SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959)

In what proved to be his antepenultimate film (excluding a late encore in RAGTIME/’81), James Cagney reaches back to the old menace that established his legend one last time.*   Almost shockingly good in this well-made ‘Irish Troubles’ story from the 1920s about a University Medical Professor who moonlights as a rebel commander in the I.R.A.  So wound up in  ‘the cause,’ he’s become enthralled to the violent struggle and doesn’t want the action to stop, even for a just peace.  Falling under his sway is Don Murray’s Irish/American med student, a WWI vet sure he’s seen enough killing till he’s radicalized thru a combination of family history, a friend’s death and a brutal interrogation by the British Black & Tan unit.  With unexpectedly muscular direction by Michael Anderson, a workaday talent regularly drafted into big assignments pleasing & perfectly awful (AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS/’56; SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN/’68), here much helped by fave lenser Erwin Hillier whose heavy use of red-filtered b&w gives off a glowering edge.*   Strong acting support too.  Murray’s romantic rivals, working-class Irish Glynis Johns & upper-crust Brit Dana Wynter are shoehorned in, but very good; so too senior I.R.A. head Michael Redgrave, poet rebel Cyril Cusack and early credits for a fresh-faced Donal Donnelly and Richard Harris as a pigheaded gunman.  (Harris even gets a splashy death dance right out of a ‘30s gangster film with Cagney.)  And if Anderson loses control as the suspense overflows toward the end, this is still a grand exit for Cagney’s snarling genius.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK - I:  Keen-eared listeners will recognize some propulsive music cues composer William Alwyn refitted from his own score to ODD MAN OUT/’47; Carol Reed’s film about ‘The Troubles’ and a robbery gone wrong with James Mason.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/odd-man-out-1947.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - II:  *Presumably it was Cagney, taking no chances, who brought in Ivan Goff & Ben Roberts, scripters on WHITE HEAT/’49.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - III:  *A superbly mastered 2022 edition on Kino-Lorber does Erwin Hillier proud.  But look out for a HUGE Spoiler at the end of a nice interview with 90-ish Don Murray.

IT STARTED IN NAPLES (1960)

Trying on Hollywood for size in 1957*, Sophia Loren stuck it out thru a fistful of forgettable films before fleeing.  (De Sica’s TWO WOMEN/’60 and Anthony Mann’s EL CID/’61 coming to the rescue.)  This light romance, pure Hollywood in spite of handsome VistaVision lensing from Robert Surtees on location in Naples, is typical of the misuse.  Clark Gable, in his penultimate role, plays an American lawyer passing thru the city to settle his black sheep of a brother’s estate and finding complications: specifically, the dead man's son, a cute tyke being raised by Zia Sophia.  You’ll guess the rest though Gable gamely finesses the ending to suit his age.  It’s why the heart-tugging train station climax writer/director Melville Shavelson (improving on similar duties for Loren & Cary Grant in HOUSEBOAT/’58) lifted from Billy Wilder’s May/December LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON/’57 for Audrey Hepburn & Gary Cooper plays out not between the leads but between Gable & Nephew.  Harmless and less Ugly American than you expect (Gable’s savvy tourist is quick to catch on to the local customs), the main takeaway is noting that Gable and Vittorio De Sica, expertly playing his voluble Italian lawyer, were both born in 1901.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Naturally, the one project in the bunch still worth watching was also the biggest flop, George Cukor’s sui generis theatrical Western, HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS/’60.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/heller-in-pink-tights-1960.html  

(Use the search engine on the Full Site to check out other Loren Hollywood pics.)

BLUEBEARD (1944)

This exceptional Poverty Row production from Z-budget auteur Edgar G. Ulmer offers a rare opportunity to compare & contrast similar projects made the same year at two low-end price points.  Over at 20th/Fox, John Brahm’s THE LODGER, coming in about a step-and-a-half up from a programmer, a Jack the Ripper suspenser on a tortured artistic soul stalking London, compelled to murder beauty till he hits the pause button with his next victim in sight and a police detective on his trail also falling for the woman at risk.  BLUEBEARD has nearly the exact same scenario, but set in Paris with blocked painter/talented puppeteer Gaston Morel (aka Bluebeard).  In THE LODGER, Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon & George Sanders get polish & smooth production values from a major studio that bargain-basement counterparts John Carradine, Jean Parker & Nils Asther can only dream about on a six-day shoot for the PRC releasing outfit.  Yet Ulmer, doing his own remarkable art design with his old U.F.A partner Eugen Schüfftan as cinematographer, creates powerful atmosphere & images thru obvious painted backdrops and false perspective.  At times, we might have stepped into THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI/’20.  Jean Parker disappoints as the object of desire (so too Oberon in LODGER), but most of the cast is unusually strong for this cost-level; Carradine particularly happy with his work, rightly so.  Bumpy going here & there, lots of coverage problems covered with awkward edits, and current prints range from unwatchable to just okay.  (Best I could find came with burned-in Spanish subtitles.)  Yet the film is strangely disturbing, with a stylistic unity of vision that posits a painter’s unique artistic style to unlock a murder mystery.  All in all, one of Ulmer’s more successful oddities.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE LODGER/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-lodger-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Ulmer, unusually cognizant on film scores (see DETOUR/’45; CARNEGIE HALL/’47; THE NAKED DAWN/’55;), no doubt smiled at PRC music director Leo Erdody purloining Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ whenever a painting showed up, but may have cringed at Erody’s musical overload elsewhere.  The guy won’t shut up!

