Gilda (1946).

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.

Companion Viewing:
"Casablanca" (1942).

Links:
IMDb.
Fan site.

Take a Look:
The trailer:


Gilda sure knows how to make an entrance:


"Put the Blame on Mame" (Hayworth's vocals were dubbed by Anita Ellis):


"Amado Mio":

Dragnet (1954).

The Scoop:
Man, I love me some "Dragnet."

After the success of his 1940s radio series and 1950s TV series, Jack Webb brought "Dragnet," his life's work, to the big screen in this enjoyable adaptation. The story, involving the investigation into a gangland murder, uses the luxury of its expanded budget and running time to offer much more detail about the nitty gritty of detective work and the legal process than the television series. But the hard-boiled, straight-as-an-arrow Boy Scout spirit makes the big screen leap intact, and it positively sizzles.

Ben Alexander reprises his role as Friday's partner Frank Smith, while Webb also directs from a script by Richard L. Breen.

This was the first of three "Dragnet" feature films. It was followed first by a color film in 1966 that paired Webb with Harry Morgan and served as the springboard for the late '60s TV series. And then came the 1987 entry starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks, which doesn't even deserve to be considered part of the canon.

With excellent direction, the film captures some of the same mix of earnestness and cheesiness of the series, without being quite as camp as some of the 1960s TV series. Of course, by then the generation gap sparked by the counterculture was enough to make Webb's brand of law and order seem downright outdated. But in this film, in its element, it's still exciting stuff.

Best Bit:
Friday explains the deductions on his paycheck.

Side Note:
This was the first feature film ever spun off from TV show.

Companion Viewing:
The '50s TV series.

Links:
IMDb.
Badge 714.

Take a Look:
Friday and Smith lay the smack down:


Sgt. Friday gets his $20 worth:

Jail Bait (1954).

The Scoop:
Ah, yes. The classics...

This is an Ed Wood product, so what else can you say about it? Like so many of his other masterpieces, this one is eminently watchable and virtually unreviewable. The plot, such as it is, involves a hardened criminal (Timothy Farrell) who draws an young innocent (Clancy Malone) into a life of crime, then blackmails the boy's plastic surgeon father (Herbert Rawlinson, who died the morning after he shot his scenes) into giving him a new face so he can evade the cops (led by Lyle Talbot).

Along with Wood mainstays Farrell and Talbot, the cast also includes Dolores Fuller (in an angora sweater, of course) and Steve Reeves, in his first speaking part, as a cop.

The incompetence on display here is staggering. In fact, you could say it is Woodian in the truest sense of the word. "Jail Bait" belongs with "Glen or Glenda?" (1953) and "Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1959) in the triumvirate of classic Ed Wood cinema.

Best Line:
So much great dialogue, so little time. How about this great exchange: "Come on, let's go." / "Where to?" / "What do you mean, where to?" / "Just that -- where to?"

Or, how about "This afternoon we had a long telephone conversation earlier in the day."

Side Note:
The "director's cut" available on most recent releases features an extraneous, gratuitous striptease act, which replaces the original scene of a blackface minstrel nightclub performance.

Companion Viewing:
"The Violent Years" (1956) and "The Sinister Urge" (1961).

Links:
IMDb.
phillyBurbs.
A highly unofficial fan page.

Take a Look:
Trailer:


Steve Reeves gives the ladies what they came for (warning: crappy audio):


Wood's cast models the fashions of "Jail Bait":

Outrage (1950).

The Scoop:
More than a half century ago, Ida Lupino was blazing a trail where too few have followed: A career as a female director in Hollywood. Working within the studio system, she made small, modest pictures -- many in the noir vein -- that still outclassed the output of many of her male colleagues.

And "Outrage" is one of her finest, an unvarnished examination of the consequences of rape, told from the woman's point of view. It's a perspective few others of the day could offer and Lupino drives her message home with full force, over the rough road from the terror of the initial attack, to the humiliation, acceptance and healing that follow.

Lupino's direction and Mala Powers' fine performance as the victim should have combined to make this a landmark in social commentary -- instead, it has become an unjustly forgotten treasure.

Best Bit:
"It's our fault, all of us. Our generation has produced too many neuroses, too many mentally displaced people right here at home. We need more hospitals, more men to turn human scrap back into useful human beings."

Side Note:
Lupino not only gave a small part to her sister Rita, but also worked in an unbilled cameo for herself in the country dance scene.

Companion Viewing:
"The Accused" (1988).

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:

Ace in the Hole (1951).

The Scoop:
In this underrated gem (which you may also find under the title "The Big Carnival"), Kirk Douglas is excellent as ambitious big city reporter Charles Tatum who is stuck in a small town newspaper office in New Mexico. Just when he can't stand the slow pace anymore, a local man becomes trapped in a mine, so Tatum takes charge of the situation and even hinders the rescue effort in an attempt to fan the incident into a major national story and further his own career. Billy Wilder (who directed and co-scripted with Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels) creates a scathing satire of journalistic ambition that plays just as well today as it did more than half a century ago.

Great acting all around, and a prescient look at the dark side of human nature. Unfortunately it was a flop when it was initially released -- so much so that Paramount decided to recoup their losses by taking a bigger slice of Wilder's share of the profits for his next film, the hit "Stalag 17" (1953). But over the years, "Ace in the Hole" has finally earned its reputation as one of Wilder's masterpieces and its long-awaited DVD release will be finally coming later this year.

Best Line:
"I've met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you - you're twenty minutes."

Side Note:
This is based on an actual 1925 incident in Kentucky, which was also the basis of the novel "The Cave" by Robert Penn Warren.

Companion Viewing:
"Mad City" (1997), which is a very loose remake.

Links:
IMDb.

Take a Look:
Tatum lands himself a job:

The Naked City (1948).

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.”

Link:
IMDb

Take a Look: