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
Ghost
City (1944, 13 chapters)
Towards the end of the Civil War, Captain Steve Clark (Dennis
Moore) of the Secret Service is sent to California to investigate the hijacking of gold shipments
intended for the Union by a band of Confederates led by Captain
Clay Randolph (Regis Toomey), a West Point classmate of
Clark’s. Enemy agents become aware of Clark, and
even before he gets near California he owes his life to one “Idaho” Jones (Joe Sawyer), a Wells Fargo
detective sent west to investigate the murder of his
predecessor, whose daughter, Cathy Haines (Wanda McKay), now
runs the Wells Fargo office in Oro Grande. It soon transpires
that the Confederates themselves are being used; that the
raiders supposedly working with Clay Randolph are actually in
the employ of Alex Morel (Lionel Atwill), a local saloon owner
harbouring a deadly secret. Randolph
discovers the truth, but is killed before he can tell
Clark. His only clue a number of coins from
different countries, all bearing the date 1752, Clark teams with
Idaho and Cathy to thwart the gold raiders and to reveal their
secret identities.... This is for the most part a serviceable
serial, filled with the usual gun-play, dashing back and forth
and death traps. (My favourite is when Steve Clark is trapped in
a wooden container that is filling with water. Do try not to
notice that his mouth is still above the surface when the
container starts to overflow.) However, it takes on additional
interest through its integration of real historical events,
sometimes outrageously inaccurately, sometimes closer to the
mark. As part of the raiders’ schemes, they try to stir the
local Indians to revolt; they are held in check by the promise
of a personal message from “the Great White Chief”, only that
message never comes: it is April, 1865. Having the characters
react to Lincoln’s assassination
gives an unexpected depth to the later stages of this serial,
which is also put to immediate dramatic purpose:
Clark
needs desperately to send a telegram, but cannot get it through:
the wires, coast to coast, are jammed with the dreadful news.
While consistently entertaining, over its final few chapters
this serial really builds up a head of steam, becoming
suspenseful and exciting as the long-threatened Indian revolt
finally happens, and the final showdown between the good guys
and the bad guys takes place. Dennis Moore is a serviceable
hero, and Wanda McKay a fair heroine (she’s more the “dashing to
get help” kind than the “pitch in” kind, but at least she’s not
a fainter); but no-one can compete with yet another
pitch-perfect villainous performance from Lionel Atwill as Morel
– although he is
well-supported by Virginia Christine as Trina Dressard, a saloon
singer who never gets further into a song that the first four
bars. Perhaps we should be grateful. Of course these two have a
terrible secret; and it is (this being made in 1944) that they
are, ahem, Prussians;
and that their mission is to use the stolen American gold to buy Alaska from the Russians. Cheek!
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
province
of Ranchipur.
While Allen is buying horses from the Maharani (Eugenie
Leontovich), Edwina meets and embarks upon a passionate affair
with the local surgeon-saint, Dr Rama Safti (Richard Burton).
Obstacles arise first in human form, with violent opposition
from the Maharani and Safti’s best friend, Tom Ransome (Fred
MacMurray), and later as Acts of God, with flooding rain, a
collapsing dam and an earthquake tearing the lovers apart. While
The Rains Of Ranchipur
probably comes under the general heading of “unnecessary
re-make”, it isn’t completely without merit. Where this version
scores points is in its refusal to shy away from the fact that
Edwina is, in fact, a thoroughly nasty bit of work, a real use-’em-and-dump-’em
type who bought her husband for his title and gets her kicks by
humiliating him. Where it stumbles is in not spending nearly
enough time – as The
Rains Came, conversely, intelligently does – on the critical
period between the meeting, and instant physical attraction, of
Edwina and Safti, and the time when they are “in love”.
Consequently, Edwina’s reformation is never really convincing.
However, the film’s frankness about the nature of the
relationship between the two is very daring considering when it
was made: this is the earliest film I know of to depict
consensual physical contact between a white woman and an Asian
or a Eurasian man. (Even if it
is Burton
in brownface. As we B-Masters learned during our “So Sorry”
Roundtable, the later a piece of racial impersonation comes, the
more offensive it seems; and certainly
Burton’s character here jars in a way
that Tyrone Power’s did not. Perhaps it’s the colour
photography? In truth, they don’t darken Burton too much; just enough to make his blue
eyes distractingly obvious.) Also startling is Edwina’s
admission that, had she succeeded in seducing Safti at the
outset, he would have been just one more notch on her belt, a
memory of “the one with brown skin”; and that the Maharani’s
rage against Edwina, for all that she refers to Safti as “her
son”, is obviously provoked by sexual jealousy. The other
interesting aspect of this version is that it was a contemporary
production, its events therefore taking place after
India’s liberation. Thus we
learn that Safti has spent time in jail as a follower of Ghandi;
while the Maharani is only a figurehead, a relic of earlier days
with no real power. Other updatings do not work as well,
particularly not the substitution of a post-war-lost-idealist
Tom Ransome for the wastrel-younger-son-packed-off-to-India
Ransome of The Rains Came. The Rains Of
Ranchipur is, finally, less a good film than a film of good
moments. I am particularly fond of the reaction of the Christian
missionary who has nursed Edwina through a near-fatal illness to
the arrival of Safti at her bedside: a beaming smile and a
cheerful, “She’ll be all right now that
you’re here!” I
do like my missionaries broadminded, don’t you? But the highlight,
undoubtedly, is when the news of Edwina’s illness reaches Safti
via her cuckolded husband. “In his ignorance,” says Esketh with
infinite bitterness, “the
messenger came to me instead of to you....”
(Speaking of racial impersonation: the white actor smothered in
dark make-up and playing the local chief of police is none other
than John Banner.)
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)
A good way to start an argument amongst western buffs
is to ask, “Which is the best of the Randolph Scott-Budd
Boetticher films?” This tense psychological drama is the one for
my money. Bounty hunter Scott is escorting callow killer James
Best to Santa Cruz
for hanging, knowing that his vengeful elder brother Lee Van
Cleef is on their heels. Along the way, Scott enters into an
uneasy alliance with former outlaws Pernell Roberts and James
Coburn, who can win an amnesty for their crimes if they are the
ones to deliver Best. The screenplay (by Burt Kennedy) then
proceeds to trap its characters, and the viewer, in a moral
quagmire, offering up a villain who has committed one of the
vilest acts imaginable....only it was a long time ago, and it
kind of slipped his mind; a “hero” who hunts men for a living,
and who is so consumed by schemes of revenge that he has lost
sight of all ethical considerations; and an honourable outlaw
who wants nothing more than to go straight and settle down – and
if he has to kill a friend to achieve that goal, well, that’s
just too bad.... We know what to anticipate from Scott and Van
Cleef; the unexpected pleasure of
Ride Lonesome is the
work of its supporting cast, with James Coburn (in his debut) a
delight as the loyal but thick-headed Wiley, and a remarkably
fine and nuanced performance from Pernell Roberts. At only 73
minutes, Ride Lonesome
is a masterpiece of efficiency in story-telling, and a perfect
riposte to those people who say they dislike westerns because
they’re “simplistic”.
Ring Of Fire (1961)
Two deputies in a small Oregon town arrest three
young adults wanted over a gas station hold-up. On the road to
the sheriff’s station, the female of the trio, Bobbie Anderson
(Joyce Taylor), manages to slip a concealed gun to Frank
Henderson (Frank Gorshin). Steve Walsh (David Janssen) offers
himself as a hostage on condition that his partner, who is
married with children, is released. As the local sheriff (Ron
Myron) gathers a posse consisting of the local loggers, the
criminals and their hostage abandon their car and proceed on
foot ever deeper into the woods. The tension of the situation
continues to escalate, due to Roy Anderson’s (James Johnson)
drinking and temper, Bobbie’s teasing advances to Steve, and
Frank’s insistence on smoking, at the height of the driest
summer the area has ever known....
Ring Of Fire is an
uneven but interesting action/adventure film. It suffers
particularly from its dialogue –
way too many
“Daddy-O”-s and such – but it is consistently interesting, and
the climactic fire sequence is spectacular and frightening.
After several feints – the hostage situation, the hijacking of a
car, the near shooting of a motorcycle cop, the uneasy
relationship between kidnappers and hostage, the former reliant
upon the latter’s woodcraft for their survival – the story
begins to focus upon the intriguing but worrying relationship
that develops between Steve and Bobbie, the latter of whom
taunts and ridicules Steve, but twice saves his life from her
trigger-tempered and far more hardened criminal associates. (It
all starts when Bobbie sneers at Steve for not searching her. He
tells her that it’s policy not to search females.
