ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1943)

It took a World War to make (and sustain) the unlikely stardom of TechniColor beauty Maria Montez.  The campy, exotic adventure films she made for Universal in the ‘40s, especially when co-starred with blandly handsome Jon Hall and impish Sabu, were a perfect fit for wartime anxiety.  And though she continued making films till her early death in 1951 (only 41), her time had already passed.  ALI BABA, from 1943 now seems her best, certainly the best introduction, but is perhaps less well known than the ones with Sabu.  (Turhan Bey takes over his regular spot, and quite well.)  Easy to see why it holds up so well since, after a prologue that has the young Caliph watch his father’s murder, discover the secret cave of the Forty Thieves and get newly christened (if that’s the right word for an Arabic fable!) as Ali Baba, the bulk of the film, neatly paced by director Arthur Lubin, is pretty much lifted story beat by story beat/character by character from Warners' THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.*  Even Jon Hall, bringing Errol Flynn dash to his grown up Ali Baba, Andy Devine in for Alan Hale, a public rescue from certain death, a dastardly usurper . . . and so on.  Alas, Montez ain’t no Olivia de Havilland in the kidnaped princess turned helpmate/lover department.  But then, who is?*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See for yourself in ROBIN HOOD with the whole unbeatable Warner Bros gang.   (Note: Hold off on more Montez; her films best seen in long-spaced intervals.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-adventures-of-robin-hood-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Another ripoff comes when the outlaws sing their fighting song while riding thru the desert on horseback.  These guys not only robbing the wealthy Khan villians, but also composer Sigmund Romberg whose ‘Riff Song’ from his operetta THE DESERT SONG serves as a too close for comfort inspiration.

VIGILANTE FORCE (1976)

Twenty-five years before the horrible Brothers Weinstein, public face Harvey/backroom Bob, a similar dynamic played between the pleasant Brothers Corman, B-pic King Roger, front-man and stealth distributor of classy foreign cineasts, while kid brother Gene mostly content to stick with unassuming action junk such as this, one of a short series produced by Gene, on his own, for M-G-M release in the '70s..  And they don’t come much junkier than this tale of a terrorized town where locals hire a clean-up specialist only to discover that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.  (Heck, that’s almost SEVEN SAMURAI, no?)  Vietnam vet Kris Kristofferson’s the one-man wrecking crew (and closet sociopath) who simply replaces the current gang of shoot-em-up brawlers with a new protection racket of business-backed thugs.  It’ll take kid brother Jan-Michael Vincent to organize the town against KK and take back the town from the corrupt vigilante force who took back the town from the previous bad guys. Writer/director George Armitage manages to make a 30-day shoot look like they had 21, though art director Jack Fisk (with uncredited assistance from wife Sissy Spacek) somehow conjures convincing small-town flavor.  But who can explain what a hot property like Kristofferson (just off two Sam Peckinpah pics and about to start Streisand’s STAR IS BORN remake) is doing here.  (The filmmakers so surprised he showed up on set, they apparently forgot to buy him shirts!)  Jan-Michael Vincent shows the natural screen presence that somehow never quite put him in the top tier, while in a smaller part, pal Andrew Stevens makes a real impression even if Armitage throws away his sacrifice at the climax.  Guess he was too busy lifting James Cagney’s WHITE HEAT/’49 finish to bother.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  IMDb says this is a remake of Blaxploitation pic BUCKSTOWN/’75.  (Not seen here.)  And it does seem something of a precursor to popular guilty pleasure ROAD HOUSE/’86.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/08/road-house-1989.html

LE RAILWAY DE LA MORT / THE RAILWAY OF DEATH (1912)

