FOG OVER FRISCO. First National Pictures, 1934. Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Byron, Robert Barrat, Henry O’Neill, Irving Pichel, Douglass Dumbrille, Alan Hale. Based on the novel The Five Fragments by George Dyer. Director: William Dieterle.

Sometimes a film starts off really well, with a promising plot, a stunning female lead, and an atmospheric San Francisco nightspot. There’s also a gangster, a goody two shoes stepsister, and a duped fiancé, all of whom vie for the deeply flawed protagonist’s attention. What’s not to like?

But then all of a sudden, about thirty minutes into the movie, things just quickly fall apart, leaving the movie feeling utterly rudderless. That’s the best way to describe Fog Over Frisco.

Based on a novel by George Dyer and directed by William Dieterle (The Life of Emile Zola), the movie stars Bette Davis as Arlene Bradford, a scheming socialite and femme fatale. She manipulates her fiancé, Spencer Carlton (Lyle Talbot), into a scheme involving a criminal lowlife and some stolen government securities. Her father, head of the brokerage firm where Spencer works, thinks Arlene’s rotten to the core. Her stepsister, Val (Margaret Lindsay), however, isn’t willing to give up on her. (Full story: https://www.aktienboard.com/aktien-apps/)

Davis is nearly perfect for the part of the scheming Arlene, portraying the doomed protagonist as a liar, schemer, and classic manipulator. You kind of start actually liking her, even though you know she’s up to no good whatsoever. Then she disappears from the film for a few minutes, leaving you wondering where she went and where the film’s headed.

And then you get your answer. She’s been killed, leaving the film without its best character. In contrast to an extremely focused first half, the second half of Fog Over Frisco is one big muddled affair with stock footage of car chases, too many characters, and no Bette Davis. It’s fast moving, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

Who could the murderer be? Her fiancé, her sleazy gangster friend, and even her on-the-side love interest are all possible suspects, but it’s difficult to care. Somewhere along the way, the stepsister Val gets kidnapped, an intrepid newsman gets involved with the case, and it turns out Arlene had a secret husband who used to live in Los Angeles. If it sounds far too complex for a film with a running time of sixty-eight minutes, it’s because it is.

In conclusion, Fog Over Frisco starts off extremely promising, but ends feeling like just another convoluted and mediocre B-film mystery with some ridiculous plot devices thrown in to explain away a clumsy story. As far as the fog alluded to in the title, there’s a bit here and there, but really nothing to justify its usage beyond a marketing device.

All told, it’s an average, if not below average, suspense film with little to recommend it beyond Davis’s great, albeit abbreviated, performance.

WITHOUT HONOR. United Artists, 1949. Laraine Day, Dane Clark, Franchot Tone, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett. Re-released as Woman Accused. Screenplay: James Poe. Director: Irving Pichel.

   Without Honor was directed by Irving Pichel and written by James Poe, a distinguished writer for radio and film. (Though Poe wrote the screenplays for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Summer and Smoke, Lilies of the Field and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, he won his sole Oscar for Around the World in Eighty Days.)

   For genre lovers Poe also is especially notable as a radio scriptwriter for classic series like Suspense and Escape (perhaps his best known adaptation is the brilliant nail-biter “Three Skeleton Key,” starring Vincent Price).

   Without Honor followed the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope into theaters by one year, and the influence on the latter film on the former seems clear, with Without Honor playing as a feminized, suburbanized version of the classic Hitchcock film.

   Laraine Day stars as Jane Bandle, a San Fernando valley housewife whose dalliance with businessman Dennis Williams (Franchot Tone) has been uncovered by a private detective employed by her rat fink brother-in-law, Bill Bandle (Dane Clark), who is still angry that she once spurned his advances and has been eying his chance to exact revenge.

   Williams has come to the Bandle house to inform Jane that with a detective on their tails, it’s all over between them — he won’t divorce his wife as he had promised. A distraught Jane, who when Williams dropped in to lower the boom had been preparing shish kabob for her husband’s dinner (d’oh!), grabs a skewer and hysterically threatens to commit suicide on the spot. Williams grapples with her and ends up getting stabbed in the chest.

   After Williams collapses in the laundry room, a panic-stricken Jane shuts the door on him but finds that the worst is yet to come: her snake-in-the-grass brother-in-law has invited Williams’ wife, Katherine (Agnes Moorehead), to come over the Bandle bungalow to discuss a certain matter of marital infidelity. Oh, yes, and Jane’s husband, Fred (Bruce Bennett, aka former thirties film Tarzan Herman Brix) should be along any minute now too….

   This film has gotten its share of criticism over the years, but I enjoyed it. The performances are quite good, in my view. Tone is his customarily sophisticated self, but it’s Dane Clark who dominates the film, as a highly memorable etching in sleazeball venom. A rather censorious New York Times, which didn’t like the film, allowed nevertheless that “Mr. Clark does such a thoroughly good job in developing the revengeful brother into a full grown monster that one can almost forgive and commiserate with Laraine Day, despite her guilt of marital indiscretion.”

   Laraine Day mostly spends the film looking terrified, though she does this well. Agnes Moorehead lends an interesting performance as a not entirely unsympathetic Beverly Hills matron. Bruce Bennett is convincing as Day’s somewhat dim husband. Essentially a post-war kitchen sink women’s melodrammer, Without Honor nevertheless also offers genre fans a pleasing repast of crime and suspense.

NOTE:   This review first appeared in slightly different form on Curt’s own blog, The Passing Tramp. Check out Part One of this series on this blog here.

“Undercover.” From the COLUMBO series. ABC/Universal TV, 2 May 1994. Starring Peter Falk as Columbo. Teleplay by Gerry Day. Based on story by Ed McBain. Produced and Directed by Vincent McEveety. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link. Executive Producer: Peter Falk. Producer: Christopher Seiter. Guest Cast: Ed Begley Jr, Burt Young, Harrison Page, Shera Danese, Tyne Daly.

   Sorry for the commercial interruptions on this YouTube video.

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

   OK, who is this character posing as Columbo? Where is the inverted mystery? The real Columbo, one properly dressed in his car with his dog does not arrive on screen until the final scene. Until then this imposter works in a police station where he shares a desk with his partner, needs his Captain’s approval to take the case, goes undercover, carries a gun and gets knocked out by the bad guy in this average TV mystery.

   And the most unforgiving flaw with this cop show posing as a Columbo episode, was I knew who the killer was while Columbo believed it was another suspect. We expect more from Columbo.

   After a man is murdered by someone searching for a piece of a photograph, the alleged Columbo goes undercover searching for the killer and the photograph that would lead to the location of the missing four million dollars from a botched bank robbery.

   The acting, directing and production values were up to usual Columbo standards. The script by Gerry Day (Wagon Train, Dennis the Menace, Murder She Wrote) had its moments such as when one character described Burt Young’s character as looking like that guy from Rocky. But there was nothing about this episode that made it special enough to abandon the series premise of the inverted mystery or the main character’s methods.

   Columbo does a story by Ed McBain, master of the police procedurals! There are so many things wrong with that sentence.

   The McBain book adapted here was Jigsaw (1970). This and the episode “No Time to Die” (adapted from McBain’s book So Long As You Both Shall Live (1976) and was the only COLUMBO episode without a murder) were the only Columbo episodes not originally written for the series. Both books were from McBain’s 87th Precinct book series.

   This episode is also available on DVD (Mystery Movie Collection: 1994-2003).

SOURCE: The Ultimate Columbo Site.

JAMES E. MARTIN – The Mercy Trap. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1989. Avon, paperback, 1990.

   James E. Martin, policeman in Norwalk, Ohio, turned special investigator for the State of Ohio and now retired, authored a mystery in 1973 (The 95 File) and now returns with The Mercy Trap, the first of a series about private eye Gil Disbro.

   Disbro comes full-grown out of the standard P.I. womb: former cop, former husband, getting his sex without commitment, a man with his own particular standards which are at once adaptable and firmly held. He walks the mean streets of Cleveland, retrieving bail jumpers for a bondsman between real jobs.

   Here a mission of mercy comes his way: wealthy contractor Howard Eberly’s adopted daughter is dying for lack of a kidney transplant, and Eberly wants her real mother or other close relative found as a possible donor. Not a quest likely to involve violence, though a twenty-nine-year-old trail with the mother’s true identity carefully hidden may prove a tad faint.

   But the traces are quickly picked up by Disbro’s capable hands, though along the way (but where? and why?) he seems to have stepped on somebody’s toes. Martin’s narrative is compelling, his sense of plot and pace sure. I’ll await the next Disbro with much anticipation.

       The Gil Disbro series —

The Mercy Trap. Putnam 1989.
The Flip Side of Life. Putnam 1990.
And Then You Die. Morrow 1992.
A Fine and Private Place. Morrow 1994.

WICHITA. Allied Artists, 1955. Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Lloyd Bridges, Wallace Ford, Edgar Buchanan, Peter Graves, Keith Larsen, Walter Coy, Jack Elam. Director: Jacques Tourneur.

   The first time the viewer sees now legendary figure Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea) in Wichita, he’s an absolutely miniscule figure on horseback perched on a hill off in the distance.

   A solitary man overwhelmed by nature, Earp is initially portrayed as extraordinarily reluctant to be the arbiter of law and order in the rapidly growing city of Wichita, Kansas. Earp’s also got a strong fatalistic streak, going so far as to tell a potential love interest after a bank robbery that “things like that are always happening” to him. As if he were just an object swept to and fro by the winds of History.

   Directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past), Wichita is not only quite good Western, it’s also a superbly well-crafted character study of how frontier violence fundamentally alters the course of one man’s life. With a supporting case that includes a youthful Lloyd Bridges as a villain and Peter Graves as Earp’s brother, Morgan, the film is definitely worth a look.

   The story follows Earp (McCrea) as he journeys, both literally and metaphorically, from a lonesome figure on horseback to a married man tasked with establishing law and order in Kansas. Soon after the film begins, Earp encounters a cowboy encampment. After some initial pleasantries, his relationship with the men begins to sour – and how! – after two of the men attempt to steal from him as he sleeps. Although this initial encounter is brief, it sets the stage for what is to come.

   Earp journeys onward alone, stopping briefing in front of a signpost indicating Wichita is ahead. The sign also notably states, in all capital letters, that “Everything Goes in Wichita.” Soon two fast moving stagecoaches barrel down on him, pushing him off to the side. The first stagecoach has a banner on the back with the very same words, while the second has one that reads, “Wine, Women, Wichita.” From that moment onward, the viewer knows that the rapidly expanding city is going to be both a somewhat lawless town, but also a frontier town where a man can reinvent himself.

   Earp’s plan is to be a businessman in town. That plan goes by the wayside once he witnesses the aforementioned cowboys arrive in town and, in a drunken frenzy, shoot up Wichita, killing an innocent young boy in the process.

   That’s when Earp decides he will take the mayor up on his offer and become a U.S. Marshal. Supporting him in his endeavor is Bat Masterson (Keith Larsen). The rest of the movie revolves around not only the conflict between Earp and the cowboys, but also a growing rift between Earp and Sam McCoy (Walter Coy) over Earp’s strong-arm tactics. Earp also falls for McCoy’s daughter, Laurie (Vera Miles) in a somewhat clichéd subplot that doesn’t really do much for the film, but may have been intended as a box office draw.

   There are several scenes in Wichita that merit particular consideration. The first is Earp’s initial encounter with the cowboys. When he first meets them, he’s elevated on horseback. They are sitting. We quickly learn he’s a stoic figure, with his first words to them (and in the movie) as follows: “Howdy! My name’s Earp, Wyatt Earp.” While all of the cowboys are dressed in a dark colors, Earp is wearing a clean, bright red shirt. This marks the beginning of a personal journey that will culminate in his fight against the darkness and disorder symbolized by these ragged men.

   The sequence in which the cowboys shoot up the town, injure a woman, and kill a young boy through carelessness also is likewise worth watching closely. These events prompt Earp to accept the position as U.S. Marshal. Look for the notable, stark contrast between the bright saloon and the dark, foreboding street.

   Inside the saloon, there are many women, resplendent in a multitude of colors. Outside, on the dusty street, there are loud men in dark clothes engaging in recklessness and violence. By stepping out into the grey netherworld of the Wichita streets, Earp becomes the de facto protector of the town’s innocent women and children and a protector of Wichita’s desire for domesticity.

   Finally, there’s a harrowing scene in which the cowboys shoot Sam McCoy’s wife. Again, the killing wasn’t so much intentional, as the result of lawlessness. The gunmen ride in front of McCoy’s house, shooting into it. We see McCoy’s wife fall to the ground and bullet holes lodged in the family house’s front door. This senseless act of violence again prompts Earp into action, making the final break between Earp the businessman and Earp the lawman.

   Wichita has a lot to recommend it. With a running time of a little less than ninety minutes, the film has decent pacing and enough action to keep a viewer engaged. McCrea is generally very good in this, as is Peter Graves.

   The film’s biggest downside is the fact that the plot is just a bit too predictable. Much like in Law and Order, which I reviewed here, the hero is a U.S. Marshal who defeats the bad guys and gets the girl. What sets Wichita apart, however, is its significantly better cinematography and use of symbolism to tell the story of Wyatt Earp before he arrived in Dodge City.

BLACKOUT. Hammer Films, UK, 1954. Lippert Pictures, US, 1954. Originally released in the UK as Murder by Proxy. Dane Clark, Belinda Lee, Betty Ann Davies, Eleanor Summerfield, Andrew Osborn. Based on the novel Gold Coast Nocturne by Helen Nielsen. Director: Terence Fisher.

   Dane Clark (1912-1998) is one of those actors that you, if you are, as I am, in middle age, have almost assuredly seen on television earlier in your life, even if you don’t match the name with the face. I recall him playing an FBI agent in Season One of Angela Lansbury’s beloved mystery series, Murder She Wrote, the “Watson” in that episode to Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher. I don’t know why I remember this character, but I suppose I have to chalk it up to Clark’s acting skills, having seen some of his other genre film work of late. He’s good!

   Dane Clark was known in the 1940s as the “B-list John Garfield,” but I don’t believe this appellation does him justice. (It’s a bit like when the great Ida Lupino is dismissed as the “poor man’s Bette Davis.”) Dane Clark was his own man. Both John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in 1913) and Dane Clark (born Bernard Zanville in 1912) were Jews from New York City, but Clark came of much more comfortable circumstances than Garfield, graduating from Cornell and getting a law degree before ending up in acting (after stints in boxing, baseball, construction, sales and sculptor’s modeling — he had found lawyers weren’t doing too well in the Depression either).

   In 1941 Clark married the artist and sculptor Margot Yoder (a distant relative of my family) and the next year appeared in several films (uncredited): The Pride of the Yankees (“Fraternity Boy”); Wake Island (“Sparks”); and, most notably, Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key (“Henry Sloss”).

   By the end of World War II Clark was getting bigger roles, including that of the Bohemian artist in the Bette Davis identical twins melodrama A Stolen Life (1946); the escaped convict who has a desperate romance with Ida Lupino in Deep Valley (1947); and, in the Oscar-nominated film Moonrise (1948), the tormented Danny Hawkins, who is in love with gorgeous Gail Russell and has, most inconveniently, killed her fiancee (played, very briefly, by Lloyd Brides). Today Moonrise pops up on lists of greatest noir films though regrettably it’s not available on DVD (you can see on it Amazon instant video, however).

   If you look around, you should be able to find on DVD some of Clark’s work as a lead actor in late 1940s and 1950s crime films (when he really came into his own as an actor), including Without Honor (1949), Backfire (1950), Highly Dangerous (1950; screenplay by Eric Ambler), Gunman in the Streets (1950, with Simone Signoret), Never Trust a Gambler (1951), The Gambler and the Lady (1952), Blackout (1954; Murder by Proxy in UK), Paid to Kill (1954; Five Days in UK), Port of Hell (1954), The Toughest Man Alive (1955) and The Man Is Armed (1956).

   I’ve recently seen several of the above films, the first being, for the purpose of this review, Blackout.

   Blackout, as I have discussed on my own blog, is an English adaptation of Helen Nielsen’s Chicago-set hard-boiled crime novel, Gold Coast Nocturne (1951). Although transferring the setting from Chicago to London is slightly awkward, to be sure, overall I was really rather impressed with this film. It is quite faithful to the novel, even using some of the dialogue.

   As the beleaguered hero, Casey Morrow, an American out to solve a murder he wakes up to discover he’s suspected of having committed, Dane Clark is excellent, as are the two lead women, Belinda Lee (sexy blonde heiress Phyllis Brunner) and Eleanor Summerfield (wisecracking artist Maggie Doone). A couple crucial supporting performances could have been stronger, but overall I would quite recommend this film.

       TO BE CONTINUED…

Editorial Comment:   This review first appeared in slightly different form on Curt’s own blog, The Passing Tramp.

RICHARD HULL – The Ghost It Was. Putnam, US, hardcover, 1937. First published in the UK by Faber & Faber, hardcover, 1937. Penguin, UK. paperback, 1950.

   Looking for employment that doesn’t require any work, Gregory Spring-Benson checks out journalism. Unfortunately, The New Light wants experience or at least a good story. A potential story is what Spring-Benson discovers when he finds that his estrange — and strange — uncle has purchased an allegedly haunted house in Amberhurst.

   The possibility of the story, plus maybe getting his uncle, notoriously stingy, to part with some money, stirs Spring-Benson to go to Amberhurst.

   There, after some travail, he meets some cousins who are not much better than he, although probably not much worse. The house’s ghost — both fake and maybe real — appears, perhaps committing a murder and then definitely committing one.

   A bit too much coincidence and little doubt about who the murderer is, if it wasn’t the spook, are the weak points here. Still, Hull always amuses and entertains with his odd characters. His works are well worth looking for.

Bibliographic Notes:   Richard Hull was the pseudonym of Richard Henry Sampson, (1896-1973). His first novel, Murder of My Aunt, published in 1935, is perhaps also his best known. It has the honor of being included as one of the Haycraft-Queen cornerstones of mystery fiction. Hull has in total 15 entries in Hubin.

THE SPOILERS. Universal Pictures, 1942. Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Margaret Lindsay, Harry Carey, Richard Barthelmess, George Cleveland, Samuel S. Hinds. Based on a novel by Rex Beach. Director: Ray Enright.

   The Spoilers stars John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Marlene Dietrich in a tale about claims jumping and legal corruption during the Alaskan gold rush. Based on a Rex Beach novel and directed by Ray Enright, the film is a slightly above average period Western. There’s some great onscreen chemistry between Wayne and Dietrich, a beautifully filmed scene of a locomotive at night, and one of the most extensive saloon fight scenes that I’ve come across in recent memory.

   Set in Nome, Alaska, the story follows the conflict between miner, Roy Glennister (Wayne) and a corrupt gold commissioner by the name of Alex McNamara (Scott). The two men also each have their eyes on saloon owner beauty, Cherry Malotte (Dietrich), who has yet another suitor in the lovesick Bronco Kid (Richard Barthelmess).

   McNamara’s underhanded attempts to achieve title to Glennister’s gold mine sets the story in motion. Aiding him in his task are corrupt Circuit Court Judge Horace Stillman (Samuel S. Hinds) and his lovely niece, Helen Chester (Margaret Lindsay), who grows increasingly ambivalent about her role in the whole sordid scheme.

   Both Wayne and Dietrich are quite good in their roles. More importantly, each of them appears to be having a good time working on the project, making their screen time together a fun experience for the viewer. It’s Scott, however, who steals the show in his portrayal of the villainous McNamara. There’s just something so incredibly devious about his character. He’s sort of what you’d imagine a frontier claims jumper would have been like — a bit genteel, at least on the surface, but also ruthless and more than willing to get his hands dirty should the need arise.

   Maybe that’s why in the film’s final sequence, when he and Wayne’s character get into a lengthy, brutal bar fight, you both want to see him get his butt kicked and to see him get in a few good punches himself. He’s a bad guy all right, but not one without his charms.

