CatherineYronwode Reviews

The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935)

I'd like to thank Yakima Canutt: What a HORSE!!

[8/10 · 23 April 2024]

Sure, Henry Fonda is amazing in his first film role, Janet Gaynor displays spunky charm, and the supporting cast is six-deep with favourites from John Qualen and Slim Summerville to Sig Rumen and Margaret Hamilton, plus Vince Barnett as a crystal ball gazing "Hindu Prophet" ... but there is no movie to compare with this for the sheer glory of the horses assembled by Yakima Canutt . He outdid himself for this film.

The all-out star is the star-spangled grey Percheron. WHAT A HORSE. I cannot say enough about this calm, perfectly mannered draft animal. You will never see another like him, i guarantee.

Then we have Canutt's usual "stage coach stunt" wagon team -- and a cool stunt where they hear a loud noise and take off running. Play it back and see if you can figure where Canutt is hiding, driving them on long reins.

There are some other great draft horses too -- a white one pulling a plow is out standing in his field.

As if that weren't enough. There is entire herd of lithe ponies being ridden by genuine Native Americans, just in from a wild west show -- and their horses are all glossy and alert.

Slim Summerville drives a buggy horse who steps out lightly, and there are dozens more horses towing barges pulling wagons, getting shod, and being led through the streets.

And amazingly, while all of these these magnificent animals are in action, not a one is shown being stressed, other than the bolting wagon team -- but they knew that routine from a hundred Westerns.

The Erie canal scenes are gorgeous set pieces, filmed with perfect lighting and a true eye for artistic compositition. The costumes are period-perfect. The male chorus is manly, and it is a pleasure to hear Janet Gaynor whistling "Oh, Don't You Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?," and then to hear it played on a genuine old music box. Such attention to detail!!

And as if all of this were not enough, Yak also stunts for Henry Fonda! My gosh, it can't get any better than that.

Oh, there's a plot. Folks fall in love. Complications ensue. A resolution may or may not be achieved. But who cares -- THAT BEAUTIFUL HORSE steals the entire show.

For the Love of Mary (1948)

A wonderful romantic comedy

[10/10 · 5 January 2024]

This is a charming and surprising comedy well worthy of comparison with films like "My Man Godfrey," "Theodora Goes Wild," and "Ball of Fire." Deanna Durbin is delightful as Mary Peppertree, a former switchboard operator for the U. S. Supreme Court, who quits her job due to a bump in the road of her romance with a young lawyer (Jeffrey Lynn), and moves to a job as a switchboard operator at the White House.

Complications ensue when a goofy but lovable ichthyologist (Don Taylor) keeps calling the switchboard to speak to the President, and Mary gets involved in helping him. However, complexities redouble when she accidentally cuts the President's line in on a call she is taking about her inability to attend the birthday party of her old friend Justice Peabody (Harry Davenport, at his most twinkly judicial self). The president (who is never seen or heard throughout the entire film) tries to help Mary out by assigning her a Navy Lieutenant escort (Edmond O'Brien) to the party.

In short order all three men are courting her, and the President's personal secretary (Ray Collins, best known as Lt. Tragg in "Perry Mason") is enrolled to play cupid at the unseen Chief Executive's command.

Meanwhile a subplot revolves around a jovial immigrant restaurateur from Vienna (Hugo Haas) whom the Supreme Court Justices are coaching so that he can pass his American citizenship test.

The supporting cast is chock full of the best character actors of the 1940s and 1950s, including Louise Beavers ("Imitation of Life," "Beulah") as the cook in Haas's restaurant who fixes up the chopped chicken liver and marinated herring; and Morris Ankrum (a recurrent judge on "Perry Mason") as a Navy Admiral The small-part players work beautifully together as a warm-hearted ensemble cast.

Not only is this a romantic comedy, it is also a musical, with Deanna Durbin in fine voice and, for a couple of numbers. Accompanied by the assembled justices of the Supreme Court, who sing old, sweet songs in quartet harmony while Harry Davenport accompanies them on accordion.

The best musical number of all, however is Durbin's soprano rendition of "Largo al factotum" (a.k.a. "Figaro") from Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville" -- what a surprise! -- and just as surprising is how well it fits into the storyline, because like "The Barber of Seville," this is a comedy of missed connections and thwarted romance, in which those with access to the powerful can pull the strings to make everything come out exactly right in the end.

I loved this movie and am only sad that it took me until i was 76 years old to see it!

Carnival Lady (1933)

A Charming Carnival Romance

[9/10 · 12 December 2022]

This underrated poverty row gem has so many winning features i scarcely know where to begin. The story is romantic and dramatic, and there are dozens of wonderful documentary scenes of including a carnival bally, a rigged carnival midway game, Kit Guard as a carnival boxer who will go two rounds with anyone, a delightfully acrobatic vaudeville specialty dance, and an actual death-defying high diver, filmed from several angles. Add to that some nice railroad train footage, a cameo appearance by Angelo Rossitto the burly dwarf, a couple of obese freak-show actors, and a strange mitt-reader named Zandra and you have a great production with Willis Kent touches galore.

Special shout-out to Donald Kerr as Dick, the acrobatic dancer and sure-shot boxer. He had a long career playing carnival barkers and pitchmen and appeared in more than 500 movies and television shows -- but as of this writing, in 2022, IMDb could not even be bothered to clip out a still of him to place on his bio.

Hotel Continental (1932)

No Comparison

[10/10 · 11 December 2022]

Yes, reviewers who think backwards compare this film to "Grand Hotel," but it came out six months earlier and chronological order trumps coincidental similarity in my mind, so i prefer to say that "Grand Hotel" is a big, fat, blown-up version of "Hotel Continental."

I loved everything about this movie, aside from the low quality of the print i viewed for free on YouTube.

The opening scene was Hitchcockian in its long, roaming scan of the hotel lobby -- an amazing piece of work. Peggy Shannon was lovely and expressive, while Theodore von Eltz was handsome, brooding, and darkly Byronic -- and they made a great star-crossed couple, both with shady pasts and trust issues, like an antique version of a Coen Brothers story. Additionally, Henry B. Walthall was superb in an unexpected role that had me guessing.

The music was another plus. It was all over the map, stitched together from a dozen sources, including stock cues, "Street Scene," "The Dance of the Hours," "Nola" (Vincent Lopez's radio show theme), "Auld Lang Syne," and "Mama Inez" (a hit for Maurice Chevalier the year before). A real, live female pianist played some of it, uncredited, during the party scene.

And speaking of "uncredited," kudos to Wedgwood Nowell, wrongly credited at IMDb as a "party guest" who actually played the role of a radio announcer, with a real feeling of pathos in his voice, as he broadcast his last remote from the Grill Room of the Hotel Continental.

What a wonderful, unsung gem. I hope other viewers enjoy it as much as i did!

Night Alarm (1934)

H.B. Warner for the Win, Plus Documentary Footage of Old L.A.

[8/10 · 28 November 2022]

H. B. Warner was a fine actor, although sound came too late for him to be a leading man. However, whatever part he is given -- here he is the ingenue's industrialist-financier father -- he is head and shoulders above all the other talent. Here his role is intended to be ambiguous, and he delivers -- because up until the very end, you could see him on either side of the law, he plays it that neatly. I cannot say enough about his skill, his charisma, and his command of any scene in which he appears.

Bruce Cabot is rather pleasing as a carefree reporter and Judith Allen is charming as his girl reporter love interest, but the best thing about this film, aside from H. B. Warner, is the tremendous amount of documentary footage involving early 1930s fire engines and burning buildings. The fires are real, from news footage, and are elegantly intercut with scenes on sets. But what really got me was watching the fire trucks running out, sirens blaring, as i tried to figure out in what part of Los Angeles this was filmed.

It was a warehouse district -- the plot called for that -- and we got lucky as we ran the film at half speed to look for business names (Maxwell House Coffee, Gilmore Gas and Oil, etc.) and saw a sign for Imperial Street. Google maps told us that Imperial Street no longer exists, because it has been made into warehouse parking lots now, but it is still on the maps, and right north of it is Los Angeles Fire Station #17 -- where the engine company was located!

Re-running the film, we could trace all the routes, down Santa Fe St., 11th street, by the old train yard -- it is all there. The film footage is not super high-quality, because much of it was shot at night (the title of the film is "Night Alarm," after all) but it is priceless because almost every building in this district, including the fire station, has been torn down and replaced with modern block-structures. Here it is captured, a snapshot in time.

The night club (called a "casino," although no gambling was shown) was not a set either. Where it was, i do not know, but as a location shot it was also a nice treat.

The plot is nifty, the ending is exciting and also satisfactory, so i rated this film as a 7 because of the documentary footage, with an extra point for H. B. Warner's fine performance, giving it an 8 overall.

The Lady Refuses (1931)

She Was Poor But She Was Honest

[8/10 · 21 November 2022]

Betty Compson shines in this woman's story of a prim British Lord who rescues a poor woman from the cops, and hires her to save his son, who has drifted away from a career in architecture and into the arms of a scheming gold-digger with a violent Lithuanian pimp. Complications ensue. The "Britishness" of the setting is a bit off, as some of the actors fail to achieve the proper accents, but the rooms in the home of the landed gentry are magnificently over-the-top, as are the apartments of the wealthy, and the glimpse inside a fancy couture shop. These sets present a smashingly florid mash-up of English Manor, Frenchified beaux-arts, and geometric art deco that would fall out of favour shortly, but was the height of luxury at the time.

This film flirts with ideas it never names, and although Compson flings herself between virtuous and tough-as-nails, the actual defining moment comes when diminutive Daphne Pollard, as a landlady, bursts into song while scrubbing the floors. The song she sings in her warbling Australian-Cockney voice is the chorus to "She Was Poor But She Was Honest," a British musical hall favourite that may have begun life as a genuinely tragic Victorian lament, but which by World War I had become a burlesque filled with outrageous verses declaimed with mock portentousness.

It's the same the whole world over It's the poor what gets the blame It's the rich what get the pleasure Ain't it all a blooming shame?

Look up Elsa Lanchester's version on You Tube and listen closely to the lyrics.

There are countless verses, but these two, which appear in many versions, form an actual gloss on the plot:

She was poor but she was honest, Victim of the squire's whim; First 'e loved 'er, then 'e left 'er And she lost 'er name through 'im.

Then she ran away to London For to 'ide 'er grief and shame; But she met another squire And she lost 'er name again.

I wonder if Daphne Pollard improvised the singing of that song or if it was really in the script. Either way, it certainly fits.

Those We Love (1932)

No No No No No

[4/10 · 20 November 2022]

I tend to rate early talkies far higher than the average IMDb rater does because i love pre-code films and i make an effort to view them from within the mindset of their own era. Thus it is not uncommon for me to rate a pre-code drama at 8, 9, or even 10, while the averaged IMDb rating is only a 6 or 7. Not so with this stinker.

First, Mary Astor: Great performance, covering about 16 years of elapsed time, expressive gestures, beautiful line readings. Just a gem, as always.

Second, Kenneth MacKenna: His teeth are grotesque, his character is disgusting, and his line readings are filled with his teeth.

Third, Lilyan Tashman: Please. No. She is a terrible ham actress. As IMDb reports: "Tashman is alleged to have been romantically involved with Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Kay Francis, and to have gotten into physical altercations with Lupe Velez, Constance Bennett and Alona Marlowe, during her time as an actress in Hollywood." It shows. Also, per IMDb: She was "charged with assault in 1931, when she beat actress Alona Marlowe after catching her in husband Edmund Lowe's dressing room." And THAT, my friends, makes her performance in this role, one year later, bizarre.

Fourth, Tommy Conlon: A young actor who is charismatic and sincere. He works very well with Mary Astor, less so with the teeth-faced MacKenna.

Fifth: Everyone else: A small cast, filled out with a lovely assortment of character actors, all doing their usual fine turns.

Sixth: Mary Astor co-authoring a book on American folk songs ... that was a delightful surprise.

I hated this movie. I wanted Mary Astor to rise up and shoot Kenneth MacKenna in the teeth with a pearl-handled derringer. The fact that i am telling you that she did not do so constitutes a spoiler. So be it.

The Last Mile (1932)

Pre-Code is Different

[8/10 · 7 November 2022]

I have been watching only pre-code films for the past months, at the rate of 5 per week. Of course everyone loves them for all the double-entendres, sexual free-play, gender ambiguities, and double beds -- but there is another theme i see threaded through them, which disappeared abruptly when the code came in. I am not sure the code actually sought to end the theme, but for one reason or another, it happened. I am talking about the presence of Jews and African-Americans as characters in ensemble dramas. This film has both.

First, George E. Stone plays a Jewish man on death row who has a wife and children. The nature of his crime is unexplained, but he is visited by a rabbi in his cell, as if that were the most natural thing. I can think of many prison and crime movies with Christian chaplains, fathers, and padres, but this is the only one i have seen so far that features a rabbi. To make it more interesting to me, he is a Reform rabbi -- no Orthodox style, no Yiddish accent, no yarmulke, no tallis -- just a rabbi in a suit. (Weirdly, he is played by a goy, but actors often play against ethnic type, so i won't give that any scrutiny.) Of course an Irish priest later takes center stage, but still, it was really cool to see a Reform rabbi in a prison movie.

Second, we get Daniel L. Haynes, the African-American actor best known as the wonderful singer in "Hallelujah." His crime is also never referenced, but most importantly, he is treated as just another guy on death row. In fact, the only one talking about race is him, in a strange little riff on segregation in heaven and hell. He sings here too, several times -- but IMDb does not credit him for the soundtrack! That's a shame, because he is good, and the pieces are well-known gospel songs. I wish he had made more movies; he is a good actor as well as a great singer.

Extra bonus: this is a Two McDonald film, featuring both the handsome Francis McDonald as a robber and the melodiously-voiced Kenneth MacDonald (of later Perry Mason fame) as a guard named Harris.

(Come to think of it, George E. Stone was on many episodes of Perry Mason as a bailiff and no doubt appeared in episodes in which Kenneth MacDonald played the judge... small world.)

I enjoyed this movie, despite my political-philosophical differences with the character of the warden, and i hope that somebody picks up on how the Jewish characters in pre-code films are often just folks, not comics or stereotypes. I'd love to read an in-depth article on the subject.

