TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (1966)

Known Stateside as the writer of LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD/’61, this larky Alain Robbe-Grillet’s ‘meta’- espionage film, which he also directed, is cleverly worked out, if a tad too long to sustain its amusing conceit. Wily Kurant, fresh off lensing Jean-Luc Godard’s MASCULIN FÉMININ, gives it jangly allure with ‘stolen’ street shots and glistening surfaces on the eponymous train as a film producer/director team (plus secretary with tape recorder) spitball ideas for a cocaine smuggling thriller that might star . . . why, there’s Jean-Louis Trintignant in the corridor. And quicker than you can say action, we’ve cut straight into an ever changing narrative (two steps forward/one step back continuity) as the film execs brainstorm over changes to the storyline, with Jean-Louis playing either himself or a character in their film story. Or is Trintignant himself the character we’re following? Various plot possibilities all handled without a moment’s confusion (eat your heart out Charlie Kaufman & Pirandello) and with just enough scandalous S&M sex stuff in the scenes set in Antwerp to shock a 1966 audience into imagining they’re getting something extra naughty instead of something experimental & non-linear in time, place, story & characterization. Yet never becoming a dry intellectual puzzle. Good juicy fun most of the way.

THE MIGHTY MCGURK (1946)

Late Wallace Beery vehicle leans back to THE CHAMP to glean a bit of the father/son sentiment that made it such a hit for M-G-M back in ‘31. In this one, Beery’s an ex-champ, a Bowery institution fronting Edward Arnold’s popular bar and now charged with running a pesky Salvation Army outfit off the block. (Especially since Army Sargent Cameron Mitchell is sweet on Arnold’s daughter Dorothy Patrick.) That’s where little immigrant orphan Dean Stockwell comes in, sticking to surrogate Dad Berry like glue while working on an accent somewhere between cute Hollywood Irish & posh Hollywood British as they hunt up his only living relative. A reasonable construct of a plot, but everyone’s just going thru the motions, in front and behind the camera. Particularly second-unit man John Waters in his only sound feature as director, showing little aptitude for ringing in laughter or tears from a setup loaded with possibilities. (Chaplin’s THE KID/'21 as much as King Vidor’s CHAMP in the mix.) A toss-off programmer under the best of circumstances, Beery, one of the few silent stars who not only effectively transferred, but thrived as sound came in, deserved a little more attention than he got here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Creaky round the edges, and with a risible boxing match finale, THE CHAMP has too many fine naturalistic elements, thanks to King Vidor’s comfort level with the material, to write off or not shed a tear at. OR: For Berry without slobbering sentiment, George W. Hill’s remarkably advanced early Talkie THE BIG HOUSE/’30. (Both written by Frances Marion.)

LISBON (1956)

Entering a death spiral as cash-cow program Westerns migrated to tv, Republic Pictures tried to up their game with improved TruColor (vivid in Kino Lorber’s restored DVD) and ‘Naturama,’ their own WideScreen process. If only they’d given equal attention to storyline, dialogue, characterization & staging. Pretty dreadful, if not without historical/technical interest to film geeks. Producer/director Ray Milland stars as a sort of playboy smuggler, running luxury contraband goods in on his yacht, the fastest boat in Lisbon’s port. And that makes him just the man needed by swanky international thief Claude Rains to handle the ransom exchange that will return aging multi-millionaire Percy Marmont to his much younger wife Maureen O’Hara. The twists? O’Hara would be perfectly happy if the old man died during the exchange; Milland can imagine a rich future with this soon-to-be widow even as he pursues an affair with a beauty from Rains’ personal harem. The basic lack of morals from all concerned makes a pleasant surprise, and there’s something delicious in Rains’ tactic of punishing wayward girls by burning the evening gowns he likes to give them. Yikes! (If only they’d show this unique bit of fashion torture!). Alas, the yacht sails, the film runs aground.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Milland megged a handful of outlier pics (A MAN ALONE/’55; THE SAFECRACKER/’58) as well as some more conventional tv, even finding a spot for all but forgotten silent film star Percy Marmont in both this one and in HOSTILE WITNESS/’68. None of these seen here, but MAN ALONE (also newly restored) coming up.

THE WINSLOW BOY (1948)

Terence Rattigan’s fine, moving, fact-based play about a 13-yr-old British Naval Academy Cadet kicked out for petty theft, is ‘opened up’ to mixed results by the playwright himself in Anthony Asquith’s film. Rattigan makes the story as much about sacrifices in the boy's pre-WWI upper-middle-class family as about the case. (Health & financial setbacks for a just retired father determined to do right by his son; ruined marriage prospects for an older suffragette sister.) Asquith has a dream cast in Cedric Hardwicke’s ailing father; Margaret Leighton’s political activist; Basil Radford’s sweetly infatuated barrister; stage cameos from Cyril Ritchard & Stanley Holloway; and most strikingly in Robert Donat’s characterization of Sir Robert Morton, Tory to his toes, still taking the case. But Rattigan deflates some of the play’s strengths trying to make things ‘more cinematic,’ taking us to Parliamentary debates & courtroom action that paradoxically gains rather than loses interest when only heard about on stage, distancing making it all less conventional. And he seems to know it, jumping back to the livingroom (where the play is entirely set) for the juiciest bits.* Even so, enough comes thru to make a stirring effect, most of all when he keeps to the playscript for what is often considered the most effective First-Act Curtain in mid-twentieth century British drama as Sir Robert interviews the boy in a brutal cross-examination to decide whether or not to take the case. A free-standing tour de force theatrical event; Donat caught in excelsis by Freddie Young’s camera. If only the rest of the film had as much faith in the pure cinematic value of Rattigan’s stageworthy craft.

DOUBLE-BILL: David Mamet’s remake of 1999 keeps somewhat closer to the play, but his finicky script editing doesn’t help, and his cast has nowhere near the charisma (or chemistry) of the earlier film. In the Leighton spot, Rebecca Pidgeon (Mrs. Mamet), a particular problem. OR: *Similar stage-to-screen problems, better handled by Rattigan/Asquith in THE BROWNING VERSION/'51.

THE BIG COUNTRY (1958)

Phenomenally impressive, especially on the big screen, William Wyler’s handsome Western gets a welcome boost in a crisp new restoration out on Kino Lorber DVD & Blu-Ray that helps it live up to something nearer its full potential. Co-produced by Wyler and star Gregory Peck, the two friends had stopped speaking by the end of a difficult shoot, but as so often the case, an unhappy shoot made for a superb film, one that’s still somewhat underrated. Peck, a former ship’s captain from the East, a man of great inner strength not for show, now a greenhorn out West, landed in cattle country to meet his intended, Carroll Baker. But once there, he's a stranger in a strange land full of mismatched pairings (Peck, Baker, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Chuck Connors) and unwittingly involved in a three-way feud over water rights (Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Simmons). Wyler handles the unusual structure with beautifully paced steady-as-she-goes story rhythms (people really take time to think things thru in this film) and a nearly unmatched feel for the use of visual scale over the vast territory. And it pays off in a series of tense and/or comic set pieces like a delayed fight, played largely in longshot, for Peck & Heston (the latter transformed under Wyler) and in Wyler’s thrilling climactic shot organization/orchestration as Bickford rides into a winding canyon, pigheaded & alone, for a fatal meeting with nemesis Ives, only to be serially joined by Heston & his reluctantly loyal men. Jawdroppingly precise moviemaking from Wyler, aided by Franz Planer’s striking cinematography* and one of the all-time great traditional Western scores from composer Jerome Moross. (The Saul Bass credit sequence with Moross’s title track alone worth the price of admission.)

DOUBLE-BILL: *Planer’s next, Fred Zinnemann’s THE NUN’S STORY/’59, utterly different, equally gorgeous & masterful.  OR: See a younger Peck play something like the Heston role in King Vidor's DUEL IN THE SUN/’46.  Charles Bickford’s in that one too, but not in Peck’s spot which is more or less taken by Joseph Cotton.  DUEL as looney as BIG is sane; not entirely a bad thing.

SCARFACE (1932)

Last & toughest in the Early Talkie Gangster Cycle is no antique, still packing a wallop as a Prohibition Era fast rise/quick fall cautionary tale. Howard Hawks’ violent & pacey direction is a big step up from his last (prison pic THE CRIMINAL CODE/’31), with startling blasts of action from favored second-unit helmer Richard Rosson. Yet the film equally belongs to scripter Ben Hecht who largely invented urban mob story tropes in UNDERWORLD/’27; drew on his Chicago newspaper background for the Al Capone-like Tony Camonte; steered Hawks to male leads Paul Muni (out of Yiddish Theater) & Osgood Perkins (from his own THE FRONT PAGE); brought along John Lee Mahin on dialogue; and came up with the idea of using the infamous Borgia Family as inspiration. (Hawks, great director/appalling fabulist, regularly took credit for much of this.) Though his portrait never became iconic, like Edward G. Robinson’s LITTLE CAESAR or James Cagney’s PUBLIC ENEMY, Muni is seriously thuggish & scary crazy as Camonte, paradoxically becoming more restrained and more out-of-control as events turn for, then against him, launching incestuous jabs of sexual longing at Karen Morley’s amoral moll (he's stealing her from surrogate brother Perkins) and plain old incestuous longings toward vampy sister Ann Dvorak, hot for Muni’s coin-flipping mob enforcer George Raft (another surrogate brother!). Love & murder in the crime world running its course like an infectious disease.

DOUBLE-BILL: Brian de Palma’s self-indulgent 1983 remake (nearly twice the length) has its own big following and is apparently being remade yet again. (A six-hour version?)

CONTEST: When Camonte ‘classes up’ his act by going to the theater to see Somerset Maugham’s RAIN, look sharp at the billboard during an intermission smoke break. You can just make out a few letters of a first (‘NNE’) & last name (‘LS’) on the poster. So who’s the famous actress appearing in the production? Name her to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

THE BULLFIGHTERS (1945)

Laurel & Hardy were built for comedy shorts. Literally, with big assists from producer Hal Roach & writer/director Leo McCarey starting in late ‘20s silents. Keeping at it thru the transition to sound, then moving up to features in the mid-‘30s. ‘Up’ being a relative term since the feature length films miss the consistent hilarity of the best shorts. Even so, Stan & Ollie make such good company, they just about all give off an enjoyable vibe. BULLFIGHTERS, if not the least of their Hollywood features, comes close. (It's certainly the last.*) Yet still lands a reasonable bit of pleasing silliness. Investigators on the hunt in Mexico City, Stan’s uncommon likeness to a local bullfighter gets them into just enough trouble to run out the hour. With smiles instead of belly laughs, and a few choice crying jags for Stan, it keeps the spirits up before a wicked sick final visual gag under director Mal St Clair, a gag-man all the way back to Mack Sennett days. Viewed with limited expectations, it’s makes for an okay sendoff.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The final entry in a series of films made for 20th/Fox (1941-‘45), the boys returned to the screen six years later, looking much the worse for wear, going overseas to make UTOPIA/’51 (not seen here). A better bet might be their final film for Hal Roach, SAPS AT SEA/’40, under an hour and close in spirit to the old shorts.

DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954)

Alfred Hitchcock’s smoothly entertaining theatrical thriller isn’t so much adapted from Frederick Knott’s stage play as lightly trimmed. Only the opening gets a uniquely filmic construct, cutting from husband Ray Milland with wife Grace Kelly (in bridal white) to lover Robert Cummings with mistress Grace Kelly (now in shocking red) though it largely plays out in an apartment drawing room we barely leave over the course of the film. Yet, even with a first act full of talkie exposition as Milland blackmails old school acquaintance Anthony Dawson into murder-for-hire, there’s not a moment without visual interest as Hitch cunningly sidesteps & glides his way around the small space, holding back on close-ups and virtuoso shots only as needed for emphasis while color-coding Kelly’s wardrobe & makeup down (that drab brown coat!) as she falls into a legal abyss. Even more effective when seen, as originally intended, with the subtle play of Hitchcock’s sophisticated use of the 3D process. (Currently available ‘with’ or ‘without.’) Naturally, the suspense peaks during the famous attempted murder, but act two has its own cerebral thrills, drawn to our attention in a great character turn from Inspector John Williams, quietly hilarious when, as he says, he gets his blood up. It’s no more than a puzzle, but with just the right amount of pleasurable jolts and tingly sensations.

DOUBLE-BILL: Of many tv versions, a Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast from 1958, finds Dawson & Williams reprising the roles they played on film and originated on B’way, now against Maurice Evans who had Milland’s role on stage with them. The only film remake, A PERFECT MURDER/’98, with Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow & Viggo Mortensen, skimps on the twists & turns. It’s DIAL M FOR DUMMIES.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Two oddities. There’s a really bad shot of Dawson on the couch, an upward diagonal pan across him as he sits, listening to Milland explain things. Considering the phenomenal precision of every shot in the pic, this gaffe really sticks out. Cover for a missing angle? A patch for a screwed up 3D element on the negative? Then, right at the end, a funny moment of indecision when Detective Williams has some dialogue to tell us exactly what is happening just outside the door as Milland almost doesn’t figure out just what is going on with the mixed up latch keys, the key to the case! The speech is straight from the play where Milland’s action wouldn’t have been seen on stage. Hence all the verbal description. Yet, Hitchcock plays it both ways, giving us all Williams’ dialogue and using parallel editing to show Milland’s actions on the doorstep. Why so? Best explanation is that they wanted to make all the key swapping business crystal clear for even the slowest wit in the audience. (Hands please.)

MARY POPPINS RETURNS (2018)

Though little remembered, Disney made a followup (if no sequel) to MARY POPPINS (same writers, songsters, producer, director, leading man) in BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS/’71. A major flop from the early ‘post-Walt’ period at the studio, it was re-released to little effect in various shortened edits. (Ironically, here, just as in BEDKNOBS, Angela Lansbury takes over a role planned for original Poppins Julie Andrews.) This new film, an uninspired ‘further adventures of . . . ’ is more disappointment than major flop, so careful not to put a foot wrong it never puts it right. The look & tone is dingy & depressed (it’s the Depression Era, get it?) with hideous green costumes on everyone. The very air inside the Banks’ home dank & green. Happily, amid all the gloom, a nice hand-drawn animated sequence, not in the style of the original POPPINS pic (an unhappy moment in Disney animation history), but more in line with the look of LADY AND THE TRAMP. Nice. But little else measures up to the older film.* Certainly not its song score (unmemorable) or story arc (will the Banks’ home be repossessed?). It’s a wash between Ed Wynn’s pointless ‘Laugh’ number in POPPINS and Meryl Streep’s pointless upside-down routine here. But didn’t anyone notice that the twist ending reverses the moral of the first film? So much for giving the old Bird Lady a tuppence! Then again, it’s just right for modern corporate Disney Inc. Perfect for Baby Boomer fans of the original who grew up to be greedy bankers.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Briefly: Emily Blunt’s Poppins very blunt. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Cockney accent less distracting than Dick Van Dyke’s. (Though Van Dyke’s surprise cameo here a rare moment of musical comedy magic.) Ben Whishaw, our grown-up Michael Banks, now a pint-sized Jeremy Irons . . . and wearing Irons’ mustache!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In a first, there are two (count ‘em 2!) trailers for the same film (TOY STORY 4) on this DVD.

DOUBLE-BILL: The first MARY POPPINS/’64, if never quite living up to Julie Andrews’ classic portrayal, gets past obvious shortcomings & longueurs with its memorably cheerful score & unique painterly look. (That final kite sequence pure Henri Rousseau - courtesy of Andrews’ then husband design consultant Tony Walton?)

VIDAS SECAS / BARREN LIVES (1963)

A founding film in Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement, Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ artful Neo-Realism holds up extremely well.* Set in the 1940s, but with a timeless feel, it’s both fable-like and naturalistic, following an itinerant family (husband, wife, two young boys, irreplaceable dog) as they wander thru a desolate countryside looking for work. Finally finding a job, under near slave-like conditions, tending cattle & other livestock, they briefly see a possible future of stability only to fall again when temptation & pride leads them into trouble in town just before weather conditions turn against them. Even the dog is suddenly at risk. Surprisingly, Dos Santos’ leads are professional actors, but feel completely authentic, as does everyone else. No one more so than their dog, Baleia, one of cinema’s canine immortals. Moving, and never dreary in spite of the injustices & hardships.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Certainly compared to his better known HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMAN/’71, where Western Civilization ‘in ironic quotation marks’ meets Cannibalism.

