Monthly Archives: June 2016

China Gate
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Samuel Fuller
1957/USA
Globe Enterprises
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win. – Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s[/box]

Sam Fuller keys in on many familiar Viet Nam tropes years before America was in the war.

An international mercenary force is backing the French in the Indochina War.  The USSR is smuggling supplies to the Viet Cong through a network of tunnels near the China Gate. The French call on “Lucky Legs” (Angie Dickinson), a boozy mixed-race entertainer to use her seductive talents and connections to find out the exact location of the tunnel.  She refuses the mission for any amount of money but agrees to do it for a guarantee that her five-year-old son can be sent to the U.S.

She is not happy when she finds out that Sgt. Brock (Gene Barry) will lead the Foreign Legion patrol.  She and Brock were married but he deserted her when their son turned out to look Chinese and not white like his wife.  Now everybody in the movie thinks Brock is a complete louse and tells him so whenever possible.

We soon discover that the couple’s love has not diminished, though it will take the rest of the film for Brock to accept his son.  Lucky Leg woos Viet Cong leader Maj. Cham (Lee Van Cleef), who is also of mixed race origins for info on the tunnels.  The film ends with some heavy combat and explosions.  With Nat King Cole, who also sings the title song a couple of times, as one of the patrol and Marcel Dalio as an aged one-legged French priest.

From the small boy clutching the puppy at the beginning of the film (the dog is the last edible animal in Hanoi) to other larger-than-life situations later, this film could be by none other than Samuel Fuller.  Another trademark is his anti-racist theme and hard-hitting combat dialogue.  I may not have been in the mood for weirdness when I saw it, though, as the film kind of dragged for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNcNd4cCOvs

Trailer

The Spirit of St. Louis
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder, Wendell Mayes and Charles Lederer from a book by Charles A. Lindbergh
1957/USA
Leland Hayward Productions/ Warner Bros./Billy Wilder Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Charles Lindbergh: Now, I don’t propose to sit on a flagpole or swallow goldfish. I’m not a stuntman; I’m a flier.[/box]

Billy Wilder makes the story of a man alone in a plane richly cinematic.

This is the story of Charles Lindbergh’s (James Stewart) historic transatlantic solo flight. The story opens with Lindbergh lying in bed unable to sleep the night before he is set to attempt the crossing.  We get his story as he tosses, turns, and reflects on how he raised the money and got his plane built for the flight.  We learn that six men have died attempting this same feat.

After Lindbergh’s suspenseful takeoff in fog over a muddy runway, we are alone in his plane.  He never did get to sleep and grows increasingly loopy over the 33 hour flight.  A house fly joins him in the plane and he begins to talk to it.  Later in his exhaustion he begins to talk to himself.  We get more details from earlier in his life through his thoughts.  We also get to watch some dazzling scenery from the air and live through several scary incidents.

I had heard of this film for a long time but had not seen it or realized it was written and directed by Wilder.  It certainly is not characteristic of his work.  It shows, though, what an accomplished director he was even without his trademark wisecracks.  The flight scenes are especially beautiful.

This film was a notorious flop.  Lindbergh hated Stewart’s portrayal of him and most felt he had been miscast as a man almost half his age.  I liked it a lot though.

The Spirit of St. Louis was Oscar-nominated for Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer

The Brothers Rico
Directed by Phil Karlson
Written by Lewis Meltzer, Ben Perry and Dalton Trumbo; story by Georges Simenon
1957/USA
William Goetz Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Johnny Rico: [to Eddie] Okay, okay, so nobody’s blaming you. Let’s just say something happened way back when, huh? So maybe I am gonna die, but Eddie, you’ve got even bigger troubles. You’re gonna live.[/box]

An entire family is dragged down by the mob in this effective late film noir.

Eddie Rico (Richard Conte) has gone straight.  He used to work as an accountant for the mob but now he runs a successful laundry.  Yet when he gets an early morning call asking him to hide an associate in a back room, he agrees.  No questions asked.

His life becomes more complicated when his brother Gino comes to call.  Gino says he was the trigger man and brother Johnny (James Darren) was the driver in a mob assassination.  Now the mob is looking for Gino and he is terrified.  Johnny has disappeared.  Eddie gives Gino money to help him leave the country.  Soon Eddie’s “Uncle” Sid, the mob’s boss, summons Eddie to Miami.  Eddie and his wife are trying to adopt and this is happening at the worst possible time.

In Miami, Sid tells Eddie that Johnny’s brother-in-law has gone to the DA and he is afraid Johnny will snitch.  He asks Eddie to locate his youngest brother, warn him, and get him out of the country.  Things get pretty bloody after that.

The wages of crime, like sin, is death and this is a very dark noir.  Conte is excellent as the conflicted protagonist.  I have a mixed reaction to Karlson’s crime films.  I liked this one a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWcSC1bLNjo

Trailer – spoilers

Kronos
Directed by Kurt Neumann
Written by Lawrence L. Goldman; story by Irving Block
USA/1957
Regal Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Hubbell Eliot: We have half of the equation; we can turn matter into energy. But up there, they have the second half; they can turn energy into matter.[/box]

This B sci-fi film is kind of a mixed bag.

