SIREN OF ATLANTIS (1949)

French Legionnaire Andre St. Avit (Jean-Pierre Aumont) has finally returned to his Sahara desert outpost after being missing for months and confesses to having killed his fellow Legionnaire Jean Morhange (Dennis O'Keefe) while they were on a mission to find a missing archeologist who had an unusual idea: the legendary land of Atlantis was actually under the Sahara desert, the water under which it sunk having receded ages ago. In flashback to the mission, we see St. Avit and Morhange separated from the rest of the search party when a sandstorm hits; the two wind up under attack by armed natives and are taken to the Hoggar Mountains where the land of Atlantis does indeed exist, ruled by Queen Antinea (Maria Montez, pictured at right with Aumont), a beautiful woman with a voracious lust for handsome men. One problem: when she tires of their charms, she has them killed and encased in gold, to stand as statues in a kind of Hall of Former Lovers. St. Avit is picked by the Queen to visit her boudoir and soon he is in love; Morhange, though handsome enough to be future fodder for the Queen, figures out what's going on and plots with Tanit, one the Queen's handmaidens, to escape. When they are caught, Tanit decides to kill herself rather than face the death of the "slow fire" (in which people are lowered into a fiery pit in a manner reminiscent of the same kind of pit in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom). Morhange is kept alive, but when St. Avit assumes that the Queen has now adopted Morhange as her new boy toy, his jealousy leads to tragedy.

I have a lengthy backstory for this one. L'Atlantide is a French adventure novel first published in 1919 which has been adapted for the screen at least four times. The premise of the lost civilization of Atlantis winding up in the desert was a fascinating one to me in my youth, but I was never able to find one of the movies based on this story, and the book was out of print, at least in English. In the 90s, I found a VHS copy of the 1961 movie version, JOURNEY BENEATH THE DESERT, but the quality was so bad, I gave up 10 minutes in. One recent weekend, I happened by chance to come across this version on YouTube, in a beautiful print that I suspect was taken from a British DVD—the movie is not available on a region 1 disc. It's not a big budget film, but the sets are quite impressive, creating an appealing fantasy feeling; the lighting and cinematography help to create an effective mood of both unease and fascination. In fact, what I like best about this movie is its tone, a cross between the fantasy worlds of SHE (an exotic wonderland ruled by a cold woman) and LOST HORIZON (the film ends with St. Avit trying to make his way back to Atlantis despite the possible dangers he faces).

It helps that the acting is, if not stellar, more than adequate. Aumont is very appealing in the lead, O'Keefe (at left) almost as much, and Montez, though not a particularly subtle actress, flaunts her more exotic qualities quite nicely. Among the supporting players, Henry Daniell plays the Court Librarian with just a hint of gayness, Allan Nixon does a nice job as Lindstrom, a man driven to drink by his lust for the Queen, and Alexis Minotis is the embalmer, a former lover of the Queen who has had his tongue ripped out. The print looks complete, but there are some odd editing choices here and there. That same weekend, I found two other film versions of this story which I'll write up soon—and I've also since read the original novel in e-book form—but this is the one I found most enjoyable. [YouTube]

THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES (1956)

A fisherman is yanked out of his canoe and into the deeps by a rather silly looking creature, a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Cowardly Lion. When the body is found on the beach, it's covered with radiation burns. This is just the latest in a series of mysterious deaths in the area that folks are blaming on a phantom. Bill Grant is a G-Man sent to investigate; he runs into a suit-and-tie wearing beachcomber who says his name is Ted Baxter (yes, the unintentional laugh is the highlight of the movie) but really he's oceanographer Ted Stevens, working undercover for the government. (This strange bit of identity folderol seems put in just to use up a few minutes of screen time.) Both men want to talk to Professor King, an oceanographer at a local university who is up to something no good, coming home late at night, soaking wet, and hiding things from his nosy secretary, who finds them anyway. Also hanging around are King's promising student George (who skulks around in the dark with a spear gun), Commie spymaster Wanda (for whom George is working), and King's daughter Lois (who has little to do except be worried about her dad and get involved in a deadly dull semi-romance with Stevens).  Overall, this has little to recommend it except to the die-hard B-movie sci-fi fan.  The monster, seen in the first moments of the film, is ridiculous, and most scenes are made up dumb dialogue lamely delivered by people who seem like they'd rather be anywhere except in front of a camera. The exceptions are Phillip Pine, who isn't half-bad as the student George, the would-be Russian spy, and Vivi Janiss as the secretary; she seems like a community-theater actress, but she at least puts some energy into her role. This was one of the first movies from the company that became American International, home to Roger Corman for many years. [TCM]

END OF THE ROAD (1970)

At his graduate school graduation, Jacob Horner (Stacy Keach) gets his degree, then walks like a zombie through the celebrating throngs, goes to a train station, and stands on the platform in a catatonic state as train after train goes by. A big burly psychiatrist (James Earl Jones) who goes by the name Doctor D notices him and takes him to an asylum for some shock treatment, not with electricity but with startling multi-media (lights, film clips, sounds) one-on-one therapy. Soon he releases Horner who gets a job teaching grammar at a local university. He still goes catatonic at times—at one point, not even able to finish a casual phone conversation—but he slowly begins to fit in by "acting" the role of a "normal" college professor. One faculty couple, Joe and Rennie (Harris Yulin and Dorothy Tristan) takes him under their wing, but Joe turns out to be almost as damaged as Jacob, mistreating his wife and strutting around when he thinks he's alone playing with guns and acting like Hitler. Soon Jacob and Rennie are having an affair, Joe finds out, and when she becomes pregnant, only two options present themselves: Rennie's suicide or an abortion.

This film, based on a John Barth novel, is very much a piece of its time. The story it tells is (mostly) a recognizably human tale but it's told in an artificial, surreal way which keeps our emotional response a bit distant, and which ultimately makes it difficult to sympathize with anyone. Stacy Keach gives a very good performance, doing the best he can with a character we never really get to know—because he's really more a stand-in for the Alienated American of the 1960s. The frequent newsreel-footage sequences which interrupt the film, and which also appear during the Doctor's therapy sessions, make it clear that one of the movie’s theses is that insanity is a proper response to the times (see also KING OF HEARTS, ZABRISKIE POINT, M*A*S*H). But even though Keach is often in an affectless state, he has enough energy and charisma to keep us interested in his character's fate—which is left most unsatisfactorily up in the air at the end. Yulin is good as an unlikable character, and Tristan gives the most emotionally rounded, realistic performance in the movie. Jones (pictured with Keach at right) is problematic; he bravely goes balls-out as the doctor who may be crazier than his patients, but he suffers from Symbolism Syndrome worse than even Keach. Grayson Hall has a one-scene role as a teacher who briefly becomes Keach's lover, and M. Emmett Walsh and James Coco are visible as asylum patients. An interesting movie, worth seeing for Keach and Tristan. [DVD]

STREET GIRL (1929)

What this early sound musical lacks in technique and originality it makes up for in energy and acting. Mike Fall, Happy Winter, Joe Spring and Pete Summer make up a tight little jazz combo called the Four Seasons (get it?) and they're the big draw at a little café called the Beef & Beans. One night as they return to the large one-room apartment they share, Mike stops to help a young lady in distress. Fredericka Joyzelle, known as Freddie, an immigrant from the small European country Aregon, is fighting off an unwanted suitor and pangs of hunger when Mike finds her on the stoop to their building. He takes her upstairs and when the group finds out she plays the violin, they warm to her at once (even, eventually, the eternally scowling Happy), offering to let her stay with them. She becomes their manager and gets them a much better gig at the Little Aregon, and soon she and Mike are dating. But when Prince Nicholaus from Aregon visits New York and bestows a friendly kiss on Freddie in public, Mike becomes jealous. Soon, however, the two have smoothed things over, the band is the toast of the town, and the owner of the Little Aregon redoes his café into a fancy night spot and calls it Club Joyzelle in honor of Freddie. But the prince's plan to attend the grand opening makes Mike jealous all over again and he quits the band.

