Bombay Mail was screened at Cinevent in Columbus, this past weekend. I certainly agree with Steve’s assessment of the film, reviewed here, which is fun but cluttered with too much plot and too little development of the large cast of characters. This might, however, repay a visiting, and Steve, I’d be interested in your take on the film after a second viewing.

   There were several crime films screened, and, of the ones I saw, I was most impressed by The Under-Cover Man, a 1932 Paramount Publix release, that gave George Raft his first starring role. He had no great range as an actor, but the role, that of a small-time crook who goes undercover for the police to help them catch the murderer of his father, nicely suited his talent. It also helped that he had a strong supporting cast that included Nancy Carroll, Lew Cody, David Landau, Gregory Ratoff and Roscoe Karns.

   I was less impressed by a British film, Appointment with Crime (a British National release, 1946), a grim little drama that was marred by a badly written climax that may have been scripted to satisfy a morality code demanding a “suitable” punishment for the criminal lead (Kenneth Harlan). There were some striking performances, most notably that of Herbert Lom as an upperclass villain, standing out among the lowlifes he dealt with.

   An oddity was Blondie Has Servant Trouble, an old house mystery in the long-running Columbia series based on the even longer-running newspaper strip. I’ve seen the movie more than once (and I did see it on its original release) and it’s probably the only one of the series that I would watch again.

   An enthusiastic Variety review is quoted, and, with even a modicum of encouragement, I will pull the film from my box set of the complete series (now you know the probably awful truth about my taste in films) and see if it’s held up for me.

   For the record, the films I most enjoyed at the convention were Dick Turpin (Fox 1925; John G. Blystone, director; starring Tom Mix); The Virginian (B. P. Schulberg Productions, 1923; Tom Forman, director; Kenneth Harlan (The Virginian), Florence Vidor (Molly Woods), Russell Simpson (Trampas), and Pat O’Malley (Steve); and Mare Nostrum (MGM, 1926; Rex Ingram, director; Alice Terry and Antonio Moreno).

   I will add that Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery (Darmour Inc./Columbia release, 1941; James Hogan, director, Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charley Grapewin, and Anna May Wong, among a cast of familiar faces) seemed to me a silly travesty of the EQ character, with Bellamy dithering through much of the film over Nikki Porter’s “meddling” in a murder investigation instead of sticking to her typewriter and working on his latest novel.

   After the screening, when a friend asked me what I thought of the film, and I told him, it was only then that he told me that, fired by his enjoyment of the film, he had bought a complete set of the Queen films from one of the convention dealers. Not one of my more comfortable moments during the convention.

BOMBAY MAIL. Universal Pictures, 1934. Edmund Lowe (Inspector Dyke), Ralph Forbes, Shirley Grey, Hedda Hopper, Onslow Stevens. Based on the novel by Lawrence G. Blochman. Director: Edwin L. Marin.

   In the novel, the leading detective is Inspector Leonidas Prike, who made repeat appearances in two later Blochman novels, Bengal Fire (1937) and Red Snow at Darjeeling (1938). All three books, rather obviously, take place in India.

   But Bombay Mail also has the advantage, as far as I’m concerned, of taking place on a train, which in case of the motion picture is a huge plus, with the clickety-clack of the wheels on the track being heard at least 98% of the time. (I say this even though it was filmed, I’m sure, on a stage set).

   What Inspector Dyke must learn, as the trains cuts across the Indian sub-continent from Calcutta to Bombay, is first who poisoned the British governor of Bengal (lots of suspects on the train, with lots of reasons – one per suspect, at least), then who shoots the Maharajah of Zungore before he can tell Dyke what he knows and who he saw doing what.

   There is, as there has to be, one femme fatale among the suspects, and in Bombay Mail she is played by Shirley Grey, known in some circles as Russian opera singer Sonia Smeganoff, and by others as plain Beatrice Jones (on her passport).

   Questions: Who supplied her with the ticket she needed to be on the train before she was deported? Who had access to the cyanide used? (Quite a few, as the Inspector Dyke soon learns.) Who is the mysterious Mr. Xavier, and who is the dangerous-looking man he hires to keep an eye on John Hawley? Why does the scientist Dr. Lenoir carry a deadly king cobra snake around in his handbag? And what are those valuable rubies doing in Hawley’s tobacco pouch?

   This is definitely my kind of movie, and maybe yours as well, but overall I was disappointed. There is too much plot for too little playing time (70 minutes or so), and it takes a long time for the viewer (me) to sort out who all the players are and what the connections are between them. Perhaps I was slow on the uptake, but I believe another 20 or 30 minutes of movie time would have been useful.

