PETE KELLY’S BLUES (Warners/Mark VII, 1955) with Jack Webb, Janet Leigh, Lee Marvin, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Milner, and Andy Devine. Screenplay by Richard L. Breen; based on the 1951 radio series of the same title. Directed by Jack Webb.

   I knew Jack Webb could be funny — screamingly funny on the Tonight Show — and I knew he could be preachy and boring — like his late-60s revival of Dragnet — but I never thought he could be exciting till I saw this.

   The year is 1927:  Gangster Edmond O’Brien starts squeezing Kansas City jazz musicians for protection money. When they resist, he has one of them killed and the others knuckle under. He even pressures bandleader Webb into using his mistress in the act. At last, sickened by O’Brien’s brutality, Webb rebels in a violent shoot-out.

   A plain tale, simply told, and kudos to writer Breen and director Webb for adding just enough depth to keep it real, and just enough action to keep it moving. Webb himself is effectively laconic, in the Dick Powell style, with one of the great lines in the Movies:

      â€œCall the police and get someone to help bring Joey in.”

      â€œJoey? What’s wrong?”

      â€œIt’s raining on him.”

   Watching this, I never figured out why Janet Leigh fell helplessly in love with Jack Webb. I mean, he’s not as dour as usual here, but he’s still no Errol Flynn. More like an Americanized Henry Daniell. But the other characters ring true: Peggy Lee’s lush chantoosie, Martin Milner’s hothead, and even Andy Devine, unrecognizable as a tough cop.

   Best of all, there’s Lee Marvin as a laconic clarinetist. This character does almost nothing to advance the story, but he’s there anyway, with his droopy eyes and laid-back attitude, lending an authentic jazz-band tone to the proceedings. And he handles the licorice stick convincingly. The fact of his existence in this film — in a medium where every character is a bit of added time & expense — speaks volumes for Breen’s writing and Webb’s knowing production sense.

   Add the lush WarnerColor and some real fine, down-home, goat-ropin’ music, and you have a film here well worth your time.

“C”-MAN. Laurel Films / Film Classics, 1949. Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Harry Landers, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul. Director:  Joseph Lerner.

   â€œC”-Man is what we film-lovers call “an enjoyable little B.” Dean Jagger, in a Wig that would embarrass Howard Cosell, plays a rugged Customs Inspector looking for the smugglers who killed his buddy. Second-billed John Carradine gets about five minutes’ screen time as an alcoholic Doctor, and someone named Harry Landers, who was never heard of since, puts in a high-key, tightly wound performance as a barely-controlled psycho. Director Joseph Lerner covers the bare-bones budget with some interesting camera angles and rapid-fire location shooting, but that raised an interesting question for me:

   Irving Lerner was an energetic fast-paced maker of really impressive, really cheap films like Murder by Contract. Katz’s Film Encyclopedia credits Irving Lerner’s oevre to Joseph, apparently assuming they are one and the same, and it’s easy to watch “C”-Man and pick out the odd bits of style that turned up later in Murder by Contract. But Style is a fickle mistress. Does anyone know for sure if Irving and Joseph are one and the same?

   Directorial flourishes aside, the best part of “C”-Man for me was seeing mild-mannered Dean Jagger cast so violently against type. Kind of interesting, actually. Jagger somehow adds a layer of depth to the film, suggesting that maybe Tough Guys can be soft-spoken, gentle sorts without losing too much credibility. Works for me.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

BLOOD MONEY. 20th Century, 1933. George Bancroft, Judith Anderson, Frances Dee, Chick Chandler, Blossom Seeley. Director: Rowland Brown

   Where a movie like SOUND OF FURY (reviewed here, and Sweet Lord, how I hate that title!) tries to analyze its characters, a dandy little film called BLOOD MONEY seeks only to understand them, with much happier results: fast-paced and thoughtful, cynical and sentimental, BLOOD MONEY deals out the tale of a bail bondsman (flamboyantly played by beefy George Bancroft) and his sadder-but-wiser gal — a remarkable tum by Judith Anderson, better known for prim, patrician parts in REBECCA and LAURA, in slinky gowns, brassy makeup, and weary sang-froid.

