Time for a few more films.

Voodoo Man (1944), directed by William Beaudine. This hokum is quite entertaining. Bela Lugosi is Dr. Marlow who lives in an out of the way house where the basement is home to a few female zombies. The nutty doctor has these women as subjects for his attempt to restore his dead wife to life (she has been dead 20 years, but looks as fresh as a daisy). Helping him is gas station owner by day/voodoo chanter by night Nicholas (George Zucco), and two dim-witted helpers, Toby (John Carradine) and Grego (Pat McKee). Carradine hams it up delightfully. Of course, we have a young couple caught up in the dark goings on. Ralph (Tod Andrews) is a Hollywood script writer who is just about to marry Betty (Wanda McKay). First Ralph meets Sally (Louise Curry) when the two of them are on their way to Twin Falls for the wedding. Sally finds herself abducted by Toby and Grego, and Ralph finds himself in the midst of a mystery. Where did Sally go? Soon Betty is involved and Dr. Marlow has eyes for her, thinking she will be the one whom he can use to bring his wife back to life. Through a voodoo ritual, Betty’s mind and will to live may be transferred to Marlow’s wife. If this all sounds preposterous, it is. Nutty. But everyone from the young couple to the zombie women to Zucco’s babbling voodoo man to the sheriff and his sidekick performs suitably. In short, the film is predictable, unbelievable, and short. Oh yes, Bela distinguishes himself in a role that calls for him to look at his victims with piercing eyes.

 

Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton. A favourite film of mine, Night of the Hunter is Laughton’s only foray into directing, and what he produced is magnificent. (Stanley Cortez, the cinematographer here, also photographed Welles’s The Magnificent Andersons.) A fairy tale this is, and a Grimm affair with the children set upon by an evil “Old Harry” figure in the person of wily Reverend Powell, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). They find refuge with the elderly wise woman, Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who is something if an avenging angel. What distinguishes the film, aside from the performances, is the otherworldly, expressionistic photography, the shadows and lighting and compositions. For example, the Harper house into which Powell insinuates himself is angular and seemingly too small for its inhabitants. Its triangular walls and cluttered basement suggest enclosure and constraint. The underwater scene of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) as she sits drowned in the old car is luminous and creepy and weird. Much of the film is creepy and weird. The plot hardly matters here; it is the familiar fairy tale story of children, here brother and sister like Hansel and Grethel, who find themselves in the clutches or near clutches of evil Harry Powell, preacher who sports, famously, the words Love and Hate on his eight fingers, hate being suitably on the left or sinister hand. Harry’s account of the struggle between Love and Hate is one of many great moments in this masterful film. The whole thing is as haunting as the ditty, “Leaning, leaning/safe and secure from all alarms/leaning, leaning,/leaning on the everlasting arms” that weaves its way throughout the film. Harry Powell seems an appropriate character for our own times, a man without a conscience, a duplicitous and callow grifter and murderer.

 

Dementia (1955), directed by John Parker and Bruno VeSota. Like The Thief (1952), Dementia is an experimental film without dialogue; it is, in effect, a silent film. It is also a film that explores the psyche. We follow The Gamin (Adrienne Barrett) during her peregrinations one night, or is she simply dreaming. Dream and reality fuse here. Anyway, we follow The Gamin through dark and shadowy city streets, alleyways, nightspots. A graveyard, hotel rooms, and a rich man’s flat. Early in the film she purchases a newspaper that has the headline “Mysterious Stabbings.” The Gamin carries a switchblade. In the cemetery interlude, we see action that suggests her mother was unfaithful to her father, her father shot her mother, and The Gamin stabbed her father. To complicate the psychological drama, the actor who plays The Gamin’s father also plays the Police detective (Ben Roseman). The film delights in Freudian gestures. For example, when is a cigar nor a cigar, or a piece of chicken not a piece of chicken? And the all those musical instruments doing double duty and signs of the times and sexual signs. One amazing scene gives us a castration (Orlac anyone). You will have to see the film for this to make sense. Anyway, the film channels Bunuel and Welles and clearly has the mark of noir. A second version of this film was released as Daughter of Horror, with a voice over narration by Ed McMahon.  

Invisible Avenger (1958), directed by James Wong Howe, Ben Parker, John Sledge. Why it took three people to direct this one-hour cheapie, I will never know. And one of these people is the esteemed cinematographer James Wong Howe. Anyway, in this one Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow (Richard Derr), and his assistant and teacher in the mystic arts Jogendra (Mark Daniels) are out to help an exiled president from Santa Cruz find his way back home and prosecute a successful revolution. The exiled politician also has an evil twin brother. The acting and the action are what you would expect from a low budget film. Wan. Mr. Cranston disappears before the eyes of adversaries, Mr. Jogendra hypnotizes people from a distance, Cranston and Jogendra talk to each other through thought transmission, and both of them generally befuddle the bad guys. The Shadow delivers his line about evil lurking in the minds of men, and cackles convincingly. All in all, this film provides mindless entertainment for an hour’s ride on the indoor bike.

 

Dancing with Crime (1947), directed by John Paddy Carstairs. Part of a cycle of films know as Spiv (underhand activity) films, Dancing with Crime is familiar as it looks much like American gangster films of the 1930s. We have the jazz music, the nightclub scenes, the gritty city streets, the men in trench coats, the common man, here taxi driver Ted Peters (Richard Attenborough), caught up in criminal activity and doing a bit of sleuthing, Helping Ted is his girlfriend Joy (Sheila Sim) who takes a job at the Palais de Danse in order to try and find evidence of the crooks’ wrongdoing. The Palais is owned by Mr. Gregory (Barry Jones); in reality Mr. Gregory is mastermind of a criminal operation. The postwar atmosphere of London is here impressively presented. The interior and exterior scenes are very well set up and managed. The action (e.g. fight scenes) are impressively mounted, although perhaps a tad unconvincing in one instance. Richard Attenborough makes for a likeable hero. Mr. Gregory’s second in command Paul Baker (Barry K. Barnes) gives perhaps the best performance as an icy yet suave villain. 

 

Mysterious Mr. Nicholson (1947), directed by Oswald Mitchell. The mysterious VLS (‘vivre le sport’), aka Mr. Nicholson (Anthony Hulme), has a double who has made it look as if Mr. Nicholson has committed a murder. Nicholson is, as happenstance would have it, a former Robin Hood thief who operated in Paris. He is now in London trying to put his criminal past behind him, and now he finds himself the centre of police attention. What’s a fellow to do but set out to find out who the real murderer is and why. To be quite blunt, the most memorable part of this low budget mystery thriller is the lengthy dog act that the two main characters watch at the Music Hall. The many dogs, large and small, cavort and somersault and act cheeky and fail not to gain our sympathies. As for the rest of the film, with the other mysterious fellow, Pedrelli, well it moves along amiably enough, if predictable. Oh, you may have noticed that I did not provide the actor’s name for Pedrelli. You can easily guess my reason, just as it is easy to grasp who this fellow is in the film. Another film to pass the time on the indoor bike.

A Life at Stake (1955), directed by Paul Guilfoyle. This is a rather heated little noir about an architect who falls in with a married woman and arranges a business partnership with her, and as it turns out with her wealthy husband Gus, played by Douglas Dumbrille. As things progress, the architect, Edward Shaw (Keith Andes), finds himself enthralled by the married woman, Mrs. Doris Hillman (Angela Lansbury), a woman who likes to swim in the nude and draw men into her web. Soon Shaw wonders if this woman is on the up and up or if she is out to get money from his life insurance. And is the husband part of this plot to scam the architect into signing a life insurance policy to ensure the business deal? What a web we weave. Oh, and Mrs. Hillman has a sister, Madge Neilan (Claudia Barrett). Is she too part of the nefarious plot to bilk the architect? There is plenty going on in this potboiler of a noir. We have the hot relationship between Doris and Edward, the cool anger of the husband Gus, the suspicious happenings such as the brakes failing on a car, the spritely charm of the sister Madge, the police who doubt Edward’s claims that he is going to be murdered, the mountain cabin where a person just might fall to his or her death, the thousand-dollar bill that Edward has framed, the plans for a trip to Las Vegas, and so on. As lower end noirs go, this one is pretty good, even if Keith Andes is a bit wooden. He spends much of his time without a shirt, and he has a deep voice. What I suggest by this is anyone’s guess.

