Underwater Shenanigans

 

So I watch the 1973 movie The Neptune Factor on YouTube and I kind of like it. So I decide to do a blog post about it, alerting my thousands of devoted readers (don't disillusion me!) to the movie's existance.

Except now that I'm writing about it, the flaws in the movie are starting to become more apparent. This doesn't retroactively prevent me from having enjoyed watching the movie, but the flaws are real.

The movie is about an undersea lab, with three men aboard, that's knocked into a deep trench by an undersea earthquake. An experimental sub--the Neptune--is sent down to see if the lab is still intact and the crew rescued.

The sub is cool and the underwater photography is quite good. Also, I like the cast, especially Ernest Borgnine as a diver and Yvette Mimieux (who played Weena in George Pal's The Time Machine) as a scientist. Ben Gazzara (an actor I normally like) puts on a very unconvincing Southern accent as the sub's designer/pilot, but he's still good in the role.

When the sub gets close to the remains of the lab, the crew discovers the deep waters are infested with huge sealife. Rescuing the crew, who are rapidly running out of air, means running a gauntlet of giant moray eels.

This is all pretty cool. The problems with the movie are:

1. Why is there sunlight this deep?

2. How can the divers so casually leave/enter the sub this deep without worrying about water pressure?

3. The "giant" fish are regular fish shot in extreme closeup without any effort to give them a sense of scale.

These problems were obvious when I watched it and more obvious now that I'm writing about it.

But, gosh darn it, I like the sub. And I like Ernest Borgnine. I watched this whole movie and I don't regret it. 

I've read of a Sean Connery rule--a rule that states if Connery was in it, the movie is worth watching no matter what its quality is otherwise. Should there be an Ernest Borgnine corollary to this rule?

Decide for yourself. Here's the movie:

The Fighting Pilot (1935)

 

Richard Talmadge, born in 1892, worked as an acrobat as part of the Flying Melzettis before diving into the movie business as a stuntman, often doubling for Douglas Fairbanks or Tom Mix. In later years, he was behind the camera as a stunt coordinator or second-unit director. But for a few years in the 1930s, he was the star of a series of B-movies, produced by the Poverty Road studio "Reliable Pictures." 

One of these films is The Fighting Pilot, which was released in 1935. Talmadge plays Hal Foster, a pilot with acrobatic talents that come in handy when someone tries to steal both the plans and the prototype of a new airplane.

The movie clocks in at 56 minutes, so (like most B-movies) it doesn't waste any time. A villain named Cardigan steals the plans and a couple of pilots he's hired fly off with the plane itself. Foster pursues a carload of bad guys on a motorcylce, eventually jumping into the car and fighting three men while the car careens out of control.

Laster, he trails Cardigan to a building in Chinatown. More acrobatic/fight shenanigans follow. Along the way, he learns where the prototype plan is actually stashed. Flying there, he makes a mid-air leap into a plane full of bad guys.

The story is structured purely to show off Talmadge's acrobatic abilities. This is fine, because he's a great acrobat and his stunts (especially that motorcylce-to-car leap) are fun to watch. 

The supporting cast is also good. Well, mostly good. Rorbert Frazer is appropriately oily as Cardigan. Gertude Messinger plays Foster's gal--she's nice to gaze upon and is pretty darn spunky. The downside is Eddie Davis as Berty, Foster's comedic sidekick. It's here that the movie as the same failing as many other B-movies in that it inserts a sidekick who simply isn't that funny. 

But it's not enough to spoil the film. Richard Talmadge was a great acrobat and stuntman, so a short film built around his stunts is an inherently good idea. This makes watching The Fighting Pilot a pleasant way to pass an hour. 

You can watch it yourself here:

A Fake Baron and a Jealous Cowhand

 

1940's The Showdown is yet another entertaining entry in the long-running series of B-movies, with William Boyd's boisterous and authoritative portrayal of Hoppy giving the story a firm anchor to build upon.

Hoppy is asked by a ranch owner to pay a visit. The owner is hard up for cash and wants Hoppy to take the horses to San Francisco for auction. But then a European baron shows up who might want to buy them himself.

Hoppy's not sure about the Baron. And he has reason to be suspicious. The "Baron" is indeed a fake. He simply wants to find out when the horses are being taken to Frisco, so he can have his band of outlaws intercept and steal them.

