BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON (1972)

This film of the early life of St. Francis of Assisi begins with young Francis (Graham Faulkner) coming home from the Crusades; the rumor is that he has turned coward, but he arrives in a state of near-total collapse with a dangerous fever. While his mother (Valentina Cortese) tends to him, we get some fractured flashbacks of his days before the wars as a son of privilege in the village of Assisi. When he finally recovers, he seems to have had a major personality change, made plain in a scene in which he scampers across a roof chasing after a bird. He catches it, holds it, and lets it go, and then teeters on the edge of the roof while a flock of birds swarms around him. He decides to give up all his possessions and live in poverty as a beggar. His father hopes taking him to church will help, but Francis has a meltdown, screaming "No!" at the giant crucifix and eventually stripping himself naked in the public square in the presence of the Bishop, saying that he has been "born again." The Bishop tells him that he is subverting "the established order," though he does seems to have at least a bit of sympathy for Francis' innocent idealism. Francis goes off to live in a ruined chapel and, with the help of a small band of followers, mostly poor and crippled, rebuilds it. That winter, his three closest friends return from the Crusades and, one by one, they decide to join him. Also joining him is Clare (Judi Bowker), a young woman he fancied in his pre-war days. When the bishop has their church set on fire, Francis and his friends go to Rome to see the Pope (Alec Guinness) to find out why the Church opposes them so violently. In the film's climax, the muddy, barefoot Francis enters the outlandishly ornate cathedral and lectures the Holy Fathers on the Gospels (the lilies of the field neither toiling nor spinning, etc.). He is run out of the church, but the Pope has second thoughts, calls him back in, and gives him his blessing by kissing Francis' feet

This film is derided by many as a "hippy-dippy," flower-child film, and the fact that songs by Donovan, the archetypal hippie troubadour, crop up occasionally only reinforces that label. There is a very 60's vibe to Francis's philosophy, presented as a rebellion against "the establishment"--the church, the state, the family. But I found the movie to be quite enjoyable, and much less dated than I was expecting it to be--no day-glow colors, no light show visuals, no druggy hazes, and fairly standard cinematography (though most of the men do have hippieish hair and/or beards), and even Donovan's songs sound more ancient folkie than hippie. Faulkner is very handsome and gives a solid, charismatic performance despite the fuzziness of Francis' character as written. Bowker, wispily lovely, has almost nothing to do, and is in fact absent from the film for long stretches. Supporting players Leigh Lawson and Kenneth Cranham as Francis' buddies have much more screen time. Guinness gives one of the oddest performances of his career as the Pope--I can't tell if the Pope indeed has had some kind of spiritual epiphany, or if he's crazy like a fox (it's suggested that the Pope's actions have a practical, political basis in that Francis may be able to bring the poor back into the faithful fold), or just a somewhat bug-eyed loony. The movie, shot on location in Italy, is almost always lovely to look at. I find this a much more interesting film than the early 60's Hollywood version of Francis' life with Bradford Dillman. This one is much better than its reputation suggests. [DVD]

MIRANDA (1948)

I've never been particularly fascinated by mermaids (though I was fascinated by the hunky blond Aquaman in my comic-book-reading youth), and though I remember SPLASH being OK, I also remember that MR. PEABODY AND THE MERMAID was a terrible movie, despite the presence of the wonderful William Powell. So it was with some trepidation that I approached this British comic fantasy about a man who finds a mermaid and takes her back to civilization. It turns out to be a fairly delightful film, much more interesting than the above two mermaid movies. Middle-class doctor Griffith Jones takes a solo fishing vacation in Cornwall and snags a mermaid named Miranda (Glynis Johns) on his line. When he falls in the water, she takes him to her cave and he awakes to hear her singing her siren song. She begs him to take her back to London with him so she can spend a few weeks seeing the sights she's read about in snippets of newspapers left behind in the water. He agrees, having her pose as a patient confined to a wheelchair. When they get to London, the men she meets are all enchanted with her, especially Jones' butler (David Tomlinson) and his painter friend, John McCallum. The women are another story. Jones's wife (Googie Withers) isn't terribly happy to see such a lovely young woman staying with them indefinitely and being carried everywhere by her husband. Tomlinson's wife, the family maid, and McCallum's fiancée are similarly upset to see the effect she has on their men.

