PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND (1963)

Warner Home Video has issued a 4-movie set of early 60's romance films, all of which star Troy Donahue; his co-star in three of them is Connie Stevens. This one, featured first, is actually the last chronologically. It's a mild teenage romantic comedy, and undoubtedly a comedown for Donahue who had been starring in glossy soap opera melodramas. Donahue is a college basketball player spending spring break with his team (and their coach/chaperone, Jack Weston) at Palm Springs. Andrew Duggan is the local police chief, not looking forward to the annual outbreak of shenanigans, and Stefanie Powers is his daughter, who gets involved with Donahue. Robert Conrad is a rich kid with a chip on his shoulder because Daddy ignores him; he rides around in a snazzy convertible with a life-sized Bugs Bunny blow-up doll which he uses to pick up girls (not that he needs it--he’s the best-looking guy in the movie) and focuses his attentions on glamorous Connie Stevens who passes herself off as a wealthy college socialite but is really an average Hollywood High School girl. Ty Hardin (star of Bronco, an TV western) is a hunky Texan stuntman who also has eyes for Stevens. Filling out the cast are Zeme North as Stevens' plain-looking roommate who gets a makeover, 9-year-old Billy Mumy as an obnoxious kid, and Jerry Van Dyke as a comic-relief sidekick who does the same banjo routine he did when he guested on his big brother’s TV show, The Dick Van Dyke Show. The actors all look a bit old to be playing college students, but they're all energetic and healthy; Hardin and Conrad actually come off the best, acting-wise. Donahue (pictured with Powers) is handsome but is starting to look a little seedy--he had been a drinker since he was a kid--and his Tony Curtis voice doesn't really go with the face and image. He and Powers have zilch chemistry, though for that matter, none of the couples do. It's basically a beach movie with no beaches in sight, but a couple of poolside scenes that allow for some wholesome skin. [DVD]

LONDON BY NIGHT (1937)

Average B-mystery set in a fog-bound studio version of London. Reporter George Murphy is ready to go on a Paris vacation, but gets tangled up in a strange case in which men are being threatened with blackmail, violently kidnapped, and apparently murdered, though their bodies are never found. The villain, who is a master of disguises, is dubbed "The Umbrella Man" by the press, and a couple of folks who do manage to see his real face wind up dead. Of course, the killer must be someone we know: is it Sir Arthur (Montagu Love), the man whose house seems to be the center for all the nefarious activity? Or his lovely daughter (Rita Johnson), whom Murphy falls for? Or Sir Arthur's butler, who seems to always have an umbrella? Or Sir Arthur's sickly secretary (Leo G. Carroll)? Or the mysterious man they call "Mr. Rabbit"? If you know your character actors well, and pay attention to the cast list, you'll figure out fairly early on who the bad guy is, but that doesn't spoil the mild fun to had along the way. Murphy is a bland leading man (and he's constantly slipping in and out of an Irish accent) and Johnson is even blander, but the rest of the cast is fine, especially Eddie Quillan and Virginia Field as a squabbling pair of lovers who wind up playing important roles in the case, and the always excellent George Zucco as the police inspector. [TCM]

WOODEN CROSSES (1932)

This is probably one of the first antiwar movies of the sound era, along with 1930's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, though perhaps because this is a French film, it has not gotten nearly the acclaim that the earlier Hollywood film has. Set in WWI, it follows Gilbert, a young soldier (Pierre Blanchar), as he becomes a member of a war-weary squadron; he is introduced to the men in a casual, almost light-hearted sequence, though their partying stops cold when a string of dead soldiers is carried by. The beautifully and creatively shot film alternates between showing the tedious waiting around for something to happen, the short skirmishes that can occur suddenly, and the longer battles that always result in the death of one or more of the men. The narrative arc isn't as important as the individual episodes (worrying about the Germans digging and planting mines right underneath the French encampments, awareness of the irony of defending a graveyard, and making it through a ten-day siege) or even individual moments: the singing of the Ave Maria over the moaning of injured and dying men in a church being used as a makeshift hospital; a mortally wounded man cursing his philandering wife, then changing his mind with his final breaths; a dying man in the middle of a battleground no-man's-land pitifully screaming for water. In the end, there is only the promise of death and ever more wooden crosses sprouting from the ground. The director, Raymond Bernard, only made a handful of sound films, but this one deserves its rediscovery as a classic (available as part of a set from Criterion's Eclipse label). Some of the battle scenes were used in John Ford's THE WORLD MOVES ON. [DVD]

I WAS MONTY’S DOUBLE (1958)

As D-Day approaches, British Intelligence is trying to find a way to throw the Germans off the scent of the real plan--to invade along the northern coast of France--or to at least confuse them. One night, Major Harvey (John Mills) sees an Australian actor, M.E Clifton-James, impersonate Field Marshall Montgomery and gets a brilliant idea: hire the actor to impersonate Montgomery for real and have him take a tour of the British troops in North Africa, make sure the German spies know he’s there, and hope they’ll get the Nazis thinking that the invasion might come from the south instead. Harvey and his commanding officer (Cecil Parker) take the mild-mannered Clifton-James, try to toughen him up a bit, and have him spend some time observing Montgomery. Despite a few bumpy moments, the German spy (Marius Goring) bites and the ruse works; in fact, it works so well that the Nazis try to kidnap the actor, thinking he’s Montgomery.

This is mostly based on fact. Clifton-James, the actor who pulled it off, plays himself here (albeit almost fifteen years older) and gives a nicely understated performance. The first half lacks action but is nevertheless compelling as we see the plan hatched, developed, and put into place. The movie should end with the actor’s final major speech to the troops, but the filmmakers, apparently thinking some further tension was needed, added a totally fictional component, the kidnapping attempt, and it doesn’t really fit, playing out like an anti-climactic epilogue tacked on to flesh out the running time. Mills (pictured above, with Clifton-James on the left) actually bears the brunt of the acting burden and he’s quite good, as is Parker. The only other actor to make an impression, besides Goring (giving a nicely slimy performance, practically a cameo, as the spy), is Michael Hordern as the Governor of Gibraltar; he had a long career as a character actor, and may be most recognized as Marley in the Alistair Sim CHRISTMAS CAROL. It comes off almost as a TV movie, but it’s mostly quite enjoyable. [TCM]

LOLA MONTES (1955)

Lola Montès, the infamous dancer and courtesan (Martine Carol), has been reduced to performing in a circus, albeit as the star attraction; the entire show is built around her life, as narrated partly by herself but mostly by a ubiquitous ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) and acted out in dance and tableaux vivants by the circus company. We see one evening's performance, from on stage and off, alternating with the details of her life presented through Lola's own flashbacks. As a young girl, she is pimped by her own mother, though she ends up marrying a handsome young soldier--whom, if I'm not mistaken, her mother had been sleeping with. He (Ivan Desny) turns out to be a lout and she leaves him, becoming a ballerina. Dancing across Europe, she creates scandals: smoking cigars in public, taking lovers everywhere (including Franz Liszt), and being unafraid to make a scene when she feels wronged--as when she jumps off the stage and dresses down her married lover, in front of his wife. She settles down as mistress to King Ludwig of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook) but when she begins ostentatiously throwing her influence around, revolutionaries whip up some outrage against her and she is expelled from the country, winding up in this traveling circus. Throughout the movie, we have seen that, though she is still relatively young, she is in ill health, and her doctor warns her not to take her final high dive during her climactic trapeze act. Will she go through with it anyway? Will she live to meet her adoring public after the show?

Rarely do I watch a movie without having a pretty good idea of what I'm getting into. I've usually heard of the film and know something about its reputation or its cast or director, and often I read some reviews beforehand; at the very least, I look at the capsule reviews of Halliwell and Maltin. This one I came too with very little knowledge. I've seen a couple of movies by its director Max Ophüls but I have read very little about him, and all I knew to expect was a lush look and a restless camera. Though in its day, this was considered a disappointment (largely due to the disjointed narrative and what is perceived as a lackluster performance by Martine Carol), I enjoyed it quite a bit. The phrase "visually ravishing" was made to describe a film like this; Ophüls' use of rich colors, finely detailed sets and costumes, elaborate camera movements, and the widescreen make this a visual delight. Carol is not the most expressive actor here, but I suspect Ophüls intended that to be the case; though we see most of her story through her own eyes, we never really get to know her or what motivates her. Indeed, the film really seems to be about not Lola, but the media "circus" that surrounds her, and the ways in which public lives are "narrated" by and within the larger culture. I was frequently reminded, by theme or camera shot or use of fractured narrative, of later films like CABARET, ALL THAT JAZZ, CHICAGO, and MOULIN ROUGE--even though this film is not a musical. Ustinov, who like the rest of the international cast, speaks French, and Walbrook are excellent. The Criterion disc, which restores the original uncut version, is sparklingly clear and gorgeous. Highly recommended. [DVD]

GIRL IN THE NEWS (1940)

Nurse Margaret Lockwood is on the verge of leaving her employer, a spiteful invalid (Irene Handl), but when the old lady promises to reform, Lockwood agrees to stay. Handl then promptly swipes the key to the medicine cabinet, takes too many sleeping pills, and dies of an accidental overdose. Lockwood is charged with murder and lawyer Barry K. Barnes gets her off, since all the evidence against her is circumstantial, but even he isn’t sure that she was really innocent. Lockwood has a hard time getting another nursing job, but when she is sent, anonymously, a help wanted ad for a nurse for another invalid, she changes her name and gets the job. Unfortunately, the same thing happens to her new patient, and Barnes, who by now believes in her innocence, agrees to defend her again. The acting and plotting here are fine, but there is almost no suspense; the film begins as though it's going to be a mystery, but it turns into a courtroom drama, and a slowly-paced, predictable one at that. Because we know that Lockwood is in fact innocent of both crimes, and we know who's behind the death of the second invalid, it's just a matter of waiting to see how Barnes will get her off in court; when he does, it's with a clever trick that was set up early--watch for the short seemingly unimportant scene in the barber shop. Barnes, who had a very short career in the movies, makes a perfectly pleasant leading man, reminding me a bit of Griffin Jones. Familiar faces who turn up in include Roger Livesay (as Barnes' roommate), Emlyn Williams, Basil Radford, Mervyn Johns, and Kathleen Harrison. On DVD as part of VCI’s British Cinema: Classic "B" Film Collection, Volume 1. [DVD]

THE FIREBIRD (1934)

Ricardo Cortez is a Shakespearean actor living in an apartment building in Vienna. He is talented and famous, but also has a reputation as quite a ladies man, and when he flirts with the rich (and married) Verree Teasdale who lives upstairs, she asks the landlord to kick him out of the building. The landlord cannot oblige, so Teasdale, her husband (Lionel Atwill) and her daughter (Anita Louise) make plans to move. Before they can leave, however, someone murders Cortez. Was it Teasdale, who, despite her supposed antipathy toward Cortez, may have been visiting him regularly? Was it Atwill, defending his wife’s honor? Maybe Louise, a sweet young thing who might have been tempted by Cortez playing a recording of Stravinsky’s hot-blooded “Firebird,” music that Teasdale calls “savage”? The plot takes some interesting twists and turns, though the ending is predictable. Dorothy Tree has a couple of nice scenes as Cortez’s ex-wife, a red herring suspect. The movie was shot in the round, so to speak; all four corners of the screen are rounded off. A must-see for Cortez fans. [TCM]

THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1950)

The Grahames are a middle-class couple trying to hang on to their status which is beginning to slip: even though they have a nanny for their young son, and have just hired a live-in handyman (John Mills), the mother (Valerie Hobson) has been spending beyond her means and the father (Hugh Sinclair) has been losing at gambling. Hobson's brother (Ronald Squire) covers a bad check written by Sinclair, but soon Sinclair loses his job and the couple are in danger of losing their home. Their ignored son (John Howard Davies) bonds with Mills, who likes to place an occasional bet at the horse races. Davies is aware of the family's money troubles--he is haunted by the house itself when he keeps hearing echoes of his mother’s cry, "There must be more money!"--and soon discovers that, if he rides his nursery-room rocking horse hard and fast enough, the names of race horses come to him, and the next day, they always win. He and Mills start betting and winning, with Davies saving up his take to give to his mother, thinking that will win back her loving attentions. Soon, Squire gets in on the plan and Hobson is rolling in dough again, having been told that it's money from an inheritance. But of course, her spendthrift ways don't stop, Davies doesn't get the love he craves, and the horse names stop coming, despite the fact that the boy takes to riding the horse so often and so single-mindedly that he becomes haggard and weak. One last prediction finally comes through, but at a high cost for the family.

This is based on a short story by D.H. Lawrence, and though it's very well done, it does sometimes feel like it would have worked better as a shorter Twilight Zone episode. Davies, who was 11 years old at the time, does a good job carrying the movie, looking appropriately obsessed and drained during his riding bouts. Hobson is fine, though I think she underplays her part when perhaps a bit more melodrama might be called for. Best of all is John Mills as the handyman--he's really the only fleshed-out sympathetic character and he pulls off his part in a strong but not flashy way; he's become one of my favorite character actors. Much has been made of the Oedipal undertones here; really, "undertones" isn't quite the right word, what with the almost shockingly clear masturbatory qualities of the boy’s sweaty, intense, almost half-naked riding scenes. The atmospheric cinematography adds greatly to the mood of growing unease. BTW, Davies went on to produce and direct episodes of Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. [TCM; available on DVD]

PRINCESS OF THE NILE (1954)

Egypt, 1249. The town of Halwan, supposedly ruled by Prince Salim, is actually being run by a shadow ruler, the Shaman, who keeps Salim drugged and is in cahoots with the warlord Rama Kahn (Michael Rennie) who arrives theoretically to protect Salim but really to plunder the town with his troops. Also new in town, fresh from a victory against invading hordes, is the handsome Prince Haidi (Jeffrey Hunter), son of the Caliph of Bagdad. When the people rebel against Kahn's parading troops, Haidi's friend Hussein is killed as a scapegoat and Haidi stays in town to catch the guilty party, Kahn himself. Also in the mix are two beautiful women: the dancing girl Taura who shakes her moneymaker at an Arabian-Nights equivalent of a nightclub, and the Princess Shalimar who is kept a virtual prisoner in the castle by the Shaman. However, it turns out that the two are one (Debra Paget): Shalimar leaves the castle each night by a secret passage and becomes Taura, not only a sexy dancer but also a resistance fighter against Kahn. There is more plot and incident, including the threat of a forced marriage between Shalimar and Kahn in order to save the town, but the reasons for watching this film are the Technicolor, the elaborate sets, the fisticuffs--including a well-staged swordfight between Haidi and Kahn's men--and the lovely leads Chandler and Paget. They're not called upon to do great acting, but they fit the bill for solid B-adventure-movie performers. Rennie makes a fine villain, Michael Ansara plays his second-in-command, and Wally Cassell is comic relief as Haidi's sidekick. Enjoyable for a simplistic exotic adventure movie of its era. [FMC]

THE GENE KRUPA STORY (1959)

The story of jazz drummer Gene Krupa, known for his wild, unhinged drummer style, with most of the rough edges sanded down for mainstream consumption. The film begins with the teenage Krupa (Sal Mineo) bringing home a drum set, only to have it smashed up by his father. His parents don't like that he plays in a jazz band with Eddie Sirota (James Darren). At a pool party, a trampy girl (Yvonne Craig of Batgirl fame) comes on to Krupa, but Gene only has eyes for Ethel, an innocent girl-next-door type (Susan Kohner) who wants to write a symphony. When his father dies, Krupa goes into a seminary to fulfill his family's wish that he become a priest, but he rather quickly realizes that's not the road for him, and soon he's off to New York City with Eddie and Ethel, who is now engaged to Eddie but still loves Gene. After months of struggling, Gene gets a big break as a drummer thanks in part to jazz singer Dorissa Dinell (Susan Oliver), though her first reaction to his overheated drumming style is to yell, "I'm not a cooch dancer and we're not doing the zombie's mating call!" His rise is covered mostly in montages of headlines until he joins the Benny Goodman band, leaves his old friends in the dust, and gets himself a fancy penthouse apartment. He becomes a drinker and a womanizer, and one night after Eddie and Ethel both tell him off, Dorissa introduces him to marijuana, telling him pot will help him "be somebody." He has a reefer-madness moment in his apartment, but next thing you know, he's fronting his own band.