“In spite of the risk?” “Because
of the risk.”) Despite his profession, Steve has evidently led a
fairly sheltered life; he is appalled by the grim details that
Bobbie casually reveals about herself. She, in turn, hardly
knows how to respond to someone who is, all too obviously, the
first decent man she’s ever met. (It is implied – pretty
clearly, considering when this was made – that Bobbie has no
idea how to relate to a man other than sexually.) Steve, on the
other hand, knows very well that he’s being played, but wants
very much to believe that Bobbie isn’t as bad as she seems. At
the critical moment we get a fade to black. We know what that
usually means, of course – but here it takes on a whole new
importance when the newly re-arrested Frank takes revenge on
Steve by revealing that Bobbie is only seventeen and accusing
him of statutory rape. All of this, however, and a great deal
more, becomes essentially irrelevant when Frank’s discarded
cigarette sets off a tinder-box in the woods, forcing the entire
population of a town to be evacuated. The only way out is a
train belonging to a logging company, which is forced to travel
over a rickety wooden bridge, around which the flames are
already growing.... There are some good performances here,
particularly from David Janssen and Frank Gorshin; although from
my point of view the most interesting thing about this film is
how much more likeable Joyce Taylor is playing a bad girl here
than she was playing the heroine of
Atlantis, The Lost Continent the same year. The location photography
is very beautiful – this was partially set and shot in Olympic
National Park – and, evidently, the remains of the train and the
bridge from the climax still lie at the bottom of a gorge along
the Wynoochee
River in Washington State.
Romance In Manhattan
(1935)Karel
Novak (Francis Lederer) arrives at Ellis
Island to be greeted by the news that while he was
in transit, the American authorities raised the sum necessary
for an immigrant to enter the country from $50 to $200. Faced
with being sent back to
Czechoslovakia, the desperate Novak jumps
overboard, swimming ashore in New York but losing his money in the process.
At first too overwhelmed by his surroundings to worry about his
circumstances, hunger finally drives Novak to steal the
leftovers from a meal put out for the cast of a Broadway show.
Caught by chorus girl Sylvia Dennis (Ginger Rogers), Novak
convinces her of both his need and his sincerity. Sylvia takes
Novak home with her, lending him blankets so that he can sleep
on the roof of her apartment building. Novak sets about earning
the $200 he needs to stay in the country; while Sylvia has
problems of her own, as she is threatened with losing custody of
her young brother, Frankie (Jimmy Butler), who plays truant from
school in order to earn money as a news-boy. Novak and Sylvia
begin to fall in love, as the authorities begin to close in on
them both.... Romance In
Manhattan is a charming yet rather curious little film. At
first glance one of the many “American rapture” movies that
proliferated at the time, at closer inspection the film is more
clear-eyed and critical than you might anticipate. For example,
Karel Novak’s constant acclamation of his new home is cruelly
undercut by a subplot involving a shyster who cleans him out and
then turns him in to Immigration. There are also some points
that probably look different in retrospect than they did at the
time. Novak finds employment as a cab-driver; when a strike is
called, he immediately hires himself out as scab labour, an act
interpreted only as a praiseworthy willingness to work. No
thought that unionism and striking might be among the American
freedoms that Novak has been eulogising ever intrudes. This
interlude is rather at odds with the “one for all” feel that
otherwise permeates this Depression-era production, as Novak,
Sylvia and Frankie pitch in to help one another out. But neither
Novak nor Sylvia can evade their respective nemeses forever; and
it takes an unlikely Deus
ex machina in the shape of the nicest, friendliest, most
corrupt group of New York cops ever to
save the day. This was one of Ginger Rogers’ most important
early roles, and the shifting moods of the story allow her to
show her range. Francis Lederer, an underrated actor, is very
appealing as Novak. Lederer’s own range would allow him, over
the course of a long career, to move from romantic and comedic
parts, as here, to convincing horror movie roles in films such
as The Return Of Dracula and
Terror Is A Man....although his most frightening performance
would come in Jean Renoir’s version of
Diary Of A Chambermaid.
