CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1949)

In the 1480s, the Italian sailor and trader Christopher Columbus (Fredric March) is trekking through Europe with his son trying to get backing for a trip to prove that you can go around the (round) world and get to India by heading west. He leaves his son at a monastery for safe keeping and one of the monks gives him a letter of introduction to the Spanish court. King Ferdinand isn't impressed, but Queen Isabella (Florence Eldridge, March's real-life wife) thinks there is some promise in the plan to claim new spice markets and lands for Spain. However court noble Francisco de Bobadilla, concerned for his own interests, tries his best to scotch Columbus's plans, so years pass with no progress. Bobadilla gets his lovely young cousin Beatriz to romance Columbus to get him to stay in Spain, but the Queen sees through the plan and has Beatriz banished. Eventually, the Queen uses her own jewels to bankroll Columbus's trip. There's a brief swashbuckling mutiny but soon land is sighted, natives are met, customs are exchanged, and the land is claimed for Spain. By the end of his life, he has become an obscure figure, embittered by court intrigues, though he predicts that he will eventually be remembered long after the King and Queen have been forgotten. This is a bland, by-the-numbers telling of Columbus' discovery of the New World. A bigger budget—with better costumes and sets—and a livelier lead actor might have made this more interesting. March is OK but uninspiring, never coming off as compelling or larger-than-life as his character really should, making the movie feel like the story of a low-level bureaucrat or a whining dreamer. Francis L. Sullivan as the scheming Bobadilla almost upstages March, and it feels like Eldridge is doing a grade-B imitation of Bette Davis in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX. This is OK to skip. [Netflix streaming]

HAUNTED GOLD (1932)

This early John Wayne film is not only a fine example of the B-western but also of the mystery/horror western, a small but interesting subgenre. One night, a bunch of guys are sitting around in a ghost town saloon waiting for Ed to come back from an abandoned mine which is rumored to have a treasure in gold hidden somewhere. What comes back instead is his horse, riderless, with a note warning others to stay away, signed by The Phantom. One of the men, Joe Ryan, has a half-claim on the land, and arriving that night is the man with the other half-claim, John Mason (Wayne), with his African-American buddy Clarence (Blue Washington). Another person involved is Janet Carter, daughter of one of the co-owners; her father, a former owner of the mine, is in jail, supposedly framed by the Ryans, but she has been summoned mysteriously and is staying with Benedict, once the mine foreman. Also in the house is Benedict's deaf assistant, a creepy housekeeper, and some spooky figure whose eyes we frequently see peering into rooms from behind clocks and paintings. Ryan plots to get Mason's claim away from him, Mason plots to catch Ryan and his men in criminal activity, and someone seems to be trying to keep everyone away from the mine.

The word "horror" is misleading—this is more like an "old dark house" thriller in a western setting—but it does contain a handful of nicely atmospheric moments as it also gets in some hats-and-horses action. The young Wayne makes a nice light-on-his-feet hero, a little different from the slower and more stolid characters he became known for later. Much critical commentary has been made about Washington and his stereotyped comic relief role—at one point, a villain refers to his "watermelon accent"—but despite being eighth billed (far behind Wayne's famous horse Duke), Washington (pictured with Wayne) has almost as much screen time as Wayne, and most of his shenanigans are actually amusing rather than cringe-inducing. It helps that he has a deep, gruff voice, unlike the lazy, high-pitched voices that many black actors were forced to use in their subservient roles. He's also effective in getting Wayne out of some tight spots. Duke the horse gets to pull a couple of good stunts, kicking a man off a cliff and saving Wayne from a long drop into a canyon. Some of the lengthy final action scene is presented speeded-up and I'm not sure why. Interesting tidbit: the prop that became the Maltese Falcon in the 1941 movie can be seen on the heroine's organ. [TCM]

THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959)