Manhattan Love Song (1934)

A Sweet Little Depression Love Story

[8/10 · 5 November 2022]

When the Depression came to America, the usual stories about the doings of the upper class became irrelevant within two years. Films like "You Can't Take It With You," "Sullivan's Travels," "My Man Godfrey," "Our Daily Bread," "Wild Boys of the Road," "The Devil and Miss Jones," and musicals like "Gold-Diggers of 1933" set forth a new vision, that of a financially troubled America.

In some of these fantasies, the rich suddenly had a change of heart and supported the poor, in other films the poor formed an anarchist collective of creative equality and resource-sharing which saved the day, and in a third type the wealthy tumbled into poverty and the poor saved them by demonstrating their spunk, grit, and human kindness.

"Manhattan Love Song" falls into this last category. The snooty rich sisters lose all their money and are thrown on the mercy of their former servants and a random stranger from way out West. It is only a slight comedy, but as a romance, it is very satisfying. All the right Shakespearean touches are there -- the poor-but-honest true love, the temperamental young woman, the wise old woman, the comical or rustic couple, the second-lead couple, and the lead couple.

Extra points go to Robert Armstrong as a dynamic leading man, to Dixie Lee as a very good singer, and to the uncredited "Louie," whose pianistic skills are supreme. Cecil Cunningham also does a lovely turn as the old, unpretentious, and down-to-earth tourist -lady visiting New York (portrayed by Los Angeles), who happens to be the owner of a silver mine in Nevada.

For scene-spotters: This is a low budget film from Monogram, so we don't get much in the way of high art deco set decoration. No trains, trained dogs, special signage, or skyscrapers -- but there are some nice dresses, a good view of a kitchen with contemporary appliances, and a pretty clean look at the inside of a Western Electric phone booth.

Forgotten (1933)

A fne Jewish Movie

[9/10 · 24 October 2022]

Lee Kohlmar, with his wonderful Bavarian accent, is a Jewish businessman whose two sons are ungrateful, and whose daughters-in-law despise him. Discarded by everyone but his youngest daughter and her boyfriend, he is reduced to living in an old-age home.

Without spoiling the plot (just see King Lear), what makes this low-budget film work so well is the uncompromising Ashkenazi Jewishness -- or should i say American Yiddishkeit? -- of the characters, even those played by non-Jewish actors.

The emphasis on giving charity, the celebration of food and family, the pride at gaining American citizenship, and the ultimate epithet of anger ("Swine!") will be recognizable to anyone who ever watched "The Goldbergs" with Molly Berg. It is a bit sentimental, but what family drama isn't?

This is not a story about the tenements of the Lower East Side or the Nazis or Israel. It is about an American Jewish businessman in the chemical dye industry (as an adjunct to the garment industry) and about the value of friendship, thriftiness, and honesty in that world. It is about the joy of owning and running a business, not for wealth, but to be useful in the world.

The chief struggle is between the immigrant generation and the "Americanized" children who don't value the old ways, and in this It bears some resemblance to the movie "Avalon" as well as to the romance comic book story "Different!" by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

I rated it as 9 out of 10 because it was well made on a shoestring budget and because it was a joy to see so many older character actors (NONE OF THEM CREDITED!) doing their small parts with professionalism and panache.

Rendezvous (1935)

Shoddy Film and Russell Ruins It

[5/10 · 31 August 2022]

Casting Rosalind Russell to imitate Myrna Loy was a bad mistake. The tipped back head, the winning smile -- Russell was like a performing dog, but she was not Myrna Loy. The fact that her character was an annoying narcissist didn't help much either. What a stinker.

Casting William Powell as a guy named Bill gave me a few chuckles, but not enough to make me like this film. A long list of great character actors added spice, the young Cesar Romero was very cool, and no movie with Lionel Atwill in it can ever be a bomb. But this film was shoddily made, with repeated weird overdubbing when Romero's character name was mentioned. Also the women's costumes were sub-par -- neither accurate to the 1917 era intended to be portrayed, nor sharp for the 1935 date of filming. Ditto for the hairstyles -- they were accurate to neither period.

Finally, the script suffered from the "ho-hum another dead body" syndrome that plagued so many 1930s murder-comedies. It just didn't work for me at all.

I am currently making a point of watching every William Powell film, but i rated this one at 5, while all the others i have watched on this foray have been 7, 8, 9, or 10 -- which will give you an idea of how much i did not like this one.

The Interrupted Journey (1949)

Twisty, Taut, and Terrific

[10/10 · 2 May 2022]

This under-rated British psychological crime thriller features an amazing plot-line, filled with twists upon twists upon twists, and the great thing is that every turn of the screw is totally believable, even though it contradicts the plot points established earlier in the story,

I do not want to write a spoiler review, so there is no way i can describe "The Interrupted Journey" other than to say that suspicion was cast upon almost every character at one point or another, and i could see the logic to each shifting nuance of blame, and by the time we got to the scene with the weirdly up-angled hotel keeper, i was ready to step off the 39th step, so to speak.

