THE WHITE REINDEER, Finland, 1952. Original title: Valkoinen peura. Mirjami Kuosmanen and Kalervo Nissila. Written by Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen. Directed by Erik Blomberg.

   Since Writer/Director Blomberg and Writer/Leading-Lady Kuosmanen were married, this is obviously a family project. It’s also quite a memorable film: Not a horror movie (though it’s listed in Phil Hardy’s Encyclopedia) as much as a grim fairy tale or a spooky folk song.

   I should say for starters that this is set in contemporary Lapland, the northernmost part of Finland, and though there are villages with substantial houses, everyone seems to spend most of their time in smallish tents or huts (Yerts, maybe?) out in the frozen wilderness, catching and herding reindeer, or whatever people used to do before there was Cable TV.

   The film opens with a mysterious woman staggering out of the snowy wastes and into a hut where she dies and gives birth to a baby, which is cared for by the locals, who name her Pirita, and she grows up a scene or two later into Ms. Kuosmanen. And as you’re probably unfamiliar with this actress, I’ll just say she is devastatingly beautiful, with one of those radiant complexions that seem crafted to show off large haunting eyes and a sensuous mouth.

   Pirita marries Aslak, a local hunter (played by Kalervo Nissila, a Kent Smith type), but when he goes off hunting after the honeymoon, she gets into a snit and goes to visit the local shaman for a love potion that will make her irresistible.

   What follows is a beautifully-done scene, murky and moody, as the Shaman does his medicine-show-magic, gives Pirita the usual potions and instructions on the proper rites… and then discovers what Pirita didn’t now herself: she’s a witch!

   Too late it seems. There follows another creepy scene or two as Pirita performs the rites in front of one of the most imposing totems I’ve ever seen in the movies (and needless to say, with the kind of flicks I watch, I’ve seen a totem or two in my day….) and finds she can transform herself at will into the eponymous white reindeer, pursued by one hunter after another (i.e. irresistible to men!) but when they catch her she transforms again and kills them — just how is never shown, but she’s suddenly sporting a set of very sharp teeth.

   Visually, this film is simply stunning, shot almost entirely outdoors in one of the most haunting landscapes on earth, with epic shots of vast snowy landscapes dotted with scraggly trees, ribboned with migrating herds of reindeer, miles long, shifting and curling about the countryside. We get breathtaking scenes of the principals racing around on skis or reindeer-pulled toboggans, and eerie night-time tableaus with the snowscapes bathed in eerie moonlight as everyone’s breath turns into clouds of evanescent mist.

   And then there’s Ms. Kuosmanen, sometimes glowing and beautiful in the classic Hollywood tradition, and other times… well let’s just say that when the killing mood is on her she can produce the kind of predatory smile we wouldn’t see again till Barbara Steele turned up in Black Sunday.

   Indeed, the only real letdown here is the final chase, as Aslak her husband chases down the White Reindeer, with a conclusion straight out of some old and plaintive ballad. The chase itself is done in a surprisingly flat and objective manner and just fails to generate the emotion it should.

   That’s a minor carp though. It’s a film I’ll remember, a film I’ll watch again, and as I finished it, it occurred to me that with the oppressive landscapes and Ms. Kuosmanen’s striking beauty, you could call it Bergmanesque: Ingmar or Ingrid, take your pick.

CHARLIE CHAN IN THE CHINESE CAT. Monogram Pictures, 1944. Sidney Toler, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Ian Keith, Sam Flint, Cy Kendall. Based on charcaters created by Earl Derr Biggers. Director: Phil Rosen.

   When it comes to James Bond, Roger Moore is by far my favorite actor to portray 007. When it comes to super-sleuth Charlie Chan, Swedish-born actor Warner Oland is the actor who I most associate with the role. That’s not to say that other actors haven’t portrayed Bond or Chan with conviction and skill. It’s just that when asked to develop a mental picture of either fictional character, Moore or Oland immediately come to mind.

   That being said, I am far from close-minded when it comes to different actors portraying the playboy spy or the Chinese aphorism-wielding police detective. Although I can’t claim that Sidney Toler is my top Chan, I still consider Charlie Chan and the Wax Museum (1940) (reviewed here), a film in which Toler gave a solid performance, to be a highly worthwhile, if still deeply flawed, crime film.

   The same can’t be said for The Chinese Cat. Directed by Phil Rosen, this installment in the Charlie Chan series is a real disappointment. Although the movie begins on a somewhat promising note with a locked room mystery in which a businessman is shot to death alone in his study.

   But the movie soon descends into an inchoate mess in which various crime film elements are employed, all without any coherent effect. There’s a love affair between a detective and the dead man’s daughter; a criminologist who has written a book about the aforementioned murder; a gang of jewel thieves; twin brothers; and various attempts on Chan’s life.

   Adding to the disappointment is the clumsy inclusion of the character of Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland), an African-American cabbie who chauffeurs Charlie and Number Three Son (Benson Fong) around town as they race against the clock to solve not one, but three murders.

   By the time it all wraps up, it takes a great deal of energy to care about the identity of the murderers, let alone about the reasons why everything went down the way it did.

MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH – Remains to be Seen. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1976. No US paperback edition. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1976.

   Two minor bureaucrats in an obscure Washington office. to justify their salaries not to mention their jobs, start in motion a chain of unlikely events that brings the close attention of several world powers down upon the British descendants of a Russian prince who escaped the Bolsheviks two generations before.

   That two of Davydov’s sons, now named Davis, are undertakers is quite crucial to the Plot and to the success that the third son, a dreamer and a fourth-rate poet, has in finally finding himself and quite rightly rising to the occasion.

   With some quick shuffling of a dead body or two (you knew?) and a hi-de-do comic routine as minor everyday problems escalate out of control. Butterworth entertains without ever producing real in-the-aisle laughter, lacking the spark of truly insane genius that would set the affair out of the ordinary.

Rating: C plus.

Bibliographic Notes:   Michael Butterworth (1924-1986) has thirteen books listed in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, all non-series books such as this one. He also wrote two books as by William Dobson, three books as by Sarah Kemp (series character: Dr Tina May), seven as by Carola Salisbury, and one as by Anne-Marie Sheridan.

PHARAOH’S CURSE. United Artists, 1957. Mark Dana, Ziva Rodann (as Ziva Shapir), Diane Brewster, George N. Neise, Alvaro Guillot, Ben Wright. Director: Lee Sholem.

   Sometimes low-budget features pleasantly surprise you. Despite a near complete lack of critical appreciation, Pharaoh’s Curse is everything you could hope for from a somewhat obscure 1950s horror film, and more.

   True, the director Lee Sholem is more widely known for churning out timely product than for any particular artistic vision. And yes, the actors and actresses in the cast are hardly household names. But if you give the movie a chance and dig a little deeper, you may just unearth a dusty little nostalgic treasure in the form of a charmingly simple archaeological-themed thriller.

   At a running time of less than seventy minutes, Pharaoh’s Curse doesn’t indulge in too much backstory. The movie gets into the heart of the matter pretty quickly. American-accented British officer Captain Storm (how’s that for a name!) is dispatched from Cairo to find out what has happened to an international archaeological expedition.

   Along the way, Storm (Mark Dana) and his party encounter a mysterious exotic woman by the name of Simira (Israeli actress Ziva Shapir). She claims that her brother is with the expedition and that she knows the quickest way to get there. Sounds simple enough, right?

   As it turns out, the archaeological party is already knee deep in trouble, having broken the seal on a mummy’s wrappings. And you know what that means, of course! A curse and a living corpse back from the dead determined to guard his tomb against would-be grave robbers.

