HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN (1964)

Aliens plummet to earth from the moon and force the people of Samar to sacrifice groups of young men and women every three months at the Mountain of Death. Gladius, advisor to Samar's Queen Samara, begs her to find a way to stop the sacrifices, but it turns out she's in cahoots with the moon men (or man, as I think we only ever see one of them, usually in the form of a transparent hologram); they have promised her that when they take over the world, she can rule with them. Gladius asks Hercules to help stop the slaughter. Complicating matters is Princess Billis, she of the fabulous 60s hairdo, who is about to be sacrificed—her blood will revive her look-alike, the dead moon queen Selene. Billis's boyfriend Darax fights for her, even taking an arrow in the chest and surviving, as do a band of rebels. Hercules joins in, escaping drowning in a pit, killing a monster, facing a small army of huge stone creatures, and surviving torture in which he is slowly pressed between two large spiked slabs. Then, of course, there's the alien's prediction that a cosmic cataclysm is about to strike the earth.

Of all the 60s peplum musclemen, I think Alan Steel is the most appealing—he's seems happy and excited doing what he's doing (not bored like Reg Park in HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN), has an open and friendly face, is quite well built without being grotesquely bulbous, and does a great job sweating and straining under torture. This film has the added attraction of a science-fiction element spicing up the usual storyline. The special effects are not great, consisting mostly of a sickly green tinting of any scenes on and in the Mountain of Death; the alien is a tall robed figure wearing an owl-face mask, and the final disaster is very disappointing. But the stone men are kinda cool, and the typical sword-and-sandal action scenes are carried off well, especially the spiked torture of Hercules. Many critics (and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang) make fun of the lengthy sandstorm scene near the end, but though it definitely does go on too long—"Deep hurting!!" to quote the MST3K robots—I enjoyed the shifting color washes and the swirling sands. Had I seen this movie when I was fourteen, the long torture scene, with lingering close-ups of Hercules's sweaty arms and chest, would have been like gay porn for me. Not the best of peplums, but not quite as bad as its reputation, though it must be seen in widescreen. [DVD]

MISS ROBIN CRUSOE (1954)

This adaptation of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe changes the sex of the main character (and of his companion Friday) and adds a romantic interest, but retains several details of the original story—which I admit here that I've never read. In 1659, a hurricane hits a ship traveling to Brazil and two survivors are washed up on an isolated island: Robin, the cabin boy who is actually a girl in disguise (Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty from the TV classic Gunsmoke), and an old salt named Sykes. When Sykes assaults Robin, she fights back and he winds up falling off a cliff. In a few months time, after she has built herself a treehouse for shelter, she discovers a cannibal tribe on the island and interrupts a ritual which involves splitting two women in half as sacrifices. Robin manages to save one of them and takes her back to the treehouse, naming her Friday; together, they manage to thrive until, after a huge storm hits, another sailor is washed up on shore. At first, Robin is wary of Jonathan (George Nader) and refuses his help, but soon realizes that the three of them working together is not such a bad thing. She even starts to fall for him, but a major bone of contention remains: he wants to patch up a small 2-person canoe and go out to find help nearer to the shipping lanes, but Robin won't leave Friday behind. When Jonathan sneaks away in the canoe by himself, Robin feels betrayed. Soon, Jonathan returns but so does the cannibal tribe.

This definitely counts as a novelty. In addition to the gender switch, there's the somewhat schizophrenic style: some of it looks like Gilligan's Island, having been filmed on soundstages, but some of it was shot, if not on location in the South Pacific, at least outside on an actual beach. Most sequences end with an very abrupt blackout; I thought at first it was a film splice problem but it happened throughout the movie. The color palate is quite bright which makes it fairly pleasing to the eye. Given the small number of characters, we don't get to know Robin very much at all, and Blake's performance is rather two-note: either suspicious/fearful or arrogant/aloof. Nader is OK but again his character is completely flat. The fact that these two get involved is much more about lust than love; I imagine that after they're rescued, they'll realize they are both boring people with nothing in common. There's a strange scene of Friday (Rosalind Hayes) stroking Robin's arm and hair while she sleeps, but nothing comes of it. An odd little film. [Warner Archive Instant]

RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945)

An almost completely fictional biopic about George Gershwin, one of the great composers of the 20th century. Once you've accepted that little in this film is based on fact (despite the presence in the film of several real-life friends of Gershwin), you can settle back and more or less enjoy this as a fictional film with some great music—though considering they had the Gershwin catalog to choose from, the renditions of most of the songs leave much to be desired. We begin with the working-class Gershwin family, and young brothers George and Ira excited to see that a piano is being delivered to their humble Bronx apartment. George (played as an adult by Robert Alda) takes to it immediately and soon works his way up to become a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley. On the side, he begins writing his own songs and taking lessons from Prof. Franck (Albert Bassermann) who feels Gershwin is wasting his talent on creating disposable pop music. Next thing you know, he's writing for singer Julie Adams (a fictitious character played by Joan Leslie) and he becomes the toast of Broadway, turning out songs like "Swanee" and "I Got Rhythm." Still pursuing serious music, his jazz-inflected "Rhapsody in Blue" is a smash success played in a concert hall by Paul Whiteman's orchestra. George and Julie get friendly though remaining chaste, but when George goes to Paris for musical inspiration (and eventually writes another serious piece, "An American in Paris"), he meets Christine (Alexis Smith), a well-connected woman-about-town, and a love triangle is set that ultimately goes nowhere. When he starts fretting about not having enough time to do everything he wants, and then begins getting debilitating headaches, we know the end (a brain tumor) is near.

