What classics did you see last week ? (29 Dec - 4 Jan 2020)
Jan 4, 2020 19:39:54 GMT
spiderwort, teleadm, and 4 more like this
Post by mikef6 on Jan 4, 2020 19:39:54 GMT
Tomorrow At Seven / Ray Enright (1933). Jefferson Pictures/RKO Radio Pictures. The infamous serial killer The Black Ace likes to warn his victim ahead of time by sending them, well, a black ace – the ace of spades. Mystery novelist Neil Broderick (Chester Morris) is gathering evidence on the killer. He manages to get an audience with rich businessman Thornton Drake (Henry Stephenson), another expert on the Black Ace after meeting Martha Winters (Vivienne Osborne), daughter of Arthur Winters (Grant Mitchell), a close friend and associate of Drake. Shortly after arriving at Drake’s home, Drake himself receives an ace of spades. Winters phones the police and who should show up but the two dumbest cops in Chicago played by Frank McHugh and the ubiquitous Allen Jenkins, McHugh being the slightly more evolved of the duo. The whole group decides to fly to Drake’s Louisiana plantation but on the way in the airplane, the lights go out but someone other than Drake is killed. Inside the plantation house, everyone is a suspect including Broderick who seems to be in communication with someone outside in the dark. They all have to spend one dark night with the threat of the Black Ace hanging over their heads and with everyone in the cast, including the eccentric maid and a cadaverous looking coroner (Charles Middleton, Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials). It is all resolved in a slugfest and the two cops are of no use at all. Generally entertaining, if a routine effort.
Background To Danger / Raoul Walsh (1943). Warner Bros. Cinematography by Tony Gaudio (Adventures of Robin Hood, The Letter, Juaraz). This was George Raft’s last picture for Warner and in Jack Warner’s opinion it was Good Riddance. The movie is based on an Eric Ambler novel about a business man traveling in Turkey who falls into trouble with spies and espionage. Raft, as-per-usual, demanded changes in the script to turn him into an American intelligence agent working undercover. W.S. Burnett (Scarface) is credited with the screenplay but William Faulkner, Daniel Fuchs, and John Collier also worked on it. Raft plays Joe Barton, going through Turkey, a neutral country during WWII. A Nazi plotter, Col. Robertson (Sidney Greenstreet, as fascinating to watch as ever), wants to plant fake evidence in Turkish newspapers that Russia is planning an immediate invasion of Turkey in order to sway public sentiment into throwing in with Germany for protection. Barton runs into a woman who has stolen the fake plans. She gives them to Barton for safe keeping but she is later killed and Barton loses the plans to a mysterious brother/sister couple played by Peter Lorre and Brenda Marshall. The movie is quite watchable, a Raoul Walsh action adventure, with a lot of talent in front of and behind the screen. But Raft, more and more, seems to me a black hole in the middle of some otherwise good movies.
Seven Doors To Death / Elmer Clifton (1944). Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). The movie starts with a bang – and scream. Following the gunshot, a woman runs to the street and commandeers the car being driven by Jimmy McMillan (Chick Chandler). The car crashes and when Jimmy wakes up, the woman is gone. Rushing back to the scene, Jimmy spots a dead body through a window, but when he sends the police, the body of the body he saw - wearing a checked coat - is gone but another corpse in a tux is in the next room. Jimmy sets out to find the murderer and unravel the mystery. Running just about an hour even, the movie is still a little tiring to watch mainly because the DVD print from Westlake Entertainment (a now defunct indie distributor of public domain product) is incredibly dirty making nighttime and basement scenes very hard to make out. Gower Gulch studio PRC was unable to provide the production with much of a budget. Chick Chandler, usually a wisecracking sidekick (e.g. Mr. Moto Takes A Chance) plays a wisecracking leading man in his only top billed role in a feature film. A game cast along with Chandler, June Clyde, George Meeker (his portrait on his Wikipedia page is from Seven Doors To Death), and WWII pin-up girl Rebel Randall – are what will make this watchable, if anything will.
