COVER UP. United Artists, 1949. William Bendix, Dennis O’Keefe, Barbara Britton, Art Baker, Ann E. Todd, Doro Merande. Screenplay: Jerome Odlum & Dennis O’Keefe. Director: Alfred E. Green.

   Here’s a fine example of a case where the title of the movie is spot on accurate, so much so that you’re going to have to put it in the back of your head while you’re watching, or it will give the whole story away. (And forget I just said so, too, while you’re at it.)

   Dennis O’Keefe, who gets second billing, even though it’s his actions (and reactions) we follow throughout the movie, plays an insurance investigator in Cover Up. In the unnamed small town somewhere in the Midwest (near Chicago, apparently) where he’s been sent to look into a reported case of suicide, he runs straight into a stone wall.

   The local sheriff, played by a placid, pipe-smoking William Bendix, is friendly enough, but when asked about the gun, the bullet, anything at all, evades the answers. The coroner’s out of town, I don’t know where the gun is, I don’t know what type of gun it was, all the while puffing away, looking slyly upward to see how his act is going over.

   No fool he, Sam Donovan (that’s O’Keefe) knows it’s an act, too, but he has no choice but to realize that any investigating he has to do, he’ll have to do on his own. Complicating matters is that he is falling for the girl he rode into town with on the bus (Barbara Britton).

   Why complicated? Only that he comes to the conclusion that murder has been committed and the girl’s father, the town’s banker (Art Baker) is soon his number one suspect.

   This is no film noir mystery, as I’ve seen it advertised online, in case you were wondering, not in my opinion. The story takes place at Christmas, there is a lighting of the town’s tree with all of the local folk in attendance, presents are exchanged, and soon the snow is starting to fall.

   Very folksy and charming, in other words, but if pressed, I’d have to agree that there’s an edge to the plot — hidden right below the mistletoe — that keeps this movie moored as a mystery and not a just another soft-hearted romance.

   And while Dennis O’Keefe as Sam Donovan may be the primary protagonist, it’s William Bendix, who does double duty as both the small town’s sheriff and its self-appointed guardian, if you will, who earns his top billing after all.

NO PLACE FOR A LADY. Columbia Pictures, 1943. William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Phyllis Brooks, Dick Purcell, Jerome Cowan, Edward Norris, Thomas Jackson. Screenwriter: Eric Taylor. Director: James P. Hogan.

   It’s worth pointing out, I’m sure, that the two leading stars of No Place for a Lady, William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay, had just finished appearing in the last three of seven early 1940s Ellery Queen movies – playing EQ himself and Nikki Porter, respectively. (Lindsay was actually in all seven. It was Ralph Bellamy who portrayed the master detective in the first four.)

   And digressing a little more before going any further, I can’t imagine either Bellamy or Gargan as the erudite Mr. Queen, but Hollywood license went a whole lot farther then than it does now.

   Since Eric Taylor was involved in the writing of all seven EQ films, and director James Hogan did the last six, when it came time for them to do No Place for a Lady, it’s natural, I think, to wonder if they simply reworked a leftover Ellery Queen script, but I don’t think so. If they did, it was one heck of a rewrite.

   William Gargan plays a high-powered PI named Jess Arno in this one, while Margaret Lindsay is a real estate agent June Terry, and his fiancée, She’s also the jealous type, which is important, and so is the fact that she’s a real estate agent.

   Egged on by a close reporter friend named Rand Brooke (Dick Purcell), who’d like to get closer, Terry stages a fake murder in a seashore cottage she has for rent, hoping to get Arno in trouble when he leaves his latest client there, a beautiful blonde (Phyllis Brook) whom he’s just gotten off on a murder rap.

   Unknown to everyone involved, a rat named Eddie Moore (Jerome Cowan) has already left his own very real murder victim there, a casualty of a scam involving a fire and hijacked tires.

   Which leads to an entire movie’s worth of strange coincidences, misunderstandings, missing bodies, false leads and blaring air raid alerts, complete with the dumbest pair of shoreside cops you will ever hope to meet – or not. The fact that Eddie Moore is also a nightclub singer means that a few minutes can be taken up with a song or two.

   Don’t expect any detective work to be done in this movie, and you’ll be all right. I imagine that in the movie theaters in 1943, the laughs came loud and often, but in all honesty, that wasn’t what I was watching for.

   I’m always happy to have a copy of any PI movie that comes along, but while the movie isn’t actually bad, neither is it very good. In spite of its magnificent pedigree, No Place for a Lady is more disappointment than not.

THE PLOT THICKENS. 1936. James Gleason, ZaSu Pitts, Louise Latimer, Owen Davis Jr., Richard Tucker. Based on a story and characters created by Stuart Palmer. Director: Ben Holmes.

   The role of Hildegarde Withers in this next-to-the-last movie based on her adventures with Inspector Piper was taken over from Edna May Oliver then Helen Broderick by ZaSu Pitts, whose fluttery hands and ways are best taken in small doses. She seems to fit the part, however, given Hollywood’s perspective on the stories.

   This has come up before, and in the meantime I’ve given this some small amount of thought to it — the business of detective stories being made into comedies when converted to the silver screen, especially during the 30s and 40s.

   Maybe it’s because the idea behind the traditional, cozy detective murder mystery is inherently ridiculous to begin with — the established routine of a victim, suspects, clues, questioning, locked rooms, alibis and so on.

   Could it be, when transferred into cinematic terms, the whole entire unlikelihood of the proceedings is amplified into the utterly absurd?

   That’s the question as I’ve reformulated it so far, and I haven’t answered it yet, but why else did so many favorite mystery characters turn into bumbling idiots when portrayed on the screen?

   Or why did their adventures need to “enlivened” by the presence of goofy chauffeurs, clown-like cops or (simply) funny friends? Hard-boiled operatives fared much better. I don’t think Hollywood had a very great opinion of the Ellery Queen’s or Hildegarde Withers(es) of the literary world.

   Which is not to say that I’m bitter — but wouldn’t it have been better to have had Jean Arthur play Pam North than Gracie Allen? Wouldn’t Sara Haden (Andy Hardy’s Aunt Millie) have made a better Hildegarde Withers? (It could have been worse — they might have used Marjorie Main.)

   This not being an ideal world, however, simply the best of all possible ones, we accept what we’re given. As the title indicates, there’s a lot of plot in this one: first of all a murder, with lots of suspects, including a butler and a jealous boy friend. There also turns out to be a stolen emerald in the dead man’s possession, and the whole affair ends up in a museum where the famous Cellini cup is the target of a gigantic gang of thieves.

   Simply terrific stuff!

   James Gleason, as Inspector Oscar Piper, is a pint-sized bantam with an irascible temper and even fouler-smelling cigars. As a detective, well, it’s no wonder he had Miss Withers along to do his thinking for him.

[UPDATE] 12-08-10.   When I wrote this review, I was unaware of a made-for-TV movie in which Miss Withers (Eve Arden) and Inspector Piper (James Gregory) were also the leading characters. It was A Very Missing Person, based on the novel Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene by Stuart Palmer and Fletcher Flora. Shown on ABC, 4 March 1972, rumor has it that it was not as good as it might have been.

   And a fact that was totally unknown to me until just now, according to Wikipedia, there was a 1950s TV sitcom pilot entitled “Amazing Miss Withers” that starred Agnes Moorehead and Paul Kelly. It is apparently considered lost, probably forever.

SIDESHOW. Monogram Pictures, 1950. Don McGuire, Tracy Roberts, John Abbott, Eddie Quillan, Ray Walker, Richard Foote, Jimmy Conlin, Iris Adrian. Director: Jean Yarbrough.

   This short black-and-white movie (only 67 jam-packed minutes) has some noirish aspects to it – it’s dark throughout (in the sense of poor lighting) and there are a few sinister scenes taking place behind the outward glitter of a rundown carnival – but in reality it’s only a crime film, and not a very good one – not one I can honestly recommend to you, if you can find a copy.

