A WOMAN'S FACE (1941)

In a Swedish courtroom, Anna Holm (Joan Crawford) is on trial for murder. As a small group of people testify, we piece together her story. At a rustic tavern in the woods, a regular patron, the once wealthy Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt), is hosting a small party, but when the time comes to pay up, he is told that they can no longer extend him credit. Torsten has a private conversation with Anna, who tries but fails to hide her scarred face (suffered as a child in a house fire that her drunken father set). However, he barely seems to notice her disfigurement; they hit it off and she extends him credit. We find out that Anna is the leader of a blackmail ring involving the workers at the tavern; Torsten, whom Anna has fallen for, becomes a partner in crime. He gives her a packet of love letters he filched from a married woman, Vera, to her lover. Anna goes to Vera's house to ask for money for the letters, but the sudden arrival of Vera's husband Gustaf (Melvyn Douglas) causes a glitch. He happens to be a plastic surgeon and he whisks her off to the country to use some radical techniques to cure her. Weeks later, when the bandages come off, Anna is beautiful and has a new lease on life. When Anna returns (taking a new name, Ingrid), she gets involved in Torsten's plot to get his hands on a sizeable inheritance. The sticking point: a four-year old stands in his way. Anna reluctantly agrees to become part of a murder plot by becoming governess to the child, and eventually killing him in a staged accident. But when Gustaf shows up (still married to his cheating wife), Anna gets cold feet, and an entanglement begins that ends in the death that Anna is accused of causing.

This is a grand entry in the women's melodrama genre so popular in the 1940s, the genre in which Joan Crawford excelled (HUMORESQUE, MILDRED PIERCE). And though Crawford is fine in the role, what makes this movie fun for me is the supporting cast, primarily the trio of con artists working with Crawford: Connie Gilchrist, who went on to a long career playing cooks and housekeepers—most notably as Norah Muldoon in AUNTIE MAME—gets a role here a bit bigger and juicier than usual; Donald Meek and Reginald Owen round out the group. Sadly, though the three get quite a bit of screen time early on, by the time Crawford loses her scars she also loses her gang. Marjorie Main is delightful as a housekeeper—physically, she's unrecognizable, but she can’t hide her voice. Veidt, of course, is always wonderful as the man you love to hate—and he has a great scene with Crawford before the climactic party scene (which leads to a nice nighttime sleigh chase)—but he rather overpowers Douglas, ostensibly the male lead. Osa Massen is good as Douglas's cheating wife, and other welcome faces include Albert Basserman, Henry Daniell and George Zucco. Recommended. Pictured are Crawford and Douglas. [TCM]

WIRETAPPER (1955)

As WWII winds to an end, Alice (Georgia Lee) is anxiously waiting for her fiancé Jim Vaus (Bill Williams) to come home. He's stationed stateside but keeps getting transfers from one place to another and can't seem to get a furlough to come home. As we find out, the truth is that Jim is in a military jail for stealing equipment and has his letters to Alice smuggled out to be mailed from various locations. But after V-J Day, Jim is pardoned and given a lecture by a chaplain who knows about Jim's letters and urges him to tell Alice the truth when he gets home—but when he's face to face with her, he can't bring himself to do so. Still, their reunion is happy and he goes into business as an electrical engineering consultant. Business is quite slow at first, but when he performs a minor repair job for a lawyer named Rumsden, he discovers by accident that Rumsden's house is bugged. It turns out that Rumsden is a lawyer for gangsters, and he quickly hires Jim to do a wiretapping job for him on a woman trying to muscle into the local prostitution ring. The cops catch him doing it, but because the tap provides enough info to jail the madam, they turn a blind eye. Soon, Jim is working for other shady characters, his "business" becomes a success, and he and Alice (whom he keeps in the dark about his clients as long as he can) get married. Eventually, he tells Alice about his past and she's forgiving, but as his jobs become more numerous, he neglects his wife, even missing the birth of their first child. After pulling off a scam in which Jim delays the ticker-tape results of horse races to fix some bets, Jim wants to leave the rackets, especially with Alice pregnant again, but he finds that difficult to do—until Alice drags him into a Billy Graham revival tent.

Bet you weren’t expecting Billy Graham as a deus ex machina at the climax. I wasn't either, and it doesn't play very well, even though this movie is based on a memoir by the real Jim Vaus, so perhaps that's what really happened. Up to that point, religion has barely been mentioned, making the ending feel even stranger. Overall, it's a so-so B-crime movie with film noir elements—primarily the conflicted hero—but with nothing interesting going on in terms of style or acting. Bill Williams is fine in the lead, and Ric Roman (as a gangster) and Stanley Clements (as a lesser thug) are good in support. But Georgia Lee is pretty terrible as the wife, accentuating Alice's whiny clinginess and squeaky-clean personality, giving the character no shadings at all. As far as the issue of the noir hero, Jim has been cutting moral corners all his life, but Williams plays him as a pleasant and not terribly thoughtful person, not really all that conflicted about how he makes a living. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, the film was originally shown at churches and at revivals, but it did eventually receive a theatrical release. Mostly recommended to fans of 50s B-movies; it's competently made and hardly painful viewing but it’s also not all that memorable . . . until Billy Graham appears. [YouTube]

A GIRL, A GUY, AND A GOB (1941)

This rom-com has a meet-cute opening: at the opera, Dot (Lucille Ball) and her working-class family are occupying the box seats of wealthy Stephen (Edmond O'Brien) and his snooty fiancée Cecilia. Dot has the tickets in hand and after some fuss, Stephen's party angrily leaves, after which Dot finds out that her brother had actually found the tickets which Stephen had lost and used them for his family. The next day, Dot is assigned as a temp worker to, you guessed it, Stephen. Meanwhile, we meet Dot's boyfriend, the "gob" (sailor) of the title, Claudius J. Cup, who goes by Coffee Cup; he's a friendly, rambunctious guy who fits right in with Dot's eccentric family. When Dot, Stephen and Coffee Cup wind up together on a streetcorner, they get in the middle of a brawl; Stephen is knocked out and is taken back to Dot's family's apartment where he recovers. Our trio becomes downright chummy, even as Dot feels romantic conflict: she genuinely likes Coffee Cup even as she begins having feelings for the buttoned-up Stephen who seems to be enjoying becoming a little more carefree. If you think this sounds a little like a Frank Capra film (specifically, You Can't Take It With You), you'd be right, though this is less sentimental and much less polished than the average Capra work. One thing I liked about this is that I couldn't quite predict whether it would be the Guy or the Gob that the Girl would up with. Both are likeable and neither does anything to make Dot angry. Sometimes you can tell by the billing—in this case, that would mean first-billed George Murphy. Sometimes you can tell by looks—in this case, O'Brien is the more handsome man. All three leads are fine: Murphy's full of piss and vinegar, O'Brien is distractedly dazzled by Ball and her family, and Ball gives one of her best movie performances. Henry Travers gives fine support as a business partner of O'Brien's, and Franklin Pangborn is fun in the small role of a nervous pet shop owner. Harold Lloyd produced the film which includes a couple of rowdy slapstick scenes. Not quite a classic but very entertaining. Pictured are O'Brien, Ball and Murphy. [TCM]

TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (1962)

Kirk Douglas is a former hot-shot actor who has spent some time in a sanitarium after a breakdown, and is offered a role in a movie being shot in Italy by his former friend and director (Edward G. Robinson). Their relationship is fraught, to say the least, by past complications, and when Douglas arrives in Rome, he finds the part is no longer available. But the movie has to be finished in two weeks or the producer will take the film away from Robinson, so Douglas is hired to supervise the dialogue dubbing sessions. Further complications ensue. For starters, Douglas begins dating Dahlia Lavi, unaware that the movie’s young and sullen leading man (George Hamilton) is also interested in her. Douglas' ex-wife (Cyd Charisse) also happens to be in town and wants Douglas to sleep with her despite her marriage to a Greek tycoon. Robinson is carrying on a fling with a younger woman, and his wife (Claire Trevor) is infuriated that news of the affair has been leaked to the press. Then Robinson has a heart attack and Douglas finishes the film, for which Robinson ends up resenting him. The climax comes when a manic Douglas takes Charisse on a wild, almost suicidal nighttime car ride around Rome. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, this melodramatic film has become a minor camp classic thanks to its soap opera plot and wild overacting by almost everyone (especially Claire Trevor who shrieks so often, you want someone to tie her up and gag her and send her to another movie). Douglas is OK, and Hamilton is interesting in a very un-Hamilton-like role. The film sure looks good, however, with beautiful sets and costumes, and some nice behind-the-scenes shots of moviemaking. There's a weird Italian pop song that seems to be about Dracula in the background of one scene. Often considered to be a sequel to Minnelli's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, a 1952 movie about moviemaking with Douglas, but there is no real story connection. Pictured are Trevor and Robinson. [DVD]