Since i rarely bother to check out movies that rank under a 7 at IMDb, i almost missed this one -- ranked at 6.8 on the day i watched it. (I hope it ranks higher as more people check it out.)

I selected it for the title and because i like documentary footage of trains. What a surprise it was! I loved the plot, the German-expressionist camera angles, the low-key lighting, the great use of unusually asymmetrical bits of architecture, and the way the actors shifted from innocent to guilty and back to innocent and back to guilty again at the turn of their heads.

Every lover of film-noir, British Railways, primulas, adultery, murder, and character actors will want to see this one, take my word for it.

Hell Drivers (1957)

I Think I Don't Get it

[2/10 · 19 April 2022]

Yes, Sean Connery, William Hartnell, Patrick McGoohan, Herbert Lom, and David McCallum are in this movie. That is not enough. It's just like an old arcade video game, with reckless drivers under the grey skies of England. I hated the way it dragged on. The plot was telegraphed in the first few minutes and dutifully followed the plan all the way to the end.

Rated 2 instead of 1 because there was a brief piece of train footage, and a dog (although not a cute, well-trained, or personable one), and because there was a very interesting piece of folk-art in the nominal hero's boarding house bedroom, namely a large hand-painted image of Saint Simon Stock, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the Infant Jesus. I wonder where the prop department found that!

This certainly was no Thieves' Highway. The Long Haul, Racket Busters, or They Drive By Night.

Skip it.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Better Than the Remake

[8/10 · 3 March 2022]

I have watched both this earlier version and the 1954 remake four times each, and i always prefer the original version for three reasons:

(1) Edna Best plays a competent woman and heroic mother in the original and Dinah Shore plays "Que Sera Sera" interminably and is little more than a submissive wife in the remake.

(2) Peter Lorre is just too cool for words in this version, and although the remake can boast James Stewart, whom i admire greatly, Lorre is super-sensational. (They play different characters, of course; i am simply choosing between two stars. )

3) The climax is boring and predictable in the remake, and defers to the concept of "expert authorities," much like a "fighting G-men" or "valiant treasury agents" semi-documentary "true story" movie of the 1950s, but in the original, as in many of Hitchcock's British crime dramas (and even into the American "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Strangers on a Train") fairly ordinary people call upon reserves of strength and fearlessness, with only their desperation and native intelligence to sustain them.

I give this version 8/10 and the remake 6/10 -- but i always watch them together, back-to-back.

The Devil Plays (1931)

A Tea Cozy Mystery

[6/10 · 24 September 2020]

This is a typical mansion murder or cozy mystery, with only four sets: the apartment where the murder takes place, the police captain's office, the low-rent hotel of a hard-bitten show girl and a tea room financed by shady money. I tuned in for the tea room, because collecting tea room memorabilia is one of my hobbies.

The set did not disappoint. It is the Universal "basement restaurant" set (seen in other movies as an Italian restaurant, etc.). Outfitted with a bevy of what seem to be Pretty Little Dutch Girl waitresses and laid out to resemble the Bohemian basement tea rooms of Sheridan Square and Greenwich Village in the 1910s to 1920s, mostly fading from view by the time this was filmed in 1931.

There were some nice deco touches in the show girl's hotel room set as well. .

That was about it. The acting was slow and halted, the actors' mannerisms stylized and stagey, and the plot was totally random.

Hell Bound (1957)

Like "The Killing" But with Foot Fetishism and Trains

[6/10 · 5 July 2020]

This is an odd movie. The plot resembles of that of "The Killing" from 1956 (no spoilers from me, folks!), but with a train yard instead of and airport and an inexplicable amount of random foot fetishism scenes.

The location shots of the seedy, ugly industrial underbelly of the Port of Los Angeles, filled with clanging freighters, trains, cranes, derricks, busted lamps, bridges, weedy open areas, parking lots, and seedy neon streets are spectacular -- beautifully filmed in high-noir style, and almost documentary in their precision. The trolley graveyard, Southern Pacific freight yard, and piles of scrap metal are literally priceless as settings. For anyone seeking great, sharp-focus, high-contrast footage of the industrial junk piles in Los Angeles in 1957, this is valuable footage.

The plot is ... a plot (see "the Killing") and the actors are competent, but the script is thin, so there are lots of unvoiced action scenes and facial dead-pan reaction shots that last too long. The repetitious, silent fetish scenes of women's feet, both in and out of shoes, also lack charm. And, inexplicably, several minutes are wasted on a pointless strip tease act right out of a Sack Entertainment exploitation film. The director was probably getting off on the high sleaze-quotient, but i found it awkward and childish.

I'm glad i saw this film, but i didn't really like it all that much.

When Were You Born? (1938)

The astrology is accurate

[6/10 · 28 May 2020]

Nine out of ten films that make use of metaphysical matters such as palmistry or crystal gazing in their plots employ them merely as gimmicky window-dressing. This movie is different in that every bit of astrological business mentioned is accurate according to the principles of Western astrology -- which is odd, because Anna May Wong, the film's astrological expert, is Chinese-American and could have been expected to employ Chinese astrology.

What was most interesting to me was not that all of the actors were portraying people of zodiacal signs other than their own, or that the characters they portrayed were virtually stereotypical of Sun-sign astrology, but that there were many throw-away lines that only an actual astrologer would recognize.

For instance, when Wong is reading the chart of Miss Kenton, the Cancer, she speaks of her having "certain habits." The woman admits to drinking, but a glance at her chart shows Saturn square Neptune, which can also imply drug addiction. Likewise, when the Pisces policeman says he's been having a hard time lately, Wong mentions that Saturn is currently in Pisces -- which it actually was during both 1937 and 1938.

In the end, however, despite such wonderful touches, and the delightful introduction by Manly P. Hall, a Pisces, whose feet doubtless hurt him, i could not rate this movie higher than 6/10 because the directing was set-bound and stodgy and much of the acting was wooden. In fact, aside from Miss Wong's pet monkey, the only character with any life in him was Dr. Fenton, the eccentric little Jewish crime expert -- but although Fenton was said to be a Capricorn, Russian-born Maurice Cass, who played him, was actually a Libra.

Eyes in the Night (1942)

His Dog Friday

[10/10 · 15 May 2020]

I decided to watch this film out of curiosity, because the cast included Edward Arnold, Donna Reed, Reginald Denny, Steven Geray, and Mantan Moreland -- and it was difficult to imagine what sort of film could include that diverse cast. Of course there are murders and it is a crime drama, but was rewarded far beyond my expectations, for this is a real gem of a feature, operating on many levels, all of them great.

Edward Arnold is very convincing as a blind detective who practices jiu-jitsu, Donna Reed is given a surprisingly selfish and treacherous role to play, Mantan Moreland is his usual great comedic self, and there are villains galore -- but the two actors who most impressed me were the charming and sincere Ann Harding, and Friday the dog, about whom more later.

The directing is excellent, albeit set-bound, with a particularly inventive shoot-out in a pitch-black basement. The plot is tight, the script is fascinating, and the acting is excellent. The casting was unusual for the number of stage-trained British actors it featured, and they all had a ripping good time, giving the whole affair a bit of the fun of an Ealing comedy -- which will doubtless annoy both film noir purists and gritty-grim crime movie buffs, but charmed me no end.

Outstanding was Stanley Ridges as an over-educated butler who bursts into a rapturously dramatic line reading from "Samson Agonistes" by Milton, which apparently cracked up Edward Arnold to the point that he could not quite keep a straight face. Additionally, the beloved Reginald Denny gives us all a lesson in baritone elocution, but the screenwriter delights us with some not-so-subtle in-joke references to Denny's heroic WW I fighter plane record, his days as a Hollywood stunt pilot, and his essential work for the US military -- even as the film was in production! -- developing radio-operated target drone planes.

Now, on to Friday the dog. IMDb's biography does not tell us this, but according to his biography at the American Kennel Club's National Purebred Dog Day site, he was the son of Flash, a German Shepherd cinema dog who starred in "His Master's Voice" (1925), "The Flaming Signal" (1933), and "Call the Mesquiteers" (1938). Flash had the shorter ears and paler saddle of the "modern" German Shepherd, while Friday had the longer ears, a longer muzzle, and darker saddle seen in the original Rin Tin Tin.

Like all of the "Rinty" type dogs in the movies, Friday was trained in schutzhund or protection work, and could feign an attack on command. But he went far, far beyond that basic stunt. Throughout the film we see him leaping over shrubs, sailing over garden hurdles, opening doors with his mouth, fetching named objects, plunging out of windows and off of roofs to hard landings, and hair-raisingly scaling tall brick walls by leaping up, hooking his front feet on top and hoisting his body up with a scrabble of hind legs. He runs long distances unguided, escapes a cellar through clever direction, and walks in harness as a seeing eye dog to boot. He is an incredible agility stunt dog with a pleasingly emotive expression, perhaps the finest all-around dog actor i have seen next to Higgins, who was trained by Frank Inn and starred in the "Petticoat Junction" TV series (1964 - 1970), "Mooch Goes to Hollywood" (1971), and "Benji" (1974).

