PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Forgotten Noir Volume 5

Two OK movies in Forbidden Noir Volume 5, the first up on the disc is F.B.I. Girl. It's a 1951 crime film that was written by Dwight V Babcock and Richard Landau with William Berke directing. Dwight wrote original stories or screenplays for 2 dozen movies and over 3 dozen TV episodes. You might have seen The Mummy's Curse, House Of Dracula, House Of Horrors, The Brute Man or She-Wolf Of London. Not all great films but entertaining. Richard has a few less movies and even more TV scripts than Dwight. I know I've seen Secret Of The Whistler, Spaceways, The Quatermass Xperiment, The Black Hole and Lost Continent. I know I've seen even more of his TV writing. William directed 86 movies and I've seen a few of them.

A sad story of a governor who murdered a man twenty years ago. Raymond Greenleaf plays the governor and he's managed to keep the secret so far. He fears a crime crackdown might lead to his getting fingerprinted and exposed. His pal, or sorts, Raymond Burr is a sleazy scumbag who is helping the gov get his fingerprints out of the FBI. He had a gal all primed and she fails, unfortunately Burr finds out after his goons have killed the woman. Since the woman worked for the FBI they take notice and put Cesar Romero on the job.

Audrey Trotter plays another woman at the FBI, Cesar uses her to get evidence on Burr. She's rumbled in the act and it's touch and go there. A nice solid story that moves along well. There's a good cast and they do the script right. A bit of film on a TV had a bit of the comedy styling by Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall. Peter would do himself right and get out of comedy and get into hosting Hollywood Squares. All in all a nice entertaining film.

Tough Assignment is the second feature and it came out in 1949. Don "Red" Berry and Marjorie Steele are a newly married couple, they've just returned home from their honeymoon. They stop off to get some groceries only to find the man at the butcher's has been attacked by hoodlums. They inadvertently snap a pic of the thugs as they leave and the thugs follow them home to get the film. A bit of rough and tumble leaves the couple alive but annoyed.

Don gets the idea that there's something fishy at the butchers and he's thinking protection racket. None of the butcher's in town will talk to him but he finds out that the problem is a gang has been forcing the butcher's to buy their illegally harvested beef products. The rustler's have a ranch and a meat factory. Quite a set up and they aren't none too happy to have the newspapers doing a story on stolen beef. They send some thugs after the couple but they manage to get away in time. The rest of the movie has the reporters going undercover at the ranch. Don maneuvers the crooks right from the get go.

There's a bit of jeopardy and some fun characters. I liked Don and Marjorie, too bad she only made four films. Marc Lawrence, Steve Brody and Sid Melton are among the crooks. Fun to watch. Glad to have it.

Forgotten Noir Volume 2

Loan Shark 1952 Directed by Seymour Friedman with a Eugene Ling screenplay adapted from a story by Martin Rackin.

I'm not much of a George Raft fan, not for any reason, just I guy I never had much interest in. He's alright here as an ex-con who goes undercover for the cops. His brother-in-law is killed by loan sharks and he gets involved for some payback. George seems to old for the part but that's the way things go. Decent story and good cast. Worth seeing.

Arson Inc 1949 Arthur Caesar wrote the story which was adapted for the screenplay by Maurice Tombragel and William Berke directed.

Another undercover plot, this time a fireman goes undercover to investigate an arson ring. Good story and good actors. I liked it more than the other film but I would watch both of them again someday.

Night Boat To Dublin 1946

I picked up a copy of Night Boat To Dublin just because it's got Robert Newton in it and he's not playing a pirate. I haven't seen many of the movies he made when he wasn't playing Long John Silver. He's in the 1939 Hitchcock film Jamaica Inn. Robert's career started in 1924 and ended in 1956 when he passed away at age 50. He's in 41 movies and only 2 were Long John films. He died just after making the TV series The Adventures Of Long John Silver. I used to watch that series when I was a kid and grew to love the rascally Long John.

Night Boat To Dublin came out in 1946 and the screenplay was written by Lawrence Huntington and Robert Hall with Lawrence directing. Lawrence directed over 30 films but I think I've only seen one other. It's hard to find these older British films over here. The DVD of Night Boat To Dublin is from the UK. There's no edition out in the US.

