WAY…WAY OUT (1966)

In the far future of 1994, America and Russia have weather stations on the moon, each manned by one weathernaut and one astronomer. When the Americans (Howard Morris and Dennis Weaver) have what amounts to a nervous breakdown (attributed to sexual frustration) and start assaulting each other, NAWA—the weather version of NASA—decides to send up a married couple to replace the two men. Jerry Lewis, the next weatherman in line for the job, has to get married fast, and from a pool of two eligible female astronomers, he picks the lovely and wholesome Connie Stevens. She's not crazy about the idea but agrees if he'll keep the relationship platonic, which frustrates Lewis no end. On the moon, the two become friendly with the Russians—the sexy Anita Ekberg and her boyfriend Dick Shawn—but a bump develops when Ekberg says that she's pregnant and so a Russian will be the first baby born on the moon. There’s no way that Lewis and Stevens could arrange to beat that, is there?

I'm not really a Jerry Lewis fan, but he's going to be on the Turner Classic Movies cruise I'm going on next month, so I thought I should prepare by trying to catch a couple of his movies. I like THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, but I have never taken to his more slapsticky, "Hey, Ladyyyyyy" performances. In this film, he is subdued—his character is a mild playboy figure, though not as extreme as Buddy Love in PROFESSOR—but the surrounding movie is nothing more than an extended riff on sexual frustration. At the time of release, some of this may have seemed almost daring—for example, the Russians are co-habiting but are not married—but now much of it just seems cutesy-smutty. Lewis is bearable, Stevens is appropriately sweet, and Robert Morley is good as their NAWA boss. The rest of the performances are all over the map. Morris and Weaver have good chemistry as the battling men (their fisticuffs scene is a highlight), though Morris is a bit over-the-top sometimes in his near-drooling horniness. Ekberg fulfills her role (to be hot) well; Shawn, also not one of my favorites, is generally OK. What I really liked about this movie, however, is the production design. It's a perfect colorful 60s view on what the future would look like. Watch for a young James Brolin in the opening scenes. Harmless but mostly recommended to fans of either Lewis or of 60s sex farces. Pictured above are Weaver and Lewis. [FMC]

HOUSE OF DARKNESS (1948)

A composer of film music tells a director the story of where he got his inspiration for his current piece. There's a house in Dorset that the locals call the House of Strange Music; they say that a ghostly melody can be heard that conjures up visions of the past residents, a dysfunctional family named Merryman. Young Francis (Laurence Harvey), a composer and pianist, resents the fact that his older brother John (Alexander Archdale), a violinist, has control of the family estate until his death. Both live in the house along with Francis's wife Elaine; a third brother, the passive Noel who is engaged to Lucy; and the feisty housekeeper Tessa. Francis has been racking up gambling debts and signing John's name to the IOUs, and now John, who is plagued with a weak heart, has had enough and takes steps to disassociate himself from Francis. But Francis is one step ahead and during an angry confrontation, he goads John into a heart attack. John dies and Francis seems to get what he wanted—until strange sounds and visions make the family believe that John's ghost may be haunting the house.

This little-known film is a gem of a Gothic thriller; it has some of the shortcomings of a low-budget B-film—some plot holes, mostly so-so acting—but it also has the young Laurence Harvey (pictured) in his first film role and, though I'm not particularly a fan of his, he is very good here, carrying the movie and standing head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. The other actors are fair to middling—the strongest being John Teed as Noel and Grace Arnold as Tessa—and it might have been fun to see Harvey enact his role with stronger actors opposite him. But as it is, Harvey has a bit of an Anthony Perkins-Psycho vibe, especially early on. He has a tendency to smirk which some critics think is a fault, but I think it's perfectly in tune with his character. At heart, this is a psychological thriller with a ghost story overlay and a nicely ambiguous ending. The frame story, which features George Melachrino playing himself as a film music composer, is an awkward fit with the rest of the story, but it is unusual. Recommended. [TCM]

THE THIRD DAY (1965)

George Peppard climbs up soaking wet to the highway from a wrecked car; he has amnesia so he just keeps walking until he comes to a bar where people seem to know him—and they don't especially like him. Turns out he's a playboy-type (even though he's married to Elizabeth Ashley), son of a rich but dying father (Herbert Marshall). The family is particularly disliked right now because Peppard's brother-in-law (Roddy McDowell) is pushing to sell the family factory, which would throw many townspeople out of work. The pianist at the bar (Arte Johnson) seems to loathe Peppard; we soon find out that Peppard was having an affair with his wife (Sally Kellerman). Even worse, when the police find Peppard's car in the river, they find the dead body of Kellerman and want to charge him with murder. Of course, the amnesiac Peppard is a nicer guy than the playboy Peppard, but can he patch things up with his wife, stop the sale of the factory, and get out of the murder charge?

This is not the most original plotline and it becomes predictable pretty quickly, but the movie is generally entertaining—if you can buy the "amnesia change" aspect of the story, which is a tried and true plot device in literature and movies. The young and handsome Peppard (pushing 40 but looking younger) does a nice job in the lead role, managing to convey a certain personality emptiness without coming off as vacuous. Ashley—his wife in real life at the time—has to work with a character that is not well-rounded and so doesn't make  much of an impression. Better are the nasty, brittle Roddy McDowell (gay subtext, of course) and the nastier Arte Johnson, who banishes all thoughts of his comic character on Laugh-In. A strong supporting cast helps: Mona Washbourne as Peppard's aunt, Robert Webber as a cop, and Arthur O'Connell as a doctor. This was Herbert Marshall's last film—he died a year later—and he plays an uncommunicative stroke victim whom McDowell is trying to get around in order to sell the factory. Funniest (unintentionally) line: a rider showing off says about his horse, "Watch me put the wench through her paces—she’s all woman!" Style-wise, it's shot like a TV movie but the widescreen angles are often filled with nice background detail. [DVD]

PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN (1940)

Archeologist John Benton returns from an expedition to Mongolia where Benton found a scroll in an ancient tomb which may hold the key to the location of the fabled Temple of Eternal Fire. His cameraman Frasier shows some clips of the expedition at a presentation at the local university, but just as Benton is about to discuss his findings, he drops dead at the lectern. The police, led by Captain Street (Grant Withers), find that someone had put a quick-acting poison in his water carafe. Jimmy Lee Wong (Keye Luke), a former student of Benson's, offers Street his help and soon the two are trying to narrow down a list of suspects including Win Len, Benson's somewhat secretive secretary (Lotus Long); Tommy, the expedition pilot (Robert Kellard); Frasier, the cameraman; the owner of a Chinatown restaurant who acts like he has something to hide; and Benton's butler. Added to the mix is Mason, an expedition team member assumed lost and dead in a storm in Mongolia but who may be alive and kicking—and out for revenge.

This is the last of six Mr. Wong B-mysteries from Monogram, and, despite attempts at doing something different, one of the lesser efforts. The primary unusual aspect is that a central Chinese character is actually played by a Chinese actor. I've liked Keye Luke in supporting roles, but here, he doesn't have the charisma or gravitas to anchor the movie. The earlier films all had Boris Karloff in the main role, which points to another interesting thing about this film: it goes back in time to show Wong before he became a card-carrying detective—but this potentially intriguing plot point is never brought forward, so if you were unaware of the earlier Mr. Wong movies, this would just be another Asian detective yarn. Wong fans may enjoy the continued presence of Grant Withers as Capt. Street, but the rest of the supporting cast is unexceptional at best, and in the case of Lotus Long, terrible—she reads virtually all of her lines like it's the first time she's read them. Unsurprisingly, she did not have a stellar career, though she does have small roles in other Mr. Wong movies. I'm sorry that the handsome Robert Kellard (pictured with Luke) had so little to do except look handsome. The plot itself is a little unusual in that it's basically a "Mummy" movie storyline, set in China instead of Egypt, and without a mummy. But the filmmakers don't do much with that novelty, except for the gimmick of having flashbacks to the expedition alternate with the filmed footage that Frasier took. Monogram gets a couple of points for trying, but generally a disappointing end to the series. [DVD]

THE MUMMY (1959)

In Egypt in 1895, archeologist Stephen Banning discovers the long-lost tomb of Princess Ananka. The Egyptian spoilsport Mehemet Bey warns him that there is a curse on desecrators, but he ignores that and, leaving his son John (Peter Cushing) laid up with a broken leg, behind at camp, Stephen enters the tomb. He discovers something called the Scroll of Life, reads it out loud, screams, is found a gibbering mess, and spends the next several years in an asylum. Eventually, he comes out of his state long enough to tell his son what happened: the reading of the scroll awoke the mummy Kharis (Christopher Lee), protector of Ananka, and guided by Mehemet Bey, Kharis will be tracking down the desecrators. Sure enough, that's what happens.

This is a Hammer reboot of the Universal series. It’s largely based on the later 1940s B-movie series of Mummy movies (in which the name Kharis is first used) rather than the 1932 classic with Boris Karloff, and it's one of Hammer’s weaker efforts, though not for lack of trying on the part of Lee and Cushing who, like Vincent Price, almost always tried their best even when the material was far below them. The opening sequence, featuring the archeologist going mad, is based directly on the opening of the 1932 film, and though the tomb set is fairly well done, the scene itself misses the mark by quite a bit—it's just not scary. The idea that a living woman (played blandly by Yvonne Furneaux) reminds Kharis of his princess and the Egyptian character who aids Kharis are both borrowed from the Universal mythology to only occasionally effective use. A specific link to the Karloff film is an nicely done flashback scene showing how Kharis became the creature he is. The one plus this has over the earlier series is that the mummy moves quickly and attacks brutally, and Lee, his piercing eyes vivid under the mummy makeup, makes the most of his scenes. This is worth one viewing, but I doubt it would stand up very well to repeat visits. [DVD]

THE PEOPLE (1972)

Young Melodye (Kim Darby) leaves city life behind to start over in the country; she is hired by the people of the small California farming village of Bendo to be their schoolteacher. The inhabitants are not exactly unfriendly but they are standoffish and seem a bit old-fashioned, having largely cut themselves off from popular culture, and she is surprised when she is given carte blanche to teach in the one-room schoolhouse however she sees fit. But the children are a joyless bunch who don't know how to sing and shuffle when they walk. One young man, Francher (Chris Valentine), shows some promise, but Melodye is freaked out when it seems that he can read her mind. When he shows her his ability to levitate, she realizes she's embedded with a strange group of people indeed, but are they well-meaning or sinister?

This TV-movie is based on the concept created by Zenna Henderson, specifically the frame story to her first short story collection, Pilgrimage: The Book of the People. I read that collection when I was a teenager, and I found the overall idea of the People to be more interesting than most of the short stories themselves, which all tended to have the same themes of conformity and prejudice. I won't spoil your discovery of who the People are, but suffice to say that this movie was intended as a pilot for a TV series that wasn't picked up. Considering its limitations as a TV-movie, it comes off quite well. A big chunk of the acting is done by kids, most of whom did not go on to long acting careers, though all of them, especially Valentine, are fine. William Shatner (pictured above) has a surprisingly low-key role as the village doctor, and Diane Varsi and Dan O’Herlihy play the primary adult roles. The whole thing has a Ray Bradbury feel to it, just as the original book seemed inspired structurally by The Martian Chronicles. This is not on DVD; the print I watched on YouTube was unnaturally stretched out from the original full-screen TV format to an inappropriate widescreen format. I was able to adjust for this on my television, but if you can't do that, beware. [YouTube]

NO HANDS ON THE CLOCK (1941)

Private detective Humphrey Campbell (Chester Morris) was hired to find Louise (Jean Parker), a missing heiress, and when he found her, he married her. Now they're in Reno on their honeymoon, which doesn't stop his boss Oscar from tracking him down to take on another missing persons case, this one involving Hal Benedict, the son of a wealthy rancher. Humphrey doesn't want it, but Oscar promises Louise a mink coat if she can talk him into it, and of course she does (otherwise, there'd be no movie). Thus are Humphrey and Louise thrown into a most convoluted mystery. Hal was supposed to marry his father's ward Rose, but according to a bar pianist, Hal was dating Irene; when Humphrey goes to visit her, he finds her dead with Rose hiding in the house, insisting that Irene was dead when she arrived. Meanwhile, Humphrey gets involved with a brassy blonde named Gypsy (which makes Louise jealous), a couple of FBI agents also looking for Hal, and a gang of bank robbers led by Red Harris (Dick Purcell) who think that Humphrey is a former gang member turned snitch. Two more developments: it turns out that Rose was engaged to Tom Reed, a foreman on the Campbell ranch; and Hal had hired a Reno private investigator named Copley to get back love letters to Irene that were being used to blackmail him.

There is much more to this B-mystery, and it is a credit to the filmmakers that, though the proceedings get murky, I was for the most part able to straggle along with the labyrinthine plot and enjoy the movie. Morris makes a fine leading man, and he has good chemistry with Parker; the two are pictured above in a slapstick shower scene. The film is based on a book in a series by Geoffrey Homes that featured Campbell; another one was adapted a few years later as CRIME BY NIGHT featuring Jerome Cowan as a re-named Sam Campbell. Morris makes a good fit and it's too bad that no more were made with him—instead he wound up spending much of the decade as another sleuth, Boston Blackie. There's a running gag about how much Campbell likes milk, even ordering it at bars, and how milk gives his wife a rash, but the payoff is very minor. Others in the cast include Astrid Allwyn as Gypsy, Rod Cameron as Reed, Grant Withers, Keye Luke, and Milburn Stone. Entertaining; if you find the plot hard to follow, just go along for the ride. (The title comes from a clock without hands above the entrance to a mortuary.) [YouTube]

ENCORE (1951)

This is the last of three British anthology films made from the stories of (and introduced by) W. Somerset Maugham, the earlier ones being QUARTET and TRIO. Television made these kinds of films mostly obsolete, but there is a certain nostalgic charm to this that makes it still quite watchable. In "The Ant and the Grasshopper," wealthy lawyer Roland Culver is constantly approached by his slacker brother (Nigel Patrick) for money which he immediately wastes on gambling. Culver begins refusing and insisting that Patrick be gainfully employed, so Patrick gets jobs that put Culver in an embarrassed position—doorman at his club, bartender at his pub, etc. Finally, Patrick goes on holiday, meets a rich woman, and an unexpected reversal of fortunes closes the story. In "Winter Cruise," which is amusing but is basically an extended variety show skit, Kay Walsh, a good-natured spinster who never shuts up, gets on the nerves of the crew of a cargo ship on which she has booked passage for a vacation cruise to the Caribbean and back. How the crew tries to distract her forms the bulk of the vignette.

The last story, "Gigolo and Gigolette," is about a husband-and-wife acrobat act (Glynis Johns and Terence Morgan, pictured) currently performing at a ritzy resort. At the climax of their act, Johns does a high dive into a small pool of water surrounded by a ring of fire. This is the gimmick that has made them in demand, but after hearing a story of a diver who lost her nerve, Johns becomes convinced that she will too, and tries to get out of doing the high dive. The rest of the story explains her loss of nerve and how her husband tries to help her get it back. Unfortunately, this last story is the weakest—it's well acted but feels underdone. Still, the first two are fun and not completely predictable. Culver, Patrick and Walsh are all quite good. It's a shame that the weak entry wasn’t first—I suspect it's in last place because it's the most serious. [TCM]

VEILED ARISTOCRATS (1932)

John Walden left his home in Fayetteville twenty years ago, leaving behind his mother and baby sister—and his African-American identity—to pass for white, go to law school and become a successful lawyer in the big city.  Now he's returned to his family home (called the House Behind the Cedars by the townsfolk) with an agenda: to take his grown-up light-skinned sister Rena back to the city, have her pass for white, and marry her off to an appropriately well-off white man. But Rena's in love with local fellow Frank and isn't crazy about leaving. Frank thinks she should go with John for a while, if only to give Frank time to become successful as a building contractor. Six months later, Rena is installed in a nice house with African-American servants and has a marriage proposal from wealthy white man George Tryon, but ultimately she decides to give up her sham life, go back to Fayetteville, and marry Frank.

