BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1945)

This oft-filmed farce, the one about a guy who has to quickly spend a million bucks to inherit another seven, has served ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, Jack Buchanan, Richard Pryor(!), and here, Dennis O’Keefe. (Bonus posters below.) Farce is a tough nut to crack on film since the misunderstandings that lead to all the comic confusion could usually be explained in two or three lines of honest dialogue. Avoiding that discussion is half the battle, but can wind up being more annoying than comic. This one puts the structural gimmick right in the dead man’s will, holding Brewster to a pact of silence about why he’s got to spend, spend, spend. Smart move. Allan Dwan helms in a bright, energetic & mercifully fast manner, keeping his attractive cast on their toes and neatly tying scenes together with long horizontal tracking shots that cover a lot of territory. He gets some really strong supporting perfs out of players like Mischa Auer & June Havoc, and delightful ones from leads Helen Walker & particularly Dennis O’Keefe who shows some real comedy chops delivering a four-page diatribe in a single take. You don’t expect this much good, dumb fun out of a little B-list indie firm (Edward Small Productions); and you also don’t expect to find the kind of sharp looking transfer you get on this Hen’s Tooth DVD.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Was Dennis O’Keefe Hollywood’s tallest leading man? It’s hard to find his exact measurements, but he sure towers over the 6'2" Mischa Auer.

NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971)

After producing THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57 and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62, Sam Spiegel knew something had gone terribly wrong with David Lean’s follow-up pic, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO/’65 . . . Sam Spiegel hadn’t produced it. Worse, it wound up being the biggest cash-cow of the lot! Nothing to do but make his own damn Russian Revolution Romance: LIFE WITH NICKY. It turned out to be a rotten idea, one Spiegel never fully recovered from. Designer John Box & lenser Freddie Young, two vets from LAWRENCE and ZHIVAGO, came on board, plus Franklin Schaffner, freshly Oscar’d for PATTON/’70, to direct. But nothing could invest those Romanov waxworks with rooting interest. You’d have to go back to Louis XVI & his Marie to find a royal couple equally slow off the mark, incurious & unsympathetic. Schaffner rouses himself for Lenin & Co., at least those revolutionaries seem to be doing something, but little holds your attention. Even the pageantry bores, and the little-known leads fade before our eyes while the better-known actors get flavorless cameos. The film did get Set Direction & Costume Oscars, but that’s like winning Miss Congeniality.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Did the filmmakers really wish to convey the idea that a Russian Leopold & Loeb did away with Rasputin?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: It has a perfectly awful rep, but the best part of this story is much better served in M-G-M’s RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS/’32. It actually manages to accumulate some real Russian flavor, most likely from its director Richard Boleslawski, a Moscow Arts Theatre vet; and it's got Ethel, Lionel & John Barrymore in their only joint appearance. This was Ethel’s first sound film, and while she takes most of the film to find her rhythm, it’s worth the wait.

THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957)

No doubt, we’ll never run out of world threats grave enough to kickstart more Apocalypse film scenarios. Today, it’s Global Terrorism & man-induced climate change; in the ‘50s we had the Cold War & nuclear proliferation. But just when (and how) a genre largely confined to cheap kiddie-matinee fare turned into today’s big-budget/3-D Summer spectaculars is something of a mystery. (It can’t all be explained by the combination of ultra-sophisticated computer imaging with ultra-simplification of dramatic demands.) This one’s a particularly woeful example of its genre & era, with documentary footage largely substituting for any kind of F/X as the earth erupts and buildings collapse. (Those old analogue Special-Effects are often the main reason to check out these films.) On the other hand, you do get to enjoy the token female scientist on the team (Kathryn Grant Crosby) as she pours coffee and explains the bulge in the Earth’s crust with a comparison to an expanding cake of yeast. (She must have studied domestic science.) And keep your eyes open for a truly remarkably set, a cross-section of an airplane cabin where scientists & generals use folding chairs, corded telephones & sit around a bridge table. Everything in place but the thin mints.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Though not all it’s cracked up to be, the generally accepted Gold-Standard for this sort of thing is THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE/’61.

