The Girl Of The Golden West (1938)
Mary Robbins (Jeanette
MacDonald) is the lone woman in a remote section of the California gold-fields, where she operates a
saloon called “The Poker”. The area is plagued by bandits led by
Ramirez (Nelson Eddy), an American posing as a Mexican. Sworn to
capture him is the local sheriff – and professional gambler –
Jack Rance (Walter Pidgeon), who is in love with Mary. Mary
evades Rance’s marriage proposal and sets out for her yearly
visit to Monterey, where she sings in the church
belonging to Father Sienna (H.B. Warner). On the road, Mary’s
carriage is held up by a masked Ramirez. Unable to forget her,
he follows her to Monterey, where he courts
her in the guise of a young army officer. Soon afterwards,
Ramirez learns that most of the gold mined in the area is held
at a local saloon. He goes to reconnoitre the situation – and to
his dismay finds that Mary is the owner of the establishment he
plans to rob. As she warmly welcomes “Lieutenant Johnson”,
Ramirez realises he must make a grave decision, while his
presence at The Poker arouses both the jealousy and the
suspicions of Jack Rance.... Adapted from a play by David
Belasco, and an opera by Puccini, this is an overlong but quite
enjoyable outing for Jeanette and Nelson, in which they play a
terribly distracting game of “competing accents”. He wins,
because his, ahem, “Mexican” accent
is a fake, assumed as
part of his disguise; while Jeanette is supposed to be genuine
in her effort to sound like a grizzled 1890s
prospector....consarn it. Starting out as the usual
light-hearted fare, The
Girl Of The Golden West takes an interesting sobering turn
into a more western-like movie (although still with the
occasional musical interlude), climaxing in a tense scene at
Mary’s snow-bound cottage, where after trying to hide the
wounded Ramirez, she offers to play cards with Jack Rance for
the bandit’s life – and for her hand in marriage. Walter Pidgeon
is oddly cast but effective as Rance, while the supporting
performance from Buddy Ebsen as “Alabama”, the shy blacksmith
also suffering from unrequited love for Mary, matches the
shifting tone of the film itself, starting out perilously close
to Odious Comic Relief-dom, and ending up both serious and
touching. Obviously a film like this is not for all tastes, but
for those who like this kind of thing, I think it’s one of J&N’s
better efforts.
Gold-Diggers Of 1933 (1933)
Living under an assumed
name, Boston blue blood Robert Treat Bradford (Dick
Powell) tries to make it on his own as a Broadway
songwriter, only to have his cover blown when he is forced
to replace the “juvenile” lead of the show he’s written,
who’s come down with lumbago. Outraged older brother J.
Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) and family attorney
Fanuel H. Peabody (Guy Kibbee) come to town to try and break
up Powell’s budding romance with aspiring chorine Polly
Parker (Ruby Keeler), but end up being taken for a ride by
the real gold-diggers, Keeler’s pals Carol King (Joan
Blundell) and Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon). Warners’
follow-up to the smash hit
42nd Street has
certain points over its famous predecessor (there’s less of
Ruby Keeler singing, for one thing) and more than its share
of bizarre and unexpected touches, like Ginger Rogers
singing We’re In The
Money in pig-Latin, or the fact that the Pettin' In
The Park number very casually features a black couple
amongst its petters; you wouldn’t get
that from any
studio but Warners. Also typical Warners is that this
essentially frothy mixture of show tunes, cynicism and
sexual innuendo proceeds to blindside its audience by
climaxing in the shattering Depression era anthem,
My Forgotten Man.
The Gorilla Man (1943)
During WWII, a group of British commandos carry out a daring
raid in France, learning in the process German plans for
an invasion of England. The leader of the men,
Captain Craig Killian (John Loder), is injured in the raid,
and to save time is taken to a sanatorium on the English
coast. However, unknown to the authorities, the sanatorium
is a front for a nest of Nazi spies headed by Dr Dorn (Paul
Cavanagh) and Dr Ferris (John Abbott), along with an
Englishwoman, Nurse Kruger (Mary Field), whose husband and
son in Germany are being used to compel her
obedience. Dr Dorn is unable to prevent Killian from passing
on his information to General Devon (Lumsden Hare), but
concocts an elaborate plan to discredit Killian by making it
seem that his experiences have left him mentally unbalanced
and violent. Soon, wherever the Captain goes, a dead body is
sure to be found.... This is one weird little effort – sort
of a war movie, sort of a horror
movie, and sort of a suspense movie. It is supposed to be
about Killian’s battle to attend a meeting of the brass at
General Devon’s house – and to convince his superiors of his
sanity – but it is the script’s amazingly gruesome details
that linger when the film is over. Most of these come
courtesy of Dr Ferris, who is both a Nazi
and wanted as a
“psychopathic killer” in
Glasgow.
Inflicted with the most unnerving pair of glasses
ever, Dr Ferris
has a habit of experimenting on anyone unfortunate enough to
be brought to the hospital....all for “the advancement of
science”, you understand. (“I see,” says Dorn, when Ferris
admits to working on “nerve reflexes”, “that’s
why you didn’t administer an anaesthetic.”) It is also
Ferris who is responsible for the bodies left in poor
Killian’s wake – “their heads almost torn from their
bodies”. The really unsettling thing about all this is that
it’s just a side-plot, with these particulars tossed at the
viewer in the most casual way imaginable. The film’s
inappropriate title, by the way, is the newspaper nickname
bestowed upon Killian in reference to his extraordinary
climbing abilities (he scales a near-sheer cliff in the
course of the raid). Not that gorillas
are known for
their climbing abilities....but I guess “The
Gibbon Man” didn’t give off quite the right vibe.
Hand Of Death (1976)
During the Qing Dynasty, betrayal from within their own
ranks sees the disciples of the Shaolin Monastery and their
master slaughtered and the few survivors scattered through
the land. Yun Fei (Tan Tao-liang) is given the mission of
killing the treacherous Shih Shao-feng (James Tien Chung),
who has made himself master of a strategically located town
and surrounded himself with both Manchu officers under the
leadership of Tu Ching (Sammo Hung Kam-po) and a personal
bodyguard of eight fighters, each skilled in a particular
style of deadly combat.
Hand Of Death is
one of those films that gains importance retrospectively. It
was one of the period martial arts films made early in his
career by John Woo, and unites him for the only time with
both Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan (who, this early in
his career, is
billed as Chen Yuang-long). Jackie has a supporting good guy
role as a woodsman who has “played dumb” for three years
while waiting for a chance to avenge his elder brother,
killed by Shih’s men; while Sammo, dressed in less than
flattering Manchu robes and afflicted with the scariest set
of fake teeth you ever will see, is Shih’s chief flunky and
a right bastard. John Woo himself plays Chang Yi, the leader
of a local revolt whom Yun Fei must escort to safety.
Hand Of Death
is, frankly, a fairly clunky effort, particularly during the
early martial arts scenes, which look more like blocking
exercises than the real deal. (It doesn’t help that the
print I saw is heavily overdubbed, with every arm movement,
sword passage and spear thrust accompanied by thunderous
WHOOOMP WHOOMP
noises.) Things improve as the film goes on, thankfully, and
the two major battles between Tan Tao-liang and James Tien
Chung are both very enjoyable. Despite its age and setting,
Hand Of Death is a typical John Woo film,
with men finding redemption, women nearly non-existent, and
most of the likeable characters dead by the end. For myself,
the highlight of the film is when Yun Fei, having been left
hanging upside-down and bound hand and foot after being
beaten by Shih’s guards, manages to free himself by
undoing the ropes
around his feet with his teeth. Damn. I wish
I had abs like
that....
The Heavenly Body (1944)
Astronomer William
S. Whitley (William Powell) is at the peak of his
professional success, discovering a comet and predicting its
collision with the moon. Whitley’s night-work puts a strain
upon his marriage to Vicki (Hedy Lamarr), who despite her
husband’s certain disapproval, allows her neighbour Nancy
Potter (Spring Byington) to take her to astrologer Madame
Sybil (Fay Bainter). To Whitley’s horror, Vicki soon becomes
an unshakable devotee of astrology – going so far, when Mme
Sybil predicts a new love in her life, to start planning the
divorce.... Ugh! This “comedy” is so painful in so many
different ways, it’s hard to pick which is the worst. We can
start, though, with how plain unlikeable all the characters
are. For a start, William S. Whitley is a condescending
know-it-all. At the same time, Vicki is an annoying idiot.
So far, they deserve each other. When James Craig shows up
as the answer to Mme Sybil’s prediction, foreign
correspondent turned air raid warden Lloyd Hunter, you feel
rather sorry for him getting caught between these
two....only then he turns out to be just as obnoxious as
they are. (He’s the kind who, having travelled in other
countries, thinks he knows more about them than the people
who live there – and likes to
correct them.)
The film never bothers to explain Vicki’s sudden devotion to
astrology; there’s not even any real implication that this
is her passive-aggressive way of hitting back at her
constantly absent husband. In the worst Bad Comedy way, her
abrupt conversion is
just ’coz. The curious thing about all this is that
despite Whitley’s, and by extension the film’s, rude and
jeering dismissal of astrology, as far as we learn Mme Sybil
is generally correct in her predictions. As if realising
belatedly that it has written itself into a corner in this
respect, the script’s way of dismissing her is via an odd
double-play: she is exposed not as a cheat, but as – gasp! –
a hoarder. Yes,
this was a
war-time film, although you’d never guess it from the calm
opulence of the characters’ lives; I suppose you’d call it
“escapism”. The
Heavenly Body does liven up for about five minutes
during its home run, with the otherwise pointless
introduction of a dozen vodka-swilling Russians and one
disgustingly cute dog, but by then it’s far too little, far
too late.
Hedda Gabler (1981)
Like the curate’s
egg, it’s good in parts.... I actually have no idea what
that expression means, but it is nevertheless a good
description of this rather perfunctory rendering of Henrik
Ibsen’s famous play. Diana Rigg is Hedda, dwindling into
marriage with professorial hopeful George Tesman (Dennis
Lill), allowing him to devote his life to making her happy,
and imagining she is conferring a great favour on him by so
doing. Already bored and disgusted with her oblivious
husband, faced with a future of provincial visits and
dinners, Hedda longs for “power over someone’s destiny”. Opportunity presents itself when she becomes the
confidante of an old school acquaintance, Thea Elvsted
(Elizabeth Bell). Thea has left her husband, discreetly,
while she searches for her new love, Eilert Lǿvborg (Philip
Bond), who is both Hedda’s former lover and Tesman’s
professional rival. Having long wasted his talent in
alcoholism, Lǿvborg has sobered up under Thea’s influence
and produced a work of astonishing originality and power.
