HAVING A WILD WEEKEND (1965)

aka CATCH US IF YOU CAN

In the wake of the success of the Beatles' film A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, it's not surprising that other British Invasion bands got their own movies. This one, which features the Dave Clark Five, is a little different. The band, like the Beatles, came off as playful, stomping, fun-loving guys, but the movie they're in is anything but dumb fun. The Five play TV stunt men who have been hired to appear in an ad campaign for meat, in support of Dinah, the young and lovely model whose face has already appeared on a slew of billboards with slogans like "Meat for Go!" Dinah (Barbara Ferris) hits it off with Steve (Dave Clark), the most serious of the stuntmen and, feeling hemmed in by the demands of her bosses, she takes off in a car with Steve during an ad shoot; they plan to visit a nearby island, and on the way they wind up in a number of situations: publicly subverting the meat campaign, being asked for pot and heroin by some stoned homeless hippies, getting in the middle of military war games, and meeting a hip, middle-aged  couple who collect pop culture ephemera. Meanwhile, the chief ad executive tells the press that Dinah has been kidnapped, so everyone (the ad men, the police, the rest of the stuntmen) goes looking for them.

It feels a bit as if the screenwriter took the five-minute segment from HARD DAY'S NIGHT in which George Harrison winds up in an advertising executive's office mocking their latest teeny-bopper star and spun a whole movie out of it. There is a lot of comic potential here, but first-time director John Boorman (DELIVERANCE, EXCALIBUR) is in a serious, almost somber mood that winds up giving the whole enterprise a schizophrenic feel. It's in black and white and most of the scenes with Ferris and Clark, which make up more than half the film, are kin to the serious social issue British films of the era (ROOM AT THE TOP, BILLY LIAR) with little laugh-out-loud humor. But the film is punctuated with wacky setpieces mostly involving the rest of the Dave Clark Five, bouncing on trampolines and holding wild parties; the most successful sequence is a costume party which features people dressed up as pop icons (Harpo Marx, Jean Harlow, the Frankenstein monster). But the wacky scenes feel out of place here, partly because Ferris and Clark are very good in their roles, as are Robin Bailey and Yootha Joyce (pictured with Clark) as the couple they spend most of the movie with. Some nice tidbits: Joyce calls Clark "saturine and well-built"; Bailey remarks that "young people are callously hopeful"; one message of the movie is delivered by Ferris to Clark: "Why can't you enjoy the journey?" The ending is downbeat, though certainly not tragic, and it's no surprise that this didn't do well at the box office given the way it was promoted as a rollicking rock & roll comedy (there are Dave Clark Five songs used in the background, but the guys never play music onscreen). Boorman's use of arty cinematography feels much more self-conscious than Richard Lester's in the Beatles movies. Not recommended for a feel-good lark, but very interesting if approached as a fairly serious meditation on mass media. [Warner Archive streaming]

BILLY THE KID (1930)

The oft-told story of Billy the Kid, romanticized outlaw figure of the Old West, focusing on a fictionalized version (using some of the actual names) of the Lincoln County War. A band of settlers led by Tunston and McSween arrive at territory overseen with an iron fist by Donovan. He tells them they're not welcome, but they stay despite his threats, and when Billy the Kid (Johnny Mack Brown) and his Mexican buddy Santiago arrive, they align themselves with the settlers and Donovan and his men back down a bit, especially after Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery), a friend of Billy's, becomes sheriff, and there is peace for a time. But after Tunston's fiancée Claire (Kay Johnson) arrives from the East, trouble starts. Violence flares, Tunston is killed, and Billy and his friends try to protect McSween. In the end, after a lengthy shootout, Billy is starved out of hiding—Garrett fries up some bacon outside the cave where Billy's holed up and Billy gives himself up. The outlaw is offered an amnesty but doesn't take it, and in the end, Garrett lets Billy escape, taking Claire with him off into the sunset.

I’m used to Hollywood versions of historical events being glamorized and falsified, but I admit I was taken aback by this ending, especially when most folks, if they know nothing else about Billy the Kid, know he was killed by Pat Garrett. As is usual with this story, Billy is played by someone too old (the Kid was 21 when he died and Brown, pictured, was 26 and looked more like 30), though Brown is fine in the role, and Beery is also good as Garrett, underplaying instead of engaging in his usual scene-stealing. Johnson is a blank as the Sweet Flower of Eastern Womanhood, though supporting players Roscoe Ates (as comic relief) and James Marcus (the bad guy Donovan) stand out. Compare this with the 1941 Robert Taylor version ; the later movie is better but this one is more than passable if taken as just a western tale. [TCM]

WATERFRONT (1939)

This tepid B-melodrama begins on the New York docks as Jimmy (Dennis Morgan), head of the Waterfront Club, a social club for dock workers, gets into a fistfight with hotheaded Mart Hendler (Ward Bond) who thinks Jimmy lords his position over everyone else. But it's innocent Frankie who winds up in the hospital, getting an accidental punch in the jaw from a very contrite Jimmy. Jimmy's gal Ann (Gloria Dickson), concerned with Jimmy's anger issues which were passed onto him from his late father, has Father Dunn talk to him. The talk works for a while and Jimmy agrees to marry Ann, leave the docks, and take up ranching out west. But at a Waterfront Club party, a drunken Hendler starts another fight and accidentally kills Jimmy's kid brother Danny. Hendler goes on the run, chased by both Jimmy and the cops. When Jimmy finds out where Hendler's hiding, he forgets his promises, takes a gun, and goes to mete out his own justice. Like most Warner Bros. B-films of the classic era, this is fairly well produced and has a decent cast—it's Dennis Morgan's first starring role and he's handsome and charismatic enough, though the character as written is predicable and not all that sympathetic. Dickson (pictured with Morgan) is about average, but Bond is very good as the villain. Frank Faylen and Marie Wilson are enjoyable as another waterfront couple. OK if not a standout. [TCM]

THE FLEET’S IN (1942)

We are warned right away via musical number: "Hey there, mister, you better hide your sister 'cause the fleet's in!" Shy sailor Casey Kirby (William Holden) gets roped into kissing a movie star for a publicity photo and all his fellow sailors start jokingly referring to him as the Navy's best ladies’ man. Jake (Leif Erickson), who fancies himself a real stud, bets Casey's buddy Barney (Eddie Bracken) that Casey can't get the Countess of Swingland (Dorothy Lamour), a singer at a San Francisco dance hall, to kiss him in public; apparently, she has the reputation of being a real ice queen. Barney really needs to win the bet so he does everything he can to get Casey and the Countess together. Thus begins a series of misadventures between Casey and the Countess: first he misinterprets her interest—she lets him accompany her one night in order to escape the attentions of a rich old geezer—then she learns about the bet but doesn't understand that Casey is really falling in love with her. For good measure, the Countess's brash roommate and fellow singer (Betty Hutton) gets interested in Barney.

This cute Paramount musical was filmed in late 1941 before Pearl Harbor, though it was released in early 1942, after the United States entered the war, so it occupies a strange narrative place. In the movie, there is no mention of war; in fact, Holden refers to having one last short stint in the Pacific before his Navy duties are over, something that probably would have rung false to moviegoers of 1942. The plot is a variation on the Astaire/Rogers movies in which a mismatched couple slowly fall in love. This doesn't have the wit or visual style of those films; it relies more on physical comedy, and your tolerance for the wacky stylings of Betty Hutton will determine how much of this you will sit through. I lasted til the end but just barely. The very young William Holden (pictured to the right of Bracken) is quite comely and creates an interesting character: he's not shy in the obvious comical way that most actors of the time would have been, but instead he seems more like a thoughtful, quiet young man still figuring out his place in the world. Lamour is brittle and fairly unappealing; I didn't know what Holden saw in her that made him continue with his mild pursuit. I'm not a fan of Hutton, and this movie didn't change my mind, but she does have one good number, "Arthur Murray Taught Me to Dance in a Hurry." I like Bracken and he's fine here, managing the tricky task of being the comic sidekick without going overboard and becoming irritating. Jimmy Dorsey and his band perform backup throughout and there are two standards in the soundtrack, "Tangerine" (which became a hit again in the disco era) and "I Remember You." Also with Gil Lamb, a tall Ray Bolger-type dancer, and Big Band performers Jimmy Dorsey, Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly. Cute but not essential. [TCM]

DJANGO (1966)

"Spaghetti Western" is the term for an Western film shot in Italy, by Italian directors and with an Italian cast, though set in the American Old West and featuring an American or British star in the lead role. The plot typically involves a loner hero or anti-hero who arrives in a town and is caught between two battling factions. He usually kicks the bad guys' asses then leaves town. I have seen very few of these except for the archetypal one, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY which was Clint Eastwood's breakout movie role, but I saw that years ago on a tiny tabletop TV, not letterboxed, so my memory of it is very dim. So I'm calling DJANGO my first spaghetti Western.

