Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

A BULLET FOR JOEY (1955)

Shortly before Cecil B. DeMille granted Edward G. Robinson unofficial pardon from Hollywood’s ‘Gray List’ with a role in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56, Eddie G. was wrapping up a half-decade of Pinko Purgatory with two underwhelming B pics for Lewis Allen. The second one, ILLEGAL/’55, with Eddie as mob lawyer, limps along, but still bests this lame effort. George Raft co-stars as an exiled, nearly immobile crime boss who sneaks into Canada, with his old gang right behind him, to grab an atomic ‘device’ & scientist. Robinson, sedate but inexorable as the inspector on his trail, manages to add some class, say his idiotic lines and not simply walk thru the script’s inanities. No small accomplishment when even Audrey Totter, stalwart noir sleaze-pot seems embalmed. Yet, what an apt little story for Eddie G. to take on! Rooting out a Commie atomic spy ring when, back in the real world, his career was under a cloud from Hollywood's Commie Witch Hunt. Irony surely not lost on the great actor.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Just before Eddie got tagged by the Hollywood ultra-Right as a dangerous ‘Premature-Anti-Fascist’ (damn ‘modern’ art collector, too!), he turned in one of his best perfs in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s underrated/underseen HOUSE OF STRANGERS/’49.

No comments: