The Scoop: After knocking around Hollywood in bit parts for years, Rita Hayworth's career finally exploded after playing the title role in "Gilda."
A small-time American hood (Glenn Ford) finds work in a South American casino only to come between the crooked owner (George Macready) and his singer girlfriend (Hayworth). Then the fireworks begin. There are a lot of plot shenanigans going on, but the real meat of the film is the explosive love triangle centered on Gilda.
Director Charles Vidor and a small handful of screenwriters put together a sultry, vaguely noirish cocktail with this one. Ford and Macready hit all the right notes as the lusty men brawling over Gilda, but Hayworth is the one who steals the show. She didn't have much range, but she definitely had a lot of presence. Her performance is still one of the sexiest of all time, making this much more erotically charged than most films of the period. It's a little slow in stretches, but still a good watch.
Best Bit: Hayworth's hair toss while performing "Put the Blame on Mame."
Side Note: Hayworth and Ford had so much quickie sex between takes that the Columbia Pictures executive in charge of the production not only had to keep them apart when not doing scenes, but also had to bug her dressing room in order to enforce the punishment.
The Scoop: This is, quite simply, the greatest voodoo movie ever made. I realize that's not saying much, given the consistently sorry state of the genre, but even if they weren't all so bad, this film would stand out above the rest.
One of greatest triumphs of legendary producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur, the story follows Frances Dee as a nurse who travels to Haiti to care for the comatose wife of plantation owner Tom Conway. But the wife's condition isn't necessarily medically explainable, and the nurse turns to the local voodoo priest for help.
Lewton was a master at taking lurid b-movie fare and turning it into moody, exciting art. His best work came in a short stretch in World War II during his partnership Tourneur. The pair created a singular aesthetic that seemed to work every time out. "I Walked With a Zombie is a prime example -- their trademark creepy atmospherics and a complicated love triangle highlight this classic -- but "Cat People," "The Ghost Ship" or "Bedlam" would work just as well. So just watch them all.
Best Bit: The first walk across the cane fields.
Side Note: Very, very loosely based on Charlotte Brontë's novel "Jane Eyre."
Companion Viewing: "White Zombie" (1932), "Cat People" (1942) and "The Seventh Victim" (1943).
The Scoop: This technicolor extravaganza is campy B-movie jungle adventure fun at its best.
Maria Montez, who really deserves to be a bigger drag queen icon, plays twins (one good and one evil, of course). It seems that the evil twin, Naja, is the priestess of an ancient island cobra cult and when she discovers the existence of good twin Tollea, she has her kidnapped for no good reason. Tollea's fiancé Samu (Jon Hall) sets off to rescue her with his trusty native pal Kabo (Sabu) by his side. Lon Chaney Jr. also lurks around the edge of the action. Plus, there's a chimp!
All the swashbuckling, campy fun and beautiful native girls on display here make this a perfect time-waster. (In fact, Kenneth Anger once called this is all-time favorite film, which should give you an idea of what you're in for.) Noir master Robert Siodmak stepped outside of his comfort zone to direct this with gusto from a completely inept script by Gene Lewis and Richard Brooks. It's so wrong it's right.
Best Bit: The cobra dance. Oh yes. You must stick around to watch Maria do her cobra dance.
Side Note: Famed Shakespearean stage actor Fritz Leiber, near the end of this life, has a small unbilled part.
The Scoop: Sixteen years after the fact, the team behind the landmark "King Kong" -- producer Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest B. Schoedsack, special effects guru Willis O'Brien and actor Robert Armstrong -- return to their old stomping grounds to give the story a fresh, more kid-friendly twist with "Mighty Joe Young."
Blowhard producer Max O'Hara (Armstrong, essentially reprising his "King Kong" role) travels to Africa looking for wild animals to include in his latest vaudeville production. (Never mind the fact that vaudeville was all but dead by the late 1940s. Don't question Hollywood storytelling!) He and his guide Gregg (Ben Johnson) luck out by finding a 12-foot gorilla who was raised by a young woman named Jill (Terry Moore). Jill and her ape, now dubbed Mr. Joseph Young, are persuaded to travel back to America and go into show business. The show is a success for a while, until unruly audience members taunt Joe and push him too far. He goes on a rampage, then goes on the lam as Jill, Gregg and O'Hara try to keep him one step ahead of the cops and get him back to Africa.