FOREVER AMBER (1947)

It may be unfair to compare this historical romance-melodrama set in 17th century England to Gone with the Wind, but if the shoe fits… Like GWTW, this is based on a best-selling novel set in the past, has a woman at the center of the story who develops a somewhat unhealthy romantic obsession for a man, works herself up in society over a period of years, and loses the love of her life in the end. In 1644, with a civil war raging against King Charles I, an orphaned infant girl is left with a Puritan family. Years later, after the monarchy is restored, young Amber, now an attractive teenager (Linda Darnell), grows restless with her situation—about to be married off to a poor farmer whom she doesn't love. She rebels by wishing for better, but her father threatens to whip her, saying, "Vanity is Satan at work in the female soul." When a band of cavaliers, having successfully fought to put King Charles II on the throne, pass through her village on the way to see the King in London, Amber falls for the dashing Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) and runs off, hoping he'll take her with him. He doesn't though his buddy Lord Harry (Richard Greene) is quite taken with her. Bruce has a mistress in London, but she is also a mistress to the King, so there are problems. When Amber follows the men on her own, Bruce finally gives into her charms, but eventually leaves her to go on another privateering mission. She vows to climb the class ladder so eventually Bruce will marry her for her position, but long before that can happen, Amber undergoes a series of trials: joining a robbery gang, spending time in prison, giving birth to Bruce's son, and getting swindled out of what money she has managed to get. But like Scarlett O'Hara, Amber is not inclined to give up and she marries for convenience and even becomes a mistress to the King (George Sanders) before meeting up with Bruce again who, unfortunately, is married and ready to head to America.

This is not as long as Gone with the Wind, and not as well acted, but it's shot in gorgeous Technicolor which has been beautifully restored, so it's always a treat to look at. It's also very episodic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, though it makes it feel a bit like an adventure serial, albeit a high-budget one. There was a big search for an actress to play Amber, and while Darnell (pictured above) is a colorful beauty, she's not an especially versatile actor and she plays Amber without any substantial character development except for the changes in her surroundings. I'm not a fan of Cornel Wilde, but he acquits himself well here, and Richard Greene is likable as his friend. Of course, George Sanders is fun as the king, though he doesn't get much of a chance to chew the scenery. Otto Preminger's direction is workmanlike but the film never feels as spirited as it should and instead of becoming a bigger-than-life figure like Scarlett O'Hara, Amber winds up a soap opera anti-heroine. I'm glad to have seen this once, but it probably won’t need a second viewing. [TCM]

SECRET AGENT FX 18 (1964)

I suspect that this French/Italian production was among the earliest to ride the big coattails of James Bond. Coming in the first wave of imitators, it's not aiming for parody or comedy (like Our Man Flint or the Matt Helm movies), but seems to be trying to establish its main character as a franchise. There were four more movies with the character Francis Coplan (who was based on the lead in a series of novels and comic books) but each had a different leading man and none made a splash in the States. There are lots of problems with this movie, though if you stick with it to the halfway point, it moves fast enough that you can just go with the flow. The first problem is the poor dubbing. The second problem is the character's name; in print and in the IMDb credits, it’s Francis Coplan, but throughout the film, he is called something that sounds like Cavty or Crabtree. And then there's the incoherent plot, which eventually gets easier to follow.  The summary that follows involves some guesswork on my part.

A man loads a poisoned dart into a cigarette and uses it to kill an artist who apparently has a microfilm copy of some secret American rocket plans. The good guys (La Vieux and his associate whom we mostly see sitting at desks and on the phone) send a young operative named Murphy out to investigate. But the bad guys (led by Noreau and Barter) kill him, throw his body in a barrel, fill it with cement, and send him to the bottom of the sea. La Vieux manages to pull his best man, Coplan, FX-18 (though I don’t think I ever heard him called that in the movie), away from what looks like a getaway with a sex kitten, to sort things out. He's accompanied by Morvil and Alphonso, two cheery, beefy guys who function largely as mild comic relief or as rescuers when Coplan gets in too deep. They’re off to Majorca where Noreau and his baddie buddies are on a yacht, sending spy information to the Russians via a satellite link-up. A beautiful blonde is also on the yacht, and Morvil and Alphonso play up to her to get invited on the yacht. At some point, the microfilm shows up. So does a dark-haired woman. And Coplan is hanging out with Patricia, a spy posing as his wife. Eventually the plotholes recede when the action heats up: asses are kicked, people are killed, a busty woman is tortured, a yacht is blown up, and Coplan races on foot and catches up with a prop plane filled with baddies. The good guys win, of course, though I'm not sure what the prize is.

I admit the reason I sought this out in the first place was the presence of the hunky Ken Clark, who was busy in B-movies throughout the 60s including 12 TO THE MOON and DESERT COMMANDOS, but whose big moment in the sun may have been as Stewpot, a tall, hairy, shirtless sailor in SOUTH PACIFIC. He's perfectly fine here, with a blond Marlboro Man look and an athletic build, and the two sidekicks (Jean-Pierre Laverne and Lorenzo Robledo) are fun. Everyone else is forgettable and/or interchangeable. The men (good and bad) all look like nondescript European guys in business suits; the women have different hair color but similar curvaceous bodies. Names like Mazzerac and Rodriguez are thrown around but I was never sure who they were. Clark is introduced (shirtless) briefly at the beginning, but then he vanishes from the film for half an hour, and it isn't until then that the movie finally picks up. Early on, there’s a fist fight set to a honky-tonk piano soundtrack, and someone refers to white wine as "workingman's whisky." If you choose to accept this mission, the print on YouTube (a dub of a Something Weird video) is the way to go over the Amazon Prime version. It was filmed in widescreen and the YouTube film is presented pan-and-scan, but the Prime film is stretched artificially to seem letterboxed, and it's atrocious. Of course, unless you're a fan of Ken Clark or Euro B-films of the 60s, you should probably not worry about it at all. The top picture of Ken Clark is from the movie; I don't know if the second picture is, but who cares. [YouTube]

A SUMMER PLACE (1959)

Pine Island Inn is a small resort hotel on a private New England island. It's seen better days, but the current owner, Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy), has let debts pile up and let the building and grounds go to pot. His wife Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire) is about at the end of her rope as she tries to keep the resort going through the summer months with help from a small staff and their son Johnny (Troy Donahue). Bart is unhappy to hear that Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) has made reservations for the summer for his family. Ken used to be a lowly summer lifeguard on the island, in the employ of the Hunters, but he is now a wealthy research chemist, and Bart is sure that he is coming just to show off his good fortune. But Sylvia is happy to hear the news, partly because of the money they'll get, but also because Ken was her first boyfriend all those years ago and it seems she's always held a bit of a torch for him. For his part, Ken's wife Helen (Constance Ford) is a frigid shrew who is doing everything she can to de-sex their teenage daughter Molly (Sandra Dee). All the elements for a soap opera are in place and very soon, Sylvia is running off to the boathouse for midnight make-out sessions with Ken, and Johnny is having a nice time squiring Molly around the island doing some making out of their own. Eventually, after much anguish, divorces occur and Sylvia marries Ken. That fall and winter, Helen does all she can to keep Molly away from Johnny, but of course, that only makes the two work harder for some time together. Throw in the fact that they are now siblings by marriage and the stage is set for a second act focused on these star-crossed lovers.

