THE BREAKING POINT (1950)

Harry Morgan (John Garfield) runs a charter boat business along the California coast with his associate Wesley (Juano Hernandez). They've been a bit down on their luck lately. Both men have families, and Harry's wife (Phyllis Thaxter) has been trying to talk him into selling the boat and getting a job on her father's lettuce ranch, but Harry wants his freedom. His latest client is an obnoxious businessman named Hannigan who charters the boat for a fishing trip in the waters of Mexico. Hannigan brings along a companion, a sexy blond named Leona (Patricia Neal) who flirts a bit with Harry. In Mexico, Harry's lawyer (Wallace Ford) talks him into taking Mr. Sing (Victor Sen Yung) and a group of several Chinese refugees back to California. It's illegal, but when Hannigan abandons Harry (and Leona) without paying, he decides to take on the job. It all goes to hell and Harry winds up in trouble with the border patrol. Harry's troubles pile up: his boat is impounded, his wife suspects he's sweet on Leona (and she dyes her hair brassy blond like Leona in an attempt to keep her husband's interest); when he gets his boat back, he is threatened with foreclosure on it. Finally, the lawyer offers him one last big job, but it means getting involved in a racetrack heist and with armed men who won't hesitate to use their guns if they suspect betrayal.

It's tempting to make that summary longer by spilling all the beans, but in this case, I think spoilers might really make the movie less interesting. Suffice to say that there's a nice shoot-out finale on the boat, and that, though Garfield survives, the final shot is one of the most heart-wrenching ones of classic-era films. Sadly, this is one of Garfield's last movies before a heart attack cut his life short at the age of 39. It's the second Hollywood movie based on Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not, and this one is apparently more faithful than the first version, famous for its pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It's a solid seafaring melodrama with good acting all the way around. Wallace Ford, as the shyster lawyer, seems to be filling in for Sydney Greenstreet, both in his looks and his attitude, but he's fine. Hernandez (pictured with Garfield at left) is excellent in a role that allows a Black man to be something other than servile or scared or comic relief. Neal is good as the hotsy totsy bad news. Garfield's character is not totally sympathetic but we root for him nevertheless. [TCM]

THE LOVE MACHINE (1971)

When we first see John Phillip Law, he's doing a human interest news story on the New York affiliate for TV network IBC. Dyan Cannon, the young wife of the head of the network (Robert Ryan), is impressed by him—more so his looks than his talent, it seems—and she talks her husband into making him the national news anchor, over the objections of Jackie Cooper, the network president. (I was constantly confused by people's titles and therefore the power relationships that are in play.) In six months, Law, who lives alone with a caged sparrow he rescued, is the head of the news department and is juggling relationships with several women. Jodi Wexler, an up-and-coming model, falls in love with him and gives him an ankh ring, which means nothing to him as he sleeps with whomever he fancies and isn't about to be tied down. This even applies to Dyan Cannon, who, while cheating on her husband with Law, becomes unreasonably jealous when she catches Law in a threesome. Law's closest, perhaps only, friend is gay fashion photographer David Hemmings. Law tells Hemmings, "The thing I like about you is you never make a pass"; Hemmings' reply is "I'm biding my time." Cooper sells a variety show to IBC with second-rate comic Shecky Greene, partly to stick it to Law, who hates the idea. The show's a hit, leading to tense relations between Cooper and Law, with Ryan trying to keep the peace but also realizing that Law is more important to the network than Cooper. Eventually, Jodi commits suicide, and a kinky joke on the part of Hemmings involving a slave bracelet threatens to bring Law down on a morals clause charge.

I took almost three pages of plot summary notes on this movie, so I've left a lot out. But the bloated narrative serves the soap opera tone of the movie perfectly. Based on a Jacqueline Susann novel, audiences expected trashy, sexy melodrama, and they got it, though the movie did not do nearly as well financially as the earlier VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. In some ways, this is a slightly better movie than DOLLS; it's a little glossier and in general better acted. But it's not as fun as DOLLS. There is no Patty Duke yelling, "Sparkle, Neely, sparkle!" and no one's wig gets flushed down a toilet. There's also a big hole in the center of the film in the form of the title character (actually, Law calls television "the love machine," but we all know it's really him). Law was never a very demonstrative actor, and his plastic performances as the hunky angel in BARBARELLA and anti-hero of DANGER: DIABOLIK may well be his career peaks. His glossy looks serve him well here as a face onto which his various admirers can read whatever they want, but his plastic performance gives us not one iota of insight into the character's inner life or motivations—granted that's partly due to the script, and may well be intentional, but it makes it difficult to care about him, even during his final downfall, which is more or less played for laughs (in fact, the ambiguous ending suggests that he escapes a downfall altogether). 

Old pros Ryan and Cooper are fine, though Cooper has to suffer the indignity of a weirdly stand-alone camp-comic scene of the Hallelujah Chorus playing as he comes out of a meeting. Cannon acquits herself well, though Shecky Greene seems miscast and uncomfortable in a role that could have been based on him. In smaller roles, I liked Maureen Arthur as a PR worker known as the "Celebrity Banger," and William Roerick as a network assistant who is present for most of the big blowups. Greg Mullavey (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) pops up in a couple of scenes, and Jodi Wexler, a model who never made another movie, is fine as the model and tragic figure all melodramas need. David Hemmings is saddled with the part of the stereotyped gay man, but he seems to be trying to make it a little subtler than the norm in those days, and he largely succeeds. He's the only character I thought might actually be fun to spend time with. We know that Law's character, Robin Stone, has deep-seeded problems, and for a time it's suggested he might hiding gay tendencies. In one scene when he declines to sleep with a hooker, she calls him a fag and he smacks the shit out of her; in another scene, when an executive wonders out loud if Stone is AC/DC, Cannon replies, "Balls." A gay smear is behind the final scene, but Stone remains steely straight all the way through. It might have been fun if a little real ambiguity crept in about his sexual proclivities. This is far from a great film, but as a chic 70s melodrama, it's fairly watchable. Pictured are Cannon and Law. [DVD]

MURDER IN HARLEM (1935)

