JOHN GOLDFARB, PLEASE COME HOME. 20th Century Fox, 1965. Shirley MacLaine, Peter Ustinov, Richard Crenna, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Scott Brady, Harry Morgan, Jerome Cowan, Telly Savalas, Jackie Coogan, Charles Lane, Leonid Askin, Richard Deacon, Jerry Orbach. Screenplay: William Peter Blatty. Director: J. Lee Thompson.

YOU KNOW WHAT SAILORS ARE! General Films, UK, 1954; United Artists, US, 1954. Akim Tamiroff, Donald Sinden, Sarah Lawton, Naunton Wayne, Bill Kerr, Dora Bryan, Martin Miller, Michael Shepley, Ferdy Mayne, Shirley Eaton (unbilled). Screenplay by Peter Rogers, based on the novel Sylvester by Edward Hyams. Director: Ken Annakin.

   These two films, done a little over a decade apart, are both cold war satires and sex farces set against a never never land of exotic Middle Eastern Arab states (more Grand Duchy of Fenwick than Graustark) and broadly drawn caricatures of both Western and Mid-Eastern types. One is a pleasant, even charming comedy with real laughs and sex appeal, the other is John Goldfarb, Please Come Home.

   Starting with the brassy and annoying title song sung by Shirley MacLaine, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home sets the tone for the entire film, loud, obvious, and painful to endure. Fawzia is a fictional Arab state run by eccentric King Fawz (Peter Ustinov at his absolute worst doing incredibly unfunny and offensive slapstick) who is upset his darling son has been kicked off the football team at Notre Dame and wants revenge.

   When U2 pilot, John “Wrongway” Goldfarb (Richard Crenna “He said, funny, you don’t look Jewish.”) manages to ditch over Fawzia on a mission over the U.S.S.R. (they don’t call him Wrongway for nothing), and King Fawz learns from his chief minister Gus (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that Goldfarb was a football star and coach, — well you can see where this is going — and nowhere fast.

   Meanwhile obnoxious harridan reporter Jenny Ericson (Shirley MacLaine), who gave Goldfarb his hated nickname, has gone undercover in King Fawz harem only to find the old boy is more active than she was told and she is anxious to maintain her amateur standing blackmailing Goldfarb into protecting her.

   All this leading to one of those hate turns to romance things so beloved by script writers and here wholly unlikely as the only proper reaction to MacLaine’s character would be homicide and not chivalry. This film really doesn’t like women. It doesn’t like anyone much, but it really dislikes women, the harem consisting of gold diggers with no self esteem whatsoever. Women exist only as sex objects, and the only vaguely intelligent one is a screaming shrieking harpy with a shrill laugh and all the charm of a scorpion.

   I like MacLaine, in fact I like everyone involved in making this film including the screenwriter and director, but what any of them were thinking escapes me. This film is an almost physical assault from start to finish, the cinematic equivalent of being slapped in the face with a wet dead fish repeatedly.

   Back in Washington the boys (Secretary of State Harry Morgan, CIA chief Fred Clark, diplomat Jim Backus, Sec. of Defense Richard Deacon et al) think Goldfarb is dead, and are concerned about getting an airfield in Fawzia, but having recently presented the king with a set of pigskin luggage (yes, that’s the level of humor here) things are looking bad — unless they can persuade Notre Dame to play a game against Fawzia’s new team with their mystery coach, and Notre Dame loses …

   Loud, often racist, rude, crude, painfully unfunny, sexist, silly, strident, and just awful are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind about this painful satire that makes Mad look subtle. There is something here to offend everyone including the total waste of talent. To give you the level of humor here, Fred Clark is the CIA director named Overreach and Jim Backus a diplomat named Whitepaper.

   These are the jokes, folks …

   I will give Scott Brady this, though. In a film with so many funny men and women being not funny he has a nice turn as the thoroughly flustered Notre Dame coach. It’s not much, but it’s something.

   You Know What Sailors Are! starts with Lt. Sylvester Green (Donald Sinden) and friends, Royal Naval officers on a binge, who as a joke build a Rube Goldberg contraption from a pram and three gold balls from a pawn shop on the prow of an Arab destroyer in port and paint it gray. Come the next morning the Royal Navy spies the thing and before an hour has passed they have identified it as Project 998, a super-secret new radar, and want to know how the Arab’s got it first.

   In short order Lt.Green is ordered to accompany the Arab ship back home to Agraria and find out from a brilliant scientist living in retirement there, Professor Hyman Pfumbaum (Mark Miller), how the Agrarians got the new radar, and he can hardly tell his superiors it’s a drunken joke.

   Traveling with Sinden is the malaprop-dropping President of the Arab state, Akim Tamiroff, who believes 998 is a secret weapon, just what he needs against one of his militaristic neighbors, Smorgisgov, who have his country ringed by missiles, and who decides he must keep Lt. Green a prisoner, so he locks him ups in his harem of beautiful daughters watched over by his eccentric English wife (Dora Bryan) and an army of scantily clad beautiful girls as guards.

   â€œHe must be marrying one of my daughters, then everyone will be happy, myself excluded.”

   Things get more complicated as Tamiroff and his friend Hyman try to convince their neighbors that 998 actually works by blowing up Smorgsnigov’s missiles deceiving their foreign scientist Stanislaus Voritz (Ferdy Mayne) who has a thing for missiles, and Sylvester’s girl Betty(Sarah Lawton), secretary of his boss (Naunton Wayne) and best friend Lt. Smart (Bill Kerr) parachute into Argaria to break into the harem and rescue him before the Royal Navy gets too suspicious why he doesn’t come home.

   You Know What Sailors Are! is genuinely funny, it’s barbs sharp but delivered with wit and not malice, and aimed at pretty much everyone with equal wit and warmth. Tamiroff’s fractured English is a delight — “Bang Crash Ruddy Wallop!” is how he describes his countries plight, and when he and his friend scientist Hyman meet to talk announcing “Let us both talk in broken English so we can misunderstand each other.” — and the girls are genuinely attractive.

   There is a funny, but still sexy, musical number with Lawton posing as a dancer trying to capture Green’s attention that compares more than favorably to the jolting and unattractive numbers that dot John Goldfarb with little or no point other than MacLaine and skimpily clad models gyrating unattractively to bad music. You know a Hollywood movie is in trouble when it can’t even organize a sexy Arabian nights style faux belly dancing number.

   You Know What Sailors Are! is a pleasant minor satirical diversion, sexist yes, but not jarringly so and not without intelligent and capable female characters, beautifully shot in soft pastel colors with a cast of attractive and talented people poking gentle barbs at themselves and others, probably offensive if you really want to get offended, but all done with such good humor and affection it would be hard to take real offense.

   It comes across as a sort of Middle Eastern The Mouse That Roared. John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a garish assault on the senses, eyes and ears, painfully arch, blatantly offensive, utterly without a redeeming feature, screechingly played at the top of everyone’s voice, and with all the charm and subtly of a herd of sexually frustrated camels stampeding through your china closet.

   I’m recommending one of them. Guess which?

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.