Jones hires a famously eccentric nurse (Margaret Rutherford) to take on the mermaid's personal care; when Rutherford finds out the truth about Johns, she's fascinated and keeps the secret. The rest of the film consists of Johns seducing all three men (though it's unclear exactly how far any hanky-panky could actually go) between visits with Jones to the opera (where one night, she heaves herself up on the edge of her box seat and belts out an aria as good as the one just heard on stage) and the playing-out of lots of fish puns and jokes about the mermaid's cold skin and Tomlinson's big ears. Just when it seems like the mermaid has wrecked all their love lives, the men find out that she's juggling them all and they lose interest. Johns dives out into the Thames and heads out to open sea, leaving the men and women to mend their relationships. A tidy and predictable ending, yes, but with a hilarious shocker of a last shot that will make you go back to contemplating the mechanics of human/mermaid sex. The movie is frothy and sexy and all the acting is top-notch, with especially high marks going to Withers, who generally manages to avoid the brittle clichés of the jealous wife, and the very handsome Jones (pictured) and McCallum. It's based on a play, but it never feels stagy. Brian Oulton has a small role as a flamingly gay dress designer. I love the fact that there is a separate credit for the tail: "Tail by Dunlop." [TCM]

SHADOWS OF THE ORIENT (1935)

Wow, am I on a bad movie kick! This one is so bad, I'm tempted not to bother anyone with news of its existence, but I sat through the whole thing so I'm gonna forge ahead. Besides, that cool title is what suckered me into watching this, so maybe my review will save others who might be equally tempted. This begins with a good scene that was duplicated in a later (and much better) Ronald Reagan B-movie, SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR, in which a pilot, smuggling a Chinese family of illegal aliens, dumps them out in mid-air to their deaths when he's attacked by another plane. The pilot, pissed when his boss won't pay him for the aborted delivery, calls the Feds and offers to give them the goods on the smuggling ring, but is shot to death just before the agents raid the Chinese restaurant which is the front for the gang. The leader, Sidney Blackmer, gets away, but agent Regis Toomey, his older sidekick (J. Farrell McDonald), and a prominent judge's daughter (Esther Ralston) try to infiltrate the gang. Many static, tedious scenes later, a climax of sorts occurs when Blackmer forces Ralston into smuggling another Chinese family, with Toomey on her tail, not realizing she's in the pilot's seat. The 70-minute movie is filled with inept photography, bad sets, and flubbed lines left in, and the lack of any background music at all only accentuates the sheer boredom of the proceedings. Even the promise of a moderately exciting air chase at the end goes nowhere. The actors, all pros who have done good B-film work elsewhere, are left at sea by bad direction and zero production values. Blackmer gets one nicely slimy, almost campy line, when he says, "Orientals have a peculiar irresistible fascination for me," but despite the promise of the melodramatic title, this one will hold no one's interest. [DVD]

THE HAT BOX MYSTERY (1947)

This Poverty Row detective film, from little-known outfit Screen Guild Productions, is dreadful, but for a B-movie buff like me, still has moments of interest. While struggling detective Tom Neal is out of his office, his secretary/fiancée Pamela Blake takes on a case for him; a mysterious man (Leonard Penn) with an obviously fake goatee says he wants her to get photographic evidence of his wife's adulterous activities. He tells Blake where to take the picture and even gives her a hat box with a hidden camera to use. However, when Blake goes to take the photo, it turns out that the box is rigged with a gun, and she shoots the wife. The DA takes her into custody, but Neal talks him into letting her go and letting him try to snare the real killer. With equal parts help and hindrance from bumbling sidekick Allen Jenkins, Neal does eventually clear Blake and the cops get Penn.

The plot is serviceable but with a weak script and a 45 minute running time, this ends up feeling more like a summary of a movie with most of the action and explanatory detail left out; other weaknesses include the cardboard sets and the grating background music. I like both Neal and Jenkins (pictured), though their best days were behind them. Jenkins was a reliable supporting comic relief figure in dozens of Warner Brothers films of the 30's (42ND STREET, MAYOR OF HELL, SH! THE OCTOPUS) whose career was revitalized later in TV. Neal, a handsome tough-guy actor who never made it out of B-films (DETOUR, FIRST YANK INTO TOKYO), was only in his mid-30s here but he's looking rather seedy already--his career was essentially over a few years later thanks to some real-life bad behavior. Blake is totally forgettable, though comic actress Virginia Sale tries hard for some laughs as a burger slinger and Jenkins' long-suffering gal. The most notable part of the film is at the very beginning, when the four leads introduce themselves directly to the camera, first in character, then with Neal giving their real names. [DVD]

TONIGHT WE RAID CALAIS (1943)