This early talkie from the acclaimed black director Oscar Micheaux exists only in a very worn and choppy print, at times making the plot machinations a bit unclear. But even excusing this, the movie is hard to sit through. Almost every scene consists of two or three people in a room talking, with breaks every so often for a completely unrelated musical number—one is sung at a fancy party, one by a maid at work, and the last one, which goes on for almost six minutes, features Rena's servants kicking up their heels at her return to her roots (as one woman says, laughing, "Once they love a spade, ain't nobody can take him away—and I bet he's a dark one!"). Frankly, this number is the highlight of the film which in general is poorly acted and directed. Lorenzo Tucker (pictured), known as the Black Valentino, is credible as John, as is Laura Bowman as his mother. In an interesting twist, the white George is played by light-skinned black actor Barrington Guy who never made another movie but was known as a dancer and nightclub performer. The rest of the cast feels amateurish—especially Lucille Lewis as Rena which makes it hard to whip up any sympathy for her character. Bizarrely, the reunion scene between Rena and her brother feels uneasily like a lover's reunion, for which I blame the direction. The background music is wildly melodramatic, and between the cuts, the poor dialogue and the static pace, the story feels like it's being summarized instead of acted out. Interesting from a historic perspective, but even if a complete non-choppy print was found, I'm not sure I'd bother to revisit it. [TCM]

THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (1941)

This almost completely fictionalized version of the life of General George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) begins with his dandyish entrance as a cadet at West Point. At first he's mistaken for a visiting French officer, then he is made the butt of pranks by Ned Sharp (George Kennedy). Despite a number of infractions on his record, the cocky Custer graduates, meets cute with a general's niece, Libby (Olivia de Havilland), and thanks to some help from that general (Sydney Greenstreet), gets a commission in the Army and fights at Bull Run, the first major battle of the Civil War. Custer has a tendency to ignore orders, but he manages to come off heroically on the battlefield. After the war, he marries Libby but winds up bored with civilian life so Libby gets her father to put him back in the Army and he is given command of Fort Lincoln in the Dakotas. There, he runs into Ned Sharp, operator of a trading post and a saloon at which the soldiers spend a little too much time. The men are whipped into shape, the saloon is closed, and Sharp connives with his father to pull off a plan to tarnish Custer's image. This leads to the threat of an Indian war and the infamous climax in which Custer's men are slaughtered by the Lakota at Little Big Horn, though here Custer is presented as deliberately sacrificing his life (and his men) to save another Army company. Though I know very little about Custer, this film is clearly best approached as a rousing Errol Flynn adventure movie rather than as a history lesson. As such, it works quite well. Flynn is in top form—especially in his early scenes as the naïve cadet—he's handsome and charming, but also smart and conflicted. De Havilland doesn't get a lot to do, but she too cuts a good looking figure. Kennedy is very good as a man who shifts from good guy to bad guy and back again. Standouts in the big supporting cast include Hattie McDaniel, Gene Lockhart, John Litel and Charley Grapewin. I was pleased to see the uncredited John Ridgely and Gig Young in bit parts. Director Raoul Walsh keeps the plot clear and the action exciting. [TCM]

INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT (1938)

In 1937, the conflict between China and Japan intensifies when Japan bombs Peking (or Peiping as it was called back then), and a shipload of partying passengers on the way to Shanghai are advised to transfer to another ship and go back to San Francisco because their safety cannot be guaranteed. Del Forbes (George Sanders), playboy and adventurer, stays as he's going to be training Chinese pilots, but he advises the young and innocent Joyce Parker (June Lang) to leave—she first introduces herself as a journalist but admits that she's on board because she won a newspaper contest, and she hopes to write a series of articles about her trip. Before he leaves the ship, Forbes is called to the room of ailing notorious gun-runner Maurice Zabello, who asks Forbes to impersonate him in Shanghai to close a million dollar deal for a shipload of guns to be delivered to a Joseph Lang. When Forbes checks in as Zabello at a hotel in the International Settlement—a district shared and controlled by foreign governments—he runs into Joyce, who decided to stay though she has a hard time getting a room, and his old friend Wally Burton (Dick Baldwin), a cocky but charming newsreel reporter, who after an initial rough patch, bonds with Joyce. Forbes is also shot at by the exotic singer Lenore (Delores del Rio), who has a grudge against Zabello. After they get things straightened out, Forbes goes to collect the money from Lang (and his unsavory associate Murdock), but we see that a Mr. Silvers is keeping a close eye on the transaction, apparently planning to horn in at some point. Just as Forbes is about to deliver the money, he finds Zabello has died, and now he's stuck with a false identity, a lot of money, and no way to deliver the guns to Lang. He'll soon need all the help he can get from Joyce and Wally, but can he really trust Lenore? What about that sinisterly snoopy Silvers? And, worst of all, Japanese bombers are heading to Shanghai.

That's a lot of plot to cram into a 75 minute B-movie (albeit it high-B) and, surprisingly, there are still a few dead spots in the proceedings, but overall this is mild fun. The biggest problem is Sanders, who looks very young and dapper, but as I've noted before, is not an action hero, and when fisticuffs occur, it's plain that a double has stepped in for him. Still, he's fine in the first half. I'm not a big fan of Del Rio, but she's serviceable here. Baldwin (pictured above left with Del Rio) is fun in the buddy role—at times, he seems like Robert Cummings with an extra dose of testosterone—and Lang (pictured at right with George Sanders) does well as the naïve but plucky gal pal. She went on to a so-so career in B-films, though Baldwin, who seemed more promising, only made a handful of movies before going into real estate. The support is a notch above the usual: Leon Ames and John Carradine are good, Harold Huber is straightforward as Lang. The movie stops dead for two mediocre songs, one right at the beginning which is about a supposed dance craze called The Shrug. Keye Luke has a crucial but thankless role as a doctor near the end of the film. The slow pace at the beginning is needed to get all the plotlines unspooled, and it does pick up in the home stretch. [YouTube]

THE GOLDWYN FOLLIES (1938)

At a preview for producer Adolphe Menjou's new movie, the audience laughs at exotic actress Vera Zorina's death scene, which of course is not supposed to be funny. While filming Zorina's new movie on location, Menjou overhears local girl Andrea Leeds making fun of how unreal the love scene is. Menjou has a chat with her and asks her to come back to Hollywood with him to give him pointers in making the movie more real—he nicknames her Miss Humanity and hides her from the actors so she'll remain loyal to her own feelings and not be influenced by others. But she does meet singing diner cook Kenny Baker and finagles him a role in the movie. There are complications, some romantic (Menjou falls in love with Leeds while she's in love with Baker), some otherwise (during the filming of a jazz vs. classical Romeo & Juliet ballet number, Leeds suggests a happy ending), but finally everything works out the way Hollywood tells us it should.

This has a rather poor reputation, mostly because it tries to be an A-movie musical and comedy revue with a solid B-cast, but if you accept that limitation, it's not bad. Menjou seems like he doesn’t really want to be involved, but Baker (a B-level Dick Powell) and Leeds make a fairly appealing pair. Many of the musical numbers, in particular a Water Nymph ballet choreographed by George Balanchine, are close to MGM level. Several of the songs are originals by the Gershwins (this is the score George was working on when he died), but the best song, "Love Walked In," is spoiled by being sung over and over again throughout the film. The comic relief comes from the Ritz Brothers playing a band of animal handlers—I can generally take them or leave them, but they are fine here. Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy have a little too much to do for my taste. The DVD color print is in beautiful shape. Entertaining if not quite up to the level of MGM or Fox musical extravaganzas. [DVD]

DOOMSDAY MACHINE (1972)

Sometime in the near future, spies sneak into a Chinese installation and snap pictures of a doomsday machine which will go off soon and could lead to the destruction of the world (no explanation for why this would happen is offered, so I guess we just have to go with DR. STRANGELOVE to fill in the exposition). U.S. government officials see the pictures and decide to alter the plans for a space mission which is to establish a 2-year colony on Venus. They pull three men from the 7-man crew and replace them with three women. They also move the mission ahead by a few days. Not long after blast-off, the astronauts see the earth blow up thanks to a nuclear chain reaction triggered by the Doomsday Machine, and they realize that they are intended to be four Adams and three Eves once they get to Venus. Of course, tensions galore bloom on the ship: ship doctor Henry Wilcoxon and Russian cosmonaut Mala Powers are generally the voices of reason; studly Denny Miller, the commander, bonds with blond buxom Ruta Lee; the boyish but troubled Grant Williams has unrequited hots for young meteorologist Lorrie Scott; Bobby Van is the chipper comic relief—it would have been interesting if they had made him gay, but I couldn’t even find any suspicious subtext to harness for such a reading. Wilcoxon decides that they have enough power to get to Venus, but he's afraid they’ll all wind up sterile because of exposure to cosmic radiation, so they boost the engines to arrive faster, but that also (in one of the most ludicrous plot developments of all time) means they have to jettison four crew members—something about weight on the ship. But after Williams tries to rape Scott in the airlock and they accidentally open the airlock leading to their eyeball-bleeding deaths, Miller decides they can all make it to Venus. Ultimately, Powers and Van decide to sacrifice themselves to go out and repair the craft, but they come across an empty Soviet craft and climb in that. So with all five heading to Venus, there'll be a happy ending in front of a cool Venusian setting, right? Wrong.

