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Post by topbilled on Oct 7, 2024 15:14:25 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Then there were none in the dark city
Contemporary critics thought Charlton Heston, in his Hollywood screen debut, was starting his career at Paramount the way Alan Ladd did a decade earlier. You know, where the studio bosses put an attractive male star in a by-the-numbers crime thriller. Their new matinee idol is meant to captivate the audience with his macho magnetism and dignity, no matter how lurid the story might be.
In DARK CITY, Heston is cast as a crooked card sharp who is targeted for death by the brother of a man he cheated. Unfortunately for Heston, the man’s brother committed suicide and the only thing that will console the grief-stricken man is full-scale vengeance.
Of course, Heston’s character isn’t the only one marked for doom. There are other regular players the brother blames, and they are all going to be dealt the death card if he has anything to say about it. In a way this is a noir version of Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. We see the killer carefully picking off this group of cons one by one.
It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a movie plot. Though the script is a tad bland in spots and certainly padded in the middle. It did not need 97 minutes running time to tell a satisfying tale of revenge…it could have been told adequately in 75 minutes. And one has to wonder which city is darker– Chicago, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas since the action occurs in all three places.
Potential female love interests are played by Viveca Lindfors and Lizabeth Scott. Because this is a Hal Wallis production, and because Miss Scott was one of his more popular stars, especially in noir, she will receive more screen time than Lindfors does.
Scott radiates enough heat with Heston, that they will pair up again in another crime pic, BAD FOR EACH OTHER, a few years later.
In this production, Lizabeth Scott is certainly acceptable in all her dramatic scenes. But I’m sorry to say her lip syncing is pretty phony when she is trying to get over the illusion her character is a cabaret singer. Perhaps she needed some more coaching.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, Don DeFore does a fine job as a doomed gambler, and so does Ed Begley (Sr.). Key scenes also feature Jack Webb as a cowardly type, along with his real-life pal Harry Morgan…the two would later costar on TV’s Dragnet.
In his memoirs, Heston called this a good B film. I’m not sure producer Hal Wallis would have labeled it such. It’s an A film that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Fortunately for viewers, the moments of greatness in it— and there are some— do outshine the parts that don’t work.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Oct 7, 2024 17:53:06 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Then there were none in the dark city
Contemporary critics thought Charlton Heston, in his Hollywood screen debut, was starting his career at Paramount the way Alan Ladd did a decade earlier. You know, where the studio bosses put an attractive male star in a by-the-numbers crime thriller. Their new matinee idol is meant to captivate the audience with his macho magnetism and dignity, no matter how lurid the story might be.
In DARK CITY, Heston is cast as a crooked card sharp who is targeted for death by the brother of a man he cheated. Unfortunately for Heston, the man’s brother committed suicide and the only thing that will console the grief-stricken man is full-scale vengeance.
Of course, Heston’s character isn’t the only one marked for doom. There are other regular players the brother blames, and they are all going to be dealt the death card if he has anything to say about it. In a way this is a noir version of Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. We see the killer carefully picking off this group of cons one by one.
It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a movie plot. Though the script is a tad bland in spots and certainly padded in the middle. It did not need 97 minutes running time to tell a satisfying tale of revenge…it could have been told adequately in 75 minutes. And one has to wonder which city is darker– Chicago, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas since the action occurs in all three places.
Potential female love interests are played by Viveca Lindfors and Lizabeth Scott. Because this is a Hal Wallis production, and because Miss Scott was one of his more popular stars, especially in noir, she will receive more screen time than Lindfors does.
Scott radiates enough heat with Heston, that they will pair up again in another crime pic, BAD FOR EACH OTHER, a few years later.
In this production, Lizabeth Scott is certainly acceptable in all her dramatic scenes. But I’m sorry to say her lip syncing is pretty phony when she is trying to get over the illusion her character is a cabaret singer. Perhaps she needed some more coaching.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, Don DeFore does a fine job as a doomed gambler, and so does Ed Begley (Sr.). Key scenes also feature Jack Webb as a cowardly type, along with his real-life pal Harry Morgan…the two would later costar on TV’s Dragnet.
In his memoirs, Heston called this a good B film. I’m not sure producer Hal Wallis would have labeled it such. It’s an A film that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Fortunately for viewers, the moments of greatness in it— and there are some— do outshine the parts that don’t work. Liz Scott character wasn't really essential to the storyline and thus her scenes don't add much tension. As for her lip singing: yea, that is an area of weakness, e.g. one can find something very similar in Dead Reckoning (1947). |
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Post by topbilled on Oct 14, 2024 14:58:50 GMT
This neglected film is from 1932.
“A boy was killed, a game was lost.”
There’s something I’ve always liked about this Paramount precode. Maybe it’s because all the performers, from the younger stars to the older supporting cast members, fully believe in the story and play their scenes with considerable honesty and integrity. Even the bad guy, tough dude Lew Cody as a gangster, is ultimately on the level.
Cody portrays the older brother of star Phillips Holmes. They don’t resemble each other; and in fact, Cody seems old enough to be Holmes’ father, not brother. The two actors approach the melodrama differently. Holmes is the golden child, a character going to a prestigious state college in love with a pretty rich girl (Dorothy Jordan), good at his studies, and successful on the football field with his pal (Johnny Mack Brown) and all their buddies.
In stark contrast to that, Cody has had to chisel for a living. Cody has spent years dominating the local rackets to make money to send Holmes to the right school and make the right connections. One bro has had the perfect life, while the other one has struggled to gain respectability.
Holmes’ world suddenly comes crashing down after Brown dies during a hugely important game, and he becomes the police’s prime suspect. It’s up to Cody to step in and help; even if Cody may be suspected by Holmes of having murdered Brown. This is because Cody had a lot riding on a big bet about the outcome of the game.
Keep in mind that this is the early 1930s. We are told that football is not quite a national sport the way baseball is. I don’t know when that would change, but it did change. Football became a much more prominent American sport, where gambling on the outcomes would be just as much a part of experience as it is with baseball or boxing.
At this point, while football is considered a fun endeavor, and certainly popular enough to bring seventy thousand spectators into the stands, it is still not seen as a professional sport, more just a college sport.
Besides Holmes and Cody, there are an assortment of additional characters that may be suspected of contributing to Brown’s death. With the assistance of the state team’s knowledgeable coach (J. Farrell Macdonald, demonstrating qualities that he probably exhibited behind the camera as a director of silent films), a sensible police detective (David Landau) decides to re-stage the action on the field that had occurred when Brown died.
The story is an interesting mix of athleticism and crime mystery. There is a twist, where we learn that Brown had received a rub down from a man who put a nitroglycerine solution on his upper torso, which is what led to the death. This is done to Holmes during the re-enactment sequence, and he also comes perilously close to death.
When the culprit is cornered, he throws a container of nitroglycerine which causes a dramatic explosion. It is tense, nail-biting stuff. Of course, we know Holmes will survive and be cleared…so he can marry Jordan.
We aren’t told whether he ever fully reconciles with his older brother (Cody). Because this is a precode, a gangster’s life and the wild fraternity parties, will continue to go on. But there won’t always be seventy thousand people watching.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 14, 2024 15:16:45 GMT
70,000 Witnesses from 1932 with Phillips Holmes, Dorothy Jordan, Charles Ruggles, David Landau and Johnny Mack Brown
70,000 Witnesses plays okay as its intended "murder mystery wrapped inside a big rival college football game" story, but where it really shines for us today is as another piece of movie evidence that college football had already been corrupted by the early 1930s.
There's a belief that college football was once a "pure" sport played for the love of the game by sincere college students who honorably represented their school. Maybe back in the late 19th century, when college football started that was true, but not by the 1930s.
One 1930s college football movie after another shows that all the corruption we're familiar with in college sports today was already in play by that decade. There were few clean hands even back then.
Players were gratuitously passed in their classes to maintain eligibility. Ringers were often brought in. Star players were paid in backdoor ways, but called "amateurs." Alumni held outsized sway if they made large donations, often steered toward sports, not academics.
Gambling and gamblers, too, were already heavily involved in the sport with bribes and, as seen in 70,000 Witnesses, worse machinations put in play to affect the outcome of the games.
"State" is about to play its big game against "University" (why they didn't come up with fake college names is a mystery) with State's star player, played by Johnny Mack Brown, being targeted by a big New York City gambler, played by Lew Cody, who needs University to win.
Cody's ace in the hole is his brother, a teammate of Brown’s, played by Phillips Holmes. Cody has been paying his younger brother's way through State, but Holmes has kept his tie to his big-time gambler brother a secret.
College was an upper-class milieu then, so no gambler's relatives were invited. Worse, Holmes is dating Brown's sister, played by Dorothy Jordan. So when Holmes' brother pressures him to "harmlessly" knock Brown out of the game, Holmes is torn.
He knows it is wrong, but his brother has paid his tuition, plus his brother says the knock-out drug for Brown is not dangerous. Cody, knowing his brother might not help, has put other plans in motion to get Brown out of the game, "just in case."
Game day is a mass of tension as Holmes is still torn between team loyalty, friendship and a perverted sense of filial duty. For some reason or other, Brown dies on the playing field, in front of 70,000 fans, making it, potentially, a very public murder.
From here, the movie becomes a homicide investigation led by the local police chief, played by David Landau, who smashes his way through obstacles in a way no police chief would be allowed to today.
Landau sees all the random pieces – the brothers and the mobsters – but he can't connect the dots. So on the recommendation of an always inebriated newspaper man, played by Charles Ruggles, he comes up with the stupidest plan ever, which is to reenact the game.
It's a mess of a plan that turns the movie into a giant mess, with a forced "dramatic" and not-too-believable outcome that seems like a last-minute "save" to give the audience a happy ending.
The movie, which starts as a college picture, effectively becomes a detective story by the second half. Holmes is a good-looking but weak leading man, which leaves a lot of room for Landau, with his strong screen presence, to take over the picture.
Jordan might have been fun to see as she's cute and spirited, but her role shrunk even more than Holmes' in the second half, which became the "Landau with Ruggles as his comic sidekick" movie by then. Even Cody is nothing more than a stock mobster at this point.
All this makes 70,000 Witnesses an oddity as a collegiate movie that morphs into a murder-investigation movie with the lead characters and tone changing. The story is okay entertainment, but the picture's real value is simply in what its existence says.
College football was already a massively popular sport in the 1930s. Many 1930s movies argue that the sport was also already corrupt and a corrupting influence on colleges and students. Sadly, the only thing that's changed today is that it's gotten worse. |
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Post by topbilled on Oct 14, 2024 16:47:42 GMT
I felt that Ruggles' character was superfluous to the action, and as you can see, I kept him out of my review. Some films need comic relief to break the tension, but Ruggles and his brand of comic relief just seemed like a running gag that didn't really work or add much to this picture.
With Phillips Holmes I think we get a nice combination of intelligence and good looks. He is not rugged by any stretch of the imagination, but I did buy him as a college football player. Would have been able to go pro, after his college days? Nope, I don't think so. Johnny Mack Brown seems like he would have gone the distance, if not for his character being murdered.
I don't think a movie has to be stuck in to a certain preconceived formula. In fact, I liked how this film switched gears after the death of Brown's character...because that is what the filmmakers' real goal was, to tell a murder mystery. I suspect the scenes with Brown were padded and extended, since he was a popular star at the box office, and they didn't want it to just be a cameo walk-on sort of role, where he was bumped off after five minutes of screen time. They built his character up a bit, and as a result, we are invested and feel something when he dies.
I always thought it was kind of dumb watching episodes of Murder She Wrote, that the murder victim was always killed at the 15 minute mark, so Jessica Fletcher would have a full 45 minutes to solve the crime. Just once, I wanted the murder to occur at the 30 minute mark. And in this film, that is sort of what we get...Brown's character dies right at the halfway point. So it is kind of like two halves melded together...the innocence and sportsmanship of the first half giving way to a horrible crime and the solving of that crime.
As for the re-enactment on the field, I agree that is a tad far-fetched, because how can the guys on the team make sure to do exactly what they did during the actual game? Maybe if there had been a newsreel made, they could have watched recorded scenes and then re-enacted it exactly without any deviation. Of course, the key is that the murder really occurs in the locker room during the rubdown, though the player doesn't expire until he returns to the field.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 14, 2024 16:50:27 GMT
For anyone who's interested, the film may currently be viewed on YouTube:
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2024 8:59:37 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
A force beyond her control
Though she has top billing, Carole Lombard doesn’t appear until around the 14-minute mark of this 64 minute film. It’s a horror flick from the folks at Paramount, who usually gave the actress comedic assignments. But Lombard was more than capable of pulling off serious dramatic roles, even if the basic concept is a bit far-fetched.
She’s playing a wealthy woman in her mid-20s, whose twin brother (Lyman Williams) recently died. After returning to the mansion from the funeral, she receives a note from a fake spiritualist (Alan Dinehart) who claims he’s been in contact with her dead brother.
But before we get to that part of the plot, an opening sequence details the death of an unrepentant murderess (Vivienne Osborne) who cackles with delight that she’s killed three of her former lovers. But there’s one man who turned her into the police that she didn’t kill; and before her execution, she’d like to get even with him. That man is Dinehart.
Following a bizarre conversation with a prison warden about how evil can live on after death, a doctor (H.B. Warner) is able to see Osborne in her cell. He convinces her to sign a paper, which will allow him to claim her body after the execution.
Then he will see if he can combat the evil energy from her body. As I said, the concept is far-fetched, if not still intriguing. Osborne’s character agrees to participate in the after-death experiment, because she hopes to transubstantiate into another body, to get revenge on Dinehart.
And this is where Lombard comes into the story. She attends a seance by Dinehart, despite her boyfriend (Randolph Scott) insisting it is all trickery.
Of course, we know Dinehart is a charlatan and he’s only after Lombard’s money. He kills a few people who stand in the way of that, including a drunken landlady (Beryl Mercer) who knows what he’s up to and blackmails him.
Perhaps the film’s most memorable sequence is the one where Lombard and Scott visit Warner’s home to discuss the spiritualist. They interrupt the doc while he’s working on Osborne’s dead body. It’s sufficiently creepy and atmospheric. Osborne tries to take over Lombard’s body, but fails; but she tries again later and succeeds the second time.
The spooky hokum continues into the film’s last act. Lombard is now possessed by Osborne, and she attempts to kill Dinehart while he is trying to seduce her. This occurs at Osborne’s former apartment, then moves to Lombard’s yacht. The sexually charged murder scene is full of precode perversity, but it’s strangely entertaining to watch. Lombard has fascinating reactions during the climactic moments.
It’s all wrapped up a bit too neatly. Scott barges on to the yacht, and he saves Lombard from killing Dinehart. Dinehart then flees and falls to his death. At which point Lombard has snapped out of her trance and is content to marry Scott and travel with him to Bermuda. I guess she won’t really think too much more about her deceased brother; and nothing else is said about the doctor’s experiments with the body of the woman who had been executed.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 29, 2024 11:40:58 GMT
Supernatural from 1933 with Carole Lombard, Vivienne Osborne, Randolph Scott, Alan Dinehart and H.B. Waner
For fans of horror-movie history, Supernatural is one not to miss. For fans of old movies in general, it's still an okay picture, due more to the stars than story, though. Either way, it's a short movie with impressive production qualities that has, now, been beautifully restored.
A serial killer, who murdered three of her lovers, is on death row. Vivienne Osborne plays this murderess with a pitch-perfect sociopathic calmness. She was betrayed to the police by her fourth lover, a charlatan psychic, played by Alan Dinehart.
A doctor, played by H.B. Warner, convinces the police to let him experiment on Osborne's body after her execution because he has a theory that her murderess' spirit will leave her body and enter another to continue killing. He's using "mitogenic rays" to test his theory.
Dinehart, the fake psychic, after reading about an heiress, played by Carole Lombard, whose brother just passed away, reaches out to Lombard to help her "connect" with her dead brother's spirit via a séance.
Lombard, bereaved, agrees despite the warnings from her square-jawed and pragmatic boyfriend, played by Randolph Scott, that Dinehart is a huckster.
The two threads – Dinehart's seance, impressively done with wires and other fakery, and Warner's nutty experiments – soon come together when at a second séance, we see, with decent special effects, Osborne's spirit leave her dead body and enters Lombard's.
From here the movie is Lombard, possessed by Osborne, trying to exact revenge on Dinehart. At the same time, the hero of our story, Scott, tries to save Lombard from committing murder, while also trying to free her soul so they can be together.
You don't watch Supernatural for its scintillating or believable plot. A horror-genre fan watches it to see horror-genre pioneer director Victor Halperin follow up his early, self-financed, horror effort, White Zombie, now with the backing of a major studio.
Paramount put an impressive budget behind this effort. The sets are incredibly natural as several feel like they were filmed on location in a New York City tenement and a second-hand shop. Dinehart's fake seance is also well filmed as it lets us in on his impressive tricks.
The special effects are modest by today's standards but smartly done in a restrained style, especially for the time. There's nothing campy about seeing Osborne's soul leave her body and enter Lombard. The same can't quite be said for the "mitogenic rays."
Paramount also assembled an impressive cast with Lombard giving her all to a difficult role. She has to play the almost-out-of-her-mind grieving sister early on and then the woman possessed by a murderess' soul later. It's asking a lot of a young actress still learning her craft.
Osborne, though, despite having a much smaller role, almost drives the picture as her portrayal of a black widow is chilling and, in the context of the picture, believable. In 1933, one would have predicted a bigger Hollywood career for her than she ultimately had.
Scott has the unenviable role of being the voice of reason and the man almost always a step or two behind the plot, but he's handsome and sincere, which is pretty much what the part calls for.
Beautifully restored, Supernatural is an enjoyable visual experience that shows the care and thought Halperin and Paramount put into this early horror-genre picture. Plus, it's a fun peek at two stars, Lombard and Scott, early in their careers.
N.B. Being a precode, Supernatural shows Dinehart, as he's seducing a now-possessed Lombard, put his hand firmly on her breast. Yes, his hand is over her dress, but it's not subtle, and it's not something viewers would see in movies once the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced a little over a year later. |
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2024 14:57:55 GMT
I feel like I should have included a paragraph about the dog! During the early part of the story, when Lombard is grieving her twin brother, there is a wonderful scene upstairs with her and the family dog. The pooch goes to get the dead bro's slippers out of the closet, and brings them over and places them alongside an easy chair, while Lombard plays a record that she and her brother made, in which they performed a story together.
Horror movies today leave those slower character-driven scenes out, since there is usually an over emphasis on plot and special effects. But SUPERNATURAL takes the time to let us get to know Lombard's character and the special relationship she had with a now-deceased relative.
By contrast, we have Vivienne Osborne's wholly unnatural relationship with several deceased men (that have died at her hands). I agree that Osborne's performance propels the story forward when she is on screen, but it's Lombard's character we care most about in this story.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 15, 2024 14:33:09 GMT
This film is from 1953.
My love is Shane-less
There are at least a half dozen things that do not work for me in SHANE. Number one, the relationship between the young boy (Brandon de Wilde) and Shane (Alan Ladd)– Joey seems to either have a crush on Shane– especially in the beginning– or to be mentally incapacitated to the point that all he can do is gawk and gush at anything Shane says or does.
It comes off a bit odd and makes Claude Jarman’s character in THE YEARLING seem much more normal. Number two, the casting of Jean Arthur who was past fifty at the time this picture was made– she should have been playing Joey’s granny. When she gets close-ups, they have that Lucille Ball in MAME sort of blurriness to them due to the extra soft lighting used.
Number three, the music good as it is upstages most of the acting and so does the scenery. And so does the dog. But the music is definitely too much in some spots, and it should have been used more sparingly. The way it plays now, some of the music is so sweeping and melodramatic I half expected to hear Jean Arthur’s character say the chickens weren’t laying any eggs and that the music would swell up and we could collectively sigh (and cry).
Number four, the fact that Palance is underused. Maybe a little bit of his meanness goes a long way? But I think he fares much better playing the same type of role in OKLAHOMA CRUDE twenty years later.
Number five, the painfully slow narrative that is camouflaged by quick edits where characters do not even move. This only draws attention to the fact that the editor is trying to save the story from becoming too dull or tedious.
And number six, the fact that all the poor folk are good upstanding citizens when I have yet to find any community where all the people are perfectly virtuous and one individual of power is the only corrupted member of society. It doesn’t seem very realistic.
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