THE TATTOOED STRANGER (1950)

In the wake of the new trend toward making on-location police procedurals, like Jules Dassin’s THE NAKED CITY/’48, this tiny, but highly effective/efficient little noir was soon forgotten. With a no-star cast & crew who soon drifted into tv or simply out of the biz, there’s no hook to hang a cult following on. But it’s a neat piece of crime solving, and it comes loaded with pricelessly crummy NYC period detail from neighborhoods already in the process of being swept away by urban renewal as the film was being made. (Lots of construction sites pop up.) We might be watching the waning end of the city that New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell once walked around & wrote his small masterpieces on. The story involves a ‘Jane Doe,’ found dead in an abandoned car in Central Park. Old-school detective Walter Kinsella gets the case and bristles at having to show his peppy new partner (John Miles) the ropes of homicide investigation. A sweet gal botanist from the Natural History Museum (Patricia Barry) comes on board to identify a clue and supply a bit of romance and, eventually, suspense. The film’s a happy surprise if you don’t expect too much; and as a bonus, there’s a young & eager Jack Lord trying to get in a line of dialogue. (He’s abruptly cut off in his first scene, but scores in his second.) Edward Montagne gets a lot out of his tight budget, moving his camera freely since so much was dubbed and shot without sound. The deeper mystery is the disappearance of the pic’s smart, funny leading man, young John Miles who did nothing after this second credit. With a friendly boyish quality (a bit like Jim Hutton in the ‘60s), he’s wisecrackin’ & openly horny . . . in an honest American way. Whatever became of him? Illness? Blacklist? Trust fund? Maybe we should investigate.

ALL NIGHT LONG (1962)

Patrick McGoohan makes a great Iago in this jazzed-up modern take on Shakespeare’s OTHELLO/1604, but everything else lags far behind. That is, everything except the music which finds greats like Dave Brubeck, John Dankworth & Charlie Mingus playing themselves on screen. It’s the play that goes missing. Paul Harris & Marti Stevens are over-parted in the Othello & Desdemona spots. Surrounded by jazzmen of various races, Harris is denied Othello’s ‘otherness’ while Stevens is hobbled by a look that’s pure Marlene Dietrich. And someone had the bad idea to load up on the motivation behind McGoohan’s villainy. He’s jealous of Harris’s success and needs Stevens for his own putative band. But pinning down Iago’s malice tames it, makes it ordinary. Daringly, the whole show is played out in a single set, a fancy loft owned by Richard Attenborough in the Roderigo role. In theory, this should help give everything a claustrophobic vibe, but director Basil Dearden doesn’t find a visual style to make this studio construction come alive. (Using real locations on SAPPHIRE/’59 brought a lot more out of him.) And it all sounded like such a good idea.

DOUBLE-BILL: George Cukor’s A DOUBLE LIFE/47 is another modern take on OTHELLO with Ronald Colman playing the Moor on-stage & off. Or stick with Shakespeare, especially Orson Welles’ eye-popper from ‘52.

THE NICKEL RIDE (1974)

After his debut as the tormented priest in THE EXORCIST/’73, Jason Miller must have looked like star material in the making; an idea quickly scotched by this downbeat follow-up. In an early, pretentious script from Eric Roth, Miller plays a sort of middle-management facilitator for the mob, adjudicating rival claims and securing warehouse facilities for those truckloads of stolen merch. But old ties are loosening, his mojo is running low, and a last-shot deal for a turn-around is falling apart. It’s that purest of post-Vietnam/Watergate parables: DEATH OF A SALESMAN in Mob-Land. Jack Lemmon just got Oscar’d doing it in Steve Shagan’s dreary SAVE THE TIGER/’73. This one’s somewhat better since director Robert Mulligan gets a lot out of his grimy L.A. locations, choreographs a couple of good suspense sequences and coaxes quirky supporting perfs from Bo Hopkins & John Hillerman. But we never see (or even suspect) what once drew people to Jason Miller’s Willy Loman-esque character. He’s not tragic, just a pain.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Much like his handsome son, Jason Patric (whose Grandfather was Jackie Gleason!), Jason Miller seems to reflect less light than gets thrown his way. Father & son are like two Black Holes, not just lacking energy, but sucking it out of anyone they’re on screen with.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Peter Yates’ FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE/’73 gets this sort of thing right, with a host of magnificent perfs headed by the much lamented Richard Jordan and starring Robert Mitchum in a great, late perf. Lemmon got Oscar’d that year, Mitchum not even nominated.

