THE STEEL HELMET (1951)

On a battlefield in Korea strewn with dead soldiers with their hands tied behind them, Sgt. Zack (Gene Evans) is still alive, crawling on his belly and trying to get free. A figure with a gun approaches so Zack plays dead, but it turns out to be a 12-year-old boy (William Chun) who unties him. Zack calls him a "gook," and the boy, a war orphan, politely corrects him by saying he's South Korean, and soon, despite Zack's gruff exterior, the two have bonded and Zack nicknames him Short Round. Wandering through the foggy woods, the two eventually bond with Thompson (James Edwards), an African-American medic, and Tanaka (Richard Loo), a Japanese-American soldier. Zack most certainly does not bond with Lt. Driscoll (Steve Brodie), a cocky soldier whom Zack knows and doesn't respect, though Zack and his men wind up traveling with Driscoll's small regiment. They stop at an abandoned Buddhist temple near the front to set up a communications post, and the rest of the film is set at the temple as the men argue, become friendly, battle a sniper hiding in the temple, and eventually try to hold off dozens of attacking North Koreans.

This is widely acknowledged as the first Korean War movie, made and released during the first year of the conflict. It's not Samuel Fuller’s first film as director, but it is the first one that feels like a Fuller movie, and though perhaps not as full of battlefield action as some may like, it is nevertheless practically an archetypal modern war film with attention paid to both the physical and mental pains of warfare. Many WWII movies paid lip service to the multicultural makeup of the men in battle, but in this one, the culture clashes feels much more central to the film, without artificially weighing down the narrative. The point that African-Americans were still isolated back home is made but not intrusively, and the Japanese internment camps in the US are not ignored. Evans is excellent as Zack, who is mostly a hard-boiled, cynical guy whom we see soften a bit until the end when he comes dangerously close to having a full-fledged breakdown. Edwards is just as good as the quiet, stoic Thompson. Other cast standouts include Richard Monahan as a young guy who went bald in his youth and will try anything to grow hair, Sid Melton as a private who only talks to his burro (and only in whispers), and Robert Hutton as a former conscientious objector. I've heard that Spielberg used the "Short Round" name in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM as a tribute to Fuller, and this explains the name: Zack's helmet has a hole in it due to a defective bullet going into his helmet, pinging around and exiting without hurting him; "short round" is a term for such bullets. The movie was shot on a low budget but between the fog and the temple set, it looks great. Highly recommended. [Criterion streaming]

TOPAZE (1933)

The bratty son of the rich Baron De La Tour complains that his teacher, Professor Topaze (John Barrymore), is against rich people and is teaching communism. Actually, Topaze is a stuffy but well-meaning teacher who tries to teach lessons of hard work and honesty, but when he refuses to change the boy's grade, the baron gets him fired. Meanwhile, the baron is about to unveil a new product, a sparkling water that, the advertising claims, has special health benefits even though it's just carbonated water. The inventor of the water quits when he finds out that the baron wants to swindle the public, so La Tour hires the newly unemployed and naive Topaze to front for the product, calling it Sparkling Topaze. When he eventually finds out that he's been duped, Topaze has a nightmare vision of being surrounded by giant bottles of the water, and seeing huge neon signs proclaiming, "Topaze is a thief!" To placate him, the baron arranges for Topaze to receive the Academic Palms, a great state prize, and soon Topaze seems to be converted to the baron's lifestyle, lording his new fame over everyone and blackmailing the baron into subservience. He even attracts the attentions of the baron's young mistress (Myrna Loy, pictured with Barrymore). But when he is asked to speak at his old school, he struggles between his new outlook on life and his former innocent morality.

I've never seen Barrymore as a great talent, but he's very good here, doing a nice job playing against type in the first half as a passive, idealistic academic, then turning into a kind of Mr. Hyde character later. Loy is also fine as the mistress to both men; the opening scene, a pre-Code classic, shows Loy and the baron (Reginald Mason) enjoying a cozy winter night together—we assume they are married until he gets up and decides it's time to go home to the wife. The film’s satirical swipes at big business and advertising still sting. [TCM]

FLIGHT TO MARS (1951)

This is one of the earliest of the 50’s "docudrama" science-fiction space travel films, with the first half chronicling in a relatively realistic fashion a trip to Mars, albeit by five people who wear street clothes and smoke cigarettes in the spaceship. There's a love triangle between engineer Arthur Franz, his longtime assistant Virginia Huston, and cocky reporter Cameron Mitchell, and scientist John Litel spends a fair amount of the trip philosophizing. Once they get to the red planet, the film turns as fanciful as Jules Verne or Flash Gordon when they discover friendly Martians (who look just like earthlings) dressed in colorful Teletubby outfits. Our crew is taken to the large underground city where the population thrives thanks to a mineral (which, unknown to the earthlings, is now in short supply, threatening the Martians continued survival as the surface is too inhospitable for long-term living). The Martians agree to help the earthlings fix their damaged ship so they can return home, but they secretly plot to take the ship over for themselves and move their population to Earth. The mini-skirted Alita (Marguerite Chapman, pictured with Franz) falls in love with Franz (leaving Huston and Mitchell free to flirt to their hearts' desires), tells him about the Martians' plans, and helps the earthlings try to escape. The best thing about this B-movie from Monogram is the color, which really helps hide the low budget; the planet and the city look good, though the scenes of the rocket in space and the meteor shower they go through look very primitive. The Martian women dress like catwomen, in pointy-shouldered tops and fabulous shoes that are a cross between a high-heel and a go-go boot. The name Alita is a nod to a famous silent Russian film, Aelita, Queen of Mars, which was itself based on a work by Leo Tolstoy, which means one could make a "six degrees" thing between Tolstoy and the Teletubbies. [DVD]

HIAWATHA (1952)