The resemblance between Friday and Higgins is more than a matter of acting style, by the way. In "Eyes in the Night," Friday performs a particularly difficult stunt, clambering up a wall, ascending a rising series of narrow ledges, turning to the right, and entering a window -- a stunt that is almost step for step the same as one later performed by Higgins in "Benji." It is pretty obvious to me that Friday was trained by Frank Inn during his days with Rudd and Frank Weatherwax, where he also helped train Pal, the star of "Lassie" and its sequels (1943 - 1954). The major difference between the two versions of the ledge-and-window stunt is that Friday ascends to the window, finds it closed, backs around and runs at it a second time, crashing through the glass and tearing a lace curtain inward behind him. When this spectacular stunt was reprised in "Benji," with the much smaller Higgins, the window was left slightly open, and Higgins wiggled inside, because it would have been unbelievable to have a tiny pooch break through the glass the way that Friday did. Although the duplication of this stunt, 32 years later, is all the proof i need that Friday was trained by Frank Inn, there is another similarity between the two dogs worth noting: both Friday and Higgins could sneeze on command, a rather unusual trick, and one of Inn's signature pieces of business.

I was so impressed with Friday that i am off to look for the sequel, "Hidden Eyes" (1945), starring Edward Arnold and Friday.

I rated this movie a solid 10 out of 10. Friday is so amazing that my husband and i re-ran his scenes several times, agape with awe over his power and balletic grace. What a wonderful dog!

One Way Street (1950)

A Monotonic and Moronic Film

[1/10 · 14 April 2020]

My husband and i couldn't stand this movie.

A dull, toneless James Mason is a depressed British gang-doctor in Los Angeles. A Swedish actress is his passionless love-interest who has been kept captive by psycho gangster Dan Duryea since she was 14 years old. William Conrad is a fat, lazy thug. Jack Elam poses a threat. Rock Hudson delivers his tiny part handsomely.

So much for Los Angeles Noir. Suddenly, Viva Mexico!

Stereotyped Mexicans, including banditos, peasants, rapists, a priest, and a curandera! enact meaningless roles as guitars are softly strummed. There are goats. chickens, and a horse. The priest is wise. The village peasants are trusting, like little children. Some of them actually are little children.

We disliked this movie so much we watched the second half in little snippets, making fun of it as we skipped ahead. When it ended, we were glad.

Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)

You may need a map

[9/10 · 25 March 2020]

This a delightful detective thriller, made in the inimitable British post-war manner. The cast is comprised of more than a dozen unusual characters who have taken the Orient Express to Trieste. A few of them are innocent and charming, but most of them are law-breakers on one level or another, their crimes ranging from evading customs duties to adultery, theft, assault, and murder.

The plot concerns a stolen diary, but the real action is trying to figure out who is in whose compartment at any given time, because as the police move in on the murderer, the matter of timing and alibis becomes of paramount importance.

The documentary shots of the train itself are exemplary. If you are a train buff, you will greatly enjoy this crude, lumbering, noisy hunk of iron, a giant boiler on wheels, barreling down the tracks as the people inside change compartments, eat, drink, and plot their petty and grand crimes.

Secret Beyond the Door... (1947)

The Death of Lisa Rosenthal

[2/10 · 15 March 2020]

Fritz Lang has long been suspected of murder in the death of his first wife, Lisa Rosenthal. This movie is pretty obviously a creepy attempt on his part to psychoanalyze it all better for himself. It is a disturbing, violent, sadistic, and unconvincing look at femicide. Michael Graves plays a psychotic woman-hating architect who lies about everything, all the time, and keeps at least a dozen scarves laying around his mortgaged mansion so that the camera can zoom in on him twisting them in his hands as he contemplates throttling his wife. Miss Bennet's gowns, furs, and jewelry are literally the best thing this stinker of a film has to offer. Ugh.

Exposed (1947)

Nice Tree!

[6/10 · 6 February 2020]

This was one of those Republic films in which the parts are definitely greater than the whole. It is watchable one time for * Nice location shots all over Los Angeles. * An impressive half-timbered Turdoresque mansion. * A stunningly beautiful oak tree outside the mansion with charisma supreme. * Nice cars. * Fine stunt fighting. * Robert Armstrong. And that's it.

The smart mouthed female detective is grating. The murder arouses no emotion beyond a gasp and a whimper from good-hearted Mary Gordon as a servant. The magnetism between the two young leads is null and void. The stunt fight is lengthy and satisfying, in the true-blue Republic manner. Robert Armstrong is delightful as the good-natured Homicide Detective. And the tree....

Ah, the tree. My husband and i actually re-ran the scene in which the tree first appeared, just to freeze-frame it. What a beautiful tree. I am being completely unironic. The director obviously liked the tree enough that it was given a brief reprise just before the boring all-the-suspects-are-assembled-in-the-drawing-room scene.

The actors who made this film are likely all dead by now. I hope the tree is still living. It was stout and strong in 1947. I wish it well.

Fallguy (1962)

Blood Simple, Alphaville, and 77 Sunset Strip rolled into one

[7/10 · 18 January 2020]

This is, obviously, a low budget movie with a fairly predictable "man on the run" plot. Leaving that aside ...