Rome
Express (1932)
The eponymous train speeds between Paris
and Rome
with a motley collection of travellers on board, among them the
perpetrator of a startling art theft (Donald Calthrop).
Unfortunately for him, the two confederates that he is betraying (Conrad Veidt and
Hugh Williams) are also on the train....and unfortunately for
all three of them, the mild-mannered, fussy, eccentric
entomologist down the carriage (Frank Vosper) turns out to be
one of the leading detectives from the Sûreté. Drawn into the
conflict are a number of the other passengers, all of whom have
something to hide, including the movie star with a dark past
(Esther Ralston), the adulterous wife who’s having second
thoughts (Joan Barry), and the avaricious, cold-blooded
“philanthropist” (Cedric Hardwicke) and his worm-may-turn
secretary (Eliot Makeham). This is the great grand-daddy of
all train thrillers
and, for screenwriter Sidney Gilliat, a dry run for
The Lady Vanishes six
years later, which takes everything but its central situation
from this film.
(Train-ophile Gilliat also worked on the first version of
The Ghost Train and the comedy thriller Seven Sinners.) The film is also important for initiating the
British career of Conrad Veidt, who exudes menacing charm as the
leader of the criminal gang. Great fun.
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)
Here’s an embarrassing confession: I
love this film! About
equidistant between
Destry Rides Again and
Blazing Saddles sits
this good-natured fish-out-of-water comedy, which sees
mild-mannered Englishman Kenneth More venturing into the wild,
wild west in order to bolster the sales of his family’s
long-founded but failing gunsmiths firm, and in the course of a
few eventful days, earning himself a reputation as a deadly
shot, being appointed sheriff of a frontier town, settling a
range war, making peace with and being adopted into the local
Indian tribe, and romancing saloon owner Jayne Mansfield – all
of it more or less accidentally. Good support is given by Robert
Morley, Henry Hull, Bruce Cabot, William Campbell and – as
More’s “father” – Chief Jonas Applegarth; while the freakazoid
romantic pairing of More and Mansfield works far better than it has any
right to – much like the film itself. (“I couldn’t fall for a
local idiot,” fumes
Mansfield
at one point. “I had to go for the
international kind.”)
No doubt director Raoul Walsh had made enough westerns by this
stage in his career to thoroughly enjoy skewering their
clichés....but there’s no feeling of contempt for such films
here, just a sense of fun. And without wanting to spoil things
for anyone, I may say that the closing exchange between More and
Mansfield
has been a running joke in my household for years.
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:
1. It sucks to be Ralph Byrd’s brother.
2. In 1937, the Coast Guard was the pre-eminent American law
enforcement agency.
3. In 1937, the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction included
Hawaii
and inland
Canada.
4. If boats do not respond to being hailed, it is
perfectly legal for the Coast Guard to shell them and blow them
and their occupants out of the water.
5. Kelp farmers RULE!!
Quote:
“You might as well
surrender, Boroff! You can’t get away from the Coast Guard!”
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 London
that’s flooded, polluted, rat-infested and rife with disease.
(This may indeed be one of the earliest examples of the
environmental warning sub-genre, but this stuff is only there to
look kewl in a
distinctly sub-Blade
Runner sort of way.) A killer is on the loose, ripping out
the hearts of his victims; and apparently in the believe that it
takes a psychopath to catch a psychopath, chocolate-munching,
caffeine-guzzling, heavy ordnance-toting Harley Stone (Rutger
Hauer) is brought back from suspension and teamed up with
suit-wearing, university-educated, health food nibbling Dick
Durkin (Neil Duncan). They’re the original odd couple! And
together, they fight crime! Apparently operating under the
delusion that this isn’t quite enough clichés for us to be going
on with, the film opens with Stone visiting a strip club. Then
we learn that Stone’s partner was killed before his eyes by the
same killer. And that Stone was having an affair with his
partner’s wife. And that Stone is somehow in psychic contact
with the killer. You following all this? Pay attention, I’ll be
asking questions. After teasing us with everything from a giant
rat to an actual satanic manifestation, the film proceeds to
serve up a monster so unabashedly copied from
Alien, you almost
have to admire its
chutzpah. Lost in this mess are Michael J. Pollard, playing
exactly the same role after all these years; Pete Postlethwaite;
and the late, great Ian Dury. Also, Kim Cattrall shows up in her
Undiscovered Country
’do and flashes her boobs in a textbook example of the
Gratuitous Shower Scene. Look, I’m not saying that
Split Second isn’t
entertaining. Just don’t try to make sense of it. Your head
might explode.
