SECRET CEREMONY (1968)

Mia Farrow is a waifish young girl whose mother has recently died, leaving her alone in a large house in London, theoretically in the care of two aunts whose idea of care is to visit her occasionally and steal knick-knacks. One day on the bus, Farrow sees Elizabeth Taylor, a lonely, high-class prostitute who bears a resemblance to Farrow's mother. Taylor has her own sorrow, having lost her daughter through an accidental drowning. Farrow follows Taylor around like a puppy, insisting that Taylor is her mother. When she sees how the girl lives, Taylor takes on the persona of the mother; at first, she seems inclined to behave like the aunts and steal some of Farrow's riches, but soon she begins to feel real compassion for her, as though they truly were mother and daughter. Soon, however, Farrow's possibly incestuous stepfather (Robert Mitchum) arrives, to seduce (or re-seduce) Farrow, and maybe Taylor while he's at it. Eventually, Farrow claims to be pregnant--with Mitchum the presumed father--but Taylor discovers that she has been stuffing a doll in her dress to look as though she was with child. What happens in the last 15 minutes results in two deaths and allows the murderous survivor to get away scot free.

This is a crazy movie, not quite camp, which might have worked better as a play. Farrow and Taylor are incredibly mannered in the first 20 minutes or so (much of which plays out with very little dialogue), the fault I assume of the director, Joseph Losey, who may have felt he was doing something avant-garde; if this was made today, it wouldn't be a star-driven film but a moody independent film (with a pre-jail Lindsay Lohan and a post-"Single Man" Julianne Moore, maybe). The movie looks great, with interesting use of color and good sets. Unfortunately, the bizarre acting and confused plotting work against this as effective entertainment. For 60s film buffs only. [TCM]

CHASING YESTERDAY (1935)

Sylvestre Bonnard, an old archeologist who still teaches at the University, lives a quiet life, surrounded by his beloved old books and tended to by his cranky but loving housekeeper Therese. His one regret is that he never married his childhood sweetheart, Katharine, now dead. When M. Coccoz, a penniless door-to-door bookseller, arrives, Bonnard helps him out by buying his entire suitcase full of books, and he tells Coccoz of his attempt to find a long-lost book from his youth, "The Golden Legend." He still cherishes a short love note Katharine wrote to him on a torn-off corner from a page of the book, and Coccoz's visit motivates Bonnard to head back to his hometown to find the book. It turns out to be missing from the family library, but he does meet Katharine's teenage daughter, Jeanne, who lives a miserable life feeling oppressed by M. Mouche, her guardian, and Mlle. Prefere, the uptight headmistress at the school where she is being trained to be a teacher. Bonnard sets out to brighten the girl's life, ultimately hoping to adopt her, but he is stymied by Mouche and Prefere. The guardian agrees to sell him the right to raise the girl, but Bonnard will have to sell all of his old books. The sale doesn't go as well as expected, but a return visit from Coccoz, who has found "The Golden Legend" and a secret about Mouche, winds up giving Bonnard the upper hand.

This potentially interesting storyline is let down by slow pacing, a dreary and repetitive musical score, and lack of characterization. As Bonnard, O.P Heggie (the hermit in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) looks like Frank Morgan as Prof. Marvel in THE WIZARD OF OZ, but doesn't have the playful spark that Morgan would have had. Etienne Giradot, as Mouche, also lacks any real presence, so their conflicts play out in lackluster scenes. However, there are some good performances to save the day. Anne Shirley (pictured with Heggie) has personality to burn as Jeanne, Helen Westley is quite amusing as the housekeeper, and Elizabeth Patterson does a nice job as the headmistress, who blooms under Bonnard's attention, thinking briefly that he is romancing her. Also with John Qualen as Coccoz and Trent Durkin as a young man who catches Jeanne's fancy. One of a number of films from the 30s with senior citizens as lead characters (though Heggie was only 59, he looks considerably older and in fact died the next year). [TCM]

THE KING OF KINGS (1927)