Django (Franco Nero, pictured) comes into a very muddy town dragging a coffin behind him. The nearly-empty frontier town has been ruined by a war between a gang of Mexican bandits and a group of proto-Ku Klux Klan Southerners led by Major Jackson. Django sees a woman being whipped by some ugly men; she's Maria, a prostitute who has made the mistake of selling herself to both the Mexicans and the Confederates. The Mexicans who are whipping her are shot to death by a gang of Confederates, but when they decide to burn her at the stake, Django kills the Confederates and takes her back to the saloon/brothel which is about the only going concern left. Django is on neither side in the small war; out for revenge against Major Jackson, he seems to buddy up to the Mexicans, but later he steals a huge fortune in gold from the bandits. There are a couple of startling scenes of slaughter and a torture scene in which a monk has his ear cut off and is forced to eat it. Ultimately, Django is punished by having both his hands broken, and yet in the tense climax, he manages to come out on top anyway.

This is violent and nihilistic, and entertaining. The character of Django is the perfect anti-hero: we can't really condone much of what he does, but because everyone else around him is pretty much evil and he seems to be acting out of a need for personal vengeance, we're on his side most of the time. Nero is handsome and charismatic; even though he is caked in mud all through the movie, everyone else is even filthier. No one else comes close to being very likeable—Maria has been wronged, for sure, but we never get to know her very well; Nathaniel, the saloon owner and pimp, seems harmless; and everyone else is a bastard. Though there is lots of violence, it's not as gory as it would have been if made twenty years later; for example, the ear slicing scene is not nearly as graphic as Quentin Tarentino's similar moment in RESERVOIR DOGS. The presence of a machine gun seems anachronistic, but why bother about details? I don't think I’ll be going on a spaghetti Western jag anytime soon, but I did enjoy this. [DVD]

HERCULES AND THE PRINCESS OF TROY (1965 TV-movie)

The women of Troy are being sacrificed one by one to appease a giant sea monster. Some families are fleeing Troy, but they often wind up captured, tortured and enslaved by pirates. Hercules, Diogenes and young Ulysses, on the ship Olympia, come across a pirate ship; they board, kick a lot of pirate ass, and free the slaves, but when Hercules hears their stories of what's happening in Troy, the three decide to go open up a tin of whoop-ass on the sea monster. In Troy, Princess Diana, who will soon become queen, welcomes the three, but soon Diogenes suspects that someone is out to stop Diana from taking the throne. On the day of the sacrifice ritual, Diana is chosen, but Hercules is trapped in a pit. Will he escape in time to save her, and get rid of the sea monster once and for all?

Well, of course—he's Hercules! This pleasant peplum diversion, under an hour in length, was a pilot for a TV series which never sold, though this was eventually broadcast as a TV-movie. It's one of the few sword-and-sandal flicks to feature mostly English-speaking actors who don't seem to be dubbed. Despite the low budget, it doesn't look bad. The monster, not seen until the climax, is a little goofy-looking (see picture at left), but for TV, it's effective enough. Gordon Scott, who also played Tarzan a few times, is a fine Hercules. Mart Hulswit is a little on the wimpy side for Ulysses, and Paul Stevens verges on nerdy as Diogenes, the thinking sidekick (all three pictured above right). Diana Hyland is the Princess who, despite her importance to the plot, doesn't have much to do. There are a couple of interesting fantasy elements: Herc gets to ride an invulnerable horse (we see a spear bounce right off of it) and Diogenes comes up with a substance that burns on contact with water to fight the sea monster. [DVD]

THE MAGIC CARPET (1951)

In this tepid Arabian Nights tale, the Caliph is assassinated in the middle of a ceremony to anoint his new-born son as his successor. The wicked Ali is installed as Caliph, with the just-as-wicked Boreg as his Grand Vizier, and in the confusion they assume that the son is dead and will never be able to challenge them. However, they don't know that the baby has been spirited away via a magic flying carpet to a protector, Ahkmid the physician, who adopts the boy but doesn't tell him about his heritage. Years later, with Ali proving to be a bad ruler, the grown boy, now called Ramoth, becomes a Robin Hood-style vigilante called the Scarlet Falcon who steals money from the unjust tax collectors and gives it back to the people. Over time, Ramoth works his way into the royal palace as personal physician to Ali in order to commit mischief, but when Boreg discovers the truth about Ramoth's background and kills the kindly Ahkmid, Ramoth discovers not only that he is the true Caliph, but also how to use the magic carpet, and he devotes all his time to getting revenge.

This came late in the Arabian Nights fad, didn't have as big a budget as the Jon Hall & Maria Montez films of the 40s (such as ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES), and didn't have actors who were willing to commit whole hog to slightly campy melodrama. In the lead, John Agar (above) looks fine but is quite wooden; the same can be said for Lucille Ball (at left, in purple), who plays not his romantic interest, but the wicked Caliph's sister—she seems to be playing herself, or at least an early version of the persona she would use as Lucy Ricardo. Patricia Medina (Agar's actual love interest) is OK, as are Gregory Gaye as the Caliph and George Tobias as Agar's buddy. If you need a reason to sit through this, it might be for Raymond Burr who strikes the right tone as Boreg: he is sinister and seems to having at least a little bit of fun, whereas everyone else is going through the motions. The swashbuckling and fisticuffs scenes are fine, though the magic carpet itself isn't really used enough to justify being the title object. [TCM]

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE (1941)

Young James Gillette, who works as a ranch hand for Mary Howard, is about to be whipped and driven out of the county by some vigilantes who accuse him of cattle rustling. Cowboy George Montgomery comes riding up with his gun out and stops the men; Howard is grateful but standoffish as she has developed a dislike for gun play since her father was shot dead years ago. It turns out that the judge (Robert Barrat), the leader of the vigilantes, is also behind the cattle rustling as a way of getting people off their land and grabbing it for himself, which is what he wants to do with Howard's ranch. Montgomery sticks around as he is looking for the man who seduced and abandoned his sister Millie years ago, and while he and Gillette are on the track of the rustlers, they capture a masked rider who turns out to be not only a female but also the grown daughter of Montgomery's late sister, raised by one of the vigilantes. They take her to a secret hiding place that Gillette calls Surprise Valley; it's takes a rough trip through rocky mountains to get there, and it's protected by a gigantic rock that, if loosened, might cause an avalanche (hint, hint). When Montgomery finds out that it was the judge who kidnapped Millie, he heads out for an all-or-nothing confrontation with the judge and his vigilantes.

