AN INSPECTOR CALLS (1954)

The wealthy Birling family has gathered for dinner. Around the table are the father Arthur, a factory owner; the mother Sibyl, a older socialite who busies herself with charity work; the daughter Sheila, present with her fiancé Gerald, wears a sense of entitlement in addition to her beauty and nice wardrobe; the brother Eric is a dissolute drinker who is always a little "squiffy," though both Sheila and his mother work hard to avoid any scenes that he might cause. In the middle of dinner, Inspector Poole (Alastair Sim, pictured) shows up somewhat mysteriously with the news that a young woman named Eva Smith has died, apparently a suicide. The family members don't seem to know her and don't know why Poole has called, but slowly the inspector jogs their memories with a photograph he presents to each, one at a time, and it turns out all of them had dealings with her that may have led her down the tragic road to death, which we see in a series of flashbacks prompted by Poole who seems to know more than he should about everyone. She once worked for the father, but he casually fired her for verbally defending a possible factory strike. Her next job was at a department store, but Sheila has her fired for an imagined slight. Going by the name Daisy, she winds up homeless and is taken in by Gerald who lets her stay at his small apartment in the city. His intentions are honorable at first, but soon she becomes his mistress until she realizes that their class differences are making him lose interest. Other sad and tawdry revelations involve Sibyl and Eric, and they all seem to have had a hand in Eva's sad end. When the family is confronted by their unfeeling ways, they feel guilty and want to atone (some more genuinely than others) until they discover that no woman named Eva Smith has been reported dead, and that no one named Poole works for the local police. So who is Poole and what does he want?

Based on a play by J.B. Priestley, this film uses its flashbacks to overcome its stage origins, though even the scenes set in the drawing room are shot with style and never feel overly stagy. In terms of genre, this isn't easily classifiable. No overt crime is committed and it's not really a mystery, despite how mysterious the inspector is. The lifestyle of the Birlings is attacked, but not satirically. I guess it's a morality play in the form of a melodrama which has a distinct Twilight Zone feel to it as it goes along. As interesting as the narrative is, it's the acting here that carries the film. Sim is always fine, and the only problem with his sleepy-eyed but sharp inspector character is that I wish there was more of him. Olga Lindo, as the mother, is a wonderful bitch whose pious bubble you can't wait to see burst. Eileen Moore as Sheila and Bryan Forbes (better known as the director of Seance on a Wet Afternoon and The Stepford Wives) flesh out their relatively sympathetic characters well. Arthur Young as the father and Brian Worth as Gerald are fine, as is Jane Wenham as Eva who actually comes off as a little too strong of a character to succumb to suicide. The moral lessons of the movie may seem a little simplistic nowadays but the social commentary is still relevant is this era when many people who loudly proclaim their Christianity seem to be completely in the dark as to what truly Christian behavior as outlined by Christ should be like. [DVD]

FUGITIVE IN THE SKY (1936)

Reporter Terry Brewer is hanging out at a Los Angeles airport, flirting with Rita, a stewardess, when he recognizes Roger Johnson, a departing passenger on a Transamerica Airlines flight to New York, as a Federal agent named Mike Phelan. Smelling a story, maybe involving the capture of the notorious 'Killer' Madsen, Terry gets a ticket and joins eleven other passengers, including Katie, a woman obsessed with horoscopes; an beauty queen from Apple Creek, Ohio; a quiet elderly lady; a boxer and his manager; a drunkard; and a pilot (Bob) who is also sweet on Rita. At one point when everyone is asleep, we see a passenger stabbed to death in silhouette. When Rita discovers him, Phelan steps forward to take charge, but so does the elderly lady who is actually 'Killer' Madsen. He pulls a gun and, though apparently innocent of the murder, hijacks the plane to Evansville, Illinois, despite the fact that the pilots warn him about a dangerous dust storm that's brewing near there. From here on out, it's one thing after another—Madsen smashes the plane's radio, the pilot and co-pilot both wind up out of commission, Rita has to pilot the plane briefly, the horoscope lady makes a nuisance of herself, and a rocky landing is made in the middle of nowhere during the dust storm. Madsen leaves and is forced to stop at an isolated farmhouse, and soon all the other passengers wind up there as well. Can Terry and the Fed manage to bring Madsen to justice? And if Madsen really didn't kill the passenger, who did?

Because this movie was released in the relatively early days of transcontinental air travel, it begins with a foreword stressing that, despite what we're going to see, air travel is actually fast and safe. Well, it may be if you don't have a couple of murderers on board. This is a typical classic-era Warner Bros. B-picture; as such, it's well-paced, has a short running time, and features a fairly solid group of second-string actors, including Warren Hull as Terry (he doesn't cut the most heroic figure, but he's nicely flippant), Jean Muir as Rita, Gordon Oliver as the co-pilot (whom I was rooting for to get the girl, but since he’s third-billed, I knew that wasn't going to happen), John Litel as the federal agent, Howard Phillips as the bad guy, and Nedda Harrigan and Mary Treen in smaller roles. Even if the outcome is predictable, the last 20 minutes are fairly exciting. My favorite line: when the reporter, frustrated when Madsen gets the upper hand in the plane, blurts out, "I'd like to give that guy some action!" the Fed replies, "Who wouldn't?" I wanted to quote Archer here: "Phrasing…" Pictured are Muir, Hull and Oliver. [TCM]

THE ROAD BACK (1937)

It's November 11, 1918 and the Armistice that will end World War I is about to be signed, but the tattered remains of a group of German soldiers, which includes buddies Ernst (John King) and Ludwig (Richard Cromwell), don't know that and Captain Von Hagen somewhat reluctantly has his men take one last village. The frightened soldiers think they hear gas shells in the air, but it's really a flock of wild geese. Eventually the captain spreads the news of the truce, but it's too late for the badly wounded Wessling who is basically left to die in the village as the other men leave for home. When the Germans encounter a group of American soldiers, there is tension for a moment until the Americans offer them some chewing gum, an unknown treat which delights the Germans. But the "road back" to their old lives will not be so easy for most of the men. When the captain dismisses his handful of men for the last time, we see a ghostly image of the dozens of soldiers from the company who didn't make it back. There is revolution in the streets and old relationships aren't the same. Ernst, who suffers from what we would call PTSD, tells his girlfriend who wants to hear glory stories that he just wants to forget his war experiences, and that men who are taught to be "inhuman" for four years will have a hard time resuming normal life. Weil, one of the former soldiers, joins the street protesters and is shot dead in the streets by his former captain. Another goes somewhat awkwardly back to school. Albert (Maurice Murphy) discovers that his fianceé has gotten a reputation as a good-time girl, and is currently mistress to Bartscher, a war profiteer, which ultimately leads him to kill Bartscher. At the trial, Ernst gives an impassioned plea in his defense, blaming a society that taught Albert how to kill but not how to find a road back from war.

This is something of a sequel to the classic WWI film ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, based as it is on the follow-up novel by Erich Maria Remarque. James Whale crafted a strongly anti-war movie but ultimately to avoid offending Nazi Germany, the movie was taken out of his hands by Universal; several scenes that might offend the newly militaristic nation were cut and some reshoots involving scenes of comic relief were inserted. Whale disowned the film, but despite its reputation as a ruined classic, I still found it powerful, even if it does pull its punches a bit. My biggest problem is that none of the actors attempt to do German accents; that may have made things easy for the cast, but in the first 20 minutes or so, I kept forgetting these were German soldiers we were following, and the scene in which the Germans meet the Americans was especially confusing as they all sounded exactly alike. John King (later, as Dusty King, a star of B-westerns) is fine as Ernst, though when he delivers his big speech at the end of the movie, he rushes through it like he's afraid he'll forget his lines. Cromwell is rather bland as Ludwig. Slim Summerville and Andy Devine are the comic relief soldiers who eventually wear out their welcome. Maurice Murphy is effective as the tragic Albert, and you'll recognize Lionel Atwill, Clara Blandick, Noah Beery Jr. and Spring Byington in small roles. This may not have been as powerful as Whale wanted, but it does still pack some punches, and is well worth seeing. Pictured is Larry Blake as Weil. [YouTube]

COME NEXT SPRING (1956)

In a backwoods Arkansas town in 1927, Bess (Ann Sheridan) is doing her best to raise her two kids (Annie, a mute, and the younger Abraham, a bedwetter) on her small farm, with some help from a sharecropper (Walter Brennan) and his adult son. Nine years ago, her husband Matt (Steve Cochran) left his family in disgrace after a drunk driving accident—he had a reputation as the town drunk—but one fine morning, he shows up strolling down the road. He's been sober for three years and has returned, though it's not clear why. Bess has a more or less friendly chat with him, but she is not inclined to welcome him back in her life. But her son, who was born after Matt left, takes a shine to him and when Matt offers to do some odd jobs around the place, she lets him stay, making it clear that they will not be living as man and wife. The townsfolk are not happy to see him, but slowly he starts winning people over, especially when a twister hits and Matt helps get people to safety. Bess and Matt kiss, but she worries that he will return to his old ways and refuses to get more involved. A roughneck named Leroy (Sonny Tufts) has been trying to court Bess, and he shows up at the town Halloween party. Matt breaks his pledge and has a drink, just to show the other men that he can have one and stop, but soon he and Matt tangle, leading to a lengthy brawl that starts outside the barn and winds up in a creek, and in the end, Matt has to save Leroy because he can't swim. Finally, Annie, whose muteness seems to have been caused by Matt's past drunken accident, goes missing in some dangerous mountains, and the town comes together to help Matt and Bess find her.

This was aired on Turner Classic Movies as one of Leonard Maltin's "neglected classics." I'm not sure I'd so far as calling it a classic, but it does deserve to be more widely seen. The predictability of the plot and the potential for some sticky sentiment are offset by Cochran and Sheridan who work well together. Sheridan in particular is fine playing convincingly against her 'Oomph girl' type as a plain, careworn mother, and Cochran (pictured with Sheridan) goes a bit against type in a somewhat gruff but sympathetic role. Walter Brennan hasn't much to do but he adds his relatively authentic mountain folk persona to the proceedings. In their advertising for the film Republic Pictures tried comparing it to their earlier hit The Quiet Man, but the only real point of comparison is the long nighttime brawl scene, accompanied by a rollicking score, which for my money plays out better here than in the John Wayne film. (It's heresy to say but I'm not really a fan of The Quiet Man.) Sherry Jackson, also the daughter on the 1950s Danny Thomas Show, is very good as Annie. The trajectory of the story will come as no surprise, but it's a generally pleasant viewing experience, and as a fan of Steve Cochran, it was nice to see him as a good guy for a change. [TCM]

LI'L ABNER (1940)

I lost the original version of my review of this movie (as well as a handful of others) in a jump drive incident a few months ago, so this is a slightly faded memory version of my reaction to this 1940 movie based on Al Capp's famous comic strip set in the small backwoods village of Dogpatch. Granville Owen makes for a nicely hunky and dumb Abner. (I know him from the serial TERRY AND THE PIRATES, but most would know him under the name Jeff York when he played Bud Searcy in OLD YELLER.) His Mammy is trying to marry him off to blond and busty Daisy Mae, though Abner just wants to live the carefree life of a backwoods bachelor. But when Abner becomes convinced that he has a fatal disease and only has 24 hours to live, he winds up promising to marry not only Daisy Mae but another sexpot named Wendy Wilecat. When he doesn't die, the only solution to his two-timing proposal is the annual Sadie Hawkins race, in which single women chase single men to catch and keep them. 

This is a low-budget affair, and the print I saw on YouTube was not in good shape, but still the comically anarchic nature of the proceedings comes through well enough. Owen embodies Abner, the muscular doofus, to a tee, and Martha O'Driscoll (pictured with Owen) is effective as Daisy Mae. Mona Ray, as Mammy Yokum, doesn't need to act much—her exaggerated nose and chin makeup do all her acting for her. Buster Keaton is completely wasted as an offensively stereotyped Indian, though every character here is some kind of stereotype, as they were in the original comic strip. The best scene is probably when Abner falls asleep in the woods, wakes up, and thinks he's died and gone to heaven. This will probably not hold the attention of someone who isn't already a classic movie-era fan, but I enjoyed it more than the glossy, big-budget 1959 musical film which, despite the songs and the sturdier sets and the widescreen, becomes elaborately far-fetched and ultimately failed to hold my interest. [YouTube]

MAGIC BOY (1961)

This was one of the first examples of Japanese animation (anime) released in the U.S. The title character is introduced to us through a bland but catchy theme song--"There was a boy named Sasuke in Japan / He loved the friendly creatures of the wood…” Sasuke (pronounced Saski in the English dub of this movie) lives with his older sister in a modest cabin in the woods, and he frolics frequently with a bunch of friendly animals including a bear, a squirrel, a deer and its fawn (named Tinkle for the bell it wears). One afternoon, a romp goes wrong when a hawk attacks Tinkle and carries it off, dropping it in a nearby lake. The fawn's mother leaps in the water to save the fawn, but she dies when attacked by a giant salamander, which is actually a shape-shifting evil witch named Yakusha. Sasuke takes it on himself to get schooled in magic by an amiable wizard for three years so he can get revenge aginst the witch. Meanwhile, his sister Oyu's home is burned down by bandits who are controlled by Yakusha, and Oyu is helped by a handsome prince who offers his help again if ever needed. When Sasuke goes after the witch, she decides to go after him, and Oyu for good measure. A little girl who is brave enough to go after two comic-relief bandits also gets involved, as does the prince, and eventually the witch is defeated.