There's no use pointing out the inaccuracies here because there are so many. Even when they get something right, like the success of "Rhapsody in Blue," not enough attention is given to it; it's just one more step on the ladder to the top. This is largely a missed opportunity for a colorful Gershwin revue; had this been done by Arthur Freed's unit at MGM, it would have been filled with stars performing the songs as splashy production numbers, but here at Warner Bros. we're stuck with lukewarm renditions, mostly by the bland Joan Leslie (voice dubbed by Sally Sweetland). Anne Brown, who actually played Bess in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, sings a bit of "Summertime," and Hazel Scott and Al Jolson sing some songs as themselves.  And very few of the 20+ songs are done in their entirety. Alda is unremarkable in the central role, but a handful of other actors do nice work, including Morris Carnovsky as George's father, Herbert Rudley as Ira (pictured at right with Alda), Albert Bassermann as the music professor, and Alexis Smith as one of the two (totally fictitious) love interests—in real life, Gershwin apparently played the field. Best of all is Oscar Levant playing himself; the hangdog, snarky Levant (pictured top left with Alda) is always welcome in a sidekick role, and he actually knew and worked with Gershwin. In fact, it's Levant’s playing that we hear whenever we see Alda at the piano. The highlight of the film is the playing of the Rhapsody; it's well-played and well-shot, and as it comes about an hour into the movie, you can shut it off when it's over and miss the last draggy 75 minutes. [Warner Archive Instant]

THE FLORENTINE DAGGER (1935)

In a nicely atmospheric opening sequence which would not be out of place in a Universal horror film of the era, three men who don't know each other get off a train at the small, largely unvisited Italian town of Rossanu, which is dominated the deserted castle of the Borgias nearby. Two of men seem to vacationing: Victor Ballau (Henry O'Neill), a play producer, and Gerard Lytton (C. Aubrey Smith), a doctor. The third, Juan Cesare (Donald Woods), keeps to himself and seems a bit haunted. It turns out that he is a descendent of the Borgias and is convinced that bad Borgia blood will eventually lead him to murder so he's decided to kill himself. Lytton manages to stop him, and suggests creating art as a way of achieving catharsis. So Juan does just that: he writes a play about Lucretia Borgia and, back in Vienna, Ballau agrees to stage it with his daughter Florence (Margaret Lindsay) starring as Lucretia. Juan falls intensely for Florence and even though she seems a bit reticent, he asks her father for her hand. Ballau won't allow them to marry, afraid that Juan's potential homicidal drive may not quite be cured. One night, Florence leaves the theater in the middle of a performance without explanation, and later her father is found dead, stabbed with a Borgia dagger. Was it Florence? Juan? Dr. Lytton? Ballau's strange housekeeper? The police captain (Robert Barrat) is determined to find out, and he uncovers several unsavory secrets before the killer is revealed.

This is one of a short series of Clue Club films that Warner Bros. made in the mid-30s, and it begins very well, with the first few minutes conjuring up the opening the 1931 DRACULA (in fact, one character says that Juan is "something of a Dracula type"), but when the action moves to Vienna, it reverts to something more like an average B-mystery. Woods (pictured with O'Neill) is good, and Barrat is even better, being amusing without resorting to bumbling comic-relief shtick. Florence Fair is the housekeeper and Eily Malyon has a nice brief bit near the end as a mysterious wig and mask maker. The story, with its attempts at psychological depth, is interesting, but there is too much plot crammed into the 70-minute running time. The ending is unusual in that it seems to go against the Production Code, as the killer is basically let go. [TCM]

THE COSSACKS (1928)

The Cossacks consider themselves a tribe of "free men and warrior kings" and they are locked into traditional roles: the men go off to fight the Turks and the women stay home and work the land. But Lukashka (John Gilbert, pictured) is a lover, not a fighter, and though he has a very masculine manner, he prefers to stay home, lollygagging in the fields, and work at getting Maryana (Renée Adorée) into the sack. Despite her fond memories of him from childhood, she doesn't like what the villagers perceive as laziness or cowardice in him and rebuffs his advances. The worst aspect of Lukashka's attitude is that his father Ivan (Ernest Torrence) is the bloodthirsty leader of the Cossack men. After fellow Cossacks trap Lukashka one night and humiliate him by tying him up and making his stomp grapes (women's work), he retaliates and bests his father in a fight. When Turkish prisoners escape, Lukashka joins his fellow Cossacks and tracks them down, and once he draws blood—and suffers his first battle wound—there's no going back: he is now a warrior. But now Maryana finds that he has perhaps gone too far in the "fighter" direction, especially when he dallies with a gypsy whore. The arrival of Prince Olenin (Nils Asther), a messenger from the Tsar, complicates matters: the Tsar wants peace between the Cossacks and the Turks, and the prince has been ordered to marry Maryana as a way to mix the blood of the civilized and the savage.

