She/He MADE Me!: ANGELA MADE TIM WATCH: Sabrina (1954)

She/He MADE Me!: ANGELA MADE TIM WATCH: Sabrina (1954):   SABRINA  (1995), starring Humprhey Bogart & Audrey Hepburn. Written by Billy Wilder, Ernest Lehman & Samuel A. Taylor. Directed by...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "Big Crazy" 8/30/51

A woman disappears and her husband hints that he murdered her while bragging about having been an abusive husband. But his neighbors all agree that he had been a hen-pecked milquetoast. So the detectives have a mentally unstable suspect for a murder that might not have been committed.

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The Secret of the Whistler

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #121

The sixth movie in the Whistler series--movies based on the radio show of the same name--is another quietly suspenseful story. The Secret of the Whistler (1946) is similar in a way to the previous year's Voice of the Whistler, in that a large chunk of its 65-minute run-time is devoted to setting up the crimes that will eventually be committed.  

But that short run-time and another strong performance by Richard Dix keeps the story from dragging. This time, Dix plays an artist named Ralph Harrison, who has very little talent but is able to live off his wealthy wife's fortune.

His wife, by the way, is physically frail and has suffered several heart attacks. So when Ralph falls for a pretty model named Kay Morrell (Leslie Brooks), he figures it won't be long before they are free to get married. In retrospect, though, he should have made sure his wife wasn't nearby listening when he explains this to Kay.

Ralph soon learns he's going to be kicked to the curb and cut out of his wife's will. In response to this, he drops poison into his wife's medicine.

I mentioned Dix's strong performance as Ralph. Dix is playing a guy who is definitely a self-centered jerk, but murder is something that is normally far above his pay grade. Dix portrayal of him as nervous and sometimes near outright panic--both while committing the murder and later worrying about being found out--gives backbone to a good script.

Ralph marries Kay, but news about another husband who was arrested for killing his wife worries him constantly. The fact that he can't find his first wife's diary and doesn't know if there is anything in it that can hurt him is yet another worry. And, after a while, Kay begins to wonder about Ralph as well. Has she indeed married a murderer?

This all leads up to a violent and satisfyingly ironic climax. 

Another good, solid entry in a well-written and well-produced series. 

Batman and Robin in Future-Space!

 

cover art by Lew Sayre Schwartz;

(Batman and Robin figures drawn by Bob Kane)

One can argue that during the Silver Age, Batman comics walked a little too far out of the shadows, with the silly stories featuring a Dark Knight who was no longer dark. (Mirroring the 1990s, when Batman walked way too far into the shadows.) But therre is no denying that many Silver Age Batman stories were lots of fun.  

Batman #59 (June-July 1950) includes a story that gives us a perfect example of Silver Age silly fun. "Batman in the Future," written by Bill Finger and drawn by Lew Sayre Schwartz (with Bob Kane drawing the Dynamtic Duo), is a joy to read.

The story begins with Batman and Robin catching the Joker and tossing him in the slammer. When the Joker mentions that he commits crime in part because his ancestors were famous clowns, Batman decides the thing to do is to travel 100 years into the past to study these influences. He and Robin go to Professor Nichols, who has a method of sending people into the past via hypnotism. 

But Nichols inadvertantly sends them 100 years into the future, where they see a future version of the Joker chasing someone. They stop the arch-criminal--only to discover this Joker is not an arch-criminal,

 

He is a decendent of Joker, but he fights on the sides of good as Police Chief Rokej. 

So at first it appears that Batman and Robin are going to be tossed in the Future Slammer. But Batman has Rokej compare his skin pores to a 20th Century picture of himself to prove he's the real thing. Before you can say "Holy Plot Device!" the two time travelers are recruited to help with a case.

Someone is sabotaging a particular brand of new space ship, leaving them easy prey for space pirates. It's suspected to be an inside job, so Bruce and Dick get jobs in the factory that makes the ships.

