

THE DRAGON PAINTER (1919)--A wonderful way to discover the early career of Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa in a fairy-tale-ish parable about love and art.

THE GHOST TRAIN (1941)--British B-comedy/thriller about train passangers stranded at a haunted station which isn't all that funny but has atmosphere to burn.

THE GUV'NOR (1935)--Another charming George Arliss comedy. The man is due for a critical revival.

HUMORESQUE (1946)--One of those movies I'd avoided, a romantic melodrama of the kind I have to be in the right mood for, but I enjoyed it immensely, with Joan Crawford giving what may be her best performance just before tipping into camp in the 50's, and John Garfield almost as good as her violin-playing lover.

I WAS AN ADVENTURESS (1940)--Not a great movie, but a fun novelty, with Erich von Stroheim in a rare comic role as a con man (with his partners Peter Lorre and Vera Zorina) out to fleece the idle rich. Essentially a B-movie version of Lubitsch's classic TROUBLE IN PARADISE.

MAN HUNT (1941)--Walter Pidgeon muffs his chance to kill Hitler and goes on the run from nasty Nazi George Sanders. Not at all realistic, but a solid example of a pre-WWII Hollywood spy thriller.

I also kinda liked the Lana Turner 60's paranoid drug flick THE BIG CUBE and some of the other movies that Warner Home Video put out in their "Camp Classics" series of boxed sets. I liked discovering 2 50's actors who should have had bigger careers, Don Murray (THE BACHELOR PARTY, HATFUL OF RAIN) and Anthony Franciosa (STORY ON PAGE ONE and w/Murray in HATFUL). I discovered the difference between Deanna Durbin (OK) and Sonja Henie (not so much). I was very happy to finally be able to see TOBACCO ROAD, which led me to read the original book, and finally I loved an early James Mason thriller THE UPTURNED GLASS, which just missed making the top 10.

FOOLISH WIVES (1922)

Three Russian con artists pose as aristocrats, rent a villa near Monte Carlo, and use counterfeit money to gamble. The two women, Olga and Vera, pretend to be countesses and Sergius (Erich von Stroheim) poses as their cousin, the Count Karamzin. He is on the prowl for a rich woman to fleece and finds one in Helen, the young and restless wife of the staid and older (and newly arrived) American ambassador to Monaco. Karamzin is free to show her the sights, take her on boating trips, and help her out in the casinos. He even contrives to get her stuck with him overnight during a storm when they take refuge in an old woman's house in the marshes, but a monk who has also come in out of the rain winds up in the same room with them, putting the kibosh on that plan. As he ups the seduction attempts, he also carries on a lackluster affair with his plain-looking maid, whom he has promised to marry, and has designs on Marietta, the mentally handicapped daughter of his counterfeiter. Eventually Karamzin gets Helen alone in his villa and tells her he needs 90,000 francs to settle a debt of honor; she offers him the money, but the maid, overhearing them, sets the house on fire before throwing herself into the sea. When the count leaps to safety before Helen, he is disgraced and runs off in the night to sneak inside Marietta's window, apparently with rape on his mind. But the next morning, the counterfeiter drags Karamzin's dead body out of his house and stuffs it down the sewer. In the end, Helen appears to learn a "Wizard of Oz" lesson, to be happy with her stuffy old husband and not to seek exotic thrills outside of her own back yard.

This is one of the many movies Erich von Stroheim directed which were drastically edited down by studio bosses from several hours (over 6 in this case) to a more commercial running time. Most of the original cut is lost, but Kino's restoration, which comes in at around 2-1/2 hours, still manages to feel both too long (many individual scenes could be edited down a bit) and incomplete (we don't know what happens in the counterfeiter's house at the end, and the character of Vera seems totally unnecessary). Stills from his silents show Stroheim looking quite wicked and decadent, but here, his character is essentially a weak and desperate man trying to project both a charming and bullying persona, as needed. He actually comes off more like a naughty boy than a sinister lothario. Some of the acting is in the exaggerated silent style of the era, though Stroheim and Maude George as Olga are less mannered than the rest. This was the first movie which cost over a million dollars to make, mostly due to its sets, with Monte Carlo reconstructed faithfully, and many scenes are striking, such as the midnight storm and a water carnival. In an amusing self-referential joke, throughout the film, Helen is seen reading a book called "Foolish Wives" by Erich von Stroheim. [DVD]

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS (1955)

Back in the mid-60’s, I remember this made-for-TV opera being run every year at Christmas, usually on a Sunday afternoon, but despite my love of all things Christmas, I never got around to watching it. Since then, I’ve learned that the opera was first aired live in 1951 and re-staged, in live performance and in reruns, through the 60's. Recently a kinescope of the 1955 live telecast was issued on DVD. The plot is simple and seemingly classic, though as far as I know, it originated with the opera's writer, Gian Carlo Menotti. On the night of the Nativity, a poor lame boy named Amahl gets in trouble with his mother; he's an idle dreamer who makes up wild stories all the time, so his mother doesn't believe him when he says that wonderful things are happening in the night skies. But of course, there really is a magical star shining in the sky, and later that night, the Three Kings stop by looking for shelter on their way to visit the Christ child. Nearby shepherds provide food and entertainment, but the mother resents the fact that the Kings are taking gold as a gift for some newborn infant, while her poor crippled son has nothing. After she's caught trying to steal some gold, Melchior offers it to her outright, but when she learns more about what Christ has come for, she instead wishes she had a gift to send. When Amahl offers to send his crutch, since the child may need it someday, he is miraculously cured and heads off with the Kings to see the newborn child. I am not an opera fan, and though this work was popular in its day, I would have had trouble following the action if it weren't for the subtitles available on the DVD. Some of the songs are close to show tunes, especially a cute bit in which Amahl keeps trying to tell his disbelieving mom that three kings are at the front door, but the operatic tones keep getting in the way of clear comprehension. I have a similarly hard time judging performance here, since the acting is not, and is not meant to be, naturalistic, but the 12-year-old boy playing Amahl, Bill McIver, is excellent, and Rosemary Kuhlmann is fine as the mother. There have been a few picture book adaptations of this over the years, but I think the material is ripe for adaptation as a non-musical film or play. [DVD]