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea Water,… well, this doesn't quite follow the Longfellow poem. In fact, in doing a little research after watching this movie, I found that Longfellow's Hiawatha was not based on the historical Hiawatha at all. It also seems likely that the Hiawatha in this movie (played by Vince Edwards) isn't much like the real person either, which is par for Hollywood historical films. This begins with hunky Hiawatha leading a band of Ojibway hunters through the woods where they come upon a group of Dakota hunters who seem to be lost. Though the various tribes don't get along, Hiawatha approaches the men peacefully, but his hot-headed fellow hunter Pau PukKeewis (Keith Larsen) is of the "shoot first" school and a skirmish breaks out. This triggers a debate among the Ojibway, who have remained isolated for some time, as to whether they should try to make peaceful contact with the Dakota and the Illinois. The discussion gets heated, and Pau PukKeewis implies that Hiawatha is not of pure Ojibway blood (of course, this eventually leads to the revelation that, indeed, his father was a Dakota). On a mission of peace, Hiawatha winds up attacked by a bear and his life is saved by Lakku of the Dakota tribe. As he recovers, he and Lakku's daughter Minnehaha fall in love and he takes her back to his tribe as his wife, which doesn't sit well with Pau PukKeewis and the more warlike men. That fall, the harvest is poor and some blame Minnehaha; when an Ojibway man is killed by a Dakota arrow, war preparations begin, but Hiawatha suspects that the spiteful Pau PukKeewis is to blame.

If you're not a fan of Vince Edwards, there's probably no reason for you to watch this. It's colorful and looks like it was shot on location, or at least on an elaborate set—rare for a Monogram B-film—but to today's viewers, it will look like any average TV movie, something that might have run on The Wonderful World of Disney back in the 60s. Apparently the historical Hiawatha was known as a peacemaker, but little in the film rings true. The reviewer at DVD Talk reads the movie as commie propaganda—I guess because of its pacifist, "let's all get along" message and the attempt by the Ojibway to get the Dakota to share food over the winter—but that seems a bit far-fetched. I like Edwards, so despite his awful pig-tailed wig I stuck with the movie, but there's not much else to recommend it.  Keith Larsen is strictly average as the bad guy and Yvette Duguay is colorless as Minnehaha. [Warner Archive Instant]

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1949)

After the war, wealthy banker Claude Rains and his younger wife (Ann Todd) are vacationing in the Swiss Alps. Todd arrives first and, unexpectedly, the long-lost love of her life (Trevor Howard) whom she hasn't seen since before the war, is staying in the room next to hers. She slips in and out of reveries about Howard and we get flashbacks that explain their relationship. Many years ago, before Todd met Rains, she and Howard were lovers; he proposed marriage but she treasured her independence, wanting love "without clutching" and, fearing that marriage would trigger feelings of possession, she turned him down. In 1939, at a New Year's party, they met again; he's with a date and she's with her husband, Rains. She cares for Rains, but their marriage is sexless and she seems satisfied with the status quo, but when Rains leaves on an extended business trip, she and Howard meet for lunch which leads to a long afternoon together which leads to an affair. When Rains finds out, the three have a confrontation and she agrees to end it. Now, in Switzerland, Todd and Howard—who is married with kids—become reacquainted and he pushes her to resume their affair, but she hesitates. Unfortunately, Rains arrives and, seeing them return from a picnic in the mountains, assumes the worst. He instigates divorce proceedings, which leaves Todd with mixed emotions, but when she finds out that Howard is unlikely to leave his family, she is driven to a desperate act.

This romantic melodrama from David Lean sounds routine, but the performances, some location shooting, and lovely black & white cinematography bring it up a notch, making it compelling viewing. The tricky flashback structure keeps you on your toes for the first half of the film. Todd and Howard seem very natural as the illicit lovers; Rains' character is mostly unlikable but complex enough that he never comes off as a villain. The marriage between Rains and Todd is basically a marriage of convenience and neither one kids themselves about that (at one point, he even says that he knows she likes, not loves, him). That fact makes it a bit difficult to accept Rains' furor when he thinks she fooling around—he says on the one hand that he knows she likes her independence, yet he is unwilling to give her too much of it. The ending is a tad far-fetched but satisfying. By the end, I was unsure to whom the title referred: Todd and Howard? Or Todd and Rains? Pictured are Todd and Howard, with Rains in the middle (and out of focus). [TCM]

THE PHANTOM EXPRESS (1932)

A series of wrecks has plagued the Southwestern Pacific railway company, and we see the latest; on a moonless night, a "phantom express" is seen racing down the tracks straight at an oncoming train. The engineer, Smoky Nolan, tries to stop, but the train derails, killing and injuring many, and the phantom train vanishes. Both Smoky and his fireman Axel insist they saw a train, but the signalman says he did not. Harrington, head of the railroad, reluctantly allows his playboy son Bruce to launch a secret investigation; Bruce's reason is that he’s fallen for Smoky's lovely daughter Carolyn. In a needlessly convoluted plan, Bruce gets his pal Dick to pose as Harrington's son while Bruce poses as his buddy, also named Bruce, and gets a job working at the roundhouse hoping to snag some clues from fellow workers. Time is of the essence for two reasons: 1) poor old Smoky is fired because of the wreck; 2) as it happens, a consortium of businessmen is trying to force Harrington to sell the railroad to them and there's a deadline of midnight—guess who winds up being behind the phantom train shenanigans?

When I run across little-known B-movie with titles like this, I get excited thinking I'm about to find a spooky and/or thrilling little gem. Usually I'm disappointed, but this one is an exception. The plot, though predictable, has a couple of nice twists, especially with regards to the explanation for the phantom train. For a 30s indie film, the effects and sets are good, combining some obvious but atmospheric use of miniatures with scenes that seem to have been shot at a real railroad yard. The acting is also a notch above average. William Collier Jr. (pictured above) makes for an acceptable if unexciting hero, Sally Blane is good (though given little to do) as Carolyn, and Eddie Phillips is fine as the sidekick (who also has little to do but look distinguished pretending to be the boss's son). A man named Axel Axelson, who would seem to come by his thick Swedish accent naturally, plays Axel as a bit of a comic relief figure—Axelson seems to have never acted again. Best of all is J. Farrell McDonald as Smoky; he gives a genuinely moving performance in the scene where, after he's fired, he has to put on a smile for a surprise birthday party being given for him.

I recommend this wholeheartedly, but unfortunately it appears to be available only as a chopped-up print; the version I saw on YouTube was 55 minutes long, but other sources indicate it was released at between 65 and 70 minutes. Indeed, there are jagged jumps and moments where the screen goes black, though the story is intelligible, and in fact, what there is of the print looks good. [YouTube]

THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR THEM (1932)

aka THREE BROADWAY GIRLS

In this early "Gold Diggers"-style movie (though not a musical), Joan Blondell and Madge Evans are ex-showgirl roomies on the prowl for money and love, preferably both. When we first meet them, they are having a reunion with the slightly older (and much bitchier) Ina Claire who has returned from Paris after a disastrous sugar daddy hunt. They vow to stick together and be the Three Broadway Musketeers, but troubles begin immediately. Claire is pissed when she discovers that Blondell has been billing and cooing with the elderly and very rich Pops, whom she had been seeing before she went to Paris—Blondell says that "Pops is my fiancé, not that we're engaged or anything like that." Evans, who is practically engaged to the rich handsome David Manners, gets in the middle of some shenanigans involving Manners' friend, a rich pianist (Lowell Sherman, also the film's director) who shifts his attentions from Claire to Evans; she then gets irritated when Manners doesn't act jealous. Claire winds up sleeping with Sherman, and Evans gets officially engaged to Manners; out of sheer spite, Claire plants a stolen pearl necklace on Evans on the day she's meeting Manners' father, hoping to scotch the engagement. In the middle of all this, Pops dies; Claire expects a nice lump of money but instead discovers that he has warned the estate's executor about her scheming.

Based on a play—the credits read, "Based on the stage success"—this same material was adapted in the 50s as HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, and unofficially adapted by any number of films about Broadway babies looking for love. This is fun for a while, but the sheer nastiness of Ina Claire's character starts to wear you down, even though Claire is fun in the role. Why Blondell and Evans would remain friends with her is a mystery. All three women are good, though disappointingly, Blondell has the least to do. Manners is one of my favorite 30s actors, and he's fine here. Sherman is better as the conniving pianist. Fairly entertaining, though mostly of interest as a pre-Code relic. Pictured from left are Manners, Evans and Claire. [YouTube]

GATES OF THE NIGHT (1946)

aka LES PORTES DE LA NUIT

This interesting French film, directed by Marcel Carné and set after the liberation of Paris but before the end of the war, has a little bit of everything: it's mostly a realistic story but it has a front-and-center fantasy element; it's serious but there are light moments; it's grounded in everyday reality but there is a poetic, romantic streak running through it; it even has a film noir feel both visually and in some of the plot and character arcs. The realistic story involves the problem of those Parisians who were considered to be collaborators with the Nazis during the Occupation, some more actively than others. Resistance fighter Jean Diego (Yves Montand) comes to Paris in February 1945 to tell Mme. Lécuyer that her husband was taken off to be executed, but happily, he finds Lécuyer alive at home, having escaped. Diego had overheard Lécuyer being ratted out but didn't see who did it. Later, he hears a voice and recognizes it as the betrayer: Guy Sénéchal (Serge Reggiani), the son of Lécuyer’s landlord, who himself is shunned for his collaborationist tendencies.

In another narrative arc, the landlord's daughter Malou (Nathalie Nattier) has come to visit and Diego falls for her before he learns that she's unhappily married to Georges (Pierre Brasseur), who eventually comes looking for her. That night, Diego and Malou spend a romantic evening wandering through a (beautifully shot) junkyard, led there by a young boy, son of Lécuyer, who keeps a secret room in which he takes care of a stray cat. In a third plotline, a pair of young lovers pop in and out of the narrative; the boy has been coming to the train station gate every day just to catch a glimpse of her as she passes on the street. On this day, they finally make contact. Finally, the fantasy element is a scraggly looking fellow who calls himself Fate. At the beginning of the movie, he tells Diego he will meet the most beautiful woman in the world—and in Diego's eyes, he does—he helps get the two young lovers to finally speak to each other, and he also foretells the death of a gypsy woman by drowning, and assures another character that he won't drown, though he might die like a dog.

This is a lovely film, if not exactly an uplifting one. Fate, a beggar, can tell people what will happen but he cannot change the future. Jean Vilar, as Fate, has a nicely sad look without looking either depressing or sinister. There are good guys and bad guys, but even the bad guys aren't without some sense of regret about the paths they took. The movie takes place in one day, mostly at night, hence the shadowy noir look. Montand is excellent, as is Reggiani (pictured at left with Vilar). 9-year-old Christian Simon does a nice job as the boy. Nattier (pictured at top with Montand), considering her importance to the plot, doesn't have much to do except look beautiful and a little mysterious. The 50s pop standard "Autumn Leaves" originated with this movie; it's a tune that Destiny hums from time to time, and that seems hauntingly familiar to both Diego and Malou. For lovers of Carné's epic CHILDREN OF PARADISE, this may seem slight, but it's lovely and, like "Autumn Leaves," a little haunting. [Criterion streaming]

AGGIE APPLEBY, MAKER OF MEN (1933)

This overlooked gem is a cute pre-Code romantic comedy with some clever writing and good performances, and I hope TCM sees fit to air it more often. The great opening sequence is a tracking shot across city streets to focus in on a brawl in a diner, initiated by Red Branahan (William Gargan) who insists that he started it to save the honor of his live-in gal Aggie (Wynne Gibson). Red is a charming roughneck gambler, but he can rarely scrape up rent money when the landlady (Jane Darwell) comes calling. When Red is arrested for beating up some cops, Aggie is left homeless, so her friend Sibby (Zasu Pitts) lets her stay overnight in an apartment house where she works, in the room of milquetoast Adoniram Schlump (Charles Farrell) while he's out looking for a job—he's from a rich family but he wants to make it on his own even though he has no discernible talents. But Schlump, who is engaged to socialite Evangeline, comes home early to find Aggie sacked out in his bed. He lets her stay and she sets out to make a man of him: she gets rid of his glasses, loosens his tie, ruffles his hair, and makes him take off his record of "Pomp and Circumstance" to listen to hot jazz.

