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Short reviews of the other stuff I watch
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Q Planes (1939) Death rays were everywhere during the twenties and thirties; and Q Planes posits that a device that Marconi was working on at the time of his death, capable of “stopping a car motor at twenty-five yards”, has been perfected by An Unspecified Foreign Power, who are using it to bring down planes carrying new technology, which is then appropriated. (You’d think that people who could build a death ray could develop their own technology, but never mind.) Government operative Charles Hammond (Ralph Richardson) is convinced that the disappearance of experimental planes all over the world is far from coincidental, but he has trouble convincing either his superiors or Barrett (George Merritt), the head of the British firm under threat. A plane supposedly carrying a new supercharger is sent up and, in mid-flight, has its engines and its radio cut out. Preparing to bail out, the crew is relieved to see a salvage boat on the waters below; they coast to a belly landing and wait for rescue.... The disappearance of a second Barrett & Wade plane and its crew drives test pilot Tony McVane (Laurence Olivier) almost to his breaking point, particularly when he discovers that the cafeteria worker, Kay (Valerie Hobson), with whom he has been carrying out a somewhat prickly flirtation, is an undercover reporter – and Charles Hammond’s sister. Hammond, McVane and Kay join forces, with the truth about the “salvage boat” discovered just too late to stop McVane taking up a third plane, determined to learn his colleagues’ fate by offering himself as bait. Q Planes contrives an “action hero” climax for Laurence Olivier, during which half a dozen British aviators (rather improbably captured rather than killed) manage to escape and overcome the entire crew of the salvage boat – take that, Unspecified Foreign Power! – but this is Ralph Richardson’s film all the way, as he has enormous fun playing a silly duffer who really isn’t. This is, in fact, an incongruously light-hearted offering, considering not just its subject matter, but the year of its production. Still, let’s not forget that one of the most popular British films of the same year centred on a threatened German invasion of |
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Rachel And The Stranger (1948) Hunter Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) visits the farm of his friend David Harvey (William Harvey), only to discover that David’s wife, the woman they both loved, has died, leaving him with their young son. David struggles on alone for several months, finally concluding gloomily that he needs a woman around the place, both for chores and to raise the young Davey (Gary Gray). David rides to the nearest stockade town, begging help from Parson Jackson (Tom Tully). The parson suggests that David buy bondservant Rachel (Loretta Young) from her present master – warning him, however, that he will have to marry her, as they cannot live together at the isolated farm otherwise. David reluctantly agrees, while Rachel’s opinion isn’t asked. After the hastily arranged wedding, David and Rachel return to the farm, where Rachel must struggle with the harshness of frontier life, her step-son’s hostility, and her husband’s indifference. Matters change abruptly, however, when Jim Fairways turns up without warning and invites himself for a visit. With growing resentment, David watches Jim’s attentions to Rachel, and her blossoming under them – and another romantic triangle begins to form.... Rachel And The Stranger is a hard film to categorise. It isn’t a western, although it climaxes with an Indian raid. It isn’t a romance, since its central couple spend most of the film oblivious to one another. It certainly isn’t an action film, since most of its “drama” involves three people running a farm. It isn’t even historical in the usual sense, never getting away from the day-to-day life of the frontiersman-farmer, whatever might be going on in the bigger world. It does, however, draw an absorbing picture of the hard realities of the pioneer life: the quiet courage of those undertaking it; the bitter isolation of it; and the pragmatism needed to survive it. When David rides into town after numerous months, the parson greets him with an inquiry after his wife; by the end of the conversation, he’s arranging a second marriage for him. Rachel And The Stranger is perhaps most interesting in its examination of the eternal question of “what women want” – or rather, of what, in dangerous times, constitutes a desirable husband. The screenplay stresses the intelligence of both Rachel and her predecessor, then has both women make the same romantic choice: the unimaginative but dependable David over the attractive and insightful but footloose Jim. The film is most thoughtful in its handling of David. There is a certain ironic distance kept – the screenplay is entirely in sympathy with Rachel’s growing exasperation at David’s obtuseness – but it isn’t unkind, making it clear that most of his myopia stems from the simple fact that he is still mourning his wife, and that his unnecessarily brusque treatment of Rachel is due not to any innate unkindness, but from an involuntary resentment of her simply for being a woman, but not the right woman. (There’s a wonderful moment