THE PHYNX (1970)

The Super Secret Agency has its office entrance behind a men's room stall in an International House of Pancakes. Their latest mission: sneak into Albania and rescue a slew of pop culture celebrities who have been kidnapped. The disappearance of folks like Johnny Weissmuller, Edgar Bergen, Butterfly McQueen, Rudy Vallee, and Col. Sanders of KFC fame is lowering the morale of American citizens, and superspy Corrigan (Lou Antonio) can't get past Rostinov (Michael Ansara) who guards the Albanian border. One idea is to parachute Bob Hope in and Albania will think that a war has been declared. But the supercomputer (named Motha and shaped like a buxom woman) comes up with another plan: put together a pop group, get them a big following, and have them visit Albania on the pretext of giving a concert. Four young men are chosen to form a band called the Phynx (pronounced "Finks"); there's the cute one, the jock, the black guy, and the Native American. First, they're sent through boot camp, then renowned (and nutty) producer Philbaby is brought in to make their first album. They appear on Ed Sullivan, and James Brown gives them their gold record.

In Europe, agent Martha Raye—who wears a "Rosebud" bracelet—reveals that a map to the Albanian castle where the celebs are being held is tattooed in three parts on the stomachs of three lovely young women, which leads to all manner of lurid behavior (X-ray glasses, 1000 one-night stands—actually more like 10-minute stands) to find the three bellies and the map. Albania extends "the warm fist of friendship" to the band, they attend the National Flower Festival—their flower is the radish—and eventually make it to the castle where they find the celebrities. In the end, they all get away when the Phynx's rock and roll performance causes the castle walls to collapse. Yes, rock and roll saves American popular culture!

I have long wanted to see his notorious movie because of the long list of classic-era names putting in cameos—in addition to those named above, we see Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Maureen O’Sullivan (who gets a cute scene of banter with her former Tarzan co-star Weissmuller), Xavier Cugat, Busby Berkeley, Dick Clark, Richard Pryor (blink and you'll miss him) and Pat O'Brien (whom Gorcey calls "Father" in reference to their 30s movie ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) among many others. George Tobias and Joan Blondell have more substantive roles as the rulers of Albania. There seems to be some debate as to whether or not this movie ever got an official release, but over the years, it has gotten a reputation as one of the worst of the worst. Surprise: it's actually fun. A good movie? Not really, but I had great fun watching it and I can imagine watching it again sometime. It helps that it's meant to be stupidly funny, so when they throw everything against the wall, a few things have to stick. Lou Antonio as the spy boss is good, though it took a while for him to grow on me. Less amusing is Mike Kellin as Antonio's boss. The band members are fine, though only one (Lonny Stevens) has gone on to other movie credits. The others, for the record, are A. Michael Miller (the cute one), Ray Chippeway, and Dennis Larden. Sadly, the music, though not awful, is not memorable, despite the fact that all the songs were written by Leiber and Stoller, co-writers of many great rock hits ("Hound Dog," "On Broadway," "Stand By Me"). Most critics dismiss this as a mess, but Paul Tabili at DVD Drive-In hits the nail on the head when he compares its "vibe" to that of the TV show Laugh-In. It doesn’t work for Tabili but it mostly worked for me. Others reactions are bound to be similarly scattershot. If you have any interest in either the late-60s comic ethos or the classic stars gathered here, you should see this one. Pictured at right are Joan Blondell and Col. Sanders. [TCM]