DOUBLE-BILL: Often coupled with film like John Ford’s GRAPES OF WRATH/’40 and Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI/’55, it’s probably closer to Jean Renoir’s THE SOUTHERNER/’45.

THE SEA OF GRASS (1947)

After his pitch-perfect debut directing A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN/’45, Elia Kazan did war service & a pair of B’way plays before returning for seconds, and the traditional Sophomore Slump. It must have sounded like a good idea: a classic cattleman vs. homesteader Western, but with the confrontation seen from the perspective of the cattle baron’s East Coast wife, an unhappy transplant who briefly falls to temptation with her husband’s main nemesis, but still comes home to have her lover’s child. Even more interesting, the cruel land gives nothing but hard answers while the illegitimate child ends up being favored by ‘Dad’ over his half-sister. But where Kazan got nothing but support and a gift of a cast @ 20th/Fox on BKLN, over @ M-G-M, all the major decisions were already made by producer Pandro Berman & the department heads before Kazan was off the train from NYC. And though he ended up liking Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn, he didn’t like them for the parts. Equally miscast, Hepburn all sharp edges and eyes brimming with regret/Tracy mushy soft and resigned. Worse, a story all about the land entirely faked using backscreen projection & studio mockups. (Second unit location inserts all in long shot, made without the stars . . . and without Kazan.) And a final thirty minutes where the kids, suddenly grown into Robert Walker & Phyllis Thaxter, speed the action to quick unsatisfying resolutions and an inexplicably hopeful tag end. Commercially, a big hit (wouldn't you know) and the only film Kazan was ashamed of making.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Kazan had his revenge on his third (released second) pic, BOOMERANG!/’47, filmed largely on location in Stamford, Connecticut.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Kazan’s self-justifying auto-bio (A LIFE) can be a bit of a pain, but the chapter on GRASS is a great look (both hilarious and appalling) into the compromises & insanities of M-G-M corporate moviemaking as Golden Age Hollywood began its post-WWII collapse.

THE LAST OF SHEILA (1973)

In addition to his day job as B’way lyricist/composer, Stephen Sondheim is a brilliant, all but fanatical puzzle addict. A bent used, with actor/pal Anthony Perkins, in co-writing this one-off screenplay, a decidedly nasty murder mystery amongst the Hollywood set, but with its Agatha Christie bona fides more Hamptons L.I. than Malibu L.A. Hollow, but fun, you don’t have to be a member of Acrostics Anonymous to enjoy watching the claws of movieland’s rich & entitled come out during a shipboard week of parlor games with James Coburn hosting a nightly truth or dare 'character' treasure hunt to find out who was responsible for last year’s hit-and-run death of wife Sheila. Director Herbert Ross, judging his effects perfectly, makes sure we can parse all the plot twists & explanations while getting excellent perfs (James Mason & Richard Benjamin especially fine) other than Raquel Welch whose third-rate movie actress is also third-rate in this movie. All leading up to a real Hollywood ending: cynical, amoral, with a Deal Memo for a heart.

DOUBLE-BILL: Woody Allen took a whack at the form in his underrated MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY/’93.

THE FIGHTING LADY (1944)

Superior WWII action-documentary (not too sticky/not too jingoistic), pieced together from on-the-spot 16mm war footage (in color) from aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown during a 1943 mission against Japanese air & sea forces in the Pacific. With sound & narration (Lt. Robert Taylor, whose flat voice is very effective here) added later, the film, credited to photog great Edward Steichen (in the Naval Reserve), was more likely shaped by producer Louis De Rochemont who went on from war documentaries to start the post-war trend in feature docu-dramas (THE HOUSE ON 92nd STREET; 13 RUE MADELEINE). This film, which runs an hour, while moving and exciting on its own (crew almost painfully young), also stands as useful corrective to the model special effects of the time and the overblown CGI of today; and in capturing the long waits before flare-ups of blunt, sudden violence. (A surprise attack after the ship is spotted by air giving off quite a jolt.) And they don’t forget the ship’s internal workings, nearly as fascinating as the all the topside flight heroics. (Watch for the steak & eggs breakfasts in prep before the big flying mission.) Essential stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL: Before he joined up, Robert Taylor did Hollywood naval service in STAND BY FOR ACTION/’42 (not seen here, but with Charles Laughton, Brian Donlevy & Walter Brennan in the cast, there must be a reason it’s not better known).

LINK: Here’s an excellent transfer that shows just how well the 16mm negative came up in 35mm release prints. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5JbXRDOP60

SPRINGTIME IN THE SIERRAS (1947)

Typically well made Roy Rogers (and Trigger!) Western, one of a handful with Jane Frazee in for Dale Evans as romantic interest*, with regular director William Witney smoothly shifting gears between light-hearted banter; some darn good songs; process-free horseback thrill rides; and unusually dark dramatic corners. In this one, Roy’s got a murder to solve after a gang of poachers shoot the operator of a wildlife rescue preserve who was about to arrest them. Stephanie Bachelor is scary & strikingly attractive as a cold-blooded gang leader who takes sick pleasure in killing. It gives her flirtatious behavior with Roy a perverse edge rarely seen in formulaic, kid-friendly pics. Generally, these Republic Westerns were hacked down by a couple of reels to fit television time slots; worse, printed in subfusc b&w prints with the original negatives left to rot. A few made later in TruColor’s improved full-range process are now out on Kino-Lorber and a treat to look at. Whereas this one, made in the earlier 2-color bi-pack system (heavy on orange & turquoise) is lucky to survive even in compromised fashioned via a 16mm archival print. The picture’s not as sharp as it should be, but color values look about right, and all the dropped footage (mostly songs?) now back in place.