when David comes suddenly upon Rachel with her hair down and looking quite stunning. He eyes her for a moment and then says crossly, “You sure do have a lot of hair.” We infer that the late Mrs Harvey kept hers cropped.) Having firmly established David’s indifference to Rachel, the film allows itself a little discreet fun on the dreaded subject of s-e-x. After outlining Rachel’s duties with respect to the farm and the boy, David adds that there will be “a few other things”. “Figured there would be,” responds Rachel grimly, gritting her teeth – only to have the oblivious David start talking about his late wife’s flower garden and her plans for paving stones. All this changes when Jim Fairways turns up out of the blue and, in effect, starts courting Rachel under David’s very nose – and the increasingly indignant David finds himself looking at her through Jim’s eyes. All three of this film’s stars were at the top of their game here. Loretta Young, gorgeous in colour, was fresh off her Oscar for The Farmer’s Daughter, while Robert Mitchum had, over the preceding two years, earned his stardom with a series of strong performances. William Holden, at this time still making his reputation and two years away from his break-out performance in Sunset Boulevard, nevertheless holds his own against his high-powered co-stars with a shaded performance that manages to make David as sympathetic as he is frustrating. Raiders Of Towards the end of the Civil War, Captain Steve Clark (Dennis Moore) of the Secret Service is sent to
The Rains Of Ranchipur (1952)
Unhappily married and coldly promiscuous Edwina Esketh (Lana
Turner) accompanies her husband, Lord Allen Esketh (Michael
Rennie), to the Indian Rancho Notorious (1952) Fritz Lang’s third and final venture into the realm of the western is one strange film. Mild-mannered ranch hand Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) becomes another of Lang’s revenge-driven loners after his fiancée is raped and murdered. A faint trail of clues leads him to a former showgirl named Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich) and a mysterious place known as Chuck-A-Luck. Learning that jailed outlaw Frenchy Fairmont (Mel Ferrer) is Altar’s lover, Vern breaks him out, accompanying him to Chuck-A-Luck, which turns out to be a ranch and gambling saloon where Altar offers safe refuge to outlaws, at the price of a cut of their hauls. Posing as an outlaw himself, Vern becomes convinced that one of the men hiding out at Chuck-A-Luck is the one he seeks – but which one? At first glance, Rancho Notorious seems to sit comfortably amongst the many dark and revisionist westerns that emerged during the 1950s, which use long-established genre tropes as a means to explore the psychology of their characters; but there is a certain mocking air about this film – particular in its use of the de rigueur theme song, with William Lee warbling about “Hate! Murder! And Revenge!” at irregular intervals throughout – which suggests that Lang took his western less seriously than many of his contemporaries did theirs. This may perhaps also be seen in the fact that Vern Haskell never quite loses his grip upon his reality in the way that many of Lang’s dark protagonists tend to do. True, in posing as an outlaw, Vern begins to behave like an outlaw; and in pretending to fall for Altar, to an extent he does, even though in doing so, he sails perilously close to betraying his friendship for Frenchy. But when he comes across the evidence he needs and knows who brutalised and murdered his girl, the pieces all fall back into place. Although less emotionally exhausting than most of Lang’s films, Rancho Notorious is infused with a sense of loss and regret that makes it rather moving, particularly in its constant evoking of Destry Rides Again, and its merciless reminders of the thirteen-years-younger Marlene Dietrich. At the same time, Lang does allow an unusual (for him) degree of sympathy for his characters to emerge as their fate catches up with them. This is particularly true with regard to the central triangle: Frenchy can only look on helplessly as Altar begins to fall, not so much for Vern himself, but for the could-have-been he represents. (Go away,” Altar tells Vern in the film’s signature line, “and come back ten years ago.”) Mel Ferrer gives one of his most effective performances as Frenchy, while amongst the supporting cast, George Reeves stands out as the outlaw upon whom Vern’s suspicions fall.
Rendezvous (1935)
As America’s involvement in WWI escalates, the military suffers
severe losses of their transports due to the enemy’s
interception of their secret codes. A search is under way for
the author of the definitive text on encryption and decryption,
in the hope that his recruitment will allow the creation of an
unbreakable code; but the government has no luck in finding the
book’s pseudonymous author until Bill Gordon (William Powell), a
former international correspondent newly inducted into the army,
confides a secret to the girl he is falling in love with, Joel
Carter (Rosalind Russell) – whose Uncle John (Samuel S. Hinds)
just happens to be the Assistant Secretary of War. On the verge
of his departure for France, a furious Bill is co-opted into the
War Department, where he finds himself in a desperate race to
crack the enemy’s codes and unearth a spy ring based in
Washington, before more troop transports can be torpedoed....
Rendezvous is a fair
spy thriller almost ruined by an astonishingly unfunny
performance from Rosalind Russell, here playing one of the most
unbearable characters ever passed off as a film’s “heroine”. Of
course, this was 1935; a few years later, no American film would
have dreamed of finding humour in a girl pulling strings to get
her boyfriend kept from active war duty, nor indeed in her
interfering in his work at every opportunity, when any delay in
his cracking the enemy’s code will mean the death of thousands
of young Americans. Truthfully, it is unlikely whether Joel’s
blinkered and selfish obsession with Bill Gordon would have been
funny at any time, but in context it is quite horrifying. One
wonders how grafting (alleged) screwball humour onto a story
about the sinking of troop ships could ever have seemed like a
good idea. However, when Joel is out of the picture and the film
concentrates on its dramatic content, it remains engaging,
particularly the extended game of cat-and-mouse between Bill and
a charming lady spy, Olivia Karloff (Binnie Barnes); the tension
being significantly heightened by the fact that neither of the
combatants knows quite as much about the other as they think
they do. Rendezvous
is also bolstered by a fine supporting cast, including Lionel
Atwill and a very young and dashing Cesar Romero. The Return Of Doctor X (1939) “Interesting stuff, blood.” Rookie reporter Walt Garrett (Wayne Morris) is sent to interview stage actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys), but finds her stabbed to death – although strangely, there is no blood. Intent on establishing himself professionally, Garrett breaks the story in his paper before alerting the police, and when they do belatedly investigate, the body is gone. Not just gone: the next morning, Garrett and his editor are confronted with an ill-looking but definitely alive Angela Merrova, who threatens a lawsuit. The bewildered Garrett takes his case to his friend, Dr Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan). Their investigation leads them to a second murder, where the blood at the scene isn’t blood, and to researcher Dr Flegg, whose oddly pallid assistant bears a strange resemblance to a man executed for murder some years previously.... The Return Of Doctor X gets badmouthed a lot, but I find it both hilarious and fascinating: fascinating, because of what it reveals of the state of medicine at the time, with blood groups “1, 2, 3 and 4”, and professional blood donors, on call to be present during operations, because no-one had figured out how to store blood for transfusion. And hilarious because of, well, everything else! Like all Warners horror films, this one is acutely uncomfortable about being a horror film in the first place, and for the most part plays out like a straight mystery, with a puzzled reporter trying to make sense of things. But the reveal, when it comes, makes it all worthwhile: mad science, artificial blood, the living dead, and Humphrey Bogart in his only horror role! And never, my friends, never will you see any actor more uncomfortable in a part than Bogart is here, with his deathly (heh!) white face, a skunk stripe in his hair, and a bunny rabbit to cuddle. John Litel is the mad scientist (doctor, actually) who brings Marshall Quesne, aka Maurice Xavier, aka Doctor X, back from the dead so that he can have access to his brilliant scientific theories....and never mind that in life, those theories led Doctor X to starve a number of children to death! Despite its title, The Return Of Doctor X has to connection to Doctor X. On the other hand, in his makeup here, Humphrey Bogart bears an unmistakeable resemblance to one of the characters in the serial Dick Tracy, made two years earlier.