The rest of the movie follows the now-familiar story of fall and redemption: he's arrested for possession (even though we know he's a user, he swears it's a frame-up), Dorissa refuses to be a character witness for him, and on his lawyer's advice, he pleads guilty, winding up with no jail time but with a washed-up career. With some help from Eddie and Ethel, he works his way back up through the ranks and the film ends with his triumphant return to drumming with Tommy Dorsey. What's good about this film is Sal Mineo. He gives a believable performance, though his dark pretty-boy looks prevent him from ever looking as debauched as he ought to be, and he is outstanding in his drumming scenes. According to some sources, Mineo spent a year working with the real Krupa to be able to sync his drumming to Krupa's recorded drum tracks. Darren and Kohner do fairly well with what are types rather than fully rounded characters. Oliver is very good as the unlikable Dorissa, who, if I'm reading between the lines correctly, may be behind his dope arrest. You can see the real Krupa performing "Drum Boogie" with Barbara Stanwyck in the opening scene of BALL OF FIRE. [TCM]

THE CUCKOOS (1931)

Another film from the nearly forgotten comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey—for background, see my review of HIPS HIPS HOORAY. This title conjures up the Marx Brothers THE COCOANUTS, which came out the year before; though I am fond of Wheeler & Woolsey, they’re not Groucho and Chico, and the Marx Brothers will win hands-down in any direct comparison. This film is set along the Mexican border. Bespectacled Woolsey (the Professor), and romantic lead Wheeler (his sidekick Sparrow) are driven out of town for posing as fortune tellers and they get involved with a band of gypsies camped out near a casino resort. American June Clyde has been brought down to the resort by her aunt to keep her away from dashing pilot Hugh Trevor; a rich baron falls for her but when Trevor flies down, there's no contest. Wheeler is in love with Dorothy Lee, an American who has grown up with the gypsies, but so is tough-guy gypsy Mitchell Lewis. There’s a kidnapping, some fisticuffs, and several musical numbers before the happy ending. The songs, while not classics, aren’t bad: "I'll Find You Wherever You Are" begins as a romantic duo and ends up as a big production number; there's also the catchy "I Love You So Much, It's a Wonder You Don’t Feel It" (is that supposed to be a bawdy suggestion?), and the finale, in faded Technicolor, "Dancing the Devil Away." As in Marx Brothers movies, plot bits keep getting set up but left behind for chunks of stand-alone comedy routines. A couple of funny lines: "You kill me"/"Not a bad idea"; "Will you love me until I die?"/"That depends on how long you live." The funniest scene involves Wheeler & Woolsey in a hotel room bed with lots of people running into the room, spouting non-sequiturs. [TCM]

RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935)

Let me get some confusion out of the way right now: this movie has a character named Ruggles, played by Charles Laughton, and an actor named (Charlie) Ruggles playing a character named Floud. While Floud and his wife (Mary Boland), rich but uncouth Americans, are vacationing in Europe, they win a butler, Maramduke Ruggles, from the Earl of Burnstead (Roland Young). Ruggles is upset about going to such an uncivilized country, "a country with slavery"; the Earl replies, "That's all finished--some fellow named Pocahontas or something did something about it." Back in the relative wilds of Washington state, it takes a while for Ruggles to adjust to the less-strict class structure here, and eventually he decides to open a restaurant, falls in love, and even teaches the Americans some history (in a famous scene in which he recites the Gettysburg Address from memory when none of the Americans can even say what the Address is about).

What makes this movie so enjoyable, in addition to a good script, are first-rate performances all around. Laughton, usually best in roles in which he can ham it up, is wonderfully dry and tamped-down here and completely believable as the mild-mannered butler who breaks out of his shell--especially funny is a drunk scene with Laughton and Ruggles. Ruggles holds his own, though he doesn’t have much to do in the last half. Boland is very funny as the obnoxious wife, Young is absolutely right as the droll Earl, and Maude Eburne gets some laughs in the relatively small role of Boland's mother. Zasu Pitts (pictured above with Laughton) doesn't get much to do as Laughton's love interest, but she's the only weak spot. Otherwise, a witty and charming comedy. [TCM]

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON (1950)

In post-war London, a scientist working on atomic weaponry vanishes one day with an experimental bomb and sends a message to the Prime Minister saying that he will set the bomb off at "the seat of government" at noon next Sunday unless England abandons its atomic program. Scotland Yard begins a secret city-wide search for the professor with the help of his daughter. It isn't until a half-hour into the film that we see the professor (Barry Jones), a plain-looking, mild-mannered fellow, praying in a bombed-out church. When wanted posters go up with his face on them, he shaves off his mustache and takes a room in a boarding house until the landlady, suspecting he might be a killer on the loose, goes to the police. An aging actress (Olive Sloane) who has fallen on hard times takes him in, thinking he's just a lonely eccentric. As the days pass, the city begins making plans for a mass evacuation (which eventually goes off unrealistically smoothly, aside from a few people who want to take their pets on the buses and one loony "end-of-days" sign-carrier who won’t part with his signs). On Saturday night, with the middle of the city nearly empty, Jones holds Sloane hostage and waits in hiding for Sunday noon, when he heads back to the damaged church to finish what he started.

This low-key film is shot largely in a documentary style, though the nighttime scenes, especially early in the search, have a film noir look about them. Jones, also generally low-key, is excellent and always believable as a man who has gone mad because he cannot deal with the potential horrors of his work. He doesn't rant and rave, and the movie doesn't delve deeply into character so he never has to explain how he came to his decision--though we see he is clearly obsessed with Bible verses about Babylon and Milton's line, "Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon." We see most of the search unfold through the sober eyes of a Scotland Yard man (Andre Morell) and Jones' research assistant (Hugh Cross), though somewhat surprisingly, there is a fair amount of light comic relief from several supporting characters, and though I don't want to spoil the suspense for anyone, the very last shot of the film will elicit a chuckle. A little-known but solid entry in the "fears of the atomic age" genre. [TCM]

FIRST COMES COURAGE (1943)

A fairly routine WWII thriller about Underground operations in Norway. Merle Oberon is a Norwegian woman who is shunned by the locals for her intimate relationship with a Nazi major (Carl Esmond), but what they don't know is that she is an important informant for the Underground; when Esmond lets slip some secret plans to her, she passes them along to an eye doctor (Fritz Leiber) who passes them along to the Allies. Soon, the Nazis realize there is a security leak somewhere and British spy Brian Aherne sneaks into Norway to pull off a raid and kill Esmond before he can figure out the truth about Oberon. However, when he and his buddy (Erik Rolf) are betrayed by a local, Rolf is killed and a wounded Aherne is captured. After Oberon helps him escape from the hospital, Esmond's superiors become suspicious of her; to allay their fears, Esmond proposes marriage to Oberon. He also, as a test, leaks false information to her, and when it becomes clear that she has indeed passed that info on, Esmond doesn't tell anyone else, but instead makes sinister plans for their wedding night. This isn't a bad movie, but not a very exciting one until the last 15 minutes or so when it becomes a cat-and-mouse game between our three leads. Oberon is lovely but only so-so in the acting department; Aherne is better, though at times it seems like he's shooting for a Cary Grant impersonation. Erville Alderson, Oberon's faithful butler, was Gladys Cooper's butler in THE BISHOP'S WIFE. This was the last film of director Dorothy Arzner (CRAIG'S WIFE). [TCM]

MIRAGE (1965)

This film begins with a stunning shot of the New York City skyline during the late afternoon as all the lights go out in a skyscraper. Inside, the secretaries and businessmen are planning a groping get-together (what they call a Braille party) in one of the dark offices, but a confused-looking Gregory Peck is just trying to get to ground level. In the stairwell, he helps a young woman (Diane Baker) who claims to know him, but when he doesn't recognize her, she bolts away into the sub-basement. Peck follows but loses her. Out on the streets, there is a commotion: just before the lights went out, an executive (Walter Abel) jumped from the 27th floor, though Peck doesn't know who he was. At Peck's apartment, he is approached at gunpoint by Jack Weston who keeps saying that the Major wants to see him. Peck, not knowing who the Major is, beats him up and throws him out, but soon comes to realize that he seems to have amnesia, and not your garden-variety kind: he can't remember what he's been doing for the last two years. The police won't listen to him, and neither will a psychiatrist, who says such amnesia is impossible. When Peck goes back to work, he finds there is no sub-basement, and the office he assumes he's been using doesn't exist. He hires a somewhat shabby but honest private eye (Walter Matthau), then runs into Baker again, who says she was once his lover. When more thugs (including George Kennedy) wind up on his trail, bits of memory flashes start coming back, including the fact that he may have been in Abel's office moments before he jumped from the window. Could Baker hold the key to this mystery? Or perhaps the key is a strange key ring that says, "The Future Is Now."