DOUBLE-BILL: *By the time Roy did TWILIGHT IN THE SIERRAS/’50, Dale Evans was back in her usual spot and TruColor had switched to a 3-color system. (Not that it looks much better than old TruColor in copies currently available!) To see some properly restored TruColor, again in the later 3-color system, Kino Lorber’s out with SUNSET IN THE WEST and TRIGGER JR./’50.

ALPHA (2018)

Albert Hughes, stepping back from co-director brother Allen and even further back in time, goes all Pre-Historic on this Adolescent Boy and His Feral Dog story. No doubt a Passion Project, cobbled from his ‘original’ story, this survival fable tosses a tribal chief’s son over a cliff and into the wilderness during the annual buffalo hunt, then follows a danger-packed, obstacle-strewn race against winter to return home, joined by the wild canine he wounded, tended, befriended & domesticated. It's a 'can’t-miss' vehicle that misses badly thanks to poor structure, editing its way out of impossible situations & overplaying resilience to the elements while fumbling suspension of disbelief thru unconvincing CGI animal renderings that give off little threat. Plus action & mystic vistas exhaustingly tricked up with showy computer-enhanced tracking shots or as visually tweaked cosmic postcards. It takes some doing to make a Boy-and-His-Dog pic that doesn’t leave a wet eye in the house, and then bow out with an insulting, over-sentimental tag.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Our poster calls this an ‘Incredible True Story.’ Incredible, all right, as in ‘impossible or hard to believe.’

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Tame fire rather than pets in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s QUEST FOR FIRE/’82, which has problems of its own, but also a surprising sense of humor. OR: Hungary’s WHITE GOD/’14, where packs of roaming dogs take back city streets. Done with hundreds of real dogs (mostly from shelters) and zero CGI, it’s 101 DALMATIANS meets CUJO. (Both FIRE and GOD covered below)

BODYGUARD (1948)

Before turning respectable in the mid-‘50s, Richard Fleischer earned street cred with low-ball/hard-boiled noirs like THE NARROW MARGIN/’52. And while this early credit doesn’t hit that high mark, it points the way there in acceptable manner. Tougher than tough guy Lawrence Tierney is on the right side of the law for a change . . . well, almost right. An overly aggressive cop just kicked off the force when he’s pushed into acting as bodyguard to the unwilling owner of a meat packing operation. He’s really there to be framed for murder, part of a coverup on a weight-fixing scam worth thousands a day. Fortunately, girlfriend Priscilla Lane (in her last film) works back at the station and is able to dig up all the info he needs to figure things out. Pretty straightforward stuff, but Fleischer shows a neat hand and a touch of experimental moxie with some closer-than-close closeups and tricky edits. No great shakes as a film (even as a B-pic), and Tierney can be pretty raw up there, but fun to watch Fleischer flex his cinematic chops, especially for those who know where he’s headed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Tierney shows his best/nastiest form playing strength-to-strength against a rock solid Claire Trevor in his previous pic, Robert Wise’s BORN TO KILL/’47.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/born-to-kill-1947.html

AVANTI! (1972)

Thirty minutes too long; studded with stale reflexive gags & moldy punch lines; and with Jack Lemmon overplaying in his ‘70s style (though less than usual); yet something touching, funny & original comes across in this late Billy Wilder film, his signature sweet & sour sentiment bubbling up thru the missteps. Working his crassness a little too hard, Lemmon’s a classic Ugly American, a big cheese swooping into a relaxed Italian resort town to pick up the body of his dead father and rush back home for the funeral. But along the way, he meets cute³ with Juliet Mills, on a similar mission for her mother. Turns out, the recently deceased pair had been having an annual one month summer fling . . . for the past ten years! Mills cool with the idea, cool with Italian ways; Lemmon uptight about . . . well, everything. You know where this is going, but Wilder & co-scripter I.A.L. Diamond, working from a flop play by Samuel Taylor (author of Wilder’s SABRINA/’54), work up a dandy farce of missing bodies, a blackmailing hotel staffer & his vengeful lover, and a wonderful Clive Revill as a worldly, wise, unflappable hotel manager. Coming right after his equally overlooked PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES/’70, these late flowerings in the Wilder canon, in spite of longueurs & undeniable flaws, are unique and precious in their way. Fool's gold that give good weight.

DOUBLE-BILL: Wilder’s late works couldn’t catch a commercial or critical break. Yet, all worth checking out (even the reviled BUDDY BUDDY/’81) with the exception of his coarse, unfunny FRONT PAGE remake of 1974, slavishly aping the look & style of THE STING/’73, and naturally the only one of these late films to make a buck.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Juliet Mills is tagged as slightly more than pleasingly plump in the film, yet that’s exactly what she is. Shows it off, too. Lemmon, equally nude at the moment, has an inspired comic bit trying to cover up her breasts with a pointedly inadequate pair of shriveled black socks.

