DARKENED ROOMS (1929)

At a boardwalk carnival, Madame Silvara is a mentalist, fake but convincing, and when a customer wants her to take a "spirit photograph" of his dead girlfriend, she goes down the boardwalk to photographer Emery Jago and gets him to fake a picture. In Emery's shop, Ellen, a young out-of-work chorus girl, has come to have some publicity pictures made but faints from hunger. Emery feeds her and hires her as an assistant; her first job is to pose as the spirit behind Madame Silvara, with her face blurred in a ghostly way. Soon Emery decides that spiritualism might be an easy way to supplement his income so he and Ellen get into the racket with some help from Silvara. She sends them to the upper-class home of Joyce Clayton, who wants to get in touch with her aviator boyfriend who died in a crash. In a darkened room, Emery and Ellen hold a seance and claim to make contact, but Joyce's current boyfriend Billy turns on the lights and claims the whole thing is a fake. However, Joyce is a believer and goes to the boardwalk for another session. Ellen, worrying that Emery's interference will just prolong Joyce's misery and scotch things with Billy, hires Bert, an actor friend, to throw an unexpected kink into the seance, hoping that Emery will give up the act. Though not exactly a comedy, this hour-long melodrama is light in tone which works somewhat against the spiritualism plot but works for character development. Evelyn Brent, a star of silent films, is featured in one of her first talkies as Ellen and is quite good. Neil Hamilton (pictured), also transitioning to sound films, is just as good as Emery. Both are youthful, good looking and appealing, and they have nice chemistry. Though they did appear in films together again, they weren’t ever paired up like they were here, which is a shame. Gale Henry, known as a comic actress in many silent shorts, is fine as Madame Silvara. Sammy Bricker has a fun little comic relief role as a sailor who keeps dragging new girls into Emery's studio to have pictures taken. For the record, Doris Hill is Joyce and David Newell is Billy. Wallace MacDonald is Bert; he played in many silent films, but wound up as a prolific B-film producer in the 40s and 50s, mostly for Columbia. An enjoyable hour. [YouTube]

MURDER OVER NEW YORK (1940)

Charlie Chan, on a plane heading to New York City for a police convention, chats with Scotland Yard inspector Drake who is after a saboteur named Narvo. He has tracked Narvo's wife to New York and is looking for help from her. Also showing up in the Big Apple is Chan's pesky son Jimmy. At a party for Drake given at the apartment of aircraft executive George Kirby, Drake winds up dead, poisoned by a tetrogene gas pellet—surprisingly, it's Jimmy who identifies the newly developed gas—and his briefcase of secret documents goes missing. Following the conventions of the mystery genre, the guests at the party all become suspects. There is Fenton, an old friend of Drake's who treats the murder as a personal inconvenience; Jeffrey, a business associate of Kirby's; Ralph Percy, an airplane designer; actress June Preston; Boggs, the somewhat shady butler; David Elliott, a chemist who was working with tetrogene and may have been the last person to see Drake alive; and, of course, Kirby. Eventually Narvo's wife shows up, using the name Pat Shaw; she has left Narvo (and is now involved with Elliott) but worries that she is being followed by Narvo and his Hindu associate Ramullah. Police inspector Vance has the bright idea of bringing in a dragnet of all Hindu men in the city, leading to a comic scene in which one Hindu man is revealed to be a non-Hindu con man. In the somewhat improbable climax, Chan and Vance gather all the suspects onto a plane on which a capsule of tetrogene has been hidden the night before. Will there be a mass murder over New York?

Some years ago, during my first viewing of the Chan films on the Fox Movie Channel, this was one of my favorites due to the airplane climax. Now, however, that scene isn't quite enough to boost the film much above a B-minus. The plot, as is often the case, gets muddled and there are almost too many characters. But there is an unusually strong supporting cast. A few of my favorite character actors are present: Ricardo Cortez, who played both good guys and villains, is Kirby; the British actor Melville Cooper is appropriately obnoxious as Fenton; the British John Sutton is Jeffrey; busy B-movie lead Kane Richmond is Percy; Robert Lowery, who played Batman in a 1949 serial, is the chemist Elliott. As is sometimes the case in Chan movies, the females (Marjorie Weaver and Joan Valerie) are weaker, partly because their roles seem underwritten. Sidney Toler (Chan) and Victor Sen Yung (Jimmy) are fine, though Jimmy is more irritating here than usual. The likable Frank Coghlan Jr. (Billy Batson in the original Captain Marvel serial) has a small but noticeable role. Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges is the fake Hindu man. Donald MacBride, who played cops in dozens of classic-era films, is Vance. The first fifteen minutes, as the case is being set up, are good, as are the last fifteen; it's in the middle that things bog down a bit. Pictured are Cortez, Richmond and Toler. [DVD]

THE SECRET OF THE LOCH (1934)

In a small Scottish village, Joe, perhaps slightly inebriated, runs into a tavern one misty night claiming to have seen the legendary Loch Ness Monster, a giant sea serpent creature that supposedly lives in the Scottish lake. There has been a rash of sightings lately and people who have gone underwater looking for it have not returned. In London at a conference of morphologists, Professor Heggie claims the beast is real and that it's a relative of a dinosaur. His fellow scientists laugh him off the stage, but Jimmy, a reporter, smells a good story and follows Heggie back to his village. Lots of other reporters have had the same idea, but Jimmy gets a leg up by breaking into Heggie's house and flirting with his granddaughter Angela. He gets on the good side of Angus, Heggie's beefy assistant, by wearing a tartan tie of the MacNockie clan (a tie which he filched from a girl at his newspaper) of which Angus happens to be a member. With nothing concrete to go on, Jimmy gets fired by his boss and told that only an interview with the monster will save him. Heggie hires a diver to look for the serpent one night, but he runs into some trouble and his air hose comes to the surface without him. Heggie is charged with negligence in the diver's death and Jimmy, who now is in love with Angela, decides to take a dive himself and settle the matter. 

The Loch Ness Monster has been a pop culture phenomenon since 1934 when a British newspaper published a photograph of the monster, a blurry shot of what looks like a toy dinosaur coming out of the water. This film, which came out at the end of 1934, appears to be a quickie attempt to exploit that photo's popularity. Though a handful of sightings were reported before the 1930s, it wasn't until the photo and a separate account of a sighting became news, perhaps because of the building of a new road which gave more access to the loch, that Nessie became a legend. This is mostly a comedy, despite the death of the diver, with humor provided by the village locals and the morphologists. In the last few minutes, Jimmy does indeed see the monster (an iguana photographically enlarged and matted into an underwater shot) and later a group of men see it rise up out of the loch, in a shot that looks very much like the newspaper photo. Seymour Hicks, a distinguished stage actor known for playing Scrooge in an early sound version of A Christmas Carol, is Heggie, and he doesn't seem to be too happy in the role. Frederick Peisley, however, throws himself into the comic romantic lead as Jimmy (pictured), and Gibson Gowland (the star of GREED) is fine in the semi-comic role of Angus. Nancy O'Neil has the underwritten part of Angela. In the 70-minute movie, we don't even get near the loch until the 50-minute mark, so don't watch this expecting a serious sci-fi, adventure, or horror film, though the murky atmosphere of most of the scenes is effective—with some of the murkiness due to the age of the unrestored print. As a novelty, and as the first film about the monster, it's kind of fun. As far as other movies on the subject, there haven't been many, with the most well-known one being a Scooby-Doo cartoon movie made for video in 2004. [YouTube]