Resenting Thea’s power over Lǿvborg, resenting even more her
own comparative impotence, Hedda makes up her mind to play a
significant role in the fates of these two people. A stag
party at the house of Judge Brack (Alan Dobie) leads to a
shameful relapse for Lǿvborg and, as Hedda sees her chance
to strike, to disaster, scandal and death.... While never
beginning to get at the ambiguities and mysteries of the
play, this version of
Hedda Gabler is
just good enough to frustrate the hell out of you by not
being better. It pulls off some scenes but not others;
brings the characters to life at times, but not always. For
example, Elizabeth Bell and Philip Bond are fine in their
scenes together; but as Thea, Bell never manages to suggest
the kind of desperation that could lead her to trust in
Hedda, who she knows from bitter experience is manipulative
and a bully and, frankly, not to
be trusted.
Similarly, Diana Rigg and Alan Dobie strike sparks as Hedda
spars with the judge, mistakenly believing herself in charge
of the situation; but at the same time, Dobie never really
succeeds in conveying the selfish malevolance underlying the
surface bonhomie of this petty power-broker. Still, the
wreck of lives that comprises the final acts of the play
cannot help but affect the viewer, whatever one makes of
Hedda in general, and this Hedda in particular. A nice bonus
in this version is a supporting performance by Kathleen
Byron, as Tesman’s devoted Aunt Juliana – and while good
manners prompts a reference to
Black Narcissus
here, honesty provokes a cry of, “Ooh,
Twins Of Evil!”
Hero And The Terror (1988)
A Chuck Norris film
with emotional depth!? Gedouddahere! In this one Chuck is
Danny O’Brien, a cop unimaginatively nicknamed “Hero” after
single-handedly taking down serial killer Simon Moon (Jack
O’Halloran) – even more unimaginatively nicknamed “The
Terror” – who killed twenty-two women, keeping their bodies
hidden in order to “play with them”. As Moon serves out his
time in a psychiatric facility, O’Brien must undergo
therapy, unable to shake the memories and suffering
recurrent nightmares over his discovery of Moon’s lair.
Three years later, O’Brien’s life seems in order. His
pregnant girlfriend, Kay (Brynn Thayer) – formally his
therapist – moves into his apartment, and O’Brien proposes
marriage. But then comes word that Moon has escaped. The van
he was driving crashes into a river, and although his body
isn’t found, he is presumed dead. But O’Brien knows
better.... This was Chuck’s last collaboration with the
Go-Go Boys, and it’s kind of an uneven send-off. There is
less action than normal, and an uncertain air pervades the
touchy-comic tone of the relationship between O’Brien and
Kay; but the straightforward attempt to give this story more
heart that usual is unexpected and interesting, if not
always successful. However, there are parts of it I like:
particularly its admission – and in a Chuck Norris film,
too! – that experiences like Danny O’Brien’s are
not just shrugged
off with a laugh and a beer, but take a brutal toll. The
high point of
Hero And The Terror
comes when O’Brien literally finds himself inside his
nightmare, as he stumbles into Moon’s new lair; while the
final chase/confrontation is quite tensely staged. I also
like the heavily pregnant Kay’s restaurant meltdown, in
which she declares herself to be “old, and fat, and ugly”,
and has a cold-feet attack encompassing everything from the
baby to her moving in with O’Brien to the sabbatical she’s
taken from work. Of course, there are groan-inducing
moments, too – plenty of them – like O’Brien fainting when
Kay goes into labour, and the demise of O’Brien’s partner
(Steve James). It’s not like the white hero’s black partner
has to work all that
hard to get himself killed, even under normal circumstances;
but here Danny has Bill spend the night alone at the
restored theatre that he’s pretty certain is the killer’s
new hideout – and then Bill rushes to meet his manifest
destiny by taking off
his gun and leaving it lying on a seat while he works
out by running laps of the auditorium. Where this film
really crosses the line, though, is its absolutely shameless
theft of four of the most famous chords in horror movie
history: Simon Moon’s scenes are all underscored by the
unmistakable sound of Harry Manfredini’s
chh-chh-chh-chh.
They don’t even
pretend they aren’t doing it! – and it completely
punctures the film’s efforts to be taken seriously. Still –
points for trying.
The Heroes Of Telemark (1965)
Anthony Mann’s
penultimate film as director is an account of the Norwegian
underground’s attempts to destroy the German production of
deuterium oxide, “heavy water”, needed in the creation of
the atomic bomb. This compressed account of events, a year
and a half’s conflict whittled down to three onscreen
months, opens with resistance fighter Knud Straud (Richard
Harris) coming into possession of microfilm detailing
operations within the German-controlled Vemork plant near
the town of Rjukan. Insufficiently knowledgeable himself,
Straud takes the film to physics professor Rolf Pedersen
(Kirk Douglas) who, despite his lack of interest in the
resistance movement, recognises the grim significance of the
film’s content and allows Straud to recruit him. The two men
lead a band that commandeers a ferry, making a perilous
journey to
England. Their information is
examined, and sent to America – to Robert Oppenheimer and
Albert Einstein – for final confirmation. Joining forces,
the British and the Norwegian resistance plan a raid to
destroy the plant. Disaster strikes when the gliders
carrying the British commandoes crash when landing. The
Norwegians go ahead anyway and by torturous effort, scale
the unguarded cliff faces at one side of the plant,
infiltrate it, and blow up the heavy water production room.