Hollywood movies about Jesus Christ are usually epic films which wind up, perhaps because of too much concern for reverence, being rather slow and dull. This early silent telling of the last days of Jesus, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, is reverent but compelling. It begins, oddly, with a royal banquet at which the courtesan Mary Magdalene is irritated because her current favored lover Judas Iscariot is missing--seems he's been swept off his feet by some carpenter from Nazareth. She saddles up her zebras (I kid you not; they’re gifts from some Nubian prince) and heads out to break up the apostles' meeting. When we first see Jesus, he is curing a little blind boy (the future Gospel writer Mark), and we don't see Jesus' face until the boy does, appearing out of a fog as his eyesight returns. Judas is a would-be kingmaker, interested in Jesus as a political figure; he tells Jesus that he should tend to the rich and mighty to curry favor instead of to the powerless poor. When Mary shows up, Jesus exorcises the Seven Deadly Sins right out of her (each sin personified as a ghostly figure). For his part, Judas thinks that any of Jesus’ followers should be able to perform miracles, but when he tries to cure a “lunatic” boy, he has no luck until Jesus takes over the task. The rest of the film pretty much conforms to the familiar Gospel narratives: Peter finds a fish with a gold coin in its mouth which is used for payment of back taxes; Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead (a scene with a horror-movie feel--pictured below--as a wrapped-up body rises up from a slab and slowly unwraps itself), stops the stoning of Mary Magdalene, and rages against the merchants at the temple; Judas betrays Jesus to the high priests. There is no suspense since we know the rest of the story by heart, and the film builds up to the Crucifixion, with its thunder and lightning and earthquakes, followed by a brief Technicolor sequence of the Resurrection and Jesus' appearance to the apostles.

The movie looks beautiful, in a Sunday-school kind of way, like a bunch of vintage Bible illustrations come to life. There’s a nice scene in which Caiaphas plunks out thirty pieces of silver for Judas, and a beautiful shot after the Last Supper showing a glowing chalice with a soft-focus dove flitting around it. Soft focus is the de facto means for showing Christ’s divinity--he is usually seen with a luminous glow about him. H.B. Warner plays Christ as passive but not a wimp, just someone who is for the most part resigned to his fate. At almost 50, he was too old for the part, especially when we see him with his mother, played by Dorothy Cumming who was not yet 30, but he does look a lot like the Jesus of old Bible cards. Joseph Schildkraut, as Judas (pictured above with Warner), almost steals each scene he's in, a bit like the same character is a scene-stealer in JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. The Criterion restoration has a lovely newly-written score which is mostly unobtrusive and appropriate. Though I like the modern KING OF KINGS for its epic feel (and the handsome Jeffrey Hunter), this movie is the one to beat for good old fashioned religious moviemaking, with just enough of the secular (the scantily-clad Mary Magdalene) to keep things interesting. [DVD]

5 AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955)

Four college buddies (2 Korean War vets, played by Guy Madison and Brian Keith, class clown Alvy Moore and studious Kerwin Matthews) take a quick trip to Reno where law student Guy Madison tries out a system for winning which fails, but the four witness a botched robbery attempt. Back on campus, Madison devotes his attentions to his girl friend, nightclub singer Kim Novak, and Keith tries to overcome his hair-trigger temper, exacerbated by his war experiences. But when they get hit by the "mid-semester whim-whams," Matthews, inspired by their Reno visit, comes up with a foolproof system for robbing the casino. He gets Keith and Moore involved, promising to pull it off as a spring break experiment, intending to give the money back. Madison and Novak go along for the ride, unaware at first of the plans for the heist, but by the time they get to Reno, Keith has gone a little bit nuts and insists at gunpoint that they all go along with the plan, and keep the money once they get it. Of course, the heist doesn't quite go as planned. Though released as part of a film noir set from Columbia, this isn't noir at all, it's a straight-ahead crime caper, with the added twist of college kids (albeit very mature looking kids--most of the actors were in their 30s, with Matthews the youngest at 29) and a crazy war vet being the protagonists instead of career criminals looking to pull off a last big job. The heist actually takes second place to characterization, and the planning is more exciting than the actual crime. All the actors are fine, though Madison, meant to be the central character, winds up the least interesting of the four guys--most surprising is Alvy Moore, best remembered as Hank Kimball on Green Acres, who is a solid comic relief sidekick. The very young Novak (pictured) is lovely, though the film might have been leaner without her character, who has little bearing on the film. [DVD]

