DESTINY. Universal, 1944. Gloria Jean, Alan Curtis, Frank Craven, Frank Fenton, and Minna Gomebell, who doesn’t have a big part — I just like writing “Minna Gombell.” Written by Ernest Pascal and Roy Chanslor. Directed by Julien Duvivier and Reginald Le Borg.

   A true oddity of a B-movie with an oft-told back story which I will try to summarize briefly:

   In 1943, Julien Duvivier made Flesh and Fantasy, an all-star three-story portmanteau for Universal Studios, with Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, Edward. G. Robinson, Bob Cummings and Betty Field. There was originally supposed to be a fourth part with John Garfield and Gloria Jean, but Garfield balked at being loaned out to Universal and was replaced by contract player Alan Curtis. Then, when the movie was judged to be too long, this part was cut out altogether.

   With the wisdom and penury of their breed, the studio heads at Universal decided to salvage the footage and build a new movie around it. Roy William Neill was assigned to produce, with Reginald Le Borg (of The Mummy’s Ghost and Sins of JezebeL infamy) directing, and Roy Chanslor (Johnny Guitar) tasked with creating a story to fit the stuff already filmed.

   Well they did it, and it ain’t awful. In fact, considering the strictures of the project, it turned out surprisingly well. Some might even give it that overworked accolade “noir.” But before I get to that, there’s another thread to the story:

   â€œDestiny” was an all-purpose title the execs at Universal slapped on any work in progress while they searched for a more marketable moniker. At various times, The Wolf Man, Son of Dracula, and Ma & Pa Kettle in the Ozarks were all temporarily titled Destiny, and I suspect in this case they just didn’t bother to change it.

   Okay, moving on to the story itself, it starts with our hero (Alan Curtis)on the run from the Law, then flashes back to how he got drawn into a robbery, duped by a night club chantoosie and slammed into prison for three years …. only to get innocently involved in another robbery after his release. Which would all be very noir indeed, if done by anybody but Le Borg, who films it in his usual fast and anonymous style.

   Anyway, Curtis eventually wanders into a rural community called Paradise Valley, where the Duvivier footage comes in as he meets one of those blind girls unique to the movies (Gloria Jean) who lives with her aging father (Frank Craven) and has a strange affinity with nature: wild animals flock to her side and even the flowers seem to nod as she passes.

   All this should be way too cutesy, but Duvivier manages not to wallow in it by focusing on Curtis, whose character has changed markedly from the Le Borg footage. We’re supposed to think he’s been embittered by his experiences, but actually he seems something of a rotter, hoping to force his company on poor Gloria, even if it means killing her dad.

   Which leads us into the high point of the film, and one of the best few minutes of a great director: a tour de force sequence of Curtis chasing Gloria Jean through a storm-lashed forest. As they run, branches, vines and underbrush magically part to let her through, then snap back to pummel and ensnare the pursuer … and it’s convincing! A real nightmare scenario, with fluid camera, striking compositions and everything else that makes movies memorable.

   There’s more to Destiny after this, but why go into it? I’d only have to use words like facile, clichéd, contrived and crap and I hate to apply terms like that to a film that like I say, ain’t all that bad. And if you can take it for what it is, you can enjoy this Destiny.

JANE DENTINGER – First Hit of the Season. Jocelyn O’Rourke #2. Doubleday, hardcover, 1984. Dell, paperback, October 1985.

   Jocelyn O’Rourke is a young actress and acting coach who knows her way around the Broadway theater thoroughly , both on- and off-, and her insight into the people involved — producers, directors, other actors, even critics — gives her boy friend, homicide detective Phillip Gerrard, plenty of additional meat to chew on while solving a case.

   Which in this case involves the death by poisoning of a Broadway critic with a vicious pen — a little too vicious for one of his victims, perhaps.

   Author Jane Dentinger, who herself at the time was in much the same profession as her leading lady, is very, very good when it comes to characters, personal relationships between them, backstage gossip and witty repartee. In this book, though, she is not as good when it comes down to clues and describing actual detective work. She knows the setting of this flavorful Broadway concoction like the palm of her hand, however, and while your opinion may vary, this goes a long way toward mitigating any weaknesses you also may find in the crime solving that’s involved.
   