Hoppy seems to foil this plan and expose the Baron in a clever way starting by foiling an attempt to cheat at a poker game. But the Baron is persistent, convincing Hoppy's friend Lucky that Hoppy is making a play for Lucky's gal. Because of this, Lucky unwittingly gives away where the horses will be initially taken after leaving the ranch. This results in Hoppy being captured and tied up in a burning barn.

Hoppy will, of course, win through in the end. This movie ends with a nifty action scene, but the real pleasure of this one is watching Hoppy stay one step ahead of the Baron and carry out that clever reverse con to expose the Baron's scheme.

Here's the movie on Youtube, but a print with better sound quality is available on the free streaming service Tubi.

Blonde for a Day

 

Michael Shayne--the hardboiled private detective created by Brett Halliday (Davis Dresser) had a lively film career. He was played by Lloyd Nolan in a series produced by 20th Century Fox--seven movies made from 1940 to 1942. It was their attempt to set up a B-production line to compete with series such as The Saint and The Falcon. These were often based on non-Shayne novels (including Chandler's The High Window) because the studio had paid for the rights to the name and basic setup of the character--not any of the individual novels. So they pulled out novels they already owned film rights for and stuck Shayne's name on the main character. 

Then Shayne moved to PRC, one of the Poverty Row outfits. Oddly, they did retain the rights to several of Halliday's novels. There were five films--two loosely based on stories by Halliday (though one of those is based on a non-Shayne tale) and three with original screenplays--produced in 1946 and 1947.

The Nolan movies are a ton of fun. And I've just watched one of the PRC films for the first time. PRC's Shayne was played by Hugh Beaumont and 1946's Blonde for the Day is the third of the five. So I can now say that the PRC Shayne is also a ton of fun. This is, by the way, one of the movies using an original screenplay.

It's always neat seeing someone play a part so different from what they would become famous for--in this case, Beaver's dad Ward Cleaver is a tough P.I. who clearly enjoys being one step ahead of the homicide detective, making fun of the poor guy whenever he can. It's the sort of behavoir that would have gotten him a good talking too from Ward.

In this case, he's looking into the attempted murder of a reporter friend. That friend had been looking into a gambling ring and a series of murders linked to the gamblers. Superficially, that seems to point towards the gamblers as the main suspects. But there's also at least three different unidentified blonde women involved in the case and someone is also being blackmailed.

Shayne and his secretary/girlfriend Phyllis look into things and Shayne gradually evolves a plan to lure some of the bad guys into a trap and find the clues necessary to nail the killer.

Phyllis is played by Kathryn Adams--Beaumont's real-life wife. Her schtick about getting jealous whenever another woman comes within five feet of Shayne gets old, but she is otherwise a clever lady who does her share in helping Shayne and--it turns out--has a wicked right cross.

Blonde for the Day makes me want to watch the other PRC Shayne movies. This one, at least, really is a ton of fun.

A Ghostly? Killer and a Fun Saloon Brawl

 

Rimfire (1949) is a noir Western directed by B. Reeves Easton. Easton is not exactly a famous figure in movie history--he was best known as a second-unit director and action specialist. He does a fine job here as the primary director, though, and his action-specialist background shows through in an exceptionally well-choreographed saloon brawl.

The main plot involves an undercover agent named Tom Harvey (played by James Millican) searching for some stolen government gold. He takes a job as deputy in a small New Mexican town, as he suspects the gold is hidden somewhere nearby. 

But other stuff is going on in town. The owner of the local saloon is the secret leader of a band of stagecoach robbers. A gambler (Reed Hadley) is falsely accused of cheating at cards and hanged, though Harvey believed he was innocent. And then someone begins killing off those involved in the hanging--has the gambler come back from the dead? Harvey doesn't think so and also thinks the killings might relate to the stolen gold. But the only clue is that the killer is using rimfire cartridges (bullets in which the primer is along the edge of the cartridge rather than the center). Who else uses such a gun?

Aside from the pretty awesome saloon brawl, another stand-out scene is the gambler's trial, which hits just the right note of grimness and effectively reminds us that a man's life is at stake. The revelation of the killer's identity is honestly surprising and acting is quite good.

