bru-5 Reviews

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Disappointing thriller

[5/10 · 16 January 2005]

Director Val Guest's DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE ranks among the great British science fiction films that doubles as one of the best newspaper films as well. A cautionary tale which expertly tapped into the A-bomb jitters of the early sixties, the film centers on the aftermath of a nuclear upheaval which sends the world on a crash course towards the sun. The hook of the film is that the action is seen through the eyes of journalists who chart the story and eventually arrive at the truth despite the web of official government lies and deceit.

80,000 SUSPECTS, released only two years later, is something of a companion piece, once again centering on a group of professional people struggling to balance their personal lives as the world is falling apart around them, in this case it's a smaller-scale disaster in the form of an outbreak of smallpox. Guest uses the exact same technique: gritty black and white photography and ample use of authentic locations and hand-held camera conveying a newsreel look. With everything in place for a sizzling apocalyptic thriller, it's a pity 800,000 SUSPECTS wastes it all on the director's own turgid and profoundly tedious script. The cast of lovable cynics spouting razor-sharp dialog in DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is sorely missed. Instead, the characters are so akin to a Hollywood hospital soap opera a la THE INTERNS, I half-expected to see Michael Callan lurching around in his white scrubs.

As the married doctor-and-nurse team who tackle the epidemic head-on, Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom are never less than professional but never more than marginally interesting (the pair would shortly reunite as the leads in Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING). More disappointingly is that Mr. Guest uses the opportunity to give a plum role to his wife, the talented Yolande Donlan who several years earlier became the toast of London's West End recreating Judy Holliday's role in BORN YESTERDAY. Unfortunately, her big scene playing drunken wife of a staff physician is overlong, over-written and serves to slow the film down even before it has a chance to begin. It's not surprising that this film has dropped into obscurity.

Frisco Lil (1942)

Efficient programmer

[16 January 2005]

Long out of circulation, FRISCO LIL is unlikely to draw any interest except for buffs who specialize in Universal B movies of the forties. For those whose tastes run in that direction, this is a slick and well-paced example of the sort of bread-and-butter fare the studio routinely ground out in between Abbott and Costello comedies and their famous monster rallies.

Although the title suggests a rough-and-tumble Barbary Coast-themed action picture (a la Universal's similarly titled FRISCO SAL with Turhan Bey released a few years later), this film is strictly modern-dress and primarily set in a swank 40s style gambling parlor.

Irene Hervey plays a law student who is forced to interrupt her studies when her father (Minor Watson), a smalltime casino operator, is fingered in a murder rap engineered by his unscrupulous partner (Jerome Cowan). The Hervey-Watson relationship initially appears slightly unseemly as our first glance of the pair has them affectionately nuzzling each other in a train compartment although both are well above the age when his sort of thing is acceptable even in close family relationships. The script quickly establishes a conventional romantic interest for Hervey in the form of college professor Kent Taylor, however, and the film settles into the main plot of the leading lady going undercover in an attempt to clear her father's name. Taking a phony name and landing a job in Cowan's organization as a dealer and card shark, Hervey gradually amasses evidence against the villains decked out in an array of fetching Vera West gowns until the climactic shootout.

Horror movie and comedy veteran Erle C. Kenton directs the film capably and gets crisp performances from studio contract players Hervey, Taylor as well as the ever-avuncular Samuel S. Hinds who seems to have worked nonstop at Universal all through the war years. Hinds even does a funny turn as a tipsy gambling house patron, slightly reminiscent of his role as the crooked politico in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN. Jerome Cowan exudes oily charm as the heavy and Milburn Stone is okay in the offbeat role as Hervey's slightly dimwitted accomplice.

This is the sort of B-picture which hasn't gotten a television airing in decades and since a DVD release is unlikely, interested parties' only recourse is to be on the lookout in the bootleg video market.