Click
here to see if anyone else can make sense
of this film.
The Storm (1938)
Close, but no cigar. Had the climax of this film occupied more
of its running-time, or if it had not just cut to “afterwards”
without resolving anything, I might have made a ruling in the
other direction, but as it is I can’t really call this a
disaster movie. What it
is, unfortunately, is one of those films where the alleged
“hero” behaves like a complete arsehole from start to finish,
and yet we’re supposed to sympathise with him. Bob Roberts
(Charles Bickford), wireless operator for the Globe Steamship
Line, is good enough at his job that his employers turn a blind
eye to the fact that he is also a drinking, brawling, womanising,
completely obnoxious jerk. In England, Roberts catches up with
old friend Jack Stacey (Preston Foster) who, since they last
met, has married and had a child, and is soon to transfer to a
land job. Stacey’s settling down makes Roberts ponder his own
footloose existence and his future. The friends' ships both get
caught in fog near a dangerous ice-drift. Captain Kelly (Samuel
S, Hinds) takes all precautions in spite of his perishable
cargo; but Captain Cogswell (Barton MacLane) presses ahead with
disastrous consequences. The
Astoria goes to the
rescue of the Capricorn,
collecting the entire crew from three life-boats---all except
Stacey. Cogswell insists that he was killed on board, but
Roberts knows from the time of Stacey’s last radio message that
Cogswell left him behind... Considering his loss, Roberts is
granted a furlough. However, his visit home is marred by the
revelation that his kid brother, Jim (Tom Brown), has qualified
as a wireless operator and intends to follow in his footsteps.
Furthermore, Jim is engaged to Peggy (Nan Grey), a nurse on the
Global Line, who, because of a misunderstanding, Roberts
believes is a chippy taking advantage of Jim and treats
accordingly. Roberts suffers another terrible blow when the
Astoria is destroyed
in an explosion, just after he transfers off. The final straw is
his discovery that Jim and Peggy have both obtained postings on
the Orion, and plan
to be married at the end of their passage. Roberts arranges a
post on the Orion for
himself, discovering too late that the captain is Cogswell.
Peggy is worried about Jim’s health and tries to persuade him
not to sail, but the boy allows Roberts’ jeering to bait him
into staying on the job. It is a decision all three will
bitterly regret. Jim collapses with acute appendicitis, there is
no doctor on board, and the
Orion is heading into
a savage storm... See? See? But---no, it just doesn’t
feel right, in the
end; not even when The
Storm sets up a scenario of Peggy having to drain Jim’s
infected appendix during the storm, via medical advice from
shore, with the radio-tower hit by lightning just as she is
about to make her incision... The film is worth watching just
for this sequence, but be warned: the majority of its
running-time is devoted to the thoroughly unlikeable Roberts and
his rude, stupid, drunken, violent behaviour.
Surviving The Game (1994)
I’m not sure the world really needed yet another riff on “The
Most Dangerous Game”, but this one benefits from an absurdly
good cast: Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham, Charles
S. Dutton and Ice-T as the “prey”. Taking a cue from the
previous year’s Hard Target, Surviving The
Game has homeless men being sent into the wilderness on the
pretext of being hired as hunting guides, only to learn too late
that the job description wasn’t entirely accurate. (Although how
anyone could find themselves in the middle of nowhere with
Rutger Hauer and Gary Busey and
not immediately intuit that they’re in deep doo-doo is beyond
me.) There’s nothing
here we haven’t seen before, but of all the versions of “The
Most Dangerous Game”, this is probably the one where you most
want to see the hunters get theirs. Anyway, even if you don’t
like it, you can at least enjoy the stunning location
photography: this is the rare film that has
Washington
State played
by Washington State, and not by British Columbia. (Understand, this is from
someone who watches First
Blood for the scenery.) And hey! – Charles S. Dutton dies!
Aren’t you astonished?
