THE SHEIK (1921)

Arabs, we are told, dwell in happy ignorance of civilization which has passed them by. At a roundup of eligible young women, we see a wise and educated sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan (Rudolph Valentino), allow his buddy to keep his girlfriend, then head off to the town of Biskra, gateway to the desert, to sell the rest of the women into marriage. The madcap Lady Diana and her brother Aubrey are in town and she wants adventure; Aubrey encourages her to settle down and marry though she calls marriage "captivity." When she is kept out of the casino at which Ahmed is holding the marriage market, she sneaks in disguised as a dancing girl. Ahmed is amused by her antics and he follows her as she heads off into desert with only an Arab guide. He kidnaps her and during a sandstorm plans to have his way with her, but is struck by her despair and instead just insists that she dress in Arab clothing and remain his captive. His "civilized" French friend Raoul visits and is critical of Ahmed keeping Diana; Ahmed replies, "When an Arab sees a woman he wants, he takes her." Ahmed and Diana become cordial and more so—she even writes, "Ahmed I love you" in the sand—and when Diana is captured by a bandit disguised as a holy man, Ahmed heads off to rescue her. He is successful but is injured, and as Diana helps nurse him back to health, she is told by Raoul that Ahmed was actually an orphan of English and Spanish descent, allowing her finally to express her feelings of love to him.

This is a rape/miscegenation melodrama in which both elements disappear and instead we get a story of a civilized woman falling for a lusty, primitive man. The story's plot and politics are old-fashioned and easily dismissed by today’s viewers, though we remain a little unsettled by Diana's growing identification with and attraction to her kidnapper (now called Stockholm Syndrome). The appeal of Valentino is difficult to see from this: his grins and grimaces make him seem today more like a comic relief character. He is attractive but I didn’t find him overwhelmingly sexy like audiences of the day did. Agnes Ayers, as Diana, is fine, and it’s interesting to see a relatively young Adolph Menjou as Raoul. A must-see only for its historical importance as Valentino’s breakout movie. [DVD]

ACT ONE (1960)

Theoretically, this is the story of how playwright Moss Hart, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author (with George S. Kaufman) of You Can't Take It with You and The Man Who Came to Dinner, got his start in the business, based on his autobiography. In 1929, young Hart still lives with his family and keeps trying to sell his dramatic plays, with no success, though he is told by an agent that his real talent is comedy. Hart takes a job as a director with an amateur theater group and works on a comic play about the film business. Big Broadway producer Sam Harris gets hold of the script and agrees to buy the rights if he'll let George Kaufman finish it with him. It takes a while for the two to gel—Hart is young and bouncy, Kaufman is older and acerbic—but eventually they get the knack of collaborating and after a few false starts, the finished play, Once in a Lifetime, is a hit. Though set during the early Depression years, the movie doesn’t much bother with getting period details right—it's in black & white, but it has a glossy 50s look to it. A young George Hamilton is ill-suited physically to play Hart, but he's appealing in the role. Jason Robards does not fare as well as Kaufman, as he's stuck mostly griping and bitching and generally being a pain in the ass. It's fun to see Burt Convy play the young Archie Leach—later to become Cary Grant—in a series of scenes which show Hart commiserating with other show biz hopefuls. The cast also includes Eli Wallach, Jack Klugman, Sam Levene, and George Segal. The score by Skitch Henderson is shrill and overblown. Occasionally interesting but generally drab and colorless.  [TCM] 

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (1971)

Michael Sarrazin is a student at a New York City university; his father (Arthur Hill) and grandmother (Ruth White) are rich, conservative and powerful—though White is stuck living in a mansion in a neighborhood which has gone downhill to the point where her property is vandalized almost nightly by hooligans. Sarrazin lives with his girlfriend Barbara Hershey (pictured with Sarrazin); she's been politically radicalized by him, but now as he approaches graduation, he's backed away from politics which pisses her off. In fact, he seems to have backed away from anything requiring committed thought or action, becoming a vaguely unhappy and passive guy whose ties to everything around him are vanishing. One rainy night, he accidentally hits and kills an old woman who stepped out in traffic without looking. He does the right thing and turns himself in, and even, against the counsel of his father's powerful lawyer (E.G. Marshall), goes to the victim's family to apologize, though he is turned away by her grief-stricken daughter (Rue McClanahan) who is confused by his gesture. He goes so far as to wear a suit to his hearing to make a good impression, but the judge, seeing in him a pattern of irresponsible behavior (over 20 unpaid parking tickets were found in his glove compartment), sentences him to a year in prison. His cellmate is a state senator in for embezzlement, and he makes friends with Gilbert Lewis, a gay black man, but when Lewis is stabbed to death in the shower, Sarrazin has to go to a hearing at which he rails against injustice (as with his car accident, he sees the stabbing as an unfortunate accident) and he gets in more trouble. When his guards let him go to the bathroom by himself, he sees an open window and escapes and makes his way to his father, grandmother, and girlfriend before deciding to escape to Mexico rather than go back and face the music.

Some critics see this as a leftist hippie anti-establishment movie, though the only hippie in sight is Sarrazin's freeloading but likable buddy (Robert Klein). Others look at it as a Kafkaesque nightmare, Sarrazin being punished by a faceless bureaucracy for no reason (though vehicular homicide is a pretty good reason for some punishment). I see this as a kind of Hamlet story: as he approaches adulthood and independence, he realizes he's in a world not of his own making—his family wants him to be something he's not—but he can't make up his mind about what he wants to be. Escaping to Mexico is just putting off the inevitable. Sarrazin is attractive and likable but by the end, I wanted to slap him and say, "Man up, asshole, and take a stand one way or another." I might not have felt that way with a different actor in the role. The other actors, including Peter White as a cousin, Sada Thompson as an aunt, David Doyle as the senator, and William Devane (channeling Jack Nicholson) as a shady pilot, are fine, and generally make the film worth seeing. [DVD]

VALENTINO (1977)

When I was in college, I loved Ken Russell movies. He was the first director in whose films I could find a discernible style: over-the-top acting, grotesque supporting characters, colorful costuming and art design, outrageous emotional outbursts; all the kinds of things that attracted the attention of this young man in the process of becoming a gay adult. Thirty-five years on, I find his work not having a lasting hold on me, though part of the problem is the fact that his movies from the 70s are difficult to find so I haven’t been able to re-view many them in the DVD era. But this one aired a while back on Turner Classic in a lovely widescreen print and it held up much better than I would have expected.

Rudolph Nureyev plays silent film idol Rudolph Valentino. The film is set in 1926 at the time of his funeral which was perhaps the first modern celebrity-death media circus. As the various women in his life visit the funeral parlor, the story of his rise to fame and fortune is told in flashbacks. He starts as a taxi dancer/gigolo (with rumors about his homosexuality whispered about), becomes part of a nightclub act, humiliates the actor Fatty Arbuckle, and is discovered for the movies by screenwriter June Mathis (Felicity Kendal), who seems to be the only person who cared unselfishly for Valentino. He becomes a huge star and marries the actress Rambova (Michelle Phillips) who becomes a controlling monster and a bad influence on Valentino's career. When his masculinity is questioned in the press (he's called a "powder puff"), he challenges a reporter to a boxing match; he wins the match, barely, but does grave injury to his ulcer and dies that night, alone, at the age of 31 (though in real life, he died of peritonitis after an appendectomy).