Arthur Vance, a security guard at a chemical laboratory, makes his midnight rounds and finds a dead woman, Myrtle Stanfield, on the floor of a small storeroom. When the police arrive, they find two oddly worded crumpled-up notes near her body that seem to implicate the watchman (one says, "The tall Negro did it"). Suddenly, we cut to a flashback from three years earlier which involves none of these characters. Henry Glory is trying to raise money for law school by selling his self-published romance novel door to door. One of his customers sends him to The Catbird, a good-time girl who lives in an apartment building across the street, but he rings the wrong doorbell and winds up selling his book to the sweet and innocent Claudia. Over time, sparks fly until The Catbird's thugs mistake him for someone else and knock him out and drag him into the Catbird's rooms. He assumes Claudia was in cahoots with the Catbird, and he ends his relationship with Claudia. Back in the present time, Glory is now a lawyer (and still writing novels), Arthur the watchman is Claudia's brother, and Claudia visits Glory at his office and asks him to take Arthur's case, which he does. Eventually, it comes out that Brisbane, Arthur's boss, claims he saw Arthur and Myrtle sneak off to the storeroom together that afternoon and his story is corroborated by his assistant Lem Hawkins, but when Claudia meets up with Hawkins at a party, she gets him drunk and another story emerges, one that could clear Arthur.

Most movie viewers, whether they are aware of it or not, adjust their expectations for a film based on genre. People hold Marvel superhero movies to a different standard than they would a low budget horror movie on Shudder. Similarly, classic movie buffs don't judge a B-movie from the 40s by the same standards as an A-movie like Casablanca. This film is an example of a race movie, a film made by Black performers and filmmakers, usually with very low budgets and outside of the studio system, so anyone watching this film needs to adjust to the at-times amateurish feel of the onscreen proceedings. This one, from director and writer Oscar Micheaux, has narrative problems, including the odd positioning of the three-year flashback, and some wooden performances, but taking those limitations into account, this is a fairly entertaining example of the race movie genre. The lead actor, Clarence Books (as Henry) is not terribly charismatic; I was assuming he was delivering some extra afternoon delight to his female readers, as there is an odd fade-out and fade-in during his first sale, but that seems not to be the case. Dorothy Van Engle is a bit better as Claudia, as is Bee Freeman as The Catbird. Despite some plotholes, the story is easy to follow and has a satisfying ending. In the opening scene, Arthur acts very suspiciously as though he is expecting to find a body in the storeroom, but this seems to just be the result of awkward acting. Out of the blue, there are a couple of musical numbers that have nothing to do with anything, including a delightful soft-shoe tap number (pictured above). At 90 minutes, it feels a big dragged out at times, but it's watchable and interesting from a historical perspective. [Criterion Channel]

LYDIA (1941)

The elderly, wealthy Lydia MacMillan is being honored for her life's work with children, culminating in the opening of an orphanage for the blind and crippled. Her old friend Michael Fitzpatrick is honoring her in a more private way, hosting a small gathering of the four most important men in her life, though only three have shown up. As they chat, they all reminisce about their relationships via flashbacks. Michael, son of the family butler, was the doctor to Lydia's grandmother Sarah, and the only one of the four to be a constant presence in Lydia's life. As a young woman, Lydia was a bit rebellious--Sarah berates her for wearing a dress with bare shoulders to her first ball, complaining that she's going out "in the nude." When Lydia recalls that ball, she remembers hundreds of harpists, a huge orchestra, and dozens of chandeliers (and her flashback is presented in slow motion), but Michael corrects her, bringing her memory down to earth a bit, with a small band of musicians and a couple of chandeliers. There, she meets Bob, a beefy football player with a tendency toward drunkenness. The two try to elope but things don't work out. After an encounter with a blind child, she devotes her life to working with children, and at a school for the blind that she opens, she meets the third man, Frank, a blind pianist who teaches there, and who eventually writes her a concerto. Despite the love of Frank and Michael, Lydia proclaims that she will remain a spinster, that her work is her life. But soon, she meets the fourth man, Richard, a handsome and earthy sailor (and the only man not currently present), and the two take off to live together at MacMillan Point, an isolated family home on a windswept coast. Their days together end when Richard leaves to fulfill an obligation to another woman (we assume it involves a child) and despite a promise to return, he never does. Lydia claims that Richard was the love of her life, but when Richard finally arrives, he doesn't even remember her, an outcome that she accepts as punishment for her "sins."

This is French director Julien Duvivier's reworking of his 1937 Un Carnet de Bal (which I have not seen) and though it's an American film, produced by the British Alexander Korda, it has the feel of a French film, especially in its direct presentation of Lydia and Richard living "in sin," something that one would not likely see in the typical Hollywood movie of the time. It has great sets, a hazy nostalgic feel, and the old age makeup on all the actors in the present-time scenes is very good (see Oberon as an old woman above). Merle Oberon is Lydia, and this is her movie all the way. I'm not a big Oberon fan, but she is quite good in this, being believable as a headstrong young debutante, a social reformer, a passionate lover, and an old lady. Joseph Cotten is equally good as Michael, who pines away for her, though not in a self-pitying way. Alan Marshal makes a very likable character out of the carefree Richard. The other two men, George Reeves as Bob and Hans Jaray as Frank, don't have much time to make their impressions. But the film is frequently stolen by the fabulous Edna May Oliver as the grandmother—it's a grand Oliver performance through and through, as she plays an irascible but ultimately loving woman, and seems to be having fun doing so. Sadly, this was her last film as she died the next year. Critics aren't crazy about this movie, but I found it fun and compelling. [TCM]

MELODY TIME (1948)

This collection of short musical cartoons, introduced by a gigantic paint brush, feels very much like a reboot of FANTASIA, except with pop songs rather than classical pieces. Like FANTASIA, there is no real overarching connection between the segments, and some of the cartoons are fairly abstract, though the two longest films—both about 20 minutes—have strong narratives. "The Story of Johnny Appleseed," sung and voiced by Dennis Day, tells the folkloric story of John Chapman, who planted trees throughout early 1800s America. The short subtly stresses religious faith with the constant presence of a Bible in his (non-seed throwing) hand and the finale where Johnny falls asleep under an apple tree and an angel escorts him to heaven so he can keep planting trees. The other, "Pecos Bill," combines live action footage of Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers with the animated adventures of the fictional cowboy. Both of these were released as stand-alone short subjects. Another shorter segment, "Little Toot," sung by the Andrews Sisters, is a story about a brave little tugboat and was the inspiration for a character later featured in some Disney comic books. 

But for me, the more interesting segments are the abstract ones, presented at the beginning of the film. "Once Upon a Wintertime" looks and feels the most like a Fantasia short, with its focus on a season and its telling of a story that juxtaposes nature and humans, complete with a threatening storm like the Bacchus section of Fantasia. "Bumble Boogie" is a jazzy, surreal bit with a bee being chased by giant piano keys, scored to Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Flight of the Bumblebee." Joyce Kilmer's famous poem "Trees" is read out loud with more lovely pastel scenes of nature (and a storm)."Blame it on the Samba" is reminiscent of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in that it features a popular Disney character, Donald Duck. He interacts with a live-action organist, Ethel Smith, and an animated South American parrot named José Carioca, to not much effect. Overall, I couldn’t help but see this as a dumbing-down of Fantasia. The animation is great, as one expects from Disney, and the print playing on Disney+ is beautiful. Apparently, in an earlier DVD rendition of this, the Pecos Bill segment was edited to remove multiple instances of the character smoking, but this version includes the cigarettes. There were other cartoon compilations between Fantasia and this (Make Mine Music, for instance) which I haven't seen, but if they are like this one, I'm not sure I need to. [Disney+]

ALPHAVILLE (1965)

A movie buff's guilty admission: I've never had much use for Jean-Luc Godard. I understand his importance in the advent of the New Wave cinema of the early 60s and I can see how he influenced other filmmakers in terms of cinematography, editing, and presentation of narrative, but aside from a couple of early films (BREATHLESS, CONTEMPT), I never cared much for anything else of his, and eventually I quit trying. But after his death last year at the age of 91, I decided to go back and revisit one of his early films that was a crushing disappointment to me when I first saw it. ALPHAVILLE was marketed, in part, as a science-fiction film, and I remember seeing stills from it in the SF-horror movie magazines I read as a kid. The plot description involved a detective in a dystopian future who travels through space to find a missing person and subvert the supercomputer that runs the city of Alphaville. When I finally saw it on cable in the early 80s, it was nothing like I had imagined it would be: grungy looking black & white, no space travel visuals, no special effects, and an old, worn-out looking hero instead of a handsome spaceman. I definitely appreciated the movie more in my second viewing. Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a craggy-faced Bogart type of agent who gets back and forth to Alphaville not via spaceship but in a plain Ford Galaxie (get it, galaxy?) along a nighttime freeway. The city is run by a computer called Alpha 60 (which also sort of narrates in an irritatingly phlegmy voice). Examples of how people are programmed to think in Alphaville come from a number of expressions we hear or read: "Silence = logic, safety = prudence"; "No one has lived in the past and no one will live in the future"; "There is no 'why,' only 'because.'" The Institute of General Semantics is an important arm of the government, dictionaries are referred to as bibles, and words like "conscience" and "tenderness" keep dropping out of the dictionaries. Lemmy is tended to by a "level three seductress" (I’m not sure if that's a high or low rating). Lemmy is trying to see a man named Von Braun (original name, Leonard Nosferatu), inventor of Alpha 60, and his daughter Natacha (Anna Karina) ends up helping him. Lemmy kills Von Braun, essentially destroys the city, and takes Natacha back across space (the freeway) to the Outer Countries.

Obviously, a coherent plot was not foremost in Godard's mind. What enjoyment I got came strictly from interesting visuals, bits of politics and philosophy, and some fun dialogue. When Lemmy finds the agent he's been looking for (Hollywood character actor Akim Tamiroff, pictured above with Constantine), seemingly forlorn and defeated, he tries to pep him up by asking, "Is Dick Tracy dead? How about Flash Gordon?" My favorite scene is of Lemmy getting interrogated by Alpha 60 in a small dark room with a number of large microphones hanging from the ceiling, doing a kind of elaborate dance around his head as he responds. In a movie with little action, a car stunt on an icy street near the end is exciting. I liked Constantine, but to talk about acting in this movie is beside the point—the characters are really just symbols or placeholders for opinions. I'm glad to have given this a second chance with different expectations, but it didn't change my mind much about Godard. [Criterion Channel]

THE IRON DUKE (1934)

Here I go, learning more history from Hollywood, or in this case, from London. It's 1815 and with Napoleon imprisoned at Elba, Europe is at peace, but with the drawing up of treaties, Prussia, Russia and Austria are plotting to keep France weak, partly by restoring Louis XVIII as King, so French unrest may stir. The Duke of Wellington (George Arliss) is sent from England to the Congress of Vienna to press the case for fair treatment for France, but soon Napoleon escapes. Wellington advises the King to leave, but the King's advisor Marie Thérèse (daughter of Marie Antoinette, known as Madame) doesn't trust Wellington, and indeed is still seeking revenge against, well, practically everyone. In the meantime, the Duchess of Richmond introduces Wellington to Lady Frances, a young woman who has a big case of hero worship for him, which frequently seems on the verge of becoming a romantic obsession even though she's married. At the battle of Waterloo, Wellington sees Napoleon ("Boney" as he calls him) from afar but won't let his men aim for him: "Not sporting—generals don't kill generals in cold blood." But even after Boney's final defeat, Wellington has problems in his relations with the French. Madame refuses to return art that Napoleon had stolen, and Wellington's friend Marshal Ney is threatened with execution for treason. A bigger worry, at least as far as public relations go, is that Madame spreads the rumor that the married Wellington is having an affair with the married Lady Frances. The latter part of the film centers on how Wellington rises above all this. Arliss can do no wrong in my eyes, though I don't necessarily like all his movies equally. But this is a strong entry in his series of biographical films, though like most of them, I wouldn't trust this to be terribly accurate. Arliss gives a fine performance, and he is matched well by the wonderful Gladys Cooper (pictured with Arliss) as Madame; her part is not large, but she makes every scene count.  Other cast standouts include Emlyn Wiliams as a reporter and Norma Varden as the Duchess of Richmond. A good one for Arliss fans. [DVD]

AMERICAN MATCHMAKER (1940)

This Yiddish-language film directed by notable B-moviemaker Edgar G. Ulmer begins by showing wealthy young garment factory boss Nat Silver (Leo Fuchs) throwing yet another bachelor party as his friends comment that he is forever celebrating other people's marriages but never getting married himself. He's come close several times but he always discovers that his fiancées only want him for his money. Nat proceeds to sing an anti-female song to the assembled "gluttons and hooch hounds"—so-called by his butler Morris—and Nat's misogyny only solidifies when one of his clerks bursts in and threatens him with a gun for trying to steal his girl Shirley, who, the clerk informs him, only wants his money. This makes Nat give up on the idea of marriage for good until he hears a family story about his late Uncle Shya who, back in the old country, felt he was under a marriage curse and so, somewhat counter-intuitively, became a successful matchmaker. Inspired by this, Nat tells his mother and sister that he's decided to head back to Europe to contemplate his life. Instead, using the name Nat Gold, he gets an office in the Bronx and opens a modern matchmaking business. It's so successful that other more traditional matchmakers protest, though Nat deals with that by hiring Simon, one of the leading protesters, as his assistant. But when Nat tries to find a match for Judith Aarons (Judith Abarbanel), he slowly comes to realize that her best match might actually be him. This is an amusing romantic comedy with a good central performances by Fuchs (pictured)—often referred to as the Yiddish Fred Astaire, he's given a couple of songs, though I wouldn't go so far as to call this a musical which some critics do. He also briefly has a second role as Uncle Shya in a dream flashback. Celia Brodkin is Nat's old-fashioned mother and Anna Guskin is Nat's more modern sister. There's a funny running gag in which Nat refers to himself as an "advisor in human relations" and his assistant thinks the phrase is "human relishes." Minor but fun enough. Available on the Jewish Soul boxed set from Kino Lorber. (Also released as Amerikaner Schadchen.) [Blu-ray]

CYNARA (1932)

Jim Warlock (Ronald Colman) is meeting his wife Clemency (Kay Francis, at left) before he heads off alone to South Africa, his career and his marriage in shambles. We flashback to months earlier as Jim, a successful London barrister, is about to celebrate his seventh wedding anniversary. His old friend John eggs him on about having a colorless life, and in fact, Jim is a little put out that Clemency is taking off for a trip to Venice with her younger sister who is trying to avoid a boyfriend scandal. Jim and John go out to dinner that night where a young girl named Doris (Phyllis Barry), on a bet with her friend, flirts with Jim. He takes her to see a Charlie Chaplin movie and is obviously enchanted by her, but balks at anything more. However, John finagles an invitation for Jim to judge a swimsuit contest at a town gathering where he knows Doris will be a contestant. Jim picks her as the winner, and when she falls and hurts her ankle, he takes her back to her flat where one thing leads to another, but only after she assures him that he is not her first lover, and that she will not be a nuisance in his marriage. By now, we know where this is going: she does become a nuisance, going as far as, at the end of a countryside interlude, threatening suicide when he has to go back to meet his returning wife. He tries to keep his relationship with her going, but finally writes a "Dear Doris" letter breaking it off. [Spoilers follow:] Doris does kill herself and when Jim's letter is found, he is called to testify at the inquest. To protect her reputation, Jim lets the coroner believe that he was her first lover. He is not legally responsible for her death (the coroner says dramatically that she "ended her own life preferring the judgment of the infinite to the opinions of her fellow men") but his own reputation is now soiled and he decides to leave England alone. Back in the present timeline, is it possible that Clemency will live up to her name and forgive Jim?

Current day viewers may be surprised at the answer. In general it's only in the pre-Code days that a movie could end with reconciliation and forgiveness for an adulterer, especially where such sordid circumstances as the suicide of a mistress were involved. The ending feels a bit rushed, and the character of Clemency is not fleshed out as much as she should have been, but it's a bit refreshing to have the wronged wife forgive the cheating bastard. Given the melodramatic plot elements, the acting here is a little underplayed, which is also refreshing. Colman is a little less stoic than he would be later in his career, Francis a little less tortured than she sometimes came off. Barry, with whom I was not familiar, is good as the mistress who doesn't so much scheme as hope. The likable Henry Stephenson is fine as John. The title comes from an ode by Horace: "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion." The Irving Berlin standard "Blue Skies" becomes theme music for the illicit lovers. [TCM]

ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH (1975)

Mike Wayne (Kirk Douglas) is a one-time big-shot Hollywood producer who can no longer get hired, but he desperately needs money, partly due to paying medical bills for his young (in her late teens) daughter January who has been in a Swiss medical clinic for months, recovering from a serious motorcycle crash (which I assume killed the handsome man who was driving). She returns home happy to be with her dad, but not happy that he has married heiress Deidre Granger. Deidre is very pleasant and very rich, but January intuits that this is a marriage of convenience and does not approve. (In fact, despite having been married four times, the love of Deidre's life is a reclusive retired actress named Karla.) January gets a job as an assistant to Linda, editor of a popular women’s magazine and a promiscuous man-lover. One night, Linda puts the moves (a little desperately) on beefy, hypermasculine author Tom Colt, but he is more interested in January. January is quite interested in him, in part because, as becomes crystal clear, she has major daddy issues. When Linda confronts her by saying, "It would be a lot healthier if you just got it over with and went to bed with your father," January doesn't seem all that shocked. Tom's little secret is his impotence, which of course January manages to cure. Mike discovers January in bed with Tom and beats him up, and soon January has to make a choice between Tom and Dad, just as Mike has to decide if his pride is too great to keep him with Deidre. There are not happy endings in store for anyone.

When I started this blog twenty years ago, I considered any movie before 1960 to be appropriate for review. At some point, I began allowing myself to include movies through the 60s, figuring that most of them feel like period pieces to a 21st century audience in the same way that movies of the 30s and 40s felt to me in the 1970s. As time moved on, I loosened my self-imposed strictures, delving into some early 1970s movies now and again. I guess the time has come to open up my blog to the entire decade. One advantage to this is that I now have an excuse to revisit movies like this that I haven't seen since their initial release. This soap opera melodrama is based on a novel by Jacqueline Susann about the sexual trials and tribulations of the rich and unhappy, and like its predecessor VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, it hasn't aged terribly well, but if you're in the right mood, it's still watchable. With a star like Kirk Douglas (so-so in the role), I expected this to be the story of Mike Wayne, but really it's the story of his daughter, played by Deborah Raffin. In the beginning, it feels like Raffin is trying too hard, but by the middle, I realized that she was going all in for the melodrama; she's more believable than Barbara Parkins was in DOLLS. Alexis Smith is perfect as Deidre (supposedly based on Barbara Hutton), David Janssen is not quite as bombastic as he should have been playing a stand-in for Norman Mailer though he's got the hairy chest for the role (pictured with Raffin above), and Brenda Vaccaro got an Oscar nomination as Linda—she's fun, largely because of her dialogue ("I happen to like screwing," she says matter of factly), but the performance feels a little lightweight. George Hamilton is a playboy who briefly woos Raffin, and poor Gary Conway is given a throwaway role as an astronaut who now lives the simple life of a beachcomber on David Janssen's beach. I thought he was being presented as a healthy alternative for Raffin, somewhere between Janssen and Hamilton, but the filmmakers weren't thinking that hard. Too bad, because Conway is very good in his few scenes. Melina Mercouri is underwhelming in her one scene as Karla (a stand-in for Greta Garbo). Fun for an evening of indulging in nostalgia for forgotten movies of the 1970s. [Criterion Channel]