Ride Lonesome (1959) Ring Of Fire (1961) Two deputies in a smallRomance In Karel
Novak (Francis Lederer) arrives at Scene Of The Crime (1949) Off-duty detective Edward Monigan (G. Pat Collins) is shot and killed, apparently while guarding an illegal bookie shop. The discovery of a roll of cash on the body seems to confirm that Monigan was a cop gone bad. Monigan’s former partner, Mike Conovan (Van Johnson), is put in charge of the investigation, along with his current partner, Fred Piper (John McIntire), and rookie detective C.C. Gordon (Tom Drake). The investigation sees Conovan caught in the middle of a dangerous street war, a situation that puts intolerable pressure upon his marriage to Gloria (Arlene Dahl), a model; pressure increased still more when Conovan is forced by circumstances to pretend to romance Lili (Gloria DeHaven), the exotic dancer-girlfriend of one of his suspects.... Emanating from the same MGM B-unit that gave us Kid Glove Killer and Mystery Street, Scene Of The Crime maintains the gritty, noir-ish feel of its companion films but trades in forensic science for the police procedural. There is some difficulty about accepting Van Johnson as a tough-talking, two-fisted homicide detective; but the biggest problem here is that – good old MGM! – the film so gosh-darn polite, giving us a strip club where no-one takes their clothes off (Gloria DeHaven’s Lili actually has more on by the end of her act!), and some truly ludicrous “street language”: when a stoolie known as The Sleeper (Norman Lloyd) uses the word “stinkin’” in front of Gloria Conovan, he feels compelled to apologise for it. Still, while the specifics of the film seem horribly cliched these days – truthfully, this is to Police Squad as Zero Hour! is to Flying High – there are plenty of memorable moments in this that, for good or ill, keep you watching. The best, perhaps, is a throwaway remark from aggrieved private eye P.J. Pontiac (Robert Gist), after Conovan and Piper rescue him from the most recent in a line of beatings, blaming his professional woes on Humphrey Bogart: “He takes a punch and comes up smiling; I take a punch and come up pickled.” On the other hand, what on earth are we to make of a line of dialogue like, “Careful, Mr. Wiggly, or you'll have thirteen fish to fry and no little wormies to catch them with”? Whatever else it is, Scene Of The Crime is a fascinating look back at old-school policing: at the time when there was no such thing as that pesky “probable cause”; when breaking and entering was all in a day’s work; when an uncooperative suspect could be “persuaded” to talk by a scalding cup of coffee in the face. (To be fair, Conovan doesn’t actually do that; but by the way The Sleeper recoils when the detective picks up his coffee, we see clearly that he, at least, has been down that road before.) Yet for all its cliches, this film is unexpectedly progressive in its depiction of the Conovan marriage. Of course, all the usual problems and conflicts are there, and towards the end Gloria does decide (briefly) that she can’t take it any more; but underneath, the details are fascinating. Mike and Gloria have been married for four years, yet Gloria is still working, and is never criticised for doing so. She’s a model, and certainly earning more than Mike, a point that never comes up; nor do we ever catch the faintest hint of wounded male ego from Mike. An ex-boyfriend of Gloria's, a millionaire businessman, is still hanging around on the fringes; his presence annoys Mike, but it never occurs to him to be jealous, or to doubt Gloria. Matching her man, Gloria’s trust in Mike is absolute – even when he cancels on her to take Lili out nightclubbing – and he, in turn, proves entirely worthy of that trust. This is one of the most interesting, and heartening, marriages to be found in a film of this era, a real partnership of equals. The rest of Scene Of The Crime might be by-the-book stuff, but here it makes a worthy effort to break a little new ground.Shadow On The Wall (1950) David Starrling (Zachary Scott) begins to suspect that his second wife, Celia (Kristine Miller), is involved with another man, Crane Wymouth (Tom Helmore), who is the fiancé of her sister, Dell Faring (Ann Sothern). Finding evidence of an affair, David threatens Celia with a gun. She lashes out at him with a silver hand-mirror and knocks him unconscious. At that moment, Dell returns to the apartment to confront her sister over Crane – and ends up shooting Celia dead with David’s gun. As Dell slips away, David’s young daughter, Susan (Gigi Perreau), hidden in the shadows, screams and screams.... David is convicted of Celia’s murder and sentenced to death. Meanwhile, the traumatised Susan is placed under the care of child psychologist Dr Caroline Cranford (Nancy Davis), who begins to suspect that the girl saw something on the night of the murder that, could she be brought to remember it, might prove David’s innocence. Dr Cranford confides her suspicions to the girl’s one remaining relative – Dell Faring.... This is an effective and often disturbing little thriller. Its strongest point is the shifting character of Dell. At the outset sympathetic despite her impulsive killing of Celia, and even when she cannot find the courage to confess after David’s conviction, once Dell realises that Susan may be able to finger her as the real killer – and makes up her mind to do something about silencing her – this film moves into some unusually dark territory. This was an uncharacteristic role for the usually bubbly Sothern, and you get the feeling that she appreciated the change of pace. Gigi Perreau, aged only nine, is effective as the beleaguered Susan, particularly in the scene when she is taken to visit her father – and displays a complete lack of emotion. Jimmy Hunt also has a small role as a fellow patient of Susan’s, who very nearly becomes the accidental victim of one of Dell’s murderous schemes. Apart from its thriller aspects, Shadow On The Wall is another of the numerous post-war “justification of psychiatry” films, with Nancy Davis scoring as the dedicated Dr Cranford. It’s interesting how often in these films the psychiatrist is a woman. Of course, from a modern standpoint, the scariest thing about this film is the circumstances of David’s conviction and near-execution: these days, five minutes in the apartment for any halfway decent CSI team is all it would take to blow the entire “David” theory out of the water. C’est la morte.
