boblipton Reviews

Born to Kill (1947)

Tierney Gets Them All

[8/10 · 25 April 2024]

Lawrence Tierney kills a woman he's interested in but goes out with other men. His room mate, Elisha Cook Jr. Tells him to get out of town. Tierney takes the train to San Francisco. He meets Claire Trevor, back from Reno and set to marry Phillip Terry. It's clear Tierney and Miss Trevor yearn for each other, so Tierney marries her sister, Audrey Long. Meanwhile, sleazy Walter Slezak has been hired by Esther Howard to investigate the murder.

Tierney plays his usual psychopath, Cook his side boy, and the entire production reeks of various sorts of forbidden love. At times it approaches the comic, but everyone takes things so seriously that it comes out as compellingly bizarre. Perhaps this was why the audiences didn't cotton to it at the time, that and the large number of films noir available to them that year.

The Magic Flute (1975)

K. 620

[8/10 · 24 April 2024]

The Queen of Night((Birjit Norden) sends Prince Josef Köstlinger and bird catcher Håkan Hagegård to rescue her daughter, Irma Urrila, who has been kidnapped by Ulrik Cold. At least, that's the story they start out with.

Ingmar Bergman's production of Mozart's opera was originally done for television, and then released into movie theaters. To succeed fully, it has to succeed at a stage opera, a television show, and a movie. I'll say that it works handsomely for the first two media, not so well for the last, where it largely becomes a television production offered in a different venue.

The issue for me is that the show starts with the overture, a brief glimpse of the stage, then we look at the audience staring intently forward, presumably at the stage. Even in a theater, that's not the way people behave. Audience members drift into their seats,climbing over people, apologizing, removing their clothes. Even if by some miracle, they are all already seated, they're talking to their neighbors, looking around the hall at the other audience members. Thus we've already destroyed the verisimilitude that is at the heart of movies, the "seeing is believing" aspect. We're not drawn into the opera, and later reaction shots of audience members don't help. Perhaps we are meant to be reassured. This, their rapt interest tells us, is a good production, worthy off our attention.

And it is a good performance, a fine one indeed. So if you wish to enjoy it for that, I can't really dispute your taste, since I enjoyed it a lot too.

Burn 'Em Up O'Connor (1939)

Heroic Nat Pendleton

[5/10 · 23 April 2024]

Dennis O'Keefe is a race-car-obsessed farm boy. After he gets fired, he and fellow hayseed Nat Pendleton get jobs with Harry Carey's racing car outfit. While Pendleton becomes a mechanic, O'Keefe becomes a driver when a series of almost identical accidents kill Carey's other drivers. Pendleton takes it into his head that they aren't accidents, but murders. But how?

While O'Keefe s the lead in this MGM programmer and gets to pitch woo at Cecilia Parker, it's really Pendleton who's the hero of the story -- yes, I know, but to me, Sam is the real hero of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It's an okay story, the sort of thing a Poverty Row producer might have done, but the MGM polish is oddly apparent in the racing sequences, when the shots are clearly process photography. With Addison Richards, Charley Grapewin, Tom Neal, Si Jenks, and Clayton Moore.

The People's Enemy (1935)

What Remains Is Excellent

[7/10 · 22 April 2024]

There's about fifteen minutes cut out of the copy of this movie that I looked at, and it's a shame. I was expecting very little, and then I looked at the credits and realized that director Crane Wilbur had called in a lot of favors as a member of the Tyrone Power dynasty. Not only is Charles Coburn present in his second film -- he would not begin his regular appearances in the movies for another three years -- but Joseph Ruttenberg is the cameraman, and Preston Foster and Melvyn Douglas give very strong performances.

Lawyer Douglas has gotten gangster Foster out of a lot of beefs with the law, but he can't do anything against the Feds, and so Foster goes up for a long time. Douglas continues to represent him fairly and honestly, and even makes a strong plea for parole, but Foster's kid brother, William Collier Jr. Threatens another lawyer, who talks the parole board out of letting Foster go. Collier blames Douglas, and Foster slowly goes mad in prison.

But Foster slowly starts to reform, almost certainly under the influence of Foster's abandoned wife, Lila Lee, and his child. It makes no difference to Foster, who breaks out of prison.

Ruttenberg handles the camera with his wonted excellence, the script is a lot stronger than you'd expect out of Poverty Row producer Burt Kelly releasing through RKO at this stage of his career. Kelly would eventually go to Columbia for some of the later BLONDIE movies to end his career. He would die in 1983 at the age of 84.

The Bold Caballero (1936)

A Good B Version, And Heather Angel

[6/10 · 22 April 2024]

The military commandante of Santa Cruz, Sig Ruman, kills the new governor and frames Zorro. The dying governor gives the place to his daughter, Heather Angel, and tells her to seek vengeance on his murderer. This leaves Zorro/Don Diego Vega in a pickle, as he loves Miss Angel. So he offers to help Ruman woo Miss Angel, while fopping it up for her.

Republic Pictures' first color production (Magnacolor, an offshoot of Prizma) is a pretty good effort, with Yakima Canutt and Joe Yrigoyen among the stunt doubles. Bob Livingston as Zorro is pretty good in the conedy parts, and a full-face mask allows his doubles to do the stunts convincing; when Livingston has to handle a sword, the cameramen are obviously covering for him.

It's all good fun, and if it doesn't average as good as Fairbanks or Power, it's good, clean fun.

The Lure of Crooning Water (1920)

Poor Copy For Assessment

[5/10 · 22 April 2024]

Actress Ivy Duke collapses on stage. Her doctor prescribes a rest at Crooning Water Farm, owned by Guy Newall (real-life husband of Miss Ivy) and his wife, Mary Dibley. At first Miss Duke is a pain, treating Newall like a dumb beast, but soon she falls in love with him, and he with her.

The copy I looked at was a very poor one, but between that and the now-hackneyed plot, I didn't think much of this film. Over on the Continent, film was busy reinventing itself to combat the dominance of Hollywood. Within a couple of year,s the British industry would have a downturn from which it never really recovered, while American producers fought back by going to Europe and hiring all the behind-the-screen talent that was available. In the meantime, a lot of English-language productions in 1920 were stodgy in their pacing, and this is one of them. Miss Duke is lovely and a fine film actress in her other surviving, better preserved picture, of the period, FOX FARM, but here she is not shown to advantage. Newall is an inert lump except in flashback sequences, and rather surly in his few titles.

A better copy might yield a more favorable opinion, but when dealing with movies of this age, we are frequently left noting, as Popeye might, that we have what we have, and that's all we can base our assessments on.

The Omaha Trail (1942)

What's Going On Here?

[5/10 · 22 April 2024]

How did they get the engine to Promontory Summit to celebrate the transcontinental railroad? I always assumed they drove it from the east over the tracks. This movie says different: they had to freight it a good part of the way, up the Missouri by boat, and then by ox cart. Apparently there was a sizable business in such freighting, and when Edward Ellis hires James Craig to do the job, fellow freighter Dean Jagger realizes it means the end of his business, and so sets out to sabotage it. Also Craig has been shining up to Jagger's girl, Pamela Blake.

All right. It's a story, and I'll accept it for the sake of a story without doing any research. It all ends with. An Indian attack and then a gun duel. But that's not the only peculiar thing about this movie. As an MGM movie it has some fancy sets, as you might expect, and a long cast list that runs from Metro contract players down to regular cast members of B movies, people like Tom London and Kermit Maynard. But it runs only 62 minutes. Was it cut down before release? If so, what subplots were lost? Or was Mayer figuring to get back into the B western business, a field MGM had abandoned with the coming of sound?

The Night of June 13 (1932)

A Good Cast In A Dirty Little Comedy

[7/10 · 21 April 2024]

In the new, pricey suburban development, it's an ill-assorted group of neighbors: climbing new money, snobbish old money, younger people who don't care, and aging wives who very much care about their husbands being gallant to pretty girls. Clive Brook comes home on the late train to find his wife, depressed Adrianne Allen, has committed suicide and left a note explaining that she has done it because he has run off with Lila Lee. To keep Miss Lee's name out of it, he burns the suicide note and puts his faith in the legal system. When, however, his neighbors lie about what they heard and saw to cover up their own peccadilloes, it looks like his reward will be the hangman's noose.