A competently made WWII propaganda film which falls somewhere between a B- and an A-film. John Sutton is a British spy who is snuck across the English Channel in order to find a munitions plant and mark it so the RAF can bomb it a few nights later. On his way to finding his contact, Marcel Dalio, he takes refuge in the farmhouse of Lee J. Cobb, whose son has just been reported dead in a battle against the British. Cobb is willing to help out, passing Sutton off as his son returned from the front, but Cobb's daughter, Annabella, blames the British for the death of her brother and resents Sutton almost as much as she resents the Nazis. With the help of Dalio and Cobb, Sutton finds the plant and gets local farmers in the area to set bonfires encircling it on the night of the raid, but local Nazi Howard da Silva, by threatening Annabella's family, finds out about the plot from her. When he kills her family anyway, she sees the light and commits herself to helping Sutton accomplish his goal. The production is stagy but effective, and Sutton, mostly a B-actor, acquits himself well, though I was not as impressed by Annabella, a French actress, married at the time to Tyrone Power, who did not have a long Hollywood career. Beulah Bondi is Cobb's wife, who gets tricked by Da Silva into giving away an important secret near the climax. The most striking aspect of the plot is the active role of the women; at the climax, it's the farmer's wives who have to bond together and take care of setting the fires with Sutton. Also with John Banner (Schulz on "Hogan's Heroes") and Blanche Yurka. Directed by John Brahm with some nice but unobtrusive stylistic touches here and there. [DVD]

SEXTON BLAKE AND THE HOODED TERROR (1938)

Fictional British detective Sexton Blake is a Sherlock Holmes rip-off, right down to the bumbling sidekick, the matronly housekeeper, and a Baker Street address. He was not nearly as universally popular in the movies as Holmes, but he remained a hero in books, comic strips, and British television through the 70's. This film, which plays out more like a Saturday matinee serial than a Holmes mystery, begins in Shanghai with an attempt on the life of Granite Grant (great character name, played by David Farrar, though he only has a couple minutes of screen time) by an evil organization called the Black Quorum, led by arch-villain The Snake. Grant's friend Duvall goes to London to pass along important information about the group, but he is killed via poisoned blowpipe in Blake's apartment. With help from a French agent (Greta Gynt), Blake (George Curzon) and his roommate Tinker, who is in fact an inept tinkerer in scientific experiments, get on the trail of the Snake, actually a wealthy stamp collector (Tod Slaughter). There are many trappings of the adventure serial: the blowpipe, invisible ink messages, spying TV cameras, a creepy casino which is a front for the bad guys' headquarters, and a death chamber with snakes slithering out of the walls. Best of all is the Black Quorum who, despite knowing each other’s identities, sit around at their meetings wearing hoods (see picture). The relatively fast pace of the proceedings is a big plus here, as most of the actors are just adequate, with Slaughter doing nicely as the baddie. The Snake gets away at the end, but since Blake was only "unofficially" on the case, he doesn’t care (!). Farrar went on to low-level stardom as the male lead in Michael Powell's BLACK NARCISSUS. Good print from the British Cinema Classic B-Film set from VCI. [DVD]

CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE (1940)

Another British B-thriller with Tod Slaughter twirling his mustache and threatening to feed a man's entrails to the pigs. This one is a loose adaptation of Wilkie Collins's classic Gothic novel The Woman in White which was brought to the screen more faithfully (with Hollywood stars and a bigger budget) but with less rough flair in 1948. Here, Sir Percival Glyde, prospecting in Australia, gets word that he is to take over his family's estate in England; fellow prospector Slaughter, thinking Glyde is rich, murders him (driving a railroad spike through his head), goes to England and assumes his identity, only to discover that the estate is almost bankrupt. His only hope is to go through with a long-arranged marriage with the wealthy (and considerably younger) Laura. However, as she is in love with her tutor Paul, she is not happy with the arrangement--the brief wedding night scene is shot like a scene of torture from a Hammer horror movie--and she brings her sister Marion to live with her.

Meanwhile, the counterfeit Glyde has other problems piling up: 1) the saucy maid he's banging on the side is pregnant; 2) he discovers that Glyde had been secretly married and has a secret daughter, Anne, locked up in an asylum; 3) legally, he can’t get his hands on enough of Laura's money to satisfy his needs, and his lawyer tells him he'd be better off if his wife was dead. So, 1) when the maid wants him to do the right thing, he kills her, and gets to re-use his infamous line from MURDER IN THE RED BARN, "You shall be a bride--a bride of death!"; 2) when Anne's mother becomes a problem, she winds up dead as well; 3) when Glyde finds out that Anne, escaped from the asylum and haunting the property, is the spitting image of Laura, he kills her, claims his wife is dead, and sends Laura to the asylum. Luckily, Paul and Marion figure things out and come to Laura’s rescue. Though it only uses the names and bare bones of Collins's original plot, it's great near-campy B-movie fun. Slaughter goes delightfully over the top, leering and licking his lips whenever he can. No one else in the cast has a chance against him, though Hay Petrie has a bit of fun as the dastardly Dr. Fosco, who knows all of Glyde's secrets and keeps hoping for a big financial payoff instead of the promised loss of his intestines (which sadly does not happen, though Petrie's end is imaginative). Not for everyone's taste, but trashy fun if you're in the mood. The print from VCI's British Cinema: Classic B Film Collection Vol. 1 is in very good shape. [DVD]

BLACK MAGIC (1949)

In 16th century France, a young gypsy boy named Joseph sees his mother brutally executed for having the power of "second sight': he bites the hand of the man responsible, Montagne (Stephen Bekassy), leaving a scar, and as he is being tortured, he is rescued by gypsies. Years later, Joseph (Orson Welles) discovers, with some help from the famous Dr. Mesmer, that he has a powerful talent for hypnosis. He goes on the road as Count Cagliostro, becomes famous as a mystical healer, and soon runs into Montagne, who, not recognizing him, asks for his help in a complicated plot to bring down Marie Antoinette involving Lorenza (Nancy Guild), a woman who is her double. He agrees to help, but once they reach the royal court, the plots multiply and it is soon each man and woman out for his or her own interests. Though this film is thick with the trappings of French history (Cagliostro was real, and he was arrested for being involved in the infamous affair of the necklace that was instrumental in bringing down Marie Antoinette), it is apparently mostly fiction, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas (who, in the movie's framing device, is telling the entire narrative to his son, played by Raymond Burr). It's a bit slow moving but it's enjoyable to watch the tricky, complex plots play out, and the sets (many of which look like actual on-location spots) are magnificent. Welles is excellent as always, and is rumored to have co-directed with credited director Gregory Ratoff. The rest of the acting is inconsistent; Guild is just OK as the French queen but terrible as Lorenza, and is especially bad when she's acting with Welles; Frank Latimore, as her gallant lover, is rather wooden. The only other standout is Akim Tamiroff as Cagliostro's loyal associate who has pangs of conscience near the climax when he's convinced that his boss has gone off the deep end. Not screened very often, but worth catching. [TCM]

MURDER IN THE RED BARN (1935)
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (1939)

In the 20's and 30's, Tod Slaughter was well known in England as a hammy star of stage and screen melodramas, most associated with the role of the killer barber Sweeney Todd (long before the Sondheim musical). As far as I can tell, the B-movie thrillers he made through the 30's and 40's didn't take off here in the States, but with the availability of the public-domain films on cheap DVDs, he has something of a cult following these days, and I was pleased to catch up with him over the holidays. The movies are stilted and low-budget but fun if you're not expecting too much. My problem with Slaughter (pictured below) is that he looks too much like Paul Ford, the jolly actor who played Mayor Shinn in THE MUSIC MAN, so it's difficult to take him seriously as a villian at first.

MARIA MARTEN, OR MURDER IN THE RED BARN, Slaughter's first film, is based on a play which was part of his regular repertory. He plays Corder, a well-liked village squire who throws dances for all the townsfolk, even the outcast gypsies, in his big red barn. He dances and flirts with lovely young Maria Marten (Sophie Stewart) but she is loved by Carlos, a hot-blooded gypsy boy (Eric Portman). An old gypsy fortune teller sees a hangman's noose in Slaughter's future, which rather puts a damper on the proceedings, but a few nights later, Maria sneaks away to be with Corder—it's unclear what the attraction is, as she looks sweet, virginal, and about 20 years old, while he looks a bit plumb and every bit his 50 years—but their rendezvous that night results in her pregnancy. By the time she tells Corder, he's on the verge of marrying a rich woman in order to pay off some gambling debts. When she threatens to expose him, he lures her to the barn and kills her (great line, delivered with blood and thunder by Slaughter: "You shall be a bride--a bride of DEATH!") and buries her there. Carlos helps the police figure out what's what, and Slaughter gets a good gone-round-the-bend climax. Gerard Tyrell is memorable as the comic relief village idiot who keeps getting cheated out of loose change by Slaughter.

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW is set in 1880 France, where the police are stymied by a series of murders and robberies supposedly committed by a wolfman, whose horrible face appears at the window just before the murder occurs (a good special effect for the day). When a bank is robbed by the monster, the rich Chevalier (Slaughter) agrees to make a large deposit to help save the bank, but in return he asks the bank manager for his daughter's hand in marriage. However, the young lady is in love with a lowly bank clerk (John Warwick), so Slaughter incriminates Warwick in the robbery. Meanwhile, Warwick knows a doctor who is experimenting with re-animating dead beings; this plot thread comes into play in the main narrative when Warwick proposes bringing back a recently dead victim of the "wolfman" so they can identify the killer and clear his name. It's no spoiler to note that Slaughter is behind the "wolfman" racket, though the secret of the face at the window and the way in which Slaughter is unmasked are both worth sticking around for. Neither of these are exactly horror movies; they're more Gothic-tinged crime thrillers, but they're fun discoveries, especially the first one, and I may delve further into Slaughter's work in the future. [DVD]

THANKS A MILLION (1935)

Fred Allen's traveling band gets stuck on a rainy night in a small town and happens upon a political rally for windbag politician Raymond Walburn, who is running for governor. His tiresome speech has the audience members trickling out in boredom, but when singer Dick Powell gets up and does a song, the reaction is electric. Allen agrees to have the band peform at all of Walburn's rallies, but Powell soon gets fired for being too good--the crowds start to leave after he's done, not sticking around for the often-inebriated candidate. Party boss Alan Dinehart sees a good thing when it's in front of him and asks Powell to run for governor instead, as a figurehead for the party. He agrees to do it, assuming he'll lose but hoping to get some good exposure for his singing, but soon he's ahead in the polls. Powell and the band enjoy the ride, but when the party tries to make his sign a contract promising specific state office appointments as favors, he rebels.