I found a quote HERE from an interview with Margie Dean, who plays a saloon girl in the movie:  

“James Millican was polite and pleasant, but again I knew Reed Hadley better. It was a good little picture. Some of them I made were corny, but this was pretty well done. These films were done fast with last minute script changes. If you hit your spot and said the dialogue, it was printed. To be pretty good in something like that is more of an achievement than being good in a big picture where you do it over and over.”

I've always championed B-movies on my blog and Margie's quote about being good in a B-movie just makes me appreciate them more.

Here's the movie in its entirety. You know, I have a little over 7,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel (hardly an earth-shaking number, I realize) but I've never been sure why most of them have subscribed--whether its for the clips from movies I've reviewed or the ERB podcast or what have you. The increasing prevalence of old movies in their entirety on YouTube means I'm posting fewer clips--since I can more often post the entire film. I hope my subscribers don't show up as an angry mob outside my home because of this. Torch and pitchfork damage isn't covered by my insurance.

Wild Mustang (1935)

 

Ajax Pictures was one of the Poverty Row studios able to churn out inexpensive B-movies to inhabit the bottom half of double features, In 1935, they produced Wild Mustang, starring Harry Carey as former sheriff Joe "Wild Mustang" Norton. 

As is the case with many of the B-movies, it's a fun little movie. The story certainly unfolds quickly. It pretty much has to--the movie has a mere 58-minute run time.

Veteran Western villain Bob Kortman is Utah Evans, an escaped convict that "Wild Mustang" Norton sent up the river years ago. He puts together a gang, robs a bank and commits a couple of murders. The murder victims include the current sheriff.

So Norton comes out of retirement and soon has his own son Reno going undercover, joining the gang as an outlaw. Reno's cover is quickly blown, but he's learned of the gang's plan to raid the town.

In the meantime, old "Wild Mustang" gets himself captured. With the help of his horse, he escapes, but then soon gets captured again. This leads to him being tied up and gagged in a cabin that his own son is about to blow up with dynamite. Harry Carey was a good actor with a real screen presence, but his character this time can be said to have an over-confidence problem. 

In the end, of course, the good guys win. Utah is caught by the hero (who does manage to escape again) and, though we don't see the rest of the gang caught, its implied that are. The story does indeed move quickly and I think it's worth an hour of your time if you are in the mood for an old-fashioned oater. 

It's Sindbad, not Sinbad!

 

Actually, I'm not bothered by the Anglocized spelling of the Arab sailor's name, but it's nice to see a more faithful translation. (If I understand it correctly, Sindbad is a Romanization of the original Arabic, but closer to the original than Sinbad. If anyone reading this can correct me on this if I've got it wrong, please let me know.)

One of those times the name is spelled the Roman way is the 1963 movie Captain Sindbad. Guy Williams, in full swashbuckler mode, had finished swashbuckling about on the TV series Zorro and was a few years away from getting lost in space as Dr. John Robinson. So he had opportunity to star in this imaginative (if obviously inexpensive) independent film. It was directed by Byron Haskin, who is best remembered for directing War of the Worlds in 1952.

Sindbad, in this version, is the only hope to overthrow the evil El Kerim, despotic ruler of Baristan. El Kerim biggest advantage is a ring he wears that forces the magician Galgo to serve him. One of Galgo's accomplishments is removing El Kerim's heart and placing it in a remote tower. That way, El Kerim can't actually be killed--a trait that unexpectedly foils Sindbad's initial attempt to dispose of the guy.

There's also a beautiful princess, of course--Princess Jana (Heidi Bruhl--whose performance endows the princess with a quiet courage). Jana is the daughter of the rightful king, so El Kerim wants to cement his position as leader by marrying her. She's in love with Sindbad, though, so is a very reluctant bride.

The movie, as I've said, is very imaginative. Sindbad's ship is sunk by men transformed into rocs who bomb the ship by dropping rocks on it. Later, Sindbad is a prisoner in an arena, forced to battle an invisible monster. Eventually, he and his surviving crew must brave a swamp full of various monsters (including a hydra-type creature--pictured below) and other dangers to get to the tower where El Kerim's heart is hidden. Then Sindbad must fight an unusual monster followed by fighting El Kerim himself to win the day. And save the princess as well. While all this is going on, Jana is being led to the execution block to be killed by getting stomped on by an elephant. Yuck.

