jknoppow-1 Reviews

Port of Seven Seas (1938)

Wallace Beery was a bit too bleary.

[5 February 2010]

Thank you, Richard from the United States for the fine review.

The plot of Fanny. (Not necessarily the plot of Port of Seven Seas).

Fanny sells shellfish by the sea shore. Marius mixes drinks in his father's bar, while dreaming fantasies of the sea. They love, all too well, passion makes Fanny's belly swell. Sails away Marius, what to do: Fanny?

Fanny marries Panisse, wealthy; but his youth a goner. He marries her to save her honor. Marius returns to husband his wife, and claim his son Cesariot; but his father, Cesar kicks him out on his ass, Cesariot finds out the Truth and journeys to find his Dad.

Eventually, all is well. But – will it sell?

Wallace Beery could not speak the absurdist language that Sturges had translated.

He was out of his depth. He was also not the box office attraction that he once had been. He was sullen, he was uncooperative, he played childish tricks on the crew, and generally made life harder than it had to be.

As James Curtis, Whale's biographer has it, Wallace Worsely Jr, Whale's script clerk said, "Nobody seemed to be speaking to anybody else. Whale would sit on the set reading the newspaper. There didn't seem to be any sense of urgency to it."

Worsely also said that (Beery) "would go around the set and take and remove the decorations; lamps, rope, tackle and things, and put them in the back of his station wagon. And every day, when the crew came back from lunch, they had to go out to his car, unload it, and redress the set."

The reviews were really very good.

The audiences did not agree with the critics. It lost $112,000.

By Candlelight (1933)

Charming and Clever

[2 February 2010]

Robert Wyler was a director for Universal whom Laemmle Jr. had promoted; and he had a familial connection. Robert Wyler's maternal grandmother was a first cousin of Universal owner, Carl Laemmle.

There had been turn downs by Wyler, Whale getting the assignments instead, and also cases in which Wyler had failed to be able to make a satisfactory start, and then Whale was asked to continue them.

'By Candlelight' was one of those latter cases.

It had been very successful a few years earlier as a British stage play. Because Whale had already turned down some efforts by Robert Wyler, who did not have the talent to direct, he was nearly forced to take on the film. Perhaps it was a matter of discretion over valor. In the end, he took it on.

He took Ted Kent, his favorite cutter, and the then competent John Mescall as the camera director. Whale started the film over from the beginning.

He filmed the script as it was for the most part, but he also made a game of it, putting in his own special tricks of the trade.

Carl Laemmle was very happy with the result. He liked the film himself, and it brought in good money just in the nick of time to help save the studio once more, adding some good revenue to the spectacular revenues from Whale's 'The Invisible Man' which were then really piling up.

Whale had a contract offer from Paramount as director. He was very actively considering it, but wasn't sure of LeBaron's own firmness in the position of producer; it was LeBaron's offer.

Laemmle offered Whale both a set of raises to automatically kick in, and producer's credit even though Whale would not actually be the producer.

And it's a good thing for us that Whale took Laemmle's offer, or we'd not have had 'Bride of Frankenstein' or 'Show Boat'.

But I'll always wonder what would have become of Whale's career had he taken LeBaron's offer to come and direct at a really powerful studio, which could have offered him some of the best talent, actors, writers and crew, in the world.

The Road Back (1937)

A Terminally Rough Road Back

[2 February 2010]

It was in 1932 that James Whale found another piece of candy after 'Frankenstein'. It was called 'The Road Back', and it was the follow up novel to 'All Quiet on the Western Front'.

Universal was going to buy the rights and make the film. The book was not even written yet, but Remarque wanted fifty-thousand dollars.

But, when the book was published, it turned out to be not so hot. Universal decided to spend the money on other films, including 'Frankenstein'.

The film was revived though, after the Laemmles had lost the studio. Filming began on a strongly rainy night on January 27th, 1937.