But the Germans have contingency plans; and within two weeks
production has resumed. As time passes and the heavy water
accumulates, the Allies must consider ever more desperate
alternatives.... The
Heroes Of Telemark is an uneven film, suffering
particularly from some clumsy scripting and insufficiently
detailed characterisations. (And while this may be petty, it
also suffers from Kirk Douglas’s accent. With Douglas
surrounded predominantly by Brits and Scandinavians – and
even the occasional authentic German, most notably Anton
Diffring, being all steely-eyed and threatening as usual –
his New York-bred tones are like the proverbial sore thumb.)
Still, the film is not without its merits, and the subject
matter certainly deserves attention – even if history now
argues with some of the events depicted. (The documentary
The True Heroes Of
Telemark has much to say about the film’s inaccuracies –
which, it might be pointed out, occasionally plays down
rather than exaggerates the facts: the film has the British
paratroopers all killed in the glider crash, when some of
them were captured, tortured and executed.) The film was
shot on location in Norway, at the
actual site of events, and although the result is
spectacular, it is also a mixed blessing, dramatically
speaking, as the sheer grandeur of the story’s setting
threatens to overwhelm its characters. One extraordinary
sequence is an in-action ski-pursuit, achieved by hiring the
Norwegian Olympic ski coach and putting him in charge of the
camera; while the cliff-face assault upon the plant is
depicted with tense and painful realism. Ultimately,
however, the film’s primary virtue is its detached depiction
of the shifting personal moralities of the main characters;
its recognition of the difference between
recognising the
need for action, and
taking action; and its investigation of where, in war
time, a line can be drawn – or whether it can be drawn at
all. Rolf Pedersen is at first quite cynically passive,
content to ride out the Occupation without rocking the boat;
his initial response to Knud’s attempt to recruit him is to
point out that the main outcome of Knud’s own activities is
a lot of shot hostages – a charge the film never refutes, by
the way. But Pedersen far more than the others understands
the magnitude of the danger; and over time it is he who
becomes the truly ruthless one, set upon destroying the
heavy water at any
cost; while Knud and Anna (Ulla Jacobsson), Rolf’s ex-wife
and another resistance fighter, begin to question the
necessity of the mission, unable to accept the civilian
casualties that must result from pursuing it, or Rolf’s
word-picture of a world where Germany has the bomb. The
final attack upon the heavy water requires the bombing of
the ferry on which it is being transported – and upon which
two of the local passengers are the widow of the one man
killed during the original raid on the plant, and her new
baby. Even Rolf, it turns out, has his limits....
Highly Dangerous (1950)
British entomologist Frances Grey (Margaret Lockwood) is
contacted by government official Hedgerley (Naunton Wayne)
and asked to undertake a dangerous mission into
Eastern Europe, where reports indicate a new
form of biological warfare is under development, using a
particular strain of insect. After some hesitation, Frances agrees, and sets out posing
as a travel agent investigating tourism in the area. Almost
immediately, however, she attracts the attention of a man
who turns out to be Commandant Anton Razinski (Marius
Goring), the head of the local police. When Frances reaches her destination, her contact is
not there to meet her; unbeknownst to Frances, he has already met a grim
fate. Instead,
Frances
falls in with American reporter Bill Casey (Dane Clark), who
has been banished to this gloomy region by his editor as
punishment for a politically unwise article. Recognising
Frances
from a magazine article, Bill decides, to her frustration,
to stick with her, scenting a story that will put an end to
his exile. Things take a bleak turn when
Frances
falls into the hands of Commandant Razinski and must suffer
through imprisonment and interrogation. Having stood up to
the treatment, Frances responds not by running away with her
tail between her legs, but swearing that she
will carry out her
mission – to the horror of the bewildered Bill, who rapidly
finds himself in way
over his head.... Yet another spy thriller about amateurs
outdoing a literal army of professionals,
Highly Dangerous
is ridiculous, of course, but still quite a lot of fun – not
least because, let’s face it, how many films do
you know where the
hero is a female entomologist?? Anyway, we’re certainly not
meant to take any of this seriously. The film signals its
intentions early on by treating us to an episode of a radio
serial to which Frances’s young nephew is devoted, featuring
the adventures of “Frank Conway and his sidekick,
Rusty”....and later has Frances
masquerading under the name “Frances Conway”. (Bill is
understandably puzzled when she starts calling him “Rusty”.)
Margaret Lockwood and Dane Clark make a likeable couple,
while Marious Goring is both sinister and charming as
Razinski. Naunton Wayne and Wilfrid Hyde-White are the
British officials mixed up in all this, both of them so very
proper in the midst of all the scheming and violence.
Highly Dangerous
is worth watching purely for the sequence in which Frances,
having withstood interrogation, is drugged – presumably with
sodium pentathol – in order, as Razinski puts it, “to plum
the very depths of your mind”....only for the startled
police officer to discover that the depths of a female
entomologist’s mind can be a very scary place indeed....
Hitler’s Children (1943)
In pre-war Germany,
Professor “Nicky” Nichols (Kent Smith) runs the American Colony
School, which is next door
to a German school. To Nicky’s growing worry, his students
and the German youth fall ever more frequently into fights.
Particularly hostile – at least at first – are the German
boy Karl Bruner (Tim Holt) and the American girl Anna Miller
(Bonita Granville). Attracted to each other against their
will, the two become friends and spend much of their time
together; but it is not long before their ideological
differences drive them apart. Years later, while Anna is
working as a teacher at the school, she is claimed by the
Nazis as a German citizen by birth, despite her American
breeding, and sent to an indoctrination camp. As Nicky works
feverishly to win her release, he discovers to his horror
that Karl is now a Gestapo officer. Reminded of his past,
Karl must fight his feelings for Anna, while the girl’s
rebellion against Nazism puts her life in dire danger....
