MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA (1948)

In New England at the end of the Civil War, Lavinia Mannon (Rosalind Russell) looks forward to the arrival of her father Ezra (Raymond Massey) and brother Orin (Michael Redgrave) from the war. She's been living with her mother Christine (Katina Paxinou) in the family mansion, and both women have a secret: Christine is in love with seaman Adam Brant; so is Lavinia. And the topper is that Adam is the illegitimate son of Ezra's brother. But incest seems to run in the family: when Ezra returns, we discover that Lavinia has an unhealthy obsession with him. (And as we'll soon discover, Orin seems almost equally obsessed with his mother.)  Erza wants to start over with the unhappy Christine, but when he has a heart attack, she gives him poison—which Adam helped her obtain—instead of medicine and he dies, and Lavinia figures out what happened. When the wounded and passive Orin returns home, Lavinia tells him of her suspicions and Orin kills Adam which leads Christine to kill herself. Brother and sister go off on a South Seas vacation and return to try and resume normal lives, but this proves impossible, in part because Orin is ashamed that Lavinia had a torrid affair with an islander, or so he thinks. When young Peter (Kirk Douglas) comes to court Lavinia, his sister Hazel sets her cap for Orin. Absolutely nothing good will come of these passions.

This almost three-hour film is an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill's play which is itself a modern version of the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. Little attempt is made to open the play up cinematically, and although this movie is generally disparaged by critics, it actually manages to sustain interest in the fashion of a soap opera. Russell (pictured with Redgrave) is too old for the Electra part, but once you get used to her, she holds with screen well opposite the commanding Massey (in the Agamemnon role) and Redgrave (Orestes). Paxinou looks the part but her strong Greek accent and her over-the-top histrionics work against her. However, it can be said—and has been—that all the actors go over-the-top in different ways, as that's what the material calls for. Redgrave comes off the best, though his character is not especially likable. Of course, it seems silly to talk about any O'Neill characters as likable; perhaps they can only be judged as more or less sympathetic. The young Kirk Douglas is not memorable, but that may partly be the weakness of his character. I'd avoided watching this for years, but I'm glad I overcame my prejudices based on critical perception and gave it a shot. [TCM]

BRIGHT LIGHTS (1930)

We meet Dorothy Mackaill on the last night of her hit musical, prancing about in her scanties and chatting with fellow performer and close friend Frank Fay about leaving her career to marry the rich, older, stuffy Philip Strange. In a scene that was copied later for SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, we hear Mackaill tell a reporter about her idyllic high-class past but what we see is how she really gained her performing experience, in rough-and-tumble bars in Africa where one night after her racy show, a drunken Portuguese smuggler (Noah Beery) assaults her in her dressing room; Fay comes to her rescue but when it looks like Berry gets the upper hand, Mackaill smashes a lamp against Berry's face and the two run for it. She tells the reporter about attending a fashionable girls school, but in reality she gets a job in a carnival as a hula dancer called Princess Lulu, accompanied by Fay who remains her protector. After Mackaill goes back onstage, we discover that Noah Berry, his face scarred by Mackaill's attack, is in the audience and seeking revenge. Will Fay, who's clearly been carrying a lifelong torch for Mackaill, be able to save her one more time, from both the dangerous Berry and from a loveless marriage?

Mackaill is largely forgotten today, perhaps partly because she left the business in the late 30s, but she was very active in the pre-Code era. Because of her vivid performance in the gloomy melodrama SAFE IN HELL, I think of her as a tragic type, but she's quite bubbly in THE FLIRTING WIDOW and she pulls off the carefree dancing girl role here quite well. If Fay is remembered today, it’s mostly as Barbara Stanwyck's troubled alcoholic husband, but he's quite good as well, pulling off a cocky yet vulnerable persona for the part of a pining lover. Frank McHugh steals most of his scenes as a drunken reporter who plays an important role in the climax of the film. Despite a murder in the last half, the movie retains a light tone, helped by a couple of fun production numbers. One, "I'm Crazy for Cannibal Love," is a wild comically exotic dance; in "Man About Town," Mackaill enters dressed in a tux and top hat, and then, surrounded by a gaggle of boy dancers, she changes into more a traditional female dance outfit. Recommended for fans of pre-Code musicals. Pictured are Mackaill and Fay. [TCM]

THE DESERT SONG (1943)

In 1939 French Morocco, a railroad is being built that will go from the north coast of Africa to the west coast, and the people of the tribe known as the Riffs are being rounded up and used as slave labor to build the railroad. But a mysterious figure known as El Khobar leads a band of rebel Riffs and successfully attacks work sites, freeing some of the enslaved. We soon discover that El Khobar is actually an American piano player named Paul Hudson (Dennis Morgan, at right) who shares an apartment with a war correspondent named Johnny. The movie is at pains to make us know that the villain here is not France itself but the local hotshot Youseff (Victor Francen) who is in league with the Nazis, secretly providing major financing for the railroad to use it for military purposes once they conquer the area. Other characters caught up in the action include night club singer Margot (Irene Manning), shady dealer Fan-Fan (Gene Lockhart), and a French colonel (Bruce Cabot) who is on the hunt for El Khobar but who might be persuaded to switch sides if he only knew the truth about the Nazis.