I guess this was hot stuff in the late 50s when the Production Code was weakening. Had this been made just a few years earlier, the pre- and extra-marital sex would have either been less explicit or there would have to have been a tragic ending. Of course, I use the word "explicit" here not to refer to actual sex scenes, of which there are none, but just to the fact that we know illicit sex is occurring. What was titillating in 1959 is not now, and I suspect that this movie is much more known for its theme, which was a #1 hit for Percy Faith, than for any avid following the story itself has. Still, this remains watchable, mostly for some of the performances. The actor who is the most fun to watch is Constance Ford who gets to be bitchy and judgmental throughout, and also gets to spit out the word "harlot" at Dorothy McGuire a couple of times. McGuire plays a bit against her goody-goody type here; yes, she has an affair, but she remains a mostly demure and gentle presence. This was Troy Donahue's big breakout role, and his appeal remains a bit mysterious to me. He's attractive but also has the look of dissipation around him, even here at the age of 23. His acting is a bit wooden but he and Dee (both pictured above) have chemistry and their characters remain sympathetic. Egan and Kennedy are acceptable if not exceptional. For a movie with the word "summer" in its title, it doesn't have the feel of a summer film. Most of the first half is indeed set in that season, but the focus for much of that time is the relationship between Egan and McGuire. Once that gets settled and the seasons turn, the focus shifts to the younger people, though we only make it back to summer in the last minute or so of the movie. All the best lines are given to Constance Ford, whose advice to her daughter is, "You have to play a man like a fish." [TCM]

ATOMIC WAR BRIDE (1960)

On what looks like a pleasant spring day in an Eastern European country, young John Johnson (an everyman figure, ya think?) is chatting with a friend about how wonderful life is, and one reason is that he is about to marry young Maria. But suddenly, war is declared and civil defense workers are passing out radiation suits (basically hooded ponchos) for people to wear in case of fallout. John's suit is defective (as, of course, all of them would be against radiation), and when planes come roaring overhead, everyone in the town square drops to the ground, but the planes turn out to be friendly. We soon meet Maria and her family, including her cousin Jack who is very sensitive and faints at talk of bombs falling. John assures everyone that even if there is war, atomic weapons won't be used, and the wedding begins, but bombs start falling all around them. Maria, understandably upset, says, "Everything has changed! The world is horrible! We might die!" to which her level-headed new husband says, "We're in love—it's impossible to die!" The next thing we know, John and Jack are pulled off the streets and conscripted into the army. They are given useless training—lots of finger exercises for firing guns, which the drill instructor says that even a "serious moron" can do—and soon the sensitive Jack drops dead. During an air raid, John winds up in the same shelter as Maria and her family. The army announces that they are going to use atomic weapons against the enemy; John gets involved in an anti-war group, and gets arrested and charged with treason. Suddenly, peace is declared but John is still not off the hook, though he and Maria manage to escape. In the last moments of the film, we discover that the enemy has launched their atomic weapons, so it’s only a matter of time for our loving couple, dirty and tattered and hiding in the ruins.

This Yugoslavian social message film (its original title is "Rat," which means "war") is interesting, if never quite fully involving. There's a bit of a tone problem. At times, it reminded me of the gloomy 80s nuclear war movies like The Day After or Testament, but it has a comically satirical edge that those films didn't, such as the ludicrously extended scene of people practicing pulling their parka hoods on and off and on and off, or the military gun finger exercises, or the fainting cousin, or the hapless optimism of John throughout. The result is that all the expressed emotions feel artificial and we are kept at a distance from the characters, which robs the film's potentially devastating ending of some of its power. But it’s worth seeing as a document of the times. Pictured are Ewa Krzyzewska as Maria and Antun Vrdoljak as John. [YouTube]

DESTINATION TOKYO (1943)

On Christmas Eve 1941, the crew of the submarine Copperfish learn from their captain (Cary Grant) that they'll be leaving San Francisco the next day on a secret mission in the Pacific. When Grant opens his sealed orders the next day, he discovers that they are to head up to the Aleutian Islands where they will pick up John Ridgely, a meteorologist, and deliver him right into Tokyo Bay. Ridgely's mission: to take weather readings in preparation for the upcoming Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The rest of the film covers their successful trip to Tokyo and their tense journey back home. We get to know several of the men: the bragging womanizer (John Garfield), the short feisty Greek (Dane Clark), the cook (Alan Hale), the pharmacist (William Prince), and the new kid (Robert Hutton). Along the way, the crew plays a tense game of hide-and-seek with Japanese ships, navigates carefully through a mine field, is attacked with depth charges, and engages with enemy planes. The new kid even has an attack of appendicitis and the pharmacist has to play amateur surgeon to save his life (something inspired by a real life incident, as was the sub's mission). At two hours and fifteen minutes, this is overlong, and it's the action scenes that feel the most padded out—something current superhero movies suffer from. But some real tension is built up in a few scenes, notably when the crew is trying to keep quiet while enemy ships float above them. As far as I know, this is Cary Grant's only war action movie and he does a nice job, as do all the actors. Other familiar faces in the supporting cast include Warner Anderson, Whit Bissell, Tom Tully, and John Forsythe. The stereotyping present in most WWII movies is kept to a minimum, and fewer men die than you might expect. The three on the left in the photo are Garfield, Hutton, and Clark. [DVD]

WORLD WITHOUT END (1956)

Rocketship MRX is headed to Mars but Earth loses contact with the ship and its four-man crew as it goes out of control and eventually crash lands in snowy mountains on what seems to be some uncharted planet with an atmosphere very much like Earth. The men run into a giant spider and violent cave people with cyclops eyes. Predictably, the planet turns out to be Earth hundreds of years in the future. In the world of 2508, humanity is split in two: the aboveground primitives are mutants damaged by fallout from a nuclear war; underground in a series of well-constructed chambers live those unaffected by the radioactivity, protected from potential attacks by the mutants. Our astronauts (who wear street clothes rather than any kind of protective uniform) are taken in by the underground folks, but soon come to realize that this group of humans—mostly weak older men—have become impotent and/or sterile, both sexually and in terms of ambition, and may be in danger of dying out. Soon the astronauts are trying to talk Timmek, the leader of the underground people, into making an attempt to salvage their spaceship and begin venturing aboveground, but an upstart pacifist named Mories argues that the potential for violence is too great. Will the astronauts be able to inspire them to reclaim the outdoors? Or will Mories succeed in turning his people against the time travelers?

This is a sort of mirror-image version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, with a withering passive race below ground instead of the above ground Eloi, and outdoor mutant monsters instead of underground Morlocks. More to the point for me is the way in which this plot was re-used in a few other sci-fi films (like THE MOLE PEOPLE, THE TIME TRAVELERS, and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME) Since I, like Timmek and Mories, am resistant to change, it took a while for me to get on board with the astronauts (led by Hugh Marlowe and Nelson Leigh). Of course, it wouldn't be a 50s space movie without some element of romance, and a handful of women—including one of the mutant women who was captured and put to work as a slave and looks nothing like the cyclops mutants—are crucial to that development, which pushes the film toward QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE territory. Rod Taylor has his first major, albeit supporting, role in a Hollywood movie, and he outacts everyone else, including Marlowe who is running in second gear. This is a B-film from Allied Artists with a slightly bigger budget than usual—the film looks fairly glossy and colorful, but the effects and make-up are still bargain basement quality. Fun if not quite a classic. Pictured at left are Marlowe and Taylor; above right, Shawn Smith and Taylor. [Blu-Ray]

A LIFE AT STAKE (1955)

Young architect Edward Shaw (Keith Andes) lives alone in a shabby boarding house room; he sits shirtless, staring into space, immobilized by a recent financial failure and owing some $30,000 to various creditors. Out of the blue, a lawyer arrives to make him an offer: Doris Hillman (Angela Lansbury) wants to hire him as a business partner (with money provided by her rich husband Gus) to build houses on property she will acquire. When Edward goes to meet her at her home, the maid tells him that she is out by the pool and warns him that she occasionally swims naked; as it happens, she's wearing a swimsuit, but is also acting a bit flirtatiously and perhaps sipping cocktails. Later, when they meet at an apartment where Doris is catsitting (!), she tells him her husband wants Edward to take out a large life insurance policy since he will be the "key man" in their business. This angers him at first, but later when she comes to his place, he agrees to the situation and they spend some time making out. When Edward meets Doris' younger sister Madge, he discovers something disconcerting in Doris's past: she was previously married to a business partner of Gus’s who died in a car accident—and who had a big life insurance policy that paid out to Gus. Later, the brakes on Edward's car go out and he barely escapes injury. Is Edward the sucker in a murder plot, or is he just paranoid?

This B-film noir is a DOUBLE INDEMNITY knock-off (the seduction, the stolen kisses, the life insurance, the innocent female relative) but that shouldn't be counted against it. It's predictable in the way that many noirs are, though there are some fun twists and turns. Andes (CLASH BY NIGHT) whom I like, is not the greatest actor but he fills the role of the befuddled patsy well enough, and he's always easy on the eyes. It's fun to see Lansbury as a sexy femme fatale. Douglas Dumbrille is serviceable if not much more as the husband, and Claudia Barrett is vanilla-bland as the sweet kid Marge. Jane Darwell has a small role as the boarding house keeper. At one point in the middle of the movie, we learn that Doris and Gus have a mountain cabin getaway with a door that opens up directly onto the edge of a cliff (Chekhov's cliff, if you will) which we know will come into play at the climax, which it does in a satisfying way. Not bad. Also known as KEY MAN which is a way better title than A LIFE AT STAKE. [Amazon Prime]

EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

Wylie (Michael Sarrazin) is in the middle of making love to his casual girlfriend (whom we hear referred to only as "Poor Dear") when Kassia (Gayle Hunnicut) barges into the bedroom and demands that Wylie come with her. Wylie, apparently a decadent playboy, thinks this is just another kinky come-on (it’s the 60s, you know) and he leaves with Kassia. It turns out that Kassia is the hairdresser for his rich Aunt Danny (Eleanor Parker) and she needs him for a nefarious plan: Danny, an invalid who sleeps in an oxygen tent due to advanced emphysema, is close to dying and has left her fortune to her dozens of cats which swarm about the house at will. But Kassia knows that, if her wayward nephew Wylie came home, Danny would change the will and leave everything to Wylie. The plan is to clean shaggy Wylie up, send him to his aunt, and have her change the will, after which Kassia will kill Aunt Danny and split the estate with Wylie. And indeed, Danny is ecstatic to see Wylie again. But there are at least a couple of obstacles: the presence of Wylie's brother Luke (Tim Henry) who has been Danny's caretaker for years, and Wylie's intense cat phobia which can send him into cataleptic shock.

Though this is an enjoyable psychological thriller which has a couple of fun plot twists up its sleeve, there are so many plotholes and ambiguities that trying to make sense of the plot is truly frustrating. Why has Wylie stayed away so long? Why does Kassia assume that Wylie will split his inheritance with her? What's up with Poor Dear and that kinky opening scene? (Poor Dear returns briefly to be the catalyst for a vigorous catfight which is completely extraneous to the narrative.) Why isn't Luke more upset about being pushed aside for the prodigal nephew? Why does the sickly Aunt Danny look so healthy? And is she actually flirting with Wylie? How on earth does all this happen in basically a day and a half? To be fair, at least one of those questions is answered by a big plot twist near the end (which is a good one, but also opens a new can of plot questions which are not answered). The acting is problematic, with too much underplaying (perhaps because of the underwritten script). Michael Sarrazin (pictured with Hunnicut above) is one of my favorite 60s-70s actors (he's great in THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?) and he's all jazzed up and sexy here, but he way overdoes the cat phobia, especially in the first such scene when an orange cat stalks him in Kassia's salon. Hunnicut practically sleepwalks through her role, and Parker is OK, though as I noted, too robust to seem truly vulnerable. Tim Henry (at right) rivals Sarrazin for comely looks and is fine as the brother, but also seems at times to not be sure of how to play a scene so he underplays it.

The pluses: the 60s vibe, the San Francisco setting, a couple of nicely done Hitchcockian scenes, especially the one in which Parker's wheelchair malfunctions and she goes zipping backwards down a long hillside street. As Stephen Larson points out in his review at Blu-ray.com, the characters are all locked into relationships of dominance and submission, and it's interesting to watch those play out, though again due to the script, we don’t really get enough information about their backgrounds (especially Luke's and Kassia's) to allow us to undo all the knots. The beefcake element is nice—both Sarrazin and Henry get shirtless scenes—and the cats are used effectively, though there is a worrisome scene early on in which Sarrazin frantically tosses a cat into a space heater (I hope the ASPCA was on hand for the filming of that moment). The conclusion is satisfying but the very last scene tosses one last ambiguous moment our way. The Blu-ray includes as an extra the TV print which cut out some sexiness and, oddly, reworked the last section of the movie to feature only one cat at the climax instead of the dozens that return in the theatrical film. [Blu-ray]

SHE DEMONS (1958)

Four shipwreck survivors are washed up on what appears to be a deserted island: Fred, the skipper (Tod Griffin), Jerrie, a spoiled socialite (Irish McCalla), Sammy, the Asian first mate (Victor Sen Yung, best known for playing a son of Charlie Chan in several films), and a Polynesian guy named Kris with no personality whom we know won't be long for the world. Jerrie's rich father has funded this expedition to investigate reports of an island filled with odd creatures, and fate has dumped our group on the exact island they're looking for. Their radio won't transmit, but it does receive, and when some military jets fly overhead, Sammy hears enough to understand that the planes will back in a couple of days to do a bombing practice run over the (assumed to be) human-free island. The four build a camp and when Fred & Jerrie & Sammy return from exploring, they find the camp destroyed and Kris dead, killed with bamboo spears. Clearly, the island is inhabited and soon the three find the corpse of a woman with a deformed face ("A woman’s body with the face of a demon!" says Fred). What's going on? Well, it turns out the inhabitants of the island are a handful of Nazis led by Col. Osler (Rudolph Anders) and some native women on whom the doctor is experimenting. He's searching for a way to cure his wife's disfigured face but all he's done so far is turn the women in "mindless beasts" with grotesque animal faces whom he holds as prisoners and slaves.

This schlocky B-movie is unmemorable except for some surprisingly effective make-up for the titular "she demons." The film combines two horror movie tropes: experimentation that turns humans into inhuman creatures, and a mad doctor's search for a disfigurement cure. Despite the good effects, the movie is let down by the drab performances. Irish McCalla was best known as the star of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a mid-50s TV series. She's statuesque but between the character's nastiness and McCalla's indifferent acting, it’s difficult to care about Jerrie. A beefcake hero might have made the movie more fun, but here, Tod Griffin is a drab, vanilla fellow with little screen presence and what looks like an oddly groomed little toupee of chest hair in his shirtless scenes. Even Rudolph Anders is fairly bland, missing an opportunity to go over the top as the Nazi doc. This leaves Victor Sen Yung, fine as the sidekick, as the default best performer. There is a fun scene of the native women dancing that recalls but doesn't better Maria Montez's delirious campy dance in COBRA WOMAN. This cheapie made some money on a successful drive-in double bill with a similar low-rent quickie called GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN. It's all quite silly, and if you're in the right popcorn mood, can be fun, but I kept wishing the hero was someone a little hunkier, like John Agar or Ken Clark or Jeff Richards. Pictured are Griffin, McCalla and Yung. [Amazon Prime]

BENGAL TIGER (1936)

At the Hindale-Clark circus, two of the stars, likeable trapeze artist Warren Hull and beefy, blustery animal trainer Barton MacLane, are buddies. MacLane is obsessed with taming Satan, a man-eating Bengal tiger. One night after the two have had a few drinks, the tiger escapes. MacLane gets him back in his cage, but when his assistant (Paul Graetz) warns him about interacting with the animals when he's drunk, MacLane gets mad and deliberately provokes Satan, leading to an attack that leaves Graetz dead and MacLane with only one leg. After he recovers, MacLane discovers that Graetz's daughter (June Travis) has turned to crime (we assume prostitution) to survive, so he takes her in, sets her up in her own house, and eventually proposes, acknowledging that even though she doesn't love him romantically, he'll be able to take care of her (and redeem himself for his role in her father's death). She accepts but soon finds herself falling in love with Hull. Hull decides to leave the show, but when MacLane catches him kissing Travis, MacLane plots to toss Hull in Satan's cage. This B-melodrama is too predictable (and, near the end, too rushed) to be effective. I like character actor MacLane in small doses (THE MALTESE FALCON, TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE) but he's too one-note for a starring role. However, with Hull and Travis making a fairly bland couple, MacLane gives this movie the only oomph it has, except for Satan, the tiger.  The wedding banquet thrown by the circus performers for MacLane and Travis seems like a sly homage to the similar scene in 1932’s FREAKS. Not essential viewing. Pictured at left is Hull on the trapeze. [TCM]

LOOKING FOR LOVE (1964)

Libby (Connie Francis) is frustrated—she has spent an entire month in Hollywood looking for a singing job and has had no luck, though she thinks her real talent will be getting married and having children. While grocery shopping with her roommate Jan (Susan Oliver), she meets Paul (Jim Hutton), a tall and handsome co-worker of Jan's, and is certain she can catch him even though he barely notices her—Jan warns her that Paul likes his women "T and T," that is, tall and top-heavy, an observation that is illustrated when he see him fondle two large lemons while gazing at a well-built woman. Moments later, Libby literally runs into Cuz Rickover (Joby Baker), a friend of Jan's, who is working at the store. Cuz seems smitten but Libby barely notices him—he's cute but doesn't seem to be husband material. Frustrated with trying to keep her clothes tidy, Libby invents a "lady valet" for women to hang their clothes on; this gets Paul's attention as he sees a chance to invest in a money-making product. He gets her on the Johnny Carson show and tries to get some celebrity endorsements, but the whole time, Libby has convinced herself that he's fallen in love with her, even as Jan tries to push Libby and Cuz together. Then, when almost accidentally, Libby's singing career takes off, Paul does get interested in her. But where does that leave sweet Cuz? And Jan, who is more Paul's type?

This romantic comedy has a weak script and the leads are miscast, but there is some fun to be had watching all the pieces fall into place. Francis and Hutton don't seem comfortable in their roles, even though both were veterans of the rom-com genre. Francis seems a little bored and her character is mostly unlikeable; Hutton tries going over-the-top while aping Jimmy Stewart's delivery but he's just not uninhibited enough to be successful. Baker and Oliver are much more appealing (I quite like Baker--pictured with Francis--who starred in a late 60s sitcom, Good Morning World, before leaving the Hollywood radar), and there are a handful of fun cameos by celebs playing themselves. In addition to Johnny Carson, we see Paula Prentiss and Yvette Mimieux as two of the potential endorsers, and George Hamilton does a screen test with Francis. The funniest scene is of Francis, on a Danny Thomas TV special, involved in an elaborate production number which completely falls apart. What I enjoyed the most in this movie is the color scheme—the production design is awash in bright, cotton-candy colors, and I could almost convince myself to watch it again just for that. [TCM]

HONEYMOON HOTEL (1964)

Jay (Robert Morse) and Ross (Robert Goulet) are Manhattan bachelor pad roomies. Jay is settling down, set to marry Cynthia that afternoon, while Ross continues his playboy ways, having almost forgotten his best man duties because he's been necking with an Amway saleswoman who stops by the pad twice a week—not to mention flirting at work with a totsy named Sherry (Jill St. John). But at the high society wedding, Cynthia gets jealous when she overhears Jay talking with Ross about a former girlfriend and she calls off the wedding. The morose Jay is stuck with two tickets to an expensive Caribbean resort so he and Ross decide to go themselves—without realizing that the hotel caters only to honeymooning couples. That’s the one joke the movie keeps flogging, as promised by its title; employees and other guests keep assuming the two men are honeymooning together (a joke that has pretty much lost its outrageousness over the past few years), and both men are frustrated by the abundance of women in bikinis who are off-limits because they're newlyweds.

But fret not, other naughty situations arise: 1) Ross discovers there is one single woman on the premises: Lynn (Nancy Kwan), the social director, who it just so happens is friends with Cynthia and was present at the called-off wedding. Ross starts an effort to bed her, and he seems to be having some luck until she sees Jay who lets it slip about Ross's promiscuous ways. She then plots to make both men look foolish; 2) Ross's married boss Mr. Sampson (Keenan Wynn) takes up with Sherry and the two of them wind up at the hotel, posing as honeymooners; 3) the suspicious Mrs. Sampson follows her husband to the resort and soon, a farcical game of "Hide Sherry" commences; 4) Cynthia arrives, having decided to give Jay another chance, but with all the shenanigans involving Sherry and Lynn, she has second (third, I guess) thoughts.

With all that plot, you'd think this would be a sparkling 60s sex farce that would be fun to watch even today. You would be wrong. First, as I hinted above, our sexual mores have changed so much that this feels more like a Disney sitcom than a sophisticated adult entertainment. There's also the rampant and unfunny sexism on display, especially in the way that the Jill St. John character is treated (though the actress herself, pictured at right with Goulet, gives the best performance in the film). Goulet and Morse, both making leading man debuts after achieving Broadway success, are badly directed; Morse is sluggish and Goulet artificial. The presence of Asian actress Nancy Kwan is interesting, in that she and Goulet are probably among the earliest examples of an interracial couple being at the heart of a romantic comedy, but Kwan is just as poorly used as the male leads, though she does get a nice but short dance bit. Anne Helm is unmemorable as Cynthia, and Bernard Fox (Bewitched's Dr. Bombay) and Elsa Lanchester have thankless supporting roles. I did laugh a few times here and there, and St. John turns a rather lame line into a high point: early on, when Ross promises to take her to the Caribbean, she replies chirpingly, "That’s in the Great Lakes, isn't it?" She also gets the best bit of physical comedy when she walks into a sliding glass door (I actually laughed out loud). But I would only recommend this to fans of the stars or to 60s sex farce completists. [TCM]

WHITE WOMAN (1933)

Carole Lombard is a morally suspect woman (her husband was apparently driven to suicide because of her promiscuity) making a living as a club singer in Malaysia. A snooty British lawyer is working on getting her deported for being a white woman who has lowered herself to entertaining the natives. But Charles Laughton, a roughneck Cockney who worked himself up from the slums to become a rich plantation owner known as King of the River, takes pity on her and marries her. At his jungle home along the river, she discovers that his help consists of criminals in hiding whom he basically enslaves in exchange for keeping them away from justice. Overseer Kent Taylor, who, we are told emphatically, hasn't seen a white woman in years, cozies up to Lombard, and she to him. Laughton, knowing about his wife's attraction, taunts the two with a story about Taylor suffering from (what we would now call) post-traumatic stress disorder because years ago his best friend was decapitated by natives, and his head was tossed through a window, landing at Taylor's feet. (Of course, using Chekhov's gun as a narrative principle, we know that a head is going to end up in play eventually.) Lombard and Taylor try to run away together, but Laughton threatens to sic the natives on them before they get very far, so Taylor winds up sent to another station up the river. The next overseer, Charles Bickford, a chain gang escapee, is only slightly less sleazy and threatening than Laughton, though Bickford asks Lombard, as Taylor is leaving, "Do you come under the heading of overseer duties?" Soon, however, Laughton's unquestioned rule of the river suffers when he refuses two natives who are demanding more trading freedom. When Laughton unwisely spits in their faces and sends them away, the natives become restless (as the cliché notes) and all the white people's lives may be in danger.

This is a fairly wild and wooly exotic melodrama from the pre-Code era, so Lombard's character can remain tainted without explaining away her behavior or necessarily getting punished in the end as the Production Code would have insisted. Laughton is the big draw here, giving a juicy, scenery-chewing performance; if you don’t like him in this mode, you may want to skip this, but he is as gross and slimy a villain as you'll encounter in any 30s movie. It took me a while to get used to his over-the-top performance, particularly when everyone else is so serious, but I do think he is effective. Taylor and Bickford are believable as the types they play, Lombard a little less so as she tends to fade into the helpless woman mode in the face of the three strong male performances. However, despite this and despite the non-PC attitudes on display, this is a fun pre-Code relic. Pictured are Bickford and Lombard. [DVD]

DESERT COMMANDOS (1967)

It's Christmas, 1942 in Berlin and five German soldiers are called upon to cut their holidays short to go on a mission. They are parachuted into the North African desert, disguised in British uniforms, and told to head to Casablanca where they will meet up with an agent who will help they complete their task: to assassinate Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, the Allied "Big Three" who are meeting there to plan war strategy. The leader, Scholler (Ken Clark), is a by-the-rules guy and, seemingly, a fervent Nazi, though he doesn't seem fazed when one of his men, Wolf (Horst Frank), expresses admiration for a Jewish writer. An officer named Huber and two young guys, Mainz and Ludwig, round out the group, all picked because they can speak English and have some connection in their past with America. After some problems in the desert (lack of water, falling under enemy fire), they get near Casablanca where they find, not their contact, who has been killed, but his daughter Faddja (Jeanne Valerie) who agrees to help them. Is this Arab woman sincere or is she actually an Allied sympathizer? The same question is asked about the lovely Simone, a club owner who may or not be genuinely helpful. Though we know from history that they can't possibly succeed in their mission (unless this turns out to be a Quentin Tarentino movie), we do end up engrossed in their situation, wondering what will happen to them when they fail.