The Hoodlum (1951), directed by Max Nosseck. This Poverty Row cheapie is a showcase for bad boy Lawrence Tierney. As Vincent Lubeck, the hoodlum of the title, Tierney complains about growing up next to the city dump. By the end, his long-suffering mother (Lisa Golm), angrily asserts that he, Vincent, is the smell, he is the stink. During the short running time, Vincent, smashes things, courts a woman who works in a bank so he can get information, impregnates his brother’s fiancé (a rather daring thing for films to discuss at the time), carries out a bank heist, and shoots a few people. He is bad through and through. This crime-doesn’t-pay little noir passes the time, but other than Tierney, the film does not offer a lot that we have not seen before. As for Tierney, brother of Scott Brady, he has no trouble performing the bad boy part.

 

Gangster Story (1959), directed by Walter Matthau. This is the only film Matthau directed. It is a low budget thriller with a preposterous storyline. Hoodlum Jack Martin (Matthau) escapes from police custody, and after things cool a bit, he sets out to rob a bank by calling the police and asking for police presence at the bank because they are shooting a movie there and a police presence would make things look more believable than they otherwise would. The police arrive to find Martin outside the bank, no cameras, no crew, no other actors. Martin tells the three policemen that they are rehearsing a scene. The bank manager arrives in a car, gets out, and enters the bank. Martin follows and holds the manager at gunpoint until he opens the vault at 8:00. No other bank personnel are there. Can you believe this? The rest of the film has more rather strained action. The acting is not the best, by any means. The film has the look of a 1950s television cop drama. As for Martin, he finds himself on the run and to get away from his pursuers, he enters a library where me meets a bespectacled (of course) librarian. They have a conversation about books; clearly, Martin has never read one. Anyway, they become a couple, as unlikely as this is. Things proceed in a predictable way until the final shootout. The film is mercifully brief, running just 65 minutes.

 I missed July, but here are a few films for August.

Salt of the Earth (1954), directed by Herbert J. Biberman. Written by Michael Wilson and produced by Paul Jarrico. Jarrico, Wilson, and Biberman were all blacklisted in the HUAC years. So were cast members such as Will Geer and Rosaura Revueltas. Most cast members were unprofessional actors. Upon release the film was censored and not seen by many until 1962. This is a film I think you should see if you have not already seen it. It resonates now more than ever. The story focuses on a zinc mine in New Mexico, its mostly Latino workers, their wives, and those who set out to break the Union that calls for strike action after a mine accident. The workers call for safety measures, and for pay equal to what the white miners make. This story is based on the 1951 strike against the empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. Both race and gender are at the forefront of this remarkable film. The company owners exploit the Mexican-American workers and are about to break the strike when the miners’ wives step up and take control. This is remarkable for a film made in 1954. The film is neo-realist in its look and has several visual echoes of early Soviet cinema. It is, perhaps, not without its faults, but it remains a compelling visual statement and call for equality and justice.

Highway 13 (1948), directed by William Berke. This low budget Lippert film benefits from its cast of familiar character actors from old geezer Clem Bevan and Mary Gordon who plays his wife to Dan Seymour as an Insurance Investigator. The two main characters are Robert Lowery as truck driver Hank Wilson and Pamela Blake as his girlfriend Doris Lacy, daughter of Pops Lacy (Bevans). Also prominent is femme fatale Mary Hadley played by Maris Wrixon. The plot has to do with a series of mysterious truck crashes, a couple of which result in deaths. Who is responsible? Why are these crashes occurring and why to they occur down the road from Pops Lacy’s garage and diner? As things develop in this 58-minute thriller, Hank finds himself accused of murder, and his relationship with Doris threatens to fall apart because of Mary’s machinations. I watched the film because I like Clem Bevans, and I was not disappointed. Admittedly, this film is a cheapie, but it has its charms and it also has Clem Bevans. The mystery villain or villains are pretty well hidden until the finale.