Director Jean Durand amassed over 250 credits, mostly shorts/mostly for Gaumont, peaking in the pre-war years and out of the biz by his mid-40s before sound came in.  He must have been a handy guy to have around in those early days, churning out comedies that mixed Mack Sennett clownish eccentrics with Georges Méliès technical trickery (and nearly as tiresome); adventuress romances courtesy of daring wife Berthe Dagmar, who liked to work with wild/exotic animals; serials (none seen here); and tales of the untamed American West filmed in France (Pommes Frites Westerns?), as here.  Standing head & shoulders above anything else we’ve seen from Durand, and something of an astonishment for 1912, it’s a worthy precursor of the last two reels of Erich von Stroheim’s famously mutilated (but still phenomenal) GREED/’24.*  The two reeler (at least the 17minutes we have of it; 1912 two-reelers could last nearly a half hour using a slow cranking speed), opens in medias res, with a dying man discovered in a field by a pair of presumably prospecting partners.  His dying secret the exact location of a gold load, not ore, but a cache of gold nuggets.  Only problem, the 50/50 share the men had sworn to, lands in a notebook one of the ‘pals’ holds in the inner breast pocket of his jacket.  So the race is on, largely by train to claim the prize.  And the stunting (including fights on the roof  of a moving train) are gasp inducing.  No effects here, no cutaways or stunt doubles.  Just a couple of regular guys holding on for their lives before a nihilistic ending Stroheim would have okayed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the basic situation raised to the heights in GREED.   OR:  A selection of Jean Durand is out on a Gaumont Treasures DVD (Vol. 2/Disc 2).  But if you can deal with French-Only title cards, here’s a link to the same print of RAILWAY sans translation.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/greed-1924.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWCzOg_X14

GERONIMO! (1939)

Born 1829; died 1909.  That’s all you need to know to figure out what a raw deal and what a load of historical hooey Apache warrior Geronimo got in the movies.  This early try starts encouragingly (that exclamatory title!), with backhanded admiration on screen (‘The Story of a Great Enemy’), and in hiring Native American Chief Thundercloud to play him.  But after an opening scene at the White House where a sympathetic President Grant notes broken treaties, starvation rationing, crooked suppliers and a near official policy clash between the peace pedaling Indian Affairs Bureau and Army extermination practices, it’s business as usual for the rest of the film.  In fact, the story’s hardly about Geronimo at all.  Instead, Grant forces reluctant martinet General Ralph Morgan to enforce peace policies he doesn't believe in, while also  unaware estranged son William Henry has been assigned to the unit.  The rest is almost entirely dysfunctional father/son issues alternating with dysfunctional attitudes between the ‘regular’ army guys already out there and the interloping/clueless General.  Journeyman director Paul Sloane, given a slightly above average B-pic budget (lots of process and stock footage in here), can’t get us interested in the familial drama, allowing Capt. Preston Foster and schlubby aide Andy Devine whatever heroics & swagger available.  Indeed, Devine, for once, gets to play last man standing.  Oh, and Geronimo?  In this one, he’s killed about four decades before the fact.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  The Martinet General/Regular Army conflict, along with the estranged father/son drama proved perfect material for the first and third films in John Ford’s classic Cavalry Trilogy: FORT APACHE/’48 and RIO GRANDE/’50.   OR: 1962 GERONIMO. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/rio-grande-1950.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/geronimo-1962.html

THE COMPLEAT BEATLES (1982)

Straightforward, unpretentious and unauthorized, this succinct Beatles docu has all you really need to know about John, Paul, George and Ringo, seen plain before mythology took over.  Basically a cut-and-paste job (a good one) by director Patrick Montgomery and editor Pamela Page (well narrated by Malcolm McDowel), buttressed with purpose-made interviews from a fair sampling of on-the-scene witnesses: Gerry (and the Pacemakers) Marsden, L.P. producer George Martin, et al.  Without finger pointing and with no ax to grind (nice to see Ringo get his due), the film is particularly refreshing in not polishing up every track and image to pristine state.  Instead, capturing some of pleasure in pulling out a slightly dinged up original pressing to listen to rather than some over-refined digital replacement/remix.  All in a couple of hours.  (THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY, currently in streaming rotation goes on for 10 hours.)  Best insight comes in noting just how quickly John’s voice broke down doing live shows.  Did that factor into the boys taking on Abbey Road studio hermitage?  Worst is the usual fawning over SGT. PEPPER.  Anyone around at the time can (off the top of their head) reel off five or six titles they’d put on the turntable before it.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  As mentioned in this NYTimes piece, the film is floating all over the internet.  The rights situation must be confusing as hell.  Most seem to be taken from decent VHS copies and are surprisingly watchable.    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/movies/other-beatles-documentary.html   