The film looks great and, like most of Russell's biographical works, treats a real life as just a light framework for Russell's wild imaginings—this was taken to an extreme in LISZTOMANIA, a film I adored at 19 and am afraid to watch now. There is never a pause in the parade of grotesque incidents so we don't really get to know the characters, but as plastic exaggerations employed largely as living set decoration, they suffice. It takes a while to get used to Nureyev's stylized acting, but I think he does an admirable job creating a suitably exotic character. Phillips is dreadful, but looks every inch a silent movie diva, and that's what was important to Russell. Leslie Caron is OK as Nazimova, another diva Valentino fell in with, Carol Kane and Leland Palmer are fine as other passing fancies, but Kendal fares the best performance-wise. Seymour Cassell does a nice job as Valentino's manager who, like Kendal, actually does seem to care for the person behind the legend. There are several interesting setpieces, but the one that remained seared into my mind for years (and still holds up) involves cross-cutting between Nureyev and Phillips arguing and copulating on a dining room table while his fan club members are outside chanting desperately to their idol. Not a great film, but one worth seeing, and one that deserves a DVD release. [TCM]  

ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949)

District attorney Foster says in passing that he would sell his soul to break the stranglehold that Hanson's protection racket has on the city. One night, he is told to go the China Coast Café for some information. Out of the fog comes the whistling figure of Nick Beal; he claims to have Hanson's accounting books which had supposedly been destroyed. Foster takes the books, even though he knows they must have been stolen, and Beal vanishes. After Hanson is sent to prison, Foster is talked into running for governor and Beal comes back into Foster's life, offering to smooth his way into office. Those around Foster, including his wife, aren't happy with Beal's influence (and it seems strange that Beal leaves the room when a minister starts quoting the Bible), but soon Beal is running the show and Foster's wife has become estranged. Sure enough, Beal is the Devil, and Foster wins the election, but when Foster shows signs of attempting to renounce his ill-gotten gains, can even the help of his minister save his eternal soul?

This fantasy melodrama is one-of-a-kind. For a while, we're not certain that Beal is a supernatural figure, but even when we know he is, the film mostly plays it straight, like a slightly off-kilter film noir. Foster (Thomas Mitchell) is a good man with good intentions, and at various times, he tries not to take Beal's help, but as long as he thinks he’s doing good for the people, he gives in. At one point, Beal (Ray Milland) sets up a prostitute (noir gal Audrey Totter) to entrap Foster, and she does indeed get wrapped up in Foster's life and campaign, but she can't bring herself to enlist fully in the Devil's work. The ending, which involves the traditional signed pact for Foster’s soul, is a bit of a fizzle, but it doesn't hurt the film, which is a marvel of noir shadows and nighttime scenes. Milland at first struck me as a bit one-note, but it's an effective note; he's always both calm but intense, even when things don’t seem to be going his way. Mitchell and Totter are both fine; the cast includes George Macready playing a bit against type as the minister, Fred Clark as a gangster, and Daryl Hickman as a wayward youth saved by the minister. Never released officially on home video, I saw this on YouTube in a good print, and I hope someday Universal will be moved to put it out on DVD.  [YouTube]

CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE (1947)

In 1518 Spain, aristocrat Tyrone Power aids an Aztec slave (Jay Silverheels) on the run from his cruel master (John Sutton) who also happens to be an Inquisitor. Out of spite, Sutton imprisons Power's family on trumped-up charges of heresy, and Power's young sister dies while being tortured. Vowing revenge, Power stabs Sutton, apparently killing him, and he and his family escape with some help from a sympathetic barmaid (Jean Peters), her jailer brother, and Lee J. Cobb, an alcoholic adventurer who planned on taking his mother with him to the New World but found that she, too, had been killed by the Inquisition. Power, Peters and Cobb join Cesar Romero (as Hernando Cortez) to head off to Cuba and then Mexico (for conquering and plundering, but since these are the good guys here, that's downplayed). When an arrest warrant for Power is presented by the Inquisition, a good padre (Thomas Gomez) finds out what happened and tears it up. But lo and behold, who shows up in Mexico but Sutton, still alive, and Silverheels, still hiding from his former master. Did I mention that Peters is pregnant by Powers? How will all the tensions resolve themselves?

This swashbuckler was made (in beautiful Technicolor) at the end of the traditional studio system era, and though it's gorgeous to look at, it doesn’t quite all come together. That may be because the film is based on a huge historical fiction bestseller that would have taken a film of Gone with the Wind's length to sort out. The first half is more successful as it focuses more narrowly on Power and his family and friends. Power, Cobb and Sutton are all good at bringing their characters to life. Romero is blustery and fun, and George Zucco has a small role as a friend of Power's family who refuses to help them against Sutton. Peters (pictured above with Power) is duskily attractive but doesn't have much to do. Though the Power vs. Sutton storyline is wrapped up, the end of the film is an ambiguous scene of Gomez praying that Romero will drive greed out of his heart as he is about to go a-conquering. [TCM]

TIMES SQUARE LADY (1935)

King Bradley runs a number of businesses in New York City, including a hockey team, a nightclub, and some boxers. When he dies, his daughter (Virginia Bruce) comes to the Big Apple from Iowa to take control, much to the consternation of some of his associates who want bigger pieces of the pie themselves. Robert Taylor, the owner of her Casa Nova nightclub, plays along with the bad guys for a while, helping to set up incidents designed to scare her back to the cornfields, but she is made of tougher stuff. The two, along with hayseed Oklahoma singer Pinky Tomlin, plot to sell the businesses off to legitimate owners. Of course there is potentially dangerous blowback from the cabal, including Taylor's ex-gal (Helen Twelevetrees), but with some help from tough guy Nat Pendleton, who leaves the baddies and joins up with the good guys, there's a happy ending for Taylor and Bruce. This pleasant but undistinguished film was Taylor's first leading role and he's fine; he's handsome and slick, and he has good chemistry with Bruce (the two were apparently dating at the time). Tomlin is essentially playing himself, a sort of Kay Kyser personality whose song, "The Object of My Affection," which he sings here, was a big hit. Bruce is one of those starlets who never broke out big but who usually makes a movie worth seeing, and that's true here. [TCM]

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (1935)

John Jasper is a middle-aged choirmaster who has a passion for the young and lovely Eva Bud, who lives at Miss Twinkleton's School for Girls, but she has already been promised to Jasper's handsome nephew Edwin Drood. Meanwhile, Neville Landless and his sister Helena arrive, and Neville, who has a bit of a temper, falls for Eva. She, not really being in love with Edwin, falls for him. Neville and Edwin argue, with Neville pulling a knife—and the story of the fight gets exaggerated by the village gossips—but eventually Eva and Edwin realize they're not really in love and he frees her from her arranged obligation. On a wild and stormy Christmas Eve, Jasper has Neville and Edwin over for a reconciliation dinner, but the next morning, Edwin is missing and Neville falls under suspicion. But what’s with Jasper’s drug paraphernalia? Neville, who insists that he and Edwin were no longer enemies, vanishes and returns in disguise as an old man, discovering Jasper is a secret opium addict. Could Jasper be a killer as well as a dope fiend? This melodrama is based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, and the mystery is given a satisfying if unsurprising ending; the movie as a whole, however, fails to thrill in the way that it promises to. The Gothic atmosphere is first-rate, and the film plays out more like a horror movie than a traditional Dickens adaptation, but the screenplay and acting are only adequate. Claude Rains, usually a reliably excellent actor, seems stymied by the merely serviceable script and weak direction. Douglass Montgomery is fine as Neville. David Manners (above, standing over Rains) and Heather Angel are lackluster as Edwin and Rosa, though there is some fun to be had with some of the supporting actors (Francis L. Sullivan as the Rev. Crisparkle, Zeffie Tilbury as the "Opium Woman," and Ethel Griffes as Miss Twinkleton). Maybe I felt let down by this one because the atmosphere builds it up to be something it isn't (creepy Gothic horror), but there just isn't much energy on display. [TCM]

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1947)