This is based on a novel by Zane Grey which is considered one of the most popular and influential western novels ever; it has been filmed at least five times, as far back as 1918 and as recently as 1996 (for TV). I know the title mostly because of its adoption by a Grateful Dead country-rock band, the New Riders of the Purple Sage. I was a little disappointed that the story was nothing special—perhaps an early version of the "loner on the range" plotline—but the movie itself is entertaining. I'm a big fan of George Montgomery's 40s movies; he's a solid B-movie substitute for Clark Gable or Tyrone Power, and he's very good here. Howard is mostly unmemorable and Gillette is handsome but bland, but other supporting actors are worth catching, including Barrat, Kane Richmond as the judge’s son (pictured to the right of Montgomery), and Richard Lane as a vigilante. Little Patsy Patterson does a nice job as Howard's daughter though she never appeared in another film, and Oscar O’Shea is decent comic relief as a loveable old coot. The last fifteen minutes, including Montgomery facing a whole gang of vigilantes as he tries to rescue the kidnapped Patterson, are exciting. [FMC]

SCREAMING EAGLES (1956)

In June of 1944, the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division are stationed in England, anxious to be part of the Allied invasion of France. Newcomer Tom Tryon is cocky and egotistical (and, as we discover, had a rough childhood and is still recovering from a Dear John letter), so he has a little problem fitting in, though his Southern buddy (Martin Milner) keeps trying to intervene for him. The lieutenant in charge (Jan Merlin) also steps in to smooth things over, and when D-Day comes, the group is more tightly bonded. Once they've parachuted into France, they separate into smaller groups to carry out sabotage missions. During a run-in with Germans, Merlin is blinded and Tryon has to help lead him along with them until they get to a nearby village. Once there, with the help of a young French woman (Jacqueline Beer) and a captured German radio operator, they pull a scam on the invading Germans and Tryon becomes a hero. This is a routine war melodrama in which a rough-edged loner learns a lesson about teamwork. On that level, it's fine, but I think the title is misleading. It promises action in the skies, and there is none of that at all—they're only in the air long enough to get from England to France. Tryon makes for a decent sullen lead, and Milner (pictured above sitting with Tryon) is good in support, as are most of the other actors, including Alvy Moore (Hank Kimball in Green Acres), Mark Damon, Paul Burke, and Edward G. Robinson Jr. Tryon's plotline is ignored for a long stretch in the middle, which allows more focus on the action. Nothing special, but not a chore to sit through either. My favorite line, spoken by Tryon to the philosophical Merlin: "Are you just gonna sit there and talk about life and stuff?" [TCM]

BORN TO BE BAD (1950)

Joan Fontaine arrives at the fancy San Francisco apartment of Joan Leslie; Leslie’s boss, a publisher, has asked Leslie to take Fontaine (his niece) in while she attends business school. An orphan, Fontaine was raised by a maiden aunt and comes across to everyone in the big city as wide-eyed, innocent, and a little scared, but as we soon find out, nothing could be further from the truth: her sweet, shy girlish exterior hides an ambitious, conniving woman. First, she toys with Robert Ryan, a Hemingwayesque author—he falls for her but also catches on to her wiles fairly quickly, observing that she has two sides: the realistic young lady and the fictional personality who wants what she knows she cannot have. Later he says to her, "If you ever draw an honest breath, I want to be there to see it." Despite all this, he still lusts for her, calling it just a "sex attraction." But after a short affair with Ryan, she moves on to Leslie's millionaire fiancé (Zachary Scott). Fontaine plants the seeds of doubt in Scott's mind that Leslie may want him only for his money, and next thing you know, Scott marries Fontaine, though she still tries to keep Ryan as a lover. He's tempted but demurs, telling her "I'm not cut out to be a back street boy" [insert pop music pun here]. Nevertheless, soon the two are at it again. You know it's only a matter of time before her cheating ways are exposed, and when they are, it makes for a satisfying climax.

Though sometimes referred to as a film noir, this is really a romantic melodrama and a very enjoyable one. I'm not a big Fontaine fan; she's OK here, giving her phony simpering an edge, but I couldn't help imagine how much better someone like Lauren Bacall or Audrey Totter or Lana Turner would have been. But the supporting cast is a great one. Ryan, in potentially dangerous good guy/bad guy mode, is at his most appealing, not just physically but as a character. He seemed too smart to let himself be used by Fontaine the way he is, but he's also the heart of the movie. Even if you've not been a fan of Ryan's in the past, I think you'll like him here. Scott is almost as good as the nice-guy millionaire who can't quite figure out what’s going on. I also enjoyed Mel Ferrer as Gobby, a bohemian artist who is friends with everyone, who paints a portrait of Fontaine, and is also the only one who knows what's going on all the time. The character is coded (fairly openly) as gay, so he winds up as the passive observer who, in an amusing scene at the end, is the only one to get anything good out of his relationship with Fontaine. Virginia Farmer has a small but crucial role as Fontaine's Aunt Clara. Well acted, nicely shot, this feels like a low-rent ALL ABOUT EVE—not a slam, but actually a compliment. One last detail: it seems like there are more kiss-clinches in this movie than I can remember in any non-romance film I've ever seen; I hope Fontaine and her leading men had lots of breath mints handy. [TCM]

PERFECT UNDERSTANDING (1933)

Judy (Gloria Swanson), an American in London visiting Lord Portleigh, an old family friend, falls for the handsome Nick (Lawrence Olivier); he throws over Stephanie for Judy and they agree to marry. That night, the cook sees her husband, the butler, kissing the maid and stabs her (superficially, as it turns out). This makes Judy afraid of jealousy in marriage, and she insists that she and Nick sign this pledge: "Never be husband and wife, but lover and mistress; above everything else, to remain individual." They marry and have a wonderful honeymoon period traveling all over Europe, but eventually Nick agrees to join friends George and Kitty (and, unknown to him, Stephanie) at Cannes while Judy goes to London to prepare their home. Nick enters a contest in which the men get drunk and race speedboats and in the process is injured. He recuperates at Stephanie's place and winds up engaging in a night of ill-considered passion with her. When he sees Judy he confesses and despite their pledge, she's consumed with jealousy. She goes to commiserate with old friend Ivan (John Halliday), a famous explorer who has been nursing an affection for her for some time. He's leaving on a trip the next day and asks her to join him. She has a long dark night of the soul, walking the streets of London thinking things over, and decides not go, but the note she writes Ivan in appreciation of the evening is found by Nick and misinterpreted; when she denies an affair, he slaps her and leaves. Soon Judy is pregnant, but as she and Nick are on the verge of reconciling, he suddenly suspects that the child might be Ivan's and leaves again. Of course, as this a comedy, things eventually get worked out—in the divorce court.

This is one of several movies from the pre-Code days that took as a subject the search for a better kind of marriage, one that wouldn’t degrade either partner and would allow a certain amount of freedom in matters of work and play. Of course, the real subject is, a better kind of marriage is poppycock and traditional marriage still works best. The plot is predictable and the dialogue no better than it needs to be, but the movie is worth seeing for its two stars. Silent star Swanson (pictured with Olivier) only made a handful of talkies after this one, but she's fine here, as is Olivier who wasn't terribly self-important yet. He's quite handsome and a little bit scrawny as we see in the Cannes beach scenes. Halliday adopts a thick accent and it seems to hamper his acting a bit. Swanson's real-life husband Michael Farmer plays George, and despite the overwhelming critical consensus that he can't act, I thought he was OK. Nora Swinburne is Stephanie and Nigel Playfair has some fun as Lord Portleigh. The director, Cyril Gardner, gives the movie some nice stylistic touches—long tracking shots, montages, interesting shots—but the background music is almost never-ending and occasionally got on my nerves. Future director Michael Powell wrote the screenplay. [TCM]

THE WITCH’S CURSE (1962)

aka MACISTE IN HELL

In 1550s Scotland, Martha Gunt is being burned as a witch; she goes to her death proclaiming that the presiding judge, Parrish, is getting revenge against her because she wouldn’t sleep with him and she as she dies, she curses the village, specifically the very ground she is burned on. One hundred years later, a gnarled tree has grown at the spot of her death; the curse causes girls from the town to hang themselves from the tree, which then blooms after their deaths. A descendent of the witch, also named Martha, has arrived in town to marry her boyfriend Charley and spend their honeymoon in the old Gunt castle, but when the villagers get wind of this, they grab their torches and head to the castle to kill Martha, hoping this will lift the curse.

Up to now, this has been a standard 60s horror film as ground out by Hammer Films or American International. But suddenly, who should show up in the middle of the night but Maciste, the Italian muscular, shirtless action hero, riding a horse and ready to kick some torch-wielding villager ass. He saves Martha and Charley from death, but cannot stop the officials from carting her off to jail, where she's to be burned as a witch the next day unless Maciste can break the curse. He heads off to the witch's tree, uproots it enough to go down into the ground beneath it, and enters Hell itself where he looks for the old witch Martha to try and convince her to call off the curse.