This Italian war film is, as other commentators have noted, almost existential in its view of human life, conflict and ambition. The upbeat/downbeat ending works because we have grown to know, if not necessarily like, these men. We don't want them to succeed but we don't want bad endings for them, either. Though the first half of the film drags in places, real tension is built up in the last half-hour, and the conclusion is satisfying. This acting is a bit above average for a grade-B war film: Ken Clark (pictured above right), a big slab of blond manhood, is quite good as the hard-ass German soldier who may not be a Nazi sympathizer but who answers the call of duty; Jeanne Valerie keeps us guessing as to her true nature (pro-Nazi or pro-Allies); Hardy Reichelt and Howard Ross provide some handsome beefcakiness as the two younger (somewhat interchangable soldiers; one of them, I'm not sure which, is pictured to the left with Clark). The desert backgrounds are effective. The best scene involves a scorpion crawling up to an badly injured soldier on the sand—will Clark let it bite him to put him out of his misery? The climax involves a clever trick that I didn't see coming. One odd mistake: the Jewish writer that Wolf admires is William Faulkner who was not Jewish. The dubbing is distracting, as usual, but overall this was an enjoyable film. Its original Italian title, Attentato ai tre grandi, translates as Attack on the Big Three. [Amazon streaming]

CIMARRON (1931)

In 1889, the U.S. government opened up vast amounts of Native American lands (in what would become Oklahoma) for white settlement, leading to a land rush; literally, hundreds of people on horses and in covered wagons racing through the land to claim property. With the land rush as a starting point, this film tells the story of newspaper editor Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) and his wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) over the next forty years. Yancey is tricked out of his first land plot choice by the saucy prostitute Dixie Lee, but he and Sabra settle in the barely-built boom town of Osage. Characters we meet include an outlaw known as The Kid, who tries to hold up Yancey until they recognize each other as old buddies; a thuggish roughneck named Lon who is not above shooting someone in the back; Mr. Hefner, the town's furniture dealer and undertaker; newspaper printer (and constant stutterer) Jesse; and Sol Levy, the sole Jewish man in town, whom Yancey takes under his protective wing. As the years go by, the town gets more built up and more civilized—though not before Yancey's young black servant Isaiah is killed in a bandit raid. While his wife is raising children, Yancey gets the fever to participate in another land rush on the Cherokee Strip, and Sabra is left alone to run the paper by herself, with help from Jesse and Sol. By 1907, Oklahoma has become a state, Yancey decides to run for governor, and their oldest son Cimarron falls in love with an Indian girl, a development that bothers Sabra but not her more tolerant husband. When oil is found on Indian land, Yancey refuses to take part in schemes to cheat them out of their land and publishes an editorial to that effect, straining his relationship with his wife. More years pass, Yancey once again lights out for further far-flung territory, and Sabra thrives, accepting Cimarron's marriage and even winning an election to Congress.

This is often cited as the worst and/or most boring Best Picture winner of all time (for me, that title is shared by BIRDMAN and OLIVER!, and possibly THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA though I've never made it all the way through that one). It's true that, for all the action—the land rush scene that starts the film still comes off as rousing—and all the many plot threads, it does seem to move at a slow pace, though its ending feels artificially rushed. Part of the problem is that what held audiences' attention 90 years ago (the New York Times called it "engrossing" and "a stupendous undertaking") often does not today. Still, the narrative is filled with incident and I was never bored. The acting is generally fine, particularly in the supporting parts. Dix is a rather stolid and uninspiring lead, and Dunne doesn't get to shine until late in the film. George E. Stone as Sol, Roscoe Ates as Jesse, and Edna May Oliver as a high-toned older lady are all quite fine and each gets at least one good scene to themselves. William Collier Jr. as the Kid shows promise in his first scene, but doesn't get to stretch much beyond that. The message of tolerance is admirable and seems a little ahead of its time. The print that is in circulation is not in great shape, especially the sound elements. I couldn't recommend this to just anyone, but if you have any affinity for the early sound era, you should catch this. Pictured at top right is a newspaper ad for the film's initial run in New York City; above left are Dunne and Oliver. [TCM]

THE CLAY PIGEON (1949)

Jim Fletcher (Bill Williams) comes out of a coma in a naval hospital to find a blind veteran trying to strangle him. His nurse saves him but treats him with contempt, calling him a traitor. It turns out that Fletcher is facing a court-martial over treason charges that, while in a Japanese POW camp, his actions led to the death of another prisoner, though Fletcher can remember almost nothing from his experience. He escapes from the hospital and heads to San Diego to find his pal Mark Gregory; at Mark's apartment, his wife Martha (Barbara Hale) answers, seems very sociable, and lets him in, but Jim sees a newspaper headline about his escape and discovers that it’s Mark's death for which he is being held accountable—he supposedly ratted out Mark for smuggling food in the camp. Jim takes Martha against her will on the road to LA see his Ted, a fellow former POW, to try and clear things up. Along the way, Martha sees torture marks on Jim's chest and begins to believe that he is innocent. At a Chinese restaurant, Jim sees Tokoyama (Richard Loo), the man who tortured him in the camp, and soon realizes that he is being hunted not just by the authorities but also by someone who wants him dead.

This is a short, well-paced B-film with good performances, a few nice noir touches, and a fine climax on a train. Leads Williams and Hale were married in real life (and actor William Katt is their son) and their chemistry here is another plus. Williams (pictured above) is handsome but has just enough roughness in his face that he's perfectly suited for playing the noir role of a confused man trying to solve a mystery with himself at the center. Richard Quine, best known as a director (MY SISTER EILEEN, BELL BOOK AND CANDLE), is fine the small but crucial role of Ted. There is an interesting scene in which Jim takes refuge briefly in the apartment of a Japanese widow whose husband was a decorated soldier in the American armed services. The movie takes its time getting its ducks in a row, then at the 50 minute mark, rushes a bit too quickly to the end, a common B-movie problem. But I recommend this one wholeheartedly for fans of noir, crime, or post-war films. [TCM]

THE HELEN MORGAN STORY (1957)

It's Chicago in the Roaring Twenties, and everyone was trying to get rich quick. Helen Morgan (Ann Blyth) is a dancer at a sideshow exhibit run by Larry Maddux (Paul Newman) who is using dancing girls to get folks to hear his pitch to buy real estate at Sunny Acres in Florida. When a sudden storm stops the show, Larry decides to pack it in and he pays the girls off. Helen dawdles a bit, Larry sweet-talks her into making out, and a one-night stand ensues. The next morning he's gone and she's alone and jobless. She struggles to find a place in the world of show business, and one day when she's auditioning at a speakeasy she runs into Larry who is now a bootlegger working for a big-time gangster. Back in her life and wanting to help and protect her, Larry gets her hired at the club (but then gets her fired when he beats up a customer who was getting handsy with her), then talks her into posing as a Canadian to win a fixed Canadian beauty pageant (she wins but a reporter finds out she's not from Canada). One of the judges, a married lawyer named Russell Wade (Richard Carlson) takes a shine to Helen, though it's hard to tell at first if he wants her to be a friend or a mistress. Things finally look up when Larry sets her up with her own nightclub—with Russell as a silent partner whom even Helen doesn’t know about—and soon Helen is discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld and becomes the toast of Broadway starring in Show Boat. Sadly, it's all downhill from there as Helen winds up unhappy in love and begins drinking which ends her career and leads to a stay in an asylum, though a final reunion with Larry holds the promise of redemption.

This follows the usual path of the Hollywood biopic—ambition, romance, fame, the downturn into the miseries of alcohol. In real life, it seems her fall was slower—she starred in the film version of Show Boat several years after the stage show and kept performing in movies and in theater until she collapsed on stage in 1941 and died shortly thereafter of cirrhosis of the liver. The problem here isn't that her life has been heavily fictionalized, but that for much of the movie's running time, she feels like a secondary character in her own story. Blyth is outshone not just by the charismatic Newman but also by supporting players like Alan King, Gene Evans and Cara Williams. In the last half of the movie, Blyth is able to cut loose a bit in scenes depicting her downfall, but the unrealistic conclusion (best described as "sadly upbeat") ends things on an unsatisfying note. Gogi Grant does a nice job providing Helen's singing voice on songs like "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and it's fun to see Rudy Vallee and Walter Winchell in cameos playing themselves. Pictured are Newman and Blyth.[TCM]

MORNING GLORY (1933)

A young, naïve aspiring actress (Katherine Hepburn) arrives in Manhattan from a small town in Vermont, ready to take Broadway by storm. While in a crowded waiting room, hoping to talk with Broadway hotshot Adolphe Menjou, she chats up older actor C. Aubrey Smith who takes a fatherly liking to her, and he agrees to be her mentor, giving her acting lessons that she'll pay him for when she can. Playwright Douglas Fairbanks Jr. also takes note of Hepburn, but her bubbly chattiness and her high opinion of herself are a bit off-putting; she's reluctant to take small roles, so her career essentially stalls out. Weeks later, Menjou, Smith and Fairbanks (and obnoxious alcoholic leading lady Mary Duncan) have a hit show and Smith brings a starving, struggling Hepburn to the opening night party where she proceeds to get smashed on champagne but also delivers a couple of Shakespeare pieces that are truly impressive. That night, Menjou beds her, but the next morning he regrets it and tells Fairbanks, who is a bit in love with Hepburn himself. Eventually, she realizes that Menjou has just been toying with her, and she goes off to do stock and vaudeville. But months later, as another Fairbanks play is about to open, Duncan throws a tantrum on opening night, so Menjou has Hepburn, who has been hired as her understudy, take her role. She's a success and, as she soaks in the praise (and a declaration of love from Fairbanks which she turns aside), she is warned by her dresser, a former Broadway star, not to become a "morning glory," one who blooms beautifully but who then fades quickly. Confident in herself, she claims that even if that does happen to her, she's not afraid of the future.

This well-worn making-of-a-star story was, I imagine, rather old hat even in 1933. But a few things make this stand out. One, of course, is Hepburn, who pulls off the role quite well. Too much of either starry-eyed innocence or blind confidence could have made us not like the character, but Hepburn strikes a good balance, and the ending, in which she is left in limbo, is unusual—the norm would have been to either have her future star status be assured, or to have her decide that love trumps her career, but neither thing happens. The three men in her life, though stereotypes, have characters that are developed about as well as they could be in a short (75 minutes) movie. Fairbanks is sweetly charming, Smith is likeable, and Menjou even makes his cold-hearted producer come off in a way that isn't totally alienating. Hepburn won her first of four Oscars for this role, soon proving that she certainly was no morning glory. [TCM]

CRESCENDO (1972)

Georges Ryman (James Olson, pictured) is on a blustery beach, making out with a woman whose face we cannot see. A figure approaches holding a shotgun. Georges turns and sees that the threatening man is himself. The doppelganger shoots at the woman, and we see she has turned into a rotting corpse. But this is all a dream, and Georges wakes up in a sweat. We soon learn that Georges is the only living son of the late composer Henry Ryman; his brother, perhaps more talented than Georges, died some time ago. Georges is wheelchair-bound, addicted to heroin and lives with his mother Danielle (Margaretta Scott) in a lovely villa in France. She gives him a daily injection of heroin, but when he starts jonsesing for a fix later in the day, the pouty maid Lillianne shoots him up (unbeknownst to Mom), and teases him sexually, knowing that his paralysis means he's impotent. We don’t know why he's in a wheelchair, but we suspect some past trauma is responsible for that and the drug problem. Into this uncomfortable family situation (a beefy manservant named Carter also lives there), comes American grad student Susan Roberts (Stefanie Powers), doing research on a thesis about Henry Ryman. Danielle seems quite pleased to welcome her, and even the gloomy Georges brightens up a bit around her. In fact, an attraction builds between them, but he keeps shattering their romantic moods by falling into bouts of self-pity or getting the screaming fits for his heroin. It seems like Mom is planning for Susan to marry Georges, but Lillianne has some plans of her own in that direction. Carter doesn't like Lilliane, but it's difficult to tell where his sympathies lie, if for anyone. As tensions grow in the villa, Susan hears someone playing piano at night, trying to finish Henry's unfinished concerto but winding up playing chaotically. Georges keeps having sweaty dreams about his doppelganger, and when we find out that Susan resembles Georges' dead girlfriend Katherine, we know no good can come of these relationships.

Many Hollywood psychological thrillers of the late 60s and early 70s have elements in common: damsel in distress, hidden secrets, a glossy look and pretty locations, and a smidge of decadent behavior. In other words, they are old-fashioned Gothic tales done up in mod style. This one, from Hammer Studios, feels directly influenced by an earlier Hammer modern Gothic, SCREAM OF FEAR, even featuring the similar physical setting of a villa with a big pool in its middle and a character confined to a wheelchair. The surprise gimmick here, however, is not quite the same as in earlier movie, but you'll probably guess it not long before its full reveal. Still, this is an enjoyable thriller with a decent, if rather second-string, cast. I like James Olson (Andromeda Strain, Ragtime) quite a bit, and he's good in the central role of the neurotic (or is it psychotic?) hero (or is it anti-hero?). His swings from pleasant and friendly to rude and unhealthy are pulled off well. Powers, whom I think I've only ever seen in TV productions, is fine as the damsel who also walks a line between determined and helpless. Joss Ackland, a very busy British character actor, is good but mostly wasted as the creepy (or is he?) manservant. Jane Lapotaire is fine as Lilliane, making the most of her big scene in which she starts rubbing and groping the helpless Georges before she gives him his fix. At first, I didn’t like Margaretta Scott as the overbearing mom, mostly because she looked so much like Joan Bennett in her Dark Shadows days that I was wishing that Bennett had played this role. But by the end, I appreciated her fairly low-key approach to the Gothic mother part. Not a well-known flick, but good for a rainy Saturday night. [DVD]

THE SINGLE STANDARD (1929)

This film opens with a quoted bit of wisdom: "For generations men have done as they pleased—and women have done as men pleased." At a glittering house party, we see young attractive Arden Stuart (Greta Garbo) on a balcony, looking both bored and amused as she watches three married men returning from a quick road trip with three women who are not their wives. Her boyfriend Tommy (Johnny Mack Brown) tries to get her interested in some canoodling but she's restless and instead takes off for her own midnight ride with the handsome family chauffeur. He's a former war pilot and before the hanky-panky happens, the two talk about wanting to live freely and honestly. When they return, they are greeted by her angry brother Ding (?!) who immediately fires the chauffeur who then proceeds to kill himself by crashing the car. In an existential funk, Arden isolates herself until one rainy day, she enters an art gallery and is fascinated by Packy Cannon (Nils Asther), a former boxer turned artist. The two begin a flirtation—as Liszt's "Liebestraum" plays on the background score—and when Packy says that for him, love is "equality and perfect freedom," Arden is hooked. He's about to set sail for a solo around-the-world trip on his yacht but impulsively asks Arden to join him which she does. After several months of romantic (and/or erotic) isolation, Packy eventually takes Arden back home and returns to the sea by himself. She is heartbroken and her behavior has caused her to be a figure of scandal, but she is invited to the latest society shindig anyway where lovesick Tommy begs her for another chance. She agrees to marry him, but she warns him that she can't promise what will happen if Packy comes back for her—which, a few years later, he does. By then, she is settled with a child, but the allure of the free life with Packy is tempting. What will she decide to do?

This is one of Garbo's last silent films and it's no emotional fever dream like The Flesh and the Devil or Wild Orchids; the direction (by John Robertson), cinematography, scenery and narrative flow are all rather plain which leaves the acting to spice things up, and luckily the lead trio comes through. This was touted as Garbo’s first "100% American role" and she does indeed play down her exotic appeal; you can imagine Katherine Hepburn playing this part—indeed, Arden could be a slightly different take on Hepburn's Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, though Arden is more interested in sex than romance, unlike Tracy. Garbo is called on to be sad, frustrated, passionate, thoughtful and (eventually) a loving mother and she does a nice job on all counts. Asther (pictured with Garbo) is good as the male exotic and Brown is appealingly, stolidly masculine. They all come off as rather likable, unusual for a romantic triangle movie of the era. Zeffie Tilbury stands out in the supporting cast as a society matron. Definitely pre-Code material, if rather conventional in its ending. [TCM]

TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR (1944)

The Deyo sisters, Patsy (June Allyson) and Jean (Gloria DeHaven), grow up in vaudeville houses as part of a performing family. Little Jean carries around her "oogy" doll that looks just like comedian Billy Kipp (Jimmy Durante), who often is playing on the same bill with the family. By 1943, the two girls have their own act, and occasionally wonder whatever happened to Billy. But they keep busy not only performing at a nightclub but turning their (surprisingly spacious) apartment into a servicemen's canteen after hours, so lonely men on furlough have a place to go and be sociable. One night, the two girls attract the attention of a sailor (Van Johnson) and an Army soldier (Tom Drake) who wind up vying mostly for Jean's time. We find out that the sailor is actually rich heir John Dyckman Brown III, and when the sisters express a wish to lease an abandoned warehouse near them to use as a real servicemen's canteen, Brown secretly arranges for them to get the lease and the money and materials to fix it up. In the midst of renovation, the girls discover that the broken-down Billy Kipp has been living in the building, distraught over his wife and son leaving him years ago. They enlist his aid and soon the canteen is up and running, featuring entertainers like Lena Horne, Virginia O'Brien, Gracie Allen and Harry James and his band. We know it’s just a matter of time before Brown's identity is exposed, but when it is, who will he choose—pretty Jean or smart Patsy? If you've seen enough (or any) romantic comedy musicals of the classic era, you know the answer even before the question comes up.