   I’m still going to recommend this movie to you. One should never complain too loudly about too much plot in a detective movie, especially one that takes place on a train. When I watch this one again, and I will, I’m going to enjoy it immensely.

GEORGE DYER – Five Fragments. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1932. Hardcover reprint: Grosset & Dunlap, 1932 [?].

Film: FOG OVER FRISCO. First National Pictures, 1934. Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Byron, Robert Barrat, Henry O’Neill, Irving Pichel, Douglass Dumbrille. Director: William Dieterle.

   Following Dolores Hitchens’ Fools Gold [reviewed here ] and still on the book-to-movie bent, I visited a novel called The Five Fragments by George Dyer.

   Dyer authored a series of mysteries in the 1930 centered around the Catalyst Club, but this ain’t one of ’em; it’s a Keeler-esque series of long narrative flashbacks framed by a mysterious host who has assembled a group of disparate guests, each of whom knows something about a recent and notorious murder/kidnapping scandal in San Francisco.

   The five narrators — a pretty standard set of stock characters including a dumb cop, brash young reporter, doughty coast-guardsman, colorful gangster and cool customs agent — proceed to sketch out a tale of dope smuggling, bootleggers, a wild heiress named Arlene and her half-sister, who has fallen in love with the reporter and then got herself kidnapped.

   The resultant surprise conclusion is a bit creaky but entertaining nonetheless, and though none of the characters is ever more than two-dimensional, they are at least painted up real pretty, and they go through their allotted paces at a brisk clip.

   When Warners filmed this in 1934 as Fog Over Frisco they chewed through the book typical abandon: jettisoned the framing device, added a bumbling photographer (Hugh Herbert) to follow the brash young reporter and provide dubious comedy relief, switched stolen bonds for smuggled drugs (a bit of a no-no in ’34) and threw in a sinister butler for good measure.

   But I especially like what they did with the Arlene character, who never actually appears in the book: they built the non-existent part up into a neatly bitchy role for top-billed Bette Davis, who clearly relishes the part and leaves the movie all too soon.

   Directed by William Deiterle at the usual break-a-leg pace Warners’ pace, Fog offers nothing too special, but serves it up well.

MURDER IN TRINIDAD. Fox, 1934. Nigel Bruce, Heather Angel, Victor Jory, Murray Kinnell, Douglas Walton, J. Carrol Naish, Claude King, Pat Somerset, Francis Ford, John Davidson, Noble Johnson, Paul Panzer, Ivan Simpson. Screenplay by Seton I. Miller, based on the novel by John W. Vandercook. Director: Louis King. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   It’s always good to see Nigel Bruce in a starring role without his fuddy-duddy mannerisms that came to characterize his on-screen persona, especially in as nifty a crime film as this one is.

   As fond as I am of Peter Lorre’s Mr. Moto character, Fox’s first try at a film version of the Vandercook novel is superior to the later remake, Mr. Moto in Danger Island. The characters (and perhaps the film audience as well) are put off by Bruce’s casual manner on first acquaintance, but there’s a sharp intelligence behind that exterior, as his antagonists will soon learn, to their regret.

   As detective Bertram Lynch, Bruce also has a pet monkey that probably contributes to the off-putting first impression, but the monkey might be seen as a metaphor for the position Lynch ultimately puts the murderer in. One of the highlights of the weekend.

      Previously on this blog:

JOHN W. VANDERCOOK and BERTRAM LYNCH, a double profile by David Vineyard.

THE RUNAWAY BUS. Eros Films, UK, 1954. Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark, George Couloris, Terence Alexander, Toke Townley, Belinda Lee, Stringer Davis. Screenwriter and director: Val Guest.

        BBC Announcer: Today’s Forecast: Fog.

   London in the immediate post-war years and well into the middle 1950’s suffered some of the worst fogs since the late Victorian era, some not only hazards to transportation, but killers that took many lives. This one isn’t quite that bad, but it’s bad enough. At Heathrow the airport is shut down and passengers aren’t happy about it, among them the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford who just won’t take no for an answer when told her flight to Dublin is canceled.

   What none of them know is nearby a master criminal known only to Scotland Yard as the Banker is planning to heist a shipment of gold bullion and use the fog to cover the escape.

   When news reaches the airport that the weather is clearing at a nearby airport they put on a bus for the passengers headed for Ireland, with relief driver Frankie Howerd driving, flight attendant Petula Clark assigned to help the passengers, and four in tow, Rutherford’s cantankerous old lady, gruff businessman George Couloris, meek little Toke Townley, and Belinda Lee as a young lady obsessed with the lurid paperback mysteries she is reading. As they set out in the dense fog, Flight Officer Terence Alexander catches a last minute ride with them.

   But what none of them know is that there is a fortune in gold bullion hidden in the luggage compartment of the BOAC relief bus. Or at least only a few of them know.

   They are soon lost in the fog, and then when they drive off the road they end up stranded in an abandoned village in a rat trap of an old pub. By then Scotland Yard has learned that the bullion is on the bus, but can’t find them. Howerd knows about the gold and has told Clark, but there is no one else they can trust, including Alexander who doesn’t seem to be who he claims.

   In fact almost no one seems to be exactly who they claim to be, and it gets even worse when some one fires a Sten gun at the them and seems to be throwing grenades.

   Though it isn’t credited on screen The Runaway Bus is basically a remake of The Ghost Train (1941), an old barn burner of a play that was filmed before the war.

   Both were comedy mysteries, but Runaway Bus has a broader sense of humor and a satirical edge aided by the excellent cast and Howerd’s familiar delivery. Both films are available from Sinister Cinema, and Runaway Bus at least has been shown on TCM.

   Rutherford as usual is in fine form as a veritable dreadnought of a woman, here with obvious romantic eyes on meek little fellow passenger Toke Townley, and veteran villain George Couloris always handled comedy as well as drama. Belinda Lee mostly looks pretty and none to bright with a seemingly endless supply of blood soaked paperback mysteries. Clark has little to do as the flight attendant, but adds a pretty face to the mix.

   Frankie Howerd was a popular comic best remembered for his role in The Ladykillers, in the “Carry On” films, and the long running BBC comedy series Up Pompeii! where he played the scheming but none too bright slave Lurcio in the doomed city at the time of Nero’s reign. His asides to he audience breaking the fourth wall were the highlight of most episodes.

   The twists come fast and furious and generally very funny.

   Terence Alexander was a familiar face in drama and comedy, probably best remembered for his regular role on the BBC series Bergerac. He was also the voice of John Creasey’s the Toff on BBC Radio.

   After the usual comic complications the Banker is revealed, and the bullion recovered.

   This isn’t in a class with the Ealing comedies or many of their imitators, but it is a bright funny comedy mystery with a cast of familiar faces (Stringer Davis who appeared with Rutherford in the Miss Marple films is also in this one) led by the always delightful Rutherford and a very young Howerd It’s one bus you will be glad you caught.

ELLERY QUEEN – Ten Days’ Wonder. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, 1948. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover & paperback. Film: La décade prodigieuse; French, 1971. Released in the US as Ten Days’ Wonder. Anthony Perkins, Michel Piccoli, Marlène Jobert, Orson Welles. Director: Claude Chabrol.

   I tried Ellery Queen back in High School and quickly tired of him/them because it wasn’t Raymond Chandler. But when someone hereabouts recommended Queen’s 1948 mystery Ten Days’ Wonder, I decided to give it a look.

   Well, Queen-as-author doesn’t exactly sparkle, and Queen-as-character never really comes alive on the page, but I found Wonder a pretty well crafted thing: something about a friend of Queen’s with a god-like father, sexy young step-mom, desire-under-the-elms, blackmail, blackouts and criminous suspicions.

   Given that Queen’s friend/suspect is a sculptor, the overall pattern of the thing (and hence the killer) is pretty transparent, but — given that pattern and the morality it references — there’s something sort of subversive in the way Queen-the-character keeps morphing: from sleuth to accomplice, from celebrity to pariah, then back to celebrity, all without himself changing.

   And there’s an odd sub-text flirting with the nature [**WARNING**] of a God who imputes our fall to sin. Lenny Bruce put it more succinctly when he observed that if man is sinful, the fault lies with the manufacturer, and Fredric Brown put it more sharply with the God-as-comic-punster ending of The Screaming Mimi, but Queen’s handling of the notion has its merits.   [**END OF WARNING**]

   In 1972 Claude Chabrol did a pretty faithful movie version of Ten Days’ Wonder; Michel Piccoli plays a suitably colorless detective (here a philosopher, but for the French it’s pretty much the same thing); Anthony Perkins is neatly cast as the unstable sculptor; Marlène Jobert the cute step-mom; and Orson Welles, in the fakiest fake nose of his career, simply perfect as God-the-Father.

   Like most Chabrol films, it’s thoughtful rather than gripping, definitely watchable, but damn! that schnozz they stuck on Orson; I’ve seen better noses on a pair of Groucho glasses.