The special effects obviously suffer from a lack of budget and technology, but you can always see what the filmmakers were going for. The story is fun and the cast gives it their all. I wish this had been a Ray Harryhausen film--that would have made it awesome. But it's still worth watching.

By the way, Gold Key put out a comic book adaptation with Russ Manning art. We'll take a look at it next week.

The City of Lights Can Be Pretty Darn Dark

 

1935's Charlie Chan in Paris, starring Warner Oland as Chan, is a strong entry in the series. It's a good, solid mystery with an excellent climax.

Getting to that climax is a lot of fun. Charlie arrives in Paris, ostensibly on vacation but in reality investigating the source of forged bonds. He immediately receives a death threat.

Charlie shrugs this off and soon shrugs off an overt attempt on his life. Charlie is soft-spoken and invariably polite, but he has never scared easily. 

He's soon joined by his son Lee (Keye Luke), which adds in the excellent father-son chemistry that made the Oland films the best in the series. And, though Lee is always comic relief to a degree, he's also a real assett in the investigation, following a suspect and making astute obeservations. I kind of wish there had been a scene in which Lee was present when someone tries to off his dad. Other movies in the series show us that you simply do NOT threaten Charlie Chan when Lee is around. It will not end well for you. That's always fun (and a little touching) to see.

Charlie accompanies some friends to a nightclub soon after arriving in Paris, but his real reason for doing so is to meet up with a dancer at the club. She's been doing undercover work for Chan. But she's murdered before she can tell him anything significant.

There's another murder after that, with a friend of Charlie's being arrested for it. But Charlie knows she's innocent and knows this murder also involves the counterfeit bonds. The crimes are being committed by a scruffy begger. It's not hard for us to guess that the begger persona is a disguise, but each of the likely suspects has an alibi for at least one of the murders.

Charlie eventually puts it all together. Accompanied by a friend, he eventually follows the trail into the sewers of Paris, where a confrontation with the killer is inevitable. Its a suspenseful and satisfying conclusion to the mystery.

The Charlie Chan movies are now on YouTube. I don't know the legal situation, so I can't promise the link below will always be there, but here's a good quality print of the movie:

Cute Girls and Corpses

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #175

Rare book dealer Joel Sloan and his wife Garda have one last mystery to solve. And for the third time in three movies, there are different actors bringing the Sloans to life. This time around, it's Franchot Tone and Ann Sothern.

I don't have a lot to say about this one, because after two fast-paced and entertaining comedy/mysteries, Fast and Furious (1939) is a bit of a dud. 

I don't blame Tone and Southern for this. They play against each other nicely. But their dialogue fails to sparkle the way it did in the first two films. One major problem is Garda's almost obsessive jealousy. In the earlier movies, this was an occasional running gag. Here, it pretty much defines every interaction they have.

Also, the movie takes a half-hour (nearly half of its 73-minute run) to set things up and actually get to the murder. And that murder does not involve stolen or missing rare books, meaning that Joel's special skillsets are not used and he becomes a more generic amateur detective. Joel is asked to help judge a beauty contest, allowing this Busby Berkely-directed movie to fill itself up with pretty girls in bathing suits.

There's also a sequence in which several trained lions end up in the Sloans' hotel room. It's a funny scene, but seems a little too slapstick to fit into a comedy that depends on sharp dialogue for its humor.

The mystery itself (involving missing money and the murder of the guy who originally embezzled it) is pretty good and the resolution is satisfying. But we simply don't have as much fun getting there as we did in the first two movies. Though, to be fair, there is a pretty nifty scene in which the Sloans have to escape a death trap.

This wraps up our examination about how being a rare book dealer inevitably leads to investigating murders. We also finished up the Tom Corbett novels a few weeks ago. At this moment, I have no idea what the next Read/Watch 'em In Order subject will be, but I'll think of something.

Stolen Manuscripts and Multiple Murders

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #173

A year after we were introduced to rare book dealer Joel Sloan and his wife Gerda in Fast Company, the two returned in 1939's Fast and Loose.

But they are no longer played by Melvyn Douglas and Florence Rice. Rather, they've been transformed into Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell.

It is perhaps even more obvious in the sequel than in the original that MGM is trying to replicate a Thin Man vibe with this series. The Sloans banter with each other constantly. As with the first movie, this is just fine. Montgomery and Russell have good chemistry together and Russell in particular is a master at playing that sort of character. 