TREMORS (1990)

Mentioned near the top in recent obits for undersung actor Fred Ward, I’d not been aware of missing this sharp goof of a horror pic.  (Had I confused it with HOLES/’03?*)  A modest performer initially, it became a monster hit in home video, generating many poorly rated sequels.  But the original is a paradigm for this type of silly/scary night-at-the-movies fun, with everyone bringing their best to the survival game tropes as huge blind underground wormy beasts attack a small southwest desert community.  Director Ron Underwood, with stinkers like THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH/’02 to look forward to, is on top of every piece of business, either pushing or lying low as needed while getting strong eccentric perfs out of a pitch-perfect cast.  Ward’s co-stars, Kevin Bacon & the less well known Finn Carter, take charge trying to out think the fast evolving creatures, with a fine company of eccentrics joining battle.  Gung-ho survivalist gun-nuts Reba McEntire & Michael Gross are particularly winning & funny.  And now the film has acquired as extra layer of wit as prescient parody of A QUIET PLACE/’18 using the same gimmick of noise-activated attacks . . . but with more laughs.  And a bright, sunny look rather than the usual modern murk doesn’t hurt either.  The film is almost too much fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: You know you’re in a '90s pic with an opening shot that spots Bacon from the back as he shakes off a pee before giving his ass a scratch.  (It’s okay, he keeps his jeans up.)  Had to let the kids know they were seeing something they couldn’t get for free on NBC at home.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Here’s a link to HOLES which turns out to have little in common with TREMORS.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/holes-2003.html

And to QUIET PLACE which has rather more.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-quiet-place-2018.html

THE NORTHMAN (2022)

Perhaps tempered by exponentially growing budgets (4 mill for THE WITCH/’15; 11 on THE LIGHTHOUSE/19; now up to 60), this third project from gifted writer/director Robert Eggers is both highly accomplished & disappointingly conventional.  Visually an art-house blockbuster manqué with brooding landscapes fit for any freshman dorm room; in content an early iteration of Hamlet, like a second cousin thrice-removed; it's a museum instillation you admire but are unmoved by.  Alexander Skarsgård makes a stunning beast as Amleth, the Hamlet character, running away from his dad-murdering/mom-marrying uncle only to return all grown up for revenge.  Those who know HAMLET will get a kick out of the differences (Nicole Kidman’s Mom in on the plot; the Ophelia character sane & fertile; a guilt-free Uncle Claudius; a doubt-free avenging son; etc .), but also note missing character & narrative interest.  You only have to recall the immediate vibrations of Denmark being a country out of whack triggered right at the start when the wrong person (the visitor not the guard) asks ‘Who goes there’ to see the difference genius makes.  Though certainly a worthwhile watch, much of Eggers’ complicated staging techniques start to feel like efforts to camouflage rather than reveal.  Hopefully, the film’s relatively soft grosses will safeguard him from a soul-sucking call placed by the ubiquitous folks of MARVEL to the talented Mr. Eggers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Eggers two other pics: THE WITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-witch-2015.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-lighthouse-2019.html   OR:  Ethan Hawke, over-parted in the Claudius spot here, had the lead in Michael Almereyda’s modernized HAMLET/’00.  (not seen here)

SAIL A CROOKED SHIP (1961)

From a novel by Nathaniel Benchley* (son of Algonquin Round Table Robert/father to JAWS Peter) a twee comic programmer where junior shipping exec Robert Wagner's idea to salvage a fleet of rusty old freighters leads him straight into a gang-who-couldn’t-shoot-straight pack of bank robbers.  Occasional director Irving Brecher (formerly a go-to writer for M-G-M comedies & musicals) hardly sweats the details on a plot that doesn’t add up, content to let a cast of good-natured comic zanies run the deck on board.  Wagner looks fit tossed by a hurricane in a Buster Keaton routine (alas, he grins thru the whole sequence); a pre-convent Dolores Hart holds on to her chastity; Ernie Kovacs, in his last film, fights Frank Gorshin for gang leadership; moll Carolyn Jones cuddles for warmth & loses her makeup to Wagner in a lifeboat (where’s Blake Edwards when you need him?); Frankie Avalon kicks a jukebox to life to accompany him on ‘Opposites Attract’; Jesse White & Harvey Lembeck can’t get a laugh; and so on.  Still, enough lands to keep you watching and there’s a fascination in wondering what possible audience Columbia Pictures was aiming at.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Benchley had far better luck in another nautical comedy, the well-played Cold War slapstick of Norman Jewison’s THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/russians-are-coming-russians-are-coming.html