This black & white movie is one of the earliest of the "trust nobody" paranoid thrillers (along with NORTH BY NORTHWEST and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE). The plot is tricky but easy to follow and the actors are mostly first-rate, though Baker seems a little out of her league. Peck is more animated than he was usually called upon to be. Matthau provides some mild comic relief for a while, though his exit from the film is dead serious. Kevin McCarthy is Peck's boss, and Leif Erickson is the mysterious Major. I enjoyed seeing the old pro Walter Abel in a handful of flashback scenes. Hari Rhodes, whom I remember as the sidekick on the TV series Daktari, has a good scene as a NYC cop. All the strands come together nicely, though the climax itself is a little weak. The widescreen film looks great on DVD; highly recommended. [DVD]

THREE WISE GIRLS (1932)

Average pre-Code gold-digger melodrama of three girls, only two of whom are really "wise" in any way, and their romantic adventures in the big city. Jean Harlow is a soda jerk in the small town of Chillicothe, Ohio (or so I assume since she works at the Chillicothe Drug Store) who lives with, and even sleeps in the same bed with, her mother; she gets the itch to go to New York City where her friend (Mae Clarke) is having a high old time as a fashion model and kept woman to a rich and unhappily married man whose wife won't give him a divorce. Soon Harlow has a roommate (Marie Prevost as the plain-looking comic-relief gal) and a job modeling with Clarke. She also quickly acquires a rich lover (Walter Byron) who, she is devastated to find out, is married to a wife who won't give him a divorce. By the end, Clarke's lover leaves her high and dry and suicidal, Harlow's lover finally gets a divorce--and follows her back to Chillicothe to make an honest woman out of her, and Prevost settles down with Byron's oafish chauffeur (Andy Devine). These moral lessons for innocent girls trying to make their way in the big city were apparently quite popular back in their day; in plot, acting, and production style, this is no different from any similar movie. Harlow hadn't quite hit her stride--though she would later that year in RED DUST with Clark Gable; here, she's attractive but not compelling, and her performance feels rather tentative. Clarke (the Baron's wife in the Karloff FRANKENSTEIN), though she has less sex appeal, upstages her, partly because she plays a slightly more interesting character. Prevost does the drab roomie bit well, Byron is stodgy and not especially attractive, and there just isn’t anything more to say about this film. [TCM]

LADY BY CHOICE (1934)

The title of this movie and its star, May Robson, may have led folks to believe that it was a sequel to Frank Capra's hit LADY FOR A DAY, a cute sentimental comedy based on a Damon Runyon story about a poor and elderly apple seller who is turned into a grand lady by her buddies on the streets in order to impress her visiting daughter. But this movie doesn't have Capra or the wit and charm of the earlier film. Here, the homeless Robson is arrested for bar brawling and "sentenced" to an old ladies home. Weeks later, as a Mother's Day stunt, notorious fan dancer Carole Lombard is prodded by her manager (Arthur Hohl) to adopt a mother for publicity, and she picks Robson. After a tentative start, Robson is soon acting like a real mother for Lombard, getting rid of her manager for swindling her out of money, counseling her to take singing and acting lessons, and sharing her gambling winnings. Soon, however, Lombard, frustrated by her lack of a career future, goes after rich lawyer Roger Pryor, who has been Robson's caretaker. It turns out that Robson was the love of Pryor's father's life. Because Robson assumes Lombard is just being a gold digger, she tries to stop the arrangement, and there are more complications before the predictable happy ending. After a good first half-hour setting up the characters, the movie bogs down in melodrama and acting problems--overacting on the part of the women and lackluster acting on the part of the men, the one exception being Walter Connolly as a judge who keeps running into Robson in his court. This winds up far from Capra and Runyon territory, to its detriment. [TCM]

BANK HOLIDAY (1938)

This is a small-scale British "Grand Hotel"-type movie which follows the adventures of a handful of people whose paths cross over an August "bank holiday" at a beach resort in Bexborough. The film begins with sidewalk headlines about revolution and war shadows replaced with more joyful news about weather reports for the upcoming holiday. First we meet Catherine, a young nurse who bonds with a man named Stephen when his wife dies in childbirth. She is scheduled to go off to the resort with her boyfriend Geoff--where they may or may not have sex for the first time--but she clearly would rather stay and help Stephen in his grief. Still, she goes off with Geoff (who keeps seeing posters for a play called "Sinners" wherever he goes) though it's obvious she's thinking about Stephen. The second story concerns Doreen, a small-town beauty queen who travels to the resort to compete in a Miss England contest where she and her friend Milly keep running into the more polished and glamorous Miss Mayfair. The third batch of characters is the working-class family of Arthur and May and their three unruly kids; the most stereotypical of the film's characters, May is burdened with the children while Arthur keeps sneaking away for a drink. The first night, the hotels are full up and everyone except Doreen winds up sleeping on the beach. The next day, they all get rooms at the Grand Hotel and the melodramatics kick into high gear when Catherine rebuffs Geoff's attempts at seduction, then leaves the hotel to go back to the city because she's sure that Stephen in at the brink of suicide (which he is--we periodically see Stephen drifting aimlessly through the weekend, having flashbacks to happier days with his late wife). Doreen winds up comforting Geoff, and Catherine gets a ride with a crook who is stopped on suspicion of theft. Will she be in time to save Stephen from himself? Will Doreen win the beauty contest? Will Arthur get his comeuppance from May?

This comedy-drama from director Carol Reed is mostly enjoyable, if predictable. The lovely Margaret Lockwood is fine and gets the most screen time as Catherine, though Rene Ray (as Doreen) and Kathleen Harrison (as May) are just as good, and Mere Tottenham makes the most of her comic-relief sidekick character of Milly. John Lodge, who plays Stephen, gave up acting for politics, was governor of Connecticut and later served as ambassador to Spain and Argentina. Ultimately, Hugh Williams as Geoff (pictured above with Lockwood) may be the most sympathetic character; even though (gasp!) he wants premarital sex, he's not painted as a bad person, although a little more insight into his background would be a plus. The juxtapositioning of the stories works out nicely, and I was amused by the two off-duty soldiers who keep cropping up in scenes; they're not important to the narrative, but they deliver a nice punch line at the end. The nighttime beach scene is particularly effective. American title: THREE ON A WEEKEND. [TCM]

THE TIGER WOMAN (1944 serial)

aka PERILS OF THE DARKEST JUNGLE

In this serial set in an unnamed jungle country (probably in South America), the Tiger Woman is a white-goddess figure and benevolent ruler to her tribe, who co-exist peacefully with the "civilized" community of Belleville nearby. The Inter Ocean Oil Company, represented by Allen Saunders, is about to lose its lease on some tribe-controlled land and bad guys from a rival oil company are about to swoop in. They know something that Saunders doesn't: Tiger Woman is actually Rita Arnold, an heiress to millions; she and her father were lost in a plane crash years ago--the father died but the daughter was raised by the tribe, and the proof of her identity is sealed inside a sacred urn kept by the tribe elder. The baddies (led by Morgan and Dagget) want to find the proof, dispose of the Tiger Woman, and have someone pose as Arnold to claim her fortune for them. Over the course of 12 chapters, Saunders, his sidekick Jose, and the Tiger Woman battle numerous efforts by Morgan and Dagget to accomplish their evil schemes.

