A few Japanese films, especially those by Seijun Suzuki.

An Actor’s Revenge (1963), directed by Kon Ichikawa. I keep being surprised and delighted by the visual splendours of Japanese cinema. An Actor’s Revenge is stunning in its visual beauty and imaginative staging. I say “staging” because the main character is a kabuki actor, a female impersonator, and the various sets (everything is on a set) and designs allude to, but do not simply deliver, the kabuki stage. The imaginative vision here is stunning. The story is familiar, even old-fashioned. A kabuki actor finds himself acting in front of an audience that prominently includes three men who are responsible for the deaths of the actor’s mother and father. The daughter of one of these men is also in the audience. The plot has the actor set out to avenge his parents. Complicating things are two master thieves, and another mysterious man who is out to kill the actor. And so we have many goings-on, much darkness, much colour, much play acting, and a stunning performance by Kazuo Hasegawa as the cross-dressing Yukinojo. Whether on stage or off, Yukinijo dresses as a woman, although most everyone knows he is a man. In fact, Namiji (Ayako Wakao), the daughter of one of the villains, falls in love with the female-looking Yukinojo knowing full well he is a man. Finally, I might note that this was Kazuo Hasegawa’s 300^th film (this is acknowledged in the screen credits), and he slyly plays two roles in the film, that of Yukinojo and also that of Yumitaro, one of the thieves who also serves as something of a chorus. I say “slyly” because Hasegawa is such a good actor that it is possible to miss this dual role performance. This film is mind-bendingly splendid.

 

Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (1963), directed by Seijun Suzuki. The opening shot of this frenetic film is a close-up of an American G.I., and early on in the film a character remarks that this is not an “American TV show.” No, it isn’t, but it is a send-up of the American noir cinema. This is Peter Gunn on shrooms. Jo Shishiro, he of the chipmunk cheeks, is Hideo Tajima, proprietor of Detective Bureau 2-3. I have no idea what this name signifies, but the Bureau is the office of Detective Tajima, a sort of Sam Spade or Marlowe transported to Japan. The film delights in filling the screen with images that echo American culture, even going so far as to have a couple of production numbers, one of which sees Tajima singing and dancing along with a nightclub’s entertainer. Another number has several young women wearing little and dancing to “When the Saints Come Marching In.” The whole concoction is a hoot. Perhaps not as stylish as Suzuki’s later Tokyo Drifter (1966) or Branded to Kill (1966), this film does have the primary colours, the careful use of widescreen, the fast pacing, the quirky sound track, the offbeat locations, and the surprises we expect from Suzuki. The film’s title fronts a film that proudly parades excess. The plot, familiar and quite beside the point, has our detective hero infiltrating a criminal organization in order to get the goods on this organization. Meanwhile, the criminal organization is feuding with at least one other criminal organization and this leads to a couple of baroque shootouts. Through it all, our hero meets a femme fatale, has his cover exposed, and spars with his two minions, one of whom is a female reporter. The film is delicious. 

 

Branded to Kill (1966), directed by Seijun Suzuki. Talk about your deconstruction, and then take a look at this film. It is about a hitman who has a fetish for the aroma of rice wafting from a rice cooker. He also has two femme fatales causing him some anguish. Mostly, however, his anguish comes from his desire to be No. 1 hitman. As the film opens, he is No. 3. By the end of the film, he can echo James Cagney’s famous shout, “Top of the world, Mama.” And like Cody, the Cagney character, he has also met his doom. Suzuki is a film maker who marries pulp with more style than you can possibly wish for. He is the master of crazy ideas and wonky camera angles. He likes shots through doorways and passageways. His protagonist, Hanada, is played by chipmunk-cheeks Jo Shishido, a rather addle-pated hitman who finds novel ways to assassinate his targets. For example, he shoots one fellow through the waterpipe below the sink over which the fellow is washing his face. He also shoots a few people while sitting atop a hot air balloon. Then we have the surreal bits with birds in cages or dangling from the rear-view mirror of a car, or the many many butterflies that appear as décor or as impediments to an assassination. Oh, and then there is the scene in which Hanada lies beneath an automobile that has ropes hooked to its bumper, and he pulls the automobile closer and closer to his adversary who is trying to shoot him. So what does Suzuki deconstruct? The conventional noir thriller here finds it nemesis in this wild off kilter crazy Seijun Suzuki fling.

 

Tokyo Drifter (1966), directed by Seijun Suzuki. If Gate of Flesh is the most pulp of Suzuki's films, then Tokyo Drifter is the most stylish. This film offers Classical form crossed with Romantic content. The form delivers sparse sets singularly coloured and lighted, with emphasis on verticals and horizontals. The colours, dark green, mauve, purple, muted yellow, red (of course), pastel blue, white, along with black and white with hot lighting at the beginning, give us eye-popping visual fields to look at. The action is stylized in the extreme giving the action something of a mechanical look. I was reminded of both Melville's Samurai with Alain Delon and MGM musicals of the late 40s and early 50s. The action has clear choreography that gives it an artificial but effective look. Camera angles are various and noticeable diverting the viewer from action to form. As for content, this involves a lone "drifter" with a sense of loyalty who is quick on the trigger and fast with his fists. He is a combination of the typical film noir hero out on a limb and sawing it off, and the American cowboy. The film even has a "Western Saloon," in which an entertaining and wild brawl breaks out. This is as imaginative a take on the gangster film as you could expect to see.

 

The Ballad of Narayama (1958), directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. This film is an exquisite exercise in formalism, painterly and deliberate. And yet it also manages to be an examination of the human capacity for self-sacrifice, kindness, stupidity, and selfishness. Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) is a woman about to turn 70, and in her village, a village strained by poverty and hunger, when someone turns 70, he or she goes to Narayama to die. Orin accepts this ritual. Her son and his new bride (his first wife has died) are saddened by the prospect of losing Orin, but her grandson and his lover are just thrilled by the prospect of having one less mouth to feed around the house. We have much ado about Orin’s teeth. We have a kerfuffle with some local thieves. Mostly, however, we have Kinoshita’s beautiful set pieces. The film takes the form of a kabuki play. Everything except for the final shot of the film, takes place on sets, but these are exceptionally detailed and beautiful sets. The colours are eye-popping. Most striking are the autumnal colours. We are, after all, dealing with old age and mortality. The journey Orin takes to Narayama, carried by her son, is arduous and wrenching once they arrive, snow begins to fall, and Orin sends her son away so she may die alone. Paired with Orin is Mata (Seiji Miyaguchi), an old man who refuses to take the journey to Narayama until his son binds him with rope and hauls him up the mountain. Then we have that final shot of a train crossing a landscape and going through a town named Obasute (Abandonment of Old People). Just what does this signify? 

 

Gate of Flesh (1964), directed by Seijun Suzuki. The word "pulp" is often used to describe the films of Seijun Suzuki, and of the four Suzuki films I have seen, Gate of Flesh is the most deserving of this descriptor. Suzuki worked for Nikkatsu Studio and he was obligated to take the films the studio gave him. He also regularly had a shooting schedule of not much over a month. With such constraints, he (like Howard Hawks in Hollywood) managed to make films stamped with his singular vision. Gate of Flesh was to be an "adult" film, one of two categories of film available at the time in Japan. In other words, it was to be lurid. And it is. The still photographs one finds on the internet do not capture the richness of Suzuki's colour or his careful structuring of his wide screen photography or the shocking things we see such as the graphic killing of a cow. The action of the film takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War, and it expresses the damage, both materially and psychically, the war inflicted on Japan. The central characters are a group of prostitutes who live in a bombed out building. They eke out an existence by selling their bodies. They will not offer their services to American GIs, and they will not allow any of their group to offer sex for free. To give oneself freely results in severe and humiliating punishment. Each prostitute wears signature clothing, mostly a feature of colour, although one dresses in traditional garb. Anyway, into this group comes chipmunk-cheeked Joe Shishido (a regular in Suzuki films), an ex-soldier who is on the run from the police for having robbed a U.S. army depot. You can guess that the cat has found the chicken coop. Suzuki handles the action with visual flare, and the characters express their anger at the world, their hope amid hopelessness, with intense words, looks, and actions. This is a bleak look at life in post war Japan, but it is also a sobering examination of abject conditions at any time. The narrow streets, ruined buildings, enclosed waterways, teeming markets are reminders of a humanity trapped by circumstance. Even with masterful wide screen photography, Suzuki manages to capture the claustrophobia of existence in this world. Somewhere outside this ghetto people may live more relaxed lives, but we can only imagine this because we cannot see this. What we see is life in extremis. This is pulp fiction with artistry.

 March begins with a few scattered film comments.

Hamnet (2025), directed by Chloe Zhao. Death, grief, and the power of art. This pretty much sums up Hamnet, I think. This fanciful recreation of Shakespearean England has its emotional moments. These arise from the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, at the age of nine. It also has its visually stunning moments. Lighting, compositions, shades, and colours bring to mind such visual artists as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, and others. We alternate between lush visuals of the forests and outdoors and those of dimly lit interiors where light highlights certain features and images. I am not sure what all the chthonic mystery is about, the emphasis on Agnes (Jesse Buckley), mother of Hamnet, as an outsider, an earth mother (pretty much literally), a witch of the woods, amounts to, but it does lend itself to the magical aura of the film. The emotional intensity of the action reaches a climax (!) in the performance of Hamlet that works as both an end to the film and as an emotional catharsis both for the groundlings watching the performance (including Agnes) and for the film viewer. The moment when the actor playing Hamlet reaches down and touches Agnes’s hand and the hands of the front row groundlings brings together art and reality. In a way, Hamnet underscores life as a stage on which men and women, merely players, strut and fret for an hour or two and then are heard no more. I confess to having mixed feelings about this film. As far as I can tell, it plays fast and loose with the facts of history, and yet it manages to humanize characters from history who remain just out of range of facts. And finally, we have those magnificent tableaux that invoke Renaissance art. And by the way, do I not recall that an earlier play, earlier than Shakespeare’s work, exists called Hamnet?

All We Imagine as Light (2024), directed by Payal Kapadia. Blue is the predominant colour here, from the blue of the nurses’ uniforms, to the sky, to towels, to various shades of blue turning up throughout the film, both inside and outside. Much of the filming takes a painterly form giving us shots that stand out as looking like paintings. This painterly quality, in a way, belies the film's focus: the city of Mumbai. The opening documentary-style footage announces the focus on a city of dreams that is crowded, bustling, run-down, and filled with poverty. As things proceed, we focus on three nurses, Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha), and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam). Prabha has been married for about a year, but right after her arranged marriage, her husband traveled to Germany and he no longer communicates with Prabha. She has taken Anu as a roommate. Anu is flighty and younger than Prabha, and she has a boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), who happens to be Muslim. Finally, there is Parvaty who lives in a slum and has been evicted because she lacks papers. These three women we come to know well, their anxieties, their dreams and aspirations, their failures, their loneliness, and their desires. When Prabha receives a mysterious package from Germany containing a fancy rice cooker, she is unsure whether this is a gift from her husband or not. As for Anu, she dresses as a Muslim woman in order to visit Shiaz, but at the last minute he cancels her visit. Parvaty decides to return to her seaside village, and the other two women accompany her to help her carry all her belongings. Here at the seaside, Prabha has a surreal encounter with her estranged husband after she revives a man on the beach and save his life. As the film rolls to a finish, we have the three women sitting, at night, at an outdoor establishment, sharing intimacies while the young server dances and twirls in the background. This is a quiet, intensely intimate story of three women. As a piece of cinema, it offers the colours of Wong Kar Wai and the humanity of Satyajit Ray. This is an impressive film.

The Beast (2023), directed by Bertrand Bonello. If I may understate the case, this film is a loose retelling of Henry James’s novella, The Beast in the Jungle. Here the focalizing character is female rather than male. Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux) is an enigmatic character in an enigmatic movie; she appears in three times, as a concert pianist in Paris around 1910, as an aspiring actress and model in Los Angeles in 2014, and as a woman going through “purification” to control feelings and make her a better worker in 2044.  The film opens with the aspiring actress in front of a green screen acting out a scene in which an intruder threatens her life. The unseen intruder (to be added later) is a beast. Indeed, the beast in this movie is amorphous, unseen, more an existential dread than something concrete. The elusiveness of the beast is reflected in the elusiveness of the narrative(s). Things move along without clear transitions. One of the more powerful parts here involve the male character who, like Gabrielle, appears in all three “stories.” This character is Louis Lewanski (George MacKay), and in the 2014 segment he plays an incel who stalks Gabrielle. This segment is chilling. In any case, Louis and Gabrielle are lovers fated never to love. The film has several recurring images, one of which is the doll. In the 1910 segment, Gabrielle is married to a man who manufactures dolls, in 2014 models are dolls and Gabrielle has a sort of Chucky doll, and in 2044 AI generates dolls, one of which is Gabrielle’s companion and would be lover. The doll is a mark of the emotionless state towards which humanity moves. Another recurring image is the pigeon, a bird that signifies both freedom and death. Indeed, freedom and death are perhaps the two most prominent themes here. As for cinematic influences, we can identity allusions to Godard, Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin), David Lynch, Spielberg, and perhaps even Scorsese. This film will not appeal to everyone, but it is provocative.

A House of Dynamite (2025) directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Devastating. A combination of Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, this film takes us to the edge of nuclear disaster. It leans closer to Fail Safe than to Strangelove, and this may be both its strength and its weakness. The U.S. government here is peopled with serious, earnest human beings desperately trying to sort out a dilemma of world-shattering proportions. We, however, live in times that more closely resemble Strangelove with its nutjob generals and numbskull politicians. This has the effect of making A House of Dynamite even more terrifying. This film is meant as a call to renewed sanity and it arrives at a time of unprecedented insanity.

What We Did on Our Holiday (2014), directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. Heart-warming is probably as good as any description of this film. Heart-warming is both praise and criticism. Some will find this film attractive, and some will find it bland. I found it attractive. The cast, especially the three children, are superb. The script is often witty. The Scottish scenery is fabulous. The scene in which the three young children give their grandad a Viking funeral is worth the price of admission. The plot is straight forward: a couple with three young children is having marital difficulties, but they decide to go as a family to Doug’s (David Tennant) father’s 75^th birthday party in the Highlands of Scotland. Doug and Abi (Rosamund Pike) bicker all the time. Grandad Gordie (Billy Connolly) has terminal cancer. Doug’s brother Gavin (Ben Miller) has social aspirations, while his wife Margaret (Amelia Bullmore) has had a meltdown in a convenience store that has made its way to YouTube. Then we have the scene at the beach with Grandad and the three kids, Lottie (Amelia Jones), Mickey (Bobby Smalldridge), and Jess (Harriet Turnbull). As I say, heart-warming. What we have is a film about family, its frictions, its dysfunctions, its strengths and its weaknesses. Celia Imrie turns up as a social worker, and Annette Crosbie turns up as an owner of ostriches. One ostrich has a way of streaking every now and then. The film too has a way of streaking every now and then.

From Vegas to Macau 111 (2016), directed by Wai Weung Lau and Wong Jing. This film has a 2.6 rating on IMDB and user reviews are uniformly negative. Well, I confess to not having seen the first two From Vegas to Macau films, but I can say that this one is off the wall bizarre. It has two robots, Skinny and Stupido, who fall in love. It has Transformer scenes. It has gadgetry that surpasses anything in a James Bond film by far. It has dozens of Andy Laus. It has two Chow Yun Fats. It has martial arts. It has soldiers that look like the dark side of those in Star Wars. It has characters who wildly overact. It has colourful eye-catching costumes. It has many pies in the face scenes. It has much shooting and a few explosions. It has Psy. It has scenes of gambling. It has a plot that left me wondering what was going on. In short, it is a mess. And yet, it left me feeling upbeat. Its zaniness is contagious. Its two main stars, Chow Yun Fat and ageless Andy Lau are likeable. So if you are seeking diversion in these troubled times, this film just may provide it.

 February.

Il Grido (1957), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. When I first arrived in the city of Toronto, a callow youth from a small town, I discovered the New Yorker, a small movie theater on Bloor Street, just at the ‘t’ with Charles Street. This is where I first experienced cinema, and one of the first films I saw was this one. I had not seen it since until last evening. I had a memory of a father and young daughter wandering aimlessly across a barren flatland, and this memory proved accurate. Antonioni and his cinematographer, Gianni de Venanzo, capture the dislocated and alienated life of mechanic and labourer Aldo (Steve Cochran). After his partner for seven years, Irma (Alida Valli), learns that her husband in Sydney, Australia, has died, she informs Aldo that she is leaving him. He is upset. Being upset, Aldo packs a small valise, takes their daughter,  Rosina (Mirna Girardi), and hits the road. The film is something of a road movie with Aldo and Rosina making a few stops where Aldo strikes up short relationships with three women (not all at once?): his former fiancé Elvia (Betsy Blair), Virginia (Dorian Gray ) who runs a petrol station, and the prostitute Andreina (Jacqueline Jones). Like the landscape we see with its bare and stunted trees, its wide open spaces and flatness, and its assortment of shabby buildings and factories, the people live dreary lives struggling to make a living and find some semblance of contentment. Antonioni nicely captures a world on the verge of decline, a world drained of purpose, direction, and hope. At the end, Aldo may be the man in the high tower, but this does not get him very far. He ends where he began: splat. The film made an impression on me when I first saw it 55 and more years ago. It still impresses.

 

La Notte (1961), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Here is another film I first saw at the New Yorker Cinema in Toronto over fifty years ago. It remains perhaps the most searching film having to do with the modern malaise, alienation and boredom and the ennui of the bourgeoisie. We follow novelist Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) for the better part of 24 hours, from midday to the following morning. During this time, a time that has, in a way, stopped (we see at one moment a broken clock), Lidia and Giovanni begin to face the futility of their marriage, and perhaps the futility of the lives they have fashioned for themselves. We also see the vacuous lives of the high society in which the Pontanos live. Not a lot happens, on the surface, but much happens below the surface as the lives of these people unravel. The film presents its themes with a light hand; we see this in the remarkable rapport between Lidia and the woman her husband sets out to seduce, the industrialist’s daughter, Valentina (Monica Vitti). But what most impresses the viewer are the cityscapes, the blank walls, glass panels, long vistas, interior architecture, and juxtaposition of modernity and time past. At the party of a rich industrialist, Gherardini (Vincenzo Corbello), Gherardini remarks that he has “always looked upon my business as works of art.” He may be a philistine, but Gherardini has an artistic ambition, one that Antonioni’s camera delights in recording, even celebrating. The rub here is that such celebration comes with a caveat, this modernity may have artistic merit, but it also has emptiness, flatness, and alienating hardness. Sounds, too, are urgent reminders of the loud and even cacophonous present. La Notte comes between Antonioni’s L’Avventura and L’Eclise, and this trilogy of films perhaps sums up modernity as well as any works of art.

 

L'Eclisse (1962), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. The last seven minutes of this film are justly famous. They communicate absence, emptiness, failure, and a world of meaning without substance. Antonioni's film lacks the drive of what we are used to seeing these days, except perhaps in the two lengthy stock exchange scenes. These scenes have the frenetic activity of ostensible chaos, the workings of ants that seem random and yet have dire human consequences. So much of this film speaks of the ruination of humanity because of money, colonial power, concrete, and the ever-present market that rules the practice of modern living. Antonioni invests insignificant things with communicative power - a chip of wood floating on water, lamps, clothing, cars, knick-knacks, windows, doors, mirrors, silence, cigarettes, a balloon, a chain link fence, a water tower looking like a mushroom, newspapers, an elbow. The film is very much of its time, and yet its exploration of modernity strikes me as of continuing relevance.

Identification of a Woman (1982), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Characters lost in a fog pretty much sums up this film. The protagonist, Niccolo (Tomas Milian), is a movie director who mistakes lust for research in his quest to find a woman suitable for his next film and for a companion. He tries two women, Mavi (Danielo Silverio), a cool upper-class woman whose friends greet Niccolo with icy distance, and Ida (Christine Boisson), an actor who is pregnant with another man’s child. The elusiveness of these women is expressed when Niccolo tapes a photograph of Louise Brooks on a window. This is another of Antonioni’s examinations of the hollowness of modernity, reminding me of L’Eclisse, except here lust attempts vainly to fill the emptiness of being. The narrative proceeds in a rather staccato fashion, leaving gaps for the viewer to fill in. Tomas Milian, in the main role, strikes me as curious. I associate him with the westerns of Sergio Corbucci, Giulio Questi, and Sergio Solima. Here he wanders through various locales in a bemused, even bewildered state.  Anyone starting out with Antonioni might steer clear of this film until you have seen his early films from the 1950s and early 60s.

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013), directed by Frank Pavich. The greatest movie never made! Actors include Mick Jagger, Orson Wells, Salvador Dali, artists include H. R. Giger and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, and music by Pink Floyd. Oh, and then the participation of Dan O'Bannon because Jodorowsky had liked the film Dark Star (who wouldn't like Dark Star?). This documentary has an infectious appeal as it traces the work of Jodorowsky through the collation of the script and story boards for Dune. Oh, and did I mention that Jodorowsky had not read Frank Herbert's book? I found this film a hoot. And of course El Topo and The Holy Mountain have their moments here.

 A few silent films.

The Son-of-a-Gun (1919), directed by Gilbert M. Anderson (i.e. Bronco Billy Anderson). Bronco Billy rides into town, buys drinks for everyone except for a kid who happens to be in the saloon with his Dad’s ranch foreman, an unsavoury fellow who is leading young Buddy Brown (Paul Willis) astray. The townsfolk come to think of Bronco Billy as a detriment to their community and they drive him out of town and to the next county. There Bronco continues to buy drinks all round. Back in Bronco’s old country, Buddy’s Dad has to sell cows in order to get money to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment. Dad sends Buddy to the next county with the foreman and some cows. Once Buddy sells the cows and has money, the foreman begins once again to lead Buddy astray, this time so he can get the money from him. A crooked poker game causes Buddy to lose the money, but Bronco arrives to save the day. Bronco takes the money and Buddy back home where Buddy’s father promptly shoots Bronco. The end. This is not a particularly distinguished silent western.

 

The Monster (1925), directed by Roland West. A mix of horror and comedy (mostly comedy), this Lon Chaney film is fun. Chaney plays Dr. Ziska, an inmate of a “sanitar-rium” who has, with other inmates, taken over the place. Into this grand and spooky old house come three innocents, Johnny Goodlittle (Johnny Arthur) would be detective, Amos Rugg (Hallam Cooley), and Betty Watson (Gertrude Olmstead). The plot has something to do with Dr. Ziska’s mad plan to transfer a woman’s soul to a man so he can find the secret of life. Helping him are an assortment of crazies. The film has lots of atmosphere, with a howling wind and pelting rain, and shadowy rooms and secret doorways and useful dumbwaiters, and more curious of all, the large mirror that slides down onto a road from an overhanging tree. This mirror serves to frighten drivers into crashing off the road. Those who are unfortunate enough to crash (Betty and Amos, for example) find themselves abducted and carried away to the sanitarium. An allusion that appears more than once here is to Fuseli’s famous painting, The Nightmare (1781). Perhaps a tad slow, the film nevertheless is entertaining. Tubi has an excellent print.

 

The Prairie Pirate (1925), directed by Edmund Mortimer. This is a well-made western melodrama that will strike some viewers as pleasant precisely because it is so dippy. Harry Carey stars as Brian Delaney who returns home one day to find that his cabin has been ransacked, and his sister Ruth (Jean Dumas) is dead. She has left a note behind saying she was being attacked by bandits and she would not allow them to take her alive. We have seen all this earlier. The bandit Aguilar (Fred Kohler) and his men break into the cabin and find Ruth. She manages to shoot two of the bandits before climbing into the crawl space beneath the cabin where she takes her own life. Aguilar has all this time been lighting cigarillos, taking a puff or two, and then twisting what is left before dropping them. When Brian returns to find the ransacked house and his sister, he also finds the tossed twisted cigarillos. He takes these as a clue to the identity of the person responsible for his sister’s death, and he sets out to find this person. In order to find the criminal, he takes on the identity of the “Yellow Seal” and goes about robbing saloons, taking only their ashtrays so he can locate the twisted cigarillo butts. For some reason, this makes him a bandit worthy of a $1,000 bounty. Dippy. Anyway, the rest of the film has to do with a slimy saloon owner Howard Steele (Lloyd Whitlock) and his hold over the compulsive gambler, Don Esteban (Robert Edeson). Steele wants either to take over Don Esteban’s ranch or marry the Don’s daughter Teresa (Trilby Clark). Meanwhile, the Yellow Seal has saved Teresa from being assaulted by another bandit, and in saving her, he of course finds himself attracted to her. Then we have Steele in cahoots with Aguilar, and some riding, some impressive stunt work, a bit of shooting, and the Yellow Seal saving Teresa from an unwanted marriage. All of this is fun, if rather unbelievable. But heck, it is a movie.

Between 1918 and 1923 Chaplin's films all came from his own studio, First National. Shoulder Arms (1918) is perhaps the most noteworthy of the films produced at First National, but on the whole the First National films are not my preferred Chaplin. In any case, we watched four of these films last evening: Sunnyside (1919), A Day's Pleasure (1919), The Idle Class (1921), and Pay Day (1922). Highlights are the brick catching scene in Pay Day (amazing), the dream sequence with the nymphs in Sunnyside (clever and very funny), the inebriation sequence in the rain in Pay Day (Chaplin had played tipsy since his music hall days and he does so in many of his films; his performance while supposedly under the influence is always good for a laugh), and the road tar sequence in A Day's Pleasure (slapstick at its most graceful). In The Idle Class Chaplin plays two roles, something he did in a few films. All four films pit the working class against the wealthy, and we know where Chaplin's sympathy lies. 1923 marks the end of Chaplin's shorter films.

A couple more Chaplin films: A Dog's Life (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923), both directed by Charlie Chaplin, and both for First National (the first and last films for this studio). A Dog's Life co-stars Scraps. The title of the film may refer equally to Scraps the dog or to the Tramp since both lead a dog's life, scrapping for bits of food wherever they can get them. Edna Purviance also co-stars as Charlie's love interest. This film offers laughter with a tear, Chaplin's signature tone. Much of the action takes place in a speakeasy where Edna sings and flirts with men to relieve them of their money. Of course she is not made for this kind of life. As for The Pilgrim, this also co-stars Edna Purviance, her final film with Chaplin. Here Charlie is an escaped convict who steals the clothes of a fellow who is swimming in a river. The clothes prove to be those of a pastor and, you guessed it, Charlie makes his way to Texas where he arrives in a town whose denizens are expecting their new pastor. Charlie thinks to abscond with the Church collection, but he meets Edna Purviance and he reforms, even thwarting another thief from making off with Edna's mother's mortgage money. The local sheriff thinks twice about arresting Charlie and instead takes him to the Mexico border where he encourages Charlie to stay in Mexico. Charlie straddles the border as the film ends. Along with these films, we watched How to Make Movies, a short film Chaplin made to introduce and celebrate the creation of his own studio, First National.

Wolfblood (1925), directed by George Chesebro and Bruce Mitchell. What caught my eye was the name George Chesebro, Here he is leading man and director. I know him from the hundreds of B westerns in which he played the bad guy or a member of the bad guy’s gang. I was also intrigued to see that this was a werewolf film. Well almost. The story is set in “the vastness of the Canadian forests,” and has many stock shots of lumberjacks going about their business. Dick Bannister (Chesebro) is foreman of a lumber business that is experiencing trouble from its rival Consolidated Lumber. The owner of Bannister’s outfit, Edith Ford (Marguerite Clayton), comes to the forest with her doctor fiancé Eugene Horton (Ray Hanford). To simplify: Edith finds herself attracted to Dick, Eugene is jealous, Eugene finds Dick wounded one night (he has been attacked by villainous Frenchman Jacques Lebeq (Milburne Morante), Eugene saves Dick’s life by giving him a blood transfusion using a wolf for the transfusion, the result is that Dick is now thought to be the Loup garou. He is not. So much for the werewolf theme. The film is competently organized, but contains nothing particularly noteworthy aside from the crazy blood transfusion, and this comes halfway through the film. It is, however, interesting to see George Chesebro as the romantic lead.

The Matinee Idol (1928), directed by Frank Capra. It is the time of year for a Capra film, although this is not the one you might expect. This early Capra is about a Broadway star, Don Wilson (Johnnie Walker) who meets a country girl while he is on vacation. He mistakenly finds himself taking part in the theatricals of a small group of thespians called the Bolivar players. Ginger Bolivar (Bessie Love), daughter of Jasper Bolivar, the head of this troupe, soon catches Don’s eye. He has introduced himself as Harry Mann (!), and so we set out to have a play of disguise and mistaken identity. The country troupe of actors prove so inept, they endear themselves to Don’s friends who produce the Broadway production in which Don stars in Blackface. He is something of an Al Jolsen figure. Once we get past this uncomfortable reminder of the ugliness of racism, we might find aspects of this production interesting. One of the country players is clearly gay. The unfortunate thing here is that another character makes fun of the gay person. I might also add that, despite Capra’s interest in the small-town person, here he makes these people amusement for the, ostensibly, sophisticated New York audience. The Capra sympathy for the common person is clear, although not quite without its down side. And Bessie Love in the main female lead is engaging, spunky and independent minded. All in all, this is not a film without its problems, but as an early Capra, it has its interest.

The Virginian (1914), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Tubi has a pretty good print of this film, the first film version of Owen Wister’s novel. Things move along succinctly and smoothly here. The story is familiar, and the early cross0cutting between Molly, the Easterner, and the Virginian out west is effective. Outdoor shooting is good. The elements of the western are here with cattle drives and cattle rustling, lynching of thieves, saloon antics, cowboy romancing, Natives attacking, and, of course, the shootout between the hero and the villain, here the Virginian (Dustin Farnum) and Trampas (William ‘Billy’ Elmer). As early westerns go, this one is impressive. The compositions by DeMille are catchy. At one point, as the Virginian and his pal Steve reminisce, we have a superimposed image to let us see what they are thinking. We have seen superimposed images before in Melies, but not for purposes of letting us see into the minds of characters. There are also extended sequences, the longest having to do with Steve and the Virginian swapping babies while their parents take part in a party and dance. 

The Man from Beyond (1922), directed by Burton L. King. If you are looking for a silent film that will engage you, give this one a miss. The main attraction here is Harry Houdini who stars as the man from beyond, Howard Hillary, who has been encased in ice for 100 years. Thawed out, Howard comes back to civilization from the frozen north to find himself at a wedding. He notices the bride and takes her to be the woman he was to marry before he was iced over. Consternation. Thinking him out of his mind, his hosts have him incarcerated in an insane asylum. Of course, he escapes despite the straight jacket and barred windows. Meanwhile Felice Strange (Jane Connelly), the women who was to be married before Howard crashed the wedding, is on the run from her fiancé who has proven to be a cad. Felice takes a row boat on the Niagara River. Yes, you can see what’s coming. Howard comes to the rescue, but not before the two of them just about topple over the Niagara Falls. If all this sounds exciting, then I fear I have failed because, sadly, it is not. The whole thing is supposed to have something to do with reincarnation, the power of love and such balderdash. In its favour, the film is a curiosity.

 

 

 A few films to begin the new year.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), directed by Taika Waititi. This film is a mish-mash of such films as Rambo, Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Searchers, and perhaps even Where the Wild Things Are. It has the feel of a good fairy tale. And it has two main characters who, despite their curmudgeonly demeanor, charm us. Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is the foster kid with an attitude who aspires to be a rap artist and who is forever making up haiku. He is overweight. He is, in short, charismatic. His fellow traveller in the New Zealand bush is Hec (Sam Neill), a misanthrope of few words and much scowl. Together they strike out against the establishment in a very satisfying manner. The look of this film is also worth admiring, awash in light and offering splendid vistas of the New Zealand outback. The film is funny and serious. It has a bit of Mr. Fantastic in it.

 

Jojo Rabbit (2019), directed by Taika Waititi. As A. O. Scott in the New York Times notes, this film is in the vein of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. It takes on the same sensitive subject, and infuses it with charm and, for the most part, lightheartedness. The film does have shocking moments, and it also uses its humour for bursts of violence; for example, when young Yorki (Archie Yates), a butterball of a young soldier (11 years old), sees his friend Jojo and drops the bazooka he is holding effectively setting it off. The film brings Wes Anderson’s palette to the screen presumably to emphasise innocence, youth, and hope. Not everyone will appreciate the tone of this narrative of the Nazi horrors. Its focus on children and women, however, carries its own unsettling message. At the heart of the film is young Jojo’s relationship with his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler. Playing off this imaginary friend is Sam Rockwell’s burnt-out soldier who also happens to be gay. There is cleverness here. Aside from the main characters, others remain stereotypes, but this seems appropriate in a satire. I mention satire, and yes this film is satirical, but not in a militantly ironic manner. This is, after all, a comedy, and appropriately for a comedy, we have dancing to finish things off. I have not outlined the plot. Suffice to say we have a loving, and apparently single because of the war, mother who secretly harbours a young Jewish girl behind the walls of her apartment. Once this mother's young son, Jojo, discovers the secret, an uneasy friendship begins to develop.

 

Blackkklansman (2018), directed by Spike Lee. This is a major contribution to the conversation about race in America today. Set in the early 1970s, the film manages to speak to conditions we see today and the continuing racial injustice in America. The final shots using contemporary news footage are chilling, disturbing, and powerful. Just as powerful are the clips from early Hollywood films such as Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind that point out the lengthy history of racial insensitivity in culture production. The narrative is a somewhat rambling account of a Black policeman in Colorado Springs, Colorado, who in the 1970s manages to become a full-fledged member of the Ku Klux Klan, even having extended conversations on the telephone with David Duke, grandmaster of the KKK. The film is funny, unsettling, and melancholy. The melancholy emanates from the clear understanding that what we are watching is both bizarre and yet actual. This is an important film.

Mapplethorpe (2018), directed by Ondi Timoner. This biopic of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a tepid affair, and Mapplethorpe himself has little depth and less likeability. The film glosses his relationship with Patti Smith, and she leaves the scene earlier than she did in actuality. We get the obligatory scenes of interaction with family, with lovers, with New York nightlife, and so on. We also get scenes of Mapplethorpe taking pictures, instructing his subjects to hold themselves tighter or spread their knees, or take their cocks out of their trousers. All this seems rather perfunctory. The photographs themselves, especially as the end credits run, are impressive. But the film gives us no insight into how the artist captured light or conceived of his subjects beyond compositional objects. Even the controversial aspect of Mapplethorpe's work gets thin treatment. Of course the Aids epidemic arrives near the end, but again, we have little in the way of the actual grimness of what transpired.

Another Mother's Son (2017), directed by Christopher Menaul. The film tells the story of Louisa Gould, a woman living in the island of Jersey during the Nazi occupation. With the aid of her family, she hides a Russian prisoner of war for about three years before quislings give her up and she ends in a concentration camp in Germany. The story is based on actual events and people. As you might expect, the action pulls at the heart strings. There is not much in the way of spectacular action; things move along at a quiet pace with much riding of bicycles. And yet the tension gathers and the characters resonate. The Russian soldier has to practice social distancing along with the others, except for close family gatherings. And so this seems an appropriate film to watch these days. The cast is uniformly good, the scenery lovely (although it was shot in and around Bath, not on Jersey), and the story compelling.

Jellyfish (2018), directed by James Gardner. This is Gardner's first film and it is sobering, to say the least. In the tradition of British realist film from the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, the film gives us a glimpse of a dreary life, the dreary life of Sarah, 15-year-old caregiver to her bipolar Mom and adult protector to her younger siblings. Set in Margate, the film gives us not only a life under duress, but also a place seeking an elusive improvement. The shots of a tawdry arcade and down-at-heel seaside and less than attractive abodes provide an unsavoury mise en scene. Margate here aspires to the condition of Brighton, an aspiration unlikely to be fulfilled while Sarah is there. Sarah's life is relentlessly downbeat, yet compelling. This is a noteworthy first film. Let's hope Sarah can harness all the anger and sorrow and become a stand-up comic.

Assassin (2015), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. This film looks as if it is going to be an example of wuxia, a martial arts film. However, it is something else indeed, a mood piece with a plot that is both simple and daringly opaque. Unlike most martial arts films, or films in general these days, Assassin moves at an excruciatingly slow pace, with moments, long moments, of silence and stillness. The few bursts of action punctuate the stillness forcefully. Mostly we have beautiful people in beautiful costumes placed carefully in beautiful sets or in beautiful landscapes. The plot has the eponymous character exiled in order to prove herself a ruthless assassin, and the film places the viewer in something of an exile too. Do we have the patience to see the film to its end? Well, we do, and we did. And the assassin, Nie Yinniang (She Qui) proves herself a woman with heart and compassion. She wanders off with the maker of mirrors.

 A few John Ford films.

Bucking Broadway (1917), directed by John Ford. This early Ford western has Harry Carey playing Cheyenne Harry in a comedic vein. The film has many touches we associate with Ford, male camaraderie and enjoyment of song, a close relationship between an older man and a younger man, and exquisite compositional detail. It also has one unfortunate scene in which Harry buys new clothes only to see a Black man wearing a similar outfit, prompting Harry to return the clothes in disgust. Back to composition. At one point, we have a shot that anticipates the famous doorway scene(s) in The Searchers. The plot has Harry proposing marriage to his boss’s daughter, Helen Clayton (Molly Malone), only to have her run off to New York with the oily horse trader, Eugene Thornton (Vester Pegg), who sports a villain’s large moustache. Anyway, Harry has given Helen a small heart that he has carved and told her to send it to him if she is ever in trouble. She sends this to him, and Harry makes his way to New York. Soon after the other cowboys from the ranch also arrive with a load of horses. What follows is a raucous melee, not in a saloon, but in the posh hotel where Helen and Eugene are have their engagement party. The film is played for laughs. As early films go, this one is worth it for the cinematography and for an early glimpse at Ford’s interests as a film maker.