Besides the same basic plot, "Mighty Joe Young" also shares the same thematic concerns as "King Kong" -- namely, the exploitation of Third World cultures and the tragedy of humankind's encroachment on nature. But the script by Ruth Rose gives these themes a lighter, more fun twist, complete with the happy ending that Kong deserved but never got. The biggest drawback is a final act that drags on a bit too long.
But the real treat here is the charming stop motion animation that brings Joe to life. While the character was designed by O'Brien, who got top billing, the majority of the actual animation work was done by his apprentice, the legendary Ray Harryhausen, who got his big break here. While the style isn't as smooth and expressive as most of Harryhausen's later work, it is still terrific, bringing a tender and almost humanistic side to Joe. And because Joe is smaller in stature in Kong, that means a lot more interaction with the human characters, which is pulled off skillfully thanks to the special effects team.
The end result is a wonderful companion piece to "King Kong" that is engaging and enjoyable. Forget the 1998 remake and stick with this one.
Best Bit: The first nightclub sequence, which is highlighted by a bravura tracking shot through a set that is quite literally larger than life. The set was too big to be built as it was envisioned, so the tracking shot is actually an optical composite of several smaller sets.
Side Note: Terry Moore had a long and varied career after this film. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1953 for "Come Back, Little Sheba," then made the jump to television with guest roles in everything from "Rawhide" and "My Three Sons" to "Knight Rider" and "Murder, She Wrote." She even played a villain in the original "Batman" series, and was one of the executive producers of "America's Funniest Home Videos." In the 1970s claimed that she had had a long--term secret marriage to reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
Companion Viewing: "King Kong" (1933) and "Son of Kong" (1933).
The Scoop: The eternally sexy Veronica Lake tries her hand at comedy (a big change of pace for her) with "I Married a Witch" and comes out a winner.
The spirits of a witch (Lake) and her father (Cecil Kellaway), burned at the stake in the 17th century, visit the 20th century to exact revenge on the descendant (Frederic March) of their persecutor (March again). Instead, the witch falls in love with the modern guy. This amusing little film with the feather-light touch of director René Clair flies by at a breezy 77 minutes. And it also served as the inspiration for the "Bewitched" television series 20 years later.
And all that would be enough to recommend this film. But it is raised a notch by Lake's presence and sex appeal, which prove that there was a lot more to her than just being a noir moll.
Best Line: "'Twould be nice to have lips... lips to whisper lies... lips to kiss man and make him suffer. Father, why cannot I have lips, and eyes, and hair?"
Side Note: The production got uncredited help from Preston Sturges (who produced) and future blacklistee Dalton Trumbo (who co-wrote). However both men eventually left the production before it was finished.
Note: Desuko Movie Spot is going on a brief Thanksgiving break. Check back next week for new reviews.
The Scoop: The late 1940s was a bad time for monster movies. Maybe there was too much postwar optimism going around, or maybe the horror cycle had just grown tired from being around too long. Whatever the case, by this time the classic monsters of the early '30s were reduced to cheesy characatures bordering on self-parody.
Witness this movie, in which the classic Universal monsters (Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster, played for the most part by the original actors -- Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Glenn Strange) are nothing but straight men for Abbott and Costello's zany antics. As an Abbott and Costello film, this is worthwhile; it the duo at their peak, with some of their best gags. But as a monster movie it is abysmal. The classic creatures that once frightened and thrilled a generation are reduced to toothless caricatures -- and not by parodists, but by the very studio that created them, which was now desperate to exploit them for the sake of making a quick buck. The Universal monsters were already on their way down that slippery slope, thanks to the World War II-era "team up" films ("Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man," "House of Dracula," etc.), but this production finally put the last nails in the coffin.
But the exploitation worked, and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" turned out being a huge box office hit when it was released. What's more, the film's popularity helped launch the comic "monster mash" craze of the '50s and early '60s, which provided great nostalgia for the kids of the era, but which also kept American horror film dead as a genre for two decades.
Horror wouldn't live again on American screens until a group of young maverick filmmakers from the indie underground came along in the late '60s and early '70s with such films as "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." But by then, the boogeymen of the American imagination would be very different monsters indeed. Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Invisible Man -- they all would just seem like distant jokes by then, thanks in no small part to "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein."
Best Line: "What we need tonight is young blood -- and brains!"
Side Note: Vincent Price has an uncredited cameo as the voice of the Invisible Man at the end. Also, Mary Shelley got a writing credit on this one, ostensibly because it's based on her novel. (Um, yeah...)
The Scoop: More cut-rate, bargain basement shenanigans from Bela Lugosi, who apparently spent World War II hiding from the Nazis by making crappy movies no one would ever want to see.