I concluded a few years ago that, although I love the idea of serial adventure movies, in practice, they just don't hold up today for me. One exception is DRUMS OF FU MANCHU; this is another. The formula here is a bit numbing: each 15-minute chapter involves the heroes getting out of the last cliffhanger, some conversations among the bad guys about what to do next, a sudden shootout or fistfight scene, some more exposition, and another action scene leading to the cliffhanger. They certainly cram lots of action in. Chapter 1 opens with one minute of speedily-delivered exposition followed immediately by an action scene. In Chapter 6 alone (Dungeon of the Doomed), there is an out-of-control mine elevator, an ambush in a bar, the hijacking of a truck, a shootout in a cave, and a roaring oil fire inside said cave. There are lots of other interesting action scenes which play out nicely and help push this serial a notch above most. Early on, we see a tribal ritual in which someone is dangled over a lava pit while a young totsy does a sexy dance before the victim gets dropped to his death. In the Cathedral of the Sky God, some villains are killed by their own weapons: weakened stalactites which fall from a cave ceiling. A speedboat crashes spectacularly into a riverboat. Shacks explode. Many vehicles go barreling over cliffs and waterfalls. One fistfight is set in the back of a speeding truck; yes, the actors are obviously fighting in front of rear-projection footage of the road, but it's still effective. As for acting, the less said the better. Allan Lane, better known as "Rocky" Lane in a series of 40s westerns, makes a good hero and Duncan Renaldo (the Cisco Kid on TV) is the faithful sidekick. The bad guys who parade across the screen are interchangeable and unmemorable (and an unusually large number of them actually get killed in gunfights). Linda Stirling makes for a glamorous Tiger Woman, but she can't really act to save her life. No matter; with all these fights and deaths and cliffhangers (and some fairly good sets and matte painting backgrounds), who needs acting? [DVD]

PRIVATE POTTER (1962)

I thought for a few minutes that this was a WWII film, but it's actually set in the late 50's during what's known as the Cyprus Emergency (in which the British fought Cypriot guerrillas). Private Potter (Tom Courtenay), part of a nighttime expedition, screams out loud and freezes up, giving away his group's position and leading to the death of a soldier. He is thrown into solitary confinement and threatened with court-martial, and claims he acted the way he did because God appeared to him in a vision and he was startled. No one quite believes him, but no one really seems to be terribly angry with him, either. Based on a TV play, the bulk of the film consists of people debating his situation--Is he mad? Is he a religious visionary? Is he a coward?--and ultimately coming to no solid conclusion. There is a parallel story involving a local who was working against the British and is caught, but it goes nowhere as well. Toward the end, Potter escapes during a rainstorm, goes into a stream, strips naked, and is eventually found and brought back--I assumed a "holy fool" hypothesis was about to be argued, but it isn't. If anything, the evidence of the film, which ends ambiguously, suggests that Potter is indeed a nut case, and by extension, so is everyone who claims visions of God, from St. Francis to Bernadette of Lourdes. But I might be letting my own beliefs (or lack of them) color my view. Courtenay is not compelling, befitting the overall effect of the movie which wants to be profound but is not. Later movies with similar themes, from KING OF HEARTS to BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON to AGNES OF GOD, work much better; maybe this one was trying to be ahead of its time, but it stumbled badly. [TCM]

THE WHIP HAND (1951)

Reporter Elliot Reid is on a fishing vacation in Minnesota when he's caught in a storm and cuts his head on a rock. He makes it into the small town of Winnoga but is turned away from a gated compound called the Lodge. The town doctor sees to his injury and he learns the story of the town; just after the war, a virus destroyed all the fish in the lake, driving away industry and tourists. Reid takes a room at the local inn and decides to stay and write about the town, but soon discovers he's not welcome, with even the innkeeper (Raymond Burr, pictured with other town toughs) trying to get him to leave. There's a secret at the Lodge and, with the help of the doc's daughter (Carla Balenda), he is determined to discover it. Turns out the ghost town is actually a front for a Commie community; a Nazi scientist (Otto Waldis) who had done work on germ warfare has turned Communist and lives at the Lodge where he and his conspirators (most of the remaining townsfolk) are engaging in inhumane experiments to perfect weapons of terror they plan to unleash in the water systems of major cities.

This B-thriller is a nice variation on the "Body Snatcher" themes of paranoia and dark conspiracy, with the folksy small-towners unmasked as cold-blooded Communists. Here, it turns out that the fish virus was deliberately set loose in the lake by Waldis in order to empty the town and give him free rein. The doctor, like a handful of others, is apparently helping them because he sees no other way out. A grocer who helps Reid get a message out to his newspaper when it becomes clear that Waldis and Burr want to keep him prisoner gets killed, and the climax has Reid and Balenda in mortal danger, though with the Feds alerted, we know nothing too bad will happen to them. [TCM]

MAN'S CASTLE (1933)

In this romantic melodrama set at the height of the Depression, Loretta Young is a starving young woman whom we first meet on a big city park bench. Spencer Tracy, in a tux and feeding pigeons, offers to take her to dinner, which he does, but at the end of the meal, she finds out that he's as broke as she is (he's wearing the tux as part of an advertising gimmick for which he gets paid a few bucks). He talks the restaurant manager into not calling the cops and takes her to the shantytown where he lives, and they quickly shack up together. He's a blustery guy, rather rough around the edges, and she's sweet and innocent, but despite his having a little affair on the side with showgirl Glenda Farrell, they clearly care for each other and make their bumpy relationship work. When she gets pregnant, he gets scared off briefly but returns and has a homeless preacher (Walter Connelly) marry them. However, the urge for going gets strong again, and he gets involved in a robbery scheme so he can leave Young some money. Of course, things don't go smoothly, though, since this is a pre-Code film, the ending is not as predictable as you might think. Tracy and Young are the focus of the film and they're both fine (in other hands, Tracy's character might be quite hard to take as a "good guy"), but equally good are Connelly as the sympathetic Bible-thumper, Arthur Hohl as a nasty little shit, and Marjorie Rambeau as a tough old boozy gal who plays an important role in the climax of the film. A memorable line: a person whips out a gun and says, "This ain't murder, it's housecleaning!" I'm not really a big fan of Tracy's but this is worth seeing. [TCM]

MAID OF SALEM (1937)

In the village of Salem in 1692, Claudette Colbert is a young woman of marrying age who seems fated to be matched up with the Ichabod Crane-like Sterling Holloway; she is told it is her "duty to marry and have children to the glory of God and the colony." However, she is a free spirit who dances by herself and dares to wear frivolous hats to church and doesn’t think much of the stuffy Holloway. Fred MacMurray (surprisingly scruffy and hunky) is a tax resister who has escaped from jail in Virginia and is hiding out with his uncle; he and Colbert meet, get together on the sly, and fall in love. Meanwhile, bored teenager Bonita Granville hears stories of girls getting the attention of none other than Cotton Mather by claiming to be bewitched, and the slave Tituba attracts an audience with stories of witchcraft and magic potions (even the respected wife and mother Beulah Bondi, in a weak moment, admits she'd like to live a little and attend a Devil's Feast). When someone stirs up the townsfolk with news of witchcraft in a nearby village, Granville starts faking convulsions, claiming she's being attacked by demons conjured up by local witches. Other girls get in on the act and soon the town is in a frenzy of dark accusations, with suspected witches jailed and hanged; as a title card puts it, "Old grudges are paid with the fatal charge of witchcraft." Colbert, accused of consorting with a dark, mysterious man, is left alone to face charges of sorcery when MacMurray is arrested and hauled back to Virginia.