      The Jocelyn O’Roarke series —

1. Murder on Cue (1983)
2. First Hit of the Season (1984)
3. Death Mask (1988)
4. Dead Pan (1992)
5. The Queen is Dead (1994)
6. Who Dropped Peter Pan? (1995)

RATTLERS. Boxoffice International Pictures, 1976. Sam Chew, Elisabeth Chauvet, Dan Priest, Ron Gold, Al Dunlap, Dan Balentine. Director: John McCauley.

   Schlock and awe is the name of the game in Rattlers, a low budget when-animals-attack movie from the 1970s. And yes, it’s a very 1970s movie. There’s a subplot about feminism and equal rights and some absolutely beautiful shots of vintage (from today’s perspective, that is) cop cars being driven around the California desert. And then there are the snakes. Although there’s nothing particularly 70s about them. To be honest, not all of them are rattlesnakes and it’s not even clear how close the actors got to them.

   But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that, despite its obviously low budget nature, the film doesn’t come off as an amateur production. I know now it’s trendy to poke fun at these types of films and, on some level, I get it. There are some unintentionally comedic moments to be found in Rattlers. But it’s not aiming to be high art either. It’s meant as escapist entertainment and was part of the zeitgeist. How many when- animals-attack films were there in the mid- to late 1970s? How many were inspired by the success of Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)?

   Sam Chew, who went on to become the narrator of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, portrays University of California herpetologist Dr. Tom Parkinson. He’s asked by a sheriff in the Mojave Desert to investigate a string of bizarre deaths. This is not the work of a serial killer, however. The culprits in this case couldn’t hold a knife to save their ophidian lives.

   Parkinson teams up with the very single and very feminist war photographer Ann Bradley (Elisabeth Chauvet) to investigate what is causing these snakes to attack humans in such a brutal manner. This leads them both to a local military facility where a megalomaniac officer is conducting illegal research on nerve agents. I think you can put two and two together.

   Laugh at Rattlers if you must, but unlike a lot of contemporary quickie low budget horror films that are little more than joyless gore fests, this one was actually attempting to be socially conscious and to say something.

C. C. WADDELL & CARROLL JOHN DALY – Two-Gun Gerta. Chelsea House, hardcover, 1926. Serialized in four parts in People’s Magazine, October 1 through November 15, 1923. Available as a PDF download from Vintage Library, a possibly censored version.

   That is the authentic voice of Roger Francis ‘Red’ Connors, ex-Hollywood stunt man and cowboy star (“You want to remember that I’d had two years’ experience dare-deviling for the films under Milt Leffingwell. As a matter of fact, I’d worked almost the same stunt in one of my ‘Reckless Rudolph’ pictures, as you’ll recall if you’ve ever saw ‘The Pit of Perdition.’), and all around tough guy come South for adventure and about to be up to his neck in it when he encounters the beautiful and fiery green eyed hellion, ranch owner Gerta O’Bierne: “She had a couple of heavy Colts strapped about her waist; and for all her sweet-sixteen look and her quiet manner, I figured that they weren’t just a bluff. Give her half a chance, and she’d use ’em.“

   He has hardly ridden into Yavisa when he spies beautiful Gerta pinned by local bandit and mustache twirler Colonel Manuel Esteban, old Crooked Mouth: “Half Mexican and half something else, I took him to be, but all murder. He looked like the bad man in the movies, only more real. A yellow, splotchy face under his broad-brimmed sombrero, with eyes as cold and deadly as a rattlesnake’s, and a cruel, crooked mouth that ran halfway up his cheek on one side as the result of an old knife scar.”

   In short order Red has saved Gerta and is hired as foreman on her ranch, but it is hardly smooth sailing from there, as soon Gerta is kidnapped, and even once he rescues her Red has to face her jealousy over saloon girl Rosita.

    But with the help of his horse, “El Flivver!…EL Hennery Ford! The devil caballo!” and his Colt .45 automatic, Red is a match for just about anything the Old West or Old Mexico can throw at him save perhaps Gerta.

   But it takes more than a squeeze of that sort to decompose Red Connors:

   Red, of course, gets the girl and the horse, and at one point has a two way conversation with Henry Ford the likes of which you never encountered in Zane Grey, and it is all insane and mad fun written in the indomitable style of the much maligned Carroll John Daly, who for my money is one of the most sheerly entertaining bad writers to ever hunt and peck deathless prose onto the written page.

   Exactly what C. C. Waddell contributes is hard to guess, because Two-Gun Gerta reads like pure Daly, and Red Connors, like Three Gun Terry Mack, is just a rehearsal for the urban gunfighter/private eye Race Williams soon to emerge from Daly’s white hot imagination.

   It is pure pulp, and Red, Henry Ford, and Gerta are all well worth meeting: ”She’d been heaven and hell. But through it all, she’d been Gerta. And there wasn’t nobody like her.”

   There “wasn’t nobody” like Daly either, or this B Western of a two fisted adventure novel out of Tom Mix by way of Mickey Spillane.

Note: This book is important to the development of the hard-boiled genre for three reasons. Most obviously it is an early work of Carroll John Daly, who, whatever your feelings about his work, is the onlie beggetor (to borrow a Kiplingesque term from O. F. Snelling), of the modern hard-boiled private eye.

   Next, historically this book is further evidence of the ties between the Western and the hard-boiled school of writing where the former genre’s penchant for colorful language, fast action, and smart independent noble heroes with guns was transplanted to the Urban canyons of the Big City, while the quieter pleasures of the detective novel were supplanted by gangsters, floozies, femme fatales, gunmen, gamblers, crooked politicians, and corrupt cops.

   Hammett and Chandler both touch on distinctly Western settings at least once each in their work, and Gardner actually wrote mysteries with Western settings, while Black Mask as often as not included one Western in many issues..

   Finally, Red Connors is only a breath away from Daly’s first two private eyes, Three Gun Terry Mack and Race Williams. Hard going as this book may be for some readers, it is historically important to the genre.

BACK DOOR TO HELL. Lippert Pictures / 20th Century Fox, 1964. Jimmie Rodgers, Jack Nicholson, John Hackett, Annabelle Huggins, Conrad Maga, Johnny Monteiro. Director: Monte Hellman.

   For a low-budget combat film that doesn’t have a particularly compelling plot, Back Door to Hell is nevertheless worth a look. Directed by auteur Monte Hellman, the movie features a young Jack Nicholson in a starring role as one of three soldiers sent to the World War II-era Philippines for a reconnaissance mission.

   Nicholson, along with popular music singer Jimmie Rodgers and actor John Hackett, portray a diverse trio forged in fear as much as in valor. The three soldiers team up with a war weary Filipino guerrilla leader named Paco in a quest to free captives from the Japanese occupying forces. They also go on a daring mission to radio the American forces vital intelligence necessary to prepare for the forthcoming battle against the Japanese.

   Back Door to Hell, which was filmed on location in the Philippines, was made on a rather modest budget. And it shows. But with Hellman at the helm, it’s a far more stylish product than his mentor Roger Corman’s 1960 film Ski Troop Attack (reviewed here ).

   Indeed, there are some sequences that reminded me quite a bit of Anthony Mann’s work with James Stewart in the Western genre. In 1964, Hellman was a little known Hollywood director without a cult following. But that was all to change in the years ahead with the release of Ride the Whirlwind (released on television in 1968) and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). As for Jack Nicholson, he went on to a pretty good career as well.

LESLIE CHARTERIS “The National Debt.” Simon Templar “The Saint.” Novella. First published as a non-Saint story in The Thriller, UK, 06 April 1929, as “The Secret of Beacon Inn.” Reprinted in All Star Detective Stories, US, March 1931. Rewritten and collected as a Saint story in the book Alias the Saint (Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, May 1931) and in the US as part of the larger compilation Wanted for Murder by the Doubleday Crime Club in 1931. Reprinted many times in several collections and formats. TV adaptation: As “The Crime of the Century,” The Saint, starring Roger Moore (Season 3, Episode 22; 1965.)

   The history of The Saint over the years is a highly complicated one, and if any of the information above is incorrect, please set me straight. I read this particular story in a paperback entitled Alias the Saint published by Charter in the 1980s, I believe, but as an overall collection, it contains only two of the three stories originally published under that title in the UK in 1931.