Robert plays Captain David Grant, he's a spy who's on the trail of a traitor. The villain has kidnapped a Swedish atomic scientist. The fellow on the right is Captain Toby Hunter who's being played by Guy Middleton. They've got a lead on the villain called Faber and Captain Grant has a plan to infiltrate Faber's organization. He gets a clerk job in Faber's law office. Faber gets tricked into believing Grant is a AWOL soldier who stole some plans and he takes him on to help in his criminal activity. His first job for Grant is marry a young German woman. That's her below, holding Robert's hand. Don't worry, he'll be A-OK.

It all goes well until Faber's henchman fumbles onto Grant's deception. It's touch and go there for a while. I liked the script, the characters and the general production. I was glad to have picked it up. I'll want to watch it again.

The Many Faces Of Sherlock Holmes

I went looking for a cover shot of The Many Faces Of Sherlock Holmes and found The Many Faces Of Sherlock Holmes. The first is the Mill Creek Entertainment 3 DVD set that you see the cover to above. The second is a 47 minute documentary, narrated by Christopher Lee, about the various actors who've played the detective. I watched the first 10 minutes and it seems interesting enough. I'll finish it while I type this.

I bought the DVD set because it had two Sherlock Holmes TV productions on it that I hadn't seen. So, I thought. When I went to put it away with the rest of the Holmes stuff I found I had gotten a different DVD and watched it 3 years ago. Totally forgot about it. I even posted a blog post about it.

Sherlock Holmes & the Leading Lady 1992 Written by Bob Shane and H R F Keating, with Peter Sasdy directing. Mycroft asks Holmes to investigate the theft of stolen plans for a bomb detonator. Holmes and Watson travel to Vienna where they run into Irene Adler. Irene is played by Morgan Fairchild and Vienna is played by Luxembourg.

Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls 1992 Written by Bob Shane and Gerry O'Hara, directed by Bill Corcoran. This time they filmed in Victoria Falls as well as Luxembourg. The King asks Sherlock to protect the Star Of Africa on a trip to Cape Town. There's lots of outdoor travel and plenty of killing. Jenny Seagrove plays Lilly Langtry and Claude Akins plays Theodore Roosevelt.

Both are a bit stodgy but they're fine. Lee and Macnee do a fine job. I gave them both a 6 when I saw them the first time and I still stick by that now.

The second disc contains the 1965 feature A Study In Terror with John Neville. I had just gotten this on a Blu-ray that looks so much nicer. The rest of that disc has 5 episodes of the 1950s TV show The Adventures OF Sherlock Holmes with Ronald Howard. I already have them in a DVD set that I got ages ago. The series is in the public domain and there are several sets out there, often mixed with other PD Holmes material. Just like this set. You can see them all on YouTube.

The third disc has 5 older films that are all in the Public Domain.

A Study In Scarlet 1933 Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes in a fairly good film. Warburton Gamble is Watson and Anna May Wong co-stars.

The Sign Of Four 1932 Another fairly good film with Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Hunter as Watson.

Murder At The Baskervilles 1937 Another film with Arthur Wontner as Homes. This time Watson is played by Ian Fleming. Not the James Bond guy. It's an OK film.

Dressed To Kill 1946 This Holmes film is in the Public Domain, as is the one below. Basil Rathbone plays Holmes and Nigel Bruce plays Dr Watson. Better than all the others here by far. You can find better copies of the whole lot of the Rathbone and Bruce films on DVD. I recently bought the Blu-Ray set and was mighty pleased.

Terror By Night 1946 Another good one with Nigel and Basil.

Here's another production I found while looking for other Holmes material. I hadn't seen before. Now that I've watched it, it's pretty poor in every way. Patrick Macnee plays Sherlock Holmes, making him one of 4 actors to play both Holmes and Watson. Sadly, he's part of the pretty poor formula. One of the worst Holmes films ever is based on a play by some Canadian bloke. He wrote the screenplay and it's also pretty poor. Just everything about it reeks. Have a look.

Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of London 1993

Here's a documentary called Sherlock Holmes The Great Detective.

Power Of The Press 1943

Sam Fuller wrote the story for Power Of The Press, a 1943 film set in the newspaper world. Robert Hardy Andrews wrote the screenplay and Lew Landers is the director. Lew is noted as a prolific director, often compared to cinematic workhorses, Sam Newfield and William Beaudine. I'd just seen one of his early films, The Raven, the other day. POTP was his first feature length film, his 5 previous efforts were all serials. He's got 175 credits on the IMDb and a lot of the later ones are TV listings with multiple episodes. If he hadn't died in 1962, at age 61, he might have had an even longer listing.

Guy Kibbee is a small town newspaper editor who inherits a newspaper in a big city. The previous owner was murdered when he said he was going to start using the newspaper to support the war effort. Guy steps in and immediately has trouble with Otto Kruger. Otto's a scum bucket of the more heinous kind. He's power mad and an isolationist, he has people killed when it suits him. He framed a man for the killing of the newspaper owner and covers for the real killer. Joining Guy in the good fight is Gloria Dickson who had been the owner's assistant. It's a tough fight as Otto cheats and schemes to stay in control of the paper.

Otto will get his in the end but it's touch and go there for a while. A good solid story that I found entertaining. It's totally something we've got going on today. They even mention fake news.

The Mystery Of The 13th Guest 1943

I found a copy of The Mystery Of The 13th Guest on YouTube today. I hadn't seen it before and after watching a few minutes I decided to continue to the end. It's directed by one of my favorite directors, William Beaudine, and the screenplay is by Tim Ryan, Charles R Marion and Arthur Hoerl. It's based on a novel by Armitage Trail called The 13th Guest. The book was adapted in 1932 as The Thirteenth Guest with Ginger Rogers. I've seen that and it was OK. Trail also wrote the novel Scarface.

In the 1943 movie the Morgan family meets at the bequest of the rich patriarch. They all sit at a table with 13 chairs but there are only 12 of them. Morgan shows the 8 year old granddaughter an envelope and says she will see it again in 13 years, when she's twenty one. Only then will the rest of the family know who gets the cash. Thirteen years later the girl is a young woman, played by Helen Parrish, and on her birthday she's given the envelope. She's supposed to go to the closed up Morgan mansion to open the envelope. She does and some weird things happen. Later she's found dead and the police arrive. Tim Ryan and Frank Faylen play Lt Burke and his dopey sidekick. Dick Purcell plays Johnny Smith, a detective hired by one of the Morgan family. More suspicious stuff starts happening, the family lawyer is found electrocuted and Helen comes back from the dead.

There's a bit of mystery, some creepy old house stuff, and a good bit of humor. It's just about an hour and it moves along quickly, no wasted time there. I enjoyed the thing and would recommend it to those that like that sort of thing. It's pretty much a B programmer but it was fun and I'd be happy seeing it again someday.

Moontide 1942

Moontide is a 1942 romantic crime drama, some say an early noir, starring French actor Jean Gabin and English actor Ida Lupino. It's based on a book by actor Willard Robertson but the story has been tamed by the censors of the day. Willard has 145 credits as an actor on the IMDb, he started in films in 1924 and stopped when he died in 1948 at the age of 62. I've seen some of the films on his list but I don't have any recollection of him in them. Even his picture on the IMDb doesn't look familiar. The screenplay was written by John O'Hara and an uncredited Nunnally Johnson. Fritz Lang started directing lasted less than three weeks and left. Archie Mayo took over and finished the picture.

I had recently seen Jean Gabin in a couple of Inspector Maigret movies from 1958 and 1959. I really enjoyed those. He's 38 when he plays Bobo, the world weary Frenchman who's somehow wound up in this small southern California fishing village. Gabin is good int he role, and he's working with several good character actors. Thomas Mitchell plays Tiny, Bobo's pal, a weak man and a man who's trouble. He has a bit of a hold over Bobo and that's going to smash things up a bit before the end of the movie. Claude Rains plays Nutsy, he checks doors and hangs around the bar. He turns out to be the best pal Bobo ever had. The two are walking back from the bar when they hear some yelling down by the beach. A woman has walked into the sea. Jerome Cowan, Ralph Byrd and Victor Sen Yung were names I knew.

Bobo rescues Ida Lupino and saves her from being arrested by lying to the police. Ida was 24 at the time and she'd appeared in several British films before coming to America. She made a big hit with the public in the 1940 Raoul Walsh film They Drive By Night. That's a movie with Humphrey Bogart and George Raft as a pair of truck driving brothers. I should have a look for it. I don't think I've seen it, it's not on My Watched Movie List, but who knows.

Bobo brings her to the place he's staying, the Live Bait shop along the break water, and she winds up staying there. The pair start an odd relationship and there's one hurdle after another. That picture above is a screen cap from the film. I love the look of the place. Strictly from afar though, not a place I would want to live.

The Wikipedia says the movie didn't do too well, that's also repeated on the commentary, but I really enjoyed it. In more recent years critics have been more kind to the movie. I liked the story, the script is pretty good and the characters interesting. Often it takes a while for the public to catch up to a film. Sometimes a lot of people have to die.

I listened to the commentary right after the film was over and then watched the 26 minute making of. All time well spent. I'd recommend it.

Warner Brothers Horror/Mystery Double Features

Here's another Warner Brothers Archive Collection, Warner Brothers Horror/Mystery Double Features, featuring horror and mystery titles from the 1930s and 1940s. I'd seen some of them before, on Turner Classic Movies, it's probably what sent me looking for the DVDs. I ordered this set ages ago and it got buried on the To Be Watched shelves. It surfaced recently and got seen. Here's a list of the films, 2 to a disc. All of the films are short, ranging from 54 to 71 minute, they don't waste much time on padding. All of these films were under the First National Pictures banner when they came out. The company started in 1917, under another name, and in 1929 they were absorbed by Warner Brothers. They made films under the First National Pictures heading until 1936.

 

Find The Blackmailer 1943 This is based on a magazine story called Blackmail With Feathers by G T Fleming-Roberts, the screenplay was written by Robert E Kent and the director was D Ross Lederman. Robert E Kent has a good number of writing credits including Rock Around The Clock and Don't Knock The Rock (both of which I just coincidentally picked up on clearance DVD yesterday),  Zombies On Broadway, Charlie Chan In Reno, a couple of the Great Gildersleeve films, a couple of the Dick Tracy films, a Philo Vance, and so on.

Jerome Cowan is a private eye, he gets hired to find a talking raven. He finds the owner of the bird, dead. There's a mix of larceny and comedy going on. Jerome likes to quip and he cam take a punch. There's a politician getting blackmailed, a dead guy, a crooked lawyer, a pretty and sexy actress, some thugs, all the things that make a mystery fun.

The Smiling Ghost 1941 Stuart Palmer wrote the original story and he co-wrote the script with Kenneth Gamet. They had some help from Philip Wylie on the story and Ben Markson and Ralph Spence on the screenplay. Lewis Seiler is the director. Stuart Palmer is the creator of Miss Hildegarde Withers. I've read several of his books and seen many of his movies.

Wayne Morris a goofy guy who's out of work. He's got bills piling up and he puts an ad in the paper looking for any work that's legal. He's offered a $1000 to play the fiance of Alexis Smith for a month. Wayne thinks it's a bit goofy but he's a goofy guy who needs that 1000 samolians. That's a lot of money for a month in 1941. Turns out Alexis has a history of short lived husbands. She's gotten rich on the insurance and been dubbed the Kiss Of Death Girl by the news media. Lucky for Wayne he's got his valet, Willie Best, and spunky reporter Brenda Marshall on his side. They keep him from being victim number four. It's pretty much a comedy with bit of mystery and horror. The New York Times said it was predictable and inane. Sometimes that's what you need in a film. I liked it and I'd already seen it once before. I always like Willie Best, he always delivers on his roles, even if he's just playing a similar character.

Sh! The Octopus 1937 The movie is based on two plays, The Gorilla by Ralph Spence and Sh, The Octopus by Ralph Murphy and Donald Gallaher. George Bricker smashed the two plays together into the screenplay and William McGann directed. If the previous movie was a goofy comedy this is the same but with goofy turned up to 11. It's like George took all the gag scenes out of the two plays but didn't spend any time linking them all up. Still, I got a kick out of it.

That Hugh Herbert, Marcia Ralston and Allen Jenkins above. Hugh and Allen are a couple of bumbling detectives who are after the notorious criminal the Octopus. The script quickly puts everyone in an old lighthouse. The boat disappears and the lot of them are trapped. There's a dead body hanging from the underside of the light and a real octopus keeps attacking. The gags keep coming so you don't have much time to think about the plot holes. No matter. I had a laugh. Someday I'll watch it again.

 

The Hidden Hand 1942 Here's another film that was based on a play. Rufus King wrote the play Invitation to a Murder, Anthony Coldeway and Raymond L Schrock wrote the screenplay, Benjamin Stoloff is the director.

A rich old lady just happens to have a criminally insane brother. She arranges for him to escape prison and dresses him up as her butler. That's them on the left above. The rich old lady has invited her relatives for a reading of her will. Then the killing starts. Willie Best is the scaredy cat chauffeur. There's oodles of gags and plenty of slapstick. I'll certainly want to watch it again.

Mystery House 1938 This time the movie was adapted from a novel, The Mystery Of Hunting's End, by Mignon G Eberhart, Sherman L Lowe and Robertson White wrote the screenplay and Noel M Smith was the director. I don't care much for the poster above, the one below is better but no winner.

Dick Purcell isn't much interesting but Ann Sheridan certainly is. It's a locked room mystery with a dead CEO and a secluded hunting lodge filled with suspects. William Hopper, Paul Drake on the Perry Mason show, is one of them. There will be some more killin's before they get to the end of the movie. Ann plays the nurse of the CEO, she'll play the same character in the next movie, and Aline MacMahon played the same character in a 1935 movie called When The Patient Slept. I haven't seen that. I did enjoy Mystery House and would watch it again.

The Patient In Room 18 1938 Mignon G Eberhart wrote the novel with the same title, Eugene Solow, Robertson White wrote the screenplay and Bobby Connolly and Crane Wilbur directed. Ann Sheridan is a nurse again and this time she's working in a hospital. Patric Knowles is there for rest cure. Someone steals $100,000 worth of radium and kills a patient. Then the head doctor is murdered. Pool Patric has to solve the case and keep him and Ann from getting murdered. Not quite as funny as some of the other films int he lot but still entertaining.

All of them were worth seeing and the set's a nice addition to my pile of movies. I'll be wanting to watch them again.

Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive

I'm always on the look out for a movie collection. Usually that means a lower cost per film. The Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive is a collection of 5 films from the 1940s. I'd only seen the last in the list below so it was a nice treat for me. I got it from Amazon, $13.99, not bad for 5 movies. They're short ones, most about an hour, and they're all packed on 2 discs. The movies look and sound fine but there are no extras, other than 3 trailers. You can see John Carradine and Bela Lugosi on the box. They both worked a lot for Universal. They're joined in this box by Basil Rathbone, Milburn Stone, Lon Chaney Jr, Alan Ladd, Martha Vickers, Broderick Crawford, Paul Fix, Lionel Atwill, Russell Hicks and plenty of other good character actors who worked at Universal Studios.

The Black Cat is a 1941 horror picture that lays on a bit of comedy. Horror movies of the time were pretty lightweight when compared to the ones you see today. It's got a script from Robert Lees and Robert Neville with Albert S Rogell directing. Albert directed a good number of pictures in a career that started in 1921 and ended in 1954. Half of his 124 credits were silent films, half of those shorts. I just wasn't familiar with most of them. I'd recently seen his Painted Faces with Joe E Brown and his 1940 film Lil Abner.

The Black Cat is based loosely on the Edgar Allan Poe story. An elderly spinster is on her deathbed and the greedy relatives are hovering for a paycheck. With that start you won't be surprised that there's a murder shortly after. Th corpses start piling up, even the cat isn't spared.

Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne and Alan Ladd are the cast members that I had heard of before. I liked it despite the annoying character that Hugh plays. That guy got on my nerve. Broderick was more fun. The house was fun too, lots of secret passages and nicely dressed sets. The story was full enough for the short running time of 71 minutes and there was fun stuff for the actors to do. It's probably my favorite in the set.