This silent movie, based on a novel by Leo Tolstoy, is usually summarized as being about a young man who refuses to follow his fellow villagers to war, and his eventual turnaround. But that is actually less than half the story; Lukashka is "reformed" in the first half-hour of this 90 minute film, and the rest is taken up with the Lukashka/Maryana/Olenin triangle, and the attempts of the Cossacks to get back legitimately to their warrior ways. This is generally a dandy action film, with some surprisingly brutal scenes of battle and torture. Gilbert is very good, as usual; I particularly like the fact that the peace-loving Gilbert of the first part of the film doesn't behave in stereotypical "sissy" fashion—he just thinks there's more to life than war. His rather sudden change of heart doesn't seem realistic, but the fighter Gilbert is just as compelling as the lover Gilbert. Adorée is fine, and Asther, though not around for long, makes his character memorable. A grand physical production adds to the film's appeal. [TCM]

THE HARVEY GIRLS (1946)

This musical has Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and Virginia O'Brien, three people I usually like to see, and a very young and sexy Angela Lansbury (pictured), not to mention the epic musical number "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," so as a card-carrying lover of musicals, especially the ones that Arthur Freed's unit turned out at MGM, I should love this movie, but I don't.  However, on a second viewing recently, I discovered that I don't dislike it as much as I thought I did—faint and ambiguous praise, I know. The plot's background is based on the real life restaurant chain called Harvey's, from the late 19th century, which expanded by opening new locations in small frontier towns, helping to give those towns a veneer of respectability to attract travelers. Judy Garland is a city girl who has come out to a small Old West town to marry a man she's been corresponding with; arriving on the same train are a number of Harvey Girls, young women who will work as waitresses at the new Harvey House opening in town. Garland's sweetheart (Chill Wills) is a tad too old for her, and it turns out that the letters he sent were actually ghostwritten by another fella (John Hodiak). They call off the wedding but Garland decides to stay and join the Harvey Girls, and an attraction slowly builds between her and Hodiak. The conflict: Hodiak runs a popular saloon (and, it's implied, whorehouse) that may lose a great deal of business to the new restaurant, and though Hodiak tries to keep the battle clean, some of his men resort to underhanded methods to stop people from patronizing Harvey's, culminating in a fire being set by the bad guys.

The movie actually has a number of pluses, beginning with the ten-minute "Atchison" number performed on and around the trains. Even Marjorie Main gets a verse which she brays out in that ragged voice of hers. Many of the supporting players are fine: on the male side, Wills, Bolger, and Preston Foster (the chief baddie); on the distaff side, the seductive Lansbury (tarted out in some fabulous colorful and shiny outfits), and O'Brien (who vanishes halfway through because her pregnancy began to show) and Cyd Charisse as Harvey girls. The sets and costumes are first-rate and the songs are fine. Disappointingly, it's the leads that let the movie down. Garland seems distracted or unwilling to commit her all, except in her songs, and Hodiak is unattractive and charmless.  Among the songs, only "Atchison" stands out. Worth a viewing, but I will never consider this one of MGM's musical gems. [Warner Archive Instant]

MURDER IS MY BEAT (1955)

Good cop Bert (Robert Shayne) goes after bad cop Ray (Paul Langton) who has been holed up in a roadside motel after running off with convicted murderess Eden Lane (Barbara Payton). When Bert finds Ray, Eden's not there, but Ray begs Bert to give him 24 hours to try and clear up the mess his life has become. In an extended flashback, we see Ray investigating the murder of businessman Frank Dean, found in his home, his head and hands burned beyond recognition in his fireplace. Eden, his mistress, works at a cheap nightclub with her roomie Patsy, but Eden is already on the run, having hopped a bus to an isolated and snowbound mountain cabin. Ray catches up with her and takes her back to L.A. where she is found guilty of murder. When Ray escorts her on a train to prison, she looks out the window at a small-town stop and insists she sees the supposedly dead Frank Dean, alive and well. Ray believes her; the two of them jump off the train and go back to the small town to figure out what's up. Eventually Ray and Eden become romantically involved, but one day she vanishes. When Bert hears this story, he agrees to give Ray one day, and helps him to track down the truth.