   That this was not originally a Saint story, but was cobbled into one when the character proved to be so popular in other stories, helps explains why the Saint spends quite a bit of his tine doing his crime-solving duties under the name of Ramses Smith, as the leading character was so named in the Thriller version.

   Specifics of how he gets onto the trail of a trio of miscreants is not gone into. Suffice it here to say that the three have grandiose plans of some kind, but definitely criminous. To that end they have forced a young female chemist to work on their project with them. How? By drugging her with a doped cigarette, then killing a detective from Scotland Yard and making her believe she did it.

   Enter the Saint. He barges into the inn of the original title where the villains have set up a laboratory for the kidnapped girl to work in. Proving that the direct approach works, and delightfully so, Templar drives up, and improvising as he goes, declares that he’s working for Scotland Yard and if they don’t serve him a meal, he will arrest them all and take them in.

   This is not a whodunit by any means. For the Saint it’s only a matter of “what are they up to?” Before the story ends, he has found out, escaped from a cellar room filled with a deadly gas, and (of course) rescued the girl, all in Leslie Charteris’s usual breezy fashion, glossing over messy details as he goes. The story’s so much fun to read, though, that only nitpickers like me would even bring them up.

   
MARCIA MULLER – Till the Butchers Cut Him Down. Sharon McCone #15. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995.

   I was rooting for Wolf in the Shadows to win an Edgar because I think Muller is long overdue for awards recognition, even though I didn’t think it was one of the stronger in the series. When you look at writers with as many as 15 books about the same character, though, few have maintained her quality of output.

   Sharon has made one of the biggest decisions of her life, and decided to leave All Souls Legal Cooperative and strike out on her own as a private investigator. Not completely, though — her office is still in the same building among her old friends. Another old acquaintance, this one from her Berkley daya, becomes hre first client. Once a dealer in dope, exam papers, false ID’s and other such needed college paraphernalia, now he is a corporate turnaround specialist worth millions. He thinks someone is trying to kill him and ruin his business, and he wants Sharon to find out why.

   As is so often the case, the explanation for the present lies buried in the past, and she finds herself going back in time to Nevada and steel-town Pennsylvania in her quest. And there is always her enigmatic lover, Hy, and the question she has about his past and their future.

   I think Muller has returned to her old form here. It’s a “formula” hard-boiled PI tale, but enhanced by the continued growth and evolution of McCone as a character, and by Muller’s straightforward and very effective storytelling. I continue to think that Sharon McCone is one of the best realized protagonists in detective fiction, and that Muller is one of the best and most consistent practitioners of her craft.

BARBARA D’AMATO – The Hands of Healing Murder. Dr. Garrett DeGraaf #1. Charter, paperback original, 1980.

   It has to be quite a challenge for a mystery writer to write a locked room mystery, and to write one as your very first one, that must be a double challenge indeed. (I base this statement from observation only, not on experience!) After writing this first adventure of Dr. Garrett DeGraaf in crime-solving, author Barbara D’Amato wrote but one other, that being The Eyes on Utopia Murder (Charter, 1981).

   She then disappeared from the scene for while, with no other mysteries until Hardball came out from Scribner in 1990, the first of her reporter Cat Marsala series, and one for which I am sure she is far better known.

   I have not read the second DeGraaf book — I bought this when it was new, and it has taken me this long to read the first one! — but I do not believe that it was also a locked room mystery. Dead in Hands is a doctor in his own library, killed by a scalpel in his neck while eight guests, two foursomes, were playing duplicate bridge in the other side of the room. The chair in which he was sitting was partially obstructed from view by a bookcase, so the murder was not seen — but it does not seem possible that the murderer was not. No one else entered the room (fact) but the fingerprints on the murder weapon match no one who was in the room.

   There are no secret panels or places for anyone else to hide. It’s quite a puzzle, indeed. The dead man was a perfectionist and largely disliked by all, so there is no shortage of suspects. This is as pure a detective puzzle that I’ve read in some time that wasn’t written in the 1920s or 30s.

   A couple of things stand out. First, the observation that in real life, killers in general do not want to create locked room mysteries. If one occurs, two questions have to be asked: why as well as how?

