FORT APACHE, THE BRONX. Time-Life/20th Century Fox, 1981. Paul Newman, Edward Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Rachel Ticotin, Pam Grier, Kathleen Beller. Screenplay: Heywood Gould, suggested by the experiences of Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore. Director: Daniel Petrie.

   I would venture that Fort Apache, The Bronx is one of those movies that elicits either strong positive or negative reactions, with few observers taking a neutral position on this gritty police procedural. Part of it, I suppose, concerns the subject matter; namely, the NYPD and its efforts (or lack thereof) to police the decaying, drug-infested, burnt-out South Bronx in late 1970s/early 1980s.

   The other aspect that likely provokes strong reactions is the fact that Fort Apache, The Bronx is less a plot-driven story than it is a character study of a middle aged cop trying to find meaning both personal and professional life. Indeed, the movie veers from crime film to romantic drama in the blink of an eye and then back again to crime film, often leaving the viewer less that surefooted as to where the movie is headed and what’s coming up next: more personal drama or a nasty, violent sequence showing the utter depravity of the criminal element in one of (at the time) New York’s roughest neighborhoods.

   Count me in the (all things considered) strongly positive camp, albeit with some caveats.

    Fort Apache, The Bronx was not directed by a well-known auteur and it certainly doesn’t have the same emotional punch as the grindhouse classic, Death Wish (1974), let alone Martin Scorsese’s brilliantly bleak Taxi Driver (1976), gritty New York films both.

   It does, however, have some exceptional standout performances by not only leading man Paul Newman, but also by supporting cast members Ken Wahl, Ed Asner, and Pam Grier.

   Newman, a fine actor more than capable of taking on demanding roles, portrays Murphy, a cynical, world-weary middle-aged cop stationed in the South Bronx. The precinct house, his real home, is nicknamed “Fort Apache” signifying that the station is less akin to a “normal” police station and more like a Western cavalry outpost in hostile Indian territory. Unfortunately, it’s a theme that doesn’t get played up as much as it might have.

   The plot basics: After a strung-out prostitute named Charlotte (Grier) murders two cops in broad daylight, Murphy and his young partner, Corelli (Wahl) are tasked by their new by-the-book boss (Asner) with rooting out the criminal element from the neighborhood and shaking them down for information on the cop killer. Little do the cops know that the killer isn’t a male suspect; rather that it’s the devilishly sociopathic hooker who has been responsible for an entire series of seemingly senseless grisly slayings. Complicating matters for the mismatched duo is endemic police corruption, the local heroin trade, and Murphy’s burgeoning romance with an emergency room nurse.

   Eventually, all the various subplots come together, some neatly and others not so comprehensively. All of this may give some viewers a sense of incompleteness, as if the various strands were never adequately resolved. But that, in my estimation, was the whole point of the film. Police work, especially in a beleaguered neighborhood in a dying part of town, is never really going to provide its participants with a total sense of closure.

   Overall, Fort Apache, The Bronx is a solid piece of filmmaking. Largely filmed on location, what the movie lacks in imagination, it more than makes up with stark images of decay and dilapidation. There’s one scene in particular, located toward the end of the movie that remains etched in my mind. Murphy (Newman) is walking alone on the sidewalk just below the elevated subway tracks. In the context of what has recently happened to his character, it’s a beautifully haunting scene begging the question as to what possible impact a solitary man can have in the midst of such sadness and disorder.

HOUSE OF 1,000 DOLLS American International Pictures, 1968. Originally released in Spain as La casa de las mil muñecas, 1967. Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader. Written and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Directed by Jeremy Summers.

   You know a movie’s in trouble when the hero of the piece gets third billing. You know it’s really desperate trouble when that billing reads “George Nader,” an interesting man perhaps, but never the most electrifying of actors.

   Actually, House of 1,000 Dolls has a few stylistic flourishes that make it just about worthwhile. It’ll never make anyone’s “10 Best” list, but it’s an okay time-killer if you’re in the mood.

   Vincent Price and Martha Hyer play traveling magicians in the employ of a shadowy figure known only as “The King of Hearts” using their act to lure beautiful women into sexual slavery in a Tangiers Brothel. This not only gives Price a chance to strut about in cape and top hat, looking regally sinister, but also gives writer/producer Towers ample opportunity to show lotsa young ladies running around in their undies, a win-win situation if ever there was one.

   I have to confess that I’ve only come across one real-life “white slavery” operation and it was a pretty tatty affair involving a few rather unattractive and not-very-bright young ladies (not all of them white, for that matter) held in the thrall (and ratty apartment) of a rather unpleasant and not-very-bright old guy. So maybe I don’t have a sound basis for comparison, but it seems to me that House not only sanitizes the concept but positively glamorizes it.

   In this film the women are all beautiful, the brothel lavish and well-staffed, and the operations positively baroque; one slave is actually delivered to the villains in an ornate coffin transported by a hearse, which strikes me as a lot of overhead for an enterprise like this.

   In keeping with the spirit, Price and Hyer do their act in the finest nightclubs, travel in style and employ a seemingly limitless army of black-clad nasty guys who travel in pairs and prove completely unequal to the task of eliminating George Nader.

   Ah yes: George Nader. It seems he’s a forensic examiner for the NYPD and this makes him an expert in all sorts of crime-fighting, following clues, trailing suspects, wise-cracking at the expense of local cops and bashing about a bit when the occasion calls for it. Yes, of course it does.

   Well you don’t go to a movie like this for stark realism, and I’m happy to say that House of 1,000 Dolls doesn’t bother with any. There’s a fairly rudimentary plot about George’s wife getting enlisted in the brothel’s Ladies Auxiliary, some mystery about who The King of Hearts will turn out to be, a few fights, chases, murders and a slave-girl revolt (are there echoes of Spartacus here?) all handled passably, sometimes stylishly… but somehow never memorably. This is a film you will soon forget, but it’s painless and sporadically fun to watch.

NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER. Columbia Pictures, 1980. James Brolin, Cliff Gorman, Richard Castellano, Linda Miller, Barton Heyman, Sully Boyar, Julie Carmen, Abby Bluestone, Dan Hedaya, Mandy Patinkin. Based on the novel by William P. McGivern. Director: Robert Butler.

   Night of the Juggler isn’t for the faint of heart. While it’s not particularly violent or gruesome, it’s exceedingly gritty and seedy. But that’s what you might expect from a psychological thriller/action film set in the decaying streets of Manhattan and the South Bronx circa 1980.

   James Brolin portrays Sean Boyd, a former NYC cop turned truck driver, as he pummels and punches his way through Times Square and gang-infested streets. All in order to save his teenage daughter from a psychopath who, believing she was the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer, has kidnapped her and is holding her for a million dollar ransom. Brolin’s physicality is on full display here, as he doesn’t so much as act as he becomes a force of nature in the vein of Burt Reynolds or Liam Neeson at their best.

   Brolin’s character is also a Virgil figure, taking the viewer on a journey into Gotham’s most hellish and hopeless spots. It’s a bleak Inferno, one populated by peep shows, violent cops, ruthless street toughs, and crumbling infrastructure. The scenes in the South Bronx are a stark reminder of what that part of the city looked like some three and a half decades ago. As far as Times Square is concerned, the one featured in the film looks nothing like the posh family-friendly Disneyland that it is today.

   As a crime thriller, Night of the Juggler is a perfectly adequate film, but nothing more. As a time capsule into a barely recognizable New York, this somewhat forgotten feature is captivating, if unnerving, to watch.

A GUNMAN HAS ESCAPED. Monarch Films, UK, 1948. John Harvey, John Fitzgerald, Robert Cartland, Ernest Brightmore, Maria Charles, Jane Arden, Frank Hawkins. Scenario: John Gilling. Director: Richard M. Grey.

   Sometimes films have more to offer in terms of historical interest than any entertainment value they may or may not have. In all honesty, if anyone could call this late 40s low budget crime drama from England anything more than mediocre, I’d have to consider their critical judgment something between low and none.

   But consider the date. For most of the players in this movie, the war was barely over and this was the beginning of long careers for them, mostly in TV when that came along, but movies as well. In fact one of them, Maria Charles, who plays a gun moll named Goldie and whose first movie this was, is still alive at the age of 86 and was on TV as recently as 2009.

   The director (and producer) of A Gunman Has Escaped, Richard M. Grey, made one or two other films then disappeared, and so did his production company. Perhaps the most well known of the actors was Jane Arden, whose second film this was, later became a noted film director, actress, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter, and poet. (You can follow the link to a long Wikipedia entry on her.)

   In this movie, though, she plays an unmarried and very naive farmer’s daughter who falls in love with one of three gunmen who botched a jewelry robbery, killing a bystander in the process, and who are now on the lam, and who take refuge on her father’s farm.

   This is a very short film, well under an hour in running time, and although almost all the violence is offstage, quite a brutal one. The actors all know their lines, though, and although the story is nothing more than perfunctory — I’ve told you all there is to know — I never had the urge to turn it off while I was watching.

KING OF GAMBLERS. Paramount Pictures, 1937. Claire Trevor, Lloyd Nolan, Akim Tamiroff, Larry Crabbe, Helen Burgess, Porter Hall, Barlowe Borland. Writing credits: Doris Anderson (screenplay), Tiffany Thayer (story), Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur (neither credited). Director: Robert Florey.

   King of Gamblers is an immensely fun little “B” from Paramount, one of a series put out by that studio in the late 30s. These films, with titles like Dangerous to Know, Hunted Men, Tip-Off Girls, Illegal Traffic and Parole Fixers offered fast-moving stories, stylish direction and strong acting from a revolving stock company that included Robert Preston, Akim Tamiroff, J. Carroll Naish, Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn and (almost invariably) Lloyd Nolan.

   But they are primarily triumphs of Production. Someone at Paramount cared enough to get directors like Robert Florey, writers (sometimes uncredited) like Ben Hecht, Horace McCoy and S. J. Perelman, and cameramen and editors who knew how to lend class to tight budgets. And it shows. You can watch almost any film from this series and get an hour of solid entertainment from it.

   King of Gamblers features Tamiroff in his usual Mob-Boss stint, Lloyd Nolan as his reporter-nemesis and Claire Trevor as (you guessed it) the girl they both love. But the show gets stolen by an actor even I never heard of named Barlowe Borland.

   Who? That’s right, I guess. Borland was an Edmund Gwenn type before there was Edmund Gwenn, usually type-cast as the fussy professor or prissy butler, but here quite effective as Tamiroff’s “arranger” Maybe he’s so chilling because he doesn’t try to act nasty; whether he’s setting up Trevor’s seduction, abetting a woman’s kidnapping, or covering up a murder, he keeps up a cheery Dickensian demeanor quite in keeping with the modest virtues of the film itself.

   One to look for.

SOL MADRID. MGM, 1968. David McCallum, Stella Stevens, Telly Savalas, Ricardo Montalban, Rip Torn, Pat Hingle, Paul Lukas, Capo Riccione, Michael Ansara. Screenplay by David Karp based on the book Fruit of the Poppy by Robert Wilder. Director: Brian G. Hutton.

   Hot off his television role in CBS’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum starred in the hardboiled thriller, Sol Madrid. Featuring an alternatively psychedelic and jazzy score by Lalo Schifrin, Sol Madrid has McCallum portraying the eponymous title character, a cynical, at times ruthless Interpol agent tasked with bringing down a heroin ring run by flamboyant criminal mastermind by the name of Emil Dietrich (a scenery-chewing Telly Savalas).

   Set in Mexico, the movie also features Rip Torn as a sadistic mafia boss, Stella Stevens as a nice small town girl who gets herself mixed up with some unsavory characters, and Ricardo Montalban as Madrid’s Mexican Interpol contact who wants nothing more than to live it up and retire early.

   Although the plot really is quite basic with very little new to offer, the movie’s explicit depiction of heroin usage certainly pushed boundaries when it was first released. Not only does the movie begin with a seedy scene in a shooting gallery, there’s also a horrific sequence in which Rip Torn’s character tortures a girl by deliberately getting her hooked on dope.

   Despite some tense moments and some terse dialogue, the movie ends up feeling tremendously incomplete. Not only does one get the impression that some of the movie’s most important sequences may have been edited out, but one can’t help but wonder whether most of the actors in the film were simply there for their paycheck. In more ways than one, that is a real shame, for Sol Madrid really had the potential to be something far more than just another rather forgettable late 1960s studio production, albeit one with just enough punch to it to make you want to watch to the very end.

RUN ALL NIGHT. Warner Brothers, 2015. Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Boyd Holbrook, Bruce McGill, Genesis Rodriguez, Vincent D’Onofrio, Common. Director: Jaume Collet-Serra.

   Because it’s a fairly recent movie and there’s quite a few reviews available online to read (this one from Sight & Sound magazine is particularly on point), I probably am not going to be saying all that much that’s new here about Run All Night.

   Still, it’s worth noting that, for those not familiar with the film, it’s is actually a quite engaging neo-noir feature, one that grips you tight and doesn’t particularly want to let you go until the very end.

   Combining the directorial talents of Jaume Collet-Serra and both the world-weariness and sheer physicality of Liam Neeson, this gritty crime film set primarily in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, feels more like a 1970s Charles Bronson/Steve McQueen/Roy Scheider movie than it does a sleek Hollywood action film. There’s murder, revenge, car chases, corrupt cops, ruthless gangsters, bright neon lights, and cold winter rain. There are back alleys, back rooms, and back streets.

   Neeson portrays Jimmy Conlon, a down on his luck, washed up enforcer for Irish crime boss Shawn Maguire (a nearly perfectly cast Ed Harris). Jimmy’s glory days as a hit man have come and gone. All he’s got now are bad memories and the bottle. He’s estranged from his son, Mike, and lives alone in an apartment several yards from an elevated subway platform. It’s a depressing life, especially in contrast to Shawn’s upper middle class lifestyle.

   All that changes when Maguire’s son Danny sets out to kill Mike for witnessing several murders that he has committed after a drug deal gone bad. That’s when our antihero Jimmy, who was throwing up from too much booze earlier in the film, turns into a Charles Bronson-type figure and decides that he’ll take on the entire city, the police included, if that’s what it takes to protect Mike and to redeem himself in his son’s eyes.

   It takes some suspension of disbelief to imagine this action all taking place on one rainy December night. Neeson’s character often looks tired, as if he’s beyond exhausted by both his present condition and by the crimes he himself has committed in the past.

   But that’s the point, and if anyone is well suited to this role it is Neeson who is able to convey an incredible amount of meaning in short, terse sentences and in body language alone. Neeson excels in portraying men carrying heavy moral burdens and that’s certainly the case in Run All Night. Look for rapper Common who portrays a Terminator-like hit man. It’s something else.

   One final observation: after watching this one on DVD not knowing whether I’d care for it or not, I can now safely report that I regret not going to see it on the big screen during its theatrical release last year. Next time a Liam Neeson actioner hits the theaters, I’m there.

BOXCAR BERTHA. American International Pictures, 1972. Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, John Carradine. Director: Martin Scorsese.

   Produced by Roger Corman, the Depression-era crime film Boxcar Bertha has its share of sex, violence, and leftist social commentary. With director Martin Scorsese at the helm, however, this would-be exploitation film ends up being as much an art house film as it is a grindhouse movie.

   That perhaps, along with a stellar cast including Barbara Hershey as the title character and John Carradine as her partner in crime in taking on the greedy and mendacious railroad elites, is what makes this low budget, but high quality production, a memorable visual depiction of the shadowy borderlines between crime and political protest.

   At once a depiction of the tensions between haves and “have-nots” in Depression-era Arkansas and a character-based film about a young woman trying to navigate a life in that milieu, Boxcar Bertha isn’t the easiest movie to categorize. It’s a crime film about outlaws on the run as well as a romantic drama; a hang out movie as well as a buddy film.

   It’s a very personal film and a vehicle for a stridently pro-labor, pro-feminist, and anti-racist political message. There’s even quite a bit of religious, particularly Catholic overtones throughout, themes that would be explored time and again in Scorsese’s films. However one categorizes this movie, it’s definitely the case that Corman and Scorsese successfully captured lightning in a bottle with this unflinching portrait the dark side of the American Dream.

YOU AND ME. Paramount Pictures, 1938. Sylvia Sidney, George Raft, Robert Cummings, Barton MacLane, Roscoe Karns, Harry Carey. Director: Fritz Lang.

   â€œGenuinely odd but likable film.” That’s how Leonard Maltin described Fritz Lang’s decidedly uneven, but eminently watchable, gangster film/romantic comedy mash-up starring George Raft and Sylvia Sidney as two former jailbirds turned lovebirds. Both work in a department store run by a man who wants nothing more than to give parolees a second chance at building an upstanding life.

   Sounds typical enough, right?

   The thing is: Maltin’s correct.

   You and Me is nothing if not “genuinely odd.” With an Old World comedic sensibility with more than a dash of Yiddishkeit, an armed standoff in the children’s section of an Art Deco department store, and some captivating dreamlike montage sequences, this relatively obscure crime melodrama didn’t fare well at the box office.

   That’s not surprising, given how much of the movie feels as if it were almost an experimental film, a cult classic before there were cult classics.

   When looked at as a whole, the final product actually seems like a thought experiment in which Lang, either consciously or subconsciously, explored the possibilities of bringing both the aesthetic and thematic elements of German expressionism into the American crime film genre.

   Skillful use of light and shadow to convey meaning (check); a prominent spiral staircase (check); a subterranean meeting of criminals operating according to their own code with camera shots that look straight out of M (check).

   Some scenes, such as when a group of gangsters remember their time in the slammer, work extraordinarily well; others, such as when Sidney’s character instructs a coterie of criminals in basic math to demonstrate why crime (literally) doesn’t pay, fall flat. Yet, it’s difficult not to find some things to genuinely admire in this quirky film, one that surely left most audiences slightly baffled when first released in the late 1930s.

FIND THE LADY. Major Pictures/J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1956. Donald Houston, Beverley Brooks, Mervyn Johns, Kay Callard, Maurice Kaufmann, Edwin Richfield, Moray Watson, Ferdy Mayne, Anne Heywood. Director: Charles Saunders.

   I’ve categorized this old obscure British movie as a crime film, but in all honesty, it’s played a lot more for comedy than it is for thrills. To summarize quickly, though: when the starring lady (Beverley Brooks, as a fashion model from London) goes to spend New Year’s Eve with her godmother out in the country, she finds that the old lady has disappeared.

   But before that she has a funny (and perhaps at the time hilarious) encounter with the local doctor (Donald Houston) when their paths cross while their automobiles traverse a watersplash (a shallow ford in a stream) in opposite directions. The end result is the doctor falling face first into the water while the young lady’s car stalls and she has to walk into the local village for help.

   When the missing woman’s brother-in-law (Mervyn Johns) answers the door, getting back to the kidnapping, for that is what it is from the get-go, he says that she has been taken to a nursing home for seclusion and rest. We, of course, know that something is wrong right away. The old woman’s cane is there, her dog is there, and the replacement “maid” (Kay Callard) looks more like a gangster’s moll than I imagine that any gangster’s moll in the real world ever did. (She’s the one on the far right in the photo above.)

   The young woman and the doctor hit it off very well, and they decide to investigate together. Complicating matters is Miss June Weston’s other suitor (Moray Watson) who comes down from London to add some comedy relief to the proceedings.

   Most of the names I have dropping are totally new to me. I’d have thought, though, that Beverley Brooks (the beautiful brunette above and up at the top crowded into the phone booth with the doctor) would have had a longer career, but she didn’t. This movie, perhaps her only starring role, was the last one of her career.

   But you may noticed Anne Heywood’s name in the credits. She plays the receptionist at the inn (see the photo above) in this, only her second film. She’s very easy on the eyes as well.