Given the drama (political, religious, personal, and historical) inherent in the subject of the Salem witch trials, it seems odd that Hollywood hasn’t done much with this dark time in our past. Aside from versions of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, no other films come to mind. This one just barely begins to scratch the surface of the topic, but for its time (the Hollywood doldrums of the mid-30's) and style (artificial studio sets, middle-of-the-road stars, journeyman director), this is a fairly good first stab at filming the story. Colbert does a nice job early in the film, seems to lack energy in the middle, but rises to the occasion during her climactic courtroom scene; MacMurray is fine, though the plot contrivance of his arrest leaves him absent for crucial sections near the end (suffice it to say that the studios would never leave Colbert to burn, so through more plot contrivances, she's saved at the end). The supporting cast is uniformly fine, especially Granville and Bondi (at left), who makes the most of her handful of scenes. Madame Sul-Te-Wan doesn't get as much screen time as she should as Tituba, who along with Granville is at the center of the mess. Gale Sondergaard, Harvey Stephens, Virginia Weidler, and Halliwell Hobbes also do good work. [DVD]

NIGHT TIDE (1963)

Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) is a moody young sailor at liberty staying at the Santa Monica boardwalk who goes to a moody beatnik bar called The Blue Lagoon and meets Mora (Linda Lawson), a moody young woman who works as a mermaid at a boardwalk attraction and lives above the carousel. They both seem like lonely, vulnerable people and begin to bond. Then Johnny finds out about her background: her boss and guardian, Captain Murdock, says that she is descended from a race of siren-type sea people; Mora's two previous boyfriends disappeared and were later found drowned; a mysterious woman pops up now and then who seems to have a strange power over Mora; and, oh yeah, Mora thinks she's actually a mermaid and occasionally goes walking in a trance out to the ocean because she's being called from the depths. Of course, their relationship is doomed, but is it doomed because these people are neurotics, or because Mora really is an unearthly creature?

This moody (sorry, but that's the best word) fantasy/melodrama is often compared to the 40s movies of Val Lewton, I'm guessing because of the gloomy look and the brooding characters (I found a couple of synonyms for "moody"). Make no mistake, the director, Curtis Harrington (whose career peaked a few years later with the tricky thriller GAMES), is no Val Lewton; if anything, this movie, perhaps because of its watery setting and feeling of doomed predestination, reminded me more of CARNIVAL OF SOULS than of CAT PEOPLE. If you only know Hopper from Easy Rider or Blue Velvet, you'll be surprised how handsome and almost delicate he is here; he's very good as the nice-guy sailor with just a touch of loner-oddness about him--he is Dennis Hopper, after all. Lawson is weaker, but her role is so strange that her performance almost fits. Cult star Luana Anders has a relatively small part. The score jarringly breaks the mood at times. There is a nice dream sequence involving mermaids and octopuses, and indeed the best sections of the film are the ones that feel dreamy--the more rational parts bring the film down a bit. Worth seeing, especially widescreen. [DVD]

SAILOR OF THE KING (1953)

During WWI, British Naval officer Michael Rennie, on a five-day leave, meets a young woman (Wendy Hiller) on a train. They hit it off and spend the five days together at a village hotel as man and wife. He proposes marriage, but she tells him that, since they barely know each other and he'll be heading off to sea for an extended time, a marriage would be impractical, so they part. The story picks up in 1940; Rennie is a captain commanding a Navy cruiser which is part of a convoy going after a notoriously deadly German ship called the Essen. Another ship in the convoy, the Amesbury, winds up engaging the enemy; the Essen sinks the Amesbury, and the German ship picks up the only two survivors: a petty officer (Bernard Lee) who has lost a leg and a young signalman (Jeffrey Hunter) who grew up with in Canada with a single mother who trained him from a young age in all things naval. When the ship pulls into an island lagoon for repairs, Hunter arms himself, escapes into the hills of the island, and becomes a sniper, injuring and killing many of the German sailors who are trying to make the repairs. Hunter hopes to keep the ship in the lagoon long enough for another ship from the British convoy to arrive, but the Germans soon catch on and send their own men out to find him.

[Spoilers ahead!] What would be an average wartime thriller is complicated by an interesting plot twist which is telegraphed so subtly, I almost missed it. Hunter is the son of Wendy Hiller, and most likely Rennie is his father. Hunter's sniping trick works and the British capture the entire Essen crew. In the final scene, when both Rennie and Hunter are being rewarded by the Navy for their efforts, the two men meet, though they remain unaware of their actual relationship. In an alternate ending on the DVD, which is apparently truer to the original story by C.S. Forester, Hunter's trick still works, but he dies on the island. Rennie meets Hiller when she arrives to receive her son's posthumous medal and they have a touching reunion. This film feels a bit padded out; it would make a better hour-long TV show. But the acting is good, the sniping sequence is tense and well-played, and best of all, the beautiful Hunter is shirtless (and sweaty in that clean Hollywood way) for much of the last half of the movie. Both endings are interesting and both work well, though to different effects. The meeting with Hiller is underwritten, so I think I prefer the ending in which Hunter survives but Rennie remains in the dark. [DVD]

INTERMEZZO: A LOVE STORY (1939)

This romantic melodrama has a strong reputation among classic movie fans, but I've avoided it largely because I don't have a high tolerance for the genre; the mixture of romance and pathos and high emotion has to be just right for me to appreciate it (as in HUMORESQUE). We first meet Leslie Howard, a famous concert violinist at the end of a successful American tour; he and his pianist (John Halliday), who is retiring, head back to their native Sweden where Howard is happy to catch up with his wife and children. When he meets his daughter's piano teacher (Ingrid Bergman), who is also a protege of Halliday's, he barely notices her until he hears her play and realizes her potential. After a romantic evening together at the symphony, they stroll around town and fall in love. She fights the feeling for a while, but when he suggests she come along on his European tour as his accompanist, their flirtation becomes a full-blown affair. They have an idyllic time until reality intrudes in two ways: 1) his wife serves him with divorce papers, and 2) Bergman gets word through Halliday that she has won a prestigious musical scholarship. Halliday assumes that the two will come to their senses and end their affair, and they do, half-heartedly, but soon a near-tragedy will cause Howard to finally make a decision one way or another.

Though this film is short (70 minutes), it feels longer, and not in a good way. The beginning of the affair is handled well, and Howard and Bergman have a nice, casually intimate chemistry. For a time, when it works well, it feels like the much better British film BRIEF ENCOUNTER, but when melodrama takes over, things get draggy. It might have helped to have given the supporting cast more to do, especially the always welcome Cecil Kellaway as Howard's manager. Halliday is OK, though Edna Best is bland as the wronged wife; Ann E. Todd gets a few good scenes as Howard's daughter. The masterful Gregg Toland does his usual solid work as cinematographer. I suppose now that I've seen this, I'll need to see the other big romance I've avoided for too long, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER. [TCM]

THE WORLD MOVES ON (1934)

John Ford directed this generations-spanning family saga. In 1825, two powerful families, the Girards from New Orleans and the Warburtons from England, merge their cotton businesses; a young Girard son (Franchot Tone) has some other merging in mind when he falls for Mrs. Warburton (Madeleine Carroll), but after fighting a duel for her honor, he decides not to press the point. By 1914, the business is more successful than ever, and another Girard (Richard, played by Tone) and another Warburton (Mary, played by Carroll) meet and generate sparks, though she is engaged to the German Erik (Reginald Denny) who runs the Berlin branch of the company. To forget her, Richard goes to Europe and when war breaks out, joins the Foreign Legion. Mary becomes the head of the company in Europe and, after Richard is wounded, the two marry, though when he returns to the front, Richard is captured in battle and winds up being interrogated by Erik, now an officer in the German army. After the war, Richard and Mary go to America and by 1925, as a title card tells us (while "Rhapsody in Blue" plays), Richard has forgotten about the lessons of the war; money is his "new morality" and power his "new God." As he becomes richer and more ruthless, he becomes more distant from Mary until 1929, when he loses everything in the stock market crash. The film ends with a prescient montage sequence showing the building of the tensions that would lead to WWII, and a close-up on a crucifix while Mary prays.