There is something almost charming about this odd sloppy hybrid. They don't even try to explain what the Hercules-era Maciste from Italy is doing in 17th century Scotland. The moment when the loinclothed hunk comes riding out of the night to save Martha is jolting in a fun way. The first shots of Hell, with dozens of underdressed people writhing in torture, are impressive, though as Maciste travels on, Hell feels rather sparsely populated. He runs across the old witch Martha who, in a nice touch, is hanging around with Judge Parrish, the man who put her to death. Among his hellish adventures: he meets Prometheus who has his intestines eternally pecked at by an eagle; gets his hands badly burned, then healed by a mysterious lovely lady; loses his memory then has it restored by looking into a magic pool to see his exploits of the past—by way of scenes from previous Maciste movies; and has to deal with an avalanche and some stampeding bulls. Kirk Morris—actually, an Italian actor named Adriano Bellini (pictured)—is likeable and boyishly cute in addition to being lithely hunky. And while I’m on the subject, Angelo Zanolli is quite handsome as Charley, who stands by his new bride even to the extent of climbing up to the stake with her as she's about to be burned. Something a little different for horror and/or peplum fans. [DVD]

LA BATAILLE DU RAIL (1946)

aka THE BATTLE OF THE RAILS

This WWII fiction film about French railway workers who became part of the Resistance by sabotaging rail traffic in the occupied zone is unusual in a few ways. It's not a documentary, though it often feels like one—and it is rumored that some actual footage of sabotage missions made it into the final film. Many of the actors were non-professionals. Perhaps in the service of verisimilitude, none of the characters is developed, and only one, the chief guy in the office who is also directing the resistance efforts, is in enough scenes to become familiar to us. Instead of a narrative, the film is structured in chronological episodes just before, during and after D-Day, ending with the liberation of the town of St. Andre. In the beginning, we see small acts of smuggling—of packages and people—followed by the fairly subtle delaying of the arrival of trains packed with German soldiers. As the narrator tells us, the railmen's acts of sabotage were "grains of sand" to make grit in the Nazi war machine. The film does build to a climax of sorts when the railroad workers hear about the Allied landing; the last part of the movie follows the huge concerted effort to stop soldiers, tanks and weapons from reaching Normandy; the French get some help from an RAF air raid.

Even though we don't get to know any of the characters (who also remain mostly nameless), we do feel for them as individuals working against the evil of the Nazis. One remarkably well-done sequence occurs fairly early in the film; after some trains have been blown up, the Nazis, unable to pin down any saboteurs, take several workers hostage and eventually line them to be killed by a firing squad. The camera looks down the row of men facing a wall (pictured), as one by one they are picked off. Another notable scene near the end shows a train derailment that looks very real. This is an early work by director Rene Clement (FORBIDDEN GAMES, PURPLE NOON); his style is solid and assured, perhaps because he had shot a number of actual documentary films before this one. The print on the DVD from Facets is not in the best shape, and some of the subtitles are a little off when it comes to translating idioms; "Bon appétit" is shown as "Good appetite," and later odd phrases include "Ain't that a lark!" and "I like to realize…" But this is an oddity worth seeing. [DVD]

ENEMY AGENTS MEET ELLERY QUEEN (1942)

Police sergeant Velis (James Burke) boards a train to New York; he is escorting Reese, a suspect in the murder of Dutch jewel merchant Van Dorn and they're handcuffed together. Also on board are the very Germanic Heinrich (Sig Ruman) and his henchman who manage to knock Velis out and get Reese away from him, at which point they throw Reese off the train to his death. As it happens, Ellery Queen (William Gargan) and his secretary Nikki (Margaret Lindsay) are also on the train and when Velis is fired by the chief inspector (Charley Grapewin) who is also Queen's father, Queen agrees to help Velis get his job back by digging into the mystery. It winds up involving a mummy case imported from Cairo which has diamonds in it that are being smuggled away from the Nazis by Van Dorn's widow (Gale Sondergaard), and that's what Heinrich and his men are after. I like Gargan but there is so much going on and so many characters that he winds up fading into the background. Even the scene-stealing Sondergaard doesn't get much of a chance to shine. Familiar faces include Gilbert Roland as the mysterious Mr. Gillette, Minor Watson as Commodore Lang, an old friend of the Queens, and James Seay as a Marine who is handy with his fists and who helps Queen out in the fisticuffs-filled finale. This works better as a spy thriller (or a wartime propaganda piece) than as a detective series entry, as there is little to make this seem distinctively an Ellery Queen story.  (YouTube)

CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION (1967)

This low-budget movie which went directly into television syndication is a remake of 1956 low-budget horror film THE SHE-CREATURE, which, while it had an interesting plotline, was no great shakes itself. In this version, the sinister looking (because of his goatee) Les Tremayne performs a show at a seaside resort in which his lovely assistant (Pat Delaney) helps him read minds and make predictions. One night, he predicts that there will be a murder on the beach—and there is. There are more predictions and more murders, and the resulting publicity winds up being good for the resort, so the owner (Neil Fletcher) enters into a business deal with Tremayne—who insists he's a real psychic—publishing a quickie book about the situation. However, the cops (led by Roger Ready—yes, that is the actor's name) get a handsome Air Force officer (Aron Kincaid) who just happens to be an expert on parapsychology to help them investigate. It turns out that Tremayne puts Delaney into a past-life regression trance which triggers the appearance of one of her prehistoric selves, a googly-eyed sea monster which goes on a beachside killing orgy.

Even by TV-movie standards, this is cheap and mostly lame. A quickie from American International which needed a few new films to flesh out its syndication package, it's a few steps above Ed Wood but don't expect much out of this. The saving grace is Les Tremayne who had a lengthy career in movies, radio and TV, working regularly up to 1990. Though he may be a bit embarrassed about the production around him, he gives a nicely understated performance, sinister but not histrionic. Kincaid (pictured) was pleasant enough as beach movie eye candy, but here he just seems wooden, and his character, who would seem to be the hero, mostly just observes and predicts bad things—and the fact that all his dialogue is post-dubbed doesn't help. The monster itself is a very bad knock-off of the Creature from the Black Lagoon with ping-pong balls for eyes. Most of the night scenes are clearly cloudy-afternoon scenes with no attempt made to darken them. For trash connoisseurs and fans of wooden hunks only. [DVD]

SINFUL CARGO (1936)

aka YELLOW CARGO

Drug enforcement agent Conrad Nagel is re-assigned to Immigration and sent to Los Angeles to stop a ring of smugglers who are bringing in "Asiatics" illegally. The suspicion is that some bigwig Hollywood type might be behind it, and sure enough, Nagel immediately suspects the owners of Globe Productions, a new company whose big boss, a guy named Brace, is elusive, and whose only director (Jack La Rue) isn't doing much directing. To get an in, Nagel's cover story is that he's a Broadway actor looking for work so has a good reason to hang around Globe's offices. Also suspicious is reporter Eleanor Hunt who, along with her bumbling cameraman (Vince Barnett), haunts Globe's offices trying to get an interview with anyone—she reasons that studios always want publicity, and when one doesn't, it's as newsworthy as "man bites dog." It turns out that Globe is, in fact, a front for the smugglers: they take a small boatload of extras dressed in Chinese garb out to a nearby island to shoot a scene, send the extras back on a commercial boat, and bring the illegal immigrants back on their private boat, seeming to be the same extras that went over. Nagel disguises himself as an extra to investigate, the same day that Hunt and Barnett hide on the island to get pictures. What could go wrong?

This Poverty Row B-movie is a little better than average, partly due to the interesting storyline—though as usual with these cheapies, there are some plotholes here and there to ignore. Nagel, who had a long career as a supporting player and B-star, is fine—he played the same character, Alan O'Connor, in three other movies. La Rue and Barnett are familiar faces to the classic movie fan; La Rue (pictured above with the gun) was very busy, mostly as a villain, credited in more than 50 movies just between 1933 and 1940. I could have done with a little less comic relief from Barnett, and Hunt seems almost like an amateur, but overall this is a fun hour. One highlight is a little girl in the Globe waiting room who wants to know what Shirley Temple has that she doesn't. The movie's director, Crane Wilbur, plays Brace, the head of the ring. [DVD]

A COLD WIND IN AUGUST (1961)

17-year-old Vito (Scott Marlowe) does odd jobs over the summer for his father, the superintendant of an apartment building. One sweltering August day, he goes up to fix the air conditioning unit in Iris' apartment. Iris (Lola Albright), an attractive woman in her 30s, is being kept—so we assume—by her friend Juley (Herschel Bernardi). She's retired from the stripping business but has agreed to do a favor for her ex-husband by taking a strip tease job for a week in a club where he supplies the talent. But when she starts flirting with Vito, he doesn’t know any of this—he just knows that she's hot and interested, and he’s young and horny. Nothing happens until the next day when she answers the door braless, in a clinging blouse and tight shiny pants. Then something happens, and briefly, the two are a happy, sexy couple until real life catches up to them, climaxing (so to speak) when he catches her stripping act, is revolted, and calls her a whore.