Stephen Roberts directs from an early novel from Vera Caspary in which she rips apart the morals and pettiness of people. Roberts gets a lot of comedy from the satire, and there are performances from such well-remembered performers as Charles Ruggles, Gene Raymond, Mary Boland, Charley Grapewin, and Helen Jerome Eddy. The production is more efficient than cinematic, but works very well for all that.

Vive la France! (1918)

Good Vehicle For Miss Dalton

[5/10 · 21 April 2024]

French Dorothy Dalton and Quebecois Edmund Lowe are engaged and living in Los Angeles. A parade inspires Lowe to enlist, and he is soon posted to France. Miss Dalton receives a letter from an old friend recounting the death of her parents at the hands of the Germans, and she is soon there as a nurse. When the Germans reinvade her village and are cruel to her, she almost despairs. Meanwhile, Lowe is ordered to deliver a message to the Americans about a counterattack. His airplane is shot down, guess where? And guess who has to carry the message.

It's Lowe's third or fourth movie, and director Roy William Neill had been wielding the megaphone for only a couple of years, so this movie looks like it was compiled from snippets of other films and a mish-mosh of Miss Dalton's other vehicles for producer Thomas Ince. She was a popular action star for the company. Although she is certainly very broad in her action, she pop off the screen. The battle sequences look like they were lifted from other films and assembled into a mostly coherent fight by the editor, for a good programmer.

Hazard (1948)

Lots Of Fun Until They Have To Worry About The Plot

[6/10 · 21 April 2024]

Casino operator Fred Clark loves compulsive gambler Paulette Goddard. She's run up $16,000 in debt to him, which she has covered with a rubber check. No problem if she marries him. She refuses. He offers her double or nothing on a card cut: either she squares the debt, or marries him. She agrees, loses, and runs off. Clark hires PI Macdonald Carey to track her down.

Under the direction of George Marshall, the first hour of this movie is an agreeable comedy, made funny by eccentrics that inhabit this cinematic world, played by competent comic actors in odd situations: Stanley Clements, Percy Helton, Max Rosenbloom, and so forth. At about the hour mark, however, with the movie two-thirds over, Marshall seems to recall that he's got to get these two to fall in love and eliminate Clark as an impediment to the course of true love, so there's a shift into more standard comedic situations. And while Miss Goddard is fine in comedy, Carey is not.

He was one of those performers who emerged after the Second World War, classically trained and terrified of looking silly, and incapable of taking a pratfall. So he was replaced in the movies by a later model and instead appeared in over 3000 episodes of Day Of Our Lives. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but he probably wondered what had happened. Meanwhile, Miss Goddard made lots of money, married interesting men and was accused of being a communist. To this she replied "Say that again and I'll hit you with my diamond bracelet."

The Magic Skin (1915)

Way Too Broad

[4/10 · 21 April 2024]

Everett Butterfield lives with his father, playing the piano. They are almost broke. Their loyal servant, William West, spends his savings paying off their creditors. Then father dies, and his rich uncle offers him a place to live if he gives up this artistic nonsense. Butterfield turns him down. Taking West's last money, he moves to Paris, where he rooms with the family of Mabel Trunnelle, who loves him. Butterfield, however, only has eyes for dissolute Sally Crute, who wears low-cut gowns, drinks cocktails, and smokes. After Miss Trunnelle gives him all her hard-saved dowry, telling him a man left it for him, he takes it and goes to a jewelry shop to buy Miss Crute a necklace. There he sees a hide with strange writing on it. While waiting for the shopkeeper, he falls asleep. When he wakes, he can read the writing, which promises everything he desires. However, as each desire is met, the hide will shrink, and his lifespan with it.

It's based on a story by Balzac and is rather repugnant. Everyone overacts ridiculously, and behaves obnoxiously, except for West, who seems to be an idiot. It does have the cinematic virtue of not having many titles; Edison, as a production company favored that, and director Richard Ridgely seemed to think this over-the-top stop, combined with over-the-top performances, was the way to go.

I Wanna Be a Life Guard (1936)

Killing At The Pool

[8/10 · 21 April 2024]

Popeye and Bluto spot Olive Oyl at a swimming pool and apply to Wimpy for the open position of lifeguard. They compete for the job by beating each other up.

By this point, most of the Popeye movies had settled into a pattern of the sailor man and Bluto beating each other up, with Bluto winning until Popeye eats some spinach. Even so, the variety of ways of pummeling each other, the incidental gags that Dave Fleischer insisted on crowding into the cartoons, and the songs, with the music written by Fleischer family member Sammy Timberg, keep them enormously entertaining. This one is up to that high standard.

Escape (1940)

MGM Admits The Truth

[6/10 · 21 April 2024]

Robert Taylor is in Germany in search of his mother, Alla Nazimova. Once a prominent stage actress, she had retired to the United States while keeping her German citizen. Finally, she recently returned to Germany to sell her house and has disappeared. Finally he learns that she is in a concentration camp, about to be executed for treason. Taylor asks casual acquaintance Norma Shearer to help. She is an American-born countess who runs a girl's school and is the mistress of General Conrad Veidt.

It's based on a novel by Grace Zaring Stone published under a pseudonym. By 1940, the situation in Germany had become clear enough that Hollywood was abandoning it as a market. Even so, people were afraid; Franz Waxman's score is uncredited.

This being a movie version of a novel, some things are obviously missing. Veidt's character has gaps all the way through, indicating a lot was left out. Instead, Mervyn Leroy concentrates on his players' emotions; Taylor gives a fine performance as a terrified man, and Miss Shearer is up to her best standard, even if Felix Bressart gives one of his poorest performances.

Four Mothers (1941)

Good Cast In Contrived Disaster

[7/10 · 20 April 2024]

Here we are with a "Well, Doctor, here I am again!" movie, following FOUR DAUGHTERS and FOUR WIVES. Claude Raines is back as daddy, with four grand daughters -- two of them twins -- and everyone is very happy as Frank McHugh's Florida development is making them all rich. But then there's a hurricane and tidal wave down south, the development is wiped out, and everyone in town turns against them for their lost speculation. The family has lost everything, and Raines is fired from his job at the music institute.

It's certainly pleasant to see them back again, but they've lost the A talent behind the camera, with the screenplay written by Stephen Morehouse Avery -- one Oscar nomination, but mostly forgotten -- and William Keighley directing. It's one of those movies that makes use of the old saying that if you want G*d to laugh, make plans, and requires a deus ex machina to sort out the problems. Essentially, it's a B series movie with a fine cast that you can forget as soon as the movie ends.

Our Post Office (1965)

Our Dull Documentary

[3/10 · 20 April 2024]

In this Encyclopedia Britannica educational film, a narrator explains in simple terms how the post office works. He makes sure to use short words, and a tone of voice that indicates that he doesn't think his audience is capable of understanding, well, anything at all.

I despise this short subject. I despise it because it is quite possible to show how a postal system works without treating your audience like its composed of stupid children: not ignorant children, stupid children, who are incapable of learning.

If you think I am being harsh on this film, I advise you to hunt up a film by the British General Post Office that covers a lot of the same subject, and does it in an interesting manner that posits that most of its audience is ignorant of how it works, but is not stupid. It is NIGHT MAIL by Harry Watts.

Bob.