A truck driver is humming along to “Something’s Gotta Give” on his radio as he tootles down a desert road.  Suddenly he sees a small beam of light before him.  There is a blinding flash and the trucker is instantly zombified.  His handler sends him to a laboratory where he blitzes a guard.  There is a second flash and the handler takes over Hubbell Ellis, the lab’s head scientist.

Ellis now has a mysterious gleam in his eye.  An asteroid looks ready to collide with earth. Ellis counsels using nuclear weapons to destroy it.  This proves ineffective and the “asteroid”, really a spacecraft, lands in the Gulf of Mexico.  It morphs into a gigantic robot and starts heading for a nuclear power plant.  In the meantime, Ellis is put in an insane asylum.  During his rare lucid moments, the frightening truth begins to emerge.

The film features stylish title credits, a great score, and an intriguing premise about energy conservation.  After a very promising opening, it kind of resolves into a standard creature feature plot, with attendant romance and wisecracks, and lacks thrills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxwxL6xDT3s

Trailer

The Deadly Mantis
Directed by Nathan Juran
Written by Martin Berkeley;story by William Alland
1957/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Ned Jackson: I’m convinced that we’re dealing with a Mantis in whose geological world the smallest insects were as large as man, and now failing to find those insects as food, well… it’s doing the best that it can.[/box]

The plot is rather bland but the monster is rather awesome.  And we all know what is important in these things.

We start with an explanation of North American missile defense.  Then we travel to the outermost command above the arctic circle.  A weather station is destroyed.  Its occupants simply disappear.  Then an Eskimo village and cargo plane are attacked.  The military locates a bit of evidence.  Scientists determine that it must have come from a living thing.  The part is taken to a entomologist/paleontologist (William Hopper) at the Museum of Natural History.  Turns out it’s the spur from a prehistoric preying mantis!

The mantis is moving southward toward its natural environment in the tropics.  It makes stops in Washington DC and New York City, where its last stand proves to be the Lincoln Tunnel.  The obligatory romance is also included.

I was impressed with the special effects in this one, extremely dated though they are. Several different techniques appear to be used.  Other than one howler of a real mantis climbing a tiny Washington Monument, they are effective.  There’s also some better than average use of stock footage.  Not bad for a giant bug movie.  Why are all giant creatures born in either the Arctic or the desert?

Trailer

Forty Guns
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Samuel Fuller
1957/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Globe Enterprises
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Jessica Drummond: I need a strong man to carry out my orders.

Griff Bonnell: And a weak man to take them.[/box]

Fun Sam Fuller Western confirms my opinion that Barbara Stanwyck aged the most gracefully of the classic actresses.

Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) is the boss of Cochise County, Arizona.  She backs up her iron rule with forty hired guns and the allegiance of hand-picked sheriff Ned Logan (Dean Jagger).  Logan (Dean Jagger) also has an unrequited passion for the wealthy Jessica. Jessica has been saddled with little brother Brockie (John Ericson), now a mean alcoholic loser, since his birth.

U.S. Marshall Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) rides into the territory with his two younger brothers, Wes (Gene Berry) and Chico.  He aims to take fugitive Howard Swain, Jessica’s top gun, into custody.  As soon as the Bonnells arrive in town, Marshall John Chisum (Hank Warden) pleads for help but Griff refuses to lift a finger for him.  The almost blind Chisum is promptly gunned down by Brockie for kicks.

Things take their brutal course.  In the meantime, Jessica and Griff, who have a lot in common, fall in love setting up a triangle with the jealous Logan.  Brockie and Griff are inevitably drawn into conflict leaving Jessica in a sad dilemma.

I enjoy this movie a lot.  It is short, taut, and features some stunning shots of men on horses. Stanwyck retains the dignity and looks to be a believable middle-aged love interest.

Trailer

Abandon Ship (AKA Seven Waves Away)
Directed by Richard Sale
Written by Richard Sale
1957/USA/UK
Copa Productions
First viewing/YouTube

Edith Middleton: Why are the wicked always so strong?

This “lifeboat” type movie goes a little overboard.

A ship is sunk by a derelict mine.  Ship’s officer Alec Holmes finds himself and a few others clinging to some debris.  He swims off to rescue nurse Julie White (Mai Zetterling).  They are attacked by sharks and end up on the captain’s skiff with an assortment of passengers and crew.  Many of these people, including the captain, are grievously injured. The skiff is designed and equipped to hold nine people.  Twenty-seven people are on board or clinging to the side.

With his dying breath, the captain puts Holmes in command.  He is immediately confronted by a barrage of demands and complaints and must immediately establish himself as the unquestioned authority.  Fortunately, he has a couple of pistols at his disposal. Eventually, the radio man reveals that he did not get a chance to send an SOS. Some of the passengers and a wounded fellow crew member (Lloyd Nolan) advise Holmes to sacrifice some of the occupants so that at least some can survive.  Holmes initially resists this but a storm makes him question that decision.  Steven Boyd, Kenneth Moore, Finlay Currie and Gordon Jackson share the boat.

The movie has a motley cast of characters and setting very reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.  The film presents the interesting moral question of whether some should be sacrified for the good of the group and, if so, who is the most dispensable.  The script is good at drawing a large number of well-defined characters.  Unfortunately, the acting and dialogue seemed too melodramatic for my taste.  This is a very highly rated film, though, and others probably will enjoy it.

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