HOUSE BY THE RIVER (1950)

Impressive Gothic thriller directed by Fritz Lang for B-studio Republic Pictures. The low budget means limited and rather stagy-looking sets, but this adds to the gloomy atmosphere. The opening scene of foreshadowing is obvious but effective: a chatty housekeeper is repelled by the carcass of a dead animal that keeps floating back and forth along the river, in which all manner of debris is constantly returning to the surface. Her boss, Louis Hayward, a struggling writer with one unsuccessful novel to his credit, tells her not to worry about it, but we know that the river which cannot keep its secrets will play an important role in the narrative. Hayward is married to Jane Wyatt, pleasant but unexciting, and is able to keep writing because his crippled brother, Lee Bowman, gave up much of his share of the family inheritance to Hayward--partly because he's secretly in love with Wyatt. At dusk one day, while his wife is out, Hayward puts the moves on their young maid (Dorothy Patrick), and when she resists and starts to scream, he strangles her to death. Bowman arrives and agrees to help Hayward deposit the body in the river (has he already forgotten the first scene?). When the maid's family reports her disappearance, Hayward implies that she was a thief and a hussy; the resulting publicity kick-starts sales of his book and gives him inspiration for a new novel. However, Hayward's psychological state suffers; as he was dumping the maid's body, Hayward saw a glinting fish leap into the air, and so the sight of any light flashing off of an object sets him off. He manages to keep things together for a while, but when the maid's body is found, both Hayward and Bowman fall under suspicion leading to the slow unraveling of their cover story, and to the unraveling of Hayward's mind. The acting is as good as it needs to be--Wyatt is a bit of a weak link, but she doesn't really have much to do. Carl Switzer (Alfalfa from Our Gang) and Kathleen Freeman have small bits, and Jody Gilbert and Anne Shoemaker steal a brief scene in court as two gossipy maids, but it's the visuals here that truly steal the show. The dark, gloomy sets and the beautifully composed shots of the rooms filled with shadows and curtains billowing in the wind are exquisite, and help to make the climax very effective. This film was once thought lost, and the print on Kino's DVD isn't as sharp and clean as it could be, but it's not bad, and it's definitely worth seeing. [DVD]

THE SOLDIER AND THE LADY (1937)

A Hollywood version of Jules Verne's adventure tale "Michael Strogoff" which uses of lots of footage from a German movie based on the same book, made the year before with the same leading man. Anton Walbrook, best known as the ballet impresario in THE RED SHOES, plays Strogoff, the soldier of the title, who is employed by Tsar Alexander II as a courier to relay important military plans to troops in Omsk who are under siege by the Tartars. He travels undercover by train where he gets tangled up with two women, one a spy (Margot Grahame) and the other a more traditional love interest (Elizabeth Allan). Also present are two bumbling reporters (Eric Blore and Edward Brophy) who wander in and out of the narrative. The particularly nasty villain is Tartar chieftain Akim Tamiroff, who gets to chew lots of scenery, especially in a scene in which he tortures Walbrook. Fay Bainter is Walbrook's mother, who lives in a village en route to Omsk. He hasn't seen her in years, but he is instructed to ignore her for the sake of his mission. At one point, she recognizes him and almost gives the game away. Bainter and Grahame are quite fine; Allan has little to do, but looks nice; despite the presence of Blore, the comic relief is tiresome. Most of the battle scenes are from the German film, known in English as THE CZAR'S COURIER, and the disconnect between those impressive, interestingly photographed scenes and the more mundane RKO shots is jarring at times. If I'm not mistaken, the Borodin melody used as the basis for the Kismet song "Stranger in Paradise" provides the backdrop for a brief dance number. The movie drags at times, but the plot twists of the last half hour are worth sticking around for. [TCM]

KING OF BURLESQUE (1936)

I'm not sure if this is actually the first of the Fox backstage musicals which flowered in the late 30's and early 40's, but it's certainly an early entry in the series, and the plotline is one that was followed closely in many later Fox films. Warner Baxter, bringing over some of his cachet from playing a similar part in 42ND STREET, is a successful burlesque producer who wants to head uptown and produce "legitimate" Broadway revues. He, his lead attraction (Alice Faye, done up to look a bit like Jean Harlow), and his partner (Jack Oakie) do just that and a few years later, Baxter owns his own music hall. At an auction, Baxter meets socialite Mona Barrie, and takes her as a trophy wife, leaving faithful Faye in the lurch. She leaves to make a go of it in Europe and becomes successful, while back in New York, Baxter, under the influence of Barrie, decides he needs to do something artier than his usual fare. Barrie becomes a screaming bitch, the shows flop, and soon Baxter has lost his wife and his theatre. Faye finds out and returns home, secretly financing Baxter's comeback (using cleaned-up street bum Gregory Ratoff as a front). Baxter can't afford top talent, so he uses a bunch of nobodies (a telephone operator, an office boy, etc.) who, over the course of the film, have been begging him for auditions. Of course, the show's a hit and Baxter and Faye wind up together. The plot isn't much, though I did like the twist involving the "nobodies" we see attempting to do mini-auditions throughout the film, among whom are juvenile singer Kenny Baker and the famous jazz pianist Fats Waller. Arline Judge plays Oakie's lady friend. There are some fine musical numbers, fairly close to Busby Berkeley quality, including "Lovely Lady" and "Too Good to be True" (which both got choreographer Sammy Lee an Oscar nomination). [FMC]

THE 300 SPARTANS (1962)

