HIT AND RUN (1957)

Gus (Hugo Haas) is a slovenly middle-aged man who owns a service station and junkyard, and by the standards of his small town, is fairly well off. His chief mechanic, the young and handsome Frank (Vince Edwards) lives above the garage and occasionally serves as a kind of bodyguard, keeping unwanted attention at bay. One night, the lonely Gus spies Julie (Cleo Moore), an attractive chorus girl sitting at a bar and being depressed about her situation. Gus comes on to her, promising to give her an overhauled jalopy if she'll visit him. Frank is not happy about her presence; he partly sees her as a golddigger, and he partly has the hots for her himself. Much to Frank's consternation, Julie marries Gus and moves in, causing Frank to say that he's quitting as soon as Gus can find a replacement. But soon, Frank is flirting with Julie who responds listlessly, finding Frank attractive but not as attractive as Gus' money. Unknown to them, an ex-con buddy of Gus's who has just gotten out of San Quentin, is coming for a visit. One night, Frank takes Julie for a ride in a rehabbed junker, and when he sees Gus strolling down the road, perhaps drunkenly, Frank hits and kills him, leaving the body as a hit and run victim. Julie's not happy with this turn of events, and she's even less happy when, at Gus's funeral, she sees someone who looks like Gus watching from afar. It turns out that the visiting ex-con is Gus' twin brother Dave who hangs around and catches on quickly that Julie and Frank are lovers. But Julie freaks herself out by thinking that perhaps Frank killed the wrong man, and that the guy calling himself Dave is actually Gus.

A nicely grungy B-movie revamp of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, though here, Julie is a much more passive figure than Cora (Lana Turner). Haas (who also wrote and directed the movie) made several B-noirs with Cleo Moore, this being the last before she retired from movies at the age of 33. Moore isn't A-level talent, but she anchors her B-films well (see ONE GIRLS’ CONFESSION) and I'm sorry she never matured into more interesting roles. Haas is adequate as the small-town big-shot sad sack and as the less sad-sacky brother. As long as Vince Edwards has his eyes set to "smolder," he can do no wrong in my book, and he's the best thing in the movie. It takes a while for the somewhat choppy plot to take hold but eventually it’s solid B-noir entertainment. A song by Ella Mae Morse, "What Good Will It Do Me," is reminiscent of “In the Mood” which I found myself humming all day long. Pictured are Edwards, Moore and Haas. [YouTube]

SUBMARINE SEAHAWK (1958)

In the Pacific during World War II, the submarine Seahawk comes upon a Japanese warship; their first two torpedoes go astray but the third strikes the target. They are then ordered back to Pearl Harbor to get a new assignment and a new skipper as Stoker, the current commander, is kicked upstairs to an office job. Stoker turns in a negative report on Lt. Turner (he's a cold fish, too academic, and not especially well liked by the crew) and he recommends the friendlier Hallohan, but Capt. Boardman decides to put Turner in charge anyway, partly because their new mission involves intelligence gathered by Turner. It seems that some thirty Japanese warships have just disappeared from action and the Navy believes they're in hiding near the Mariana Islands for some nefarious plan. Boardman wants the Seahawk to go out on a reconnaissance mission to find the ships so the Navy can attack. Among the sailors under the taciturn Turner: Bellis, a naïve farm boy; Flowers, who's making it his mission to get the lad interested in girls; a radio operator; a "bearded sonar man" (which is how he listed in the credits); a new man named Shore who is on his first assignment and a little fragile; and Hallohan who, despite being overlooked for command, puts on a brave face and does his duty. The crew doesn't know that Turner was ordered not to risk engaging the enemy, so when the ship comes near a Japanese ship, the men resent Turner's order not to fire. Eventually, as the sub navigates mined waters in pursuit of a ship, Shore, the new guy, has a breakdown, threatening the men and their mission.

Until they found their niche with movies aimed at the teen market, American International dabbled in war films, distinctly B-movie affairs as all their films were. The director, Spencer Gordon Bennet, was at the end of a long career doing B-westerns and serials, and this film starts out badly, with awkward group scenes and stagy dialogue delivery. Submarine movies need to make us feel a bit claustrophobic, and this one is a little less effective at that than others. But things pick up a bit when the ship goes back out on its main mission and the actors, most of whom I was unfamiliar with, are all adequate and in some cases a bit more. John Bentley (CALLING PAUL TURNER) is a solid lead as Turner, the unemotional leader whom we can sense has some anxiety beneath his quiet surface. Paul Maxwell is even better as the reliable Hallohan. Wayne Heffley (Stoker) and Frank Gerstle (Boardman) are fine in scenes showing them keeping track of things back at HQ. Predictable comic relief comes from Henry McCann as the farm boy and Steve Mitchell as his friendly tormentor. Brett Halsey gives a one-note performance as the neurotic Shore, but to be fair, the role is pretty much one-note. The most exciting moments in the movie are made effective with footage from other bigger-budgeted movie—I recognized some scenes from the 1943 Cary Grant film Destination Tokyo. A worthy choice for a B-movie Saturday afternoon. Pictured are Maxwell and Halsey. [Streaming]

THE YIDDISH KING LEAR (1935)

A recent Blu-ray set from Kino Lorber, The Jewish Soul, features a number of Yiddish films made before World War II (including THE DYBBUK), most of which have had little exposure since their initial release. This one is considered by most critics to be the worst of the bunch, and while in terms of technical movie-making, that's true, it's still interesting viewing, especially if you approach it as a filmed stage production, which it is. Successful businessman David, his wife Hannah, and their three daughters (two with husbands) have gathered for Purim. During the meal, David announces that he intends to leave Vilna to go to the Holy Land to pray and study and do holy work. He divides his estate among his daughters (Etele, Gitele and Taybele), leaving control of his business to Etele's husband Avrum. Etele and Gitele express their thanks ostentatiously but Taybele, the youngest, who is not orthodox and not yet married, is uncomfortable with the situation, as she just wants to be free to go off to St. Petersburg with Joffe, her mentor (and, it seems, boyfriend-to-be) and study to be a doctor. David disowns her and Joffe points out that he is acting just like Shakespeare's King Lear and is bound to be sorry for his actions. David softens enough to instruct Avrum to give Taybele some money, but in David's absence, Avrum keeps the money, and also takes over David's properties. David does indeed live long enough to regret his actions (he goes blind and becomes a beggar), but the ending here is one of redemption: Taybele becomes a doctor, Avrum gets his just desserts, a "small" operation will restore David's sight, and there is reconciliation at the wedding of Taybele and Joffe.