THE CHRISTMAS CHOIR (2008)

My viewing pick for this year's Christmas TV-movie is the Hallmark Channel's The Christmas Choir. It claims to be based on a true story, but the cliches and coincidences run so thick, I imagine this is more fiction than fact. Jason Gedrick (pictured) is a workaholic accountant who, though not quite a Scrooge, has let his work life affect his personal life: his girlfriend has just broken up with him and his secretary is getting fed up with all the extra hours. One night, while nursing his broken heart at a downtown bar, he is befriended by a homeless guy (Tyrone Benskin); when the two head off to a nearby shelter together, they bond over their love of music. Gedrick, goaded by the earthy nun who runs the shelter (Rhea Perlman), finds a new meaning to his life: he organizes a "Christmas Choir" of homeless men to sing in the subways, so they can collect a little money to make their holidays a little better. Of course, all the predicted obstacles (uh-oh, no permit; uh-oh, what to do about that pesky alcoholic singer) and some more outrageous than predictable (would you believe a major fire at the shelter, right on Christmas Eve?) occur, but the performances make it work--I even got a little teary at one point. What I wasn't as crazy about was the "While You Were Sleeping" romance between Gedrick and subway token taker Marianne Farley. The handsome Gedrick is very good but Farley lacks any oomph. You're always in good hands with Perlman, a total pro. This is one I might consider watching again.

THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR (1937)

This is the third movie version of this story, originally a play and filmed once as a silent in 1919 and once in the early sound days, in 1929, by Tod Browning (DRACULA). I reviewed the '29 version several years ago, but the primitiveness of the filming and the awkward direction distracted me from enjoying the narrative. This film, though obviously a B-enterprise, is a bit more enjoyable as it doesn't have the slack pacing and technical problems that marred the '29 version. In British-run Calcutta, an Englishman named Leith has been murdered and no one who knew the man is talking, so his friend (Henry Daniell) gets Scotland Yard involved. The visiting inspector (Lewis Stone) plots with Daniell to hold a seance, with the batty Madame LaGrange (Dame May Whitty) attempting to contact the dead man's spirit, in the hope that the killer will snap and confess. Among the participants, many of whom had grudges against Leith, are a Hindu professor (Lal Chand Mehra), the son of the local governor (Thomas Beck), his girlfriend (Madge Evans), a doctor (Charles Trowbridge), and a snotty young woman (Heather Thatcher) who may have had a special relationship with Leith. At the seance (shot in total blackness), Daniell is knifed to death, though no one can find the murder weapon. The participants are questioned, secrets are revealed, and a second seance is held, which leads to the killer's exposure. Old pros Whitty and Stone are fine, and the plot holds the attention. I especially liked getting some insight into Whitty's own self-consciousness about her mystical abilities--she seems to sincerely believe that she has some, but she also admits to resorting to theatrical trickery now and then. The scene in which she calls out desperately, alone in the room, for help from Laughing Eyes, her spirit contact, is nicely played. Also with Elissa Landi and Ralph Forbes. [TCM]

THE UPTURNED GLASS (1947)

James Mason has been giving a series of university lectures about the psychology of crime; this time, he uses a case study to show how a perfectly sane and rational person could commit murder. As he tells the story, we see it in flashback, and the rational man is Mason himself, a brain surgeon who successfully operates on a young girl to restore her sight and falls in love with the girl's mother (Rosamund John). Though they are both married, they have a brief, furtive affair before deciding they must break it off. A short time later, John winds up dead in what is judged to be an accidental fall from a window at her home. However, Mason picks up on small clues which indicate that John's sister-in-law, Pamela Kellino, may have had something to do with the death, so he gets close to her so that he can engineer a similar death for her. When Mason does finally force Kellino out the window, the narrative takes a breathtaking turn (I would say an M. Night Shyamalan trick, but it's pulled off much more fairly and logically than most of his are). I don't want to reveal it here but suffice to say that there is another tense and well-played half-hour to the movie. The young Mason occasionally looks like Gregory Peck, and the movie itself feels kin to other early psychological thrillers like Hitchcock's Spellbound. There are plotholes galore, but they are easily overlooked, and the ending manages to be both satisfying and, the more you dwell on it, rich in ambiguity. A little gem, available in a good print on a DVD from MPI called Classic British Thrillers. [DVD]

NORTHWEST RANGERS (1942)

Warners wasn’t the only studio to do B-level remakes of earlier A-level films. This MGM second feature is a variation on the oft-told story of boyhood pals who take different life paths and wind up on opposite sides of the law. It's an official remake of MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, though lots of other movies have used that inspiration unofficially. Instead of a gangster-ridden big city, the buddies grow up in the Yukon, where they are orphaned after an Indian attack. Mountie sergeant Jack Holt takes them both in; Jim grows up wanting to follow in Holt's footsteps, but Blackie, when still a snot-nosed kid, tries his hand at John Carradine's saloon and gambling club. He loses big but catches the fever and takes off for parts unknown. Years later, Jim (William Lundigan) is a clean-cut Mountie still living with his dad when gambling dandy Blackie (James Craig, pictured above) comes back to town. At the local club, Craig (with the help of his friend Keenan Wynn) catches Carradine cheating, gets the best of him, and wins ownership of the club, which of course makes Carradine an enemy for life. Patricia Dane, a singer at the saloon, cozies up to Craig, but soon finds herself attracted to Lundigan. The old friends still get along, but problems arise when Craig brawls with deadbeat Grant Withers; Withers is accidentally killed, Lundigan's investigation comes to naught, and Carradine blackmails Craig, getting the saloon back. Then he threatens to get Lundigan in trouble for covering up evidence which implicated Craig. As in the original movie, Craig sacrifices himself for Lundigan's honor. If you read this blog regularly, you know Lundigan and Craig are two of my favorite B-movie leads, so I found this to be a fun way to spend an hour, even if the storyline is predictable. Dana is too bland as the leading lady (and luckily winds up with little to do), but it was fun to see 11-year-old Darryl Hickman as the young Blackie. Hugh Beaumont (TV's Ward Cleaver) has a small role. [TCM]

WICKED, WICKED (1973)

(100% Weird alert!!!) At a large seaside hotel, there's been a rash of lovely blond women skipping out on their bills. But when house dick David Bailey starts investigating, he finds out that these women are actually missing, and foul play by some hotel employee is suspected. A stab is made at presenting a handful of suspects, including Edd Byrnes as a beach bum who works part-time as a waiter, but we learn very quickly that the psycho killer is young handyman Randolph Roberts, who was abused by both his blond mother and a later blond mother-figure. By chance, Bailey's ex-wife, Tiffany Bolling, shows up as a lounge singer doing a gig at the hotel, and when she puts on a blond wig, she attracts the attention of Roberts. In the finale, we find out that Roberts, an amateur embalmer, has been cutting up his victims and sewing their parts back together, and of course he plans to do the same with Bolling, until Bailey and the cops arrive in the nick of time.

This is basically a retread of PSYCHO that plays out like a TV-movie, with one big gimmick: it was filmed in "Duo-Vision," which means the entire film is in split-screen. This doesn't come off as badly as one might think. Sometimes, we get the point of view of the killer on one side and the would-be victim on the other. Sometimes we get a person relating a flashback on one side while what really happened is played out on the other. (Its best use, however, comes as a visual joke during a sex scene.) The problem with the gimmick is that it isn't needed; the style doesn't seem organic to the tale, as though Duo-Vision was randomly applied to the script for the heck of it. However, the real problem with the film is the acting, which is mostly weak. Bailey overacts; Bolling, a Playboy model, underacts and is terrible (though she did eke out a career as a B-movie star); Scott Brady, as a cop, is totally forgettable. Arthur O'Connell is OK as the handyman's boss, and Madeline Sherwood (Sally Field's Mother Superior on The Flying Nun) does a decent job as an eccentric older lady in danger of being kicked out the hotel until Roberts comes to her aid. Roberts comes off the best, doing a less neurotic variation on Norman Bates. Poor Edd Byrnes (77 Sunset Strip's Kookie) is around just long enough to be a red herring before he gets in an accident and spends the rest of the movie in a coma. Overall, this movie was better than most of the reviews out there indicate—and it's certainly better than the bomb rating that Leonard Maltin gives it—but don't lose sleep if you never catch it. [TCM]

UNNATURAL (aka ALRAUNE) (1952)

This odd little gothic melodrama, with science-fiction overtones out of Frankenstein, is based on a German novel from 1911 about a woman conceived through artificial insemination, a method which was apparently considered scandalous back then, and perhaps still had the taint of "unholiness" about it in the 50's when this film, the fifth version on record, was made. It helps to know a little fascinating background first: "Alraune" is the German word for "mandrake," a root, shaped like a human being, which was believed to grow beneath a gallows, seeded from the semen of hanged men. In this story, disgraced professor Erich von Stroheim has "created" a daughter through artificial insemination, from an executed criminal and a prostitute, an act thought of by his former colleagues as a "crime against nature." As a young woman, Alraune (Hildegarde Knef) is lovely but amoral, and has been kicked out of a convent school for possessing pornography and being a bad influence on the other girls. Stroheim's nephew (Karl Boehm, of PEEPING TOM), a decadent, gambling student, first sees her looking like a nymph lolling by a pond and falls for her, as do his buddies. One by one, she drives most of them to bad ends (one wastes away, one dies in a duel, etc.). Stroheim decides he wants her all to himself (never mind that she was raised to believe he was her father), but when she thinks she can find true happiness running off with Boehm, her "creator" shoots her dead.

The plot is sheer pulp thriller, though the way the film is shot, there aren't all that many thrills. This is a talky movie, and the bad English dubbing doesn't help (no German language option was available on the DVD), nor does the somewhat damaged print. The film's strengths are in its visuals; the whole thing has a dreamy Gothic aura, the sets are evocative, and the camerawork has an occasional off-kilter look that makes it seem more modern than the 50's. At least two important plot points are disappointingly conveyed in writing rather than action. Knef is fine, though too old for the part; she is supposed to still need a governess but looks at least 30. In the very last shot, Knef's dead body appears to morph into a mandrake root, though I assume that is creative poetic license rather than true narrative closure. The whole idea that she was "created" wouldn't really carry much water today, so this doesn't work as science fiction, but as a kind of Gothic Hawthorne or Le Fanu tale, it's worth seeing. [DVD]

BILLY LIAR (1963)

Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) is a young 20-something guy, a clerk at an undertaker's firm, living with his parents in a working-class town in England. He does a number of strange things to escape his drab life; primarily, he lives a fantasy life as a ruler of a kingdom called Ambrosia, but he also steals calendars from his work place for no apparent reason, is engaged to at least two women, occasionally walks around town as though he's blind or crippled, and has convinced himself that he's in line for a big show biz job in London writing for a famous comedian. He does have some talent (we find out that he and a friend have written a "Twist" song which gets performed at a local dance hall), but he has no practical ambition. He's pals with a true free-spirit named Liz (Julie Christie), and at the climax of the film, we think she's finally talked him into leaving with her for London, but the lure of comfort, bland and unsatisfying as it is, may be too much for him.

This film came near the end of the "Angry Young Man" cycle of British films, and though it shares with those films a bleak view of everyday life, there is little anger here, except the anger of Billy's father toward his son for not making a useful life of his own. Courtenay goes a long way toward making the character of Billy likable, and overall the movie's mood is not a downbeat one, but neither is it very comic. I guess realistic is more like it, and that may be why it doesn't quite work for me. It keeps feeling like it's going to take a turn one way or the other, but never really does, so Billy winds up at the end almost exactly where he was at the beginning. The fantasy scenes are fun (and sometimes surprisingly elaborate for what looks like a relatively low-budget film), and today a viewer might make the assumption that Billy was a high-functioning autistic. Christie is quite good in her breakthrough role, and Mona Washbourne and Ethel Griffies are fine as Billy's mother and grandmother. A fantasy scene of Billy machine-gunning people put me in mind of the later IF..., a more interesting movie about young people and fantasies. The print on the Criterion DVD is in great shape. [DVD]

THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA (1940)

In the same year that Cary Grant did such a great job in the romantic comedy THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, he made one of his rare career missteps in this period drama set during the Revolutionary War era. It follows the arc of the birth of America through the story of two families, the Howards, working class tobacco farmers, and the Peytons, upper class landowners. Cary Grant is Matt Howard, the hard working son, who just happens to be friends with young Thomas Jefferson (yes, improbably *the* Thomas Jefferson, played even more improbably by baby-faced Richard Carlson), who gussies Grant up and gets him a job as a surveyor for the aristocratic snob Fleetwood Peyton (Cedric Hardwicke). When Hardwicke finds out about that Grant is just "white trash," he wants to get rid of him, but Grant has fallen for Hardwicke's sister, Martha Scott, and she for him; they get married and go back to Grant's roughneck home village where Scott slowly begins the process of assimilation. Over the next several years, they have children and become such a respectable family that Grant wins election to the Virginia House of Burgesses. However, between his lawmaking duties and his growing involvement in the fight for independence, which irritates Scott's Royalist family, Grant's relationship with his wife and sons becomes strained. We see (ever so briefly) the Boston Tea Party, and there are scenes with Lafayette and George Washington, and finally a family reconciliation. Grant supposedly thought this was his weakest film role; though he does seem a bit uncomfortable in the beginning, I think the real problem is the screenplay. Based on a long novel, this wanted to be a Gone With the Wind for the American Revolution, and, though it tries to cram lots of stuff into its two hours, most situations and characters aren't developed enough for us to care about them. Carlson as Jefferson comes off worse than Grant does; the cast also includes Tom Drake, Ann Revere, and Paul Kelly. It's not a terrible film, but it might make a good sleeping aid for an insomniac. [TCM]

GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (1933)

During the Depression, Jud Hammond (Walter Huston) is elected President and immediately begins breaking his campaign promises. He tells reporters that problems such as unemployment and crime are purely of local concern and not worth his attention. He's a figurehead for his do-nothing party, politics as usual, until he suffers a serious concussion in a car accident caused by his own reckless driving. His doctors don't hold out much hope for him, but after a heavenly breeze rustles the curtain in his room he suddenly recovers and is a changed man. When a protesting "army" of the unemployed arrives in Washington, he greets them with open arms and announces the creation of a Construction Army to put them back to work and to stimulate the economy. He asks Congress to dissolve itself and give him full power to rebuild the government; when they balk at this, he threatens to invoke martial law. As a dictator, he ends Prohibition (to put racketeers out of business), bans mortgage foreclosures, and, to go directly after criminals, he cuts the "red tape of legal procedures" to get "back to first principles" by creating a Federal Army which is able to go after notorious gangster Nick Diamond (C. Henry Gordon) without due process, putting him and his men before a firing squad. Soon he goes after Europe, threatening war unless they begin paying back their debts. Somehow, this leads to a global disarmament agreement, and once that's signed, there's another heavenly rustle and Hammond collapses and dies.

This political fantasy (thus fitting in with my Thanksgiving fantasy theme, though it's certainly not an epic adventure) is a wild wish-fulfillment fever dream. It was filmed just as FDR came into office; clearly Hammond is meant to be the kind of president who would save the country from the mess that Herbert Hoover could not; the Construction Army is a forerunner of the WPA, one of Roosevelt's biggest New Deal plans for propping up the economy. William Randolph Hearst, an FDR backer, produced the film and according to Jonathan Alter's book The Defining Moment, about FDR's first hundred days in office, Roosevelt himself made some script suggestions. Of course, the problem is that even if the trains are back to running on time, so to speak, Hammond has become a fascist. If, as a fantasy from the Depression years, this seems almost quaint, think of George W. Bush having President Hammond as a role model. The movie, however, is not quaint and does still pack some power (in Hammond's scary speeches, the gunning-down of the gangsters, and the bizarre show of military power near the end), albeit not the inspiring kind that Hearst assumed it would have. Franchot Tone plays Hammond's secretary who grows to admire the president, and Karen Morley (pictured above with Huston) is Hammond's mistress, whom he installs as his "confidential secretary," though later he gives her up, and almost literally gives her away to Tone, who is in love with her. Though occasionally a bit creaky as filmmaking, this is a fascinating document of its time and is well worth seeing, especially if you know something about 1933. The title comes from some speculation between Tone and Morley that the Angel Gabriel, whom Tone calls "the angel of Revelations," has guided the President. [TCM]

HERCULES AGAINST THE MONGOLS (1964)

In the year 1227, our hero Hercules helps an Asian woman and her kids, and she repays the favor by presenting us with a lot of narrative exposition that she sees in a handful of water from a stream. It seems that Genghis Kahn has just died and his three nasty sons are out to subvert the peace that their old man had established; they pillage the land of Juleda (or Tuleda or Tudeda, the sound was murky at best) and hold the princess Bianca as a slave, hoping she'll lead them to her dead father's hidden treasure. Hercules soon meets up with the rightful heir to the Juleda throne (a little blond boy named Alexander), protects him from the bad guys, and enters a tournament to whip the Kahn boys' asses so he can free Bianca. He wins, Bianca is freed, but Hercules has to take her place in the slave quarters, which he does willingly until the Kahns, with some help from a treacherous Juledean named Adolphus, re-imprison Bianca. Then Herc goes all medieval and saves the day, with a little help from a small rebel band.

Most of the popular sword-and-sandal movies of the early 60's were made in Italy and featured a muscle-man hero named Maciste, who made his debut in Italian cinema during the days of silent movies. However, when these films were released in the United States, the hero's name was usually changed to something more familiar to Hollywood audiences, like Samson or Goliath, but most often, Hercules (supposedly the name Maciste was derived from a Greek city which had a temple to Hercules). The "historical" background never really mattered, since Hercules had clearly become timeless. These movies are still sort of fun to watch, sometimes in a campy, MST3K bad-movie way, though this one is short on camp value. It compensates with an interesting Mongolian background and plenty of sweaty beefcake. The hero is Mark Forest (pictured), a little more handsome and less hyper-muscular than most Herculeses; only 31 when he made this movie, he retired from the screen a year later and became an opera teacher. The hunkiest sons are played by hairy-chested, Ohio-born Ken Clark and shaved-headed Italian Renato Rossini, who later took the name Howard Ross, despite staying in Italian films for the rest of his career. Jose Greci, a red-haired Ann-Margaret-wannabe is fine as Bianca, and the even more attractive Maria Gracia Spina has a largely silent supporting role as a Mongolian bad girl who becomes a self-sacrificing good girl in the end.

There are a few problems with critiquing these movies: 1) the English dubbing is always terrible, and in this case, even the English-speaking actors are apparently speaking Italian and are then dubbed into English; 2) the prints are poor (probably public-domain films of which no one has taken proper care over the years): washed out, chopped up, and worst of all, not presented in their appropriate widescreen ratio. This one, on DVD from low-rent Alpha Video, is especially bad on that last count; instead of pan-and-scan, the widescreen image in crammed into a TV square by a process that could be called chop-and-scan, in which, instead of the image being panned along to catch the action, it is chopped and moved, leading to lots of startling cuts within shots. It's a shame because this one seems to have had a little more attention to detail (both narrative and scenic) than most of its ilk. Makes a fun Saturday afternoon flick for fans of the genre. [DVD]

SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977)

The Ray Harryhausen fantasy extravaganza is a genre unto itself with its predictable conventions: exotic settings in the time and lands of myth, handsome heroes, lovely damsels in distress, lots of travel by ship, big stop-motion monsters, colorful sets and costumes, and wooden acting. For its time, the stop-motion animation in the films is well done, though kids raised on Lucas and CGI probably won't respond very well to it. I liked JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS when I was young, but even then the effects seemed a little off. This film, which I'm reviewing as my annual Thanksgiving weekend fantasy memorial, is one of Harryhausen's last films. Though it's way too long, it's also one of his better productions in terms of looks and effects. I have to say that the main reason I watched this is that it stars Patrick Wayne, son of John, and I had just recently found out that Wayne played Marathon John, an incredibly handsome cowboy (pictured below), in a series of TV ads for the Marathon candy bar back in the mid-70's which I have never forgotten--Wayne, dressed in dazzling white, was always being challenged by bad guy Quick Carl, all in black. Wayne does look every inch the manly hero here, but his acting is just a notch above amateurish. On the other hand, most of the rest of the cast, including future star Jane Seymour, is just as bad as Wayne. But it just wouldn't be a Harryhausen film if it had good acting!

Sinbad (Wayne) arrives in a port city to visit his friend Princess Farah (Jane Seymour), only to find the town shut down under quarantine. When he investigates, he discovers that Farah's brother Kassim, who was about to be crowned Caliph, was magically turned into a baboon by the wicked witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting). If he's not turned back by the seventh moon, he will lose his shot at Caliphood and Zenobia will be able to install her wicked son Rafi (Kurt Christian). Sinbad and Farah and the baboon (who still has some human traits, like the ability to play chess) get some help from the magician Melanthius (Patrick Troughton) and his daughter (Taryn Power) and all set off to the Arctic land of Hyperborea where a magical shrine may be able to transform Kassim back. There are a number of Harryhausen stop-motion creations, including a trio of demon skeletons (who fight Wayne and his men in a scene stolen straight from ARGONAUTS), a giant wasp, a horned troglodyte, a walrus beast, and a saber-toothed tiger which has been taken over by the spirit of Zenobia--her evil gleaming eye giving the movie its meaningless title. The human-acting baboon is perhaps the best effect, partly because it's fairly subtle and doesn't call attention to itself. Each adventure has some appeal, but the linking sequences are snooze-inducing. Whiting overacts (my partner said that her role model must have been Witchiepoo from "H.R. Pfunstuf"), maybe to counter everyone else's underacting. Taryn Power, daughter of 40's matinee idol Tyrone, looks remarkably like a Los Angeles hippie girl plunked down in Ancient Greece, but she is stunning looking and acts as well as Wayne or Seymour. Actor Sam Wanamaker directed with a choppy awkward style. I'm not sorry I saw this, but I wish Wayne had made a Marathon John movie instead. [TCM]

THE GUV'NOR (1935)
aka MISTER HOBO

Here's another classic-era film for our current economic times. Set in England during the Depression, the film begins with Barsec the banker (Frank Cellier) assuring a woman that her money is safe in his bank; moments later, we see him tell his friend Dubois that the bank will fail in a matter of weeks. However, based on a secret report, he knows that an old ironworks belonging to the Granville family, thought to be tapped out, still has rich, hidden veins of ore for mining. The Granvilles owe the bank a great deal of money, and his plan is to get them to sell the property on the cheap to Dubois (and Barsec as a secret investor). The family can keep their house, Barsec can let the bank fail, and he and Dubois will make boatloads of money. But Barsec needs a patsy, someone he can install as a figurehead president so he can get his plan going and leave his "sinking ship." Enter a pair of hobos who just happen to bum a meal at the Granville residence, where the young lady of the house is very nice to them. Later that day, they are arrested for vagrancy. One of the bums (George Arliss) says his name is Rothschild, which is the family name of one of the richest banking families in the world. The police are very amused and, though he's not actually related to the family, he is given 2,000 pounds from a family charity and sent on his way. You can see where this is going: Barsec crosses paths with Rothschild, thinks he's the real thing (if a bit eccentric), and gets him to take over the bank presidency. But Rothschild is no fool and when he figures out Barsec's plot, he tries to spoil it.

This is a charming little film, though frankly, I'll watch anything with George Arliss. His movies tend to fall into two camps: the big "important" biographical pictures and the light comedies in which he's a meddling grandfather figure who helps facilitate a romance between two young people. In this comedy, there is a romance, between Miss Granville (Viola Keats) and the banker's son (Patric Knowles, looking young and strikingly handsome in one of his earliest roles), but it's backburner stuff and Arliss never really gets involved. Gene Gerrard (at right with Arliss) does a nice job as a hobo buddy of Arliss' who helps him out with the shenanigans. The film is well-paced until the last 15 minutes or so when the plot slows down and becomes unnecessarily convoluted as it heads for the inevitable happy ending. A viewer at IMDb notes a similarity between this and TRADING PLACES, though to me, it feels more like a Capraesque take on BEING THERE, with everyone reacting to Arliss as though he's practically royalty, despite his appearance, which remains rather scruffy throughout (though Gerrard takes to his new life and cleans up nicely). There may a bit of in-jokiness about Arliss' character being named Rothschild, as just the year before, he played a real Rothschild in THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD. There's a very funny moment involving Arliss being offered a drink called a "white lady," which he assumes is something other than a drink. Despite a somewhat weak ending, a satisfying film. [TCM]

AMERICAN MADNESS (1932)

In this Frank Capra Depression-era film, which is a kind of forerunner to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, there are four main plotlines to follow: 1) bank president Walter Huston, a folksy, likable fellow who gives loans rather freely based on what he perceives as a person's character, is being pressured by his board of directors to approve a merger with another bank, despite the fact that Huston's bank is still in good shape; 2) Huston's wife (Kay Johnson) is faithful but upset at how much time he is spending taking care of bank business; 3) Pat O'Brien, a reformed burglar (this is a rather vague plot point), is the chief teller and has the full confidence of Huston, and is dating Huston's secretary (Constance Cummings); 4) head cashier Gavin Gordon has run up some rather big gambling debts and is approached by a gangster to help arrange an after-hours robbery. How all the storylines converge: in order to establish an alibi, Gordon sweet-talks Johnson, left alone on her wedding anniversary, into a night on the town, ending up in his apartment. O'Brien thinks they're having an affair and goes to Gordon's that night to try and break it up. The gangsters pull off the robbery, with a watchman shot dead, and O'Brien falls under suspicion but won't tell the cops where he was for fear of upsetting Huston. Wild rumors about the robbery and the potential failure of the bank cause hundreds of depositors to stream in that afternoon to take their money out, which would, of course, lead to a real bank failure. Can Huston save the bank, his marriage, and O'Brien's reputation?

If you've seen It's a Wonderful Life (and who hasn't?), you'll know Huston's (and Capra's) faith in the essential goodness of people saves him in the end. There is no angelic intervention here, though there is a brief moment when it looks like Huston is considering suicide. There are two strikingly-shot sequences involving the telephone rumor-mongering and the hordes of customers swarming inside the bank, desperate for their money. There is maybe one plot line too many; though I like O'Brien and Cummings quite a bit here, their romance feels tacked-on, perhaps at the expense of developing the character of Huston's wife. The film is well-paced and has a couple of nice throwaway scenes at the beginning and end involving the staff of tellers and their relationship with O'Brien. Edwin Maxwell does a nice job as Huston's nemesis, the kind of role which Edward Arnold and Lionel Barrymore would hone to perfection in later Capra films, and Sterling Holloway, the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh, makes his sound film debut here as a teller. The DVD print is excellent. In honor of our country's current economic crisis, which I don't think can be solved by the "little" investors out there (though I'd like to see angels give it a shot), I'll review another bank crisis movie tomorrow. [DVD]

THE PHANTOM BROADCAST (1933)

Arnold Gray is a popular radio crooner who sends corsages to his female fans and sets up one-night stands with them all, on different nights of the week, of course. His manager and pianist (Ralph Forbes), a hunchback, stays behind the scenes and is considered a nice guy by everyone who knows him, though Gray treats him like dirt. A mobster wants Forbes to sign over Gray's contract to him, and Forbes refuses, leading to a little dust-up. Meanwhile, Gail Patrick, a singer looking for a break, comes to Forbes' attention; he tells her she has promise, but she must give up her boyfriend to concentrate on her career. Suddenly, halfway through the picture, we learn a surprising fact: Gray's singing is actually done by Forbes, hidden away at the piano, while Gray moves his lips to Forbes' voice. Forbes, who has a bit of a crush on Patrick, suspects that she has been done dirt by the singer, so he heads off to Gray's apartment with a gun, but finds the crooner already shot dead. Assuming that Patrick did it, Forbes covers up for her and tells the police he did it, but she didn't do it after all, and a tragic ending is in store for the sweet-natured hunchback singer. This low-budget thriller from Monogram Pictures has several things going for it: an unusual set-up, three solid performances from Forbes, Patrick, and Gray, and a shocking pre-Code ending which lets the killer get off scot-free. The lip-sync plot element is interesting and allows for a good climax, but otherwise it doesn't feel crucial to the story. Though Patrick is definitely the leading lady, Vivienne Osborne, who starred in silent films, gets top female billing as a lover of Gray's; her role is important but she has less screen time than Patrick. Gabby Hayes, best known as a crusty old sidekick in countless Westerns, is credited as a police officer, but I didn't recognize him. The Alpha DVD print has heavy damage to both picture and sound, but is watchable. [DVD]

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957)

Don Murray is a Korean War vet who has become a heroin addict, apparently as a result of a drug dependency which followed a hospital stay after the war. He has a decent job and lives in a housing project in Brooklyn with his pregnant wife, Eva Marie Saint. She doesn't know about his addiction, but suspects that his odd behavior, such as spending occasional nights away from home, is due to his having an affair. Murray's brother, Anthony Franciosa, a bar bouncer, lives with them and has recently confessed to Saint that he's in love with her--and she's clearly on the edge of feeling the same way about him. As if things around the apartment weren't tense enough, the boys' father (Lloyd Nolan) arrives from Florida to collect some money that Franciosa had saved up for him to use to buy his own nightclub. Franciosa doesn't have the money; he lets Nolan think he squandered it away, as he's already considered the black sheep of the family by his dad, but he actually gave it to Murray to pay off some drug debts. Now Murray is in debt again, and the pushers aren't in a waiting mood.

This is based on a play and it shows, in good ways (clear narrative arc, well defined characters) and bad (overwrought dialogue, some stagy performances). At the time, it was considered a fairly honest look at an unpleasant topic, but now it comes off as hopelessly dated, like an after-school special for adults. Still, taken as a stagy period piece, much of it remains compelling. For one thing, it stars two of the most attractive male actors of the late 50's. Murray is too clean-cut and mild to be effective as a Jekyll/Hyde-type addict; overall he's not bad but his withdrawal scenes seem rather artificial nowadays. Franciosa, who was nominated for an Oscar, is much better in a more complex role: he's the brother who was never good enough for his father, but who now has become complicit with Murray in hiding Murray's problems from not just the father but from Murray's wife. Nolan is good at playing an abrasive character; Saint usually gets the best notices from critics of the film, but I find her to be, like Murray, too mild; perhaps she was underacting as a way of compensating for the stagy atmosphere. Viewers who aren't aware that there was a time when "rehab" wasn't an everyday catchphrase may find the ending to be a bit baffling, with Murray carted out of state to recover. Henry Silva makes for a so-so villain, but William Hickey is more interesting as a pusher sidekick. [FMC]

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS (1948)

Reporter Lucile Bremer goes to novice private eye Richard Carlson and asks him to help her break the case of a corrupt judge who has gone missing. She thinks he's hiding out in a private sanitarium so they pose as a married couple and she convinces a doctor to commit him. Once at the asylum, Carlson discovers that patients are being abused by sadistic guard Douglas Fowley. He makes friends with an orderly (Ralf Harolde) and a firebug patient, and soon finds out that Bremer's suspicions are correct, but by then, the head doc and the judge have found out Carlson is on to them, and they plan to have him meet a brutal fate at the hands of a violently insane ex-boxer (Tor Johnson) who is kept in solitary confinement. Bremer catches on to their plan, but can she stop it before the damage is done? This is part of a film noir box set from Kino, and though it is a well-made B-thriller, it doesn't have a noir feel to me, except that many key scenes take place at night. Bremer, who I found wanting as Judy Garland's older sister in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, is actually quite good here; ironically, this was her last film role before she retired from acting at the age of 31. Carlson makes a fine B-movie hero, and Fowley is appropriately slimy. Johnson has a wordless role here as he did in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Overall, a solid and well paced film, disappointing only if you're really expecting a film noir. [DVD]

THE OSCAR (1966)

A notoriously bad junk movie, directly in the Harold Robbins/Jacqueline Susann line of trash, but not a bit of fun to sit through. Actor Stephen Boyd is sitting in the audience at the Academy Awards, certain he's going to win the Oscar. We learn how Boyd came to this moment through a flashback narrated by his former best friend and manager, Tony Bennett. Years earlier, the two toured the country in a sleazy nightclub act with stripper Jill St. John. An ornery Southern sheriff frames them on trumped-up prostitution charges. They wind up in New York City where Boyd meets the fashion designer Elke Sommer at a Greenwich Village party. He splits with St. John, not realizing she's pregnant, and gets a job working with Sommer. When he criticizes an actor at a play rehearsal, talent scout Eleanor Parker gets him hooked up with an agent, Milton Berle, and soon Boyd is going places as an actor. He marries Sommer in a quickie Tijuana wedding, but cheats on her with women procured by Bennett. Boyd's career is going well, though he's also making enemies right and left, including studio boss Joseph Cotten, and is shocked when he runs into a former star (Peter Lawford) who is now working as a maitre d'. Soon Boyd's career starts sputtering, and just as he's about to accept the lowly offer of a TV series, he gets word that he's up for an Oscar. In hopes of ensuring a victory, he gets private eye Ernest Borgnine to dig up his past morals charges and splash them in the headlines, the plan being that voters will assume that another nominee dug up the dirt, thus giving Boyd the sympathy vote. By Oscar night, Boyd has alienated everyone around him, including Bennett and Berle; will his scheme to win the gold statue work?