To us today, this psychodrama is average soap opera material, but in its day, this was probably somewhat daring material. Iris has problems but because of the times, they are not explicitly explained—Juley seems to have been her lover at one time, but they are platonic friends now, even though that frustrates him. It’s not clear if she's what would have been called a "nymphomaniac," or if she has just been, shall we say, underserved by men in the past, and Vito serves her just fine. Of course, a happy ending is not in the cards here, but neither is a tragic ending. Marlowe was almost 30 when the movie was made, but he makes a fairly convincing teenager, all gangly twitchiness and puppy-dog attitude. I was thinking he would have made a good Tony in WEST SIDE STORY. Albright, best known as the sexy singer in the Peter Gunn TV series, takes her character seriously (even if she doesn't get much help from the screenplay) and creates someone likeable rather than evil or perverted—and of course, today, she'd just be considered a healthy "cougar." The low-budget black & white look of the film gives it a nicely gritty feel. [DVD]

THE BLACK TENT (1956)

Charles Holland's brother David (Anthony Steel) was reported dead in action in North Africa during the war; years later, a claim for native reparations with his name on it comes to the attention of Charles (Donald Sinden) who heads off to the desert to find the Bedouin tribe that presented the claim. In flashback, we get David's story: in 1942, badly wounded in a skirmish with the Germans, David made his way to a Bedouin camp and collapsed. The men of the group, tying to stay neutral, are a little nervous but young Mabrouka, daughter of Sheik Salem ben Yussff, tends to him and as he recovers, a romantic attraction develops about which the Sheik is not pleased as she is already promised to another Bedouin. When a German patrol arrives, Mabrouka hides David in some nearby ruins. The man to whom Mabrouka is engaged winds up betraying David, and the Sheik eventually sides with David to fight off a Nazi patrol. He gives his daughter to David in marriage and soon Mabrouka is pregnant, but when David finds out that British troops are near, he feels compelled to join them. On the way, he sacrifices himself to save the Sheik. Back in the present day, as Charles learns the truth, he tries to talk Mabrouka into letting him take their light-skinned child back to England to claim his inheritance.

An odd little film; not a war movie as implied by the poster, but a romantic melodrama set against a war background, and an action movie fan would not find much excitement here. The whole idea of the Anglo falling for the Exotic Other and going native is hardly new—this was the basis of many romance films from Valentino's THE SHIEK onward—nevertheless, the plot is just different enough to hold interest. I've just recently discovered the minor pleasures of Anthony Steel as a B-movie leading man, and he is good in this, though Andre Morrell may be better as the Sheik who actually grows and changes during the film (as do both Holland brothers, leading to an ending which is predictable but satisfying). A young Donald Pleasance with a duskied-up face has a small role. Not bad for a second-feature melodrama. [Netflix streaming]

LOOSE ANKLES (1930)

When the matriarch of the Harper family dies, young Ann (Loretta Young) is left the bulk of her estate, but the disposition of all the property is reliant on two things: Ann must first get married—with the approval of her aunts and uncles—and the family must not allow a bit of scandal to appear in the papers before the marriage. Pissed off about the restrictions, Ann puts an ad in the paper for a young, good-looking and "unscrupulous" man, hoping to create a scandal even at the cost of her money. Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), a handsome professional gigolo who admits to his fellow gigolo roommates that he thinks he's not really good at his business, answers the ad. She plans to get caught with him in a compromising position, but (this being a Hollywood romantic comedy) they fall in love instead. However (this being a pre-Code romantic comedy) there are still some risqué touches: at their first meeting, Ann needs to get her maid to give her advice on how to create a scandal (the maid says plainly that they need to get his clothes off, and when the aunts arrive, he ducks out the window wearing one of Ann's furry nightgowns--see picture at right). Ann, Gil, the aunts, and Gil's roomies all end up that evening at a racy speakeasy, the Circus Café: Ann looking for Gil, Gil there on assignment, the aunts trying to stop any scandal, and the roomies looking for business. The aunts wind up escorted by the gigolos and get quite drunk as the evening goes along, and in the end, Ann threatens to expose the aunts to scandal for their drunken behavior unless they agree to let her marry Gil.

This is a cute comedy, helped immensely by the attractive and likeable duo of Young and Fairbanks; she's sexy and fizzy, he's handsome and charming. The two largely vanish during the long speakeasy sequence at the end as the aunts and gigolos take over, to good comic effect. Fine support is given by Louise Fazenda (Aunt Sarah) who sounds like the Wicked Witch of the West when she shrieks at Young, "You purple woman! You lavender woman! ... You rainbow!!" I also liked cute Eddie Nugent as Andy, one of the gigolos, whom we first see lolling naked in the bathtub. Though this may not be top-drawer pre-Code material—the story is thin and predictable—it is a lot of fun. [TCM]

FLYING DOWN TO RIO (1933)

This musical concerning the romantic misadventures of a hotel bandleader is remembered today not for its stars, Gene Raymond and Delores del Rio, but for a pair of supporting players who soon would get top billing in their movies: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. At a Miami hotel, Gene Raymond is the flirtatious bandleader (Astaire and Rogers are part of the band) whose shenanigans have gotten him in trouble before, and now he has been strictly warned not to fraternize with any guests. Unfortunately, Brazilian hottie Del Rio arrives and, even though she's engaged, she sets off sparks with Raymond and the band winds up unemployed—but not for long. They get a job at a hotel in Rio, but complications ensue: the hotel, the target of a hostile takeover, is owned by Del Rio's father, and her intended is an old friend of Raymond's. It’s nice to see Astaire and Rogers shine in their comic relief roles, and whenever there's music, Astaire can't resist the rhythm, like he was born to dance. Their production number together, "The Carioca," is fun, though the best sequence in the film, seemingly inspired by Busby Berkeley, is near the end when chorus girls perform strapped onto the wings of a biplane. Raymond is handsome and charming, though Del Rio is flat and listless. Great supporting players Eric Blore and Franklin Pangborn appear all too briefly in the Miami scenes. A pre-Code movie, there are some risqué elements here and there: Rogers wears a very revealing dress in her first song, and the clothes of the girls on the plane blow off. Fun line, in reaction to Del Rio's sex appeal: "What have these South Americans got below the equator that we haven't?" A fun movie that sparkles even more whenever Astaire and Rogers are front and center. [DVD]

THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN (1963)

The Amazons rule a land in which all men are considered inferior and raised as slaves. The Black Queen—who is indeed black—is told by their blond glittery oracle that a strong man will soon arrive and threaten her land. Meanwhile, Princess Tamar and her little brother have set a trap to catch a marauding tiger but instead catch muscleman Thor. She tells him that her village was destroyed by the Amazons, who enslave the men and turn the captured women into "gladiatrices" to fight each other to the death in the arena. The Queen and her forces find Thor who is injured by a poisoned bolo and falls off a cliff, but is caught and saved by his black buddy Ubaratutu. They take Tamar off to train her for the arena. In a hidden cave, Ubaratutu nurses Thor back to health (which involves some mildly homoerotic leg massage and other physical contact) and the two head off to free Tamar. They arrive as the Queen’s former husband is about to be killed, and she decides to take Ubaratutu has her new mate, which he thinks is kinda cool for a few minutes. Ultimately, Tamar discovers that there is a conspiracy afoot against the Queen, and she and Thor are able to harness these folks to rebel. Thor gets his requisite torture scene, survives, and leads the battle to do away with the evil Queen.