FUGITIVES FOR A NIGHT. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Frank Albertson, Eleanor Lynn, Allan Lane, Bradley Page, Jonathan Hale, Russell Hicks, Paul Guilfoyle, Ward Bond. Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo, based on a story Richard Wormser. Director: Leslie Goodwin.

   Matt Ryan (Frank Albertson) is a would-be actor who ends up as a stooge for the studio [a “yes man” who does anything he’s asked], pushed around by studio head Maurice Tenwright (Russell Hicks) who assigns him first to arrogant heart throb John Nelson (Allan Lane), who wants out of his contract with Tenwright, then fading but charming and gentlemanly leading man Dennis Poole (Bradley Page), who Tenwright is using as weapon against Nelson.

   Poole is a real change from Nelson, he can’t even stand to use the term stooge when referring to Matt, but his star is rapidly blinking out, and his only real value is to be held over Nelson’s fat head as a threat since his last two films did terrible box office.

   Matt’s girl, publicist Ann Wray (Eleanor Lynn), has seen enough of Hollywood and just wants Matt to open a hamburger stand and get out of the dirty racket. Anything other than stay in the demeaning job as stooge — a menial and soul-numbing position as a punchline for everyone else’s joke.

   And she may be right. At an illegal casino in the desert where all the studio big wigs are gathered along with nasty gossip columnist Monks (Paul Guilfoyle), there is a police raid, and in the confusion Tenwright is shot and killed.

   Wry police Captain Jonathan Hale suspects Matt, who with help from Ann escapes into the desert night. Now wanted by the police for murder, Matt has to prove he didn’t kill Tenwright and reveal who really did.

   The suspects, along with the police Captain, gather at Poole’s house as Poole tries to stall them to give Matt a chance to escape, but Matt and Ann are headed right for Poole’s because they think they know the killer.

   There is nothing special here; this is a solid B movie with an attractive cast and capable direction, moving at a pace, but what’s notable is how much of Trumbo’s voice makes it onto the screen. The film is cynical, bitter, sardonic, and almost no one is decent or even likable.

   Tenwright is manipulative and backstabbing, Nelson arrogant and self absorbed, Monks a snarling coward, and for most of the film Matt all too willing to be everyone’s doorstep. Even Hale is star struck, vain, and full of himself, last seen in the film admiring himself in the mirror while quoting “all is vanity.”

   This is by no means film noir, but it is bitter, cynical, and fairly nasty in tone for a B programmer, and you have to imagine that was Trumbo’s doing.

THE CRIME NOBODY SAW. Paramount Pictures, 1937. Lew Ayres, Ruth Coleman, Eugene Pallette, Benny Baker, Vivienne Osborne, Colin Tapley, Howard C. Hickman, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Jed Prouty, Hattie McDaniel. Based on the play Danger, Men Working, by Manfred Lee & Frederic Dannay. Director: Charles Barton.

   As I understand it, the play (mentioned above) that the Ellery Queen cousins wrote never made it anywhere near Broadway, and if the movie that it was made of it instead resembles it in any way, it’s no surprise.

   Not that the movie is bad, if you’re in the right frame of mind, and forgiving. It just isn’t very good. It opens with three frustrated playwrights (Ayers, Pallette and Baker) struggling with their latest opus, a mystery play that’s supposed to start next week, and they, in spite of all their efforts, can’t get any farther than Page One.

   Enter their drunken neighbor from the apartment across the hall. When he collapses on the floor and passes out, they go through his pockets. A little black book is filled with names and suspicious numbers. He’s not a lecherous lothario, they quickly decide, he’s a blackmailer!

   Call the police? No, not they. Determined to take the situation and turn into the play they have not been able to right, they… Did you guess? They disguise themselves as policemen and call three of the names in the black book, important individuals all, and invite them over to hear the final accusation from the man who owns the book.

   Well, OK, this is really a lot of fun – if you’re in the right frame of mind – but things get out of hand when (you guessed it) the lights go out (and guess again) the unconscious man is mysteriously murdered.

   There are a few twists that follow, and now that I think about it, perhaps more than a few, but (still thinking about it) none that make any sense. I might have to watch the movie again, if you wanted me to be more definitive than that, and I probably will, someday, and even perhaps someday soon, but not immediately. Forgive me.

   One last thing. Hattie McDaniel, a black actress who often played the same variety of lady’s maid as she does in this movie, is also a key witness. Without her, the three wanna-be playwrights wouldn’t have had a clue.

THE CRIMSON CANARY. Universal Pictures, 1945. Noah Beery Jr., Lois Collier, John Litel, Steven Geray, Claudia Drake, Danny Morton, Jimmie Dodd, Steve Brodie, John Kellogg, Arthur Space. Josh White, the Esquire All-American Band Winners with Coleman Hawkins, Oscar Pettiford. Director: John Hoffman.