By sheer coincidence, I watched this movie about the battle at Thermopylae between a small group of Spartan warriors and the much larger Persian army of King Xerxes only a week before a brand new movie about the same battle ("300," based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller) was released--and set a box office record for biggest March opening. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of "video game" movies, and the reviews of "300" have been terrible, but this early 60's epic is a largely empty affair full of blah writing and acting, and only average battle scenes, with some nice location scenery about the only bright spot. In 480 B.C., Xerxes (David Farrar, giving by far the best performance in the film), ruler of the Persian Empire, is out to crush the resistance of the independent Greek states, whose rulers can't agree on a war plan; should they unite or fight as separate forces? Themistocles of Athens (Ralph Richardson) pushes for unity but others, such as Xenathon, are trying to undermine him. Spartan King Leonidas (Richard Egan) takes his personal bodyguard troop of 300 to the pass at Thermopylae to hold off the Persian army, composed primarily of slaves, believing he'll get back-up troops after the current religious festival ends, but when the Delphic Oracle predicts disaster, the Greeks decide to stay put to defend Athens. The Spartans, having been taught to value the love of freedom even above their own lives, are fierce fighters (something that is probably more graphically illustrated in the recent film) and are able not only to hold off the Persians (with some help from a few other Greek volunteers) but to burn down the king's camp. Even Xerxes' personal army, known as the Immortals, is defeated, spreading fear among the slave army. Queen Artemisa (Anne Wakefield) advises Xerxes to back off and save face by claiming that he's had a vision from the gods to retreat, but Ephialtes (Keiron Moore), a local who has been spurned by Greek lovely Ellas (Diane Baker), goes to Xerxes with information about a secret goat herder's path, and Xerxes uses this information to launch a sneak attack, leading to the climactic battle in which the vastly outnumbered Spartans die valiantly. The sets, backgrounds, and costumes all look good, but the actors are strictly second string except Richardson (who hasn't much to do) and Farrar (who film buffs will remember as the man who turns the nuns' heads in BLACK NARCISSUS), and Farrar's screen time as the hissable villlian is the only time the non-action scenes come alive. There is a moderately interesting subplot involving the young Spartan Phylon (Barry Coe, who is nice to look at but seems to be barely hiding a "good-ol'-boy" accent), his father, who is assumed to be a spy but isn't, and the aforementioned looker Ellas, but that all ultimately feels like it's part of a different movie. The last battle is nicely handled. The film winds up feeling like a particularly slow episode of HBO's (much more interesting) series ROME. [FMC]

THE DECAMERON (1970)

Boccaccio wrote The Decameron, a collection of 100 short and mostly bawdy tales, in the 14th century; they are very much like the stories told by Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. In the 1970's Pier Paolo Pasolini adapted both works as movies, clearly relishing the earthiness and vulgarity of the stories of both men. Here, he adapts only a handful of Boccaccio's hundred (I counted nine or ten, depending on whether the incidents befalling the first character (Ninetto Davoli) count as one or two stories) and a continuing tale involving Pasolini playing the artist Giotto working on a fresco. He also does away with the original frame narrative of a group of men and women telling each other the stories as they spend ten days in a country house escaping the plague which is spreading in Florence. As a result, the movie feels a bit like a vaudeville show of unrelated skits. In the first (and second?) bit, a woman tells a young man (Davoli) visiting from another town that she recognizes him as a long-lost relative and offers him a place to stay, but she has him robbed and dumped down a shithole; he climbs out, covered in filth, and is taken in by a group of scammers who are stealing riches from an archbishop's sarcophagus. He climbs in and hands out most of the booty, but they slam the stone lid on him, trapping him with the corpse (and at least one valuable ring). Understandably, Davoli freaks out, but soon another group of crooks happen by and pry the lid open. As they are daring each other to get in, Davoli hears one of them taunt another by saying, "Dead men don't bite," so that's just what Davoli does to the poor guy who climbs in looking for loot. The next tale, with its emphasis on sex and social customs, is more indicative of the rest: a young man posing as a deaf-mute goes to a convent and gets a job as a groundskeeper; two of the celibate nuns decide to take a walk on the wild side and force him to have sex with them (as though it were just another chore). They like it and wind up passing him around among the rest of the sisters, and the sex does indeed become a chore, and one he grows unhappy with until he finally speaks and the Mother Superior proclaims that a miracle has occurred. Other bawdy plotlines: a young woman sleeps out on the balcony of her family's house supposedly in order to see if she can catch a nightingale, but actually she's having a tryst with her boyfriend; a band of brothers plot to kill a man who has been sneaking in at night to have sex with their sister, but they don't realize the extent to which she wants to keep him around the house; a traveling priest takes advantage of a naive couple in order to seduce the wife. Most of the stories are amusing, and often have almost Twilight Zone-like ironic twists, though some feel unfinished. There is sex galore (though not terribly explicit) and quite a bit of male nudity, enough to get the movie an X rating upon initial release. There is also a fairly strong anti-organized religion tone, especially evident in a tale involving a man who dies--from having too much sex--and returns from beyond to tell his buddy that the church is wrong and sex doesn't count as a sin in the afterlife. Though not much happens in the Giotto story (he starts painting a religious fresco, gets frustrated, gets inspired, and finally allows the public in to see it, though it's still unfinished), the fact that director and writer Pasolini plays the artist gives these scenes some resonance, and his final line is almost haunting: "Why create a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?" [DVD]

THE FOOTLOOSE HEIRESS (1937)