ESCAPE FROM EAST BERLIN (1962)

aka TUNNEL 28

In 1961, East Germany, under Russian control, built a wall to separate East and West Berlin. The Berlin Wall was heavily guarded by armed patrols to stop East Berliners from escaping, either to join relatives who had already left or to get out from under Communist rule. This film's focus is on Kurt (Don Murray), a mechanic and driver for Major Eckhardt. Kurt is a carefree young man, still living with his family in East Berlin and engaged in a clandestine affair with the Major's buxom wife. One night after work, he hitches a ride with Gunther, a fellow driver, hoping to talk him into sharing a beer. But the nervous Gunther drops Kurt off, then turns his truck around and races desperately for the wall. His truck does crash through, but he winds up tangled in barbed wire and killed by guards. The next day, Kurt runs into Gunther's sister Erika (Christine Kaufmann), who makes a half-hearted attempt to break through some barbed wire at a less-guarded area of the wall. She is certain that her brother got through, but Kurt can't bring himself to tell her the truth, though he does hide her when some suspicious guards come after her. Soon Kurt finds himself pressured—by Erika, by a potentially blackmailing neighbor, and by the presence of a stranger named Brunner (Werner Klemperer) whose motives for hanging around Kurt's family’s house are unclear—into attempting an escape by tunneling under the Wall.

Based on an actual escape that occurred only months before shooting on the film (in West Berlin) began, this is a low-key thriller whose main suspense is generated not so much by the escape at the end—which actually feels a little rushed and anti-climactic—but by the character development of Kurt from unambitious playboy to committed hero. Though derided by some critics as too bland and Midwestern, Murray brings a certain easy charm to his part and does a decent job of showing his (mostly internal) struggle with committing to political action—albeit mostly because he falls in love with Erika. Klemperer nicely underplays the wild card character. Tension is kept up well throughout without much in the way of histrionics or bombast. Robert Siodmak, the director, was known for his film noirs of the 40s (THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, THE DARK MIRROR) and this movie has a dash of the noir flavor in its shadowy nighttime scenes. Not a masterpiece but enjoyable. [TCM]

AFTER TONIGHT (1933)

In a Luxembourg train station at the outbreak of World War I, a lovely nightclub singer (Constance Bennett) is trying desperately to get a train to Vienna, but with hundreds of tourists also eager to get out, she's having problems. Dashing German soldier Gilbert Roland gets her passage with him on a train and they seem to hit it off, but she leaves at the first stop and he's mystified. Roland is on the lookout for the spies that are leaking German plans to the Russians, but he doesn’t realize that he's just let a successful spy slip through his fingers. We see Bennett traipsing across Austria smuggling information out via messages sewn in coats and written in invisible ink in books. Eventually she is reunited with Roland and later, when she seems to be caught red-handed, Roland, blinded by his love, lets her go, but soon his sense of duty gets the best of him and her sets her up to be caught for good this time. This is a well-made spy thriller that nevertheless doesn't rise above average. It seems very mechanical, like a script written to certain specifications. The spy details are fun, but nothing very exciting happens until the end, and even there the action feels perfunctory. I'm not a big fan of Constance Bennett; she always seems to be a little bored or just not altogether present, and that's pretty much how she is here. Roland is better but there's no real chemistry at work between the two. The ending is almost comical. For fans of Bennett or of the genre. [TCM]

I'm heading off on the final Turner Classic Movies cruise so this blog will go dark for about a bit, but I'll be back before Thanksgiving!

ELEVEN MEN AND A GIRL (1930)

Upton College has had a losing football team for years and the trustees have told the president that if his team can't beat Parsons, their chief rival, he'll be forced out. Star player Speed Yates (Joe E. Brown) convinces Nan, the president's daughter (Joan Bennett), to take off her glasses and flirt with star players from other colleges to get them to come to Upton so they'll have a winning team next term. She manages, with some unspoken promises of love (or at least lust), to snag eleven football stars—played by the real-life All-American football team of 1929—with a twelfth player, rich cocky Tommy (James Hall), being a bit of a question mark because his father won't let him go to Upton. But Nan and Tommy click and he enrolls under an assumed name. Complications arise when the other eleven players realize they've been bamboozled by Nan—when Tommy finds out, he says to her, "This college is too small for you; you should have joined the Navy!" When Tommy's father discovers his subterfuge, he tries to have his son pulled out of school on the eve of the big game. Will this be Upton's last stand?