Heiress Joan Bennett is protected from the wiles of fortune hunting men by her older brother (Paul Cavanagh); after he dies, the family lawyer proposes to her—he’s a nice guy and has his own money but he's rather bland. Before she makes a decision, she goes on a vacation to Mexico where she meets dashing architect Michael Redgrave who seems to have plenty of money (he owns a modern architecture magazine); he calls her a 20th century Sleeping Beauty who needs someone to wake her up, and of course, she thinks he's that someone. They get married and after an inauspicious honeymoon during which Redgrave goes rushing mysteriously back to New York, she joins him at his mansion, which has an entire floor devoted to reproductions of "felicitous rooms," which all turn out to be murder scenes. There's one room that's locked; wonder what's in there? Meanwhile, the other inhabitants of the house take some getting used to:  Redgrave's unmarried sister (Anne Revere—think a somewhat more pleasant Mrs. Danvers from REBECCA), his secretary who was disfigured years ago in a fire (Barbara O'Neil—think Bertha from JANE EYRE), and his oddly mannered teenage son (Mark Dennis—think gayish). Yes, it appears that Redgrave has secrets, some financial (his magazine is hemorrhaging money), some psychological (both his mother and previous wife died in mysterious circumstances). Redgrave blames a life dominated by women for his problems; will Bennett be able to help him, or will she be his next victim?

Fritz Lang directed this psychological gothic melodrama with fine attention to visual detail—nice use of shadows, reflections, and odd camera angles—and indeed it gets by for about 20 minutes on its stylistic flair, but once you've figured out that it's Lang trying to outdo Hitchcock (the plot is REBECCA by way of SUSPICION with a big dose of SPELLBOUND), it gets very predictable. If Redgrave is supposed to be like Olivier in REBECCA, he's not; Olivier was intense, dashing and neurotic, but Redgrave is mostly just distractedly neurotic. Bennett is good, but is let down by Redgrave in their scenes together (both pictured above). Among the supporting players, Revere has the most potential, but her character winds up a bit of a red herring, and O'Neil doesn't get enough screen time or character development to be very interesting. Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island) has a few good scenes as a comic relief gal pal. There's a bit of a cheat near the climax when one character's interior monologue leads us to believe that a murder has occurred that actually hasn't.  [TCM] 

SKY LINER (1949)

Eakins, a State Department man, is heading from New York to Los Angeles to give an important speech, but before he can get out of his office to board his plane, Amy, his secretary (who is also a dirty spy), calls her contact Smith to tell him that top secret papers have been delivered to him. Moments later, Smith kills him and steals the papers, then boards the plane under Eakins' name and sits with Amy. When the plane lands for a quick stop in Chicago, foreign agent Bokejian gets on, planning to buy the secret info from Smith, but Smith holds out for more money. Bokejian reluctantly gives it to him, but is understandably upset when the papers he paid so much for are blank. He kills Smith in the restroom and when the body is discovered, an FBI man on board takes control, hoping to solve the case before the plane lands.  

A couple of critics have called this a B-movie Grand Hotel in the air—storylines of several people who interact in a confined space—though with very little character development, that comparison is too generous (to be fair, the print I viewed was 12 minutes shorter than its length of record at IMDb, so I may have missed an entire reel). There are a few characters who are peripheral to the main action, including a young newlywed couple, two nervous old ladies, and a jewel thief who becomes important to the plot at its climax, which plays out far too quickly to be exciting. Richard Travis as the FBI man (pictured above, in the middle) is good, far better than he was in his Warner Bros. days (he was dismal as Bette Davis' suitor in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER). Pamela Blake, as the stewardess who helps save the day, doesn't have much to do; more interesting are Rochelle Hudson as Amy and Steve Pendleton as Smith—I was almost wishing they could get away with their swindle.  This low-budget indie film's production values are passable, though process shots of the plane flying through fog are terrible, resulting in what looks like a ghost plane in the sky.  [DVD]

A NIGHT IN PARADISE (1946)

In 560 B.C., the famed storyteller Aesop, aged and stooped, arrives in the land of Lydia days before the wedding of King Croesus to the lovely Princess Delarai. The king's counselor Leonides warns him that Queen Attosa, whom he was supposed to marry but didn't, and cheated out of a treasure of gold to boot, will use sorcery against him. Attosa has indeed called on the gods for help with her revenge, and she appears as a ghostly vision to pester Croesus. The king asks Aesop for help, but Aesop has his own problems: Attosa is haunting him, trying to get him in on her plans, and he finds himself falling in love with Delarai. It turns out that Aesop's appearance is a disguise—he says, "The world will only accept wisdom in the cloak of age and suffering"—and in reality he is a handsome youth. Without old-age makeup and under the name of Jason, he begins to secretly woo the princess. 

This is a later entry in Universal's series of exotic fantasies, most of which featured B-stars Jon Hall and Maria Montez. The two are missed here—instead we have Turhan Bey (pictured), who is OK but very low-key as Aesop, and Merle Oberon, a former A-list star who seems to have slipped a bit; she looks the part but doesn't put much effort into her acting, perhaps sensing that, with a mediocre script and a drab leading man, the film couldn't be saved. Thomas Gomez is one-note as the King, leaving Ray Collins (Leonides) and Gale Sondergaard (Attosa) to steal the show in their relatively small roles. The Technicolor sets look good (though the print shown on TCM was a bit on the dark and faded side), and there is some fun to be had with the thread of bawdy humor that runs through the film. Early on, when a slave is polishing a huge statue of Aphrodite and is caught in its cleavage, someone remarks, "That's as close to Paradise as he’ll ever get." Later, there are some puns on people being entwined and enmeshed, as in lovemaking. Look fast and you'll see supporting players Jerome Cowan, Ernest Truex, and John Litel, and supposedly the singer Julie London appears in the background as a palace maiden. Finally, there seems to be virtually no reason for the hero being Aesop—his colorless character could be any young fellow looking for romance and adventure.  [TCM]

CRIMINALS WITHIN (1943)

A research scientist working for the Army is shot dead while demonstrating his new explosive; his brother (Eric Linden), an Army officer, falls under a cloud of suspicion when a secret list of people working on the project turns up missing and Linden admits he was the last person to see it. Linden is jailed briefly but breaks out and sneaks around the base trying to clear his name with some help from an enterprising reporter (Ann Doran). They stumble on a spy ring involving the rec hall hostess (Constance Worth) who smuggles secrets (inside a false heel in her high heels shoes!) to a German cobbler. It begins to look like a soldier is helping the spies; could it be Linden's buddy (Ben Alexander), who helped him break out of jail? 

I'm usually in hog heaven with WWII grade-B spy thrillers, though certainly they're not to everyone's taste; this one, from Poverty Row studio PRC, has a particularly weak script full of loopholes and junky looking sets. Still, I found enough pleasures to make the hour-long film worth my time. Linden, a favorite juvenile of mine in the 1930s (AH WILDERNESS!, FLYING DEVILS), makes his final film appearance here. In his early 30s, he was aging well, and he does a fine job in the B-lead role; actually, he's by far the best actor in the movie, though the entire cast tries harder than the slapdash script probably deserves. Two other standouts are the black orderly (Dudley Dickerson) and his girlfriend (Bernice Pilot), who happens to be Doran's maid. They come off less offensively than many other servant figures of the Hollywood 40s. I especially like Dickerson's expletive, "Death and destruction!" which he uses like he's saying, "Holy cow!" This is technically a "war preparedness" film, as it was made in 1941, before the U.S. entered the war; some sources say it wasn't released until '43, but at least one source gives a release date of June 1941. [DVD]

LA CHAMADE (1968) 

aka HEARTBEAT

The young and beautiful Lucile (Catherine Deneuve) lives a life of leisure as the mistress of the rich, older Charles (Michel Piccoli). She has her admirers but none pose any threat to their domestic situation until Antoine (Roger Van Hool), a young and struggling writer, gets her attention during a croquet game when he sacrifices his play and allows her to cheat so she can win—she announces proudly that she likes winning. Antoine breaks things off with his mistress and Lucile begins a casual affair with him that grows more intense—to the point where she begins practicing how to break the news to Charles that she's leaving him—but she's not sure she can face leaving a life of relative luxury as a kept woman and move into Antoine's small apartment. Charles and Lucile go off to the Riveria and Antoine hears stories that she's begun drinking, so when she returns, he talks her into leaving Charles. He gets her a job at a magazine archives but unbeknownst to him, she quits and begins selling her jewels and gambles in order to get money. Will she be able to resist returning to a loveless but materially comfortable relationship with Charles? Deneuve is lovely and does as much as she can with an unsympathetic character, but this low-key movie never builds any fire or passion. A few scenes between Deneuve and Piccoli have some feeling, and Van Hool gives his character some depth, but this winds up being a love triangle without much at stake. I did like Antoine's cluttered apartment. [Netflix streaming]

ONE THIRD OF A NATION (1939)

Shopgirl Sylvia Sidney lives with her unemployed father, mother, and teenage brother in an old tenement building that is badly in need of repair. When a fire breaks out one day, her brother (Sidney Lumet) tries to climb out on the fire escape but it snaps and he falls to the ground. A rich man (Leif Erickson) who just happens to be driving past offers to take Lumet to the hospital and pays for his treatment; the boy's life is saved, but he will use crutches for the rest of his life. Erickson falls for Sidney, but things get uncomfortable when he discovers that the damaged building is one he owns. At a hearing, he is found not liable because, despite the sub-standard condition of the building, it was built long enough ago to be exempt from the current building code. However, Erickson vows to make a difference and sets in motion a plan to tear down the old buildings and, with help from the city, build new ones with parks and playgrounds nearby.  Erickson's sister, thinking he is only going on this crusade to impress Sidney, warns that she'll make trouble. Erickson decides to postpone his plans, but Lumet, by now deranged because he's become a neighborhood misfit, sets fire to the building, leading to tragedy, but also to Erickson's renewed effort to rebuild.

This is based on a Federal Theater "Living Newspaper" play, one of a series that told headline stories of the day and usually took a political stand on the issues. The film is stuck between romantic melodrama and propaganda, and though it never quite finds its footing, it's an interesting period piece. Erickson is a handsome and hearty leading man, but remains a stick figure without a real personality; Sidney (pictured above with Erickson) fares a bit better simply because her character is a bit more believable. The supporting cast helps carry the day. The 15-year-old Lumet (at right) is excellent as the bitter lad who winds up at the center of the narrative. He even manages to make a strange gimmick work: one night, while out on the street, he vows revenge against the building, then imagines the tenement talking back to him, telling him that it's always been bad news for its inhabitants and things will never change. Myron McCormick plays Sam, a leftist friend of Sidney's who is supposedly in love with her but who seems mostly to be a mouthpiece for the playwright. The tone is mostly serious, even grim at times; there are two startling scenes: dead bodies laid out on the sidewalk after the first fire, and a burning man leaping to his death from the roof in the second fire. Despite this, there are some tonal problems: an odd screwball scene when Sidney goes out to Erickson's mansion to have a showdown with him, a final reconciliation scene between Erickson and McCormick which doesn't ring true, and a rushed and completely unrealistic happy-ish ending that doesn’t work at all.  But it's well made for a low budget film, and worth seeing as an example of earnest social commentary of the era.  [Netflix streaming]

ADVENTURE IN SAHARA (1938)

This forgettable B-movie is on DVD only because cult figure Samuel Fuller wrote the screenplay (years before he would begin his directing career which would culminate—as far as I'm concerned—with 2 wonderful arty B-movies of the 60s, THE NAKED KISS and SHOCK CORRIDOR). Pilot Paul Kelly gets word that his brother, a French Foreign Legionnaire, has died; he immediately quits his job, even ignoring the pleas of his girlfriend (Lorna Gray), and flies out to the Sahara to join the Legion in order to get revenge on the sadistic captain (C. Henry Gordon) who was responsible for the brother's death. Sure enough, at Fort Agadez, smack in the middle of the desert and known as "The Last Outpost," Kelly finds Gordon is a strutting disciplinarian who is hated by his men. After Gordon drives several men to their deaths by exacting brutal punishments for seemingly minor offenses, Kelly gets the men to mutiny, and Gordon and the officers are sent out into the desert with few supplies and one bullet per man so they can finish themselves off. However, after a gang of Arabs attack the men, Gordon manages to survive and, dressed in Arab clothing, makes it to civilization to report the mutiny. Back at Agadez, the men are getting restless when needed food doesn't arrive—what does arrive is a huge battalion of men, led by Gordon, come to take back the fort.  What neither Gordon nor Kelly know is that over the next dune is a bunch of Arabs with guns, waiting to attack everyone.

At just under one hour, this winds up feeling more like a sketch of a movie with no character development and a rushed action climax. In a better movie, Kelly would be a more interesting character; his turning-out of Gordon and the men to certain death is nothing short of murder, though because Kelly is the hero and this was made during the Production Code era, we have to see that all the men die, not because of what Kelly did, but at the hands of the warring natives. There's a ridiculous subplot which involves Gray flying to the fort (and crashing into the sand) to find out what happened to Kelly. Kelly (pictured) is fine, though the usually reliably villainous Gordon seems a bit sluggish here. In smaller roles, you'll notice Dwight Frye as a snitch for Gordon, noir stalwart Marc Lawrence as one of the men loyal to Kelly, and Stanley Browne and Raphael Bennett as two of the poor saps who fall victim to Gordon's cruelty. [DVD]

THE MUDLARK (1950)

In 1875 London, a boy named Wheeler is a mudlark, someone who spends his days picking through trash along the Thames. One night he comes across a cameo of Queen Victoria and imagines it's the image of his late mother, whom he never knew. When he finds out it's the Queen and she's been in seclusion at Windsor Castle for fifteen years since the death of her husband, he heads out to meet her. At the Castle, Prime Minister Disraeli is trying to convince the Queen to make a public appearance as she might be able to calm the unrest of the people who think the Queen is out of touch and doesn't care about them. Also at the Castle, Lady Emily, a maid of honor, is in love with a guard but the Queen forbids them to marry. All three plotlines come together when Wheeler sneaks into the Castle, makes friends with John Brown, Scottish confidant of the Queen, and generally throws the entire household into an uproar. This low-key comedy-drama is based on a legend about a boy who snuck in to see the Queen. Irene Dunne is completely unrecognizable as Queen Victoria, though she's buried under so much makeup, she gives a rather lifeless, stilted performance. Much better is Alec Guinness as the sly Disraeli, and Finlay Currie as a full-blooded Brown.  11-year-old Anthony Ray (pictured) is fine as the boy. Best line: When the earthy Brown says that the Queen is stubborn as an old mule, Disraeli replies, "What power of expression there is in a limited vocabulary." [FMC]

MERRY WIVES OF RENO (1934)

On the occasion of their first anniversary, Donald Woods buys his wife (Margaret Lindsay) a new fur, and she buys him a new overcoat. They get a chuckle out of listening to their neighbors (Guy Kibbee and Ruth Donnelly) in the apartment next door argue, but Lindsay becomes upset when her husband can't go out for a special anniversary dinner because he's making a house call on a client, the slightly addled Hugh Herbert (pictured with a sheep; don't ask). As it turns out, Herbert's not home but his flirtatious wife (Glenda Farrell) is. She does her best to seduce Woods but is interrupted by someone at the door. Assuming it's her husband, she shoos Woods out the window to the fire escape, and he leaves his new coat behind. Actually, the visitor is Kibbee, with whom she's been having a fling for some time. Another interruption and Kibbee's out the window, his coat left on top of Woods'; this time, it really is Herbert who notices the two coats and doesn't quite believe they're his even though Farrell insists. When Woods gets home, Lindsay notices he's missing his overcoat and he tells her some cockamamie story about giving it to a beggar, but the next day at the beauty salon, Lindsay overhears Farrell telling a beautician about the coats and she decides to take a train to Reno for a divorce. On the same train is Donnelly, also getting a divorce. Ultimately all three couples wind up in Reno where a series of misadventures lead to divorce cancellations, then reinstatements, until Woods and Kibbee plot with bellboy Frank McHugh to turn the tables on the wives by swiping their furs and showing them how easy it is to come to false assumptions. Relatively happy endings await all.