UNDERCURRENT (1946)

Of the eleven films Katharine Hepburn made at M-G-M (1940-‘52), eight were with Spencer Tracy, three without. This was best of the ‘withouts.’ Kate, assistant to and living with her science professor dad Edmund Gwenn, is well on her way to spinsterhood when industrial titan Robert Taylor walks into their house and walks out with a bride. Not a lot of chemistry between these two, but that winds up helping the drama since Taylor soon starts to show his true pathological colors about some unexplained family drama involving wise & gentle younger brother Robert Mitchum, currently (make that undercurrently) out of sight (dead?), if never out of mind. The film has some trouble getting on its feet, but is perked up by having all three leads play against type, and even more once director Vincente Minnelli starts laying on that Modern American Gothic atmosphere. (Lenser Karl Freund providing plenty of shadowy light.) It may be no more than a foolish sort of dark & stormy night melodrama, with big nods toward Hitchcock’s REBECCA/’40 and SUSPICION/’41, the climax plays like SUSPICION on horseback, but also some dumb fun.

DOUBLE-BILL: That’s the slow movement of Brahms’ Symphony #3, reconfigured as a piano concerto, blaring on the soundtrack when composer Herbert Stothart’s title card comes up. The same piece so prominently used in AIMEZ-VOUS, BRAHMS? (aka GOODBYE AGAIN/’61).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: If Mitchum’s face looks a bit gaunt here, it may be because he was hustling back and forth making three films concurrently. (Make that 'underconcurrently.')

THREE TEXAS STEERS (1939)

After a decade stuck in program Westerns, John Wayne turned the career corner to A-pics in John Ford’s STAGECOACH, yet still had a few of these 3 MESQUITEERS oaters in his future. This one offers a pretty good setup, but the scattershot execution typical of a 6-reel programmer. Here, circus owner Carole Landis is helpless to stop her successful Big Top show from being mysterious sabotaged. Forced into bankruptcy and a retreat to her late uncle’s dilapidated ranch, she’s now being run off that property as well! Turns out the ranch is worth a lot of money (land rights for an upcoming dam project she's unaware of); and ‘loyal’ manager Ralph Graves is tricking her into a panic sale. You’ll note that the story works perfectly well without Wayne, Ray Corrigan & goofy Max Terhune (The 3 Mesquiteers) figuring into things. They’re wedged in all the same, along with a man in one of the worst gorilla suits you’ll ever see (Landis bringing some of the circus along) and a rare chance to see Wayne ride behind a prize trotter with the horse’s tail & ass right in his face. Worth the whole pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one point, William Lava’s score suddenly breaks into ‘Le Bal’ from Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. (Listen up for the harp intro.) Surely a Western first.

FRAU IM MOND / WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929)

Compared to masterpieces made directly before & after (SPIES/’28; M/’31), this Sci-Fi epic from director Fritz Lang and writer/wife Thea von Harbou is mere curiosity. And if the mid-section covering a jet-propelled mission to the moon has technical interest (in ideas of the day and in seeing how they brought it off), the story & characters that go with the visual legerdemain are too ridiculous to hold much interest. Harbou’s cockamamie (Space)Ship of Fools follows an elderly professor who believes the far side of the moon has both breathable atmosphere and caverns of gold. (No doubt, green cheese lies on the other side.) So off he goes (the guy must be nearing 70), along with the gallant Captain, his engineer, the woman they both love who is documenting the voyage; as well as a sinister representative of the mission financiers* and a stowaway boy. Alas, German Expressionistic acting styles butt heads with any attempt at believable Science Fiction elements, and while Lang’s penchant for detail works well in flight, it stops momentum elsewhere. (Note that indie animation legend Oskar Fischinger is listed as one of the cinematographers and apparently handled some of the decidedly clever space flight effects.) There’s good pseudo-scientific fun in here, and is obviously a must for Langians; for others, caveat cinemaniacs.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, the seriously underrated SPIES or M.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Fritz Rasp’s villain by far the most memorable character. Watch him put his Hitler-esque hair-cut back in place after it’s disheveled by severe ‘G forces’ during takeoff.

A LOST LADY (1934)

Hopelessly mired in depression after a personal tragedy (will she ever love again?), Barbara Stanwyck is reluctantly coaxed back to life by rich, older suitor Frank Morgan, stubbornly pursuing her with his offer of companionate marriage. But embers of passion flare up once she meets Ricardo Cortez and now it’s Morgan’s turn to fall into a hopeless depression. This circular drama, the only Willa Cather novel turned into a movie during her lifetime, exhausts itself after a brusque, effective prologue, with director Alfred E. Green reverting to autopilot. The acting isn’t exactly bad (Lyle Talbot rather good doing unrequited gentlemanly love and Cortez weirdly glib & unsympathetic as Babs' hot new love), but the script can’t find a pulse in the material, sleepwalking its way to resolution. Something Cather may have noticed since she never sold anything else to Hollywood. (Though was it this production or the silent version of 1924 with Irene Rich that turned her off?)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Someone must have hit the replay button on ‘The Very Thought Of You’ for the monotonous soundtrack.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: This was Stanwyck’s first ‘Post’ Hollywood Production Code release and almost any of her ‘Pre-Codes’ would make a better choice. Especially those early Frank Capra beauties THE MIRACLE WOMAN; FORBIDDEN/’31 or THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN/’32.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018)