   There’s also the matter of Simira. Who, or what, is she exactly and what is her relationship with the ancient Egyptian past? It’s up to the intrepid Captain Storm to solve a supernatural mystery emanating like a hot desert wind out of the distant Egyptian past!

   Now don’t get me wrong. Pharaoh’s Curse is hardly of the same quality, aesthetically or dramatically, as Hammer Films’ The Mummy (1959), which I reviewed here and which stars the always wonderful to watch Peter Cushing. Pharaoh’s Curse is filmed in black and white rather than in lavish color; Death Valley, California has to stand in for Egypt; and the characters occasionally meander down the same interior hallways.

   That said, the actors all appear to be taking their roles seriously, lending this movie a spunky authenticity notably absent from so many science fiction and horror films from the same era. The movie may never be a classic, but that doesn’t stop it from being thoroughly escapist fun.

JANE GOT A GUN. 1821 Pictures / The Weinstein Company, 2016. Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich. Director: Gavin O’Connor.

   Some people blame the lack of success of this recent western movie epic — its first weekend’s gross was a paltry $865,572 with a per theater average of $691 — on the problems in production: too many last minute changes in the cast and crew, including the director. Others have suggested that modern day audiences aren’t able to handle sophisticated story-telling devices, such as the extended use of flashbacks in revealing the history of the characters gradually and only in bits and pieces.

   Or maybe westerns have fallen out of favor with movie-going audiences in general, with only a few exceptions making any noise at the box office. Lots of reasons, in other words, but personally, I enjoyed this one.

   Which tells the life story of Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman), whose husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) comes home to their New Mexico ranch one afternoon badly wounded and telling Jane that the Bishop gang is coming. Leaving their young daughter with a neighboring family, Jane goes to Dan Frost, another neighbor (Joel Edgerton), for help. He refuses, but it is clear that there is a history between the two.

   And what that history is is where the flashbacks come in, and the whole purpose of the movie — to tell us one of hundreds of similar stories of the real Old West, a time and place that was often brutal and uncaring. This is not as much a story of a woman’s quest for revenge (as the title might suggest) as it is one of a woman making some tough choices in life and then having to live with them as life goes on.

   The photography is often strikingly beautiful, and that of course includes Natalie Portman, who stands out and steals every scene she is in. Of course we the viewer also realize that she is more beautiful than any other women in the real Old West ever was, but instinctively we also place such thoughts into a category called the magic of movie-making.

   The movie is rated R for the occasional horrific scenes of violence, making the (Spoiler Alert) the happy ending a bit too saccharine and therefore out of place in comparison, but once again, speaking personally, I didn’t mind at all.

PHILIP R. CRAIG – The Double-Minded Man. Jeff Jackson #3. Cbarles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1992. Avon, paperback, 1993. Reissued as Vineyard Deceit: Avon, paperback, 2003.

   I thought a previous book about the ex-Boston cop on Martha’s Vineyard was pretty lightweight. I felt much the same about this one. The plot revolves around an Arab potentate who is on the island to reclaim an heirloom stolen by one of the island inhabitants’ ancestors many years ago. Murders occur (naturally), and both Jackson and his ladylove, Zee, are placed in jeopardy.

   I still like Craig’s breezy style okay, still think Zee’s an attractive character, still enjoy the background, and still am not offended by the hero. But the plot still isn’t much, and I just don’t think it all comes together in any remarkable fashion. It’s not a bad book, and there are worse ways to pass a dull afternoon; there are a lot better, too. Library only.

ZEPPELIN. Warner Brothers, US/UK, 1971. Michael York, Elke Sommer, Peter Carsten, Rupert Davies, Marius Goring, Anton Diffring, Andrew Keir, Alexandra Stewart. Screenplay by Arthur Rowe & Donald Churchill, based on a story by Owen Crump. Directed by Etienne Pèrier.

   This big wartime adventure film often looks good, and has some decent photography and special effects, but it’s as leisurely as some of E. Phillips Oppenheim’s World War I diplomatic spy novels, which it too often resembles, when it could use a healthy dose of John Buchan-style action or even William LeQueux melodrama.

   Michael York is perfectly cast as Lt. Geoffrey Richter-Douglas, a Scot of mixed German background assigned to a desk at Whitehall, thanks to his vertigo, when London is attacked from the air and bombed by German zeppelins for the first time. The country is in a panic, the government is asking questions, and unknown to Geoffrey, he is in the cross-hairs of Captain Whitney of British Naval intelligence (Rupert Davies) under the direction of the famous Admiral Needles Hall (Richard Hurdnall) — the brilliant British spy who uncovered the famous Zimmerman telegram — and German Military Intelligence in the person of seductive Alexandra Stewart.

   When the Germans try to recruit Geoffrey to defect, he learns that is exactly what his people want him to do, defect and use his contacts in Germany, notably Professor Anschul (Marius Goring) to get a look at the new zeppelin he is developing. In no time Geoffrey is in Germany, where he discovers his knowledge of Scotland is part of a German plan by Colonel Hirsch (Anton Diffring) and Major Tautner (Peter Carsten) to use the new zeppelin to destroy British morale once and for all and end the war.

   Complicating things are Professor Anschul’s beautiful younger wife Erika (Elke Sommer), who sees right through Geoffrey, but doesn’t care he is a spy so long as her husband isn’t hurt.

   In short order, Geoffrey finds himself on board the zeppelin commander by Captain Von Goirer (Andrew Kier) under the watchful eyes of Hirsh and Tautner on its mission to destroy the treasures of the British empire stored in an abandoned Scottish castle in the highlands for the duration, trying to survive and contact his people.

   There is a fairly exciting raid on the castle, somewhat undercut in that the hero stands around for the duration with his hands in the air, then a nicely shot attack on the zeppelin by the RAF as they try to escape with Geoffrey on board, then the film just sort of fizzles to the end with nothing much resolved except most of the cast is dead and the rest are wet, and considering Sommer is covered to the throat in coveralls for most of the picture, even her wet in a white blouse is a let down.

   Zeppelin is by no means a bad movie. It is perfectly cast, it looks great, and if it had been made in the 1930‘s it would likely be one of my favorite films, but if had been made then, it would be half an hour or more shorter, and not waste so much time on a preachy anti-war message that never rises to the level of irony, so it just gets in the way.

   A much better film would have been to do it tongue in cheek in the manner of The Assassination Bureau, but that isn’t the film they made. As it is, made in Technicolor and widescreen in 1971, it isn’t dull, but it isn’t very exciting either, a fatal flaw for a big screen action epic. Still, if you ever wanted to see a Technicolor film of an Oppenheim WWI era spy novel, minus the slapstick and musical numbers of Blake Edwards’ Darling Lily, this is pretty much your best bet.

FRANKLIN MAYFAIR – Over My Dead Body. Book Company of America #009, paperback original, 1965.

   Rodney Valino, soon not to be a publicity man for Magno-Feierstrein Studios, has as a last assignment the publicity for Antietam, a Civil War epic starring one of the most detested men in Hollywood, Robey Hardin. Among other things, Hardin is a lecher and perhaps a blackmailer, and he has ruined several careers. He is also responsible for Valino’s losing his job.

   With most of the people involved in the new picture hating Hardin passionately, it is no surprise that he is murdered during filming. Because of Hardin’s proclivities, suspects are numerous. But the police, among them a friend of Valino’s, have their eye on the publicity man. Because of this, Valino feels he must detect on his own. He identifies the murderer and puts his life at risk, somewhat to his surprise.

   This is an amusing, literate and well-plotted novel that should have been picked up by a major publisher.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   Franklin Mayfair was the pen name of Felix Mendelsohn, Jr. (1906-1990). This is the only crime novel he wrote under either name. Under his own name, he was also the author of “two unremarkable comic sf novels, Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon (BCA, pbo, 1965) and Superbaby (Nash, hc, 1969; Paperback Library, 1970).” Thanks to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia for the quote.

   Book Company of America was a short-lived paperback published based in Beverly Hills CA. In the years 1964-65 they published a total of 17 books, three of which are regarded as criminous and included by Al Hubin in his comprehensive bibliography of the field, Crime Fiction IV.

GEORGE BAXT – The Affair at Royalties. Scribners, hardcover, 1972. Intl Polygonics Ltd., paperback, 1988. First published in the UK by Macmillan, hardcover, 1971.

   George Baxt is best known for his Pharaoh Love trilogy — a series of murder mysteries written in the late 1960s and set in the underground of homosexual New York. The books feature a bizarre homosexual black police detective, Pharaoh Love. Another Baxt series features the popular detective duo Sylvia Plotkin and Max Van Larsen, a pair of wacky lovers and sometime partners in crime detection who run across like-minded wackos in the melting pot of New York City.

   The Affair at Royalties is no less interesting than the above, although certainly more conservative. A good-looking and brilliant young Englishwoman regains consciousness in what they tell her is her very own bed. She has suffered a total memory loss, nerve-racking in itself, but to make matters worse, she is also the suspect in a brutal murder of which, of course, she has no memory.

   She can’t even remember which of the men at her bedside is her husband, much less if she loves him or not, so she makes eyes at one of them anyway. Unfortunately, he turns out to be the local homicide inspector, and the relationship begins on a rocky note.

   As she slowly regains her memory, she finds she is a notorious mystery-story writer. We watch her put her extraordinary analytic mind (and loud mouth) to work solving the mystery of her own amnesia, risking- — with true “liberated” woman chutzpah — the possibility that she will, in the process, indict herself for murder.

   Good characters, plot, movement, and a particularly nice rendition of what happens when the strong female meets the strong male: Will they destroy each other or fall in love?

   Other notable Baxt titles are A Queer Kind of Death (1966), with Pharaoh Love, and “I!” Said the Demon (1969), with Plotkin and Van Larsen.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

D-DAY ON MARS. Republic Pictures, 1946. Feature version of the movie serial The Purple Monster Strikes (1945). Dennis Moore, Linda Stirling, Roy Barcroft, James Craven, Bud Geary, Mary Moore. Directors: Spencer Gordon Bennet & Fred C. Brannon.

   Back in the mid-60s someone got hold of a bunch of Serials from the ’40s, cut them down to 90 Minutes (from their original four hour plus running time!) and sold them to TV as feature films. D-Day on Mars is the thus truncated version of The Purple Monster Strikes, an early Republic Serial, and it’s actually pretty good with lots of well-staged fights and nifty cliff-hangers.

   Veteran Heavy Roy Barcroft plays a Martian, come to Earth to steal the plans and prototype for a new Space Rocket so he can go back to Mars, build a mess of ’em and conquer Earth. (Warning!) He doesn’t make it. (End of Warning!)

   As usual in these things, he ties up with a Gangster and they go around stealing or trying to steal Annihilator Beams, Rocket fuel, Magneto-Sensors and whatever else the writers decided they’d fight over that week, and of course Hero Dennis Moore keeps getting in rock’em sock’em slug-feats with the hood and his men.

   For some reason, they almost always fight in groups of three – Maybe it was Union Rules or Family Pride: I see the Stunt-Men saying to the Producer, “We Don’ work ’less-a Tony work-a too.” Whatever the case, in each chapter, there’s a face-off, someone gets the drop on someone else, the gun gets knocked out of his hand and everybody throws punches, furniture and each other around for several minutes until the bad guys get away.

   After awhile, this gets a bit redundant, but this one’s mostly fun, with inventive stunt-work and some nice comic-bookish sets and costumes.