The Lear parallels will be clear to anyone who knows the original play. In addition to Lear and his daughters, and Lear's reduced state and period of wandering, there is a Fool-type truth teller character who sticks with David. As noted above, this is largely a filmed stage production without an audience. Quite often, there are strange shaky cutaways to people's faces, not always congruent with what's happening in the scene. The acting is a little stagy and melodramatic (Maurice Krohner as David/Lear, for example), with the standouts being the lower-key performances of Miriam Grossman and Jacob Bergreen as Taybele and Joffe (all three pictured above). This won't be to everyone's taste, but given its limitations, I was engrossed enough to stick with it. In Yiddish (obviously) with English subtitles. [Blu-ray]

ALICE'S RESTAURANT (1969)

Arlo Guthrie, son of famous folk singer Woody Guthrie, came to fame in 1967 with "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," a 20 minute shaggy-dog story-song which occupied an entire side of the album Alice's Restaurant. The song, even when edited down to 5 minutes, never made the top 40 but it became an underground sensation, getting lots of airplay on album rock stations, and the album went gold. In 1969, Arthur Penn made a full-length movie based on the song with Guthrie playing himself and performing chunks of the original song as narration. The film retains the main narrative of the song at its center (a Thanksgiving celebration which ends with Arlo getting thrown in jail for littering—actually, dumping quite a bit of trash on public land), but builds a somewhat autobiographical plot around that. Arlo, trying to jumpstart a folk music career, becomes eligible for the draft. He starts college (mostly in order to get an exemption), gets in an altercation with hippie baiters, quits school, plays gigs in small clubs, and winds up spending some time with his old friends Alice (Patricia Quinn) and Ray (James Broderick) in a small town in Massachusetts. Alice, who runs a restaurant, has bought, with Ray, a deconsecrated church where they live with a rotating group of hippie youngsters. After a big Thanksgiving celebration, Arlo and a friend cart all the leftovers and trash to the city dump, only to find it closed for the holiday. They find a small cliff over which others have dumped some trash so they follow suit, but the local cop, Officer Obie, arrests them for littering, cuffing them and throwing them in jail until Alice pays their bail. After they're found not guilty, Arlo is called up by the military only to find that his arrest record makes him ineligible for the draft.

This comic story has been drawn out to feature film length and made more serious by fleshing out the characters. We see Arlo visit his dying father in the hospital and fending off the advances of an underage groupie (Shelley Plimpton, original cast member of Hair and mother of Martha Plimpton). Tensions between Alice and Ray, mom and dad figures to the hippie kids, grow when Ray starts spending too much time hanging out with a young man named Shelly (Michael McClanathan) who has just come out of heroin rehab, as if Ray is trying to escape "adulting" (as we might say today). There's also the intimation that Alice and Arlo are attracted to each other, though they don't seem to become intimate. The song's happy ending is undercut by the tragic death of Shelly and, despite the hippie wedding of Alice and Ray, the famous ambiguous ending shot of Alice, standing outside the church looking utterly lost as the kids leave and Ray seems to retreat into himself. (In real life, the two had divorced before the movie was made.)

This is sometimes considered one of those movies that was heralding the end of the peace & love generation, but it seems as if every movie that was ever made about the 60s was doing that—is there a mainstream movie that actually celebrated the hippie generation? Though it might not bother all viewers, this film has a tone problem: the events of the song, which take up less than half the running time, are presented mostly in an antic mood, and the rest in a downbeat, elegiac mood, and the two halves, while occasionally effective, generally work against each other. Guthrie is no actor, so Quinn and Broderick (Matthew Broderick's dad), both very good, win acting honors. McClanathan, a young man from Ohio, is quite good as Shelly, but after only a couple more roles, he left movie acting behind. William Obanhein, the real Officer Obie, plays himself, somewhat uncomfortably. M. Emmet Walsh has a wonderful double-talk moment at the Army induction office. Pete Seeger has a short scene as himself in Woody Guthrie's hospital room. Not a bad movie, exactly, but one that can only be viewed as a period novelty. Pictured at top right are Seeger and Guthrie; at left is Michael McClanathan). [DVD]

CALLING PAUL TEMPLE (1948)

A woman in a train compartment is found dead with the word "Rex" written on the window blind. This is the third Rex murder and Scotland Yard official Sir Graham Forbes calls on former detective and current mystery novelist Paul Temple for help. While Temple and Forbes are chatting in a nightclub, Norma, the featured singer, sends them a note that she has some knowledge about the Rex killer, but we see a woman in gray sneak into Norma's dressing room, and later Norma collapses and dies in the middle of a song. Paul's wife Steve discovers an Egyptian lipstick container in the dressing room and soon the two are playing detective. Among the suspects: an Egyptologist named Kohima, his secretary Mrs. Trevellyan (who sometimes dresses in gray), a teapot salesman named Davies (who was present on the train when the third victim was discovered), and Edward Lathom who may have the key to the crimes—he claims he's being blackmailed by Rex. Things come to a climax in an old monastery in Canterbury where our heroes are stuck in a room that is quickly filling with water. 