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Beatles’ first Stateside visit turns NYC upside down in Robert Zemeckis’s debut pic, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND/’78.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-wanna-hold-your-hand-1978.html

IT ALL CAME TRUE (1940)

Standard line on Humphrey Bogart’s move from the ranks of leading contract players to A-list stardom has him plucked for bigger things in '41 by Raoul Walsh and then John Huston for the one-two punch of HIGH SIERRA and THE MALTESE FALCON.  But before that, home studio Warners had already singled him out after years of second lead hoods in big pics and top-billed leads in programmers.  In hindsight, this film looks like his career pivot point.*  Lewis Seiler is the blunt, journeyman director who can’t take the cutes out of the set-up, an aging Irish Darlin’ with a failing Manhattan boarding house filled with ancient ex-performers who gets a lifeline when her darling boy (Jeffrey Lynn) comes home with his guest, underworld gangster/club owner/employer Bogart, desperate for an unlikely hideout after shooting someone.  Niece Ann Sheridan, a singer who’s worked for Bogie, already staying there.  Both men have their eyes on Sheridan.  (Who wouldn’t, she even gets to sing a few numbers in her own warmly musical voice when a bored Bogie converts the brownstone into an intimate Gay ‘90s club.  Just what any gangster on the lam would do.)  Hokey, but also silly fun; plus a great turn from Felix Bressart as a retired magician who doesn’t know his revived act is getting big laughs because his dated routine is so darn corny.  But the main thing to watch is how Bogart transitions right before your eyes into a sympathetic lead.  Heck, he even gets the big renunciation scene at the end so he can play fairy godfather to the lovers.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Basically, the same renunciation bit James Cagney played two years back for Raoul Walsh in THE ROARING TWENTIES/’39, giving the very same Jeffrey Lynn the love of his life.  Plus Bogart as the second lead baddie . . . sans redemption.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-roaring-twenties-1939.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A later reissue reshot the opening title card, upping Bogart from third to first billed.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (2025)

With the notable exceptions of CABARET and CHICAGO*, B’way lyricist Fred Ebb & composer John Kander mostly turned out near misses that had good concepts, catchy scores, short runs and cult cast albums to keep their reps alive.  KISS, probably the best of these, still comes up short in Bill Condon’s heartfelt, but commercially DOA film adaptation.  Based on Manuel Puig’s novel (as was the 1985 William Hurt/Raul Julia film, uncredited here), it’s a sort of Queer Scheherazade with two prisoners of the Argentine military dictatorship in for Sultan and Storyteller.  Sharing a cell and an evolving friendship, Valentin, Diego Luna’s macho revolutionary political prisoner, and Molina, Tonatiuh’s effeminate informer, in on a vice charge, survive the misery of incarceration with nightly story recitations by Molina of the OTT romantic musical melodramas he loves and which now help take them out of the prison reality of  torture, poisoned food and isolation.  Under Condon (under Kander & Ebb for that matter,  the conceit only works sporadically, unsure how directly to reflect or comment.  Something the film points out all too well, highlighting the one musical number that pulls the whole concept together, ‘Where You Are.’ since it does exactly what the rest of the film only hints at doing.  Condon & Co. merely distracting when they mean to distance, in the Brechtian sense.  ‘Where You Are’ also exceptional because, while Molina is infatuated with lush TechniColor, this number, is lit & costumed to mimic glossy b&w showstoppers of the’30s,  using the natural abstraction of b&w to enhance a dialectic between audience & screen without need of forcing the conceit on us.  No complaints about the two leading men: Diego Luna’s Valentin gaining nuance and offering acceptance thru suffering; Tonatiuh’s Molina, pitched a bit high in the opening, but soon showing his best form and wide-ranging talent.  As the woman of their movie dreams (in multiple roles), Jennifer Lopez is proficient, sabotaged by leftover costume designs from Chita Rivera’s B’way run and by make-up that turns her into a wide-mouth ringer of musical comedy cult fave Dolores Gray whom you may recall from IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER/’55 and DESIGNING WOMAN/’57.*  Intentional?

LINK:  *Speaking of CHICAGO/Speaking of Dolores Gray: ‘IF,’ a comic ballad/tortured torch song (Jule Styne; Betty Comden & Adolph Green) introduced on B’way by Gray in TWO ON THE AISLE, is like a précis of CHICAGO, shrunk down from 2.5 hours to 3.5 minutes.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XoR-fuzvY   

CONTEST:  For unknown reasons, two references to an earlier ‘concept musical,’ LADY IN THE DARK are in here.  Spot them and send your answer via our COMMENTS Box.  The first correct answer wins a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the streaming film of your choice.

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994)

Faux Stephen King, but not faux John Carpenter in what is probably the best of his later films.*  Producer and occasional writer Michael De Luca gets credit for the script on this Stephen King pastiche about best-selling horror author and King rival Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow in a purposefully unbecoming wig).  His immense sales & cultural influence a lifeline to publisher Charlton Heston (well cast) and editor Julie Carmen (less well cast).  With Cane’s latest manuscript way overdue, but scheduled to hit the stores soon, they can’t even locate him.  That’s how insurance investigator Sam Neill (terrific) gets involved, hunting him up along with editor Carmen through directions more imaginary than real.  A lot like his books, getting weirder and scarier as the searchers find they’re driving into a living horror fable right out of his fevered brain.  Threatening small-town rubes, unspeakably gory monsters, it’s more maze than amazing.  Yet the best scare, the only one that really shows Carpenter still in top form, is a simple one that sees Neill hot-wiring a car to make an escape only to discover no matter how far or fast he goes into uncharted territory, you wind up right back where you started from.  Pure Lewis Carroll logic.  He’ll  have to go twice as fast to get anywhere.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not having seen all of Carpenter’s later work, use the COMMENTS Box to let us know if we’ve missed something good.  Thanks.

LOOK IN ANY WINDOW (1961)

Since coming to Hollywood with Orson Welles’ Mercury Players, William Alland had done a bit of everything.  As an actor, he’s the shadowy reporter on the hunt for ‘Rosebud’ in CITIZEN KANE/’41.  Post-WWII service, he wrote & produced B-pics with little distinction till finding his niche at Universal in Sci-Fi & horror: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE/’53; CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON./’54; THIS ISLAND EARTH/55; THE MOLE PEOPLE/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-mole-people-1956.html), et al.  But he only directed once; this micro-budget seven-day quickie meant to establish rising ‘Teen Idol’ Paul Anka as a new Sal Mineo.  (Physically, the young Anka more proto-Dustin Hoffman.*)  In this debut, the poor kid’s in a bad way: Manly Mom Ruth Roman, busy emasculating unemployed Dipso-Dad Alex Nicol, is hankering for wealthy horndog neighbor Jack Cassidy.  Jack’s ignoring his wife who’s contemplating a coffee-fueled tête-à-tête with that widowed Euro-neighbor next door.  Meanwhile Gigi Perreau, Cassidy’s boy-curious teen daughter fights off a hot rod boyfriend to make nice with unthreatening soft-rod Anka.  But once he gets into Pop’s liquor supply, Anka comes on too strong.  (If Gigi weren’t stronger than drunk Paul, those shattered wine glasses already put out for  tomorrow’s big Fourth of July pool party might not have been just symbolic.  Yikes!  (Or is it mazel-tov?)  No wonder the kid is acting out as the pervy local Peeping Tom.  Enter Detectives Tweedledum and Tweedledee, one ready to force an old-school confession from any suspect, the other all modern psychology, understanding the kid’s depraved because he’s deprived as WEST SIDE STORY’s Officer Krupke might have put it.  Presented in a smeary/lo-fi image, the film lists no cinematographer (who’d want to take credit?); with generally lousy tech work to match.  Where has this sleazy, sticky-to-the-touch, campy Midnite Madness Movie been hiding?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Anka didn’t turn into a Mineo or a Hoffman, but he did write the film’s theme song.