   That’s a big “if.” It’s hard to find, and when you do, it’s likely to be in as rough in quality as the one I have. Both the picture and sound deteriorate noticeably toward the end, but not seriously enough to cause you to throw the DVD away. Not me, anyway. I’m happy to have it.

   The real problem is that it’s the story itself that falls apart, the longer it goes. I’ve watched the movie twice, and while there was an improvement the second time around, it’s only at the beginning. The ending is still as much of a mystery to me as it was before. Who, what, when, and especially why – all unanswered questions, even after the curtain comes down.

   I suppose it’s time for me to tell you what this movie’s about, isn’t it? The amusement park carnival that treasury agent Steve Arthur (Don McGuire) goes undercover working for is also somehow the means by which a gang of jewel thieves has been smuggling their gems into the US. His job: to find out how.

   Dolly Jordan (Tracey Roberts), the hootchy-kootchy girl he first suspects, turns out to be both innocent and then a close ally. (The pearls in the fudge she made were placed there by someone else.) But that leaves plenty of other suspects, some brought in during the last reel, and as I said before, the whole affair doesn’t make a lick of sense. (I am not going to watch it a third time.)

   The atmosphere is good, however, including some gritty inside glimpses at sideshow life, and the acting is even better, believe or not.

   The hunky Don McGuire, who didn’t star in many other movies, was a lot more successful as a writer (Bad Day at Black Rock, Tootsie), for example, and as a producer and director, while red-headed Tracy Roberts went to become a famous Hollywood acting coach.

   Not that you could tell she had red hair in the movie, but I think you can from the poster and at least one of the lobby cards I found for the film.

THE UNHOLY WIFE. RKO Radio Pictures, 1957. Diana Dors, Rod Steiger, Tom Tryon, Beulah Bondi, Marie Windsor, Arthur Franz, Joe De Santis. Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, based on William Durkee’s play “The Prowlers,” telecast on the CBS series Climax! on 05 January 1956. Director: John Farrow.

   It’s something of a muddled mess overall, but there is still a lot to like in this end-of-the-era film noir, and noir or not, it needed to be filmed in color, else Diana Dors’ beautifully coiffed mane of brilliant platinum blonde hair would have been as cruelly wasted as a crime against nature itself.

   It begins, however, with Dors’ character, Phyllis Hochen, telling the story in what appears to be a dingy room of some type, possibly (and more than likely) a prison cell. Without makeup and with her hair perhaps her natural brown, it gives her a chance to display her acting ability, rather than her other more spectacular attributes. She is barely more than pretty in these scenes, but there’s an honesty about her that one does not notice when she’s playing bombshell, a role which in 1957 she was much well known for, by far.

   Accompanied by Gwen (Marie Windsor) as a barroom pickup artist, as she tells her story, Phyllis parlayed a small shot into picking up a husband, Paul Hochen (Rod Steiger), a very rich winegrower in northern California. This in spite of the fact that she has a young son and a husband lost in the war. Make that a double: she also warns him that she’s no good.

   A warning he ought to have taken. Bored with life in an isolated mansion, it is not long before Phyllis has found a lover, a rodeo cowboy played by the ultra-handsome Tom Tryon. And it is not long after that that Phyllis shoots a prowler by “accident.” The only problem is, the dead man is not her husband, but her husband’s best friend.

   Thinking quickly on her feet, the blonde mane not concealing an empty brain, she convinces her husband to —, then she twists her story around in court so that —, and Paul’s ailing mother overhears —, and then, and then, and then the end.

   Can you fill in the blanks? You’re going to have to, because I’m not telling. It’s believable enough, but it would be even more so if the characters weren’t quite so shallow – no, it’s not that they’re shallow. It’s more that we never get to know enough about them, only hints here and there. Some blatant, some hidden. The story shows us their actions. Their motivations are up for grabs.

   Some reviewers have taken what I took to be a straightforward story and twisted it up and down and inside out and coming up with another story altogether. I won’t tell you anything about that one, either. You’re better off making your own conclusions.

   Or in other words, other commentators have been all over the place with this one, including Rod Steiger’s performance, understated in a way that’s not easy to put into words and yet totally dynamic — but as long as you’re asking me, I liked it just fine.

   I do wish that Marie Windsor had had a longer part, though. Five minutes with Miss Windsor on the screen is not nearly enough.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY. 1930. Betty Compson, Lowell Sherman, Raymond Hatton, Hugh Trevor, June Clyde. Director: George B. Seitz.

   It was a dark and stormy night … on a rock-bound island off the coast of Cuba. [FOOTNOTE] A mansion, full of guests, laughter and merriment, and suddenly … a shot rings out.

   A rush to the wall at the edge of the cliff … and a body is seen being washed out to sea. A confession … despair … hatred … and (would you believe?) murder.

   The fiancee of the accused man, with whom she has been quarreling, is also a writer of mystery novels (“dime novels,” he sneers), and in this movie she proves her worth as a detective. While we (the viewer) know who the killer is, it is nice, on occasion, one such as this, to be able to follow the deductions along with the sleuth of the story.

   And a stagey sort of story it is (not surprisingly, being adapted directly from a play, one called Hawk Island), with the acting ranging from barely adequate to abysmal. By today’s standards, I hasten to add.

   The only player I recognized was Raymond Hatton, but after seeing him as a cowboy sidekick in countless other movies of a type other than this, I’m not sure I would have recognized him, what with suit jacket, vest and tie, if his name hadn’t appeared early on in the credits.

[FOOTNOTE]   There is some confusion about this, as this week’s TV Guide says it was off the coast of Maine, which seems more likely, but I checked the beginning of the movie again, and no, it says Cuba, right there in the opening scene.

[UPDATE] 10-26-10.   I should still have the video tape I made of this movie, and I certainly hope so, since I’ve not been able to find one on DVD. Presumably I taped it from either TCM or American Movie Classics, so there is no doubt that it does still exist somewhere.

    Betty Compson, pictured above, made a lot of silent films, and I mean a lot, but she survived the switch to talkies and was still making movies through the late 1940s, albeit of the “B” variety, a la Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947), which I watched a month or so ago during an all-day Bowery Boys marathon.

PETER GUNN. Pilot: “The Kill.” NBC-TV, 22 September 1958. Craig Stevens, Lola Albright, Hershel Bernardi, Hope Emerson. Guests: Gavin McLeod, Jack Weston. Written & directed by Blake Edwards. [The series: 1958-1960, NBC; 1960-1961, ABC.]

GUNN. Paramount Pictures, 1967. Craig Stevens, Laura Devon, Ed Asner, Sherry Jackson, Albert Paulson, M.T. Marshall, Helen Traubel, J. Pat O’Malley, Regis Toomey. Screenplay by Blake Edwards & William Peter Blatty. Directed by Blake Edwards.

PETER GUNN. TV-movie/pilot, ABC, 22 September 1958. Peter Strauss, Barbara Williams, Peter Jurasik, Pearl Bailey, Charles Cioffi, Jennifer Edwards. Written & directed by Blake Edwards.

   Some ideas are just too good for one telling. Roy Huggins novella “Appointment with Fear,” a Stuart Bailey private eye tale, was the basis for the films The Good Humor Man and “State Secret,” the pilot for 77 Sunset Strip (and at least two episodes), and the pilot for City of Angels. So Blake Edwards, with variations, used “The Kill,” the pilot for Peter Gunn, as the basis for the 1967 feature film and the 1989 refit with Peter Strauss.

   The basic story, as outlined in “The Kill,” is that an aging gangster is killed by two assassins dressed as cops in a phony cop car. Peter Gunn owed the old time mobster his life and won’t leave his death alone.

   An ambitious gangster (Gavin McLeod — called Fallon here, Fusco in the movie) wants to take over and blows up Mother’s, the jazz bar run by Hope Emerson where Peter Gunn’s chanteuse girlfriend Edie sings, as an example of how his extortion racket will work. Gunn figures it out, puts pressure on Fallon’s top man (Jack Weston) and sets him up as a target for the two phony cops.