KILLER'S KISS (1955)

Davey Gordon is pacing around Penn Station; as he narrates his story in flashback, we cut to him pacing in his small apartment. Still a young man, he is considered old by the standards of his profession, boxing, his career having been "one long promise without fulfillment." His uncle in Seattle has offered to let him stay with him for a while, and he's considering it. Across the courtyard, he can see into the window of Gloria, a worker at the Pleasure Land dance hall. Though the two see each other frequently, they don't know each other. That evening, he has what may be his last bout, with an up-and-comer named Kid Rodriguez. As Davey gets pummeled in the ring, Gloria is pawed at by her boss Vinnie, a slimy small-time gangster as they watch the match on television (with Vinnie getting rather excited by the violence). Later in the night, Davey hears her screams as Vinnie assaults her, and he races across the rooftops to her room which scares Vinnie away. The two share their backgrounds, and we find out that Gloria had a sister who was a ballet dancer who killed herself just after Gloria accused her of not loving their recently deceased father. They spend the next day together in the city, and, declaring love, they decide to leave for Seattle together. Unfortunately, that may not be easy for Gloria; when she goes to Vinnie to quit and collect her last paycheck, he becomes jealous and sets in motion a plan to squelch their happiness.

Stanley Kubrick's second film, this is a fairly stark black & white semi-noir thriller, shot mostly on location in a fairly plain straightforward style with some nice stylistic touches here and there that nevertheless don't draw a lot of attention to themselves—the opening shots of Davey pacing in two different places, a very cool climactic fight scene in a warehouse filled with mannequins. The B-movie feel extends to the acting, which is not meant as a criticism; it feels naturalistic but a bit under rehearsed. I quite liked both leads: Jamie Smith (pictured with mannequin hands) as Davey, and Irene Kane as Gloria (Kane gave up acting and became Chris Chase, a successful journalist who has a cameo as a film critic in ALL THAT JAZZ). They are a bit unpolished but they feel real. Frank Silvera, the only member of the cast to sustain a substantial acting career, is nicely menacing as Vinnie. Virtually all the dialogue was obviously post-dubbed which hurts the atmosphere. It may not be indicative of where Kubrick was headed, but it's certainly watchable (and short, definitely not where Kubrick was headed). [DVD]

THE WOMAN CONDEMNED (1934)

We first see popular radio singer Jane Merrick (Lola Lane) as she broadcasts her last show before a long vacation, though there seems to be something a little mysterious about her departure; no one is clear when she'll be returning, and her producer (and would-be fiancé) Jim worries that someone is threatening her and that the show will lose its sponsor if she stays away too long. That night, a police call comes in about a prowler outside of Jane's apartment, and a young woman named Barbara (Claudia Dell) is arrested. At the night court, handsome cocky reporter Jerry (Richard Hemingway, pictured) feels sorry for her and, hoping to get a good story, tells the judge that she's his fiancée and has a history of playing practical jokes. The judge releases her into Jerry's custody, then insists on marrying them in the courtroom. They share a pleasant dinner before she sneaks off to Jane's place again, this time getting in through a window. She sees a mysterious man with a foreign accent apparently blackmailing her, and after the man leaves, a shot rings out, killing Jane. Barbara is caught by the police with the gun in her hand, and still won't explain herself, so Jerry goes all out to clear her name. He winds up tracking the foreign-accented man to a private sanitarium. To reveal much more would be too spoilery—suffice to say that not everyone is who or what they seem, and eventually there's a ghost (maybe).

This pre-Code melodrama is cheaply made and has a rickety plot, but I like the way things wrap up in the end, though it does involve a bit of a surprise trick and some suspension of disbelief. It bothered me that it was never made clear why Barbara was skulking around Jane's apartment in the first place. Claudia Dell is fine as Barbara; she made some 40 movies in the 1930s, mostly B-films, then retired. Busy character actor Mischa Auer (he was in 60 movies between 1930 and 1934) is the mysterious man with the foreign accent. Jason Robards Sr. is Jim and Louise Beavers has a small role as Jane's maid. The big find here is Richard Hemingway as Jerry. A Golden Gloves winning boxer in his youth, Hemingway (apparently no relation to Ernest) only made nine movies, some in bit parts, before he retired from acting in 1936. That's a shame because here, he displays a promising talent as a Jimmy Stewart type. Despite Dell getting top billing, Hemingway is really the star of the movie. The director, Dorothy Davenport, is billed as, and better known as, Mrs. Wallace Reid, widow of a silent film star who died young from morphine addiction. She's best known as a silent movie actress—over 100 short films—and for directing a couple of anti-drug films (including THE ROAD TO RUIN and seems to have retired from show business after this film. If you adjust your expectations to Poverty Row level, you’ll enjoy this. [Criterion Channel]

THE TROJAN WOMEN (1971)