This is the second of three movie versions made of the Sigmund Romberg operetta, vaguely inspired by the activities of Lawrence of Arabia. The 1953 version is apparently relatively faithful to the play, but this version, by making the Nazis the bad guys, becomes something like a musical version of CASABLANCA, with Morgan in the Bogart role, Manning as a poor man's Ilsa, Francen as the Major Strasser figure, Cabot as Claude Rains' Capt. Renault, and even a Sydney Greenstreet stand-in with Gene Lockhart—and two actors from CASABLANCA, Marcel Dalio (the croupier) and Curt Bois (pickpocket) have small roles here. You can tell the two movies even shared some Moroccan street sets on the Warner Brothers lot. The film begins well as it sets up the characters, and it always looks great in glorious Technicolor with impressive shots of the Riffs riding en masse through the desert (actually New Mexico), but the atmosphere of exotic mystery and adventure dissipates quickly and we get bogged down in, among other things, ineffective comic relief from Lynne Overman as Morgan's buddy Johnny (this element worked no better in the 1953 version) and lackluster acting from Manning as the leading lady. Even the songs feel weak, with most of them, set in a night club, stopping the action dead. Still, on balance, I enjoyed the film; Morgan makes a sturdy and handsome hero and Bruce Cabot is fine as the colonel who might eventually join Morgan's side. And did I mention the wonderful color (pictured at left)? [TCM]

THE MEDUSA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

We are told that, "through the centuries, in olden times," great heroes have been given the honor of the title of Son of Hercules, and Perseus is one of these men, or will be when we meet him, but first we get some backstory. There's a Hamlet vibe in the royal house of Argos: the previous king was killed by Acrisius who then married his widow, Danae. Her son, who would be heir to the throne, has been missing and presumed dead for many years, but Danae believes that he (identifiable by three marks on his shoulder) will return someday. Acrisius will not let the people of nearby Seriphos pass through his land to get to the sea so they can engage in trade. The soldiers of Seriphos also have to deal with a deadly water dragon and the Medusa, not the serpent-haired woman of mythology, but a shambling treelike monster with tentacles and a single glowing eye with which it turns people to stone. In the middle of a battle between the two armies, most of the Seriphan soldiers, despite being warned not to look directly at the monster, wind up as statues. With his army decimated, the only way to avoid invasion by Argus is for the King of Seriphos to allow Acrisius’s son Galenore to marry his daughter Andromeda.

As Acrisius and Galenore head off to Seriphos seal the wedding deal, enter Perseus, handsome, fair-haired, and nicely built (though not your typical sword-and-sandal muscleman), who pals around with a fawn and enjoys occasional sylvan encounters with a mysterious young woman—who turns out to be Andromeda. And, gasp, he has three marks on his shoulder! When Galenore shoots Perseus's fawn for sport, the two wind up in a duel fought with whips, but Andromeda steps in and arranges for them to work things out in a tournament, with the winner getting Andromeda in marriage. Perseus wins but Galenore ungallantly kidnaps Andromeda. When Perseus goes to Argos after her, Danae recognizes his shoulder marks but Galenore kills Danae. The stage is now set for a climactic battle involving Perseus, Galenore, the two armies, the dragon, and lest we forget the movie's title, the Medusa, as the death of the Medusa may bring the stone soldiers back to life.

As you can tell, this has more narrative than the average Italain peplum movie. I'll let you to go to Wikipedia to check out the story of the mythical Perseus; suffice to say that some of the names and legends of his story (Medusa, Andromeda, relation to Hercules) are here, but mostly the plot is made up fresh for the movie. Richard Harrison makes a nice exception to the rule of the musclebound hero—he is handsome and fit, but he surely doesn’t have super strength. Because of the often atrocious dubbing in these films, it can be difficult to judge a performance, but Leo Anchoriz as the evil Galenore and Anna Ranalli (pictured with Harrison) as Andromeda are fine. The effects are cheap but surprisingly effective, especially the Medusa (pictured top right). This, like MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, was actually released under a different name in Europe (PERSEUS AGAINST THE MONSTERS) and first appeared in America as part of a television package of Sons of Hercules movies, hence the catchy theme song. Worth seeing, though I wish I'd seen a cleaned-up widescreen version instead of the dull colored pan-and-scan version. [Cable]

TARZAN’S SAVAGE FURY (1952)

Lord Oliver Greystoke is on safari in Africa with his guide Rokov, but when Greystoke takes aim at a lion, Rokov (Charles Korvin) takes aim at Greystoke and shoots him dead. Rokov and his partner in crime Edwards (Patric Knowles), a patrician looking Brit, steal Oliver's belongings and Edwards poses as the dead man. Their plot: to find Tarzan, Greystoke's cousin, and get him to take them to a hidden treasure of diamonds which they'll claim they want to take back to England to enrich the country's post-war coffers but they actually plan to keep for themselves. Meanwhile, we see Tarzan (Lex Barker) watching some natives use small children as bait for hunting crocodiles. He saves one child, Joey, a white orphan, and lets him stay with him and Jane, teaching the boy survival skills such as being able to stare down a lion. When the men meet up with our jungle family, Tarzan has his doubts, but Jane convinces him to help, so they all (including Cheetah) head out to cross potentially dangerous territory to find the gems. The bad guys act in the usual fashion, doing something stupid (in this case, unnecessarily shooting at a hippo) that puts the entourage in danger. There's also the usual danger from natives (in this case, a cannibal tribe), the usual trapping of Tarzan which puts him out of commission at a crucial moment, and the usual antics of Boy (err, Joey) and Cheetah which end up helping to save the day.

I've now seen all five of Lex Barker's Tarzan movies; he's not as muscly as Gordon Scott, or as articulate as Jock Mahoney, but he seems comfortable in the character. He's not as primitive or hot-headed as Weissmuller, though he still speaks in broken English and he is (rightfully) distrustful of white interlopers. Dorothy Hart is fine as Jane, and actually looks a bit like the original, Maureen O'Sullivan. Tommy Carlton is good as Joey, though this was his only movie role of credit. Hungarian actor Korvin is nicely villainous, and Knowles fills out the sort-of bad guy role well—he's bad at first but soon regrets his actions and tries to change, naturally with unhappy results. There isn't really any "savage fury" on display here—it would be up to Gordon Scott to give Tarzan a little more edge—but this is generally enjoyable, and though a couple of effects shots are poorly done, the stock footage scenes look like they've been refurbished. [TCM]

THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH (1957)

aka BIG TIME OPERATORS

Matt, a struggling novelist, and his wife Jean inherit some property from a great-uncle whom Matt barely remembers. When they hear it's a cinema in a small town, they get excited about the possibilities, but the reality is that the Bijou is known by the locals as the "flea pit"; it’s a small dilapidated theater with three old and eccentric employees. Hardcastle, the owner of the Grand, the bigger, more modern cinema in town, offers to buy the property from them to turn it into a parking lot, but Matt has a plan: engage in a surface effort to make improvements and keep the place going, so that Hardcastle will up the ante on his price. Things actually start looking up for a while. They show some Hollywood westerns and rowdy teenagers start showing up (partly for the fun of the movies, partly to make out). During "The Mystery of Hell Valley," Percy, the recovering alcoholic projectionist, pumps up the heat so their ice cream sells better, and hiring a lovely young woman to walk around selling snacks also helps. After some ups and downs, and an attempt at sabotage by Hardcastle, Old Tom, the senile usher, solves their problems with his own act of sabotage.

This is a charming little comedy with a nice atmosphere and good performances, but given the actors involved, it's a shame that the characters are not better developed. Matt and Jean are played by real-life couple Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna (pictured, of BORN FREE fame), Peter Sellers (in fairly artificial-looking old age make-up) is the projectionist, Bernard Miles is the usher and Margaret Rutherford (Miss Marple in the 1960s movie series) is the cashier. They're all fine, but each character remains flat, defined by only one trait or quirk. Despite the occasional misstep, you're never in doubt that things will turn out fine for Matt and Jean, though the way their happy ending comes about is unusual (and technically seems in violation of America's production code of the era in that someone breaks the law but isn't punished). The ending also has a fun callback to an earlier joke about a trip to Samarkand. It's a feel-good movie with a nice pace and good-natured tone. [TCM]

ISLE OF DESTINY (1940)

During a South Seas storm, radio contact is lost with famed pilot Virginia Allerton and her navigator Max as they fly their plane Lady Bird around the world. At the U.S. Marine base on the South Seas island of Palo Pango, Lt. George Allerton, her brother, is particularly upset, but finally, contact is made and two Marine buddies, Thornton and Barnes, are sent to meet her. When they do, both men fall for her and begin a rivalry to win her heart. Meanwhile, the dashing but dastardly Oliver Barton is operating a gunrunning ring on the island and he is determined to use Virginia's presence as a cover for sending a load of illegal arms to China. Barton's associate is a doddering old guy named Doc Spriggs who is pretending to be an ethnologist (and who actually does believe he has lived many past lives). As they socialize on Palo Pango while Virginia and Max prepare to continue their flight, Barton and Virginia agree on a friendly bet as to who can reach Guam first. Virginia is cautioned to avoid taking a dangerous route over the island when she leaves, but when Barton goes that way, she follows. In short order, she and Max wind up grounded and held by Barton. The plan is that, when Virginia again is not heard from, the swarming of planes looking for her will be a cover for Barton to fly his illegal arms out. But Barton hasn't planned on the involvement of Thornton and Barnes.

This B-adventure film is an odd duck. It’s cheaply made but the flying and action sequences are pulled off nicely. The two lead actors, William Gargan as Thornton and Wallace Ford as Barnes, though likeable, both come off as rather lightweight for Marines, or at least for Hollywood Marines. Ford seems intended as comic relief, but given the light tone of the entire film, it's more like the villain (well played by Gilbert Roland) is there for some dramatic relief. The movie is so light that the odd character of Doc Spriggs (Etienne Giradot) must function as comic relief for the bad guys—otherwise, there is no reason for his character to exist. June Lang is fine as Virginia, showing more spunk than many B-heroines of the era did. Good support comes from Grant Richards as George and Ted Osborne as Max. There is a cute song, "Moonlight Magic," sung by four Marines as a serenade to Virginia. One of the singers is Thurl Ravenscroft, best known for singing "You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in the original Grinch TV special. This was the first, and apparently only, film shot in Cosmocolor, though it seems only black and white prints still exist. Pictured are Ford (left) and Gargan. [YouTube]

SUNNY (1941)

In New Orleans during Mardi Gras, handsome rich guy Larry Warren (John Carroll) is swept away from his sister and parents in a crowd and literally bumps into the lovely Sunny O'Sullivan (Anna Neagle, pictured with Carroll). As she's in a hurry to make an appointment, he tries to navigate their way through the crowded streets, but they run into a street combo who won't let them move while they sing "The Lady Must Be Kissed"—so he kisses her (when she darts off, the combo calls her a "kiss and run girl.") Larry and his family attend the Streamlined Sawdust circus and he sees Sunny performing and makes a date with her; in a mix-up, she is stood up, but Larry finds her and the two hit it off so well, he proposes to her that night. Her circus friends are sad to see her go, but Larry's sister Elizabeth (Frieda Inescourt) feels Sunny is a lower class golddigger and tries to stop the relationship. She thinks she has a sympathetic relative in Aunt Barbara (Helen Westley), but surprisingly, when Sunny visits the family mansion, she finds an ally in the strong willed Barbara. It looks like smooth sailing until, on the day of the wedding, Sunny's raucous circus friends show up and cause chaos ("They're ad-libbing all over the place!" someone says) that threatens to derail everything.