OVER THE GARDEN WALL (2014)

Enchanting animation, odd & creepy, strange & whimsical, Patrick McHale’s hand-drawn mini-series (10 ten-minute chapters first seen on Cartoon Network) soon bewitched all who saw it.  Filled with subconscious childhood fears of loss & abandonment, it opens without explanation as two young brothers find they are lost in a Grimm forest and can’t find a way home.  Structurally, if not geographically, it’s familiar territory, each chapter set in a new location with fantastical creatures who might be friend or foe.  Surely one of them will know the way out!  But any directions they get are Delphic, designed to be inscrutable, confusing or contradictory.  So too our Freudian siblings: Kid Ego & Kid Id; while the communities they come across survive within Jungian collective memory & ritual.  Some of it, especially in the early going, frightening stuff . . . and not just for kids.  Loads of cultural & visual references, from WIZARD OF OZ to HANSEL & GRETEL; from the ‘30s 2-strip TechniColor of Isling & Harmon cartoons to an Auntie from Studio Ghibli.  Vocal stylings ranging from Jack Jones smooth Pop standards to Sam Ramey smooth operatic baritone.  Even a bit of faux Randy Newman.  Yet none of it feeling shoe-horned in for show, but part of the free-floating gestalt.  Something that gets too direct an explanation in Chapter 9 after we’ve given in to any lack of logic.  Better not to know or speculate, merely accept, like kids hearing a scary fairy tale for the first time.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  McHale’s sole credit after this is writer on the animated ADVENTURE TIME series.  Hopefully more of his distinctive voice will come thru on the upcoming Guillermo del Toro stop-motion PINOCCHIO adaptation where he's listed as co-writer.

CONE OF SILENCE / TROUBLE IN THE SKY (1960)

The suspense is largely cerebral in this courtroom & cockpit drama about jet aviation and a suspect new line of aircraft.  Intelligent & involving, timely too considering current problems at Boeing, it earns full credit for tackling a story based on technical specifications: the safe handling of planes under difficult flying conditions with only a soupçon of personal issues to complicate things.  Bernard Lee (‘M’ in the early James Bond pics) is the vet pilot under scrutiny after an aborted take off: pilot error or design flaw?  Checked out as AOK and back in the sky, further troubles pop up just as Inspector Michael Craig takes a shine to daughter Elizabeth Seal causing rival pilot Peter Cushing (in a rare unsympathetic role) to suspect favoritism.  With a reasonable production (other than some unhappy model plane shots) & typically fine British supporting cast, the film ought to be smooth sailing . . . er, flying.  Yet so visually dull, it just sits on the screen and dies in front of you.  Deplorably understated & tasteful, it plays like a veritable call to shake up British cinema.  Something already happening over at Hammer in TechniColored Horror, in stage-to-screen adaptations of Angry Young Man plays, and soon in the British New Wave.  All three sweeping this style of filmmaking aside.  Ironic that a film about the dangers of following the rules too strictly should be hoist on its own petard in Charles Frend’s unbending, by-the-book dependability.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Frend could be better, especially in films with Jack Hawkins like THE CRUEL SEA/’53.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-cruel-sea-1953.html

OR: Sticking closer to our subject, David Lean’s THE SOUND BARRIER/’52..  

WOMAN IN HIDING (1950)

Neatly twisted film noir has a lot going for it, but misses top-tier status; less from a lack of plausibility (common enough) than from a lack of inevitability.  Ida Lupino gets things off to startling effect as a newlywed in flight from her honeymoon, speeding away from deceiving husband Stephen McNally only to plunge to her death when she drives off the road and into the river.  That suits him fine since it’s not Ida he wants, but the furniture factory she’s just inherited from her late dad.  He killed him, too.  But if Ida’s dead, where’s the body?  He won’t own the factory till they find her.  So, he’s on the hunt and she’s on the run.  Enter free-spirited Howard Duff, halfheartedly running a newsstand at the bus station when this lost soul comes by.  Intrigued, if not entirely convinced by her story, he just might turn her over to the authorities as one mixed up dame (her picture’s in the paper) . . . or phone the husband to come pick up his deluded wife.  Director Michael Gordon can’t quite make all the pieces add up, but in a series of tight set pieces, he shows consistent visual imagination, much helped by long-time M-G-M glam cinematographer William Daniels, freed at Universal to show off some impressive noir bona fides with near night-owl vision.  (Check out a chase in an Emergency Stairwell and a gasp-worthy climax in the darkened furniture factory.)  Plus a bit of Hollywood matchmaking as co-stars Lupino & Duff married next year.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: No composer credited, but lots of tasty Miklós Rósza stock cues help to build tension.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Universal released an even better woman’s POV film noir this year, WOMAN ON THE RUN/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/woman-on-run-1950.html

CONTEST:  Not the only 1950 film to have a ‘corpse’ narrate the film.  Name the other one to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on a film of your choice.