Burma Convoy (1941)

A Man's Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Man's Gotta Do

[5/10 · 20 April 2024]

The valiant link between the sea and the Chinese armies centered in Chungking is the Burma Road, over which valiant men blah blah blah. Well, you know how this begins, setting up another adventure of the real men who drive the trucks and the real women who love them. In particular, there's Charles Bickford, a no-nonsense man's man who's talking about heading back to Kansas City (which one he never says) to open a garage and marry that redhead, along with kid brother Frank Albertson. They've got their railroad tickets to Lashio -- or maybe they are in Lashio, wherever that is -- which leaves nice girl Evelyn Ankers, helping Cecil Kellaway run the hotel, while doing a Joan Davis imitation...... where was this sentence heading? Oh, yeah. Miss Ankers loves the big galoot. She doesn't say anything, but broadly hints with her eyes. Which Bickford doesn't notice, because he's a guy.

Then Albertson gets killed, so Bickford decides to stay and ge the dirty Jap who killed him. Because that's what men do.

In other words, it's a typical B movie, filled with Willie Fung and Turhan Bey. At just under an hour it moves too fast to confuse you.

Fright (1956)

What's Frightening Is Fleming Not Having His License Lifted

[5/10 · 20 April 2024]

Psychiatrist Eric Fleming talks a serial killer down from a bridge so the police can capture him. Among the crowd watching is Nancy Malone. While the press makes a fuss over over the doctor, she approaches him to see if he can help her with her general dissatisfaction. He suggests dinner, but she wants a professional appointment, so they wind up doing both. Gradually he comes to realize that she thinks she is the reincarnation of Baroness Mary Vetsera of the Mayerling Incident, in which the lady and her lover, Crown Prince Rudolf killed themselves. He figures out why this is, but then she vanishes and the police come to him with a letter accusing him of wanting to kill her. They aren't fashed about it, just investigating.

Despite its title, W. Lee Wilder's movie isn't frightening, creepy, or anything but the sort of thing someone who was born in Vienna during the Empire might think is interesting when maudlin drunk. Lew Davies offers a score that consists of a warbling theremin and woodwinds in a minor key, and while Miss Malone is ok, Fleming talks like he is a television doctor peddling cigarettes. The script is by Wilder's son Myles, who had more success with television sitcoms. Ned Glass and Sid Raymond have tiny roles.

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #8 (1932)

100 Wall Street

[5/10 · 20 April 2024]

One of the innumerable random facts that Robert Ripley talks about in this episode of Warner Brothers' BELIEVE IT OR NOT shorts is that at the time, 100 Wall Street was an apartment house, with flats renting for $25 a month. 100 Wall Street has recently been in the news as I write this, with some even more fantastical assertions made, including being a dozen or so stories taller than it actually is, and being fully rented. I am barely able to believe Ripley's assertions; I don't believe former President Trump's.

Which is the primary difference between Ripley's tales, and our modern age. Ripley pulled a few whoppers in his time, but his stuff was meant for amusement.

Pros and Ex-Cons (2005)

Dumber Than Dumb

[4/10 · 20 April 2024]

What do you get if you re-imagine a Guy Ritchie crime movie as DUMB AND DUMBER? Pretty much this movie, as Sam Worthington and Steve Bastoni carry out a hit for David Wheeler, but kill the wrong man.... over and over again. Nor are the police brighter.

It's a rather mild burlesque of Ritchie's stuff, with the body count remaining high, while the blood remains in small, but reasonable doses. The issue is that Ritchie has a good, if macabre sense of humor, while the people involved with this film seem to think the same thing over and again is hilarious, as we are informed by Michael Lira's 60's-style, horn-dominated score, and the out-takes at the end.

The Big Moment (1954)

The UJA

[5/10 · 19 April 2024]

A boy is caught stealing. Instead of the police, he is given a home and training for a skilled trade. A doctor is drafted, and thanks the people of the small town he has been tending for making him welcome; a girl has too many memories of death by barbed wire, and leaves the kibbutz. Robert Young introduces these three stories and makes an appeal for the United Jewish Appeal in this short subject.

So do many well-known actors, from Thomas Mitchell to Donna Reed. As an old joke goes, "Funny, you don't look Jewish." Not all of them were. They were, however, glad to offer their services in support of a worthy charity.

The Passenger Train (1940)

The Choo-Choo

[4/10 · 19 April 2024]

Here is the train station, and here is the train, and here are the people who work on the train. And here are a few disconnected details, and then a specific boy gets off the train and the train goes on.