There’s nothing new or very original in this romance of rich snobs vs. salt-of-the-earth folks, but it all passes quickly and painlessly. The Broadway musical this is based on was a big hit in 1925 for Marilyn Miller who reprised her role in a 1930 film version (in which most of the songs were cut out). This B-movie remake has a handful of songs and a few athletic dance numbers performed by Ray Bolger who gets top billing despite having a relatively small role. Neagle, a big star in England, never quite took off in the States, and she seems fairly colorless here. Carroll, one of my favorite B-leading men, made this worth my while with his looks and charm. Edward Everett Horton, as the family lawyer, is another bright spot, as is Helen Westley as the crusty aunt. The somewhat rushed ending (Carroll calls off the marriage because of the behavior of the circus folks, then suddenly changes his mind) tries for an antic madcap tone but mostly feels jumbled and forced. Still, a watchable B-musical. [YouTube]

TARZAN AND THE MERMAIDS (1948)

The last of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies has a more elaborate plot than most of the others, requiring an off-screen narrator to set things up for us. The isolated island of Aquatania, not far from the river that runs past Tarzan's home, has set itself up as taboo to strangers. The people worship a god named Balu, a statue that occasionally comes to life and makes pronouncements communicated to the natives by the high priest Palanth (George Zucco). Balu has the people dive for pearls and bring them to him as offerings. What we soon find out is that Balu is actually a shady pearl dealer named Varga who puts on a mask and robe for his appearances (pictured), and he and Palanth have rigged this island as an easy money-making scheme. When Mara (Linda Christian) is chosen against her will to be Balu's bride, she escapes into the sea and winds up in the river where Tarzan finds her, thinking for a moment that she's a mermaid. Tarzan and Jane take her in, but a gang of Aquatanian men find her and snatch her back to the island. Tarzan goes to rescue her, joined eventually by the local commissioner who is investigating pearl smuggling, and by Tiko (Gustavo Rojo), Mara's boyfriend who was exiled from the island for speaking out against Balu.

Weissmuller went out with a bang with this movie which mostly shook off the formulaic doldrums into which the Tarzan films had settled. Boy is gone (being schooled in England) and the antics of Cheetah the chimp are sharply reduced. The evil white hunter is now an evil pearl trader, and, though the actor playing him (Fernardo Wagner) actually has little to do, his henchman, the fabulous George Zucco, gets quite a bit of screen time to be dastardly. A new character—Benji, the singing mailman, played by John Laurenz—acts as a theatrical chorus, summarizing plot points in song. Near the climax, Tarzan executes a dangerous dive from a high cliff; according to rumor, the stunt man who did the dive died as a result, but that seems to be unsubstantiated. Brenda Joyce as Jane is fine if a bit colorless, but Christian (who soon married Tyrone Power) and Rojo are fine as the threatened lovers. Weissmuller had been seeming a bit bored and bloated in previous films, but for his last stand, he's a bit more energized, even if his acting remained lackadaisical at best. BTW, despite the title, there are no mermaids other than the swimming Mara. [TCM]

DIONYSUS IN '69 (1970)

I was quite happy to find this oddity from early in Brian DePalma's career, a film of a performance of an avant-garde play performed in New York City by an experimental troupe led by Richard Schechner. My impressionable 12-year-old self was fascinated with the press coverage of the avant-garde art scene in the 60s, and I have a vivid memory of reading about this play in magazines like Life. It looked less like a play and more like a "happening," one of those free-form art events, often including audience participation, that were all the rage in the hippie era. The play is performed more or less in the round, with the audience sitting on the floor and on scaffolding that surrounds the primary performance space. The text, such as it is, is drawn from The Bacchae by Euripides, and the best way to summarize what happens in this play is to go to the source. Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility, has come to town and his female followers have whipped themselves into a frenzy of religious ecstasy, much to his pleasure. But the young king Pentheus is opposed to this worship (and religion in general) and wants to suppress it. The bulk of the dialogue is a debate between the god (William Finley) and the king (William Shephard), though most of the play's action consists of the undifferentiated cast members, dressed in skimpy clothes, writhing and spinning and chanting, and twice engaging in orgies in which clothes are taken off completely.

I don't mean to suggest that this comes off as an unplanned free-for-all; clearly, there is a script, though it often departs wildly from Euripides' text. Frequently, the actor playing Dionysus refers to himself by his real name, and also calls the actor playing Pentheus by his name.  The movement of the cast, while it sometimes looks—and might be—improvised, is clearly well-choreographed, though audience participation is encouraged now and then—I think a handful even join in on the orgies. Even though I read The Bacchae years ago, I got lost in this play's twisted narrative, but there's usually something interesting to watch. DePalma presents the entire play in split-screen, which in the beginning works well, as we see the same action from two different perspectives (and sometimes we see the audience reaction), but I grew tired of this style and longed to see what the show looked like to the audience, as we rarely get a full length shot of the entire performance space. There is some homoerotic content that may have seemed daring in the time—in addition to Dionysus kissing Pentheus, he also gives Pentheus instructions on how to give him a blowjob (ultimately done offstage). At about 90 minutes, it felt too long to me—the writhing of the cast and the speechifying by Dionysus get repetitious—but as a historical record, it's fascinating. The play was performed in 1968, but the title comes from the final scenes in which Dionysus posits running for office in '69. [YouTube]

SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE (1935)

William Magee (Gene Raymond) is an author who has bet a friend that he can whack out a novel in 24 hours. To accomplish this, he gets a key, supposedly the only key, to Baldpate Inn, a resort hotel closed for the winter where he can get peace and quiet to write. However, that night he is anything but lonely as several other folks with keys to the inn show up, including a gangster, a hermit, a professor, and an actress who is in hiding as part of a publicity stunt. There are secret passages, a safe everyone wants into, an insurance scam and (maybe or maybe not) a murder. This is in some respects a classic "old dark house" tale, based on a popular 1913 play by George M. Cohan, itself based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Charlie Chan. In addition to three classic-era film versions (1929, 1935, 1947), there were two silent films and a 70s horror film version called HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, notable mostly for its stars: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine (and Desi Arnaz Jr. who actually isn't bad).