Soon, they've saved the owner of the factory and get permission to build a Space Batplane. That allows them to take their adventure into space, where they foil and capture the pirates.

But a Bat Signal projected on the moon brings them back to Earth, where they learn the space ship factory has been badly damaged by sabotage. One wonders how large a budget Chief Rokej has available to him if he can whip up a Bat Signal that projects an image half-a-million miles away. 

Anyway, the only way the space ship company can survive is to win a major upcoming space race and the only way for this to happen is for the Space Batplane to compete. But things go awry early in the race when the Batplane's fuel supply is sabotaged and it drifts into a Sargosso Sea of lost spaceships.

At first, things seem hopeless. But Batman realizes they can salvage fuel from the wrecked ships, which allows them to get back into the race.

They win the race by cutting a close orbit around the sun. All through the story, they've also been stumbling across clues that eliminate suspects as to who the saboteur is and now one last clue lets them finger the guy. Justice is served just as the hypnotism wears off and kicks Batman and Robin back to 1950.

It is indeed a silly story, but it is internally logical (sort of), visually eye-catching and--as I've said--a joy to read. The best Batman stories are from the 1970s, when he was the Dark Knight without being too dark and his skills as a detective and escape artist were properly appreciated. But the world would be a poorer place indeed without Silver Age Batman's goofy adventures.

Next week, a modern Marvel hero teams up with a 1930s pulp hero.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #33--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 25--...

Edgar Rice Burroughs Podcast: Mini Podcast #33--Tarzan of the Apes--Chapter 25--...:   A look at Chapter 25 of Tarzan of the Apes, in which the Ape Man decides to leave the jungle and seek out civilization. Click HERE for th...

Cover Cavalcade

 

Another great Luis Dominguez cover for Jonah Hex. This one is from 1980.

She/He MADE Me!: ANGELA MADE TIM WATCH: Daddy Long Legs (1955)

She/He MADE Me!: ANGELA MADE TIM WATCH: Daddy Long Legs (1955):   DADDY LONG LEGS  (1955), starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Written by Henry and Phoebe Ephron. Directed by Jean Negulesco.  TIM SAYS...

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Gunsmoke: "What the Whiskey Drummer Heard" 4/17/54

Marshal Dillon learns that someone has been hired to kill him, but doesn't know Who, Where or When.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

The (Almost) first Bond

 

When Roger Moore died a few years ago, I felt obligated to watch one of his Bond movies. That was The Spy Who Loved Me, which epitomizes that actor's films. It was absurdly over the top, but also enormous fun. It also gave us Jaws, arguably the best henchman ever (however badly he was handled in the awful Moonraker). 

So when Sean Connery died recently, I wanted to watch one of his Bond films. (I also want to watch Connery's best ever films--The Wind and the Lion and The Man Who Would be King.) But which one? Goldfinger and Thunderball are my favorites and I will undoubtably watch them soon, but I decided to watch Dr. No (1962), Connery's first Bond movie. 

I know most of my readers are likely to be members of the global Nerd Herd, so a lot of you probably already know this: Connery actually isn't the first person to play James Bond. In 1954, the TV series Climax! produced a live adaptation of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. Peter Lorre was the villain and and Barry Nelson played the American spy Jimmy Bond. 

But Dr. No took Bond back to his appropriate British roots. The movie also gives us the iconic Bond theme music, though we don't yet get to hear a title song unique to this particular movie. That's a tradition that would begin two movies later with Goldfinger. 

There's also no spy gadgets--we wait another movie (From Russia, With Love) to meet gadgeteer Q and watch him explain how a booby-trapped briefcase works. In Dr. No, we meet the an armorer who (at M's orders) takes away Bond's .25 caliber Berreta and gives him the Walther PPK the character would carry for decades.