That's what we see in this early Encyclopedia Britannica educational film. It's not just the poor outlining; we should have been introduced to the boy early on, to give us a point of view. It's also the bewildering variability of the sophistication of information. One moment the narrator is defining what a menu is. The next he is reassuring the audience that the train's kitchen is clean. One moment he is explaining that passenger fares and mail pay for the train; yet another, he is mentioning that the train usually travels over flat ground, without explaining why.

You can only explain so much in a ten-minute short. Still, better organization and a focus on what points are important to you would help.

Fire: What Makes It Burn (1952)

Tryin' To Set The Night On Fire

[5/10 · 19 April 2024]

This Encyclopedia Britannica film considers fire, the fact that it needs heat, oxygen, and a fuel to burn, and how to put it out. Of course, the subject is much more involved than that; you don't need oxygen; fluorine will often work even better. But the basics are there, even though the narrator never mentions that fire is a subset of oxidation.

After I wrote that last sentence, I checked several dictionary definitions, and found them all recondite, so let's go with the narrator. Usually I spend my reviews of these schoolroom films making fun of them. I can think of a few ways to do that, but let's ignore them. This is a decent discussion, even if I find the narration spoken in a dull manner.

Three Faces East (1930)

Had My Head In A Whirl

[6/10 · 19 April 2024]

Constance Bennett shows up at the home of William Holden -- no, not that one -- where she soon contacts the butler, Erich von Stroheim. She is a spy working for Germany, as is he. Soon se has him captivated, as well as Holden's son, Anthony Bushell. But there are other spies in the house, and it soon becomes clear that there are double agents in place. Who is working in who's real interests.

The first thing I noticed about this movie is the slow and stately pace at which the dialogue proceeds. Warner Brothers may have been producing all-talking pictures for a couple of years, but director Roy Del Ruth, working from a stage play, with screen dialogue by Arthur Caesar, clearly wants every word to be understood, so muddled is the situation. By about ten minutes in I knew who everyone was working for. By halfway through, I was utterly confused.

Rare Birds (2001)

What Goes On Up There

[6/10 · 19 April 2024]

William Hurt has a failing restaurant in Newfoundland and an estranged wife in Washington D. C. He and friend Andy Jones -- who's building a small submarine -- discover a lot of cocaine in Hurt's wine cellar. After they establish it is good cocaine (so to speak), Hurt starts a rumor that a type of duck thought extinct has been spotted in the bay his isolated restaurant sits on. Suddenly people start showing up to look for the duck and eat, and his first hire is Molly Parker.

It's a very low-key comedy, as the heat develops between Hurt and Miss Parker, Jones' submarine gets an outing, and some guys who are obviously not birders set up in a Winnebago near the restaurant.

Hurt has always been a puzzle to me as a movie star -- and, according to reports, to himself as well. He moves slowly from inert, depressed lump to hopeful lump and I can see the emotional journey, but it's the situations and fog-bound images that held my interest. The movie itself is a paean to the polite eccentrics of Canada.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? (1975)

Why Rent A Shark When It Doesn't Have Lasers In Its Head?

[2/10 · 18 April 2024]

Bob Dishy's father wants back the money Dishy has stolen from the company. Dishy's wealthy wife, Joanna Barnes, wants a divorce. Dishy's response is to take out a million-dollar insurance policy on her, and then hire Bill Dana for $25,000 to kill her. When it turns out that the doctor who examined her is not a doctor, Dana finds Dana to call it off. Dana, however, has hired Jack DeLeon for $20,000 to kill her. When they track him down.... well, you get how this is going.

It's all shtick all the time from insane characters, as I realized when they got down to Richard Libertini. Insane characters can be fun, but the audience needs someone to hold onto, some one to react to the insanity, which you don't get until Libertini and Vito Scotti are riffing off each other in. Italian. That wasn't anywhere near enough to keep my interest, and the writers seem to have agreed, since they didn't bother writing an ending.