First of all, I must cry "Yikes!" at the fortuitous arrival of this film on Fox Movie Channel so close to the time that Illinois's Blagojevich scandal broke. It's always fun when a little-known classic-era flick becomes relevant to our 21st-century affairs. I had never heard of this film, but it's a little gem; the political satire, though broad, is fun, the songs are decent, and I enjoyed seeing hunorist Fred Allen, who I mostly know from reruns of early-50's episodes of What's My Line on Game Show Network, in a rare acting role; he's quite good, and I'm sorry he didn't do more sidekick roles like this. Dick Powell is at an interesting place in his career here: he'd just pushed past the "lead juvenile" part he could do in his sleep (the early 30's Gold Diggers films), but hadn't yet found his tough-guy niche (1944's MURDER MY SWEET). I found him quite handsome and charming here; his leading lady, Ann Dvorak, is fine in a less substantive role, and Walburn is very funny as the popeyed drunken politician. Also with Patsy Kelly and Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. A romantic stumbling-block plotline involving the party boss's wife fliriting with Powell is too half-hearted to work, but the rest of the film is quite enjoyable. [FMC]

MY YEAR IN CLASSIC MOVIES:

Below is my list of the 10 classic movies I saw for the first time this year which were either among the best or most interesting (not necessarily the same):

BLONDE ICE (1948)--Delirious nonsensical Poverty Row film noir with no stars but a ton of action involving bad people acting badly. Almost as good as DETOUR (which I reviewed this year, but had seen before).

THE BLUE LIGHT (1932)--Not the best of the German Mountain movies, but one that stays in the mind due to its imagery.

CRAIG'S WIFE (1936) and HARRIET CRAIG (1950)--Two versions of the same story, with enough differences in the plot points and performaces to make them both worth watching; Rosalind Russell ('36) and Joan Crawford ('50) are both excellent.

CULT OF THE COBRA (1956)--B-thriller about a woman who can turn into a cobra hunting down some GIs who desecrated a cult ceremony. Bland and ultimately disappointing, but different enough to make it worth a viewing, especially in its first 15 minutes.

THE DRAGON PAINTER (1919)--A wonderful way to discover the early career of Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa in a fairy-tale-ish parable about love and art.

THE GHOST TRAIN (1941)--British B-comedy/thriller about train passangers stranded at a haunted station which isn't all that funny but has atmosphere to burn.

THE GUV'NOR (1935)--Another charming George Arliss comedy. The man is due for a critical revival.

HUMORESQUE (1946)--One of those movies I'd avoided, a romantic melodrama of the kind I have to be in the right mood for, but I enjoyed it immensely, with Joan Crawford giving what may be her best performance just before tipping into camp in the 50's, and John Garfield almost as good as her violin-playing lover.

I WAS AN ADVENTURESS (1940)--Not a great movie, but a fun novelty, with Erich von Stroheim in a rare comic role as a con man (with his partners Peter Lorre and Vera Zorina) out to fleece the idle rich. Essentially a B-movie version of Lubitsch's classic TROUBLE IN PARADISE.

MAN HUNT (1941)--Walter Pidgeon muffs his chance to kill Hitler and goes on the run from nasty Nazi George Sanders. Not at all realistic, but a solid example of a pre-WWII Hollywood spy thriller.

I also kinda liked the Lana Turner 60's paranoid drug flick THE BIG CUBE and some of the other movies that Warner Home Video put out in their "Camp Classics" series of boxed sets. I liked discovering 2 50's actors who should have had bigger careers, Don Murray (THE BACHELOR PARTY, HATFUL OF RAIN) and Anthony Franciosa (STORY ON PAGE ONE and w/Murray in HATFUL). I discovered the difference between Deanna Durbin (OK) and Sonja Henie (not so much). I was very happy to finally be able to see TOBACCO ROAD, which led me to read the original book, and finally I loved an early James Mason thriller THE UPTURNED GLASS, which just missed making the top 10.