   Given that The Spoilers benefits from great cast, a decent plot, and a good amount of rugged frontier action, you’d think that it would have more of a critical reputation than it does. Part of this likely stems from the fact that the two male leads, John Wayne and Randolph Scott, each went on to much bigger and better projects, leaving affairs like this in their dust.

   The fact that The Spoilers can feel considerably dated at times doesn’t help matters, either. Case in point: the film’s blatantly transparent attempt to utilize racial humor. This is exemplified in a scene in which Wayne’s character is effectively wearing blackface and fools Cherry’s maid into thinking he is Black. It was surely intended to induce guffaws from the audience, but now it just falls flat. While I do recognize that there was likely no conscious decision to be derogatory toward Blacks in the film, I don’t believe most audiences today would find value in the movie’s usage of blackface for comedic relief or think Wayne in blackface was particularly humorous.

   In conclusion, The Spoilers is a solid frontier Western with some very good scenes and a notably strong performance by Randolph Scott. It’s by no means a bad film. It just doesn’t stand the test of time that well.

   Not a review per se but something I wanted to put out to the others here and see if it got any reaction. A College Professor once told me that the function of Innocence is to be destroyed. Well maybe, but I’m not sold on the notion.

   I was discussing Out of the Past and a few other films yesterday, and reflecting on the value of Innocence: When I first watched Out, I knew nothing about film noir and so wasn’t prepared for the plot developments or the ending — which made them much more powerful.

   Nowadays you can’t get close to it without knowing in advance that it’s one of the essential noirs, and setting your expectations accordingly. Similarly, there;s something magical about being 15 and watching The Maltese Falcon or Angels with Dirty Faces, not knowing the endings. Or being 19, going to an all-night drive-in-movie triple feature and seeing Night of the Living Dead before it had such an awesome rep, when it was just another monster movie.

   In each case, my enjoyment of the film was keyed by not expecting, not knowing in advance… Doesn’t happen much anymore. These days I’m more likely to hear a film praised or a scene described or a book synopsized, and build up my expectations. By the time I saw The Searchers I’d heard so much about it, it couldn’t possibly live up to my mental hype; had to see it a few more times to really appreciate the film for what it was.

   So I’m just wondering if anyone here has similar memories of reading or watching something that turned out to be a classic, and if you can still recall that first youthful thrill of discovery.

   Or am I just getting into my dotage?

CRUEL GUN STORY. Nikkatsu, Japan, 1964. Originally released as Kenjû zankoku monogatari. Jô Shishido, Chieko Matsubara, Tamio Kawaji, Yûji Odaka, Minako Katsuki, Hiroshi Nihon’yanagi. Director: Takumi Furukawa.

   I’m not going to fake it. This is the first Japanese crime film I’ve seen in a good long while, and there’s no way I can possibly place it in any kind of context where it belongs. I don’t know the actors nor the director, nor what the intentions were of the people who were responsible for the making of the film — only the results, as I saw them.

   But on the basis of this first toe-in-the-water attempt on my part, I’m enthusiastic enough to try another, and perhaps even soon. I feel as though I’m on the verge of entering a very big field here, and I hope it doesn’t go to my head.

   Just released from prison, a small-time gangster named Togawa (Jô Shishido) discovers that he has a benefactor who negotiated his release, and expensively, and that he is expected to reciprocate. (It wasn’t that he was a gangster that sent him to prison, it was for the murder of the man who ran over his sister with a truck, causing her to lose both legs.)

   The job he’s supposed to do? Nothing more than to hold up an armored car, along with a easily supplied crew of assistants. The prize: millions of dollars yen being transported from a race track to a nearby bank.

   Togawa agrees. His sister needs an operation, he believes. And as they always do in heist films like this, things go wrong. And boy howdy, do they ever go wrong. The body count is as high as any movie I’ve seen in recent months, including lots and lots of American-made westerns.

   Although filmed in black-and-white, and often dazzlingly so, please do not think of this as a film noir. It’s only a heist film populated by lots of guns and gangsters, flawed by a plan which could never have worked in the first place, and done in by plain old greed, pure and simple.