The predictable plot is about the only real negative here, and the fact that the stretching-out of the narrative makes the movie last about 15 minutes longer than it should have. Otherwise, this is pretty fun. The four actors playing the band—John Herron as Mike, Ned Sparks as Happy, Jack Oakie as Joe, and Guy Buccola as Pete—have a very believable rapport, and look like they're genuinely having fun playing music. I would have sworn that they were all playing their own instruments, but apparently the songs (written by Oscar Levant and Frank Loesser) are actually performed by Gus Arnheim and His Coconut Grove Ambassadors. Herron falters as the romantic male lead, which is partly the fault of the script which makes him a whiny little bitch, but the other lead, Betty Compson, is only fair, so we can concentrate on the solid performances of the supporting players. Oakie and Sparks are reliable pros, but Buccola, in a relatively small role, is fine—it's a shame he never made another movie. In addition to the band, there is also good work from Joseph Cawthorn as the café owner. There is interesting use of overlapping dialogue, which may have been a directorial choice, or may have been accidental as this was an early sound film, and the first one made by RKO. A little too long but fun. Pictured from left are Herron, Compson, Buccola, Oakie and Sparks. [TCM]

POSTAL INSPECTOR (1936)

The title of this B-movie does not lie: it's all about the exciting life of a postal inspector (Ricardo Cortez). And I'm only being mildly facetious—his line of work is made to look like it's just a little less thrilling than that of a detective or a spy. The opening of the film shows he's also a good citizen: on a small passenger plane trying to land in the fog, Cortez enlists the aid of a young boy with a harmonica and a famous singer (Patricia Ellis) to calm a crying child who is making everyone else nervous. At the airport, Cortez meets his kid brother (Michael Loring) who happens to be an old childhood friend of Ellis. Slowly, a mild romance begins between Loring and Ellis, though Cortez is sorry to hear that Ellis is singing at a local club run whose owner (Bela Lugosi) Cortez knows to be a slimy character. Loring, who works for the Federal Reserve Bank, lets it slip in conversation that he is overseeing the transfer of 3 million dollars in worn-out bills to be taken out of circulation, and Ellis innocently mentions that fact in front of Lugosi who then plots to steal the money from the mail trucks. The robbery is successful—with two postal workers killed in the hold-up—and the rise of ferocious flood waters helps to distract the law. Cortez suspects that Ellis had something to do with the crime, but he's busy trying to keep the mail going during the flood. To clear her name, Ellis and Loring try and crack the case, but Lugosi gets the best of them, and it's up to Cortez to save them even as he continues to battle the flood.

And that's not all Cortez does. Several times during the film, we see him dealing with disgruntled people who have been hoodwinked by unscrupulous companies using the mail system to send defective or fraudulent products. This film certainly makes the life of a postal inspector look heroic. This is no Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler parody (Ace Ventura, Postal Inspector?); it's dead serious, though when I tell you that this is almost a musical, you may wonder, especially when I tell you that one of the songs is called "We’ll Have Bluebirds on All Our Wallpaper." But the songs are in a performance context, though one insipid rumba number is sung by Ellis in the shower, and she's joined briefly by her maid (Hattie McDaniel)! But for an hour-long second feature, this is fairly watchable. Cortez is usually a reliable B-lead and he's fine here, though maybe not as dynamic as a younger actor would have been. Ellis is OK; Loring is promising but he didn't go on to a long acting career. Lugosi, of course, is Lugosi. The flood effects in the last scenes are nicely done. [YouTube]

WOMAN ON THE RUN (1950)

Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) seems to be a nice guy but a bit of an underachiever, especially in the eyes of his wife Eleanor (Ann Sheridan). A frustrated artist (their dog's name is Rembrandt), he works on department store windows and benignly ignores his wife, and she him. One night while walking the dog, he witnesses the murder of a man who was about to testify against a gangster before a grand jury, and sees the killer's face. The killer shoots at Frank but misses, and is scared away by the arrival of the police. When Inspector Ferris tells Frank he'll have to testify to the grand jury, he's frightened and goes on the run. Ferris goes to Eleanor for help, and in the beginning, she's reluctant because of how far apart the two have drifted, but as she learns things about Frank she didn't know—for example, that he has a heart condition and that he loves her more than he lets on—she becomes determined to find him, though not necessarily for the police. A reporter named Leggett (Dennis O'Keefe) charms his way into Eleanor's trust, offering to help her find Frank if his paper gets an exclusive on the story, so soon the two are looking all over San Francisco following Frank's trail, themselves followed by the police. Then, suddenly, there's a sneaky plot twist. Though the twist comes relatively early in the proceedings, I don't want to give it away here, but suffice to say that not everyone is who he or she pretends to be, and the search for Frank becomes complicated.

Film noir expert Eddie Muller claims this film, out of circulation for years, is the best overlooked noir around; I wouldn't go that far, but it is a solid urban thriller, with fine nighttime cinematography and excellent use of San Francisco locations, though some outdoor shots are clearly studio concoctions with rear projection. Sheridan is not the greatest actress—she often seems stiff and mannered—but I like her anyway; here, she gets more of a chance to "act" than in many of her heyday films in the early to mid 40s, and she's fine, hiding her trademark beauty and glamour under a drab coat and minimal makeup. O'Keefe, an underrated actor (pictured above with Sheridan), is good, as is Elliott in his relatively small role. Personal favorites Frank Jenks and John Qualen also appear. The final sequence at a seaside amusement park looks a bit like a dry run for the end of Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, though disappointingly the climax in which the villain gets his just deserts is not shown. Not a masterpiece but worth a look. [TCM]

DON’T GAMBLE WITH STRANGERS (1946)

On a cruise ship, slick card sharp Mike Sarno (Kane Richmond, pictured) observes a poker game and notices that the supposedly wide-eyed innocent Fay (Bernadene Hayes) keeps winning; he realizes she's fleecing the men, so he gets into the game and fleeces her. Later, she confronts him and asks for a part of her winnings back, and they wind up partnering, posing as brother and sister so they can double their gains. We learn that Sarno has a brother who owed a $4,000 debt to gambler Morelli and is in jail for embezzlement—he stole bank funds to pay the debt and was caught, though he managed to hide the money. Sarno tells his brother that he'll get the money and feed it a little at a time to his wife, but instead he takes the bulk of it for himself. Three more plotlines develop: 1) Sarno and Fay take on a long-term fleecing project on John Randall, eventually running him into near-bankruptcy; 2) Sarno starts romancing Ruth (Gloria Warren), who is dating Randall's son Bob (Peter Cookson) who works in the DA's office, making Fay jealous; 3) Sarno catches Morelli trying to cheat the patrons of his gambling establishment by faking a robbery, so he wrests control of the casino from Morelli. It should come as no surprise that Sarno, having made a few enemies, winds up dead, but who’s the killer?

This plot-heavy Monogram B-movie (not really a noir as some claim) should be more fun than it is, and I think it's that twisty plot that’s the problem. It’s easy to follow, but at 70 minutes, not much gets developed past the bare bones so there's little at stake for the audience in terms of caring about characters or situations. The acting is good, however, especially Richmond (who reminded me of a low-budget Jon Hamm), Philip Van Zandt as Morelli, and Charles Trowbridge as Ruth's guardian. For this to work as a film noir, we'd have to be more invested in the Sarno character; as it is, when he's killed, I didn't really care a bit. OK, but not very compelling. [DVD]

BATMAN (1943 serial)

In this serial, the first big screen appearance of the iconic superhero, wealthy Bruce Wayne (Lewis Wilson) and his teenage ward Dick Grayson (Douglas Croft) fight crime in the identities of the mysterious Batman and Robin. Here, they spend fifteen chapters (roughly 15 minutes each) fighting the evil Japanese Prince Daka (J. Carrol Naish, pictured at right with his thugs holding Batman) as he plots to take over the world from his headquarters behind a "Japanese House of Horrors" attraction. Daka has used a machine that can turn people into his unthinking, obeying zombies to trap Dr. Warren into helping him with his radium-powered ray gun. Warren's niece Linda (Shirley Patterson) goes to her friend Bruce Wayne for help, but he's an indolent playboy who always disappoints her. Of course, we see that in his secret identity of Batman, he's on the case. As in all serials of the era, each chapter ends with a cliffhanger of Batman and/or Robin in mortal danger, and each chapter begins showing how they get out of their predicament and continue to search for Dr. Warren.