I'm not an expert on anime so I won't try to comment on the film as an example of the genre, but I can say that there are plenty of Disney influences here. The animals seem right out of Bambi, and the sequence with the wizard is reminiscent of The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence of Fantasia. The mix of fantasy, comedy, and black arts gives the movie a Snow White feel. Most amusingly, the robe that the witch wears has giant bats on it with heads that look exactly like Mickey Mouse silhouettes. (I even think the witch looks a little bit like 101 Dalmatians' Cruella de Vil (see photo) though that movie was made after Magic Boy.) The film was marketed for kids, and the New York Times ran an approving review of it when it opened in New York in December of 1963, calling it a perfect Christmas treat for the family. But it is darker and more violent than classic-era Disney fare, with some swordplay, a brutal whipping endured by Sasuke, and people being tossed off of cliffs. The body count is fairly high though there is no blood or gore, and except for the deer mom, all the good guys and gals and animals survive. The film's rhythms take some getting used to—the narrative doesn't really get started until about 15 minutes in, and there are long scenes with no dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, I scoured the Internet and couldn't find any credits for the English voice cast, though I'm sure I heard Paul Frees, one of the most famous movie & TV voices ever (Boris Badanov on Rocky & Bullwinkle among hundred of other voices and narrations). The lovely backgrounds are more impressionistic than most of Disney's. It feels ahead of its time, and kids today would certainly not be caught as off-guard as I was by its unusual qualities, especially kids who have seen the movies of Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle). Released in Japan in 1959 as Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke. [TCM]

STARK FEAR (1962)

Ellen (Beverly Garland) is stuck in a dysfunctional relationship with her husband Gerald (Skip Homeier) and things are just getting worse. Though employed, Gerald seems to be on the way down the corporate ladder rather than up, and Ellen has gone to work as a secretary for Cliff (Kenneth Tobey), a nice guy who sympathizes with Ellen's problems. But Gerald wants Ellen to quit her job because he thinks Cliff hired her just to have an affair with her. On Gerald's birthday, Ellen tries to cheer him up (and also tries to get him interested in sex, something that's been lacking in their relationship), but instead he gets violent, calls her a tramp, and says he wants a divorce. She goes to stay with Ruth, a friend and social worker, and when she finds out that Gerald has taken an "unpaid holiday" to the anger of his boss, she goes looking for him and finds out that he has gone back to his hometown of Quehada, Oklahoma. She is surprised because he told her he came from Pennsylvania, and she soon discovers some unsavory facts about him (multiple affairs, a dead-mother fixation). Eventually, Ellen is raped, on top of the mother's grave, by an old friend of Gerald's—with Gerald watching from the shadows, though she doesn't find that out until later. Meanwhile, her friendly boss Cliff has developed feelings for Ellen, and she for him, but he's heading off to Mexico for two years and invites her to come. Ellen is torn between wanting to go and wanting some kind of closure with Gerald. More unsavoriness follows until we wonder how low Ellen will go before realizing she needs to get away from her husband.

This B-film has the cheap look and feel of a naughty grindhouse film (though there is no nudity or explicit sex), and the script drowns in simplistic psychological explanations for everyone's behavior—Gerald is a sadist, Ellen a masochist, taking the blame for Gerald's behavior and belittling herself. Even good guy Cliff may be acting out his problems—we find out that Gerald had worked for Cliff years ago until a falling-out, so is Cliff deliberately pursuing Ellen to punish Gerald? The film remains involving despite the shoddy production values, mostly due to solid acting from the lead trio; the film was shot on location in Oklahoma and most of the rest of the cast is made up of locals. (Sidenote: the movie got a big ballyhooed world premiere in Norman, Oklahoma in January 1963, but played much of the rest of the country as a second feature to King Kong vs. Godzilla.) Garland (pictured with Homeier) does what she can with her overloaded, underwritten character, Tobey makes the most of could have been a thankless role, and Homeier, who I know as a 13-year-old Nazi in TOMORROW THE WORLD, is chilling as the totally unsympathetic husband. The last half of the movie is unrelenting torture for poor Ellen, but she gets a relatively happy ending—though it's a bit abrupt and feels like it might have been a last-minute script change. Marketed as noir, but really drive-in exploitation. If that's your thing, you'll like this. [DVD]

FLOWING GOLD (1940)

Johnny Blake is a roaming roughneck (oil well worker) at the front of a line of men looking for jobs at an oil rig. But when a man arrives to put up a wanted poster with his face on it, he takes off. Heading west, he winds up at another oil field and finds work on a roughneck gang headed by foreman Hap O'Connor. When Hap fires a drunken worker, the man tries to kill Hap and Johnny jumps in and saves Hap's life. Soon, cops start sniffing around looking for Johnny, and he confesses to Hap that he killed a man in self-defense but ran because he figured he couldn't get a fair trial. Because Hap owes Johnny his life (and because Johnny is a good worker and they've become friends), Hap agrees to hide Johnny from the law. Soon, Hap and his crew have joined up with the eccentric Wildcat Chalmers and his daughter Linda trying to stake a claim. They must strike oil by a certain date to hold onto the property, but they keep getting thwarted by Chalmers' old rival. Still, they make progress, and both Hap and Johnny fall for Linda. When Johnny is arrested in a bar fight and flees, and Hap sustains a serious leg injury, it looks like Chalmers is done for. But don’t count our heroes out for too long…

