HANGMAN’S KNOT. Columbia Pictures, 1952. Randolph Scott, Donna Reed, Claude Jarman Jr., Frank Faylen, Glenn Langan, Richard Denning, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Clem Bevans, Ray Teal. Written and directed by Roy Huggins.

   Hangman’s Knot has Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin in it —two of my all time favorite actors — so I had pretty high hopes prior to watching this lesser known early 1950s Western. Unfortunately, despite solid performances by both these men (especially Marvin), the movie never really gets that far off the proverbial ground.

   It’s not that Hangman’s Knot is remotely a bad film; it’s just that it devolves into (trust me, I almost feel guilty saying this) somewhat mediocre, even somewhat clichéd, post Civil War-era, Western. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I couldn’t help but watch this film without subconsciously comparing it the decidedly excellent Budd Boetticher-directed Westerns that Scott would star in as the golden age for the Western genre wound on.

   Written and directed by Roy Huggins and produced by Harry Joe Brown, Hangman’s Knot features Scott as Major Matt Stewart, a Confederate officer tasked with stealing a gold shipment from Union troops in Nevada. The mission, which he carries out with the assistance of his sociopath comrade (Lee Marvin), is a success.

   The catch: as it turns out, the war is already over, making these Confederate soldiers just a bunch of outlaws. They are literally men without a country.

   The rest of the movie follows these happenstance outlaws as they hole up in a way station with a group of hostages and surrounded by a ragtag posse out for the gold. About those aforementioned hostages: did I mention that one of them is a lovely young Yankee woman (Donna Reed) who, by the end, falls in love with our tall and handsome Southern protagonist? Love conquers all or something like that.

SUSAN RICHARD – Chateau Saxony. Paperback Library; paperback original, 1971.

   You pick a book at random, around here at least, and you never know exactly what you may find. This looks like a perfectly ordinary gothic romance novel from the 70s, and that’s precisely what it is. Checking with Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, you then discover that “Susan Richard” is a pseudonym, of Julie Ellis, who also wrote mysteries and crime fiction (mostly other gothics) as Susan Marino and Susan Marvin.

   Most of her books seem to have been written as by Julie Ellis, and over the years – from the titles, at least – it appears that she is now writing what is called “romantic suspense” – gothics as such having lost some of their appeal. (There simply can’t be that many spooky castles and mansions still remaining anywhere in the world.)

   While the first book that Hubin lists for her as being crime fiction, The Secret of the Villa Como, as by Susan Marvin, came out from Lancer in 1966, Julie Ellis seems to have had another early career writing as Joan Ellis for the relatively sexy line of Midwood paperbacks from the even earlier 1960s – for example, The Hot Canary (Midwood, 1963), The Strange Compulsion of Laura M. (Midwood, 1962), Liza’s Apartment (Midwood, 1961) and Gang Girl (Midwood, 1964).

   So. Chateau Saxony is where young, unattached Laurie Stanton finds herself going after graduating from college – Switzerland, that is, near Geneva, where she by happenstance has been hired to teach French to a young wealthy businessman’s stubborn grandmother, who’d rather be back home in New England.

   The house itself is not spooky, but the servants do not seem to like her, and soon after Laurie’s arrival, strange events begin to happen: a rock and a trivet are thrown through her window; she finds a voodoo doll on her bed; a fire breaks out in her room. The grandmother, Diedre, on several occasions, claims to have ESP and warns Laurie that if she stays, something horrible will happen at the chateau that summer.

   The challenge to the author is, if you’re going by the rules, is to have all of these events happen, and yet make them seem reasonable, with everyday kinds of explanations, so that in effect, nothing seems to happen while there really is. And – if you were wondering – why does Laurie stay? There is the young wealthy millionaire (I guess that was redundant) whom she finds herself falling in love with. And, it as gradually becomes clear, although under the most chaste of circumstances, he with her.

   The last incident that Laurie must face could have been enhanced into a fairly decent locked-room mystery – a pendant is stolen from her room while she is sleeping and locked in – but after nearly 150 pages of gradually growing suspense and atmosphere (mostly the latter), the whole affair seems to come unraveled and is solved all too quickly. I imagine I should have spotted the person responsible, but I confess that I did not. I am embarrassed, but I will never lie to you.

PROFESSOR BEWARE. Paramount, 1938. Harold Lloyd, Phyllis Welch, Raymond Walburn, Lionel Stander, William Frawley, and Montagu Love as Professor Schmutz. Written by Delmer Daves. Directed by Elliott Nugent.

   Not a completely successful film, nor a consistently funny one, Professor Beware flopped at the box office, leading to Lloyd’s retirement (until Mad Wednesday anyway) but I find it a charming thing, with a screamingly funny wrap-up.

   This starts off with a creepy pastiche of The Mummy (Universal, 1932) as a star-crossed Egyptian Romeo gets entombed alive, the result it seems of a misunderstanding involving a vestal virgin or some such. Flash forward to 1938 and we find the ancient swain reincarnated as our Egyptologist Hero and launched on a cross country chase with a madcap heiress in true screwball-comedy fashion.

   The problem here is that the resulting escapades ain’t all that funny. There’s a clever line here and there, a fleetingly funny bit of business now and then, and Phyllis Welch, in her one and only starring film, has the requisite cute-and-perky act down pat, but the story lacks sustained comic momentum, and Lloyd’s best and most athletic days were now behind him.

   Instead of the cheerful ballet of Harold at his best, we get some rather dire back-projection and a faintly unfocused odyssey as he tries to escape the curse of his ancient progenitor, the heiress and cops chase after him, and a slew of comic character actors do what they can in brief bits — my favorite being Montagu Love as Professor Schmutz; he doesn’t do anything funny, I just like the name “Professor Schmutz.”

   But I said early on that I liked this film, and I do. There’s a certain eerie mood hung on the theme of Harold trying to cheat his fate that sustains the story in spite of itself, and it comes together in a thoughtful moment when our hero figures out that if risking a horrible death is the price of true love…. Well, maybe it’s worth it.

   Of course it helps that Professor Beware wraps up with a full ten minutes of delightful sight gags, wonderfully conceived, and beautifully shot and edited as Harold storms a yacht and we get that wonderful feel of his Silent Movie days, that this guy can sweep a football field or climb a skyscraper and take us right along with him.

THE HONEY POT. United Artists, 1967, 132 minutes (cut down from 150). Rex Harrison, Susan Hayward, Cliff Robertson, Capucine, Edie Adams, Maggie Smith, Adolfo Celi, Hugh Manning. Based on the play Mr. Fox of Venice (1959) by Frederick Knott, which was based on the novel The Evil of the Day (1955) by Thomas Sterling, which was based on the play Volpone (1605) by Ben Jonson. Screenplay and direction: Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

   Anyone familiar with Ben Jonson’s play knows that Volpone (“The Fox”) spends a lot of the time pretending he is deathly sick in one way or another to acquire unmerited wealth. Cecil Fox (Harrison) seems to be on his deathbed, too, and has called for his three favorite intimate female acquaintances to gather round him in his villa in Venice.

   The consensus is that, since he has no heirs, Fox wants to bestow his worldly goods on one (or possibly all) of his mistresses. But before that happy event, murder claims one of them, with suspicion falling equally on everybody. It will take all the worldly wisdom of a mild-mannered Venetian detective (Celi) to sort it all out.

   Since The Honey Pot was creatively Joseph Mankiewicz’s baby, he can be praised what for what’s good and blamed for what’s bad about the film. The good stuff: the acting (overall everyone’s fine, especially Rex Harrison) and the plot (it moves along, with a couple of nice twists). The bad stuff: While Susan Hayward’s performance is good enough, she’s hampered by one of the most inauthentic Texas accents ever committed to film — and then there’s that egregiously smart-alecky dialogue that Cliff Robertson, in particular, is saddled with.

   American audiences will probably remember Adolfo Celi for his role as supervillain and adept H-bomb snatcher Emilio Largo in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball.

   If you’ve never seen The Honey Pot and you like your whodunits to have at least some mystery about them, you would do well to avoid the IMDb, Wikipedia, and TCM entries since they all give away those “nice twists” we noted above.

MATT HELM. ABC-TV. Made-for-TV Movie: 7 May 1975. TV series: 20 September 1975 to 3 January 1976. Meadway Production in association with Columbia Pictures Television. Cast: Tony Franciosa as Matt Helm, Laraine Stephens as Claire Kronski, and Gene Evans as Sergeant Hanrahan. Based on characters created by Donald Hamilton. Developed for television by Sam Rolfe. Produced by Charles B. Fitzsimons and Ken Pettus. Executive Story Consultant: James Schmerer. Executive Consultant: Irving Allen.

   As with many fictional characters, Matt Helm has an identity crisis when it comes to his life in books, films and television. Matt Helm has always adapted to what was popular at the time. The character created by Donald Hamilton for a series of books, starting with Death of a Citizen in 1960, was a government assassin fighting the Cold War during a time when such a paperback series character was popular.

   The movie Helm was one of the endless numbers of James Bond parodies popular in films during the 60s and 70s. And the TV version joined the large group of ex-something (be it ex-con, ex-cop, or in Helm’s case ex-spy) turned 70’s PI with a fast car. Matt Helm liked to join the crowd.

   The TV movie version of Helm developed by Sam Rolfe was an ex-spy turned PI with a beautiful lover, a liberated lawyer who didn’t mind supplying the cheesecake. This Helm had a dark side, while he still was able to contact The Director and his old agency The Machine, Helm had quit the spy business after tiring of all the lies and bad things he had to do. While reformed and sanitized for 70s TV, this Helm was closer to Hamilton’s version than the movie version ever got.

   Sadly the TV version had something in common with the film version: both were made by Columbia Pictures and producer Irving Allen. What saved the TV Movie was the talent of writer Sam Rolfe who had created or developed such TV series as Have Gun, Will Travel, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Delphi Bureau. His screenplay (with Harold Jack Bloom) for The Naked Spur (1953) received an Oscar nomination.

   Yes, it is a 1970s TV Movie, so there were cheesy moments and it was not quality drama, but it was and still remains a mindlessly fun entertaining TV mystery thriller. Rolfe’s script featured a strong plot and enough twists to keep the viewer involved. Rolfe, one of the best TV Movie pilot writers of the time, was also able to make Helm interesting, and the film had enough possible story directions to inspire several seasons of story lines. It would be something the weekly series would not take advantage of.

   The rest of the production was above average for the standard 70s TV Movie, thanks in large part to the work of Producer-Director Buzz Kulik. Tony Franciosa played his usual character, the same guy he played in Name of the Game, Search, and every other character he played on television. Laraine Stephens (Mrs. David Gerber. Gerber was an award winning producer (Police Story) and at the time head of Columbia Pictures Television) was fine as liberated and sexually active Claire Kronski. The only other character from the pilot to make it to the series was Helm’s police contact and friend Sergeant Hanrahan played by the capable Gene Evans.

MATT HELM. 7 May 1975. Written by Sam Rolfe. Executive Producer: Irving Allen. Produced and Directed by Buzz Kulik. Guest Cast: John Vernon, Ann Turkel, Patrick Macnee, Michael C. Gwynne. *** When a PI she hired is killed Maggie turns to Matt for help to find her father’s killer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN91OAvpuXY

   Maggie’s father had been killed when she was very young. Now a successful actress Maggie can afford to hire someone to find her father’s killer. She and Matt meet through Kronski who is the actress’ lawyer. When Matt learns a casual friend and fellow PI had been killed he takes the case.

   Maggie’s father had been a Captain in the Army who was murdered by his Sergeant when he uncovered the Sergeant’s smuggling ring. The killer vanished. The murdered PI thought he had found the killer, now known as Harry Paine. Matt remembers Harry from his days with The Machine. It is not a happy memory. As Matt searches for Maggie’s father killer, everyone including an old friend from The Machine warn Matt to drop the case.

   As with most TV shows there were changes made from the TV Movie pilot to the weekly series. Jerry Fielding’s theme from the TV Movie was replaced by a theme written by Morton Stevens. The series added a new character to the supporting cast, Ethel (Jeff Donnell), an annoying woman who took Matt’s messages. On the plus side the one bad subplot from the TV Movie featuring the angry PI hating Police Sergeant (Val Bisoglio) was dropped.

   Irving Allen remained, now credited as executive consultant (there was no on air credit for executive producer). Buzz Kulik and Sam Rolfe were gone. Charles B. Fitzsimons and Ken Pettus became the producers. James Schmerer, who had been the associate producer for the film The Silencers (1966), was the series executive story consultant.