This mildly bawdy B-comedy is not particularly distinguished but is worth notice for two reasons; 1) it was one of the last films released before the Production Code wiped out most racy humor, double-entendres, and unpunished immoral behavior in Hollywood films—and as far as I can tell, Herbert and Donnelly don't get punished for their affair; 2) it features several Warner Bros. supporting players in larger roles than they usually got in A-movies.  Lindsay and Woods, the nominal leads, are lackluster, but the rest of the sextet shine, as does McHugh and famous stutterer Roscoe Ates. Louise Beavers, usually consigned to maid parts (IMITATION OF LIFE, HOLIDAY INN), has only a couple of lines, but they're memorable: explaining to a lawyer why she wants a divorce, she says she's had 12 kids: "Some call that love but I call it madness!" A few film historians have compared this to the notorious long-lost pre-Code film CONVENTION CITY, with much of the same cast and similar shenanigans, so this may be as close as we can get to seeing that film.  [TCM]

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR (1942)

Bob Martin gets a job as a cub reporter—his main credential is that he's the police commissioner's son, though when he tells his boss that he flunked journalism school, the editor says, "That’s one thing in your favor." Martin is assigned the task of getting an interview out of Black, a guy accused of a politically-motivated shooting who hasn't talked to anyone. It turns out that Black is a deaf-mute, but luckily Martin knows sign language so he gets his scoop. He also gets a coded message to deliver to Judson, Black's slimy lawyer. Next, Martin goes to interview Joyce Greeley, who is being released from prison, but Joyce is really Joan, whose kid sister Ellen, not realizing Joan's been in jail for two years, was going to pick her up the bus station. Joyce/Joan is killed by two of Judson's thugs who are after a set of keys to a safe deposit box. Ellen just happens to have the keys, which her sister had given her before she was sent to jail. We get some backstory about Joyce's past (a burlesque dancer who fell in with a bad crowd when her sugar daddy died) and the rest plays out unexcitingly—Martin helps Ellen evade the bad guys—until the climax, a chase set in a theater. If you like Monogram poverty row thrillers, this one isn't bad. The lead, Robert Lowery (pictured; best known as the original Batman in the 1949 serial) is a bland but pleasant enough hero; the only other actor of note present is John Miljan (as Judson) who had a busy career—almost 200 movie credits—as a B-movie villain throughout the 30s and 40s. There's even a completely extraneous song performed in the theater scene. [Netflix streaming]

WOMAN OBSESSED (1959)

This rather mild romantic drama tries to trade on the aura of Douglas Sirk's glossy melodramas of the 50's such as MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION and ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (which, with its plotline about class conflict, this does resemble a bit). Susan Hayward lives on a farm in the woods in Saskatchewan with her husband and young son. When her husband dies in a forest fire, she struggles to keep the farm going. A young and hunky guy (Stephen Boyd) who knew her husband ambles on by, offers to help, and winds up staying as a handyman.  He's rather moody and temperamental; it turns out his wife died in a fire as well. During a snowstorm, Hayward's horse bolts while she and her son are returning home and the two of them collapse in the snow. Boyd heroically heads out in the storm to save them and soon he and Hayward fall in love. They marry and, though the boy (Dennis Holmes) is jealous of Boyd at first, they seem to be bonding until they run across a deer that had been mauled by a mountain lion. Boyd shoots it to put it out of its pain and tries to make the boy help him skin it, but Holmes becomes so upset, he faints. Boyd is determined to make a man out of him, and of course his efforts just alienate Holmes, and soon Hayward as well. Things deteriorate; Boyd slaps her and rapes her, tries to apologize the next day, and gets into a brawl in town. Hayward winds up pregnant and, during the event-filled climax, has a miscarriage during a torrential rainstorm, and winds up in the hospital while her son goes missing and Boyd tries to find him. Believe it or not, everything works out in the end. It feels like everybody, from the scriptwriter to the stars, was working on half-energy here. It’s a watchable movie but it's very predictable and never compelling.  Boyd and Hayward are fine, though Boyd's character becomes a real pain in the ass by the end, even though we know eventually he'll redeem himself (as will the boy). Also with Barbara Nichols as a hot blond who has an eye for Boyd, and Theodore Bikel as the town doc. Early on, there's a shot of a quicksand bog, so we know that will be important in the third act somehow. [FMC]

TARZAN AND THE JUNGLE BOY (1968)

A geologist and his young son are on a river in Africa when their canoe is overturned in some rapids. The father drowns and the son, Erik, is presumed dead, but a few years later, a blurry photograph is taken of a lad in a loincloth, alone in the middle of Tzekunda country, and Myrna and Ken, two National Geographic journalists, come to Tarzan hoping he'll help them find the boy. Tarzan is reluctant because it is forbidden for outsiders to trespass on Tzekunda land, but when the tribe holds a contest of skills to choose a new leader, Tarzan approaches them. Two brothers, Buhara (the good guy) and Nagambi (the bad guy), compete for the title; Buhara wins and promises to look for the boy, but soon the sore loser Nagambi attacks his brother and leaves him bound and bleeding, to be eaten by lions. Erik, the jungle boy, finds Buhara and tries to nurse him back to health. Tarzan goes ahead into Tzekunda land to find the boy, and Myrna and Ken eventually follow, leading to fisticuffs, animal attacks, and spear and gun fights before Erik is talked into heading back to civilization. 

This film, late in the officially sanctioned series, has the plus of location shooting (in Brazil) but the minuses of a draggy story, lackluster acting, and a TV-movie look. Mike Henry, a pro football player turned actor, certainly looks the part; physique-wise, he's by far the best movie Tarzan ever. But his lackadaisical delivery of dialogue and flat American accent take away any pomp or mystery from the character, leaving him just another comic book superhero in a loincloth. Aliza Gur, a minor Bond girl in From Russia With Love, is remarkably irritating as Myrna, and when the spears started flying, I kept hoping one would find its way straight through her (Spoiler: no such luck). Rafer Johnson (an Olympic decathalon champ) and Edward Johnson provide some sparks as the brothers. Despite the location filming, most of the animal shots (elephants, giraffes, etc.) are clearly from stock footage. Only watch this if you want to admire Mike Henry's body—and I've sat through worse movies for less. [DVD]

LÉON MORIN, PRIEST (1961)