Considering I have a Bachelor's degree and a Master's Degree in English (and I am A.B.D to boot, having passed my Ph.D orals without finishing a dissertation), I am at sea when it comes to the ancient Greek playwrights. Though I have read several of the classic plays (Oedipus Rex, Antigone, The Bacchae), I don't really know my Sophocles from my Aristophanes. This film by Michael Cacoyannis is based on a play by Euripides set after the fall of Troy (see Homer's Iliad for backstory), centered on the fates of the women left behind after their city was burned and their men captured or killed. Filmed outdoors (on location in Spain), the movie has a realistic look but in terms of acting, it's very stagy, consisting largely of fairly static scenes with the main characters loudly proclaiming their grief and frustration to a chorus of sympathetic women. The story focuses on Hecuba, former Queen of Troy (Katherine Hepburn, pictured), who is waiting on word from the Greek king about the fate of her family. Her husband is dead; her daughter Cassandra (Genevieve Bujold), a prophet who has gone mad, is slated to become a royal concubine; Andromache (Vanessa Redgrave) the wife of Hecuba's slain son Hector, fears that her young son will be put to death so no legitimate line of royal lineage will exist. Meanwhile, Helen of Troy (Irene Papas), whom the other women blame for the war, is being held prisoner. In the best scene of the movie, Helen claims that the gods are at fault, but Hecuba rebuts her, holding her responsible for her own actions. In the end, only Hecuba is left as the last of Troy is burned, wailing with the nameless chorus of women over their future enslavement. The tension between realism in setting and theatricality in delivery never resolves itself, so all the moaning and declaiming is highlighted, remaining artificial and melodramatic. Had this been filmed as a staged play on a proscenium set, it might have worked. Bujold gets short shrift here, in a relatively small role that is mostly a tepid mad scene. Redgrave is OK, but Hepburn, being Hepburn, manages to shine, reining in the histrionics more than her fellow actors. Her scene mentioned above with Papas is riveting. Unfortunately, little else in the film rises to that height. The only males in the cast are Brian Blessed and Patrick Magee who are fine. The concept of the chorus of women works fairly well. The director claims that this was meant primarily as an anti-war statement, but partly because all the war scenes occur before the action of the film, that sentiment is not effectively delivered. I would recommend this only to classicists, Hepburn fans, or viewers looking for a novelty. [DVD]

REET, PETITE, AND GONE (1947)

Band leader Louis Jarvis is called away from his hit radio show to see his dying father Schyler. Also called for a final visit is Honey Carter, the daughter of the late singer Lovey Linn. In a flashback, we see that Schyler discovered Lovey in New Orleans and brought her to New York City to sing in a show with him. They fell in love but Lovey's mother married her off to a wealthy man named Carter. To his dying day, Schyler never forgot Lovey, and he wants her daughter to marry his son. His somewhat convoluted way of accomplishing this is to make a will that insists that, to get Schyler's money, Louis must marry a woman of particular measurements, those of Honey, and do it in four weeks. Schyler dies before Louis or Honey get to see him, and his conniving lawyer Talbot secretly changes the measurements in the will to those of his secretary Rusty, and he works it out so if Louis fails to marry the woman, the money defaults to Talbot. Louis thinks the whole thing is crazy, and he's not at all interested in Rusty, but he needs an infusion of money for a show he's about to put on, so in the process of holding auditions for a leading lady, he agrees to have all the women measured. Honey shows up and, though she doesn't measure up, she and Lous hit it off. At the end of the four weeks, Schyler's valet shows up with a secret letter given to him by Schyler that might just make everything right. 

That’s a lot of plot for a 67-minute Poverty Row movie in which the first eight minutes consist of songs, and another 25 minutes or so of songs are presented before the end. Well known swing bandleader Louis Jordan (pictured, who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influencer) plays both Louis and Schyler and, let's just say that there's a reason he never took another dramatic part in a movie. Honestly, however, few of the actors here are really "actors," and many never made any other films. June Richmond, who plays Honey's pal June, was better known for singing with Jimmy Dorsey's band and sustained a solid career as a jazz singer in Europe. She's also better than everyone else here. They all seem pretty amateurish, but she's enthusiastic and probably could have forged an acting career if she'd been interested, or, more to the point, if she could have gotten any roles. This is what was called a "race film" with an all-Black cast. The only cast member with a substantial career was Lorenzo Tucker (Talbot). The music is the main reason for the film's existence; some of it is fine, some is dated, but the dancing is strictly amateur all the way. During "Let the Good Times Roll," performed with Jordan's band the Tympany Five, Jordan refers to himself as "Mr. Jordan" rather than "Mr. Jarvis." The plot point about the female measurements just felt mind-numbingly dumb to me—it never even comes off as racy or funny. Good viewing as a novelty. [TCM]

THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG (1934)

Arthur Cartwright is angry at his neighbors the Foleys over the incessant howling of their German shepherd. He goes to attorney Perry Mason (Warren William), not to complain about the dog, but to draw up a new will because he thinks the howling dog is an omen of death. Oddly, though Cartwright is married, he wants to leave everything to Evelyn Foley, the wife of his neighbor, whom he says is not actually Foley's wife. Mason goes to investigate and can't find evidence that the dog was howling—the only other witness is Foley's nearly deaf maid. But he notes that Foley is having a new garage built on his property, a detail that may become important later. Next, Mason is told that Cartwright has run off with Evelyn, and that Evelyn was actually Cartwright's wife all along. Then Bessie Foley, Foley's real wife arrives. She is seen arriving at Foley's house; she argues with Foley, the dog attacks her, and it appears that she shoots and kills both the dog and Foley, though our view of the incident is not clear. And, as if things hadn't already been complicated, they get even more so from here as Mason, despite the evidence, decides to take Bessie on as a client, and tries to get to the bottom of the Cartwright/Foley tangle.

This is the first of six Perry Mason movies made by Warner Bros. in the 1930s. I've reviewed a few others in the past including The Case of the Stuttering Bishop and The Case of the Curious Bride, so I won't rehash the background of the movies and the TV show. Suffice to say that William plays him as suave and stylish, and somewhat surprisingly, with a loose sense of morality, especially in terms of the outcome of the case, an ending that I'm surprised made it past the Code censors (the Code had become the "law," so to speak, just a couple of months before this movie was released). Helen Trenholme, who only made two movies, is fine as his attractive secretary Della Street who gets to play investigator briefly. Mary Astor is OK if a bit bland as Bessie, a relatively small but important part; she could have used a bit of the jolt she gives Bridget O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon. Grant Mitchell is the D.A., Gordon Westcott is Cartwright, and Dorothy Tree is a character named Lucy Benton who is Foley's maid, or is she? It’s fun to see Allen Jenkins with a mustache (which completely changes his look) as a cop, pictured at left with William. Mason's firm is depicted in the opening scene as a huge and apparently wildly successful operation with a dozen or more lawyers and investigators working for him, and Mason himself has a big and well appointed office. I have to admit that the plot got a bit too complex for me, and at the end I wasn't 100% sure of what happened, but nevertheless it was a satisfying ending. [TCM]

CREST OF THE WAVE (1954)