This movie feels like three different movies, and in fact, it is (kind of) at least two different movies. The bulk of it, with our seven astronauts, was filmed in 1967. Apparently it was supposed to end on Venus but money ran out and shooting was halted. The last reel was shot in 1972 without the benefit of the original cast; two uncredited actors play the parts of two of the astronauts from behind opaque space helmet visors (in the rest of the film, the helmets are clear), and their ultimate fate does not involve landing on Venus. Actually, the conclusion has weak echoes of 2001, and had the script been stronger, it might have been interesting, but as it stands, it's an unsatisfying cop-out.

The acting is all over the place, with many performances smacking of a made-for-TV effort. Best are old pro Wilcoxon, Ruta Lee and Mala Powers. Denny Miller (the blond Tarzan) looks the part but puts forth little acting steam. Grant Williams (pictured at left, to the right of Miller) suffers from playing an inconsistent character; at first, he's a bitchy little foot-stamper who you think could be likable if he got himself together, but when his aggressive tendencies emerge, he becomes a stock psycho—with better writing, he could have had a touch of Norman Bates in him. Bobby Van's humor quickly grows stale, but I give him points for trying. Look for Casey Kasem doing a fine job in a small role as a mission control worker. My very favorite thing about this movie, which made it worth watching: the psychedelic pastel lighting throughout the spaceship. [Streaming]

THE RISE OF CATHERINE THE GREAT (1934)

In Russia in 1745, Grand Duke Peter (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is sulking at the royal hunting lodge because despite being heir to the throne—currently held by his aunt, the Empress Elisabeth (Flora Robson)—he feels mostly like he is "heir to a baby’s rattle and a box of toys" and does not want the arranged marriage he is being forced into with a German princess named Catherine (Elisabeth Bergner). She meets cute with Peter, not knowing who he is, and slowly he warms up to her, but they wind up playing cat and mouse games with each other, especially after Peter's valet Lecocq plants doubts in Peter's mind about Catherine's fidelity. She pretends to have many lovers (seventeen, she says, which the Empress overhears as "seventy") whereas Peter actually does take a mistress. Soon, with Peter treating Catherine shabbily and showing signs of madness, Catherine asks for a divorce, at which point Peter suddenly becomes interested in her again and they reconcile for a time. But even the Empress comes to see that Peter is not the person to rule Russia—on her deathbed, she confides to Catherine that she should have him killed and give the title to Catherine. And that's pretty much where the court intrigues lead—to Peter's downfall and Catherine's rise to the throne.

This same story was told by Josef von Sternberg in THE SCARLET EMPRESS—both versions are highly fictionalized but SCARLET has the advantage of Marlene Dietrich in the title role, and Sternberg's spectacular visual style. The sets and costumes in this film, directed by Paul Czinner, are lovely, but the leading lady, Elisabeth Bergner, is nowhere near Dietrich in terms of talent or charisma. She's OK but she can't really carry the movie. Luckily, her co-star, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., can carry what she can't. He plays Peter as a crafty, somewhat childish playboy, and makes his scenes come to life. (In SCARLET, Sam Jaffe played him as mentally damaged, which is apparently closer to the truth.) Flora Robson is also quite good as the Empress, and Gerald du Maurier, father of author Daphne, has a small role as Lecocq. He gets one of the better lines: when Peter asks if he's ever been married, Lecocq replies, "Not officially, but I've dabbled in it." Not a classic but worth a classic film fan's time. [DVD]

STRANGERS OF THE EVENING (1932)

It's a busy night at Chandler Undertaking Parlors. McNaughton, a hot shot political figure, is dead. He supposedly died in a car accident, horribly mutilated, but undertaker Joseph Chandler and a couple of cronies are trying to hide the real cause of death (a murder involving unsavory underworld figures). Young assistant Tommy is supposed to prep the body, but he's a bit skittish about it, so he heads out for a drink first. Meanwhile, Dr. Ray Everette, who has a lab in the morgue, is about to elope with Ruth Daniels against the wishes of her father. Mr. Daniels arrives at the lab, unseen, to have it out with Everette. We see them in silhouette behind a door arguing. Next thing we know, Ray and Ruth have ducked out to get married, and two passersby find a dead body in the alley and carry it in to the undertaker's. When Tommy gets back, all alone in the morgue, the recently arrived body, assumed to be Mr. Daniels, rises up under the sheet and sends poor Tommy racing out of the room. Next morning, someone is buried in McNaughton's coffin, but Chandler isn't sure who. As a topper, a befuddled but amiable amnesiac shows up thinking he knows something about the various events of the night before. They manage to track him down to a boarding house where he was befriended by the scatterbrained landlady Sybil—who nicknamed him Snookie. So Sybil, Snookie, and a cop work together (not always comfortably) to figure out who's dead and who's not.

There is promise here; the first 20 minutes or so (out of about 65) are amusing and atmospheric—though a lack of background music hurts. Unfortunately, once the narrative focuses on Sybil and the cop, the proceedings slow down and become distinctly blander. Zasu Pitts (Sybil) is an acquired taste—I can take her ditsy persona best in smaller doses, but she's a little too front and center here for me. Eugene Pallette (the cop) is similarly best when used sparingly (Friar Tuck in the Errol Flynn ROBIN HOOD, the patriarch in MY MAN GODFREY), but he's a little less blustery here than he could be. I enjoyed Lucien Littlefield as Snooki, Theodore von Eltz as Ray, and Harold Waldridge as Tommy (the latter two pictured above), and part of me wishes the plot could have been carried through without bringing Pitts and Pallette into it at all. The plot machinations do get a bit complicated, and every five minutes or so, the plot gets summarized, and re-summarized, in newspaper headlines—which makes me wonder why one of the main characters wasn't a reporter. The timing and pace are a little off, which I blame on the direction by Bruce Humberstone, who knocked out some 30 B-movies between 1932 and 1950. His career peaks were probably the handful of Charlie Chan titles he did in the 30s and some 50s-era Tarzan films. If you don't mind the antics of Pitts and Pallette, or the slack Poverty Row production values, this might be up your alley. [Streaming] 

A KISS BEFORE DYING (1956)

Perennial collegiate golden-boy Robert Wagner is dating co-ed and socialite Joanne Woodward, hoping to marry into her family. When she finds out she's pregnant, she wants to keep the baby and get married, but if they did in that situation, her judgmental father would disown her—and confound Wagner's plans for a future on Easy Street. He has his own family problem in the form of an overbearing mother who nags at him for his failure to make something of himself at the age of 25. Feeling trapped, Wagner decides to poison Woodward to get untangled from his mess, and when that doesn't work, they go downtown (supposedly to get a marriage license) and he takes her to the top of an office building (pictured) where he pushes her to her death. The police assume suicide and the father goes along, not wanting more publicity from further investigation, but the verdict does not sit well with Woodward's sister (Virginia Leith) who, a few months later, is dating Wagner, not realizing that he previously dated Woodward. However, it doesn't take too long for Leith to start putting two and two together—most importantly, noticing that Woodward had been wearing something old, new, borrowed and blue on the day of her death—and with some help from handsome young professor Jeffrey Hunter, she begins to investigate. At first, she suspects Robert Quarry, an ex-boyfriend, but he is found dead (again, apparently a suicide but actually murdered by Wagner). Leith agrees to marry Wagner, but what will happen when the light of suspicion gets closer and closer to him? At times, Hitchcockian moments spring up that put me in mind of PSYCHO and VERTIGO (both of which came after this film), but there's something missing here. The film starts off well, but after Woodward's murder, the pace slackens a bit. Wagner and Woodward are the best actors; Leith and Hunter are blander (and possibly miscast), so the acting also feels a bit unbalanced. The bright skies of Tucson and the widescreen compositions work against a noir atmosphere, but the look of the movie is generally a plus. Also with Mary Astor as Wagner’s mother and George MacReady as Woodworth’s father. Interesting but mostly feels like a missed opportunity by director Gerd Oswald who eventually moved to television. Based on a novel by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby). [TCM]

BLONDE FEVER (1944)

Philip Dorn and Mary Astor are a married couple who run a fancy restaurant/club out in the Nevada woods not far from Reno—which means a lot of their clientele are people getting divorces. The couple is renowned for their restaurants, but there seems to be trouble brewing: Dorn, who has recently given up a gambling habit, is flirting with Gloria Grahame, a cigarette girl at the restaurant, even though she's dating young hothead Marshall Thompson who occasionally delivers guests to the club on a rickety motorcycle. Astor seems to view this with a certain worldly detachment for a time, but when Dorn wins a $40,000 lottery prize, Grahame doubles down on her gold-digging attempts, so Astor hires Thompson as a waiter, an act which unbalances the teetering triangle. Eventually a gun comes into play, but as this is a comedy, no worries, and no surprises about how things end up.

Based on a play by Ferenc Molnar (most famous for "Lillom" which was turned into the musical CAROUSEL), this is a small B-comedy delight. Unfortunately, the lead actor, Philip Dorn, almost sinks the whole thing: he's too old (he’s only five years older than Astor, but seems much older), too heavy-handed, and frankly, not very attractive. Someone like James Stewart or a B-lead such as James Ellison or James Craig might have made this movie truly memorable. But the rest of the cast is fun. A special credit card notes this as "introducing" both Grahame and Thompson (both pictured above), and the two are very good with sparkling chemistry. It was a surprise to see Thompson, who I think of as the game warden in the 60s TV series Daktari, as young and cute and gangly, a bit like a taller Mickey Rooney. Felix Bressart plays the friendly bartender, and an uncredited Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy have a very funny 30-second scene which seems to have been tossed in as an in-joke of some kind. At one point, Astor refers to Grahame as "a pretty little surrey with a fringe on top" which made me laugh as Grahame would go on to co-star in the movie version of OKLAHOMA (though as Ado Annie, not Laurey for whom the "Surrey" song is sung). I’d watch this one again. [TCM]

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967)

Time is hazy, so the narrator insists, and tends to tug us "toward all yesterdays as strongly as all the unborn tomorrows that stretch toward all eternity." With that to chew on, we find ourselves in a time travel lab with a handful of scientists who are feeling threatened by the new owner (Scott Brady) of the scientific company they work for. Through a portal, they can see and photograph the past 24 hours ago, and are now working on seeing 24 hours into the future. When Brady decides he wants to repurpose their lasers for military use, moderately studly scientist Anthony Eisley rebels and sets everything at full power, so the entire lab is sent hurtling into the far future, the year 6968 to be exact. While the young and attractive scientists in the present (Andy Davis [pictured below] and Tracy Olsen) try to find the lab workers "in whatever dimension of space or time they've gone," Eisley, Brady, and the gang wind up in the middle of a war between what's left of the earthlings who have mostly destroyed the world through nuclear war and pale aliens who have arrived from their dying planet. The chief alien spokesperson (Poupée Gamin—yes, that is the actress' name, pictured at right) tells Eisley to go back to 1967 and warn mankind not to experiment with laser weapons—which of course doesn't sit well with Brady. As the lab heads back through the space-time continuum, they see another object on a collision course with them and Brady destroys it. Overshooting their own time, they wind up back around 1,000,000 BC; Brady grabs up lots of volcanic gems and decides to leave without the other scientists, but [possible SPOILER, though this is easy to see coming] on his way, he and the lab are destroyed by, yep, the Brady that was heading back to the past. Somehow, Eisley and fellow scientist Gigi Perreau still wind up in the lab and make it back to 1967, but they soon discover that something has gone very wrong…

This, another of my summer sci-fi B-movie viewings, is an uncredited remake of THE TIME TRAVELERS, from the story to the largely one-set setting to the bizarre time-loop ending. Some of the plot details differ and this one seems to have been produced on a lower budget than the earlier film. The lingo used is particularly convoluted here, and sometimes the dialogue is delivered as though the actors saw it for the first time moments before the scene was shot. Use of stock footage during the chaotic time-travel scene is worthy of Ed Wood, especially an oddly long sequence of D-Day footage. But still this manages to be fun much of the time, sometimes in a bad-movie way. Brady, a tough-guy actor in lots of westerns, seems to think the whole enterprise is a waste of his time, and he can't even be bothered to tuck his shirt in during the last half of the movie—it may have been on purpose but it didn't seem in character. Eisley and Perreau are OK, and I found Andy Davis to be rather fetching, though all he has to do is stand at a desk and try to keep track of what year the lab is in. Lyle Waggoner plays an alien, though I did not recognize him. On balance, bad-movie fun. [Streaming]

SPACE PROBE TAURUS (1965)

aka SPACE MONSTER (TV title)

The pilot of the spaceship Faith I radios Earth Control with a desperate message: everyone else on board is dead and he is suffering from intense and painful radiation poisoning, so he wants the military men on the ground to blow up his craft by remote control, which they reluctantly do. The next ship, the Hope I, heads off—their mission is unclear to us—with a four-person crew. Hank, the studly commander, doesn't take well to the presence of Lisa, lady scientist, whose most important function seems be to calling out "Dinner is served!" John, the obnoxious horndog, is looking forward to making money from writing magazine articles about his trip. Paul is the colorless doctor who is there to be, well, the colorless fourth person. In the middle of their petty personal conflicts, they run into a meteorite swarm and have to turn on their forcefield, which somehow damages the ship; it speeds up and won't slow down, draining their resources. They wind up landing on a "rogue moon," though rather than landing on land, they end up on the bottom on an ocean. After the crew wards off an attack by giant crabs, John suits up (luckily, there is scuba gear on board), heads out to shore, and discovers that the atmosphere of the moon will support human life. But a "Black Lagoon"-type of creature kills him before he can make it back to the ship. Now that the egotistical creep has redeemed himself, the rest of the crew can head home, after deciding to name the moon after the creep.

I feel like I've hit the bottom of the barrel in my summertime 60s sci-fi scrounging. If it's not the sexism, it's the bargain basement effects (the crab attack is the low point), or the confusing plot—what the hell are their missions? (We get a sense of this when, at the tail end of the movie, the doctor takes a spiritual tone to talk about the hand that guided them to find "Earth reborn.") Where the hell is the Triangulum Galaxy? Is Taurus the moon? If it is, why does it need another name? Why was there a scuba outfit on board? Why doesn't Lisa tell Hank to shove it up his ass? (Instead, of course, she falls in love with him.) And spaceships named Faith and Hope??? Generally I think it's unfair to bash movies for their outdated social attitudes, but here the sexism is so front-and-center that it's difficult to get past it. The high point of the movie, both in terms of actual action and crazy plot developments, is when Hank and John barge onto an another spaceship and think nothing of killing the alien who inhabits it, whose main aggressive move is to flick its tongue at the two men. The underwater monster is the same creature from WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP, produced the same year by the same company, American International.  For that matter, the tongued alien (pictured above right) looks the same as one from another 1965 low-budget film, THE WIZARD OF MARS. James B. Brown (who I know as the young soldier in GOING MY WAY) does what he can with the boneheaded male role. For the record, the other actors are Francine York (Lisa), Baynes Barron (John--pictured with Brown), and Russ Bender (Paul). [YouTube]

LAW OF THE JUNGLE (1942)

Sultry chorus girl Nona (Arline Judge) is stranded in an African village, having lost her passport and been deserted by her manager. Hotel owner Simmons hires her to sing, but unknown to her, he is in cahoots with two German agents, Grozman and Belts, who are trying to start a native uprising—and who have stolen her passport, to what end, I was never sure, except so there would be some femme appeal in this movie. Meanwhile, paleontologist Larry Mason (John King) and his "gentleman's gentleman" Jeff (Mantan Moreland) arrive looking for "the missing link." Mason is warned to steer clear of Nona (bad influence and all), but when she witnesses the assassination of a British agent, she lights out for the jungle and is reluctantly taken in by Mason, even though the natives accompanying him say that the "white woman is bad juju"—of course, all it takes is for King to tell them that she is NOT bad juju, and they're appeased. It turns out that the dead British agent's report on the German spies is in the possession of Nona, though she doesn't know it. Soon, Larry's band is being hunted not only by the Germans but also by two British cops. They discover the agent's report, hide it in a human skull they find in a cave, and are promptly attacked by a gorilla and captured by a native tribe—who might be cannibals.