This is a predictable wartime musical revue, with all the songs presented as on-stage numbers, and there are a lot of them, mostly OK but unmemorable, with the exception of June Allyson singing with Harry James on "Young Man with a Horn" and Virginia O'Brien doing her deadpan routine on "Take It Easy." Another bright spot: an uncredited actor named Arthur Walsh has a recurring role as a lonely and silent soldier who keeps trying unsuccessfully to get some feminine attention until he suddenly cuts loose on the dance floor late in the film. Van Johnson is unbelievably cute and dewy-eyed in his first full-fledged leading role, and Allyson and DeHaven are charming. A little Durante goes a long way for me, but he mostly remains on the sidelines. Henry Stephenson and Henry O'Neill have a nice scene as Johnson's grandfather and father. Also with Frank Jenks, Donald Meek, and Xavier Cugat and his band. Worth a viewing, if not exactly a keeper. Pictured are Allyson, Johnson and Durante. [TCM]

THE WITCH (1966)

aka THE WITCH IN LOVE or LA STREGA IN AMORE

Sergio (Richard Johnson) is a playboy grad student in Rome who spends more time hanging out with his latest female conquests than studying, but currently he's disturbed that an older woman seems to be following him, even waiting out on the sidewalk one morning near his current mistress's apartment. When he finally confronts her, she claims she has put a want ad in the paper for an academic to work as a librarian to sort and catalog the writings of her late husband, and thinks he'd be perfect. Consuelo (Sarah Ferrati) takes him to her palazzo in the middle of the city where he discovers a few complicating factors: 1) the huge library is a mess and the papers are mostly the husband's erotic memoirs; 2) Conseulo may be a drug addict—she passes out in front of him after drinking a potion of some sort; 3) living with the older woman is her young and sexy daughter Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino) who practically throws herself at him; 4) he's expected to get rid of Fabrizio (Gian Maria Volonte), the current librarian, who follows Aura around like a wounded puppy. He takes the job and, though he enjoys the favors of Aura, he notices some more strange touches around the house, including the dead husband's embalmed body laid out upstairs and Consuelo going through some odd rituals, and later, Aura talking about the still-present Fabrizio while she's making out with Sergio. Eventually, given the title of the movie, we assume we'll run into a witch, but who, and what does she want with Sergio?

Though often classified as a horror movie, this is, for most of its running time, more a psychosexual thriller. Most online critics note how appealing Rosanna Schiaffino is, which is true, but I found Richard Johnson (THE HAUNTING, KHARTOUM) to be almost equally appealing—he's handsome and has a slow burn sensuality in his scenes with Schiaffino, particularly an early scene in which she insists they make love without using their hands. But this is not a porn movie, not even a soft-core one; no one gets naked on camera even if erotic content is front and center for much of the film. Is this a psychological or a supernatural thriller? It may be better appreciated as the former, as the witchy elements seem almost tacked on to a story that doesn't really need them. After about half an hour, it's easy to see where this is going: [Slight spoiler] Sergio is the latest in a string of men that the two women toy with, and even if he manages to get rid of Fabrizio, he will eventually be replaced, too. The sets and cinematography are good, though the music is a little weird—at times, it sounds like a Vince Guaraldi score for a Charlie Brown show. Generally interesting, with a pronounced 60s feel. Pictured are Schiaffino, Volonte and Johnson. [YouTube]

GET OUTTA TOWN (1960)

Kelly Olesen used to be part of a notorious gang of thugs, but he left town and reformed, making money through hard work; now he's back in town to attend the funeral of his kid brother Tommy. The inquest found that Tommy died from a drunken fall, but Kelly suspects foul play and hopes that his old cronies Tony (a friendly underachiever who spent some time at San Quentin, or "The Q" as he calls it) and Rico (a slicker fellow who now is a member of a larger syndicate) might help him find out the truth. But his visit gets off to a bad start: the cops are not happy to see him and tell him to get out of town as soon as the funeral is over. His mother is cold to him and his ex-girlfriend Jill is only slightly more friendly. Kelly has to deal with a feisty young thug named Rocky who distrusts Kelly and comes at him with a knife ("Somebody’s spiking your pablum, kid," says Kelly who kicks his ass), two bar employees who may not have told the whole truth at the inquest, and Claire, another former girlfriend who is married to Rico now. Will Kelly find out the truth before his inquisitiveness gets him in trouble?

This B-film is a little rough in its production values, and most of the actors did not go on to long careers (virtually all of them were completely unknown to me), but if you're looking for a short crime story that feels like it came right out of an old pulp fiction magazine, you'll find some pleasures here. The narrative is a little fractured; the movie opens with Kelly getting beat up on the street and making his way to a woman's apartment to recover, then goes into a long flashback before catching up with the beginning. Doug Wilson (Kelly) doesn’t quite look or act like a hero or anti-hero—he's a little too vanilla in his personality and a little too lumpy in his looks to be all that appealing—but I got used to him. Jeanne Baird (Jill) and Marilyn O'Connor (Claire) are not memorable, and the main cop (Frank Harding) doesn't modulate his one-note performance—irritated bluster—at all. But as is often the case in B-films, a couple of supporting players stand out. Tommy Holden is fun as Squirrel, a gangster gofer who tries to ingratiate himself with Kelly even as he's not so sure that he should; Tony Louis as Rico manages to be slimy in a clean way; best of all is Sam Chiodo as Rocky, the good-looking but dumb as rocks thug who doesn’t trust Kelly. Some of the dialogue has a nice punch with my favorite line being delivered by Tony to Kelly, surprised to see him back in town: "I had you figured for a concrete kimono!" I've included the DVD cover above because it’s far cooler than any actual scene in the movie, but don't believe the claim about it being a "brutal noir"—it's really just a crime movie, fairly mild as far as violence goes except for Kelly's opening ass-kicking, and a pleasant hour of viewing on a Saturday afternoon. [DVD]

MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945)

Unemployed working girl Julia Ross (Nina Foch) is on the verge of being evicted from her boarding house. To add to her woes, Dennis, the fellow boarder she had a crush on, has moved out to get married. And the landlady's maid, Bertha, is a nasty piece of work who isn’t above petty theft. But an interview at the Alison Employment Agency yields a job as a live-in companion for Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty). Because Hughes has had several girls leave the position to get married or to go home to family, she is especially happy to hear that Julia has no living parents and no "young man" in her life (though just before Julia leaves the boarding house, Dennis returns, having called off his wedding, and Julia agrees to see him again soon). Also living with Mrs. Hughes is her adult son Ralph (George Macready) who seems fairly normal but is also a little highly strung, and has a thing for playing with pocket knives. On her first night at their house, a nefarious plot is sprung: Julia is drugged and taken to a house on a remote coast. When she awakens that morning, Dennis and his mother try to make her believe that she is Dennis' wife, Marion, who is recovering from some kind of breakdown. However, Julia is made of stronger stuff than mother and son assume. She never buys into their plan—though she (and we) aren't sure why they're pulling this charade. Julia tries to escape or get some villagers on her side, but her erratic behavior just strengthens the story about her illness. Her last chance may be Dennis, who is looking for her after she didn't show up for their date. But will he find her before the Hughes' plot comes to fruition—with the murder of Julia?

This hour-long B-movie has a bit of a cult reputation, probably due to the moody cinematography by Burnett Guffey (an Oscar winner years later for Bonnie and Clyde). This element is also what has led some to believe that it's a film noir. Actually, it's a fairly average Gothic thriller, with a predictable damsel-in-distress storyline. Though it moves along at a good clip, everything about it is strictly second-feature material except the cinematography and the performance of Dame May Whitty; she usually plays stodgy matriarch types (and at least once, in Night Must Fall, she was the damsel in distress in a similar Gothic story), but it's fun to see her as a villain for a change. Nina Foch is a blank sheet of paper as the title heroine—she has virtually no personality, though she does exhibit some backbone as things wind down to the ending you know is coming. Similarly, George Macready (pictured with Foch) is a little too bland to be playing a murderous psycho—it never quite feels like Julia is in life-threatening danger except in one nicely done scene near the end on a staircase. Mostly, I enjoyed Joy Harington as the sly Bertha but hers is a small role. [Criterion streaming]