Monthly Archives: March 2016

The Quatermass Xperiment (AKA The Creeping Unknown)
Directed by Val Guest
Written by Richard H. Landau and Val Guest based on a BBC television play by Nigel Kneale
1955/UK
Exclusive Films/Hammer Films
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Prof. Bernard Quatermass: There’s no room for personal feelings in science, Judith![/box]

This movie ticks all the boxes for classic 50’s science fiction.

Megalomaniac scientist Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) has secretly launched an experimental space ship.  It startles the population when it returns to earth.  Quatermass is in turn startled when, after some to-and-froing, it is discovered that only one of the three astronauts is still alive.  The other two have simply disappeared.  Their spacesuits are now empty shells.  Quatermass cannot get any information from the survivor, Victor Carroon, who is mute, appears terrified and has an abnormal respiration rate and pulse.

Quatermass takes Carroon to his laboratory for treatment over the objection of Carroon’s wife, who along with Quatermass’s own expert thinks the man belongs in a hospital.   Finally, the scientist is forced to relent and Carroon is taken to a clinic where he is to be kept in strict isolation.

I will not reveal everything that happens after Carroon is freed.  It’s nice and creepy, though.  Has a great ending as well.  With Jack Warner as the detective on the case.

I really enjoyed this movie from the very first minutes.  You know how you can tell something is going to be good just from the energy it puts out? Donlevy is fantastic as an eccentric who knows everything and won’t listen to anybody.  I find most 50’s sci-fi more fanciful and amusing than scary.  This one, however, manages to have some genuine thrills.  Recommended.

Trailer

The Big Knife
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by James Poe from a play by Clifford Odets
1955/USA
The Associates & Aldrich Company
First viewing/Netflix rental

Smiley Coy: What do you think of women, kiddie?
Charlie Castle: Oh, there’s room in the world for ’em.

This is a Hollywood expose along the lines of Sunset Blvd. or The Bad and the Beautiful. Unfortunately, it lacks the former’s black humor or the latter’s production values and is an over-the-top mess.

Charlie Castle (Jack Palance) is a big movie star.  In his past life, he was a fiery idealist and theater actor.  His wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), is disgusted with him and wants him to leave the studio.  She is already living apart from him and threatens a divorce if he continues with his life style, which also includes numerous affairs.

Charlie has a problem though.  Ruthless studio head Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger) is pressuring him to sign up for another seven years.  He makes Charlie an offer he can’t refuse when he threatens to reveal that Charlie was the driver in a hit-and-run collision with a child, a deed for which another man took the rap.  Hoff also knows that Charlie was accompanied by starlet Dixie Evans (Shelley Winters) at the time, something that Marion is not yet aware of.

I will not reveal all the twists and turns of the plot except to note that we get a couple of different women attempting seduction by means of blackmail and a murder conspiracy.  With Wendell Corey as Hoff’s right-hand man, Jean Hagen as a would-be adulteress, and Edward Everett Sloane as Charlie’s agent.

The dialogue is overwritten in the way that characterizes many films based on plays by Odets.  The story is too full of incidents for the time allotted and the ending leapt out at me from left field.  Finally, Rod Steiger hams it up ludicrously.  His bleached hair and hearing aid do not help.  The title led me to expect a film noir but I got an overblown melodrama instead.

Trailer

A Generation (Pokolenie)
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Written by Bohan Czeszko from his novel
1955/Poland
Zespol Filmowy “Kadr”
First viewing/Hulu

[box] When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. — Andrzej Wajda[/box]

Despite some evident propaganda obligations, Wajda reveals his mastery of the medium in his first feature film.

The setting is occupied Warsaw.  Stach Mazur lives in a slum bordering on the Jewish Ghetto.  He has launched his personal resistance against the Nazis by stealing coal from boxcars headed for Germany.  One day, he is spotted.  His comrades are killed and he is wounded.  He flees to a workingman’s pub.  The denizens, impressed by his courage, offer to get him a job.

Stach reports to work at a company that makes bunkbeds for German barracks.  He is the low man on the totem poll and worked inhumanely.  A workmate lectures him on the teachings of Karl Marx and the duty of workers to fight for their rights.  He puts Stach in touch with Dorota, a young woman who organizes a Communist youth militia.

The rest of the film follows the battles of the youth brigade with the Nazis.  Among other things, the young people support the uprising in the Ghetto.  Along the way, Stach falls in love with Dorota.  With a very young Roman Polanski as one of the partisans.

Wadja manages to combine beautiful composition with a brisk pace.  The story is kind of predictable but I was engrossed the whole time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVedEkQIXLU

Clip – wow

House of Bamboo
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Harry Kleiner and Samuel Fuller
1955/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Griff: But ever since you saved this guy’s neck, you’ve been acting funny, well I know what you’re trying to do, but you’re not going to get away with it, cuz I won’t let you.[/box]

This film offers Sam Fuller’s cockeyed worldview along with some beautiful color shots of post-War Tokyo.

As the film opens, a train guarded by Japanese police and U.S. soldiers is robbed and one of the soldiers is killed.  One of the robbers is wounded and gives the police some sketchy clues about an Eddie Spannier and the robber’s own secret wife before dying.  Next thing we know, Eddie (Robert Stack) appears in town, having been released from prison.  Eddie meets with the wife, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), who is apparently innocent of any knowledge of her husband’s criminal connections.  He then strong arms a couple of Japanese pachinko parlor bosses into paying him protection money.  This brings him to the attention of Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), the gangster that runs the pachinko parlor racket in Tokyo and masterminds many other crimes.

Sandy takes a liking to Eddie and soon he is muscling out Griff (Cameron Mitchell) as Sandy’s “ichiban man”.  Mariko assists Eddie by becoming his “kimona woman” and staying over at his place.  The rest of the movie follows the further criminal exploits of the gang and the joint police/US Army investigation.

Although it all takes place in broad daylight, this is a solid film noir with several stunning shots and a cracking ending shootout at an amusement park.  Fuller gets in some digs at Ugly Americanism.  According to the commentary, Ryan was the only actor who picked up on Fuller’s homoerotic subtext.  It’s certainly pretty subtle.

Trailer

Allan Arkush – Trailers from Hell

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Directed by Henry King
Written by John Patrick from a novel by Han Suyin
1955/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Han Suyin: Our gorgeous lie did not even last the night. [/box]

This romantic weeper exceeded my fairly low expectations.

The setting is Hong Kong in the closing days of the Chinese Revolution.  Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) is a proud Eurasian.  She is a widow and lives for her work as a resident at a local hospital.  One of the board members convinces her to take a break and attend a cocktail party with him.  There she catches the eye of Mark Elliot (William Holden), an American correspondent.  He begins a dogged pursuit of her. She is almost immediately informed that he is married.  For some reason, she believes that she is immune from love and accepts his invitations on dates.  She is wrong.

The remainder of the movie tells their love story.  Once Mark has broken her resistance,   Suyin becomes completely devoted to him.  Their affair has many ups and downs.

The story is no great shakes but I thought the movie was well-made with some beautiful views of Hong Kong.  I can recommend it to folks who like this kind of thing.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Costume Design, Color; Best Music, Original Song (for the title song); and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  It was nominated for Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Sound, Recording.

Trailer

The Violent Men
Directed by Rudolph Maté
Written by Harry Kleiner from a novel by Donald Hamilton
1955/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lee Wilkison: Here in Archer we don’t pay much attention to that hogwash about the meek inheriting the earth.[/box]

Edward G. Robinson and some outstanding action sequences add spice to an otherwise fairly routine Western.

John Parrish (Glenn Ford) is a valiant ex-Union officer who has retired to a cattle ranch to recover from his war wounds.  As the story begins, he receives a clean bill of health to get married and go on a long honeymoon.  His fiancee Caroline desperately wants to return East to civilization.  While in town, John witnesses the cold-blooded murder of the Sheriff by two thugs hired by Lew Wilkinson (Robinson), the crippled owner of the Archer Ranch.  Wilkinson has managed to snap up most of the land in the valley for a song through threats and intimidation.  Although John deplores these tactics, he is determined to sell out himself for whatever price and refuses to get involved.