The Cosmic Man (1959)

Drab, minor science fiction

[4/10 · 29 December 2004]

You can say a lot about John Carradine but dull he isn't except, of course, in THE COSMIC MAN. He has very little screen time and when he does appear it's behind the darkest pair of goggles this side of The Invisible Man. His affected, halting "alien speak" hampers him even further so he's not a exactly ball of fun and neither is the movie. I know it's a personal quirk but even as a kid I never liked genre films with child actors as major characters and when they play for sympathy (the boy has polio) it gets even more cloying.

On the plus side, there are atmospheric touches in a couple of scenes with Carradine printed "in negative." This, however, is more than balanced by scads of talking head scenes, some of which includes the leading lady wavering between her two oldish, low-charisma suitors Bruce Bennett and Paul Langton. It's a very slow go.

I recall back in the seventies when THE COSMIC MAN seemed to be a lost film, a friend of mine, a die-hard science fiction fan, was determined to track down a copy. He finally got his opportunity when the film suddenly became available on home video. Even he gave it a big Thumbs Down.

Danger Woman (1946)

A misnomer

[5/10 · 26 December 2004]

The title of this elusive Universal B film tantalizes with the promise of Patricia Morison reprising her role as the female Moriarty who gave Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes a run for his money in DRESSED TO KILL. No such luck. As it turns out DANGER WOMAN finds Morison less of a femme fatale as she a philandering housewife; the film itself is less of a hardboiled espionage thriller than a domestic melodrama. Yet this potboiler still attracts minor interest to baby-boomers as one of the handful of non-horror films which found it's way into Screen Gem's famous "Shock Theater" package which help jump start the monster craze in the late fifties.

DANGER WOMAN was, in addition, one of the first Hollywood movies out of the gate to incorporate atomic energy into its plot although it mainly functions as a classic Hitchcock maguffin, setting the wheels of the plot into motion without having any particular thematic interest. Don Porter, we're told, is one of the masterminds of the A-Bomb who now is seeking to refine atomic power for industrial applications. He gets sidetracked when his estranged wife, Morison, who left him years earlier for a string of paramours while he was off splitting atoms, arrives on the scene hoping for a reconciliation. Shortly after, Porter suddenly finds his life in a tailspin. His relations with his live-in secretary Brenda Joyce become fodder for local gossip, promised research grants evaporate and agents of unspecified origins come out of the woodwork, trying to hijack his secrets.

Once you get over the novelty of a Universal film of this vintage featuring familiar studio stock players such as Milburn Stone and Samuel S. Hinds waxing earnestly about The Bomb, DANGER WOMAN isn't much. A deep-dyed B film with a 60-minute running time and the action rarely straying from the hero's living room, the shudder-hungry Shock Theater audiences of the fifties must have been tuning out in record numbers. It's not particularly bad in the way that Universal programmers of the 40s often were, it's just so resolutely small-scale and unambitious. The script can't even decide if the villains are in the employee of an evil corporate empire or an unnamed foreign government. Morison spends most of her time playing down her reputation as a fallen woman, regularly getting stern rebukes from the maid Kathleen Howard (W.C. Fields' wife in IT'S A GIFT) while the rest of the characters eye her as a moral leper. Morison's involvement in the main action of the film comes so late and tentatively that her title DANGER WOMAN hardly seems warranted. Brenda Joyce, her opposite, is The Good Girl and she's little more than The Stepford Secretary, fawning all over her boss, belittling her own intelligence (with good reason) and virtuous to the point of being a nuisance. It's very much a picture of it's time. A hardcore Universal completest may still find it mildly entertaining.

