Flickers in Time

Little Fugitive
Directed by Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin
Written by Ashley, Engel and Orkin
1953/USA
Little Fugitive Production Company
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

This early no-budget indie film turned out remarkably well.

Mother, a widow, is raising her two boys alone.  They are Lennie, who is maybe twelve years old, and Joey, who is six.  Lennie is long accustomed to baby sitting duty and is as gracious about it as most pre-teens, which is to say not very.  He has been given some money for his birthday and the plan is to go to Coney Island with some buddies and have fun.  But Grandma gets sick and Mother must go away for the day so Lennie is stuck again caring for Joey.

One of Joey’s friends decides it would be hilarious to pull a  trick on Joey.  They tell the kid that they have a real gun and let him shoot it, telling him to be very careful.  He fires and Lennie falls down “dead” and smeared with ketchup.  The gullible Joey is convinced that he must flee from the cops.

Joey takes some money Mother left for Lennie and gets on the subway.  He ends up in Coney Island where he has a fine time.  We see him at batting practice, on the beach, and playing various games.  He is nuts about horses and soon figures out that he can get the money to take some pony rides by collecting bottles for the refund.  He remains unfazed until his anxious brother can retrieve him.

The filmmakers found a real talent in little Richie Andrusco and it is his utter naturalness that makes the film.  The other actors, presumably amateurs, are a bit more forced but not too bad.  This is more a cinema verite documentary of New York childhood than an actual story.  I like it a lot.  It is amazing to think of a time where a six-year-old child could feel perfectly safe wandering around through throngs of New Yorkers.

Trailer

It Came from Outer Space
Directed by Jack Arnold
Written by Harry Essex from a story by Ray Bradbury
1953/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] [first lines] John Putnam: [off-screen] This is Sand Rock, Arizona, of a late evening in early spring. It’s a nice town, knowing its past and sure of its future, as it makes ready for the night, and the predictable morning. The desert blankets the earth, cooling, resting for the fight with tomorrow’s sun. And in my house near the town, we’re also sure of the future. So very sure.[/box]

Fifties sci-fi seems to be preoccupied with the alien in human disguise.

Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) is whispering sweet nothings to his sweetie Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) when they see a large object fall from the sky with a tremendous crash.  They assume it is a meteor and go out to the site to investigate.  John goes down into the crater and sees what seems to be a vehicle and what he thinks may be life inside. Immediately there is a landslide which buries the evidence and from which John barely escapes with his life.  He alerts some telephone repairmen who scoff at his report.  He leaves to fetch help and when he returns the repairmen are acting mighty strange.

John spends the rest of the film at odds with the town’s sheriff whose primary concern is protecting Ellen from John’s weird ideas.  When the evidence becomes undeniable, the sheriff further complicates matters by rushing to the other extreme in cowboy mode.

This is quite an OK example of the early 50’s sci-fi genre.  I’m sorry they found it necessary to show the alien.  The previous reaction shots and glimpses were way creepier.  I’d love to see this in 3-D.  The 2-D trailer shows the possibilities.

Trailer

Robot Monster
Directed by Phil Tucker
Written by Wyott Ordung
1953/USA
Three Dimension Pictures
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Great One: Earth Ro-Man, you violate the laws of plans. To think for yourself is to be like the hu-man.
Ro-Man: Yes! To be like the hu-man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?
Great One: You are an extension of the Ro-Man, and a Ro-Man you will remain. Now, I set you into motion. One: destroy the girl. Two: destroy the family. Fail, and I will destroy you!

This is my second viewing of this bad-movie classic after a gap of two years and seeing several more of its most notorious bretheren .  It stood up as still the most hilarious example of its genre I have ever seen.

A family decides to picnic in what looks to be an abandoned rock quarry on the day Robot Monster, who refers to himself as Ro-Man, is sent to destroy all the Hu-mans (as he and the Great Guidance refer to our species) on earth. Ro-Man is played by a large man in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet and moves very, very slowly.

The survivors have all been innoculated with a serum which prevents every known disease and also happens to defeat Ro-Man’s death ray. There are thus 8 survivors left on earth, most of them conveniently located with yards of the Ro-Man’s cave headquarters.  Ro-Man offers them a painless death if they surrender but they decline preferring “peace with honor”.

Ro-Man: I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!

The rest of the “plot” is perhaps unnecessary save to say that Ro-Man’s downfall is his unseemly feelings for the family’s hot eldest daughter. In between, we get random stock footage of dinosaurs fighting, a very bizaare wedding, and some of the most hilarious dialog ever captured on film. With the “automatic billion bubble machine”, which receives a special credit.

How I loved this movie! I had a silly grin on my face except during the many times I was laughing out loud.  Much of the fun comes from the many unexpected, because ludicrous, happenings so I will not spoil these for anyone brave enough to try this.  I suggest getting together with a like-minded friend and possibly a few drinks for maximum enjoyment.  It is only about an hour long.

Multiple complete versions of this gem are available on YouTube, including the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, which I have never seen.  This is funny enough without an added riff track.

Trailer

Joe Dante on Robot Monster – Trailers from Hell

Stalag 17
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum from a play by Donald Bevin and Edmund Trzcinski
1953/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Sgt. Schulz: How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns?
Lt. James Skylar Dunbar: We sort of hope you’d laugh yourselves to death.

Billy Wilder wise-cracks his way through life in a POW camp.

The action takes place at about the time of the Battle of the Bulge in a camp housing US sergeants.  The men make their lives bearable through joking and various improvised games.  Sgt, J. J. Sefton (William Holden) is the organizer of many of these activities.  As the story begins, two of the men make an escape attempt.  Sefton takes bets from one and all that the men will not make it.  They are killed and Sefton wins his bet.  The men become convinced that one of their number is an informer.  Attention focuses on Sefton, who is thoroughly cynical and always seems to have the best of everything.

One day, a couple of new POWs who are officers arrive.  One of them boasts that he blew up a train depot in Frankfurt even after he was captured.  Soon the officer is being questioned by camp commandant Col. Scherbach.  The men are more and more convinced that Sefton is the rat.  I think I will leave it at that.  With Sig Ruman as a prison guard and Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Don Taylor and Peter Graves as prisoners.

The last time I watched this movie the Oscar-nominated performance of Robert Strauss as “Animal” irritated the hell out of me.  This time it didn’t bother me at all.  Holden is always Holden.  I find him appealing and enjoyed his performance.  It was fun to see Preminger as a Nazi.  Worth a watch.

William Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  The film was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Strauss) and Best Director.

Re-release trailer

Affair in Trinidad
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Written by Oscar Saul and James Dunn; story by Virginia Van Upp and Berne Giler
1952/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/The Beckworth Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dominique: It is the prerogative of a faithful and loyal servant to be impertinent.[/box]

The story, a mash-up of Gilda and Notorious, falls rather flat.  Not so Rita Hayworth’s dancing.

Neal Emory’s body is found in Port of Spain harbor with a bullet in the head.  At first, it is thought that the unsuccessful painter may have committed suicide.  The police and American consul call on Neal’s widow, Chris (Hayworth).  She has no idea why he might have committed suicide but reveals that the couple had been married in name only for about a year.  A witness and an autopsy reveal that the corpse was shot after Neal was strangled.

The police suspect the murder may have had something to do with the wealthy Max Fabian (Alexander Scourby), who is well-known to the police.  The police threaten that they will attribute Neal’s “suicide” to Fabian’s attraction to Chris if she does not cooperate by getting next to Fabian and reporting back.  She is not to reveal what she is doing to anyone.  For some reason, this intimidates Chris into cooperating.

In the meantime, Neal had written to his brother Steve (Glenn Ford) telling him that he had a job for him in Trinidad.  Steve shows up and starts a parallel investigation of his brother’s death.  He also ends up staying in Chris’s house.  Naturally, they begin a stormy love affair. Chris must play up to Fabian, however, causing ever more violent storms.  With Juanita Moore, as Chris’s wise, mystical Trinidadian housekeeper.

The plot is shot through with holes and its resolution is rushed and unsatisfactory.  I wasn’t expecting much from this movie and was pleasantly surprised that Ford and Hayworth retained their Gilda chemistry.

Clip – Rita Hayworth doing “Trinidad Lady”