This B-noir from director Edgar G. Ulmer is more accomplished in terms of script, production and acting than his classic no-budget film DETOUR but it doesn't pack the punch of that earlier movie. Still, this is worth seeing as a classic noir narrative. Langton (pictured with Payton) is just about perfect as the weary, dogged cop who may or may not be truly out for justice—or maybe he's just blinded by lust. Payton's real-life story—abuse, public fights, drugs, an arrest for shoplifting—could have come out of a noir movie, but she's very good here, basically at the end of her career. The low budget does have some liabilities—there are many scenes of people dialing phones, and dialogue-heavy scenes that convey information rather than action shots. But the sequence of Langton trudging through a snowstorm to get to Payton's cabin was clearly filmed during a real snowstorm, resulting in perhaps the most realistic snow scene ever outside of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Recommended for noir fans. [Warner Archive Instant]

INSIDE THE LINES (1930)

As World War I is breaking out, Eric (Ralph Forbes) and Jane (Betty Compson), two British citizens in Berlin, meet and fall in love in one week's time, but one morning she announces that she must leave immediately and is mysterious about the reason. We discover that she's actually a German spy and a coded message sends her on a mission to Gibraltar to obtain British war plans: she is set up to be a houseguest at the governor's house and is given the combination to an electrified safe which houses the plans, and also instructions on how to get around being electrocuted and how to pass off the plans to a contact. She is also given a new identity, that of young Ellen who hasn’t visited in fifteen years, and is coached in the details of the family that Ellen would be expected to know. Things go smoothly until Eric shows up; he's confused, of course, and she doesn’t offer a very convincing explanation. But when she goes the steal the plans, Eric appears, apparently her contact, so they're both German spies. Or are they?

An early talkie, things don’t start out promisingly as the opening farewell scene is played out in a static fashion with over-the-top melodramatic line readings—at one point, Eric even says that their situation sounds like something out of an old melodrama. But things improve a bit once the scene moves to Gibraltar, or maybe I just got used to the style. Compson (pictured above with Forbes) had a long career, mostly in silent films, and she's OK here, though her co-star Forbes is more at ease; Compson sometimes feels a little blank, as though she's not sure herself if she's a spy or a double agent, or something else altogether. Ivan Simpson is amusing as a British underling who is quite taken with Compson, though his acting style suggests a character who is a little light in his loafers. Mischa Auer is a Indian servant who plays an important role in the climax. I wasn't sure about this one at first, but I ended up enjoying it. [TCM]

THE DISEMBODIED (1957)

Deep in the African jungle, Carl, a doctor, lives with his young, vivacious wife Tonda (Allison Hayes; she looks about as Caucasian as he is, but she's apparently a native) at the edge of a small village. She doesn't seem terribly content with her lot in life—in the first scene, we see her use a voodoo doll to cause her napping husband to start suffocating, though when Suba (a villager and house servant) arrives to help him, she stops. Soon after this, three filmmakers—Tom, Norman and Joe—arrive, with Joe unconscious and badly injured from a lion mauling. The doctor tends to him but warns them that the case looks hopeless. Tom (Paul Burke) and Tonda hit it off and, while flirting, he asks, "How can a young and beautiful girl be happy living in the jungle?" Her sultry reply: "How do you know I'm happy?" Suba sees her with Tom and calls her a "bad, bad woman" but kisses her up anyway, which naturally bothers Suba's wife Mara. That night, Tom witnesses Tonda leave the house and lead the villagers in a voodoo ritual that involves the tied-up shirtless Suba having a dead chicken thrown on his chest. The next morning, Suba is dead but Joe is miraculously recovering from his wounds. The problem: the ritual has caused a transmigration of souls, and Suba's soul inhabits Joe's body, so needless to say, Tom's a little confused when the recovered Joe goes off with Mara. He's even more confused when Tonda asks Tom to kill her husband so she can go off with Tom.

Allison Hayes was a B-movie "scream queen" in late 50s films like ZOMBIES OF MARA TAU and ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, but this, though definitely a B-movie, isn't a horror film as much as a mildly exotic melodrama with supernatural overtones. And when the murder plot becomes apparent, it turns into DOUBLE INDEMNITY starring a frustrated voodoo priestess instead of a frustrated California housewife. Hayes was not a particularly good actress, but she had a certain "va-va-va-voom" (as we would have said as kids) element going for her, and that's good enough for this movie, though her voodoo dancing isn't as enthusiastic as male teens of the 50s might have liked. She doesn't even try for a native accent, though her skin does seem to have been darkened a degree or so, maybe with the same kind of make-up Ava Gardner used to "dusky up" in SHOW BOAT. Paul Burke, best known for TV work on Naked City and Dynasty (and as the male lead in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS) acquits himself well enough as the moderately hunky hero. Once you realize that the horror/gore quotient here is fairly low—one character's heart is cut out but we don't see it—it's an enjoyable enough trashy melodrama. Pictured are Burke and Hayes. [Warner Archive Instant]

WILD ORCHIDS (1929)

Middle-aged businessman Lewis Stone is married to young trophy wife Greta Garbo; we first see the two arrive just in time to board a ship to Java. She's looking forward to the trip as a second honeymoon, but for him, it's mostly a business trip about investing in plantations. In the hallway outside her room, Garbo sees the handsome, exotic Nils Asther beating a servant. She's revolted by his behavior, but Asther is entranced by her and, as he happens to own a tea plantation in Java, he cozies up to the couple, inviting them to stay at his estate and even offering to host a tiger hunt. That night, when he and Garbo are alone, Asther comes on strong, comparing her to "the mysterious, misty orchids" of Java and kissing her. She slaps him and leaves, but later has dreamy, sexy visions of Asther's whipping incident. Over time at Asther's plantation, he and Garbo soon grow close; it takes a while for the oblivious Stone to suspect that something's up, but it isn't until the tiger hunt that things come to a head. There's nothing very original going on in this silent movie version of the traditional triangle involving the frustrated wife, the distant husband, and the appealing playboy, but it's all pulled off fairly well, with MGM gloss and solid acting. The first shot of Garbo arm in arm with Andy Hardy's dad (which is how I'll always think of Lewis Stone) was a bit disorienting but I got used to them. Asther doesn't really have much of a character to fall back on, but he's handsome and strikes a nice balance between slick and slimy. Though the film is silent, there are, in addition to a full musical score, numerous sound effects throughout. [TCM]

EDGE OF DARKNESS (1943)

The Norwegian resistance movement during WWII is well-documented, and stories of the bravery of the Norwegian people were used as the basis of several propaganda movies of the era—as were stories of collaborationists who came to be called "quislings" after the Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling who worked with the Nazis after they occupied the country in 1940. Though THE MOON IS DOWN has the most distinguished pedigree—based on a play by John Steinbeck—this is probably the most exciting and entertaining of the mini-genre. The small fishing village of Trollness has put up with the occupation, under Nazi captain Helmut Dantine, for a couple of years, but most of the villagers have remained cold to the occupiers and are looking to the unofficial leader of the resistance movement (Errol Flynn) and his girlfriend (Ann Sheridan) for guidance, though all are getting restless. They soon get word that the British are smuggling in arms and they are asked to wait to rise up until a coordinated effort all along the coast is ready. During what appears to be a routine church service, the villagers, all the while looking forward at the pastor (who is a pacifist), debate three points: rebel now, wait, or do nothing. They decide to wait and accept the weapons, though Sheridan's father (Walter Huston), a respected doctor, is uncomfortable with any active resistance. Meanwhile, Sheridan's brother (John Beal) arrives from out of town and takes the collaborationists' side, becoming friendly with Dantine and a Polish woman (Nancy Coleman) who is being "kept" by the Nazis. When a respected retired teacher refuses to give up his home to the Nazis, he is beaten in public and has all his books torn up. This flashpoint passes as the wait for the rest of the coast continues, but after Sheridan is raped by a Nazi and a German soldier is killed, Dantine rounds up the town leaders (including Flynn, Sheridan and Huston) and holds a public execution, forcing each Norwegian to dig his own grave first. Surprisingly, it's the pastor who fires the first shot against the occupiers and triggers the armed revolt.

Though the story is a Hollywood fantasy of resistance—there was apparently no armed uprising of any kind in Norway—it is compelling, well-acted and directed with some visual flair by Lewis Milestone (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT). There is interesting use of camera movement and miniatures, and the church meeting sequence works up quite a bit of tension with odd shots from behind and from the sides of the actors. Flynn and Sheridan make a good leading couple, and though Flynn is the star, it's to his credit that his character ends up more or less blending in with the rest of the townspeople. Huston shines by underplaying, and in a cast full of small but meaty roles, the standouts are Judith Anderson as another village leader, Morris Carnovsky as the teacher, Charles Dingle as the quisling owner of the town fishery, Henry Brandon as a British spy who wears a Nazi uniform, and Richard Fraser as the pastor. (The picture at left shows Huston, Sheridan, Flynn and Anderson at the execution site.) The movie has a grim opening, one of the darkest of any Hollywood movie of the era, set after the climactic revolt: two German pilots flying over the town see a Norwegian flag flying instead of the German flag, land to investigate, and find the village heaping full of corpses, both natives and Nazis. Yes, it's a glossy studio production and rarely shakes off its soundstage feel, and with a running time of two hours, could have used some judicious editing, but overall it's one of the best of the WWII propaganda films. [DVD]

COP HATER (1958)

In a striking opening set at night during a big city heat wave, a shirtless man gets up from a nap, grabs a gun, gets dressed, kisses his wife, and walks out onto the street where he is immediately shot down and killed in cold blood. He was a policeman, and when his partner is shot down a couple days later, the newspapers report a cop hater on the loose. The two chief investigators are Detectives Carelli (Robert Loggia) and McGuire (Gerald O'Laughlin); as they track unpromising leads, we get a picture of their private lives: Carelli has a good relationship with Teddy (Ellen Parker), his deaf girlfriend, and McGuire has a stormy relationship with his sexpot wife Alice (Shirley Ballard). There's also a reporter who thinks that a street gang (led by a young Jerry Orbach in his first movie role) is responsible. When a third cop is killed, we are treated to a CSI-type scene of forensic investigation before Teddy winds up in danger from the killer.

Based on an Ed McBain novel which was the first in his popular 87th Precinct series, this is a short, tense, effective B-thriller which kept me guessing despite some predictable moments—as soon as you see that Teddy has an elaborate system at her apartment in which a light blinks when someone is coming, you know she's going to wind up in trouble. The summer heat is conveyed nicely, and there are some surprisingly sexy moments between the beefy O'Laughlin and the curvy Ballard (pictured at left), particularly one scene with O'Laughlin sprawled out in a chair in only his boxers and Ballard trying on a new bathing suit at his request. Even Ellen Parker plays her big menace scene dripping wet in a wraparound towel. Vincent Gardenia (Mr. Mushnik in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS) has a small role. Loggia (SCARFACE, BIG) is so young and fit, he's practically unrecognizable (pictured above to the left of O'Laughlin). O’Laughlin (Lt. Ryker in the 70s TV show The Rookies) is very good; I don't remember seeing him before but I'll keep an eye out for more of his roles. Last line, from Robert Loggia as the credits role and the cops get back to business as usual: "There’s a guy with his insides hangin' out over by the river…” Small-scale enjoyable. [DVD]

NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950)

Barbara Stanwyck is single and pregnant; her lover (Lyle Bettger) abandons her, leaving her only a train ticket to San Francisco. On the train, she strikes up a conversation with Patrice, another pregnant woman who, with her husband, is heading off to meet her in-laws for the first time. The train derails and Stanwyck is taken to the hospital where she has her baby. Patrice and her husband are both killed, and circumstances lead the doctors to assume that she is Patrice. Stanwyck, weak and confused, doesn't correct them, and soon she is off to Frisco posing as Patrice. The family accepts her though she's caught off-guard a bit when the dead husband's brother (John Lund) comes home and she feels an attraction develop. Just as Stanwyck is feeling fairly secure, Betteger shows up to blackmail her. All the noir elements are in place, so of course there's guilt, deception and murder in the offing. Based on Cornel Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man (what a great title; I don’t know why it wasn't used for the movie), this is a top-notch noir melodrama, tainted only slightly by a typical Production Code ending that cops out; the novel's ending is perfect, and I highly recommend reading the novel, and anything by Woolrich. Stanwyck, of course, is good, as is everyone else. Lund, pictured with Stanwyck, is solid in the role of the largely passive male who digs in when he needs to; Bettger shines as the attractive but slimy blackmailer; Jane Cowl, as Stanwyck's mother-in-law, is good in a small but crucial role. A scene where a body is disposed of is reminiscent of a similar scene in Stanwyck's DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and in general the shadowy noir atmosphere is well presented. Recommended, but do yourself a favor and read the novel (which was remade more recently as MRS. WINTERBOURNE) as well. [DVD]

BOMBS OVER BURMA (1942)

Anna May Wong is a schoolteacher in Chungking during the Sino-Japanese War. It seems odd when an itinerant street peddler comes into her classroom one day hawking his wares, but he is actually delivering a coded message to Wong who does some spy work for the Chinese. She is to accompany a group of people on a bus along the Burma Road and help keep a food supply caravan safe while also being on the lookout for anyone who might be leaking information about such supply trips to the Japanese who then bomb the roads in an attempt to stop the supply chain. Back in the classroom, there is a horrific scene of a Japanese bombing; Wong evacuates the room but forgets one child who had been made to sit in the corner for misbehavior, and he is killed by a bomb blast. Distraught, Wong is even more determined to carry out her mission, but along the way, the bus breaks down and the small group of travelers spends the night in a Buddhist monastery. Tensions rise among the group members, which include a British diplomat (Leslie Denison) and an obnoxious American (Dan Seymour), and when it's discovered that the head monk (Noel Madison, pictured at left with Wong) has a secret transmission room hidden behind a large Buddha statue, we're not sure who to trust.

In general, I can't join the chorus of voices in praise of Anna May Wong. She was certainly a culturally important figure as one of the first popular Asian-American movie stars, but I've rarely found her performances compelling, with words like "wooden" and "low-key" recurring in many of my reviews of her films (DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, WHEN YOU WERE BORN, CHU CHIN CHOW). The same goes for her here; the only time I found her effective was when she expressed sorrow over the death of the child. The first half of this Poverty Row B-film is sluggish, but the pace picks up with the interplay of characters at the monastery, which itself has a nicely mysterious (albeit low-budget) atmosphere. Aside from Wong, the acting is fine, and the way the climax plays out is especially interesting, with a surprisingly intense moment of reckoning for the villain. Sadly, it seems the only print available is in bad shape with lots of splices and dirt; it's just this side of watchable. [Streaming]

BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER (1960)

Astronaut Robert Clarke is being shot into orbit higher than anyone has ever been, and at one point it appears as if his craft splits into two. He loses contact with ground control but is able to land with no problem. But when he gets out of his plane, the airbase is deserted and indeed looks like it has fallen into ruins. A group of deaf-mutes hustle him away to an underground place called the Citadel where he learns his has traveled in time to the year 2024. A nuclear plague has sent remnants of the human race underground—too many atomic bomb tests tore apart the ozone layer and the earth is ravaged by dangerous cosmic rays. Only a handful of people can still speak, including an old guy called The Supreme (no Motown puns, please), and even fewer are fertile, such as his lovely deaf-mute—and telepathic—daughter (Darlene Tompkins). The speaking elite want Clarke to mate with Tompkins, but a small rebellious band of speakers, led by Arienne Ulmer, want to get Clarke back to his own time to warn everyone and make the world stop the bomb tests. For a B-movie (directed by the king of the Bs, Edgar G. Ulmer), this is fairly ambitious. Some of it works and some doesn't. The sets, all pyramids and triangles (see picture at right), are pretty nifty for a low-budget film; apparently the interiors were shot in Dallas at the Centennial Fair Grounds. The plot is OK, though the acting is about average, no better. There's a subplot about primitive mutants who suffered the full brunt of the "cosmic plague" and are enslaved which feels like an underbaked steal from The Time Machine. For fans of the B-movie SF genre, it's worth seeing. [DVD]