As these episodic CAVALCADE-type of films go, this is OK. What with the rush of melodramatic events, the level of acting is almost beside the point; Tone and Carroll are adequate but they don't really get to put an individual stamp on their roles. Of the supporting cast, only Denny shines. Stepin Fetchit does his usual shuffling, barely-articulate bit, though I did chuckle at the scene where he joins up with the Foreign Legion because he thinks he's joining a lodge. A big chunk of effective combat footage, some done with hand-held cameras, was taken from the German film WOODEN CROSSES to which Fox had bought the rights. [DVD]

THE MATCH KING (1932)

A heavily-fictionalized biopic about Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, who built a match monopoly, and supposedly came up with the folk belief that three on a match is unlucky as a publicity gimmick so people would buy more matches. We first see Warren William as Paul Kroll, a flim-flamming cleaning man at Wrigley Field who has come up with a scam involving keeping the names of ex-employees on the payroll, then splitting their money with the other guys. His uncle asks him to come to Sweden to help out with his failing match company; he does, and uses his crooked ways, involving balancing loans, forging, and blackmail, to build the company into a European giant; his motto: "Never worry about anything until it happens." William has an affair with a famous actress (Lili Damita, playing a Garbo type) who eventually dumps him. When he hears an old man has invented an "everlasting match" that can be struck over and over, he pretends to be a sympathetic entrepreneur but actually schemes to get the man committed to an insane asylum. He even commits murder when he gets in over his head in a plan involving counterfeit bonds. By the end, realizing his house of cards is about to come tumbling down, he kills himself. William does a nice job at the center of this fast-moving melodrama, outshining everyone else except perhaps Glenda Farrell and Claire Dodd as two of his paramours—I like both actresses though neither gets much screen time here. [TCM]

TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (1945)

This average wartime musical set in a music hall in London renowned for staying open and never missing a performance throughout WWII is based loosely on the story of an actual theater, The Windmill, which was also the inspiration for a much more interesting film, 2005's Miss Henderson Presents. Here, the theater is mostly just a backdrop for a tediously predictable and underdeveloped romance between American singer Rita Hayworth and RAF pilot Lee Bowman. He flirts with her during an air raid and won't take "no" for an answer, so she agrees on a date, but she gets pissed off when he pulls a fast one to ensure they'll be alone in his apartment. A couple days later, when he's called up for a mission, she suddenly decides she loves him (about the most unconvincing romantic switcheroo ever). Will he come back in one piece? Will she agree to marry him? The only real suspense is in figuring out which character(s) will die, since in a war movie, someone in whom the audience is invested has to die. Will it be her dancing friend Janet Blair? The wispy male dancer Marc Platt, who waits until the movie's almost over to declare his (doomed) love for Hayworth? Florence Bates, the crusty but heart-of-gold manager of the theater? Or will the rather boring Bowman die a hero after all?

There are a few points of interest along the way. Hayworth, in her first starring role, is gorgeous and does a decent acting job with weak material. The Technicolor is stunning, and a couple of the numbers, notably Hayworth's sexy "You Excite Me" and an elaborate production number for an otherwise so-so song called "Cry and You Cry Alone," are fun. Most of the major British speaking parts are taken by thoroughly American actors who can't do an accent to save their souls, and to Bowman's credit, he doesn't even try. Only Texas-born Florence Bates manages to sound authentic. I like that a stab is occasionally made at fleshing out some of the supporting characters, but more attention should have been paid to rounding out the leading couple, not to mention the super-boring Platt and Blair. Hayworth fans won't be disappointed, and devotees of the movie musical might have some fun now and then, but most other viewers will want to skip this one. [TCM]

SKI TROOP ATTACK (1960)

Around Christmas of 1944, a small band of soldiers on skis are in a German forest on a reconnaissance mission. There is constant tension between the leader (Michael Forest) who wants to focus narrowly on their assignment and a sergeant (Frank Wolff) who just wants to kill as many Germans as possible. Several times during the movie, the men get to ski down hills, shooting and knifing Nazis; between times, they tramp around a bit awkwardly on their skis and argue. At one point, they come across a cabin in the woods occupied by a tough German woman. In many war movies, this character would wind up being sympathetic to the Americans, but here she's a faithful German who tries to poison the soldiers. The film builds to a climax in which the soldiers try to blow up a bridge; there is a long chase along a snowy mountainside that slows down the action, and some of the men die, but there are plenty of ski attacks and the bridge gets blown up by the end.

Netflix sends their discs in wrappers which usually have a nice paragraph-long summary of the DVD enclosed. For this movie, the wrapper contained one sentence: “Roger Corman plays a Nazi in this cheapy war flick.” Aside from the misspelling of “cheapie,” this is accurate but misleading. I figured if Netflix had nothing good to say about this, it must be a miserable movie indeed, but it's certainly not as bad as the wrapper would indicate. It is a very low budget B-movie, shot in the mountains of South Dakota while Corman's crew and actors were finishing up a sci-fi film, BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. One of the things that makes it work to the degree that it does is that it was shot in real snow. The action scenes are repetitious (they see Germans in the snow, they shoot at them from afar, ski down a hill, and use their bayonets when they get up close) but the real snow—both on the ground and occasionally falling—adds to the atmosphere. Corman, who produced and directed, does indeed play a Nazi but in a cameo part. All the German dialogue was dubbed in later, though most of the English sounds like it was recorded on set. Not bad for a "cheapy." [DVD]

THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA (1952)

Although like Monty Woolley in THE BISHOP'S WIFE, I consider myself to "have no religion," I was raised Catholic and I still find it difficult to resist Hollywood portrayals of Catholicism (if only all priests were like Bing Crosby in GOING MY WAY). Based on an actual event, this film opens with some brief context: in 1910, a socialist uprising in Portugal led to anti-clergy policies including the closing of many churches. By 1917, churches were re-opened but the priests were very cautious about stepping on the toes of the civil administrators. One spring morning, three children playing in a field see a vision of a beautiful lady, in the sky above a tree. She doesn't identify herself but she tells the children to have everyone pray the rosary each day for world peace, and asks them to return to the same spot on the 13th of each month for the next six months. Hugo, a charming village ne'er-do-well (and atheist), advises the children not to talk about the vision, but they do. The priest says they are just suffering from daydreams and downplays the growing talk of a miracle, but soon pilgrims are coming from out of town to try and catch a glimpse of the lady, whom the children think is the Virgin Mary. Eventually, large crowds are present when the children hear the lady warn them that another large-scale war is coming, and she wants Russia consecrated in her name. Government men come in, portrayed a bit like Hollywood gangsters, and try to force the children to recant, but the plan backfires and more people than ever show up for the visitations. On the sixth and final visit, hundreds of onlookers see the sun move erratically in the sky and there are many conversions, including that of Hugo.

This film follows the accepted narrative of the miracle of Fatima quite reverently, throwing in some anti-socialist propaganda for good measure. Perhaps because the protagonists are children, we don't get terribly wrapped in them as characters, though Susan Whitney is fine as Lucia, the oldest child. Gilbert Roland adds some needed interest as Hugo, and Frank Silvera has the thankless role of the chief administrator, the closest thing the story has to a villain. This plays out like a community theater version of the earlier SONG OF BERNADETTE, which was about similar visions which took place at Lourdes years earlier. It must be difficult for filmmakers to decide how much of a heavenly vision to show on screen. In BERNADETTE, we don't see anything, but here, we see a rather static image of a pretty lady in the sky, and we hear her voice talking to the children. Because of this device, it was never clear to me if any of the pilgrims actually saw the Virgin Mary themselves, or were just ecstatic to be in the presence of a miracle. The "Ave Maria" is used extensively in the background score. Directed by John Brahm, who is not nearly as interesting here as he was with his earlier Gothic thrillers THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE. [TCM]

DARLING LILI (1970)