   Even though I love old B-movies, especially old B-for-budget detective films, I have to admit that most of the time I’m disappointed. Noir films made for the same amount of money got by on atmosphere. Detective films of the 1930s and 40s of the punch-them-out variety may have had atmosphere, but most of them don’t hold up as detective fiction.

   The Crimson Canary is one that does, more or less, making it one of the “good” ones. Not one up to the standards of a Agatha Christie or a John Dickson Carr, but in comparison to its competitors, Canary stands out like an upraised thumb.

   But atmosphere? That it’s got, and more. Noah Berry Jr. heads up a group of wartime buddies in a jazz band, and boy do they swing. Strictly small time stuff, stuck in a small town nightspot, but good enough to have hopes – and to have a good looking vocalist flirt with all the guys, and with Danny Brooks (Beery) with a steady girl friend yet.

   When the girl’s found dead in a back room, the guys take it on the lam – joining up when the coast is clear, they think – but it’s not, not with a jazz-loving police detective (John Litel) breathing down their necks and watching every move they make.

   The music is great, and the detective end of things (as I said up front) good. The only flaw is that there’s only a very limited number of suspects. In 64 minutes, with 20 of them taken up by musical numbers (my very rough estimate) there simply isn’t time enough to introduce anyone else who could have done it.

   Highly recommended for fans of jumping and jiving 1940s pre-bop jazz.

Note: From the AFI page: “…the musicians who dubbed the quintette were Nick Cochrane and Eddie Parkers, trumpet; Stan Wrightsman, piano; Barney Bigard, clarinet; King Guion, tenor sax, and Mel Tormé, drums. Coleman Hawkins was supported by Howard McGhee, trumpet; Sir Charles Thompson, piano; Denzil Best, drums; and Oscar Pettiford, bass.” Check out this two minute clip from YouTube.

TELL NO TALES. MGM, 1939. Melvyn Douglas, Louise Platt, Douglass Dumbrille, Gene Lockhart, Zeffie Tilbury, Sara Haden, Florence George. Screenplay: Lionel Houser. Director: Leslie Fenton.

   Terrific two-fisted programmer from MGM that moves like an express and has a surprising amount of heart as well as brains. Douglas is Michael Cassidy, the editor of the Evening Standard, a big city newspaper about to be shut down by publisher Matt Cooper (Douglass Dumbrille) in favor of the tabloid rag he uses as his mouthpiece.

   When Cassidy stumbles on the story of the century, a hundred dollar bill that was part of a kidnap ransom shows up in his hands, he plans for the Standard to go out in a blaze of glory. Setting out to follow the trail of the wandering hundred dollar bill, he enlists the help of the only witness to the kidnapping, a feisty school teacher sick of being kept virtual prisoner by the police (Louise Platt).

   Cassidy follows the trail of the bill from a mousy jeweler about to be married; to a society doctor and his cheating wife; to a the wake of a black boxer possibly killed for his involvement with the kidnappers; to an attractive singer at a police benefit (with half the cops in town looking for him), a surprising source; and finally a casino owned by Gene Lockhart who leads him to the kidnappers, but for deadly reasons of his own.

   At each turn the screenplay is better than it needs to be, and the individual stories well drawn and handsomely shot, from the grieving widow of the boxer (the Alley Kid); to the frightened look on the doctor’s wife’s face when cornered about her lie; to a nicely sinister bit by Lockhart as the casino owner. Zeffie Tilbury is particularly good as a tough old lady copy editor who has been with the paper fifty years and known Cassidy since he was a copy boy.

   The finale is a bang up escape from the two kidnappers by Douglas and Platt, and a nicely rounded up ending, that, if a bit more upbeat and happy than the rest of the film would suggest, still leaves you more than well satisfied.

   I first heard about this from William Everson’s The Detective Film, and it is every bit as good as promised: a mix of tough guy dialogue, two fisted journalism, solid detective work, and sentiment that is just the right combination of schmaltz and cynicism that might have come out of Black Mask or Dime Detective, and the kind of stories about two-fisted reporters that Nebel, Sale, Babcock, and Coxe specialized in.

   Next time this shows up on TCM, be sure and catch it. It’s as slick as any A-film, and packs as much in sixty nine minutes as most A-films did in films half again as long.

   Tremendous pace, sharp crackling dialogue, affecting vignettes by great character actors, and a pretty good mystery that unfolds on the run, this one can hold its own against many a bigger picture that doesn’t have half its heart or head.