I'd never even heard of Paul Temple before watching this movie; I came to it after seeing the lead actor, John Bentley, in another movie. Temple was a character created for a BBC radio serial who went on to appear in movies, novels, and a daily comic strip. The B-mystery has a bit of a 'Nick and Nora' vibe going on between Paul and Steve, and the chemistry between Bentley and Dinah Sheridan (Steve) is solid. The plot is not as convoluted as some of the Charlie Chan movies got, and though things slow down a bit in the middle, the Canterbury setting in the last part of the film is interesting. The scene of the singer dropping dead in the middle of a song is startling, and her earlier song "Lady on the Loose" is fun, with the line, "All I want is a honey who'll be true to the end / Till the end of tonight." There is a surprising death of a likable character. None of the actors were familiar to me, though Margaretta Scott, who plays Trevellyan, went on to a continuing role in the original All Creatures Great and Small series. Nothing much out of the ordinary, but I may seek out other Paul Temple movies. Pictured are Sheridan and Bentley. [Streaming]

WHERE THE SPIES ARE (1966)

A British spy named Rosser vanishes in Beirut and MI6 needs to send someone to find him. MacGillivray, the big boss, learns of a medical conference being held there and tries to recruit a real doctor who would not seem suspicious. He approaches Jason Love (David Niven), who had done some intelligence gathering in the past. Love is reluctant, but when MacGillivray offers him an expensive, antique LeBaron car, he agrees. He is given a handful of spy gadgets which don't seem particularly useful to Love, and in fact he is told that they are more for psychological comfort than practical use. At a Paris stopover to switch planes, he fumbles his initial attempt at using a password to contact an agent, but finally meets up with Vikki (Françoise Dorleac), a lovely fashion model. As they seem to strike a spark, he dawdles at her apartment and misses his plane which promptly blows up in the air at takeoff. Vikki stays in Paris while Love makes it to Beirut where he proves himself a decent hand-to-hand fighter with an intruder in his hotel room who turns out to be Parkington (Nigel Davenport), another British agent. They discover that Rosser is dead (which we've known from the beginning) and that he knew details about a Russian assassination plot against an Arabian ruler. Suddenly instead of just being a contact, Love is in the dangerous thick of things. When Vikki shows up in Beirut, we wonder exactly whose side she's on. We find out.

Most review sources call this a spy spoof or a comedy-adventure. Though there is overall a light tone to the proceedings, I wouldn't quite call it a spoof or a comedy. It's more like the early James Bond movies, played mostly straight with a jokey reference here and there. This is no brooding Le Carre story but it's not a Dean Martin 'Matt Helm' movie either. The fact that Niven's character is an amateur is the occasion for some humor but it's fairly restrained. Niven, in his mid-50s at the time, is fine but maybe a bit too old for Dorleac, his leading lady, who was half his age (both pictured at left). At least it's not as creepy as Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Doreleac is good, as is Davenport (though he drops out halfway through). Cyril Cusack has what amounts to a cameo in the beginning as Rosser, and John Le Mesurier is fine as MacGillivray. There's a nifty helicopter rescue scene, and at 110 minutes, it does start to wear out its welcome by the climax. [TCM]

CHAFED ELBOWS (1966)

Walter Dinsmore lives in Manhattan with his mother, whom he also sleeps with—she later says to the camera, "I know it's robbing the cradle but at least it's my own." His voiceover narration tells us that he's in the middle of his November breakdown. Told he's pregnant, a doctor performs a cesarean through his hip and delivers 189 ten-dollar bills, probably because he swallowed a nickel when he was a kid. On the street, a man walks up to him and spray paints his initials on Walter's overcoat, then tells him that he is now a living artwork ("You'll be sold right away because you're very pretentious"). In the middle of Walter's January breakdown, a director named Neo Realism casts him in an underground movie because he "radiates emptiness, despair, futility." He visits his cousin Levitica Zoho who is such a committed vegetarian, she won't even eat animal crackers. When she says she's pregnant, he throws her out her window. He faces murder charges, and is himself murdered, but Heaven (with a neophiliac God who hates dwarves) tosses him back to earth as the Virgin Mary says, "You tell Charlton Heston I'm waitin’ for him!" Walter records a pop song which rhymes "Hey, hey, hey!" with "Black leather negligee," and finally batters his mom to death with a root beer bottle, but she comes back to life, saying, "You can't kill real love," and they get married.

I was tempted to just post that summary with no critical remarks, because really, this is pretty much critic-proof. Written and directed by Robert Downey Sr., this film is one of the earliest to break out of the "underground" niche, or more precisely, to make the underground movies commercial successes. It became a midnight movie staple, and enjoyed runs in legitimate theaters. Nowadays its appeal is primarily historical as an example of a dead genre. It's not so much non-narrative as anti-narrative; you can follow the plot, as it were, but don't expect it to make sense. The most interesting part is its style: a mix of still images and live action sequences. But what makes it still somewhat watchable are the outrageous jokes, some verbal ("It's a universal feeling—or is it Warner Brothers?"), some visual (Walter's mother turns toward the camera to show a huge snaggle-toothed smile, which put me in mind of Edith Massey, the egg lady of John Waters' Pink Flamingos), some situational (a man tries to sell Walter a photo of Margaret Rutherford's ass). Downey is trying to offend people and he succeeds; Walter's brother wants to open an amusement park for white people that will feature Black people being oppressed (to put it delicately), and though you get the satirical intent (the workers will have job security), it's still a little shocking to hear even today. The quality of acting isn't really an issue, any more than in early John Waters movies, but for the record, George Morgan (pictured) makes for a generally appealing lead character, and Downey's wife Elsie good-naturedly plays all the female roles. As an example of 60s underground movies, this can't be beat. [TCM]

THE DOLL (1919)

The Baron von Chauterelle, eager to marry off his nephew Lancelot so he will be assured of an heir, invites all the village maidens to the town square for Lancelot to pick a suitable bride, who will then get a generous dowry from the Baron. But Lancelot bursts into tears when told this, and winds up running from the women right into a monastery. The monks, who eat well but plead scarcity to Lancelot ("We like to share, but not too much"), convince him to go to the famous dollmaker Hilarius who has advertised female automatons ("for bachelors, widowers and misogynists"). Their plan is for Lancelot to marry a life-sized doll and give the dowry money to the monks. As it happens, the doll that Hilarius has made, of his daughter Ossi, is accidentally broken by the dollmaker's apprentice. The real Ossi agrees to take the doll's place until the apprentice can fix the doll, but then Lancelot shows up, takes the doll, and marries her. Ossi is now stuck pretending to be artificial while at the same time, getting the upper hand on him and any other misogynistic men who cross paths with her. 