SCOTLAND YARD HUNTS DR. MABUSE (1963)

aka DR. MABUSE VS. SCOTLAND YARD

The fifth of the Dr. Mabuse German reboots from the 1960s begins with Mabuse dead, as he was at the end of the fourth film, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE. The supernatural has usually been an element of the Mabuse films, often obliquely or ambiguously, but here we see the spirit of the crime lord Mabuse possess Prof. Pohland, an asylum director, and direct him to spread “panic and chaos.” After that, however, it’s mostly a straightforward crime melodrama. In fact, given that the plot is based on a story by Edgar Wallace’s son Bryan, it's very close in look and feel to the German krimi movies of the era, as the earlier THOUSAND EYES and RETURN were, with a sci-fi element. It begins in Hamburg. Inspector Vulpius is upset that Mabuse's infamous "testament," the scribbled documents that he wrote in the throes of madness and which contained plans for future criminal plans, has been destroyed. A train derailment frees a prisoner, Cockstone, whom Pohland uses to help refine a new and dastardly invention by Prof. Lawrence: something that looks like a camera but is actually a mind control device. When aimed at someone's head, that person will follow whatever instructions they are given (verbal orders transmitted to the person somehow), though the control fades when the subject sleeps. Cockstone kills Lawrence and Pohland moves his operations to England, where he sends his henchmen out with the devices, triggering a major crime wave of robbery and murder and suicide. Vulpius follows and teams up with Scotland Yard man Bill Tern to stop Pohland's reign of terror. Though this feels very little like a Mabuse movie, it’s fun as a crime movie, well paced and exciting. 

Few cast members from the earlier Mabuse movies are present here. Peter van Eyck is a bit lightweight and even a bit too old for part of Tern, without the energy of Lex Barker, the lead in the last two films. Werner Peters, who played minor roles in previous films, is fine as Vulpius, though I do miss Gert Forbe from the previous movie. One of the oddest characters in a Mabuse movie (or, for that matter, in a krimi) is Tern's elderly mother, played by Agnes Windeck, who gives herself nightmares from reading crime novels but is very helpful to her son with her off-the-wall insights. Even odder is Klaus Kinski, a regular in the Edgar Wallace krimi films, playing Joe, a fellow Scotland Yard detective. His stock-in-trade is playing tense neurotics, and here, though he's a good guy (except briefly when he is put under mind control), he still looks like he might just snap any minute. Walter Rilla reprises his role from TESTAMENT as Pohland, the Mabuse stand-in, and is very good. Sabine Bethmann plays a half-hearted romantic interest for Tern. The best scene is one in which a hangman, about to execute a prisoner, is forced through mind control to hang himself. Even though the reboot movies move further and further from the mood of the Fritz Lang Mabuse movies, they are still worth seeing. I’ve got one more to go. Pictured are van Eyck and Kinski. [Blu-ray]

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT (1938)

Mr. Byers, the head of a big advertising agency, sends Waldo, a young underling, out to find Bruce Keene (Preston Foster), an unreliable ad executive who spends too much time in bars and not enough in his office. When he's found, he gets fired, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Penny (Sally Eilers), who is a secretary at the same agency. That night, Bruce draws a kind of combination caricature/rebus on a wall at a restaurant that impresses the owner, and Penny, and eventually Mr. Byers who rehires Bruce to do a campaign for a new cereal called Tantalizing Tasties. One a week, he'll draw a picture puzzle to be published as a newspaper ad, and contests will be held to solve the puzzle with a big cash prize each week. But to enter, contestants must include a boxtop from the new cereal. When the promotion pays off, the cereal is a hit, but Bruce starts hitting the taverns pretty hard. Penny hires small-time crook Softy Blane to kidnap Bruce and take him to a health farm to dry out, but Devers, Blane's boss, decides that cornering the market on puzzle answers would make for some easy money, so he breaks Bruce out of the farm and kidnaps him for real, keeping him making the puzzles. Eventually Penny figures out, from clues in the pictures, what's happened to Bruce and goes to the police. A fairly slapstick finale of guns and fists leads to Devers' capture, and to Bruce proposing to Penny. This is a mild little romantic comedy with crime overtones that never gets too terribly serious. Apparently, it's built around an actual fad of the time for picture puzzles—you might think that would date the movie badly, but it actually gives it a nice novelty appeal. Foster and Eilers play off each other well, but it's the supporting cast that makes this movie fun: Cecil Kellaway, Guinn Williams, Richard Lane, Arthur Lake and Jack Carson. There’s a song with a cute title: “Put Your Heart in Your Feet and Dance,” and there's a fun line from Williams to a flirting Lorraine Krueger: “You’d love anything that had biceps.” Pictured are Foster and Lane. [TCM]

JUNGLE QUEEN (1945 serial)

In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, Germans are worried about access to Europe through Africa and a number of Nazi spies are sent to Tambosa in British Middle Africa. Their mission is to take control of the Tongghili, a group of tribes coexisting under their ruling judge Tonga. When he is killed, the tribal elder Godac, by virtue of his possession of the powerful Sword of Tongu, is set to name a successor. The Nazis get the cooperation of Maati, who will serve as their puppet ruler, but Kyba is also in the running. Lord Bell, head of British espionage and known by most only as Mr. X, has agents in Tambosa trying to figure out who the Nazi leaders are and counteract their efforts among the locals. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy is listening in to all conversations in Mr. X's office and he reports to Dr. Elise Bork, outwardly the respected head of an experimental farm but actually a spymaster, and her associate Lang who maintains direct contact with Maati. Meanwhile, Pam Courtney comes to Tambosa looking for her father, an explorer who has vanished; she has been tasked by Mr. X to get her father to help in their efforts to find the Nazis. Two unofficial American agents, adventurer Bob Elliot and his auto mechanic buddy Chuck Kelly, meet Pam on a plane and the three pool their efforts to find and stop the Nazi spies. A wild card in all this is Lothel, the mystery queen of the jungle, who can walk through fire unharmed (as pictured at left), can appear and disappear at will, is invulnerable to bullets, and tries to influence the Tongghili to choose Kyba as the new leader. When that seems to fail, she works with the Allies to find and defeat the Nazis.

This is a 13-chapter serial and most of the above summary is made clear in the first two chapters, which leaves eleven more chapters to fill. On the plus side, this has the look of a relatively high-budget B-film with good sets and some twisty plot points. For the most part, it doesn't keep repeating story bits like many serials do. On the other hand, the writing is not great. Far too much activity is talked about rather than shown, with people constantly announcing who they are, where they are, what they've just done and what they're planning on doing. Each chapter has a cliffhanger but the next chapter begins with exposition, usually expressed in dialogue, often in England or Berlin, before we see how the cliffhanger works itself out. There are plenty of plot holes. For example, we never understand the importance of the Sword of Tongu aside from its being a symbol of power. I kept wondering why the bad guys didn't just construct a fake one, and in fact, long about chapter 12, someone does. Lothel, the title character, is quite strange. In terms of being a great white protector of the Tongghili, she's sort of a Tarzan figure. She seems to live in the back of a cave chamber which is filled with fire and used as a place of justice—accused criminals are sent to the fire chamber and told that the innocent will survive. No one ever does except Lothel; in every chapter, we see a clip of her, dressed in diaphanous robes, leaping through the fire and emerging in the throne room to make important proclamations. Her origin is never even touched on. There are a number of characters, some (like the sinister bar owner Tambosa Tim) only present for a short time. Some of the Nazi henchmen, such as Drake and Weber, are important briefly before they are sacrificed.

