SWEEPINGS (1933)
THREE SONS (1939)

These two movies, both based on the same novel, are old-fashioned sentimental family melodramas of the "ungrateful children are sharper than serpent’s teeth" variety. Since the '39 version is virtually a scene-by-scene remake, I'll let the plot summary of the first version stand here for both films. The story begins with the famous Chicago fire of 1871. In its aftermath, Lionel Barrymore (made up, not terribly well, to look like a young man) arrives in town to join the rebuilding boom. He founds a department store which is wildly successful; his wife has four children and dies during the birth of the fourth. Once the children are grown up, Barrymore hopes they will make him proud, with the sons going into the business and the daughter making a good marriage, but they all wind up disappointments. Gene, the oldest (William Gargan), lives the high life in Paris and comes home with a low-class woman who shoots a man while drunk, though Barrymore manages to cover up the incident to avoid scandal. Freddie, the youngest (Eric Linden), has no desire to work in retail, but falls for a lowly clerk (Helen Mack) whom Barrymore pays off to leave his son alone. When Linden openly rebels, Barrymore throws him out and he becomes a wandering bum. Burt, the quiet son (George Meeker), works diligently at his job as window dresser, but is unhappy when his father tries to promote him. The daughter Phoebe (Gloria Stuart) makes a bad marriage with a slimy European prince. The whole time, Barrymore doesn't see that the person who should be heir to the store is right under his nose: his loyal business partner. Gregory Ratoff, who undergoes several humiliations at Barrymore's hand yet continues to hope that he'll be rewarded for his years of service. At the climax, Ratoff is goaded by Barrymore into revealing that he has bought the children's shares in the business; this causes Barrymore to collapse, leading to the inevitable family reconciliation scene, with Linden winding up as the old man's last best hope. All the acting is good, with Ratoff a standout. Of the kids, Gargan and Linden get the most screen time and they're both fine. I wish the lovely and talented Stuart had more to do. Alan Dinehart, as Barrymore's brother, gets a memorable Christmas death scene, and Ninetta Sunderland (Walter Huston's wife) is good in her brief role as the matriarch.

THREE SONS is the B-movie remake. William Gargan appears in both versions, and the only major plot difference is that the uncle (played here by Gargan) is the man who gets shot by the mistress. Edward Ellis is the patriarch, Kent Taylor is the eldest son, Dick Hogan is the youngest, and J. Edward Bromberg is the ignored partner. Two young actors won parts in the movie through a national talent hunt: Virginia Vale plays the sister and Robert Stanton is Burt, who in this version wants to lead a ragtime band, and gets to sing a song. Stanton later changed his name to Kirby Grant (his birth name) and became famous as the star of the TV series Sky King. The acting is mostly fine. Ellis is no Barrymore, but he is more restrained in the role and fits it well; Bromberg is as good as Ratoff was. Gargan is only a few years older than the actors playing the sons, and the makeup used to age him isn't convincing. The earlier film is more atmospheric but the later film flows a bit more naturally. [TCM]

CORSAIR (1931)

An action melodrama directed by Roland West, who, after making a name in silent films, directed only three talkies (the other two being ALIBI and THE BAT WHISPERS) before retiring to run a restaurant. My understanding is that West was something of an early "indie" director, working just outside the Hollywood mainstream, which might explain the primitive, stagy moviemaking punctuated occasionally by the use of interesting visual style and atmosphere. We first see Chester Morris as a college football hero being flirted with at a high society party by snooty Thelma Todd. A year later, he's working for her stockbroker father (Emmett Corrigan), but isn't comfortable there, and when he refuses to cheat an old lady by selling her bad stock, he's fired (and dumped by Todd, who nevertheless remains interested). Morris and his college buddy Frank McHugh wind up working for bootlegger Fred Kohler, whose main customer is Corrigan. Soon Morris is using his ship, the Corsair, to hijack Kohler's liquor with some inside help from Corrigan's secretary (Mayo Methot) and her boyfriend (Ned Sparks); then he sells it at higher prices back to Corrigan. The insiders' method is far-fetched but ingenious: Methot uses her typewriter keys to send a Morse code message to Sparks, listening just outside the window. However, Corrigan catches on and plants bombs in champagne crates that he knows Morris will try to steal. Sure enough, he does, though he's brought thrill-seeking Todd (and her femme boyfriend William Austin) with him this time. All hell breaks loose in the well-done climactic scene, which includes a horrifying moment when the bad guys drown someone by dropping him into the ocean with weights tied to his feet. The pre-Code ending, which allows Morris to remain unpunished by the law and Todd to remain a spoiled, nasty piece of work, is quite satisfying. Methot, who never became a big star, is remembered now mostly as Humphrey Bogart's first wife. [DVD]

PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972)

A once-hot model and actress (Tuesday Weld) has been institutionalized after suffering a breakdown; her story is told in flashbacks, more or less chronologically, though in disjointed fashion, punctuated with flash-forwards to her heavily sedated life in a sanitarium. After escaping small town life in Nevada and becoming a famous model, she is discovered by director Adam Rourke and cast in a small-budget film called "Angel Beach" (sort of like Easy Rider if it had been made by Andy Warhol) which becomes a surprise hit. She marries Rourke and has a child who is brain damaged and lives away from home. Her marriage starts to fall apart and she has a few one-night stands with other men, resulting in an abortion. Her best friend is Anthony Perkins, the producer of Rourke's movies and a closeted gay man married to Tammy Grimes, who is paid by Perkins' mother to stay married to him, for appearance's sake, even though he has no compunction about sharing his beach house with hot young tricks. Feeling adrift, Weld goes back to her hometown to find herself, but finds nothing. She makes a stab at reconciling with Rourke, who is in Las Vegas shooting his next movie, but that falls through as well. She hears the story of a man who went into the desert to talk to God and was found dead of a snake bite. In the last scene, she and Perkins, in a hotel room avoiding a night on the town with friends, discuss the abyss before he takes a handful of Seconals and dies in her lap, which apparently triggers Weld's breakdown.

This is based on a novel by Joan Didion, whose books I can never get through. Most critics disparage the movie by saying the novel is better (isn't that almost always the case?), but I found this to be quite intriguing. It is a product of its time, both in terms of plot and style, but if you can get past the surface, it doesn't feel all that dated. A critic at the Strictly Film School site has noted that this film, directed by Frank Perry, bears comparison to the work of David Lynch, an interesting comment, though not one I would take too far, partly because this film has a strong narrative thread, even though it takes a while to piece together the fragments. Even after I had figured out the chronology, there were still things that weren't clear, particularly about the Weld character, her background (did she have a history of fragility or are we supposed to think that Hollywood destroyed her?), and her career (did she make more than one movie?). There is lots of dialogue in the film but little communication, which is one reason why the characters remain vague. The editing style is a mix of 60's choppiness and long single takes. Weld is very good in a role that calls for someone who seems a little detached; she doesn't so much spin out of control as wind down. Perkins is excellent, giving a tic-free performance that is miles away from Norman Bates, even though both characters do have "mother trouble," and he and Weld have great "best friend" chemistry; as I recall, they were also good together in PRETTY POISON. I wonder if this is the first Hollywood movie to use the word "dildo" (twice!) and show someone (a Marlboro Man-type actor played by Tony Young) using poppers during sex. My favorite line, from Weld in a restaurant in reaction to a comment on her "existential" performance in her movie: "Existentially, I'm getting a hamburger." [Sundance]

I AM A THIEF (1934)

Jewel thieves, romance, and murder on the Orient Express--sounds like fun, and some of it is, but for a short movie (one hour), too much of it drags. There has been a rash of jewel robberies in Paris and an insurance company, tired of making large payoffs, hatches a plan to catch the crooks by using an auction of the famous Karenina diamonds as bait. Suave Ricardo Cortez gets the diamonds, beating roughneck Texan Dudley Digges; when Cortez gets on the Orient Express (with nervous insurance man Hobart Cavanaugh), Digges joins him and eventually talks him into selling the diamonds, and they are stolen soon after. Who's behind it? There is a slew of mysterious characters on the train, including potential femme fatale Mary Astor, a perpetually arch-eyed baron (Robert Barratt), a count (Irving Pichel), and a befuddled looking old man (Ferdinand Gottschalk). Most of the enjoyment a viewer might get from this film depends on figuring out the good guys from the bad, with none of the main characters being who they seem at first to be, so I'll avoid spoilers, though if I figured out the puzzle halfway through, anyone can. Eventually, there is a murder, a gathering of suspects right out of an Agatha Christie movie, and an extra (though predictable) twist near the end. Astor looks good but seems a bit hemmed in by having to be quiet and mysterious for more than half the movie; Cortez is fine and the rest of the familiar supporting faces do their usual good, if unremarkable, work. Directed by Robert Florey, who remained a name in B-films through the 40's and later did a fair amount of TV work, including Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. [TCM]

THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS (1941)

A colorful, sentimental, rustic melodrama of life in Ozark Mountains among the moonshiners. This is not the kind of movie I would normally gravitate toward, but a friend recommended it so I gave it a shot. The film is based on a very popular novel from 1907 which had already been filmed twice and was filmed again in the 60's. John Wayne plays Matt Mathews, a strapping young man who belongs to a group of people who make their living selling illegal moonshine made in their hidden mountain stills. He believes he lives under a curse: his father left home when Wayne was a child, his mother died soon after, and he thinks he can't live a normal life until he has avenged his mother's death by killing his father. He's sweet on chirpy little Betty Field, but his dead mother fixation won't let him even consider married life until he lifts the curse. One day, a kindly older stranger (Harry Carey) arrives in the mountains just after a revenue agent has shot and wounded Field's father. Carey helps to save the man's life and Field takes a shine to him. He tells her he wants to buy land in the area, specifically Moanin' Meadow, where Wayne's family once lived, though now it's considered haunted. The mountain folk don't take kindly to strangers, but Field tells them all that Carey is her cousin, and after he saves the life of a sick child, he is generally accepted. Carey makes an offer to cranky Beulah Bondi, matriarch of the moonshiners and owner of the land; she is suspicious but he offers her enough money that she can't refuse. Wayne isn't crazy about Carey at first, but slowly warms to him. Soon, Field figures out that Carey is Wayne's father, who hopes to eventually strike up a relationship with him again; Wayne never knew that Carey abandoned his dying wife because he was serving time in prison. Carey and Field think that the mountain folk are spending too much time wrapped in the moonshine business and spending all their spare time scared of outsiders, and they set about making the acquisition of alcohol a low priority. As their crusade succeeds, the Bondi gang gets itchy, realizing that their easy living may be coming to an end. The catalyst for the climax comes when Carey pays to have old blind mountain woman Marjorie Main get an operation to restore her sight. At a family celebration, the newly sighted Main recognizes that Carey is Wayne's father, setting off a struggle for a gun that kills the sweet but simple-minded Pete (Marc Lawrence), and Wayne sets off to kill Carey. If you've seen THE SEARCHERS, you'll figure out how things end up.

I stayed with the movie, but wasn't crazy about the main performers. Wayne is a bit wooden, Field does an unconvincing job with the backwoods language and accent, and though Carey is dignified, he also never fully inhabits his role. I enjoyed more the rich supporting cast, including some actors who do a nice job working against type, like Bondi as a thoroughly nasty old lady (so different from kindly Mrs. Bailey in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and the usually lively Main in a low-key role. Lawrence, who played slimy goons in 40's noir pictures, is unrecognizable here as the damaged innocent who meets a tragic end. Filmed in Technicolor, the film looks lovely, with some of it shot on location (mostly in California), but the mountain homes look too, well, Hollywood to be effective. Field’s spacious "shack" in particular reminded me of a rustic version of a suburban home in a 50's Douglas Sirk movie. [DVD]

MIRACLE IN THE RAIN (1956)

Jane Wyman passed away yesterday; while she was highly acclaimed for her later work, from the mid-40's on, I enjoy her early work in B-films and screwball comedies more (films like FLIGHT ANGELS and PUBLIC WEDDING). This romantic fantasy set in Manhattan during WWII is very much like the lovely Judy Garland film THE CLOCK, but with a dollop of tragedy and a strong (and rather unexpected) element of the supernatural thrown in. Wyman is a pleasant young woman who has an office job with Excelsior Shoes; she lives in a small apartment with her mother (Josephine Hutchinson), a woman who has grown old and ill before her time because she never got over her husband abandoning his family several years ago. Wyman takes care of her and socializes occasionally with Eileen Heckart, a co-worker. One afternoon, while waiting for a downpour to end, a handsome, sweet-talking, and somewhat whimsical soldier (Van Johnson) strikes up a conversation with her and charms his way into an invitation home for dinner. He finds out that Wyman's father was an aspiring musician who left behind an unfinished song which Johnson plays at the piano, raising all sorts of bittersweet memories for Hutchinson. Despite the mother's warning that all men are no good, Wyman spends that Saturday on a casual day-long date with Johnson (and chaperone Heckart) which involves the theatre, dinner at a fancy French restaurant (where, unknown to Wyman, her missing father, William Gargan, plays piano) and attendance at a storefront auction where Wyman buys an old Roman coin which she gives to Johnson as a good-luck piece. They have a lovely Sunday together in Central Park; he also manages to write lyrics for Gargan's song and gets a human interest story published in the New York Times. Of course, it's all too good to last and on Monday, Johnson is called up for overseas duty; as he leaves, he tells her he'll love her forever. Three months later, after writing to him every day, she finds out that he was killed in combat. She has what would now be called a breakdown, barely able to function, and a cold she catches turns into pneumonia. She lights candles at St. Patrick's Cathedral and gets some counseling from a sympathetic priest, but also expresses her doubt about the existence of a cruel god who would take Johnson away from her. Heckart and Hutchinson try to help her, and even Gargan is inspired to return home, but she continues spiraling downward until she winds up weak and feverish on the steps of St. Patrick's during a rainstorm and has a life-changing vision, the title miracle in the rain, which shows her that love may indeed be eternal.

[SPOILER follows] There are two things that most critics dislike about this film. The first, the overly literal representation of life after death that ends the film (Johnson's ghost leaves her with the Roman good-luck coin she had given to him), is indeed hard to swallow, though the ending narration, which states that the story was told to the narrator and he wants to believe it, helps mitigate that a bit. Until the end, the film has seemed quite realistic (well, Hollywood romantic realism, in which people who look like Wyman and Johnson don't already have dates) and when realism gives way to a murky marriage of Catholic mysticism and campfire ghost story in the last moments, the audience is not prepared--unlike, let's say, the ending of fantasies like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or THE BISHOP'S WIFE, in which the fantasy world is set up from the beginning. The other problem for critics is the plethora of supporting characters and side plots: in addition to Heckart and Hutchinson, there's the father and his songwriting, the shoe company boss (Fred Clark) and his extramarital affair with one of the secretaries (Peggie Castle), a newlywed sailor (Alan King) and his chorus-girl wife (Barbara Nichols) whom Wyman and Johnson meet in Central Park, and a few others as well--future Laugh-In star Arte Johnson has a small role as an office boy. I think the colorful subplots add to the movie, though Gargan's story, which has a lot of promise, isn't developed as well as it should be. Ultimately, for me, the movie works because Wyman and Johnson are both very convincing, even better than Garland and Robert Walker were in THE CLOCK. Wyman made more acclaimed movies (JOHNNY BELINDA, THE YEARLING, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), but I like this one the best of all her later starring vehicles. [DVD]

THE STRANGE MR. GREGORY (1946)

Modest B-thriller from Monogram, though in acting and looks, it's a cut above their usual low-budget fare. Edmund Lowe, the Mr. Gregory of the title, is a mystic; we first see him with his assistant (Frank Reicher) as he is brought out of the Kalamudra Death Trance, a state of suspended animation which he can stay in for days. He's a magician by trade and one night, he meets Jean Rogers backstage and becomes smitten. At a party, he shows her husband (Don Douglas), as a parlor trick, how to tie a rope into a deadly garrote for easy strangling. Later in the evening, Lowe tries to lay a love trance on Rogers. Douglas punches him, though it has no effect on Lowe, who has become more or less invulnerable (except, as he says to Reicher, to "the hangman's noose or an assassin's bullet"). The next day, Lowe sends a dozen roses to Rogers with a note that he will send one less rose each day he has to wait for her. Understandably, this freaks her out a bit and soon Douglas goes to Lowe's place to tell him to lay off. However, after Douglas leaves, Reicher finds Lowe dead, garroted with a rope. *We* know all about that goofy Death Trance, so it's no surprise when, after Douglas is arrested, Lowe shows up again as Gregory's twin brother, Lane Talbot (why the different last name, I never figured out). In that guise, he gets Douglas off the hook by telling the court that his brother was a dangerously insane man, which also gets him in Rogers' good graces until she begins to suspect a rat. With some help from her friend (Marjorie Hoshelle) and a lawyer, Lowe eventually gets his comeuppance. The sets are much better than in the typical Monogram programmer, and it undoubtedly helped that this print, shown on TCM, is in remarkable shape, much cleaner than any other Poverty Row film of the era that I've seen. I haven't particularly liked Lowe before--I especially didn’t like him as the lead in CHANDU THE MAGICIAN--but he's fine here, nicely slimy and creepy. There are plot holes, and scenes that fade out about 10 seconds later than they should, but as an hour-long diversion, it does its job nicely. (IMDb says the film is also known as THE GREAT MYSTIC.) [TCM]

FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1961)

A colorful but bland account of the life of the famous saint. Parts of it work well, but there is too much gravitas here, as though the filmmakers were telling the life of Jesus, or perhaps remaking THE TEN COMMANDMENTS without any sense of humor or spectacle or even camp. In the 13th century, Pope Innocent III (Finlay Currie) is enlisting men to defend the papal kingdom of Sicily. Francis (Bradford Dillman), the carousing son of an upstanding merchant, volunteers to go, along with Paolo (Stuart Whitman), a Sicilian count living in exile in Assisi, but along the way, Francis hears a disembodied voice telling him to turn back. Sure that he's hearing the voice of God, he decides to obey; he is arrested for desertion and is scorned by Paolo, though after the war, Francis's friend Clare (Dolores Hart) talks Paolo into pardoning all deserters. Francis's father (Eduard Franz) throws a party in an attempt to reintegrate his son into the life of the town, but the passive and unworldly Francis baffles everyone. He throws off the trappings of his old life and begins begging for stones to build a new church, and with it a new order of clergy who desire to live in "extreme poverty" as Christ did. He and his little band of monks go to Rome to get papal permission to officially exist in the eyes of the church; the Pope, who has seen Francis in a dream, gives his blessing.