   This is a film that sustains itself on attitude rather than plot, but what story there is spins around Bancroft’s sudden infatuation with debutante Francis Dee, who (the script hints) likes men who play rough. Bancroft jilts Anderson for Dee, who ditches Bancroft for a fling with Anderson’s kid brother (Chick Chandler) a bank robber out on bail, then connives to have him betray Bancroft, thus heading the whole cast into shootings, gang war and general aggravation.

   That’s the crux of the thing, but BLOOD MONEY doesn’t waste a lot of time on it; what it does is limn some vivid cameos of colorful characters and let them live and breathe on the screen a while. Chandler and Dee do a fine, understated sketch of flashy self-destruction, and there are some memorable bit parts of gang bosses, bent politicos and crooked cops. There’s even a flamboyant lesbian. But what stays in the mind is the relaxed and altogether real-feeling relationship between Bancroft and Anderson, as written by Hal Long (who also wrote ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) and directed by Rowland Brown, a talented director whose penchant for violence got him black-listed.

   The scene where Anderson and Bancroft break up tugs at all the right strings: it’s upstairs at Anderson’s speakeasy, with everyone partying down below. Bancroft tries to let her down gently, she grimly hands him his hat, and he slowly walks downstairs, feeling like a heel. As faded, jaded Blossom Seeley croons “Melancholy Baby,” he tosses off a last drink at the bar and mutters, “That song kills me,” before walking out of her life. It’s a moment worthy of the great romantic films, and all the more moving for showing up in a film as fast and tough as this one.

MADONNA OF THE DESERT. Republic Pictures, 1948. Lynne Roberts, Donald Barry, Don Castle, Sheldon Leonard, Paul Hurst, Roy Barcroft. Screenplay: Albert Demond. Story: Frank Wisbar. Directed by George Blair. Currently available on YouTube.

   This low budget film about crime and faith and retribution is almost the stuff of a good movie. Anyway it would be a good movie with just a touch here and there and a better director, cast, and budget.

   Nick Julian (Sheldon Leonard) is a slick dealer in dubious art who cheats and if necessary, steals the art he needs. He’s recently discovered that Joe Salinas (Don Castle) a New Mexico rancher owns a fabulous Madonna statue believed to be a product of the Renaissance brought here by his Conquistador ancestors.

   Nick wants the statue and will get it anyway he can, and after a trip to New Mexico ends in a failure to buy the statue cheap he decides to steal it, but not by main force. Instead he has his forger make an expensive copy and will have tough but slick Monica Dale (Lynne Roberts) work her way into the arms of veteran Salinas and switch the statues.

   If you think you know where this is going, you have obviously seen this plot unreel a few hundred times in books, films, and television episodes.

   Monica arrives and goes to work, while Nick and his hired thug Buck (Roy Barcroft) wait nearby in a cabin. When she tries to make the switch at a wedding where Joe has loaned the statue out, the altar bursts into flame and Monica’s dress catches fire. But the Madonna does not burn and miraculously Monica is not burned.

   About this time, Tony French (Donald Barry) shows up, a bitter con just out of prison who has found out about Nick’s plans. His appearance complicates things for Monica who is suffering doubts and a major change of heart and falling for Joe despite his foreman Pete (Paul Hurst) being suspicious.

   You can figure out from here than Nick and Tony will cancel each other out, and there will be a happy ending after a little gunplay. Joe even turns out to be less of a sap than you think.

   This is just barely a medium time passer so long as you aren’t actually paying to see it. Leonard and Barry could do this in their sleep, and don’t, but it’s a near thing. Roberts isn’t quite up to the lead here, or is betrayed by the direction and having no one better than Don Castle to play off of in her best scenes. In any case she falls flat both as a bad girl and a reformed bad girl, and has little to work with anyway.

