Thu 28 Jan 2016
A Movie Review by David Vineyard: HAZARD (1948).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals[10] Comments
HAZARD. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Paulette Goddard, Macdonald Carey, Fred Clark, Stanley Clements, Percy Helton, Frank Faylen, Charles McGraw. Maxie Rosenbloom Screenplay by Arthur Sheekman and Roy Chanslor (his novel). Directed by George Marshall.
Looking at that cast and those credits you can forgiven for thinking this must be a small missing gem you have somehow overlooked.
I had fairly high hopes for this when I saw the cast and credits — for about fifteen minutes.
Goddard is Ellen Crane, a spoiled rich girl with a gambling problem ever since the boy she was engaged to died in the war. Fred Clark is Lonnie, the owner of Club 7 who has a thing for her. She is into him for $5,000 and a hot check and he offers her a deal; high card wins and she is either clear or she marries him.
She doesn’t draw the high card or there would be no plot. She skips town, but Lonnie hires skip tracer Storm (Macdonald Carey) to stop her starting a cross country race that leads to Chicago and Los Angeles, and then a road trip back as she and Storm connect. He even does a little cheap analysis proving she has been trying to lose her father’s money by compulsive gambling because she blames that for her boyfriend’s death.
George Marshall was one of the masters of the comedic form, and the cast is uniformly good, but this is the flattest film you have ever had the bad luck to see. There is no spark between Goddard and Carey, the script is dishwater dull, and not even the character actors manage a bright moment.
There isn’t a genuine laugh in the picture. There’s not a moment where the film ever rises above the level of one single note. Even a bit of action and rough stuff at the ending leaves the blood pressure low. When George Marshall can’t even choreograph a comedic fight you know things are bad.
There is one single funny line, the last one in the film delivered by Frank Faylen to Fred Clark followed by Clark’s double take, but by then it is far too little too late. Skip this and take a nap instead. It will be more exciting — likely more laughs too.
January 28th, 2016 at 11:56 pm
I’ve not seen this movie — has there been an official release? — but I have the sense that the lack of chemistry between the two leading stars is more the fault of Carey, not Paulette Goddard.
He may have been a decent actor, but in a romantic comedy, I just don’t see him.
January 29th, 2016 at 5:22 am
Carey was always better as a bad guy than a romantic lead, where his wit & comedic timing have been compared to those of Joseph Stalin.
Goddard’s career at this point was in a spiral that would lead her to SINS OF JEZEBEL, BABES IN BAGDAD and Television
By the way, they are both much better together in Mitchell Leisen’s BRIDE OF VENGEANCE.
January 29th, 2016 at 10:55 am
Steve,
In the last paragraph in this I think the phrase should be “too little too late” not “to little too late.”
January 29th, 2016 at 1:07 pm
I’ll fix it now. The definition of proofreading is finding (or being told about) your mistakes once your stuff sees print. Thanks!
January 29th, 2016 at 9:35 pm
I agree Re BRIDE OF VENGEANCE, and about Carey as a comedic leading man, though he did do better than this in other films. He was a decent lead in the action films FIRE OVER AFRICA and COMANCHE TERRITORY both with Maureen O’Hara, and though most critics blame him for this I think the problem is in the script, Marshall’s direction, and, sad to say, Goddard, who misses every comedic note she is given.
Goddard frankly looks a bit heavy and downright strange with the weird hairstyle she wears for most of the film. You may have trouble recognizing her and even her timing is bad. For the first twenty minutes I wasn’t sure this was a comedy. It might well have been a dull film noir.
There are several bit parts in the film that are supposed to be comedic that simply come off as creepy with Percy Helton’s ‘comedic’ manager of a seedy hotel played more like Norman Bates than a comedy part.
The film also plays her gambling as a serious problem and not a comedic one. There is a seedy unattractive feeling to this film that makes you fell as if you need to take a bath after watching certain scenes. Rather than the willful silly heiress type this aspires for her character to be she plays much of it as grim drama.
I don’t know of a release on DVD or even VHS, but it is available on YouTube.
The timing on this one is so bad that at one point Clark’s toupee flies up in the fight and I couldn’t tell if it was a gag or just missed by everyone. When you aren’t even sure the jokes are jokes …
Randy,
Thanks for catching that.
January 29th, 2016 at 10:57 pm
I now have a completely different picture of what this movie is. You have me intrigued now, and not because you have me thinking it’s good. But if Percy Helton’s in it, that’s a whole different story.
January 30th, 2016 at 5:29 pm
You will have to tell me if you feel Helton’s character doesn’t come across to you like a serial killer in the making rather than eccentric and cuddly — which is what I think they are going for.
Goddard gets him in a tight that is supposed to be humorous, but instead it feels as if she takes a wounded animal and makes its life intolerable then leaves it to suffer. Not my idea of comedy gold.
At every turn what this movie thinks is funny is just creepy or falls flat.
January 30th, 2016 at 6:20 pm
I’m not sure what you meant in the first line of the second paragraph, but the general gist of it comes through. I’ll put this film on my wish list anyway. It sounds like a movie I’d like to see, even though it isn’t one I have to see.
January 30th, 2016 at 7:53 pm
Same here, Steve…. funny to think that David’s negative review got us both hooked.
January 31st, 2016 at 6:02 pm
Goddard’s character exploits Helton’s and gets him in trouble with the police though he doesn’t do anything wrong and then leaves him in the lurch when he suffers from a problem that makes being drawn out into public painful. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
It’s almost as creepy as he is, and all because of her gambling addiction — which, incidentally, is magically cured by love.
But I can see how you both got hooked. With that cast and Marshall at the helm I would have to see this too. In fact I did despite bad reviews.
Who knows, maybe I was in the wrong mood, but I generally love screwball comedy. I just think blaming Macdonald Carey for this is unfair. Cary Grant couldn’t have saved this the way it is made and Goddard is just awful in it, and I’m a huge Goddard fan. Nor is it all the unattractive way her character is written. At times she seems uncertain this is a comedy.
I hope someone else sees it and reviews it. I might give it a second chance if they can find anything in it.