A cute B-screwball comedy which gets around one my main problems with the genre: most of them are just too darn long to fully sustain all the romantic craziness. This one is just under an hour and never wears out its welcome. The title character (Ann Sheridan) is about to marry a casual acquaintance (William Hopper) on a bet after a night of partying--and this isn't her first attempt at a madcap elopement. Her father, advertising executive Hugh O'Connell, is out to stop her, and handsome hobo Craig Reynolds, who has been riding the rails, helps him out by telling the justice of the peace that he is already her husband. Dad spooks Sheridan by inviting Reynolds to stay the night, which sends her into a hysterical fit. By this point anyone who's seen MY MAN GODFREY, or just been paying attention, will know that Reynolds will wind up being something other than a hobo (he's the son of a big ad exec in Boston who has been out to see the country "through the eyes of the forgotten man," a theme that would be addressed more directly a few years later in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS), and that he will tame the footloose heiress into a dutiful wife. Along the way, he also writes an ad campaign for Dad and winds up in jail before he and Sheridan take off into the sunset, catching a ride on a train bound for Boston. The supporting cast isn't much to speak of, but Sheridan and Reynolds are fine and have good comic chemistry. [TCM]

CONEY ISLAND (1943)

Colorful Fox musical whose main selling points are nostalgia and Betty Grable. Set at the turn of the century, the film begins with George Montgomery, as a Coney Island barker, looking to make a move to the big time as his old pal Cesar Romero, owner of a high-class saloon, has done. Carny Phil Silvers takes Montgomery on and soon Silvers' "Turkish Harem" girlie show is doing gangbusters, and putting a bit of a dent in Romero's business, but what Montgomery really wants is a piece of Romero's operation, so through an elaborate prank which involves faking the death of old friend Charles Winninger, a saloon regular, Montgomery becomes Romero's partner. His next step is to get saloon singer Grable to refine her act--he thinks she's too hammy and in order to give her a classier style, he handcuffs her while she's onstage, forcing her to rely less on movement and more on a creamy vocal style. The trick works and soon Grable moves on to bigger and better things, leaving behind both Romero and Montgomery. The rest of the film finds the two men as rivals getting into and out of Grable's good graces. Of course, as leading man, there's never any doubt that Montgomery will win in the end. Grable is fine, singing "Cuddle Up a Little Closer" and "Pretty Baby," along with a slew of new songs written for the movie. Montgomery is handsome and charming, as is Romero--the nice thing here is that, even though we know that Romero will lose the girl, he's not portrayed as a villain, but just as the guy who came in second. Winninger is good as always, and Silvers is relatively inoffensive, unlike in his horrific turn in SUMMER STOCK. [FMC]

NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944)

This little WWII gem seems to have been hidden away for years in the Columbia vaults; after reading about it recently in two different books on wartime cinema, I thought it sounded interesting and I was excited to see it in rotation on Turner Classic Movies. Released in early 1944, long before the end of the war, the film is set after the war at a war crimes trial (and the set looks remarkably like the one for the later JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, which was based on the trials that actually did occur). Alexander Knox is a former Reich Commissioner charged with murder and "degenerate atrocities" and the film focuses not on the trial but, through flashbacks given by witnesses, on how Knox became such a willing Nazi. In 1919, just after the First World War, Knox, a German schoolteacher, returns to the Polish village in which he had been teaching, having lost a leg in the war. Though the locals seem to accept him, he feels a lingering prejudice which puts him on his guard; his fiancee, Marsha Hunt, senses his coldness and postpones their wedding. After he overhears his students mocking him for not being good enough for Polish women, he rapes a local girl who then kills herself. Knox is attacked by a group of locals and leaves town; the kindly local priest (Henry Travers) and rabbi (Richard Hale) give him money to get a new start. In 1923, Knox has joined the Nazi party, telling his socialist brother (Erik Rolf) about Hitler's "new religion of blood and race." After the notorious Beer Hall Putsch, Knox is jailed, as is Hitler, who Knox says is writing "a masterpiece" in his cell. By 1933, the Nazis have come to power; when Rolf plans to move his family to Vienna to escape the coming madness, Knox betrays him and sends him to an "indoctrination" camp, while taking Rolf's young son under his wing and entering him in a Hitler youth group. After Germany conquers Poland in 1939, Knox is installed as commissioner of the Polish village and he oversees the deportation of the poor and weak to labor camps. The local synagogue is turned into a barn ("Horses are more important than Jews," says Knox) and the town's Jews are rounded up in train cars. When the rabbi makes an impassioned speech for resistance, Knox orders a massacre. The local women are forced into prostitution, though Knox excuses Hunt's daughter, on whom his nephew (Richard Crane) develops a crush. The inevitable climax involves an incident much like the one that started the film, with rape (symbolic, if not actual), suicide and murder. Back in the courtroom, Knox, unbowed, gives a final snarling rant against the court. The film should have ended here, but a rather anti-climatic speech by the judge, aimed directly at the film audience, weakens the conclusion.

Even though this film was made before the full horror of the Holocaust was exposed, it remains a grim and powerful film. Knox's character is a three-dimensional villain (even sympathetic in the beginning), even as I suspect he is also intended to function as a symbol for Germany, especially given his physical handicaps: he loses a leg in WWI and loses an eye in a confrontation with a Polish villager (who later joins the resistance). Knox himself is excellent, making his character repellent but not melodramatically so. Though most of the acting would be seen as lightweight today for a war horrors film, the supporting cast is uniformly fine, with the standouts the dignified Travers and the baby-faced Crane who moves realistically (and tragically) from casual acceptance of the Nazi philosophy to rejection. Even Hunt, who I've not been terribly impressed with, eventually displays the requisite gravitas for her role. The film, in a truly prescient way, makes the point, more than once, that the Nazis' claims that they were just following orders and could not choose to rebel doesn't hold water--Knox is shown to be a person who finds in the Nazi movement a way of life which satisfied his gnawing feelings (nationalistic and personal) of resentment and revenge. At one point, when Hunt tries to appeal to his humanity, he replies, "Human feeling is the last resort of decadence." One scene seems to provide just a hint of pederasty in Knox's attentions to his nephew. The resolution of the otherwise hard-hitting Jewish slaughter scene is odd: the rabbi collapses and dies in the shadow of a road sign in the shape of a cross. The imagery is obvious and not accidental, though I am at a bit of a loss to explain what it means. Now that this film is in circulation again, I hope it gets the attention it deserves. [TCM]

RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954)

Even though today's viewers will chuckle at the science promulgated here, and despite some pretty bad FX, this is generally a rather charming relic from fairly early in Hollywood's Space Age era when movies were being made that tried to take a realistic look at space travel, rather than recycle the Flash Gordon antics of the 30's and 40's. American scientists (led by Herbert Marshall) are trying to figure out why meteorites resist the gamma rays that would destroy their spacecraft. A computerized nationwide hunt is conducted (seemingly only among white men) for possible astronauts and most of the first half of the film shows how a group of twelve gets winnowed down, through a series of physical and psychological tests, to three, including electronics researcher William Lundigan (who happens to be Marshall's son) and science professor Richard Carlson. The point is made that the men chosen can't be married, though Carlson is dating a model (Dawn Addams) and Lundigan flirts with one of the space scientists (Martha Hyer). All three men are launched in separate rockets and each one is supposed to snare a meteorite to be studied back on earth. Robert Karnes is the first to die, in a particularly gruesome scene--fried by cosmic rays into a skeleton inside his space suit. Of the other two, one freaks out and one returns to earth with a meteorite, to the arms of his loving woman. The film's middle section is a little slow moving, but it builds to a tense climax that is quite good, given the era and the low budget (though the shots of the meteorites flying at the rockets seem painfully amateurish now). The two leading men are fine, though I think they should have switched roles; Lundigan is a little too laid back and the more dynamic Carlson feels restrained here (though since Carlson also directed, I'm guessing he got the effect he wanted). James Best, known primarily as Sheriff Roscoe in "The Dukes of Hazzard," makes a handsome would-be astronaut. The print shown on Turner Classic had a few ragged spots but strong color. I've saved the best for last: though the film's serious tone still holds up, the title song is a fabulous camp moment (and I wish I could find it on iTunes). The lush cocktail-lounge theme music recurs here and there and always took me out of the action for a giggly moment. Sample lyric: "Riders to the stars / That is what we are / Every time we kiss in the night / Jupiter and Mars / Aren't very far / Any time you're holding me tight / Your embrace / Changed time and place / Hurled in space are we..." Once again, I love you, Turner Classic Movies!! [TCM]

GEORGE WHITE'S 1935 SCANDALS (1935)

George White was, like Florenz Ziegfeld, a well-known producer of vaudeville shows and Broadway revues. He produced and appeared in three movies, all titled George White's Scandals, all apparently run-of-the-mill backstage musicals with several production numbers. In this one, White wraps up the successful 1934 show and takes a train to Florida for a vacation, but during a stop in Georgia, he sees a poster for a local show called Elmer White's Scandals and, for kicks, decides to stay and check it out. Ned Sparks does a nice turn as Elmer, dour, deadpan jack of all trades--not only is he the producer, he's also the ticket seller, ticket taker, usher, stage door keeper, and MC. White is impressed with the lead singer, Alice Faye, and offers her a job on Broadway. She goes, bringing along James Dunn, her boyfriend and songwriter, ukulele player Cliff Edwards, and even Sparks. They all find success in the next edition of the Scandals, but romantic problems intrude; Faye steps out with rival producer Walter Johnson, and Dunn retaliates by flirting with star dancer Eleanor Powell. Their personal conflicts begin to take a toll on their performances and White fires Faye and Dunn who are forced to scrounge for any showbiz jobs they can get. When Faye's dear old Aunt Jane (Emma Dunn) visits the Big Apple to see them on stage, White shows he has a heart of gold as big as a hooker's when he tries to find the couple and get them back in the Scandals just for Aunt Jane. Despite a wildly implausible ending, the show is fun thanks to the numbers and to Sparks and Edwards strong support. Songs include "The Hunkadola," "It's an Old Southern Custom," and "According to the Moonlight," which was so catchy I found myself humming it for a few days (probably because it's performed several times in the course of the film). Also featured are Lyda Roberti, Arline Judge, and Benny Rubin. Fun to see once, but I probably don't need to search out the other two "Scandals" movies. [FMC]

MURDER AT MIDNIGHT (1931)

The set-up of this early sound Poverty Row thriller seemed very familiar to me, and I realized later it's because the same story was adapted several years later for another Poverty Row film featuring Boris Karloff as Chinese sleuth Mr. Wong (THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG). In the atmospheric opening, we see a butler enter a darkened room and turn a clock's hands ahead to midnight. Next, we see a man arrive to have a rendezvous with a married woman (Aileen Pringle), but the wronged husband (Kenneth Thompson) discovers them and shoots the intruder dead. Then the camera pans back and we see that the entire thing has been an elaborate charade performed at a party. However, it turns out that the gun had real bullets, and the "intruder" is dead. A noted criminologist (Hale Hamilton, who looks a bit like Robert Benchley) is present, which helps sooth nervous Aunt Julia (Clara Blandick) and when police inspector Robert Elliott arrives, there's quite a large suspect pool, not to mention a second murder victim, the husband. Among the characters: a lawyer who reveals that Thompson had written a new will in which he disinherited his wife, a snoopy maid (Alice White) who surely knows more than she lets on, the widow, her brother (Leslie Fenton) who lives off an allowance from her, and of course, the omnipresent butler. The rewritten will and an important letter go missing and several more people wind up dead, some by way of a rigged telephone which jabs the caller in the base of the neck with a poisoned needle. The identity of the killer came as a surprise to me, and the conclusion, in which the police inspector allows the killer to commit suicide, is effective (and, I think, right out of a Philo Vance novel, "The Bishop Murder Case"). As is par for the course at the time, most of the shots are long static ones, but there are some nice creative set-ups, including one shot looking up from the floor near a body and another showing a murder from the killer's point of view. Not bad B-movie entertainment for a stormy (or snowy) night. [DVD]

PETULIA (1968)

Although on the surface this seems like a 60's period piece, with hippies and violence and mod clothes and critiques of materialism and alienation, not to mention a fractured narrative style with flashbacks and flash-forwards, it's really barely dated at all. The psychedelic trappings of the era which might most obviously date the film remain in the background; the main characters here mostly look and act like people living in the 21st century. This was my second viewing of the film, and it's a movie I appreciate more than like. It begins like a surreal screwball comedy with oddly mannered dialogue, as if someone like Edward Albee had re-written BRINGING UP BABY. At a high society charity function (with Janis Joplin performing), respected surgeon George C. Scott, attending stag due to his impending divorce, is set upon by desperately whimsical beauty Julie Christie, the title character, who is unhappily married to ship architect Richard Chamberlain. Christie goes after Scott rather like Hepburn goes after Grant in BABY, but Scott is a little more able to keep his equilibrium. After the ball, he does wind up going off into the night with her but despite going to a hotel, they don't quite finish their one-night stand--she, as he puts her in a cab: "I'm going to marry you, Archie"; he, resignedly, "It's the Pepsi generation." After this bumpy start, they do begin an affair in which, we assume, she will loosen him up a bit and he will perhaps normalize her a bit (at one point, he says he's tired of her "I Love Lucy" antics), but things take a turn for the near-tragic as we learn more about their backgrounds. His ex-wife (Shirley Knight) has custody of their two sons and she's about to remarry a dorky post-grad student majoring in hydraulics; Chamberlain, Christie's husband, apparently impotent, beats her on occasion and has a rich father (Joseph Cotton) who enables the son's behavior. When Chamberlain discovers Christie's affair, he beats her savagely while she's alone in Scott's apartment. She survives and Scott tries to pry her out of the family's grasp, but she ends up staying. In the last scene, set a year later, she has gotten pregnant and comes to Scott's hospital to have the baby. They meet and contemplate running off together, but don't.

In addition to exploring the mysteries of love and lust and intimate violence, the film also has running riffs on both the bourgeois culture and the counterculture of the time. For the middle and upper classes, artifice trumps reality: a worker installing a miniature greenhouse in Scott's apartment tells him that it's important that the flowers get no sunlight at all, just artificial light; in a very funny scene, Austin Pendleton plays a doctor who has to explain to a hospital patient that the TV set in her room is just a "dummy" one, there to encourage her to pay to rent a real one. On the other hand, the counterculture doesn't come off all that well: when the battered and bloody Christie is taken out of Scott's apartment, the hippies (among them Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead) make disparaging remarks like, "Call if you get work." There's an odd subplot about a Mexican boy who hops a ride to California with Christie and Chamberlain which becomes an important plot point, but its telling is the most fractured narrative strand of the whole movie, frustratingly so, and to no specific purpose that I could see. The time jumps and editing jolts seem to be devices to distance the viewers, and they do take some getting used to. Christie is very good, as is Scott, though it is a little disorienting at first to see him playing a tender, understanding man, the opposite of his usual loud, brusque, sometimes brutish roles. Beautifully photographed on location in San Francisco. Worth seeing, but be prepared to pay attention. [DVD]

WAY OUT WEST (1930)

This early talkie has an amusing plotline which is derailed a bit by an artificial, over-the-top performance from William Haines, getting just a bit too old at 30 to still be effective playing his youthful wisecracker roles. In this one, he plays a cocky carnival barker for a dancing girls act; one night after the show in Deep Gulch, he cheats a bunch of ranch hands with a rigged roulette wheel and plans to abscond to Chicago with the chunk of ill-gotten cash. His plans go awry when 1) one of the girls steals his money, and 2) the angry cowboys realize they've been cheated and try to lynch him when he can't give back their dough. However, the ranch owner (Charles Middleton) talks the boys into making him stay on the ranch and work off his debt. They give him a hard time but he manages to stay mostly one step ahead of them until he falls for the owner's sister (Leila Hyams) and she for him, much against Middleton's wishes. The funniest single line may be when Hyams, expecting the maid Pansy (Polly Moran), tells him to come in, sees him, and says, "You're not Pansy"; his reply, in full camp mode: "I'm the wildest pansy you ever picked!" In the end, Haines redeems himself by braving a sandstorm to get Hyams medical help for a dangerous snakebite. Haines is rather grating, and he has very little chemistry with Hyams. Cliff Edwards is fun, as usual, as one of the less ornery cowpokes, and Francis X. Bushman Jr. (son of the famous silent star) plays a more obnoxious but hunky cowboy whose plans for marrying Hyams wind up dashed. Moderately interesting, but mostly as a museum piece or for fans of Haines. [TCM]

SO ENDS OUR NIGHT (1941)

A gray-area WWII movie, made while America was still technically neutral. An opening title card tells us this is the story of "people without passports," specifically refugees from Germany and Nazi occupation in the late 30's. The narrative begins in Vienna in 1937; several refugees are sharing a flophouse hotel room, among them Fredric March, a German Aryan who despises Nazi ideology and is an escapee from a concentration camp, but is trying to get back to Germany to see his sick wife, and Glenn Ford, a young half-Jewish man new to the game of staying one step ahead of the police. March and Ford get some jail time and become friends before being released at the Czech border. Ford, in Prague, falls in love with Margaret Sullavan, a Jewish chemistry student who has to resort to subterfuge to continue her studies. Thinking she is hurting Ford's chances at a free life, she leaves him to go to Zurich, but he follows her. March, back in Vienna as a carnival mind reader, becomes a hunted man when the Nazis invade Austria, and the trio wind up together in France. Sullavan's professor suggests that she marry a Frenchman to get legitimate ID papers, but she's fallen in love with Ford. There are more journeys, entrapments, and escapes before March, held by Nazi officer Erich von Stroheim, agrees to betray resistance leaders if he is allowed to visit his dying wife (Frances Dee). Of course, he's Fredric March so instead of betrayal, he performs a heroic act of self-sacrifice which allows Ford and Sullavan to have a better shot at a happy life together. All three leads are fine, with Ford taking acting honors here (Sullavan seems a bit at sea, perhaps because of her underwritten character). Leonid Kinskey and Anna Sten are standouts in the supporting cast. The movie is directed by John Cromwell, but owes its effective, moody atmosphere to production designer William Cameron Menzies. Though not the first Hollywood movie to depict the plight of Nazi victims in Europe, it was apparently the first one to show that Jews were being singled out. This interesting film is only available on DVD from VCI in a print which leaves much to be desired, especially in its soundtrack which has a tinny, electronic echo from time to time. [DVD]

BOOM (1968)

Like THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT, this is one of my Holy Grails from the '60s, a notoriously bad movie I'd heard a lot about but thought I might never get to see; it's not on DVD but the Sundance Channel, bless its independent little heart, showed it in January. It has the reputation of being a camp classic, helped no doubt by the fact that it's John Waters' favorite movie, but while I did find some of it laughable, it never really rose to camp levels. I can't say it's a very good movie, but it's not as bad as its reputation would have it. Based on a Tennessee Williams play ("The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore") from the beginning of his declining years, the story concerns Sissy Goforth (Elizabeth Taylor), a monumentally rich woman, much married (and divorced), who is aging quite gracefully but also dying (of an unspecified illness, probably a kin to that infamous Fatal Cinematic Disease that allowed Ali McGraw to die so beautifully in LOVE STORY). She is spending what is likely to be her last summer on earth on an island that she owns, in a fabulous bone-white villa overlooking the Mediterranean. Her days (and sometimes the middle of her nights) are spent dictating her memoirs into any one of a vast network of tape recorders, to be transcribed by her long-suffering assistant (Joanna Shimkus), and bossing around her small army of servants, including security man Michael Dunn (Dr. Loveless from Wild Wild West) who has his own small army of slathering hounds at his beck and call. One day, dissolute poet Chris Flanders (Richard Burton) hitches a boat ride to the island, rising up out the surf and climbing a cliff to be attacked by Dunn's dogs. Taylor allows him to stay in a guest room to recover from his mostly superficial wounds, but otherwise pays little attention to him until her gossip buddy, nicknamed the Witch of Capri (Noel Coward), tells her that Burton is known in high society circles as the Angel of Death for his knack of being a sponging houseguest whose aging hosts often wind up dead just after he leaves. Taylor invites Burton to dine with her and most of the rest of the film consists of conversations between the two which play out like a less intimate, dumbed-down version of their classic rants in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

At first, the whole thing feels heavily symbolic, like a Twilight Zone episode without either horror or whimsy (and thanks to a Yahoo Groups friend who pointed out the film's similarity to a specific Zone show with Gladys Cooper as a dying old lady and Robert Redford as the handsome death figure). But we find out near the end that it's all too literal: Burton's character really is just a dissolute poet who believes he has a gift for helping dying people accept their death. The real problem here is the casting. Taylor is too young and healthy to be effective as an aging, dying woman--her way of showing pain is to moan a bit and shriek, "Pain!! Injections!!" into the house intercom. Burton, though by no means old or unattractive, is also not nearly beautiful or ethereal enough to be an angelic stud--Tab Hunter played the role on stage opposite Tallulah Bankhead, and while the staging was not a success, certainly the two were more appropriate for the roles than Taylor and Burton. While overall the movie doesn't work, there are pleasures to be had: Taylor's force-of-nature delivery is fun to watch, as is Coward's serious feyness. Almost every frame of the film looks gorgeous, thanks to director Joseph Losey and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (credited oddly as "lighting cameraman"), the lovely seaside locations in Sardinia, and the stunning house, which is probably a combination of a real house and built sets. The music, which alternates between sitar music and a more conventional score, is very nice as well. The title refers to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, as explained by Burton, sounding like "the shock of each moment, of still being alive," a thought I rather like, and which is complemented by Taylor's complaint that "life is all memory except for each present moment which goes by so quickly you can hardly catch it." My favorite scene is the dinner between Coward and Taylor, with the grande dame dressed outrageously in a fabulous white Kabuki outfit with a huge, shiny Aztecy headdress. It is almost worth catching this film just to see Taylor in the outfit; she's probably the only actress ever who could get away with it, except maybe Divine. (Everything comes back to John Waters eventually...) [Sundance Channel]

GENTLE ANNIE (1944)

An odd little western, based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize winner MacKinlay Kantor; the plot shows potential, but full development of characterization is lacking, and I'm guessing that the Production Code may have hampered things a bit. Set in 1901, the story follows a U.S. Marshal (James Craig) who is sent to Oklahoma in disguise as a hobo to investigate a train robbery in which a load of federal money was stolen. Rumors and clues point to the Goss boys (Henry Morgan and Paul Langton), seemingly friendly guys who live with their loving mother (Marjorie Main). Craig is befriended by the family when he gets in trouble with the local sherrif (Barton MacLane), a nasty and corrupt man whom the boys believe is responsible for their father's death. Donna Reed, a new girl in town working as a waitress until she can raise money to head home for Missouri, also winds up staying with the Gosses; it turns out that Main herself is trying to raise money to move back there after her Confederate husband's death left her with no resources. We know from the beginning that the boys were indeed responsible for the robbery, which they pulled to get money to give Main, and they don't feel they did anything wrong because their Pa's philosophy was, "Anything anyone can get from a Northerner is fair and square." We eventually find out that Main knows what they did, though it's not completely clear how she feels about it--some critics refer to her character as an outlaw, and she certainly agrees with her husband's thoughts about Northerners, but she also does not seem to actively encourage her boys' banditry. Craig finds solid evidence against the boys, but when they invite him to join them in another robbery, he's conflicted about what to do. His duty wins out and he arrests the boys, but they get the upper hand on him until they all discover that MacLane has shot Main. Craig and the boys work out a deal to take care of MacLane and then give themselves up. Things don't quite work out so smoothly, although ultimately Production Code justice is served, and Craig and Reed go off in the sunset together. In a somewhat modern touch, the movie's tone changes from warmhearted and comic at the beginning (scenes of Main talking to herself while she makes breakfast, and she and the boys greeting a portrait of the father as though they were saying hello to a person) to serious and grim by the end (deaths of major characters and a climactic shoot-'em-up). I would have liked more fleshing out of the characters, especially Main and Reed. Some of the names in the movie are a little strange: one of the boys (Langton) is named Violet because Main wanted a girl so badly, and the boys call Main "Mud" and "Muddie." [TCM]

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS (1970)

Cult movie which, while interesting, seems a little overrated to me, worth watching mostly for its historical significance as a bridge between films like IN COLD BLOOD and HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, and for excellent performances by its leads, Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler. The narrative is based on a true story and apparently sticks pretty close to the facts. Stoler plays a mean, lonely, overweight nurse who lives with her senile mother. When her friend (a very young Doris Roberts) enters Stoler in a lonely hearts correspondence club, she's pissed off until she hits it off with Lo Bianco, a sexy but clearly low-rent guy who flirts with her and charms her mother. When he wheedles a little cash out of Stoler and leaves, she calls him and threatens suicide (though we know that she's faking it). It turns out that he makes his living by glomming onto lonely single women who have some cash saved up and romancing them just enough to get his hands on the money before he splits. Far from being shocked, Stoler falls right into the scam with him, posing as his sister as he continues making contact with lonely women ripe for the picking. Things work for a while so long as Stoler believes that Lo Bianco isn't falling for or having sex with any of the women. Eventually, he marries a woman who is already pregnant and the three, cramped together in a tiny hotel room, get on each other's nerves; Stoler's solution is to feed the woman an overdose of pills and dump her on a bus, where she is found later dead. It's not clear to me if Stoler actually intended to kill her, but murder soon becomes the default solution to any problem. They bilk an older woman (Mary Jane Higby) when they claim to be investing her money by opening a hat shop for her; Higby gets suspicious of Stoler and his "sister" spending too much time alone in the cellar, so in a startling scene, the couple kill her with a hammer, and with the body still warm, Lo Biano strips off his clothes to have sex with Stoler. The last murders, also disturbing, occur when the woman being conned, the mother of a young daughter, tells Stoler she's become pregnant by Lo Bianco--they wind up shooting her and drowning the little girl. Finally feeling resigned to the fact that she'll never be able to keep Lo Bianco for herself, she calls the police and turns them both in. Stoler is fearless playing an unattractive character, in both looks and personality. Similarly, Lo Bianco is great as a guy with just enough looks and surface charm to get away with the scams he does. Because the focus of the film is on Stoler (she is in almost every scene), Lo Bianco remains a bit of a cipher; I was never sure if he really was in love with Stoler, or had just come to rely on her as a helpmate and confidante. Nevertheless, the two both give fine performances, even if, in retrospect, it seems as if Stoler may have served as a template for the persona of Divine in the movies of John Waters. The stark black and white semi-documentary look of the film gives it an unsettling matter-of-fact tone. Written and directed by Leonard Kastle, who sadly never did another film. [TCM]

THE REAL GLORY (1939)

This adventure film feels like a recycling of ideas, characters, and elements from lots of other films in the Gunga Din/Beau Geste genre: stories of a gallant group of men fighting against the odds (and rebellious natives) in an exotic setting. GUNGA DIN is more "romplike" than this one, with some of the stars not surviving to the final fadeout. Based very loosely, I presume, on historical events, this is set in the Phillipines in 1906, as U.S. Army troops, left in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, are set to go home. A handful of men are being left behind to make sure that the native troops can handle the Moro terrorists living in the jungles just outside the village. The head of the Moros, Alipang, is an almost legendary figure who strikes fear in the hearts of the natives; his men are fanatic suicidal assassins who wield their machetes with the promise of heaven waiting (shades of present day terrorists). Getting the troops to get beyond their fear and to realize that Alipang and his men are only human and can be fought like any other enemy is the main chore of our ragtag band of heroes: soldiers David Niven and Broderick Crawford, who train the troops under the supervision of Reginald Owen, and doctor Gary Cooper. As in all these "boy's adventure" movies, there is a half-hearted romance (involving Andrea Leeds, Owen's headstrong daughter) and a non-military crisis (a cholera epidemic) that allows people to show their mettle. Alipang (Tetsu Komai) keeps trying to get the troops to come to him in the jungle where he has the advantage, and tension grows between Owen, slowly going blind, who wants to wait out the Moros, and Cooper, who is instrumental in inspiring the troops and is certain that they are ready to fight. Eventually, the Moros dam up a river crucial to the village and the ailing Owen has no choice but to essentially let Cooper take over on his terms. The final battle is a doozy, with machetes swinging, guns firing, and Moros catapulting themselves over the walls of the village. Supporting players include Henry Kolker as the general who is behind the initial troop withdrawal, Russell Hicks as a doomed captain, Kay Johnson as Hicks' wife, and Vladimir Sokoloff as a "good" Moro who may not be so good after all. Overall, the movie is fine, though I wish that Niven had more to do; I don't think it's a spoiler to note that when we hear Niven pining away for an island of his own to retire on, it's a sure sign that he's a goner. The doldrums of the middle of the movie (as all such movies are prey to) are overcome by the action of the last twenty minutes. A must for Cooper fans, though he comes off better in the same year's BEAU GESTE. [TCM]

