ISLE OF MISSING MEN. Monogram Pictures, 1942. John Howard, Helen Gilbert, Gilbert Roland, Alan Mowbray, Bradley Page, George Chandler, Ernie Adams. Director: Richard Oswald.

   A strangely unclassifiable story in may ways. The title may make it sound like a crime film, but except for the fact that the film takes place on a penal island in the South Pacific, there is no crime committed during its short 67 minute running time.

   That it takes place in the South Pacific during wartime, and a Japanese warplane takes an early unsuccessful bombing run at the island, just on general principles only, might classify as a war film. On the other hand, that is the end of any reference to the war, and to honest, this movie could have taken place well before the hostilities began. It has, in fact, an overall 1930s feel to it, as if Monogram had made the film back then and only got around to releasing it in 1942.

   What Isle of Missing Men really is, is a romantic drama, centered around a blonde temptress (Helen Gilbert) who finagles her way to the island where John Howard is the governor, Alan Mowbray is the prison doctor, Bradley Page is the very suspicious second in command, and Gilbert Roland a prisoner who claims to be innocent, but then again don’t thy all? But maybe this time, just maybe.

   It is at least a four-way love triangle, and Miss Gilbert easily has her way with all her quickly gained suitors and admirers. The lady — the actress — apparently was far better known for her several marriages than she was ever was for her movie career. Isle of Missing Men may have been the peak of her success.

   A statement which I make in all seriousness. This may not have been a crime film, per se, but it has elements of a truly noir film. The low budget acts against it, of course, and so does the execrable quality of the Alpha Video DVD. And yet, and yet. The story is oddly ingratiating, if not wholly admirable. I liked this one maybe more than I should have.

KAREN A. ROMANKO – Television’s Female Spies and Crimefighters: 600 Characters and Shows, 1950s to the Present. McFarland, softcover, February 2016.

   The full title of this book is self-explanatory, I’m sure. I’ve only browsed through it myself, so this is not a review, but in my opinion this is a book that every reader of this blog ought be know about, if you don’t already.

   To open the book, author Karen Romanko provides a long and knowledgeable introduction to the overall history of female crimefighters on television, followed in the main portion of the book by a comprehensive alphabetical listing of all relevant TV series and their significant characters, cross-referenced between the two. For example, the TV series Elementary and the character Joan Watson each have their own entries, each mentioning the other in bold face.

   The first entry is Acapulco H.E.A.T., followed by Lydia Adams (Southland); the last two are Roberta Young (Snoops) and The Zoo Gang, a British production that aired in this country on NBC in 1975.

   This is a book that’s easy to get caught up in, following one familiar show to its star and then to others not so familiar, and vice versa for (in my estimation) hours on end.

FIVE GUNS WEST. American Releasing, 1955. John Lund, Dorothy Malone, Touch (Mike) Connors), Bob (R. Wright) Campbell, Jonathon Haze, Larry Thor. Screenplay: R. Wright Campbell . Director: Roger Corman.

   A highly formulaic, but nonetheless perfectly watchable gritty Western, Five Guns West is perhaps best known – if it is known at all – as the first movie Roger Corman directed. Despite occasionally languid pacing, the movie has enough on screen tension and action sequences to keep the viewer engaged for the duration of the proceedings.

   Although Corman’s direction in this low budget production is hardly on par with Western auteurs such as Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, it’s perfectly competent and as good as, if not occasionally better than, the output of the numerous Hollywood craftsmen who churned out oaters throughout the 1950s. If you go into the movie not expecting anything particularly creative or inventive, then it kind of works for what it is; namely, a slightly better than average B-Western.

   The plot isn’t particularly inventive, but it works. When Confederate leaders, already in tough straits, find out that one of their top operatives is about to turn state secrets over to the Union, they decide to “hire” a ragtag group of convicts to conduct a daring mission to intercept the would-be turncoat. Enter a bunch of criminal outlaws on horseback, each with their own agenda. There’s the authoritarian Gaven Sturges (John Lund), the scheming Hale Clinton (Mike Connors), the aging J.C. Haggard (Paul Birch), and the perpetually feuding Candy brothers (R. Wright Campbell and Jonathan Haze). One of them, it will be revealed, is not a criminal at all, but a Confederate officer in disguise tasked with keeping an eye on the men.

   When the five outlaws – or more accurately, the four outlaws and the spy among them – stumble upon a homestead run by the aging Uncle Mike and his beautiful niece, Shalee (Dorothy Malone), you just know that trouble is going to ensue. Just when it seems that Gaven is developing romantic feelings for the young lady, the men get word that the California stage carrying the would-be Confederate traitor is en route with a good amount of gold in his stead.

   As you might well imagine, since outlaws will be outlaws and Confederate officers will be gentlemen, there’s going to be a final showdown and a fight to protect young Shalee from the ravages of a nation torn by war.

TODD DOWNING – The Cat Screams. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1934. Popular Library #68, paperback, 1945. Wildside Press, softcover, 2008; Coachwhip Publications, softcover, 2012.

   In what appears to be the second in the series of six [sic] books featuring U.S. Customs agent Hugh Rennert, Rennert is in Taxco, Mexico, on vacation. It turns out to be a busman’s holiday since the night he arrives one of the people staying at the pension of Madame Fournier is smothered in his bed.

   It doesn’t help matters that the town doctor`s assistant suspects one-of the servants has smallpox and quarantines the group. Then another murder occurs, adding to Rennert’s problems. On each occasion Mura, the cat, has screamed, for reasons perhaps supernatural, perhaps not.

   Several strengths: An interesting picture of the American expatriate view of Mexico and an excellent investigation, with quite subtle clues, by Rennert. The weaknesses: A gloomy and depressing novel, with no humorous relief; none of the characters are particularly engaging, including Rennert; a great deal of the dialogue is Spanish translated into English, with which I have no problem, except when the author includes Spanish words in the translation, something I always find jarring.

Editorial Comment:   Bill was correct in saying this was the second Hugh Rennert adventure, but in fact there were seven books in the series, not six. Downing’s other two mysteries feature Sheriff Peter Bounty of Hesperides County, Texas. All nine of them are currently easily available from Coachwhip Publications.

Q. PATRICK – S. S. Murder. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1933. Popular Library #23, paperback, no date stated (1944).

   Another recuperative holiday here: After having her appendix removed, Mary Llewellyn, journalist, is taking a cruise on the S. S. Moderna — a luxury liner, according to the publishers; not so luxurious, according to Llewellyn — bound for Rio.

   Soon Llewellyn begins to think of the ship as the S. S. Murder since during a relatively blameless game of bridge a seemingly harmless businessman is given strychnine in a drink and dies. Shortly thereafter someone tosses another passenger from the ship during a storm.

   Llewellyn’s presence in the card room at the time of the death is helpful to the investigation. As one who occasionally fills in for the bridge columnist of her paper, she transcribes two hands that lead to revealing the identity of the murderer, a Mr. Robinson who appears to have been aboard the ship only for that card game since he cannot be found after a thorough search. Yet he shows up again, this time seeking Llewellyn’s journal, which seems to contain another clue damaging to him. I have my doubts about this clue, as interpreted by a Cockney detective who is on the ship to foil card sharps.

   The novel is one of the rare documentary types, in the form of letters from Llewellyn to her betrothed. Thus the style is somewhat gushy. But nothing, let me hasten to add, likely to bring a blush to the cheek of a delicately nurtured male. Good characters, good crimes, though the second is rather theatrical, and fairish play.

Bibliographic Notes:   In this case the Q. Patrick byline was the pseudonymous collaboration of Richard Wilson Webb and Mary Louise Aswell. The only other novel by this pair-up was The Grindle Nightmare (Hartney, 1935). See also Comment #1.