It’s hard to know how to react to these mid-war propaganda
pieces. On one hand, we know now that the various horrors
depicted are not only true, but grossly understated. On the
other, such films still come across as uncomfortably
exploitative and, somehow, dishonest. It’s probably the
selective vision that makes them seem this way:
Hitler’s Children
is desperately concerned for the American Anna, but hasn’t
too many thoughts to spare for the “undesirables” –
non-Germans – taken at the same time as her. Concentration
camps rate a mention only in passing – at this time,
American films were still propagating the notion that these
were just a more severe kind of labour camp – while the
J-word is never used, of course. Another problem is the
indiscriminate nature of the film’s moral outrage: it is
just as horrified by the thought of a girl having an
illegitimate baby as it is by a state-run program of
enforced sterilisation as punishment for “incorrect
political thought”. The plot, such as it is, is undermined
by its own contrivances. Why on earth Anna’s German-born
parents, safe in New York, don’t get her the hell out of there
years earlier is a mystery that is never addressed. Nor is
Karl’s own American
birth, which is brought up at the beginning, ever
mentioned again: given the wavering of his commitment to
Nazism, you’d think his superiors would be using this “flaw”
as a stick to beat him with. The film’s ending is also
absurd, but absurd in a way very popular with screenwriters
of the time (see This
Land Is Mine for another example of it). Tim Holt and
Bonita Granville are quite good as the film’s Romeo and
Juliet. The ubiquitous Kent Smith has another thankless
“everyman” role; Otto Kruger really lays it on as Karl’s
Gestapo boss; and H.B. Warner has a moving cameo as a
Christian bishop who makes a fatal stand. Made for only
$200,000, Hitler’s Children was a surprise smash hit for RKO, grossing well
over $3,000,000. (Just to put that in context – it
out-grossed King Kong!!)
Holiday Affair (1949)
War widow Connie
Ennis (Janet Leigh), working as a comparison shopper to
support her young son, Timothy (Gordon Gebert),
inadvertently gets toy salesman Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum)
fired. Feeling guilty, Connie agrees to have lunch with
Steve – hotdogs and peanuts at Central Park Zoo – and as she
spends time with him, finds herself beginning to be torn
between her growing feeling for him, her almost-commitment
to long-time beau, lawyer Carl Davis (Wendell Corey), and
her memories of her tragically brief marriage.... This is a
rather sweet example of one of the oldest tropes in romantic
comedy film-making, the woman meeting her “soul mate” after
becoming engaged to Mr Steady. Where it scores points over
most of its competition – and I can think of quite a few
recent films that could have learnt a lot from this one – is
in playing entirely fair by all of its characters. This is
particularly true in the case of Carl Davis. Instead of
taking the soft option of making Carl obviously the wrong
man for Connie, he’s an attractive marital prospect: nice,
and smart, and genuinely attached to Timothy. He
just....isn’t the right guy. The casting of Wendell Corey is
interesting here. Corey could be terribly dull on screen,
but they don’t even play
that card:
instead, the screenplay generously pitches to his delicious
way with a sardonic line of dialogue; a talent not exploited
nearly enough over the actor’s career.
Holiday Affair
is highlighted by two marvellous set-pieces, first what
ought to be, but miraculously isn’t, the world’s most
uncomfortable Christmas dinner – attended by Connie, her
son, the two men who want to marry her, and her late
husband’s parents – and secondly, a scene at a police
station after Steve is mistakenly arrested as a mugger, a
sequence stolen by Harry Morgan as the desk sergeant who has
to sort the whole mess out. There is never really much doubt
about how the various relationships in
Holiday Affair
are going to work themselves out, but the journey is a lot
of fun.
Hotel Reserve (1944)
In 1938, French-Austrian medical student Peter Vardassy
(James Mason) is on the verge of obtaining his French
citizenship when his holiday is abruptly interrupted, and he
finds himself accused of espionage. The bewildered Peter is
interrogated by intelligence officer Michel Beghin (Julien
Mitchell), and learns to his horror that on the roll of film
he put in for development were photographs of French
military installations. Peter is initially relieved to learn
that he is not the real suspect, but that, as Beghin knows,
his camera was somehow swapped with that of the real spy,
who is one of Peter’s fellow guests at the Hotel Reserve.
However, Peter’s relief turns to dismay when Beghin compels
him to act as his inside man, threatening him with
deportation back to
Austria
if he refuses.... Based on an Eric Ambler novel,
Hotel Reserve is an uneven effort that can’t quite make up its mind
whether it’s a light-hearted or serious spy thriller, and
vacillates fatally between the two attitudes. There’s
certainly nothing funny about the threat used by Beghin to
coerce Peter into co-operation – “First jail,
then deportation,
then the Gestapo” – or about the subplot involving a hotel guest who
turns out to be living under a false name; but for the most
part this is a fairly trivial exercise following Peter’s
blundering efforts at playing spy, and the “colourful
characters” who make up the rest of the hotel’s guests.
Moreover, the real spy turns out to be exactly who you
expect, and the ending is one of those annoying set-ups
where there are a dozen professionals around, but only the
amateur hero manages to catch the bad guy.