As serials go, this is not bad, though there are several obstacles to current-day audiences' full enjoyment: Batman's costume is ill-fitting and a little shoddy at times (not to mention the occasional sweat stains); there is no Batmobile, just a plain old sedan; the Batcave is very small and its atmosphere consists mostly of small bats flitting around; being issued during WWII, its treatment of Daka is unapologetically racist. But there are positives for folks who are already serials fans: the cliffhangers are fun, as are the fisticuffs; there's a alligator pit; the "Japanese House of Horrors" is a nifty concoction, though not used as much as it could be; Wilson makes for a particularly shallow Bruce Wayne, much to the irritation of Linda; the thickly wavy-haired Croft makes for an athletic Robin; William Austin plays Alfred the butler as goofy comic relief, which is different from the usual approach; the scuba-head zombie invention (see picture at left with Shirley Patterson becoming zombified) is fun. For a couple of chapters, in an unusual development for a serial, Bruce Wayne takes on the identity of Chuck White, a small-time thug who comes looking for a job with Daka’s men. There’s also a backwoods prospector who enlivens a chapter. Generally, I’d say this is not the serial to start with if you’ve never seen one, but if you’re already a fan, it’s a must-see. In the mid-60s, at the dawn of the camp era and just before the Batman TV show began airing, all 15 chapters were shown theatrically in one showing as "An Evening with Batman and Robin" for audiences to laugh and heckle at. [TCM]

SO LONG LETTY (1929)

Letty (Charlotte Greenwood) is a wise-cracking dynamo who works at a Florida resort hotel as a beautician. Her husband Tommy is tired of his wife's constant ebullience and the fact that she's never at home to clean and cook. Their next door neighbors, Grace and Harry, have the opposite problem; Grace is a household homebody and he wants to live it up. One night, the couples decide to swap mates for a week, with the wives hoping it will make their hubbies appreciate them more. Meanwhile, Harry's rich uncle Claude (Claude Gillingwater) arrives for a visit with his two granddaughters who aspire to flapperdom; they first stop at the hotel where Greenwood's antics irritate Claude so much that he leaves and heads straight for Harry's. Complications ensue.

The above is not a chronological summary; the movie actually begins with Claude and his daughters tangling with Letty at the hotel then moves to the stories of the neighbors. Despite Claude's importance at the beginning of the film, he vanishes from the action for a quite a while and the focus is really on the mate-swapping. Although this is an early talkie, it doesn't really feel like one; it rarely feels stagy or awkwardly paced. Your tolerance for this, however, will depend on how you feel about the lanky, raucous Greenwood, who gets to do a couple of her trademark leg lifts—with a nice visual payoff at one point when her husband tries to imitate her and lift his leg over their gate. Patsy Ruth Miller (as Grace) and Gillingwater turn in so-so performances, but Grant Withers (pictured above with Greenwood) is a little better as the restless Harry. There are a handful of awkwardly placed songs, but it's not really a full-fledged musical. The wife-swapping is the most interesting element here, though a brief reference implies that they will not be swapping in the bedroom. A unique relic of the early sound era. [TCM]

I SHOT BILLY THE KID (1950)

It's July, 1878, and Billy the Kid (Don Barry) and his sidekick Charley (Tom Neal) make an escape from what turns out to be the last battle in the infamous Lincoln County War and take up life as outlaws. Later, they run across sheriff Pat Garrett (Robert Lowery), wounded by Indians, and Billy saves his life, which leads Garrett to go to New Mexico governor Lew Wallace and ask him to extend a pardon to Billy, as Wallace did to the other participants in the "war," in exchange for Billy giving up his guns. Billy meets with Wallace but turns down the offer and goes back into hiding, seeing his girlfriend Francesca when he can. Eventually, Billy is captured, escapes, and is hunted down by a reluctant Garrett, and is finally caught and killed at Francesca's house.

This is a drab and generally lifeless retelling of the Billy the Kid story. The biggest problem isn't the production, which seems to have been done on the high end of a B-picture budget, but with Barry, the actor playing Billy. The film claims to be faithful to history—it's framed by an older Garrett visiting Billy's grave—but it's a big mistake to have an actor who is almost 40 playing the under-21 Billy, especially when it's pointed out how young he is. It feels like Barry is trying desperately to channel Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy in his performance, but it's a low-energy attempt that fails, and Billy just seems tired and worn out from first to last. I liked Lowery as Garrett (pictured above), and Tom Neal as the sidekick—actually, Neal could have done a much better Billy even though he was almost as old as Barry. Most of the gunplay scenes are half-hearted at best. In case you couldn't tell, I don’t think there is much here to recommend this film, which is sad because the print I saw was sparklingly clear. [TCM]

HE WALKED BY NIGHT (1948)

In Los Angeles, an off-duty cop is heading home one night when he stops a man acting suspiciously in front of a radio store. The would-be thief (Richard Basehart) shoots the cop and runs to his car, but the cop lives long enough to ram his car into the thief's car. Basehart escapes on foot, and when the police arrive, they find a small arsenal and some Navy radio equipment in the trunk of the car. Basehart, who lives alone with just a dog, seems to shun people. He has a thriving business selling electronic contraptions to a retail dealer (Whit Bissell), but actually the devices he sells are stolen from others. Soon the cops are onto him and there's a shootout at Bissell's office. The wounded Basehart escapes, removes the bullet, and stitches himself up. He then goes on a crime rampage, holding up stores and making his escapes through the city's storm drain system. He remains an enigma to the police, and the sergeant leading the case (Scott Brady) gets so frustrated that he's ordered to take time off, but when a clue pops up, Brady returns and eventually leads his men on a stakeout of Basehart's apartment which leads to a tense chase through the L.A. storm sewer system.

This is often mentioned as a particularly good example of film noir, and it often has the look and feel of one, but I maintain it's more a particularly good example of the documentary-style police procedural. Robert Porfirio calls it noir because of the "completely alienated noir protagonist," but Basehart's character is not developed at all—although we learn a few facts about him, his personality and motivation remain murky at best. The cop (Brady) is fleshed out a bit more, but except for his frustration, he doesn't seem to fit the conflicted noir hero template. This takes nothing away from the movie, which is well made and tense, with an excellent central performance from Basehart who shifts between coldly calculating and sweatily psycho. The noir look of the film is perfect, with lots of light and shadow, courtesy cinematographer John Alton and uncredited director Anthony Mann who stepped in to help the credited Alfred Werker. Jack Webb has a supporting role and supposedly was inspired by this film to create his TV show Dragnet—this film is narrated but the cops have much more personality than the TV cops had. Recommended. [DVD]

SECRET EVIDENCE (1941)

David Harrison is leaving his law office to become assistant prosecuting attorney, and everyone is sad that his faithful secretary Linda isn't going along with him; instead, he proposes to her, and she says yes. But that night, her ex-boyfriend Tony shows up; he's just served four years for robbery and he's come to claim both Linda and the stolen jewels he left with her kid brother Jerry. He's particularly anxious to get the stash because his fellow thug Sniffy (whom we soon figure out is a cocaine addict) is after him to get his share. But Linda made Jerry hand the booty over to the police and put him on the straight and narrow path. That night Linda and Jerry visit Tony to try and put everything behind them, and so does Sniffy, who promptly shoots Tony, seriously but not fatally. Unfortunately, Jerry brought along a gun which winds up getting left behind, and soon Jerry is being sought in connection with the assault. David gets assigned the case and, though he is urged to recuse himself because of his connection with the family, he doesn't. Will he be able to produce proof that the shot didn't come from Jerry's gun—or will he tarnish his reputation before he has a chance to try even one case?

A par-for-the-course Poverty Row crime drama which could have used some beefing up in the story department; everything that happened in the past with Tony and Jerry and Linda is left maddeningly ambiguous, and a little more creativity by the screenwriters might have the made the characters more interesting. Instead, we don't really care much about the outcome of the situation for anyone, especially David (Charles Quigley)—who gets little screen time despite being the ostensible leading man—and Linda. Marjorie Reynolds (HOLIDAY INN) is OK as Linda, but the best acting comes from Ward McTaggert (pictured with Reynolds) as the villainous Tony.  Howard Masters makes a somewhat intriguing kid brother—it's hard to tell if he's giving a nuanced performance or just has no idea how to act. Not a waste of time, but not necessarily one to search out. [YouTube]

FASHION MODEL (1945)

There is trouble at the fashion house of Madame Celeste. One night, the obnoxious but rich Mrs. Van Allen keeps everyone past closing as she chooses a dress while insulting all the models and trying the patience of her milquetoastish husband. Stock boy Jimmy (Robert Lowery) is dating wholesome model Peggy (Marjorie Weaver), but when sluttish model Yvonne makes a pass at him, she and Peggy tangle. Later, when the Van Allens have finally left, Jimmy opens the dumbwaiter and finds Yvonne's dead body. There is no lack of suspects: Yvonne had caused problems for Madame Celeste and her husband Jacques, who is the real designer behind the Madame Celeste name; Yvonne was also dating the older, wealthy Mr. Davis who had given her a very expensive brooch that he now wants back; and because Jimmy was overheard telling Peggy he'd strangle Vvonne to get her off his back, he's the prime suspect. When Madame Celeste's husband is found dead in a delivery truck driven by Jimmy, Jimmy's arrested, but Peggy dresses up as his sweet old granny and springs him; together, they try to find the real killer.