Aggie takes him to apply for a job as construction gang supervisor and has him use Red's name, since Red has a city-wide rep as a tough guy. He gets the job and when he accidentally knocks out a troublemaker, the men look up to him, and soon Aggie finds herself falling for him. But when Red gets out of jail, Aggie has to choose; when she complains to Sibby about her situation, Sibby says, "A woman can't be in love with two men—she may think so, but one of 'em is just indigestion." (Another gem of wisdom from Sibby: "Men are like trees—the more you tap 'em, the more sap comes out.") Things get even tougher for Aggie when she realizes that she actually has begun to miss the kinder, gentler, well-mannered Schlump, especially missing that he used to call her Agnes instead of Aggie.

This sprightly romantic comedy kept me interested all the way through. Some may find the ending predictable, but right up until the last few minutes, I had the feeling it could go one of three ways: she winds up with a slightly toughed-up Schlump, she winds up with a slightly softened Red, or she leaves them both behind. I'm not that familiar with Gibson's work but she's very good in the Joan Blondell-type title role; Farrell's somewhat squeaky voice is put to good use, though I find his earlier look with glasses to be more attractive (pictured at left) than his macho makeover; Gargan (pictured above right with Gibson), a favorite character actor of mine, shines in the first fifteen minutes, though his character is more or less out of commission for the rest of the film. Zasu Pitts is fun as always. Other amusing lines: Gibson telling Farrell to change his vocabulary by using words "with hair on 'em"; when Gibson worries about how Farrell's fiancée would react if she went after him, Pitts says, "I'd say, Raspberries, Evangeline!" Very fun. [TCM]

PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW (1971)

John David Carson is a high school student with a problem: he gets an erection at the drop of a hat, so to speak, and despite himself is still a virgin. One day, when substitute teacher Angie Dickinson gets him hot and bothered, he excuses himself and heads off to the boys' room (with his notebook in front of his crotch) where he finds a dead girl in a stall, a note saying, "So long, honey" taped to her rear end. And soon enough, more dead girls show up around the school. Meanwhile, well-liked football coach and guidance counselor Rock Hudson tries to help Carson with his problem by putting Dickinson on the case—he tells her that Carson is impotent and she should give him confidence—and in a few days, Carson and Dickinson are sleeping together. We soon discover that Hudson is having sex with just about every girl in the school, all of whom are scantily dressed and flirtatious. Who could be killing all these pretty maids?

This is a crazy-ass movie that could only have been made in the crazy-ass 70s. The first half-hour centers on a teenage boy's erection (though we never see it, in or out of pants); every female student looks like a Playboy playmate; teachers have sex with students and there seem to be no problems with that, aside from the post-coital killings. It's not really a spoiler to note that Hudson is the killer, but his character has no consistent psychology—he is married with a young daughter and appears to love his wife, but still bangs schoolgirls a mile a minute. The killings seem to occur when the girls turn cold or want a commitment, but even that isn't clear or consistent. And in the somewhat surprising climax (which I won't spoil), it even appears as if his wife knows about his activities and is OK with them. Carson (pictured with Dickinson) is very cute and handles his unusual role well, and Dickinson is fine. Hudson seems a little at sea, like he couldn't quite commit to a murderous villain role. Also in the cast without much distinction are Telly Savalas as a detective (looking every inch like Kojak, the role he would become famous for a couple of years later), Roddy McDowell as the ineffectual principal, and Keenan Wynn as a police chief. I guess I'd have to say I enjoyed the movie, but I felt kinda gross afterward. [TCM]

THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS (1957)

In the woods near a resort lodge in a small town in Utah, vacationing lawyer Lex Barker is smooching with resort employee Anne Bancroft when they find the body of a young woman who has been brutally murdered, her throat cut and mutilating slashes across her lips and eyes. Everyone agrees she was, shall we say, a woman of loose morals, but hardly deserved that kind of demise. Local sheriff John Dehner has plenty of suspects: the woman-hating owner of the lodge (Ron Randell) who has had psychosomatic paralysis ever since a girlfriend left him; his overly-protective sister (Marie Windsor); a washed-up actor (John Holland) and his little totsy (Mamie Van Doren) who was friends with the dead woman; employee Indian Joe who is a little slow but also menacingly hulking especially with a knife in his hands; a mysterious man named Feldman who checked in after the murder; hunky young Frankie (Gerald Frank); even Barker and Bancroft come under suspicion. More people die before the culprit is discovered.

This outdoorsy mystery has some promise, and a plot that for the most part is easy to follow, but the actors all seem to be sleepwalking through it, and it runs out of steam before the 60-minute mark, overstaying its welcome by a good 20 minutes. Barker (pictured with Randell) is OK, and I liked Dehner as the sheriff—he seems to be auditioning for a TV series about a laconic small-town cop. The two characters with the most potential, Bancroft and Windsor, aren't fleshed out enough to really be interesting, and Randell's character, who is supposed to be somewhat sympathetic, is very unpleasant, both as written and as acted. The death of one character near the end at a lumber mill is confusingly shot and, as far as I could tell, completely unmotivated. Fans of Van Doren will be disappointed since, despite her third billing, she only has one big scene. There are psychological threads galore, though most go nowhere: in addition to Randell's odd paralysis, there's Windsor's overdone attention to her brother and Bancroft's cold-fish ways with Barker despite her surface flirtatiousness. Not to mention that strange death at the lumber mill. The Utah setting is a plus. Overall, the movie is not hard to watch but it's hard to like. [TCM]

SAMSON AND THE SEVEN MIRACLES OF THE WORLD (1961)

The hero of this sword-and sandal film set in China, in the original Italian version, is Maciste, though in the English dub, he's just a somewhat random muscleman (Gordon Scott) who has taken the legendary name Samson to strike fear into the hearts of villains. Here, he's battling a Mongol horde led by Garak, who has a Chinese princess under his thumb. Garak tries to get rid of her teenage brother by throwing him in a pit with a tiger, but Samson leaps in and successfully wrestles the tiger (alternately an old and tired live one and a bug-eyed stuffed one), saving the boy. Then he joins forces with some Chinese rebels to free the princess from a forced marriage to Garak. There's some folderol involving Chinese monks and seven miracles that are supposed to happen, the final one being that, when Garak's men entomb Samson in a tiny crawlspace underground, he finds the superhuman strength to break free and in doing so triggers an earthquake that spells an end to the Mongols. Because the muscled Scott played Tarzan in the 50s and because in this movie all he wears is a dangly red loincloth, this felt like a Tarzan-goes-to-China movie for me, which makes as much sense as a faux-Samson (or even an Italian Maciste) in China. The best scene is one in which he stops racing horses from executing a group of men buried up to their necks in the ground. Aside from the novelty of its setting and the presence of Scott, who is a notch above most peplum actors, this is nothing special. The print from Alpha Video is technically letterboxed, but because jarring pan-and-scan cuts remain, I suspect it is not presented at its true original aspect ratio. [DVD]

