THE BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES “Blood and Water.” Prime, New Zealand. 28 September 2014 (Season 1, Episode 1).. Neill Rea (Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd), Fern Sutherland (Detective Kristin Sims), Pana Hema Taylor, Cristina Ionda, and a large remaining ensemble cast. Writers: Tim Balme (also creator) & Philip Dalkin. Director: Mike Smith. Currently streaming on Acorn TV via Amazon Prime Video.

   When an elderly man who has been grieving the death of his wife for several years is found drowned below the bridge he came to on the same date every year, the immediate assumption is that he committed suicide. But why then, has Auckland almost immediately sent Det. Sgt. Mike Shephard (Neill Rea) to the small town of Brokenwood to investigate?

   With the head of the small local police force stepping out of the picture in deference to Shepherd, it is up to Detective Kristin Sims to deal with Shepherd’s brusque and often unorthodox approach to police work, but (to no viewer’s surprise, including mine, nor should it) she gradually and begrudgingly learns that Shepherd really does know what he’s doing.

   As Mike Shepherd, Neill Rea is really the star of the show, which has been on now for six seasons of four two-hour episodes each. (It comes as no surprise that at the end of the first episode Shepherd has decides to stay on, having come to appreciate the advantages of living and working in a small town filled with quirky characters.) He is overweight, scruffy, has an unspecified number of ex-wives – he admits to three, maybe four – but possesses a quick mind that is always working.

   The detective work is better than average, the setting is often beautiful, but it’s the people in the stories that follow that will have me coming back often, I’m sure.

BLACK ORPHEUS. Dispat/Tupin, Brazil, 1959. Original title:  Orfeu Negro. Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliviera, and Ademar da Silva. Written by Marcel Camus & Jacques Viot, based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, which is itself an adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Directed by Marcel Camus. Winner of Oscar® for Best Foreign Language Film at the 32nd Academy Awards in 1960.

   Costumes, celebration, death and voodoo — could any film be more fitting for Halloween?

   Yes, I know it’s paternalistic, simplistic, and slowed down by too many overlong dance scenes, but the sheer vibrant energy and romantic urgency of the thing sweeps me along with the uncluttered story-line: A beautiful young Eurydice comes to Rio at Carnaval, fleeing Death. She is temporarily rescued by Orpheus, but in the end, he must seek his love in the next world.

   The simple story is conveyed with memorable visuals. The shanty-towns of the city seem to hang on cliffsides as precarious as the pursuing death, the costumes glitter and shimmer in the sun, and Death itself (athletically portrayed by Ademar da Silva) moves with a coiled grace that makes me wonder if the creators of Spider-Man (whoever they may be) were inspired by his lithe and lethal acting.

   Just as striking is Orpheus’s descent into the underworld, wandering empty corridors until a benign Janitor — Charon, with a broom instead of a barge pole —  guides him down a staircase of infinite emptiness to a hellish voodoo world where the myth must play itself out once again.

   Like me, you may be used to thinking of Halloween movies in terms of Karloff, Lugosi, Universal and Lewton. Or you may be of a generation that equates Horror Movies with serial slashings and CGI monsters. But I found Black Orpheus the equal of these, and in its own way, better than most.

   Need more? Actors Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn, the star-crossed lovers of the film, died within weeks of each other, and Ademar da Silva died on the same day as the composer of the film’s justly-celebrated score:

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Universal Picures, 1943. Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Claude Rains, Edgar Barrier, Leo Carillo, J. Edward Bromberg. Jane Farrar, Frank Puglia, Stefan Geray, Fritz Feld, Miles Mander, Fritz Leiber, Barbara Everest, Hume Cronin. Screenplay by Eric Taylor & Samuel Hoffenstein. Adapted by Hans Jacoby as John Jacoby, based on the novel by Gaston Leroux. Directed by Arthur Lubin,

   When Universal sought to capitalize on the film that first made them a great studio in the silent era thanks to Lon Chaney Sr., they spared no expense. Like the original silent film, this version of the oft-told tale features lavish sets and costumes, a cast of some of the finest faces in Hollywood, including the ever popular Nelson Eddy, and one of the finest actors in Hollywood in the lead as the Phantom, Claude Rains.

   To this, add an original operatic score, cinematography by W. Howard Greene and Hal Mohr, and stunning Technicolor.

   It is too bad that somewhere along the way they forgot the mystery, the horror, terror, and for the most part Eric, the Opera Phantom.

   They remembered the opera though.

   Here we have Erique Claudin (Claude Rains), a violinist in the orchestra of the Paris Opera who secretly loves Christine (Susanna Foster), stand-in to vainglorious diva Biacarolli (Jane Farrar), so much so, he has secretly been paying singing master Leo Carillo to train her, But when Claudin loses his job, he needs money, so he takes the music he has written to publisher Miles Mander who dismisses him.

   In his despair and desperation Claudin kills Mander accidentally and scars his own face with acid, fleeing to the sewers which lead beneath the Opera house, there beginning his reign of terror against Biancarolli so that Christine may take her place.