You might not guess from that summary, but this B-thriller is primarily a comedy, and it throws everything but the kitchen sink at the screen trying to keep us amused. It works on occasion, especially near the end when Jimmy and Peggy, pretending to be mannequins, are put in a store window and undressed by an addled window dresser (see picture at right), much to the amusement of a growing crowd on the street. Lowery and Weaver make an appealing couple, and Weaver has a little more backbone than the average B-heroine. Tim Ryan is about average as the bumbling cop, and Lorna Gray makes for a nicely nasty Yvonne. I also enjoyed the short appearances of Nell Craig as Mrs. Van Allen. The mystery plot itself is fun with (for me) an unexpected twist in the identity of the culprit. Enjoyable B-fluff. [Netflix streaming]

TRIUMPH OF THE SON OF HERCULES (1961)

aka TRIUMPH OF MACISTE

This Italian muscle man movie is very much like all the others. We have a hero named Maciste who is referred to in the American print as a son of Hercules in order to grab the audiences that made the Steve Reeves Hercules films popular here. The actor playing him, Kirk Morris, at left, is appropriately muscled and a little more baby-faced that the average peplum hero, and he is exceptionally good at looking pained and sweaty during his torture scenes. The plot involves a wicked queen who is sacrificing young women to the gods, with muscled hero Maciste helping to lead a revolt.

What's a little unusual about this one is that it takes place not in Italy but in the ancient city of Memphis in Egypt. Prince Iram, the rightful but exiled ruler, sees a series of omens that indicate now may be a good time to try and topple Queen Tenefi (who we know is decadent because she takes milk baths and has doves fluttering around—not to mention the human sacrifices at the Mountain of Thunder) and when Maciste helps save Antea and her villagers from being dragged off to sacrifice, Iram enlists him to head off to Memphis and stop the sacrifices. A silk merchant helps sneak Maciste and his men into the city but then betrays them. Maciste is chained to two horses to be split in half, but after a good lot of sweating and muscle-bulging, the queen lets him go and uses magic to erase his memory and make him her slave (another plotpoint used in other peplum films). There is plotting galore by various factions, but given the title, it's no spoiler to note that eventually, Maciste regains his memory, exerts his muscles a few more times—I counted at least four separate scenes of Morris sweating and straining—and triumphs against Queen Tenefi, with some help from the exploding Mountain of Thunder. Generally predictable and padded-out in places, but no worse than average.  [Streaming]

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW (1966)

Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner, at right) is 19, a virgin, lives with his well-off parents, and works as a page at the New York Public Library; wearing roller skates, he zips around retrieving material from the basement and sending it upstairs in a dumbwaiter. His buddy Raef (Tony Bill) is much slicker and more sociable, and is always giving Bernard advice about getting out of his rut. Bernard's mom (Geraldine Page) is a rather nightmarish overly-protective type, and his father (Rip Torn), who is a department head at the library, is both stern and also not quite living in the real world. Mom and Dad decide to let him live alone in Manhattan in a boarding house run by the eccentric Miss Thing (Julie Harris), who is instructed by Bernard's mom to keep a close eye on her son's comings and goings. His dad's secretary, the sweet Amy (Karen Black), has a crush on Bernard but he's oblivious; he only has eyes for the mysterious blond waif Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman) whom he keeps seeing around the city. When he finds out she's an actress in a off-Broadway avant-garde play, he sends her a fan letter and she replies, initiating a relationship that, we can tell, won't last long, and it doesn't, culminating in an NYC street chase involving a Gutenberg Bible and a prosthetic leg.

This early Francis Ford Coppola film is mostly delightful, tricked out with some 60s style effects—hand-held camera, surreal subjective touches—that have dated but are not too irritating. At heart, it's a standard coming-of-age story and Kastner is perfect as the geeky bespectacled hero, who, in my eyes, is geekier when he takes his glasses off. Karen Black (at left) was, as far as I know, never again to play such a vanilla, mainstream role; she's young and lovely and totally right as the sweet girl who doesn't give up—though whether Bernard is worth the wait may be debatable as his character is far more acted-upon than active, and though he's likeable, his personality is left rather vague. Torn and Page are a little too caricatured, and Harris is your standard slightly nutty old maid, though I enjoyed the very handsome Tony Bill, and Elizabeth Hartman's take on the heartless breaker-of-hearts is just different enough to be refreshing. Also featured: Dolph Sweet as a cop who is sweet on Harris, Michael Dunn as an actor friend of Hartman's, and some footage from Coppola's earlier DEMENTIA 13 and Roger Corman's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.

One area in which the movie falls down a bit is in tone. It begins with lots of vaguely surreal touches, mostly dramatizing Bernard's inner daydreaming state. My favorite scene has him looking at racist graffiti that says, "N-----s go home"; he riffs on where home is, which is the heart, and on where the heart is (according to the Robert Burns poem, my heart's in the highlands) and sees the graffiti as "N-----s go to the Highlands," then imagines a merry band of African-Americans in kilts, dancing in Scotland. Yes, too much of this might have sunk the movie in leaden whimsy, but I could have used a little more. By the end, I suppose the point that is being made is that, in the climactic chase scene, his real life has actually become a bit surreal—though the last sequence of Bernard and Amy in a pretzel factory is just plain puzzling. If you don't have an aversion to 60s shenanigans, this is well worth a look. [TCM]

MYSTERY PLANE (1939)

In the fall of 1923, young Tommy Tompkins goes to see his hero, WWI ace pilot Brandy Rand, in a barnstorming exhibition, and manages to get Rand to visit him afterward and look at his scrapbooks of Rand's exploits. The pilot is clearly touched by the boy's devotion. Fifteen years later, Tommy, known as "Tailspin Tommy" for his daring in the air, is a pilot working at an independent airport run by Paul Smith. They're testing a device they hope to sell to the military that would automatically drop bombs over a target, and when Tommy and his sidekick Skeeter take the plane up, the device works, but when the plane malfunctions, Tommy has to pull it out of a, yep, tailspin to save the device, the plane, and himself. The Army brass is impressed, as is a group of crooks hoping to get their hands on the device to sell to the highest bidder. And they've snagged Rand, now an alcoholic mess, to help them. Tommy and Skeeter are shanghaied by the bad guys, and Tommy is shocked to find his former hero involved. Even worse, when Tommy's best gal Betty Lou is kidnapped, he may be forced to work with the villains.

Tailspin Tommy was a comic book character who was the star of a couple of serials in the early 30s, and who was brought back by B-studio Monogram in four short films, all in 1939.  The later DANGER FLIGHT is straightforward kiddie matinee material, with Tommy the head of a boys' club. This one is a little less aimed at kids, and despite the poor reviews this film has on IMDb, I found it to be fast-paced and enjoyable. John Trent is the all-American straight arrow hero and manages not come off as an insipid drip; Milburn Stone (pictured above to the right of Trent) is a notch above the usual comic sidekick; Marjorie Reynolds is serviceable as Betty Lou; best is George Lynn as Brandy, who makes his character very sympathetic. There are some good ass-whooping fisticuffs at the climax. [DVD]

SECRET OF THE PURPLE REEF (1960)

Set in the Caribbean, this film begins with a priest giving us some plot exposition via a melodramatic eulogy for sailor Robert Christopher who was declared dead when his ship, the Cloud, vanished mysteriously at sea. His older son Mark (Jeff Richards, at left) has returned to the islands to help his younger brother Dean (Richard Chamberlain) get to the bottom of the situation, as much-needed insurance money is being withheld. The brothers talk to Tom Webber (Peter Falk), an unsavory troublemaker who was the last person to see Christopher alive; Tom's own ship, the Dagger, foundered at Purple Reef and the Cloud picked he and his men up and dropped them off on shore, never to be seen again. At least that's the story Tom tells; Mark and Dean don't quite believe him, and, along with old family friend Tobias (Robert Earl Jones, father of James Earl), the more they start digging, the more they become sure that foul play was involved.