Barny (Emannuelle Riva) is a young widow with a half-Jewish daughter, living in a French town occupied first by the Italians, then by the Nazis. She and her friends, mostly Communists, atheists or Jews, live in fear of their oppressors and some send their children off to be baptized as a safety measure. Adding to Barny's unsettled life, she finds herself entertaining sexual thoughts about Sabine, a female co-worker. In frustration, she goes into a church, intending to basically prank a priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in the confessional, but the two wind up in serious conversation. He gives her books to read and soon she is going to his rooms for extended philosophical discussions. She transfers her lustful feelings from her co-worker to the priest—joining several other women who think he's hot (and he is, because he's Jean-Paul Belmondo). Most of the rest of the film, which ends with the eventual liberation of the town, is carried by the ambiguous tension between the two. Is she after salvation (at one point, she converts to Catholicism) or sex? And what does he get out of the relationship? This leisurely but never boring film from director Jean-Pierre Melville does a nice job of setting up the atmosphere of the town and the circumstances of Barny's life before it plunges her into the emotional chaos of forbidden passion (of more than one kind). Riva is fine but Belmondo is even better—the priest clearly knows he's physically attractive to the women of the village but he never seems to trade on it, or even become tempted to respond, though we never really get to know him well. Despite the title, the movie is really about Barny, not him. [DVD]

ATLANTIC (1929)

This is the first talkie made about the Titanic disaster, but because of legal threats from the White Star Line, the filmmakers used the name Atlantic instead of Titanic, and used fictitious characters instead of real people. The movie begins at 11 p.m. on Sunday night with a vaguely ominous scene in which the ship's captain tells his crew not to say anything that might unduly alarm the passengers. There's a rumor that the ship is entering an area of water filled with ice bergs and floes and such—one of the officers, Lanchester (John Longden), says, "I wonder who sets these rumors afloat," one of the few bits of humor, intentional or otherwise, in the film. We spend most of the movie in the company of a handful of upper-class passengers who are drinking and playing poker (we see no one from steerage and only a few crew members). Chief among them are the elderly Mr. Rool (Franklin Dyall) who is confined to a wheelchair, and his wife, son, and pregnant daughter-in law; a minister whom everyone calls Padre; the tipsy, carefree Dandy (Monty Banks); and a bounder named Tate-Hughes who is cheating on his wife with a saucy young lady. About 20 minutes into the film, the ship hits an iceberg though no one takes the bump seriously until alarm bells start going off. Lanchester tells Rool, in his most melodramatic delivery, "The ship has three hours to live!" As women and children are called first, most of the pathos of the next hour involves decisions about whether or not to go (Mrs. Rool refuses to leave without her husband). The ship's band continues playing upbeat tunes trying to keep everyone calm, but the loading of the lifeboats becomes a helter-skelter affair; in one brief scene, two men get into a fistfight trying to get in a lifeboat until a crew member shoots them both. Dandy has a moment of hysteria, then calms down and joins the other men in the lounge to keep up their civilized drinking until the end. After the barful of men sing a drinking song ("Drunk last night, drunk the night before, gonna get drunk tonight like I've never been drunk before"), they hear the band launch into "Nearer, My God, to Thee," and we know the end is near.  

This British-made film has the usual weaknesses of an early talkie: overdone acting, awkwardly delivered dialogue, and no background score, but the scenes of panic at the lifeboats are well done—just don't expect anything like what James Cameron gave us in the 1997 TITANIC, or even what 20th Century Fox did in the 1953 TITANIC. A handful of the actors might be recognized: Madeline Carroll, as the pregnant wife, was the heroine of Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS; John Stuart, as Rool's son, had a long career with supporting roles in over 100 movies; Longden, the officer (pictured at left in uniform), was a detective in Hitchcock's early thriller BLACKMAIL; Banks was married to comic actress Gracie Fields. Rather than attempt a spectacular special effect as the ship finally sinks, the screen instead goes to black and we hear the awful roar of hundreds of people facing their doom—it's quite effective. It's a bit strange to realize that this was made less than 20 years after the real disaster, so most of the survivors would still have been alive. [YouTube]

ANOTHER MAN’S POISON (1951)

Mystery writer Bette Davis lives in a large house on the outskirts of an English village. Her husband has lived apart from her for some time, though he's returned recently and stranger Gary Merrill has come looking for him. Surprise #1: hubby and Merrill were partners in crime, and Merrill has come looking to get his half of the stash from a recent bank robbery. Surprise #2: Davis has just killed hubby because he was an abusive blackmailer. When the nosy village animal doctor (Emlyn Williams) drops in, Merrill poses as the husband, since few of the locals had actually met him. Meanwhile, Davis is carrying on an affair with the handsome and considerably younger Anthony Steel (pictured), the boyfriend of her secretary. Oh, and Davis has a horse named Fury. All these plot strands eventually collide, leading to full-blooded melodramatics, a couple of outlandish plot contrivances, and a poisoning (hence the title). This isn't a great movie, but it's fun, mostly due to Davis' over-the-top performance, puffing on cigarettes, tossing her hair around, and braying at anyone in earshot. She gets to toss off a few fun lines now and then. When Steel and Murray arrive not long after Merrill, she announces, sounding like Margo Channing, "The night air teems with unexpected guests." Later she says to Steel, "For a man, you have disgracefully long eyelashes." No one else can keep up with her, though Merrill, her real-life husband at the time, is fine, and the sly Williams almost steals a couple of scenes. It's based on a play and, despite a few scenes shot in the great outdoors, is stagy throughout, though with the house being so dark and gloomy, it feels like a film noir that might turn into a horror movie at any moment. [TCM]

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (1953)

After a star-making whirlwind tour, singer and dancer June Haver decides to settle down for a while and buys a home in Scarsdale. She thinks she's moving to a rustic place "out in the country," but she's actually got a huge, ultra-modern suburban house, complete with charming next-door neighbors, widowed comic-strip artist Dan Dailey and his young son, Billy Gray. They meet cute during her huge house-warming bash when a flock of pigeons and some barbecue smoke from his yard almost squelch the fun in her yard, but soon they’re quite the cuddly item—until Gray, feeling the father-son bond threatened, expresses his disapproval of his dad’s new beau. This leads to the usual hurt feelings and misunderstandings that crop up in Hollywood domestic comedies until the preordained happy ending in which the three of them work it all out. For a time, this is a breezy, colorful, well-paced musical comedy. Haver and Dailey have good chemistry and create characters that keep threatening to be interesting, and they get good support from Dennis Day, as her agent (pictured between Haver and Dailey), and Cara Williams as her close friend. Their characters are flat but their mismatched romance provides some humor. Billy Gray, best known as Bud on Father Knows Best, is fine, and Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island) appears briefly as a buzz-kill babysitter. There are quite a few songs, most memorably the opener "We Girls of the Chorus" which plays out under the credits, and Dailey and Haver get some good dances. There are also a couple of cute animated sequences in which the human characters are presented in the form of Dailey's comic strip characters. But when the relationship story between Haver and Dailey gets derailed by Gray's jealousy, it all slows down and becomes too predictable. Still, it's an enjoyable enough small-scale 50's musical. [FMC]

MORE (1969)

Handsome Stefan, a recent college graduate from Germany, decides to take some time to travel through Europe to find himself (it was the 60s, after all) before settling down. In Paris, he loses all his money gambling, but he makes friends with the scruffy Charlie who helps him out. Soon he meets up with American girl Estelle. Charlie warns him about her but he falls for her anyway; they get high, have sex, and make plans to meet in Ibezia where she lives at a hotel run by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Wolf who is rumored to be an ex-Nazi. When Stefan gets there, she proves hard to find, and when he does find her, she's a little weird and distant, and shacking up with a woman named Cathy with whom she is obviously on intimate terms. It's also possible that she's boffing Dr. Wolf. Eventually, Stefan gets Estelle to go away with him to a deserted part of the island and they romp about uninhibitedly, sunbathing in the nude, getting high and having more sex (it was the 60s, after all). Paradise is lost, however, when Cathy stops by, looking for some heroin—apparently Dr. Wolf supplies it to some of the locals. Soon Stefan finds Estelle passed out on the rocks and decides he wants to try some of this stuff. Things go downhill from here as the two go through cycles of addiction which they try to break by taking acid. Ultimately, Estelle is left to an unknown fate and Stefan, hunting for her, shoots up in an alleyway and dies with a mangy dog sniffing around his body and only Charlie there to mourn him.