It wasn’t as if borrowing was new to Blake Edwards. He began his career creating singing detective Richard Diamond for Dick Powell on radio, then moved into screenplays and television. He updated Richard Diamond as a smooth non-singing private eye played by David Janssen for television, then he also wrote and directed a pilot with Brian Keith for a Mike Hammer series.

   Peter Gunn was very much a cross between the cool hip buttoned down and laid back Richard Diamond and the tough violent jazz themed world of Mike Hammer.

   Peter Gunn, for the uninitiated, is a private eye in a riverfront town that is never named but always seems a bit wet and foggy. He operates out of Mother’s, a smoky bar where his girl friend Edie is the singer, and he stands at the bar and exchanges hip humor with the owner, Mother. His chief ally on the police force is Lt. Jacobi, a human, dogged, world weary policeman.

   Peter is aided by a small army of informers and snitches, all colorful, eccentric, and prone to theatrics. The closest literary equivalent to Peter Gunn was likely Henry Kane’s Peter Chambers who has a similar jazzy offbeat quality — and ironically (or not), Kane wrote the only novelization of the television series.

   To add to the cool dialogue, complex plots, and moody noirish look the series was blessed with perhaps the most recognizable theme in television history, Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme.

   What the Monty Norman/James Bond theme is to spy fiction, the Gunn theme is to crime. It is simply unforgettable (little wonder, in addition to Mancini, at the time his orchestra included legendary John Williams.) Even people who never heard of Peter Gunn know that iconic theme.

   One more element came into play: perfect casting. If there was a better choice than Craig Stevens to play Peter Gunn I can’t imagine him. Stevens was a minor B-actor whose biggest role was probably that of a shell shocked soldier in Since You Went Away and by the time of Peter Gunn had fallen to appearing in films like The Preying Mantis and Abbot and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

   Just before Peter Gunn he had an outstanding role as a cool gun man in Budd Boetticher’s Buchanan Rides Alone, which may well have led to his being cast as Gunn. For whatever reason, he took the part and ran with it. The result was like seeing Mike Hammer played by Cary Grant. It is simply one of the most iconic roles in television history, on a level with Lucy and Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason.

   Craig Stevens is Peter Gunn. Much of the character and mood established with nothing more than a raised eyebrow or a his cat like walk. Craig Stevens is Peter Gunn the way Sean Connery was James Bond or Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes.

   For American audiences, Peter Gunn and Stevens were the transition from Mike Hammer to James Bond.

   The rest of the cast included Lola Albright as the sexy somewhat melancholy Edie who knows her man is only her man in a limited way:

   Hershel Bernardi was cast as Lt. Jacobi the world weary cop and veteran Hope Emerson was Mother, an imposing presence even on the small screen. Veteran character actors like J. Pat O’Malley and Regis Toomey were semi regulars as colorful informers.

   The series ran only three seasons on NBC and then ABC. When it went off the air it found new life in syndication, and in 1967 Edwards decided to try again as a feature film. Stevens was back, but Lola Albright was replaced by Laura Devon as a rather wan Edie. Ed Asner was good as a tougher version of Jacobi and Helen Traubel played Mother. O’Malley and Toomey again appeared as informers.

   The plot was expanded from “The Kill” with some fine variations — at least one borrowed from Mickey Spillane’s Vengeance is Mine. Albert Paulson was “Fusco,” the Fallon character from the pilot, M. T. Marshall had a standout role as Daisy Jane, a madam who ran a floating whorehouse, and Sherry Jackson appeared as a beautiful and mysterious kook who shows up naked in Gunn’s bed.

   The world had changed in six years though Gunn hadn’t, and the whole thing is faintly anachronistic, but it is done with such style that hardly matters. It’s a superior effort all around, with at least three outstanding set pieces, including a shoot out in a mirrored bedroom, a confrontation on a racket ball court (taken in part from “The Kill”), and the finale, a bloody brawl that may well be one of the most violent scenes filmed to that time.