THE MISSING JUROR (1944)

[Spoilers included] A train hits a car which we saw being rolled onto the track; the dead man in the driver's seat was a juror in the infamous Wharton murder trial in which a jury found Wharton guilty, but just hours before he was to executed, someone confessed that Wharton had been framed. He is freed but soon has a nervous breakdown, is institutionalized, and kills himself by setting his room on fire. Now, it appears as if someone is avenging Wharton by killing off the jurors; the man in the car is the fourth to wind up dead, with a fifth reported missing. Reporter Joe Keats investigates, and interviews juror Alice Hill, an interior designer, and Jerome Bentley, a foreign gentleman with a fancy beard and heavy accent. Joe develops a thing for Alice, and when another juror is found dead, Joe digs deeper. The mysterious Bentley claims he knows who the killer is, and agrees to arrange a meeting with Joe and the killer in a steam room, but instead Joe winds up trapped in the room and almost boils to death. Of course, [1st Spoiler] the killer is Bentley, but [2nd spoiler] Bentley is actually Wharton, who faked his death in order to pull off this revenge. Meanwhile, Bentley/Wharton is setting a trap for Alice; can Joe get the cops to believe his theory in time to save her?

This B-mystery is generally fun, even though the Bentley/Wharton subterfuge should be crystal clear to any viewer from early on. Part of the problem is that George Macready, who plays the part(s), is too distinctive in looks and accent to be hidden behind a beard and monacle. An early edition of Halliwell's film guide says this is part of Columbia’s "I Love a Mystery" series, but it's not, even though the reporter is played by Jim Bannon, who was the lead in that series (and Macready also appears in the first film). For a B-lead, Bannon suffices--he's breezy and confident--and the whole thing moves at a quick pace. Janis Carter is fine as the femme lead and Jean Rogers steals a scene or two as her assistant, a perky gal from Texas. You may recognize wrestler Mike Mazurki in a small role as a masseur. [TCM]

VICKI (1953)

This noir melodrama tries hard to conjure up comparisons to the classic film LAURA, and even if it can't quite live up to that, it's still an enjoyable little movie. The stylish opening scene shows billboards featuring the model and singer Vicki Lynn (Jean Peters), who seems to be the rage of New York and, as we learn later, was about to head out to California for an acting job; as a "Laura"-like theme plays, we see the police taking her dead body out of her apartment. Richard Boone is a cop who is determined to find her killer. As in LAURA, we learn Peters' story in flashbacks. There are several suspects including Peters' sister and roommate Jill (Jeanne Crain), an actor she had dated (Alex D'Arcy), and a columnist (Casey Adams) who wrote about her frequently, but Boone is certain that the killer is her PR man (Elliott Reid) who discovered her as a waitress at a late-night diner, worked hard to get her modeling career off the ground, and was about to be left with a broken contract when she decided to leave New York. However, the plot thickens with two developments: 1) the seedy telephone operator at Peters' apartment building (Aaron Spelling) took a powder after the discovery of her body; 2) Reid finds out that Boone had been unnaturally obsessed with Peters, spying on her when she was a waitress and having turned his apartment into a shrine to her. I will admit I was surprised at the final solution.

With all the controversy about what constitutes film noir, I'm inclined to take the view of Justice Potter concerning pornography: I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. This movie, with its focus on sexual obsession, fatalism, conflicted characters, and the night world, feels a lot like noir to me, even if it seems too brightly lit to fit the visual noir mold. The B-ish cast works well, especially Peters and Reid; Crain (pictured above to the left of Peters), playing a good girl, is bland, and Boone wildly overdoes the obsessed cop bit, harshly screaming at people right and left. He almost leers at Reid when he tries to break him and calls him "pretty boy," which gives his character a delightful little sex-kink subtext. I liked Carl Betz, who gained fame as the husband on The Donna Reed Show, as a darkly handsome cop, and it's fun to see Spelling (long before his TV tycoon days) as a geek. Technically this is a remake of the Victor Mature/Betty Grable film I WAKE UP SCREAMING, but clearly it was trying to ride a LAURA vibe at the box office. [FMC]