It was a bad time to be shooting films outdoors. One man was killed when an explosive device knocked a gunner's tripod into shrapnel. George Daly, one of the actors, was pierced through the chest with a piece of wood.

The film went rapidly over budget and over time.

Then came the German government.

To make a long story short, they threatened Universal, and they threatened even some of the actors in the film. They wanted the movie to be killed. Charlie Rogers the production chief knew that he would not get the film into Germany, or into other countries pressured by Germany.

John King, the star was a downfall. Whale had decided to employ relatively unknown, and some actually unknown actors, as he had done in his early days in the London stage.

King simply couldn't handle the role, and the film was nearly finished before Whale realized it. Whale did what he did to actors that couldn't act well enough. He ignored him. He wasn't a particularly helpful man.

When the film was finished, it was two and a half weeks overdue and about two hundred thousand dollars over. That overage was enough for many a Universal movie, in total.

Whale got himself on the bad side of Charlie Rogers at that point. Whale got himself loaned out to Warner Brothers, and left Ted Kent, his favorite editor to handle the cut.

Then the German problem came back. As the film was about to be released, suddenly it was drawn back. Pressure from the German Embassy again.

Universal did have a fair amount of money invested in German properties. For whatever reason, Rogers found himself with a million dollar movie which he couldn't export, except to England. He gave in, and the movie was taken away from Kent and, to a great extent, destroyed.

The European nations that would not take the film without the changes largely still didn't take them. Brazil, China and Brazil refused it too, by German government request.

It was truly a disaster in just about every way.

But it was not the fault of James Whale.

The Impatient Maiden (1932)

Will Hayes Makes GOOD in Hollywood

[2 February 2010]

Clara Bow, the famous sexy flapper, was on her way down as a movie star. Universal was able to arrange with Paramount to get her on loan. Universal had bought the rights to a novel, 'The Impatient Virgin", which, back then, was very juicy, practically pornographic. (It wouldn't be now). Universal expected to make a fortune with that combination.

When she saw the script, La Bow bowed out. Too sexy. The script was made especially for her. Bow was a oner. Exeunt Bow, exeunt the story.

When the script, which followed the book closely, was submitted to the MPPDA, the self-censoring body of the major studios, the organization immediately banned the word 'virgin'. They suggested 'maiden' instead.

They advised against nearly the entire script. The film was assigned to two other directors before James Whale was forced to direct it. He didn't want to, he wasn't interested in it.

The Hays office, which is the MPPDA, advised them to take the heat out of the script. They did. It became a different story, and there was not a single scene in it which was actually hot. (There is a seduction. I won't say if it came off or not).

Whale didn't get along with the star, Lew Ayres. Ayres had made a bunch of movies in the last two years, but he still didn't know his craft. Whale never gave him any advice. He hardly spoke to Ayres.

Still the film garnered some friction. A censor board cut out the main part of the appendectomy scene. It said the seduction was all right.

The film died a quick death, did not get much business in the big city venues, was not re-released, and never made it into Europe.

The review from the New York Times, titled 'A Naive Melodrama', by A. D. S., March 4, 1932 says in part:

Everything it has to say is in the title.

On the whole there seems nothing James Whale, the talented director of "Frankenstein" and "Journey's End," could have done about this one.

Green Hell (1940)

The Penulimate Whale Movie

[4/10 · 6 December 2009]

'Green Hell' was Whale's penultimate feature length film. Frances Marion, the screen writer, was famous in the silent era, but when the talkies came in, her scripts had to be re-written by others for dialog. She simply had no talent at all for that; her mastery was in plot and action.

Whale was coming off of 'The Man in the Iron Mask' which made lots of money for its producer, and Whale's agent told him that if he made 'Green Hell' it would put him back in the limelight.

The budget was good enough, $685,000, and he had a reasonable thirty-six days to complete it. He had the help of Karl Freund and Ted Kent, his long time favorite editor, and one of his favorite assistant directors, Joe McDonough.

The ambient temperature was screamingly high that summer; Freund's large bank of carbon arc lights didn't help. The problem with the film was the script. The dialog was worse than inane, audiences were falling out of their seats, laughing.

I think Whale may have been bipolar. He had periods of manic activity, interspersed with complete disinterest in what he was doing. He was a director who was not afraid of demanding re-writes, and he did have a talent for judging scripts. He must have known that he was attempting to turn a color-by-the-numbers canvas into a work by Picasso, but when Ted Kent approached him about the script, Whale, according to James Curtis, Whales biographer, said merely that it was "very good. Great."

Francis Marion wanted her name taken off the credits. But she wrote the script, and very little had been done to change. Her credit remained, and it was the last script she ever sold.

The reviews were terrible. In his memoirs, Douglas Fairbanks doesn't so much as mention the film. Famous Productions had lasted for the length of this one movie, the company failed before the film was released. Harry Edington, according to Curtis, "took a job as production chief at RKO."

Sneak Easily (1932)

SPOILER ALERT: Plot of the film.

[8/10 · 27 May 2008]

Professor Austin, chemist extraordinaire is said to have invented a new very powerful explosive, which for reasons never explained nor examined, he put up in a pill: or so say the police when an explosion occurs and his wife disappears.

We open on the trial. Zasu Pitts is one of the jurors. The defense attorney, twenty minutes late, is Thelma Todd, the prosecutor is Billy Gilbert. Gilbert shows his evidence, one of the bomb pills and a dummy made as an exhibit.

The pill is very large. Todd for the Defense claims to the jurors that no woman could possibly swallow such a large pill. Zasu, who is sharing a domicile with Todd, reminds Thelma of how Zasu once swallowed a plumb, entire.

She tries it. And she accidentally swallows it. The 'real' pill rolls off the judge's bench. Nothing happens. The Court Clerk has accidentally switched the real pill for the demonstration pill, and Zasu has swallowed the real one!

All panic. Zasu is rushed to Prof. Austin's laboratory, where a merry mix-up proceeds; only to be interrupted by a loud pounding on the door. It is Professor Austins 'murdered' wife, who merely had gone out for a while.

At the end, it is explained that it was she who invented the giant pills, and not her husband: and that they are perfectly harmless.

Nevertheless, Zasu complains that she's feeling sick.

Todd asks Mrs. Austin what is in those pills.

Mrs. Austin explains that they contain nothing but castor oil, and Thelma rushes Zasu out of the room.

The End.

Broadminded (1931)

Failed Marx Bros. Film

[5/10 · 19 August 2006]

Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar, who would work on three Marx Bros. films, including "Animal Crackers" the play of which was out the year before this film, are the authors of 'Broadminded'.

It's clear to me that this film is the Warner Bros. idea of how to cash in with a cheapie madcap story.

Thelma Todd is as wonderful as ever. She was a fine actress who always managed to do a fine job even with the sorriest material.

Grayce Hampton who played what should have been Margaret Dumont's role is flat and unfunny. The male lead, played by William Collier Jr., looks like a peeled potato, and yet he's a lady killer. He picks up every good looking woman he sees. But he's lumpy and wimpish. He's a very poor choice for the role. I think he's supposed to be Zeppo Marx playing the love interest, but he's not even that good.

Ona Munson is pretty good as the female lead, but she's not given anything to do.

Joe E. Brown who is the putative star does what he does. He mugs unmercifully throughout, and he makes the most out of his circus clown mouth, and he makes a tremendous number of unwarranted sounds. I grew up in the last years of his really active career, and I thought he was great until I was about seven, when that wore off, and from then on I found him to be darn near intolerable.

But even if were someone else playing the part, it would still be a (in my opinion of course) dull and completely predictable film.

There is absolutely zero witty repartee in this film. There's no singing, no dancing, no harp or piano or guitar playing.

Bela Lugosi does steal the greasepaint mustache that Groucho put on, but now it's in the form of extenders for Lugosi's sideburns.

Lugosi pretty much mugs his way through this film along with the rest, but he looks as though he's playing along because he's being paid. And he's never convincing. He's always Bela Lugosi gone slumming. Not that he was bad, but I'd say that he was skirting it.

I'm glad I had a chance to see this film, I've been hungering for it for several decades now, and it's often presented in movie books as practically a tour de force performance for him.

It isn't.

I did not keep a copy of the film, although I've got many Lugosi films in my library. I just don't think I'll ever want to sit through it again. As it was, it took me two days to get through it.

I gave it a five rating because my tastes aren't universal, and Lugosi and Todd fans should certainly see it.

Follow Me Quietly (1949)

Ineptly Wonderful

[7/10 · 15 August 2006]

I wouldn't call this a film noir. It's not dark enough or desperate enough. Most of the characters are good guys, really good guys. No femme fatale, no focus on the depravity of the bad guy, and only one bad guy. It's a police procedural, or a mystery/detective.

There is some effort to make it seem noirish. It's got lots of rainy streets upon which murder is done by a serial killer. The title is a noir title, (I wonder if Mickey Spillane borrowed it for "Kiss Me Deadly"), and we've get some scenes of empty streets, (too empty), but no depression, no hero who plays by his own set of rules, no city full of crooks, shysters, perfumed men, down at the heels detectives willing to do anything for anyone, and et cetera.

The production values are good. Set ups could be better, but it's lit nicely, it moves along, it's got a sort of Dragnet style, it's pretty good on all that.

The acting is anywhere from fine to adequate, depending on who is doing it. In my opinion, this is a film which requires hot and energetic male and female leads, but they forgot to plug them in so they are very genteel at all times. Sam Spade could knock them over with a sneeze.

The really wonderful thing about this film, according to my wife and I, is that it so superbly inept. There are plot holes galore, there is a guy who runs a place that the principles frequent who is always on the phone with his bookie, for comedy relief, but the actor who plays him is so scandalously bad that his acting becomes the comedy relief.

There is the very usual climbing to the top of an open metal structure with lots of metal to ping bullets on, and tons of pipes to hide behind, but the fight at great height isn't as exciting as the Thrilla in Manilla. It isn't as exciting as tying your shoelaces, but it's so drunkenly botched that it's entertaining as heck.

We've watched it twice now, and we'll watch it again whenever we're in a mood to feel superior to someone.

This has the same kind of charm as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" only with good production values. Edward D. Wood Jr., eatcher heart out!

Murder She Said (1961)

A Bit More Sedate "Avengers."

[9/10 · 13 May 2006]

I like Miss Marple, and I like Hercule Poirot. But novels often do not translate well to the stage. Time must be compressed for a film far more than for a play. Films rely on action, plays also need some action, but are far better suited to character study. Almost everyone knows that the fully narrated film is the too cheaply made to have been worth making it film. But novels are all verbal narration.

This isn't Miss Marple of the novels, it is someone else, superficially like her in intent, and perhaps brain power, but vastly different physically and in her broadly humorous outlook.

I like this Miss Marple very much. Margaret Rutherford, for my money, delivers tour de force performances in all four films.

These are meant to be lightweight entertainment. Those who require heavy drama will be disappointed. But if you like 'The Avengers', you will almost certainly like Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. She rides, she hikes, there are vehicles from sports cars to horses and buggies, she's an expert swords woman, she can even fight. And the way she usually solves the crime is to become an unofficial undercover agent, sometimes backed by her friend, Mr.Springer, or by her favorite but always skeptical police official, Inspector Craddock. The sprightly and stirring theme, and the other incidental music, is delivered with harpsichord and mordents, perhaps outright borrowed for "The Avengers."

And like "The Avengers" don't expect everything to be realistic, expect some 'Avenger' like fantasy, and you'll be well satisfied.

Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (1974 TV Movie)

Avid Judge Dee Reader, Loved this Movie

[10/10 · 8 March 2006]

Another person here said that, having read all of the Dee mysteries, he thought this was a bad adaptation.

I very strongly disagree. I have also read them all, and love them all. The film is different because it is a film. But the warmth, the humor, and the clever detecting is the same. I give the books a 10 and I give this film a 10.

This film bears the same resemblance to it's originating books as the Charley Chan film series did to Earl Derr Biggers novels. It's nearly if not actually impossible to get everything into a movie that is in a novel, and when it's a series of novels and short stories, as here, one gets a collective sense of the central characters that no single film can possibly produce. It is true that Judge Dee written doesn't match Judge Dee filmed entirely, but then, neither did Charley Chan. The only thing I ask of a film is that it be well done, and either or both informative or entertaining.

I think this film more than satisfies on all counts.

While the Patient Slept (1935)

Nice, but derivative film

[6/10 · 23 December 2005]

When is a Nurse Keating film not a Nurse Keating film? When it's a Hildegarde Withers film. If you liked this one, you'll love the first four of the Hildegarde flicks from RKO. 'While the Patient Slept' is taken from the first Hildegarde story, 'Penguin Pool Murder'. Penguin Pool's plot is different (except for being a humorous murder mystery, but the main characters are the same, and while penguins are the trademark of author Stuart Palmer, here they've substituted a green elephant.

I now have a copy of this movie, and that completes both my Nurse Keate and Hildegarde Withers collections. Speaking of rip-offs, if you like the 'Thin Man' Series, try "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" and "Star Of Midnight," both with William Powell, Bradford with Jean Arthur and Midnight with Ginger Rogers. RKO got Powell on a loan-out and took full advantage of it.

The Ghoul (1933)

Very good Karloff film from England

[16 June 2004]

On this site there is a criticism which says to stay away from this film because it is incomprehensible. That's correct for the incomplete copies heretofore available. Now MGM Video has released a complete version on VHS and DVD, a very high quality print. The story is very clear now, and this is one of the high end Karloff flicks. If you like vintage horror films, if you're a Karloff fan, if you liked Karloff's "The Mummy," you will like this film.

The Return of the Whistler (1948)

It won't hurt to give this one a try

[7/10 · 29 May 2004]

I hate reading reviews that say something like, 'Don't waste your time, this film stinks on ice.' It does to that reviewer yet for me, it may have some sort of naïve charm. If you like the other 'Whistler' series films, this one will be watchable. If you like 40s noirish films, this one will be watchable.

This film is not as good, in my opinion, as any of the earlier series entries which starred Richard Dix as the protagonist. It's much slower, and the plot is trite. You've seen this same narrative device used in many other films, and usually better.

But the acting is good, and so is the lighting, and the dialog. It's just lacking in energy and you'll likely figure out exactly what's going on and how it's all going to come out in the end not more than a quarter of the way through.

The 'Whistler' series is semi-noir, and there character, mood, lighting, camera movement and angles are more important than the story itself. But this film is not noir. It's too light weight and Hollywood innocent for that. Neither Richard Dix's character nor those of any of his ladies in the previous films had to come to a good end. You just never knew until the end.

But still, I'll recommend this one for at least a single viewing. I've watched it at least twice myself, and got a reasonable amount of enjoyment out of it both times.

A Scream in the Dark (1943)

A good and enjoyable flick.

[20 May 2004]

This detective mystery film is an actioner; it moves right along without a single letdown. With the exception of the always wooden Robert Lowery, the cast is really excellent, and for us guys, Marie McDonald is very easy on the eyes. Edward Brophy does his usual fine job as the side-kick, Elizabeth Russell was one of the femme-fatale greats, and Jack LaRue, as the good guy cop, is playing out of type, but does as fine a job being heroic as he does being a slime-ball. Despite the body count, the film is also light hearted without being sappy, and that's more than one should ask of an el cheapo Republic film.