In this one, Sloan is asked to be an agent in the purchase of a Shakespeare manuscript. He and Gerda are staying at the home of the current owner when things begin to get hairy. The manuscript turns out to be a forgery. The owner's personal librarian disappears. And then the owner is murdered.

Gerda isn't happy about Joel investigating another murder after he got shot in the behind last time. But there's no choice. The cops suspect someone Joel believes to be innocent. 

There are a number of other suspects, including a ruthless gangster who tries to threaten the Sloans and later has his thugs run them off the road. Sloan keeps plugging away, even after his best theory is seemingly shot down and two more murders occur. But eventually, he is able to finger the killer and find the real Shakespeare manuscript.

It really is a fun movie. I think Montgomery and Russell play off one another even better than Douglas and Rose (though that's subjective--both couples are excellent). The murder mystery is relatively clever and the banter is indeed witty.

One more movie in the series to go---with different actors again taking over the lead roles. We'll soon see how they stack up against the others.

Rare Books and Murder

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #171

We still  have a Tom Corbett book to eventually look at as part of the In Order series, but I caught a movie on TCM today that I want to write about. That movie had two sequels made the next year AND I just scored a triple feature disc with all three of the films on it on Ebay. So we'll add them to the In Order line-up. If I get confused and start writing about Tom Corbett being a rare book dealer... well, I'll try to keep it all straight. Besides, Tom would only deal in rare SPACE books.

Anyway, Fast Company (1938) was directed by Edward Buzzell and released by MGM. It's based on a novel written by Marco Page--a pen name for screenwriter Harry Kurnitz, who also co-wrote the screenplay. I'd like to read the book as well, but quick search makes me think an affordable copy will be hard to find.

The movie features Melvyn Douglas as a rare book dealer named Joel Sloan, who runs his business with the help of his wife Garda (Florence Rice). Joel's bookshop doesn't make a lot of money, but he supplements his income with detective work--tracking down stolen rare books and getting rewards from the insurance companies. 

But when a rival and probably corrupt dealer is murdered, a friend of Sloan's is the main suspect. So Sloan is obligated to step up his detective game and look for a killer. 

He has a lot of suspects to chose from. There's Eli Bannerman (Louis Calhern), who--like the dead man--deals in stolen books. Sid Wheeler (Dwight Frye) has a talent for making fake first editions. And the victim's lovely secretary (Claire Dodd) was probably involved in the crooked side of the business as well.

While looking into the murder, Joel often pauses to banter with his wife. The movie is obviously going for a Thin Man vibe. And this is fine, because it suceeds here. Douglas and Rice have a nice chemistry together, their one-liners are often very funny, and she comes across as smart and capable herself. In fact, Garda will get a chance to save Joel's life near the end of the film.

Another similiarity to the first Thin Movie at least is having the protagonist suffer a minor gunshot wound in an... embarassing location. I don't know if that was intentional or coincidental, but it's another fun conntection between the two series. 

The murder mystery in Fast Company is satisfying and the supporting cast is quite good. I always like seeing Dwight Frye outside the Universal monster movies. He was an excellent character actor whose early death in 1943 was a loss to the movie industry.

I also enjoyed seeing former wrestler Ned Pendleton as a less-than-brilliant thug. Ned, by the way, was in several of the Thin Man movies as a less-than-brilliant cop. He was good at playing befuddled and slow-witted character parts. 

The two sequels came in 1939. Provided there's no problem with my getting the DVD, I'll review those soon as well. It will be interesting to compare them, since the Sloans are played by different actors in each of the three films. Douglas and Rice got the series off to a strong start. Will the other actors do as well? 

Captain Scarface

 

Barton MacLane was a great character actor who probably played bad guys more often than good guys. He also probably holds the record for the person most often shot or beaten up by Humphrey Bogart.

In the 1953 film Captain Scarface, he plays the title character and he's definitely the bad guy. A tramp steamer named the S.S. Banos is torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet sub, with survivors machine gunned in the water to keep this act of destruction a secret. Well, everyone but the radioman Clegg (Paul Brinegar), who was paid off to make sure no SOS was sent. 

Captain Tredor (also known as Scarface) then brings a nearly exact duplicate into a South American port, with plans to continue on to the Panama Canal. There, an atomic bomb hidden on the ship will be detonated. It's a suicide mission, but Scarface and his crew are fanatics--willing to die to accomplish their mission.