The first two MR. MOTO movies

It's probably not politically correct to say so, but I do enjoy the Asian detective movies that came out of Hollywood in the '30s and '40s (to wit, the Messrs. Chan, Moto, and Wong) even if the actors who played these main roles were not Asian. The Japanese Mr. Moto was originally featured in a series of novels by John P. Marquand, and was not exactly an unambiguous "good guy"; usually, he was a secondary character looking our for Japanese interests who wound up helping the American hero out of a tough spot. Though I have reviewed Moto movies before, most of them were very hard to find until Fox released a boxed set of four of the films last year (with the remaining four coming out this month). These first two of the series (both from 1937), like the rest, star Peter Lorre as Kentaro Moto, who is not a detective but a kind of independent adventurer who gets involved in cases of espionage and winds up working with police or government agents. He is much more down and dirty than the more cerebral Chan, quicker with his fists than with his quips. The poster art of Lorre on the cover of the first DVD verges on the offensive, with horribly exaggerated buck teeth, but his actual appearance in the films is not quite so stereotyped.

THINK FAST, MR. MOTO opens quickly but confusingly with Moto, in disguise in a San Francisco curio shop, getting into fisticuffs and witnessing a murder. He books passage to Singapore on an ocean liner owned by the Hitchings company, and becomes friendly with the son of the line's owner (Thomas Beck) who has been a wastrel but is being given another chance at the business by his dad; we soon learn that Moto is on the trail of diamond smugglers who have been using the Hitchings line for their dastardly doings. Virginia Field is Beck's love interest, who may actually be one of the bad guys. Reliable villain Sig Ruman is present, as are J. Carroll Naish and Philip Ahn. The plotline takes a while to develop, but the film is paced well and Lorre makes a solid hero figure, involved in a fair amount of physical action. One scene in which he almost casually tosses a man out of ship porthole to his death is quite startling. THANK YOU, MR. MOTO begins in the Gobi desert as a group of travelers set up camp during a sandstorm and a man is killed trying to steal a scroll painting. Then, as in THINK FAST, we see Lorre in disguise, being held for suspicion of art smuggling, but actually he is, once again, on the trail of people trying to get their hands on a set of scrolls which, when put together, shows the location of the tomb of Genghis Kahn (shades of Fu Manchu!). Ruman is again the chief baddie, Beck is again the handsome Anglo lead (who romances the forgettable Jayne Regan), and John Carradine is a lesser baddie. The most interesting characters here are Prince Chung (Philip Ahn) and his mother (Pauline Frederick) who hold most of the Kahn scrolls. There is much skullduggery over the scrolls, ending in tragedy for some. These are both quite fun, and though B-films, never look cheap. [I've previously reviewed MR. MOTO'S LAST WARNING and a longer review of THINK FAST appears here. [DVD]

BY WHOSE HAND? (1932)

Briskly paced and very enjoyable murder-on-a-train thriller which was considered lost for many years. The opening sequence, startling for an early 30's movie, shows a killer's-eye view of a murder in a train's sleeping compartment, then we flashback to the beginning of the train's journey in Los Angeles (to San Francisco) as we get a glimpse of each of the passengers as they arrive at the station. Jeweler Kenneth Thompson (the man who is murdered) says goodbye to his wife as he flirts with sexy Ethel Kenyon, who is clearly out to pull some kind of con on him. Ben Lyon, a wisecracking crime reporter who has just written a story about the escape of wanted killer Nat Pendleton, shows up because of reports that the killer is near the station; when the cops can't find him, Lyon decides on impulse to ride the train so he can follow Barbara Weeks, a total stranger from whom he accidentally gets a kiss. Also on the train: a crotchety old man (William V. Mong), a blonde widow (Helene Millard) traveling with her dead husband's body, a honeymooning couple who just want to get to some canoodling, and a drunk (Tom Dugan) who latches onto Lyon (and even at one point calls him his boyfriend). Finally, there's Dwight Frye, a crook who turned state's evidence against Pendleton and is now traveling in handcuffs under federal protection. Not to give anything away, but suffice to say that, after Thompson is found dead that night, we discover that not everyone is who he or she seems. The cops get involved (as does Pendleton, who springs out of a most unexpected place--I should have seen it coming, but I didn't), but it's Lyon who is most instrumental in wrapping things up. For a pre-Code film, it's not terribly racy (except for smirking references to the honeymooners), though a marijuana cigarette plays a crucial role in the proceedings. There's one scene that implies that Dugan isn't as drunk as he appears, but nothing is done with that--it's as if the writers couldn't decide what do with that character; if it's a deliberate red herring, it should have been developed a bit more. Lyon and Weeks are fine as the romantic leads; Frye is surprisingly laid back, playing yet another slimy type, but at least not a neurotic mess like he usually got stuck with. This is one of those movies from the Columbia vaults that's been rescued by Sony and Turner Classic Movies; the print was in great shape, and I highly recommend it for mystery fans. [TCM]