This German silent movie is a consistently funny satire with enough commentary on gender roles to feel fresh today—though it never conks you over the head with its lessons. In addition to the situations, there are other pleasures here. The lead performances are across-the-board excellent. Ossi Oswalda does a great job trying to move like a doll for the other cast members even as she lets us know what she’s doing and thinking. Hermann Thimig walks a nice tightrope as Lancelot; we never quite know what he has against women, and he often comes right to the edge of effeminacy without quite crossing over. Indeed, he comes off more as a just a man who can't quite accept adult emotional intimacy rather than being gay or a genuine misogynist. Perhaps best of all is 15-year-old Gerhard Ritterband as the apprentice. After he breaks the doll, he has a series of scenes in which he contemplates suicide–trust me, he's funny. He also gets to break the fourth wall once by talking directly to the audience. The sets are resolutely artificial, looking like a sunny, happy precursor to the expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (released the next year)—there are paper cut-outs and two pantomime horses, among other delights. Director Ernst Lubitsch keeps things fluffy throughout, even opening the film with a scene of him building a small-scale version of the setting. Quite fun. Pictured are Oswalda and Thimig. [TCM]

DENVER AND RIO GRANDE (1952)

This "based on a true story" film begins in the 1870s as a team of railroad workers, led by General Palmer (Dean Jagger) and his chief engineer Jim Vesser (Edmond O'Brien), is surveying a route for the Denver & Rio Grande railroad to lay a track through the Royal Gorge in Colorado. Vesser discovers that a rival team led by the unscrupulous McCabe (Sterling Hayden), working for the Canon City Railroad, is butting in on their territory. (At various points in the story, one or the other has official status to build, and the legalities of this situation were never clear to me.) Fisticuffs between Vesser and McCabe lead to the death of McCabe's associate Nelson, who was also an old friend of Vesser's. It's McCabe who accidentally shoots Nelson, but he puts the blame on Vesser. Vesser is cleared legally of charges, but Nelson's sister Linda (Laura Elliott) is bent on revenge. She also happens to be General Palmer's secretary, and she unwittingly plays into the hands of McCabe and his men by feeding them information about the whereabouts and plans of the Denver & Rio Grande men. Clashes between the teams continue, and Linda finds herself slowly warming toward Vesser even as she still holds him responsible for Nelson's death. But eventually, she will have to choose a side when the conflict becomes potentially deadly as McCabe goes all out to stop Vesser.

In most ways, this is an absolutely average Western, maybe even a little below average. It’s indifferently acted, lazily scripted (see my note about the legalities), predictable, has fairly bland physical settings, and is directed with no stylistic flair. On the other hand, it's watchable and generally avoids too much narrative dead time. There are two main reasons to see this. One is to see Sterling Hayden, pictured, in his youth—he was a very comely man who resembles a current-day ginger bear (a much-admired type in the gay world), and his performance is the best in the film, along with that of the always reliable Dean Jagger. The other reason is to see the spectacular train collision at the climax of the movie. No CGI or other visual effects are used—the filmmakers actually sent two trains crashing into each other on railroad tracks, and the outcome is something to see, though younger viewers who grew up on computer effects may be less impressed. Also with J. Carroll Naish, and some mild and inoffensive comic relief from Zasu Pitts and Paul Fix. [Criterion Channel]

THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT (1967)

The Man from UNCLE was a spy series that ran on network television for four seasons in the mid-1960s at the height of the spymania occasioned by the James Bond movies. It still has some currency in popular culture, having been made into a big-budget film in 2015. During its initial run, eight feature films were released, each combining two episodes of the show with some added footage. Though a few were released as drive-in double features in the US, most were intended for European audiences. In the past I have avoided watching these, assuming they wouldn't be up to snuff as movies, but this one proved to be quite fun. At an amusement park pier, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum), secret agents for the spy organization UNCLE, chase agents from the evil organization THRUSH and wind up bruised and battered from a car chase. Their boss Waverly (Leo G. Carroll) sends them to Italy to infiltrate a winery owned by Louis Strago that is being used as a cover for a plan by Von Kronen, a Nazi scientist who has invented a way to alter the Gulf Stream which would turn Greenland into a tropical home for remaining Nazis and at the same time would bring crippling blizzards all year round to much of the United States. During a street festival, Solo and Ilya wind up in a gunfight with THRUSH men; Ilya escapes but Solo is wounded and is cared for by the lovely young Pia and her mother. Solo leaves but winds up back in Pia's bedroom, hiding under her bed for a night. Pia's mother considers this a disgrace and insists the two get married. Solo manages to leave, and he and Ilya follow Von Kronen and Strago back to the States where they have to deal with Pia's three elderly uncles, all former gangsters, who plan a literal shotgun wedding for Solo and Pia. Eventually the action moves to Strago's private island with Pia kidnapped and the gangsters joining the UNCLE agents to get her back, and to stop the Gulf Stream device from being set off.