   Castle is a nice looking guy, but he delivers his lines like he was in a high school play. That’s enough to kill the big emotional scenes where he talks about the Madonna saving him after he was crippled and in a wheelchair when he came back from the war. I’ve heard car insurance pitches delivered with more emotional impact. Roberts tries hard but must have been fighting a yawn the whole time.

   This kind of story requires more than just a flat presentation. Add some moody photography, a couple of leads with a modicum of charisma, and a push here and there to the corn, and it would work. This one is too cheap to even manage an inspirational musical score. There’s not even a closeup of the Madonna using effective lighting, just as well as it looks like a plastic replica from a Vatican souvenir shop.

   I’ve seen episodes of half hour syndicated television series from the Fifties filmed more imaginatively.

   It’s almost a good enough plot to work, almost a decent little movie. Unfortunately pros like Leonard, Barry, and Hurst can’t save it from Castle’s bland hero or Roberts miscast bad girl, and even a charismatic pair of leads would have trouble with this direction and unimaginative production.

   I will give it this, though. Barry puts some real energy into his scenes, and if the movie had concentrated on his character it might have been a solid little B crime drama. It doesn’t, and it isn’t, and nothing relieves the flat-footed production.

SHOOT ’EM UP. New Line Cinema, 2007. Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci. Screenwriter-director: Michael Davis.

   There’s a host of other people in this movie, mostly of them ending up dead, but the three that I listed above are all that really matter. Clive Owen is the man who witnesses a pregnant woman being run down and attacked; he rescues her, she dies, but somehow in the confusion he manages to deliver the baby. He needs assistance, and quickly, but where? Monica Bellucci as Donna Quintano, a prostitute who agrees to help.

   Their problems are not over, however. Paul Giamatti, as brilliant as always, is the head of the squad of men who are on their trail from that point on — until the end of the movie, and who end up wholly frustrated in what turns out to be an entirely useless chase. For as we all know, the good guys always aim right the first time, and the bad guys couldn’t hit the inside of a barn from inside the barn.

   Cannon fodder is all they are. What seems like thousands of bodies pile up, but I’m sure I read somewhere that there were only 150. Some people have little else to do with their time than to create statistics like this. Don’t look at me. All I did was watch it.

   The sexy scenes are minimal. There are a few gross out scenes, that is true, but other than that, this is a movie filled with non-stop movie violence. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

   What I think is that this is a even better Jack Reacher film than Jack Reacher, the film itself, the one with a pint-sized Tom Cruise trying to fill Jack Reacher’s shoes. He did surprisingly OK, but Clive Owen does an even better job playing an antisocial and psychotic hero, the kind of guy who drifts into town and waits for trouble to find him.

   Which it certainly does in this film, along with a girl who detests him at first — no, that’s unfair — actively dislikes him, but then as she’s also caught up in their plight together, she learns to like him a lot better.

   My purpose here is not to tell you how much I liked this film, or not, but to let you know what to expect if you decide to watch it anyway, in which case, my job is done.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

JO PAGANO – The Condemned. Prentice-Hall, hardcover, 1947. Perma Star, paperback, March 1954/ Also published as: Die Screaming (Zenith, paperback, 1958).

THE SOUND OF FURY. United Artists, 1950. Re-released as Try and Get Me!. Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, Richard Carlson, Lloyd Bridges, Katherine Locke. Adele Jergens. Screenplay by Jo Pagano, based on his novel The Condemned. Director: Cyril Endfield.

   Philosophers and scientists posit the existence of a Life-Force, an energy behind the existence (and persistence) of life under the most adverse and unlikely conditions throughout the- world, and perhaps the universe. Well, I’ve come to suspect the existence of a Pulp-force, an irresistible pressure. that takes profound ideas and classic works of art, music and literature, vulgarizes them (This is not always a bad thing.) and turns them into Pop Art. So we get rock songs based on themes from classical music, Classics Illustrated comic books, and films like ROMEO AND JULIET (1996) and WAR AND PEACE (1956) with Henry Fonda as a Russian aristocrat.