As early-talkie college romance movies go, this is rather fun even if the acting is not top-notch. One doesn't expect the football players to be great actors, though a couple of them seem to be having fun, and Bill Banker from Tulane has a fun scene in which Bennett serenades him, but the leads seem less than fully involved in their roles. Hall, playing the juvenile lead, was 30 and looked it. Bennett seems stiff, and Brown has little to do after the opening scenes—which is OK by me as I'm not really a fan. But still, the film has a nice, buoyant feel and a couple of scenes are memorable: one with a bear on the ground and Bennett up a tree, and one in which all the players pretend to be drunk and unable to take the field in order to get back at Bennett. Also released as MAYBE IT'S LOVE, the song Bennett sings to Bill Banker. [TCM]

SHADOW OF CHINATOWN (1936)

Reporters in San Francisco think a Tong war has started in Chinatown, but actually a cabal of Eurasian merchants led by Sonja Rokoff has hired a fix-it man named Poten (Bela Lugosi) to get rid of Chinese competitors in the import business. Society reporter Joan Whiting tries to get mystery novelist Martin Andrews to help her find out who's behind the violence in Chinatown, hoping that breaking the story will get her a better job—and also, perhaps, hoping to land Martin as a husband though he seems to mostly find her a pest. The Eurasian Poten hates both the Chinese and Caucasians and plans to use his scientific prowess to develop plans to destroy the races and start a new mixed race (with, one assumes, himself as the "father"). Joan and Martin eventually figure out Poten's plan and also realize that he has put Sonja, who now regrets her role in the Chinatown plot, under his hypnotic power. The two follow Poten to Los Angeles and back in their attempt to stop his dastardly plan, the specifics of which are never really made clear.

This is a 70 minute version of a 15-chapter serial with the same title that ran for over 4-1/2 hours. That’s probably the reason why this story, after it gets going, makes little sense—even my general plot summary above is based to some degree on hunches rather than full knowledge of the events as played out. Clearly most of the cliffhangers and action scenes have been stuffed into this version with little regard for the niceties of narrative or character. Bruce Bennett (here acting under his birth name Herman Brix, also the name under which he won a medal at the 1928 Olympics) is disappointing as Martin, the hero; he looks the part but recites most of his lines as if he hadn’t seen a script until moments before the cameras started turning. Joan Barclay, who never broke out of B-movies, is at least energetic and appealing as the heroine. Better still is Luana Walters as Sonja—though she doesn't come off as Eurasian, she does manage to project an exotic mystique and wind up as a sympathetic character in the end. Strangely, Lugosi lets us down here; his ripe enthusiastic manner is toned down and the movie definitely suffers. Production values are particularly poor, lower than the average B-movie serial. Given how much of the original film is missing, I'm tempted to watch the serial someday, but I have a feeling I'd wind up asleep in the middle of chapter 2. (The pictured poster is for chapter 1 of the serial) [YouTube]

X MARKS THE SPOT (1942)

Eddie (Damien O’Flynn) is a private detective, son of an Irish cop, who is taking a post with Army Intelligence in a couple of days. His dad has the bad luck to run into gangster Marty (Jack La Rue) as he's hijacking two trucks filled with tires (in wartime, tires were in high demand for their rubber and became essentially a controlled substance). Marty shoots the cop dead and Eddie, naturally, gets himself involved, trying to track down the killer in the few days of freedom he has left. This B-mystery is rather messy in its details and cheap in its look, but it has a few points of interest. Local clubs and diners use what amounts to a human jukebox; the patron inserts money and talks to an operator at a central location, requesting a certain song which she then plays. I have no idea if this was ever a real thing, but it's crucial to the plot for two reasons: the operator (Helen Parrish) gets involved in the case, and at one point, she announces an air raid blackout which is called in—and which turns out to be a false alarm, rigged up so a character can be killed in the dark yet still in public. O’Flynn is a bland leading man, with Parrish only marginally better. Much better are La Rue (as the baddie), Dick Purcell (as a police lieutenant), and Neil Hamilton (as the owner of the tires). As far as the title, there is no "X," just a place run by Marty called the One Spot Café. Completely average of its type. Pictured are O'Flynn and Parrish. [YouTube]