In port, Scarface takes aboard a  Soviet scientist and his daughter, who think they are being helped to defect. Instead, Scarface is soon forcing the scientist to make sure the bomb will work. 

But there's a fly in Scarfaces's ointment. Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) is an American who has gotten in trouble and needs to leave South America as quickly as possible. Circumstances land him on the ship, using the identity of another Soviet agent without at first realizing that's who he's impersonating. Fortunately, Scarface is expecting the agent, but has never met him.

Wilton doesn't know what's going on, but (despite his own shady past) soon realizes he'll have to do something to save innocent lives. Outsmarting Scarface won't be easy, though. The ship captain might be a fanatic, but he's smart as a whip.

It's a fun movie, generating suspense as it moves the story along briskly. A sort-of side plot involving two innocent middle-aged passengers plays out in a way that ends up intertwining with the main plot and adding a several moments of sincere heartbreak. 

The ending is a little anti-climactic, but overall this is a movie worth watching.

Bullet Scars (1942)

 

Whether it was an A-film with Bogie, Cagney or Edward G.--or a B-movie with solid character actors who knew how to give life to a role--... well, if it was from Warner Brothers, it was likely to be good.

1942's Bullet Scars is a fine example. Made on a small budget, it has a nifty story backed up by two actors expertly playing off each other.

Howard da Silva is bank robber Frank Dillon (the similarity in last name to Dillinger is probably on purpose). When a robbery turns violent, one of Frank's men is badly wounded. The wounded man (named Joe) is Frank's best friend, so he'll do whatever is necessary to keep Joe alive.

A clever pre-prepared trick gets Frank and his men past a police roadblock and they soon arrive at their ranch hide-out. Frank then hires a doctor named Steven Bishop (Regis Toomey) to care for Joe, telling the doctor that the gunshot wounds were from a hunting accident. He also drafts Joe's sister Nora, a nurse, into the set-up. Nora knows Frank and her brother are crooks, but family loyalty motivates her to come along.

Much of the movie at this point is Frank trying to keep the Bishop from tumbling to the truth. The two actors do indeed play well against each other. Frank is often subtly threatening, while Bishop is slowly putting two and two together. 

When the situation comes to a head, Bishop uses a clever trick of his own to get a message to the police. This leads to him and Nora beseiged in a room in the ranch, though fortunately Bishop proves to be as adept with a pistol as he is with a scapel. When the police show up, the scale of the gun battle widens to include tear gas bombs and lots of stuff catching fire. It's a fun, well-directed action scene that brings the movie to a satisfying conclusion.

The movie is in the public domain. Here it is on YouTube:

Gracie Allen solves yet another murder

 

A few years ago, I reviewed The Gracie Allen Murder Case, in which Gracie (playing herself--or rather playing her usual comedic persona) teams up with Philo Vance to solve a murder. The movie was great fun--a good mystery as well as very funny.

That was in 1938. Four years later, Gracie starred in Mr. and Mrs. North. This is based on a play that in turn was based on the first North novel written by Richard and Francis Lockridge in 1936.

In the novel and the movie (and I assume the play, which I have never seen or read), the Norths are a happily married couple that finds a body in their apartment. Pam North (played by Gracie in the movie) seems a bit ditzy, but she's actually smart as a whip. She demonstrates regularly throughout the North novels, solving many a murder.

Played by Gracie, Pam becomes just plain ditzy. She is good at noticing things, but never completely puts clues together on her own and solves the murder pretty much by accident.

For fans of the novels, this can be a little disappointing. Pam is turned into Gracie Allen, who is again simply playing to the comic persona she and George Burns had perfected on vaudeville and radio.

But taken on its own, the movie is (like the Gracie Allen Murder Case) a lot of fun. It is a good, solid mystery--with the vital clue subtly dropped into the dialogue partway through the movie. The clues at first point to different suspects, including Pam and her husband Jerry, but in the end finger the actual guily party. The supporting cast, most notably Paul Kelly and Millard Mitchell as homicide detectives, are excellent. Tom Conway as a friend of the Norths and another suspect in the crime is also particularly good. 