 

The Killers (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak. Yes, that musical score by Miklos Rozsa is familiar; it turns up a few years later in the Dragnet TV series. And yes, this film is deservedly considered quintessential noir, with its doomed hero, its femme fatale, its expressionist lighting and camera angles, and its dark and pessimistic view of the world. Burt Lancaster, in his first screen role, is the Swede, Ole Anderson, an ex-boxer who has, perhaps, taken too many punches. He falls for femme fatale Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner, in her first major role). Kitty is a double-crossing woman who is in league with crime boss Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker). Anyway, the film begins with a magnificent set piece. Two hitmen, played by William Conrad and Charles McGraw, arrive at a small diner in New Jersey. It is after dark. These two are looking for the Swede; they intend to kill him and make no secret of this to the people in the diner, including the owner, the cook, and customer Nick Adams (yes this part of the movie follows the Hemingway story). It is noteworthy that these two thugs show nothing but disgust with both the black cook and the person they have been hired to kill, the Swede. This is America where human life, especially human life that deviates from solid white North American stock, is cheap. Anyway, before too long we meet the Swede who lies in his boarding house bed waiting for the arrival of his killers. He stoically remarks that he once did something wrong, and he now waits for the consequences. The consequences arrive when the two hitmen open the Swede’s bedroom door and proceed to fill him full of holes. The rest of the film, like Citizen Kane, is structured with a series of flashbacks that detail the Swede’s friendship with policeman Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), his affair with Kitty Collins, his final boxing match, and his participation in a heist masterminded by Jim Colfax. Of course, we have double crosses and bad behaviour. The story is pieced together by curious insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmund O’Brien), a character who brings to mind the journalist in Citizen Kane who tries to track down the significance of Kane’s final word. This version of The Killers is simply a touchstone for film noir.

 

The Killers (1964), directed by Donald Siegel. This is a remake of the 1946 Robert Siodmak film, a film that at first was slated to be directed by Siegel. In 1964, Siegel got his chance. His film was to be the first full-length movie made for television, but it was deemed too violent (in the wake of the Kennedy assassination) and shown theatrically instead of on TV. The opening sequence in which two hitmen, Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) and his sidekick Lee (Clu Gulager), arrive at a home (school?) for the blind, beat up a blind woman in order to get information, find the person they are looking for, Johnny North (John Cassavetes), and fill him full of holes, sets the tone nicely. This film offers a cynical and unpleasant look at the ways of humanity. Even the choice to have Johnny be a motorcar racer seems intent on highlighting a human drive for speed and danger and thoughtless driving headlong into catastrophe. The villain here – wait, everyone is a villain in this film. However, one of the villains is the oily self-serving Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan in his last film). Somehow seeing Reagan play this unpleasant and greedy criminal who receives his comeuppance at the end of a gun is satisfying. The film delivers Siegel’s no-nonsense, in your face direction. An amusing touch is the focus on the two hitmen, one of whom, Strom, wonders why the victim of assassination waited stoically for the killers to carry out their mission. Strom, not an insurance investigator as in the 1946 movie, becomes the person who investigates the murder, the murder he himself carried out. In the end, the unpleasant characters, including femme fatale, Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson), meet their ends violently.

 

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), directed by George King. Tod Slaughter plays the eponymous character and he performs with relish, lots of cacking and hand wringing and eye-rolling. Production values for a cheapie are quite good. The story is told in flashback, a modern day barber in Fleet Street regaling his customer with the story of the nineteenth-century Demon Barber. Sweeney Todd is in cahoots with the woman baker whose shop is next to his barbershop. She helps him dispose of the bodies. She also fancies herself more than his partner in crime, and she grows jealous when Mr. Todd steps out with Johanna Oakley (Eve Lister), daughter of wealthy ship owner Stephen Oakley (D. J. Williams). Being the villain he is, Todd has Mr. Oakley in his debt and to offset the debt, he offers to marry Johanna. This is Victorian melodrama at its most melodramatic, with a dash of the gothic thrown in for good measure. The film has an interlude that takes place in Africa that stretches things out and allows us to get to know the story’s hero, Mark the sailor (Bruce Seton). Mark is in love with Johanna, but he does not have enough wealth to enable him to marry her. You can see where this is going. The film is worth seeing for Slaughter’s theatrical performance. Step aside Johnny Depp.

 

Dragnet (1947), directed by Leslie Goodwins. Dragnet before Dragnet, this cheapie has Inspector Geoffrey James from Scotland Yard (Henry Wilcoxon) arriving in New York to investigate a jewel heist. Before he arrives, a body has been discovered on a beach. The beach also sports a shack owned by a local beachcomber. Anyway, we have lots of goings on including florescent dye found on the dead man’s clothes, a shady female, a mysterious fellow in a hat, a stewardess from a plane somehow involved in the plot to smuggle jewels into America, a life preserver, and much sleuthing. The actors are amiable. The script has its moments. The action keeps things moving along. The comic relief supplied by police sergeant Martin (Ralph Dunn) and restaurant server Molly (Maxine Semon) is passable. Sergeant Martin thinks the label on the dead man’s jacket that reads Harris Tweed is the man’s name. Anyway, this wee film is okay as a time waster. As for the title, it refers to police Lieutenant Ricco (Robert Kent) calling for a dragnet near the end of the film when the murderer’s identity becomes known. The film has little or nothing to do with the Jack Webb Dragnet, although at one point Lt. Ricco tells Molly to “stick to the facts.” He neglects to say “Mam.”

Black Magic (1949), directed by Gregory Ratoff and Orson Welles. By all accounts this is a ludicrous film telling the story of 18^th century magician, hypnotist, narcissist, and charlatan Cagliostro (Orson Welles). Power hungry Cagliostro falls for the beautiful Lorenza (Nancy Guild) who is a double for Marie Antoinette. Because she looks exactly like Antoinette (minus the beauty mark), Madame DuBarry (Margot Grahame) and the wicked Demontagne (Stephen Bekassy) who has executed the young Cagliostro’s parents, have a plot to replace the real Marie Antoinette with the look-a-like Lorenza and take control of France. So, Cagliostro, who has been trained in hypnotism by the famous Dr. Mesmer (Charles Goldner), finds himself embroiled in the plot to take over the country. The convoluted plot is silly, much of the acting over-heated, and the events of history distorted (to put it mildly). The script is not particularly compelling. What does work, for me at least, are the set designs and costumes both of which are lavish reminding me of von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934). In fact, the lavishness here rises to the level of camp. The credited cinematographers, Ubaldo Arata and Anchise Brizzi, are unknown to me, but their work here is noteworthy for its lighting, especially in the first half of the film.

Lady Gangster (1942), directed by Robert Florey. Faye Emerson stars as Dot Burton aspiring actor who agrees to take part in a bank robbery and ends up arrested. She does manage to get the gang’s money and hide it before she goes to jail. Much of the film takes place in the women’s prison where Dot finds trouble with the Deaf Annie (Dorothy Adams) and snitch Lucy Fenton (Ruth Ford). A highlight of the film is the visitor who turns up at the prison to see Dot. This visitor is Dot’s “sister,” the catch being that Dot does not have a sister. No, this visitor s actually the robbery gang leader Carey Wells (Roland Drew) in drag. Aside from this bit of high performance, the film is pretty predictable. Dot has an on again, off again relationship with radio personality Ken Phillips (Frank Wilcox), and we know things will work out favourably for this troubled couple. Performances and sets and photography are all fine for a low-budget film of 61 minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but the film serves to make the time on the bike trainer go by nicely. Oh, and Jackie Gleason has a small part as a kindly member of the gang  of robbers.

Letter of Introduction (1938), directed by John M. Stahl. Aging actor, John Mannering (Adolphe Menjou) returns to New York where an aspiring young actress, Kay Martin (Andrea Leeds) accosts him with a letter of introduction. This letter reveals that Kay is Mannering’s daughter from his first marriage. (He has been married four times.) They both agree to keep Mannering’s paternity a secret, although I am not sure why. He is about to marry another young woman and I guess he does not want her to know. This woman, Lydia Hoyt (Ann Sheridan), soon leaves Mannering, but he and Kay continue to keep the secret. Finally, Kay and Mannering are cast in a Broadway production, but on opening night Mannering arrives both late and inebriated. Disaster. Oh, and I neglected to say that another fellow, Barry Paige (George Murphy) has fallen in love with Kay, but Barry has embarked on a tour with his dance partner, Honey (Rita Johnson), and plans to marry her. An entangled web. Eve Arden clomps about too as a friend of Kay and Barry. She is also a friend of Edgar Bergan who, along with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, entertain the audience with several routines that are something like interludes in the action. Director Stahl manages to hold this mishmash together, and the film is amiable mostly because of the performances. None of what goes on makes a lot of sense, but if you suspend disbelief…