HER SISTER’S SECRET (1946)

At a wartime Mardi Gras celebration, Toni (Nancy Coleman) is making the rounds with wealthy playboy Guy (George Meeker) when, at a crowded restaurant, she makes eye contact with Dick (Philip Reed, pictured with Coleman), a lonely soldier on furlough. They hook up on the dance floor and he talks her into spending the night with him. The next morning, he says he'll be back in six weeks and they arrange to meet again at the same restaurant, but when the time comes, his leave is cancelled and he can't make it. He sends a letter explaining, but the slightly drunken restaurant manager (Felix Bressart) overlooks it and poor Toni is left alone—and pregnant. She goes to New York to talk to her sister Renee (Margaret Lindsay), whose husband is in the Navy and will be overseas for some time. They hatch a plan: Toni will give the baby to Renee who will claim it as her own, even fooling her husband. The plan works for a while, but in a year or so Toni has second thoughts and tries to talk Renee into giving her the baby back. Renee does not want to, and even tells Toni to stay away from New York for at least three years. Eventually, back in New York City, Toni makes a half-hearted effort to kidnap her baby, while Dick returns from the war and searches for her in New Orleans.

This rather routine melodrama is notable for a few reasons: it's the little-seen work of cult B-director Edgar G. Ulmer, it was restored recently by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and it's the rare Production Code movie of the time that allowed an unwed mother to escape at the end unpunished by death or tragedy. The first half, especially the scenes set in New Orleans, have nearly an A-budget feel to them, though in the second half, both the narrative and the production suffer a bit. Coleman, Reed and Bressart are very good, as are Regis Toomey as Renee's husband and Henry Stephenson as the sisters' father. Lindsay feels a bit restrained, like she didn’t get much direction. George Meeker's character seemed potentially the most interesting character, but he's given little screen time. Solid if generally predictable. [TCM]

TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

The village of Karnstein is dominated physically by Karnstein Castle and in most other ways by the decadent Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas), who regularly engages in orgies and such, and who has now, in his continual search for excitement, decided to hold a human sacrifice to see if he can raise the devil. Karnstein's nemesis is Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing), head of the local witch-hunting group known as the Brotherhood. Weil and his men go hunting down women whom they suspect of witchcraft—all young, attractive, and single—and burn them at the stake. (Karnstein and Weil seem to be cut from similar psychosexual cloth, though Weil does seem convinced that he is doing God's work.) Into this smoldering tinderbox come Weil's lovely twin nieces—the demure Maria and the sultry Frieda—to stay after the death of their parents. Weil is certain that the twins will soon be up to no good, and in fact Frieda does seem to be chomping at the bit to do a little bit of living it up. Meanwhile, Karnstein's sacrifice doesn't conjure up a demon, but blood from the dead woman drips down into the crypt of his dead ancestor Mircalla and she materializes, putting the bite on Karnstein, transforming him into a vampire. When naughty Frieda wanders up to the castle, the stage is set for vampiric antics galore.

This Hammer movie is the third in a loose trilogy inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's vampire story "Carmilla," the other two being THE VAMPIRE LOVERS and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. Despite its silly sexploitation title, it's one of the best of the 60s/70s horror films: well-acted with good sets, rich color, sexy vibes, and one the best decapitations I've seen in a horror flick. Despite the title, the twins aren't both evil, just Frieda, and they aren't really the focus of the film. That would be Peter Cushing, who is excellent as the somber witch hunter—based on this performance, I think he might have been better than Vincent Price in the cult classic of a few years earlier, WITCHFINDER GENERAL. In fact, much of this film plays out like a variation on that film. Thomas gives a full-blooded performance as the decadent vampire, and the Collinson twins (Mary as Maria, Madelaine as Frieda), best known as twin Playboy bunnies, are actually quite good in the leads. David Warbeck is fine as the handsome hero, though he doesn't have as much screen time as the average horror hero. Kathleen Byron, best known as the nun who goes insane in BLACK NARCISSUS, is wasted as Cushing's wife, but she delivers a strong performance anyway. Fine direction by John Hough. The previous Carmilla films are good, but if you're only going to see one of the three, make it this one. [DVD]

