PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

London Blackout Murders 1943

London Blackout Murders 1943 Screenplay by Curt Siodmak, directed by George Sherman.

Mary MacLeod's home in London is bombed during WW2 and her parents are killed. She's given a room in a house above a tobacco shop. John Abbott is the owner of the shop, he's not got much product to sell. Still, he manages to keep busy, he's been sneaking out at night during the blackouts and killing people.

While we know what he's doing the Scotland Yard boys are coming up spare in the clue department. They know or suspect the victims are connected with the Nazis but have little or no proof. Mary accidentally sees the syringe hidden in a pipe and starts to wonder, the killings are reported to be done with an injection. Eventually John is caught out by an Inspector and tried. There's a bit of discussion about John doing it for the right reasons and it's a shame he has to go to the gallows. John's resigned, he did his duty and he's ready to pay the price.

It makes 59 mins seem longer but it's still an interesting movie. The moral tale of the murderer who killed for the right reasons but did it the wrong way. What a world!  You can watch it on YouTube, the print looks OK but it's only 53:31 mins.

The Gorilla Man 1943

The Gorilla Man 1943 Screenplay by Anthony Coldeway, direction by D Ross Lederman. Anthony has a 153 credits on his IMDb page, he started in 1911 and the last one listed is in 1957. A couple of titles from the sound era are familiar. D Ross started a bit later, 1925, and he still has a respectable 150 plus credits on the IMDb. He directed features pretty much from the get go through 1950, the last 7 years of his career were in TV. I know I've seen Tarzan's Revenge, Adventure In Sahara, a couple of Lone Wolf movies and a Boston Blackie, and The Return Of The Whistler.

The guy in the middle is John Loder and he's Captain Killian, the man the newspapers have dubbed the Gorilla Man for his climbing ability. The other two are Paul Cavanagh as Dr Dorn and John Abbott as Dr Ferris. The two doctors are Nazi spies, they hear of the daring raid that Killian lead on a German instillation in France. Killian was hurt in a grenade blast during the raid and he's being brought to the UK in a ship that lands near where Dorn has a clinic overlooking the sea. Ferris is a wanted murderer and he likes to experiment on people, experiments that kill them if they're lucky.

Dorn arranges to have Killian taken to his sanitarium by having Ferris be on hand when the small rowboat carrying Killian lands on the beach near the sanitarium. Handy, huh. No matter, the doc's trick everyone into believing that Killian is a bit out of his mind to discredit the info Killian has on a German raid planned a couple of weeks later.

Killian is on to their tricks so the Nazi scum raise the stakes and have Killian framed for the murder of the wife of one of his men. He had been to the apartment to see her that evening, he delivered a letter to her from her dead hubby. The letter, Ferris lying about not seeing Killian leave the building and an open 2nd floor window are evidence the police detective can understand. Killian is arrested and charged but he escapes and the man hunt is on.

It's a nice tight little spy thriller, there's only 64 mins and they move along at a nice clip. There's more murders and plenty of running about. There's a bit of goofy romance near the end but nothing I can do about that. I enjoyed it and would watch it over again. Lucky for me, I bought the Warner Archives DVDr. I couldn't find the movie on YouTube, there's a bit of clip in the link above.

Best Of British Classics Double Feature Vol 1

   

Tomorrow We Live 1943 Released in the US as At Dawn We Die, which I find sounds hopeless, that's the opposite of what the movie is about. It's WW2 and the German's have occupied France, John Clements is a Frenchman who has some intel on the German's U-Boat base to give to the British. The resistance operates in the town and they set up an escape to England.

The Nazis are harsh masters, fining the village for violations, abusing and killing the citizens for minor infractions. It gets worse once the SS get there. There's a whole subplot devoted to collaborators. The things people had to do to stay alive, didn't always pan out. A lot of people died.

Not a happy story but a hopeful one. Dorothy Hope wrote the original story, Anatole de Grunwald wrote the screenplay and George King directed. A good solid film that has interesting characters and a nice bit of danger. You can see it on YouTube. I've linked to it in the title above.

Inquest 1939 Elizabeth Allan is accused of murder and Hay Petrie plays the KC that defends her at the inquest. It's a nice complicated story that's based on a play by Michael Barringer, he adapted his own play with Francis Miller, the director is Roy Boulting. There's a good bit of humor, despite the hangman looking over Elizabeth's shoulder. Hay works to find out what happened and comes through a champion. Well worth seeing.

Cottage To Let 1941

Cottage To Let is a 1941 British film that was titled Bombsight Stolen over here. It's adapted from a play by Geoffrey Kerr, with a screenplay by Anatole de Grunwald and JOC Orton, the director is Anthony Asquith.

A ditsy country lady has let the cottage on the estate to Alastair Sim. She's also offered it to the military as a hospital. The program to place city kids in safer places has an order to put 20 kids there. They wind up leaving two, one is played by a teenage George Cole in his first role. John Mills plays a British pilot who jumped out of his failing plane and wound up in Lock Tay. He's hurt so they take him to the cottage. He gets one of the rooms and pushes one of the kids out to the manor house. George follows when Alastair shows up with this paid rent receipt.

The daughter of the ditsy lady falls for John, leaving her current suitor out in the cold. The suitor works for her father, he's an eccentric scientist who's currently working on the best bombsight anyone has seen. George is a bit of a Sherlock Holmes fan and he spots that the butler is a planted cop. There's a pack of Nazi spies working to get the bombsight and there are plenty of red herrings making this or that one guilty looking. We do find out who all the scumbags are and a couple of them get some heavy justice laid on them. That was funny. I did like the movies sense of humor and the nice brisk pace. There's a bit of action and a good ending. Nice job from all the cast, especially Alastair, George and John Mills. You can see a copy in the link in the title above.

Friday Night Movies 789

The First Of The Few is a 1942 British film that was called Spitfire in the US. I couldn't find any good poster images for the British title, I had to settle for the one on the left. The original story is by Henry C James and Katherine Strueby, the screenplay is by Miles Malleson and Anatole de Grunwald, the director is Leslie Howard. It was Leslie's last role as an actor, he died the following year, the plane he was in was shot down by the German Luftwaffe.

Leslie is RJ Mitchell, the man who designed the Spitfire fighter plane. He'd been designing planes since the early 20s and they won a lot of speed records. He was first guy to use one wing instead of the two that were popular at the time. The company he worked at didn't agree and he left them. They hired him back later and then they were bought out by a bigger company who wanted Mitchell as their head designer. The head of that company knew that the future needed men like Mitchell.

David Niven plays RJ's test pilot and Rosamund John plays RJ's wife. The trio visit Germany just after Hitler has taken control, the pro-war rhetoric convinces RJ he must build a war plane that's better than anything. He works too hard, gets sick and dies. It's all melodramatic in the movie, it's like he worked himself to death for the sake of the country.

In real life RJ got cancer in 1934, he slowed down some and totally stopped working in 1936, he died the following year. They don't even mention cancer in the film. Still, good work out of Leslie, David and the rest of the cast. I liked most of the film, a little too much melodrama mixed in with scientist working to solve a problem, but I was still glad to see it. I'd prefer a film like The Dam Busters to this.

Berlin Express is a 1948 American film that was partially shot in the ruins of Frankfort and Berlin in 1948. Curt Siodmak wrote the story, Harold Medford wrote the screenplay and Jacques Tourneur directed.

Robert Ryan is an American agricultural expert, Paul Lukas is a German peace activist Dr Bernhardt, Merle Oberon is a French woman who's Bernhardt's secretary, Charles Korvin is a Frenchman, Robert Coote is a British teacher and Roman Toporow is a Russian officer. They all meet on a train from Frankfort to Berlin. Bernhardt is blown up on the train but we find out it's really an agent who was killed, Bernhardt is in disguise. Bernhardt is only safe for a few minutes, he's kidnapped by the Nazi underground after the train arrives in Berlin.

Merle convinces Robert, Charles, Robert and Roman to help her find Bernhardt. They set out to find the guy. We know he's being held by a fanatical brew-master who wants the Reich to rise again. The investigation takes them around the city, there's an incredible amount of rubble and destruction, yet people continue on. A good few of them are still looking backward to the glorious Nazi past that's slipped out of their fingers. You can't be sure who to trust.

It's a bit pseudo-documentary style with a narrator filling us in on what we are seeing. The cast is great, the script is great, the rubble is great. Happy to add this to the small pile of Jacques Tourneur films I would want to watch again.

Millions Like Us 1943

Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film. The original screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, the guys also directed. I like those guys quite a bit so I bought the DVD from Amazon. It appears to be a bootleg of unknown origin but it looks alright. You can see a decent copy on YouTube.

 

The movie starts in 1939 as we meet the Crowson family, they're heading off to the south of England for a seaside holiday in Hastings. There's plenty of interesting footage of  train stations, streets and countryside. When the war breaks out the family helps out with the war effort, dad is in the Home Guard, daughter Phyllis joins the Auxiliary Territorial Service, daughter Celia gets posted to a factory making airplane parts. Everyone has to make due with rationing and other hardships. The German's bomb the area around the factory occasionally and the women have concrete bunkers to hide in, they don't appear that safe, there's a lot of stress. Celia meets a Scottish flight sergeant and they marry. They honeymoon in Hastings, staying at the same B&B that Celia has stayed in since she was a toddler. The town is all sandbagged up and ready for the Nazi invasion from France. The war doesn't go the sergeant's way but Celia carries on at the factory.

Millions Like Us has the fourth and last appearance of Charters and Caldicott, played Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. They appeared in The Lady Vanishes, Night Train To Munich and Crook's Tour. The two would appear together in other films but as different characters. They add a bit of humor to the hard times. There's some humor as the different classes of citizen rub up against one and other. One of the woman at the factory is pretty posh and she loathes working on a lathe making airplane parts. The foreman is always on her case and they wind up in a relationship.

I enjoyed Millions Like Us and was glad to have added it to my collection. I thought it was worth a look and would recommend it to people who don't mind a war time melodrama. I've seen most of the films by Gilliat and Launder and hardly any of them aren't re-watchable. The Wikipedia says the film was popular in Russia. 

The Goose Steps Out 1942

The Goose Steps Out is a 1942 Will Hay movie. Bernard Miles and Reg Groves had the idea, Angus MacPhail and John Dighton turned that idea into a screenplay, Basil Dearden and Will Hay share the directing credit. Will co-directed three films with Basil, he might have gone onto direct more of his own films but his failing health ended his career. Cancer and a stroke crippled him but he managed to rally and he hung on until 1949.

 

The Goose Steps Out is set during the Second World War. Will is William Potts and he turns out to be the exact double of a German spy. That same spy is in British custody  and the War Office wants Potts to impersonate the spy. He's to travel to Germany and steal info on a new German secret weapon. In Germany Potts is put to work teaching young German spies all about the UK. Charles Hawtrey, William Hartnell, Peter Ustinov and Barry Morse are cast members I knew.

It's a nice slap in the puss to the Fuhrer and there are some other good jokes too. The film was popular at a time that people were pretty down and it still holds up fairly well. I laughed and was glad to have picked up the DVD. I will have a Will Hay film festival someday.