THE RETURN OF BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1934)

I've reviewed films in the Bulldog Drummond series previously, but before the series became a Hollywood property with restless former soldier Drummond turned into a sleuth, this British entry, based directly one of the original novels by H.C. McNeile, presented a different Drummond, an adventurer and vigilante, and maybe a bit of a fascist. When the president of the World Peace Organization is assassinated, an underground group called the Black Clan vows to act against foreign agitators who the Clan believes are responsible for the death and for the spreading of pro-war propaganda. Drummond (Ralph Richardson) is secretly the leader of the Clan, and his usually useless and rather dandified buddy Algy (Claude Allister) is his very helpful right-hand man. Carl Peterson (Francis L. Sullivan), posing as a minister working for orphan relief, is actually the head of the warmongers. He whips up a poisonous gas that can paralyze its victims, kidnaps Drummond's wife (Ann Todd), and drugs Drummond and puts him in a car headed straight into a river. Of course, Drummond and Algy win in the end, but on our way there, this is a very entertaining thriller in the Boys' Own Adventure mold; I especially liked the black leather outfits and goggles that the Clan members wear (see the picture of Richardson at left). Richardson is quite good in the lead role, and Allister goes nicely against his usual effete persona—in fact, the middle of the film has a kind of Scarlet Pimpernel feel to it, perhaps crossed with the atmosphere of Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent. Nice for something different, but probably not if you're in the mood for a more traditional Bulldog Drummond mystery. [Criterion streaming]

A BELL FOR ADANO (1945)

During the American occupation of Italy near the end of WWII, Army major John Hodiak is put in charge of bringing some semblance of order back to the village of Adano. When he and his men arrive, they find mostly women and older people, with many of the younger men in prison camps and others in hiding. Some time is spent getting the trust of the people, and sorting out the Fascist collaborators, but as townsfolk begin trickling in, the most important matter to them is replacing the revered church bell that the Fascists took and melted down for bullets. The people of Adano are slow to take to Hodiak, but when the Army bans horse carts on the roads, an action which hurts the people's livelihoods, Hodiak stands up for them and slowly he and the townspeople build up a mutual respect and even affection. Though he has a wife back home, Hodiak also begins feeling affectionate for blond native Gene Tierney—she dyed her hair blonde in order to feel special. With some help from the Navy, Hodiak manages to get a bell for the church tower, but when the Army finds out that he has subverted their orders, he may not get a chance to see the bell put in place.

This sweet-natured but not sappy film, based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by John Hersey, reminds me of the later film TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON, both involving American military men who gain the trust of an occupied population and get into trouble with their superiors. The film is very low-key—there never seems to be much at stake here, and even the Fascists are treated with humor if not warmth—but the characters are well-drawn and well-acted, and though the ending is nothing if not predictable, I was still happy to stick around and spend some time with these folks. I don't usually like Hodiak, but I got used to him quickly here—it helps that he looks very good with a crew-cut, and that he's not trying too hard as he did in THE HARVEY GIRLS—and he and Tierney (both pictured above) do have a nice intimate chemistry in their tender moments together. Fine support is given by William Bendix as Hodiak's buddy (he gets a good drunk scene near the end), Glenn Langan as a Navy man with a can-do attitude, and Harry Morgan and Marcel Dalio. Not earth-shaking, but a nice movie that has been difficult to see until recently. [TCM]

THE KILLING (1956)

Stanley Kubrick’s third feature film is a solid crime thriller which shows occasional signs of the style that made Kubrick an important figure in cinema. With Dragnet-style narration, the story is told of an attempt by a group of men to make a killing by stealing millions of dollars from a racetrack in broad daylight, while the track is open and with crowds milling about. The boss, Sterling Hayden, is a crook just out from a stretch in jail. Two guys who work at the track (Elisha Cook Jr. and Joe Sawyer) are the insiders who will help Hayden get to the room where the money will be transferred to an armored truck. An over-the-hill Russian boxer will start a fight in the bar to distract the crowds and the security men; at the same time a hired gun will shoot a horse during the race to cause even more confusion. Hayden will put on a face mask with a bulbous nose and hold the staff at gunpoint while he stuffs a huge sack with all the cash that will fit. On his way out, he will dump the sack out of a window where a crooked cop catches it and stashes it away for Hayden to pick up later to split up among the men. What could go wrong?

Well, for starters, there’s the milquetoasty Cook's knockout wife (Marie Windsor) who, when he lets the plans slip, makes her own plan with her studly lover (Vince Edwards) to get a piece of the pie (or maybe even the entire pie) for themselves. Not to mention the sweet old lady with a poodle who, in the climax, inadvertently winds up being as big a problem as Edwards. Kubrick's showy visual style is on display here, but it’s fairly subtle, used primarily in a series of tracking shots across rooms through the film. Though the story is generally presented in chronological order, the narrative is fractured in places, leading to flashbacks, and the occasional presentation of an event from two perspectives. The film is tense without resorting to artificial melodramatic tricks to tighten the screws. Acting is sometimes thought of as a weak link in Kubrick's movies, but everyone is practically perfect, from the reserved, tightly controlled Hayden right down to Timothy Carey as the off-kilter gunman. Best, however, are Cook—who winds up almost as the star of the show—as a sweaty, weasely schmoe, Windsor as his lusty, conniving wife, and Edwards (at right with Windsor) as the chunk o' sex who throws the biggest wrench of all into the proceedings. I've liked him in his 50s films, but it’s a shame that his TV stardom as Ben Casey seems to have ended his film career before it could blossom. A must-see for fans of crime, film noir, and Kubrick. [DVD]

MOTHER WORE TIGHTS (1947)

My Betty Grable problem: for me, she is absolutely unmemorable. I know who she is, I've seen a handful of her movies, I don't dislike her, but I can never remember anything about her or her movies. I don’t even think I could pick her out of a leggy pin-ups line-up. Her acting reputation is based on her musicals at Fox in the 40s, and those are mostly OK but bland and forgettable, recycling the same old "boy meets girl in an exotic location" plots (MOON OVER MIAMI, DOWN ARGENTINE WAY) without the stylish studio spark of MGM or much in the way of star chemistry like the RKO Astaire/Rogers movies.  The postwar Fox musicals had a different formula but were just as bland: stories of musical families, real and fictitious. Grable did her share of those and this is one of the first. In 1900, Myrtle McKinley (Grable) graduates from high school and goes to San Francisco to attend business school, or so her grandparents think; actually, she gets a job as a chorus girl at a vaudeville house and is discovered by star comic Frank Burt (Dan Dailey). She becomes part of his act and falls for him, but he, being rather unromantic, is a little stand-offish at first. Eventually they marry, and soon she has kids and retires from the act. The second half of the story, set several years later, focuses on their teenage daughter Iris (Mona Freeman) and her growing pains as she struggles to reconcile her feelings about her working-class entertainer parents with the upper-class students she gets to know at boarding school.

Grable and Daily work well together—this is the first of four movies they would make as a team—though without much of the charm or chemistry displayed by Astaire & Rogers. The first half is pleasant enough with some fun songs and period charm. But the last part in which the daughter takes center stage drags. Freeman is OK, but she's not charming or interesting enough that we care about her and what comes across as her petty teen angst melodrama. Sara Allgood is fine in a small part as Grable's grandmother; Lee Patrick gets a cute little dance bit to "Stumbling"; and during a sweet Christmas scene, novelty ventriloquist Senor Wences (who I remember from the Ed Sullivan show) appears. The movie is colorful with lovely costumes, but like most Betty Grable movies I’ve seen, it's mostly vanished from my experience already. [TCM/DVD]

MURDER HE SAYS (1945)

Fred MacMurray is a pollster who has arrived in a backwoods town looking for his predecessor who has gone missing. He was last seen with the Fleagles, a wildly eccentric hillbilly family who don't cotton to strangers comin' around, but against advice from some of the locals—who think that the whole family should be in jail—MacMurray rides his bike up to their house that night. His first sign that things aren’t right is the glow-in-the-dark dog he sees running through the woods. Other signs: a feisty matriarch (Marjorie Main) who wields a bullwhip and uses it regularly, two roughneck twins (both played by Peter Whitney), a daughter who has just escaped from prison, another daughter who's a little flighty and sings to herself, radioactive gravy, and a ghost (maybe). Soon he winds up racing through secret passages looking for missing loot with another outsider (Helen Walker). It's not really a spoiler to note that in the end virtually every character goes through a machine that packs them up inside bales of hay.

This is a "Tobacco Road" version of THE OLD DARK HOUSE with much wilder comedy and a sci-fi element—the glowing dogs and people and gravy. It has quite a cult reputation, and it starts off well, but like many entries in the screwball comedy genre (for example, BRINGING UP BABY), it's definitely an acquired taste. Viewers who don't like the film version of ARESENIC AND OLD LACE will have a problem with this for the same reason—it eventually goes breakneck-zany, with the dark humor and slapstick piling up a little too fast and furious for some tastes. I happen to like ARSENIC, even though I agree that it loses control near the end; this one gets even crazier, but it doesn't have Cary Grant to anchor it. MacMurray is OK, but he is overshadowed by Main (seeing her work that whip is pretty damn fun), Whitney (who is very good as the twins, and the effect that allows them to share the screen occasionally is good as well, as pictured at left), Porter Hall as Main's current husband and source of the glowing potion (pictured at right with Whitney and Main), and Jean Heather as the childlike daughter whose singing is a major clue to the whereabouts of the hidden money. There a cute reference to the Bob Hope movie THE GHOST BREAKERS (directed by this movie's director George Marshall) and the beginning of the nonsense song that Heather sings throughout is pretty much note-for-note the same as the theme to NPR's All Things Considered. I enjoyed this but I was rather tuckered out by the end. [TCM]