In "Bowery at Midnight" Lugosi plays another criminal mastermind -- kindly university professor/soup kitchen proprietor Frederick Brenner, who moonlights as sadistic underworld kingpin Karl Wagner. The plot finds Brenner/Wagner and his gang committing daring robberies, usually followed by the double-cross murder of one of the accomplices. These accomplices then wind up buried in the basement of the gang's hideout (which features smudgy walls and a ridiculously huge map of Australia). There, they are eventually resurrected as zombies. Finally, there is a poorly choreographed gunfight and good triumphs over evil.
It's all pretty standard Poverty Row stuff, although the plot features a few more absurdist twists and turns than usual. As this sort of films go, this is probably a cut above the rest -- although that's not saying much.
Best Bit: At first I though it was the fainting jeweler, immediately followed by the police chief's ridiculous pep talk to his officers. But then I saw the basement graveyard, where each grave features a little white cross with the henchman's name.
Side Note: One of Lugosi's co-stars is the ubiquitous Tom Neal, who worked in lots of cheapies at the time, from the brilliant ("Detour") to the pathetic ("Radar Secret Service").
Companion Viewing: "The Corpse Vanishes" (1942), "The Devil Bat" (1941) and "The Human Monster" (1939).
The Scoop: Boris Karloff is at his best in this Val Lewton chiller (directed by the great Robert Wise), which also features a good performance from Bela Lugosi.
Based on the short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, this is a loose adaptation of the Burke and Hare murders, in which a 19th century Scottish doctor (played by Henry Daniell) must turn to the unscrupulous grave robber Cabman Gray to complete his medical research. As is usually the case, things quickly get out of hand when the local graveyard runs short of corpses and bodies must be obtained by more nefarious means.
Karloff has never been more menacing, and he does more than anyone to carry the film to its exciting climax. Like all of Lewton's best work, "The Body Snatcher" is a humble masterpiece.
Best Bit: That edge-of-your-seat ending.
Side Note: This was the last of Karloff and Lugosi's eight screen pairings, and one of the best.
The Scoop: Excellent photography highlights this bite-size British thriller, which moves briskly through its too-short 60 minutes.
Scotland Yard investigators use modern forensic techniques to examine the legends of centuries worth of supernatural killings at an isolated English manor, which may or may not be caused by an ancient family curse. In addition to the creepy atmosphere, there are strong performances from the entire cast (led by James Ellison, Heather Angel and John Howard) and the odd burst of dry humor. John Brahm's direction is brisk and tight, working from a script by Lillie Hayward and Michael Jacoby, who adapted the novel by Jessie Douglas Kerriush. Although some of the plot elements owe an obvious debt to "The Wolf Man" and "The Hound of the Baskervilles," they are not merely derivative and are used here to good effect.
Highly recommended, this is an A-list film in B-movie clothing.
Best Line: The last line -- I won't spoil it for you.
Side Note: Brahm became more commercially successful after coming to Hollywood and working in television. He's best known for working on episodes of "The Twilight Zone," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and "The Outer Limits."
Companion Viewing: "The Wolf Man" (1941) and "Sleepy Hollow" (2000).
The Scoop: Okay, by this point it was just getting silly. This fourth installment in Universal's Frankenstein series started its long downhill slide in quality, mirroring the overall decline of the horror film genre in the 1940s.
This time around, there's yet another descendant of the mad doctor (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) trying to control the creature. Bela Lugosi is back as Ygor (despite the fact that he was killed at the end of the previous movie), and so is Lionel Atwill, although he's playing an entirely different character. Ralph Bellamy and Evelyn Ankers play the obligatory young couple. Since Boris Karloff wisely bowed out, the moster duties were turned over to Lon Chaney Jr., whose performance is an utter parody of Karloff's.
Hell, the whole movie is practically a parody of its predecessors. That didn't stop Universal from milking this cash cow, though -- this was followed by four more films in the series, which finally ended with a sputter with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein."
"The Ghost of Frankenstein" was written by Scott Darling (a rewrite of the original script by Eric Taylor, which the studio found too depressing) and directed by Erle C. Kenton -- genre veterans with filmographies that are long on B-grade quickies, but short on quality. The makeup and costume design leave a lot to be desired, too. But on the plus side, the film looks good, thanks to the efforts of art director Jack Otterson and cinematographers Woody Bredell and Milton Krasner.
