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Daily Archives: November 2, 2015

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Posted on November 2, 2015 | 2 comments

Dangerous Crossing
Directed by Joseph M. Newman
Written by Leo Townsend from a radio play by John Dixon Carr
1953/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. — Oscar Wilde[/box]

This is basically The Lady Vanishes with a sex change on the high seas. Sadly, Joseph M. Newman is no Alfred Hitchcock. Not terrible though.

Ruth Stanton Bowman (Jeanne Crain) boards an ocean liner with her husband of a few hours for their honeymoon cruise to Europe. They get settled in their cabin and then her husband asks her to wait in the bar while he sees the purser about something. This is the last she sees of him. After awhile she starts looking for him only to discover no one will admit to seeing him board and the cabin they were in is now bare, the contents now being in another room.

After investigation fails to turn up any evidence of a husband, the captain assigns the ship’s doctor Paul Manning (Michael Rennie) to look after the now hysterical woman. The search continues as Ruth begins to believe that her husband is on the boat and in terrible danger.

This movie is basically on one note throughout. Fortunately, it is only 75 minutes long and the production values and acting are pretty good. A lot of the sets were left over from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Trailer

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The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Posted on November 2, 2015 | 4 comments

The Blue Gardenia
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Charles Hoffmann; story by Vera Caspery
1953/USA
Blue Gardenia Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Sally Ellis: I didn’t like Prebble when he was alive. But now that he’s been murdered,that always makes a man so romantic.

This certainly doesn’t measure up to Lang’s other noir for 1953, The Big Heat. It’s not bad though.

Norah (Anne Baxter) works as a telephone operator and lives with a couple of her co-workers. She is engaged to a fellow who is away fighting in Korea and plans to celebrate her birthday at home alone. Then she gets a Dear Jane letter and falls to pieces. Almost immediately the phone rings and it is Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) trying to ask out one of her roommates. Norah, who is now in no mood to be alone, stands in for the roommate who is out on a date. Prebble doesn’t mind the switch and sets about getting Norah very drunk on cocktails at the Chinese restaurant he takes her too. Then he takes her home to his bachelor pad. She is so drunk she can barely stay conscious.

The next morning she wakes up back home with a terrible hangover. That’s when she reads about Harry’s murder. Every clue points directly to her. She can’t remember a thing. She is so sure she will be apprehended that she decides to entrust her fate to a newspaper man (Richard Conte), who is out for an exclusive on the case. With Ann Southern as one of the roommates.

This doesn’t have brilliant pacing and is fairly predictable. It’s entirely watchable, though. Burr is great as always. Evidently he was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood but during this period he was just brilliant at playing a creep (as here) or a very scary heavy.