She-Gods Of Shark Reef (1958)
Lee Johnston (Don Durant) – not his real name – flees the scene
of a botched arms theft and the killing of a security guard and
heads for the home of his brother, Christy (Bill Cord), on the
far side of the Big Island, The two make a run for it in
Christy’s boat, but a hurricane drives them onto a reef, where
the two become entangled in kelp and almost drowned. Their lives
are saved by the inhabitants of a small island, who pull them
from the water. The two men discover that this island is the
base of a pearl-diving operation, and that the female divers and
their supervisor, Pua (Jeanne Gerson), are the only inhabitants.
The brothers learn that in ten days, a boat from the company
will be visiting the island. Lee divides his time between
searching for another way off the island, in order to evade
capture, and obsessing over the cache of pearls he knows is in
Pua’s office, while Christy is attracted to one of the young
divers, Mahia (Lisa Montell). Meanwhile, the ocean storms
continue and the pearl yield drops; and Pua begins to consider
ways of placating Tangaroa, the angry shark-god who lives near
the reef.... In which Roger Corman takes a holiday in Hawaii,
and the rest of us pay for it. After filming
Naked Paradise,
Corman & Co. stuck around for another few days and slapped
together this tepid pseudo-adventure film. In a good print that
would show off the scenery,
She-Gods Of Shark Reef might be an acceptable time-waster, but as
things are, it’s a real slog. Nothing much happens, and no-one
is very interesting or likeable; even the usual compensating
Corman marginalia is largely absent, although I did find myself
increasingly intrigued by the workings of the mysterious
“Company”, and the question of whether they deposited these
women on this island in the first place, or whether they just
removed all the men. As usual when sharks are being offered up
as the Big Bad, they
come out of it a lot worse than the people do (a knifing scene
that I’m hoping was faked; the footage was certainly re-used, so
I can give them that); the one on-screen shark attack, which is
supposed to be our dramatic climax, is pretty ridiculous . There
are a few other amusing touches along the way here – like the
single flag semaphore system, and the stone head supposed to
represent Tangaroa the shark-god – but they’re hardly worth it. See El Santo’s full review here .The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw (1958) SOS Coast Guard (1937, 12 chapters)
When the S.S. Carfax is driven
onto rocks in a violent storm, decorated Coast Guard Lieutenant
Terry Kent (Ralph Byrd) is put in charge of the rescue; his
younger brother, Jim (Thomas Carr), is also involved. Reporter
Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle), covering the story, recognises one
of the rescued passengers as Boroff (Bela Lugosi), an
international criminal previously believed dead. Boroff was on
his way to the country of Morovania with a secret cache of the
radioactive element, amatite, the main component of a deadly
“disintegrating gas”. When Boroff flees, Jim Kent pursues him,
and is shot dead. An anguished Terry swears to bring Boroff to
justice, and to prevent the disintegrating gas falling into the
wrong hands.... SOS Coast
Guard is one of my favourite serials, a lively effort that
piles absurdity on top of absurdity, and in the end becomes a
battle between the good guys and the bad guys to determine which
of them is the more incompetent. (The bad guys win, but only
just.) Of course, any serial with Bela as chief bad guy has a
good head start – although truthfully we don’t see as much of
him as we’d like. (By the way--- “Boroff”? The
Carfax? Cute.)
Still, there are any number of bizarrely twisted plot points
here that hold the attention even in Bela’s absence. Take, for
instance, Thorg (Richard Alexander), Boroff’s devoted, bald,
mute, lobotomised henchman, who spends most of the story
stripping off to his swimmers and trying to drown people –
mostly Terry Kent, and mostly unsuccessfully. (There’s an
underling bad guy whose primary duty seems to be collecting
Thorg’s discarded clothing.) It is, of course, revealed that
Boroff was the one who lobotomised Thorg in the first
place....guess how that
relationship ends? Recognised in the first episode, Boroff
reacts by adopting a cunning disguise:
he
shaves off his goatee.