HIGH WALL (1947)

Dorothy Patrick works for Herbert Marshall, a publisher of religious books, and is also his mistress, even though she has a husband (Robert Taylor) who hasn't yet returned from the war (an injury required brain surgery and he still isn't fully recovered). However, Taylor comes home unexpectedly and catches Patrick at Marshall's apartment. He goes into a rage, blacks out, and wakes up with his wife's dead body next to him. After he drives himself and her body off the road and into a creek, he confesses to murder, even though he doesn't actually remember what happened. At a psychiatric hospital, his doctor (Audrey Totter) discovers his current problems are due to a blood clot, so he has another operation. Totter takes a personal interest in his case, even temporarily adopting Taylor's son to keep him out of state care. She talks him into undergoing "narcosynthesis," in which he is given sodium pentothol (a "truth serum") to uncover his memories of what happened during his blackout. Soon they discover what we figured out a long time ago: Marshall killed her and framed Taylor. Taylor breaks out of the hospital, with some help from Totter, and goes after Marshall in an archetypal film noir manhunt through rainy night streets.

This is a fairly solid film noir in the tradition of THE BIG CLOCK or PHANTOM LADY in which a man has to clear his own name by hunting down a killer. The noir visuals are nice, especially an atmospheric scene in a church late in the film. The wooden Taylor is the weak link, but luckily the other actors compensate. Marshall (reminiscent of the Charles Laughton character in THE BIG CLOCK) is good as the respectable bad guy who is desperately trying to cover this tracks; the best scene in the movie involves his startlingly sudden murder of a janitor who has figured out the score and is trying to blackmail him. Totter (pictured above), whom I liked so well as a femme fatale in TENSION, is also fine, though she's more fun when she's bad. Some familiar faces in the background include John Ridgely, Warner Anderson, and H. B. Warner. [TCM]

PARRISH (1961)

Another Troy Donahue/Connie Stevens movie from the Warner Bros. Romance Collection. This one is a family saga with Donahue as the title character, a teenager who moves with his mother (Claudette Colbert) to Connecticut tobacco country so she can take a job as a companion to the daughter of tobacco farmer Dean Jagger. Jagger doesn't trust the good-looking lad around his spoiled girl (Diane McBain), so Donahue finds work in the fields and lodgings with the family of fellow worker Connie Stevens. He and Stevens begin dating, though she continues seeing her steady boyfriend, but soon Donahue is also "dating" McBain. Colbert falls for and marries Karl Malden, a big shot tobacco farmer and something of a rival of Jagger's. Stevens gets pregnant by one of Malden's married sons (Hampton Fancher, pictured), McBain marries another of Malden's sons, and Donahue, after a stint in the Navy, returns to Connecticut and works for Jagger, helping to fight the unscrupulous Malden in his attempt to snatch up all the farming land, with poor Colbert torn between the two. The plot keeps bouncing back and forth between the sex and tobacco plotlines, and there seems to be plenty of material there for a TV series. Donahue, though undeniably handsome, looks puffy and soft and not at all the kind of guy who has the backbone to stand up to everyone around him, though I will say his best scene is a verbal confrontation with Fancher over Stevens' honor. Colbert's heart isn't in this, her final film role (though she appeared in a TV-movie 25 years later); though most of the young men and women playing family members of the warring clans are OK, the best acting is done by Dean Jagger. If you enjoy the glossy, well-produced soap operas of this era, you'll like this, though I think it would have been better with someone other than Donahue as the focus of the story. [DVD]

QUIET PLEASE, MURDER (1942)