Best Bit: The monster trying to indicate that he wants to trade brains with a little girl. It is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.
Side Note: The film was released on a Friday the 13th.
The Scoop: Let the monster mash begin! By the 1940s Universal Studios, which had built its empire with its classic monster movies of the previous decade, was in dire straits as it saw its box office returns declining. Fans just weren't buying into all those new Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, etc. movies like they used to. So with this film, Universal tried to up the ante and began blending all it monster franchises into one -- this is at once the fifth in the fading Frankenstein series and the second in the more popular Wolf Man series. And with each new entry, it just kept getting worse and worse.
Since this was all about selling youngsters on the fight scenes between the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster, the plot is pretty incidental. But here's what happens -- some graverobbers inadvertently awaken Larry Talbot, a.k.a. the Wolf Man (played again by Lon Chaney, Jr., who also played the monster in the previous Frankenstein picture, "The Ghost of Frankenstein"), who seeks out yet another descendent of Dr. Frankenstein to cure his condition. That descendent is played by Ilona Massey this time around, although she doesn't actually do anything here because, apparently, girls don't do science. Meanwhile, Bela Lugosi finally gets his chance to play the reawakened monster (after appearing as Ygor in the two previous Frankenstein films and a gypsy werewolf in the first Wolf Man film) and completely sucks at it. In fact, Lugosi's is arguably the worst Frankenstein monster on celluloid. And to round out the déja vu among the cast, Lionel Atwill returns as his third different character in his third Frankenstein movie, this time playing the local mayor.
This is not just a monster mash, but a mish-mash, and the film's exciting poster art in no way prepares the viewer for the actually mediocrity it is promoting.
Pitting two previously popular movie monsters against each other is a pretty desperate move, really, and "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" was the first film to go down to that well -- and in the process, proving that the well was dry before any of the later imitators even got there. This particular monster mash series would continue for a few more films, eventually incorporating Dracula and even Abbott and Costello into the mix. It also set the stage for other stabs at the genre, including the more recent "Freddy vs. Jason" and "Alien vs. Predator" flicks.
Best Line: "He is not insane. He simply wants to die."
Side Note: Lugosi was the studio's first choice to play the monster in the first Frankenstein film in 1931, but he turned them down because his star's vanity (newly-found after the success of "Dracula") was offended by playing a part with no dialogue and heavy make-up. A dozen years later, with his career on the skids and jealous of Boris Karloff's career success with the monster, Lugosi finally agreed to play the role.
Companion Viewing: "House of Frankenstein" (1944), "House of Dracula" (1945) and "Young Frankenstein" (1974).
The Scoop: This low budget production, set in Britain, manages to wring some good atmosphere out of its limited sets and personnel.
In the small Cornwall village of Morgan's Head, residents live in fear of a headless ghost that stalks the local tin mine. The villagers get suspicious when a doctor (Lester Matthews) on a walking tour of the area turns up at the local inn one evening. Their suspicion turns to paranoia when someone spots a parachutist landing in the moors. Pretty soon the doctor turns up dead, the ghost is running wild and the village is in a tizzy. Along for the ride are the obligatory bland romantic leads (Eleanor Parker and Bruce Lester), the sympathetic village idiot (Matt Willis), the hooded innkeeper (Frank Mayo) and the local squire (John Loder).
Even though this is an American production (made at Warner's), it's full of that stiff-upper-lip British wartime spirit. The moody cinematography by Henry Sharp and taut direction by Ben Stoloff are both top-notch, and at only 57 minutes, the story flies by at a brisk pace. In that sense it fits the B-movie mold perfectly -- a fun, engaging appetizer that still leaves you hungry for the main feature.
Best Line: You've got to love a dramatic climax that begins with, "I see you don't know much about the early history of tin mining in Cornwall."
Side Note: Although she kind of gets short shrift here, in one of her earliest roles, Eleanor Parker went on to have a wonderful (but unjustly overlooked) career in Hollywood. She later costarred with the likes of Charleton Heston in "The Naked Jungle" (1954) Frank Sinatra in "The Man With the Golden Arm" (1955), and Kirk Douglas in "Detective Story" (1951).
Companion Viewing: "The Cat Girl" (1957), "The Undying Monster" (1942) and "The Man From Planet X" (1951).
The Scoop: One of the truisms of comedy is that nothing guarantees a hearty laugh quite like seeing men wearing women's clothing. It long ago became a cliché, but each generation still manages to produce performers and performances that pull it off and give it a fresh spin.
While Howard Hawks' "I Was a Male War Bride" sticks to the cheap laughs inherent in cross-dressing, it keeps it to a minimum and more than makes up for it in other ways. The incomparable Cary Grant works his usual charm on a script that examines a little-known historical curiosity following the second World War -- the military offered special help to American GIs who met women in Europe or Asia and wanted to marry them and bring them to the United States. However, the cases of American military women who wanted to bring home husbands were overlooked. This movie fully exploits the comic possibilities inherent in this situation. Grant is a French army officer (based on the travails of the real life Henri Rochard, who gets story credit here) who plans on marrying American officer Ann Sheridan. Unfortunately, the apparatus set up to benefit military spouses isn't prepared to handle husbands. So, Grant must become a war bride instead. This is a hilarious film, and one of Grant's better performances.
Best Line: "The process of turning a man into a woman is enormously complicated -- but I'll do my best."
Side Note: After Sheridan's luggage was lost during her trip to Europe to begin shooting, a group of military wives pitched in to give her new clothes. They were repaid by being cast as extras.
Companion Viewing: "Ball of Fire" (1941) and "Bringing Up Baby" (1938).
The Scoop: This is another of those Poverty Row quickies churned out by the dozen by PRC and other companies in the early 1940s, but this one manages to rise slightly above the crowd, thanks in no small part to some creepy Universal-style touches, and to the performance of George Zucco.
Zucco was the undisputed king of this genre, bringing a gravity and intensity that deserved better than the cheapness that surrounded him. Here, he delivers one of his better performances as twin brothers -- one, an upstanding doctor and paragon of civic virtue, and the other, a vampire intent on destroying his brother's life. These soap opera-style evil twin machinations are grafted onto a thin plot that is way too reminiscent of "Dracula" (complete with the presence of Dwight Frye as a hunchbacked assistant).
Of course, no matter how much the film tries to rise above its origins, that still doesn't make it a good movie. "Dead Men Walk" is still a turd, but at least it's a highly-polished turd and, as such, deserves some attention from b-movie fans.
Best Line: "I don't blame you for thinking of me as a homocidal maniac, but the truth is even more unbelievable."
Side Note: That "grizzled prospector"-looking guy with the unbilled cameo is veteran character actor Al "Fuzzy" St. John, who got his start in dozens of Mack Sennett silent shorts, then went on to practically create the grizzled prospector stereotype as a B-movie Western sidekick to the likes of Lash La Rue, Buster Crabbe and others.
Companion Viewing: "The Mad Monster" (1942) and "The Corpse Vanishes" (1942).
The Scoop: Before “CSI,” before “The French Connection,” even before “Dragnet,” there was “The Naked City.” Jules Dassin’s noir classic gritty classic is a pioneer of the “police procedural” genre, letting its drama arise from the realistic depiction of day-to-day police work rather than from specatular cops-and-robbers shootouts. It was also shot entirely on location in New York City (back in a time when studio-bound shooting was still the norm), which only adds to the gritty vibe.
Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), a crusty old-school Irish detective, teams up with neophyte partner Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) to solve the murder of an aspiring model who is involved with a jewelry theft ring. Complications pile on fast and furious, all leading up to the thrilling climactic chase scene through the streets and back alleys of Manhattan.
Six decades later, the film manages to hold up, mostly due to all that realism, and offers a fascinating glimpse at everyday life in New York at the time. The one aspect of the film that falls flat, though, is its most artifical aspect -- the voice-over narration provided by producer Mark Hellinger. Before getting into the movie business, Hellinger started out as a headline writer for the New York tabloids, and he brings that lurid sensationalism fully to bear on the narration. Too bad that sort of writing just sounds so cheesy now.
But that's only a minor quibble. Don't let it get in the way of your enjoyment of this noir classic.
Best Line: Although the closing line is the best remembered and has entered the vernacular ("There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."), my favorite line is reaction of the model's mother after learning that her daughter, who had fled their small town for the glamor of the big city, is murdered: “Dear God, why couldn’t she have been born ugly?”
Side Note: Keep your eye out for James Gregory, in his film debut, playing the bit part of a beat cop near the end of the movie. Gregory would later go on to play a number of memorable character roles in movies and TV shows, including the clueless Sen. Iselin in “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) and the crusty Inspector Luger in “Barney Miller.”
Companion Viewing: Dassin's other noir classic, "Night and the City" (1950). Also, episodes of the "Naked City" spin-off television series, or of the original 1950s incarnation of “Dragnet.”
The Scoop:
