dmh7 Reviews

Calling Dr. Death (1943)

Death Would Be Preferable!

[1/10 · 14 December 2004]

I didn't expect much from this, and my expectations were met brutally: it seemed to be five hours long. The "mystery" is easily solved a good hour or more before the actual revelation, and mainly nothing happens unless you really enjoy watching Creighton rub his kneecaps as a sign of "inner turmoil." Really quite awful...

I've seen a number of these "Inner Sanctum" stories, and this is easily among the worst, although few of them are exemplary. The radio show also had rather plodding story lines, but that medium's reliance on sound made that show a a stand-out in merely technical terms. On-screen however, it is difficult to comprehend how such badly-written tales could be watchable, even if the main actor wasn't Lon Chaney Jr. He is so bad in this film that even the usually moribund J. Carroll Naish appears forceful beside him.

A good way to ruin an evening.

Strange Interlude (1932)

You Seen the Bad Play, Now Watch the Bad Movie!

[19 November 2004]

Horrid. Truly, stultifyingly, wretchedly horrid. The "idea" (of having the inner thoughts of the characters spoken aloud for the audience) is a stilted one which doesn't work on stage either. But in a movie, where the voice-overs are added later, it forces the actors to create responses to feelings they are not having, and also prompts the actors into providing rather charmless and ugly facial "clues" to their inner thoughts. It makes for a bad cinematic experience. The story itself - adapted by Eugene O'Neill from a Greek play)is the purest "eternal triangle" tripe, and tripe which never really explores any true psychological impetus, but only deals with the thinnest of human motivations, so being "let in on" these great human secrets is no grand privilege. Norma is at her worst here; stagy and melodramatic, and most of the cast comes off equally badly. An experiment gone horribly wrong. I felt - at times - like slapping any or all of the characters, just to awaken them from their banal self-pity and deep delusions. And the only fun to be gotten from it is to replace the "inner speech" with phrases of your own. Otherwise, a very bad film.

The Wedding in Monaco (1956)

Purple Prose and an Air of Depressed Monarchism

[15 November 2004]

Just caught this as part of a TCM tribute to Grace's career. Not much to say about it. There are some beautiful shots of the water, lots of big cars and boats, a rather nice visit to the ballet, and a good look at the outside and inside of the palace. It is all interspersed with some of the most fawning purple prose this side of Jackie Collins, and - all in all - a generously depressed air of decayed monarchy. We are led to believe (by the hard working hagiographer/narrator) that this all really means something, that it is a sunny symbol of the best life has to offer, that it is a manifestation of pure happiness in the form of a quite pretty but slightly gelid American princess. It doesn't ring true for one moment, but the disconnect found there is part of the reason it's bearable at all. Everybody appears to be working far too hard to keep up appearances, and all human vitality appears to have leaked out through the scullery doors. One hopes she was happy, but I read she wasn't particularly. Prince Rainier always seemed like a pill to me.

Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (1968)

This COULD have been a film, but sadly...

[27 October 2004]

...it's not. The sad thing is that there WAS an interesting (at least serviceable) idea for a rock and roll film in there, but it is hashed up with at least one too many "bright ideas". The fact that Peter No one's character is attempting to make it at an advertising firm, and that his band's is having a go at club success was more than enough. The greyhound racing scenes are immeasurably uninteresting, and the fact that the dog is actually named "Mrs. Brown" is almost beyond forbearance! But taking off from the fact that advertising is almost the precise opposite of the 60s ethos could have been fun, and would be able to expand on George Harrison's short experience with such callow types in "Hard Day's Night" to nice effect. The songs (by the talented Graham Goulding, who wrote "For Your Love" and "Bus Stop" among many more fine tunes) are not mainly his best work (although "A Kind of Hush" is perfectly decent), but they are pleasant, and - combined with the music hall performances that drift in and out of the film, the soundtrack could have been at least strong enough to support an less-crippled plot. Of course, one probably couldn't expect a trenchant (or even a tepid) satire from folks who are obviously only rushing out a product themselves, but hope springs eternal. And there are enough bad club date stories to fill fifty movies. But greyhound races take up ENTIRELY too much film space, and renders the movie almost unbearable, unless one tapes it and rushes from song to song, stopping also for Sterling Holloway, and some other such older talents. Otherwise, not recommendable.

Two Tickets to Broadway (1951)

Blandly Appealing Until The "Indians" Come In

[10 October 2004]

This is not a bad musical. It's also not a good one. Tony Martin has a solid - yet unexciting - singing voice, and Janet Leigh - of course - cannot sing OR dance. So she was the perfect choice for a musical? It all drifts along without offending or titillating (now and then touched by a nice bit from Eddie Bracken, or the "Jewish" banter of the restaurant owners), and one can watch it or not.

And then Martin appears as "Big Chief Hole-In-The-Ground" in a musical number that should be profoundly repulsive to modern audiences. Its caricature of reservation Indians as being somehow rich, due to oil being found on the land, is quite offensive when one realizes that many, many times entire tribes were moved off their land simply because it suddenly became valuable. So this bit is no longer amusing in the least. It wouldn't be any great problem (given that such casual racism pops up in a lot of older films), except that the film is so near to being empty of interest, that this concern - at least for this viewer - is downright horrifying. All the film's other problems (Janet's non-musicality, a general lack of wowser tunes, the presence of that "Dancing Loutess" Ann Miller, and a drifting filmic sensibility) fade to nothing beside this large hole in the "entertainment."

The Amazing Mr. Nordill (1947)

Leon Ames (As Usual) Is Charming

[8 October 2004]

Just caught this short on TCM, and found it to be quite a charming tale of a family of counterfeiters. Based on a true story, the short is dramatically photographed, swiftly plotted, and uses the pleasant talents of Leon Ames (who effectively and amusingly played Judy Garland's irascible yet loving father in Meet Me In St. Louis). The scene in which the entire family (including the youngsters) is engaged in learning to produce fake bills is quite interesting, and there are several other elements in this short film (including the "Yawning Detective," and the manner in which Mr. Nordill eventually slips up) which add up to a nice way to spend a very short period of time. Superior of its type, I think.

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Too Late to Stop It Now!

[7 October 2004]

It is obviously too late to stop this film from being considered a masterpiece, but it isn't. It is entirely too overblown and full of its own importance to be taken seriously, and not funny enough to be a comedy or a camp classic. Clark is in fine macho fettle, and Vivien is spectacular, and captures well the ambiguity of her character, which - although an obvious and self-centered bitch - is also the "force of nature" which gets many of the other (more anemic) characters through the war and - more importantly - through the film.

Of the two female lead characters - Melanie and Scarlett - Melanie is the more overtly "good" yet - as is revealed in the post-war scenes - she is really not up to the task of holding everyone's world together. For that, an iron will is needed, and Scarlett has nothing but. Leslie Howard's character is massively useless, almost a psychic cripple, and he seems to know it. The only real complexity in the film is provided by Vivien's magnificent portrayal of what could otherwise have been a one-dimensional harridan.

Selznick later showed what horrors he could accomplish with his epic "vision" and an inferior cast and idea when (in his final production) he gave us "Duel In The Sun," a horrid lump of a film with almost no redeeming elements, save Walter Huston's all-too-brief rendition of the bunko traveling preacher. Gone With The Wind is only a few nice performances shy of being just as irrelevant.

Truth be told, these sprawling "historical" dramas, which paste a love story over the almost beside-the-point backdrop of this event or another are usually irredeemable. A modern equivalent is something like "The English Patient" (which is, not coincidentally - another producer-driven concoction), which has its share of beautiful vistas, beautiful people, and a general lack of aesthetic value.

No one can fault the players; DeHavilland and Leslie do the best as they can with terminally-pallid human ghosts, and Clark and Vivien are never less than enjoyable. But the story is pure blarney, and - as has been noted before - basically racist in its depictions of blacks, and apparently rather irked by the fact it has to pay attention to the war at all. If one removes the Civil War background and just imagines this as a love story, it has little interest: a thousand better romances have been presented. So the entire thing strikes me as vastly pretentious.

Still, my wife loves it, so I have to watch it from time to time, and - honestly - it is better than most of what we get as film entertainment now. So - go ahead - enjoy it! It won't kill you.

The Flag: A Story Inspired by the Tradition of Betsy Ross (1927)

Francis X. Bushman: I Know Where The Flagpole Is!

[2/10 · 27 September 2004]

Francis X. Bushman is one of those actors who doesn't so much act as he pose dramatically. An example closer to contemporary is Charlton Heston, who - quite the innovator - adds exposing his teeth to his spectrum of talents. I suppose this makes Francis a good choice to act the part of an icon who looks like he has a flagpole secreted up his southern Potomac. It's as though he were expecting to have his portrait painted at any moment.