I’ll Wait For You (1941)
The proverbial luck
of mob strong-arm man Jonathan “Lucky” Wilson (Robert
Sterling) runs out when Lieutenant McFarley (Paul Kelly) and
Sergeant Brent (Don Costello) persuade some of his monetary
victims to sing. Apprehended,
Wilson makes a
break for it, only to take a bullet in the shoulder as he
flees. He nevertheless makes it as far as the Connecticut
countryside before collapsing, where he is found and taken
in by the Millers, a farming family. Ordered by his boss,
Tony Berolli (Reed Hadley), to stay where he is – what could
be a better hideout? –
Wilson
unexpectedly finds himself drawn to the Millers and their
simple lifestyle, and particularly to the lovely elder
daughter, Pauline (Marsha Hunt).... The plot’s been done to
death, of course, but the main problem with this re-working
of the old hood-with-a-heart-of-gold chestnut is trying to
believe baby-faced Robert Sterling as an intimidating
mobster. He may talk like Bogart, and dress like Robert
Montgomery – both of whom did much better in similar roles –
but really, he’s not fooling anyone; he comes across like a
kid playing dress-up in his big brother’s clothes. Moreover,
the film asks us to accept not just the magnitude of the
Millers’ countrified blindness, but also Wilson’s equally staggering citified ignorance
– would you believe he doesn’t
know where eggs
come from? Still, this slight comedy-drama is worth sticking
with for the sequence when Wilson’s police adversaries catch up him, but
in the face of the Millers’ sheer
niceness, find
themselves quite unable to give their quarry away. Trapped
on the wrong side of a swollen creek, the three men end up
sitting down in company with their oblivious hosts to the
world’s most uncomfortable luncheon. Marsha Hunt is
certainly worth a man’s reformation as Pauline; Henry
Travers and Fay Holden lend credibility to the Millers; and
Virginia Weidler has another of her trademark “kid sister”
roles. However, it is Paul Kelly as the sardonic McFarley
and Don Costello as his boater-hatted, sad-eyed offsider who
come away with the honours.
Invader (1996)
More than
twenty years after it was sent to Mars and subsequently
disappeared, a Viking 2 lander is located in the Californian
desert in a highly restricted military zone. The lander is
transported to an abandoned army testing facility, where
NASA scientist Case Montgomery (Cotter Smith) calls in
exo-biologist Dr Grazia Scott (Deidre O’Connell) to help him
investigate. The two, along with Case’s NASA colleague,
Michael Perkett (Leland Orser), examine the lander and
determine that it has been modified, with extra housings
attached to the outside. Gracia analyses the dust from the
outside of the lander, and confirms that it has indeed been
on Mars – and that its presence on Earth can only be the
result of extraterrestrial intervention. As the scientists
are struggling to come to terms with this realisation, the
military arrives. Colonel Pratt (Robert Wisdom) announces
that the lander is a matter of national security and that
the scientists are forbidden to have any further contact
with it. They respond by barricading themselves in with it.
A furious Pratt orders his men to cut open the door. As Case
tries to download the contents of the lander’s computer into
NASA’s system, Grazia hears a noise....and
something erupts
from one of the housings on the lander. Grazia shrieks for
the men outside not
to open the door, but they take no notice; and the next
moment, an alien life-form is loose within the facility....
Yes, Invader is
yet another post-Alien
dark-corridors-and-ducts film – but for once you shouldn’t
let that put you off. Lacking a budget, a name cast,
expensive special effects, impressive sets – well, lacking
pretty much
everything, really – the film-makers compensated as best
they could by serving up –
an intelligent script.
No, honestly! Perhaps I can best praise
Invader by
telling you what it
doesn’t have: career professionals who behave like
tantrum-throwing children; characters advancing the plot by
acting stupidly; a male and a female scientist who have, or
had, a personal relationship; a psychotic and/or homicidally
hard-line senior military officer; explosions in place of
ideas. It’s also unusually free of references to other
films, even the one it’s clearly inspired by. Well, almost
free. There’s an alien autopsy scene that suggests a
fondness for John Carpenter’s version of
The Thing, and
the two scientists are called “Montgomery” and “Scott”,
which might be an allusion, or just simple word association.
No, what we have here is a thoughtful and interesting little
film – with the emphasis on “little”. The budget for this
thing must have been nearly non-existent, and what money
they did have obviously went on the alien, which in its
adult form is pretty damn cool. (In the end they give us too
clear a look at it for its own good, but the visual power of
that shot, as the newly escaped alien stops and stares up at
the full moon in the night sky, more than makes up for any
revealed shortcomings.) The story progresses through logical
steps, some good tension is generated, and the characters
react intelligently as their circumstances alter. I
particularly like the evolving relationship between Grazia
Scott and Colonel Pratt: initially the two diametric poles,
with fairly clichéd viewpoints (she
wants to save it for science and communicate with it,
he wants to blast
it off the planet in the name of national security), both of
them soften their stances as the emergency worsens, develop
respect for one another’s views and abilities, and end up
working together to solve a crisis.
Invader does a
lot right – a lot
– and then.... And then it goes and ruins everything, with
an incredibly
abrupt and downbeat ending. Well, perhaps “ruins” is putting
it a bit strongly; within the context of the story, the
ending is actually valid; but it sure isn’t the one we
wanted. The performances of the three leads are all solid
and convincing, with Deidre O’Connell making a very
refreshing female scientist. I also like Raoul O’Connell
(related?) as poor Private Jeffers, who’s having the worst
day of his entire life....