One night in 1890s Paris, we see a man attacked on a foggy street, another victim of Anton Diffring, a sculptor (who creates busts of lovely young women) and a doctor; it turns out that he's over 100 years old, despite looking much younger, thanks to a gland transplant he gets every few years to stay young. Desperately in need of the operation now, he can get by for a while on a bubbling green fluid that he concocts, apparently made from bodily fluids obtained from people he kills, but he's at the point where he will start deteriorating for good unless he gets the procedure done. The older doctor who had always helped him is disabled and can no longer operate, so when Diffring crosses paths with ex-lady friend Hazel Court (pictured with Diffring), he tries to talk her friend, surgeon Christopher Lee, into doing the operation himself, eventually holding Court hostage to force him to help. This Hammer horror movie is based on a play, The Man in Half Moon Street, which was first made into a movie in 1945. The plot is predictable and the horror element here is at low boil as the film seems to retain the staginess of the play. Lee sleepwalks through his relatively unimportant part, but luckily Diffring is fine in the title role. The scenes involving the green youth-giving potion are effectively filmed, saturated in green; there are some moderately interesting philosophical discussions about eternal life; and a suitably horrific ending awaits, but it's a bit of a slog getting there. [DVD]

THE MAD GHOUL (1943)

George Zucco is a chemistry professor teaching a class about his theory that the Mayans had developed a poisonous gas which caused a "life in death/death in life" state in the people who were used as human sacrifices. After class, he asks student David Bruce to help him with his experiments involving that gas. It turns out that he has used the gas to zombify a monkey, and now plans to use herbs and a heart transplant to bring the monkey back, hoping to use the procedure on humans. When Bruce questions the morality of his activities, Zucco replies, "I'm a scientist—there is no good or evil, only true or false." A complicating factor is concert singer Evelyn Ankers; Bruce is in love with her, and though she likes him, she feels she has outgrown his attentions and is setting her sights on her sophisticated, exotic pianist (Turhan Bey). The slightly unhinged Zucco thinks that Ankers is dumping Bruce for him, so to make sure Bruce is no competition, he tricks Bruce into breathing in the zombie gas, then gets him to start digging up graves to gather up fresh hearts for his sinister work. A reporter (Robert Armstrong) figures things out and poses as a corpse to catch the ghouls, but things backfire a bit.

As other critics have pointed out, this B-film, though produced by a major studio (Universal), has the feel of a high-end poverty-row flick from Monogram or PRC, and that's mostly a compliment. The production values are skimpy but not slipshod, and the acting and writing are at least a notch above average. Zucco (pictured above in his creepy protective mask, with Bruce), as he often was in his B-roles, is the best thing in the movie, taking the proceedings as seriously as they should be, not camping around or chewing scenery and not sleepwalking through his part as the mad doctor. The rest of the cast is fine, even Bruce who many critics don't care for. Milburn Stone (Doc on "Gunsmoke") plays a cop. What I liked best about the plot is that, against expectations, there really is no sturdy hero here to save the day; Bruce becomes a zombie, Bey doesn’t get to do much except play the piano, and Zucco is the instrument of his own demise. A little-known solid B-horror flick. [DVD]

DEAR MURDERER (1947)

Eric Portman returns to England from a lengthy business trip to America, looking forward to reuniting with his wife (Greta Gynt) who has not been as faithful a letter-writer as he hoped. When he gets home, it appears as if she may not have been faithful in other ways; she's not there, and he finds love letters addressed to her from another man, the same man (Dennis Price) that he has seen pictures of her with in tabloid papers, out painting the town red. Portman goes to Price's apartment and begins an elaborate plot which ends with Portman killing Price and making it look like suicide. Of course, as these things will, his plot goes off the rails when his wife and yet another lover show up at Price's apartment before Portman can get away. There are more twists and complications that shout not be spoiled here. I don't think this is really noir, as some claim: Portman is never really sympathetic enough for us to think he's a basically good guy caught in a bad circumstances. He's very good in the role, but he's a bad guy. At one point, when Price realizes that Portman plans to kill him, Price lets him know that Gynt has had other affairs and notes wryly, "You can’t kill all of them"; we see Portman think about that and realize that he might well try. So it's not film noir but it is a somewhat Hitchcockian thriller with a good cast, especially Portman and Gynt, and a plot that is easy to follow but not so easy to predict. Jack Warner is a Scotland Yard inspector, and Hazel Court, who would achieve a level of fame starring in some of Roger Corman's 60s horror films, has a small role. (Pictured is Portman seconds away from strangling Price.) [Netflix streaming]