WHITE PONGO (1945)

An explorer named Gunderson has been captured by an African tribe and is tied up as though for sacrifice, but an older man, Prof. Gerig, also being held by the tribe, comes to his rescue. He lets Gunderson go but asks him to take the journal of the late Dierdorf, whose expedition Gerig was on, back to civilization. A huge white ape—the White Pongo of the title—appears in the village and Gunderson gets away while it goes on a rampage. He makes his way to a European outpost and dies of a fever, but gets the journal delivered to a British anthropologist named Bragdon (Gordon Richards) who realizes that Dierdorf assumed the White Pongo was the missing link between ape and man. Bragdon takes an expedition out to capture the ape to take back to London. Of course, there are complications: Bragdon's daughter Pamela (Maris Wrixon) is along and Bragdon's secretary Carswell (Michael Dyne) has a thing for her. She has dallied with him in the past, but now she falls for Bishop (Richard Fraser), one of the hired riflemen; the fact that's he's rather stand-offish just inflames her interest. Along with the group is the German Kroegert who is secretly using the trip as a way to find a legendary gold mine that he can claim. And, of course, there's the menacing White Pongo, in addition to the run-of-the-mill menacing apes one finds in African jungles in the movies.

This Poverty Row adventure really has little to recommend it—no name actors, long plodding sections of people canoeing down a river or walking through jungles, not much plot—but still I stayed with it to the end, and the end is the most interesting part because [SPOILER] unlike in the average Tarzan movie, in this one the trappers get the ape and take it to England. Of course, the trappers here are scientists rather than zookeepers or hunters, so we're supposed to be on their side. There are no hunky shirtless heroes here: Fraser, ostensibly the hero, is quite bland and passive even though he turns out to be a Rhodesian secret agent on the trail of Kroegert; he's supposed to be stoic but he comes off more as petulant and boring. As the femme interest, Wrixon (pictured with Fraser) is equally bland, and for most of the movie, fairly unlikable. There is dreadful comic relief in the person of George Lloyd as a Cockney-accented ass who I kept wishing would get torn limb from limb by the apes—though I did chuckle when he called the ape the "blinkin’ missing link." The best I can say about the actors is that Dyne is appropriately slimy as Carswell who winds up going over to Kroegert's side when Pamela throws him over. The ape outfits are actually not bad, though they’re largely wasted because, aside from the opening scene, the White Pongo never really bothers anyone until the climax. Only recommended for mild novelty. [YouTube]

THE STORY OF RUTH (1960)

Frankly, most of my knowledge of the Bible comes from popular culture; my only direct exposure to the Old Testament (except for plowing my way through Genesis on a summer vacation) was when I took a Jewish history class in college. So this story was new to me—if I get the details wrong, blame it on the filmmakers. The film breaks the tale into three parts. We begin in the land of Moab, where the people worship the bug-eyed god Chemosh and once a year pick a worthy young girl to sacrifice to him. In the opening scene, the 5-year-old Ruth is picked for the "honor," but a rash appears mysteriously on her arm and she is declared unfit. Then the narrative jumps ahead some years to focus on Mahlon (Tom Tryon), a Judean from Bethlehem whose family moved to Moab to escape famine and poverty. He is hired to make a glittering crown for the next sacrifice and winds up hitting it off with the grown-up Ruth (Elana Eden), now a temple priestess, who is charmed by the stories of his "invisible" god who is everywhere and who does not demand human sacrifice. Soon Ruth rebels against her elders (Thayer David and Viveca Lindfords), and Tryon is held responsible and sentenced to life in slavery. She helps him escape but he is fatally wounded, and in his last dying moments, he "marries" Ruth. In the third part of the film, Mahlon's mother Naomi (Peggy Wood, pictured with Eden) resettles in Bethlehem and takes Ruth with her. They have a rough way to go: the Judeans don't trust the Moabite Ruth, and Mahlon's oldest brother Tob, a surly brute of a fellow, tries to claim Ruth as his wife based on Hebrew law, even though it's the younger brother Boaz (Stuart Whitman) who slowly falls for her.

This is a Biblical epic that, at just a little over two hours, doesn't wear out its welcome. Oddly, there are no big action scenes, but that's mostly made up for by sequences of much pomp (the sacrifices, the big feast at the end). The sets and costumes are also grand, and the narrative remains clear throughout. The acting is above average for the genre: Tryon (pictured at left) is quite good as Mahlon and his presence is missed in the second half. Whitman, his replacement as leading man, is good but not as personable. Israeli actress Eden is lovely but not the most expressive person—Ruth is at the center of the film but doesn't have much of a personality. I enjoyed seeing two actors I know from other indelible roles: Wood (the Reverend Mother in THE SOUND OF MUSIC), and David (Ben Stokes and his descendent the Professor on Dark Shadows). The widescreen print I saw was clean and crisp; it's also out on DVD. [Fox]

SHERLOCK HOLMES’ FATAL HOUR (1931)

aka THE SLEEPING CARDINAL

Our story begins with two plot threads that will obviously come together: 1) Someone is breaking into London bank vaults, injuring or killing the night watchmen, but no money is ever missing, and Inspector Lestrade asks for Holmes' help; 2) Ronald Adair, a British diplomat, has been cheating at cards and winning big, trying to keep up appearances after his inheritance went bust. His concerned sister, afraid he'll get in trouble if he's exposed, goes to Dr. Watson to see if Holmes can help her. We eventually see the connection: Adair is taken to a room where he is blackmailed by an underworld figure who speaks from behind a painting called The Sleeping Cardinal. The bank break-ins have involved stealing money and replacing it with counterfeit bills, then taking the real money overseas where it won't be traced. Adair, traveling with a diplomatic passport, doesn't have his luggage searched so the Voice wants him to smuggle the money out; if he refuses, he is told that his cheating ways will be exposed and he will be ruined. As Holmes delves into these cases he beings to suspect that the culprit is his old nemesis Professor Moriarty.

Arthur Wontner played Holmes is a series of 30s British B-films (I reviewed a previous film here) and is considered by some to the best movie Holmes. Wontner is fine, probably playing the character more like Doyle wrote him than most, but I still like Basil Rathbone best. One problem is that Wontner is very low-key, as is Ian Fleming as Watson. This leaves Lestrade (Phillip Hewland) to provide much of the energy. Leslie Perrins as Adair is fine, but no one else leaves much of an impression. Based loosely on two Doyle stories, "The Empty House" and "The Final Problem," this is one of the most strongly plotted of any Holmes film, and the cinematography gives the movie some atmosphere; the opening scene of the bank robbery is shot in almost total darkness with just enough glossy white light that we're confused about what's happening. Similarly, the spooky scene with the Sleeping Cardinal painting seems to have come right out of a Saturday matinee serial. Because Wontner's films are mostly in the public domain, available prints are often in poor condition, but the one I saw on Hulu Plus was in good shape. [Hulu Plus streaming]

SIMBA (1955)

This social issue/romance melodrama starts off with a bang: In rural Nairobi, an African man on a bicycle rides down the road and sees a white Englishman lying on the ground, beaten, bloodied, and moaning; we think the bicyclist will help him, but instead he kills the wounded man with a machete and rides away. We are in Kenya during the period of the Mau-Mau uprising, as loosely organized rebels against imperialism were committing acts of terror against the Europeans, and forcing other natives to either join their group or keep quiet about their plans. Alan (Dirk Bogarde) arrives in Kenya to visit his brother's farm and possibly reunite with old flame Mary (Virginia McKenna), but his brother is the man we saw killed in the opening, so Alan decides to stay and run the farm. There is little explanation of the Mau-Mau agenda; the British can't understand why even whites who are "nice" to the natives are being targeted, and they decide that even asking why would be fruitless since the Africans are basically backward children. (Of course, no one seems to realize that that very formulation is part of the problem—even the most sympathetic white characters think of their native servants as children.) Mary seems to grasp at least some of the complexities of the issues, but Alan is openly hostile to the natives, as played out in his relationship with Peter Karanja (Earl Cameron), an African doctor tortured by his being stuck in the middle, not completely trusted by his fellow natives or by many of the British. Peter's story winds up being much more compelling than the Alan/Mary romance, partly because his character is more fleshed out; he has a secret that leads to tragedy at the end. The murder scenes are surprisingly brutal for the time. Bogarde doesn't seem to be fully engaged; McKenna is OK, though occasionally she looked like Julie Andrews and I expected her to break out in song and fix everything with her drape-made wardrobe or her parrot-handle umbrella. [Netflix streaming]

CAPTAIN THUNDER (1930)

In El Paramo, a "sleepy oasis" in the middle of the Mexican badlands, a charming bandit known as El Capitan Thunder (Victor Varconi, pictured) is upset at the small reward being offered for his arrest, so he makes a promise to rob the next stagecoach—and the one thing everyone knows about Captain Thunder is that he always keeps his promises. Commandante Ruiz (Charles Judels) insists he is prepared and will stop Thunder, but when the stagecoach arrives, it has indeed been burglarized and all its passengers, including the lovely young Ynez (Fay Wray), are clad only in their underwear, having had their clothes stolen. Thunder, quite taken by Ynez, gallantly returns her clothes and discovers that she is in love with the handsome but poor Juan, although her father wants her to marry the older, nasty American rancher Morgan. Thunder winds up in a spot because of his ethics: he promises to help Ynez marry Juan—which he does by letting Juan capture him and get the reward money (which has gone up considerably since the beginning of the movie), but he has also promised Morgan a favor, and that favor winds up being to stop Ynez's marriage to Juan. Thunder's solution is ingenious (and could never have happened if this had been made a few years later under the strictures of the Production Code)—SPOILER! Immediately after Morgan and Ynez are married, while all the guests are still present, Thunder takes Morgan offscreen and shoots him dead. Now Ynez inherits his land AND gets the cute Juan. And Thunder gets away scot free.

Most critical commentary on this movie focuses on the bad sound and the performance of Varconi, a Hungarian actor who played a wide range of exotic roles. The dialogue is indeed difficult to follow at times, between the dicey recording and the exaggerated accents of several of the actors. And Varconi is not the ideal hero: at almost 40, he's a smidge old for the adventurous lead, showing signs of going to seed, and at times he seems like he's playing a supporting role. But he's game and his light touch is just right for the tone of the film—which makes the climax all the more surprising. Wray, the year before KING KONG, doesn't really stand out, though Judels is good as the buffoonish Ruiz. Don Alverado, as Juan, was kind of a B-movie Valentino, though he never got past supporting parts. [TCM]

IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM (1969)

A World-Wind Tour bus leaves London for a 2-week trip through Europe with a bunch of American tourists. Of course, most of them are comic variations on the "Ugly American" stereotypes: Murray Hamilton is a grouser who constantly complains that things aren't like they are back home; his teenage daughter (Hilary Thompson) is looking for a cute boy to spend time with; Norman Fell's wife (Reva Rose) accidentally winds up on a different tour and he spends all his time trying to contact her; Marty Ingels takes pictures of sexy native women, intending to tell his buddies back home that he slept with all of them; Michael Constantine is a war vet revisiting old sites; Sandy Baron is looking forward to visiting relatives in Italy, unaware that they're ready to marry him off to a cousin. The main plotline involves Suzanne Pleshette, a lovely young single woman who seems vaguely dissatisfied with her fiancé; the handsome English tour guide (Ian McShane) wants to add her to his long list of erotic conquests, but through a series of comic misadventures, she remains mostly aloof until they begin to develop real feelings for each other. Then who should show up but her well-meaning but whitebread fiancé.