Sword Of The Valiant (1982)
At a Christmas gathering, an old and crusty King Arthur (Trevor
Howard) berates his knights for growing lazy and complacent. The
festivities are further interrupted by the Green Knight (Sean
Connery), who proposes a game: one of those present will strike
at him with an axe. If they succeed in decapitating him with one
blow, they win; otherwise,
he will get one strike back. To the disgust of both Arthur
and the Knight, no-one speaks – until Gawain (Miles O’Keeffe), a
mere squire, steps forward. After being knighted by the king,
Gawain strikes at the Green Knight and severs his head at a blow
– then looks on in horrified disbelief as the body picks the
head up and re-attaches it. Impressed by Gawain’s courage, the
Green Knight stays his hand, giving the young knight a riddle
and a year in which to solve it – and a warning that if he
fails, the fate deferred will be meted out.... Released in the
wake of successful fantasy productions such as
Excalibur and
Conan The Barbarian,
Sword Of The Valiant
is a pretty minor effort. (It’s a Golan-Globus, which speaks for
itself.) A definite product of the “one damn thing after
another” school of story-telling, the film suffers badly from
the fact that, well, Gawain’s adventures just aren’t that
interesting. It’s also badly paced – there’s no sense of time
passing, or of Gawain’s gruesome fate drawing ever nearer – and
we are given no particular reason to care about Gawain and Linet,
whose love story is resolved (sort of) with comical abruptness.
Cursed with the worst wig in the history of film-making, and
wearing a puffy shirt that could make your eyeballs bleed, Miles
O’Keeffe turns Gawain into a “hero” to weep for. His first two
acts out in the big wide world are to attempt to kill a unicorn
for food (!!), and to realise that he should have asked for
instructions on how to “relieve himself”
before he put the armour on. It goes downhill from there. The film
brightens up a bit with the arrival of Brian Vosper as a
criminally inclined friar and John Rhys-Davies (of course) as
the evil Baron Fortinbras – a graduate, evidently, of the Brian
Blessed School of Bluster – but Peter Cushing is criminally
wasted as Fortinbras’ chancellor. Trevor Howard gives us an
interesting Arthur, though, and the film is probably worth
watching just for the chance to see Sean Connery in green
face-paint and spangles. (Of course, those of you who have just
seen him in a nappy might disagree.)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
Merrick. As circumstances grow increasingly
complicated, Margot tries to rid herself of her “husband”, only
to realise that she cannot do it without a divorce – and that
the only way she can divorce him is to marry him in the first
place.... Third Finger,
Left Hand is a let-down. After starting out looking like a
seriously-intentioned albeit comedic examination of the
difficulties of career women during the forties, it ends up in
blithe agreement with the male philosophy that Margot denounces
so scornfully at the outset, that “single woman have no reason
to be in the workplace, except as a way of attracting men”:
after putting herself through hoops in order to hold onto her
career, Margot ends up tossing it all away and pursuing Thompson
literally across the country, apparently forgetting that she has
a career at all. Moreover, the puritanical and smugly superior
Thompson is, frankly, rather unlikeable; as so often in these
kind of movies, the second male lead – Lee Bowman as company
lawyer Phillip Booth – seems a much more attractive prospect,
yet is dismissed without a second thought. Still, the film very
nearly redeems itself with two late sequences. The first is
when, after a Niagara Falls wedding, Margot and Jeff encounter friends
from his home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio – and Margot exacts full revenge on her
“husband” by posing as a slang-slinging, gum-snapping
Brooklynite. (One does wonder where the refined and aristocratic
Margot learnt such language.) The second comes when Margot and
Jeff are on their way to Reno, Phillip along to negotiate the
settlement (and to marry Margot, so he hopes). Desperate to
stall, Jeff inquires of Sam (Ernest Whitman), the conductor, if
there might by another lawyer on board, only to learn that Sam
himself is studying law by correspondence – and that, on the
basis of his time-consuming obfusculation of Phillip, he has the
makings of a very excellent lawyer, too. The funny and
uncondescending use of a black character in such a role in a
film of this vintage (and from this studio) is unexpected and
refreshing.
The
Three Musketeers (1933, 12 episodes)
In the desert of Algiers, a troop of soldiers is under
attack by the forces of a mysterious individual known as "El
Shaitan", who is leading an Arab revolt against the Foreign
Legion. The lives of the last three men, Clancy (Jack Mulhall),
Renard (Raymond Hatton) and Schmidt (Francis X. Bushman Jr), are
saved when Lt Tom Wayne (John Wayne), from the American embassy
in Paris,
fires upon the attacking Arabs from his plane. Clancy explains
that they were trying to stop a caravan that was running guns.
The three grateful soldiers laugh that they are “the Three
Musketeers” and Tom their D’Artagnon; the four swear eternal
friendship. Tom then travels on to visit his sweetheart, Elaine
Corday (Ruth Hall), and her brother, Armand (Creighton Chaney).
Armand, however, has a deadly secret: he has been blackmailed
into helping El Shaitan, and was with the caravan. El Shaitan
declares Tom an enemy, and orders Armand to use him and his
embassy connections to bring another shipment of arms into the
country. Armand does so, but the ruse is discovered; and Tom, in Paris, finds himself accused as a gun-runner.
Escaping back to North Africa,
Tom gets the truth out of Armand, who is then killed by El
Shaitan. Tom is found standing over the body, and is soon wanted
for both gun-running and
murder.... The opening credits of this serial insist that it is
“a modern version of the famous story”, but any resemblance
between this serial and M. Dumas’ novel is, as they say,
entirely coincidental. You can also forget anything you ever
heard about the iron discipline of the Foreign Legion: when they
aren’t either breaking into their CO’s office, or breaking their
pal Tom out of military prison,
these Three
Musketeers spend most of their time in town, eating and drinking
and – [*shudder*] –
singing in taverns,
and brawling in the street; they get positively indignant when
asked to perform any actual, you know,
duties. The main
problem with
The Three Musketeers
is that is never lives up to its exciting and quite complex
first episode, but devolves into repetitive scenes of riding
back and forth across the desert, and white people sneaking
around dressed up as “Arabs”. Actually, this latter aspect is
one of this serial’s more pleasing absurdities, particularly
when Tom Wayne, a foot taller than anyone else, and with his
military boots and his
tie showing, is supposed to be impenetrably disguised, to
the point where he can infiltrate the band of Arab rebels
without being detected. (Of course, it helps that, although they
know Tom is onto them, the rebels never change their password!)
At this point in his career, John Wayne is still incredibly
awkward, far more at home in his action scenes than in those
with dialogue. Ruth Hall is an adequate heroine, mercifully the
dashing-across-the-desert kind, rather than the
stand-around-screaming kind. (She attempts a French accent for
about five minutes during the first episode, then forgets about
it.) Lon Chaney Jr, still billed as “Creighton”, gives one of
his best early performances as the tormented Armand. Noah Beery
Jr also shows up for just long enough to get shot in the back;
while that’s legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt under the mask as
“El Shaitan” (although it isn’t his voice).
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)
Some people whose identities I didn’t really catch, for reasons
that were never quite clear (hey, blame overloud music in the
expository scenes), travel to the West Indies to search for a
famous sunken galleon and a long-lost cave supposedly containing
treasure from it, after securing sole international salvage
rights for the operation. However, two other people (never quite
clear about them, either) get wind of the arrangement and plan
to let the salvagers do all the hard work before stepping in to
relieve them of any finds. Things don’t do quite to plan for
them: hand-grenade + boat = explosion so powerful it doesn’t
even leave debris. This movie was shot on location, and it is
evident that the actors enjoyed the experience very much; the
production also had repercussions for two of its participants,
inasmuch as the Cheryl Stoppelmoor “introduced” here later
married her co-star David Ladd. However, about 80% of this film
consists of scuba-diving scenes, so approach with caution. The
film has the expected leisurely pace, but does manage to build
some suspense when, forced by circumstance to take on the grim
task of recovering occupied coffins from a sunken liner, one of
the salvagers becomes trapped in the wreck with a very limited
supply of air. Stephen Boyd, Chuck Woolery and David Ladd are
the main salvagers, with Rosey Grier lending a hand; Darby
Hinton is a young hanger-on; and Ms Stoppelmoor provides set
decoration by wandering around in a skimpy bikini. On all the
available evidence, no animals were harmed in the making of this
motion picture. However, a visit to the IMDb would suggest that
my print was cut, as there are references there to a murder
scene that never happened (and yes, reading the fine print we
see a credit for “re-editing”). As things stand, film’s
alternative title, Evil
In The Deep, makes no sense whatsoever. Possibly the film
was re-named at a later date, to cash in on
The Deep.
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