This is pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel peplum. Of course, it doesn’t help that the print I saw was in lousy shape, not just panned-and-scanned, but jaggedly chopped up, sometimes by accident, but on occasion seemingly on purpose—most of the death scenes here are obviously truncated, probably for play on American TV. Joe Robinson, who was a wrestler and not a bodybuilder, makes for a disappointing Thor—who, BTW, seems not be at all related to the Norse god; in the original Italian, his name is Taur. Susy Andersen is a little too much of a 60s blond for her role as Tamar, though Janine Hendy is effective, despite her blue eye shadow, as the Queen (pictured at left), as is Harry Baird as Thor’s friend (pictured above with Robinson). There is a subplot about the gladiatorices getting 21 arm bracelets put on, and with each victory, they get one taken off, and some tension is set up when a main character (whom I believe is called Gabbleghor) is down to just two bracelets and fears that the royal-blooded Tamar will best her. But mostly this is MST3K fodder: the Amazon women chant something that sounds like, "Elf! Elf! Elf!" at various points to no particular purpose; Thor suggests that Amazon rule is unnatural because women were not intended to use physical force and be in command of people; it was apparently quite cold where they filmed  (Yugoslavia) as you can see the breath of the actors in several scenes, which is more distracting than you would think. If Robinson was hunkier, this would at least have some eye candy potential, but sad to say, I was ready to check out after half-an-hour. I stuck with it for the integrity of my blog. But unless you're a peplum completist, you don’t have to bother. [DVD]

HONOLULU (1939)

Brooks Mason (Robert Young) is a beloved movie star who is so pawed at by his fans that he winds up in the hospital every time he makes a public appearance. George Smith (also Young) is a visiting Hawaiian pineapple plantation owner who looks exactly like Mason, enough so that Smith gets mobbed at the premiere of Mason's newest movie. Mason asks Smith to swap places with him so he can go to Hawaii and enjoy a peaceful vacation; meanwhile, Smith gets to hobnob with Hollywood movie stars. So they do, leading to some predictable shenanigans. In Hawaii, George’s fiancée Cecilia (Rita Johnson) finds him to have become a much more interesting kisser, but Mason-as-George also gets tangled up with Dorothy (Eleanor Powell), a dancer who Mason flirted with on the ship to Hawaii. Back in the States, George-as-Mason bonds with Mason’s agent (George Burns) and is reluctant to end his little "vacation" as a movie star.

Though no timeless classic, this is a small-scale delight. Young does a very nice job in both roles (pictured above), even if the characters of Mason and Smith aren't really all that different. Powell is perfectly charming, as is Gracie Allen as her sidekick. Normally when Gracie was in a movie with her real-life husband George Burns, the two were paired in their patented "dumb bunny" comic routines, but here they don't meet until the end and their brief bit is not nearly as funny as Allen's earlier shtick—and Burns himself has little to do as the agent. Rita Johnson is amusing, especially since she sounds a bit like Madeline Kahn. Also with Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson as a butler and Ruth Hussey as an actress in Mason's latest movie (she’s in the first 2 minutes and then vanishes). There's a cute production number at a costume party where guests come as their favorite movie star—Gracie Allen appears as Mae West with Marx Brothers imitators, including two Grouchos. My favorite comedic moment comes from Rochester who tries to multiply 6 times 8; after some thought, he says drily, "Let’s call it 30." There’s a silly plotline involving Smith owing money to his fiancée's father (Clarence Kolb) but you can ignore that. The rest is fun. [Warner Archive streaming]

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (1965)

When a flight to Johannesburg is cancelled and passengers are shuttled to a hotel for the night, a group of them charter a small cargo plane. There is some concern that with six passengers, the plane is too heavy, but things go well until they run into a huge airborne swarm of locusts that forces them to crash land in the desert. The co-pilot is killed and the survivors decide to try to trek to civilization but stop to take refuge near caves where a band of baboons live. With little food or water, tensions flare and some leave or are exiled: the pilot (Nigel Davenport) tries to force himself on the one sole female (Susannah York) then goes off to look for water; big-game hunter Stuart Whitman goes a little crazy, forcing the doctor (Theodore Bikel) to leave the group, then tries to wipe out the baboons who he sees as rivals for food—and maybe power. Who, if anyone, will survive? I always get this movie mixed up with another plane crash/desert survival film from the same year, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, the main difference being that the survivors in that film stay with the plane and try to get it flying again. The other difference is running time: this film is a bit too long at 2 hours, but PHOENIX was way too long at almost 2½ hours. If I had to watch one of them a second time, it would be this one. It moves more quickly, the tension rarely slackens, and the acting is better. Whitman (pictured) begins in a low-key fashion, but his descent into madness is carried off well. The rest of the cast is first-rate, with special attention going to Bikel and to Stanley Baker as an alcoholic. The film builds particularly well to the final sequence with Whitman, York and Baker. Favorite line (because it's a little silly): "Are we only lost here in the desert, or were we lost in a different way in our own lives?" I also like that at one point, the bored survivors gather around to watch the fire they've built, as though they were watching TV. Worth seeing. [DVD]

KIT CARSON (1940)

In the mid-1800s, the western United States was still largely unexplored, and trappers often served as guides for pioneers seeking a route to California. When we meet trapper Kit Carson (Jon Hall, pictured), he is on the road with his buddies Ape (Ward Bond) and Lopez (Harold Huber); they'd be happy to settle in one place for a while, but as Ape puts it, Carson has "horizon fever," always wanting to see what's on the other side of the hill. The three run into an ambush by Shoshone Indians with rifles—Carson suspects that someone has armed them and put them up to mischief—but they escape. When they arrive at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, the last outpost of civilization before the long trek to California, and just when it seems like Carson might agree to stay a spell, he gets talked into guiding a wagon train of settlers led by Paul Terry (Clayton Moore) to California. For a while, they're accompanied by a group of cavalry led by Captain Fremont (Dana Andrews). Both Carson and Fremont wind up smitten with young and lovely settler Dolores Murphy (Lynn Bari); she seems to favor Carson at first, but soon comes to find him a bit too "savage" for her taste, a judgment triggered primarily by the way he and his men torture a captured Indian to get information—though as it turns out, the Indian is actually a Mexican, and Carson realizes that the Mexican General Castro is the mastermind behind the attacking Shoshones, trying to scare away settlers. Fremont and his men take their leave of Carson and Terry's wagon train, but further attacks drive them back together, and soon Carson and Fremont have put aside their differences to plan their move against Castro.

This indie western/adventure is quite fun, more compelling than many of the big studio westerns of the era. Part of it, somewhat surprisingly, is the solid acting. I don't typically associate Jon Hall, beefcakey star of mid-40s exotic adventure tales like ARABIAN NIGHTS, with good acting, but he makes a fine laid-back hero here, and Andrews is a good foil for him. Bari is just as good, and I like the fact that at the end, even though she settles for Andrews, she still seems torn between the two. Ward Bond makes a perfect sidekick to Hall, and distinctive-looking character actress Renie Riano does the same for Bari. Clayton Moore is surprisingly handsome as Terry—I'm more used to seeing Moore as the masked Lone Ranger—though he's not around very long. Good old C. Henry Gordon is quite villainous as Castro. The film also looks good—it helps that some of this was shot on locations in Utah and Arizona rather than just on Hollywood sets. I suspect that this strays pretty far from historical truth, but what 40s historical film doesn't? Good fun. [Netflix streaming]

NOCTURNE (1946)

This film noir has a beautiful nighttime opening shot, traveling from above the glittering Hollywood Hills down to a house in the hills, gracefully swooping through the open glass doors to focus on a man playing a piano, composing a nocturne and giving a girlfriend, sitting off in the shadows behind him, the kiss-off. As he begins to write the last notes, he is shot in the head. The cops think it was suicide, since only his fingerprints are found on the gun and there is a powder burn on his head, but the lieutenant (George Raft) thinks the set-up is fishy and suspects murder. Vincent, the philandering pianist, has portraits of all the ex-loves of his life on the wall, and the unfinished nocturne is inscribed, "To Dolores," but it turns out that he called all his girlfriends Dolores. Among the Doloreses: Vincent's busty blonde housekeeper (Myrna Dell) who insists she wasn't one of his conquests—"He was a ladykiller, but I’m no lady"; a bit-part actress (Lynn Bari); and her younger sister who sings in a nightclub (Virginia Huston). There's also a world-weary pianist named Fingers (Joseph Pevney) who had worked with Vincent on a song, and his assistant, a big lug named Torp who seems like he might have a vicious streak. Raft roughs some people up and gets in trouble with his bosses, and is on the verge of getting suspended when his mother (with whom he lives), in acting out a possible scenario for the killing, gives Raft a clue that might break the case wide open.