The opening credits are as good as anything Saul Bass did in the wake of "Anatomy of a Murder."

The jazz score is wonderful, and it is not the composer's fault that the director chose to turn up the volume so high that it becomes intrusive at times and even overrides the dialogue. There is a proto-Peter-Gunn feel to it that is really better than this film deserves.

There are some nice location shots around Los Angeles, and the scenes of the teens dancing at the hamburger joint are almost documentary-like in their naturalness.

Nice cars! Nice bus! Nice short-bed newspaper delivery truck! The hot little convertible and the young male lead give the whole affair the air of an episode of "77 Sunset Strip."

The director seems to come from a planet where people's faces are not important but their shoes, legs, and waists are. Shot after shot is deliberately set up to scope out men's shoes and trousers. The result is almost fetishistic, but, weirdly enough, kind of "manly" at the same time.

The bizarre angle shots in the sterile modern rooms look forward to the 1965 French New Wave Science Fiction / Film Noir cult classic "Alphaville" by Jean-Luc Godard -- only not ironic.

The sleazy exploitation subplot, including underwear-clad escorts, a ridiculous cat-fight, men slapping women around and roughing them up, and multiple negligee scenes, are spectacular examples of what happens when a demented director tries to interject a bevy of pretty young "blonde models" with no acting experience into a noirish crime drama.

Some of the actors are wooden and many of the interior scenes were badly miked, so there are unexpected echoes. and the resultant efforts to correct these deficiencies with overdubbing are failures. So what? Who cares?

The build-up of violence has an early Coen Brothers feel to it, somewhere between "Blood Simple" and "Miller's Crossing," only without their great dialogue. In fact, there is very little dialogue in this film at all, and some of what there is seems improvised.

The ending is completely over the top and veers off into Quentin Tarantino territory, and the denouement is a sweet heartbreaker, and entirely unexpected.

I gave this movie a solid "7" because i think it should be shown to all aspiring film-makers. It is a fascinating study in good intentions that do not quite make it to a professional level. It is not a travesty, like an Ed Wood film, but it is just enough below the threshold of what you are expecting that you wish Raymond Burr, Frank Cady, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Sterling Hayden had been in the cast, and that the director had been Edgar G. Ulmer.

The Judge (1949)

The Judge -- Pilot for a Series That Never Was?

[6/10 · 30 September 2019]

This is a freakish movie, and it plays a bit like the old radio series "The Whistler."

(Remember that one? "I am the Whistler -- and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.")

In this case, instead of The Whistler, we have "The Judge," who opens up his file cabinet of past cases, narrates some opening psychobabble about human minds, and lets us witness first hand the sordid horrors of human psychiatric neurosis, complete with a woozy flashback scene, more casual gun-handling than i have seen outside of a Western, and an acapella choir that sounds like it swallowed a theramin.

And what about Milburn Stone? Wow! Doc Adams on TV's "Gunsmoke" surely deserves kudos for playing firmly against type here. as a man so unexpectedly motivated that to say anything more about his intentions would be to ruin the experience of watching the looks on his face shift with almost every line he delivers.

If this had been a pilot for a very weird short-run TV series, it would have become a cult classic. As it is, it is just straight-out bizarre.

By the way, i'll bet you dollars to donuts that the dog in the opening scenes was trained by Frank Inn, uncredited. It's a larger "Benji" type terrier-shaggy cross, and the stunt is set up exactly like all of Inn's best work with Higgins and his other dogs: The dog has a whole routine or scene memorized, and pulls it off in a nice, long take without ever once looking at the trainer for instructions. Good job, Anonymous Dog! Good job, Frank Inn!

Dead Man (1995)

No No No No No Not the Shiba Inu Puppy!

[1/10 · 22 June 2016]

I am with the reviewer Sean Hooks, who wrote, "I honestly cannot recall the last time I saw a film this bad," and the reviewer Bradley, who wrote, "The editing was so poorly executed that I thought my Wifi went down." -- the funny thing is, i too had exactly the same thought, for real!

I love train films. Aside from some poorly filmed Walschaert valve gears, this movie offers nothing in the way of train footage. You can find better Walschaert valve gears footage on a home video of a G-Scale Bachmann ten wheeler model running in someone's backyard.

But, i hear you object, it stars Johnny Depp! No, actually it misuses Johnny Depp. It is, like, if Johnny Depp was a slightly overfed puppy, say a pudgy shiba inu puppy, and someone put cute little Willie Wonka clothes on him and made him die slowly, slowly, slowly, while ghastly pseudo folk guitar tones droned on and on and this missgeburt appeared in your Facebook feed and when you tried to report it for violating community standards, you got a message from Facebook saying that, no, actually it was fine, because Johnny Depp will be a dead shiba inu puppy now for all eternity.