FOOLISH WIVES (1922)

Three Russian con artists pose as aristocrats, rent a villa near Monte Carlo, and use counterfeit money to gamble. The two women, Olga and Vera, pretend to be countesses and Sergius (Erich von Stroheim) poses as their cousin, the Count Karamzin. He is on the prowl for a rich woman to fleece and finds one in Helen, the young and restless wife of the staid and older (and newly arrived) American ambassador to Monaco. Karamzin is free to show her the sights, take her on boating trips, and help her out in the casinos. He even contrives to get her stuck with him overnight during a storm when they take refuge in an old woman's house in the marshes, but a monk who has also come in out of the rain winds up in the same room with them, putting the kibosh on that plan. As he ups the seduction attempts, he also carries on a lackluster affair with his plain-looking maid, whom he has promised to marry, and has designs on Marietta, the mentally handicapped daughter of his counterfeiter. Eventually Karamzin gets Helen alone in his villa and tells her he needs 90,000 francs to settle a debt of honor; she offers him the money, but the maid, overhearing them, sets the house on fire before throwing herself into the sea. When the count leaps to safety before Helen, he is disgraced and runs off in the night to sneak inside Marietta's window, apparently with rape on his mind. But the next morning, the counterfeiter drags Karamzin's dead body out of his house and stuffs it down the sewer. In the end, Helen appears to learn a "Wizard of Oz" lesson, to be happy with her stuffy old husband and not to seek exotic thrills outside of her own back yard.

This is one of the many movies Erich von Stroheim directed which were drastically edited down by studio bosses from several hours (over 6 in this case) to a more commercial running time. Most of the original cut is lost, but Kino's restoration, which comes in at around 2-1/2 hours, still manages to feel both too long (many individual scenes could be edited down a bit) and incomplete (we don't know what happens in the counterfeiter's house at the end, and the character of Vera seems totally unnecessary). Stills from his silents show Stroheim looking quite wicked and decadent, but here, his character is essentially a weak and desperate man trying to project both a charming and bullying persona, as needed. He actually comes off more like a naughty boy than a sinister lothario. Some of the acting is in the exaggerated silent style of the era, though Stroheim and Maude George as Olga are less mannered than the rest. This was the first movie which cost over a million dollars to make, mostly due to its sets, with Monte Carlo reconstructed faithfully, and many scenes are striking, such as the midnight storm and a water carnival. In an amusing self-referential joke, throughout the film, Helen is seen reading a book called "Foolish Wives" by Erich von Stroheim. [DVD]

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS (1955)

Back in the mid-60’s, I remember this made-for-TV opera being run every year at Christmas, usually on a Sunday afternoon, but despite my love of all things Christmas, I never got around to watching it. Since then, I’ve learned that the opera was first aired live in 1951 and re-staged, in live performance and in reruns, through the 60's. Recently a kinescope of the 1955 live telecast was issued on DVD. The plot is simple and seemingly classic, though as far as I know, it originated with the opera's writer, Gian Carlo Menotti. On the night of the Nativity, a poor lame boy named Amahl gets in trouble with his mother; he's an idle dreamer who makes up wild stories all the time, so his mother doesn't believe him when he says that wonderful things are happening in the night skies. But of course, there really is a magical star shining in the sky, and later that night, the Three Kings stop by looking for shelter on their way to visit the Christ child. Nearby shepherds provide food and entertainment, but the mother resents the fact that the Kings are taking gold as a gift for some newborn infant, while her poor crippled son has nothing. After she's caught trying to steal some gold, Melchior offers it to her outright, but when she learns more about what Christ has come for, she instead wishes she had a gift to send. When Amahl offers to send his crutch, since the child may need it someday, he is miraculously cured and heads off with the Kings to see the newborn child. I am not an opera fan, and though this work was popular in its day, I would have had trouble following the action if it weren't for the subtitles available on the DVD. Some of the songs are close to show tunes, especially a cute bit in which Amahl keeps trying to tell his disbelieving mom that three kings are at the front door, but the operatic tones keep getting in the way of clear comprehension. I have a similarly hard time judging performance here, since the acting is not, and is not meant to be, naturalistic, but the 12-year-old boy playing Amahl, Bill McIver, is excellent, and Rosemary Kuhlmann is fine as the mother. There have been a few picture book adaptations of this over the years, but I think the material is ripe for adaptation as a non-musical film or play. [DVD]

THE CHRISTMAS CHOIR (2008)

My viewing pick for this year's Christmas TV-movie is the Hallmark Channel's The Christmas Choir. It claims to be based on a true story, but the cliches and coincidences run so thick, I imagine this is more fiction than fact. Jason Gedrick (pictured) is a workaholic accountant who, though not quite a Scrooge, has let his work life affect his personal life: his girlfriend has just broken up with him and his secretary is getting fed up with all the extra hours. One night, while nursing his broken heart at a downtown bar, he is befriended by a homeless guy (Tyrone Benskin); when the two head off to a nearby shelter together, they bond over their love of music. Gedrick, goaded by the earthy nun who runs the shelter (Rhea Perlman), finds a new meaning to his life: he organizes a "Christmas Choir" of homeless men to sing in the subways, so they can collect a little money to make their holidays a little better. Of course, all the predicted obstacles (uh-oh, no permit; uh-oh, what to do about that pesky alcoholic singer) and some more outrageous than predictable (would you believe a major fire at the shelter, right on Christmas Eve?) occur, but the performances make it work--I even got a little teary at one point. What I wasn't as crazy about was the "While You Were Sleeping" romance between Gedrick and subway token taker Marianne Farley. The handsome Gedrick is very good but Farley lacks any oomph. You're always in good hands with Perlman, a total pro. This is one I might consider watching again.

THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR (1937)

This is the third movie version of this story, originally a play and filmed once as a silent in 1919 and once in the early sound days, in 1929, by Tod Browning (DRACULA). I reviewed the '29 version several years ago, but the primitiveness of the filming and the awkward direction distracted me from enjoying the narrative. This film, though obviously a B-enterprise, is a bit more enjoyable as it doesn't have the slack pacing and technical problems that marred the '29 version. In British-run Calcutta, an Englishman named Leith has been murdered and no one who knew the man is talking, so his friend (Henry Daniell) gets Scotland Yard involved. The visiting inspector (Lewis Stone) plots with Daniell to hold a seance, with the batty Madame LaGrange (Dame May Whitty) attempting to contact the dead man's spirit, in the hope that the killer will snap and confess. Among the participants, many of whom had grudges against Leith, are a Hindu professor (Lal Chand Mehra), the son of the local governor (Thomas Beck), his girlfriend (Madge Evans), a doctor (Charles Trowbridge), and a snotty young woman (Heather Thatcher) who may have had a special relationship with Leith. At the seance (shot in total blackness), Daniell is knifed to death, though no one can find the murder weapon. The participants are questioned, secrets are revealed, and a second seance is held, which leads to the killer's exposure. Old pros Whitty and Stone are fine, and the plot holds the attention. I especially liked getting some insight into Whitty's own self-consciousness about her mystical abilities--she seems to sincerely believe that she has some, but she also admits to resorting to theatrical trickery now and then. The scene in which she calls out desperately, alone in the room, for help from Laughing Eyes, her spirit contact, is nicely played. Also with Elissa Landi and Ralph Forbes. [TCM]

THE UPTURNED GLASS (1947)

James Mason has been giving a series of university lectures about the psychology of crime; this time, he uses a case study to show how a perfectly sane and rational person could commit murder. As he tells the story, we see it in flashback, and the rational man is Mason himself, a brain surgeon who successfully operates on a young girl to restore her sight and falls in love with the girl's mother (Rosamund John). Though they are both married, they have a brief, furtive affair before deciding they must break it off. A short time later, John winds up dead in what is judged to be an accidental fall from a window at her home. However, Mason picks up on small clues which indicate that John's sister-in-law, Pamela Kellino, may have had something to do with the death, so he gets close to her so that he can engineer a similar death for her. When Mason does finally force Kellino out the window, the narrative takes a breathtaking turn (I would say an M. Night Shyamalan trick, but it's pulled off much more fairly and logically than most of his are). I don't want to reveal it here but suffice to say that there is another tense and well-played half-hour to the movie. The young Mason occasionally looks like Gregory Peck, and the movie itself feels kin to other early psychological thrillers like Hitchcock's Spellbound. There are plotholes galore, but they are easily overlooked, and the ending manages to be both satisfying and, the more you dwell on it, rich in ambiguity. A little gem, available in a good print on a DVD from MPI called Classic British Thrillers. [DVD]

NORTHWEST RANGERS (1942)

Warners wasn’t the only studio to do B-level remakes of earlier A-level films. This MGM second feature is a variation on the oft-told story of boyhood pals who take different life paths and wind up on opposite sides of the law. It's an official remake of MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, though lots of other movies have used that inspiration unofficially. Instead of a gangster-ridden big city, the buddies grow up in the Yukon, where they are orphaned after an Indian attack. Mountie sergeant Jack Holt takes them both in; Jim grows up wanting to follow in Holt's footsteps, but Blackie, when still a snot-nosed kid, tries his hand at John Carradine's saloon and gambling club. He loses big but catches the fever and takes off for parts unknown. Years later, Jim (William Lundigan) is a clean-cut Mountie still living with his dad when gambling dandy Blackie (James Craig, pictured above) comes back to town. At the local club, Craig (with the help of his friend Keenan Wynn) catches Carradine cheating, gets the best of him, and wins ownership of the club, which of course makes Carradine an enemy for life. Patricia Dane, a singer at the saloon, cozies up to Craig, but soon finds herself attracted to Lundigan. The old friends still get along, but problems arise when Craig brawls with deadbeat Grant Withers; Withers is accidentally killed, Lundigan's investigation comes to naught, and Carradine blackmails Craig, getting the saloon back. Then he threatens to get Lundigan in trouble for covering up evidence which implicated Craig. As in the original movie, Craig sacrifices himself for Lundigan's honor. If you read this blog regularly, you know Lundigan and Craig are two of my favorite B-movie leads, so I found this to be a fun way to spend an hour, even if the storyline is predictable. Dana is too bland as the leading lady (and luckily winds up with little to do), but it was fun to see 11-year-old Darryl Hickman as the young Blackie. Hugh Beaumont (TV's Ward Cleaver) has a small role. [TCM]

