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.