Invader also
features a baby-faced Ryan Phillippe as – get
this – “Private
Ryan”!
The
Unknown Movies Page provides both a
review (under the film’s alternative title, Lifeform)
and an explanation for the ending. To which I can only
respond – “Bugger....”
I
Take This Woman (1940)
Georgi Gragore (Hedy
Lamarr) travels to the Yucatan with her married
lover, Phil Mayberry (Kent Taylor), where he plans to get a
quick divorce; but he reneges when his wife, Sandra (Mona
Barrie), threatens a divorce suit of his own that will ruin
both his name and his career. On the journey home, a
despairing Georgi attempts suicide, but is stopped by Dr
Karl Decker (Spencer Tracy). Back in
New York and at as loss, Georgi finds her way to
Decker’s free clinic on the East Side
and gets a job there. Decker, already smitten, soon falls in
love with her. Georgi agrees to marry Decker, but their
relationship is endangered when he feels compelled to try
and give her the lifestyle she is accustomed to, and when
his insistence that she not run away from her past throws
her into company with her old society friends – including
Phil Mayberry, who has obtained his divorce....
I Take This Woman
had a disastrous production history: the shoot dragged on
for over eighteen months as it lost first Josef von
Sternberg and then Frank Borzage as director, ending up with
journeyman W.S. Van Dyke II, who re-shot nearly the entire
thing but was unable to enliven this rather tired tale of a
woman who knows her husband is worth a hundred of the heel
she’s stuck on, but goes on being stuck on him anyway. The
real problem with this film is that it needed to be made by
Warners, not MGM. Everything’s fine as long as the story is
being played out in nightclubs and at premieres, but it
falls on its face as soon as it tries to present us with
“the East Side”. MGM never
could do poor convincingly: everything’s far too spacious
and clean, and the people are embarrassing stereotypes.
(Case in point: Willie Best as – God help us! – “Sambo”,
opening line: “I’ll be an ape’s uncle!”) In fact, you can
tell this is an MGM production from the moment Georgi puts
on her mink coat to commit suicide! Actually, all jokes
aside, this film enters some fairly worrying territory with
its implication that the “correct” response of any
“sensitive” woman to male treachery is a suicide attempt.
Still, Tracy and Lamarr are worth watching, and the
supporting cast is terrific, particularly Verree Teasdale as
Georgi’s hyperactive best friend (she gets all of Charles
MacArthur’s best lines), and Frances Drake as an elegantly
parasitic nightclubber. Larraine Day has a brief early role
as the film’s second suicidally-inclined female, and Jack
Carson gets one line as the husband of one of Decker’s
patients.
Kansas City
Bomber (1972)
Single mother Diane “K.C.” Carr (Raquel Welch) struggles to
make a living as a professional roller derby skater, having
to deal with her constant separations from her children and
her mother’s disapproval of her lifestyle. Catching the eye
of lecherous businessman Burt Henry (Kevin McCarthy), K.C.
is transferred to his Portland-based franchise, where she
finds herself locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy with
fading former star Jackie Burdette (Helena Kallianiotes).
This overlong and over-obvious sports drama is sickly
compelling as long as the women are out on the rink kicking
the shit out of each other, but grows tiresome whenever it
focuses instead on the personal travails of its heroine. The
screenplay tries to posit K.C. as an innocent abroad, the
one nice and sincere person in a world of corruption and
violence, but overplays its hand by making her naive to the
point of stupidity – and beyond. She’s astonished that the
skaters she’s brought in to headline over resent her; she’s
astonished that her team mates have a problem with the fact
that she’s having an affair with their boss. (The best bit,
though, is when her boss-lover gets rid of K.C.’s room-mate,
who was kind enough – or dumb enough – to take her in, by
trading her without warning. Henry’s “explanation”, that he
just wanted to be alone with K.C., is evidently enough to
soothe her qualms about this arrangement – so much so,
she
goes on living in her
friend’s now vacated house.) While K.C. is an annoying
“heroine”, Kansas
City Bomber nevertheless presents a fascinating if
depressing portrait of the world of lower-tier sports, and
the people who fight to make a living at them. The
uncertainty of the life, the boredom and loneliness of the
road, and the terror of the future for the aging athlete are
all vividly sketched. (This film may well have influenced
George Roy Hill’s infinitely superior
Slap Shot.)
Raquel isn’t a good enough actress to make K.C. credible,
but she does a pretty good job on skates. (When it’s her:
sometimes it’s obviously a double.) The film’s memorable
performances come from its victims: Mary
Kay
Pass as Lovey, K.C.’s
former room-mate;
Helena Kallianiotes as borderline alcoholic Jackie; and
Norman Alden as roller derby’s eternal butt, “Horrible” Hank
Hopkins. A ten-year-old Jodie Foster appears as K.C.’s
tomboy daughter.
King Of The
Damned (1935)
In a Devil’s
Island-like penal colony, Deputy Commandant Montez (Cecil
Ramage) learns of valuable mineral deposits on the island,
and takes advantage of the illness of his superior,
Commandant Courvin (C.M. Hallard), by turning the convicts
into a personal road-building and mining crew. Courvin’s
daughter, Anna (Helen Vinson), who is also Montez’s fiancé,
travels to the colony to nurse her father, unaware that the
island is teetering on the brink of a full-scale revolt led
by the erudite Convict 83 (Conrad Veidt). Based upon a play
by John Chancellor,
King Of The Damned works better as a straight drama than
as a political allegory, which, given the year of its
production, the behaviour of the convicts post-revolt and
the colony being Spanish (at least by implication) rather
than the usual French, it was certainly intended to be; the
film’s ending is so naive in its optimism, you could just
cry. (Then again, perhaps we’re supposed to recognise the
characters’ hopes as delusive.) Politics aside, the film is
an enjoyable example of this odd sub-genre, particularly
when it focuses upon 83 and his torn loyalties (on the very
eve of the revolt, he learns that he has been pardoned);
while the growing attraction between 83 and Anna – conveyed
primarily through a series of covert longing glances – pays
off marvellously whe n the naval officer who comes to rescue
her discovers to his bemusement that she doesn’t want to
be rescued. (“No,
no, you don’t understand....I’m with
him.”) Also of
note are the scope of the production – the huge number of
extras employed here makes the revolt more credible than
usual – and the fact that one of the main architects of the
revolt is a black convict, who is treated without a breath
of separatism or condescension. Alas, conditions in the
penal colony were apparently a bit more advanced than those
operating in the British film industry at the time: the
actor playing the black convict is unbilled, and I have been
unable to discover his name.
King Solomon’s Mines (1937)
In Africa, the eternally optimistic treasure-hunting
Irishman Patrick O’Brien (Arthur Sinclair) and his loyal and
loving daughter, Kathleen (Anna Lee), finally admit defeat
and decide to head home to
Ireland. Through some quick
talking, they manage to secure transport part of the way to
the coast with hunter and explorer Allan Quatermain (Cedric
Hardwicke). On the
way, they encounter another oxen train. With it is a
mysterious native, Umbopa (Paul Robeson), while inside the
wagon lies a dying man, who speaks feverishly of the
fabulous treasure of King Solomon’s Mines. O’Brien’s
imagination is immediately fired, and he determines to seek
this treasure, but also to leave Kathy with Quatermain, who
promises to escort her safely to town. Discovering her
father’s departure, the frantic Kathy pleads with Quatermain
to go after him, but Quatermain refuses, explaining that he
must return to town to meet Sir Henry Curtis (John Loder)
and his friend, Commander Good (Roland Young), who have
hired him to take them hunting. Determined to go after her
father, Kathy tricks Sir Henry into giving orders for his
expedition’s wagons to “go on ahead” in the direction
she wants.
Realising the deception, Quatermain, Sir Henry and the
Commander go after Kathy, finding her and the wagons in
charge of the enigmatic Umbopa. When Kathy declares her
intention of going on regardless, the men capitulate and
agree to go with her. A perilous and near fatal journey
across the desert follows, while beyond the desert lies a
land of mountains and a tribe ruled by terror and
violence.... This is a brisk and enjoyable version of H.
Rider Haggard’s venerable tale. There has been some
tampering with the text, of course – there’s no white girl
along in the book, and the person the expedition is looking
for is Sir Henry’s brother – but otherwise it follows the
novel with reasonable accuracy. It certainly reproduces all
the expected set-pieces: the journey across the desert, the
revelation of Umbopa’s true identity and the war that
follows, and the discovery of the not-so-mythical Mines.
This adaptation is, in its way, rather subversive, inasmuch
as the white woman and the black man spend much of their
time conspiring together and rebelling against the white
male authority figures – and not only are they
not punished for
it, they are both ultimately rewarded! Paul Robeson – who,
remarkably, was top-billed – is believably regal as Umbopa
(and yes, he sings); Anna Lee makes a likeably feisty
heroine, as usual; and Cedric Hardwicke is an acerbic
Quatermain. The two that everyone remembers, however, are
Robert Adams as the psychotic usurper, Twala, and Sydney
Fairbrother as Gagool, the terrifying witch-hag who “sniffs
out” the enemies of the king.
Lady On A
Train (1945)
One of Deanna
Durbin’s better efforts to (i) grow up; and (ii) change her
image. Travelling from San Francisco
to New York, heiress Nikki
Collins (Durbin) witnesses a murder from the window of her
train, but of course no-one believes her. Learning via a
newsreel that the dead man was a shipping magnate who
supposedly died after falling from a ladder, Nikki decides
to solve the murder herself.
Lady On A Train
takes a while to get going, and Deanna rather overdoes the
scatterbrained heiress routine at the outset, but once Nikki
has infiltrated the family estate of the murder victim by
posing as the dead man’s fiancée, the film really picks up
steam, becoming a veritable parade of vignettes from some
wonderful character actors: domineering Elizabeth Patterson,
milquetoast Ralph Bellamy, ne’er-do-well Dan Duryea,
cat-clutching George Coulouris and all-purpose henchman
Allen Jenkins. Oh, and Edward Everett Horton is there, too,
being Edward Everett Horton. Best of all though, is the
triumvirate of David Bruce as the long-suffering mystery
novelist recruited into the investigation against his will
by Nikki; Patricia Morison as his even more long-suffering
fiancée; and, most long-suffering of all – because she has
to listen to her boss’s prose – Jacqueline deWit as his
secretary. (“Tear
it up, did you say?” “Type
it up.” “Oh.”) And, yes, of course Deanna sings – what do
you think? A nightclub scene gives her the chance to do a
lovely rendition of “Night And Day”, but the highlight is
when – it’s Christmas Eve – Nikki sings “Silent Night” down
the phone to her father, thereby unknowingly saving her own
life by reducing Allen Jenkins, who’s there to murder her,
to a blubbering emotional wreck.
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