Just after I discovered the charms of 50s B-actor Jeff Richards in ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN, this movie appeared on Fox Movie Channel so I felt compelled to watch it, even though it was a widescreen film that Fox aired in a typically awful pan-and-scanned version. The film itself is no great shakes, though it's watchable—faint praise, indeed. Frankly, the biggest obstacle to enjoyment is the MST3K "rock climbing" problem (when MST3K ran Lost Continent, they made fun of the lengthy scenes of men climbing rocks, undoubtedly there to pad out the running time); there are endless shots of Richards and Chamberlain buzzing through the Caribbean in a small motorboat. I'm sure the actors had a good time, but I got bored by the second one of these clips, and there are several. Also, as reviewer Dinky4 notes on IMDb, the film wastes the physical assets of the two actors—for a movie set in the Caribbean, it's a bit of a shock that they never take off their shirts, though they get their pants wet a lot. Chamberlain (with Richards at right) has little to do but follow Richards like a puppy dog, so the movie rises and falls with Richards, who is in almost every frame. I enjoyed his presence, but he seems a bit bored with the proceedings. The potential love interest, played by Margia Dean, comes off as a second-rate Suzanne Pleshette; in fact, I frequently wished that Pleshette had been cast, as I'm sure her more passionate performance would have kicked Richards into gear a bit more. British actor Terence de Marney is fine as an old drunk who may hold the key to the mystery. The score is a combination of traditional orchestration and some jaunty steel drum music that sometimes feels inappropriate over some somber scenes. Pretty much for Richards and/or Chamberlain fans only. [FXM]

ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN (1959)

Thanks to DVDs and Turner Classic Movies, I have caught up in recent years with B-movies of the 50s and early 60s, and one thing I've learned is this: if the title promises voluptuous scantily-clad women, there will also be at least one hunky scantily-clad man present. That's the only reason I watched this little flick and I was not disappointed. It even works fairly well on its own as a low-budget cross between Gilligan's Island and Forbidden Planet. Radio journalist Jeff Richards and pilot John Smith are flying to Australia for a conference when their plane loses both an engine and radio contact at the same time. They head for a small island when they hear a voice over a loudspeaker warning them away. Smith makes an emergency landing on the beach anyway, and the two are met by a kindly-looking older man (Alan Napier) who reluctantly agrees to let them stay until they can fix their plane. Much to the delight of Richards and Smith, Napier has three lovely daughters (Mercuria, Venus, Urana) who have been raised in isolation on the island—luckily, they have managed to master the basics of modern hair style and make-up.

Between chatting up the young women and working on the plane, Richards and Smith (pictured above) discover that Napier is a former atomic scientist who regretted his role in the creation of the bomb and disappeared to get away from the world. And yet, in the movie's biggest plothole, he is still working with uranium—thanks to solar power panels that power everything in his island home. When Napier realizes that Richards will tell the world about his hideaway, he destroys their plane with a hand-held flamethrower and manages to drive away a search plane, so the guys start building a raft in secret, with help from the daughters, all of whom develop little crushes on the men. In the end, the flamethrower plus the uranium equal trouble, leading to a nuclear explosion. Not to worry: everyone survives, Napier sees the error of his ways, and an Air Force plane takes them all back to civilization.

There is potential here for a decent sci-fi adventure film, but I'm guessing the low budget put the kibosh on any effective special effects—the few that are present are not very special. The disillusioned scientist and his daughters are right out of Forbidden Planet, and the homemade cave in which they live is pretty cool, but there is little logic in any of the relationships, nor consistency in character. Yes, I admit it, I stayed for the whole thing because of the two hunks. Richards is dark, beefy and hairy; Smith is blond, slim and smooth. I am far from the first reviewer to notice that the two men do seem more taken with each other than with the girls. They both go a little ga-ga for the innocent babes, but the only pressing of flesh is during massages; Venus starts in on Richards, but Smith finishes him off, so to speak. Napier (Alfred on TV's Batman) is OK but the three women are pretty much interchangeable except when Urana, the youngest (Diane Jergens), acts like a brat. It's difficult to wholeheartedly recommend this, but there is something almost cutely goofy about it that makes it memorable. [TCM]

SECRET AGENT X-9 (1945 serial)

This 13-chapter serial is set on Shadow Island, off the coast of China, the last area of neutrality in the Pacific War theater. Lucky Kamber runs a tavern/gambling joint called the House of Shadows where spies of various persuasions frequently cross paths. Kamber is friendly with Nabura, a Japanese "dragon lady" who is in charge of broadcasting propaganda from Lynn Moore, an Australian Tokyo Rose who sends dispiriting messages to Australian troops. However, Lynn is actually working for the Allies, sending coded messages in her broadcasts to Allied Command. Into this hornet's nest comes Phil Corrigan, aka Secret Agent X-9. His mission: to find out what's behind the secret Japanese project known as "722." We find out right off the bat that it's a chemical formula which, when mixed with distilled water, becomes a cheap fuel that could help the Japanese gain a distinct advantage in the war. But the Japanese don't actually have the formula; they need to get it from an American professor, so they plot to hire an agent to have plastic surgery done so he'll look like the professor, head off to America, and steal the formula. X-9 is onto them, they're onto X-9, and Kamber is stuck having to maintain official neutrality as spies from both sides run rampant.

This spy story with echoes of CASABLANCA in the setting and characters starts out as a fast-paced, entertaining thriller, but once all the plot threads are laid out—around Chapter 4—a creeping repetitive numbness sets in as the filmmakers seem to be simply marking time until they can get enough chapters to ensure a good run at weekend matinees around the country. Part of the problem is that everyone seems to know what everyone else is up to, but they act like they don't.  Also, despite the set-up of interesting characters, few of them get fleshed out in any way that would make us truly like or dislike them. Lloyd Bridges makes a fun and breezy hero as X-9 and Keye Luke (pictured with a gun at right) is fine as his sidekick. Sadly, for the most part, they are the only interesting actors in the whole thing. Nabura, who is in the serial as much if not more than X-9, should be either creepily sinister or campy fun, but Victoria Horne gives a disappointingly monotone performance, with eyes aimed down at the floor almost the entire time. Cy Kendall, usually a welcome presence as a heavy in B-films of the 40s, isn't given much to do as Lucky Kamber, who spends most of the serial playing X-9 and Nabura against each other, hoping for a big payoff for himself no matter which side wins in the end; Jan Riley as Lynn—who somehow gets top billing above Bridges in the title role—is flat-out amateurish.

I enjoyed Nabura's two main henchmen, the German Bach (George Lynn) and the Japanese Takahari (Clarence Lung), both of whom I would steer clear of in a dark alley. There are two characters who appear in every chapter doing the exact same thing: Papa Pierre (Ferdinand Munier) is a landlord who listens in to X-9's conversations, and Solo (Samuel S. Hinds) is an old man who sits at the bar playing tiddlywinks. Both characters do become more interesting by the last couple of chapters—in fact, the last two chapters are quite good, though it's a bit of a slog getting through 3-1/2 hours to that last half-hour. The cliffhangers are generally fun—a truck going off a cliff (a literal cliffhanger), a ship blowing up, a room in which the floor slides back to reveal a pit with swords and knives sticking up. And I like that one of X-9's better tricks from early in the serial is repeated to even better effect at the end. Pictured at top are Horne, Bridges and Kendall. [DVD]

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

Two young men, identified in the credits only as the Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson), appear to do nothing but race their tricked-out '55 Chevy for pocket money. Starting in California, they hit the road heading east and have occasional encounters with the middle-aged driver of a yellow Pontiac GTO (Warren Oates), who is also heading east, picking up a variety of hitchhikers along the way. Oates, who acts like he's got something to prove, challenges Taylor and Wilson to a race to Washington, DC, with the winner getting the loser's car as a prize. Oddly, the men end up meeting each other frequently along the way, sometimes clashing, sometimes bonding.  A hitchhiker, called the Girl in the credits (Laurie Bird), hooks up with both Wilson and Taylor before giving Oates a shot, but ultimately in Arkansas, she leaves all three for a motorcyclist. And that's about it for plot. In fact [spoiler], the movie ends before any of them make it to Washington.

The phrase "existential road movie" is invariably used to describe this film, and that's exactly what it feels like. On some level, this is a character drama, though we don't get very far under the skin of any of the characters with the possible exception of the GTO driver, whom we discover is an insecure man who continually makes up fictitious stories about himself. Early on, he says he's left his wife and family to go on the road, but by the end, we realize it's possible and even probable that he made that up, too. By the last scene, Oates has even taken on the lives of Taylor and Wilson when he tells a hitchhiker that he took a '55 Chevy and turned it into a prime racing car. The director, Monte Hellman, deliberately picked non-actors for the rest of the primary roles; Taylor is flat and boring, delivering his lines like an amateur, and Bird isn't much better, but Wilson (at right), a founding member of the Beach Boys, is very good. He doesn't necessarily "act" more or better than the others, but he always looks like he's in character, and like his character might actually have an interior life. Harry Dean Stanton, early in his career, has a memorable cameo. Though there's not a lot to this movie, it kept me interested, and visually it is often gorgeous. [DVD]

ROPE OF SAND (1949)

Paramount really wanted this to be another CASABLANCA. The cast includes Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains, with Rains playing a rather amoral character who winds up being helpful to the hero just as his Captain Renault character was; some of the action is set in an exotic café that looks like Rick's; there are ceiling fans, gaming tables, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, an African setting, and a character named Renault, though in this case, a female. But calling attention to Casablanca does this film no favors, even though it's a fairly well done action melodrama in its own right. Diamanstadt in South Africa is basically a company town for the Colonial Diamond Company, which owns acres and acres of desert land rich in diamonds. Many people are tempted to trespass in the hope of finding loose diamonds in the sand, but they are always caught and punished by police chief Vogel (Henreid). Mike Davis (Burt Lancaster) is a safari guide for tourists, and when Ingram, one of his clients, runs off into the restricted territory, Davis goes after him. Ingram discovers a handful of diamonds but starving and dehydrated, dies when taken back off the land, and Davis refuses to tell Vogel the spot where the diamonds were found, despite a beating. Davis is unable to get work, and eventually comes back to Diamanstadt, intending to go back and claim the diamonds that Ingram didn't get. But still standing in his way is Vogel.

Rather than Casablanca, this really calls to mind TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, though this film is not as rich in acting or moral ambiguity. Lancaster is a solid lead, sort of an anti-hero, though cleaned up to be a full-fledged hero by the end, and Henried is more effective here as a sadistic villain (torturing Lancaster in the picture above) than as a suave but passive hero in Casablanca. French actress Corinne Calvet takes Ingrid Bergman's place as the exotic heroine, and she's quite good as a tart hired by a diamond company supervisor (Claude Rains) to get information out of Lancaster. Lorre is a weasely little fellow who pops in now and again, and Sam Jaffe is an alcoholic doctor whom both sides try to use to their advantage. There is eye candy in the person of the handsome John Bromfield as one of the diamond company guards. The film is a little slow getting going as all the story parts are put in place, but a vicious fight in the desert between Lancaster and Henried near the climax is quite exciting, and it's fun to see how all the just desserts are arranged. [DVD]

WILD ON THE BEACH (1965)

There's this college, see, and it's near a beach. The college is so overcrowded that there's a housing shortage, and students who can't find places to live must disenroll. Handsome Adam (Frankie Randall) is renting a nice beach house from his absent buddy Skipper, and he's decided to get a license from the college so he can legitimately rent rooms to his friends. But guess what? Skipper's sister Lee (Sherry Jackson) shows up to claim the house for herself, though her ownership won't become legal for another week. So Adam and his buddies compete with Lee and her buddies to get the official license, in the meantime agreeing to split the house (girls in the bedrooms, boys in sleeping bags in the living room) while having to hide the co-ed situation from the college dean and his bumbling assistant.

Though this movie has a couple of stray charms (the handsome Randall, some decent musical performances and some ass-wiggling dancers), beware if you're expecting anything like an Annette & Frankie movie. Despite the title—and the presence of an actor named Frankie—there is very little wild going on, and, quite disappointingly, nothing happens on the beach except for the opening credit sequence and a fully-clothed beachside walk. This is Randall's only major film role—he later had a singing career—and while he's no great shakes, he's adequate and nice looking. I remember Jackson as the younger daughter in the Danny Thomas TV show Make Room for Daddy and she's by far the most professional actor here, with the possible exception of Russ Bender who plays a record producer neighbor who gets the kids in trouble by complaining about their noise, then gets them out of trouble at the end when he volunteers to let the boys live in his fancy beach house. [Oh, dear, I forgot to say "spoiler."] Justin Smith has the comic sidekick role of the dean's assistant, but Smith seems to have no facility for humor and looks embarrassed whenever he has some slapstick business, which is most of the time he's on screen. One of the boys, played by Marc Seaton, is a hunky bodybuilder whose character name in the credits is Jim Bench. For me, the brief scene in which Seaton walks around shirtless (pictured at left) is just about the highlight of the movie.

The musical performers, mostly filmed in a club setting, are worth mentioning. This movie earns a small historic footnote for featuring the first film appearance of Sonny & Cher, performing "It's Gonna Rain"; not one of their best songs, but still, it's fun to see them before they made it big—the movie was released just as "I Got You Babe" was hitting the charts. Someone named Cindy Malone does an echo-drenched ballad called "Run Away from Him" (the echo effect actually being a minor plot point), and Randall does a couple of OK songs, but best of all are the songs by The Astronauts (pictured top right), a surf band who, though never having a major hit, still had a decent career. Among their tunes is a fun novelty song called "Little Speedy Gonzales." The movie tries to keep your attention—there's a guy who has a dozen reel-to-reel tape decks wired into a house-wide intercom, two friends of Jackson's who are aspiring singers, and the gimmick of the "Iron Curtain," a chain that separates the two halves of the house which blares out a loud announcement about being violated when someone unhooks it. But it's a fairly tough slog, mostly because the director seems to have known nothing about comedy. [FMC]

THE SILVER FLEET (1943)

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, shipyard manager Ralph Richardson is called in by the Gestapo and told by Nazi officer Esmond Knight to continue working on submarines which were being developed for the Dutch Navy which will now be repurposed for the Germans. Richardson is reluctant to do so, fearing he will be seen by his fellow citizens as a quisling, a traitorous collaborator, but then he realizes he could actually do some sabotage work from the inside, so he agrees to stay on and work on the subs. He takes on a secret identity using the name of Piet Heim, a 17th century Dutch naval hero who broke the Spanish "silver fleet" and spreads resistance messages using a "PH" symbol. His idea works, sparking an underground movement, but because he tells no one what he's doing on the sly, Richardson and his family become isolated in town, snubbed socially and having quisling "Q"s chalked on their front door. He masterminds a plan to have shipyard workers smuggle arms aboard one of the subs on its test run, and the men manage to take over the sub and sail it to England. In order to keep the trust of the Germans, he foils an attempt at shipyard sabotage, and then decides to risk his own life to take out a number of Nazi bigwigs when he gets the opportunity to travel on one of the submarine trials.

As WWII resistance movies go, this one, which has kept a low profile over the years, is quite good. It doesn't have many exciting action setpieces, like some of the better-known films (EDGE OF DARKNESS, THE NORTH STAR, COMMANDOS STRIKE AT DAWN) nor is there any sentimental scene of celebrated self-sacrifice (THIS LAND IS MINE, THE MOON IS DOWN), mostly because the hero remains anonymous to most of the townspeople. But the scenes of sabotage are, if not thrilling, at least tense and well staged, as is a scene later when a resistance member comes to Richardson's house while some Nazi officers gather there for dinner. Richardson is appropriately low-key, leaving Esmond Knight (pictured above to the left of Richardson) to steal most of his scenes as the belligerent Nazi. Googie Withers doesn’t get much to do as Richardson's wife, but the large supporting cast is fine, though no one really gets to shine. The takeover of the German sub is based on an actual incident, though the rest of the story seems to be fiction. I'm a sucker for these underground resistance movies, and this is definitely one of the best. [DVD]

ALLOTMENT WIVES (1945)

During World War II, a particularly heinous racket was being run in which an unscrupulous woman would marry a GI in a hurry while he was in town on a furlough only to collect his domestic allotment money from the government. Even worse, she would marry several of them and collect all their allotments, splitting the money with the head of the racket. As the war winds down and fraudulent claims are being racked up, an army colonel who was a journalist before the war (Paul Kelly) is assigned the task of breaking the ring. Kelly poses as a reporter working on a story about the racket and is present in a bar to see one of the "allotment wives" get busted as she is about to lower the boom on a young GI. While there, Kelly meets Kay Francis, beauty salon owner and manager of a canteen for soldiers; unknown to Kelly, Francis is also the head of the racket. She cozies up to Kelly to keep him off her trail, but has to dirty her hands to deal with some internal problems in her organization. Soon, however, another big problem comes her way: her teenage daughter (Teala Loring) shows up fresh from boarding school and ready for some GI flirting of her own. Finally, Francis has to deal with the arrival of an old friend (Gertrude Michael) who's not above trying a little blackmail so she won't spill the beans about Francis' business to her daughter.