Chick Chandler as Jimmy McMillan
Favorite pinup of WWII GIs, Rebel Randall
Gaslight / George Cukor (1944). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg (The Women, Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest). This is a truly classic film with a couple of truly great performances. Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) as a young person suffered the trauma of finding her beloved aunt, a famous opera star, strangled to death in her London home. She is whisked away to the continent where she grows up and meets the charming pianist Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer). They marry and return to London to Paula’s former residence but move all the old furniture to the attic to avoid bad memories. Then strange things start to happen. Pictures disappear from the wall and are found hidden. Some of Paula’s jewelry is lost and she can’t remember having it. There are strange noises at night from the locked attic that no one but Paula can hear. Gregory begins to suggest that she is losing her mind. A ray of light is seen in the person of Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotton) who suspects that something is going on in that house which is closed to visitors. And boy, is he right, even though giving us a rather weak character, at least compared to the powerhouse acting by Bergman and Boyer. And speaking of great acting, this is Angela Lansbury’s Oscar nominated screen debut as Nancy the new maid who walks the thin line between deference and impertinence. She is quite brilliant. At the very end, as Boyer and Cotton are leaving, the little sarcastic curtsy she gives has got to elicit a laugh. Well deserved Academy Awards went to Ingrid Bergman and to four men for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.
Ingrid Bergman
Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury
Fear In The Night / Maxwell Shane (1947). Pine-Thomas Productions/Paramount Pictures. Cinematography by Jack Greenhalgh. I really liked this cheaply made thriller based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, a master of knotty mysteries. Wisely, the script hews closely to Woolrich’s story. The film opens in the midst of a dream of Vince Grayson (DeForrest Kelley, his screen debut). Vince dreams that he is in a room of mirrors. There is also a man and woman there. The man attacks him and they fight. Vince kills the man and woman flees. Then,,,he wakes up. He is in his own bed in his own room. But he sees finger marks on his throat and finds in his pocket a key and button that also were in his dream. Did it really happen? How could it? He goes to his brother-in-law Cliff, a homicide detective but Cliff (Paul Kelly) is of no help, citing Vince’s overwork. Later, on the road with Cliff, his sister, and girlfriend, Vince seems to be familiar with places he knows he has never been before. Is something supernatural at play here? Can there be a logical explanation for what is happening? This is a terrific little movie – shot in 10 days – and is endlessly entertaining. The Hotel Commodore at the intersection of 7th Street and Lucas St. in Los Angeles served as the exterior of the hotel where Vince had his apartment.
Paul Kelly’s ride. He says it’s his new second hand car that he traded his old second hand car for. It’s a 1941 Plymouth De Luxe Four-Door Sedan,
No Man’s Woman / Franklin Adreon (1955). Republic Pictures. Maneating cougar Carolyn Grant (Marie Windsor) likes to break up couples for fun. She has been separated from her husband Harlow Grant (John Archer) for two years but will not agree to a divorce unless gives her half his income and a $30,000 cash settlement even though he wants to marry Louise Nelson (Nancy Gates). When Carolyn’s employee at her art gallery, Beth Allen (Jil Jarmyn) announces she is engaged, Carolyn sets out to seduce Beth’s fiancé (Richard Crane) just for kicks. Given that Carolyn is such a deliciously Bad Girl, it is no spoiler that she is shot to death after a lengthy set-up of more than half the movie. There are five major suspects, the husband Harlow, his inamorata Louise, Beth and her fiancé, and Wayne Vincent (Patric Knowles), Carolyn’s lover who she dumps immediately after learning that he has become unemployed. The movie is basically a whodunit with a police investigation, alibis, questioning, etc. Maria Windsor can give a movie noir cred just by showing up but when she departs the picture and Harlow must do some detecting to clear himself, it becomes just another whodunit. Actually, from the summery I have given, if you know how movies of the period work, you can deduce the killer.