While the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (reboot & sequel) improved on the lamentable SPIDER-MAN 3 (none too tough an assignment), they’ve already vanished from the Pop Zeitgeist; just in time for the next reboot with yet another Spidey. (The new trailer looking more like a warning than a come on.) So, filling the interregnum between Peter Parkers, a fully loaded animated sidebar of ‘alternate’ Spideys hardly sounds promising. Surprise!; it may be the best of the lot. (Admittedly, a low bar.) Our new animated Spidey is African-American, a High School kid stuck in a ‘gifted’ program where he thinks he’ll never fit in. Something his Black Sheep Uncle can relate to even before his nephew gets that inevitable radioactive spider bite. Soon we’re in the midst of too many indecipherable battle scenes, charmingly relieved by the appearance of a motley crew of Spider-Men, Spider-Women . . . even a Spider-Pig out of some glitch in the Time Continuum. (Don’t ask.) Yet it all hangs together, with visual jump cuts in and out of Comic Book stylings as helpful to the narrative as they are spiffy to look at. There’s a self-referencing, joshing tone here, especially once Jake Johnson shows up as Peter B. Parker, a grown up Spider-Man with a dash of Deadpool’s irreverence. And, for once, the villains are something of a bore while our Spidey Variety Pack get the good moves & snarky dialogue. A touch more restraint & readability in the action scenes, and this could have been even more special. Maybe next time.

DOUBLE-BILL: Brad Bird’s two INCREDIBLES (especially the 2004 original) show how animated action can be both OTT and work in a cartoonishly credible cause-and-effect manner.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

Canadian director Bob Clark, who swung between enjoyable fare (MURDER BY DECREE/’79; A CHRISTMAS STORY/’83) and crap (PORKY’S/81; RHINESTONE/’84), foretold the late ‘70s Horror revival (e.g. HALLOWEEN/’78; NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET/’84) in this initially unheralded precursor. Not exactly good even as a genre pic (scripter Roy Moore quickly dropped out of sight), it still gives off a nasty vibe and lands a few potent shocks. At heart, your basic Sorority House Slasher pic, the over-aged students (Grad School?) are stalked by some crazed killer in ubiquitous handheld P.O.V camera shots. Sound familiar? Credit for coming up with so much of the standard template. They’ve even got that creepy phone call that turns out to be coming from . . . INSIDE the house. Yikes! And Double Credit to Clark for rousting up something like an A-list cast to torment: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin, John Saxon. Pretty tame now, of course, but manages a reasonable amount of tension by not showing too much, even while dropping the ball with dumb moves like having the cops not bother with a thorough house search.

DOUBLE-BILL: The 2006 remake (not seen here), apparently adds backstory to help ‘explain’ the slasher’s possible motives, effectively dumping the original’s most original idea.

IF I WERE KING (1938)

Fine historical nonsense about François Villon, anarchist, thief, patriot & rapscallion poet in 15th Century France. Filmed in ‘27 as THE BELOVED ROGUE with John Barrymore, and then as the operetta VAGABOND KING (1930; 1956), this Frank Lloyd Paramount production holds the winning hand thanks to Ronald Colman’s gentlemanly swash and the witty buckle of Preston Sturges’s screenplay. (Those elegant bits of Villon verse his own newly made translations.) This one vied with the Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn ROBIN HOOD out earlier in the year*, but has its own vibe, especially in Basil Rathbone’s King Louis XI, villain and worthy leader, who condemns, pardons and finally sees his reign rescued by Colman. Both men in priceless turns: Rathbone using a grotesque John Barrymore-esque cackle* and Colman with his unique repertoire of haunting gestures in voice & looks. The film misses zest & panache under Lloyd’s hand (craft, but few thrills), and in the music department, Richard Hageman proves no Erich Wolfgang Korngold. But with its big handsome production, characterful turns and a pair of lovely ladies to pine away (Frances Dee, Ellen Drew), Colman & Sturges have more than enough support to make their mark. The film is enchanting.

DOUBLE-BILL: *By the time Michael Curtiz got around to this story in '56, he was off-form and stuck remaking the operetta (VAGABOND KING) for shrill Kathryn Grayson & non-event discovery Oreste Kirkop.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *No doubt, Barrymore would have preferred to play King Louis, and would have been a lot like Rathbone in the part. But back in 1927, he was Villon and Conrad Veidt had all the villainous fun. (Apparently, both this silent and the 1930 operetta version have received major restorations. Not seen here.)

LIBEL (1959)

Aired out, but still smelling of mothballs, this mid-‘30s play by Edward Wooll (on B’way with Colin Clive & Wilfrid Lawson) with its WWI backstory updated to WWII, was long past its sell date even in 1959, yet not quite spoiled. Or not once it gets past an awkwardly ‘opened up’ first half and rejoins the play in the courtroom. Dirk Bogarde, overacting to set up the big twists at the end, is the emotionally wounded war vet with a bad memory. Why, he’s not even quite sure if he’s himself! Could he be an imposter? Specifically, that rather nasty P.O.W. mate who looked just like him. Yikes! Stalag Doppelgänger! Wife Olivia de Havilland is equally unsure. Married after the war, no doubt her old flame came home noticeably changed, but it’s still him, isn’t it? Or could he just be some clever villain, playing along as best he can to win her love . . . and the family estate? And there’s a third man, another pal from prison camp who brings this all to a head by publishing a condemnation that leads to the libel suit and the big courtroom drama. Good thing, too, as the film immediately picks up, especially with Robert Morley & Wilfrid Hyde-White as opposing defender & prosecutor. (Morley quite exceptional, an entire brass band all on his own.) Anthony Asquith also much relieved, waking up from what had been a directorial sleepwalk. With Borgarde earning his dramatic payoff after all that shady furrowed brow business; and de Havilland coming thru like a champ when she finally gets a big showy opportunity.