Having been released in 1969, this comedy is awkwardly situated between old and new; the stereotypes are obvious, much of the humor is dated, and few of the characters or situations are surprising, but with the swinging single tour guide, the movie tries to be hip, and the plotline involving the teenage daughter is totally 60s: she and the moderately cute political agitator she hooks up with (Luke Halpin, star of TV's Flipper) travel about and visit a youth hostel—in which 60s icon Donovan strums guitar and sings the gloomy, folky "Lord of the Reedy River." (He also wrote the cute title song but does not sing it.) Though the film was shot on location—Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Venice—it mostly has a drab TV-movie look. Some of the performances are pitched in a one-note TV way; particularly irritating are Fell, Constantine and Ingels. But the young McShane (pictured with Pleshette) is a nice surprise, and Pleshette and Baron are very good as well. Also with Peggy Cass and Mildred Natwick, both underused. Aubrey Morris, who I know as Alex's counselor in CLOCKWORK ORANGE, has a small, almost completely silent role as a man who brings an empty piece of luggage into which he puts stolen objects from each stop. Watch all the way to the credits for a final fun scene involving Morris. There are also very brief cameos from John Cassavettes, Robert Vaughan, Vittorio De Sica, and Virna Lisi, among others. Mild fun for fans of the era. [TCM]

SUMMER WITH MONIKA (1953)

Despite the "beach party" title and the brief nudity that made this a sensation in the early career of Ingmar Bergman, this is mostly a drab and downbeat study of love and lust among the young. 19-year-old Harry (Lars Ekborg) lives with his ailing father and has an unfulfilling job at a glassworks shop. At a café, he meets Monika (Harriet Andersson); they make a date to see a movie (called Song of Love) and later she announces that he may kiss her, even as she pauses to check herself out in her compact mirror. As they begin an affair, it's clear that what she knows of love she has learned from movies and songs. To escape their boring lives in Stockholm, they take Harry's father's small boat and head off to live on a lake for the summer. For a time, they live idyllically, but soon reality barges in: a jealous ex-boyfriend of Monika's shows up to make trouble, they run out of money and try to steal food, and eventually she discovers she's pregnant. In a reversal of the usual cultural narrative, it's Monika who rejects responsibility (and her relationship with Harry) and Harry who winds up taking the baby in. Considering this film's sexy reputation, this is in some ways an anti-erotic story. It manages to make romance—and sex—seem like a lot of work. Both lead actors are good—and Andersson in particular is quite attractive—and they carry the film through its ups and downs. There's about 10 seconds of female nudity, but generally an average television drama has more sexual content that this film has. Ultimately, this is a sad little movie that seems to say that we should hang onto the memories of our carefree summers while we can because they're ephemeral, and maybe bogus even while we're living them. [DVD]

THE DEMI-PARADISE (1943)

aka ADVENTURE FOR TWO

A rather weak stab at wartime propaganda, the sole purpose of this British film is to make the Russians, who were their allies at the time the film was made, seem likable. Unfortunately, the movie is too long and has a lead performance (by the normally reliable Lawrence Olivier) that belongs in a different movie. Olivier plays a Russian engineer who is sent to England in 1939 (pre-war) to oversee production of his new ice-breaker ship propeller. His first impression is that the British are a bland, depressing people. He stays with the shipbuilder's family and his harsh edges are worn off a little, largely through the development of his relationship with the shipbuilder's daughter (Penelope Ward) who falls for him. The middle third of the film is a comedy of manners as Olivier stumbles through an assortment of awkward social situations and begins charming people almost despite himself. Things peak at a historical pageant that Olivier finds to be evidence that the British are living in the past. Ward calls him out as priggish and conceited, he calls her out as hypocritical and heartless, and he goes back to Russia to keep working on the propeller, leaving things unsettled.  Two years later, with war raging and the Russians and British as allies, Olivier returns with new propeller plans and is impressed with British resolve in the face of German aggression. This time, the pageant (pictured at left) is given to raise money for Olivier's home village. Olivier changes his mind about the Brits and about Ward, though at the end of the film, he returns to Russia with their romance still up in the air.

Olivier is entertaining, but he’s a showboater here, using a comically overdone Russian accent, keeping his character at a distance from the audience, whereas the other actors are more naturalistic. Ward is vivacious but doesn’t bring much else to the role, so the romance remains tepid. In a large supporting cast, old pro character actors Margaret Rutherford and Felix Aylmer stand out, and I also liked Jack Watling as a handsome worker, comedian Leslie Hanson playing himself, and Edie Martin as an old lady who, suspicious of Olivier, gives Ward a copy of Crime and Punishment to read—during the war, she comes around to liking him (of course). Parts of this film are fun, even some of Olivier's performance, but the main problem is that, at almost two hours, it’s just too long. [TCM]

THE ANGEL LEVINE (1970)

Tailor Morris Mishkin (Zero Mostel) is at the end of his rope. An observant Jew, he thinks God has abandoned him: he's applied for welfare because of a fire at his store, his sickly wife Fanny (Ida Kaminska) has been practically on her deathbed for ages and shows no signs of getting better—or worse—and one afternoon, he witnesses a black man who has just snitched a woman's fur coat run into traffic, get hit by a car, and die. After his wife has another one of her attacks and Morris has called the doctor, he discovers the dead thief, Alexander Levine (Harry Belefonte), in his kitchen (Harry Belefonte) claiming to be an angel who is on probation and has until the next morning to help Morris regain his faith. As Levine and Morris engage in philosophical and theological debates (it turns out that Levine is a Jew), Levine also tries to re-connect with his girlfriend Sally (Gloria Foster) to show that there will be something good he's left behind before he has to leave Earth for the last time.