   Craig Stevens commands the big screen as he did the small one, but the time for Gunn was gone and though it did well, the critics weren’t kind and Gunn disappeared again. Stevens had several other series that ran varying lengths of time — Man of the World, Mr. Broadway, The Invisible Man, did a pilot for a “Thin Man” series, Nick and Nora (notoriously bad), and probably had his last big role in Edward’s S.O.B.

   By 1989 Blake Edwards had moved onto bigger things, but he trotted out Peter Gunn yet again with a new actor in the role, Peter Strauss, then still fresh off his star-making role in Rich Man, Poor Man.

   Again a gangster has been killed and a gang war threatens. Peter Gunn caught in the middle has to find the killers and stop the bloodshed.

   As a private eye film this is not bad, but as Peter Gunn it just isn’t right.

   Strauss makes his first appearance in a dinner jacket with a white silk scarf and looks like Michael J. Fox wearing his father’s suit. Edie has almost nothing to do and is largely replaced by a scatterbrained secretary (in the original series Mother’s was Pete’s office) who has far too much screen time. Peter Jurasik plays Jacobi as a petulant and cynical typical cop. Pearl Bailey has little to do as Mother.

   Frankly it’s all tired and hackneyed. Not bad, but not Peter Gunn, not by a long sight. Peter Gunn in a turtle neck just didn’t fit somehow. That said, the film has it’s moments, with a nice variation on the shootout from The Big Sleep at the end. One nice touch, Lt. Jacobi acquires a first name — Hershel.

   Strauss might have been good as a private eye. Just not Peter Gunn. As made for television private eye films go, this isn’t bad. If you had never seen Craig Stevens and the original you might even have been impressed.

   But it’s Diet Coke, not the Real Thing.

      The plot varies even more from “The Kill” than Gunn did, but there are enough similarities you won’t have any trouble recognizing where the idea came from. Charles Cioffi is the gangster this time.

   In the years since Peter Gunn projects have come and gone. John Woo had one at one point. It would be nice if by some miracle everything came together and we got one more great Peter Gunn, but it seems unlikely. Gunn is very much of its time, an attitude, an actor, and a handful of people he interacted with, and very much one of the best themes ever written, bar none.

      Not that we will be, but perhaps, just this once, we should be grateful for what we have.

MAX EHRLICH – Spin the Glass Web. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1952. Bantam #1096, paperback, 1953.

Filmed as The Glass Web. Universal International, 1953. Edward G. Robinson, John Forsythe, Kathleen Hughes, Marcia Henderson, Richard Denning, Hugh Sanders. Screenplay: Robert Blees & Leonard Lee. Director: Jack Arnold.

   Max Ehrlich started writing for newspapers, moved on to Radio in the late ’30s and Television in the ’50s. In between times he wrote a few books, including Spin the Glass Web (Harper, 1952) which draws on his experience in live TV to craft a neat tale of a not-quite-innocent screen-writer caught up in murder.

   The story opens on Don Newell, head writer of a TV show of rather questionable taste but undoubted allure — they dramatize recent crimes as sensationally as possible. Don is married and blessed with children, and the story starts as he decides to buy off his mercenary mistress Paula — or kill her, depending on the moment.

   As he makes his way to her apartment, we flashback to their meeting, his seduction and attendant complications, including blackmail. The third-person narrative unfolds a bit further and we find Paula has a criminal husband knocking around somewhere, and another TV writer on the string: Henry Hinge, a pudgy, detail-obsessed, technical advisor with ambitions of getting Newell’s job.

   Flashbacks and unfolding done with, Don turns up at Paula’s apartment, finds her already murdered, and slowly realizes his problems are only beginning.

   Spin never generates much mystery; it’s pretty clear early on who the killer is and how he’s going to trip himself up, but the momentum of the tale comes from Newell’s frantic efforts to get out from under Hinge’s compulsive poking around into the details of the case, and the effort of trying to act natural around his increasingly suspicious wife.