Some consider this a film noir, and I guess I can see that Francis (pictured with Michael) come off as a moderately conflicted central character, but it doesn't really have the look or feel of a noir. Instead it's a cross between a gangster film and a "women’s melodrama" like IMITATION OF LIFE or MILDRED PIERCE (without the glossy look or showy acting of PIERCE). This is one of Francis' last movies; by this time, she was at the Poverty Row studio Monogram, a long way from her high glamor days at Warners. But, in an ahead-of-her-times move, she struck a deal there not just to act, but produce. Her Monogram films look a little shabby, and they could be better scripted, but she keeps her head high and remains worth watching. Another plus is the presence of Otto Kruger as her trusted associate. Paul Kelly, though nominally the hero, doesn't have much to do, getting largely shunted aside when the daughter shows up. The title conceit is interesting, but even that (which apparently did happen occasionally) is almost forgotten by the end. Mostly for Kay Francis fans. [Netflix streaming]

FOURTEEN HOURS (1951)

On St. Patrick's Day morning, bellboy Frank Faylen is on a room service call at the Hotel Rodney; he brings in the cart, then turns around to find the guest (Richard Basehart) gone: he's climbed out on the ledge and is threatening to jump. A lowly but friendly traffic cop (Paul Douglas)—Irish, of course—is the first one on the scene, followed by his brusque superior (Howard Da Silva) who is irritated when he finds out that Basehart will only talk to Douglas. As police, fire trucks, and crowds congregate below, Basehart, seemingly a mild-mannered fellow, won't say what the problem is, but soon a psychiatrist (Martin Gabel) theorizes that he has mommy issues, and when his parents show up, we can believe it: Mother (Agnes Moorehead) is shrill and overbearing, and Father (Robert Keith) is passive and a drinker. Gabel thinks that Mom didn't really want Basehart and unconsciously led him to dislike his father. They soon find out that Basehart has recently broken up with his lovely and wholesome girlfriend (Barbara Bel Geddes) after he told her he could never make her happy. As all these threads present themselves, the day turns into night and Basehart is still on the ledge.

First off, despite Fox's publicity, this is in no way, shape or form a film noir: most of it takes place in daylight, and almost every scene is set either on the ledge or in the hotel room. The hero, the cop, is not a dark and conflicted figure; Basehart, who might be seen as a kind of noir anti-hero, is not fleshed out at all—we never find out what his problem is, though of course now we can fill in the blanks that they couldn't make plainer back then: his mom has made him gay. Still, it's a nice, fairly taut thriller, given the lack of what we would call "action." At one point, Basehart is talked back into the room, but a crazy preacher scares him back out on the ledge. He almost loses his footing a couple of times, and the fairly abrupt ending is tense. Given he has little to work with, Basehart (pictured) makes the character memorable, and Douglas is very good as the average-Joe cop who becomes invested in saving Basehart. The first several minutes of the movie, as Faylen enters the room and Basehart winds up on the ledge, have no dialogue, and the first human sound is a woman's scream from the streets. There are some peripheral bystanders on the ground: Grace Kelly, in her first movie role, plays a woman heading to her lawyer to finalize a divorce; Jeffrey Hunter (in only his second credited role) and Debra Paget are two strangers who make a romantic connection during the hubhub. Despite a disclaimer at the beginning of the film, this actually is based on a real incident from some years earlier. [FMC]

ARE YOU LISTENING? (1932)

A strange little movie about the goings-on at radio station WBLA. The title comes from a top-of-the-hour time announcement: "At the tone, the time will be 9:00. Are you listening?" Bill (William Haines) is the glib, likeable writer of a popular soap opera. He's married to Alice (Karen Morley), a whining shrew who says she'll divorce him only when he has enough money to pay her the alimony she thinks she deserves. Meanwhile, he's seeing Laura (Madge Evans), an actress at the station. She lives with her sister Sally (Anita Page) who's a gold-digger; when Laura reprimands her for her late hours, she replies, "The bloom's got to be rubbed off sometime—might as well be when you’re young enough to enjoy the rubbing." After various tribulations, Bill gets fired because his writing shows that he's lost his sense of humor. Then on Christmas Eve, during a heated argument, Bill shoves a haranguing Alice away from him; she falls, smacks her head on a dresser, and dies. Not thinking rationally, Bill goes on the run with Laura.

Wait, that’s not all. In a parallel storyline, Laura and Sally's younger sister Honey (Joan Marsh), comes to town to stay, fully intending to join Sally in her gold-digging layabout ways, but she can't handle booze like Sally can and winds up getting smashed and falling for an older guy who two-times her. Honey ends up taking a job with a tabloid paper. To bring the two plotlines together, the paper's editor teams up with the radio station to sensationalize the story of Bill going on the lam by broadcasting constant warnings and updates over WBLA. This winds up being, not so much a crime story as a rambling melodrama about loosely connected characters. I'm not really complaining; it's different and I guess trying to figure out how it will all get tied up is one of the (mild) pleasures of the film. Haines, a silent movie star, was getting a little long in the tooth to be playing the carefree juvenile, but he's not bad here, coming off like he was heading for Gene Kelly territory, not as a dancer, but as a smiling charmer. I also quite liked Joan Marsh who adds some fizz as the naïve Honey. Neil Hamilton and Jean Hersholt also appear. Wallace Ford does his usual likeable fellow routine, and John Miljan is effective as the ruthless tabloid editor. I enjoyed the quirky novelty of having Christmas music playing in the background throughout the death of Alice and its aftermath. [TCM]

GO NAKED IN THE WORLD (1961)

This movie was recommended to me by a fan of bad movies, and let me tell you, this is indeed a special kind of bad. Anthony Franciosa returns from a stint in the military which he undertook specifically to get out from under the thumb of his old-fashioned Greek father (Ernest Borgnine), owner of a successful construction company who has his son's life all planned out for him. Unfortunately as soon as Tony returns, Ernie is all over him, expressing his parental love in a grotesque, smothering, almost physical way. Before he lets Tony in the house, he makes the family (mom and sexy sister) and the gardener literally get down on their knees and give thanks that Tony is back safe and sound—this over-the-top scene is played with a bit of a wink (the reactions of Tony and the gardener), but sadly, the rest of the movie's melodrama seems intended to be taken seriously. Ernie wants to pair Tony off with the daughter of a business associate, but during a night on the town, Tony meets the luscious Gina Lollobrigida and they hit it off, so much so that he spends the night. What he doesn't know is that Gina is a high-priced call girl who's been with practically every high roller in town, including his father. The rest of the movie charts the ups and downs in Tony and Gina's relationship to its ludicrous ending.

This is faux-Tennessee Williams or William Inge territory, a psychological dysfunctional family soap opera which might have worked better with a more subtle director. The screenplay is no great shakes, but the acting is terrible and I blame the director, Ranald MacDougall, because all these actors are capable of much better. Franciosa is too butch and hearty to be playing a maladjusted daddy's boy; Lollobrigida is all over the map, not knowing how to handle her character's mood swings. The mother (Nancy R. Pollock) is barely a character. And worst of all is Borgnine, who gives an obnoxiously operatic performance that never, for a moment, feels real, all shrieking and in-your-face; even when he calms down, he's grating, and I can't imagine why this man's family hadn't deserted him years ago. The ending is so bad and creepy; I want to talk about it but it really shouldn't be spoiled. Suffice to say it's a bizarre downer that I didn't quite see coming. Two quotes will give a good idea of the overheated dialogue. Ernie to Tony, about Gina's career: "Love is love, but we’re talkin' about rent"; Gina, when Tony asks her how many men she's had: "Why count the waves in the ocean?" Indeed. [TCM]

THE YOUNG RACERS (1963)

In Monaco at the Grand Prix, Mark Damon, a former racer turned writer, watches as cocky driver William Campbell wins the race. Campbell is brash, reckless and a womanizer, and soon Damon discovers the married Campbell has taken Damon's girlfriend as a mistress and then discarded her. Deciding to dig up dirt on Campbell for revenge, Damon gets a job on Campbell's crew by saying he's writing a biography, without mentioning that it will be an exposè. As Damon follows Campbell along the Grand Prix trial, from Belgium to France to England, he sees Campbell continue to seduce women while using his own brother Bob to hide his exploits from his wife. But he also soon comes to see that Campbell's arrogant surface hides a more sensitive side. For a Roger Corman B-movie, there are a couple of surprises in store, one good and one bad. The good one: it was filmed on location—supposedly to take advantage of Corman's vacation plans—and looks pretty decent, especially the racing scenes. The bad one: it's not really an action movie; it winds up being a talky, at times almost philosophical, movie about celebrity and psychology, but the screenplay and actors aren't quite up to the challenge of making an engrossing character study. So this winds up being stuck uncomfortably between two genres, not satisfying as either one. B-movie star Luana Anders and Shakespearean actor Patrick Magee (the man whose wife Alex rapes in CLOCKWORK ORANGE) have small roles. [TCM]

CODE TWO (1953)

This film follows three buddies as they make their way through training at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Ralph Meeker is the cocky, anti-authority guy who, even when he takes a wrong step and gets in trouble, doesn't learn his lesson—but we all know from WWII movies that there's something in him that will lead him to redemption; Jeff Richards, whose father was a cop killed in the line of duty, is handsome and quiet; Robert Horton has a stable married life, though Meeker and Richards become rivals for Horton's sister-in-law (Elaine Stewart). All three make it through the Academy, even though Meeker's superiors (Keenan Wynn and James Craig) disagree over his potential, and all three decide to apply for motorcycle duty—it's considered glamorous and exciting—but tragedy strikes when they clash with a gang of cattle smugglers and one of the three is killed, knocked unconscious and deliberately run over by a truck. The final confrontation between the bad guys and the surviving cops involves a chase in a slaughterhouse, a butcher knife, and a vat of quicklime.