“Those fools will never penetrate my disguise!” he later
declares, apparently in all seriousness. The absolutely
highlight of this serial, however, is the cover adopted by
Boroff and his men as they try to salvage the amatite from the
sunken ship: they pose as
kelp farmers....and this in spite of the fact that none of
Boroff’s goons ever wear anything but the standard issue
thirties suit, tie and hat. Somehow seeing through this cunning
disguise, Terry and Jean visit the dockside warehouse where the
“kelp farmers” work, on the pretext of Jean writing a story
about kelp farming for her paper. (Alas, we are not privileged
to listen in to that interview. I wonder what on earth she
asked?) But apart from all these marvels, there is something
else that makes SOS Coast
Guard stand out from its brethren. There’s an Odious Comic
Relief here, of course – of
course. It’s Jean’s
bumbling photographer, Snapper McGee (Lee Ford), whose schtick
consists primarily of his inability ever to get his camera and
tripod set up at the right time and right place, complete with
much tripping over and falling off places as he backs away to
get his shot. None of this is remotely funny, of course – of
course. And
yet....when Snapper isn’t failing miserably at being amusing,
he’s actually, well, useful. Mostly it’s accidental, like when he reveals the whereabouts
of the hidden amatite, or discovers how the disintegrating gas
is being smuggled out of the country; but sometimes it is
actually intentional. For instance, at the end of the first
episode, when he and Jean become trapped on the sinking
Carfax, Snapper
quickly lets off some distress flares. Several other times he
either sends for help or helps out himself, putting himself in
considerable danger. Anyway, you can imagine my bemusement when,
about midway through the third episode, I found myself
verbally standing up for
the Odious Comic Relief. Loudly. Emphatically. It will be
some time before I recover from the shock of it, believe you
me.... I guess the lesson here is that, even as in the kingdom
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, in a story where
everyone is an idiot, the Idiot Savant can come out of it
looking okay. As for the others, Ralph Byrd makes an energetic hero,
and courageously did his own stunts – although my opinion of him
as the worst fake fighter ever is certainly confirmed. Jean
Norman is one of those reporters who never actually goes to work
(she just follows Terry around: more press agent than reporter);
also, she has a brother who’s a scientist, and who naturally
contributes much hilarity. (Maxine Doyle would later marry the
serial's co-director, William Whitney.) The bonus for me, though, was the
reappearance of John Piccori, the unforgettable Moloch of the
serial
Dick Tracy.
Here he’s Rackerby, a weak-willed scientist pressed into
Boroff’s service, and as entertaining as ever. All in all,
highly recommended.
Things I Learned From Watching This SerialTM: 2. In 1937, the Coast Guard was the pre-eminent American law enforcement agency. 3. In 1937, the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction included 5. Kelp farmers RULE!!
Split Second (1992)
WTF!? “Confusing”
barely begins to describe this muddled science fiction outing,
which actually challenges
The Dark for its sheer inability to make up its mind what it’s about
and what its monster is. We know how
The Dark got the way
it is; Lord knows who was responsible for this mess. It’s “The
Future” – and global warming has had its way with the world,
resulting in a
The Storm (1938)
Surviving The Game (1994)
Sword Of The Valiant (1982) Third Finger, Left Hand (1940) Magazine editor Margot Sherwood Merrick (Myrna Loy) invents a husband in order to hold onto her job, a position that she knows her lecherous publisher’s jealous wife would never allow her to occupy if Margot weren’t a married woman. A chance encounter with artist Jeff Thompson (Mervyn Douglas) leads to romance, but the straight-laced Thompson walks out in disgust when he discovers that Margot is married. Hurt but unable to forget, Thompson begins to investigate the mysteriously absent “Merrick”, and upon proving to his own satisfaction that there is no such person, he punishes Margot for her deception by publicly announcing himself to be
The
Three Musketeers (1933, 12 episodes) In the Things I Learned From Watching This SerialTM: every single Arab in the world is called El Something-or-other. Treasure Of The Jamaica Reef (1975) |
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