The acting is fairly weak. Our hero, Edward Norris (Bob), is OK in the crunch but not quite as heroic looking or acting as he could be, definitely not up to the standards of Kane Richmond or Buster Crabbe. Eddie Quillan (Chuck) is mostly comic relief with an occasionally heroic scene. Lois Collier (Pam) fades into the background. Ruth Roman (known later for Strangers on a Train and lots of TV including Knots Landing) has a nice otherworldly look and demeanor as Lothel, but when it comes down to it, doesn't have much to do except flit about in her fireproof nightgown. Douglass Dumbrille (Lang), Clarence Muse (Kyba), and Napoleon Simpson (Maati) are fine, and the best performance comes from German actress Tala Birell as Bork. Though she gets stuck in her own repetitive bits, she's convincing as the chief villain who also has to appear pleasant and innocent. It's a rarity to have a female as the main Nazi and she's up to the task. I like the fact that some of the Black characters, mostly Maati and Godac, have actual agency and aren't just mindless followers or henchmen. I liked this a little less than I wanted to, but the Blu-ray print has been nicely restored, even if some of the early chapters are a little faded looking in terms of clarity. As a whole, it's awfully talky though rarely boring, and probably not one for a viewer new to classic era serials. Pictured above right are Norris and Quillan. [Blu-ray]

THE NIGHT OF THE SCORPION (1972)

Oliver Bromfield feels guilty over the death of his wife Helen some months ago. She fell through a second-floor railing in the family mansion in what was found to be an accidental death, but Oliver, an alcoholic, fears that he caused the death while in a drunken haze. Sara, Oliver's widowed stepmother, has always had a thing for Oliver and tries to talk him into living with her, but he moves out anyway. He soon marries Ruth and brings her to live in the mansion. The jealous Sara begins spying on Oliver and Ruth's lovemaking by peering through a hole in a clock against the wall. Also in the house: Jenny, Oliver's fragile sister who was engaged in an affair with Helen, and Clara, a maid who may know more than she tells. The suspicious atmosphere in the house sends Ruth to talk to the family doctor who also has mild concerns about Helen's death—he testified that she was prone to dizzy spells but that was a lie because he was protecting Oliver, or perhaps Sara, if one of them was responsible for Helen's fall. Soon Ruth has reason to believe that her life may be in danger when some milk she was going to drink is lapped at the house cat and the cat dies. But, whoa, later Ruth sees the cat alive—is she starting to snap just like Oliver might have snapped? Ruth's uncle Edward visits, but it turns out he is actually a detective she has hired to investigate the family. This has all been very gothic soap opera in tone, but in the home stretch, a giallo trope (a black-gloved killer slashing throats) crops up. Still, the gothic soap opera strain of the story wins out and the film ends predictably. Critics who expected this Italian/Spanish co-production to be a sexy gory giallo don't like this film, but since I approached it as gothic, I was less disappointed. It's no great shakes on any level (too talky and slowly paced, with people not really doing anything for long stretches, though the visuals are occasionally interesting) but I kept watching. Jose Antonio Amor (pictured) has a nicely dissolute look as Oliver, keeping us on our toes about his guilt; the women—Nuria Torray (Sara), Daniela Giordano (Ruth), and Teresa Gimpera (Jenny)---all seem a bit interchangeable. The opening funeral scene felt like it came right out of a Hammer movie. Ultimately, the whole thing seemed to me like a Dark Shadows story arc and on that level, I enjoyed it. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN’S MURDER CRUISE (1940)

Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard visits Charlie Chan in his Honolulu office. Duff is traveling incognito on the trail of a strangler who is apparently one of ten folks on a four-month world cruise run by a man named Suderman (Lionel Atwill). The last leg of the trip will leave soon for San Francisco and Chan agrees to help, but when Chan leaves his office briefly, Duff is strangled to death by an intruder and Chan is determined to finish Duff's case. He visits the hotel the cruise group is staying at where a Mr. Kenyon is found dead, a small bag of thirty coins found in his hand. Chan makes a connection to Judas' thirty pieces of silver from the Bible and assumes a betrayal motive for the murders. Other cruise members include Kenyon's nephew (Robert Lowery), a somewhat acerbic socialite (Cora Witherspoon), her secretary (Marjorie Weaver) who is flirting with Lowery, an archeologist (Leo G. Carroll), a playboy, and an older couple who believe in signs from the unseen world. Of course, it wouldn't be a Charlie Chan movie without one of his sons tagging along—here it’s #2 son Jimmy who stows away on the ship once it takes off. We see a heavily bearded man skulking around the ship, obviously someone in disguise, who eventually strangles another passenger before Chan ropes all the remaining cruise members together in San Francisco to unmask the strangler. This is one of the better Sidney Toler Chan films, partly because it has a fast pace and fairly straightforward plotting (based on one of the original Chan novels, Charlie Chan Carries On, which was adapted to film in 1931 but is now considered lost). Like most of the Chan movies from Fox, the supporting cast is strong, especially Lowery, Witherspoon, Atwill, and Carroll. Charles Middleton, the villain Ming in the Flash Gordon serials, is the meek husband to the occult inclined wife. Jimmy (Victor Sen Ying) gets an amusing slapstick moment as he goes slipping and sliding through a hallway and collides with a steward carrying a full tray of food. The opening scene is a fun bit in Chan's office as Jimmy and his younger brother Willie comb through Pop's mail to find Willie's disappointing report card, which it turns out Chan has already seen. Not quite top rank Chan, lacking an interesting atmosphere, but enjoyable. Pictured are Atwill, Yung and Toler. [DVD]

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1962)

I've been reviewing the 1960s Dr. Mabuse films here recently. You should go to Wikipedia or IMDb for the full background of the character, but I will note that this is the fourth in the rebooted German series from CCC Studios from the 1960s, and a remake of Fritz Lang's 1933 film of the same title. At the end of the previous film, the criminal mastermind Mabuse has gone insane and been committed to an asylum, filling his hours by constantly scribbling indecipherable notes and sketches. This film begins with a couple of daring and clever robberies: gold is stolen from an armored car, a diamond exchange is robbed, and paper used for printing money is taken from a train (this for a smaller gang of blind men who work as counterfeiters). Inspector Lohmann thinks that the crimes betray the touch of Mabuse, but asylum director Pohland takes Lohmann to see Mabuse, safely locked away and single-mindedly scribbling in his cell. Jonny, a boxer, is recruited to join the criminal gang whose orders are given to them in a secret passage room by a shadowy figure, though Jonny hides his new job from his girlfriend Nelly (who I really only mention because she is played by future star Senta Berger). Halfway through, we discover that Mabuse has Pohland under his hypnotic power, and it's Pohland who passes his criminal plans along to the gang. The gang members try not to kill or harm the innocents who get involved in their crimes, but one gang member who turns out to be spying for the cops is, in the movie's best scene, killed by a backward-shooting gun. The last fifteen minutes are a wild and wooly climax involving the electrical torture of Lohmann and by the end, both Mabuse and Pohland are dead, though based on the evidence of the previous films, they're probably not.