John goes out to the Archer Ranch for negotiations.  He meets Lew and the rest of the clan.  Lew’s brother Cole (Brian Keith) is a ruthless character.  Lew’s wife Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is all sweetness and light.  We soon learn that under her cool exterior lies the most avaricious of the entire lot.  She is secretly in love with Cole.  The Wilkinson’s daughter Judith is on to her mother’s shenanigans.

Some thugs ride over to John’s place with efforts to encourage him to sell low but end up killing a couple of his ranch hands.  From here on out, it is war and John proves to be an equally ruthless adversary.

This Western contains a horse stampede, a cattle stampede, several conflagrations, and plenty of gunplay.  These were the high points of the film to me along with Robinson’s nuanced performance.  He starts out being a pure villain but ends by revealing a human interior.  The film’s range-war/reluctant-hero themes have been done many times before and since.  On balance, I would say it is worth seeing by Western fans.

Clip

Illegal
Directed by Lewis Allen
Written by W.R. Burnett and James R. Webb from a story by Frank J. Collins
1955/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/My DVD collection

[box] Victor Scott: Well, every time you go into a courtroom, it’s a gamble.

Frank Garland: I’m the house, Victor. I never gamble![/box]

This film gives us another solid performance from Edward G. Robinson and the debut of Jayne Mansfield.  Otherwise, it is eye-rolling stuff.

As the film begins, Victor Scott (Robinson) is a District Attorney with a burning drive to win at all costs. His most recent success is convicting a man of murder on some pretty flimsy evidence and sending him to the chair.  At the last minute, Victor learns that a gangster has confessed to the crime and tries to call the execution off but it is too late.  Devastated, Victor quits his job and turns to the bottle.  His able assistant/ward Ellen Miles (Nina Foch) is unable to comfort him and he advises her to marry another lawyer from the DA’s office, Ray Borden (Hugh Marlowe).  Despite the fact that Ellen is actually in love with the much older Victor, she does.

After his drunken bender lands him in court for disorderly behavior on a charge that should have been assault, Victor starts work as a defense attorney.  His drive to win is undiminished and he turns to ever more shady methods of achieving an acquittal. Eventually, an embezzler turns to him for help.  Victor manages to coerce the victim bank into accepting less than half the money in exchange for an agreement not to prosecute.  It turns out that the bank is actually a front for gangster Frank Garland (Albert Dekker) and Victor has himself a new client.  This serves his-new found greed nicely until another murder gives Victor the most important case of his life.  With Mansfield as Garland’s “protege”/secretary.

The non-sequitors in this movie are mind-boggling.  One of the most egregious is when Victor sucker-punches a witness in court to “prove” that he could have been unconscious when a fight took place.  Instead of Victor being disbarred, the case is dismissed!  There are many more.  Still, I wouldn’t call any film with this cast a total loss.

Trailer

Creature with the Atom Brain
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Written by Curt Siodmak based on his story
1955/USA
Clover Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Frank, you may be a crackpot, but you’re also a genius.

This entry from schlock-meister “Jungle Sam” Katzman is actually fairly decent.

Gangster Frank Buchanan was sent up the river by a combo of traitors in his mob and lawyers from the DA’s office.  When he left for prison, he vowed that he would see them all dead, Now he is out of prison and has hooked up with a German neuro-scientist to carry out his fiendish plot.  In a secret lab, reached only by crawling through yards of filmy tunnel, the two use electrodes to animate corpses stolen from the morgue.  These they control with a television and microphone.  The zombified bodies start on a rampage.

The police are baffled and Det. Dave Harris turns to his friend Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning) for help.  The rest of the movie follows the grisly story as Buchanan expands his focus to include the new enemies on his trail and Walker’s wholesome 50’s wife and daughter.

This is somewhat repetitive but over all solid.  The zombies look pretty cool and the acting is quite acceptable.  Short, sweet, and OK for a break from classier viewing.