   Case in point is a novel written by Jo Pagano in 1947, THE CONDEMNED. It opens with a taut, engrossing kidnap-and-murder, then flashes back to the events and social conditions that led Howard Tyler, veteran and family man, to hook up with sociopath Jerry Slocum for a series of petty robberies that culminate in tragedy. Pagano handles the action well enough – even memorably sometimes — and ratchets up the suspense quite well toward the middle, as a drunken and remorseful Howard tries to keep a grip on reality, but CONDEMNED is also bulked up with pages (And pages. And more pages.) of psychosociological ramblings, as if Pagano were determined to write an “important” book, and it stows up the momentum of what could have been a very fine read, in the Jim Thompson vein. There’s also a coda in the narrative (Based on a true story) that could have had dandy dramatic impact, but here seems merely moralizing.

   THE CONDEMNED was turned into a movie in 1950, released as THE SOUND OF FURY, directed by Cyril Endfield (Better known for epics like ZULU and SANDS OF THE KALAHARI) and adapted by the author, whose screen credits also include JUNGLE MOON MEN. It’s a creditable effort, with effective performances from Frank Lovejoy and Lloyd Bridges (Not usually the most evocative actors in the business) and truly moving turns by Kathteen Ryan as Howard’s worried wife, and Katherine Locke as a pathetic floozie. And I mean they take stock parts and really make them live, helped considerably by Pagano’s writing and Endfield’s feel for character. There are also some effective stylistic flourishes — swiped from other B-movies, but useful nonetheless — like a drunken binge filmed entirely in tilted camera angles, or a robbery shot in one take from inside the getaway car.

   But there are also Important Messages to contend with, and the notion that this movie has to Say Something. So a handful of well-meaning characters try to tell us moviegoers the Meaning of All This, and they get awfully tiresome in the process. Not enough to completely kill the film, but they cripple it up pretty bad.

   And then the Pulp Force began working: SOUND OF FURY (Geeze, what a pretentious title!) was released with all due self-importance — The San Francisco Chronicle made it their “Premier of the Week” — and promptly died a dog’s death at the box office. Nothing daunted, the producers re-titled it TRY AND GET ME! and re-released it with lurid ads to play up its trashy aspects, and a few months after SOUND OF FURY made its pretentious debut, TRY AND GET ME –· the same film in a different wrapper — was unreeling at grind houses and burlesque shows.

   As for the source novel, THE CONDEMNED re-surfaced years later in drug stores and bus-stations as DIE SCREAMING.

THE MAGNIFICENT FRAUD. Paramount Pictures, 1939. Akim Tamiroff, Lloyd Nolan, Patrica Morrison, Mary Boland, Ralph Forbes, Steffi Duna, George Zucco, Robert Warwick, Albert Biberman. Screenplay by Gilbert Gabriel and Walter Ferris, based on the unpublished short story “”Caviar for His Excellency,” by Charles G. Booth. Directed by Robert Florey. Remade as Moon Over Parador (1988).

   President Alvarado (Akim Tamiroff) is the wise leader of a poor South American nation negotiating with wealthy American Harrison Todd (Ralph Forbes) to save his country, but when Alvarado is assassinated it falls to his right hand man fast talking Yankee Sam Barr (Lloyd Nolan) to cover up the crime so that Alvarado’s crooked successors and Sam can get the money.

   To that end Sam has the bright idea of employing theatrical impersonator Jules LaCroix (Tamiroff) to impersonate Alvarado until the deal is sealed and then take his bribe and run. And it seems the perfect plan, with Sam so close to the President no one will doubt his word that Alvarado survived the assassination attempt. Especially with crooked general Robert Warwick and Police Captain Albert Biberman behind him.