This is my favorite of the 60s Mabuse movies so far. Lang fans may not love it as it generally eschews the mystical feel and expressionist look of the 1933 original, though the possibility of telepathic communication is presented, but it's fast moving, coherent, and presents the gang members as competent crooks rather than evil geniuses. With the Mabuse mystique as a fairly minor element—unlike in some of the other movies, Mabuse doesn't come across here as a threat to humanity—it may be best viewed as a traditional crime melodrama, lacking (for better or worse) the almost spy-movie feel of the previous Mabuse entries as there is no handsome studly agent here, just the somewhat schlubby Lohmann, played superbly by Gert Frobe in his third appearance in the series. Wolfgang Preiss, again, plays Mabuse though with limited screen time, and Walter Rilla is very effective as Pohland. At one point, he delivers the great line, "We are not a humanitarian organization—dead bodies are part of our business." Some genuinely amusing comic relief is provided by Harald Juhnke as Lohmann's assistant who keeps positing crime solutions based on movies and novels. Also with Helmut Schmid as Jonny and Charles Regnier as Mortimer, the nominal gang leader. Though the 1933 original is a better movie (and a darker one), this is exciting and fairly fun. Released in the United States in 1965 as The Terror of Dr. Mabuse. Pictured are Frobe and Juhnke. [Blu-ray]

THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH (1964)

aka DR. SYN, ALIAS THE SCARECROW (1963)

In 18th century England, along the coast of Dover, near the town of Dymchurch on Romney Marsh, a band of smugglers have managed to operate for some time, illegally seizing shipments of liquor and gold from ships in the middle of the night, and hauling the goods back to an oast house, a barn where hops are dried. The leader of the smugglers is a masked figure called the Scarecrow, who dresses as a creepy looking scarecrow with a burlap bag mask (pictured at right). He is assisted by the similarly masked Hellspite (wearing a demon face) and the Curlew (a fluffy bird face). We learn that the Scarecrow is actually Dr. Syn, the local vicar, who believes that the villagers are being "taxed out of existence and robbed of their independence" by the exorbitant taxes of King George. In Robin Hood fashion, the money from the smuggled goods is given to the villagers to pay their taxes. When General Pugh arrives in town, telling Squire Banks that he's not doing enough to try and stop the smugglers, Syn's operation is threatened, as is the livelihood of the villagers. Pugh brings in a press gang crew in an attempt to force able-bodied men to serve in the Navy, an act which would certainly stop the smuggling, but also empty the village of working men, and Syn decides he must fight back. Even the town's leader, Squire Banks, is sympathetic as his son was kidnapped years ago by such a gang. Two arrivals in town complicate things. One is Banks' son who has escaped the Navy, and the other is an American named Bates, wanted on charges of sedition for preaching freedom for the colonies. Both could help the villagers but both are being hunted down.

This was produced by Walt Disney as a three-part miniseries for his Wonderful World of Color TV show. The above summary basically covers the first hour, which ends with the Scarecrow's men victorious. In the second episode, Pugh searches out men who had been in arrears with their taxes but who suddenly had a windfall and managed to pay up, the assumption being that these men were the recipients of smuggling money. A man named Ransley becomes the smuggler's weak link, offering to rat out the others for immunity. When some men are caught and put on trial for smuggling brandy, Syn arranges for the barrels to be emptied and filled with water which results in an embarrassing loss for Pugh. Banks' son arrives in episode three; when he and Bates are captured and taken to Dover to be tortured, Syn plots to free them by dressing his men as a Navy press gang and taking the men out of the prison, more or less under the nose of General Pugh himself.

I cover the origin of the Dr. Syn character in my review of the 1937 DR. SYN, but this adaptation is based more directly on a 1960 rewritten and simplified version of the original 1915 novel. This film dispenses with an entire subplot involving Syn actually being a reformed pirate, so there are only two identities to keep up with. Losing the pirate background doesn't hurt, as there is still plenty of narrative. Patrick McGoohan (TV's The Prisoner) uses his slyboots look to great effect here as Syn, looking like he's always one step ahead of everyone around him, even if he's not. The memorable opening sequence of each episode shows the Scarecrow riding and cackling at night, but the series itself is actually a bit short on such scenes. Still, Syn is a compelling lead character, and the Scarecrow is a bit unsettling, with his costume and his loud, gruff voice (very different from Syn's soft but commanding voice). George Cole (Mipps, the town sexton who is also Hellspite) and 16-year-old Sean Scully (the squire's son, also the Curlew) are fine in support, and the Curlew’s mask is almost as weird looking as the Scarecrow’s. Geoffrey Keen (Pugh) is a solid villain; Michael Hordern is the squire; David Buck is the squire’s handsome son. I haven't even mentioned the romantic subplot, in which one of Pugh's men courts the squire's daughter, to the disapproval of the squire, but winds up providing aid to Syn and his men and gets the girl in the end. Without ads and Disney's episode intros, the TV version of this film (under the Romney Marsh title) runs a bit over two hours, but a few months before it aired in America, it was released as a 100 minute feature film in Great Britain (and later in the States) with the Dr. Syn title, cutting most of the plot of the first episode. I watched both versions and, while the feature film is better paced, I enjoyed the longer version more. Pictured at left are Tony Britton and David Buck. [DVD]

DOCTOR SYN (1937)

In 1780, we see a contingent of pirates drag a violent beefy mute man off a boat onto an island where they tie him to a post and put up a sign that says, "Here rot the bones of a traitor mulatto—so perish all who would betray Capt. Clegg." In 1800, we are in the village of Dymchurch on the southern coast of England near Romney Marsh. In the graveyard we see a stone for Clegg who was caught and hanged years ago. As clergyman Christopher Syn preaches in the church, he is given a note that a band of government revenue agents, led by Capt. Collyer, has landed on the coast and plans on staying in town for a while, their mission to catch members of a criminal ring who have been smuggling goods (mostly liquor) for years and making money so the citizens can pay the onerous taxes levied by the king. Syn insists that there are no smugglers, but we find out that there are, and that Syn is the secret head of the ring, hiding behind the identity of the unseen figure The Scarecrow who assigns men to meet ships on the shore at midnight and move their smuggled goods to a barn on the outskirts of town. Only Syn's assistant Mipps, the sexton and undertaker, knows his secret. But Syn has another secret we learn later: he is the dread Captain Clegg, who escaped his hanging and swore off pirating years ago to become the village clergyman. More plotlines arise that will tie together. First, we see that the lovely young orphan Imogene has eyes for the handsome young Denis Cobtree, son of the local squire, though Rash, the schoolteacher, has long been interested in her. Later, we learn that Imogene is the daughter of Clegg, and Syn has been keeping an eye on her. Finally, the mulatto, who survived his ordeal, is a member of the revenue gang and therefore a threat to Syn if he recognizes him as Clegg. A couple of other secrets will surface, and when the town doctor tells the agents that he has seen mysterious "phantoms on horseback" on the marsh at night, Collyer is sure he's on the trail of the smugglers.

Some people think that Dr. Syn was a real person who became a folk hero but actually, he was an invention of British novelist Russell Thorndike, though his stories were based on actual smuggling incidents that occurred near Romney Marsh. I've never read the books, but the character as presented here is a fascinating one, though we're rushed through the character's pirate background only as exposition. This allows the filmmakers to keep Syn likable as a Robin Hood type. Syn is played by the great British actor George Arliss (pictured above). This was his last movie and he was almost 70 when it was filmed; he has plenty of energy and comes off as at least a decade younger, but I doubt he would have been credible as a swashbuckling pirate, though he acquits himself well in a brief fisticuffs scene near the end, perhaps with the help of a stuntman. Arliss, who has a distinct long and unhandsome face, didn't make his first sound film until 1929 when he was past 60 and is largely forgotten today, though he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1930. I like him quite a bit and have reviewed many of his movies on my blog. Arliss never gave a bad performance, and though he's exactly not a scenery chewer, Arliss does tend to command most of the attention in his movies, leaving supporting players a bit at sea. Here, Margaret Lockwood is fine as Imogene; John Loder is handsome though underused as Cobtree; Meinhart Maur has little screen time as the mulatto but he makes the most of it as a physical presence, a bit like Tor Johnson would in the late 1950s. Graham Moffatt makes an impression as the simple-minded young Jerry Jerk—he reminds me of the teenage department store worker Alfred in Miracle on 34th Street. Others are adequate but don't get to shine. At 80 minutes, this starts to drag a bit in the middle but ends excitingly. Many baby boomers, like me, know Dr. Syn from a Walt Disney mini-series from 1964 that has a cult following now; I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow. [DVD]

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)

During the Civil War, three Northern soldiers (Capt. Cyrus Harding, young Herbert Brown, and Black soldier Neb Nugent) escape a Confederate military prison in Richmond during a ferocious storm and head for a hot air observation balloon to escape. War correspondent Gideon Splitt joins them, and they are forced to take a Confederate guard, Pencroft, to pilot the balloon. The poor weather forces them to stay in the clouds for days and they end up over the Pacific Ocean, crashlanding on a small deserted island. Well, it's mostly deserted in terms of people, though the men soon find two British women, the high-toned Lady Mary and her young niece Elena, the sole survivors of a shipwreck. But it's also got giant critters galore. First the men deal with a huge crab which they kill and which Gideon cooks. Then they face a giant bird-chicken thing on the rampage. Herbert and Elena get stuck briefly in a huge bee hive with a gigantic bee threatening them. The group finds shelter in a large cave they call Granite House up on a cliff. There seems to be an unseen presence who occasionally intercedes on their behalf in small ways, and when a pirate ship attacks, the presence appears and blows up the ship. Their savior is Captain Nemo, creator of the famous submarine the Nautilus (see 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), who has been assumed dead for years but has been living in his disabled submarine and using the island for experiments on "horticultural physics" that might help fight world hunger, hence the huge animals. Together they work on refloating the pirate ship to sail for New Zealand, but the island's volcano suddenly becomes active. At the same time, the Nautilus comes under attack from a huge sea creature. Can they work fast enough to escape natural disaster?

This film's basic plot is based fairly closely on a Jules Verne novel which was something of a sequel to 20,000 Leagues, though the sci-fi-fantasy giant creatures were added by the filmmakers, with effects created by Ray Harryhausen, and his work, in both creature creation and combining the effects with live action, make this worth watching. It may all look a bit shabby to modern viewers, but if you turn off your expectations of glossy CGI, you'll find these effects quite compelling. As weirdly fun as the bird thing is (Harryhausen meant it to be an actual ancient being but budget concerns changed his plan), the giant beehive and bee were my favorite effects with Herbert and Elena caught in a giant hive cell, ready to either be stung to death or drowned in honey (picture at right). Exciting incidents happen often enough so that things don't bog too much. Oddly, once Nemo presents himself, the pace slows down and the excellent actor Herbet Lom is mostly wasted as Nemo who is neither terribly friendly nor terribly manic. The other actors are fine. Michael Craig makes a nicely stoic and low-key hero; Michael Callan is handsome and energetic as young Herbert and Beth Rogan is fine as his love interest Elena. It feels like Joan Greenwood, as Lady Mary, wants to cut loose and be a little campy in her privileged position, but she's been restrained. Gary Merrill (Gideon) is not an inspiring action hero type. Percy Herbert (Pencroft) and Dan Jackson (Neb) are bland in smaller roles. The film's trailer calls the sea creature a "prehistoric devil fish" but my husband identified it as a monstrous cuttlefish. It's probably the least effective of the creatures but it helps make the climax exciting. Pictured at top left are Craig and Callan. I reviewed a silent movie version of the book here. [Blu-ray]

JAMBOREE (1957)

Grace and Lew are talent agents, once married but now divorced. Grace is shopping around young Pete Porter and Lew is doing the same for young Honey Wynn. Both singers show up at an audition for talent in a Broadway revue. When neither one gets lucky, Grace has the idea of pairing the two, like a hip Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. They get a good song and a record contract, and as their first single heads to the top of the charts, the two fall in love. Despite their success, Grace encourages Pete to cut a solo record but he won't. Meanwhile, Lew, suspecting Grace of trying to pull such a stunt, talks Honey into recording a solo. When Grace finds out, she takes Pete to the studio and has him "accidentally" see her record which irritates him. During a TV marathon appearance, Grace cancels the duo performance and has Pete sing his own solo song. Pete and Honey split, Pete goes on a successful solo concert tour in Europe, and Honey releases her solo record which is not a hit. Everybody is sad and sorry, but because Grace and Lew had begun to feel romantic stirrings again, they work together to get the kids to reconcile at a major record industry convention. The road back proves bumpy, but a happy ending is in store for both couples.

In this 90 minute film, less than half of the running time is devoted to the above plot. The rest of the movie features performances from over a dozen pop music acts of the era, mostly presented with little to no context. Some are supposedly performed at the marathon, and most are introduced by various deejays from around the country, including Dick Clark. But all are performance bits that are not attached in any way to the narrative. Though pushed as a rock and roll movie, there are many genres represented. The opening credits mention fifteen acts, topped by Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis who are bona fide rock singers, but also featured are jazz legend Count Basie and country singer Slim Whitman. Some, like Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, were basically one-hit wonders. Some had no hits, like Louis Lymon and the Teenchords who were copies of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" fame; in fact, Louis was Frankie's brother.  At least one performer, the very young Frankie Avalon, went on to fame as an actor. His song, "Teacher’s Pet," has the fun line, "As long as you rate my kiss straight A, I'm at the head of the class." For my money, the best number is the opener, "Record Hop Tonight" by Andy Martin, which is fully choreographed and presented as a scene in the Broadway revue. While it's fun to see some of these artists, most of them just stand in front of the camera and sing, and don't work up the energy of that opening. Meanwhile, the names of the actors aren't even shown in the opening credits, saved instead for the end. The plot is lazy and predictable, and the actors don't seem to have been encouraged to try too hard, but I quite liked Paul Carr as Pete and Kay Medford as Grace; both had lengthy acting careers and both are able to work up personalities for their characters—a bit nerdy for Pete, conniving for Grace. Robert Pastene (Lew) played Buck Rogers in a short-lived TV series but did little else, and Freda Holloway (Honey) made no other movies. Carr seems to do his own singing, but Connie Francis dubs Honey, with "the voice of Connie Francis" given a credit in the cast list. It’s obviously a B-level production, but it was fun, and if you have any interest in mid-50s pop music, you should check it out. Pictured are Carr and Holloway. [TCM]

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE (1967)

The time: postwar (most critics say late 1940s but if there was a specific time referenced, I missed it). The place: an army base in Georgia. Marlon Brando (at right) is a major, stoic but tightly strung, who teaches classes on leadership. His wife (Elizabeth Taylor) is a sexy and gregarious bombshell who loves to ride horses. She gets nothing from her husband in the bedroom so she is indulging in an affair with another officer (Brian Keith) whose wife (Julie Harris) is still recovering from a nervous breakdown during which she cut off her nipples with garden shears. (No, it's not based on Tennessee Williams but Carson McCullers.) Her horse is named Firebird and its groom is the broodily handsome and silent army private Robert Forster. If you have any doubts about where this is going, here is an early exchange between Brando and Taylor. Brando: "Firebird is a horse"; Taylor, contemptuously, in her braying and snarling mode, "Firebird is a stallion!" Forester becomes an obsessive stalker of Taylor, sneaking into her bedroom at night and going through her underthings. He also has a tendency to stroll through the nearby woods naked, and to sunbathe naked, and to ride horses naked. Brando's eye is caught by Forster, and he thinks that Forster is flirting with him. Brando is certainly not ready to accept his homosexual feelings, though he does occasionally primp in front of a mirror when no one else is around, and cries for no reason—though being Brando, he does all this in a fairly butch fashion. One day Brando takes Firebird for a ride, but he loses control of the horse, falls off, breaks down and winds up beating the horse with a whip. The naked Forester takes the horse back to its stall, and that night at a party, Taylor whips Brando in the face. Things do not go uphill from here.

The Hollywood Production Code, which prohibited the portrayal of any number of acts that could be seen as immoral or perverse, was breaking down at this point in the 1960s, due in large part to movies like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which starred Taylor). Queerness was still seen as something unhealthy and couldn't really be presented explicitly in a mainstream film, but anyone who couldn't see it barely beneath the surface here, as it was in the 1941 novel, wasn't paying attention or had lived a very sheltered life. This may seem like an outdated story now, but even in 2026, people are still pressured to hide their queerness; if this were made today, it would surely be much more explicit in tone, imagery and incident but the fear, self-loathing, and ridicule of others would still be sadly relevant. 

Having said that, it was difficult to watch this today and not feel it was old-fashioned, bordering on camp. It takes a while to get used to Brando in a closeted mode, and he gives a very mannered, performative performance (if that makes sense), but that makes some sense as the character would have been aware all the time that he was performing straight masculinity. I ended up thinking that he gave a good portrayal of a man who was constantly uncomfortable in his own skin. Taylor is a bit over the top, coming off occasionally like a somewhat less angry Martha from Who's Afraid, but nothing about the part seems to call for underplaying. Brian Keith is very good, coming off as mostly confused but well-intentioned about both his wife and his mistress. Julie Harris is vague in a vaguely defined role. Forester, pictured at left, barely gives a performance at all; he just stands around looking sexy and detached, but also a little confused about his feelings for Taylor. He's more a plot device than a character. I'm not even sure if he has any dialogue; for a while, I thought maybe his character was imaginary and that only Brando could see him. There are two other characters who are coded as gay/queer. Zorro David plays Julie Harris' effeminate Filipino houseboy who tries to protect her from reality, and is the source of the title, a reference to a peacock's eye in a painting. It's interesting that Keith seems to resent his presence, but after he leaves, Keith wishes he would come back. There's also a very minor character, Capt. Weincheck, a friend to Harris, who is seen as, if not quite a sissy, still too gentle and sensitive for military life. Brando gets a good line that gets to the core of his problem, to which he gives a tightly controlled and effective reading: "Any fulfillment obtained at the expense of normality is wrong and should not be allowed to bring happiness." I saw a full-color version of this movie, but it was originally released (in theaters and recently on DVD) in an amber-tinted version that just seems wrong-headed. [TCM]

THE CRUEL TOWER (1956)

Tom is a studly young hobo who, while riding the rails, gets beaten up and tossed off a train car. He is found by Joss, a developmentally disabled steeplejack (someone who works on towers, smokestacks and other tall structures), who takes him back to the trailer office of his employer, Stretch Clay. Co-worker Casey and Stretch's secretary Mary help Tom recover and Stretch offers him a job. Tom is afraid of heights, but Stretch tells him his duties will keep him on the ground so he accepts, though Joss hints to Tom that he should leave before evil influences from Stretch get to him. The men are rather informal about safety measures, and Stretch is known to occasionally have a few drinks before going up the water tower they're working on. We soon learn some backstory. Mary is Stretch's mistress, but Stretch has a wife whom Joss accuses him of mistreating. Stretch is also not above a casual fling with other women. Tom's fear of heights comes from an incident in his past when he couldn't save his brother from falling off a cliff to his death. The men also have sabotage problems stemming from their rivalry with Forrest and his men, though eventually, Stretch hires Rocky, a former Forrest worker. With Mary's help, Tom begins to work on the towers, but when Joss lets it slip that Casey is having an affair with Stretch's wife, things begin to fall apart for the group, and when Tom and Mary decide to leave together, Stretch tries to stop them with tragic results. This is a solid B-movie with decent acting, good location shooting at real California towers, and some nice stunt work. The tensions between the characters are sustained throughout, and at eighty minutes, the film is just about the right length. The handsome John Ericson carries the movie well as Tom, and he and Mari Blanchard (Mary) work up some good chemistry. Charles McGraw, who played tough cops and tough thugs, is good as Stretch; though we know from early on that he'll be trouble, he manages to garner some sympathy along the way until his plans lead to the death of a character. Steve Brodie (Casey) and Peter Whitney (Joss) give fine support, as does Alan Hale Jr. in the smaller role of Rocky. There's a couple of bar brawls and the climax, played out at the top of a tower, is predictable but worth sticking around for. Pictured are Ericson and Blanchard. [YouTube]

A PAIR OF BRIEFS (1962)

Tony is a frustrated junior barrister in London who doesn't make much money and spends most of his time on minor legal matters like sewage problems. Frances is the young niece of Sir John, an esteemed barrister; he has gotten her a job with Tony's firm and she is moved into Tony's office (and takes his desk). Tony resents her bubbly and privileged presence and connives to face her in court in a case involving "restoration of conjugal rights." Gladys, Frances' client, claims that she married a man named Sid during the war, lost her memory in a bombing raid, and lost track of her husband until years later. Sid, living in sin with a blond totsy, claims he doesn't know her and there was no marriage. Gladys is middle-aged and dresses plainly, though we have our doubts about her as in an early scene, we see her dressed to the nines in her apartment, then changing into dowdy clothing to go see Frances. Tony gets his roommate Hubert to give him Sid's brief and Frances is not happy to realize that she'll face Tony in court; there is animosity between them, though romantic sparks are clearly being set off underneath. In the courtroom of the serious judge Haddon, Frances gets emotional and is punished by Haddon, which leads Tony to feel sorry for her and stand up for her in court—they both loudly proclaim that "the law is an ass"—which further angers Haddon. As Frances is unable to find any concrete evidence for the marriage, Haddon finds in Sid's favor, and threatens to have both Frances and Tony disbarred. However as we have been expecting to find out since the beginning, the case of Gladys and Sid is not quite what it appears, leading to some farcical complications in the last half hour before all is settled with a happy ending for Tony and Frances.

Despite its sex farce title, this is a delightful little romantic comedy that brings to mind the Tracy/Hepburn battle of the sexes movie Adam's Rib. The screenplay is fairly clever, though if you pay attention to Gladys's first scene, you’ll be a step ahead in eventually sorting things out. The way things work out at the conclusion is ingenious, if a bit predictable. But the real reason to watch this is the acting. I've seen a number of movies recently starring the very handsome and charming Michael Craig, and he's never been as handsome or charming as he is here as Tony. He handles light comedy very well, and manages to act a bit befuddled at times without coming off as an ass. Mary Peach (Frances) also handles the comedy well, though she wears out her welcome a bit in the main courtroom scene with her naive and unsuccessful attempts to hide her courtroom inexperience. Craig is very good at showing us his growing attraction for Peach. The strong supporting cast is anchored by James Robertson Justice as the bearded bear of a judge; he manages to suggest an occasional twinkle in his eye despite his fierce courtroom behavior. Ron Moody, best known as Fagin in Oliver, overdoes a bit the obnoxious goofiness of Sid, whose string of monkey jokes ("Beat it, as the monkey said to the egg whisk") never stops. Brenda de Banzie is better as Gladys, the apparently pitiful and wronged woman who eventually displays much more fortitude. In smaller roles, John Standing as the roommate Hubert (pictured above with Craig) and Liz Fraser as Sid’s mistress stand out nicely. Future Laugh-In star Judy Carne has a small role as an exotic dancer who apparently uses a vacuum cleaner in her act. My favorite line: when a gay hotel manager says combatively to Tony, "If that's the truth, I’m the Queen of Sheba," Tony replies, "I don't give a damn what you do in your off duty time!" I guess I’m a bit prejudiced here because of my current crush on Michael Craig, but I quite enjoyed this. [YouTube]

TAUR THE MIGHTY (1963)

The king of Surupak sends his Black slave Ubaratutu to invite the muscular hero Taur (called Thor in the English dub in this Italian movie) to the wedding of his lovely daughter Illa to the handsome youth Syros. Got it? But when Taur and Ubaratutu get to Surupak, they discover the land ravaged, homes destroyed, and rotting corpses lying on the ground. Warriors of Kixos have caused the destruction, killed the king, and taken a number of prisoners including Syros, Illa and her sister. Taur and Ubaratutu head for Kixos on a rescue mission and discover Syros, now a prisoner in the mines. Taur frees him and leaves Ubaratutu in his place; "The worst they can do is whip you," says Taur comfortingly. In a subterranean chamber, the two discover Afer, a woman who has been chained up for eighteen years. She tells them how, years ago the evil high priest El Khad usurped the royal line and had the actual heir, just a child, killed. But Afer saved the lad and made a mark on his chest to identify him as the heir before sending him away. She identifies the mark on Syros, so added to Taur's mission is the installation of Syros as the proper king. But there's a false queen, Akiba, whom El Khad has kept doped up and docile all these years so she will do his bidding. Taur is captured and forced to fight Ubaraturu to the death, but the crowd signals mercy. Next, Taur is put to a test in which he is tied to two bands of horses to be pulled apart, during which Queen Akiba seems to get turned on, but his brute strength saves him. Our heroes have more adventures, climaxing in a plot to get a mining operation that uses the heat of a volcano to make the volcano itself explode, hopefully killing off the bad folks and saving the good folks, and leaving Syros and Illa to marry and rightfully rule Kixos.

This has the reputation of being among the worst of the 60's Italian peplum movies, but honestly, image quality and dubbing problems aside, it's actually a great deal of fun. The film is predictable, playing out like a catalog of peplum tropes: a hero dragged into a rescue situation (Taur/Thor, apparently originally meant to be named Tarzan before a lawsuit threat); a young and handsome but less hunky sidekick (Syros); another fairly hunky sidekick who provides occasional comic relief (Ubaratutu); a wicked villain (El Khad); an ambiguously wicked partner (Akiba); a village reduced to ashes; trials that allow the hero to strain (and show off) his muscles; attempts to seduce the hero; and some decent effects, including the destruction of a rope bridge and the final eruption of the volcano. The British Joe Robinson, as Taur, was a wrestler before he started acting, and after his career ended, became a martial arts teacher. He had a nice build, not as lumpily muscular as some peplum heroes, but his bland modern looks work a bit against his hero persona. Harry Baird, as Ubaratutu, is almost as hunky as Robinson but is saddled with a comic relief part with racist overtones: he has a slave mentality and he's a coward—at one point, his teeth chatter so much from fear that the bad guys almost find his hiding place. To be fair, white actors also played such parts, but the vibe with a Black actor feels a little disturbing. Still, he's good in the role. Alberto Cevenini and Thea Fleming are attractive as Syros and Illa. In the end, Taur promises Ubaratutu that more adventures are ahead, and indeed the two appeared together again in 1963's THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN, a lesser effort. The circulating print, on DVD, streaming, and YouTube, is pan-and-scan and a bit murky, but I'd rewatch this if a good widescreen print surfaced. At top right, Robinson; at left, Baird and Robinson. [Amazon Streaming]

THE FLAMING URGE (1953)

A narrator gives us an odd and very general thesis statement: everyone is different and we all react to things differently, and anyone we meet might be at the mercy of great compulsions we don't understand. Meet Tom Smith (Harold Lloyd Jr., at right), a rather intense looking young man who arrives by bus in the town of Monroe, Michigan. Looking for a new start, he rents a room at a boarding house and gets a job selling ties at a department store, but his first day on the job, he hears a fire engine siren and seems positively aroused, eventually running from the store. The secret he's trying to put behind him is that he's a compulsive fire chaser; whenever he hears a siren, he hems and haws until he goes racing after it and watches the fire being fought. His immediate boss, Mr. Pender, looks askance at this but doesn't fire him (pardon the pun), just tells him to try and control himself. Tom finds out that Chalmers, the store owner, is a fire chaser himself, having installed a fire pole in his second story office to use for his chasing escapades. Chalmers' drive isn’t as all-consuming as Tom's but Chalmers asks Tom to try and withstand his urge. At the fires, Tom becomes buddies with a fire-chasing German Shepherd named Robby and soon has struck up a friendship with Charlotte, the dog's owner. She has a boyfriend, the goofy, prank-playing Ralph, but she and Tom grow close over time. Unfortunately, a spate of fires plagues the town and Tom falls under suspicion for setting them just to see them burn. He tells Charlotte his secret, and she gives him a sealed letter to read the next time he feels the firechasing urge. The letter, telling him that she loves him and is sure he can beat the obsession, seems to work, but the fires continue. Can Tom find out who the real fire bug is before he gets run out of town?

There’s a lot to attend to in this seventy-minute B-film that, oddly, was not made by Ed Wood despite having some similarities to Wood's style and themes. On the surface, it's kind of an off-kilter Andy Hardy movie; despite the talk of obsessions and pyromania, it does have an innocent, almost sweet atmosphere to it. But right off the bat, Lloyd's performance works against the cute small town feel—he plays Tom with a burning-eyed intensity that threatens to send the movie into darker territory, possibly with murder and madness in store. That doesn't happen, but there is another reading which has been posited by several viewers: the "flaming urge" of the title might be homosexuality. Though Tom doesn't exactly have a stereotypical gay manner, he is clearly not experienced at dating women. At one point, a bow tie display he makes is called "flamboyant" as an insult by Pender. When he confesses his problem to a co-worker (an Irish guy who, for no reason, busts out in song at one point and is sometimes quite handsy with other guys), he suggests that his obsession will only go away when Tom gets married and has to take on responsibilities. In a very strange moment, Ralph pulls a prank on Tom by shaking his hand with a big glob of whipped cream that splooshes all over the place. Then there's the phallic fire pole that both Chalmers and Tom use to chase a fire. A climactic fire breaks out in a men's changing booth on a beach where we have caught a glimpse of half-naked boys. At a store picnic, a man tells his wife that he’d been talking to "Mr. McKay, who is in men's underwear," and the wife replies, "Well, I should hope so!" The fact that Lloyd was gay in real life only adds fuel to the (pardon me again) fire.