Though not as whimsical as THE BISHOP'S WIFE or IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, this is still in the tradition of fantasy movies about angels and faith, though ultimately it has a much more ambiguous ending and a cutting edge to its philosophizing. If we see Morris as a George Bailey figure, he doesn’t get much satisfaction in the end: his wife, who rallies in the presence of Levine, has a setback after Levine leaves; his money and faith situations are not resolved, and Levine himself can't get Sally to believe that he's got a new outlook on life. The big question for most viewers will be, is Levine an angel or a con man? Many critics are unhappy about the ending, in which [spoiler] Morris looks for Levine the next morning and is startled by a single black feather which dances about in the air just above his head. My initial interpretation: Morris had earlier commented that Levine didn't have wings, and in this moment, one could assume that he did indeed earn them. But I'll admit that the logic, if you will, behind accepting that ending is unclear. Unless I missed something, Levine never transcends his thuggish earthly outlook and never really brings Morris back to his faith, though it can be argued that Morris has never completely lost it, as he wears a yarmulke and kisses the mezuzah when entering his apartment. But of course, he could be simply going through the surface motions of his religion. I embrace the ambiguity even as I share the frustration that the film violates the conventions of its genre.

This is a very stagy film, based not on a play but a short story by Bernard Malamud; most of it is set in Morris' apartment with an occasional detour outside. The direction and cinematography don't let things get too closed-in; in fact, it's in the exterior sequences where things go awry—especially in a strange scene in which Morris watches from outside a drugstore window while Levine creates a scene so he can swipe a prescription drug for Fanny that Morris can't afford. It's an important scene, showing that Levine can't seem to come up with a miracle outside of his earthly criminal ways, but it's irritating, played out in silence except for an overblown musical score. The acting, however, makes this worth seeing. Mostel downplays for perhaps the only time he ever did on screen and he creates a character we care about. Belafonte, who I don't think I’ve ever seen as an actor, does even better with the angel, a flawed, human and rather sexy angel—or an idealistic, unhappy and sexy con man. Kaminksa, so good in the Holocaust drama THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (directed by Jan Kadar who directed this as well), is fine, as is Milo O'Shea—who usually plays Irishmen—as a Jewish doctor. Certainly not for all tastes, but a nice change of pace in the fantasy/religion realm. [TCM]

LIANE, JUNGLE GODDESS (1956)

The members of a German expedition in Africa (it's unclear what they're actually doing there) are sorry that Jacqueline, their doctor, is set to go back to Hamburg, mostly because she's the only female in the group. She has a bit of a crush on handsome, blond Thoren, but it's nasty old Keller who tries groping her. Meanwhile, Thoren is attacked by a native tribe and about to be killed when a nubile (and mostly naked) white teenage girl stops them. She seems to be the ruler of the tribe, and the next day Thoren runs into her when she swings, Tarzan-style, over a lake and drops in to bathe. Two of the other men in the expedition trap her in a net and bring her back to camp where the tribe attacks them but are driven off. She speaks no English, but when it's discovered that she is wearing a necklace with the letter "L" on it, it is eventually thought that she might be the heiress to a German shipping magnate named Amelongen—as a 2-year-old, the girl, named Liane, was lost and presumed dead in a shipwreck—so Thoren and Jacqueline take her with them to meet her grandfather and try to establish her lineage. In their way: Amelongen's slimy secretary Schöninck who is currently the heir and who tries his best to discredit Liane's claims.

This is presented as a jungle adventure, but only about the first half (or less) is set in Africa; once it gets to Hamburg, it becomes a typical "clashing heirs" melodrama, so if you're looking for a female Tarzan movie, this will disappoint you. On its initial release, this was advertised as "Adults only" material because Liane (Marion Michael) is topless for most of the African scenes. Michael is certainly attractive but it's a little disconcerting to realize that she was only 16 at the time. In most of the shots, her long hair covers her breasts, but not always. Aside from the few seconds of bare skin, and some shots of topless natives dancing, there is nothing else graphic or particularly adult about the movie. Hardy Kruger (pictured with Michael) is good as Thoren, and the only other cast member to stand out is Reggie Nalder as Schöninck, probably best known as the vampire in the TV-movie of Salem's Lot; his face, disfigured by burns, makes him perfect for the role of the almost Nazi-like sinister secretary. This was actually made and released in Germany in 1956, but wasn't issued in the States until 1959. [DVD]

NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS (1935)

One night as the well-off Lamberts and their friends are indulging in some postprandial relaxation, a series of explosions rock the house, but it's just the experiments of eccentric uncle Hunter Hawk (Alan Mowbray, at right). Most of his relatives can barely put up with him, though his young niece Daphne, whom he lovingly calls Daffy (Peggy Shannon), admires him. As it happens, Hunter has finally finished his latest invention: a ring that can turn people to stone, and can bring stone statues to life. He proceeds to turn the whole obnoxious family to stone, except for Daphne and Meg (Florine McKinney), the gardener's flighty daughter who insists that she’s 900 years old and has a crush on Hunter. Hunter and Meg head off to the Metropolitan Museum and bring to life the statues of several Roman gods, including Bacchus, Neptune, Mercury, and the Venus de Milo, and they all head out to experience, as the title says, the night life. Of course, the gods are rambunctious and cause much trouble before order is restored (via a trick ending).

This strange little fantasy is based on a novel by Thorne Smith who wrote a series of bawdy adult fantasies in the 30s; if he's remembered today, it's because of the movie adaptation of his novel Topper with Cary Grant. This is not another TOPPER, but it is fun, and about as bawdy as the Code would allow—both Mercury and Venus are brought to life naked or nearly so, though they are both immediately covered up. I must admit that it's difficult to judge the look and style of the film because the print I saw on YouTube was very murky—supposedly the film has been restored by UCLA but it hasn't been released commercially yet—and it ran at least ten minutes shorter than the IMDb running time. For a high-B production, probably intended as a second feature, the effects were OK, though the acting was nothing special; Mowbray is usually a welcome presence in a movie's supporting cast but he makes for a drab leading man, especially when he's supposed to be the love interest of a sexy woman almost 15 years younger than him. But many of the lines are amusing, especially when delivered drily by Mowbray's butler (Gilbert Emery). When Mowbray announces that his family has turned to stone, Emery says, unflappably, "So I see, sir." The next morning, he asks, "The family—should I give them breakfast or dust them?" When a woman sees the bunch of half-clad gods entering a nightclub, she says, "That's what we get for bringing liquor back." I'd love to get a chance to see a clean print of this. Even in this print's diminished state, it's cute, clever fun. [YouTube]

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]