This is a nifty little noir that misses classic status due to its leading man; Raft, who peaked in the mid-30s, gives a listless performance that might pass muster in a B-movie second feature or series entry like The Falcon or Boston Blackie but is a big letdown here. His character is supposed to be obsessed with finding the killer to the point where it affects his life, but Raft just floats through the movie with a constipated half-smile on his face, connecting with no one else, not even Bari, with whom (I think) he's supposed to develop romantic feelings—they kiss at one point, but unconvincingly. (Frankly, between the way he plays the role and the fact that he still lives with his mother—and has more chemistry with his mom than with Bari—the character should probably have been played gay.)

But most everything else about this movie works well. The stylish cinematography is by Harry J. Wild, who did noirs, westerns, and even a couple of Tarzan movies. The director, Edwin L. Marin, though not especially distinguished, also had a wide range of genres under his belt. The best acting comes from Bari, a B-heroine stalwart (pictured above with Raft), and Pevney (pictured at right) who went on to be a very busy movie and TV director (best known for several episodes of the original Star Trek series). But even most of the supporting actors down to the smaller roles are good: Myrna Dell as the tarty Susan, Mabel Paige as Raft's mother, Bern Hoffman as the chunky Torp, John Banner as a gayish photographer. Even Edward Ashley as Vincent, whom we only see for two minutes, makes an impression. There’s a great windy night scene and a cute moment in which Raft visits Bari on the RKO lot and we see actual sets from SINBAD THE SAILOR. Despite the lackluster central performance, this is a solid noir that is worth seeing. [TCM]

THE SPY IN BLACK (1939)

In 1917, German submarine commander Hardt is looking forward to some rest and relaxation after 16 days underwater, but he is quickly called up for a secret mission—to travel to the Orkney Islands off of Scotland and make contact with an agent who will give him further instructions. Meanwhile, Anne Burnett is headed to the Islands to become a schoolmistress and get married to the island's minister, Rev. John Harris. An old lady offers to give her a ride to the train station, but once on the road, the lady uses a knockout drug on Anne, and another young woman takes her place. On the island of Hoy in the Orkneys, Hardt is dropped off and contacts Anne who gives him his assignment: with the help of Ashington, a British turncoat, Hardt will contact his submarine and have them attack a fleet of British ships. There's a slight hiccup when the Reverend shows up to meet Anne and, of course, doesn’t recognize her, though he does recognize Hardt's German uniform and says, "You must be a prisoner of war," to which Hardt replies, "No, you are." Soon, there are tender feelings between Hardt and Anne, but we learn that both Anne and Ashington are actually British agents out to befuddle the Germans. What will happen when Hardt finds out?

This WWI spy thriller was released just months before WWII broke out, and indeed watching it now, it’s easy to see it as a WWII story as there seems to have been little effort at giving the sets and costumes a period look. It also plays out like the average WWII spy story, though the setting on an isolated island is unusual. The lead actors are all very good: Conrad Veidt, best known as CASABLANCA's Major Strasser, is Hardt, a humanized German whom we actually like, even if we don't want his mission to succeed; Valerie Hobson as Anne (or, technically the spy who takes Anne's place, pictured above with Veidt) and Sebastian Stan as Ashington are fine, as is Marius Goring as a German officer. Torin Thatcher, who I know as the villain in JACK THE GIANT KILLER, one of my favorite movies as a kid, plays a German soldier. The first half plays out at leisure, allowing character development; the last section becomes more suspenseful but also a bit cluttered in terms of plot points. The print I saw on TCM was murky and scratchy, and had a few dead audio spots. [TCM]

DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (1929)

Thymian lives with her father above his drug store. On the day that she is being confirmed, the housekeeper is sacked for being pregnant and later kills herself, even as Dad hires a new one named Meta who quickly becomes his mistress. That night, Thymian is raped by her father's sales partner and becomes pregnant; her child is given away and she is sent to a home for wayward girls (when a few of those girls flirt with her) run by a sadistic lesbian disciplinarian. She escapes and meets up with the dissolute and penniless Count Osdorff who installs her in a brothel (as a dance instructor, in theory). Eventually, Osdorff marries Thymian, not out of love but convenience, and when her father dies, she gives her inheritance to Meta who, with her kids, has been left in bad straits. Osdorff, who was counting on that money, jumps out their window to his death. And et cetera until Thymian winds up more or less on an even keel thanks to the Count's uncle becoming her sugar daddy.

This German silent movie crams in enough plot for an entire season of a nighttime soap opera, and not always very skillfully, but there are at least two reasons to see it: the stylish direction of G.W. Pabst (PANDORA'S BOX, THE WHITE HELL OF PITZ PALU) and the lead performance of Louise Brooks as Thymian. She is riveting, even if she doesn't quite get to shine as she did as Lulu in PANDORA'S BOX. Her character here, like Lulu, is knocked around by life but Thymian doesn't have the same tragic ending as Lulu; she may wind up unfulfilled and relatively unhappy but she's respectable. At one point, she is referred to as "lost, as we all are" and the last message of the film, delivered by the sugar daddy, is "With a little more love, no one on this earth would ever be lost." Maybe, but the moral hypocrisy of the middle class is seen as the primary source of the "lost girl's" misery. At any rate, this is enjoyable on three levels: as a sensationalistic tract, as a exercise in visual style, and for a rare chance to see Brooks before her too-short career ended. [DVD]

WAR GODS OF BABYLON (1962)

As mounted warriors slaughter all those around her, young Myra goes into shock, desperately exhorting the dead to wake up. The wandering prophet Zoroaster finds her and prays to the Sun God to bring her back to sanity then takes her with him to Nineveh as he preaches in the town square. He is promptly arrested by King Sardanapolos for treason but when young Prince Samos, the king's younger brother, takes a liking to Myra, she becomes his mistress and Zoroaster is freed but sent in exile to the mountains. Samos is about to be made king of Babylon, which was conquered by Nineveh, but jealousy over Myra causes the brothers to clash, and the wicked Arbaces of Babylon plays on that to get Samos to lead Babylonian warriors against Nineveh. An oracle tells Arbaces that as long as the Tigris River stays within its course, his victory is certain, and nothing could possibly cause the river to move, right? As Shakespeare’s Macbeth has taught us, however, oracles are tricky, and when a huge storm causes flooding and the river overflows its banks, all bets are off.

There aren't enough shirtless studs here for this to qualify as a muscleman movie (hell, there aren't any as far as I could see), but as a low-budget Italian action epic, it works well. The narrative is clear and has just enough intrigue to make it fun to follow. I have no idea if any of this is grounded in history; Nineveh and Babylon are both in the Bible, there was an Iranian priest named Zoroaster, and one secondary character is named Hammurabi which is the name of a Babylonian king—but does it really matter? American actor Howard Duff brings some understated gravitas to the role of Sardanapolos, and Luciano Marini (pictured) is a handsome-enough Samos. The battle scenes are so-so, but the climactic flood destruction is quite impressive, even though much of it was clearly done with miniatures. Interestingly, one major character gets killed off earlier than you would expect. Recommend for the 60s epic fan. [DVD]

KNIVES OF THE AVENGER (1966)

On a beach, an old oracle named Jona tells Karin that her Viking husband Arald, missing at sea for years, will return soon, but she also tells Karin that she is in danger and should take her son Moki and leave. Slowly, the backstory is revealed: two Viking tribes, one ruled by Rurik and one by Arald's father, were enemies for some time, but they agreed to a peace pact. But on the wedding day of Arald and Karin, Hagen, a rough and brutish warrior who had been hired as a protector of Aarld's people, rides in with the heads of Rurik's wife and son, apparently not realizing that peace had been reached. Arald's father exiles Hagen, but later that day, Rurik and his men ride in, killing the king and razing their village. Rurik himself, his face hidden by a helmet, rapes Karin. Back to the present, where Karin and her son, suspicious of everyone, turn away a hungry blond begger; just as he leaves, a gang of Hagen's brutes attack Karin and the blond man comes back to kick ass, axing the lead attacker right in the chest. Karin gratefully takes him in, and we soon find out that the blond protector is Rurik, and, though he does not reveal his identity to Karin, he suspects that Karin's son is the fruit of his rape. Rurik has turned over a new leaf, but what will happen when: 1) Arald does in fact return, and 2) Hagen also returns with intent to kill Karin and Moki?

This Italian action melodrama from Mario Bava, better known for his horror and fantasy films (BLACK SUNDAY, DANGER DIABOLIK) was a very pleasant discovery. Bava’s visual sense is always interesting—though you need to see it widescreen—and the plot and characters are fairly complex for the genre; it combines elements of the western SHANE and the epic tale The Odyssey. The American star who anchors the film is Cameron Mitchell (with his hair dyed radioactive yellow) and he's not bad, even though he doesn’t have the physique one might expect for this Viking hero. Better is Fausto Tozzi (Americanized as Frank Ross) as the vicious Hagen; I never exactly sympathized with him, but he does come off much more rounded than most such stock villains. Both Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (aka Jack Stuart, pictured to the left of Mitchell) as Arald and Elissa Pichelli as Karin are fine. There is a lot of violence but very little gore, and the long one-on-one knife fight between Rurik and Hagen conjures up memories of the big fight in THE QUIET MAN. The theme music is quite catchy. Overall, a little gem. [DVD]

Q PLANES (1939)

aka CLOUDS OVER EUROPE

Released just before the outbreak of World War II, this is a delightful little anomaly: a cross between spy thriller and screwball comedy. Ralph Richardson is a slightly eccentric Scotland Yard secret agent who is investigating the problem of why experimental test planes are taking off and disappearing, never to be found. Though his superiors aren't convinced that there's a problem, Richardson gets word that there may be a spy working at Barrett and Ward, the aviation company producing the planes. When a plane carrying something called a Supercharger takes off, we see what's behind the disappearances: men on board a salvage ship called the Viking use a secret new ray to disable the plane and cut off its communications; they pull the plane out of the water, put the pilots in the hold, and steal the apparatus. Except this time, Richardson had the Supercharger taken off at the last minute. Meanwhile, a hotshot pilot (Laurence Olivier) also suspects sabotage at the plant, and he's suspicious of Valerie Hobson, a young woman who works at the plant diner. But it turns out that Hobson is a reporter, and also Richardson's sister. Soon, the three of them are working together to catch the saboteurs.

"Delightful" is the perfect word for this. The breezy tone reminds me of the wonderful NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH; the characters are likeable, the actors seem to be having fun, and despite the dangers the characters face, we know they'll come out unscathed—which might not have been the case if the film had been made a couple of years later after the war had taken its toll on Europe. Richardson, who had a penchant for a wee bit of overacting later in his career, is absolutely right as the almost whimsical agent; Olivier (pictured behind Richardson), who also did his share of going over the top, seems to realize there's no competing with Richardson so he plays it fairly straight; Hobson keeps up with them both, doing a nice job with some rapid-fire dialogue. I don't want to push the "screwball" comparison too much, but if an American version had been made, William Powell and Myrna Loy would have been great in the Olivier and Hobson roles, though no one comes to mind to replace Richardson—maybe a young Edmund Gwenn? Very fun and highly recommended. [Criterion streaming]

THE GRASS IS GREENER (1960)

Cary Grant is a British earl who has fallen on hard times; he and his wife (Deborah Kerr) have turned their mansion into a tourist attraction and have a butler just for show—the butler complains that he has nothing to do; he's trying to write a novel but doesn't have enough insecurity or despair to succeed. When a rich American oilman (Robert Mitchum) arrives, he begins a flirtation with Kerr that leads to a full-fledged affair when she trots off to London for a few days to be with him. Jean Simmons, the friend that Kerr is supposed to be staying with, goes to Grant with stories of Kerr's infidelity. At a house party weekend, Grant plans to get Kerr back, and sarcastic jabs turn into a duel between Grant and Mitchum. And since this is a comedy, things get righted in the end, and the butler winds up with some juicy plotlines for his novel. This was directed by Stanley Donen, and much as I love SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, I have not really liked any other Donen films; his non-Gene Kelly musicals aren't very fizzy and his comedies and caper films fall flat for me. This has potential in the farcical plot and the more than competent actors, but the farce flops and the actors feel at sea. Simmons in particular seems out of place, not so much her as her character who feels wedged in for plotpoint reasons only. There is a very amusing split-screen scene as Grant (with Simmons) talks to Mitchum (with Kerr) on the telephone. Moray Watson (pictured to the left of Mitchum and Grant) does well with the role of the butler. Not terrible but disappointing. [TCM]

HUNGRY HILL (1947)

Big multi-generational family saga of two feuding Irish families: the lower-class Donovans and the wealthy Brodricks. Copper John Brodrick starts up a copper mine on land once held by the Donovans, and old Morty Donovan curses them, saying the hill will destroy them. Copper John has four sons, and two of them, Henry and Greyhound John, vie for the affections of the saucy Miss Fanny. When a theft occurs at the mine, the Brodricks accuse the Donovans of being behind it. There follows death, fire and destruction (an especially well-shot scene) and Henry is killed in an explosion. John goes away to become a lawyer, eventually returns  and weds Fanny; they raise the next generation of Brodricks (including Wild Johnnie who is, per his name, wild and ill-mannered) who will continue to clash with the Donovans, though Johnnie becomes smitten with a Donovan girl, young Kate. Copper John dies of typhoid, contracted through a Donovan, and Fanny winds up alone, gambling desperately in London, and winding up with the means to end the long feud. There are some nice setpieces, including the above-mentioned fire at the mine and a rare light-hearted moment involving a fiddle player at a fancy party who takes the guests from a slow stately dance to a wild jig. This is based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier; I have not read it, but I suspect that the movie has to drop a lot of plotlines and move quickly through others because of time constraints. What's left is engrossing enough with some decent acting all around: Cecil Parker as Copper John, Dennis Price as Greyhound John, Dermot Walsh as Wild Johnnie, Michael Denison as Henry, Margaret Lockwood as Fanny, and, in other roles, Jean Simmons, Eileen Herlie, and Siobhan McKenna. Pictured are Dennis Price and Margaret Lockwood. [TCM]

THE RELUCTANT SAINT (1962)

In Cupertino Italy in 1623, a young man named Joseph (Maximillian Schell) is growing up, well on the road to becoming the "village idiot"—at 20, he still attends school but the teachers finally tire of him and "graduate" him, leaving him at home with his industrious but impatient mother and his lazy drunken father. Mom convinces her brother, Father Giovanni, to take Joseph in at the local monastery, but he even has a rough time there—sent out on the streets to beg with other novices (to counteract "the poison of vanity"), he is set upon by rowdy youths who steal his robe. The monks make him a stable boy to keep him out of trouble but when a visiting bishop arrives, Joseph makes an impression by explaining the mystery of the Trinity better than a boringly serious monk does, so Father Raspi (Ricardo Montalban) is ordered to have Joseph study for the priesthood. You already know where this is going, don't you? Joseph is a "holy fool" figure, a bit like Saint Francis, and every time it seems like he's going to trip himself up, he is somehow saved; eventually, he does become a priest. But a supernatural aspect soon enters the picture: when Joseph accidently smashes a statue of the Virgin Mary, he takes the head of the statue and prays to it, and while he prays, he levitates. This isn't just in his head; he is seen by others who don't know what to make of it.

This is based on the legend of Joseph of Cupertino who is the patron saint of air travelers, pilots, and poor students, and in outline this is a gentle religious fantasy with the requisite amount of sweetness, humor, and moral lessons, but a mistake in casting makes this somewhat uncomfortable viewing: Maximillian Schell is far too intense (and, over 30 at the time, too mature) to play the holy fool. His brooding intensity doesn't strike the right note, and the intelligence behind Schell's eyes is too obvious for him to be effective even though he tries hard. The plot twists, especially those involved in his attaining of the priesthood, are fun, and Montalban (pictured at left, to the right of Schell) is very good as the skeptical priest who is torn between a genuine fondness for Joseph and worry that the boy's journey will scar him—and belittle the genuine students of the priesthood. The first episode of levitation is pulled off nicely, but by the end, one wishes they had spent some money on special effects or at least some more creative visual approaches. The last shot of Schell floating and Montalban grabbing his robe so he doesn’t take off like a Macy's Day balloon is cute but is badly staged. An odd little movie. [DVD]