Like most spy franchises of the era, the UNCLE show wound up being played mostly for campy laughs. This film, while often amusing, isn't quite campy, exactly. The closest it comes is the performance of Jack Palance as Strago; he plays the character as an outwardly butch but tightly wound and inwardly nervous villain, and perhaps sexually repressed as well—his comically negative reactions to the sexiness of Janet Leigh, playing his THRUSH assistant, suggest the 60s idea of a gay man burying his sexuality. Some viewers don't like him but I think he gives the movie a nice jolt, not quite serious but not quite campy. Leigh is also very good as the sexy agent who carries a knife under her miniskirt and turns against Strago when he threatens her future employment, telling her boss (the green-hatted man of the title) that she's no longer an asset. Watch for her mildly orgasmic reactions after she kills people. Vaughn, McCallum (both pictured) and Carroll, old hats at their characters, are fine. Classic movie fans will enjoy the presence of Eduardo Ciannelli, Allen Jenkins and Jack LaRue as the uncles, along with Maxie Rosenbloom, Joan Blondell, Elisha Cook, and Ludwig Donath. Much more entertaining than I had assumed it would be. [TCM]

PROJECT X (1968)

In the year 2118, an American spy (Christopher George) discovers the Sino-Asians have a plan to destroy the West in just fourteen days, but as a safeguard when he was about to be captured, he took a drug that gave him amnesia so he couldn't give up secrets under pressure. He made it back to the States and survived a plane crash to be put in suspended animation while scientists (led by Henry Jones and Phillip Pine) figure out how to make him remember. Their solution: install him in what they call a "matrix" by implanting a new identity in his brain, then have him live out this new existence in an elaborate ruse, "Mission Impossible" style until eventually his real memories surface. The world they create is a gangster's rural hideout in the 1960s, with the scientists playing the roles of other gangsters. They only have a few days to pull this off, but complications arise, primarily due to a female factory worker (Greta Baldwin) who is not in on the ruse, and a fellow spy (Monte Markham) who seems to want to help George but may actually have a sinister agenda.

The plot in summary sounds OK, but it's pulled off with all the panache of a cheap TV-movie—watching this, I kept having to remind myself that this was not a TV movie and had actually been released in (mostly empty, I imagine) theaters. William Castle, known mostly for B-horror and exploitation movies, directed, but was clearly past his prime here. The narrative is needlessly muddled and, as I imagine none of the actors know quite what was going on, the acting is uninspired at best. Christopher George (from the 60s TV show The Rat Patrol) is gruff and has the looks of an action hero, but he doesn't get to engage much in fisticuffs or heroics. Henry Jones (who had over 150 parts in TV shows from the 1950 to the early 90s, but is perhaps best known as the handyman in THE BAD SEED) sleepwalks through his role; Harold Gould (Rhoda’s father on TV) is given almost nothing to do except stroll through scenes glowering at people; Monte Markham is a cipher, and everyone else has thankless roles. The sets are cheesy looking and overly lit in a TV-movie way. The highlights, some viewers think, are the psychedelic scenes where George's brain is probed and we see flashbacks that fill in his story against pulsing animation courtesy Hanna-Barbera, the creators of the Jetsons, the Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo. I like Christopher George and would recommend this only to die-hard George fans, or fans of low-budget 60s sci-fi, though it rarely looks or feels like sci-fi. [DVD]

THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED (1920)

Eve, a light-skinned Black woman from Alabama, inherits a plot of land in the Northwest city of Oristown from her grandfather. When she goes to claim it, she is forced to sleep in a barn by Jefferson Driscoll, a Black hotel owner who passes for white and has a pathological hatred of Blacks—we see him throttle his poor mother and push her to the ground when she stops by his house. The next morning, lost and a little dazed, Eve runs into Hugh, a Black prospector who owns land near hers. He helps her find her home and the two become friendly, though Hugh, thinking Eve is white, doesn't attempt a romantic connection. We are introduced to a rogue's gallery of townsfolk including August, a former preacher turned swindler; Tugi, an Indian fakir who is an associate of August's; Phil and Bill, a couple of horse rustlers; and the relatively innocent Peter, brother of August's wife Mary who is forced into helping with August's cons. Jefferson joins up with the bad guys, selling Hugh two stolen horses that he claims are fine-bred Arabians. When Hugh finds out the truth, he proceeds to kick Jefferson's ass in an (overlong) bar fight. When news arrives that Hugh's land has oil beneath it, Jefferson sends anonymous notes to Hugh, warning him to sell his land, or else. Hugh ignores the notes, so August's men and the local Ku Klux Klan ride out one night to terrorize him. 

This is one of only three silent films that still exist out of over twenty that Oscar Micheaux directed, and this print, which was found in a film archive in Belgium, is missing what might be a full reel of footage at the climax. We see some very effective shots of Klansmen riding at night with their torches held high, then we see the epilogue, set a couple of years later when Hugh, a wealthy oil tycoon, meets up again with Eve. Now, honest about her real racial background, the two wind up together. Micheaux is an important historical figure, as the first African-American filmmaker, but because he always worked with a limited budget, modern audiences may find his films difficult to enjoy, and his sound films, such as SWING, fare even worse than the average Hollywood Poverty Row films. But because fiction films with Black talent in front and especially behind the camera were so rare in the classic era, I try to take the opportunity to see his films when I can. His sound films can feel very awkward in staging and dialogue, but here, not worrying about sound engineering, Micheaux crafts a fairly compelling film. The acting is about average for the silent era, with Iris Hall and Walker Thompson (both pictured) fine in the lead roles. The bad guys, especially Lawrence Chenault as Jefferson, tend to go overboard in their villainy, but that was not unusual in the silent era. The scene in which Jefferson beats up his mom is still shocking. Though this could be seen as a propaganda movie about race, it doesn't feel didactic at all. I never figured out what the title refers to. Beware: the musical score that has been attached to this restored print is all percussion by famous jazz drummer Max Roach, and I found it quite irritating, rarely applying to what's happening on screen. [TCM]

QUAI DES ORFÈVRES (1947)