This B-jungle melodrama from Monogram (I almost called it an "adventure" but very little exciting actually happens) suffers from particularly cheap production values and a derivative, predictable script, but a couple of actors make up to some degree for the shortcomings. Arline Judge is a good, cocky, gruff female lead; John King is adequate—many critics fault him for being wooden, but I think it's just that he suffers a bit in comparison to the more enthusiastic performance of his leading lady. The real saving grace here is Mantan Moreland who manages, as he often did, to transcend his role as African-American dumb-guy comic relief. In fact, the last fifteen minutes of the movie belong to him as he winds up getting our heroes out of trouble when it turns out that the chief of the kidnapping tribe (Laurence Criner) is an Oxford-educated fellow who belongs to the same Harlem social club as Moreland. When Moreland is faced with a giggling female who seems to be mocking him, he retorts, "You ain’t no Maxine Sullivan yourself," a fairly obscure reference to a 30s jazz singer. But actually the woman wants to marry Moreland, which, because she's rather large, is supposed to a joke all by itself but which will be offensive to many viewers today. Another odd detail: Mason's chief native associate is named Bongo. If those last two items don’t offend you, you might enjoy this outdated but occasionally fun flick. Arthur O'Connell, later a respected character actor (Oscar-nominated for ANATOMY OF A MURDER) is unrecognizable as the doomed hotel owner. [YouTube]

HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937)

Bruce Vail (Colin Clive) is a shipping magnate whose company is working on a new passenger liner named after his wife Irene (Jean Arthur). But their married life is on the rocks, to say the least: he is constantly jealous, thinking she's having affairs, and she—who is unhappily faithful to him—finally decides she wants a divorce and moves out into a hotel room. Bruce tries to put a hitch in her plans by hiring his chauffeur to go to her room and be "caught" in the act of seduction, which would pressure her to drop the divorce, but in the midst of this, a man (Charles Boyer), apparently a thief hiding on the balcony, enters the room, knocks out the chauffeur and locks Bruce in a closet. But Paul Dumond is not a thief; he was putting a passed-out friend to bed in the next room and overheard the ruckus in Irene's room, so broke in to save a damsel in distress. Paul takes Irene to the Chateau Bleu just as it's closing and sweet-talks the chef Cesare (Leo Carillo) and the band into staying open just for the two of them. It's a lovely meet-cute situation and the two fall for each other, but back in the hotel room, Bruce, thinking that Paul was Irene's lover, kills the chauffeur to put the blame on Paul, and forces Irene to travel to New York City with him. Sure enough, she does, disappointing Paul who is actually the headwaiter at the Chateau Bleu. So what does Paul do? Of course, he and Cesare head to New York City hoping to break into the restaurant business to impress Irene who he hopes will come running back to him. However, Paul has heard nothing about the murder so is unaware that she left to save him from scrutiny. The unhappy Irene does eventually wander into Paul's restaurant, but because her husband is with her, Paul is upset. Will these two kids ever get together? Will Paul go on trial for murder?

Did I mention the Titanic-like climax, as the liner named for Irene, with Paul and Irene on board, hits an iceberg? That makes for one of the strangest scenes ever in what is essentially a romantic comedy. And this is one of the more unusual movies of its era. The plot, full of incident and unusual turns, feels fairly contemporary, as do its tonal shifts from comedy to romance to drama. The sequence of Boyer and Arthur getting to know each other is quite charming, but at various points along the way, you're not sure that the two will wind up together and/or alive, and that's unusual for a 30s romance. They make a very good screen couple, and this may be my favorite Boyer performance—I looked back at my reviews of other Boyer films and I nearly always say, "I’m not really a Boyer fan, but I liked him here," so maybe I'm actually a Boyer fan. Carillo functions as a comic relief wingman most of the time and he does a good job. Colin Clive's character is basically a one-note sociopath and it's difficult to care at all about him, or to understand the lengths he goes to in order to keep a wife who hates him. A different actor may have been able to flesh out Vail a bit, but he's really just a cardboard villain. Also with Ivan Lebedeff as the ill-fated chauffeur. [Criterion streaming]

DREAMBOAT (1952)

Thornton Sayre (Clifton Webb) is a mild-mannered and respected professor of English at Underhill College. However, he has a secret in his past that he has kept from his students and colleagues: years ago, he was a famous silent movie star named Bruce Blair, aka Dreamboat. But now the movies he made with his famous co-star Gloria Marlowe (Ginger Rogers) are being broadcast on television in prime time on the Exotic Perfume Hour, hosted by none other than Marlowe. His daughter Carol (Anne Francis) discovers the connection and is horrified, as is Sayre, as are his colleagues—though Dr. Coffey, the college president (Elsa Lanchester), admits privately that she's always had a crush on Dreamboat. To save his reputation, Sayre takes off to New York with his daughter to stop the show from being broadcast. Marlowe claims she needs the show because she's broke, but when Sayre finds out that's a lie, he files an injunction to stop his movies from airing. Meanwhile, young and handsome TV executive Bill Ainslee (Jeffrey Hunter) squires Carol around town while her dad is occupied and soon they're dating. Then Dr. Coffey shows up and puts the moves on Sayre, and when he rejects her, she fires him. In court, Sayre claims the movies have been re-edited to make him look ridiculous—which they have—and he wins the suit. But Marlowe has one last plan to set in motion…

This is a cute comedy, and especially interesting for being an early indictment of television as a conduit of idiocy, but as far as I'm concerned, there's a big obstacle to total enjoyment: Webb (who was over 60) plays his younger self in the silent movie clips, and he can't really pull off the romantic swashbuckler type. Rogers (only 40 at the time) is more believable. It's not a fatal flaw, but given that Webb actually was in a handful of silent films, it's too bad they couldn't have used actual footage of him from that era. Otherwise, Webb is very good, as is Rogers. The Francis/Hunter storyline feels tacked on, but it's pleasant to watch these two pretty people (pictured above) go through their romantic comedy paces, mild as they are—Hunter thinks Francis is a small-town "museum" type, and she has to show him that she's not. Harmless fun. [FMC]

THIS IS NOT A TEST (1962)

One night along a California highway, Deputy Colter is ordered to put up a roadblock. Several travelers who are stopped get annoyed until Colter tells them what's happening: martial law has been declared because nuclear missiles are headed toward the States and they happen to be in a prime target area (military technology and oil reserves). Among the inconvenienced citizens: Jacob, an old farmer, and his daughter Juney; businessman Sam and his mildly disgruntled wife Karen; young speeder Cheryl and her playboy boyfriend Joe who has finally landed some big money but now realizes he has no use for it; trucker Al and Clint, the handsome but strange guy he picked up on the road; and cleancut young Pete. Tensions ebb and flow in the group, particularly when Colter takes charge and makes Al clean out his truck so they can all get inside and wait out the blast and the ensuing radioactivity. Not everyone thinks that's such a good idea so a few wind up striking out on their own. Other problems: Clint is a psychotic killer on the run and, though Colter scares him away, he hangs around in the hills near the group; Al flirts with Karen which threatens to unhinge her husband; Pete gets sweet on innocent Juney. Then there's the gang of looters who arrive just moments before the bombs are due to fall. And don't forget Karen's pet Chihuahua.

Though a micro-budget, no-star affair, this still manages to be mostly effective, as long as you're not looking for apocalyptic special effects. It's primarily a character drama and, appropriately, it proceeds on limited sets like a TV episode or, as another critic has noted, a play (it has a bit of the feel of The Petrified Forest  but set outside). The writing is good enough that I wish the acting had been better; the actors are OK but bigger talents would have added another layer of appeal to the film. Seamon Glass (at right) has the burly build and steely gaze of a highway cop, but he mostly seems to be reciting lines he just learned, though when his character stars showing signs of falling apart near the end, Glass gets a chance to shine, especially in a scene with the dog. No one in the cast was familiar to me, but mention should be made of Ron Starr (pictured above left), who makes a very effective psycho—the script hints at a Norman Bates-type of personality but he's the least developed of all the characters; Norman Winston, who gives the wronged husband a nice touch of gravitas; and Don Spurance and Aubrey Martin as the coupled-up Pete and Juney. I like the fact that several boxes of Christmas ornaments are taken out of the truck and spread about in a fatalistic stab at humor and irony. Not a bad little film, best approached as a period piece from the middle of the Cold War—though interestingly, there is absolutely no political discussion or mention of where the bombs are coming from; audiences of the time would have known they were Russian. [YouTube]

PLANET OF DINOSAURS (1977)

A spaceship in trouble crash lands in an ocean on a planet very much like Earth. The crew manages to swim to shore with some supplies before the ship sinks, and they discover a seemingly hospitable environment. But when Cindy tries to go swim back to the ship, she is eaten by a sea creature (as JAWS-like music plays). The remaining eight crew members hike inland to find a place to set up camp until they are rescued—which may or may not be a realistic hope as they have no way to communicate with their home base. Among the eight are: Lee, the nominal but indecisive leader; Chuck, the hunky navigator who spends almost the entire movie shirtless; Jim, the bearded lumberjackish fellow who becomes a more reliable decision-maker; and Derna, a sexy secretary. There are personal tensions, but given the title, what we really want to see are the dinosaurs. When they eventually arrive, after much tedious conversation and lots of walking and rock climbing, they are sort of worth the wait. And sort of not, depending on your tolerance for bad acting and terrible dialogue.

This movie is of a much later vintage than I usually include on this blog, but it seems part and parcel of the rash of low-budget 60s and early 70s sci-fi movies I've been watching this summer. It's very low-budget, and what money there was went to the special effects (including some nice Harryhausen-like stop-motion effects) by some men who later worked on better movies such as GREMLINS 2 and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I especially liked the little pet-sized dinosaurs, though all the effects are of higher quality than the surrounding movie. There is a great death scene involving one especially unlikable character getting speared in the chest by the horn of a Centrosaurus. Lucky for me, the undistinguished acting and bad screenplay were made tolerable by the cheesy costumes (men in jumpsuits open to the navel), porn mustaches sported by a couple of the guys (see Mike at right), and the bared chest of Chuck Pennington (as Chuck, pictured above killing one of the petlike dinos). Generally, it felt like the cast and crew were just out for a week of hiking in the hills around Los Angeles in sporty 70s duds and decided to shoot an unfinished script that the director just happened to have in his pocket. Weirdly, the whole thing has a 70s porn movie vibe to it, even though nothing remotely sexy happens—unless you count Chuck's chest, which I guess I do. I was even pleasantly distracted by Michael Thayer (as Mike) and James Whitworth (as Jim). Even Derna was played by a woman named Derna! (Whitworth went on to gain notoriety as the cannibal dad in the original THE HILLS HAVE EYES.) [Streaming]

SUSAN AND GOD (1940)

Barrie Trexel (Fredric March) is a rich but depressed alcoholic whose wife Susan (Joan Crawford) has left him for an extended tour of Europe. Her return gives him hope that she will come back to him—and their young daughter Blossom—but instead she returns full of religion, that of a specific movement headed by Millicent Wigstaff, which requires only love, and confession of sins and shortcomings. Her high society friends welcome her back and are torn between obeying her wish to be kept away from her husband, and Barrie's wish to see her. Meanwhile, Susan, filled with missionary zeal, tries to convert her friends and in the process of getting them to face up to their failings, meddles in their lives to the point of breaking up relationships. However, when it comes to facing up to her own problems, Susan is less enthusiastic and problems erupt all around.

This is an odd duck of a movie. Despite the title and the time taken up with the Wigstaff Movement, the religious content, satirical or otherwise, is minimal. The first half is built like a screwball comedy, and indeed at times the movie has the feel of THE PHILADELPHIA STORY—rich people, big houses, fancy clothes, sophisticated love lives, alcoholism, etc. Joan Crawford even seems to be imitating Katherine Hepburn for a while, though apparently she was actually channeling Gertrude Lawrence who played Susan on stage. But Susan's friends mostly vanish in the last half as the focus becomes family melodrama, and I lost interest. I don't typically find March a good comedy player and nothing he does here changes my mind. Crawford gives a busy, shrill performance, swanning about in lovely clothes but getting on my nerves—of course, her character is supposed to be unlikable, but I also found her unpleasant, and wondered why the hell her husband wanted to get her back. The supporting cast is good: Nigel Bruce is a wealthy middle-aged man recently married to aspiring actress Rita Hayworth, who is carrying on an affair with handsome actor John Carroll; Rose Hobart and Bruce Cabot are a couple whom Crawford insists are wrong for each other; Ruth Hussey is especially good as a family friend who has nursed a long-time crush on March. At two hours, this goes on far too long to a predictable, if unlikely, happy-ish ending. Pictured from left: Crawford, Carroll, Cabot and Hayworth. [TCM]

MISS JULIE (1951)

On the night of a Swedish Midsummer's Eve festival, Count Carl's servant Jean (Alf Palme) returns to the estate after dropping the Count off at another party. Julie (Anita Bjork), the Count's restless daughter, who has just told off her supposed fiancé, is slumming with the common folk at the party and flirtatiously tries to get Jean to dance with her, despite knowing that he is engaged to Kristin, the cook. As the two parry back and forth for the rest of the night, we get several flashbacks showing aspects of their relationship over the years. Jean, as a young boy, sneaks into the house to see her, then winds up literally in shit when he hides in an outhouse. Years later, Julie asks her fiancé to wade out in a pond and get her a water lily; when he refuses, Jean does it instead. We also get some insight into Julie's upbringing: her mother, Berta, was the Count's mistress and rebelled against traditional gender roles, but eventually went mad and, on a past Midsummer's Eve, burned the house down. Julie promised her mother not to let men enslave her, and tells Jean, "I'd like to see your whole sex awash in blood." Nevertheless, Jean has plans to leave and run a hotel, and Julie steals money from her father so she can run away with him. Still, master and servant mindsets are hard to change, and the best laid plans of mice and men and unstable women…

This beautifully shot and acted film is based on a well-known play by August Strindberg, but you'd never guess it from the inventive, fluid opening-up the material has received from director Alf Sjoberg and cinematographer Goran Strindberg; visually, this movie kept reminding me of CITIZEN KANE which is a high compliment. The action, as in the play, takes place over an evening and a morning, but the constant flashbacks never allow the narrative to bog down and the camera never lets the pace flag. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Ingmar Bergman was influenced by Sjoberg, and this film in particular. Bjork seems just a tad too old for the part, but she's very good, and Palme (picuted with Bjork) is even better, though his character is a bit perplexing in terms of intention and motivation. The young Max von Sydow has a small role as a mostly mute observer. Highly recommended. [TCM]

SHE'S BACK ON BROADWAY (1953)

Virginia Mayo is a movie star who feels washed up in Hollywood. Her agent (Larry Keating) talks her into heading back to Broadway to star in a new musical. The catch: she would be working with director Steve Cochran, the man who directed her breakout show years ago; the two were lovers and he never forgave her for leaving both him and the hit show for a movie contract. Cochran resists using Mayo until his producer (Frank Lovejoy) tells him that with her name attached to the project, financing for the show has come pouring in. Cochran reluctantly agrees to give her the role and for a while, things run smoothly, but when he discovers that her agent is the main backer, he assumes the whole thing is a set-up for Mayo to make a big splash, then leave the show like she did before. He starts treating her harshly at rehearsals; she storms off stage and he quits. Cochran soon realizes that he's getting bad publicity, and he and Mayo reconcile professionally and go on with the show. Though there still seems to be an attraction between them, Cochran has a lover (Patrice Wymore), a dancer in the show—their relationship is made quite clear, somewhat surprisingly for a Production Code movie—and that triangle combined with, sure enough, a Hollywood offer after the New Haven previews, may wind up scuttling both the show and the re-warmed affair.

