MANDALAY (1934)

This wonderful pre-Code film is practically an archetypal example of the kind of film they don’t make any more: the steamy tropical melodrama involving sex, crime, betrayal, and fabulous fashions. ONE WAY PASSAGE and RED DUST may be better films, but this is more fun. In Rangoon, Kay Francis is the lover of Ricardo Cortez, a handsome but good-for-nothing gunrunner who is in debt up to his eyeballs. In order to get help from slimy nightclub owner Nick (Warner Oland), Cortez goes up river to sell guns, leaving Francis with Oland; he forces her to become a "hostess" (a classy prostitute) at his club. She makes good at her trade, dressing in slinky silver lame and calling herself Spot White--though we hear one man suggest that she should go by "Spot Cash." Head cop Reginald Owen tries to deport her, but she blackmails him, leaving Rangoon but taking a chunk of cash from him. On a boat to Mandalay, looking to escape her past, Francis strikes up a friendship with doctor Lyle Talbot, who seems like a nice guy, but has a drinking problem. Suddenly, Cortez shows up on the run from the law and threatens to derail Francis' future happiness. The old Francis might have been dragged down by Cortez, but the new Francis figures out how to deal with him, once and for all.

Francis' lisp is quite noticeable throughout ("Wangoon," "tomowwow") but she's lovely and sexy and quite believable in her various transformations. She has great chemistry with both Cortez and Talbot, and she’s a knockout in various shiny outfits. One of her best scenes involves her figurative bitchslapping of police commissioner Owen. Michael Curtiz directed, and the beginning feels like a dry run for CASABLANCA, as the camera drifts slowly around the assorted clientele at Nick's nightclub (but instead of someone like Bogart running the saloon, it's someone like Sydney Greenstreet). Ruth Donnelly is wasted in a small supporting role of little consequence, but she gets off a great line when she complains that her husband won't let her wear sexy clothes because they make her look "nude--like a wet seal." Francis sings "When Tomorrow Comes," once clearly dubbed by a non-lisping singer, but once seemingly in her own voice. The movie came out in early 1934 and the ending, which lets a murderer off the hook, would not have been possible just a few months later under the newly enforced Production Code. Well acted, nicely shot, and lots of fun. [TCM]

LOVE HONOR AND BEHAVE (1938)

This odd little B-comedy/drama presents some strange lessons in child rearing, sportsmanship, and "wife taming," most of which would be seen as rather scary lessons today. The film is presented in two distinct "acts": the first sets up the disintegration of the marriage of Thomas Mitchell and Barbara O'Neil. They seem happy, but we see that O'Neil is a fairly passionless person, very concerned with calm surfaces and not willing to fight for what should be hers, in sports (where she's consistently happy to take second place) or in her marriage. Mitchell has just cut things off with his current mistress, Mona Barrie, but O'Neil catches him in a compromising position with Barrie and assumes the worst. Mitchell gets mad at his wife for not being madder at him, seemingly not willing to fight for him, and they split, with O'Neil getting custody of their son. The second act begins ten years later with the son (Wayne Morris) a pre-med tennis player at Yale--we're to think he's *too good* of a sport when we see him deliberately throw a tennis match because of what he thinks is an unfair call in *his* favor. After the game, he rekindles a friendship with Priscilla Lane (Barrie's daughter) and the next thing you know, he lets her talk him into leaving Yale, getting a quickie marriage, and going into business for himself by buying a washed-up soap manufacturing company. Things spiral downward for Morris, to the point where his wife slips into an affair with her ex-fiance (Dick Foran) and his own father won't give him a job after his soap company fails. In the end, Morris (with the tacit permission of virtually the entire cast) gives Lane a black eye and a ferocious spanking, which, of course, she likes (and has been angling for) because it shows her that her man is finally really a man!

Even though the domestic violence of the last scene is played mostly for laughs (with Lane fighting back and blacking Morris' eye as well), it's still a creepy and jaw-dropping scene; the spanking takes place in front of all the assembled parents and in-laws, and clearly Lane, who was just about to indulge in some extramarital sex with Foran, wants some passion out of Morris. In a way, of course, it's a clever reversal of the scene that ended Mitchell's marriage, but it still leaves a bad taste and makes it difficult to recommend this film for today's audiences. Morris is handsome and hunky, and it's a relief that even though his character is supposed to be a mama's boy (with O'Neil flat-out accused of breeding the manhood out of him), he isn't played as sissified or gay or weak, just confused and misguided. Barrie has a passing resemblance to Kay Francis, who would have been good in the part. John Litel is Barrie's patsy of a husband. It is fun to see Mitchell and O'Neil paired up here, just a year before they would play Scarlett O'Hara's parents in GONE WITH THE WIND. As with many B-movies, the writing could be stronger; the parents are built up fairly well, but Morris and Lane's characters are both inconsistent, acting the way they do just because the script calls for it. One funny line has Mitchell expressing anger over the family's passive style of arguing: "There won't be any fight--this is just a family affair--adverbs at 20 paces." [TCM]

