VIRTUE. Columbia Pictures, 1932. Carole Lombard, Pat O’Brien, Mayo Methot, Jack La Rue, Shirley Grey, Ward Bond. Director: Edward Buzzell.

   A Columbia pre-Code production, Virtue is a well constructed romantic melodrama/crime film that doesn’t remotely feel dated. Directed by Edward Buzzell, who lent his tradecraft to both Marx Brothers films and musicals, the film stars Pat O’Brien and Carolyn Lombard as a working class New York City couple who run into their fare share of trouble after they get married at town hall.

   O’Brien portrays ambitious cab driver Jimmy Doyle who hopes to own his own gas station one day. Lombard portrays Mae, a prostitute who stays in the city despite a court order for her to leave town. Although Mae hopes to turn a new leaf and leave her old one behind, it’s only a matter of time before her past catches up with her.

   Doyle, for his part, is never quite able to reconcile with his wife’s past in the oldest profession. Mae, on the other hand, still isn’t able to shake off her former work associates and ends up being conned out of her money by Gert (Shirley Grey), another ex-prostitute. When Mae attempts to get money back from Gert, she ends up getting framed for murder by lowlife Toots (Jack La Rue).

   Just a fair warning: the crime aspect of the film really comes at the end of the movie, so it takes some patience to get there. But it’s worth the wait.

   The film also benefits from the presence of Ward Bond who portrays Doyle’s close friend. When I think of Bond, I tend to associate him with westerns (and for good reason), but here he portrays a fellow NYC cab driver. He doesn’t have a huge role, but his character is pivotal to how the crime/murder aspect of the plot is resolved.

   Overall assessment: an above average movie with great chemistry among the two leads.
   

ALASKA SEAS. Paramount Pictures, 1954. Robert Ryan, Jan Sterling, Brian Keith, Gene Barry. Screenwriters: Walter Doniger & Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes). Director: Jerry Hopper.

   Directed by Jerry Hopper, this mediocre remake of the box office hit Spawn of the North (1938) is about rustling. Just not cattle. Here, it’s salmon that’s been rustled by rival fishermen. Ryan stars as Matt Kelly, a rugged ruffian who, when released from jail for poaching, returns to his small fishing village in hopes of getting back into the salmon trade.

   Little does he know how much has changed since he left. Not only has the government changed the regulations regarding fishing, but his close friend Jim (Brian Keith) is now engaged to his love interest Nikki (Jan Sterling). Complicating matters further in this tiny outpost is the criminally minded Verne Williams (Gene Barry) who makes Kelly a tempting offer to get involved in the illicit salmon business.

   In terms of direction and narrative, it’s all very pedestrian from beginning to end. There are some good moments, but overall there is not a lot of energy here Even though with a cast as good as this one, there really should be. One last thing. If you’ve ever wanted to see Robert Ryan interact with a trained seal in a bathtub, then Alaska Seas might just be the motion picture you’re looking for.

   Verdict: great cast, including Timothy Carey in a supporting role, but a somewhat flat story that you’ve seen in westerns sundry times before done with much greater effect.

STRANGE FASCINATION. Columbia Pictures, 1952. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Mona Barrie, Rick Vallin, Karen Sharpe . Written, directed and produced by Hugo Haas.

   This one really isn’t noir, but it’s got noir-ish features, I guess in the sense that it has an impending sense of doom, a femme fatale (to some degree), and a portrait of a man on a downward spiral.

   The fatalistic plot follows Central European concert pianist Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) as he makes his way to America, falls madly in love with a nightclub dancer half his age (Cleo Moore), and then proceeds to make bad decision after bad decision, ultimately ruining both his marriage and his professional life. It’s a decent enough work to be sure, but the plot is a little too simple for its own good.

   A lower budget auteurist work if there ever was one, Strange Fascination has Czech-Jewish filmmaker Hugo Haas’s imprint all over it. Not only does he star in this moody drama film, he wrote, directed, and produced it. So it’s safe to say that everything in the film is his work and his alone.

   To his credit, his portrayal of Paul Marvan is spot-on; Haas disappears completely into the role and imbues it with energy. He’s compulsively watchable. But otherwise, Strange Fascination is a somewhat languid affair, never quite able to deliver the punches it so desperately needs.
   

STRANGERS KISS. Orion, 1983. Peter Coyote, Victoria Tennant, Blaine Novak, Dan Shor, Richard Romanus, and Linda Kerridge. Written by Blaine Novak & Matthew Chapman. Directed by Matthew Chapman.

   A niche film, but accessible, engaging, intelligent — and Funny!

   About 30 years before Strangers Kiss was made, an eager young would-be filmmaker borrowed money, assembled a cast of non-actors, investors and their relatives, scarfed up one professional actor and somehow cobbled a movie together.

   No, not Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space. The laying of that egg was immortalized in a movie of its own, a decade later. This film is about the somewhat more talented Stanley Kubrick, and the movie was Killer’s Kiss, reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=18638

   So if you’re still with me, Strangers Kill is loosely based on the making of Killer’s Kiss. For purposes of the plot, and to give the thing a sense of movement and suspense, they provide the leading lady/heroine with a loan shark/movie-investor for a near-husband, and Richard Romanus gives the character a hairy machismo that contrasts very well with Blaine Novak’s laid-back virility as her co-star /would-be lover.

   But these three, good as they are, compete for our attention with a vivid array of sub-Hollywood types, hangers-on or drop-outs from the fringes of the tinseltown dream, limping Kharis-like from ruin to ruin…

   Lyrical, ain’t I?

   Seriously, folks, the minor characters are well-drawn, and the bigger roles are played with commitment and deft comic timing. Dan Shor does an amazing — and very funny — job as a beleaguered producer in an abusive relationship with the director, played by Peter Coyote as a mercurial megalomaniac. The scenes of Coyote plowing through the film like a mulching mower, while Shor bags up the remains are a delight to watch, funny and deeply-felt at the same time.

   Finally, for a movie about movie-making, this is surprisingly intelligent. Director Matthew Chapman evokes the seedy back-lot milieu, and lovingly recreates scenes and set-ups from the earlier film. And best of all, ((WARNING!)) after teetering at the edge of melodrama for most of its running time, Strangers wraps with everyone acting like grown-ups, resolving their conflicts (or not) with a low-key maturity that surprised me more than many an action-film!

ON THE WATERFRONT. Columbia, 1954. With Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden. Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Elia Kazan.

THE HARDER THEY FALL. Columbia, 1956. With Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, and Jan Sterling. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Mark Robson.

   I should not be surprised that two movies from the same studio, with the same writer, should feel so similar, but I watched these back-to-back, and it was like having the same dream twice.

   Both films involve corrupt bosses enriching themselves by exploiting simple (and simple-minded) men who make a living by brute strength. In Waterfront it’s longshoremen jumping to the tune of Lee J. Cobb as Union Boss Johnny Friendly; Fall offers Rod Steiger as Nick Benko, Fight Promoter, but they’re both basically the same character: venal, ruthless, and possessed of a sublime indifference to the pain of others.

   But the similarities don’t end there — they’re just beginning. Early on in both films, someone who crosses the bosses meets an untimely and violent end. More to the point of the narrative, both feature a protagonist who works for the Boss, uneasy about things he sees going on, but compromised by his position in the organization:

   Waterfront’s Terry Malloy (Brando) has a brother (Rod Steiger) in Cobbs’s inner circle; in Fall, Bogart is a well-respected (but out-of-work) sportswriter, helping Steiger (again) build up odds on an oversized Bum, but both men are essentially hiring themselves out as tools to enable the exploitation of others. And in both movies, the drama builds as our heroes begin to ask themselves “What kind of tool am I?”

   Sorry about that. But the question never is satisfactorily answered in either film. In both cases, they manufacture dramatic crises to provide a “Movie-Ending” that rings palpably false — in my ears, anyway. Schulberg and Kazan don’t explain how Terry Molloy, shunned for squealing and avoided for safety’s sake one minute, becomes the rallying point for the dock workers after he gets his ass whupped by Cobb’s goons. But the ending of Fall is even worse than that, with Bogart sitting down at his typewriter to do an exposé of “The Boxing Racket.”

   I hasten to add that these unsatisfactory (to me) finales come late in the films, too late to spoil a couple of very watchable movies. On the Waterfront is an acknowledged classic, and The Harder They Fall is an underrated gem. Maybe not a spectacular coda to a career like Bogart’s but not bad at all.

   I want to say something about the acting. Waterfront was Brando’s sixth film, and by now he was comfortable on the screen, but still visibly hard-working. He’s also surrounded by actors from the same school where he learned his craft, and the interplay between them is like watching a well-oiled machine operating perfectly.

   But I find the thesping in Harder more fun to watch. Rod Steiger attacks his part with real method-madness: animated, powerful, and vigorously phony; his performance is fascinating to watch, but obviously a performance.

   Bogart, in his seventy-fifth and final film, simply walks across the screen and dominates it effortlessly with the assurance of an established Star. Acting never enters into it; he simply is Bogart. And the clash of the two actors and the two styles brings a riveting intensity to their roles that is no less impressive for having probably been inadvertent.

MURRAY FORBES – Hollow Triumph. Ziff-Davis, hardcover, 1946. Stark House, trade paperback, 2023.

HOLLOW TRIUMPH. Eagle-Lion, 1948. Also released as The Scar (Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett; directors: Steve Sekely, Paul Henreid).

   Murray Forbes’ Hollow Triumph  has an interesting idea for a book: Henry Mueller is a failed medical student and small-time chiseler with an over-sized ego, fresh out of prison when he discovers he bears an amazing resemblance to Viktor Bartok, a prominent psychologist.

   Readers of this sort of thing will figure at once that Mueller will kill Bartok and take his place, and that’s pretty much what happens, but Forbes gives it a cute twist: Mueller’s impersonation becomes a greater success than he figured on (The American Dream: if you fail at one thing, re-invent yourself as something else.) and as time passes, he wins even greater fortune and honor… and he can’t stand the fact that the murdered man is getting all the credit for his killer’s work: Mueller rubbed out Bartok, but it was Mueller who got erased, and his overweening pride leads him to….

   It’s a clever thought, and somebody should write a book about it someday; Murray Forbes just didn’t seem too interested. Time and again he just tells us about things when he should be showing them. So we get lines like “She felt suspicious,” or “He was scared,” which ain’t exactly deathless prose. There are even points where Forbes seem to lose interest entirely, and instead of storytelling, he resorts to synopsis, resulting in passages like, “He went to New York to received the honor, then came back and continued work with his patients …”

   I kept reading, but I’m not sure why.

   Fans of Old Time Radio may recall Forbes as an actor on Ma Perkins and other programs, but this was his only novel, and in 1948 the Movies bought it, discarded most of the plot, noired up the rest, and released it under the original title and as The Scar. Like Forbes’ writing Paul Henreid’s acting is just perfunctory, but there’s fine photography by john Alton, and Daniel Fuchs’ script makes intelligent use of a plot twist that would have been a facile punch-line in lesser hands.

THE UPTURNED GLASS. General Film Distributors, UK, 1947. Universal-International, US, 1947. James Mason, Rosamund John, Pamela Mason (as Pamela Kellino), Ann Stephens, Brefni O’Rorke. Screenplay: John Monaghan and Pamela Kellino, based on a story by the former. . Director: Lawrence Huntington. Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their “gothic noir” collection.

   Dr. Michael Joyce, played quite earnestly and effectively by James Mason in one of his last few films he made in the UK, is not only a noted brain surgeon, but he often gives lectures at the university as an expert in criminology. It is in the latter role that the movie begins. The theme for his presentation is that murders can be done for rational reasons by people who are quite sane. To demonstrate the point, he tells the students of just such an instance.

   It quickly becomes apparent to the viewers that the killer in the story he tells is himself, related almost entirely in flashback. It’s an unusual structure for telling a tale, narrating as he does how it all came about, with himself playing the primary character. After he saves a young girl from going blind, he finds himself falling in love with the child’s mother, whose husband’s job keeps him long distances from home for long periods of time.

   Realizing the probable folly of their ways, they break off the affair. Soon thereafter, however, the woman in the case is found dead, having jumped to her death (possibly an accident) from a second floor window to a brick courtyard below. Joyce has another thought. Could she have been pushed? And could the pusher be the dead woman’s sister-in-law? And if so, should Joyce take matters into his own hands?

   All of the above takes up perhaps the first two-thirds of the movie, which while academically interesting is also as slow as molasses on a chily day. But with thirty minutes to go, the story suddenly shifts, catching the unwary viewer by surprise (me), and the noir nature of tale clicks in.

   It’s almost good enough to make the first hour or so worth the wait. I’m still thinking about that. If it hadn’t been James Mason in the part, twenty minutes would have more than enough time to start thinking about finding something else to do.

   And in any case, the ending does make a good fit with the beginning. Go back and read the first paragraph of this review again.

   Various reviewers on IMDb have tried to explain the title, with varying but probably futile success. The movie began its life as a story about the Bronte sisters, but when they decided it wasn’t working, they scrapped the whole thing and rewrote it from scratch, keeping only the title.

ROUNDERS. Miramax,1998. Matt Damon. Edward Norton, Gretchen Mol, John Malkovich, John Turturro, Martin Landau, Famke Janssen. Directed by John Dahl.

   Included in the long list of things I didn’t know before, here is the definition of the work “rounder” as used in the title of this film: “a person traveling around from city to city seeking high-stakes card games.”

   It turns out, at least in this case, that a movie about poker players follows the same template as many a film about other sporting events, be they boxing, baseball, basketball and so on: protagonist loses big in the first twenty minutes, followed by a long struggle to recoup and get back in shape for a rematch, then of course the rematch, and (giving the ending completely away, perhaps) eventual victory.

   Note the use of my word “perhaps.” It is intentional.

   Poker games differ, perhaps, from the other sports I used as similar examples in that there is very little physical activity during the course of one. (There may be some afterward, however, warranted or not).

   There are two primary “heroes” in The Rounders. Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) who is both a young law student and an inveterate poker player, and his friend Worm (Edward Norton) who has just been released from prison, complete with debts incurred from before incarceration, plus interest. Object: find games to play to clear Worm with the mob, in spite of Mike’s promise to his live-in girl friend (Gretchen Mol) to stay clear of any such activity.

   When you’re addicted, promises are hard to keep, and of course Worm is a friend.

   Mike’s approach to poker to win by playing well. Worm can’t stop taking chances, just for the thrill of it, and thereby lies the tale.

   If you take me as a prime example, you can watch this movie, beautifully photographed in the dingiest byways of 1990s Manhattan (not a contradiction), without knowing anything about the rules of the various games played throughout the film. It might have helped, but once you realize what the basic template is that constitutes the structure of the whole setup and how it is (probably) going to turn out, you can skip the details.

   One last thought. If you would like to know a basic axiom of pick-up card games, consider this as a basic truth: “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, you are the sucker.”

CLUB HAVANA. PRC, 1946. Tom Neal, Margaret Lindsay, Isabelita (Lita Baron), Marc Lawrence, Ernest Truex. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Currently available on YouTube (see below).

   A typical night at a Latin-American night club, with lots of intertwined stories: young love, a broken heart or two, attempted suicide – and a piano player who can break a gambler’s alibi for the slaying of a showgirl, and calls the police.

   The budget was skimpy. No expensive location shots here. All the action takes place in the night club or just outside the front door. I could have done without the floor show; it’s the characters that make the story, brought to a smashup conclusion.

GUERRILLAS IN PINK LACE. Mont Productions, 1964. George Montgomery, Valerie Varda, Joan Shawnlee. Screenplay by Fred Grofe Jr. Directed by George Montgomery. Currently available on YouTube (see below).

   The movie is bad.

   Bad doesn’t begin to describe it.

   The color photography is washed out. The acting is uniformly bad. The direction is ham-handed. The plot is ludicrous, bordering on racist tropes from twenty years earlier. Sexist doesn’t begin to describe it; there isn’t a woman in it credited with so much as a single brain cell. Sue Ann Langdon or Sherry North could have played every important female in the cast in different wigs, and probably should have.

   Nothing works from the goofy score, to the slightly less sexy for wear guerrillas in pink lace from the title, and there’s not really nudity in it considering it’s only possible reason for existing is sexploitation. There is one broadly slapstick swimming scene for Joan Shawnlee as a brainless brunette nude in the water trying to snatch her bra hooked on a Japanese water can while Murphy and the girls watch helpless, but that’s all the tease this film as to offer.

   And you know what?

   The stupid mess is fun.

   Stupid fun, but fun.

   You see, conman and unlucky gambler Murphy (George Montgomery) is in the Philippines after Pearl Harbor and down on his luck replete with a hangover and black eye, when Father Osgood (not Jim Montgomery, as IMDb insists, but Torn Thatcher) shows up. Father Osgood has a pass to be flown out that day, but he wants to stay behind and help his parishioners face the hardships of Japanese occupation.

   Murphy, of course, agrees to help him.

   He steals a cassock, a pair of glasses, and the Pass and manages to catch a ride to the airport with a bus load of exotic dancers whose boss has talked an officer into a pass. For Murphy it’s a fairly delightful farewell to Manila until the Japanese shoot down the plane.

   Only Murphy and the girls survive and end up on the small island of San Miguel where Murphy, who the girls still believe to be the courageous and Godly Father Osgood, all fine and well and rather cozy until it turns out there are Japanese on the island.

   Two Japanese specifically, an officer and a soldier keeping a radio observation outpost, a fat stupid officer and a cross-dressing (as a geisha girl to sing to the officer while Murphy steals from them and uses their radio to contact the Navy) idiot much put on soldier.

   Laurel and Hardy, Japanese soldiers.

   So while the ladies bathe and exercise and bemoan, Murphy is a man of God and not available, and surprisingly show less skin than the Japanese soldiers, and Murphy steals the Japanese blind and plots to get close to the radio to get a second message out after his initial raid, there is no real threat.

   And then of course the Japanese army shows up and all bets are off.

   Montgomery was a reliable and fairly popular leading man through the Forties into the early Sixties where he moved briefly to the small screen (Cimmaron) and then made several low budget adventure film in the Philippines (this was the third after Huk and The Iron Claw). He was one of the men suspected to be the Masked Rider of the Plains in the Republic serial The Lone Ranger, and again in The Masked Marvel, he was soon co-starring as a poor man’s John Payne opposite the likes of Ginger Rogers (Roxie Hart), cast as Philip Marlowe in The Brasher Doubloon, and in numerous adventure, comedy, and other films.

   In the Fifties he moved primarily into Westerns with some success (Cripple Creek, The Texas Rangers) and was married to singer Diana Shore. He continued to act until 1988, but had long since become popular and respected as a maker of fine furniture.

   Back on San Miguel, the small island, Murphy and the women decided to go out like heroes rather than run from the Japanese. They strip Japanese uniforms off soldiers they knock unconscious, sneak into the base, steal dynamite, and light up the night with an attack that consists of nothing but tossing sticks of dynamite into the camp in the dark among the panicking troops.

   And when they wake up the next morning they find the Japanese of decamped in the night even leaving the radio behind.

   The guerrillas in pink lace have won the battle of San Miguel.

   Murphy finds himself a Major in charge of special operations of San Miguel with his “army” commended for their skills and bravery, but the girls have just found out Murphy is no priest and…

   Well, they’ve been on the island for a while…

   If I’ve spoiled this for you, believe me, the plot is telegraphed in the title. This is no Westward the Women or Guns of Fort Petticoat. None of the cast so much as lose a nail despite the plane crash and living in the jungle.

   Well, one woman gets her hair twisted in a bush. I guess that was traumatic, but as a dramatic high point, it’s fairly lame.

   And there it stands, stupid, badly written, sexist, racist (though no one is much smarter than the Japanese), inexpertly directed by Montgomery (who did better on television and elsewhere), mostly badly acted (Montgomery does manage a kind of goofy charm as Murphy — at least to me) never delivering on the sex, or the comedy, much less the adventure, just an awful movie.

   But, like some shaggy, hair knotted, smelly, overly friendly dogs, I feel a certain good will towards it. Give it a scratch behind the ears — just be sure you wash your hands afterward.

   You wouldn’t want this dog to give you fleas.

   It probably would, and frankly I wouldn’t bet against an STD or two.