On an island off the west coast of Scotland is a small British naval base where secret experiments are being conducted involving a new kind of torpedo (don’t worry, it's just a McGuffin). The last two tests have resulted in deaths—there is some problem with the torpedo exploding as soon as it's released from the sub, killing all aboard. Lt. Bradville (Gene Kelly) has been called in from the States to investigate, bringing with him his assistants Butch and Shorty. There is some internal tension among the handful of volunteer sailors on the island, but they bond in their resentment of the intruding Americans, and the situation worsens when Badger, one of the British sailors, discovers that Butch is the Yank who stole his girl away during the war. Eventually, relations soften between the two sides, and when the British lieutenant Wharton (John Justin) figures out a possible solution to the torpedo problem, Bradville insists on being on the test sub, not knowing for sure what the outcome will be. This is based on a hit British play called Seagulls Over Sorrento (also the British name for the film)—the sailors jokingly refer to the barren island as Sorrento, an Italian resort town. Frankly, it's an odd duck of a movie. Its stage origins are obvious, and it actually works best during those scenes as we get to know the sailors and their conflicts, serious and humorous. Attempts at opening up the movie are weak, and part of the problem is Gene Kelly. It seems strange that after the one-two punch of An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, MGM would assign him to this drab B-movie. He seems listless and bored, and his role winds up being relatively small, not getting much more screen time than anyone else. Justin, as the British officer, is OK and the supporting cast is strong, including the handsome Jeff Richards as Butch, Fredd Wayne as Shorty, and Bernard Lee and Sidney James as British sailors. Exteriors were shot on the Channel Islands and are effective. Not a bad movie, but a bit disappointing, and not a must-see even for Kelly fans—though Jeff Richards fans may feel differently. Pictured from left are Fredd Wayne (who later was known for his portrayal of Benjamin Franklin in a one-man stage show), Sidney James and Jeff Richards. [DVD]

THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE (1951)

In 1871, six escapees from a Carson City prison are on the run through the Sierra Nevadas in the middle of a blizzard. Overcome by the storm, the posse chasing them turns back, assuming that the men will die in the mountains. One of the older men does die, but the others struggle on, trying to reach a small village at Lake Monte Diablo where the men believe that one of their own, Canfield (Glenn Ford), has hidden money never recovered from a robbery. Canfield insists he was not part of the robbery—though his reasons for wanting to stop at the village are not made clear. When they arrive, they find only women; their menfolk have gone off prospecting for silver. The women, seeing manacles on the men's legs, realize they are convicts but decide to let them use an empty cabin until the storm ends—though first, village matriarch Granny (Ethel Barrymore) has the women collect up all the guns in the village to keep them away from the men. Tension remains strong but some of the women begin to take pity on the men, and Canfield becomes attracted to Marcia (Gene Tierney), who is to be married to Rudy, one of the prospectors. It turns out that Canfield has come to the village to get revenge against Rudy, whose false testimony led to his imprisonment, and who probably has the stolen money hidden in the village. When the prospectors return, trouble is in store. This B-western was shown on the Criterion Channel as part of a themed collection of Snowy Westerns. It’s not the kind of movie that Criterion usually features, but it's enjoyable enough. Despite its outdoors setting, it feels very stagy, playing out like a series of conversations and confrontations in rooms or limited areas. The plot is predictable but we're in the hands of old pros. Ford and Tierney are fine in the leads, Barrymore is a solid matriarch figure, and Zachary Scott is a scenestealer as Canfield's main antagonist. Ann Dvorak and Ruth Donnelly are standouts in the supporting cast, and it's fun to see British actor Cyril Cusack as one of the prisoners. Though the village looks like a soundstage, the opening scenes in the snow are pulled off quite well. The ending is satisfying if a little surprising, given the Code strictures of the time. There actually is a place called Convict Lake and this is supposed to be the story of how it got its name, but it's fiction. Pictured at left are Dvorak and Scott. [Criterion Channel]

MIDNIGHT (1934)

In a nicely stylistic opening set in a courtroom, the camera pans across the faces of a judge, a jury, members of the press, and the people in the gallery as Ethel Saxton testifies that she didn't mean to kill her husband, that it was a crime of passion. But when jury foreman Edward Weldon (O.P. Heggie) asks her if she took money from him before or after the shooting, she admits it was after. In the gallery, Weldon's daughter Stella (Sidney Fox) gets to chatting with charming gangster Gar Boni (Humphrey Bogart). She thinks it may well have been a crime of passion, and Gar replies, "That jury doesn't know what passion is." As it happens, in the jury room, Weldon says that he has a doubt that it was an unpremeditated murder, and soon, despite public opinion running in her favor, the jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder, with death as the punishment. Weldon is soon being vilified as the person who was most responsible for the verdict and on the night of Ethel's execution, the press is gathered outside his house. Among those inside are Weldon, his wife, his daughter Stella, her now-boyfriend Gar (who is about to leave town for a while, much to Stella's dismay), and Weldon's unemployed son-in-law Joe who has allowed Nolan (Henry Hull), a undercover reporter, to visit in order to get a scoop on Weldon's reaction at midnight, the moment of Ethel's death. Gar leaves to catch his train and a distraught Stella goes after him. Moral issues involving the Saxton case are discussed, and we occasionally cut to the preparations for her execution. Weldon remains confident in his decision to vote guilty, but things change suddenly when, at the stroke of midnight, as Ethel is put to death, Stella apparently shoots Gar to death in a car as he goes to leave. Weldon, of course, has a change of heart and calls the DA to his home, hoping that there might be a reason to classify this as a "legitimate" crime of passion.