Music hall singer Jenny Lamour is married to her piano player Maurice who is hang-doggedly jealous of all the male attention she gets—Jenny's director calls him Othello. Dora is an old friend of Maurice's and a professional photographer who has her name embroidered in huge letters on all her blouses; she seems to harbor an unrequited crush on Jenny. Dora does work for the sleazy hunchbacked producer Brignon who brings a stream of pretty female hopefuls in to be photographed, mostly for his pleasure we assume. When Jenny meets Brignon for dinner, in theory to discuss a career opportunity, Maurice barges into the restaurant and makes a scene, threatening to kill Brignon. We're not sure if Jenny would resort to trading sex for career favors, but she does make plans behind Maurice's back to visit Brignon in his apartment, telling Maurice she is making an overnight visit to her sick grandmother. At the apartment, Brignon makes aggressive advances and Jenny conks him over the head with a champagne bottle, apparently killing him. She goes to Dora, tells her the whole story, and realizes she has left her fur coat behind, so Dora volunteers to go get it. Unknown to them, Maurice, who doesn’t believe Jenny's story about her grandma, heads over to Brignon's place, being careful to be seen by people at Jenny's theater so he will have an alibi. When he gets there, he finds Brignon already dead, and a shadowy figure steals Maurice's car. The next day, Inspector Antoine is on the case, suspecting everyone and realizing that all of them are hiding something.

This French film noir, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique), works best in its first half as it sets up the characters, the conflicts and the ensuing dramas. Once the cops get involved, much of the tension dissipates and it becomes a fairly traditional police melodrama. I'm in the minority of viewers here, most of whom seem to like this half, and the actor who plays Antoine, Louis Jouvet. He is a distinctive character, an unambitious detective who seems irritated to be on the case. He's also given a mixed-race adoptive son to round out his character and provide a nice final scene. But it's the other characters I found interesting. Suzy Delair, Clouzot's lover at the time, is Jenny; Simone Renant is Dora; Bernard Blier (pictured, who looks a bit like Bob Newhart) is Maurice. At various times, all three in the quasi-love triangle are likable or sympathetic, and at other times, less so, especially Jenny who, a day or two after Brignon's death, no longer seems to have a guilty conscience. (I like the scene in which she blithely announces after her number that she has to change her underwear due to "stage fright sweat.") Though set at Christmas, the holiday trappings are not obvious until the end. For all its seriousness in terms of murder and motives, the film has a surprisingly light feel. Recommended. BTW, the title refers to the address of the police station, comparable to a British crime movie being titled SCOTLAND YARD. [TCM]

DRIFTING (1923)

We are in Shanghai which is, we are told, "gateway to the land of the lotus and the poppy—the secret of the East which attracts white men like the yellow flame of a lamp attracts moths." Meeting at the Café de Paris, where anything can be bought and sold, are Cassie and Jules, rival opium dealers who have been forced to team up in hard times. The cops are on Cassie's trail and on top of that, because a big shipment of opium has been delayed, she owes people money, so she sells a bunch of new dresses she'd recently bought to some of Madame Polly Voo's "cabaret girls" (i.e., hookers). Another reason Molly is desperate for the opium is that she hopes to raise enough money from it to send her friend Molly, a barely-functioning addict, back to the United States. Hoping to accompany her, Cassie decides to make this her one last sale, and so goes off to Hangchow, a village near the poppy fields, to find out what’s going on. What's going on is that an American named Jarvis has arrived, ostensibly in charge of re-opening some mines, but actually he's an undercover agent trying to bust the opium ring. Cassie pretends to be a visiting novelist researching a book, and as she investigates, local girl Rose Li (whose father is running the dope enterprise), who has fallen in love with Jarvis, sees Cassie nosing around suspiciously. Cassie herself begins to feel warmly about Jarvis. There's also a potential native uprising brewing. When Jules shows up to see what Cassie has learned, all the elements are in place for an explosive climax.

There are two reasons this exotic silent melodrama still retains some interest among movie buffs: it's directed by Tod Browning (FREAKS and the Lugosi DRACULA) and it features Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong in the supporting role of Rose Li. Though I think excavating Wong's films is important cultural work, I have never been terribly impressed by her acting—she always seems stiff and unconvincing (except when she was paired with Marlene Dietrich in SHANGHAI EXPRESS). She's the same here, though her role is fairly limited. Priscilla Dean, a very prolific silent actor who quit the business not long after the advent of sound, is very good as Cassie, though Matt Moore makes for a rather weak hero as Jarvis. Jules is played by a relatively young (just under 40) Wallace Beery, who almost looks handsome, though he limits himself to two expressions: disinterested and irritated. The climax, involving a village on fire and a cavalry rescue, is quite exciting. The drug-addled character of Molly disappears from the movie by the halfway point, and her relationship with Cassie is never explained. The audio commentary on the Blu-ray by Anthony Slide is poor—I guess to get hired as a commentator today, all you have to do is be able to skim IMDb for information. I could have shed as much light on this movie after one viewing as Slide did. I appreciate that smaller companies like Kino Lorber are still including these extras, but they need to up their game to keep people like me buying their products. Pictured are Dean and Beery. [Blu-ray]

MALAYA (1949)

In January 1942, the U.S. is fighting World War II on two fronts, and one major problem is a shortage of much needed rubber for tanks and trucks. Manchester, editor of the L.A. Record, is heading a rubber scrap drive, and reporter John Royer (James Stewart) says he can get massive amounts of excess rubber from plantations in Malaya, despite a current blockade, with "the right kind of money and the wrong kind of man." The U.S. government provides the money to bribe the plantation owners, and provide Royer with a partner, Carnahan (Spencer Tracy), a smuggler whom they extract from Alcatraz for the job. Once in Malaya, they get help from a shady saloon keeper known as the Dutchman (Sydney Greenstreet) who gives them their required twelve men ("good honest riff-raff") to help move the rubber. They encounter other characters including a singer and old flame of Carnahan's (Valentina Cortese), a Japanese officer who becomes suspicious, and a German plantation owner who betrays the Americans at a crucial point. 