Black Moon (1934)

Intriguing obscurity

[7/10 · 26 December 2004]

This film proves that a decent retrospective of the films of Roy William Neill is long overdue. A forgotten horror movie of real merit, BLACK MOON is obscure enough not to be listed in Halliwell's Film Guide but of sufficient interest to have played in New York's Film Forum a couple of years back (where I first saw it on a double billed with ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU!) The plot is right out of "Conjure Wife" with a slight foreshadowing of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. A New York socialite (Dorothy Burgess) is haunted by her childhood memories of being brought up by a voodoo priestess in Haiti. Her hope is to free herself from the past by confronting it outright but her plan proves disastrous. Returning to the island, she is promptly elevated to the status of a white goddess among the natives and is soon participating in human sacrifices, eventually plotting against her husband and infant daughter.

I have to admit my enthusiasm for this movie isn't shared by others in my immediate movie circle. The major flaw is that Burgess' transformation into a jungle high priestess is simply glossed over in the script. Indeed, she's off-screen for the better part of the movie. Instead the film focuses on the budding romance of Jack Holt as the harried husband and his secretary (that she's played by Fay Wray is at least a consolation). Still the film works up to an ominous mood, creating a palpable hothouse atmosphere as voodoo drums beat steadily on the soundtrack.

The film played on Turner Classic Movie many years back and is, presumably, in limited circulation. It's dated racial attitudes undoubtedly won't help it get the wider distribution it deserves. It's safe to say that a DVD release is unlikely but the film is worth tracking down.

Song of India (1949)

Lively jungle adventure

[5/10 · 11 December 2004]

Obviously inspired by THE JUNGLE BOOK, SONG OF India is a reasonably fast-paced programmer which was apparently tailor-made for the long-extinct Saturday matinée market. Sabu is very much in his element playing a jungle prince who lords over the wild beasts, provoking the fury of Turhan Bey who leads a government-approved hunting expedition into the Indian wilderness. His fiancée', Gail Russell, is the daughter of the king who tags along as the hunting party's unofficial photographer and, predictably, switches her allegiance to Sabu as the characters of the two men are exposed.

The footage of marauding tigers, panthers, crocodiles, exotic birds etc. is often thrilling and is well-integrated into the action. Indeed, much of it seems shot exclusively for the film instead of the usual grainy library stock shots from another era which is the bane of many a cheap Hollywood jungle potboiler. The cast, including Sabu who probably could have played this kind of role in his sleep, is acceptable as is the script and direction.

Like most Columbia B-pictures of the forties, SONG OF India seems to be out of circulation although it was briefly released on video in an inferior, extended-play version. It's a diverting time-killer if you can find it.

Run of the Arrow (1957)

Solid Sam Fuller entry

[25 September 2004]

No one ever accused Sam Fuller of being a run-of-the-mill Hollywood dream merchant. Run of the Arrow is fairly typical of the noted director-writer's work, applying his thinking man's approach to a well-established genre; in this case, the western. Touching on the moral conflicts of the Civil War as well as the uneasy truce between the white man and the Native American, the movie centers on a disillusioned Confederate (Rod Steiger)trying to find his place in a world in which he has cast himself as an outsider.

Fuller handles the visuals and the action sequences with as much confidence as the more intimate sequences of Steiger trying to immerse himself into the culture of the Sioux after what he feels is the humiliating defeat of the Confederate forces to the Union. While he lacks is the poetic sweep of a John Ford, Fuller is refreshingly unsentimental and takes pains to establish the subtlety of the characters and their conflicts.

Still, it is by no means a perfect movie, undermined by the dreadful miscasting of Rod Steiger in the starring role. Although a highly skilled actor who has often excelled at portraying multi-dimensional, morally ambiguous characters, Steiger seems out-of-place as a Confederate renegade and his Irish brogue only calls attention to his uneasiness. Fuller barely shows any interest in fleshing out the relationship between Steiger and the Indian squaw he marries, casting a nondescript and unappealing actress for the love interest. But Brian Keith and Ralph Meeker are excellent as the Union officers, one kindly, the other oozing villainy from every pore.

The movie is a natural for fans of adult, upper-scale westerns (a la The Gunfighter, Shane, etc.) while the more action-oriented buffs won't feel entirely left out either.