You may think if you've seen one, you've seen them all, but not so. In the original play, there is a trick ending which is not used in the 1935 version, but is used in the 1929 film. Also, the three versions offer various running times which may affect your enjoyment of the movie. I would imagine that the stage version played out with the energy of a farce, but the pace of this version, at 80 minutes, is a little too leisurely despite the various entanglements that crop up constantly. The 1947 film is only an hour but feels as long as the '35 film. However, I liked Philip Terry as the writer, giving him the edge over Raymond. The 1929 film is my least favorite due to the presence of the wooden Richard Dix in the lead. The 1935 version has the added appeal of an excellent supporting cast including Eric Blore, Henry Travers, Grant Mitchell, Emma Dunn and Walter Brennan. There is a nice DVD set from Warner Archive with all three versions, and they're all worth watching for fans of the genre, though I'm not sure I'd suggest a binge-watching event. Pictured are Raymond and Travers. [DVD]

HEATWAVE! (1974)

It's Los Angeles in the 1970s, it's summer, and it's 112 degrees—and it's been that way for days. Young husband Ben Murphy wakes up in the morning, already sweaty and uncomfortable, to discover the bedroom air conditioning unit has stopped working. While he showers, his pregnant wife (Bonnie Bedelia) finds that the tap water has turned brown. At work, just as Murphy's boss is about to give him a promotion, the entire office is ordered to shut down for the duration of the heat wave to save resources. Bedelia's folks have offered them the use of their mountain cabin to escape the heat; Murphy resents his in-laws for making him feel inadequate but soon they feel they have no other choice. On the way up, Murphy stops to help a man attend to his heat-stricken wife, but the man winds up stealing Murphy's car so the two endure a long, sweltering hike only to discover that 1) the heat is just as bad up in the mountains, and 2) a fire has knocked out all the power. Not to mention that their cabin already has occupants: a young couple who found the back door unlocked. What could happen next? Yes, Bedelia, only seven months pregntant, goes into labor.

On the surface, this seems like a typical 70s disaster movie, albeit on a small scale since it was made for television. Modern day viewers would expect scenes of panic verging on the apocalyptic and at least a cursory attempt to blame the heat on climate change. But given the TV movie genre conventions, the era, and the low budget, what we get is basically a domestic melodrama with the climate phenomenon settling into the background, as issues such as career advancement and family tensions become the focus. To be clear, we're never allowed to forget the heat, mostly because of the visual representation of sweat—on Murphy's yellow t-shirt, in Bedelia's mussed-up hair, and on everyone's face. But the last half-hour is all about Bedelia's baby—once she delivers him, prematurely, the doctor (Lew Ayres) says that he needs an incubator to survive, but of course, there is no incubator and no power, so the climax is centered on whether or not Murphy, having already been symbolically emasculated a couple of times, can "man up" and save the child. [Spoiler: he can, with a little help from others. Also, the final shot is of rain falling, apparently signaling the end of the heat, with no attempt made at any time to explain why this has happened.] Murphy and Bedelia are very good, and David Huddleston is fine as a beer salesman who seems to befriend the couple but who then acts selfishly later before finally, with no apparent motivation, coming to their aid. Though the print on YouTube isn't great, I stuck with it because I like Murphy (pictured above in full sweat); unless you are already a fan of 70s TV-movies, you can probably skip it. [YouTube]

MACABRE (1958)

In the small town of Thornton, old man Wetherby has been going through a rough patch. His daughter Alice, who once dated police chief Jim Tyloe, married town doctor Rod Barrett but died giving birth and many of the townsfolk, including Tyloe, blame Rod who was dallying with his mistress Sylvia at the time. Now Wetherby's other daughter Nancy, blind but something of a wild child, married to Tyloe and pregnant (perhaps by her handsome chauffeur Nick), has died, and again aspersions have been cast on Dr. Rod. Just hours before the scheduled midnight funeral of Nancy, the local undertaker reports that a child-sized coffin was stolen from his parlor. Meanwhile, at Rod's house, his nurse Polly takes a call that causes her to collapse: a man said that he has taken Rod's young daughter Marge, has buried her alive, and that Rod has just a few hours to find her before she will die. The suspects are plentiful since so many townsfolk dislike the doctor (indeed, as Polly notes, he barely has any patients anymore). But the focus seems to be on Polly, who, in unrequited love with him, is having a hard time dealing with the fact that he plans to marry Sylvia. But what about Sylvia? Or the cop? Could Wetherby himself have snapped? Even Rod's kindly housekeeper seems suspicious. Rod and Polly head out into the night, racing against time—and butting up against the midnight funeral—to find the little girl.

William Castle sold this film as being so shocking that is was likely to cause death by fright. But actually, it's not really a horror movie, though it's dressed up like one. It's a slightly ghoulish mystery with a child-in-menace theme, though that aspect is handled rather badly; since we never see the missing girl until the very end, we don't identify with her and it's difficult to be concerned about her. The movie is almost real-time, all taking place on the night of the midnight funeral (a cool and creepy idea which is not handled as effectively as it could be). Backstory is filled in with some awkward flashbacks, and the blind daughter, the most interesting character (well played by Christine White), is not developed much at all. The acting is either bland (William Prince as the doctor) or over-the-top (Jacqueline Scott as Polly). I have a hard time watching Jim Backus in serious roles, because my memories of Mr. Magoo and Thurston Howell III intrude, but he's fine as the police chief, and Ellen Corby—best known as Grandma Walton—is OK as the housekeeper. The uncredited Robert Colbert is nice eye candy as the chauffeur (pictured with White). The mystery is interesting and the outcome not immediately predictable, so it's worth watching, but don’t expect a full-blooded horror movie. [TCM]

TARZAN'S NEW YORK ADVENTURE (1942)

On an uncharted African escarpment (basically a big cliff), Tarzan and Jane, with their adopted son Boy, live in isolated bliss until one day when they see a plane overhead which spooks the jungle animals but excites young Boy who has never seen one before. On the plane is big game hunter Buck Rand (Charles Bickford), hunting lions to take back for Col. Sergeant's circus in the States. With Rand are his older assistant Manchester (Chill Wills) and easy-going pilot Jimmy (Paul Kelly). The plane lands and as Buck starts to make his hunting plans, Tarzan swings in, busts up Buck's rifle, and warns the men to get out by sunrise. But early the next morning, a curious Boy heads out with some elephants to see the plane up close. He meets the men and shows off his skills making the elephants perform tricks, and when a band of natives attack, Buck snatches Boy up and the group takes off for New York City, with Buck planning on passing Boy off as an orphan so he can sell him to the circus as a performer, though Jimmy is dead set against the idea. When Tarzan and Jane realize what's happened, they (with Cheetah) are able to track Buck down to New York to get Boy back, though first they have to buy big city clothes, and Tarzan has to learn to tamp down his natural aggressiveness in order to deal with the law. Jimmy helps Tarzan get a lead on Boy's whereabouts, and soon they wind up in a courtroom to argue that they are Boy's legal guardians. But Tarzan gets violent, is put in custody, and escapes, swinging through the skyscrapers and leading the police on a chase to the Brooklyn Bridge. Back at the circus, the elephants stampede to protect Boy.

This is the last of the MGM Tarzan movies (the rights went to RKO for the next decade) and one of the last ones before Weissmuller went to seed. Here, he's definitely packed on some weight but he still gives it the old college try, though obviously the vine swinging scenes are either done by doubles or borrowed from earlier movies. It's fun to see Tarzan stuffed into a business suit, and it's equally fun to see him bust loose near the end. Despite the title, less than half of the movie takes place in the Big Apple, but the jungle scenes are nicely done; Johnny Sheffield as Boy is more animated than he would be a few years later as the teenage Bomba the Jungle Boy, and Bickford, Kelly, and Wills constitute a much stronger supporting cast than most of the later Tarzan films would muster up. This was O’Sullivan's last time around as Jane and she gets a nice scene in which she muses to Tarzan about the modern world, noting that the city is "a stone jungle" where "men's minds are more tangled than the worst underbrush in the jungle," and saying, "It would break my heart to see your strength and courage caught in the quicksand of civilization." Paul Kelly is especially good as the nice-guy pilot. There's a little too much (actually, for my taste, a lot too much) clowning around with Cheetah the chimp, but I must admit he's a well-trained little guy. One scene has Cheetah making noises on the phone with a confused Black janitor (Mantan Moreland)—it sounds cringe-worthy, but Moreland, who never gets enough credit for making the most of his often demeaning roles, makes it work. [TCM]

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968)

We see a woman driving home, parking in her garage, and getting out of her car only to be attacked by a person in what looked to me like an elaborate Mexican wrestler mask. He stabs her repeatedly off-camera, though in a nice touch, we see her blood spatter the side of her white Mustang. We have just witnessed one in a series of "mutilation murders," as the newspapers call them, and they are the handiwork of disgraced space scientist Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine) and his squint-eyed, mute, hunchback assistant Franchot. Sort of. Much in this movie is unclear. DeMarco has been creating artificial "Astromen" who, I think, can have thoughts and communications from others implanted in their heads through a small computer chip, or something, and sent off on outer space missions. The murders seem to be the work of DeMarco's first Astroman who unfortunately has a defective brain—though why he can't be controlled from afar is never made clear. DeMarco's former associate, Dr. Petrovich, is assisting CIA agent Holman (Wendell Corey) in figuring out what's going on, as are the strangely accented Eric (Tom Pace) and the handsome blond Chuck (Joseph Hoover). But exotic female spy Satana (Tura Satana, pictured at right) and her henchman Juan are also looking for DeMarco for the nefarious purposes of a foreign power, and they won't hesitate to kill anyone in their way.

That summary makes this movie sound almost coherent, but it's not. In my movie-watching notes, I wrote, "About an hour in, the narrative falls apart and you just quit caring." But you don't stop watching, because this train-wreck of a movie has an Ed Wood/bad movie appeal. It's directed by the notorious Ted V. Mikels who, if nothing else, had a knack for titles; other films of his include Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, The Corpse Grinders, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, and The Worm Eaters. Production and acting levels are perhaps a notch above Ed Wood's, though not by much. The sets look like they were put together in a couple of hours and the Astro-Zombies (never actually called that in the movie) are clearly just wearing masks, though they are sort of scary looking. Chuck and Eric's idea of treating a female scientist to a nice time is to take her to a tiny strip club, lit only in red, while a topless dancer done up in body paint writhes monotonously for minutes on end. There's also a long tedious sequence showing poor Franchot draining blood out of a body. These are the highlights of the film.

John Carradine took a lot of low-rent parts later in his career, and usually, like Vincent Price, threw himself into the role with as much gusto as his aged self could muster, but here he's stuck mostly rattling off a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo to his assistant and doesn't get the opportunity to chew any scenery. Wendell Corey, at the end of a respectable career in supporting roles (the cop in Rear Window, the jilted boyfriend in Holiday Affair), can barely articulate his lines, whether because he was drinking or because he was just embarrassed, I don't know. William Bagdad as Franchot gets lots of close-ups as he listens to Carradine drone on but isn't given much to do except to drool menacingly over a skimpily-clad young woman strapped to a lab table—for what reason I was never sure. Tom Pace (Eric) has an odd accent, like he was Hispanic brought up in Brooklyn, but the actor is from Yugoslavia. Joseph Hoover (Chuck, pictured above) is good-looking—if you like blond, square-jawed guys—and knows it, and he gives one of the more normal performances here. Then there’s Tura Satana whom cult movie fans will know as the scary dominatrix from FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! She's not much of an actress, but she's a hell of a presence, even when she's just sitting in a room in a tight dress smoking a cigarette while she waits for her puny underlings to carry out her chores. This is definitely fun for a MST3K-style viewing, but you'll feel badly the next day. [IndieFlix]

THE LAST WARNING (1929)

On Broadway ("the electric highway of happiness," we are told in a title card), actor John Woodford, in a theater named for him, is starring in a play called The Snare; as he reaches behind his back to grab a candlestick to fend off an attacker, he drops dead on stage. When the cops arrive, a complicated offstage situation is brought to light: Mike, the stage manager, overheard a quarrel in the dressing room of leading lady Doris Terry (Laura La Plante) between Woodford and director Richard Quayle (John Boles). It turns out that she was not only dating both men, but also seeing fellow actor Harvey Carleton (Roy D'Arcy) as well. When the coroner arrives, Woodford's body is nowhere to be found. No one is charged and the ensuing scandal makes Doris break things off with all her admirers and head to Europe, and the Bunce brothers, who own the theater, close it down. Five years later, producer Arthur McHugh (Montagu Love), a close friend of Woodford's, reopens the theater and gets the original cast and crew of The Snare together to perform it again, apparently hoping to solve the cold case. Carleton takes Woodford's role, and flirtatious newcomer Evelynda Hendon joins the cast. Even the Bunces show up. The mood in the old dark theater is spooky, and tension builds when notes begin appearing like, "Let the dead sleep!" Carleton's script contains a scrawled message, "I warn you, death plays this part!" Stage manager Mike reports seeing Woodford's ghost, and we see a short caped figure creeping about the place. Will this recreation reveal the killer, or lead to more deaths?

This late-period silent film is a nice little gem, directed with wit and style by Paul Leni, known more for his similarly flashy THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927). The acting belongs mostly to the school of exaggerated facial expressions, though Montagu Love as McHugh comes off as surprisingly subtle and modern in his acting style. Boles is also good—he is best known now as Dr. Frankenstein's friend in the Boris Karloff FRANKENSTEIN. The mystery is a bit muddled, and the motive behind the murder isn't given a very logical explanation. But this is definitely one to watch for visual style: roaming camerawork and unusual camera angles crop up with frequency; there are interesting montages, and spooky shots in the dark. One of my favorite moments is of an elderly actress (Carrie Daumery, pictured) appearing like a ghost, shrouded in cobwebs. This is essentially an old-dark-house thriller set in a theater, so we get secret passages and grasping hands and, as noted above, someone sneaking around in disguise. Though the theater set is fairly plain, the exterior makes it look like the monstrous Moloch figure in METROPOLIS. If you have any tolerance for silent films and you like spooky thrillers, you'll love this. Apparently Universal restored this for a silent film festival in 2016, but they have not yet released it on DVD; my copy, from Grapevine Video, is well-worn and a little splicy, and may be missing a few chunks of narrative, but it's quite watchable. [DVD]

TARZAN FINDS A SON (1939)

Richard Lancing (aka the Earl of Greystoke), his wife and their toddler son are flying over Africa in a small plane, observing wildlife, when the plane loses altitude and the radio goes dead. They crash in the jungle, on the escarpment on which Tarzan and Jane make their home, and only the baby is left alive. Tarzan finds the boy and he and Jane raise him as their own. Tarzan wants to call him Elephant, but settles for Boy. We watch as Boy grows up, gets pretty good at vine swinging and letting loose with his own high-pitched version of Tarzan's jungle yell, and generally learns the ways of nature. Five years later, a group consisting of Lancing's cousin (Ian Hunter), his wife (Frieda Inescourt), the Earl's uncle (Henry Stephenson), and their guide (Henry Wilcoxon) arrive on the escarpment looking for the lost boy, or preferably, proof that the boy is dead so Hunter can legally get his hands on an inheritance. Tarzan and Jane take them to the wreckage but are reluctant to admit that their Boy is the missing heir, though eventually Stephenson figures it out. Over the uncle's objections, Hunter and Inescourt decide to take the lad against his will back to England where they figure they'll be able to control the money and estate as he grows up. At first, Jane sadly agrees to the plan but when Tarzan rebels, she traps him in a deep grotto and goes off to deliver Boy. But between an attack by a cannibal tribe and Jane's realization that Boy's best interests will not be served, plans go awry. Can Tarzan get free in time to help out? Well, yeah, of course. And with some help from Cheetah and some marauding elephants (which are de rigueur in the 30s Tarzan movies) the bad guys get their comeuppance and the Tarzan family remains intact.

The fourth of the MGM/Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, this was originally going to be the swan song for Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane; she wanted out of the series so she was killed off by a cannibal's spear, but preview audiences reacted so badly that her final scenes were reshot to allow her to recover and O'Sullivan was given a raise as incentive to continue. Adding 8-year-old Johnny Sheffield helped to keep things fresh. He's a bundle of energy and his acting is better than Weissmuller's. A scene showing Boy and Tarzan frolicking underwater is delightful and a nice break from the usual re-used stock footage that wound up in many of the Tarzan movies river scenes. I especially liked Boy's jungle yell, which I assume was Weissmuller's yell sped up to a higher pitch. The supporting roles in the 30s movies were generally from the first rank of character actors, and they are all quite good here, especially Stephenson as the uncle who regrets his role in the little family melodrama. Worth watching, especially as the series began a nose dive in quality in the next few years. [TCM]

TARZAN ESCAPES (1936)

Rita and her brother Eric arrive in Africa in search of their cousin Jane (last heard from living on an isolated escarpment) whose signature is needed on some paperwork so that Rita and Eric can get their share of an inheritance. Their main motivation, however, is to talk Jane into coming home with them. What they don't know but we do is that Jane is happily living the carefree jungle life up in an elaborate treehouse with her mate Tarzan and his pet chimp Cheetah. Captain Fry agrees to lead their expedition, mostly because he hopes to capture the legendary great white ape, which we figure out is Tarzan. Natives think the escarpment is "juju" (i.e., a place with bad vibes) so it's difficult to find men who will stay with them, especially after a nasty local tribe stages an attack. Finally, 20 minutes into the movie, Tarzan appears, giving forth with his famous yell and saving the expedition from the tribe. Jane agrees to go back to England temporarily which makes Tarzan sad and sullen—though he hits it off with Rawlins, the comic relief associate of Fry's. Meanwhile, Fry plots to capture Tarzan to take him back to civilization. Jungle adventures ensue.