DOUBLE-BILL: The big success of Agatha Christie’s WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION/’57 (Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich & Tyrone Power under Billy Wilder) probably got this one up & running.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Bogarde whistles a little tune all thru the pic. And while the score is by Benjamin Frankel, this refrain sounds lifted right out of Aaron Copland’s music for THE RED PONY/’49.

ABSOLUTE QUIET (1936)

Smart, zippy, consistent fun, a first-rate comic B-pic from (of all studios) stuffy M-G-M, directed by (of all people) future ANDY HARDY specialist George B. Seitz.  Overworked financial titan Lionel Atwill, under doctor’s orders for absolute quiet after a breakdown, goes off with pretty secretary Irene Hervey (and Hervey is very pretty!) to his secluded ranch for some serious R & R . . . and perhaps a bit of (unwelcomed) flirtation.*  But neither rest nor l’amour sticks to schedule when bad weather forces a plane of politicos & reporters down on his private landing strip just after a pair of Bonnie & Clyde wannabes shows up, guns at the ready.  Like some farcical take on the just released PETRIFIED FOREST (Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart), you’ll see the inspiration even if the characters don’t match up.  Bernadene Hayes & Wallace Ford feast on their ex-vaudevillian/Bonnie & Clyde act.  (Pity we don’t get a peek at their old stage routine.)   Louis Hayward as a vain movie star and Stuart Erwin as a scoop-obsessed reporter also right on target.  It’s small potatoes stuff, of course, but tasty.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, The surprisingly stiff, if flavorful PETRIFIED FOREST/’36.  Now best for Davis.  Bogie alarmingly stagy in his breakthru perf.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Though now best known for a pair of 2-strip TechniColor Horrors (DOCTOR X/’32; MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM/’33), did any actor move from A-pics to Bs, from the Majors to Poverty Row with the aplomb of Lionel Atwill?  Nothing fazed him.

THE CATCHER WAS A SPY (2018)

Underappreciated and under-viewed, this WWII story about ‘Moe’ Berg, journeyman Boston Red Sox catcher/O.S.S. spy, is a fact-based whopper on his unlikely assignment to sneak into Europe on a mission to stop German Physicist Werner Heisenberg from developing a nuclear weapon . . . if in fact he is developing one. Some pinch-penny production compromises occasionally show thru, and the DVD transfer looks unaccountably drab, to say nothing of helmer Ben Lewin’s penchant for cliché set ups (circling every conference table; schtupping on an upright piano). Yet the faults do only modest damage to an amazing tale, especially with such a remarkable cast list. Paul Rudd brings preternatural calm and interior strength to his enigmatic polymath hero, ‘British School’ acting that calls little attention to itself while getting everything across. A hard trick to pull off when every step you take cancels a piece of personality from your last move. What a strange, deceitful, morally upright man the real Berg must have been. (And handsome as a movie star, to judge by the identity card shown before the final credit crawl.) Plus solid backup from Tom Wilkinson, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Sienna Miller, Giancarlo Giannini & Jeff Daniels, all working up solid character turns. Maybe that punning title undersold the film.

DOUBLE-BILL: For more on Heisenberg, Michael Frayn’s brain-teaser of a play, COPENHAGEN/’02, a near-miss tv adaptation from Howard Davies with Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig & Francesca Annis, raises similar ‘is he/isn’t he’ questions on allegiance still not answered. OR: More O.S.S. espionage with Fritz Lang sending Gary Cooper into Italy on a nuclear brain-picking operation in the largely unsatisfactory CLOAK AND DAGGER/’46. (both films covered below)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Compare this with George Clooney’s lux production of another unlikely WWII op, this one involving stolen art treasure, in his specious & showboating THE MONUMENTS MEN/’14, yet still pulling in 70 times CATCHER’s gross. (see below)

THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE (1964)

After networks passed on this projected tv series, originally called THE HAUNTING, writer/director Joseph Stefano (of PSYCHO fame) expanded this very ‘60s, dread-filled pilot episode into a creepy little feature about Architect & ParaNormal Investigator Martin Landau. Think TWILIGHT ZONE; OUTER LIMITS; ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. (Note past Hitchcock credits not only for Stefano & Landau, but also co-stars Judith Anderson & Diane Baker.*) The trouble begins with Baker’s rich, blind husband who’s been getting sobbing phone calls on the direct line that runs from his mother’s mausoleum to the family manse. Dead for years, Mama always feared being buried alive. Hence the phone line. And now, RING . . . RING . . . RING . . . RING. Yikes! Lensed by Conrad L. Hall not long before he moved into features, the film builds some nice atmosphere and has a few effective scares to it (along with some not so effective F/X). But ends up just one more SuperNatural Tale that wants to believe and debunk. Great sobbing though.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Landau: NORTH BY NORTHWEST/’59; Baker: fresh off MARNIE/’64; Anderson: reviving her Mrs. Danvers characterization from REBECCA/’40.

DOUBLE-BILL: While ZONE, LIMITS and HITCH retain much affection & attention, this series might have played more like the now overlooked enjoyable nut-job case ONE STEP BEYOND. (Try it free on YouTube - though preferably not Season 1: Episode 2 on the Titanic.)