[UPDATE.]   I first posted this review last Friday, but today I noticed that I’d omitted the last paragraph, tucked neatly away on a following page. Here now, at long last, is Bill’s review in its entirety.

From this San Francisco based jazz singer’s live CD Music Moves from 2005:

THE HYPNOTIC EYE. Allied Artists, 1960. Jacques Bergerac, Merry Anders, Allison Hayes, Marcia Henderson, Joe Patridge, Fred Demara, Lawrence Lipton. Director: George Blair.

   The theme of this second-rank crime film — not a horror film per se, although there are some horrific scenes that take place during the course of it, but mostly offstage — is stage hypnotism. The film takes great pains to point out the beneficial results that hypnotism can produce — but at the end, with a wink, there is a warning to say in essence, don’t try this at home.

   It seems that a wave of beautiful women mutilating themselves has hit the city: attempting a facial massage with an electric fan; using a razor instead of lipstick; drinking lye instead of coffee; washing one’s hair over a gas flame instead of a sink. What could be behind these ghastly accidents?

   Det. Sgt. Dave Kennedy, played Joe Patridge, an actor previously unknown to me, doesn’t have a clue, but when his girl friend (long-haired brunette Marcia Henderson) insists they go see a stage hypnotist named Desmond (Jacques Bergerac), events start happening that even the slow-witted Kennedy can’t downplay or deny.

   The aforementioned Bergerac isn’t a great actor, but he has the eyes and voice (and French accent) of a stage magician, and if he ever had the chance to play Dracula in a film, I think he’d be remembered a lot more than he is. Allison Hayes plays his assistant on stage, but in one of her better roles, she — well, if I tell you any more then you’d know the whole story.

   The problem with this film isn’t its leaky plot devices, it’s that there just isn’t enough story to fill its running time. One long scene taking place in one of those hippie places of the early 60s, complete with Lawrence Lipton reciting a poem called “Confessions of a B Movie Addict,” accompanied by drum and acoustic bass is at least amusing. A longer scene that is probably not as long as it seems comes toward the end of the film as Desmond shows off his great powers by mass hypnotizing his entire audience.

   Pretty much pure hokum, in other words, but I would be willing to see Allison Hayes in almost anything, and if the story line doesn’t come to the level of the often noirish camera work, it isn’t Ed Wood level either.

ALLEGHENY UPRISING. RKO Radio Pictures, 1939. Claire Trevor, John Wayne, George Sanders, Brian Donlevy, Wilfrid Lawson, Robert Barrat, Moroni Olsen, Eddie Quillan, Chill Wills. Director: William A. Seiter.

   If you’ve ever wanted to see John Wayne sporting a coonskin cap and carrying a rifle, then Allegheny Uprising may be the movie for you. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d go in for, then there’s probably no real reason for you to watch this rather dated, and poorly edited, RKO film set after the end of the French and Indian War.

   Wayne, not yet the movie star he was yet to become, portrays the historical figure James Smith, the leader of the Black Boys Rebellion in 1765 in which some Pennsylvania colonists rose up against their British overlords. In many ways, the British title for the film, The First Rebel, does the movie more justice. (Incidentally, the film did not do well in a Great Britain. No surprise there!)

   Although there’s quite a bit of American patriotic fervor embedded into the script, Allegheny Uprising ends up feeling stale. It’s almost as if you’re watching an historical reenactment rather than a cinematic representation of an historical event. That’s not to say that the exceedingly talented George Sanders isn’t well cast as a British captain, or that Brian Donlevy can’t play a conniving villain, it’s just that the whole thing seems so formulaic, as if no one in the studio fully had their heart and soul invested in the project.

   With the notable except of Wayne, who looks as if he did his best to transform what would have been an otherwise completely forgettable Revolutionary War era film into what I’ll grudgingly admit is a somewhat entertaining costumer.