LOVE AND LEARN (1947)

Jack Carson and Robert Hutton are struggling songwriters (I'd say, stop me if you've heard this before, but then this would be a very short review); Hutton is ready to call it quits and head back to his Midwest hometown, but based on a lead, they give it one last shot and go to the Danceland ballroom to try and get an "in" with a big band leader. Martha Vickers is a socialite frustrated with her high-society life in general and her fiancé in particular, and after she decides to leave him, she heads to Danceland to get away from everything. Vickers pretends to be a dance hostess to get in and she hits it off with Hutton; he decides to stay in town and, to keep up the charade, she rents a modest apartment. Vickers pays a music publisher to take one of their songs, but due to a misunderstanding, the boys think that she's a notorious thief. More misunderstandings lead to Hutton leaving for home and Vickers deciding to go back to her fiancé, but thanks to Carson and his girlfriend (Janis Paige), a happy ending is in store. Yes, this is a predictable second-feature comedy with a little bit of music, but there are some pleasures to be had, starting with the women. Vickers, best known as Lauren Bacall's nymphet sister in THE BIG SLEEP, does a nice against-type turn here as a good little rich girl; Paige as the spunky sidekick is even better. Carson is fine, though Hutton (pitured with Vickers) is rather weak, especially when you consider how much better Carson's frequent partner-in-comedy Dennis Morgan would have been. Otto Kruger is good as Vickers' father, and Florence Bates and Craig Stevens are present in small roles. [TCM]

RETURN FROM THE ASHES (1965)

During the winter after Germany's defeat in WWII, a sad, emaciated woman (Ingrid Thulin) is traveling on a train to Paris. She seems completely oblivious to her surroundings; when a small child tinkers with the door and falls out to his death, she doesn't react at all. Her fellow passengers assume she's cold and unfeeling, but we see the concentration camp tattoo on her wrist. She's heading to Paris to see her husband (Maximilian Schell, pictured with Thulin), whom she hasn’t seen since she, as a Jew, was rounded up and sent to a camp five years earlier. Their relationship was not one of great passion: he was a penniless but handsome and charming chess player and she, a well-off doctor, was essentially his sugar mama. But now, she discovers that he assumes that she died. When they meet, he notices her resemblance to his wife and asks her to join him and Thulin's stepdaughter (Samantha Eggar) in a plan to claim her money, which neither one can get their hands on since Thulin's remains were never found. This might serve as the entire premise for a thriller, but here, Thulin "comes out" as herself to Schell fairly quickly. She gets back into her practice and claims her money and property; what she doesn't know is that Schell and Eggar are lovers, and might not be above murder to get what they want out of Thulin. This twisty thriller is very well acted by all three main cast members, and it's largely a three-person show, though Herbert Lom, as a friend and admirer of Thulin's, is also good, and his character is crucial to the climax. The concentration camp background is a bit of a cheat, as it ends up not really being important to the story. If you're a movie thriller fan, this will seem fairly predictable, but along the way, there are some interesting turns. At one point, a bathtub scene conjures up DIABOLIQUE, but the echo remains that just that. The glossy black & white cinematography gives the movie a noir feel—as does the fact that much of the action takes place at night. This underrated little mystery is well worth seeing. [TCM/DVD]

THEY CAME TO BLOW UP AMERICA (1943)