I found this to be an odd duck of a movie. It seems to have been an A-picture with two big stars (Tracy and Stewart), a popular character actor (Greenstreet), and an Italian actress at the beginning of a decent career in Hollywood (Cortese). But the script is mostly B-movie stuff that I think would have come off better with B-movie leads (Tom Neal, John Carroll, Lynn Bari, etc.). A B-movie length, maybe 75 minutes instead of 100, would have paid off, too, getting rid of the occasional doldrums. Stewart and Tracy both seem like they knew this and have tried to hide their star wattage, but not always successfully. Still, they're OK, especially Tracy. I like that the Cortese character is lively and attractive, not beaten down and world-weary as so many femmes of the exotic melodrama are. There is notable support from John Hodiak as a government man and the always reliable Gilbert Roland as one of the "riff-raff." The pop standard "Blue Moon" is used throughout. Not a waste of time, but not as enjoyably scruffy as it should have been. Pictured are Stewart, Tracy and Greenstreet. [TCM]

POINT BLANK (1967)

At a crowded dance party, hot-headed low-level crook Reese (John Vernon) wrestles his buddy Walker (Lee Marvin) to the ground, then climbs on top of him, practically dry-humping him, and begs him to help out with one last heist in which they will make off with a big bag of money being delivered by helicopter to the abandoned Alcatraz prison. On the island, Reese kills the couriers then double crosses Walker by shooting him and leaving him for dead, taking off with Walker's wife Lynne. But a year later, Walker shows up in San Francisco, intent on getting his share of the stolen money. A man named Yost (Keenan Wynn), who seems to be a government agent anxious to get his hands on Reese, gives Walker the address of his ex-wife who is living with Reese; when Walker gets there, he shoots up their bedroom before realizing that Reese is long gone, and Lynne is almost comatose with depression. Walker eventually makes contact with a series of folks with connections to Reese (and with Reese's bosses who are not traditional gangsters but supposedly respectable wealthy businessmen); most importantly, he winds sleeping with Chris (Angie Dickinson, pictured with Marvin), his sister-in-law, though no emotional connection can stop him from going after the money he's owed.

In its day, the neo-noir directed by John Boorman (Deliverance, Excalibur) had a reputation as hip and new-wavish, mostly for its fractured timeline and its postmodern approach to narrative and visuals. At its heart, it's a straightforward story of betrayal and revenge, based on a traditional crime novel by prolific author Donald Westlake who wrote several more books with Walker as the main character. But as was happening in the late 60s, style was becoming more important than substance, and this has style to burn. Scenes of people getting shot or attacked (or dry-humped) are jaggedly repeated, often in slow-motion. Quick flashbacks of previous scenes pop up throughout. A shot of spilled perfumes and tonics in a bathroom sink is downright psychedelic. A physical fight between Marvin and Dickinson suddenly turns into a shot of them making love. Marvin walks into a kitchen in which every appliance is running at full tilt. But the story is another matter. There are gigantic plot holes and gaps in logic; in some reviewers' minds, the biggest plot problem is whether or not Walker is actually alive or perhaps a ghost. One viewer posits an "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" explanation for narrative problems: the whole movie is just a moment-of-death dream that Walker has. For myself, I had no problem believing that Walker was not fatally shot—the shooting, though it does take place at close to point-blank range, is not shown clearly and we see no obvious sign of a fatal wound. My bigger problem is that plotpoint connections are blurred or erased, so the movie is a series of episodes, almost in the style of a graphic novel. Marvin and Dickinson are good, as are John Vernon, Michael Strong (as a car salesman), and Carroll O'Connor (as a high-level bad guy). Worth seeing for sure, if only as a mid-60s period piece, or as a signpost to a new Hollywood style that didn't last long. [TCM]

PANAMA LADY (1938)

This is a classic-era B-movie exotic melodrama, so we know right off the bat that the Lady of the title is going to be a lady of the evening, in Production Code disguise as a down-on-her-luck chorus girl stranded in the Tropics somewhere. Sure enough chorus girl Lucy (Lucille Ball) is working in a dive in Panama when her boss Lenore has to let all the girls go. She pushes for marriage to her no-good boyfriend Roy but says he's too busy right now, and immediately takes off in his plane for business. She stows away and finds out he's actually involved in a smuggling ring, and he has her sent back to the city. Lenore gives Lucy a job as a hostess and when a charming roughneck oilman named McTeague refuses to pay his tab, Lucy and Lenore get him drunk and steal a wad of cash from him. When he's sobered up, he blames Lucy for his loss and takes her away to South America to be his housekeeper (or under the Production Code layer, mistress). She leaves a note for Roy to come and get her, but soon she develops some feelings for McTeague, although she has to deal with the jealousy of his other housekeeper (mistress) Cheema. Soon Roy arrives, assuming that Lucy ratted out his smuggling business and wanting revenge against her, but he also decides he might be able to steal McTeague's claim on some oil land, and the tensions between Lucy, McTeague, Roy and Cheema come to a boil. This is a B-movie remake of an early 30s B-movie, PANAMA FLO and it follows that film's plot slavishly. This is an improvement only in the casting. Lucille Ball does a nice job of fleshing out the main character, making her a little more lively than Helen Twelvetrees does in the original. We know Allan Lane (McTeague) will ultimately be a good guy, but he is good at keeping us a little off-balance about his intentions. I like Lane in his B-leads (see NIGHT SPOT made the year before and one of fourteen movies he made in 1938 and 1939) and he went on to achieve some fame in westerns under the name Rocky Lane. An actor named Donald Briggs, with whom I am not familiar, is fine as Roy. Steffi Duna is a little stiff as Cheema. I'd say this is mostly for fans of exotic melodrama (me) or fans of Lucille Ball. Pictured are Ball and Lane [TCM]

WOMEN IN THE NIGHT (1948)

It's the last days of World War II, after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the dropping of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. In a Shanghai hospital which has been converted into a Japanese officers club, Nazi colonel Von Meyer leads a small group of Germans working with the Japanese on a "cosmic death ray" more powerful than the A-bomb. He is waiting for the arrival of Professor Kunioshi and Colonel Noyama to hand over to them the plans for the death ray, but with Japan's defeat all but final, Von Meyer is ordered to withhold the plans. He brings a group of female prisoners to the building to use them as "entertainment" for the officers, German and Japanese. Among the women: the French Yvette (who is only too glad to flirt with anyone and is resented by the others), the American reporter Claire, the Australian Sheila, the Chinese Li Ling (who is secretly a member of the underground, as is her boyfriend, a delivery boy who smuggles things in for the women), the shy religious virgin Helen (whose mother works as a laundress at the club), and the mysterious Eurasian Maya. Over the course of the next few nights, the women are dolled up and paraded and pimped before the officers. Some oblige, some use their wiles to engage in subversion, and one would rather die than engage in forced sex. One of the officers, Von Arnheim, is actually an American OSS agent (and husband of Claire's) and helps oversee a plan to blow the club and its officers up. But will their secret plans be betrayed? 