   The second thing that caught my attention is how familiar the author had to be with both (a) hospital procedures and (b) the classification of fingerprints. In terms of being described well, both are top notch. The solution is a bit far-fetched, but otherwise extremely well prepared for. A bit awkward is the narration told by the police officer in the case, marred by his having to fill in the details that DeGraaf tells him about later, after the latter has gone off on his own.

   There is also a major theme to the story, one consisting of the question of how society should best make use of limited medical resources — how long should patients be kept alive who likely to die anyway — one that you can hardly expect to be solved in the pages of a mystery novel, nor of course is it. Overall I have a feeling that the story will be a little dry for most readers, but personally, I enjoyed this one. For a first novel, quite ably done.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY. Paramount Pictures, 1939. Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, John Beal, Douglass Montgomery, Gale Sondergaard, Elizabeth Patterson. Director: Elliott Nugent.

   The thing about a lot of locked room mysteries, particularly the kind that take place in spooky old houses out in the middle of nowhere, is that the resolution is often rushed and not nearly as thrilling as everything that came before it. That’s definitely the case in The Cat and the Canary, this 1939 horror comedy starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. The real thrill in this fun-filled Paramount release begins with Hope’s arrival on screen and never really lets up until the very end, when there needs to be some form of resolution to effectively put an end to the proceedings.

   But what proceedings! Adapted from the theatrical play of the same name, The Cat and the Canary features Bob Hope at his wisecracking, self-deprecating prime. He portrays Wally Campbell, an actor and radio host who is summoned to the Louisiana bayou house of a deceased relative by the name of Cyrus Norman.

   Wally, along with a host of other surviving relatives, are to stay in the old mansion for the night and listen to an attorney, Mr. Crosby (George Zucco) read the old man’s will. As it turns out, Norman has left the house to the dashing Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard). But there’s a catch: if Joyce is to die or go mad, she will lose her inheritance.

   Enter the Cat, an escaped mental patient who seems to be lurking about in the area. It also doesn’t take Wally long to realize that the condition of the will is a perverse incentive for someone – another heir perhaps – to murder Joyce. Or at least drive her mad.

   And that’s exactly what starts to happen when Joyce begins to see Mr. Crosby disappear from her room. It’s up to Wally to save Joyce. The question is: from whom or from what? And who is the Cat? Finding out is a large part of the fun in this admittedly goofy but entertaining film that, despite being over seventy years old and filled with what would become horror film clichés, still feels exceedingly fresh.

  THE MALTESE FALCON. Warner Bros Vitaphone Talking Picture, 1931. Bebe Daniels (Ruth Wonderly), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Spade), Dudley Digges (Casper Gutman), Una Merkel (Effie Perine), Robert Elliott (Detective Lt. Dundy), Thelma Todd (Iva Archer), Otto Matieson (Dr. Joel Cairo), Walter Long (Miles Archer), Dwight Frye (Wilmer Cook). Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Director: Roy Del Ruth.

   It’s taken me a long time to get around to seeing this one, but I’m glad I did. I’m going to assume everyone reading this knows the story, either by reading the book or watching the 1941 version, the one directed by John Huston and with Humphrey Bogart in his never to be forgotten role of private eye Sam Spade. Or both, of course.

   This first adaptation, as I’ve just discovered, follows the story line of the book just about as closely as the Bogart one. In my opinion, though, while very good, if not excellent, it isn’t nearly as good as the later one, in spite of the semi-risque bits it gets away with, having been made before the Movie Code went into effect. (I suspect that I’m not saying anything new here.)

   To some great extent, I imagine, how well you like this version depends quite a bit on how well you like Ricardo Cortez in the role. I didn’t, but on the other hand, who could compare with Humphrey Bogart’s performance, in a part made just for him?

   I don’t know what the critical or audience reception to this movie was at the time, but it didn’t seem to have any lasting effect on how detective stories in novel form were adapted to the screen. It took another ten years before film versions of other mysteries didn’t have to have goofy cops or funny detective sidekicks tagging along for comedy relief. There’s none of that in this 1931 movie, but except for a few exceptions, such Warner Brothers’ output of gritty crime and racketeer dramas, that’s a simple idea that didn’t catch on.