Both John Garfield (Johnny) and Frances Farmer (Linda) felt this assignment was beneath them (and, honestly, no one's acting abilities are challenged much), but for me, this is an enjoyable example of the grand Warner Bros. B-movie house style: relatively short, fast-paced, a good supporting cast, and strong production values, including here some well-staged fights and explosions. Garfield is fine in a variation on his tough guy loner persona, and Farmer provides a fresh new slant on the B-movie love interest, though her life would soon go off the rails (see the Jessica Lange movie Frances for details). Pat O'Brien, a Warners stalwart, is the eternal nice-guy loser in the love triangle, a role he could play in his sleep (not really a spoiler, since with Garfield around, O'Brien doesn’t stand a chance), but he still manages to give it some good energy. Raymond Walburn as Chalmers and Cliff Edwards as a ukulele-playing roughneck provide fine comic relief. It's an unpretentious B-movie adventure/romance: predictable but fun. [TCM]

DOWN TO EARTH (1947)

Broadway director Danny Miller (Larry Parks) is in the middle of rehearsals for his new show "Swinging the Muses," based on Greek mythology. He needs it to be a hit because when he racked up a big gambling debt to the gangster Joe Manion, he made a deal with Joe: back the show. If it's a hit, Joe will make a lot of dough; if it’s a flop, Danny will pay with his life. Meanwhile up in the clouds on Mount Parnassus, the muse Terpsichore (Rita Hayworth), goddess of song and dance, is angry over the show and its vulgar portrayal of herself and her sisters—in one song, the muse sings, "I put the ants in the pants of the dancers." She flits over to heaven and talks the angel Mr. Jordan into letting her visit Earth, with the plan to get the lead in the musical and exert pressure on Danny to make the show high art. Using the name Kitty, she barges into a rehearsal, dances so well that she steals the part from the lead, and does get Danny to make the show more serious. But those changes are a flop with critics and preview audiences, and it looks like Joe will come calling for Danny to pay his debt. But Mr. Jordan manages to manipulate things so Terpsichore understands what's at stake, and she allows Danny to stage the show the way he wanted, "for people who like jive, baseball and hot dogs." It's a hit and Danny is safe, but romantic complications between the goddess and Danny make her want to stay on Earth, with Mr. Jordan will not allow.

The heart of the narrative conflict here is high art vs. popular art, not an unusual theme in musicals of the classic era which often pitted opera against pop music or ballet against popular dance, with pop always winning out. Much of the middle of this movie anticipates 1953's THE BAND WAGON which uses a very similar plot device—a musical meant to be mindless fun is turned into a literal adaptation of Faust by a snobbish director and it's a flop until the show is rewritten for the masses. However, THE BAND WAGON had many legendary talents behind it, including MGM, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, director Vincente Minnelli, and the songwriting team of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. This Columbia movie misses that mark by quite a bit; the only legend here is Rita Hayworth and she carries as much of the movie as she can, but she is let down by pedestrian songwriting and direction, and a bland leading man. The frame for the story is borrowed directly from Columbia's 1941 fantasy HERE COMES MR. JORDAN which involves the angel Jordan allowing a dead person to visit Earth briefly to right a wrong. Claude Rains, Jordan in the original, is replaced here by the lesser Roland Culver, though Edward Everett Horton is fun repeating his earlier role as Heavenly Messenger 7013. Larry Parks isn't bad, but he and Hayworth don't strike many sparks, and she outdoes him wildly in looks and talent. But to touch on some positive notes: the movie is very colorful and the production numbers are fun (even if the songs are forgettable), and Rita Hayworth looks as gorgeous and dances as wonderfully as she ever did. She is reason enough to sit through the movie, even if the ending falls flat; the romance plot can't be satisfactorily wrapped up. A couple of lines made me laugh: a pop song is mentioned called "Who Hit Nelly in the Belly with a Flounder?"; a stuffy society lady sniffs, "I adore musicals—I'm so tired of thinking." [TCM]

HEADLINE CRASHER (1937)

Jimmy Tallant, the young and brash son of Senator Tallant, speeds to get a lovely hitchhiker to the airport to catch a flight in what she claims is a life or death situation. He gets her there but gets a ticket from the cops, and also learns that the young woman is just in a hurry to get to a dance. Newspaper owner Atwood, running against Tallant in the upcoming election, orders his reporters to keep following Jimmy and make him look bad in the papers as a way to tarnish the senator's reputation. Though Jimmy claims he only gets into trouble because he always wants to help, the negative headlines work and Jimmy decides to make himself scarce for the duration by going away to stay at the family vacation lodge. He tells his dad's secretary, Edith, where he's going; when she finds out that the young woman Jimmy helped to get the airport may have actually been in a robbery involving gangster Tony Scarlotti, she heads to the lodge to warn him. Reporter Larry Deering follows. As it happens, Tony and his men are hiding out at a cabin in the same woods, and poor Jimmy gets into more trouble when he helps a wounded gang member get to the hideout. As the gang tries to use Jimmy as bait to bring the senator, can Larry and Edith overcome a certain amount of animosity and work together against the mob?

In the late 30s, young Frankie Darro (Jimmy) and serials and action star Kane Richmond (Larry) were paired in a few movies by indie studio Conn Pictures. They did not play the same characters (sometimes but not always they were brothers), but the set-ups were the same—one has to help the other out of a jam. This cheap-looking but fast-paced and light-toned crime movie is fun, though because they don't share a lot of screen time, it's difficult to judge their effectiveness as a team. Both are B-movie favorites of mine so I'll probably try to hunt down a couple more of their films. There isn't much of a climax; the final showdown just sort of fizzles out. Otherwise, this is mostly indistinguishable from any other Poverty Row film of the era—an hour of painless entertainment which provides a couple of chuckles and a couple of passable action scenes. Pictured above are Darro and Richmond. [YouTube]

NOT SO DUMB (1930)

Gordon is trying to get businessman Charles Forbes to invest in his costume jewelry business. His fiancée Dulcy knows the Forbeses and invites them (Forbes, his wife Eleanor, and their daughter Angela) to a weekend house party, intending to help Gordon finalize the deal. Also present: her brother Bill, a Hollywood screenwriter named Leach, and an eccentric golfing millionaire named Van Dyke. Leach has had a crush from afar on Angela and hopes to win her over, but Bill, who used to date her, has his own ideas about getting her back. The flighty Van Dyke flirts with Eleanor, grabbing her bottom whenever possible. There's also a new butler, Perkins, an ex-con with an accent, who may be tempted to steal a valuable necklace of Eleanor's. Dulcy tries hard to get Forbes to make Gordon a good business deal, but everything she does backfires. The next morning, all is a shambles: Forbes backs out the deal, Van Dyke makes a better offer that turns out to be an empty promise, the butler seems to have made off with the necklace, and Leach and Angela have eloped, leaving both Forbes and Bill angry. Is there any way Dulcy can save the weekend before breakfast?

This pre-Code early talkie, based on a George S. Kaufman play, is a screwball comedy before that term existed. For me, it was equal parts fun and torture. The plot is promising, overstuffed with odd characters and situations that collapse comically before our eyes. There are some very funny moments and lines. The heavily-accented butler is given instructions as to how to greet guests, and he repeats these out loud ("When they come in, I say…") when doing the greeting. Leach spends hours relating the plot of his new screenplay "Sin," a through-the-ages story that begins with Noah and ends with the line, "The weasel is dead!" At a card game, Dulcy prattles so much that Forbes is sure she talks in her sleep. But I found this 75-minute movie difficult to get through. One problem has to do with the technical aspects of early talkies. Though the camera does move about, the film is very stagy and unimaginatively shot. But the bigger problem is the acting. Marion Davies, quite popular in her day as a light comic actress, is someone I've never cared much for. She tries very hard here to be a loveable scatterbrain, but too often she put me in mind of Katherine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby, a character I have always disliked. She delivers many malapropisms (for example, mixing up "exonerated" for "exiled") but they just don't sound natural coming from her. Elliot Nugent as Gordon is totally bland and I didn't care one bit if his business deal went through or not. Franklin Pangborn is amusing but ineffective as the screenwriter. His sissy stereotype was apparently in full effect this early in his career, and I did chuckle at his pronounced limp handshake with Bill. But I didn't believe for one moment that the young and vivacious Angela (Sally Starr, whom I quite liked) would go for him. The best performance is given by Raymond Hackett as Bill, the likeable layabout brother; sadly, he vanishes for large chunks of time. Ultimately, I liked the way everything came out in the end, but I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone except fans of Davies or of pre-Code comedy. (Forbes surprisingly comes out with a vigorous and clear line reading of, "I don’t give a damn about pictures!") Pictured at top left are Hackett and Davies; at right, Hackett and Nugent. [TCM]

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968)

This anthology features three short films by three well-known European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. There is no obvious connection between the three—even the title Spirits of the Dead seems only to fit one of the stories. In Roger Vadim's "Metzengerstein," Jane Fonda plays a rich and decadent countess (referred to as a "petty Caligula") who lives in a mansion by the sea, spending her days partying, holding orgies, and taking potshots at peasants, even occasionally hanging them from a tree just because she can (see photo at left). When Wilhelm, a handsome cousin of hers (Peter Fonda), moves in next door, she acts haughtily towards him but eventually flirts with him. When he rejects her, her pride is wounded so she has his barn burned down. Trying to save his horses, Wilhelm perishes in the fire, but soon a mysterious black horse shows up on the Countess' property. Could it be an incarnation of the dead Wilhelm? The second story, directed by Louis Malle, is "William Wilson," famous as one the earliest doppelganger stories. As a youth, Wilson is a popular troublemaker at boarding school, but when a boy shows up bearing his name and looking like him, Wilson is upset. The apparent twin interrupts his cruel pranks, and later as adults (when he and his twin are both played by Alain Delon), the twin continues his unwelcome interruptions. Finally, when Wilson cheats at cards and wins the favors of an unwilling woman, the twin exposes his cheating ways. This is the tipping point for Wilson who sets out to kill his doppelganger, with disastrous results.

Federico Fellini very loosely adapts Poe's "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," presented here under the name "Toby Dammit." Toby (Terence Stamp) is a British actor who arrives in Rome with much press fanfare to take a role in what is called the first Catholic western ("Dreyer, Pasolini with a hint of John Ford"). Constantly drunk or high or just obnoxious, we see Toby journeying through a fairly hellish landscape, most notably a surreal awards show, full of grotesque people and a few cardboard cut-outs and mannequins. He has visions of a young blond girl bouncing a ball whom he suspects is the devil, and when he takes off on a high-speed car ride through the streets of Rome one night, in the Ferrari which Toby has demanded as payment for his acting role, we know he will come to no good. These artsy, somewhat murky vignettes are the opposite of the glossy, fun, bloody movies that Roger Corman made from Poe stories. Though practically all critics find the Fellini film the best, I don't agree. Stamp is very good but the character seems so very doomed from the beginning that it all feels like a slow-motion train wreck culminating in (spoiler, I guess) Toby literally losing his head. The Malle film has the best story but it's told in a somewhat oblique fashion that blunts the impact of the finale, though Delon is always pleasant eye candy. I like the Vadim segment best—it's certainly the creepiest, both for the countryside Gothic look and the casting of real-life brother and sister Jane and Peter. The two characters never actually get close to sexual consummation, but the possibility definitely adds to the creep factor. I've seen this movie three times in my life and I keep hoping I will like it better, but I don't. I would recommend the first two segments, but don't feel like you have to hang around for the third, unless you are a die-hard Fellini fan. [TCM]

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP (1955)

An RAF base in Hong Kong is dealing with news of a missing aircraft over Japan when Michael Hordern arrives with advice about where to look for the plane. Even though the last message came from mid-Japan, he suggests scouring the northwest coast. We flashback to a couple nights earlier when, over cocktails, Hordern is regaling a group of people with a story of a dream he had in which he saw a small plane develop engine trouble and crash on a rocky coast in northern Japan. He remembers lots of details about the flight (a small Dakota airplane; 13 people on board including a woman and a brash, obnoxious man; a snowstorm) and one of the passengers was his friend Alexander Knox, who is listening to the story now. At first the story just seems odd and interesting but not relevant; Knox and RAF officer Michael Redgrave are going to take a small plane to Tokyo the next day to attend a conference, but the plane is a Liberator, no woman will be on board, and there will be fewer than 13 passengers. But when Redgrave informs Knox that their plane is unavailable and the substitute is a Dakota, Knox, a diplomat who has avoided flying all his life, gets a little nervous. By the next morning, things are looking even stranger: a woman has joined the group, and at the last minute, they take on two soldiers who need to get back to their base, making 13 on the plane. Redgrave and his assistant (Denholm Elliott) don't seem worried but Knox is tense, and eventually a storm causes trouble. They manage to land at Okinawa safe and sound to spend the night and the two extra soldiers leave. But when Knox finds out that Redgrave has okayed the booking of two more passengers (one of them a brash, obnoxious man), he freaks out and considers not going on. But he does, and an even worse storm hits, sending them over, yes, a rocky coast in northern Japan… 