CONTRABAND (1940)

The second movie that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger worked on together is a surprisingly light spy thriller, set in the first months after England declared war on Germany, that occasionally calls to mind Hitchcock (39 STEPS, THE LADY VANISHES). Conrad Veidt is the captain of a Danish ship which is waylaid overnight by the British at a contraband control port. Valerie Hobson is a passenger who has been a thorn in Veidt's side for much of the trip. When he discovers that Hobson and another passenger (Esmond Knight) have stolen two landing passes and headed for London, Veidt sneaks off the ship, determined to return the two by morning. He catches up with Hobson and it turns out that she's a British spy trying to meet her contact to pass along important information. The two make their way through London at night, which is under blackout due to German bombing raids, and wind up kidnapped by Nazi spies. The first half is a little too drawn out, but the last half, with the kidnapping, Veidt's escape, and his attempt to backtrack to free Hobson and find Knight, is fairly exciting. One fun scene occurs at a Danish restaurant (the Six Vikings) where Veidt is able to get a free meal for himself and Hobson; later, Veidt returns there and gets the owner and waiters to act as his "posse" in his search for Hobson. Other locales include a cinema, a couple of nightclubs--including one called the White Negro where a production number almost occurs--and a warehouse in which a company called Patriotic Plaster Products is storing hundreds of small busts of Neville Chamberlain. Of course, these busts come into clever play during the climactic shootout. Hay Petrie (who reminds me in looks and voice of Claude Rains) is quite good in the dual role of the restaurant owner and his brother, first mate on Veidt's ship. Peter Bull (the Russian ambassador in DR. STRANGELOVE) has a minor role but a funny scene; when Veidt says his name is Hans Anderson, Bull says he and his two ruffian accomplices are the Grimm brothers, which becomes a running gag. Much of this takes place in pitch black surroundings and because the print on the DVD is not in the best shape, some details are lost. Not quite up to Hitchcock, but fun, and a must for Michael Powell fans. [DVD]

THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT (1966)

I have no idea what possessed me to watch this, as I'm not really a Doris Day fan and I haven't had much luck with 60's spy spoofs, but this wound up being surprisingly enjoyable in fits and starts, even if it doesn't all work together very well. Day is a PR woman at an aerospace research corporation who gets tangled up (literally, by getting caught in a fishing line) with scientist Rod Taylor, who is working on a super-secret gizmo (called Gismo). They fall in love just as Day falls under suspicion of being a Russian spy (she makes strange daily calls to Vladimir, who is actually her dog--long story, never mind). The uneven first half develops as a screwballish romantic comedy which might have worked better with Rock Hudson instead of the fairly wooden Taylor. The last half picks up as the movie turns into a slapstick spy chase.

Day is fine, but the supporting cast (mostly made up of TV players) is largely what makes this worth watching. Dick Martin is Taylor's associate and friend, and he's every bit as good as Tony Randall was in the Day/Hudson movies--Martin should have made an extra career (after comedian and TV director) as a comic second banana in movies  Arthur Godfrey, in one of his very few movie roles, is quite credible as Day's father, who runs a glass bottom boat business--I don't understand the movie's title as the boat plays only a minuscule role in the proceedings. George Tobias and Alice Pearce, Mr. & Mrs. Kravitz of TV's "Bewitched," play similar parts here. Other TV stalwarts include Edward Andrews, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise, and Ellen Corby, but Paul Lynde steals the movie with a hilarious drag turn toward the end (which also includes a cameo by Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo); the second-best scene has Dick Martin, Edward Andrews, and a big champagne bottle in bed together. There is also a mildly amusing Jetsons-type kitchen scene and an overlong speedboat escapade. The title song, set to the old folk song "Mockingbird," is catchy, and Day even sings a verse of "Que Sera Sera." I doubt there's a big demand for this on DVD, but it really should be seen letterboxed, as it's shown on Turner Classic Movies. [TCM]

GREENWICH VILLAGE (1944)

One of the sillier of the Fox showbiz musicals, late in the cycle; even being in color doesn't help liven this one up. Don Ameche is a would-be composer of classical music from the Midwest who visits New York in 1922 and becomes enamored with Greenwich Village, the artistic, bohemian section of Manhattan (in much the same fashion as Ewan McGregor falls in love with the bohemians of MOULIN ROUGE, though the colorful crazies in that movie seem much more authentic than the bland types on display here). Nightclub owner William Bendix wants to back a Broadway revue and Ameche takes on the task of writing the music. He falls in love with singer Vivian Blaine (who definitely shows more personality than Fox's usual ingenue Alice Faye) and that's about it for the plot, except for a half-hearted story thread in which Ameche thinks he's being taken advantage of by Blaine and Felix Bressart. Carmen Miranda drifts in and out the proceedings as a fake fortune teller who winds up in the show, and B. S. Pully (best known for his unusual name and for playing a gangster in GUYS AND DOLLS) is the doorman. One of the more interesting things about the film is who was left on the cutting room floor. A group called the Revuers was hired to perform a couple of numbers, but both were cut out and we only see them in the background of a couple of scenes. Among the Revuers were future hit show writers Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and future Oscar winning actress Judy Holliday. The musical numbers are OK, with the best ones being a dance routine by the Four Step Brothers, and a very fun bit featuring seven uncredited black musicians who come springing out from behind instruments to play and dance. The atmosphere is distinctly un-bohemian, which hurts the film; the only touches of local color are a couple of mannish women and artists in glasses and goatees. [FMC]

THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUTH (1930)

This early talkie will mostly appeal to fans of Loretta Young and Myrna Loy. It's certainly watchable, and it's sort of fun to see the plot careen back and forth between melodrama shaded with humor and coming of age story, with some hints of almost incestuous attraction in a May-December romance. Conway Tearle plays a middle-aged bachelor who has, with the help of two other older bachelors, raised the son of a friend (who died when the boy was only 6). Now the boy, affectionately nicknamed The Imp (David Manners) is turning 21 and he's engaged to be married to Loretta Young, daughter of Tearle's housekeeper. The Imp is a callow youth (after all, he's played by David Manners) and he skips a carefully planned birthday dinner to spend the night carousing with Kara, a sexy, golddigging nightclub singer (Myrna Loy). She thinks the boy has a big inheritance and so agrees to marry him when he asks her, but what she doesn't know is that Manners has very little money at all. Young finds a love letter from Loy to Manners, but Tearle covers up for Manners by saying it was written to him (they both have the same first name). This ploy, however, upsets Young even more--it turns out that she has been nursing a crush on the older man for some time. Tearle goes though an elaborate charade to keep the truth from Young, not realizing all the time that Young is miserable. Everything works out in the end for most of the characters: Young winds up with Tearle; Loy marries a rich daddy from Paris; Manners has no one, but has grown up from the experience.

It's a 1930 movie, so it's a little stiff and stagy, in production and acting. Loy is wonderful, like a breath of fresh air whenever she's around, glittery and sexy and dangerous. Manners is his usual rather awkward self (when he's staring with lust at Loy, he looks rather like Harpo Marx during his drunk scene in THE COCOANUTS) but he has the leading man looks needed for the part. Young is not as good as she would be in later movies; both she and Tearle are rather stiff. It could be intentional because both characters have been hiding emotional secrets from each other and everyone else, but I think that's a generous theory. The feelings of the 18-year-old Young for the 50's-ish Tearle and vice versa are fairly obvious from the beginning (and that Young lives in the house--and I think also works for Tearle--is what makes it feel almost like incest), but some more background of the characters would be helpful. All the exposition is crammed into a long dialogue scene in the first ten minutes of the movie. I would particularly recommend this to Loy fans--it's always fun seeing her as a kind of femme fatale (as she was in several of her early films) and contrasting that image with her good-girl/wifely image later in her career. [TCM]

GRAND SLAM (1933)

I know absolutely nothing about the game of bridge, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this light romantic comedy, a forerunner of the later screwball genre. Paul Lukas is Peter Stanislavsky, a waiter at a Russian restaurant where all the help are also musical performers. He winds up as a fourth in a bridge game with pretentious bridge expert Ferdinand Gottschalk; Lukas thinks that bridge is a silly game and decides to use his own system which he claims will stop couples from squabbling while playing the game. The system seems to work and Lukas gets Frank McHugh (who ghostwrote Gottschalk's book) to ghostwrite his own; the book is a wild success and Lukas and his wife (Loretta Young) become known as the nation's "Bridge Sweethearts" until things fall apart when the system starts to fail and McHugh's role as ghostwriter becomes known. The movie climaxes at a bridge showdown between Lukas and Gottschalk which is broadcast nationally over the radio. Knowledge of bridge rules isn't needed here, though I do wonder if we're supposed to think that Lukas really does have a good system, or if he (and Gottschalk, for that matter) is just pulling a fast one on the American public. Glenda Farrell is McHugh's scatterbrained girlfriend--I usually like her, but she's rather shrill here and not an important part of the movie. Roscoe Karns is the radioman who does commentary on the final bridge game. Cat-eyed Helen Vinson is perfect as the scheming woman who almost breaks up Lukas' marriage--in this pre-Code movie, they could get away with having Lukas actually be unfaithful but still be worthy of getting back together with Young. At 67 minutes, it ends at just the right point. [TCM]

STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE (1939)