 

Hangman's House (1928), directed by John Ford. The film is perhaps noteworthy as the first film in which a young John Wayne appears, uncredited. He is a member of the audience watching a horse race, and in his enthusiasm he breaks down a small fence. The horse race, by the way, is a forerunner of the race in Ford's much later The Quiet Man. The story is less noteworthy than either the race or the appearance of young Marion Morrison. It tells the story of a young woman forced into a marriage with a man she does not love, a man who is a cad. Of course she loves another young man. Throw into the mix another man who is exiled in the Foreign Legion and who returns to take revenge on the cad who had married the young woman. This cad, by the way, is an informer. Oh, did I say the story is set in Ireland? This is something of a dry-run for Ford's later The Informer, complete with touches of German Expressionism. I found the film rather tepid, but it looks fine. The camera moves fluidly on occasion, and the compositions are worthy of the director.

 

Upstream (1927), directed by John Ford. This one concerns the theatre and its players who occupy a boarding house during the season. Some are successful, some are not. Some are serious actors, others are performers such as a song and dance act Callaham and Callaham or the sister act who are actually mother and daughter. Our main focus is on young actor from a famous family, Eric Brashingham (Earle Foxe), his girlfriend Gertie Ryan (Nancy Nash), and knife thrower Juan Rodriguez, aka Jack La Velle (Grant Withers). Nancy loves Eric, Juan loves Nancy, and Eric loves himself. Anyway, Eric surprisingly makes good with the help of the older actor Campbell Mandare (Emile Chautard), and lands the part of Hamlet in a London production. He triumps in the part and leaves his former friends behind. They struggle on, and Nancy and Juan plan to marry. They do marry and during their wedding ceremony, Eric returns for a visit just for the publicity. His return offers Ford the opportunity for one of his visual flourishes and Eric appears in the cloud of smoke created by the camera that takes the wedding photos. The whole thing is fluff, except this is Ford, early Ford yes, but Ford nonetheless. His visual flare is evident not only in the scene of Eric’s less than triumphant return to the boarding house, but also in other scenes such as the one in which Eric imagines himself playing Hamlet as he looks in a mirror. Ford gives us an intimate view of life as performance. 

 

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), directed by John Ford. Ford’s first colour film is lush and lovely to look at, but its rah rah patriotism strikes the wrong cord for me. The story has to do with the American Revolution and the goings on in an upper New York community just before the Battle of Saratoga. The Tories, led here by eye-patched John Carradine as Caldwell, are a vicious lot and employ the savage Natives to do much of their dastardly work. The Natives are hard-drinkers who like to set things on fire. If the Native happens to be a Christian, our hero’s friend Blue Back (Chief Big Tree) for example, then this Native is just fine. Our hero is Gilbert Martin (Henry Fonda) who has come to this out of the way valley to build a home; he brings with him a young bride, the rich girl Lana (Claudette Colbert), who at first finds country living intolerable. As the film goes along, Lana becomes a faithful, hard working pioneer woman, perhaps helped by the example of the widow McKlennar (Edna May Oliver), a no nonsense, independent and stubborn woman who orders everyone about, even the Natives who, while holding whiskey jugs, try to burn her house down. The film has familiar Ford touches, community solidarity, the importance of church, humour, eccentric characters, and a cast sprinkled with Ford favourites: Ward Bond, Jack Pennick, Arthur Shields, Francis Ford, Russell Simpson, Tom Tyler, along with those I have already mentioned – Fonda, Carradine, and Big Tree. The final shot where the flag of the new fresh country is placed atop the church has something of a chilling feel now when the separation of church and state seems on the verge of breaking down. Visually and thematically, this is clearly a Ford film; it is, however, a lesser Ford film. It appears in the same year as Stagecoach and Young Mr. Lincoln, and a year before The Grapes of Wrath. These three films are all a cut above Drums Along the Mohawk.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), directed by John Ford. This film showcases Ford and John Wayne at their best. We have seen it multiple times and no doubt will see it again. The cinematography by Winton C. Hoch is justly famous. The Frederick Remington-influenced look of the film is gorgeous. Wayne’s portrayal of a 43-year veteran of the cavalry, Captain Nathan Brittles, is terrific; he even manages to shed tears when C-Troop gives him a retirement present, a silver watch and chain with a sentiment on the back. The familiar Ford actors are here: Victor McLaglen, Harry Carey, Jr., Ben Johnson, Mildred Natwick, Arthur Shields, and in small uncredited roles, Paul Fix, Harry Woods, Jack Pennick, and Francis Ford. We have the usual Ford interest in male camaraderie, ritual, and tradition. We have a mixture of comedy, romance, sentimentality, and western action. The action here is interesting in that the main action of the film occurs when Brittles sets out to stop a war rather than indulge in one. “Old men must stop wars,” he says to his old friend Pony that Walks (Chief John Big Tree, another Ford stalwart). Ben Johnson as Sergeant Tyree has never been better, and his riding here is extremely impressive. Tom Tyler turns up as Corporal Mike Quayne, a wounded soldier who insists on giving the report on what happened to his patrol despite his injury. Old soldiers, eh Mis Dandridge. Olivia Dandridge, by the way, is played by Joanne Dru, another actor who appears in other Ford films, notably Wagon Master (1950). The film has many memorable moments: 
“Watch them grammar!” Lieutenant Pennell accepts Brittles’s offer of chewing tobacco as they watch from a hiding place the murder of Karl Rynders, the sutler, and the gun runners, “It’s been known to turn a man’s stomach.” Then we have the death of Trooper Smith, aka Rome Clay (Rudy Bowman), who commends “Captain” Tyree before dying. Of course, there is Sergeant Quincannon (McLaglen) in civvy clothes and brawling with those who come to take him to the guardhouse. The film has much to delight, not least its anti-war sentiment. Most impressive, however, is the landscape of Monument Valley that gives the film an epic look.

 

 A few cheapies from the early days.

The Invisible Mr. Unmei (1951, aka Oriental Evil). Low budget mystery set in post-war Japan. Cheryl Banning (Martha Hyer) arrives in Tokyo to seek answers about the death of her brother. Apparently, his death was a suicide, but Cheryl thinks otherwise. She finds herself running about with a very tall British fellow named Roger Mansfield (Byron Michie). Unbeknownst to Cheryl, Byron is married (ostensibly) to a Japanese woman. Also unbeknownst to her, Roger is really not Roger. He is actually an unsavoury fellow named Tom Putnam who owes money to various people and who is in a jam and hopes Cheryl can help him get out of this jam. So we have lots of murky goings on.  This is an odd one. Oh, the Mr. Unmei of the title is an invisible spirit fellow who appears only to evil persons about to die. Unmei has a street beggar who helps Unmei by not picking up the cigarette stubs of bad people. The beggar does not pick up Roger’s stub. How did Martha Hyer find herself in this one? And who is Byron Michie? He appears to have just two screen credits, both with Japanese settings.

Captured in Chinatown (1935), directed by Elmer Clifton. This little thriller is really for dog lovers. The German Shepherd, ‘Tarzan’, steals the show. He does any number of tricks and saves the girl and opens doors and delivers messages and tosses waste into buckets and generally manages to control proceedings. The proceedings, by the way, involve a feud between two families, the Lings and the Wongs, and two of their children who, echoing Shakespeare’s famous couple, wish to marry. An expensive jade necklace proves to bring peace between the feuding families, but dastardly Caucasians enter the scene looking to purloin the necklace. And purloin they do. Add to this, two newspaper reporters, one of whom has the dog Tarzan, and you have lots going on. One reporter, the female, finds herself captured in Chinatown, although not by the Chinese. Despite what is supposed to be an exotic background, what happens is predictable. The novelty here is not so much the location as it is the dog. The aptly named Tarzan proves smarter than the humans he finds himself outwitting.

 

Fall Guy (1947), directed by Reginald LeBorg. This Monogram thriller has something of a noir sensibility. “Clifford” Penn (father of Sean Penn) plays Tom Cochrane a war veteran who is having difficulty adjusting to life after the war. We meet him as he flounders about a street at night clearly out of his head with narcotics. He collapses and the police find him with blood on his clothes and a bloody knife beside him. A cut has him returning to consciousness in a hospital bed where the police are ready to charge him with murder. Tom manages to escape from the hospital and make his way to his girlfriend’s place. Lois Walter (Teala Loring) happens to be staying with an old friend, Mac McLaine (Robert Montgomery) who is a cop. She usually lives with her uncle Jim Grossett (Charles Arnt). So begins the story of what happened to Tom. Much of this story comes in flashbacks. In short, Tom has been taken to a party and encouraged to drink by both Joe (Elisha Cook, Jr.) and the singer Marie (Virginia Dale). He also receives cocaine, although I am not sure how he receives this. Anyway, he passes out and when he comes to and goes to leave, he opens a closet door and a dead woman falls into his arms. He stuffs her back in and hastily leaves. Shortly thereafter, he collapses on the street where the police find him. With the help of McLaine, Tom does some sleuthing in an effort to remember what happened. Meanwhile the police, headed by Inspector Shannon (Douglas Fowley) are hot on his heels. Using quite a bit of stock footage, some of it from as early as 1933, the films sets out to solves the murder of the unknown girl in the closet. The darks streets and murky goings on we associate with noir are here, as is the poor sap under suspicion of murder. The actual culprit may be in the background, but I managed to spot him by halfway through this short film. Not bad for a cheapie. This also happens to be the first film produced by Walter Mirisch who will go on to produce films such as Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, West Side Story, The Pink Panther, and many more.

 

Ouanga (1936), directed by George Terwilliger. The title refers to a love potion used in Haitian voodoo.  This is not a particularly noteworthy film, except for the racial aspect. Klili Gordon (Fredi Washington) is a black plantation owner whose skin is white. She is in love with another plantation owner, the white man Adam Maynard (Philip Brandon). Adam, however, is going to marry Eve Langley (Marie Paxton). He has had a dalliance with Klili, but he now tells her he cannot marry her because of their difference in blood. She should stay with her own people. Meanwhile, Sheldon Leonard turns up as LeStrange, a black overseer who is in love with Klili. Klili, using voodoo, plans to kill Eve, and LeStrange, using voodoo, plans to kill Klili if she won’t have him. Klili rouses two dead men as zombies. LeStrange takes the talisman that keeps Klili safe from around her neck. And then we have the drums. The whole thing is quite distasteful, and the ending is very downbeat, so to speak. As films go, this one has, perhaps, historical interest.

Dead Men Walk (1943), directed by Sam Neufield. This is a PRC quickie that has both George Zucco and Dwight Frye. Zucco has a dual role as brothers Dr. Lloyd Clayton and Dr. Elwyn Clayton. Frye plays Zolarr, hunched assistant to Elwyn. Elwyn is the evil brother who dies and returns as a vampire. Lloyd is the good brother who tries to ferret out his evil twin while local townsfolk believe it is Lloyd who is the perpetrator of dastardly murders. Elwyn hates his brother and want to see him suffer. Accordingly, Elwyn preys on the innocent niece of Lloyd, Gayle (Mary /Carlisle). Her fiancé David (Nedrick Young) begins to think the good Dr. Lloyd Clayton is trying to murder his niece. Everything moves along well enough with a few favourably staged scenes, despite the low budget. The film owes its charm to echoes of earlier Universal films, especially Dracula (1931). Fern Emmet turns in a nice performance as local seemingly loony woman, Kate. She proves to be more savvy than people give her credit for. Zucco and Frye are, however, the stand-outs. Al St. John appears briefly as a local, and Forrest Taylor is the disembodied head that present the prologue. Both St. John and Taylor are stalwarts of PRC’s westerns.

Big News (1929), directed by Gregory La Cava. This is one of those fast-talking newspaper films, and it delivers pretty well. Robert Armstrong is Steve Banks, a newspaper man with problems: he drinks too much, and his wife, Margaret (Carole Lombard), wants a divorce. Steve, however, is following a story about narcotics and gangster Joe Reno (Sam Hardy). The film takes place in the newsroom and in Reno’s speakeasy. The newsroom sports an array of characters, most notably Vera (Cupid Ainsworth), the society columnist, and Hoffman (George Hayes, later known as Gabby). The plot involves the murder of the newspaper’s editor J. W. Addison (Charles Sellon). Of course, Banks is accused of the murder, and of course we know he is innocent. The script here is snappy, and things move along nicely. For a cheapie , this one passes muster.

The Fat Man (1951), directed by William Castle. J. Scott Smart is detective Brad Runyon, the titular hero. Runyon is the creation of Dashiell Hammett, and he has his charm. He reminded me of tv’s Henry Crabbe (Pie in the Sky, 1994). The film is noteworthy for its narrative unfolding in a series of flashbacks, and its inclusion of Rock Hudson and Emmett Kelly in key roles. In short, this is a whodunnit. Detective Runyon is searching for the killer of a dentist; the killer also stole an x-ray of someone’s teeth. The film is adequately shot with some nifty camera work, and the characters, although standard for the most part, are also adequate. We do have those clowns, one of whom is a sign of times we hope to have left behind. The Fat Man also does a bit of footwork on the dance floor. Other notable actors are Julie London and John Russell. Amiable, if not particularly memorable.