Marie Windsor
Killer’s Kiss / Stanley Kubrick (1955). Minotaur Productions/United Artists. Cinematography by Stanley Kubrick. This was Kubrick’s second directorial production (he also wrote, produced, and was his own cinematographer). Kubrick himself called it a “student” attempt but critical opinion has been mostly positive. It definitely falls into the film noir category and features some innovative camera work and decisions such as a zoom down a city street projected with negative film during a dream sequence. Country boy Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) is trying his hand as a professional boxer. The only problem is: he has a glass jaw. In the early going we see him take a serious beating in a match, so much so that he decides to give up the game and go back the family ranch in Wyoming. But through his apartment window, he can see into the apartment of Gloria Price (Irene Kane). Gloria works in a dime-a-dance establishment. The owner, an older man named Vinnie Rapallo (Frank Silvera), decides he is in love with Gloria and can’t live without her. When she rebuffs him a work, he shows up at her apartment and tries to rape her. Jamie sees it and rushes through corridors to reach her room and save her. Vinnie is humiliated so vows a terrible revenge on both of them. “Killer’s Kiss” is now near the top of my favorite noirs of the 1950s. An essential.
Background To Danger / Raoul Walsh (1943). Warner Bros. Cinematography by Tony Gaudio (Adventures of Robin Hood, The Letter, Juaraz). This was George Raft’s last picture for Warner and in Jack Warner’s opinion it was Good Riddance. The movie is based on an Eric Ambler novel about a business man traveling in Turkey who falls into trouble with spies and espionage. Raft, as-per-usual, demanded changes in the script to turn him into an American intelligence agent working undercover. W.S. Burnett (Scarface) is credited with the screenplay but William Faulkner, Daniel Fuchs, and John Collier also worked on it. Raft plays Joe Barton, going through Turkey, a neutral country during WWII. A Nazi plotter, Col. Robertson (Sidney Greenstreet, as fascinating to watch as ever), wants to plant fake evidence in Turkish newspapers that Russia is planning an immediate invasion of Turkey in order to sway public sentiment into throwing in with Germany for protection. Barton runs into a woman who has stolen the fake plans. She gives them to Barton for safe keeping but she is later killed and Barton loses the plans to a mysterious brother/sister couple played by Peter Lorre and Brenda Marshall. The movie is quite watchable, a Raoul Walsh action adventure, with a lot of talent in front of and behind the screen. But Raft, more and more, seems to me a black hole in the middle of some otherwise good movies.
Seven Doors To Death / Elmer Clifton (1944). Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). The movie starts with a bang – and scream. Following the gunshot, a woman runs to the street and commandeers the car being driven by Jimmy McMillan (Chick Chandler). The car crashes and when Jimmy wakes up, the woman is gone. Rushing back to the scene, Jimmy spots a dead body through a window, but when he sends the police, the body of the body he saw - wearing a checked coat - is gone but another corpse in a tux is in the next room. Jimmy sets out to find the murderer and unravel the mystery. Running just about an hour even, the movie is still a little tiring to watch mainly because the DVD print from Westlake Entertainment (a now defunct indie distributor of public domain product) is incredibly dirty making nighttime and basement scenes very hard to make out. Gower Gulch studio PRC was unable to provide the production with much of a budget. Chick Chandler, usually a wisecracking sidekick (e.g. Mr. Moto Takes A Chance) plays a wisecracking leading man in his only top billed role in a feature film. A game cast along with Chandler, June Clyde, George Meeker (his portrait on his Wikipedia page is from Seven Doors To Death), and WWII pin-up girl Rebel Randall – are what will make this watchable, if anything will.
Chick Chandler as Jimmy McMillan
Favorite pinup of WWII GIs, Rebel Randall
Gaslight / George Cukor (1944). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg (The Women, Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest). This is a truly classic film with a couple of truly great performances. Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) as a young person suffered the trauma of finding her beloved aunt, a famous opera star, strangled to death in her London home. She is whisked away to the continent where she grows up and meets the charming pianist Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer). They marry and return to London to Paula’s former residence but move all the old furniture to the attic to avoid bad memories. Then strange things start to happen. Pictures disappear from the wall and are found hidden. Some of Paula’s jewelry is lost and she can’t remember having it. There are strange noises at night from the locked attic that no one but Paula can hear. Gregory begins to suggest that she is losing her mind. A ray of light is seen in the person of Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotton) who suspects that something is going on in that house which is closed to visitors. And boy, is he right, even though giving us a rather weak character, at least compared to the powerhouse acting by Bergman and Boyer. And speaking of great acting, this is Angela Lansbury’s Oscar nominated screen debut as Nancy the new maid who walks the thin line between deference and impertinence. She is quite brilliant. At the very end, as Boyer and Cotton are leaving, the little sarcastic curtsy she gives has got to elicit a laugh. Well deserved Academy Awards went to Ingrid Bergman and to four men for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.
Ingrid Bergman
Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury
Fear In The Night / Maxwell Shane (1947). Pine-Thomas Productions/Paramount Pictures. Cinematography by Jack Greenhalgh. I really liked this cheaply made thriller based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, a master of knotty mysteries. Wisely, the script hews closely to Woolrich’s story. The film opens in the midst of a dream of Vince Grayson (DeForrest Kelley, his screen debut). Vince dreams that he is in a room of mirrors. There is also a man and woman there. The man attacks him and they fight. Vince kills the man and woman flees. Then,,,he wakes up. He is in his own bed in his own room. But he sees finger marks on his throat and finds in his pocket a key and button that also were in his dream. Did it really happen? How could it? He goes to his brother-in-law Cliff, a homicide detective but Cliff (Paul Kelly) is of no help, citing Vince’s overwork. Later, on the road with Cliff, his sister, and girlfriend, Vince seems to be familiar with places he knows he has never been before. Is something supernatural at play here? Can there be a logical explanation for what is happening? This is a terrific little movie – shot in 10 days – and is endlessly entertaining. The Hotel Commodore at the intersection of 7th Street and Lucas St. in Los Angeles served as the exterior of the hotel where Vince had his apartment.
Paul Kelly’s ride. He says it’s his new second hand car that he traded his old second hand car for. It’s a 1941 Plymouth De Luxe Four-Door Sedan,
No Man’s Woman / Franklin Adreon (1955). Republic Pictures. Maneating cougar Carolyn Grant (Marie Windsor) likes to break up couples for fun. She has been separated from her husband Harlow Grant (John Archer) for two years but will not agree to a divorce unless gives her half his income and a $30,000 cash settlement even though he wants to marry Louise Nelson (Nancy Gates). When Carolyn’s employee at her art gallery, Beth Allen (Jil Jarmyn) announces she is engaged, Carolyn sets out to seduce Beth’s fiancé (Richard Crane) just for kicks. Given that Carolyn is such a deliciously Bad Girl, it is no spoiler that she is shot to death after a lengthy set-up of more than half the movie. There are five major suspects, the husband Harlow, his inamorata Louise, Beth and her fiancé, and Wayne Vincent (Patric Knowles), Carolyn’s lover who she dumps immediately after learning that he has become unemployed. The movie is basically a whodunit with a police investigation, alibis, questioning, etc. Maria Windsor can give a movie noir cred just by showing up but when she departs the picture and Harlow must do some detecting to clear himself, it becomes just another whodunit. Actually, from the summery I have given, if you know how movies of the period work, you can deduce the killer.
Marie Windsor
Killer’s Kiss / Stanley Kubrick (1955). Minotaur Productions/United Artists. Cinematography by Stanley Kubrick. This was Kubrick’s second directorial production (he also wrote, produced, and was his own cinematographer). Kubrick himself called it a “student” attempt but critical opinion has been mostly positive. It definitely falls into the film noir category and features some innovative camera work and decisions such as a zoom down a city street projected with negative film during a dream sequence. Country boy Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) is trying his hand as a professional boxer. The only problem is: he has a glass jaw. In the early going we see him take a serious beating in a match, so much so that he decides to give up the game and go back the family ranch in Wyoming. But through his apartment window, he can see into the apartment of Gloria Price (Irene Kane). Gloria works in a dime-a-dance establishment. The owner, an older man named Vinnie Rapallo (Frank Silvera), decides he is in love with Gloria and can’t live without her. When she rebuffs him a work, he shows up at her apartment and tries to rape her. Jamie sees it and rushes through corridors to reach her room and save her. Vinnie is humiliated so vows a terrible revenge on both of them. “Killer’s Kiss” is now near the top of my favorite noirs of the 1950s. An essential.