A WOMAN'S SECRET (1949)

Uninspired mystery tale about a radio singer (Gloria Grahame) who takes a bullet near the heart after a heated argument with her mentor (Maureen O’Hara). Things look grim for the both of them: Grahame may die; O’Hara wants to confess. Fortunately, old pal Melvyn Douglas doesn’t buy O’Hara’s story and finds a friendly ear in Gotham dick Jay C. Flippen (and his murder-mystery loving wife Mary Philips). It’s hack work for helmer Nicholas Ray on his third pic, but at least he could enjoy a honeymoon on set with new wife Gloria! (Their next was that ultra dark near-masterpiece, IN A LONELY PLACE/’50 with a terrifically scary perf from Humphrey Bogart.) The main interest here lies in watching scripter Herman J. Mankiewicz, on his penultimate credit, reusing his CITIZEN KANE/’41 story construction to format this trifle. Here, we open with a shooting instead of a death, but the jumble of flashbacks with various P.O.V.s to get at the truth, and their non-linear order is pure KANE.* Alas, nothing keeps the film from collapsing halfway thru on its own storyline.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Pushing 50, Melvyn Douglas is really too old for this sort of thing. Perhaps his true function is structural . . . he’s ROSEBUD!

DOUBLE-BILL: IN A LONELY PLACE, see above.

SAPPHIRE (1959)

Few things date faster than films with progressive social agendas. A decade or two on, they look patronizing, simplistic and smothered with uplift. So all credit to this sharply-etched British police procedural about the murder investigation of a light-skinned black girl who was ‘passing’ as white. Director Basil Dearden sticks to the pace of his two investigators, methodical Nigel Patrick and instinctive Michael Craig, who pretty much steals the pic spouting the commonplace, off-hand racial clichés of the day as if they were truisms for the ages, yet thinks he hasn’t a racist bone in his body. But what really sets this one apart, is all the fine location work from Harry Waxman whose EastmanColor lensing of a very non-touristy London has been miraculously revived, especially for those who only know the film from old, faded prints.

DOUBLE-BILL: 1959 was also the year of Douglas Sirk’s magnificent version of IMITATION OF LIFE, from Fannie Hurst’s classic ‘passing-for-white’ meller, first filmed (wonderfully) in 1934.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER (2012)

The title is irresistible. The movie? Not so much. No doubt it sounded like a crackerjack idea to get high-tech vampire whiz Timur Bekmambetov out of Russia to meg. But his homegrown vampire hits (NIGHT WATCH/’04 and DAY WATCH/’06) didn’t go over Stateside and this proved equally unfathomable/unpalatable. At first, there’s a sense of amusing gall in filling up ‘Lincoln lacunae’ with secret vampire-hunting excursions, even a kind of nutcase logic to it. But Bekmambetov scrambles the goofball idea with CGI action sequences so disjointed that nothing adds up, each shot feels like a discrete unit. And things only get worse once we skip ahead to the Civil War with the vampires joining Team South and lousy aging make-up for all the non-non-dead. (Or should that be ‘the un-undead?’) The fun in these ‘what if’ fantasies is seeing how a crazy idea plays out against a background that’s as fact-driven as possible. But little in here follows thru on characters we know all too well. Heck, they can’t even get their vampire mythology right. (Silver bullets are for werewolves. Right?) Hard to know if the cultural fumbling falls on Bekmambetov or scripter Seth Grahame-Smith, fresh from regrettable work on Tim Burton’s unhappy DARK SHADOWS/’12. At least the non-CGI stuff is elegantly lit by lenser Caleb Deschanel, and you could hardly improve on the actors. Benjamin Walker has a great physique (head & bod) for the young Lincoln, and wins bonus points by letting us see what a young Liam Neeson might have done with the part. Rufus Sewell is under-used, as usual, but excellent as the baddie while the real standout is Jimmi Simpson as Lincoln’s ambivalent buddy. A nice step up from the snide intern he used to play for David Letterman on THE LATE SHOW.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: It’s not exactly great, but THE WIND AND THE LION lets Brian Keith take a ripping shot at playing a pre-Prez Teddy Roosevelt.