The plot is smack in the middle of Valley of the Dolls territory and could have been trashy fun, but there are three major problems: 1) it takes itself far too seriously, ruining any possibility of camp entertainment; 2) the script (co-authored by Harlan Ellison) is filled with bad dialogue; 3) the acting is dreadful, beginning with Boyd who is alternately wooden and over-the-top, and who uses a bizarre accent, and Bennett, a damn fine singer who comes off as a amateurish actor. Surprisingly, Berle is quite good underplaying the agent, as is Edie Adams as Borgnine's blowzy wife. The only fun is watching for the cameos which include Broderick Crawford, Ed Begley Sr., Walter Brennan, and, appearing as themselves, Hedda Hopper, Bob Hope, and Frank Sinatra. This may sound like fun, but it was a chore to sit through. Connoisseurs of bad acting may relish Boyd and Bennett's cringe-worthy performances, but all others should stay away. [TCM]

YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING (1937)

A Fox musical with the bland Alice Faye, the young Don Ameche (before he became charming) and the Ritz Brothers, who were never young or charming: should be a recipe for tedium or horror, but surprisingly, it all works pretty well in this mild but entertaining backstage story. Faye is a starving playwright (and great-granddaughter of Edgar Allan Poe) who meets a drunken playboy (Ameche) in a restaurant. She tells him about the play she's trying to sell, "North Winds," set in the Arctic, about "the vital problems that confront women in the Frozen North." Ameche is actually a successful playwright himself, but he doesn't tell her that; instead, he gets his producer (Charles Winninger) to option the (bad) play and send her a check so she won't give up and go back to her hometown. He begins squiring her about town, and when he finds out she's actually a much better singer than a writer, he has Winninger try to convince her to star in his new musical. Soon the charade is up, but Faye has fallen in love with Ameche so she agrees to do the show. Until, that is, a old pal of Ameche's (Louise Hovick, aka Gypsy Rose Lee) shows up claiming that she and Ameche were married that drunken night at the beginning of the movie. Faye, disgusted, gores back home; Ameche and Winninger rework her play into a big musical, using it bait to get her back. Of course, she hears about the play and, mad as hell, goes to Broadway to stop the show, but when she sees the ecstatic audience reaction, and when Winninger has her take to the stage for an author's bow, she gives in to success. And, of course, it turns out that Ameche was actually too drunk to sign the wedding license that night, so he's not really married to Hovick. Ah, a happy ending! Who'da thunk it?

Faye has more personality here than in some her other efforts, and the Ritz Brothers, playing themselves as featured performers in Ameche's play, are actually bearable, even pretty funny, much less irritating than usual (as in ONE IN A MILLION or STRAIGHT PLACE AND SHOW). They do a number in long johns called "Underwear, How We Love You!" and they want to send a love-letter telegram to Hovick signed the New York Giants. A dance trio called Tip, Tap, and Toe do an impressive tap number, Tony Martin is in good voice as the leading man in the musical, and the title number isn't bad. I was fully prepared to give this one ten minutes than shut it off, but I wound up enjoying it. [FMC]

TOBACCO ROAD (1941)

Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his impoverished family live on a plot of land in rural Georgia which, long ago when they were active tenant farmers, was promised in perpetuity to them. But Dana Andrews, the son of the late landowner, arrives with the news that he has lost the land to the bank and in order to stay on the land for another year, Grapewin has a week to come up with $100 rent money. Whether because the land is barren or because the family is slothful and decadent, they are barely able to eke out a meal, let alone a living. The film follows the family's misadventures during the week. The teenage son (William Tracy) marries a 40-something revivalist (Marjorie Rambeau) who is constantly singing hymns and exhorting others to join in--and they usually do; the main action of the last half of the film occurs when she buys a car with insurance money left her by her late husband, and Grapewin tries to get hold of the car himself to sell it for his rent. Son-in-law Ward Bond comes by once in a while, complaining that his 13-year-old wife Pearl objects to being tied up, and soon Grapewin is offering his sexy 23-year-old daughter (Gene Tierney) to Bond as a replacement--though Bond thinks she's too old for a wife. Grapewin's wife (Elizabeth Patterson) is sad that none of her other "seventeen or eighteen" children ever write or visit. There's also a grandmother lurking around somewhere whom we rarely see. In the end, just as Grapewin and Patterson head off for the poor farm, Andrews ponies up 50 bucks for a half-year's rent so they can stay, but it's made clear that nothing's really changed and that six months later, the family will be in the same straits, and, oh yeah, Grandma just might be lying dead in the woods.

This is based on a notorious novel and long-running play, both of which were considered controversial in their time for the portrayal of such an unsavory lifestyle. The movie was altered considerably to conform to the Production Code and it winds up played as a comedy; it could even be seen as a forerunner to the rural "Beverly Hillbillies"-type shows that were popular in the 60's. The young Tierney, almost unrecognizable under a thick layer of dirt, is sexy as all get-out, but she has almost nothing to do except to pull a mock seduction on Bond in order to get his bag of turnips (and that's not a metaphor). Though the characters are almost uniformly unlikable, the acting is really quite good. Grapewin (OZ's Uncle Henry) and Patterson (Mrs. Trumball on "I Love Lucy") do particularly well in rare lead performances. There is an almost palpably unpleasant atmosphere set up at times, but whenever it threatens to become too dark, it's undercut by humor. Bond's child bride is mentioned but never seen, and Tracy looks and acts older than a teenager, so his relationship with Rambeau is just odd rather then potentially repellent. The movie looks great, especially the first few minutes which take place at a ramshackle old mansion belonging to Rambeau and her brother (Slim Summerville). This film has been difficult to run across until recently when Fox issued it on DVD as part of a set of John Ford films. Recommended. [DVD]