   All he has to do is keep the honest Dr. Luis Virgo (George Zucco) away until the deal is sealed and limit who sees LaCroix to a distance.

   Sounds easy enough until the complications start to pile on, but then it did in The Prisoner of Zenda too.

   Complications include the French policeman Duval (Eugene Crossart) who has just shown up to arrest Jules LaCroix for crimes he committed in France and has been a fugitive from for years. Or Mme. Geraldine Genet (Mary Boland), the famous diva who once was President Alvarado’s lover, and who is there accompanying Claire Hill (Patrica Morrison) as her chaperone as she travels with fiance Harrison Todd.

   Then there is the general greed of all the parties involved including LaCroix who finds he likes being President Alvarado and Mme. Genet and Sam’s less than trustworthy partners who are infighting over who replaces Alvarado.

   Add beautiful Claire and Sam Barr falling for each other, and Carmelita (Steffi Duna) a Spanish dancer who thinks Sam is already hers and doesn’t like his new attention to Claire, and things are starting to get sticky.

   Nor does it help when Sam starts having second thoughts about this little con game and his partners arrest him and throw him in prison with plans for him to “escape” all too easily and collect a bullet in the back. All the while Jules LaCroix is starting to be infected by the nobility of the late President he is impersonating and wondering if the country wouldn’t be better off with Dr. Virgo in charge, certainly as Sam’s partners seem to be planning another assassination.

   If this sounds like the kind of fast paced pulp story you might have found in the pages of Argosy, Blue Book, or Adventure you aren’t far off, especially considering the screen story is from Charles G. Booth, one of Joe Shaw’s Black Mask Boys who wrote novels like The General Died at Dawn and Mr. Angel Comes Aboard (and picked up an Academy Award for best story for The House on 92nd Street, ironically also with Nolan starring).

   The pacing is that of a pulp story too: tough, fast paced, slightly screw-ball, and filled with eccentric colorful characters. This might be a minor A from Paramount, but the money spent on it shows in the sets and production values.

   It’s mostly a showcase for Nolan and Tamiroff who are clearly having fun making it. Nolan, sporting a pencil thin mustache, is playing a familiar role for him, the fast-talking, fast-thinking semi-honest smart guy who goes good at the last possible minute, and Tamiroff adds another great character to his repertoire. The two of them obviously enjoying themselves would be enough alone, but this one is lively fun played in just the right key of laughs, intrigue, action, romance, and Latin American Zenda-ing with wisecracks replacing sword fights.

OUT OF SIGHT. Universal Pictures, 1998. George Clooney (Jack Foley). Jennifer Lopez (Karen Sisco), Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina, with cameos by Michael Keaton & Samuel L. Jackson. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. Director: Steven Soderbergh.

   I can easily image that everyone reading this already knows the story, even if you haven’t actually seen the film. I’ll recap, though, just in case, but as briefly as I can. When a career bank robber by the name of Jack Foley (George Clooney) breaks out of a Floridan prison, he’s forced to share the trunk of the getaway car with a federal marshal by the name Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). And as it so happens, as they talk about movies and other things, propinquity prevails and romantic sparks fly, as unlikely a thing as that might be.

   Except in the movies, of course.

   It was a huge hit, rightfully so, and the beginning of very successful movie-making careers for both of the two lead stars. But the secondary players may even be better in this one, thanks to dialogue that if it didn’t come straight from Elmore Leonard’s novel, it could have.

   It’s a wonderful romantic film, with a lot of shooting toward the end. I have only one kind of sour note to add to this short commentary, and I feel like a churl for bringing it up, but it did bother me somewhat. How did they get two adults in the same trunk at the same time? I don’t think I could fit curled up in a trunk all by myself, much less along with a fine young lady such as J.Lo.