Like THE VALLEY, which was made three years later, this is an early Barbet Schroeder film with a Pink Floyd soundtrack and a druggy 60s vibe. However, despite the era and the trappings, this is neither a psychedelic trip movie nor a "just say no" message film. The various instances of folks getting high are shot objectively with no colors or effects or frills. There is much more Pink Floyd music here than in THE VALLEY, but there is less plot and, if possible, less characterization. It's difficult to sympathize with either lead character because they are both zeros, in personality and in backstory. The actors, Klaus Grunberg and Mimsy Farmer, are pretty and their acting is adequate, but Schroeder hasn't given them much to work with. Michael Chanderli as Charlie actually has more personality than either lead. At one point, Grunberg relates a story about a cult of sun-worshipers in India who sit in the sun hoping for sensation or enlightenment until they shrivel up and die, and I think that's supposed to illuminate the narrative (there is a lot of sun and searching for sensation), but really, I think everything this movie has to offer is on its surface. I liked one of Grunberg's pronouncements about his Germanic personality: "Where's pleasure without tragedy?" That could also illuminate things, but the pleasure presented here is pretty sparse. [DVD]

TWIN HUSBANDS (1933)

A man (John Miljan) wakes up in a mansion, confused, unsure of his whereabouts, apparently a victim of amnesia. He questions his butler who tells him he is the wealthy Jerry Werrenden. But Miljan isn't quite as confused as he seems; he punches the butler in the face, knocking him out, then interrogates him again, getting him to admit he's an actor hired to play a butler. Miljan is actually a gentleman thief known as the Sparrow.  Soon he finds out what's going on. Werrenden's wife Chloe (Shirley Grey) has conspired with Colton (Monroe Owsley), her husband's business partner, to swindle hubby out of $200,000 of bonds, supposedly the last of the estate that Werrenden has frittered away. Miljan is a dead ringer for the husband, so the two drugged him (in circumstances not made clear) and kidnapped him in hopes that he would help them out. He agrees to pose as Warrenden, meet the family banker, known as the Colonel (Hale Hamilton), and accept the bonds. That meeting seems to go well, but on the receipt for the bonds, the Colonel has penned in $300,000 instead of $200,000. Who's conning who? And where's the husband during these shenanigans?

The plot twists and turns continue, but it wouldn't be fair to spoil the rest of the surprises in this interesting pre-Code film. The story is quite clever, but because it's from a Poverty Row studio (Invincible Pictures), the production isn't quite up to par, so much of the plot is unveiled through dialogue and exposition rather than action. Suffice to say that by the end of the movie, practically every character has been shown to be guilty of something either illegal or immoral and yet only one gets punished in any sense of the word, and even that one manages to elude the law. All the actors are fine; Miljan is a bit bland in a role that William Powell could have done better in his sleep, but he's alright. Grey, who never broke out of B films, has a bit of a Myrna Loy thing going on, and Owsley (in my eyes a dead ringer for Paul Reubens, and pictured at right with Grey) makes a nicely slimy character.  Available on DVD from Alpha, and though it's a dicey print, it's definitely worth watching.  [DVD]

THE BLACK TORMENT (1964)

This little-known movie was marketed as a horror film along the lines of the period shockers which came out from Hammer and American International in the 60's, and the recent DVD is similarly pitched, but I suspect horror fans would be disappointed. The deceptive ads are a shame because this is a well-made Gothic melodrama, rather like a PBS adaptation of a Bronte novel. John Turner is an English lord who returns to his estate with a new wife (Heather Sears). His homecoming is not happy: first, villagers think that Turner is responsible for the brutal murder of a young woman in the woods a few days earlier, though he insists he was far away with Sears. Second, the ghost of his first wife, who killed herself a few years earlier, has been seen around the house. Turner's father (Raymond Huntley) is mute and wheelchair-bound due to a stroke, and relies on Ann Lynn, the sister of Turner's first wife, as his caretaker--she's the only one who can interpret his sign language. Other characters include an accountant (Peter Arne) who seems suspicious from the word go, a butler, a burly blacksmith, and a local slattern who you know will wind up dead. The solution is not supernatural at all, and is in fact easy to figure out, especially if you are at all familiar with Gothic novel conventions, but the movie is still quite watchable. It actually seems better made and acted than the average Hammer/AIP shocker of the era (and it looks OK, although the widescreen movie should have been letterboxed by Image for their DVD). Turner makes a good hero (or is he a villain?) and Arne is fine as well. Worth catching as long as you're not expecting blood and monsters.  [DVD]

FLAME OF STAMBOUL (1951)

On a cruise ship docked in Istanbul, American Richard Denning is given the brush-off by the French Lisa Ferraday, who leaves the cruise and is given a job by the shady Donald Randolph: impersonate an exotic dancer named Marie, the Flame of Stamboul, go to Cairo, seduce a rich Egyptian, and steal some jewels from his collection. In Cairo, a very drunk Denning gets off the cruise ship and goes to the club where Ferraday is performing, making a scene and getting slipped a mickey by the bartender (Nestor Paiva). The next morning, we discover that Denning is a spy and Paiva is his local contact. Their assignment, which in good Mission: Impossible style will be disavowed by the U.S. consulate if they are caught, is to find out the identity of a powerful spy known only as the Voice. It turns out that: 1) Randolph is working for the Voice; 2) Ferraday doesn't realize that she will be, too, when the assignment changes from stealing jewels to stealing top secret defense documents; 3) Denning figures out that Ferraday is the Flame but doesn't know how much she knows about her criminal friends. Norman Lloyd appears as an American crook who has a past with Denning; he works for the Voice, but is willing to switch his allegiance to Denning for enough money. George Zucco, who mostly only appears in deep shadow, is the mastermind Voice, and after some fisticuffs, torture, murder, and some apparent double-crossing, the climax occurs at his dark den.  

What this 50's Columbia B-spy thriller has going for it: an atmosphere like that of a 40's Warners B-spy thriller, a solid 20 minutes or so in the beginning, and good supporting performances: from Lloyd (who in his relatively small role, steals every scene he's in), from the handsome Randolph (who comes off as more exotic than the leading lady) and Zucco (pictured above, to the left of Lloyd), in one of his last roles before he had to retire due to ill health--which may explain his lack of physical activity in this movie; he is mostly seen sitting down. Denning is a B-movie hunk (meaning in good shape with a comic-book hero jawline, but generally colorless) who strikes no sparks with the bland Ferraday, who doesn't even dance very well. Still, the plot had just enough twists and turns to keep me interested.  [TCM]

FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966)

In the future, possession of books is forbidden—imagination leads to unrest with reality and feelings of inequality—and since all buildings have been fireproofed, firemen are now enforcers, setting fires, burning caches of books that some poor souls have kept, and sometimes burning the houses in which they are found. Montag is a fireman who is unhappy with his family life; his wife Linda, like most people in this society, are perfectly happy not to read, and just to watch TV shows which present constant soap opera narratives in which the viewers themselves can sometimes play a part. This has also led to him becoming curious about the content of these books (everything from Lolita to Dickens to Mein Kampf), and he has begun sneaking home a book or two from each fire he helps set. Just as he's about to get a promotion at work, he becomes involved with Clarisse, a young neighbor girl who, he soon discovers, belongs to a secret society of book-readers. After his wife overdoses on sleeping pills—a common event in this society which is treated as a minor medical call by two technicians who pump her stomach and replace her blood—Montag participates in a book burning at which the woman caught with the books kills herself by dropping a match on the kerosene-soaked volumes. This shakes him to his core and when Clarisse's house is raided and she vanishes, he becomes a rogue fireman, on the run to find Clarisse and the book people.

When Ray Bradbury died last week, I was truly sad. The first "adult" books I read were Bradbury short story collections, and his atmospheric fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes remains one of my most-loved books. Oddly, I had never read Fahrenheit 451, maybe because I saw the movie when it came out—I would have been 10 or 11—so I re-watched this film, directed by Francois Truffaut, in anticipation of finally reading the book. Even when I was young, this struck me as an odd movie. For starters, it's set in England, not in Bradbury's beloved Midwest. It was Truffaut's first English-language film and has a very European feel that makes it feel even more distant from Bradbury. The futuristic visual elements are sparse—widescreen TVs, furniture—though the book burnings are shot nicely, and the powerful scene of the Book Lady starting her own fire (pictured above) is in many ways the climax of the movie, even though it comes about 30 minutes before the end. Oskar Werner (below) is fine as the closed-up, confused Montag, and Cyril Cusack is equally good as his boss, who always refers to Montag in the third person. Both Linda and Clarisse are played by Julie Christie, to neither the betterment nor detriment of the film, though Christie herself is fine in both parts.

The film (and the book, which I've just finished) remains relevant today for several reasons, one of which is the way in which Bradbury foretold the coming of reality TV. The book is even more specific about the lack of imagination which has led to people wanting to be entertained in short bursts and only by "real-life" stories. It's not hard to imagine that today's viewers of Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, and Ice Road Truckers have no interest at all in reading at length about things and people and philosophies that are outside their own immediate sphere of interest. In later years, Bradbury was quoted as saying that Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship as much as lack of imagination, and indeed, both movie and book are vague about the politics and history of the loss of books; in the novel, he says that official censorship wasn’t necessary—the people banned books themselves. Still, images of burning books will always conjure up battles of censorship, from Nazi Germany to Harry Potter, so I think on this one, Bradbury got it wrong: whatever he intended, it is about loss of imagination and censorship. A movie worth seeing, but don't be like me and wait 40 more years to read the book, which, of course, is better. [DVD]

MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER (1946)

The fifth movie in the Whistler series, a string of B-thrillers related only by a narrating character known as the Whistler whom we only see in shadow.  In this one, Richard Dix is an aging and somewhat shady private eye who agrees to help an old man who runs a phonograph store who is desperate to find a young girl from his past named Elora Lund.  A couple days later, someone claiming to be Lund shows up and the old man tells her he has some valuable property that once belonged to her mother, but before he can get it, a thug named Pontos breaks in, kills the old man, and kidnaps the girl.  It turns out the girl was just an accomplice of Dix's named Freda so she's freed, but soon the real Lund shows up, having read a newspaper story about the incident.  The treasure is a small stash of rare wax cylinder recordings made by famous Swedish singer Jenny Lind.  Pontos winds up killed by the cops, and Freda, who's not been on the up-and-up about her role in all this, isn't long for the world, either.  Who is Dix going to work for, himself or Lund?  And who is the mysterious person willing to kill to get the recordings?  The mystery story is fairly well worked-out, and there's a good supporting cast here, including Mike Mazurki as Pontos, Regis Toomey as Freda's landlord, and Barton MacLane and Charles Lane as the cops.  Dix is the weak link; playing a second-rate Sam Spade (of more ambiguous morality than Bogart's detective), he's drab and sluggish, and MacLane and Lane outshine him, though a cardinal rule of this kind of movie is that the detective, whether he's good or bad or conflicted, should always be more interesting than the cops.  This is not a total failure, but despite its short running time (60 minutes), it drags more often than it should.  [TCM]

A SCANDAL IN PARIS (1946)

This historical melodramatic comedy of manners (based on the life of a real person, or at least the book he wrote about himself) should have been more fun than it is; everyone seems to be working at half-energy. George Sanders is Eugene Francois Vidocq, born in a prison in 1775 and raised in the gutter,. When we pick up his story—told by himself in flashback—he has just escaped prison with his pal Emil (Akim Tamiroff). On the way to Paris, the shabby twosome stop in a village where they are recruited by an artist to pose for a painting of St. George (the presentable looking Vidocq, pictured) on a horse fighting the Dragon (the scruffy Emil). When the painting is finished, they steal the horse and more disreputable adventures begin. Vidocq takes his name from a gravestone while he's being charming to a rich lady (Alma Kruger) so he can get his hands on her jewels, though he's also being charming to Kruger’s sweet, wholesome daughter and to a cabaret singer (who happens to be "dating" the chief of police ). He steals the jewels while the police chief (Gene Lockhart) is an overnight guest at the house, then to show him up, pretends to do some sleuthing to find the jewels before the police can. Lockhart is demoted and Sanders winds up being given the position of Chief. He installs Emil and a bunch of cronies as employees in the Bank of Paris, intending to pull off a huge robbery, but soon love (not to mention his earlier stint at St. George which comes back to haunt him) has him contemplating turning over a new leaf.

This being made under the Production Code, Sanders can have lots on larceny in his heart, but can't get away with too much of it if he's to wind up the hero. Most of the film has a light satirical tone, though the plot takes some dark turns near the end with the murder and suicide of two major characters. Sanders is fine in the last half, but I think the part could have been carried off better by someone with more verve, an Errol Flynn type, perhaps. Carole Landis is the singer and Alan Napier is Kruger's husband. This was directed by Douglas Sirk, before his turn toward glossy Technicolor melodrama in the 50's (MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, WRITTEN ON THE WIND). The whole thing seems a little too calculated and distant to be fun. I did enjoy Sanders' droll observation about adultery: "Sometimes the chains of matrimony are so heavy, they must be carried by three." [DVD]

THE HOODLUM PRIEST (1961)

Young punk Keir Dullea gets out of prison and his buddy (Don Joslyn) takes him to see a guy (Don Murray); it seems like they're planning a heist, but Murray is actually a Catholic priest and teacher who feels his mission is to tend to street people and the down-and-out who already have two strikes against them.  Instead of going to a parent/teacher conference meeting, Murray spends the night at a seedy jazz club tending to members of his flock, which gets him in trouble with his superiors. After Dullea gets involved in a fistfight, Murray finds a high-powered lawyer (Larry Gates) to represent the boy; he also gets Dullea a job at a food-packing plant, though the boss' brother resents Dullea's presence. Dullea strikes up a relationship with a rich girl, but things go south quickly when he is accused (wrongfully) of stealing from his place of work and is fired; Dullea and Joslyn pull a robbery at the plant and accidentally kill the brother. Murray and Gates, who are trying to build a halfway house for young wayward men, keep fighting for Dullea, but ultimately they cannot stop the state from executing him. In the last scene, just before the halfway house is set to open, Joslyn, in a fit of rage over Dullea's death, breaks in, trashes a room, and passes out before Murray gently puts him to bed.

Based on the true story of Father Charles Dismas Clark who actually did start such a halfway house in St. Louis called Dismas House (named after one of the thieves who was promised heaven when he was crucified with Christ) which is still in operation. Though the film is meant to be inspirational, it doesn't avoid the grimness of its subject, nor does it make Clark into a saint; as is pointed out by other characters, not all of his moves, well intentioned as he is, are kosher (so to speak). The handsome and stalwart Murray (pictured to the left of Dullea) is good, especially in a climactic scene where he tries to talk Dullea into giving himself up while the police are trying to smoke him out of an abandoned slum building. I especially liked Larry Gates, best known for a long-running role on The Guiding Light, who made his character's concern with and for the priest seem real. The opening sequence, before we know what's going on, feels like the tense prelude to a gay 3-way. The look of the film alternates between artsiness and cinema vérité and generally works nicely to accentuate the mood.   [TCM]