This B-film is introduced explicitly as a postwar propaganda tale, to raise outrage against the treatment of female prisoners who were treated as prostitutes, and to propose that such acts be considered war crimes. But that element of the film is ultimately downplayed in favor of war melodrama, and as such, it works fairly well. There are perhaps a few too many characters and plotlines crammed in, though its running time of 100 minutes is unusually generous for a B-movie of the era, and I was unsure of some details—the character of Maya (Jean Brooks) was an enigma to me the whole time. The film is not really gritty enough for its subject matter, but it’s well paced and interesting. Performances are par for the B-film course. Best are Brooks, Virginia Christine (Claire), Philip Ahn (Kunioshi), Richard Loo (Noyama) and William Henry (Arnheim). Occupying an unusual place in wartime films, I recommend this. Pictured are Virginia Christine as Claire and Gordon Richards as the chief Nazi. [YouTube]

COME SEPTEMBER (1961)

Wealthy American businessman Rock Hudson has a mistress (Gina Lollobrigida) in Italy with whom he spends every September. This year, however, he gets the urge to go visit in July. He calls Gina to let her know. Unbeknownst to Rock, Gina, tired of her arrangement with Rock, was about to marry a drab Brit (Ronald Howard), but his call revives old feelings so she cancels her wedding and heads off with Rock to his lush villa. But the caretaker of the house (Walter Slezak) is also in for a surprise: without telling Rock, he's been running the house as a small luxury hotel between October and August. Despite trying to hide the evidence (including a front desk and a plaque out front for the Hotel La Dolce Vista), Slezak can't hide the current guests, a group of sightseeing teenage girls and their adult chaperone. Rock blows up when he finds out, at least partly because, since he and Gina aren't married, they can't indulge in any romantic interludes while the guests are present. He tries to get them all to another hotel, but the chaperone falls and hurts herself and they must all stay put for a few more days. In the meantime, a group of somewhat obnoxious American teenage boys end up camping out on the villa's front lawn, and the boys and girls get along—and cocky Bobby Darin and innocent Sandra Dee in particular get along well—so Rock tries his best to stop any canoodling between the groups. Eventually, Gina gets fed up with Rock's moral hypocrisy and decides to go back to her Brit, so Rock makes one last attempt to patch things up permanently.

If you just go with it, this is a cute and colorful romantic/sex comedy. Because coitus interruptus farce can get tired fast, I tried fighting it for a while. Logically, Rock and Gina should have just pretended to be married, but of course, then there'd be no conflict, or not as much conflict. The problem for me is that the plothole seemed so huge, I couldn't get past it. But I eventually quit fighting and enjoyed the light comedy skills of Hudson and Lollobrigida, who work well together, as well as Hudson and Doris Day. Walter Slezak does some nifty scene-stealing as the caretaker who keeps getting fired and rehired. Darin and Dee, who married in real life not long after filming, are so-so, but they pretty much remain secondary characters. A young Joel Gray is one of Darin's buddies. The location shooting in Italy is lovely, as is the villa. This was probably considered sophisticated in 1961 (the fact that Rock and Gina are sleeping together out of wedlock is a given and not punished). Now it's a little threadbare in plotting, but it's nice to see the lead actors have fun with the fizzy comedy. [TCM]

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)

A French actress from the town of Nevers is in Hiroshima in the last days of filming a movie that seems to be at least partly an anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons story. She meets a local Japanese architect and the two have a torrid affair despite both claiming to be happily married. Each is still dealing with past traumas: he lost his family in the bombing of Hiroshima; she took a German soldier as her lover during the war and was punished as a collaborator after the soldier was killed. Sex is had, as are philosophical post-coital conversations; he wants her to stay, and for a time it seems like she might, but in the end, they part at the Café Casablanca, her calling him Hiroshima and he calling her Nevers.

This is not a movie that a plot summary can do justice to. Not that I am all that enamored of Alain Resnais’s new wave film: I saw this many years ago and remembered little about when I sat down to watch it again, and I suspect not much of it will stay with me this time, either. The movie is known for its fragmented narrative and its often lovely and sensuous visual imagery. The first thing we see is entangled naked bodies with glittering ash falling on them, surely intended to refer to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; later, we see more graphic and upsetting footage of the bombing’s aftermath (though most of the very graphic things we see are actually from a fictional recreation of the bombing for a 1950s Japanese movie). The first ten minutes or so of the movie consists mostly of our naked lovers embracing and engaging in an odd conversation: she insists she has seen a number of sights in Hiroshima and he insists she could not have. We get footage of the town and the bombing museum; I took it that she did “sightsee” but that he insists that such behavior is not the same as having truly engaged with the horrors and tragedies of Hiroshima. We also get flashbacks of her affair and its aftermath—the villagers shave her head and she is exiled to her parents’ basement until she just leaves one day. The presentation of past and present events is not strictly chronological, though the end of the movie is also the end of their fling. The most interesting insight (to me) was her proclamation that, despite being married with children, she feels that by telling her story to the architect, she has betrayed her past soldier lover. Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada do the best they can with their amorphous characters. Interesting as one of the earlier new wave films. [TCM]