By the time we get to the end of Connery's run, the films were mixing self-aware parody into the plots, but with Dr. No, the elements that create a Bond film were just being introduced. There was nothing to parody yet and, though there is humor injected via Bond's dry sense of humor, the movie takes itself seriously. Dr. No is a well-constructed spy thriller with a strong hero, one of the most memorable Bond girls and a great villain.

It does take us awhile to actually meet the villain, though. Bond spends most of his time in Jamaica, investigating the disappearance of another British agent. It's relatively late in the film that the case takes him to Crab Key, a remote island on which the Chinese/German mad scientist Dr. No has set up shop. In addition to a small army of guards, he also has an atomic-powered Macguffin that he's using to electronically knock down American rockets. 

Joseph Wiseman gives a great performance as Dr. No, exuding just the right mixture of brilliance and insanity. I wish he had been given more of a presence in the movie, but it can also be argued that his late introduction gives the character more dramatic punch.

Connery, in the meantime, humanizes Bond. He is capable and professional. He can also be ruthless, as we see when he rather casually assassinates one of No's agents. But he can also be hurt (he's pretty disheveled after being brutally beaten by Dr. No's men). And he can be frightened. When he awakes at night to find a tarantula has been put in his bed, he's very near panic.

The movie has its flaws. Bad rear projection during a car chase spoils the tension of that scene. Dr. No's lair doesn't look anywhere near as impressive as lairs we'll see in later movies and his atomic reactor is absurdly easy to sabotage. 

In the book, Bond kills Dr. No in a very original way, while the movie ends with a so-so and far-too-short fight between the two before the doctor bites it. Also, Bond's escape through a booby-trapped air vent was a lot more epic in the book. (I include a clip of that scene here, though, because it does show us a disheveled and bloodied Bond we'll rarely see again.)

There's another interesting change from the novel. In the original, Dr. No worked for the Russians. But, though the Bond films occasionally touched on Cold War themes, the movie switched Dr. No to working for the criminal organization SPECTRE. Movie Bond would stay away from politics and instead foil apolitical master criminals. 

So, yes, I will be watching the best-of-the-best Connery Bond films again soon. But I was glad to revisit Dr. No. 

Flying Armored Cars and Flying Telephone Booths

 

Man From U.N.C.L.E. #8 (September 1966) is arguably the most entertaining issue in the comic book career of Napoleon and Illya. Written by Dick Wood and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky, it is cleverly plotted and fast-paced, with the story twisting into unexpected directions several times.

It begins with the two U.N.C.L.E. agents infiltrating a THRUSH base, intending to acquire information. But they are forced to improvise when THRUSH launches a mission. Wearing stolen THURSH uniforms, they tag along, hoping to thwart whatever the bad guys hope to accomplish.

It turns out they are after an anti-gravity formula (designated AG#4), which was made from a substance recovered from a meteor. The professor who created it tries to escape by using it, but THRUSH manages to get hold of a pail-sized container full of the stuff.

Soon, THRUSH is using the formula to rob an armored car carrying an army payroll. This sets off a wonderful action sequence that stretches across the second half of the book. The armored car is sprayed with AG #4. Napoleon manages to steal back the remaining forumla and the U.N.C.L.E. agents board the floating car, defending it against THRUSH and even managing to capture a THRUSH helicopter. 

THRUSH agents steal back the forumla and cause confusion by spraying bystanders with it. But, despite the need to save a few innocent lives, Illya steals the formula back for the good guys, only to have a THRUSH agents steal it from him.  He recruits a pretty young lady on a scooter to pursue the villain.

Illya gets the stuff back again, but is soon cornered in a phone booth. Using some AG#4 (and inadvertently spilling the rest of it), he goes airborne inside the booth. He's soon rescued by U.N.C.L.E. and the good guys more or less win (though no one ends up with the anti-grav formula.)

It's all great fun, with my quick summary really not doing justice to it. The extended chase scene with the various characters playing "musical anti-gravity formula" is imaginative and exciting, eventually bringing "The Floating People Affair" to a satisfying conclusion.

Next week--Batman in SPACE!