Before I saw this movie, I knew nothing about the real life Henry Stanley and David Livingstone except that famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" I don't know how factual this movie is, but it is entertaining and it does give an interesting, if certainly Hollywoodized, glimpse into an era (1870's) and a milieu that is rarely explored today in movies. Spencer Tracy plays Stanley, a reporter for a New York paper who is sent by his editor (Henry Hull) to Africa to find the missing missionary Livingstone (Cedric Hardwicke). One expedition, backed by a British paper and headed by its publisher (Charles Coburn), has come back claiming that Livingstone must be dead, but with no solid proof. Stanley and his sidekick pal (Walter Brennan) head off for Africa, most of which had not yet been mapped out by "white men." After a long and challenging trip, they find Livingstone, happy (if not terribly healthy) serving as medical doctor to a village of natives. Stanley stays with him for a while and helps him in his work, then returns to England bearing maps and documents in Livingstone's own hand as proof of his safety. However, the Royal Geographic Society, egged on by the London publisher, refuses to sanction Stanley's information, setting the stage for a climactic courtroom-like battle.

Tracy nicely underplays his part, though occasionally, especially in some of the African scenes, that acting strategy starts to come off as passivity or disinterest. Hardwicke is good, though his make-up always looks like make-up. Coburn is his usual blustering self and makes the most of his showdown with Tracy. Richard Greene is Coburn's son, who has returned from the original expedition in ill health and who sides with Tracy in the authentication dispute. Nancy Kelly is a young woman on whom Tracy has a romantic but ultimately platonic crush. Henry Travers has a couple of nice scenes as Kelly's father. Kelly's face is not exactly traditionally beautiful but interesting; she seems to have gotten bogged down in B-movies (I remember her as the title character in the thriller THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK) until her last hurrah as the mother in THE BAD SEED. Though all the scenes with the actors were filmed in Hollywood, there is some footage that was shot by a second unit on a safari in Africa which makes the film feel more real than the Tarzan films. My only real complaint is that we don't really get to know much about Stanley as a character, which is more the script's fault than Tracy's. [FMC]

MARKED WOMAN (1937)

A lively Warners crime melodrama, the first movie that Bette Davis made for the studio after she went on "strike" to get better roles. Technically, she lost the battle, but Warners did start doing better by her, and she won an Oscar in 1938 for JEZEBEL. This movie is not Oscar caliber, but it is a fine example of a genre in which the studio excelled. It's a well-written, well-acted gangster movie with a twist. Davis is Mary Dwight, hostess at a "clip joint," working to put money aside to send her younger sister (Jane Bryan) to college. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a clip joint is a night club where "customers are regularly overcharged" or otherwise "clipped" of some extra dough. The "hostesses" here are clearly prostitutes, though this is of course glossed over by the Production Code script. Davis rooms with other hostesses, and they all work for brutal mobster Eduardo Ciannelli. When customer Damian O'Flynn is murdered by Ciannelli's men, Davis agrees to work with cop Humphrey Bogart to get the goods on her boss, but she is scared into silence. Later, her sister, who drifts into Davis' line of work, is killed and, despite a savage beating that scars her for life, Davis and her fellow hostesses vow to bring Ciannelli to justice. Davis and Bogart are both very good; there is a romantic spark, but they both realize that even a friendship is impossible because of the very different worlds they inhabit. Warners' stable of strong supporting players is in evidence: Allen Jenkins has an amusing comic relief scene; Lola Lane, Mayo Methot (who would marry Bogart after the making of this movie), and Isabel Jewell are the hostesses; Henry O'Neill and John Litel are also featured. The ending, a show of feminine/feminist solidarity, with the women walking away from Bogart's world to their own lives, is effective. [TCM]

THE ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1931)

Definitely not the Hope/Crosby comedy, but worth a viewing for fans of pre-Code movies. It's set in the fictional locale of Khota, which sounds African but seems to be somewhere in the British controlled Orient. William Powell is a cad (or a bounder or a scoundrel, take your very British pick) who returns to Khota after a scandal involving another man's wife; he is not welcomed with open arms by the very proper Brits who populate the ritzy social club, but despite his somewhat dissolute aura, he becomes a dashing figure of interest for two women: Doris Kenyon, the new wife of stuffy doctor Louis Calhern, and Marian Marsh, Calhern's young sister. When Powell first flirts, rather aggressively, with Kenyon, she rebuffs him, but after a few weeks of marriage to Calhern, who completely ignores her social and physical needs, Kenyon goes on the prowl for Powell. Meanwhile, Marsh, a restless virgin whose only potential boyfriend is a passive dolt, also sets her sights for Powell. It turns out that Powell is not quite the complete cad he's been painted: he turns Marsh down flat (in an amusing scene in which he basically "scares" her straight) and tries to make Kenyon understand what she's in for if the two enter into an affair. Calhern discovers the goings-on and heads to Powell's bungalow with a gun. The ending is a pleasant surprise which would not have been allowed under the later Production Code.

This is one of Powell's earliest sound movies and he's a bit more rakish and decadent than he was later--at times, he comes off more like Clark Gable (though without his scampish twinkle) than William Powell. The rest of the cast is fine, with Marsh especially fun. There are also two upper-class twits, one played by the flamboyant Tyrell Davis, who wander in and out of the scenes arguing mindlessly, in the manner of the Caldicott and Charters characters in THE LADY VANISHES. There is a wonderful long panning shot (done with some miniatures and at least two "hidden" cuts) in the middle of the movie, starting on the face of the lonely and frustrated Kenyon staring out at the hot night, and backing up through the trees and brush until we end on the face of Powell, also staring out in longing. Quite good, especially if your cup of tea is steamy tropical melodrama. [TCM]

COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN (1938)

A pleasant little second-feature comedy, the kind that Warners was churning out in assembly-line fashion in the 30's. The movie opens with a cute scene of Dick Powell and his band (The Three Sharps) riding a boxcar though the Midwest on the way to Hollywood; during an impromptu performance, they get thrown off the train and wind up at a dude ranch in Wyoming. Powell meets cute with Priscilla Lane, the daughter of the owners of the ranch, and the boys get a job singing for the vacationing "dudes" who want an authentic cowboy experience--though the owners (Emma Dunn and Granville Bates) complain about having to fake the expected lingo and mannerisms. A vacationing Broadway producer (Pat O'Brien) discovers Powell and offers him a contract to become an "authentic" cowboy radio singer named Wyoming Steve Gibson, but there are at least two hitches to the plan: 1) a real singing cowboy (Dick Foran) who sings terribly and is turned down by O'Brien threatens to expose Powell as a fake; 2) Powell has a phobia of animals of all kinds, from squirrels to horses. The two problems come together at the end when, in order to combat Foran’s claims, O'Brien signs Powell up to perform at a rodeo at Madison Square Garden, leading to an effective slapstick finale. James Stephenson is a hypnotist hired to cure Powell's phobia; Ann Sheridan has a small and thankless part as O'Brien's sister who threatens briefly to become Lane's rival for Powell's affections; Ronald Reagan is O'Brien's PR man; Warners' stock B-men Jeffrey Lynn and John Ridgely have small roles as reporters. It's not exactly a musical, but there are a few songs, the best of which is "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride" by Johnny Mercer. The singing cowboy was a real radio fad in the late 30's (see the Countess' boyfriend Buck Winston in THE WOMEN from '39). Fun, depending on your tolerance for Dick Powell. [TCM]

I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE (1951)

The novel this movie was based on was also the basis for a 60's Broadway musical which helped launch Barbra Streisand's career, but this film version is strong enough to stand on its own, even though it seems to be largely forgotten today. The film is set in New York City's garment district and stars Susan Hayward as an ambitious model who wants to break out on her own and design the kind of dresses that she has been modeling. With chutzpah, sex appeal, and some calculated lies, she manages to steal two men from a dress house to help her start her own company: old-timer Sam Jaffe, a dressmaker, and energetic Dan Dailey, the company's star salesman. She also lies to her own sister to get some seed money. Hayward flirts a bit with Dailey, but is mostly aboveboard with him about her overriding concern for the company's success. Nevertheless, Dailey falls for her, even as she begins plotting to leave the company and do exclusive, upscale designs for department store owner George Sanders. Hayward and Sanders (who also engage in some hard-nosed flirtation, with both knowing exactly what the score is) conspire to break her contract with her company, betting that Dailey will let her go, but instead Dailey and Jaffe risk bankruptcy to keep their integrity.

Hayward is excellent and quite believable both in her steely strong outward persona and in her more vulnerable moments. Dailey does a nice job as the confident salesman, who's not above using his sex appeal to get what he wants almost as much as Hayward does. Marvin Kaplan, who will be recognized for many of his TV and movie roles as a mousy nerd (he was a regular customer on TV's Alice), is funny in a small role as an assistant who falls for Jaffe’s daughter (Barbara Whiting, real-life sister of singer Margaret Whiting). Sanders is his usual reliable self; there seems to be a bit of an ALL ABOUT EVE-type dynamic in the conniving between Sanders and Hayward, although he's not as caddish as he is as Addison DeWitt. Mary Philips, who plays Hayward's mother, reminds me of Thelma Ritter. The plotline involving Hayward's sister and brother-in-law gets dropped halfway through, but otherwise, the whole thing plays out quite nicely. Recommended. [FMC]

OUR MAN FLINT (1966)