This WWII spy film is based on an actual incident, now known as Operation Pastorius, in which eight German spies snuck into the country to commit acts of sabotage but were arrested before they could pull any of them off. At the time the film was made, the details of the case were still considered secret so, as an opening disclaimer states, this is a total fictionalization. Carl Steelman (George Sanders) is a German-American who has disappointed his family by joining the Bund, on the surface a German social club but actually a pro-Nazi organization which seeks to implement Nazi ideology in the US. However, Steelman has actually infiltrated the group as a spy for the FBI. Reiter, one of the Bund leaders, is called back to Germany to attend classes on sabotage, but he is shot and killed in a government raid and Steelman takes his identity and goes to Berlin instead. He is so good at his espionage exercises, he is given command of an important mission: he and his men are taken by submarine to the New York coast to begin their sabotage. But Sanders runs into a few problems involving people trying to rat him out: Reiter's wife shows up in Berlin, and a friend of Steelman's family in the States inadvertently finds out about his status with the FBI. Though fictional, this is a good spy story and works well as wartime propaganda. Sanders is fine and pretty much has the show all to himself—the only other major characters are his FBI contact (Ward Bond, pictured to the left of Sanders), Reiter's wife (Anna Sten), and Dennis Hoey as a Nazi commander. The subplot involving Sten is compelling and it ends in a fairly unpredictable way. Also in the cast are Ludwig Stossel, Sig Ruman and Robert Barrat. [The Bund was a real organization; I just read a recent history of the Bund, Swastika Nation by Arnie Bernstein, and according to the author, Germany actually tried to distance itself from the Bundists, fearing they would do more harm than good to their cause.] [DVD]

MAN MADE MONSTER (1941)

In a very effective opening, a bus traveling at high speed careens off the road and hits a power line, electrocuting everyone inside—except for Dan McCormack (Lon Chaney Jr.), a sideshow performer who goes by the name Dynamo Dan the Electric Man, who is miraculously unharmed. Dr. Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds), an electrobiologist, theorizes that he may have a built-in immunity to electric shock from his many years performing tricks with electricity, tricks he calls "yokel shockers" that nonetheless involve him subjecting himself to short shocks on a regular basis. Lawrence's assistant Dr. Rigas (Lionel Atwill) sees McCormack as a perfect guinea pig to test his theory that given a series of electrical treatments, a man could be "produced" who would essentially live off of electric power; he would become invulnerable to pain and his will could be controlled by the giver of the electricity.  Unbeknownst to the kindly Lawrence, the Naziish Rigas subjects McCormack to increasing levels of electricity. The family dog, once very friendly to McCormack, starts freaking out in his presence, and soon Rigas has McCormack, whose head glows like a light bulb, in a rubberized suit, shooting electricity from his hands, needing to get his "fixes" of power from Rigas. When Rigas goads McCormack into killing the meddling Lawrence, McCormack is found guilty of murder, but when they try to electrocute him, he becomes superhumanly strong, escapes, and goes on the requisite monster rampage.

For the past twelve years, I have reserved October for reviewing overlooked or rarely-seen horror and sci-fi movies only, but last year I felt like I was hitting the bottom of the barrel, so this year that tradition is over. But for old time's sake, I thought I'd throw a handful of horror flicks into the mix. This is one of the more obscure Universal films of the classic era and it's a pretty good one. At times early on, it seems like a dry run for Chaney before he played the lead in the genuine classic THE WOLF MAN a few months later; like that movie's Larry Talbot, Dynamo Dan is a genial lug of a guy trapped by circumstances he can't control or understand. Talbot's fate seems more tragic, partly because Dan is not especially well developed as a character—he really only has one scene of dialogue before he starts to lose his humanity. He remains sympathetic but at a distance. There's an extraneous romance in the film between a reporter (Frank Albertson) and Lawrence's daughter (Anne Nagel), but they could be lifted out of story with little damage—Albertson is stuck with a couple of comic relief scenes though they are relatively painless. Nagel's there largely as someone to feel sorry for Dan and to be a damsel in distress at the climax. Hinds is fine as the good doc, and Atwill is gloriously mad, especially when he's decked out in his little black goggles as he gives Chaney his jolts. Nowadays, Dan's need for electricity seems to be a perfect metaphor for an addict's need for drugs, and Rigas's hope for a race of supermen needs no annotation. The effect of Chaney's electric glow is pulled off quite well. Chaney played a variation on this character in 1956's INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN but this is by far the better movie. [DVD]

VON RICHTHOFEN AND BROWN (1971)