This has a distinct Twilight Zone feel to it—I wonder what people used as a reference for this kind of plot before The Twilight Zone existed? And like some Zone episodes, it feels a bit long at times even though it's only 90 minutes. But it manages to be a nice character piece--we get to know several people, not just Redgrave and Knox but also Elliott, the woman (Sheila Sim), the pilot (Nigel Stock) and the brash fellow (George Rose). At times it has a disaster movie feel to it and both storm scenes are effective at sustaining tension. The acting is very good all around. Redgrave, who could be a showy actor, underplays nicely, and Knox is good at suggesting a man who is frequently approaching a meltdown and just barely keeping it together. There are suggestions of larger thematic issues but they don't really pan out. Set after WWII, war issues are nevertheless present: we discover that Elliott had a nervous breakdown after flying in the Battle of Britain, and some of the passengers mention wanting to fly over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which they do. A concern with free will and destiny is voiced briefly at the beginning but that goes nowhere. Still, this is a very effective B-budget thriller which manages to be tense and unsettling while mixing in humor and character drama. The DVD commentary track by Samm Deighan is disappointing. She starts off well with some discussion of a genre I was not familiar with called "film blanc" (basically uplifting stories of the supernatural) but her talk is full of "sort ofs" and "kind ofs" and "as I said earlier…" to the point of distraction. She is also rarely scene-specific about what we’re seeing. I think the commentary should get a do-over.  Pictured are Redgrave and Knox. [DVD]

STORM OVER TIBET (1952)

David and Bill are two American pilots flying a supply route between Tibet and India in the last days of World War II. After making 74 flights, David is given orders to return to the States and he promises Bill to visit Elaine, Bill's wife. But just before David is to fly out, Bill discovers that David has stolen a Buddhist temple mask of the demon god Sindja who supposedly guards the treacherous peak of Amne Mandu. Bill tells him to leave the mask but David wants it as a souvenir. The two get into minor fisticuffs and David cuts his hand on glass. Because of his injury, David is left behind, even though most of his stuff, including the mask, is packed, and Bill takes his place on the flight. But the plane's compass malfunctions and it winds up going off course over Amne Mandu where the plane goes missing, with the pilots presumed dead. David is guilt-stricken and when he tries to pay a Buddhist monk money for the stolen (and now missing) mask, he is told, "Atonement is not for sale." Back home, David visits Elaine and the two soon fall in love. She assures him that Bill's death wasn't his fault and they eventually get married. One day, a package arrives addressed to Elaine: the stolen Sindja mask. Deciding that Bill may have survived the plane crash, David and Elaine join a UNESCO scientific expedition to Tibet and plan to visit Amne Mandu. On the way up, they stop in a temperate hidden valley (a non-magical version of Lost Horizon's Shangri-La) and during a religious ceremony, David sees a Sindja mask and freaks out after having a disorienting premonition of a deadly avalanche. Despite this, the group goes on. A superstitious native tries to sabotage their climb, but they make it. David sees the crashed plane on the mountain, but their progress is halted when an avalanche (as predicted by David's vision) threatens their lives.

This B-film, directed by Andrew Marton, has strong story potential that its low budget can't quite fulfill, but it's an interesting footnote in movie history. A good chunk of the 90 minute running time is taken up with location documentary footage of an actual Himalaya climb that was shot in 1934 and used by Marton for a German adventure film called Demon of the Himalayas, released in Europe in 1935 but never screened in the United States. The scenes of Buddhist rituals, mountain climbing, and an avalanche are genuine, and Marton did his best to match that footage with his studio-shot scenes, but the 1930s scenes are slightly sped up, almost like a silent film would be, so the connections are not seamless. However, if you throw in a good amount of suspension of disbelief, it all almost comes together. The handsome deep-voiced Rex Reason (pictured), better known for the sci-fi films This Island Earth and The Creature Walks Among Us, is just fine as David, the conflicted hero. Diana Douglas (Michael Douglas' mother) is so-so in the fairly thankless role of the worried wife. I also liked Jarmila Marton (the director’s wife) as a UNESCO doctor who was also in the earlier Demon of the Himalayas and so is matched up quite well in the older footage. The snaggle-toothed villain, who was apparently also in the 1935 film, is given little motivation for acting the way he does. In fact, all of his screen time may well be from the older movie. I enjoyed this, though I wish the semi-mystical tone of the film—another Lost Horizon echo—had been pulled off better. [YouTube]

MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948)

In a present-day storyline, we accompany Hollywood agent Bill Dunnigan (Fred MacMurray) to Coaltown, Pennsylvania where he is attending to the funeral of actress Olga Treskovna (Alida Valli) who came from a Polish immigrant family, grew up in poverty in this coal-mining town, and was on the verge of stardom after finishing her first starring movie role when she died of tuberculosis the day after shooting ended. Bill runs into a lot of ill will from townspeople who have nothing good to say about Olga's no-good father, but with the help of Father Paul (Frank Sinatra), the priest of a small, dying parish, Bill pulls off not only the funeral but also a PR coup by getting all the churches in town to ring their bells constantly for the three days before the funeral. The studio where Olga filmed her starring role as Joan of Arc has decided to shelve the picture, but Bill hopes the publicity will make the studio head change his mind. In a series of flashbacks, Citizen Kane-style, we get Olga's story through Bill's eyes: he first sees her as a chorus girl flubbing an audition and he intervenes to get the director to keep her on. Years later, on a snowy Christmas Eve, he runs into her again in a traveling theatrical troupe performing in a small town and the two share a lovely dinner in a Chinese restaurant--where we are first made aware of her chronic cough. Later, Bill steps in to get her the starring role in a Joan of Arc movie when the temperamental star is fired. But before Bill can express a romantic interest in her, she dies (in the beautiful Hollywood style), and he feels compelled to make her last wishes come true: be laid to rest in her hometown and have her movie released. If the bells don't convince the studio, perhaps an actual miracle will.

This didn't get a lot of love from critics when it came out and gets even less now (partly due to the odd nature of the final "miracle"), but I found it inoffensively watchable if completely average in every way from story (based on a novel) to production values to acting. MacMurray is fine and quite sympathetic, perhaps more so than a movie agent character should be, but occasionally he reminds me too much of Walter Neff in DOUBLE INDEMNITY—he calls Olga "Baby" in the same way he does with Barbara Stanwyck in the earlier film. Valli is also fine-—she certainly looks the part even if she is less convincing as a great unsung actress. Sinatra is roundly criticized as a weak link, but I thought his underplayed performance was very good. Lee J. Cobb is the studio boss and Philip Ahn has a small part in the charming Christmas scene. This is often shown at Christmas because of that scene but it's not really a holiday film, and certainly not a feel-good film. Still, even though at two hours, it’s about 20 minutes too long, it held my attention. [TCM]

MAD HOLIDAY (1936)

We see actor Philip Trent (Edmund Lowe) filming the climax of his latest movie in which he plays the sleuth Shelby James. Afterwards, he announces that he is tired of playing the part, which is based on a series of books by Peter Dean, and takes off on a cruise. He is immediately spotted as a celebrity and is hounded by Mrs. Kinney (Zasu Pitts), a mild-mannered but often drunk fan. His plans for settling down for the night are spoiled when he gets involved with a mysterious blonde who is being followed by a sinister figure, the outcome of which is a dead body in Trent's cabin. But by the time the ship's detective arrives, the body's gone. Lo and behold, the whole thing is a publicity stunt carried out by Trent's agent, Morgan (Ted Healy), and by the author Peter Dean (Elissa Landi), who is actually a woman and who was the mysterious blonde. Morgan and Dean are quite amused, the detective and the ship's captain less so, but soon a real dead body shows up, that of Van Mier, a wealthy man in possession of a famous diamond called the Dragon. Dean wants to use her expertise to crack the case with Trent's help, and eventually the help of the dead man's valet (Edmund Gwenn). Possible suspects include 'Cocky' Joe, a sometime jewel thief who had been hired to pose as the dead man in the original prank, and Li Tai, an Asian woman whose family once possessed the diamond and who had been negotiating to regain it. The diamond is found, but it turns out it's a fake, and suspicion falls on the ship's detective who is suddenly missing. As Trent reluctantly joins Dean is some sleuthing, the climax occurs on land in a Chinese theater where Li Tai's husband Li Yat is performing. 

After the success of the Thin Man movies in the mid-1930s, screwball comedy-mysteries were briefly the rage. Most of them are fun B-movies but no masterpieces and this is no exception. I'm not normally a big fan of Lowe's whom I normally find rather stuffy and stolid, but he's fine here, and he has good chemistry with Landi (who actually appeared in a Thin Man movie in 1936; pictured with Lowe) who makes her obnoxious character quite appealing. The whole cast is good, including the dependable Gwenn, the hardy Healy, and the blustery Edgar Kennedy as the detective. Best of all is Pitts who does a drunkard act to a tee and steals all her scenes, even when she's sober. There is a fair amount of slapstickish action, primarily when, through an outlandish chain of events, Trent and Dean wind up handcuffed in a cabin with Morgan locked in the bathroom. Though not a timeless gem, it's fun while it lasts and at 70 minutes, it doesn't wear out its welcome. [TCM]

IT'S TRAD, DAD (1962)

Released in the States as Ring-A-Ding Rhythm, this British film would seem to have the trappings of a traditional rock & roll movie, especially when you see that the list of performers includes Chubby Checker and Del Shannon. But you would (mostly) be wrong. The sliver of a plot has a small town mayor trying to ban the public playing of loud pop music in town. A young man (Craig Douglas) and woman (Helen Shapiro) decide to head to London to track down a DJ who will host a music festival in defiance of the mayor. They ultimately get three professional DJs and several acts to perform and, though the mayor tries to block the festival, he winds up accepting it when the show is a hit and the town gets good publicity from it. To get the musical concerns out of the way first, the music in here—and the bulk of the movie's running time consists of variety show-type performances—is mostly a kind of modified Dixieland jazz; the title of the film refers to "trad jazz," a 60s revival of Dixieland-style music. The Dukes of Dixieland themselves perform, as does Acker Bilk, a clarinet player who had a #1 hit in the UK and the States with the instrumental "Stranger on the Shore." He gets the most exposure with three songs (though not his big hit), and an odd vaudeville-like group called the Temperance Seven get two songs. A couple of nondescript jazz bands get a few numbers, and the rest, including Checker, Shannon, Gene Vincent, and the Brook Brothers, get one song each, and none of them perform hits, though most of the songs are pleasant enough—I especially liked Gene Vincent's "Space Ship to Mars." The climatic number is "When the Saints Go Marching In," which should give you an idea of just how cutting-edge this was.

As a time capsule of a forgotten period in British pop music (just before the Beatles would wipe most all this stuff away), this is fun. But it's also worth watching for the odd humorous style from director Richard Lester who would go on to helm A Hard Day's Night a couple years later. Lester speeds up the film here and there, and pulls off a few surreal moments. When Craig and Helen (pictured; both actual charting pop stars who had several top 10 hits) need to get to the big city, they ask the narrator for help. He stops the film, pulls away their background and replaces it with a TV studio hallway so they can find their first DJ. Later, the unseen narrator smacks an irritating fellow with a pie, again at the request of Craig and Helen. At the fancy Clique Club, a waiter (Derek Nimmo) pulls off some slapstickish pranks. In a bit that seems to anticipate Monty Python, a TV panel discussion degenerates into fisticuffs. The Temperance Seven (though I think I counted nine people in the band) wins for strangest performance, though their second song feels like overkill. I did enjoy this but I'm glad it wasn't any longer than its 78 minutes [TCM]

LADY ON A TRAIN (1945)

Nikki (Deanna Durbin) is on a train to New York City to visit her aunt; as she reads "The Case of the Headless Bride" by her favorite mystery author Wayne Morgan, she looks out her window and sees, in a nearby building, a man killing another man with a crowbar across the head. She tries to get people, including the police, to take her seriously, but no one does. She even contacts Wayne Morgan, the mystery writer (David Bruce), for help, but to no avail. Setting out on her own as an amateur detective, she realizes from a news story that the dead man was the wealthy businessman Josiah Waring, reported to have died at his home from a fall suffered while he was decorating a Christmas tree. She heads out to the Waring mansion where she is mistaken for nightclub singer Margo Martin who is named in Josiah's will as the chief inheritor of the Waring money and property. Soon she is neck-deep in the family intrigues, involved with, among others, two nephews: the ne'er-do-well Arnold (Dan Duryea) and the easy-going Jonathan (Ralph Bellamy). A pair of bloody slippers, the only evidence that Nikki finds, come and go as various shady characters are out to further their own ends. After the real Margo is murdered, Nikki continues her sleuthing, eventually roping in the reluctant writer, who may be more of a hindrance than a help.

This is a light-toned mystery with lots of noirish visual style, including a dark, ominous house that occasionally reminded me of Kane's Xanadu in CITIZEN KANE. It's also a little screwballish, in that Durbin plays Nikki much like Katherine Hepburn played Susan in BRINGING UP BABY, as an obnoxious steamroller of a person whose eccentricities we're supposed to find charming. Much as I like Hepburn, Susan is my least favorite role of hers—I find her shrill and demanding and pretty thoroughly unlikable. Durbin isn't quite as bad here, but I never found myself on her side, especially in the forced scenes involving the writer and his fiancée. Durbin, known more for musicals, gets a couple of songs, one of which is "Silent Night" gently sung over the phone on Christmas Eve for her ailing father. Otherwise, she's nothing special here. The supporting cast, including Duryea, Bellamy, Edward Everett Horton as a lackey of Nikki's dad and George Coulouris as a bad guy, is pretty strong, and I like that the revelation of the chief villain is a surprise, and is pulled off in a nicely creepy way. Tolerable if not a classic. [TCM]

VALLEY OF THE SUN (1942)

Tucson, 1868. Frontier scout James Craig is court-martialed for aiding in the escape of some Indians he feels were unjustly jailed. Craig, who is trusted by the local tribes, manages to escape with the help of some sympathetic soldiers. He hitches a ride in a coach with Indian agent Dean Jagger who we eventually learn has been cheating the Indians in his jurisdiction out of cattle. The unfriendly Jagger boots Craig out of the coach and proceeds to the small town of Desert Center where he is to marry Lucille Ball, proprietor of the Busy Bee Cafe—though her assistant (Peter Whitney) warns her that he knows she doesn't love Jagger. (Whitney is a simple, overgrown manchild so we know he's right.) In town, Craig eventually shows up and throws a wrench into the wedding plans, first by bathing naked in a barrel of water in front of Ball (whom he quickly falls for) and later by getting in a wild fistfight with Jagger who winds up bruised and battered. An Englishman (Cedric Hardwicke) who despises Jagger helps Craig recover from an ass-whooping carried out by Jagger's men and the two of them joined by Whitney ruin the wedding by dropping red ants onto the congregation from the second floor. Jagger and Ball go to Tucson to marry, but Craig follows, and they all wind up captured by Apaches who are aware of Jagger's cheating ways. Craig engages Geronimo in a battle of skills which Craig wins. But when they get back to Desert Center, Ball breaks her engagement to Jagger, who then gets revenge by carrying out various double-crosses and riling up the Indians to attack the town. Can Craig, with his small band of buddies, save the day and get the girl?

Though not really a classic, this does have an unusual feel. On the surface, it’s a B-western made by an A-studio (RKO). Underneath, it's a romantic comedy with very little romance and some nice action sequences. Craig (pictured), a B-lead who usually had a light touch, is quite appealing as the hero; the villainous Jagger also gets away with a light touch—he always seems a little too much of a doofus to be truly dangerous, and we even feel a bit sorry for him at times. Ball doesn't have much to do; as I noted above, there's very little romance in the movie, and we have to take the fact that she falls for Craig on faith. Whitney (in a kind of Andy Devine role) and Hardwicke are fine, and Billy Gilbert gets most of the outright laughs as a befuddled justice of the peace. The wedding day fight is well staged as is the Indian raid at the end. When Craig picks up a cricket bat belonging to Hardwicke, he is amazed: "You must have awfully big crickets around here." The best line, spoken by familiar character actor George Cleveland: "There's only two ways to handle a woman—and nobody knows what they are!" At over 80 minutes, the mix of comedy and western wears a bit thin, but I enjoyed this and would recommend it as something a little off the beaten Hollywood path. [TCM]

MANIAC (1963)

The Camargue region of Southern France is known, we are told, for bulls, wild horses, and violence. We see a scruffy looking guy abduct a schoolgirl named Annette and take her off to rape her. Afterward, Georges, her unhinged father, drags the guy back to his garage and kills him with a blowtorch, which leads to imprisonment in an asylum. Years later, Georges is still locked away, and 19-year-old Annette works at a country inn with her stepmother Eve. A handsome American artist named Jeff arrives at the inn, fleeing the clutches of a rich female sugar momma. Jeff and Annette hit it off, twisting the night away, but when he plans a romantic picnic with her the next day, it's the more age-appropriate Eve who shows up. The two are soon conducting an affair which takes a potential Double Indemnity turn when Eve enlists Jeff to help free her husband from the asylum, after which he has said he will grant her a divorce so she can marry Jeff. Jeff's role is easy: an asylum orderly is helping Georges escape, and all Jeff and Eve have to do is pick the two up outside the asylum. When he does, however, the orderly is already gone. After dropping Georges off at the docks to leave the country, Jeff finds a dead body in the trunk of the car, apparently the orderly. Is Georges still unbalanced? Does he really plan to leave or might he return to his garage, where his trusty blowtorch awaits, and get rid of Jeff, or Eve, or both? 

Despite the wild and wooly blowtorch killing at the beginning (not explicit but still brutally effective), this Hammer movie is not so much horror as suspense, with the requisite twisty plot points that will keep you guessing as to who's who and what's what. The plotting is effective, the low-key mood consistent, and the acting is maybe a notch above the typical Hammer thriller, with Kerwin Mathews and Nadia Gray, pictured, particularly good as Jeff and Eve. The movie begins with a jolt, then settles down a bit too much as the characters are all introduced and put through various paces until things kick into high gear in the last 20 minutes. Some critics don't think much of Mathews' performance, seemingly because the character is boorish and unlikable, but I found his hero to be somewhat refreshing for that very reason. One must also take into account that, for most of the movie, Jeff is being used by others for their own ends. The French countryside does not make for an especially attractive backdrop here, but even that adds to the somewhat gritty feel of the proceedings. [TCM]