SON OF DRACULA (1943)

At Dark Oaks, the Caldwell plantation, a party is being given in honor of visiting Hungarian Count Alucard (Lon Chaney Jr.); young Kay Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) met him in Europe and became fascinated with his esoteric philosophies. Her fiancé Frank (Robert Paige) isn't too happy about her obsession, and the rest of the guests are unhappy that Alucard hasn’t shown up yet, though some large coffin-shaped boxes of his do arrive. The aging patriarch leaves the reception to go to bed, but we see a large bat fly in through his window and next thing you know, he's dead with a bite mark on his neck. The mysterious, aloof Alucard eventually shows up, and Brewster, the family doctor (Frank Craven), has already noticed that his name spelled backwards is "Dracula." Kay is now sole heir to the plantation, and she and Alucard marry in secret. When Frank finds out, he is distraught and pulls a gun on Alucard, but the bullet goes right through him and hits Kay, standing behind him. She crumples to the ground, apparently dead, but the next day, she is alive and healthy, though she admits to Frank that she is now a vampire (she also says, about the label of vampire, "Don’t use that word—we don’t like it!"). She also tells Frank that she was just using Alucard to gain eternal life; now, she wants Frank to kill Alucard—by burning his coffin at dawn before he can get to it—then she will put the bite on Frank and they can live undead forever.

It is generally acknowledged that this movie's biggest problem is Lon Chaney Jr.; he is clunky and wooden and has none of the majesty or creepy charisma of Lugosi. I agree in general—Chaney rarely comes off as scary—but he is effective in other ways. His Alucard is something of a brute force of nature rather than a mysteriously charming and deadly being. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter than much because after the opening, Alucard largely becomes a supporting player. This is also one of the first vampire films—as far as I remember—that presents a willing and romantic victim; in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER, the manservant has been holding onto Countess Zelinka's promise to give him vampiric eternal life, but their relationship is not portrayed as one of love or lust—and he never gets the promised bite. It takes a long time for anything much to happen; aside from the death of the father, which we don't actually see, it's a half-hour in before anything resembling action happens. Frank winds up pretty much broken at the end, one of the few times that would happen in the classic movie era to the nominal hero of a horror movie.  The supporting cast is OK; Allbritton isn't quite saucy enough for her role and Robert Paige does his best with a poorly written character, but I like Frank Craven, J. Edward Bromberg and Samuel S. Hinds as the men who perform Van Helsing's "wild work" to get rid of Dracula. And as far as I can tell, it's never established if Alucard actually is the son of Dracula, or Dracula himself, or some sorry-ass pretender. If this is ultimately disappointing, it's worth seeing for its moments of atmosphere and its somewhat unusual ending. (Pictured above: Allbritton, Chaney, Paige) [DVD]

THE PHANTOM SPEAKS (1945)

Businessman Tom Powers pulled himself out of poverty to become rich and powerful, but money doesn't buy happiness, and one night he shoots and kills his wife's lover. He is tried, found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Stanley Ridges, a doctor who dabbles in the occult and has written a book about making contact with the dead, is convinced that the only reason he has failed in his attempts at communication is that the will of the dead to return is not strong enough to overcome the lure of the afterlife. Ridges visits Powers on the day of his execution and, believing that Powers has a strong will, talks him into trying to make contact. Sure enough, the next day, Ridges shuts himself up in a dark little curtained-off circle, concentrates really hard, and the spirit of Powers appears next to him. However, Ridges has little time to celebrate: Powers is indeed so willful, he possesses Ridges and uses his body to exact murderous revenge against his widow, his lawyer, and others who led to his death. Ridges' daughter (Lynne Roberts) works with reporter Richard Arlen to get the bottom of it all.

I've been a classic-era horror movie buff for over fifty years, but I’d never heard of this movie. I think that’s because it was marketed as a psychological thriller. But make no mistake: this is a story of supernatural horror. It's no overlooked gem, but it's interesting. Though Arlen is top-billed as the hero, the movie belongs to Ridges (who is very good) and Powers (OK but a little too one-note to come off as an especially strong-willed person; he mostly just seems cranky, like he does playing Stanwyck's unlikable husband in DOUBLE INDEMNITY). Between these two, there’s not much left for Arlen to do, and even less for Lynne Roberts. I rather liked Charlotte Wynters as Ridges' loyal assistant Cornelia—she comes off a bit cold, but the possibility seems to exist that she is his mistress. From Republic Studios, directed with some B-movie panache by John English, known for westerns and adventure serials (MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN, DRUMS OF FU MANCHU) [Paramount Vault on YouTube]

THE TERROR (1938)

A notoriously mythic criminal named O'Shea masterminds the theft of a huge shipment of gold coins; in the middle of the night, he pumps knockout gas onto the back road the truck is on, causing the drivers to pass out while he and his two men, Connor and Marx, all wearing gas masks, make away with the gold. But O'Shea himself calls Scotland Yard and turns the men in; they go to jail and the mysterious O'Shea (whose face we never see) keeps the entire stash. Ten years later, Connor and Marx are released and head off, independently of each other, to the place where they were supposed to split the gold, an old priory used in secret, it was rumored, by a devil-worshipping group called the Black Monks.

Now, it's a home owned by Colonel Redmayne who rents out rooms to boarders. Currently in residence: Mr. Goodman, an old friend of Redmayne's; the slightly dotty Mrs. Elvery, who claims to be psychic, and her more level-headed daughter; Redmayne's daughter Mary, returning to see her father after years away at school; a generally unflappable butler named Hawkins and a couple of maids. Mrs. Elvery is sure there are strange things going on, especially after she is awakened in the night by organ playing and chortling laughter, but Redmayne wants to shut down any wild rumors in the interest of his daughter's comfort. But the arrival of two unexpected guests may be just as disruptive: a man named Ferdy Fane who is constantly drunk, and a vicar—whom we know to be Marx, one of the two recently-freed crooks, in disguise. Soon, more midnight organ playing and mysterious monk sightings unsettle the guests until dead bodies start to pile up. Could one of the residents be O'Shea in disguise trying to keep the secret of his gold?

Based on an Edgar Wallace novel, this is a well-made B-thriller of the "old dark house" variety, filled with interesting characters and good performances. The creepy atmosphere could have been kicked up a notch, but overall it's a fun ride. Bernard Lee, best known as the original "M" in the early James Bond films, is the drunk, who, it is painfully obvious from his first scene, is not really drunk and instead will be Our Hero—and romantic partner to Mary (Linden Travers). Wilfrid Lawson is Goodman, who is full of spooky stories about the old priory, and who also comes on, rather out of the blue, to Mary; Arthur Wontner, best known for a series of B-movies he made as Sherlock Holmes, is the Colonel; Iris Hoey does very nicely as the obnoxious Mrs. Elvrey who keeps proclaiming, "I'm psychic!" at the drop of a hat. The delightful Kathleen Harrison has a small bit as a maid. Best of all is Alastair Sim (pictured at right with Bernard Lee) as the crook Marx—even though he has fairly low billing in the credits, he has a good-sized role and steals a couple of scenes in that way he has. There's a good running gag about a tall, skinny cop who keeps trying to make suggestions to the chief inspector and keeps getting sushed before he can get very far. A scene near the end, of the mad monk at the organ, was clearly inspired by Phantom of the Opera, and other dark house clichés abound. Not easy to find, but fun. [Amazon streaming]

ARREST BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1938)

Someone who calls himself "the Earl of Destiny" has been sending letters to the press and to Scotland Yard commissioner Nielsen, claiming that he has the answer to all the world's problems. Meanwhile, on the day before his long-delayed wedding to his fiancée Phyllis (Heather Angel), Bulldog Drummond (John Howard, at left) gets a strange letter from his scientist friend Richard Gannett saying he can't attend as he's too busy saving mankind from future wars, and after his signature, he signs "Earl of Destiny." We find out that Gannett has created a death and destruction ray (actually, two rays fired up together); he wants to use it for peaceful ends, but Rolf Alverson (George Zucco) and his henchmen kill Gannett and steal the device for nefarious purposes. When Drummond finds the dying Gannett, his last words are "Look out for the stinger!" and oddly, it turns out that Gannett died from stingray venom, despite being nowhere near water. Once again, Drummond postpones his wedding to investigate with his good friend Algy (Reginald Denny), bring the killer to justice, and get the death ray back before it wrecks havoc.

I'm not typically a film buff completist—I don't need to see every movie in a series—but I have enjoyed tracking down the Bulldog Drummond films, most of which are in the public domain and fairly easily available, though often in somewhat tattered prints (I found this one on the Criterion streaming channel through Hulu and it was in very good shape). Even though Drummond was played by Ronald Colman, Ray Milland, John Lodge and Ralph Richardson (among others), I think I like Howard best of all. He may not be a great actor or cut the butchest figure, but he has an easygoing manner, approaching danger as though it's just another aspect of a playboy's lifestyle. Howard is helped by the antics of the reliable Denny, and the presence of other regulars in the series (Angel as Phyllis, H.B. Warner as the commissioner, E.E. Clive as the resourceful butler—who seems to me to be a model for Woodhouse, the much-suffering butler on TV's Archer). Zucco is, as always, a gem as the madman villain. There is a cute running gag involving Drummond's inability to tie his tie. Though I find the constant stalled wedding antics tiresome, they aren't too intrusive here. A strong entry in the series. [Streaming]

THE GHOST AND THE GUEST (1943)

On his wedding day, James Dunn is desperately trying to call his bride (Florence Rice) but her line is perpetually busy, so in a gag scene that sets the movie's tone, he sends a telegram. After the wedding, she tells him that she has cancelled their California honeymoon in order to spend time at a house that her father has bought for them. Dunn and his valet (Sam McDaniel) aren't happy about the change in plans, but they have no choice. When they arrive at the house, they meet the caretaker (Robert Dudley), a retired hangman who still makes little nooses as a hobby, and he tells them that the house belonged to a killer named Honeyboy who was Dudley’s last "client." Several surprises are in store for our newlyweds: 1) Dudley claims that the house was left to him; 2) Honeyboy's body is being shipped to the house that very day; 3) arriving to meet it is a clutch of grieving relatives—but they're actually gangsters looking for Honeyboy's secret stash; 4) unbeknownst to anyone, it’s not Honeyboy in the coffin, it’s the very live Killer Blake who has broken out of prison and plans on finding the stash himself. Let the B-movie shenanigans begin.

This amounts to an old-dark-house comedy done on a low budget, and the print I saw is, in spots, very murky, which is a problem when much of the last half of the movie takes place in dark rooms. But generally, this is fairly fun, and one reason is the joke-filled screenplay by Morey Amsterdam, much better known as comedy writer Buddy on the original Dick Van Dyke Show. The laughs don't all land, but a higher percentage do than in the average Poverty Row indie of the era. James Dunn and Florence Rice don't have strong comic chops, but McDaniel has some fun with his limited role, and he gets some good lines; after dealing with secret passages and dead bodies, he exclaims, "In two hours we could be in New York with millions of people around—and all of them alive!" Mabel Todd is a standout as a ditzy moll. Short (under an hour) and painless. [YouTube]

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]