One of the movie musicals that killed (or at least seriously wounded) Julie Andrews' career after her back-to-back successes with Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. This and the earlier STAR! are both big-budget period-piece disasters, and both are amorphous messes that can’t commit to being either family friendly or fully adult. Neither movie is unwatchable, but both are disappointments. This one, directed by Blake Edwards, who would marry Andrews just before the film was released, is set during WWI, and features Andrews as a British music hall star; we first see her calming an audience by singing during an air raid, but we soon discover that she’s a spy, selling secrets to German officer Jeremy Kemp who poses as her uncle. She goes to work on American pilot Rock Hudson but two things go wrong: the British suspect that there’s a female spy at work, and she comes to care about Hudson. One of the biggest problems with the movie is its awkward shifting in tone, back and forth from serious spy story to frivolous spy story, with musical numbers and instances of irritating slapstick farce cropping up. There is some good aerial footage, and Andrews does a strip tease number, but as attractive as she is, she just doesn't cut it as a hottie or a femme fatale, whether it's her or just our perception of her. Of course, another big problem is the state of the movie musical at the time; just a couple of years after it seemed to have hit a commercial peak (My Fair Lady and Andrews' earlier films), the bottom fell out and the post-Easy Rider audience was staying away in droves. Here, most of the songs are performed on a stage, and one original song, "Whistling Away the Dark," is actually quite lovely. The DVD contains a director-approved re-cut edition, shorn of some 25 minutes (with the cut footage included as extras), but it still feels a bit too long. [DVD]

MAYBE IT'S LOVE (1935)

Act 1: Ross Alexander, a goofy clerk who works for Joseph Cawthorn, is sweet on secretary Gloria Stuart, but so is Cawthorn's son, Phillip Reed. Alexander thinks he's getting a promotion to Havana, but instead the boss wants him to keep an eye on Reed. Complications ensue. Act 2: Alexander and Stuart have a spat, and Reed talks his dad into sending Alexander to Havana after all, but at the dock, Stuart and Alexander make up. They get married, Stuart quits work, and Alexander gets fired. Act 3: Marital problems build up, mostly due to Alexander's gambling and Stuart's well-meaning family always hanging around. They split up and both go back to work for Cawthorn. Eventually Reed helps the two reconcile and Stuart makes her family leave them alone.

This is an average example of the romantic comedy subgenre about a young couple grappling with various problems during a rocky courtship and first year of marriage. It's unusual only in that it's based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, "Saturday's Children," though I think the original and the 1940 film adaptation with John Garfield are a bit more serious than this version. This film seems to be Frank Capra material played at Marx Brothers speed, and the result is not wholly satisfying. Alexander was supposedly a promising young contract player at Warners whose career was scotched by his homosexuality, but I've seen him in a handful of films and he just never seemed like a leading man type; he's certainly the weak link in this cast, which is a shame because most everyone else is fine. Stuart is wonderful as always; Reed, a Tyrone Power look-alike, has more charisma than Alexander; also good are Henry Travers, Frank McHugh, and Ruth Donnelley as Stuart's family members. [TCM]

GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE (1968)

[Spoilers ahead] A 60's psychedelic morality tale with a girl, a motorcycle, lots of solarized color effects, but not much else. Rebecca (Marianne Faithfull), about to marry the pleasant but dull schoolteacher Raymond (Roger Mutton), flirts with Daniel (Alain Delon), a motorcycle-riding college instructor and regular customer at her father's bookstore. While on a skiing weekend in Switzerland, Raymond wants to sneak into Rebecca's room to do some premarital fooling around, but she can't go through with it and pretends to be asleep. Later that night, however, when Daniel comes creeping in through her window, she's all about the sex. She marries Raymond but occasionally takes off on her motorcycle (a scandalous wedding gift from Daniel) and goes from her home in Alsace to carry on an affair with Daniel in Heidelberg. There is no talk of love, but clearly Daniel has "liberated" something within Rebecca--she thinks she's become a nymphomaniac. Practically the entire movie takes place one day as she's riding her motorcycle to see Daniel; in a skintight leather jumpsuit, naked underneath, she rides and writhes and delivers ridiculous interior monologues as we get her narrative in disjointed flashbacks. At the end, her mind too much on sex and not enough on the road, she is killed in a highway pile-up.

As a period piece, this is fun in spots. The director, famous cinematographer Jack Cardiff (BLACK NARCISSUS, THE AFRICAN QUEEN), uses lots of trippy color effects when we're inside her head, though there is no drug use, or even drinking, at all. If you make it through the weird opening sequence, you'll probably stick around for the whole thing: Faithfull, waking up one morning, has a swirly vision of circling birds and a dream of her husband playing a tedious cello piece in a circus spotlight while her lover rides rings around him on a motorcycle. Faithfull is lovely and has lots of screen presence, and is glimpsed naked once or twice. She and the wildly sexy Delon have good chemistry, though for a movie that is mostly set inside Faithfull's head, we never get much insight into her character, or Delon's for that matter. Obviously, Rebecca is feeling smothered, but we never quite see how or why--she does say at one point that her husband's reasonable nature has turned her into a bitch--and the fact that she is killed in the end for seeking freedom complicates the message. There are some truly ludicrous lines to be cherished: "Sometimes it's an instinct to fly"; "Rebellion's the only thing that keeps you alive"; "Your toes are like tombstones." Most of the motorcycling that Faithfull does is either in front of a rear projection screen or while obviously being towed by another vehicle. The sex scenes aren't all that sexy; the last one, in which Delon whips Faithfull with a bunch of roses while she's on top of him, has potential, but as soon as it gets interesting, the color solarization starts up again and you can't tell what the hell's going on. The Redemption DVD print is not in the best shape, but it's presentable. [DVD]

LA NOTTE (1961)

With this film under my belt, I have now seen all three of the movies in the loose trilogy by Michelangelo Antonioni which are variously referred to as the "Alienation" films or the "Emptiness" films, or the "Doomed Relationships" trilogy, or as IMDb trivia has it, the "Incomunicabiliy" trilogy--and speaking of the difficulty of communication, I'm pretty sure that should be "incommunicability." The first, L'AVVENTURA, is about a young woman who vanishes on a boat trip; what starts out as a sort of detective story as her lover and friend search for her becomes a tale of two people attracted to each other but also bored by each other, and by life. The third, L'ECLISSE (Eclipse), centers on a bored woman who initiates an affair with an attractive stockbroker, only to be bored by him, and by life. LA NOTTE follows a husband and wife through the course of a day and night during which they realize they are, yes, bored with each other and with life. Despite my flippant descriptions, I like these movies, especially the way they look, and think they are all worthy film buff material. But it doesn't seem like Antonioni got very far in developing his thesis, and in fact I think it's the first one that is the richest viewing experience, though L'ECLISSE gets a lot of critical attention for its final long sequence of city street life.

This one has the best acting of the three, probably because the characters are better written. Marcello Mastroianni is a writer, married to Jeanne Moreau (both pictured above). We see the pair visiting an older writer (whom Moreau may have had an affair with in the past), dying in a hospital room, and Mastroianni has an encounter with a woman who pulls him into a room, strips naked, and tries to seduce him, but it turns out she's a mental case. That evening, at a book party, a bored Moreau leaves, wanders the stark city streets, and stops a fist fight. The two go to a club and watch a rather sexy dance/strip number. Later they attend a cocktail party at a large, modern suburban house, all stark white walls and glass; he flirts with Monica Vitti (pictured at right--and honestly, who wouldn't flirt with her?), she leaves for a drive with a young playboy (Giorgio Negro), but both wind up at dawn together in a grassy field. She reads him an old love letter of his, he doesn't recognize it, and they end the film rolling around together in the dirt, in a prelude to a joyless sex act. As in all three films, it is the photography of architecture, and of people framed oddly against buildings and landscapes, that keeps the viewer most interested. But the characters, being better developed than in the other two films, are fairly interesting, even if we never really know what makes them tick, or even really why they feel alienated from each other and their surroundings (the plight of the thinking modern person, I suppose). There are certainly hints: Mastroianni's new book is called The Sleepwalkers; at one point he tells Moreau, "I no longer have inspirations, only recollections"; a discussion topic at the party, among the very well-to-do guests, is about what does or doesn't have lasting value. Plotwise, these threads never come together, but still by the end, you do come away with an almost physical feeling of alienation, or emptiness, or of the sadness of incommunicability. [DVD]