   I’d be willing to try, though.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

BULLETS OR BALLOTS. Warner Brothers, 1936. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell, Barton MacLane, and Humphrey Bogart. Written by Seton I. Miller and Martin Mooney. Directed by William Keighly.

   A dumb title on a story guaranteed to surprise no one, but so well-mounted I didn’t care.

   Edward G. Robinson stars as a veteran plainclothes cop, who opens the show by throwing a cheap hood through a glass door — Warner’s way of telling us he’s tough and straight — but not puritanical; he flirts with hard-boiled Joan Blondell, who runs a numbers game, and chums around with Barton MacLane as an upper-echelon gangster.

   Then, following a departmental house-cleaning, Robinson gets fired, fired up, socks the Police Captain and joins MacLane’s mob, where he quickly rises in importance. But don’t worry folks, it’s all a ruse, a sham, and a ploy, designed to get Eddie access to the really big boys who give the orders and rake off the profits.

   Well, as movie-schemes go, it’s not bad. The only real problem is Humphrey Bogart as MacLane’s trigger-happy Number Two, understandably upset by Robinson’s rise in the ranks and all too eager to demote him permanently.

   At this point Bullets or Ballots (what the hell does that title refer to?) becomes a vigorous game of cat-and-mouse, with Bogie and Eddie taking turns as predator and prey, trying to outmaneuver each other in games of gunfire and gangland politics, done with typical Warners panache: squealing tires, blazing guns and the gentle pitter-patter of fists on faces. I particularly liked one scene where Eddie walks into a room full of hostile hoods and director Keighly emphasizes his isolation with subtle camera placement and composition, then gradually eases the visual tension as Robinson wins them over.

   This was Bogie’s first film at Warner Brothers after his memorable Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, and his first team-up Edward G. Robinson, whom he would definitively kill in Key Largo. Here we have all the nastiness of Mantee, but none of that independent spirit that ennobled the earlier part. No, Bogie is the classic Meanie here: vicious, cowardly and compulsively watchable. There were better parts to come — and some definitely worse — but fans of Bogart need to see this one.

OUT OF LINE. Curb Entertainment, 2001. Jennifer Beals, Holt McCallany, Michael Moriarty, Christopher Judge, Rick Ravanello, William B. Davis, Alonso Oyarzun. Screenwriter-director: Johanna Demetrakas.

   While there is more than enough criminous activity in this film to warrant my categorizing it as a Crime Film, what it really is, when it down to it, is a romance. A Pretty Woman in reverse, you might say, and I’d be even more convinced of the comparison if I’d ever seen that other film. I’ve always meant to, but it’s still on my Must See list.

   But try this on for size. When Henri Brulé aka Henry Burns (Holt McCallany) is released from prison early, his parole officer is a young but very dedicated Jenny Capitanas (Jennifer Beals). She’s the kind of supervisor who finds the hard-nosed approach her fellow officers (all male) use not her style at all, and she finds herself taking him to the opera and teaching him tai chi, or if that’s not correct it’s close enough.

   The attraction between them is obviously not in the rule book, and as in all good noir films, you know that things are not going to work out well for them, nor do they. Th crime element comes in when Henri has to work on a deal he made to another inmate while still in prison: to mess with both a smooth crime boss’s business – and his wife.

   That’s all I’ll say about that, except that it does lead to the very much expected (and explosive) fireworks at the end. To me, the value of this film lies in the (probably) doomed romance, which produces fireworks of a different kind. If it works, and I think it does, a good share of the credit goes to Jennifer Beals, who I haven’t seen in a film she she started, way back with Flashdance, way back in 1983. As an actor, she’s not only beautiful, but intelligent too. Her body language and what you see in her face are fluid and natural. You can’t ask for more. At least I can’t.

   The overall film you can call only a qualified success, at best. I saw this online one of streaming channels, and I’d like to have a DVD as a permanent copy, but it seems to have gone out of print very quickly, and used copies have become pricey.

PostScript: I’ve just watched the trailer. It’s excellent.