Man Made Monster is a 1941 mad scientist film. It's got a script by Harry Essex, Len Golos, Sid Schwartz and director George Waggner. This was one of 2 dozen movies George directed between 1938 and 1951. He directed the next film in this set and in 1942 he directed The Wolf Man. After that I can't remember seeing any of his other movies. In 1954 George started directing TV and he worked on a lot of popular shows. The last two programs he worked on were the 1966 seasons of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman.

Lon Chaney Jr is a carnival sideshow guy who does an act with electricity under the name Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man. Lon's just been in an accident, a bus hit a high power line, everyone was killed but Lon. Lionel Atwill and Samuel S Hinds are doctors and scientists. They take Dan into their home and laboratory to study the effects of electricity on him. Lionel is the guy that pushes Dan, charging his body with larger and larger doses of juice. Dan becomes a slave dependent on the current Lionel supplies.

Samuel tries to stop Lionel from going further but Lionel isn't going to put up with losing his greatest medical break through. He desires to create emotionless, brainless, electrically powered slaves out of humans. He can't seem to see how that's a bad thing. He orders Dan to kill Samuel and poor Dan has to obey. Powered up Dan can kill with the touch of his hand. Dan's tried and sent to the electric chair. Ironically, the juice makes him into more of a monster. He escapes and goes after Lionel, hellbent on revenge. Someone's days are numbered. It was pretty entertaining, they pack a lot into an hour. Nice sets and effects too.

Horror Island is a 1941 horror comedy that was based on a story called Terror Of The South Seas by Alex Gottlieb. The screenplay is by Maurice Tombragel and Victor McLeod with George Waggner directing.

Dick Foran and Fuzzy Knight are the owners of a boat that owes a lot of cash. They help Leo Carrillo out of spot of trouble and he shows them his treasure map. He has half of the map and some masked man has the other half. The masked man keeps chasing after Leo. The treasure map gives Dick an idea to raise some cash. He's going to use his island to host a treasure hunt event at 50 smackaroonies a head. Of course once they all get there, the bodies start piling up and the chase is on. There's some silly stuff going on and a bit of romance. It was entertaining.

Night Monster is a 1942 horror mystery about a vicious revenge. Clarence Upson Young wrote the script and Ford Beebe is the director. Ralph Morgan invites the three doctors who saved his life, but left him a cripple, to his house. There's a variety of characters there. Soon after the doctors are settled in their rooms, the killing starts.

Bela and Lionel get top billing on the poster but they aren't the main characters in the film. There's a mystic in the film and he really teaches the baddie to materialize missing flesh. Not quite as fun as the others but still entertaining.

Captive Wild Women came out in 1943 and it's a heavily circus themed story. It's directed by Edward Dmytryk, the story is by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, and the screenplay is by Ted Fithian and Neil P Varnick. John Carradine is a mad scientist, he takes the glands from a live woman, killing her, and puts them into a gorilla. The gorilla turns into a pretty girl who gets a job at a circus. She's played by the lady on the poster, the shockingly savage Acquanetta. Her job is to stare at the lions while the lion tamer does his act, her eyes calm the lions. It's got way too many lion taming scenes and I was right quick on the fast forward button. The least interesting of the films in the set. Still, the whole package is mostly above average and that's fine with me. A good addition to my collection and some of those films I'll watch again.

The House Of Fear 1945

The House Of Fear is the 10th of the Rathbone and Bruce Sherlock Holmes films. It came out March 16 1945. It's kind of based on the 1891 story The Adventures Of The Five Orange Pips by Arthur Conan Doyle. Roy Chanslor wrote the screenplay and Roy William Neill is the director.

The 5 pips have become 7 pips in the movie and the recipients are 7 men who live in a castle. They call themselves The Good Comrades. An insurance agent comes to see Holmes and Watson. He holds policies on the 7 men and when he comes to Holmes two of them are dead. He thinks someone is trying for the insurance and he's like the detectives to help.

There's a third body by the time the trio of them get to the castle. Lestrade shows up to investigate. Four more deaths follow and Watson disappears. It has a bit of a goofy ending. You sure can't pull the wool over Sherlock's eyes. It was entertaining, moves briskly, there's a pile of corpses and a good mystery.