This begins like a Dragnet-type police procedural with a long narrated segment on automobile accident statistics, but once the story kicks in, it becomes a traditional human-interest police drama. The acting is variable: Meeker can't do much different with his character as written, but he's compelling enough; Horton is a bit on the bland side—again, partly due to his bland character; Richards is good in a role that doesn’t give him much shading. Keenan Wynn is fine as the guy who puts his own reputation on the line for Meeker. As is par for the course, the women fade into the background, and the strongest connections are between the men. Keep your eyes peeled for a young Chuck Connors in a small role as a cop. Though predictable, the finale really is worth sticking around for. Pictured, left to right, are Meeker, Horton and Richards. [Warner Archive Instant]

BLANCHE FURY (1948)

In this Gothic melodrama, Blanche (Valerie Hobson) is a poor outcast relation of the Fury family, eking out a living as a paid companion to a cranky old lady until she is called back by her rich uncle to be governess to his widowed son's daughter Lavinia. Eventually, she marries Lawrence, the rather mild-mannered son (Michael Gough), though it's clearly more a convenient arrangement on both their parts than a love match. Blanche soon gets involved with the handsome but sullen estate manager Philip Thorn (Stewart Granger); he is the bastard son of another Fury but his relationship has never been recognized by the family. Philip has lawyers trying to track down evidence of an Italian wedding license, but when nothing comes up, he takes more decisive action, killing Lawrence (with the passive acquiescence of Blanche) and then marrying Blanche so he will be set up to be the legal master of the estate. Things are peachy for a while, but when Blanche suspects that Philip wants to kill Lavinia to get her out of the way of succession, she changes her mind about acquiescing. 

This may well be the first Technicolor Gothic film, and the main reasons for watching it are the sumptuous color and the lovely sets. Generally, the movie lacks tension and the acting is so-so. Hobson and Granger (pictured at left) do have some chemistry, but it's allowed to dissipate in the last half-hour. There's a lot of plot in the movie, but still, not much seems to happen. The weirdest thing in the movie is the family legend of Fury's Ape which supposedly watches over the family. A carving of the ape's face is shown occasionally, but to no real effect. Not without interest, but not essential viewing. [Netflix streaming]

MEN ARE NOT GODS (1936)

Skeates, a London drama critic, dictates a scathing review of the actor Edmund Davey (Sebastian Shaw) in a new production of Othello; Edmund's wife Barbara (Gertrude Lawrence), who is playing Desdemona, arrives to try and stop the review from seeing print because Edmund is particularly sensitive right now. Skeates' secretary Ann (Miriam Hopkins) sneaks down and, knowing that Skeates never reads his own paper, changes the review. Unfortunately Edmund finds Skeates and thanks him for his praise, so Skeates, having discovered the switch, fires Ann. That night, Ann goes to see the play and develops a thing for Edmund, going back to the play night after night; eventually Barbara invites Ann to dinner, and Edmund falls for Ann. Skeates lets Ann come back to work, and fellow reporter Tommy (Rex Harrison) tries to get Ann to date him, but she's begun an affair with Edmund. When Barbara finds out, she tries to get Ann to give him up, but Edmund, going a bit overboard, decides to kill Barbara for real during Desdemona's onstage death scene.

This sounds like a downbeat melodrama, and indeed the later movie A DOUBLE LIFE would use the same central premise: an actor begins to go insane during a run of Othello and acts out the climactic moment in real life. But surprisingly, despite the darkish turn this film takes, it's mostly played in a frothy comic tone; the juxtaposition of comedy and melodrama is the most interesting thing here. Hopkins is sprightly; Shaw is intense; it's fun to see the legendary stage performer Gertrude Lawrence—she only made a handful of movies—though she's fairly drab here, upstaged by Hopkins. Harrison has little to do beyond being basically a lanky supporting juvenile. The best scene might be one in which an artist tries to blackmail Barbara by making her buy a painting of Ann and Edmund canoodling in the park, but doesn't get past Barbara’s intimidating maid (Laura Smithson). The title is a line from Othello. Interesting if not essential. Pictured, from left to right, are Lawrence, Shaw and Hopkins. [Criterion streaming]

DARK JOURNEY (1937)

During World War I, Vivien Leigh is a designer living in Sweden who, as a citizen from a neutral country, can travel back and forth between Stockholm and Paris regularly on business. But actually she's a spy, passing military secrets, cleverly stitched inside of clothes, on to the Germans. At a nightclub, Conrad Veidt, a former German officer, is pulling a parlor trick in which he predicts what women will say after he kisses them. Leigh exposes his secret and the two begin flirting, to the chagrin of her British escort (Anthony Bushell). Then the plot twists: it turns out that Leigh is actually working for the French, feeding misinformation to her German bosses, and her last case is to find out who the head of the German Secret Service Section 8 is. And Veidt is, of course, the head of Section 8, and he has been charged with finding the double agent. Of course, this strains their growing relationship, to say the least. Some reviewers find the plotlines here a bit tangled, perhaps because Leigh and Veidt defy the typical wartime propaganda stereotypes; he's quite human for a German soldier and she's presented as wavering in her duty when she realizes she will have to expose Veidt. Both actors are fine, have good chemistry, and pretty much carry the film. An enjoyable spy romance which, even if it is ultimately predictable, is satisfying. [TCM]

CONGO MAISIE (1940)

Chorus girl Maisie Ravier (Ann Sothern) slips out of her hotel room in a West African town without paying and sneaks aboard a rickety boat to Lagos where a job (supposedly) awaits. She tries to hide in the cabin of Michael Shane (John Carroll), a former rubber plantation doctor who became disillusioned and now runs a plantation, but he kicks her out and puts her at the mercy of the skeevy captain. But halfway down the river, the boiler room explodes and Shane reluctantly takes Maisie with him to a nearby plantation's medical office, coincidentally, the one where he used to work. The current doctor, McWade, lets them stay on a while, but the two soon realize they've stepped into a couple of sticky situations. For one, McWade is spending too much time on research and not enough time with his wife, Kay, who responds a little too freely to Shane's flirtations. For another, McWade is fighting the attitudes of several natives, led by a gaggle of witch doctors, who don't trust Western medicine. At the climax, a crowd of rebellious natives arrives at the doctor's home, ready to carry him off for a sacrifice, until Maisie's quick thinking saves the day.

This is the second in a series of B-movies from MGM (which means they're much glossier than the average B-film) about the adventures of Maisie, a character created by writer Wilson Collison. The first film, set on a dude ranch, has plot points similar to this film, which is itself based (theoretically) on a Collison novel called Congo Landing but clearly harks back to a Collison play called Red Dust which was made into a classic 1932 movie with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. (I hope I have all these details right—the trail of credits is a bit confusing.) Sothern makes this worth seeing, doing a fine job as a brassy dame with a heart of gold. Because these were made under the Production Code, Maisie can't be as morally loose as she probably was in the original novel, but Sothern manages to make her both wholesome and sexy. Carroll, the B-movie Clark Gable, is one of my favorite 40s supporting actors and he's perfect as a Gable stand-in. Shepperd Strudwick and Rita Johnson are fine as the distracted doctor and his dying-to-be-unfaithful wife. Ann Sothern's performance of "St. Louis Woman" at the climax is worth the wait. Fun line: Maisie tells a sailor that in her stage act she was billed as a little girl with a big harp. He says, "Oh, you played with an Irishman." She replies, "Maybe that's what the act needed." [TCM]