   Ehrlich spins this out rather effectively, using as a backdrop the producer’s decision to dramatize Paula’s murder for the show Don has to write: the closer the show comes to air time, the tighter the web Hinge spins around the hapless, haunted Newell.

SPOILER ALERT: I have to mention here that although, as I said, the killer and his undoing are telegraphed early on, Ehrlich finishes the book by cranking up the old deus ex machina and taking it out for a spin.

   The result is dramatically satisfying but hardly convincing as the getting-away-with-it killer is gunned down by a passing policeman who sees him running in the night.

   Now when I was a kid, you could get shot and killed for running away from a cop and not stopping when he ordered you to. I mean, I never tried it myself, but I saw it on the News a few times, and it was featured in a couple of movies, most notably The Prowler and Woman in the Window.

   By the time I was wearing a badge and gun, the rules had tightened up a bit, but I still had the chance once to legally shoot a fleeing felon in the back; couldn’t do it, though.

   When it came right down to it and I was squeezing the trigger, I suddenly said to myself, “No, you better hadn’t,”and stopped. (I ended up catching the burglar when he ran into a chicken-wire fence.) Anyway, whenever I see this bit in a book or movie, I always recall that moment and wonder how often it happened in what we call Real Life.

   Getting back to Ehrlich’s book, it was filmed the next year as The Glass Web “in Amazing 3-D” at Universal by the redoubtable Jack Arnold, who also brought the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the screen and detailed the domestic life of the Incredible Shrinking Man.

   It’s a solid job of film-making, with John Forsythe suitably harried as the philandering writer, Edward G. Robinson (recalling his role in Double Indemnity) playing the obsessed Hinge, and a very effective Kathleen Hughes as the predatory Paula, whom the writers contrive to kill at the start of the movie and kill again later on.

   There’s a wonderful scene early in the film, well-played and tightly-written, between Robinson and Hughes that sketches their pathetic relationship perfectly. And if the wrap-up goes a bit over the top, it at least makes for fun watching.

Editorial Comment:   You can’t make it out it, I’m sure, but on the front cover of the Harper hardcover edition up above, it reads: “Your Money Back If You Can Resist Breaking The Seal.”

   Which makes this a Harper Sealed Mystery that was missed in Victor Berch’s checklist of the same. The previous series ended in 1934, some 18 years earlier. Are there any others that came along later? We’ll find out.

I LOVE TROUBLE. Columbia Pictures, 1948. Franchot Tone, Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Glenda Farrell, Steven Geray, Tom Powers, Lynn Merrick, John Ireland, Donald Curtis, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Barrat, Raymond Burr, Eddie Marr, Sid Tomack. Screenplay by Roy Huggins, based on his book The Double Take. Director: S. Sylvan Simon.

   I have any number of things I need to tell you about this film, and I do not know where to begin. But perhaps the most essential thing you need to know is that this is a private eye movie, and that the PI who stars in it, impersonated by Franchot Tone, is Stu Bailey, who later became much more famous as the star of the television series, 77 Sunset Strip, in which he was played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

   I could understand the latter as being a gent who could turn the heads of any number of women as he walks by, if not actually being the object of the whistle of the wolf, but Franchot Tone, somewhat less so. As you can see from the list of cast members, there are any number of women in this film, including the former Torchy Blane, aka Glenda Farrell, now relegated to the role of Helen “Bix” Bixby,” faithful secretary. It’s an important role, but to my mind, it’s still a relegation.

   Bailey is hired in this movie to follow the wife of an important man in his neck of the woods, which is Los Angeles, or if not, one of the important suburbs.

   Either way, the wife of this important man is accused anonymously of having secrets in her past, which includes Portland, where she was a nightclub dancer, and Los Angeles, where she was a bubble bath entertainer.

   From which point many leads open up, and many clichés of the gumshoe business ensue as well, and quite excellently so, including witty repartee (of course); being run down by an automobile in a dark alley; being followed by car in a high speed chase before the tables are turned; finding his room and office ransacked; being slugged on the head from behind; being kidnapped by the ransackers and then being drugged by a nurse with a needle with nefarious intent and more. And as suggested above, all kinds of women (other than the nurse) become involved, some essential to the plot, some not.

   And speaking of plot, I do not believe that anyone can watch this movie and follow the plot all of the way through. It is complicated.

   Perhaps as complicated as the 250 page novel the movie is based on, which I thought I had read when I started this movie, but which I quickly decided I had not.

   In any case, I have watched this movie twice, so far, and I think everything makes sense to me. Luckily I was watching on DVD and I could back up whenever I needed to, which was on the second time through, since I didn’t realize I needed to – the first time, that is.

   Unhappily, Raymond Burr has only two lines of dialogue. Distinctive lines of dialogue, true, but only two.

[UPDATE] 10-13-10. Turns out that Jeff Pierce did a long review of The Double Take a while ago, the Huggins book that this movie is based on. He apparently read a later paperback edition that updated the story a little bit, to make it a better fit for the TV series, but it didn’t seem to affect the details of the plot any. Jeff also includes huge chunks of the story itself, making his comments doubly worth reading. You can find it here.

FOG ISLAND. PRC, 1945. George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, Sharon Douglas, Veda Ann Borg, John Whitney, Jacqueline DeWit, Ian Keith. Screenplay by Pierre Gendron, based on the play Angel Island, by Bernadine Angus. Director: Terry O. Morse.

   Fog Island cost about a buck-ninety-five to chum out and looks it, but here is a film to sink your teeth into; a stylish, creaky Old-Dark-House thriller directed at penurious pace by someone named Terry Morse and offering a hand-picked cast of cinematic low-lifes including George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Ian Keith, Veda Ann Borg and Jerome Cowan (best remembered as the short-lived half of the Spade-Archer partnership in The Maltese Falcon) at his slimiest.

   Before going on to rave about this thing I should add perhaps that by nomic standards, Fog Island don’t amount to much. The script makes very little sense at all, the sets — when there are any seem about to topple any moment, and the whole affair is served up with a rushed look that seems cheap-jack even by PRC’s bottom-of-the-trash-can standards.

   Watching it is like seeing a derelict car chug its clanking way down a superhighway – you can’t believe it’s actually moving right there in front of you, much less understand what keeps it going.

   For the record, Fog Island concerns itself with the efforts of recently paroled embezzler Zucco to revenge himself on his unindicted co-conspirators, and their efforts to prise out of him the money they’re sure he squirreled away.

   As the plot unspools, hints are dropped here and there that Zucco and/or some of his cronies may or may not be guilty — but these are mostly left unresolved in the haste to get this thing in the can.

   What’s left is brilliantly atmospheric and astonishingly grim as Zucco, Atwill et. al. struggle, grasp and claw at each other to see who will emerge Wealthy… or Alive, anyway. Oh. there’s a romantic sub-plot stuck in there somewhere, but Director Morse and writer Pierre Gendron (who worked on Ulmer’s masterful Bluebeard) clearly save most of their interest for the Baddies — who are all played by much more interesting actors anyway.

   The big Confrontation scene where Zucco and Atwill pull out all the dramatic stops and hammer away at each other (accent on Ham) with histrionic abandon has — no kidding — Real Chemistry — made all the more compelling by being shot practically in the dark to hide the cheap-o sets.

   With nothing to distract us, the eyes are drawn irresistibly to the spectacle of two full-blooded (to put it mildly) performers face-to-face and toe-to-toe in the thespic equivalent of a knockdown drag-out prize fight.

   After this emotional high point, Fog Island drags, lurches and stumbles a bit to a conclusion that, as I say, is surprisingly grim and well-realized for a B-Horror/Mystery Movie. The glimpse of impressive artistry someone heaped on this obscure thing while no one was looking makes me despair of facile, expensive things like The Firm and Line of Fire.

   Which is not to say that Fog Island is as entertaining as either of them; it isn’t. The only thing it has going for it is the gratuitous energy and enthusiasm of its creators. Which is enough for me.