Apparently, James Bond and BLOW-UP weren't the only influences on Austin Powers. In fact, Mike Myers probably based his Powers character and the look of the films more on OUR MAN FLINT than anything else. The odd thing is that FLINT itself was already a parody of mid-60's spy movies. James Coburn plays Derek Flint, superspy and superstud, who is called upon by ZOWIE (Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage) to help fight a group called Galaxy (as far as I could tell, not an acronym) which is trying to blackmail the nations of the earth by disrupting international weather patterns and causing much destruction (and promising more). The film has its share of lulls, as the central plot and action scenes aren’t all that compelling--though the final destruction of Galaxy's Pleasure Island works well, especially considering that in the days before digital effects, this movie used real sets and miniatures, real explosions, and real extras. What fun that remains is almost all in the details: Flint's tie turns into a stethoscope which he uses for breaking into a vault; he has four sexy women living with him in his ritzy bachelor pad; Galaxy is hypnotizing women into being "pleasure units," devoted solely to doing their men's bidding (clearly early versions of Fembots); a quick appearance by Agent 0008 (get it?). The best line comes when Coburn shows his boss, Lee J. Cobb, a nifty lighter which actually has 82 spy functions, "83, if you want to light a cigar." One other funny line (which has some resonance today given our country's recent intelligence problems) comes when Cobb tells off an agent who has messed up: "Great intelligence work--your next post will be Peyton Place." But witty dialogue is not abundant here.

What *is* abundant is "groovy" set design: lots of day-glow colors, psychedelic patterns, and elaborate headquarter sets for the good guys and the bad guys. There is also a giant red phone, the shrill ring of which is exactly like some cell phones today. The idea that Flint is saving women from being unthinking "pleasure units" is rather undercut by the ending, when he has five women oozing all over him, desperate to pleasure him. Coburn looks the part just fine, as does his main antagonist, Gila Golan. Edward Mulhare (who played the Ghost in the 60's TV series of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir") is the main bad guy. Overall, I don't think this holds up all that well today: the satirical elements peter out after the first half hour, and the more traditional action elements don't kick in until the very end. However, the DVD print looks great: a sharp image with good color, though there aren't any extras except trailers. Recommended for Austin Powers fans. [DVD]

LILIOM (1934)

This is a French movie, directed by the German Fritz Lang, and based on a Hungarian play which also became the basis for a popular American musical (CAROUSEL by Rodgers and Hammerstein) which is famous these days mostly for being considered anti-feminist. Even as a kid, I had a hard time buying the plot of the musical; the main character is a no-good carny turned small-time crook who smacks his wife around, dies, goes to Heaven (!?), and returns to earth several years later to make amends at his daughter's graduation; he still winds up letting his anger get the best of him and smacks his daughter, who still loves him because, in the words of the abused wife, "It is possible for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all." This early non-musical version isn't as irritating, partly because Charles Boyer can get away with being a sympathetic shit better than Gordon MacRae could. We can see a little of what is attractive about his character--I'm not normally a Boyer fan, but he is exuberant here--although it's not clear to me why Julie (Madeleine Ozeray), seemingly a delicate young thing, falls so quickly for the rough-edged Liliom. At the carnival where the two meet, Julie is accused of being a whore by Liliom's boss (played by Florelle) who herself has a thing for him. Liliom is fired from the carnival, and he and Julie wind up living together. Life is no picnic for either of them, but when Julie gets pregnant, Liliom tries to pull off a robbery to get some money; things get bungled and he stabs himself to death rather than face the ignominy of capture (in a nice detail, Julie feels the thrust of the knife herself even though she is nowhere near the robbery). He is sent to Heaven (by two ominous looking celestial "policemen"), and as in the musical, gets a chance to come back to earth years later. Heaven here is a sly parody of the earthly police bureaucracy which we saw in action earlier, and this sequence is the best in the movie. I still can't quite wrap my mind around the message about hitting not hurting; yes, I know that romantic love can make us simple and stupid, but this still doesn't seem like a very redemptive message. Still, this was interesting to see if only for the set design and the shadowy, expressionistic look. The DVD print from Kino appears to have been taken from a tape source rather than celluloid, so it's far from perfect, but it may be the best that is possible. [DVD]

ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948)

On the surface, this feels like a typical film noir, concerned with themes of betrayal, guilt, revenge, destiny, and redemption, but unlike most noirs, it's not about or set in the criminal underworld. Van Heflin, a successful building contractor living in a small town, has built a good suburban life for himself, his wife (Janet Leigh), and his children. One day, he realizes he is being stalked by a crippled man (Robert Ryan) and escapes to a nearby big city where he is befriended by a gold-hearted whore (Mary Astor) and a hitman (Berry Kroeger). We discover that Heflin and Ryan were prisoners of war together and Heflin betrayed a group of men who were planning an escape; he did it thinking he was doing good, but the men were all killed except Ryan who has set out to avenge his fellow soldiers. Phyllis Thaxter, Ryan's girlfriend, tries to talk him out of his vow of revenge, Kroeger closes in on Ryan in an attempt to kill him before he can kill Heflin, and Heflin has to make a tough decision that could lead to redemption. Watchable, with all the actors doing fine jobs; Astor is especially good in a change of pace role as Heflin's world-weary protector. There are some nice noir visuals and the subject matter of what would now be called post-traumatic stress is interesting, but overall not a terribly memorable film. [TCM]

THE FEARMAKERS (1958)

A B-thriller with an interesting premise but not quite enough budget or talent to fulfill its initial promise. Dana Andrews is a Korean War vet who was a prisoner of war and underwent brainwashing before being returned to the U.S. The brief torture scene at the beginning made me think we were headed for Manchurian Candidate territory but this element is basically ignored except to give Andrews a physical weakness (he suffers sharp, sudden headaches) that frequently threatens to put him in danger's way. He returns to the PR firm he co-founded only to find that his partner has sold it to slimy Dick Foran, then died in a hit-and-run accident the very next day. The firm is moving from taking opinion polls to molding public opinion, working specifically for an anti-nuclear group that is actually a front for Communists. Despite some critical commentary I read about the movie, the anti-Commie element is not particularly strong--we get the impression that the firm would do this work for anyone who paid them. Andrews, who is initially rebuffed by Foran, is asked to return to the company for the prestige of his name, and at the prodding of a senator, he does join up so he can infiltrate and fight their insidious "brainwashing" of the public. A secretary (Marilee Earle) and a reporter (Joel Marston) help Andrews; an odd married couple (the wife is B-movie cult figure Veda Ann Borg) try to stop him. Mel Torme plays an evil underling who ends up on Andrews' side because he has the hots for Earle. The low budget is obvious from the sets, the flat lighting, and the stale dialogue, though director Jacques Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE) uses shadows well. Most of it looks like an early TV movie. Andrews isn't bad, but a more energetic lead actor may have helped. The climactic fight occurs between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument--no symbolism there! The general paranoid tone about trust or distrust of PR information remains timely in this age of media monopolies. [TCM]

THE HOT HEIRESS (1931)

An odd little pre-Code romantic comedy that keeps threatening to turn into a musical. It certainly opens like a musical, albeit in an unusual setting: on skyscraper girders several stories up in the air, we see a couple of riveters (Ben Lyon and Tom Dugan) at work who lament their lack of romance by breaking out into song ("Nobody Loves a Riveter But His Mother"). In the middle of handling the red-hot rivets, Lyon gets distracted when he looks through a window of the building next to them and sees a half-undressed heiress (Ona Munson) lolling about in bed. A stray rivet winds up causing a small fire in her bedroom, so Lyon throws a plank over to her window and saves her. Despite their very different social worlds, the two begin dating, but problems arise when Munson tells her friends and folks that Lyon is an architect, without telling Lyon. When the truth comes out at a fancy house party, Lyon leaves her, but thanks to Munson's determination, she wins him back by the end. Aside from the opening, the other high point here is the song, "Like Ordinary People Do," which includes a cute special effects shot of Lyon and Munson singing from inside a painting. Lyon, best known as the aviator in Howard Hughes' HELL'S ANGELS, is looser and more carefree than I've ever seen him; Munson looks the part but is a bit stiff; Walter Pidgeon plays her mean-spirited fiance; Inez Courtney is good as Dugan's romantic interest. My partner noted that this seemed like the kind of movie that Don Lockwood and Kathy Selden might have starred in after "Singin' in the Rain." [TCM]

DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946)

An interesting race-against-time thriller, sort of a "noir lite," and well worth watching. Bill Williams plays a sailor at liberty in New York City until 6 a.m. when he has to catch a bus back to his barracks. The movie opens after Williams wakes up at a sidewalk newsstand from a drunken blackout--he was slipped a mickey by sexy good-for-nothing Lola Lane--and realizes he has a bundle of money in his pocket that belonged to Lane; when he goes back to her apartment, he finds her dead and fears that he killed her. With some help from a sympathetic dance hall girl (Susan Hayward) and a philosophy-spouting cab driver (Paul Lukas), Williams tries to figure out what happened and who was responsible for Lane's death. Was it her ex-husband (Marvin Miller), a blind pianist whom we saw come to Lane's apartment to get money? Was it Joseph Calleia, a gambling thug who knew Lane? Was it Jerome Cowan, a sleazy Broadway producer who was worried about being blackmailed by Lane? Or was it the drunken sailor after all? Although this has strong film noir elements (a shadowy big-city night, a hero who is ready to accept as fate that he might be guilty), there is, at times, a Hardy Boys feel about the proceedings, with the sailor, the girl, and the cabbie joined in their sleuthing by other characters eager to clear their names. And our gang runs across plenty of other characters who are active in the wee hours of the night, including Osa Massen, Constance Worth, and Phil Warren.

Williams is very good at striking a balance between "gee whiz" naivete and fatalism; Hayward is even better as the world-weary (and physically weary) heroine, long before she made a habit of going over the top in her 50's "women's pictures." Lukas seemed a bit too old to be playing the gregarious cabbie (I was thinking Cagney, or for a limited RKO budget, Jack Carson), but we discover later that there's a plot point that calls for him to be that age. Playwright Clifford Odets ladles the stagy dialogue on a bit thick at times, but there are also some nice lines: Hayward, saying it's time "to pause for station identification" as Williams is telling his story; Lukas continually beginning his observations by saying that "statistics tell us that..."; Lola Lane (who is quite good in her very short amount of screen time) opening the movie by opening her door to her ex-husband and exclaiming, "Sleepy Parsons! Aren't you dead yet?" Based on a book by Cornell Woolrich, one of the major noir writers of the era. Definitely recommended. [TCM]

YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING (1949)

Another Fox showbiz musical, a little better than most of the era. The MGM showbiz musicals were generally glossy and fizzy; the Fox movies couldn't resist the temptation to take the plots a little too seriously, and the movies aren't as much fun to watch--and it doesn't feel like they were as much fun to make. This one follows the career of dancer Tim O'Connor (Dan Dailey) who meets the very proper Hannah Adams (Anne Baxter) while touring New England; they fall in love, marry, and wind up sharing a showbiz career, first on the vaudeville stage and later in silent movies. She becomes a major star and he is happy to "retire" as a gentleman farmer. The middle sequence shows the coming of sound, in a similar fashion as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN would do a few years later, though this movie is nowhere near as funny or perceptive as the Gene Kelly film would be. To Baxter's initial dismay, their daughter (Shari Robinson) gets into the biz, becoming a Shirley Temple-type star, even singing "On the Good Ship Lollipop" and doing a dance with a black dancer, though here instead of the great Bill Robinson, it's (bizarrely) Dan Dailey in blackface. Despite some mild career angst, all ends with everyone relatively happy. Baxter's silent movie scenes are well done recreations, with Buster Keaton in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. Dailey has a couple of nice numbers: "The Varsity Drag" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo." The supporting cast is mostly undistinguished except for the wonderful and woefully underused Anne Revere as a maiden aunt. It's in color and doesn't outstay its welcome (it's about 90 minutes), and Dailey and Baxter are fine together, but it begins to vanish from memory as soon as it's over. [FMC]

Two Warner Brothers' B-Movies

STEEL AGAINST THE SKY (1941)
Strong Warner Brothers B-film with all their usual strengths and few of the weaknesses. It's a family conflict narrative, the kind that, with an A-budget, might have had James Cagney and Dennis Morgan. Here, it's Lloyd Nolan and Craig Stevens as brothers who work building bridges; Nolan is the older, plainer, more stable one and Stevens is younger, good looking, and cocky, and also not certain that he wants to follow in the family footsteps. Nolan is dating Alexis Smith (the boss's daughter) until sparks fly between Smith and Stevens (who would get married in real life a few years later). This leads to problems on the job and at home, where the brothers live with their father (Edward Ellis). The scenes on the bridge, though obviously done on studio sets with rear projection, are quite well done considering the low budget, and the climax, during a freezing rain "blizzard," is great. Edward Brophy, the third brother, has some nice comic relief; Walter Catlett provides less welcome comedy as a foolish inventor named Sampson who is working on something called Sampsonite (!); Gene Lockhart is the boss; Howard Da Silva is effective as a villainous agitator; Jackie Gleason and John Ridgely have small roles. [TCM]

SHE COULDN'T SAY NO (1940)
Eve Arden had her first leading role in this short second-feature. She plays a secretary to a lawyer (Roger Pryor), though she herself is also a lawyer; because she and Pryor are engaged, and he wants to "wear the pants" in the family, she has been content to be the hired help. Pryor heads out to a small town to get old man Potter (Clem Bevans, not Lionel Barrymore ;-) to sell some property that Pryor's old boss wants, but the eccentric Bevans won't deal with anyone because he lives in fear of a breach-of-promise suit being served by an old flame, Vera Lewis. Pryor offers to help Bevans in the suit in exchange for the property. Arden arrives in town unexpectedly and through a misunderstanding, winds up being hired by Bevans; Pryor represents Lewis, and both are promised the property. Naturally, there are shenanigans along the way before the happy ending. Arden outshines Pryor (who never rose above B-movie leading man) as does Cliff Edwards who plays a friend to both. Vera Lewis had small roles in over 100 movies, and her rather unpleasant looks make her stand out--she always looks mean and startled at the same time, even when she's smiling. Most of her roles were uncredited bits; this may be her biggest part ever. Fun for fans of Arden, and short enough to be generally fun and painless for all. [TCM]