Despite the title and the presence of the fairly lightweight actress Virginia Mayo, this isn't a musical comedy. There are some songs, all in the context of the show being rehearsed, and most of the numbers are in fact seen in rehearsal form rather than as staged songs—oddly, the full-blown production number "Breakfast in Bed" isn't as fun as the rehearsal numbers. As far as tone, it's basically a fairly serious melodrama done with a light but not comic touch. The film begins with Mayo feeling depressed over the suicide of an actress very much like her. The scenes between Mayo and Cochran are well-played and serious. There isn't real comic relief, except for the presence of one poor untalented schmoe who keeps auditioning for a part and is finally given a job as a stage assistant. The problem is that it never feels like there's much at stake here. The movie feels uneasily stuck between being a show-biz comedy like THE BAND WAGON and being a show-biz drama like THE COUNTRY GIRL. For me, Cochran (pictured at right) can do no wrong, and his solid performance is like a stepping stone to Roy Scheider's portrayal of a fictionalized Bob Fosse in ALL THAT JAZZ. Speaking of which, Fosse may have seen the audition scene early in this film, as his great "On Broadway" number in JAZZ seems to have been inspired by it. Also with the always fun Gene Nelson as Mayo’s leading man (Nelson and Mayo are pictured above left), and a spectacular two-man dance team of Steve Condos and Jerry Brandow whose tap routine is the musical highlight of the film. Worth seeing if you don't expect a frothy comedy. [TCM]

ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (1973)

John Wintergreen (Robert Blake, at left) is an Arizona motorcycle cop, assigned to a deep desert area, who desperately wants to become a homicide detective. He gets his chance when an old man is found dead in his isolated shack; it looks like an elaborate suicide but John picks up on a couple of clues that would indicate it was actually murder, so Detective Poole (Mitchell Ryan) lets him assist on the case. As it's the early 70s, a member of a nearby hippie commune comes under suspicion, and Poole uses unnecessarily brutal questioning tactics to get information, but Wintergreen sees himself as an unfailingly fair and moral man—when he stops someone for speeding and it turns out to be a Tucson cop, he gives the guy a ticket anyway—and he's upset with Poole's ways. Eventually, Wintergreen figures out who the real killer is, though his discomfort in trying to fit in with the detectives puts him back out on his motorcycle, with a tragic result.

This cult film is the only movie directed by James William Guercio, better known as the producer of most of Chicago's big hits in the 70s. On release, some critics labeled this film "fascist," I'm guessing because it was telling a policeman's story sympathetically—and also because of the visual fetishization of the hyper-masculine leather uniforms and motorcycles. In an early scene, John and his fellow cop Zipper (Billy Green Bush, pictured at right) use an Easy Rider poster for target practice, which could indicate anti-counterculture feelings, to say the least. However, whatever his politics, John wants to be fair and do the right thing. Both cops and hippies come in for criticism in this film, and today it doesn't seem quite as politically charged as it did then. Blake is excellent, making Wintergreen a round character and resisting the temptation to play his as a naïf or baboon. Ryan is fine, as is Elisha Cook as the nutty old guy who stumbles on the death scene. Jeannine Riley, best known for roles on TVs Petticoat Junction and Hee-Haw, is good in the small but important role of John's occasional lover. However, Billy Green Bush practically steals the movie with his tragicomic antics as John's tightly wound cop buddy—he's not comic relief but he does bring an interesting sense of tension (sometimes light, sometime dark) to the film. Pay attention to the hippie commune scene and you'll see some members of Chicago who each have a couple lines of dialogue, and a quick glimpse of Nick Nolte who has no lines. The exteriors, shot in Arizona and Utah by Conrad Hall, are gorgeous, and the interiors bring to mind film noir. An interesting film which deserves a wider audience. [DVD]

THE DAMNED (1947)

aka LES MAUDITS
With the end of the war in sight, a group of Nazis and collaborators leave Norway in a submarine headed for South America. Among the passengers: a Nazi general, an Italian industrialist, his wife Hilde (who is also fairly obviously the general's mistress), an academic, his teenage daughter, and a reporter. Barely out of port, the ship is hit by depth charges and Hilde is knocked unconscious. A Nazi named Forster, who still holds out hope for "victory" in a larger sense, wants to get rid of her as dead weight, but the general instead threatens to get rid of Willy, Forster's thug buddy—or is he more than that to Forster? With tensions established, the sub stops at a port town in France and a doctor named Guilbert is shanghaied to attend to Hilde. As the trip continues, word comes that Hitler has committed suicide—not good news for most on the sub—and Guilbert does what he can to sow dissent among the Nazis and enlists the help of the radio operator to try and figure out a way to escape. Something of a forerunner to DAS BOOT, at least in terms of look and feel, this is a small gem of claustrophobic tension, well acted and involving, leading to an exciting climactic encounter with a cargo ship. Most of the actors weren't familiar to me (except Marcel Dalio in a cameo as a South American agent) but they’re all fine, though the standout is Henri Vidal (pictured) as the doctor. [DVD]

THE ROADHOUSE MURDER (1932)

Eric Linden is a cub reporter at the New York Star who is desperate to make a name for himself. He thinks he has a line on some diamond smugglers and gets the police to break into an apartment, but the occupant is a young naked woman in a bathtub; the jewels she has are legitimately hers—and they were a gift from the Star's publisher. Frustrated and close to getting fired, Linden takes his girl (Dorothy Jordan), the police commissioner’s daughter, on a moonlight drive in his convertible to vent. When it starts pouring down rain, they take refuge at a small roadside inn run by an unfriendly clerk. In the middle of the night, Bruce Cabot and Phyllis Clare break in to steal jewels from another guest. They kill the guest and the clerk, but Linden and Jordan see them escape, and Clare even leaves behind her purse.

Up to now, this has been a decent B-movie crime story. But then it all goes to hell; instead of calling the police, telling their story and giving them the purse, Linden gets the bright idea of leaving fake evidence to make it look like he committed the murders. He figures he'll go on the run, get caught, write a series of articles about his ordeal, than have Clare bring the purse forward before he gets in too deep. Yeah, what the hell could go wrong with that? He does make headlines with a series of articles called "Diary of a Hunted Man," but once he gets caught and put on trial, we know the purse is going to go missing and his life will be in danger. I've always liked Linden in his 30s young pup roles (BIG CITY BLUES, FLYING DEVILS) but even he can’t quite make his character credible. Jordan is OK and there is a good supporting cast including Cabot, Roscoe Karns (pictured to the left of Linden) as Linden's boss, and Gustav von Seyffertitz as the innkeeper. [TCM]

THE PIED PIPER (1942)

In June of 1940, the curmudgeonly British John Howard (Monty Woolley) is traveling in France, fishing at a lodge, just as the Germans are invading France—with England seemingly their next stop. As Howard makes plans to leave, a woman at the lodge asks him to escort her two children, Ronny (Roddy McDowell) and Shelia (Peggy Ann Garner), back to relatives in England while she makes her way to Switzerland. Reluctantly, he agrees and the three board a train, but when it's stopped and taken over by the French Army, they wind up on a crowded bus—accompanied by another child, asked along by Shelia. At Chartres, they come under German airplane fire and pick up another child, a boy who has been traumatized into silence by the death of his parents. Howard gets news that his son, an RAF pilot, is dead just after he meets up with the young Nicole Rougeron (Anne Baxter) who had an affair with his son. She helps arrange passage for Howard and his charges across the English Channel, but a Nazi major (Otto Preminger) who thinks Howard might be a spy could bring all their plans to an end.

I spent years trying to see this film, based on a novel by Nevil Shute, because I'm a fan of Monty Woolley and he was nominated for Best Actor for his role here. It was shown occasionally on Cinemax back in the 90s but by the time I had access to that channel, they had quit airing it. Now all these years later, I was able to see in on a gray-market DVD. I'm not sure I'd say it was worth a twenty-year wait, but it is a solid wartime drama with a very good lead performance from Woolley. The child actors McDowell and Garner acquit themselves well and the tone is much less saccharine than it could have been. The horrors of the war are downplayed for a lighter tone in general which fits the feel of the original novel by Nevil Shute. Also with J. Carroll Naish and Marcel Dalio. I'm not sure why this has not gotten a legal commercial release on DVD, but it should.