   The dark ex-spy side of Helm was basically gone. The character now was just another TV PI, closer to being Tony Franciosa than any version of Helm. The stories were inferior PI procedurals with enough plot holes to turn the cheese to Swiss, bad acting doomed by cardboard characters, directors missing shots, and enough padding to fill a mattress warehouse.

“Now I Lay Me Down To Die.” 27 September 1975. Written by Gerry Day and Bethel Leslie. Directed by Earl Bellamy. Guest Cast: Shelley Fabares, Burr DeBenning, Ian McShane. *** Rich woman known for her charity work hires Matt to find a serial killer whose last victim was her surrogate father.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za_6l26H-N8

   This is a cheese fest even Wisconsin would wince at. So lets play 70’s TV PI Cliché Bingo!

   It featured a serial killer. The Killer was female. She was nuts. She had duel personalities. Chris the good girl was rich and spent her time working for charities. Tina the bad girl was a hooker. She killed her johns after sex. She loved her work.

   The audience knows who the killer is before any of the characters including Chris. There is a gratuitous subplot about Chris’s evil husband. He is in debt. He is going to steal her fortune. She won’t get the money from dead Daddy’s will until next week. This subplot will be ignored at the end.

   There is more? Yep, Matt had barely started when someone (we never are really sure who or why) tries to kill him. Car Chase!! Matt tracks down Tina and gets knocked out from behind. Talking head scene where an expert refuses to answer questions while answering questions to explain killer’s actions.

   Female expert flirts with Matt. Police know where possible clue is but can’t get search warrant. Licensed PI ignoring rule of law plans illegal search believing a court of law would not toss out such evidence. Chris confesses before talking to her lawyer a few feet away. Ending ties things up in neat little bow as if victims were mere plot devices. BINGO! Extra point – famous ex-teen queen plays World’s most overdressed psycho killer hooker!

   The series faced even more challenges than bad writing and acting. ABC put it in a suicidal time slot, Saturday at 10pm-11pm, opposite of two popular series, CBS’s Carol Burnett Show and NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies. And there may have been behind the scenes problems with Tony Franciosa’s temper.

   According to gossip columnist Maggie Daly (Chicago Tribune, 30 October 1975), while on location at the Burbank Water and Power plant Franciosa and director Richard Benedict (an ex-fighter) got into a physical fight that didn’t stop until the two fighters and the entire cast and crew were tossed off the location.

   Not surprisingly, Matt Helm lasted only thirteen episodes. The final episode to air “Die Once, Die Twice” (January 3, 1976) began with Matt happily leaving on a spy adventure for The Machine. Sadly, the mission was kept secret from us, and instead we got a 70s cheesy lawyer show featuring Kronski.

   I certainly recommend the TV Movie. But while I am curious what TV series Matt Helm might have inflicted on the spy genre, after watching four episodes of this series and its attempts at the PI and lawyer genre I rejoice ABC put TV series Matt Helm out of my misery.

SOURCE:

And thanks to the always informative Thrilling Detective website for filling in my gaps of knowledge about the book series by Donald Hamilton.

   A train is the ideal environment for a mystery or thriller. There is a closed society that is relatively isolated for long periods (certainly in earlier times) and short of leaping to their possible death there is no where for the suspects to go between stations.

   There are a variety of venues from private and semi-private compartments, sleeping cars, baggage cars, dining area, public cars and lounges to stage action in, and enough places to hide to make it both a challenge to find someone and difficult not to be seen. There are borders to be crossed, exotic cities to reach, dangerous and elegant trestles to cross …

   Then there is the romance of the machine. No other mode of transportation ever caught the publics imagination quite like a train. Add to that the original great train robbery by Charles Peace, Jesse and Frank James, the Orient Express, the Trans Siberian, the famous hijacked Confederate train in the Civil War, and other famous trains and it was a natural.

   Doyle used them frequently, Canon Whitechurch did a whole series with Thorpe Hazel, and so on. Half of Frank Packard’s output seemed to be set on or about trains. Graham Greene used them for The Orient Express, Ministry of Fear and Travels with My Aunt, and one figures in Ambler’s Background to Danger. Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming both used them more than once. There was the Rome, Paris-Lyon, Shanghai, Irish, and other Express trains and bestsellers like Dekobra’s The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars.

   I’m not sure there was ever another form of transportation as well suited to suspense, drama, melodrama, romance, mystery and adventure.

   Ships are too big, planes too small, the train though is the ideal size with limitless possibilities for mischief. Some like the Orient Express even lived up to the hype. It still had that exotic feel when I rode what was left of it in the seventies — it has been restored and runs its classic route since — but the cigar smoking gilded cherubs were still on the ceiling of the dining car.

   Then too, trains were an adventure you could actually experience. Few people could afford a passenger liner, few needed to fly, but anyone might make a journey on a train. We forget just how common train travel was, easily up into my early twenties even in this country.

   Few things are familiar and exotic, common and romantic, or mythic and down to earth, but trains are. If nothing else how many little boys, and some little girls, dreamed of adventure on those Lionel trains of our childhood?

HELEN McCLOY – The Singing Diamonds and Other Stories. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1965. No paperback edition.

   Helen McCloy wrote relatively few mystery short stories, and only four of the eight stories in this collection fall into the mystery category. All of them, however, are superior examples of the form. They all appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and each of them was a prizewinner in the magazine’s annual contests.

   The book opens with what is probably the author’s most famous short work, “Chinoiserie,” written in Paris in 1935 but not published until 1946. It makes use of the author’s art background in a tale of obsession and revenge set in nineteenth-century Peking.

   The title story, “The Singing Diamonds,” features Basil Willing. The “diamonds” of the title are a species of flying saucer: “nine flat, elongated squares, like the pips on a nine of diamonds, flying in V-formation at 1,500 miles per hour,” seen by a navy pilot and by six other eyewitnesses scattered around the country and overseas.

   Shortly after the sighting, the witnesses, one by one, die in unexplained ways. One of the survivors comes to Basil Willing for help. Are the deaths just an amazing coincidence, or are they murder? And how could such murders have been carried out? Willing’s acute mind is equal to the task of ferreting out the truth. The story may be too fantastic for some tastes, but it is an astonishing tour de force of mystery and detection.

   Another Basil Willing story, “Through a Glass, Darkly,” was expanded to a full-length novel under the same title. The remaining mystery, “The Other Side of the Curtain,” is a gem of psychological suspense: A young wife, troubled by a threatening dream, visits a psychiatrist for help, but finds herself sinking deeper and deeper into the nightmare….

   It is difficult to believe that the other four stories in the book were written by the same author. “Number Ten Q Street,” “Silence Burning,” “Surprise, Surprise!” and “Windless” are science fiction of a ponderous and heavily didactic variety, minor exercises at best. But the four mystery stories make the volume worth tracking down.

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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.

HELEN McCLOY – Cue for Murder. William Morrow, hardcover, 1942. Reprint editions include: Dell #212, paperback, [1948], mapback edition; Bantam, paperback, 1965.

   In his introduction to a reprint edition of Cue for Murder, Anthony Boucher recalled the reception of Helen McCloy’s first novel, Dance of Death (1938): “Few first mysteries have received such generous critical praise, as the reviewers stumbled over each other to proclaim [the author] a genuine find … combining a civilized comedy of manners with the strictest of logical deduction.”

   In addition to an urbane and literate style, McCloy’s work is characterized by psychological insight, meticulous plotting, and the sheer ingenuity with which she handles seemingly impossible situations.

   McCloy was one of the founding members of the Mystery Writers of America, and was that organization’s first woman president in 1950. She was married for fifteen years to mystery writer Davis Dresser, who, as Brett Halliday, created the popular private detective Michael Shayne. In addition to writing fiction, McCloy has been a publisher, editor, and literary agent. In 1953 she received an MWA Edgar for Mystery Criticism.

   McCloy’s series detective, Dr. Basil Willing, was introduced in her first book; Cue for Murder is his fifth appearance. Willing is a psychiatrist, once a consultant to the Manhattan district attorney’s office and now, in the early months of World War II, working with the New York office of the FBI.

   He is in the audience at the Royalty Theater on opening night of a modern-dress revival of Sardou`s Victorian melodrama Fedora. At the end of the first act, it is discovered that a murder has been committed on stage during the performance, but no one can identify the victim.

   Willing is drawn into the investigation both throughm his police connections and through a family friendship with the production’s costume designer. The clues include a knife sharpener’s canary released from its cage, the odd behavior of a housefly, a mysterious figure on a fire escape, and a script containing an underlined cue for murder.

   Cue for Murder is almost a textbook example of the classic fair-play detective novel, an intricate framework in which the clues fit together like the interlocking pieces of an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. The framework is fleshed out with diverting characters, acute psychological observation, a satiric and knowledgeable rendering of the theatrical background, and a vivid portrait of wartime Manhattan, complete with blackouts and air-raid wardens.

   The book’s strength as a novel is measured by the fact that it can be read with pleasure even after its secrets are known.

         ———
   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.

CANTERBURY’S LAW. Pilot episode. Fox, 10 March 2008. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Julianna Margulies, Ben Shenkman, Keith Robinson, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Terry Kinney, Ardan Quinn, James McCaffrey. Guest Cast: Charlie Hofheimer, Boris McGiver, Alison Bartlett. Creator/screenwriter: Dave Erickson. Director: Mike Figgis.

   This is a series that came and went very quickly. In fact, you might even say that it sunk without a trace. With only six episodes aired before it was axed, I’m surprised that it came out on DVD, but it did.

   Julianna Margolies (best know, perhaps, as the good wife on The Good Wife), here plays Elizabeth Canterbury, a fiery, tough-minded and determined defense attorney who (and here’s the gimmick) is willing to break all of the rules to get her clients off.

   And in this pilot episode, she pulls off all the stops (telling her client to lie on the witness stand) in order to get the real killer on the stand, where she knows she can break him down. What makes this subterfuge necessary is that her client’s initial confession was coerced by the police by denying him the meds he needed.

   There is all kinds of back story that is brought out along the way, including her affair with a private eye, one which she has broken off (she also happens to be married), but his assistance on the case she does not mind in the least asking for.

   As gimmicks go, I didn’t mind this one, and as a matter of fact, I liked it. Elizabeth Canterbury certainly is skirting the edges of legality, and in fact (as you can tell) she verges into illegality far more than Perry Mason ever did. And playing her to perfection, Julianna Margulies is an actress that makes me sit up and like it.

   She was on The Sopranos before this one, then a nurse on ER for a season or so before starring in The Good Wife, a series I’ve never seen a single episode of, and now I’m convinced I should.

UP IN THE AIR. Monogram, 1940. Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland, Tristram Coffin, Marjorie Reynolds, Lorna Gray. Written by Edmond Kelso. Directed by Howard Bretherton.

   A painless if uninspiring hour-killer from Monogram, with the pleasure of watching Marjorie Reynolds and especially Lorna (“Vultura”) Gray, plus the always-entertaining Mantan Moreland.

   The story revolves around murder(s) at a radio station, and when I say “revolves” you should appreciate that the narrative spins its wheels quite a lot but never actually seems to get too far. Alluring Lorna Gray plays a bitchy singer who is, alas, the first to go. A couple of loud and none-too-bright cops show up to investigate, but the real sleuthing is done by the team of Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland.

   The word “team” is key to the interest and charm of this movie and the others in this low-budget series, where Frankie and Mantan took turns playing unskilled workers in crappy jobs that invariably got them mixed up in murder. Mantan was always the reluctant throttle to Frankie’s racing engine, but it was he who provided the laughs and charm with his snappy patter, comic timing and — in this film anyway — snappy one-man dance numbers.

   The concept of interracial-but-equal crime-solvers may have broken some cultural ground back then, but it didn’t catch on; Monogram was a never a trend-setting studio after all, generally content to pick up on well-worn themes and discarded series from the major studios, like Cisco Kid and Charlie Chan, where Moreland again showed up to good advantage.

   But it’s interesting to note that they trotted it out decades before Culp & Cosby in I Spy when nobody was looking. I’m not saying they did particularly well with it, but the film passes painlessly as I say, and the interplay between Moreland and Darro is often fun to watch, especially when they trot out one of Mantan’s “infinite talk” routines.

   To anyone interested in learning more about this ought-to-be-legendary black comedian, I recommend Michael H. Price’s Mantan the Funny Man (Midnight Marquee Press, 2007). It’s written by an old white guy, but offers some worthwhile insights into race relations in the middle of the last century, and it takes a close and appreciative look at movies most critics wouldn’t give the time of day to.