There are some nice (if laughable) parts to this film: especially the moment in which nature so conveniently aids in Betsy's description of the soon-to-be-released flag design. And the color - although quite faint - has a certain degree of pastel charm, especially when it is the blush upon the pretty cheek of the British soldier's wife. And it is quite funny to see George Washington act the detective and find the hiding place of this soldier by noting that the flag moved! The ensuing speech by Betsy is quite hilarious in its use of metaphor, although unintentionally so.

All in all, quite entertaining if you're drunk, and are looking about for some old-fashioned patriotic drivel to laugh at.

The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)

Movie Not History, But Neither Was Polo

[27 September 2004]

I don't have much to say about the film; it's another pretty, but merely adequate Hollywood hoo-hoo. But - although the film (of course) plays loose with historical fact - it must be remembered that Marco Polo did it as well, and there is almost no actual record to compare anyone's version of the story against: Polo (like Cellini) was a notorious liar-in-print. It is now assumed that his record of his journey is quite spurious, and written to enhance the glory of his accomplishment. As there is no other extensive record of the journey, there can be precious little "truth" or "fiction" to be be determined about any Marco Polo narrative. Like Cellini, he has "pre-dramatized" his own story.

American Spoken Here (1940)

Just 'Cause you're Charming, Don't Make You Right

[7/10 · 26 September 2004]

I rather liked this short, as it explores the origins of several American slang phrases, using small scenes to explicate the stories. It zips along quite nicely, and dramatizes well. BUT...the conclusions are not to be trusted!

There is doubt about at least one of their solutions: "mind your Ps and Qs" has several different explanations than the one presented in this film. The one I most clearly recall is that it comes from a warning to apprentice printers, back when they had to lay the type by hand (and thus look at it backwards): Ps and Qs were easy to confuse. Thus the admonition.

Neither story is open to confirmation of course, like many of these things.

But that is beside the point perhaps: the little film is charming and cleanly presented, and - at the very least - shows an interest, if not in absolute accuracy, in the origins of language. A pleasant watch.

Cornered (1945)

They Should Have Shot Dick Powell

[21 September 2004]

This is no noir masterpiece. Dmytryk directed a lot of films, and some of them are exciting fare. I expected the same from this one, and had read several reviews giving it the thumbs up. Yet, it is curiously and achingly dull.

It opens well, and clips along nicely for a short while, then runs into several bad (and unfortunately persistent) problems. The scenes are generally far too drawn out and - more injurious - they seem to keep repeating: it becomes difficult to know if one has heard and seen already what one is hearing and seeing now, or whether it might make any difference if you could know. One quickly loses track of the central drive, which - after all - concerns a man's desire for revenge. Such a theme often finds fertile ground in the hands of a good cast, but here it sits fallow.

The rather secondary cast is the usual for B-movies (the common response is "they couldn't get Greenstreet, so here's Slezak"), and the women are not all that attractive, or compelling enough to seem that way. But the real awful "stink in the barn" is Powell himself. He's the protagonist, and one should feel some sympathy for him even when he acting rather badly. But all I felt was that the picture would have instantly improved if only someone had had the courage to shoot him! He seems to be wearing a permanent sour frown on his surly puss for the entire film, and delivers his dialogue with almost no verve, as though he had developed one idea for the man's personality and felt hardly energetic enough to even pull that off with any passion. I thought his wife's death had probably rescued her from a lifetime of repressed anger and boredom. I kept imagining Bogart in the role, radiating cynical ambivalence, and delivering the lines with some degree of world-weary wit. Instead, we get gray pudding bubbling in the night.

There are a few nice pieces of tough guy dialogue, and a few (though not nearly enough) scenes of the usual noir use of shadows, but there is more than one scene where we are expected to follow Dick through a door, down a hall, up some stairs, through another door, etc. with no compensating musical thrills, or even intriguing camera work to interrupt what are basically very dull strolls in the dark.

The tale meanders and returns on itself relentlessly but without narrative tension: it's lazy and seems to be pooling about your drifting attention.

Okay, if you don't want to get up from the couch and play cribbage, but not worth forestalling your trip to Barstow to see. Dreary.

The Golden Antelope (1954)

A Vague Recollection of a Good Time

[19 September 2004]

I think this is the animated film I saw on TV when I was merely seven or eight years old. I recall it being quite quiet in its depiction of a young boy on a quest (to find something, no doubt) who is aided by a magic antelope. It was on 50s TV of course, so it seemed to be black and white to me, and to have a roughly "silhouette" style of simple flat forms. But - as vague as this recall is - I DO remember that I was utterly enchanted by it. It seems to me it was presented over the course of several weekends, and that I couldn't wait for it to continue. I remember the boy riding on the antelope's back as they sped over the countryside, and (I believe) the antelope eventually undergoes a transformation. I wish I had more information. I wonder if it still exists as a film. So many have vanished.

Sliders: Pilot (1995) Season 1, Episode 1

Indigestible

[17 September 2004]

I love science fiction and (vainly) look forward to every new attempt on TV to replicate the "sense of wonder" that good science fiction is supposed to create. So I was disappointed that this show was so blandly unsurprising. So much science fiction (on TV and in the movies) appears to concentrate on the most superficial elements of the genre and merely use its "technical poetry" to tell the same dull stories over and over. Sliders was no exception: a world where the Nazis won? You got it! A world where there are still dinosaurs? Two heaping spoonfuls served up! But there was little of the intellectual and philosophical "weight": that attends the best science fiction, and for which the mechanical devices and impossible processes (here a device that traversed dimensions) are just meant to be "color." It's partly in the nature of serial TV that very little in the way of surprises can be allowed to occur, since we all know the heroes will fight and vanquish. This is why The Twilight Zone is still so watchable: you never knew what was going to happen. It had better writers too. Sad truth is, there are PLENTY of good science fiction tales that might be dramatized on TV, but Hollywood turns again and again to its usual hacks who merely dress up their usual tales with a few "gimmicks" of the sci-fi trade. It simply isn't compelling finally, and comes out as no more than the usual "Fantasy Island" mess: tired moral tales glittered up with bells and whistles.

The best science fiction on TV has always been either anthologies series (the aforementioned Twilight Zone, the best of The Outer Limits) or one-shot dramatizations of REAL science fiction tales, such as the superior The Lathe of Heaven.

Oh well, maybe next time...

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Take That, Washington!

[16 September 2004]

This is simply one of the top ten science fiction films of the fifties, albeit not an intellectual exercise. Harryhausen's flying saucers almost define flying saucers, and the "flat men" aliens are quite unique, even if they do look like they have space arthritis. The story is no big whoop, but the film moves along at a quick pace, and (like so many films that Harryhausen was involved in) we get a small taste of the "big effects" right at the beginning. I've watched it many times, and it never fails to be enjoyable, or to somehow recall to my mind the very first time I saw it, way back in my teens.

POSSIBLE SPOILER...

But the greatest thrill in the film - to my anarchist/surrealist mind - is the destruction of Washington D.C. To watch several easily-identifiable landmarks of our capitol being ray-gunned and cut down by crashing saucers is a real delight. And I don't believe this sort of "anti-authoritarian" event is entirely accidental, as Harryhausen has other similar "iconoclastic" moments in his other films (the burning of a church for example), and they never fail to get my friends and I quite charged up.

A superior black and white B movie, with solid (if not remarkable) performances from stock B movie actors, some rather imaginative approaches to aliens, and a nihilistic pay-off of great appeal.

highly recommended.

Kid Glove Killer (1942)

Totally Watchable and Entirely Routine

[9 August 2004]

Look under the word "dull" in any dictionary, and a small picture of Van Heflin will appear: he's no better in this film than any of the others I've seen. It is not surprising that very few people could name a film he was in.

This film is not bad or good, but it is short. Not a drawback in this case. The forensic details (spectrograph and hair vacuum) are easily the most entertaining aspect of the film, which is very routinely photographed and acted. The only striking acting or script moment occurs between the couple which runs a small beanery, when the man is about to inform the authorities about some rough doings he has encountered. The wife is - of course - concerned about his getting hurt, and he tells her to place one of her great hamburgers on his chest when they bury him! She asks "with onions?" and he replies "you think you'd know by now." Tender stuff that...

But - as I said - the film isn't execrable, and it passes efficiently enough. But as gems go, it's purely a low-grade zircon, without redeeming cinematic flourishes, or any sign of life from Mr. Heflin. It's brevity makes it a pleasant enough way to kill the time between lunch and a nap, but one shouldn't walk five feet in any direction to catch it.