And its funny. Gracie was a brilliant comedianne and she's a the top of her game here. One can help but wonder what the movie would have been like if George Burns had been cast as Jerry North rather than William Post Jr., but Post handles his straight man duties well. And perhaps George's presence would have made it too much of a Burns/Allen show and distracted from the murder mystery aspect of the story.

And Gracie doesn't hog all the funny bits. Felix Bressart is wonderful as a put-upon Fuller Brush salesman who has important information about the murder. But whenever he walks into a detective's office or the D.A.'s office, they assume he's there to sell them something and immediately throw him out.

So, as an alternate version of Pam North, Gracie does quite well. Here's a clip, but you can currently access the entire move on the Internet Archive HERE. 

Make Your Own Bed

 

Make Your Own Bed, released in 1944, is a ton of fun. I love the premise. Alan Hale, Sr. is an eccentric rich guy named Walter Whirtle. He and his wife have trouble keeping servants. After Whirtle (who is also the world's worst driver) insults a police officer over a traffic ticket, he meets a down-on-his-luck private eye named Jerry Curtis, who is in jail because he mistakenly arrested the distric attorney while on his last job.

The P.I is played by Jack Carson, who gives the character the same fast-talking huckster vibe that he gave nearly every other character he ever played. This is fine, because Carson was born to play such roles.

Whirtle comes up with a brilliant plan. Well, if not brilliant, at least its unique. He convinces Curtis that he's beset by Nazi spies (his factory is producing war supplies). He hires Curtis to pose as his butler to catch the spies. Of course, there are no spies, but Whirtle gets a butler out of it. That the butler is a detective who thinks he's looking for spies doesn't matter. He's still a butler.

Determined to make good and catch the spies, Carson brings his girlfriend Susan (Jane Wyman) along to pose as a cook, though she's notable incompetent in the kitchen. So Whirtle gets two servants for the price of one. And to keep these servants on the job, he hires a quartet of radio actors to his home to u pose as suspects. Whirtle also sends some threatening letters to himself. 

Before long, Jerry has heard the actors rehearsing a scene from a radio play, in which they play Nazi spies planning to blow up a factory. Jerry now "knows" they are planning on blowing up Whirtle's factory. 

Misunderstandings and slapstick rapidly ensue, in which Susan "finds out" that Jerry is playing around with the two female actors and Jerry "finds out" Whirtle's wife is having an affair with a neighbor. In addition to demonstrating his obliviousness as a detective, healso doesn't contribute much to Susan's inept attempts to cook meals. There's a scene in which the two are trying to cook dinner that's about 80% as good at the classic Kathern Hepburn tries-to-cook-breakfast scene from Woman of the Year. And that's pretty darn good. 

Oh, and those radio actors pretending to be Nazi spies?  They might not be what they seem to be.

Make Your Own Bed is funny, with Carson, Wyman and Hale lifting an average script to a higher level. Perhaps not on the same level as a Hepburn-Tracy movie, but it'll still make you laugh.

Border Cafe (1937)

 

Last week, we looked at the short story "In the Mexican Quarter," by Tom Gill. Today, we'll look at the movie based on that story, 1937's Border Cafe.

The original story is indeed short and fairly straightforward. Billy Whitney is driven to drink and runs away to Texas because he feels he can't live up to his family's expectations. He redeems himself at the end by single-handedly pursuing rustlers.

Well, the movie is only 67 minutes long, but still needed to expand upon the original story. Billy's name is changed to Keith--I have no idea why--and we get a few scenes back East to see how badly he's messing up his life. When he gets to Texas, he takes up residence just across the border in a cafe, playing piano in exchange for a room and drinking money.

Movie Keith is initially a bit more of a rotter than story Billy. Both versions of the character wrote home to falsely claim becoming partners in a ranch, but Keith actually asks for money from his Dad to finance this. He then blows the money on drinks and gambling.

The two biggest changes are:

1. Introducing a love interest for Keith, the fiery tempered Domingo. She's played with charm by Armida. She's at first revolted by Keith, but then gradually warms to him after both go to work at the ranch. She's a great character. I'll admit I fast-forwarded through her brief musical numbers--but that's more a matter of personal taste rather than a commentary on her talents as a singer. Otherwise, Armida gives her character a strong personality and brings a lot of humor into her role.