   And all that is well enough if Rains and his Phantom did much more than run around in a costume borrowed from Lamont Cranston, casting a few half-hearted shadows and mostly lurking offscreen unseen and unheard, while we get a parade of some of the finest character actors in Hollywood in what mostly plays as a light opera with way to much comic business between baritone Nelson Eddy and policeman Edgar Barrier fighting over Christine, and far too many operatic numbers.

   The famous chandelier scene is well-handled, and there is a well done chase between Eddy and Rains in the rigging above the stage, but mostly this generates virtually no mystery, no terror, and no horror, no Masque of the Red Death. Even the famous scene of Christine unmasking the Phantom is tossed off with no suspense or style.

   Oh, yeah, he’s disfigured. Ho, hum.

   Rains is largely wasted. The fine cast has to hold a thriller with no thrills and a mystery with no mystery there between too many musical numbers there only to justify Nelson Eddy being cast in the film.

   Just about everything you expect of the Phantom is missing. There is no Gothic atmosphere, no labyrinth sewers beneath the Opera, no menacing shadows, and the violence, when it comes is all done off camera ending anti climatically with Claudin fleeing through the large well lighted halls of the opera dressed like an escapee from Mad Magazine’s Spy vs Spy.

   Seldom in film history has more money been spent to less effect.

   That’s a pity, because the makings were there for a fine film of the classic, if everyone hadn’t been so overcome by the class of the project they forgot it was also a tale of murder, madness, terror, horror, and obsession.

   For my Halloween movie viewing this year, I revisited two films that I had previously watched and reviewed for this blog. United Artists’ White Zombie (1932), reviewed here, and Universal’s Werewolf of London (1935), reviewed here.

   Both are films that I had enjoyed and appreciated. Both also were movies that I had the chance to see screened in 35mm here in Los Angeles, the former at UCLA and the latter at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema.

   White Zombie, in which Bela Lugosi plays the ultra-sinister Haitian villain named Murder Legendre, was the first proper zombie movie released by a Hollywood studio. (How zombies went from creations of Haitian voodoo to that of viruses and outbreaks merits a whole different discussion). And Werewolf of London, starring Warner Orland and Henry Hull, was the first proper werewolf movie.

   The movies are, in some ways, clunky by today’s standards. (One might say they were even clunky for their time.) But that doesn’t really matter. While Werewolf of London is a bit more stylish and grounded, both movies have a timeless, nearly dreamlike quality to them.

   They are both, in many ways, fairy tale romances as well. It wasn’t until I watched both consecutively that I realized that, fundamentally, both movies are about doomed love triangles. In both movies, a man ends up sacrificing himself so that the woman he loves could be with her one true love.

TWO LEGENDS [DVE LEGENDY] “Double Standard.” Russian TV, 09 February 2014 (Season 1, Episode 1). 2 hours. Ana Popova, Artem Krylov. Directed by Vyacheslav Kirillov. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

   Probably because it appeared first on Russian TV, there isn’t a lot of information about this show on Wikipedia (nothing) or IMDb. Here’s how the four-episode mini-series is described on Amazon Prime:

   She is, of course, also beautiful, once she’s out of the classroom and can let her prim everyday facade fade away. As a math teacher, he looks like, well, a math teacher, hiding behind thick-rimmed glasses, à la Clark Kent, but in his spy outfit, he looks like, well, a math teacher.

   In this first episode, they start out not aware of the other’s existence. One is following the trail of an international terrorist, the other tracking the dealing of a notorious financial swindler. When their paths cross, their first meeting is spectacularly lengthy scene of hand to hand combat, not unlike when two Marvel superheroes cross over into the same comic book and have to slug it out for a while before they discover they are on the same side after all.

   The series was a huge hit in Russia, I am told, and I can see why. The plot itself takes second place to the action, action, and more action. The hand-held camera work, even when two people are having a conversation, can make the more susceptible viewer quite dizzy, swooping here and there and back around again. It didn’t bother me, but if you decide to give this one a try, you might want to fasten your seat belts down ahead of time.

CHRISTIANNA BRAND – Death in High Heels. Inspector Charlesworth #1. John Lane/The Bodley Head, UK, hardcover, 1941. Scribner, US, hardcover, 1942. Carroll & Graf, US, paperback, 1989. Film: Marylebone, UK, 1947 (with Don Stannard as Inspector Charlesworth).

   A great title for foot fetishists, but it turns out that footwear has nothing to do with the story. This was Ms. Brand’s debut novel, and does not feature her series detective Inspector Cockrill.

   Miss Doon, one of two chief assistants to a Mr. Bevan (and one of his many bedmates) who owns and operates an exclusive Dress Shop, dies from oxalic poisoning (Oxalic apparently being used to clean hats), and it turns out that most of her associates who had Opportunity for the crime also had Motive. Young Inspector Charlesworth, one of those innumerable upper-class policemen of the “Golden Age” of British Mysteries, is assigned to the case and immediately develops a crush on the chief suspect, a married saleswoman.

   A good example of the Classie British Mystery Novel (though not a great one} with credible characters, some humor — including a chapter where Charlesworth becomes convinced that one of the suspects has killed his (the suspect’s) boyfriend and put his body in a trunk at the Lost and Found – and enough witty dialogue to get over the quiet parts.

      The Inspector Charlesworth series –

Death in High Heels (n.) Lane 1941
Death of Jezebel (n.) Bodley Head 1949 [with Inspector Cockrill]
London Particular (n.) Joseph 1952 [with Inspector Cockrill]
The Rose in Darkness (n.) Joseph 1979

MURDER BY NATURAL CAUSES. Made for TV movie. CBS, 17 February 1979. Running time: 100 minutes. Cast: Hal Holbrook (Arthur Sinclair), Katharine Ross (Allison Sinclair), Barry Bostwick (Gil Weston), Richard Anderson (George Brubaker), Phil Leeds (Eddie), Bill Fiore (Marty Chambers), Victoria Carroll (TV actress). Producers: Richard Levinson, William Link, Robert A. Papazian, and Pattee Roedig. Writers: Richard Levinson and William Link. Director: Robert Day. Released on VHS tape, and currently available on YouTube (see below), but please be aware the picture quality is not all it should be.

   World-famous mentalist Arthur Sinclair has recently suffered a heart attack but now seems to be on the mend. Arthur’s wife Allison dutifully shows her concern, but it’s all for show, as we learn from her intimate frolics with her lover Gil Weston, a struggling actor trying to make it in local theater. When Gil asks Allison why she doesn’t settle for a divorce, she’s not shy about admitting that she is, in her own word, “greedy” and unwilling to take community property or anything less.

   Although Gil balks at killing Arthur, Allison is able to persuade him to go through with her plot to scare her husband to death — that weak heart, remember? — and the plan is set in motion. The thing about trying to pull off a perfect murder, however, is that it never goes as planned, especially when there are other plans that have already been set in motion long ago …

   We’re not going to spoil things by going further with plot details other than to say that you should anticipate having your expectations subverted — often. This is Levinson & Link at the peak of their powers, throwing in no fewer than four major — and ingenious — plot twists in the last third of the story, with the pièce de résistance being that absolutely perfect, devastating final fade-out line.

   As for the cast: Hal Holbrook is still with us at age 95; he’s best remembered for his one-man show about Mark Twain, with side stops in the occasional thriller like They Only Kill Their Masters (1972), Magnum Force (1973), and The Star Chamber (1983).

   Katharine Ross, also still with us, co-starred with Holbrook, James Garner, and some well-trained Dobermans in the aforementioned They Only Kill Their Masters.

   Barry Bostwick, very much alive, would go on to star as the Father of His Country in the George Washington miniseries (1984) and as a very suspicious character in Body of Evidence (1988).

   Richard Anderson — no longer living, alas — managed to accumulate 190 acting credits beginning in 1947, passing away at age 91 several years ago.

   As you might recall, Robert Day, the director, also helmed In Broad Daylight (1971), featured recently on Mystery*File here.

   Equally as good, if not better, was another Levinson & Link puzzler, Rehearsal for Murder (1982), which was highlighted on Mystery*File eight years ago here.
   

LESLEY EGAN – A Choice of Crimes. Vic Varallo #10. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1980.

   Filling out the working hours for the detective squad for the city of Glendale, California, are a series of unsolved motel robberies, a rapist whose favorite haunt is a darkened hospital parking lot, various suicides, and all the other many woes of present-day middle-class suburban America.

   Murder is the name of the game, however. According to recent headlines, an incredible 2300 homicides took place in all of Los Angeles County last year, and some of them are bound to have happened even in a quiet place like Glendale. According to this book, it seems to work out to something like one a day, at the least.

   Receiving most of the attention in this shifting mosaic of cases, switching constantly on and off midstream, are the detective series character team of Vic Varallo and Delia Riordan. Their work is not described as overly glamorous. It consists largely of non-stop checking and cross-checking, interviewing, and endless hours of monotonous legwork.

   Resulting from all this intermittent stop-and-go action is a story without a truly cohesive force to hold it together. The only discernible focal point is the one case Riordan is allowed to work on alone, during whatever spare time she can manage, all the while pondering her choice of life’s career.

   We have learned what to expect from Lesley Egan. Her police procedurals are always competent and always told from the Ronald Reagan side of the fence. Although they don’t always win, the cops are unquestionably the heroes here.

Rating: C Plus.

   
   
Bibliographic Notes: Author Elizabeth Linington (1921-1988) wrote 13 books about Vic Varallo as Lesley Egan, 37 books about Lt. Luis Mendoza as Dell Shannon, 12 books about lawyer Jesse Falkenstein and 13 books about Sgt. Ivor Maddox under her own name, plus 7 standalone mysteries under various of these names.