WICKED, WICKED (1973)

(100% Weird alert!!!) At a large seaside hotel, there's been a rash of lovely blond women skipping out on their bills. But when house dick David Bailey starts investigating, he finds out that these women are actually missing, and foul play by some hotel employee is suspected. A stab is made at presenting a handful of suspects, including Edd Byrnes as a beach bum who works part-time as a waiter, but we learn very quickly that the psycho killer is young handyman Randolph Roberts, who was abused by both his blond mother and a later blond mother-figure. By chance, Bailey's ex-wife, Tiffany Bolling, shows up as a lounge singer doing a gig at the hotel, and when she puts on a blond wig, she attracts the attention of Roberts. In the finale, we find out that Roberts, an amateur embalmer, has been cutting up his victims and sewing their parts back together, and of course he plans to do the same with Bolling, until Bailey and the cops arrive in the nick of time.

This is basically a retread of PSYCHO that plays out like a TV-movie, with one big gimmick: it was filmed in "Duo-Vision," which means the entire film is in split-screen. This doesn't come off as badly as one might think. Sometimes, we get the point of view of the killer on one side and the would-be victim on the other. Sometimes we get a person relating a flashback on one side while what really happened is played out on the other. (Its best use, however, comes as a visual joke during a sex scene.) The problem with the gimmick is that it isn't needed; the style doesn't seem organic to the tale, as though Duo-Vision was randomly applied to the script for the heck of it. However, the real problem with the film is the acting, which is mostly weak. Bailey overacts; Bolling, a Playboy model, underacts and is terrible (though she did eke out a career as a B-movie star); Scott Brady, as a cop, is totally forgettable. Arthur O'Connell is OK as the handyman's boss, and Madeline Sherwood (Sally Field's Mother Superior on The Flying Nun) does a decent job as an eccentric older lady in danger of being kicked out the hotel until Roberts comes to her aid. Roberts comes off the best, doing a less neurotic variation on Norman Bates. Poor Edd Byrnes (77 Sunset Strip's Kookie) is around just long enough to be a red herring before he gets in an accident and spends the rest of the movie in a coma. Overall, this movie was better than most of the reviews out there indicate—and it's certainly better than the bomb rating that Leonard Maltin gives it—but don't lose sleep if you never catch it. [TCM]

UNNATURAL (aka ALRAUNE) (1952)

This odd little gothic melodrama, with science-fiction overtones out of Frankenstein, is based on a German novel from 1911 about a woman conceived through artificial insemination, a method which was apparently considered scandalous back then, and perhaps still had the taint of "unholiness" about it in the 50's when this film, the fifth version on record, was made. It helps to know a little fascinating background first: "Alraune" is the German word for "mandrake," a root, shaped like a human being, which was believed to grow beneath a gallows, seeded from the semen of hanged men. In this story, disgraced professor Erich von Stroheim has "created" a daughter through artificial insemination, from an executed criminal and a prostitute, an act thought of by his former colleagues as a "crime against nature." As a young woman, Alraune (Hildegarde Knef) is lovely but amoral, and has been kicked out of a convent school for possessing pornography and being a bad influence on the other girls. Stroheim's nephew (Karl Boehm, of PEEPING TOM), a decadent, gambling student, first sees her looking like a nymph lolling by a pond and falls for her, as do his buddies. One by one, she drives most of them to bad ends (one wastes away, one dies in a duel, etc.). Stroheim decides he wants her all to himself (never mind that she was raised to believe he was her father), but when she thinks she can find true happiness running off with Boehm, her "creator" shoots her dead.

The plot is sheer pulp thriller, though the way the film is shot, there aren't all that many thrills. This is a talky movie, and the bad English dubbing doesn't help (no German language option was available on the DVD), nor does the somewhat damaged print. The film's strengths are in its visuals; the whole thing has a dreamy Gothic aura, the sets are evocative, and the camerawork has an occasional off-kilter look that makes it seem more modern than the 50's. At least two important plot points are disappointingly conveyed in writing rather than action. Knef is fine, though too old for the part; she is supposed to still need a governess but looks at least 30. In the very last shot, Knef's dead body appears to morph into a mandrake root, though I assume that is creative poetic license rather than true narrative closure. The whole idea that she was "created" wouldn't really carry much water today, so this doesn't work as science fiction, but as a kind of Gothic Hawthorne or Le Fanu tale, it's worth seeing. [DVD]