2. In the story, the rustlers just show up at the end with no foreshadowing. The movie introduces them pretty much right away--converting them into Chicago gangsters who are organizing a combination rustling/protection racket. The big boss is played by the great character actor J. Carrol Naish, whose performance overcomes his cliche-storm dialogue to bring a real sense of menace to the role.

Keith, by the way, is played by John Beal. The rancher he eventually teams up with is named Tex Stevens and played by Harry Carey, who is in full surrogate-dad role. This is the sort of role Carey could pull off, making his efforts to encourage Keith to man up believable if still predictable.

When Keith's parents and his old girlfriend come to visit, the various plot elements come together. Keith's dad disapproves of Domingo, but Keith impresses us when he doesn't even briefly consider buckling under. This foreshadows that the time he's spent working on the ranch really has manned hin up.

And that's a good thing. When the gangsters, whose racket has been busted, kidnap Keith's dad and Domingo while they try to flee the state, Tex and Keith are going to have to work together to save them.

The movie also benefits from its humor. Keith and Domingo play nicely off each other to get some laughs. Keith's attempts to catch and saddle a horse on his first day at the ranch are hilarious, as is a later scene when Tex and Keith's dad (both a bit drunk) trade increasingly unlikely tales about how awesome their respective ancestors were.

One criticism I have of the movie is that the final shootout, though mostly fun, suffers from severe Red Shirt Syndrome. Several ranch hands are killed along with the gangsters, but their deaths are immediately forgotten, allowing for the heroes to immediately joke with each other after the shooting is over.  Oh, well. 

The extent to which Border Cafe expands on the original story makes each its own thing and it's not really fair to say one is better than the other. Both serve their own purposes and do so quite well. 

The Mummy's Curse (1944)

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order # 156

The Universal Monster movies always played fast and loose with its timeline. The final Mummy movie--1944's The Mummy's Curse--might have the oddest time jump of all. It is set 25 years after the previous film. I suppose that means it's set in the far future year of 1969. Obviously, the producers didn't care about that detail. But, when you watch the film, there's nothing really overt about it that says it's NOT set in 1969 other than the car the protagonist is driving. Perhaps the guy just likes antique cars.

Anyway, remember that Kharis, carrying the reincarnated Princess Ananka, sank into a swamp. A quarter century later, Kharis has been recovered from the swamp by a couple of members of  Ananka's cult, strangling some poor shlub when they acquire it. One of the cultists is posing as the assistant to an archeologist named Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore). Halsey is in the swamp specifically to recover Kharis and Ananka for a museum. 

One of the things I like about this movie--in fact, about the entire series--is the casualness in which people accept that an undead mummy occasionally walks around and kills people. It's understandable, because after Kharis is reanimated in the first movie, there's plenty of evidence to show that it's true. In this case, the head of a construction crew draining the swamp is skeptical, but Halsey has no problem with the idea.

Anyway, the cultists use Tana leaves to bring Kharis back to life. In the meantime, in a scene that is remarkably creepy for this low budget film, Ananka climbs out of the swamp. She's young again despite having aged rapidly in the last film. She also has amnesia.

Ananka ends up working for Halsey, proving herself to be very knowledgable in all things ancient Egyptian. Kharis starts stalking her. Several people get strangled. Ananka is finally taken by Kharis and brought to the ruins of a monastery the cultists are using as a hideout. One of the cultists brings Halsey's girlfriend along as well. This sets off a "you-betrayed-your-oath-of-secrecy" conga line involving the cultists and Kharis. One cultist backstabs the other. Halsey shows up and gets into a fight with the still-living cultist. Kharis takes a hand in all this and also decides to kill the cultist. In the end, a big chunk of the monastery collapses on the mummy and the cultist. Since that cultist was the last living person to know the secret of the Tana leaves, there's apparently no danger of Kharis being brought back to life again.

Poor Ananka, lying in a mummy case in the monestary, has once again aged back to her normal 3000 years, so she's a goner as well. But Halsey gets his girlfriend for himself and the mummy for his museum. The end.

The low budget often shows in this entry, but despite that, I like it a lot. It's very atmospheric, with Ananka's resurrection from the swamp being particularly striking. Also, shots of the mummy walking up to the monastary ruins look pretty cool. The 60-minute film moves at a brisk pace and tells its story effectively. The Mummy's Curse is definitely a 2nd-tier entry in the Universal Monster canon, but it's still worth watching.