A mild-mannered bespectacled man (George Sanders, at right) chats with a librarian in a rare book room at the New York Public Library while admiring a rare copy of Hamlet that's on display. But Sanders isn't as mild as he looks: he guns down the librarian, smashes the glass case, and steals the book. He's a world-class forger who makes copies of stolen rare books and sells them on the black market. The glamorous but aloof Gail Patrick is his fence; she sells one of the Hamlets to the German Sidney Blackmer, who collects rarities for the Nazis, but he finds out it's a fake and wants his money back. Enter square-jawed all-American detective Richard Denning who is hot on Patrick's trail for a different client. She agrees to help him expose Sanders if he'll protect her, but then she double-crosses Denning by telling Blackmer that Denning is the forger and she arranges a confrontation at the library one night just before closing. That night, Denning, Blackmer, and Patrick go to the library, but Sanders has a trick in store: he shows up with a bunch of his cohorts claiming to be policemen, hoping to get rid of both Blackmer and Denning and steal a few more rare books while he's at it. At closing time, a shot rings out, a man is killed, and Sanders and his fake cops keep everyone in the building even as an air raid blackout is called. The rest of the film consists of cat-and-mouse games played in the dark building between Sanders and Denning. We're never quite sure who Patrick feels loyalty to, and the presence of a mute thug, a prissy air-raid warden, and a lovely young librarian with a GI fiancé complicate matters.

This little-known B-mystery is quite interesting and unusual, for its setting and for its psychological discussions. As a library worker myself (at a reference desk and in cataloging), I liked the setting; for a B-movie, the library sets are convincing, though they're not elaborate enough to be stand-ins for the real and very impressive New York Public Library. At one point, the librarian (Lynne Roberts) gives Denning a little lecture explaining the Dewey Decimal System, and near the end, a Dewey call number winds up being a major clue to the whereabouts of the stolen books. But more interesting are the conversations between Sanders and Patrick about their particular kink: sado-masochism. Sanders claims they are both, psychologically speaking, "a couple of horror shows" who find "pleasure in fear and pain," searching out situations which could lead to terrifying results. When Patrick slips up, Sanders insists it's her conscience deliberately putting her in harm's way. In a strange moment near the end, Sanders seems almost sexually excited about the possibility of getting the death penalty. Sanders also says that Blackmer is a sadist, though that plot thread is unexplored; perhaps just his ties to Nazis are supposed to be enough to prove that claim.

Actingwise, the movie belongs to Sanders and Patrick, with Blackmer holding his own. Denning, though a serviceable B-film hero, is out of his league; someone like Bogart or Alan Ladd would have given the movie even more of an edge. The ending has a Maltese Falcon feel, with Denning uncertain about whether or not to give Patrick up. He doesn't, but of course the Production Code steps in and has fate take a punishing hand. The WWII blackout setting is unusual; most air raid scenes in movies are set in London, though U.S. cities did indeed have blackout air raids. At the conclusion, there is a brief propaganda spiel about American soldiers and the girls they've left behind on the homefront. This film is hard to find, but it's worth catching on Fox Movie Channel. [FMC]

THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR (1933)

This psychological thriller opens like a romantic comedy: in Vienna, married lady Gloria Stuart sneaks off to meet her lover, Walter Pidgeon, for a tryst at his fancy home. The mood changes when her husband (Paul Lukas), who has followed her, shoots her dead through a window, then calls the police and confesses to murder. Lukas explains his state of mind to his lawyer and old friend (Frank Morgan) through a flashback: while his wife was dressing to go out, Lukas surprised her at her mirror and could see by the look in her eyes that she was no longer in love with him, and was preparing to meet her lover. Morgan thinks he can get Lukas off by arguing he was in the grip of an intense and understandable psychological compulsion, but when Morgan goes home to his wife (Nancy Carroll), who is primping before a mirror, he sees the same look on her face that Lukas saw on Stuart. Sure enough, Morgan follows Carroll to her tryst. He decides if he can get Lukas off on his planned defense, he'll kill his own wife the same way.

This is an engrossing, well-paced melodrama from James Whale, known better for his Frankenstein movies, and some sequences here are shot in almost horror-movie fashion. Morgan gives a relatively understated performance until his last courtroom scene. Lukas is very good, as is Stuart in what amounts to a cameo role, and Jean Dixon and Charley Grapewin are fine providing some mild comic relief as Morgan’s assistants. Whale did a B-movie remake of this a few years later (WIVES UNDER SUSPICION) which is worth seeing, but this version is a must-see for fans of pre-Code films or courtroom thrillers. [TCM]

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]