The rest of the film is a colorful, nicely filmed, but dramatically inert pageant of scenes from Francis's life: he loves children and blesses their pets, seems to be able to communicate with wild animals, rejoins the Crusades in order to bring peace to the Holy Land, and (in the film's best scene) tries to convert a Sultan (Pedro Armendariz) by claiming that God will allow him to walk through fire unharmed. He returns home to find his Franciscan order taken over by others (portrayed at first as almost evil but later as just misguided) who have started down the traditional road of collecting money and property to make his order like all the others. Unable to fight, he lives out his last years as a hermit, fasting and going blind. He collapses in a cruciform on the ground, with stigmata, has a reconciliation scene with his old friend Paolo (who has finally gotten over the fact that Clare dissed him to enter a convent, following Francis's lead), and dies. The very last shots, his funeral procession, are the most striking of the film, with flocks of birds following along through the dawn skies (or twilight, I wasn't sure). The acting is so-so, mostly because of the slack characterizations. Dillman is OK; he comes off like a beefier, less intense Anthony Perkins, and in fact Perkins' intensity might have made him a better (if almost certainly creepier) Francis. Hart has a nothing role, though it's worth noting that just two years later, the actress became a nun in real life. Whitman is the only actor who gets to express much emotion, but he's rather wooden. The location shooting is helpful, but doesn't make it worth sitting through. [FMC]

JUNGLE BOOK (1942)

I must admit that I've never read the Rudyard Kipling classic this film is based on; in my youth I did read a Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation and later saw the Disney version, though my memories of both are dim. This Alexander Korda film looks wonderful, with decent sets shot in lovely Technicolor, but feels a bit awkward in the telling. The narrative, set in and around an Indian village, is framed as a tale told by Buldeo, an old man (Joseph Calleia), to a couple of British tourists. He tells them that "the book of life" is the story of man's war with nature, and we flash back many years to when there were plans to expand the village if the surrounding jungle could be "beaten." One day, a toddler runs away and gets lost in the jungle while his father is attacked and killed by a tiger. The boy winds up in a wolf den, is raised by the wolves, and can communicate with the other animals, such as panthers, snakes, and elephants. Grown into young manhood, the boy (Sabu), on the run from Shere Kahn, the killer tiger, stumbles into the village, naked, barking, and howling. Calleia believes the village should not accept him, saying he has the evil eye, but his mother (Rosemary DeCamp) recognizes him as her lost son and takes him in. She names him Mowgli and teaches him human speech and customs. He takes a liking to Calleia's daughter (Margaret O'Rourke) but her father still distrusts the boy and does everything he can to run him back into the jungle. When Sabu and O'Rourke meet for a moonlight rendezvous, they discover a treasure guarded by a snake; Calleia gets wind of this and he and his greedy friends plan to find the riches for themselves. They do, but ultimately Sabu and the animals make them pay. The biggest obstacle here is that real animals are used and were clearly shot separately from most of the actors, so human/animal interaction is minimal. Most of the movie was shot on elaborate sets, which look fine, though some location footage is rather shakily incorporated here and there. Sabu, only 18 when the film was released, is perfect in the role of the wild boy who is tamed briefly but realizes he cannot be happy in the world of mankind. He appeared in several other jungle epics in the 40's but his career waned as he aged; this may be his finest moment. It's a little startling to see Swedish character actor John Qualen as an Indian barber. Ralph Byrd, later Dick Tracy in the movies and on TV, and Ralph Puglia also appear. I don't think kids today will enjoy this much, but film buffs will appreciate Sabu and the lavish Technicolor, and the huge fire and animal stampede at the film's climax. [DVD]

ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945)

I've been very much enjoying the little-known and rarely seen B-films from Columbia that TCM has been showing recently, but this one tried my patience. Perhaps because it had such a promising beginning, atmosphere to burn, and an interesting central plot device, its eventual downturn into tedious contrivance and too much talkiness bothered me more than it should have. It does begin quite well, with Nina Foch walking on what looks like a San Francisco bridge at midnight in billowing fog. She looks disoriented and a cop who approaches her suspects that she's thinking of jumping, but she assures him she's not. Still, she doesn't seem to be sure what she's doing until she sees a man getting out of a cab, attacked by two other men, one with a knife. She screams, the attackers run, and suddenly, she wakes up in her room at the Rustic Dell Inn. Two men burst in to see if she needs help, and one, William Wright, is the man she saw being attacked. Foch and Wright, both involved in war work and both on employer-ordered vacations, hit it off; when he's called to San Francisco, he asks her to come along. However, he gets orders from his boss (Otto Kruger) to take a top-secret packet to Hong Kong, so they have to cut their tentative courtship short. German spy Konstantin Shayne overhears enough of their conversation to set a trap for Wright. Sure enough, he winds up in a cab with Shayne and another thug, and sure enough, Foch winds up on the foggy bridge just in time to scream and stop Shayne from killing Wright. At this exciting point, we're barely halfway through the movie, but it's all downhill from here. Wright and Foch go looking for the packet, which got tossed off the bridge into either the Bay or onto a ship that may have passed under them, Shayne and his spies come after them, Kruger has to deny knowing Wright, and so on to fill out the last half hour. The locked room climax, with Wright and Foch tied up in a room filling with gas, does have a fairly ingenious solution, but getting there, the plot fills up with ridiculously contrived situations to get all the characters in the various places they need to be. Wright is a handsome and reasonably effective leading man, but he would remain a supporting player in B-movies until his untimely death 4 years later from cancer. Foch, later nominated for an Oscar, is at sea here, possibly because of the wishy-washy script. None of the supporting players register, though Shelly Winters has a very brief bit as a taxi driver. It's interesting that the dream premonition is never explained away. If this one airs again, catch the first half, then nap during the rest. [TCM]

I BURY THE LIVING (1958)

Richard Boone is a local businessman who is reluctantly about to take his turn as the manager of the local cemetery, a largely ceremonial post, he is assured, which will just take a few hours of his time a month. Theodore Bikel, the old Scottish caretaker (yes, you will immediately think of Groundskeeper Willie!), is about to be forced into retirement, though even with a pension, he doesn't want to leave. He shows Boone a wall map of the cemetery on which white pins designate a plot reserved for someone, and black pins designate a plot with a buried body. A newly married couple show up to buy their plots, but Boone accidentally sticks black pins in the map instead of white pins, and the next day, he hears that the couple were killed in a car accident. Struck by the eerie coincidence, he randomly sticks a black pin in a plot reserved for a Mr. Isham, and soon we see Isham die, apparently of a heart attack. A distraught Boone tells friends, police, and his fiancee (Peggy Maurer) about his weird power over life and death. They encourage him to continue experimenting with the pins in an attempt to show him that he's just imagining things, and a trio of prominent local men, including his own uncle, offer themselves as guinea pigs; when Boone uses black pins in their plots, all three indeed wind up dead. Cooped up alone in the cemetery office, a nearly suicidal Boone wonders what will happen if he takes out the black pins of the recently dead and replaces them with white pins. Sure enough when he does, we see the plots dug open, empty inside. The resolution is predictable, though the "how" aspect is not well explained.

As you can tell by five minutes in, this is Twilight Zone material, and would have worked better as a half-hour show instead of a 76-minute movie. Boone is fairly good, especially when he starts to go a bit nuts. Bikel, an Austrian who was only in his mid-30s, cannot pass for an old Scottish man; his accent is outrageously thick, as is his old-age makeup and his acting. He seemed so fake that I was sure that the character would wind up being someone disguising himself as an old Scottish caretaker, but I was wrong. The plot has intimations of the supernatural, and for a brief moment, you think that you'll get to see some of the undead stalking around the badly-done day-for-night graveyard, but no such luck. What the movie does have in spades is atmosphere; as other viewers have pointed out, this looks more like a film noir than a horror movie, and as in a Twilight Zone show, most of it occurs on just one or two sets. The wall map of the cemetery looks a little weird from the beginning, with the white pins looking practically phosphorescent in the dim lighting. As Boone starts to unravel, the map, seen from his point of view, appears larger and larger until it takes up the entire wall, dwarfing Boone (not a small man). There are other subjective shots of clocks and pins and gravestones that are nicely done. Still, I got restless several times during the middle of the film, so I can't give this a full recommendation. [TCM]

THE INTERNS (1962)

Even though doctor movies have been part of Hollywood's output since at least the onset of sound, this one, helped along by the popularity of TV dramas like "Ben Casey," probably started the fad for medical soap operas--both "The Doctors" and "General Hospital" started their TV runs the year after this film came out, and this film itself was spun off into a sequel in '64 and a one-season hour-long TV drama in 1970. The movie follows a group of handsome young male interns (and the nurses they chase) through their first year at New North Hospital; to be fair, there *is* one female intern (Haya Harareet), thrown in almost as an afterthought to provide a feminist viewpoint to antagonize a chauvinist pig doctor. James MacArthur (Dan-O on "Hawaii 5-0") is the quiet, sensitive type who is set up with a nurse (Stefanie Powers) whom all the docs assume is loose because she sports a hickey on her neck, but it turns out that the mark came from a child she was watching in the hospital nursery. She's really a nice girl, but conflict arises when she decides she wants to see the world and he wants to settle down. Nick Adams is a loudmouth joker who is tamed when he falls for a terminally ill patient from a poverty-stricken island in Indonesia. Cliff Robertson strikes up a relationship with a fashion model (Suzy Parker); when she asks him for help to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy (this was back when abortions were illegal), he steals the drugs from the nurses' station, an action which proves disastrous to his career. Michael Callan is a high-strung ball of fire who, despite having a long-time high society girlfriend, begins a flirtation with an older nurse as a way of getting an "in" to study with a doctor he admires.

Much of the narrative takes place between Christmas and New Year's, and a big holiday bash at a nurse's apartment is really the centerpiece of the film; its comic highlight is when a Russian nurse (Carroll Harrison) who is typically demure and inhibited comes alive with a few drinks in her and does a striptease, egged on by all. The main medical sideplot involves an older man dying slowly from a disease which will eventually paralyze him while his mind remains intact. His wife becomes a regular visitor among the interns and his situation is the trigger for a discussion of mercy killing; sure enough, he is eventually found dead of poisoning and the interns who were privy to his case are suspended from consideration for residencies until the case is solved. This causes tensions to run high and gives Callan a showy scene in which he has a public breakdown. Often, the movie has a beach party feel, despite the absence of bikinis or an ocean. The acting is all fine, with Callan and Adams standouts. Telly Savalas is the pig doc who almost causes Harareet to throw in the towel and leave the profession; Buddy Ebsen, John Banner (Sgt. Schultz on "Hogan's Heroes"), and Connie Gilchrist are featured, and in a very small role, you may recognize Mary Grace Canfield, who played Ralph the carpenter in "Green Acres." Watchable, if undeniably a dated period piece by now. [TCM]

THE MARINES FLY HIGH (1940)

This was made before America entered WWII, but while the studios were churning out lots of propagandistic military stories in anticipation of our involvement in the war. Even in 1940, this story of buddies who wind up rivals for the same girl must have seemed awfully cliched, and unfortunately, the B-aspects of the production don’t allow anything about this version to stand out. The leading men, both a bit past their prime, are Richard Dix and Chester Morris. An opening crawl tells us that the story is set in the past, when foreign countries often looked to American armed forces to help shore up law and order in the face of revolution and lawlessness. Dix is a Marine in an unnamed Central American country, part of a force trying to root out a shadowy revolutionary bandit, El Vengador, who, with his band of men, has just pulled off a raid on a cocoa plantation owned by Lucille Ball. Morris is a lieutenant who has just arrived in the country and is bunking with Dix. The two get along well until Ball comes between them. She has been dating Dix, so Morris' initial flirtation falls flat, but after an old flame of Dix's (Steffi Duna) arrives in the area, Ball decides to give Morris a whirl. The romance and adventure plotlines come together rather predictably, though the climactic battle, with a band of Marines trapped in a small town by the bandits, is quite exciting. I especially like the way that Dix, buzzing the area in a plane, gets messages back and forth to the men on the ground, with notes wrapped around wrenches that are delivered ingeniously. In the supporting cast are John Eldredge as Ball's foreman (and given his sinister looks from the get-go, it's not a spoiler to say that he's not what he seems), Dick Hogan and Horace McMahon as Marine buddies, and Kirby Grant (later Sky King on TV) as a lieutenant. Ball is, as usual in this stage of her career, a bit too low-key to be effective (see YOU CAN’T FOOL YOUR WIFE, a B-comedy made the same year); Morris and Hogan come off best, with Dix too old and sluggish to be believable as a man who is romantically entangled with two young women. [TCM]

BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1964)

Steve McQueen was a dashing anti-hero leading man of the 60's who to this day epitomizes the essence of "cool." I've only seen a couple of his films (the "cool" GREAT ESCAPE and the much later, deliberately "uncool" ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) so I decided to rent this one which was recently released as part of a boxed DVD set. The story is basically warmed-over Tennessee Williams, set in windy Texas grasslands instead of steamy New Orleans neighborhoods. Lee Remick is a woman with a young daughter taking a bus trip to Columbus, Texas. She's hoping to settle there and wait for her husband (McQueen) who has been in jail since before their daughter was born. She's befriended by a local cop (Don Murray) who helps her get a job and to rent a small house. Remick is surprised to discover that McQueen has been free on parole for some time and didn't send for her. The reason is another woman, not a mistress, but his foster mother, the nasty Miss Kate, who abused him when he was young and now insists that he go to night school instead of singing and playing guitar in a rockabilly "string band," which is what he wants to do, and what he thinks will lead to fame and success. Miss Kate, an invalid whom we only glimpse briefly near the end of the film, threatens to have him jailed in violation of his parole if he doesn't follow her wishes. McQueen is glad to see his family but is still trying to hash out his future and, as one can predict from early on, he makes mostly wrong choices (involving drinking, violence, and dealing with Miss Kate) leading to a sad (though not tragic) ending.

McQueen is good as a man who, thanks to an ultra-masculine exterior, seems strong, but who is actually a wounded neurotic with lots of demons swirling around inside him. Creepy harpsichord music plays in scenes which evoke memories of McQueen's past. I think Miss Kate's house looks a little like Mother Bates' home in PSYCHO, and that may be intentional--though McQueen's not a killer (and probably not a cross-dresser). Murray is very good as an example of the other side of the masculine stereotype: if McQueen is a rowdy and restless misfit, Murray is a quiet, sturdy, settled type (he was much more like McQueen in his debut film role in BUS STOP). I was rooting for Murray to sweep Remick off her feet, but this isn't that kind of movie. Things drag a bit in the middle, but the climactic action, triggered by the death of Miss Kate, is compelling, and a scene toward the end of McQueen running desperately after a speeding truck in a last stab at escape (from his past, from the law, from his obligations) is quite effective. The stark black and white cinematography sets the mood nicely. Remick was always an underrated actor and she's especially fine here. One thing that doesn't work is McQueen's singing; he is obviously lip-synching to someone else's voice, and he does a bad job of it. To make it worse, the director, Robert Mulligan, shoots his songs in close-up which just accentuates the artifice. This is not exactly the "cool" McQueen on display in this film, but he generally does a fine job and this is worth seeing. (IMDb says Glen Campbell plays a band member). The title song is catchy little number. [DVD]

DANGER FLIGHT (1939)

Pilot "Tailspin" Tommy Tompkins (John Trent) has founded a boy's club, the Scouts of the Air, with the intention of 1) keeping kids out of trouble, 2) getting kids interested in aviation, so that 3) they might become fliers when their country needs them (approximately two years hence, as it will turn out). Tommy befriends tough kid Whitey (Tommy Baker), an orphan whose older brother Mike (Dennis Moore) is a small-time thug and part of a fairly inept gang led by Dawson (Julius Tannen). When the gang tries but fails to hijack Brown's payroll delivery being made by car, Brown hires Tommy to fly the money out. However, in the middle of a bad storm, Tommy is asked instead to fly needed medical supplies to some dam workers. He does, using his only parachute to get the supplies to the ground, then crash lands. Just as searchers, including Tommy's buddy Skeeter (Milburn Stone), are ready to give up, Whitey and his fellow Scouts discover him and save the day. Whitey's heroic deed makes headlines and brother Mike plays on his ego to get him to help in a new scheme to get the ever-elusive payroll, involving a model airplane that can send out smoke signals. The ruse works, and Whitey and Tommy wind up prisoners in a basement until Tommy figures out how to rebuild a busted model plane and send his own message to the cops.

This is a pretty obscure little flick, one of four programmers made by bargain basement studio Monogram in 1939 featuring the comic strip character Tailspin Tommy, who had previously been the focus of two Universal serials. In look and feel, this is no worse, and maybe a smidge better, than any average adventure serial of the day, and the movie does feel like part of a serial, given that the story breaks down into two specific "chapters." The plane scenes, especially the storm, are handled acceptably. Baker and Moore are fine, and it's fun to see Tannen, whom many viewers will recognize as the "talking picture" demonstrator in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Stone makes a good if underused sidekick, but the weak links are Trent, who is boring, and Marjorie Reynolds as his girl, who is both boring and bad. She is known mostly as the love interest in HOLIDAY INN, and she's absolutely wooden in both films. The Alpha DVD print is in very bad shape, especially during the first reel--the picture quality gets better, but the sound remains spotty. The film seems clearly aimed at the kiddie matinee crowd of the day, but given its limitations, it's fun enough for an hour's entertainment. [DVD]

ILLICIT (1931)

Interesting pre-Code film which is surprisingly casual in its portrayal of a premarital affair. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie maintain separate residences but spend their nights together--the opening scene has them post-coitally lolling about in their "night clothes." He wants to get married but she thinks that marriage will inevitably lead to the death of their relationship, that love can't stand the strain of enforced possessiveness and the expectation to have children. When they are caught "weekending" together at a hotel, his father (Claude Gillingwater) pressures them to marry. "She has theories, Dad," replies Rennie, but she does finally agree. A year later, the strains have begun showing when Rennie wants to party but Stanwyck wants to cuddle up at home. Naturally, two old flames show up: Ricardo Cortez, who tried to stop the marriage earlier by telling Stanwyck that she was just becoming a piece of property, and Natalie Moorhead, whom Rennie starts seeing when he tells Stanwyck he's working late. The married couple separate, then find that their spark of passion returns, but both Cortez and Moorhead keep trying to split them up. Of course, social convention wins in the end and they give their marriage another chance, with Stanwyck saying, "What have theories to do with love?" Stanwyck is a bit out of her element playing a rich girl, but she's fine; Rennie is lackluster but passable. Cortez, a favorite of mine who had a nice range, from romantic lead to dastardly villain, is quite good here in one of his typical roles as the handsome second fiddle who never winds up with the girl. Supporting comic relief standouts are Charles Butterworth as an older playboy friend of the couple's and Joan Blondell as his younger mistress. [TCM]

BEDAZZLED (1967)

This trippy 60's riff on the Faust story, directed by Stanley Donen, doesn't really hold together all that well, but it's worth seeing for the great comic chemistry between Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They were part of a British comedy troupe that took Broadway by storm in a revue called "Beyond the Fringe" in the mid 60's and the two worked as a duo for many years. Based on the evidence of this film, they should have become a legendary comedy team, but though they did stage and TV work together through the 70's, they never took off as a movie team. Moore plays a kind of everyman figure, a cook in a burger diner who feels he has nothing to live for, especially because he’s too shy to get the love of his life, a waitress at the diner (Eleanor Bron), to notice him. He tries to hang himself but when he bungles the job, a tall man in a red cape (Cook) comes to his door, claiming to be the devil and offering him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Each of the wishes is an attempt to win the love of Bron and is played out like a revue skit, throwing Moore, Cook, and Bron into a different situation each time, with Moore never happy with the outcome of the wish. The devil, whose name is George Spiggot, operates out of a dive of a nightclub, with the Seven Deadly Sins working (rather ineffectually) for him--none of the sins get much screen time, but Raquel Welch manages to make an impression as Lust, and Barry Humphries in his pre-Dame Edna days is a swishy Envy. The movie never quite lives up to its first 20 minutes, but Moore and Cook are always funny. A couple of sequences stand out, including one near the end where Moore and Bron are nuns of the Order of Beryl of Sussex who jump on trampolines, trying to get closer to God. Cook's shining moment is as a pop star singing (in a monotone) an anti-romantic song with lyrics like "You fill me with inertia" and "Just go away." Though Moore is good (and surprisingly attractive in a cuddly kind of way), Cook gets all the best moments. I like that the Devil's idea of being evil is to pull irritating pranks like tearing the last chapter out of Agatha Christie mysteries or having a pigeon shit on a man's head. I also like that the Devil's conjuring phrase to make the wishes happen is, "Julie Andrews!" The colorful style of the movie is a treat for the eyes. Even if it's not exactly a masterpiece, it's consistently amusing. [DVD]

TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942)

Another anthology film, this one an American studio production. The connecting element between these stories, written by various screenwriters, is a tuxedo tailcoat which is passed from person to person. It's tailored specifically for Charles Boyer, an actor who is opening in a new show on Broadway. Boyer is told that the coat was cursed by a disgruntled employee; next, we see him in the coat, being shot and killed by a woman, but it turns out we're seeing the finale of his play, which is a great success. At a party that night, he tries to rekindle a relationship with the glamorous Rita Hayworth, who is now married to Thomas Mitchell, and Boyer indeed doesn't have much luck, winding up wounded (literally) but wiser. In the second story, the coat winds up in the possession of Roland Young, butler to playboy Cesar Romero, who, despite a nasty hangover, is due to marry Ginger Rogers that night. When she finds a love letter in his coat pocket, Romero's bachelor buddy (Henry Fonda) claims the coat is his, and Young's coat is Romero's. While this charade seems to save the day, it ends up being the catalyst for a new relationship between Fonda and Rogers. Next the butler pawns the coat and Elsa Lanchester buys it for her husband, Charles Laughton, a tavern pianist who is trying to get a symphony performed. He gets a famous conductor (Victor Francen) to hear him, and Francen immediately wants to perform the piece with Laughton conducing. During the strenuous performance, Laughton's coat begins ripping at the seams, leading to audience mirth and possibly a disaster for Laughton, but all is saved, thanks to quick thinking by Francen.

The coat then winds up in a Bowery mission house run by priest James Gleason, who gives it to down-and-out lawyer Edward G. Robinson to wear to a college reunion dinner. Robinson tries to pull off a demeanor of respectability and tricks everyone for a while until his bluff is called by former colleague George Sanders, who eggs him into telling everyone the sad truth of his downfall. He leaves in what he assumes is disgrace, but there is indeed salvation waiting for him the next morning. The next tale is a short comic bit which was cut from the initial release and therefore doesn't quite fit as snugly as it should, with W.C. Fields as a con man giving a speech at a temperance meeting, selling cocoanut milk as an alternative to alcohol, until the milk winds up spiked with booze, with amusing results. In the final incident, a crook (J. Carroll Naish) uses the coat to pull off a high society robbery; he escapes in a small plane, but later during the flight, the coat catches fire and he dumps it, with its pockets full of the money, overboard. It lands in a small sharecropper community in the South on Christmas morning (yes, this is the biggest stretch in a movie filled with them) and Paul Robeson finds it, thinking it must be a gift from the Lord. The people (including Ethel Waters and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) wind up splitting the money amongst themselves based on who has been praying for what--an interesting mix of socialism and religion--and the coat's final resting place is on a scarecrow in the fields.

Though the coat is the literal connection between the stories, what really runs through the movie is a strong feeling for irony, expressed, as in QUARTET, with lots of O. Henryish twist endings, not all of which feel quite right; for example, the outcome of Robinson's story, intended to be heartwarming, is too abrupt to be effective. All the stories are clever, though the weakest are the first (which is hurt by a lack of characterization and might have benefited from another 10 minutes or so of plot) and the last (which has a folktale feeling very different from the other stories, and also has almost nothing to do with Manhattan). Performances range widely from very good (Robinson, Rogers, Young, Francen, Gleason) to good (Boyer, Fields, Fonda, 'Rochester') to weak (Hayworth, Mitchell, and, in a rare non-stellar performance, Laughton, who seems to be lazily going through the paces in an underdeveloped role). Some, like Lanchester, Sanders, and Romero, don't get enough to do to register, though it's fun to see Margaret Dumont and Marcel Dalio (the croupier in CASABLANCA) in small roles in the restored Fields sequence. A DVD of this from Fox with commentary would be welcome. [VHS]

QUARTET (1948)

An anthology film of four short stories by Somerset Maugham. In its day, this film was seen as something unusual and its success led to two more Maugham films and a handful of other "omnibus" movies, but without a unifying theme or other organizing principal, it plays out like four randomly chosen episodes of a TV show. I've read some Maugham and I don't think of him as an O. Henry-type author whose stories turn on an ironic twist ending, but most of these do just that. In "The Facts of Life," a father (Basil Radford) tells his men's club friends about his son's adventures in Monte Carlo. After being warned by his father against gambling, lending money, and hanging out with strange women, the boy (Jack Watling) proceeds to gamble, lend money, and go home with a strange woman (Mai Zetterling). But instead of it all being the cause of his ruin, things actually go oddly right for the boy, which totally mystifies the old man. The delightful Naunton Wayne, who is frequently coupled with Radford in British movies to good comic effect, has a small role as one of the friends. The second story, "The Alien Corn," stars Dirk Bogarde as a young upper-class man who turns 21 and tells his father that his only ambition is to be become a professional pianist. The father is not happy but is persuaded to give him enough money to study in Paris for two years. When he comes back, he will submit to a "test" from an experienced pianist (Francoise Rosay), and if she says he has what it takes, he'll be allowed to follow his dream. The outcome is not terribly surprising, but it plays out well. Honor Blackman, who entered movie immortality as Pussy Galore in GOLDFINGER, plays his girl friend.

"The Kite" is a silly little story with elements of Mary Poppins and Bartleby. George Cole is a young man, still living with his parents, who is obsessed with kites and is quite proud of one very special kite he made on his own. He falls in love with Susan Shaw, disturbing his family's equilibrium, especially his mother's (Hermione Baddley). The kites become a weapon in a minor war between Shaw and Baddley, with the father (Mervyn Johns, who was Bob Cratchit in the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol) more or less observing from the sidelines. After Shaw smashes Cole's kite, he leaves her and refuses to pay any financial support, so he goes to jail where it seems as if he'll be a Bartleby figure, simply refusing to do anything, but the story is given a somewhat unconvincing happy ending by its narrator (Bernard Lee), a prison social worker. In the last story, "The Colonel's Lady," Cecil Parker is a stuffy country gentleman (a bit like Radford was in the first story) whose rather passive wife (Nora Swinburne) gets a book of poetry published. She gives him a copy to read, but he isn't interested until he realizes that the book is getting quite a bit of attention as a passionate, sexy read about a woman's memories of her dead lover. This last story has a near-perfect mix of humor and seriousness and solid performances from all, including Ernest Thesiger and Felix Aylmer. Each story is fine on its own, but, as I noted above, the lack of a strong tie between the tales leaves one feeling at sea. Maugham himself introduces the film, rather awkwardly. Among anthology films, the American O. HENRY'S FULL HOUSE is a little more fun, and the earlier British DEAD OF NIGHT is a must-see. [TCM]

STINGAREE (1934)

This is the most interesting of the lost RKO films recently recovered by TCM. It plays out like a rough cut version of a Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy operetta, more fun and with less singing. In Australia in 1874, the law and the gentry are in an uproar when they hear that the dashing highwayman Stingaree (Richard Dix) is in the country. He's the subject of ballads and legends, and the inspector (George Barraud, a Warner Baxter look-alike) has his men out in force to snare him. Mary Boland is a rich old lady who fancies herself an opera singer, though she's certainly not, and she's planning to hold a recital for visiting British composer Conway Tearle; Irene Dunne is her serving maid, a Cinderella-type orphan girl who actually has a wonderful voice, though Boland, knowing Dunne would show her up, will not allow her to be present for the recital. On a rainy night, with Barraud too drunk to be an effective policeman, Dix snatches Tearle, and, while passing himself off as the composer, meets and is charmed by Dunne and impressed by her voice. He snatches her away, though Tearle escapes, and on the night of Boland's party, Dix, risking capture, brings Dunne there to sing. Dix is shot and arrested, but Tearle is impressed with Dunne and when the furious Boland throws her out of the house, Tearle takes her to Europe to make her an opera star. Dunne goes, with encouragement from Dix, but can't get the romantic bandit out of her head, and years later, she returns in triumph to Australia, hoping to sing for Dix, who is back on the loose. The finale is romantic and exciting, and, as this is a pre-Code film, allows Dix and Dunne to escape both jail and repressive society to take off into the wild unknown together. I've not always been terribly impressed with Dix, but he fits the bill quite nicely here, and at times he sounds exactly like Robert Preston as Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN; Dunne and Boland are both perfect in their roles; Henry Stephenson is Boland's husband, Andy Devine is Dix's sidekick, and Una O'Connor is the nervous maid who calls Dix "Stinky-ree." Reginald Owen has a small but crucial role as an important official. The movie can't really be called a musical, though there are a few songs, the most fun one being "If I Were a Fisherman," sung badly by Boland. Quite fun. [TCM]