As a maker of indie B-movies, Roger Corman has no peer. But when he made big studio, bigger-budget movies, he tended to stumble.  Like his earlier ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, this film had a million-dollar budget, almost double the budget of most of his American International horror films, but was not a hit at the box office. They're not bad movies by any means, but they lack something—maybe in the writing and acting, maybe the big studio gloss one expects with a bigger budget. This tells the story of Baron Manfred von Richthofen (John Phillip Law), the WWI German flying ace better known as the Red Baron. He begins as a raw recruit who does some hot dogging over a field chasing a horse, then barely pulls up in time to miss some trees; in fact, he lands with branches stuck in his wheels. Still, he catches on quickly and becomes top dog among the German fliers, feared and respected by the British. Meanwhile, Canadian pilot Roy Brown (Don Stroud, pictured) joins the British and gets a bad reputation when he refuses to drink a toast to Richthofen—the other fliers try to keep up the idea that, despite the carnage in the air, they are all gentlemen, not savages. When Richthofen's squadron is ordered to paint the planes to camouflage them, he has his men paint them bright colors so they'll stand out instead of being hidden, with his a bright red—hence, the Red Baron, and the name the men become known by, The Flying Circus. During one dogfight, Richthofen is seriously wounded and when he returns to combat he begins showing troubling signs of memory loss and confusion. After Brown leads the British on a surprise attack and manages to damage several German planes on the ground, German pilot Hermann Goering (yes, that one) retaliates, deliberately strafing British doctors and nurses, for which Richthofen calls him out. Eventually, Brown and Richthofen meet one-on-one in the air, and of course, there can only be one victor.

What this movie has going for it is its aerial battle footage; it is well-shot, exciting and believable (at least to this viewer who has never been in a dogfight). I can't pinpoint anything wrong with the lead actors; both Law and Stroud look their parts, though both also underplay just a bit—it might have been more fun with more energetic performances. Perhaps Corman was wary that the whole thing might slip over into camp, especially given the baby boomers' identification of the Red Baron with Snoopy. The supporting cast includes Barry Primus and Corin Redgrave, and I was surprised to see Robert La Tourneaux in a decent-sized role as a German pilot—he played the hot but dumb hustler in THE BOYS IN THE BAND and I guess I never thought of him as having any other screen credits (in fact, he only did one other film). Ultimately, this is worth seeing; it's the kind of movie that is good enough that one wishes it were better. [TCM]

ENGLISH WITHOUT TEARS (1944)

aka HER MAN GILBEY

In 1939, eccentric rich lady Margaret Rutherford heads off to Geneva for a League of Nations meeting to propose international laws concerning the safety of British birds. While there, a romantic comedy of errors begins: Penelope Ward, Rutherford's niece, realizes she's in love in with their handsome butler (Michael Wilding), but she meets cute with Claude Dauphin, author of a book called Love in Six Lessons. There's also a lovely translator (Lilli Palmer) whom Dauphin and his friend (Albert Lieven) flirt with. When war breaks out and Wilding joins the service, Ward declares her love, but he turns her down flat—largely, we assume, because of class distinctions—and goes off to war. A year later, Wilding, now an officer, stops by to visit his former employers, who have turned their house into a sanctuary for Allied soldiers, and has now decided he loves Ward—but she is no longer so charmed by him. She realizes what she liked about him when he was a butler was how cold and distant he seemed, but now that they're on a more level plain, he's lost his appeal. Also meeting up at the house, by accident, are Palmer and her two devotees. It takes a couple more years, but all the pairings eventually get sorted out. A cute comedy that benefits greatly from the presence of Rutherford playing one of her patented "dotty old lady" parts—though as far as I'm concerned, she doesn’t have enough screen time—and Wilding (pictured with Rutherford) as the unflappable butler who winds up being flappable after all. Ward is the weak link, but the supporting players, also including Roland Culver and Peggy Cummins, shine all the more. There’s a cute joke involving foreign-language speakers learning to pronounce "sesquipedalian" and "phantasmagoric." [TCM]

THE RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND (1960)

Jack Diamond, a good-looking young buck looking for easy money, and his tubercular brother Eddie are adrift in 1920s New York City when they see an attempted jewel robbery in which the crooks are gunned down on the street. Jack decides to try that theft for himself, so he picks up a young dance instructor named Alice who becomes an unwitting accomplice in the crime. He manages to snag the jewels but is caught and sent to jail. A year later, free on parole, he gets Alice to find him a job, but soon dumps her and, fascinated with the thug life, goes to Miami to try to work for famous gangster Arnold Rothstein; though Rothstein likes Jack's cockiness, he doesn't hire him, but lesser mobster Augie does. When Jack and Augie become the victims of a shootout, Augie dies and Jack, even though he had three bullets in him, survives, leading him to believe that he's invulnerable. Indeed, after Rothstein takes him on as a collector (and nicknames him "Legs") and he rises in his criminal career, he survives other attempts on his life. When Rothstein is killed, Jack is cut out by the other bosses and he goes on a destructive spree. He gets back together with Alice, but it's clear he doesn't care about her and is just using her. Eventually, when his brother becomes too much of a liability, he cuts him loose, and by the end, when Jack is on the run from a new crime syndicate that considers him a liability, he has no one to turn to for help.

This B-budget crime thriller has some good things going for it: glossy black & white cinematography by Lucien Ballard, a nice period feel, and a strong central performance by Ray Danton as Legs, who looks good with a constant snarl on his face. The film is a bit of a throwback to the Warner Bros. gangster movies of the early 30s in that the lead character is not sympathetic at all—he's basically a slick, handsome and dangerous sociopath, though he's not as vile as James Cagney was in THE PUBLIC ENEMY (or as Al Pacino would be in the 80's SCARFACE). It's pointed out more than once that Jack doesn't love anyone, and that winds up being his downfall as, by the end, he's alienated everyone who might have been able to help him. Karen Steele, an actress I was unfamiliar with, is good as Alice—in the beginning, she seems a little weak but as her character grows, so does her performance. Good support is given by Jesse White (TV’s Maytag repairman) as a gangster, Robert Lowery as Rothstein, Warren Oates as Eddie, a character who should have been developed more, Sid Melton as the obnoxiously giggly Augie, and Simon Oakland in a thankless cop role. The first half-hour, as Jack goes from nobody to somebody, is quite fun, especially the sequence of the failed jewel heist; the rest is inevitably a bit downhill but it's worth seeing. [TCM]

I LOVE MELVIN (1953)

Judy (Debbie Reynolds) is a movie star shooting a big musical number and chatting with fellow movie star Robert Taylor. No, scratch that: it turns out that we've been seeing the dream of a lowly chorus girl who hopes to be a star. Later that day in Central Park as she sings about finding the right guy, she bumps into Look magazine assistant photographer Melvin (Donald O’Connor) who is singing about finding the right girl. They collide, have words, and part. She gets pulled from the chorus of her current show to play a football (!) in a big production number, then Melvin finds her and tells her he could get her picture on the cover of Look. As they work together, they fall in love—bad news for her rich and handsome but bland boyfriend (Richard Anderson)—but when Melvin's boss (Jim Backus) won't use her picture, things head downhill. Of course, this being a colorful MGM musical comedy, a happy ending is in store. If you ever need a reminder that star chemistry alone isn't enough to carry a movie, this will do. I loved Reynolds and O'Connor in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN though technically, their chemistry was not with each other but with star Gene Kelly. Here, the two try hard and manage to strike a spark or two, but it doesn't help; the plot is lightweight and predictable, the songs are not particularly catchy, and the budget seems on the low side of the A-movie range. But Reynolds is low-key delightful and the production numbers are fun. There's Debbie being tossed in air like a football, O'Connor dancing on roller skates, a mini-"Broadway Rhythm" bit involving O’Connor, and a fantasy number with Debbie on stage with dancers wearing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly masks. Backus is funny, and there is sure support from Una Merkel and Allen Joslyn as Reynolds' parents. Not a classic but cute and colorful. [Warner Archive Instant]

LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (1950)

aka THE STRANGE ONES

During a beautifully shot nighttime snowball fight among teenage students, delicate blond Paul is hit smack in the chest by the dark, cocky Dargelos (whom Paul idolizes) with a rock hidden in a snowball. Paul collapses and is taken to a doctor who prescribes weeks of bed rest at home with his invalid mother and his older sister Elisabeth. Paul and Elisabeth, who seem unnaturally close, share a room and also share an odd "game" they lapse into at prearranged signals called "getting lost" that is never quite explained, except as an activity that keeps others at a distance, even Paul's good friend Gerard. Mom soon dies leaving Paul and Elisabeth alone to get even creepier, although their circle widens a bit. Elisabeth gets a job as a model and marries a rich American who promptly dies and leaves her his estate; Gerard harbors an unstated and unrequited love for Elisabeth; Paul falls for a model named Agathe who looks a lot like Dargelos. And to stir the pot more, all four wind up moving into Elisabeth's mansion where they mock up a room to look just like Paul and Elisabeth’s old bedroom. When Elisabeth gets jealous of Paul and Agathe, she starts pulling strings to bring about certain unhappiness for all.

This is often referred to as a Jean Cocteau film, though it was actually directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, with a script by Cocteau based on his novel, and with Cocteau narrating. It's beautifully filmed with nice use of light and shadow throughout, and the plot is interesting, but it falls down on a couple of points. I didn't find the acting as weak as some critics do, but there's no doubt that casting people obviously in their 20s or older in the lead parts is a liability. Paul (Edouard Dermithe) is attractive and rather ostentatiously passive, but he's too healthy looking to be someone put out of commission by a rock in a snowball. Renée Cosima plays both Dargelos and Agathe quite well—I didn't realize they were the same actor until I saw it on IMDb. Jacques Bernard is fine as the underappreciated Gerard, and Nicole Stéphane (pictured above with Dermithe), though far too old at 27 to be playing a teenager, is quite good as the strong-willed but messed-up Elisabeth. I liked the fact that the game the siblings play is deliberately left ambiguous, as are their incestuous leanings—and Paul's homoerotic attractions, though I kept hoping that Paul and Gerard would run off together. The music, mostly chunks of Vivaldi and Bach, is occasionally too intrusive. Generally, more interesting than compelling. [Criterion streaming]

BEDSIDE MANNER (1945)

aka HER FAVORITE PATIENT

Surgeon Hedy Fredericks (Ruth Hussey) is driving to Chicago and picks up three hitchhiking Marines on furlough, all named Smith, but warns them that they'll have to spend the night in her small hometown of Blithefield where she's visiting her father (Charles Ruggles) who, unknown to her, secretly hopes that his daughter will stay in town and set up practice there. On the street, she recognizes a man she used to know named Smedley and tries to strike up a conversation, but he insists he's not Smedley but test pilot Morgan Hale (John Carroll). In their "meet cute" scene, her attentions cause problems for Morgan's jealous girlfriend Lola (Ann Rutherford). Later, Hedy and Morgan meet again as Morgan waits for the Russian pilot he is supposed to meet with; when the pilot turns out to be a cute blonde named Tanya, Morgan is in even more hot water. When Morgan is injured in a nighttime flight test, Hedy stitches him up and decides to stay in town a couple extra days to make sure he's OK. The Marines named Smith are happy about that as they're out actively skirt-chasing. Morgan, in love with Hedy by now, arranges with her father to fake a complication (pantaphobia, the fear of everything, as fans of A Charlie Brown Christmas will remember), hoping that Hedy will hang around, fall for Morgan, and stay in town in practice with her father.

I love Ruth Hussey in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY but have not enjoyed her in much else; I'm pleased to report that she's in good form here in this comedy that borders on screwball. John Carroll, a serviceably handsome B-leading man (PILOT X, HIRED WIFE), is even better, handling both his frustration with and attraction to Hussey nicely. Ruggles is always a welcome presence in movies and he's not wasted here. Familiar face Frank Jenks (Dennis Morgan's buddy in CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT) is fine as one of Smiths, as is the cute Joel McGinnis who only made six movies before leaving Hollywood. A cute B-level romantic comedy. Pictured are Carroll and Hussey. [YouTube]

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]