This all might make the movie sound more fun than it is. The primitive visual style, mismatched stock footage of fires, and the lackluster acting of most of the cast all work against it. Though a bit creepy at times, Lloyd is actually pretty good—he never breaks character, and though not instantly likable, you do end up sympathizing with him. Cathy Downs is less interesting as Charlotte, not exactly sleepwalking but not fully engaged. Jonathan Hale (Chalmers) and Bob Hughes (the Irish fellow) are fine, though Byron Foulger, with nearly 500 credits on IMDb, is a bit lackluster as Pender. I found this film after seeing Lloyd in MARRIED TOO SOON, and if this could be restored like that film was, it might come off better. As it stands, the DVD and YouTube prints are pretty shabby. Still, if you're in a what-the-hell mood, you can watch this, laugh at it good-naturedly, and feel fine afterwards. [YouTube]

CONE OF SILENCE (1960)

American title: TROUBLE IN THE SKY

In a courtroom inquest in London, barrister Arnold Hobbes, working for Atlas Aviation, the company that makes the Phoenix jet, argues successfully that Captain Gort, and not the plane company, is responsible for the crash of a Phoenix during takeoff in Ranjibad, India, which resulted in the death of Gort's co-pilot. Gort is upset with the verdict as he prizes his reputation as a careful, by-the-rules pilot, claiming that the fault had to do with the suggested parameters for takeoff speed established by Phoenix. Gort's daughter Charlotte is particularly critical of the courtroom decision, though examiner Hugh Dallas does clear him for future flights. Hugh and Charlotte get interested in each other, leading some to think that Hugh was too easy on Gort during testing. Captain Judd thinks the middle-aged Gort should be put on desk duty, and airplane designer Pickering, who is working on a new version of the Phoenix, resents suspicions that the plane was at fault. During a stormy landing in Calcutta, Gort's window breaks open though he handles the situation well. Later, however, Judd finds a bit of hedge in the undercarriage of the plane, indicating that Gort was coming in too low. What Gort, Hugh and Judd don't know is that other pilots have figured out that the unstick (basically, lift-off speed) parameters indeed need adjusting and have been doing so unofficially. Hugh eventually figures out that the bit of telltale hedge was left on the plane from Ranjibad, but by then it's too late; one more tragic accident occurs before people start to realize that all along, the problem wasn't Gort.

Don't come to this movie with expectations of a traditional disaster film. Though we do see the Calcutta incident in detail, no other carnage is shown. Instead, this is a story of flawed people all basically trying to do the right thing. Judd and Pickering are set up as possible villains, but neither one has bad intentions and both think they are doing the right thing in casting aspersions toward Gort. Gort is sympathetic, but it does seem plausible that he should be retiring. Hugh and Charlotte are well-intentioned, but they might be blinding themselves due to their own prejudices. Even the cold-blooded barrister Hobbes is eventually willing to realize he might have been wrong. The movie is nicely paced and well shot with good acting, so we don't miss the disaster scenes we might have been expecting. Handsome leading man Michael Craig (pictured) anchors the film well as Hugh, and Bernard Lee is especially good as Gort, someone we need to be uncertain about for a time—he's good at coming off as both professional and a little nervous. Peter Cushing interrupted his string of Hammer horror films to play Judd, and Elizabeth Seal is fine if unmemorable as Charlotte. George Sanders has what amounts to a fleshed-out cameo as the barrister, and doesn't need to stretch his talents much to play the stuffy and arrogant Hobbes. The original British title refers to a blind test in which the pilot must navigate using only an audio signal. Gort passes the test, but it has little to do with the movie's plot. Gordon Jackson and Noel Willman are also present. Overall, good ensemble acting and just the right amount of tension. [YouTube]

THE GRACIE ALLEN MURDER CASE (1939)

In the town of Riverford, the Vogue Perfume company is holding its annual employee picnic. Bill and Ann win the three-legged race and just as Bill is about to propose to Ann, Fred pops in to spoil the moment. The upset Bill walks away and stews by himself, but when the boss's niece Gracie shows up, Bill shares a fancy picnic lunch with her, complete with tablecloth and candles, to make Ann jealous. Gracie is a bit of a scatterbrain, but she's attractive and lively, and Bill takes her out that night to the Diamond Slipper Cafe  Meanwhile, gangster Benny the Buzzard has broken out of prison and comes to the club to see its owner, Dan Mirche, who framed Benny for his crimes in order to avoid prison. That night, Benny is found dead in Mirche's office, and when Gracie sees Bill's cigarette case near the body, she implicates him as the killer and he is taken into custody. Detective Philo Vance is soon on the case, but after Dixie, the club singer, is found dead from poisoned flowers that were sent by Vance, he may be a suspect too. Despite her good intentions, Gracie makes a comic mess of everything around her, but Vance manages, despite her "help," to clear his name (and Bill's) and solve the case.

This is an odd duck of a movie. Gracie Allen, wife and comedy partner of George Burns, took her madcap goofball act solo here with mixed results. Gracie is introduced at the picnic as Gracie Allen, but she's not playing herself exactly, that is, a comic star of radio and movies, just the boss's niece. She's constantly misunderstanding people and wrecking havoc with the English language. With Burns as her straight man, she can be quite funny. Alone, she is still funny but is a bit too much to take, especially as she's in practically every scene of the movie—though this is ostensibly an entry in the Philo Vance movie series, Vance (Warren William) doesn't show up until a half hour in, and he is largely relegated to a supporting role. I enjoyed Gracie constantly calling Philo "Fido" and her messing up the lyrics to a cute song, "Snug as a Bug in a Rug." When a woman complains that her pansies are drooping, Gracie replies, "You ought to wear suspenders." The last scene of the movie is a delightful surreal moment in which she tries to shake hands with two men at once. But really, after the 20 minute mark, I was getting a bit weary of her shtick, especially because no one around her reacts to her shenanigans as well as her husband did. Both William and Kent Taylor (Bill) have to resort to versions of just rolling their eyes in irritation, which itself gets irritating. Speaking of Kent Taylor, as I look over my past reviews of his movies, I generally find him to be OK, a decent B-lead or A-supporting player. Here, he makes a good impression in the first half hour or so, looking handsome and acting like his character might have some complexity—it's not altogether clear that he's supposed to be a nice guy. But he largely disappears from view for the rest of the movie. William also suffers a bit from being sidelined so often. Jerome Cowan is fine as Michie, and other familiar faces include Donald MacBride, H.B. Warner, Richard Denning, Willie Fung, and William Demarest. Cute as a novelty but maybe not recommended for people looking for a traditional Philo Vance mystery. Pictured are Allen and Taylor; the bottom picture is a publicity shot. [Blu-ray]