The first track in this Texas-born Louisiana-raised blues singer’s 1994 CD Blue House. If you can sit all the way through this video without moving, you’re a better person than I am.

SIMON KENT (MAX CATTO) – The Lions at the Kill. Hutchinson, hardcover, 1959. No US edition.

SEVEN THIEVES. Fox, 1960. Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Alexander Scourby, Michael Dante and Berry Kroeger (that’s seven, isn’t it?), plus Sebastian Cabot and Marcel Hilaire. Screenplay by Sydney Boehm, based on the novel The Lions at the Kill, by Simon Kent. Directed by Henry Hathaway.

   This is the first Max Catto I’ve read, and I’m asking myself what I was doing with the rest of my life.

   Lions opens with Philippe, co-owner of a moribund Paris night club, reluctantly meeting with a Police Inspector who casually informs him that some of the money stolen a year or so ago in a daring Casino burglary has been passed in his club. (The serial numbers of the hot money were recorded before the theft, meaning it will be necessary to sit on the loot for years before trying to pass it.) Two of Philippe’s employees, Manuel and Melanie, match descriptions of two of the suspects, and the Inspector thinks he can use them and the money to flush out the rest of the gang by the simple expedient of publicizing his news…. the theory being that:

      1.) Manuel and Melanie have been holding the lucre for the rest of the gang, and

      2.) When the others find out they’re spending it, they’ll converge on the club like Lions at the … kill.

   The trap is sprung in a scene of enjoyably terse violence, leaving a few loose ends to dangle intriguingly, whereupon we cut to a flashback about the robbery itself.

   This takes up the bulk of the book, and does it very well as Catto details the roles and relationships of the people involved: the planner, the organizer, the technician, the extra hands, the weak-link (unreliable but necessary to the scheme) and the woman who has seduced him into compliance. The characters are not developed so much as they are gradually revealed to us with each turn in the plot, so that the complications (and they are many and well-turned) vie for attention with what we are learning about the people involved, and our curiosity about how they will interact.

   Suffice it to say that the caper ends ironically but with edgy realism, whereupon we cut back to the aftermath of the police trap for yet another suspenseful and oddly moving twist to wrap up a tale I will remember.

   All of which was too much to put in a movie, and the ending would never have passed the censors in those days, so when they filmed this as Seven Thieves they cut out the beginning and end and just filmed the middle. And I must say they did a fine job of it, too. Writer/producer Sydney Boehm kept the best lines from Catto’s book, threw in a few effective wrinkles of his own, and got the story across quite capably indeed. For his part, that old pro Henry Hathaway filmed it with his usual expertise: effective (but never showy) camera angles, a good sense of pace, and a knowing sensitivity for the actors and the characters they portray.

   Barry Kroeger, normally cast as a slimy schemer, plays the Muscle here, and he looks convincing, Michael Dante makes a smooth safe-cracker (especially effective showing a fear of heights at the crucial moment on a high ledge) and Alexander Scourby, normally the tough old Celt, does a surprising turn as a French weakling, visibly crumbling under the pressure of the job.

   Eli Wallach is fine as usual but doesn’t have much to do except for a cool Sax solo to highlight Joan Collins’ lusty strip-tease. (She was coached for this by Candy Barr.) Edward G. Robinson displays his usual cold aplomb as the brains of the gang, cool in emergencies and unruffled by rebellion in his ranks.

   But most of the attention is focused on Rod Steiger as Robinson’s chosen organizer: the one who keeps the gang in line for him and moves things along, and if the chubby guy seems a bit unlikely as the romantic interest, he carries the tough-guy business just fine. There’s some interesting ambiguity about his relationship with Robinson, too patly resolved near the end, but for most of the picture he remains a complex and intriguing protagonist, and one who keeps us guessing.

   Ultimately, Seven Thieves betrays the tough premise of Lions at the Kill, but I have to say it does it so enjoyably that I can’t carp — and I don’t think you will either.