THE DISEMBODIED (1957)

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

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

WILD ORCHIDS (1929)

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

EDGE OF DARKNESS (1943)

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

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

COP HATER (1958)

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

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

NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950)

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

BOMBS OVER BURMA (1942)

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

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

BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER (1960)

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

THE RETURN OF BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1934)

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

A BELL FOR ADANO (1945)

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

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

THE KILLING (1956)

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

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

MOTHER WORE TIGHTS (1947)

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

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

MURDER HE SAYS (1945)

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

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

THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (1934)

In between making frothy musicals for Ernst Lubitsch and becoming a cinema legend in a series of operettas with Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald made this romantic musical, not quite an operetta (though it's about the writing and production of one) and definitely not quite on the level of a Lubitsch picture in terms of wit or visuals. Still, this may be of interest to some as one of the last of the pre-Code musicals. Ramon Novarro is a poor composer living in Brussels, barely scraping together a living playing piano at sidewalk cafés while he works on an operetta. He meets MacDonald when he jumps into her cab; they argue and tussle but he is clearly smitten (nowadays, he'd be considered on the verge of being a stalker), and is pleased to discover that she is staying at a pensione next to his, the same place where a group of his musician buddies live. His mentor (Jean Hersholt) gets him a meeting with a famous impresario (Frank Morgan), but he loses his music to the cab driver to whom he owes money. It turns out that the stand-offish MacDonald is also a composer, and soon the two are writing together—and co-habiting as well. A song she writes becomes popular and they move to Paris, but as they say, more money, more problems; soon Novarro goes back to Brussels to get his operetta produced with a famous singer (Vivienne Segal) with her husband providing backing, and when MacDonald stays behind, Morgan moves in on her. The operetta production falls apart when the singer and her husband leave, so at the last minute, only McDonald can step in and save the day—will she?

This is mild fun, though long stretches of it are surprisingly melodramatic (just like an operetta!), and as much as I generally like Novarro, I didn't like his character here—his awkward badgering of MacDonald goes on far too long, and when she finally gives in, it feels unmotivated; it's like a poorly done Astaire/Rogers set-up. MacDonald is less imperious than she was later with Eddy, and Charles Butterworth provides some worthy comic relief. It's strange to see Morgan playing a bit against type as a conniving bad guy—he's not really a villain but he's the only person in the story whom we're rooting against. The song that Novarro and MacDonald collaborate on, "The Night Was Made for Love," is repeated in various versions throughout the first half of the movie until you are sick of it. There’s a cute scene of MacDonald singing "Try to Forget" in a freight elevator. The finale, with MacDonald and Navarro singing together on stage, is in color. The primary pre-Code aspect of the film is that the two are shown living together out of wedlock. [Warner Archive Instant]

BROADWAY BABIES (1929)

This is a very early talkie and, in plot and structure, a forerunner of the Warner Bros. Gold Digger movies of the 30s. Mrs. Maguire, a former showgirl, runs a boarding house for theatrical types. Three chorus girls who room together call themselves the Three Musketeers, standing alone because unlike the other gals in the house, they're not actively looking for "sugar daddies" or "johns" as they’re known in the trade—I don't think this has quite the connotation it does for prostitutes, but it's in the same ball park. One of the girls (Alice White) is engaged to Charles Delaney, a stage manager who has ambitions to become a producer, but complications ensue. A rich gambler from Detroit (Fred Kohler) crosses paths with the gals and he gets them after-hours jobs at a nightclub. Meanwhile, White sees Delaney flirt with a starlet whom he hopes will headline his show, so she breaks it off with him and transfers her affections to Kohler. But Kohler is getting set up for a big fleecing at the gambling table by some New York gangsters, and these guys carry guns. The movie starts off slow and stagy, but by the halfway point, it gets some energy and the climax is pulled off well. The musical numbers are pre-Busby Berkeley, meaning they are staged like they would be on a real Broadway stage and not extended into a fantasy Musical-Land. The dancing is a little clunky as well, but the numbers are generally fun. The acting is not much to speak of—White is OK but has no style, and Delaney would be a better fit for a bad guy role (he's definitely not a spritely juvenile type) but Fred Kohler is good as the gambler. Of some interest for fans of early musicals. [Warner Archive streaming]

THE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT (2013)

Kathy (Kellie Martin) is a widow in a small Pacific Northwest town; her husband died earlier in the year and she has been trying valiantly to keep his small bicycle shop going, but even with only one employee, it's been tough, especially when the owner of a neighboring shop wants to buy her out of her lease. She'd really like to start a cookie baking business but her loyalty to her husband has kept her in the bike shop. Tim (Cameron Mathison), who is nursing a broken heart—his long-time girlfriend left him recently—sells Christmas trees and runs a Christmas gift shop on the side, and is about to achieve his dream of owning a Christmas tree farm around which he will build a mini-theme park. Jenna (Jewel Staite), Kathy's best friend, is trying to get Kathy to celebrate the holidays but Christmas was a big deal for Kathy and her husband—he would even order special ornaments months in advance for her—and she doesn't feel ready to decorate a tree. However, when Jenna takes Kathy to Tim's tree lot, she and Tim hit it off right away. Slowly, Kathy begins to thaw, and the charming, understanding Tim doesn't try to pressure her. She puts up a tree and decorates it, and even accepts a new butterfly-angel ornament from Tim for the top of the tree. But when Tim's ex comes back to town, everything falls apart. Will Tim be able to convince Kathy that he only has eyes for her? And what will happen to the bike shop?

This is, on the surface, not much different from the run-of-the-mill made-for-TV Christmas movie. But it has several small pleasures that set it apart: the light tone is perfect—it's not a serious melodrama and there is a blessed lack of forced comedy—the two leads have a nice chemistry, and the Christmassy feel of the town is just right, not ridiculously over the top. There are no kids to clutter up the adult story (well, there is one kid who helps out at the Christmas tree lot but he's unobtrusive and even amusing); I have nothing against kids in Christmas movies, but when they're shoehorned in, it usually shows. Martin has the right feel of someone who is stressed but not depressed, and Mathison is charming, handsome and rugged-lite—he also frequently has an intense look in his eyes that, in the beginning, made me think the movie was going to take a strange turn and reveal his character as a serial killer. For a relatively realistic story, the plot takes a slightly magical turn near the end, but I think all good Christmas movies need a touch of magic. Recommended. [DVD]

ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS (1966)

Scientist Anthony Huston warns John Agar away from launching a laser satellite, saying that a previous attempt was destroyed by unknown forces, but the launch goes off without a hitch. Months later, over dinner at Huston's (very cheap Ed-Woodish) house, Huston tells Agar that he's been getting strange transmissions through his stereo unit that he insists are from an intelligent being from Venus, though he can't quite understand what they say. That evening, the satellite leaves its orbit and apparently crashes to earth, though no one knows where. The next day, all power (cars, lawn mowers, etc.) in the area dies, except at Huston's house. Huston tells Agar that Zontar, the Venusian life form he was listening to, rode the satellite down, is hiding in a nearby cave, and is responsible for the power outage. Huston is convinced that Zontar will bring a utopian age to Earth, but Agar thinks otherwise, and sure enough, soon Zontar has sent injectapods, bat-like, lobster-shaped flying creatures, out to attack people in the neck and control them. Can Agar talk Huston into stopping Zontar before he goes too far? This micro-budgeted film was produced to pad out a package of films that American International sold to television in the mid-60s. Based on—actually a scene-by-scene remake of—Roger Corman's IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, with Peter Graves in the hero role, this adds nothing to the original, except perhaps a slightly better looking title monster: a big, gooey, three-eyed standing-up bat creature (pictured). The injectapods are laughable (on wires as plain as the daylight that they fly in), as are most of the performances. There's a cheap attempt at humor when we see two military policemen getting their jollies looking at View Master slides of scantily-clothed women. Despite the promise of the campy-fun title, this is not fun at all. [DVD]

MY BLOOD RUNS COLD (1965)

This thriller has a plot right out of Dark Shadows, and the short pre-credit sequence of a woman in colonial-era garb running away from a house while thunderclouds collect just heightens that comparison—though the movie was made a year before Dark Shadows, so it's probably just intended to conjure up a Gothic tone. The movie proper begins with young sexy Julie Merriday (Joey Heatherton) recklessly speeding along in her fancy sports car with her boyfriend Harry (Nicolas Coster) warning her to be more careful. As she passes a truck, she accidentally runs motorcyclist Ben Gunther (Troy Donahue) off the road. They stop to attend to him and take him back to her father's mansion. Ben seems OK, but he calls Julie "Barbara" and insists he knows her, believing that she is the reincarnation of her great-grandmother and he, in a past life, was her lover. Julie's Aunt Sarah (Jeanette Nolan) confirms that Barbara did have an affair with a Ben Gunther, resulting in an illegitimate child. Julie starts to believe Ben's story and the two begin a dalliance, leaving Harry out in the cold. But there is more to Ben than meets the eye…

William Conrad, of TV's Cannon and Jake and the Fatman, directed three thrillers for Warner Bros. in 1965: BRAINSTORM, TWO ON A GUILLOTINE and this one. All are workmanlike and watchable, but they are also predictable and very much of their era, feature stars and supporting players from television, and though they generally look glossy enough, they were probably made on a relatively low budget. The surprise here for me was how good Heatherton was; granted, I kept thinking she was Connie Stevens—who is the star of GUILLOTINE—but still, she did a fine job as the sexy damsel who may or may not be in distress. Donahue (pictured at left) is, as usual, attractive but wooden, though that element serves him well playing a character who may or may not be evil and/or insane. Coster, mostly known as a soap opera actor, is good and his quirky smile/sneer serves him well. Barry Sullivan barely registers as the rich father, and Howard McNear (Floyd the barber on Andy Griffith) has a cameo. Bland but watchable. [Warner Archive Instant]

NIGHT SPOT (1938)

This seemingly routine B-movie, a comic crime story, has a big plus in the chemistry of its leading men. Marge (Joan Woodbury) works at an insurance company but has come to the Royale nightclub to audition for a singing job. She's mistaken for a shady dame who had an appointment with the boss, Marty Davis, and is shown into his office. Seated and hidden from view, she witnesses a crook named Buzz break in and shoot Davis. Davis survives but Buzz is found dead shortly after. Thinking that Marge is not as innocent as she claims, and suspecting that Davis is running a jewel theft ring, the police chief assigns two members of the police department band, Cooper (Allan Lane) and Riley (Gordon Jones), to infiltrate the Royale's house band. The situation: many of the elites who come to the club have wound up getting their valuables stolen. It turns out that the tables in the club are bugged, and Davis listens in on conversations to learn when the jewels will be unguarded. In the meantime, Davis, afraid that his enemies will get to Marge, his alibi in the murder of Buzz, has his bumbling Greek henchman Gashouse (Harry Parke aka Parkyakarkus) guard her. Further, both Cooper and Riley start to fall for Marge.

For a one-hour movie, a lot of things happen here, so the pace is relatively frantic, which is fine as the tone is light. Parkyakarkus, father of Albert Brooks, is first billed and he's basically a dialect comic who keeps messing up the language, as in, "I resemble that remark." In the beginning, his comic relief is a pain in the ass since I found the plot and other actors fairly interesting, but in the last half, his role diminishes greatly. Lee Patrick plays Marge's roommate, and Jack Carson and Cecil Kellaway have small roles. B-starlet Woodbury is serviceable, but Jones and Lane (pictured above) work very well together, and make the film worth seeing. They have an easy camaraderie and never fall into straight man/funny man roles—they can both be both. A breezy little gem; it's a shame that Lane (who had a long career as Rocky Lane in B-westerns) and Jones (who went on to play the Green Hornet in a 1940 serial) weren't paired up for more of these. [TCM]

GOLD FOR THE CAESARS (1964)

Part of the charm of the sword-and-sandal epics of the 60s is the low budget of most of them; granted, they did often look cheap and didn't have the best actors, but they often made up for that with a scrappy energy and an anything-goes tone. This one was partially backed by MGM; it has a bigger budget, a stronger screenplay, a name star, and glossy sets & costumes, but it's rather lackluster and not all that fun. In Spain at the end of the first century, the occupying Romans, under Maximus, are building a bridge and holding off the barbarian Celts of the north. Centurion Rufus (Ron Randell) is the overseer, and Lacer (Jeffrey Hunter), a former slave, is the architect. Word reaches Maximus (Massimo Girotti) that the emperor is dying, and if Maximus can head north and mine gold from Celt territory to send to fill up Rome's empty coffers, he would be named Emperor. An uneasy truce is reached with the Celts and Lacer is sent with some slaves to get the gold, but Maximus gets restless, breaks the truce, and enters Celt territory with his army, leading to an all-out battle. This isn't a complete slog: the young and beautiful Jeffrey Hunter (pictured) is effective as the slave hero—and even when he's just standing around, there are enough close-ups of that face to make a fan swoon; Randell is suitable as Hunter's chief antagonist; the final battle—which involves the destruction of a dam—and an earlier earthquake sequence are pulled off fairly well; I also liked Giulio Bosetti as Scipio. But Hunter's love interest, Mylene Demongeot, is bland, and Girotti as Maximus seems to be holding back a bit. Much of the film was shot on natural locations, but parts of the final battle were shot on sets with very obvious painted backdrops—maybe they were running out of money by the end. [DVD]

REDEMPTION (1930)

On the road to Moscow, Lisa (Eleanor Boardman) stops and has her fortune read by gypsies; she is told she will marry a dark man, but oddly, her fiancé Victor (Conrad Nagel) is light. When handsome Fedya (John Gilbert), a casual acquaintance of Victor's, arrives on the scene, he is struck by Boardman's beauty. She calls him a barbarian, and he replies that trying to change people is foolish, but if anyone could change him, it would be her. The two begin meeting on the sly and eventually get married, but it turns out that Lisa can't change his ways after all; even though they have a son, Fedya gets bored and loses all his money gambling. He goes bankrupt, Victor buys his estate at auction, and Fedya leaves Lisa. In Samarkand, Fedya lives with gypsies and falls in love with the sexy singing girl Masha (Renée Adoré). In order to free Lisa to marry her old flame Victor, Fedya sends a suicide note to her, so he can be declared legally dead, then runs off with Masha. After Lisa marries Victor, Fedya's plot is threatened with exposure by a blackmailer, leaving Fedya thinking: do I let my existence come to light and ruin Lisa and Victor's lives, or do I actually kill myself?

This is one of silent star John Gilbert's first talkies and it was a notorious bomb. It's often claimed that Gilbert's voice was his downfall, being too high and squeaky for his dark, masculine looks, but in this case, the problem is his silly, overly melodramatic dialogue and the schizophrenic style of the movie; the direction and acting are both stuck in a limbo between silent (florid visual style, exaggerated gestures) and early sound (static camerawork, subtle acting). Sadly, for much of the movie, Gilbert is on the verge of being laughable, though by the end, when Fedya is constantly drunk and sick, Gilbert's performance becomes more naturalistic and achieves some power. To be fair, no one else is particularly good in this, either, except perhaps Adoré. It’s not exactly a terrible movie—it's certainly worth seeing for fans of the actors or the era—but it won’t win Gilbert any converts. [TCM]