Based on a play, this rather stagy melodrama is interesting if not as compelling as it could have been. Director Chester Erskine manages to give the film some nice visual jolts here and there—the courtroom opening, the juxtaposition of Ethel's execution with the shooting of Gar, lots of shots of people's hands. Some of the acting is quite good, in particular Fox, Bogart, Hull, and Moffatt Johnson (pictured), a British stage actor in his single film role as the DA. The characters of Joe, his wife, and his son Arthur (Richard Whorf, who eventually became a movie and TV director) are barely sketched in, leaving a little too much screen time to O.P. Heggie who is adequate but no more as Weldon. Spoilers are inevitable here, as discussing the ending is necessary to evaluating the film. Ultimately, the DA decides that, based on some flimsy physical evidence, it wasn't Stella who shot Gar but a gangland associate. The climactic actions are left murky, as are the points about justice and morality. We know that Gar is carrying a gun, but when he is shot, all we see is an isolated shot of a gun surrounded by darkness, so it seem possible that Stella, who is in a mental haze about what happened, didn't actually kill Gar, and if she did, it indeed does seem like an unpremeditated crime of passion. The ending is really one of the more interesting ones of the pre-Code period, and I'm curious how it was received in 1934. The New York Times review at the time doesn't express shock or concern about the potentially controversial ending, which I would think is still controversial today. A reviewer at Pre-Code.com notes that the film feels a little like a parlor game designed to start discussion rather than a satisfying narrative. At any rate, the ending still shocks a bit, and between that and the acting, I would recommend this, with the caveat that it is a B-movie with fairly skimpy production values. An alternate title, Call It Murder, was used when the film was re-released in the 40s with Bogart, who was in the middle of the cast list in 1934, then put up at the top after he reached stardom. His role is pivotal, but indeed he doesn't have a lot of screen time. [Blu-ray]

A STORM AT CHRISTMAS (2022)

Despite the Hallmarkian title, this is a very adult six hour Norwegian miniseries that has little to do with Christmas. Some viewers have compared it to LOVE ACTUALLY, but it more resembles a little-remembered 60s ensemble film called THE V.I.P.s. When a major storm shuts down all flights out of an airport in Oslo the day before Christmas Eve, we follow, in almost real time, the concerns of a bunch of unconnected people, some of whom become connected in unexpected ways. Pop star Ida, who has a new album out, feels her creative drive has run down. Her personal assistant Ingvild feels a bit abused by Ida and is looking for a creative outlet of her own. A young girl named Kaja gets tired of her parents' constant bickering (which is threatening to blow up into a divorce) and runs away, hiding from her parents and from the security people trying to find her. Berg, a concert pianist, is experiencing a career low point after a bad review goes viral. Ronja, the airport priest, is trying to help an old man who won’t talk and may be suffering from dementia. There's also an insufferable rich bitch who abuses everyone she runs across, a young woman whose naïve romanticism irritates a pilot whom she fixates on, a friendly bartender who learns he has terminal cancer, and a lonely dog stranded in a carrier. Over the six hours of the series, these characters (and a few others) cross paths, interact, and influence each other. Despite the melodramatic narratives, there are moments of humor, many involving an easily irritated Santa Claus figure, and all the characters, even the worst assholes (the pianist, the rich bitch), get some sort of redemption.

The first hour or so is hard to get through, partly because of the sheer unlikability of many of the characters, and also because you know exactly how some of these plotlines are going to turn out. But there are some surprises in store, and a couple of the characters who are ciphers for most of the running time—a young woman all alone and seemingly at odds who is looking for a present for her father, a man dressed in shorts heading for a vacation in Majorca—have unexpected twists in their stories in the last half-hour. This was filmed in a real, and quite grand, airport in Oslo, and that adds immeasurably to the atmosphere of the series. All the acting is good, with standouts including Jon Oigarden (pictured) as the bartender, Maibritt Saerens as the priest, Ibrahim Fall as the Santa, and Ravdeep Singh Bajwa as the pilot. Alexandra Rapaport deserves special mention; she makes the awful rich woman truly hateful but then executes her personality change in the end quite well. Near the end, a cathartic moment for many of the characters occurs as the pianist plays "Over the Rainbow" on the airport piano—at first I fought the scene but I wound up in tears. Overall, it's not exactly what I would call heartwarming, but if you can get past the first hour, and don’t mind some bald-faced emotional manipulation here and there, it does eventually pay off. [Netflix]

A LIGHT IN THE FOREST (2003)

Britta is living with her grandmother in Hollywood after the death of her acrobat parents in a tragic accident. Between her grandma's house and the high school she attends is a lovely park called Holly Woods, in the middle of which is a statue of a mythical figure called Holly Boy. In the distant past, Holly Boy, a Spirit of Christmas, saved the Pine Tree Queen, another Spirit of Christmas, from destruction by the evil King Otto. In the present, the reincarnated Otto possesses the real estate developer Ridgewell and engineers a plan to buy the Holly Woods and destroy them. The plan: rig the high school holiday talent show so Ridgewell's son Blair, a talented gymnast, wins the huge cash prize (in theory, a full college scholarship), then use that money to buy the woods. Britta and her teacher, Ms. Audrey, are trying to save the woods from development and soon, Holly Boy comes alive to help them, as other spirit possessions occur: Ms. Audrey by the Pine Tree Queen and Principal Kimmel (who had been neutral on the issue of the woods) by one of Otto's underlings. But with the talent show fix seemingly on, can anything, magical or otherwise, stop the bad guys? Did I mention that Britta, who enters the talent show with her maybe-boyfriend Gabriel, is a pretty good acrobat but won’t indulge anymore since her parents' death?

I watched this because a description I read sounded interesting, but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel of Christmas films, even considering it's aimed at kids. The director, John Carl Buechler, was apparently a talented special effects man but his efforts here come off as strictly amateurish. It was made-for-video with cheap-looking magical effects and washed out visuals throughout. A handful of B-level actors star but mostly seem to be just going through the motions. Carol Lynley (Return to Peyton Place, Bunny Lake is Missing, The Poseidon Adventure) is OK as the grandma but she winds up with little to do. Lindsay Wagner (pictured)  seems to be truly sleepwalking through her roles as teacher and pine tree spirit. Edward Albert is good as Otto (he gets to spout the deathless call, "Decline of joy, rise of commercialism!"), not so good as Ridgewell. The best performance comes from Frank Bonner (Herb on WKRP in Cincinnati) as the principal; he finds the right tone for this bland fantasy and runs with it. Among the kids, Danielle Nicolet saves the day as Britta; she was almost 30 when she filmed this but she makes for a very credible teenager. Christian Oliver (Gabriel) and Oliver Macready (Blair) are passable, but Christopher Khayman Lee is uninspiring as Holly Boy. The mythic Holly Boy plot had some promise in a Robin Hood/Peter Pan way, but there is zilch development beyond a brief sequence at the beginning. The scenes in the woods were all shot in bright daylight, robbing them of any magical atmosphere they might have had, and the Christmas atmosphere is equally disappointing—it might as well have been set in July. Why did I bother to stick this one out to the end? Well, I thought it might be a nice alternative to Hallmark Christmas movies. Though I'm not an expert on what kids like, I suspect that, though it seems pitched at teenagers, only elementary grade students will enjoy this. [DVD]