This third installment in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan series was originally so violent that preview audiences reacted negatively, so a sequence involving killer bats was removed and other scenes reshot to reduce violence, though a couple of surprisingly graphic deaths remain. Otherwise, after two fairly interesting movies (TARZAN THE APE MAN and TARZAN AND HIS MATE), this begins the series’ slide into stereotyped situations and repetitive plot lines: sinister white hunters, menacing native tribes, bumbling sidekicks, chimp antics, elephant stampedes, alligator fights, and stock footage standing in for African locations. It retains a bit of a rough edge which would eventually be sanded away, and is generally well paced. Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan (as Jane) work well together, and the supporting cast is fine, particularly William Henry as Eric and Herbert Mundin (a very familiar 1930s face) as Rawlins. If you've seen any of the later Tarzans, this is not required viewing, but it's painless. [TCM]

SWING (1938)

Directed by Oscar Micheaux, a groundbreaking African-American indie director, this "race film," a movie with an all-black cast, begins in Birmingham as we see an alarm clock go off at 6 a.m. and Mandy reluctantly rise to go her job as a maid to a white family. Her husband Cornell, a self-styled dandy, comes strutting in from catting around all night and just wants to go to sleep. Meanwhile in another Birmingham home, Lem gets ready to go to work as his wife Eloise stays in bed with a headache. Lem, the jealous type, suspects her of cheating, and sure enough, we soon discover that Eloise and Cornell are having a fling. When Mandy tracks them down at a nightclub, she starts tearing the clothes off him and gets into fisticuffs with Eloise. Months later, Mandy, having left her husband, is living in Harlem where she has met up with Lena, an old Birmingham friend. Mandy was helpful to Lena back then, so Lena is determined to help Mandy, getting her a job as a wardrobe mistress for a show being put on by producer Ted Gregory, Lena's boss. But, surprise, the star of the show is none other than Eloise, using the name Cora Smith, and being a general pain in the ass to everyone. Lem is around too, and eventually Cornell shows up, broke and miserable. In a twist right out of 42ND STREET, a drunken Eloise breaks her leg and Lena tries to talk Ted into using Mandy to save the show at the last minute.

These race films, which got only limited releases in areas with good-sized African American audiences, had lower budgets even than the mainstream Poverty Row B-movies of the era, so they come off as cheap in most aspects, such as sets, costumes, music and acting, but most of them have an appealing scrappiness that keeps you watching. This one mixes melodrama, comedy and music, and the acting, at least by the women, is a notch above what you might expect. Cora Green is OK in the lead; she comes off a little too goody-goody early on but toughens up later—at one point, she exclaims, "My name is Mandy Jenkins and I can whip any hussy that stands on two feet!" Better is Hazel Diaz as Eloise, the bitch you love to hate. Both women only made a couple of movies and apparently were better known as club singers; Green does a nice rendition of "Bei Mir Bist du Schon." There's also a good tap number called "I Got Rhythm, Boy." There are also decent performances from Dorothy Van Engle as Lena and Carmen Newsome (pictured) as Ted. Stereotypes are mostly confined to the no-good Cornell, but unfortunately we discover at the very end that the name of the show that's opening is "Ah Lub's Dat Man." [TCM]

FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE (1956)

Scientists in the United States and England have discovered a mysterious thirteenth moon of Jupiter, which has apparently been obscured by cosmic fog or something until now. Their observations indicate it has an earth-like atmosphere, so a band of five guys take off in a rocketship from England to the new moon. They don't wear spacesuits, they seem to have plenty of gravity on their ship, and they even have their electric razors and Chesterfield cigarettes handy when they get bored taking notes about the flight. They dodge a meteor shower, and when they approach the moon, a voice speaking English comes over the radio asking them about their mission. Upon landing, they see a lovely young woman (Susan Shaw) in a toga menaced by a monster in a black turtleneck. Warning shots from their revolvers stop the assault, and two of the crew (Anthony Dexter and Paul Carpenter) wind up in what looks like a ancient Greek building populated by a bevy of toga-clad young women and one older man (Owen Berry). They call their community New Atlantis; they claim to be descendents of the survivors of the sinking of Atlantis. (How they got from the earth to this moon is a question never answered, not even asked!) The women, wearing tight tops and short skirts, perform a ritual dance to the music of Borodin (even if you don't know that name, you might recognize the music as "Strangers in Paradise," a Borodin melody turned into a show tune from the 50s musical Kismet), then they drug the men and seduce them in their sleep—at least that's what appears to happen. The other three astronauts galumph about looking for the missing two; meanwhile, Berry, in gratitude for the men saving Shaw, his daughter, promises her to Dexter. The two have been flirting, but the other Maidens, believing their god is angry over the situation, choose her to be a fire sacrifice—hence, I guess, the title of the movie.

There is very little positive to say about this. Though the budget is certainly far more than Ed Wood ever had to work with, the director, Cy Roth, is utterly awful at directing actors or shooting effective action scenes. Even the dancing maidens look awkward (not to mention bored). Had more attention been paid to the sets and costumes, this might have at least been fun to look at, like the similar CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON and QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. The acting is dreadful, which I suspect says more about the director than the actors. Rodney Diak, as the youngest of the astronauts, is at least good looking and proves diverting for a minute or two. The opening scenes have dreadful echoing sound, and the peak of bad movie enjoyment is in the first few minutes when Dexter and Carpenter are having a discussion in a British observatory which is interrupted by a secretary in tight clothes and glasses—markers that she is a repressed lioness in the sack—who takes dictation for a minute, then leaves with the camera following her every move. This scene has no motivation except for a cheap joke (one of the men expresses the hope that they'll find a being like that near Jupiter) or because the director promised his girlfriend a walk-on part. This is pretty much as bad and boring as its reputation would have it. Watch it at your own risk. [Amazon Prime]