CURTAIN AT EIGHT. Majestic, 1933. C. Aubrey Smith, Dorothy Mackaill, Paul Cavanagh, Sam Hardy, Russel Hopton, Natalie Moorhead and Ruthelma Stevens. Written by Edward T. Lowe Jr. Based on the novel The Backstage Mystery by Octavus Roy Cohen. Directed by E. Mason Hopper.

   I’m not going to recommend Curtain at Eight because as a movie it’s mostly beneath contempt. Poor direction, a perfunctory screenplay that fails to keep track of the characters (when the killer was unmasked at the end, I wasn’t even sure I’d seen him/her before!) and entirely too much time wasted on the supposedly funny antics of a monkey.

   All the ingredients of a real time-waster, and yet … by the time I finished Curtain I found myself completely charmed by it.

   The cast mostly tries to punch through the desperate production values common to the sub-B studios of the time: shabby sets, ragged editing and continuity errors bad enough to cause whiplash, but they give it a game try, and director Hopper managed some effects that caught me off guard.

   Paul Cavanagh, the perennial Nowhere Man of the Cinemah, puts in a neat turn as an Absolute Bounder, a matinee idol who cheats, steals, seduces and ruins everyone he meets with the exception of his part-time wife, played by that energetic vamp of the early talkies, Natalie Moorhead, who had basically the same part in Shadow of the Law.

   There’s a dandy scene in a hotel room where Cavanagh is talking on the phone to his latest fiancée, and Moorhead, who has obviously spent the night with him, stifles a sarcastic laugh when he says he had trouble sleeping.

   Cavanagh spends the first half of the film this way while various other characters wander in and out of the plot, often looking a bit dazed and confused as to their reason for being there. We get the boozy reporter (Russell Hopton) the star-struck innocent, deftly played by Ruthelma Stevens (an intriguing actress who deserved better — catch her in The Circus Queen Murders if you can) her worried father and jilted boyfriend, sundry Theatre types, and (alas!) the Monkey, whose antics provoke tedium that would have maddened Sisyphus.

   By the time someone finally got around to getting murdered (in a neatly done if predictable moment.) I was torn between watching more of this or just taking my own life as an easier alternative. Then Sam Hardy came on as a pompous police detective, and things livened up. His bravura playing of a stock part perked things up considerably, particularly when he paused in his strutting across the screen to toss a comment at another cop sitting unnoticed in the background, and it turned out to be C. Aubrey Smith!

   Smith, the unofficial head of the Hollywood Raj in those days, and a regular in much better films, is simply marvelous here. Surprisingly shabby and soft-spoken, he ambles pleasantly about the scenery Hardy is chewing at, picking up a clue here, posing a pertinent question there, making his quiet deductions and bringing things to a close with considerable charm. I don’t know what burst of desperate genius led to his presence here in such a well-realized part, but it turned Curtain at Eight into something truly enjoyable.

   I should note in passing that in his day, the guy who wrote this thing was something of a pulp wunderkind; Edward T. Lowe had a hand in the Charlie Chan series at Fox, the Bulldog Drummond films at Paramount, and delirious efforts elsewhere like Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, Tarzan’s Desert Mystery and House of Dracula. Clearly a hack of distinction.

THE COCK-EYED WORLD. Fox Film Corporation, 1929. Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Lily Damita, Leila Karnelly, El Brendel, Bob Burns, Stuart Erwin. Director: Raoul Walsh. Shown at Cinefest 26, Syracuse NY, March 2006.

   I was not in a great mood for this reprise of performances by McLaglen and Lowe as Top Sergeant Flagg and Sergeant Harry Quirt, last seen in a 1926 success, What Price Glory?, but my grumpiness evaporated early on, beguiled by the combative charm of the leads and non-stop action orchestrated by director Walsh.

    The crowded plot follows the two rascals from Siberia by way of Coney Island to Central America, with brawls and womanizing pretty much summarizing the early scenes, then shifting to a more serious engagement in Central America that has the boys fighting for country, girls and the studio’s profit margin.

    This film is definitely pre-code, with girls, girls, girls in various stages of dress and undress. And oh, yes, there’s familiar comic El Brendel gracing yet another film with his ubiquitous and not always amusing presence. A lively romp that escapes the leaden ace of so many early sound films and races to a satisfying conclusion.

    PS. Jim G. was particularly impressed by the beautiful Lily Damita, future wife of Errol Flynn.

When it comes to watching lost or forgotten television series not available on official DVD YouTube has become an alternative to dealing with the collectors market. Below are just a few series without DVD that as of February 2014 can be seen on YouTube.

MARKHAM – CBS -“Vendetta in Venice” (6/27/59)

Written by Jonathan Latimer. Directed by Robert Florey. Produced by Warren Duff and Joseph Sistrom. Cast: Ray Milland. Guest Cast: Paula Raymond and Robert Lowery. Markham Production. Revue Studio-MCA-TV.

When a woman confronts her blackmailer she is surprised to find him dead. She turns to world famous detective Roy Markham (Ray Milland) to prove she didn’t kill him. Production values are laughable but the cast and Jonathan Latimer’s script makes this episode worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ejOC71Zpo

PHILIP MARLOWE – ABC – “Ugly Duckling” (10/6/59)

Written and Produced by Gene Wang. Directed by Robert Ellis Miller. Cast: Philip Carey and William Schallert. Guest Cast: Virginia Gregg, Barbara Bain and Rhys Williams. Mark Goodman and Bill Todman Production in association with California National Production.

Bain makes a great femme fatale who is involved with a rich man’s son-in-law. The wife refuses to divorce her cheating husband so the rich father hires Marlowe to deliver a payoff to the bad girl. Check out Marlowe’s home, a place Peter Gunn would have approved, but I doubt Chandler would have.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Well, it didn’t take long. Here it is the same day that Michael’s post appeared, and the video that was linked to has already been removed. Wish us luck that the rest of the episodes will stay online longer than this!

THE NEW BREED –ABC – “Compulsion to Confess” (10/31/61)

Written by David Z. Goodman. Directed and Produced by Walter E. Grauman. Guest Cast: Telly Savalas and Sidney Pollack.

Followed by “The Deadlier Sex” (3/20/62)

Teleplay by Don Brinkley, from novel by Genevieve Manceron. Directed and Produced by Joseph Pevney Guest Cast: Paula Raymond and James Doohan.

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, John Beradino, John Clarke and Greg Roman. Narrator: Art Gilmore.

Created by Hank Searls. Executive produced by Quinn Martin. Quinn Martin Production in association with Selmur Production Inc.

These two episodes are different but both good examples of the QM production style that would prove popular during the 60s and 70s. Stars Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Price Adams, the head of a four-man special police unit called the Metropolitan Squad. The first story deals with how psychiatry can be used as a tool for the police to solve crimes such as the murder of a man working on a government project. The second is a story of a robbery gone wrong. The noir tale highlights include an evil femme fatale and thieves betraying each other with fatal consequences. The second episode begins around the 49:40 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=insl9XeHOPM

CORONET BLUE – CBS – “Saturday” (7/31/67)

Written by Alvin Sargent. Directed by David Greene. Produced by Edgar Lansbury. Executive Produced by Herbert Brodkin. Created by Larry Cohen. CAST: Frank Converse, Joe Silver. Guest Cast: Charles Randall, Neve Patterson, David Hartman and Andrew Duncan. (Plautus Production. CBS Production – credits clipped, source: IMdb.com)

While mysterious men try to kill “Michael” (Frank Converse), he spends time with a young boy trying to deal with his father’s recent death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBeCjk9ttTc

TOMA – ABC – “50% of Normal” (1/18/74)

Teleplay by Zekia Marko. Story by Peter Salerno and Jane Sparkes. Directed by Jeannott Szwarc. Produced by Stephen J. Cannell. Created by Edward Hume. Executive Produced by Roy Huggins. Cast: Tony Musante, Susan Strasberg and Simon Oakland. Theme by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter. Guest Cast: Steven Keats, Louise Troy and David Toma as Doorman 1. Public Arts Inc and Universal TV

Toma is searching for a rapist when an old friend, who is having mental issues due to his service in the Vietnam War, returns home. The show deals with social issues more than mystery and now forty years later can be heavy handed, but the last act is a good example why fans still miss this series. After star Musante left the series it would evolve into BARETTA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTwlbb97HDw

NAKIA – ABC – “No Place to Hide” (10/19/74)

Written by Jim Byrnes. Directed by Nicholas Colasanto, Executive Produced by Charles Larson. Created by Christopher Trumbo and Michael Butler. Developed for TV by Sy Salkowitz. Cast: Robert Forster, Arthur Kennedy and Gloria DeHaven Guest Cast: Gabe Dell, Ray Dalton and Marc Singer. David Gerber Production, Inc in associations with (Columbia Pictures Television: credit clipped off video, source IMdb.com)

Deputy Nakia Parker (Forster) befriends an on the run accountant for the mob. A weak generic script that could have fit almost any cop show makes no use of the native heritage of Nakia (you know the premise of the series). Filmed on location.

FEATHER AND FATHER GANG – ABC – “Never Con a Killer” (5/13/77)

Written by William Driskill. Directed and Produced by Buzz Kulik. Executive Produced by Larry White. Produced by Bill Driskell & Robert Mintz. Cast: Stefanie Powers, Harold Gould, Joan Shawlee and Frank Delfino. Guest Cast: John Forsythe, Marc Singer, Bettye Ackerman, and Jim Backus. Larry White Production in association with Columbia Pictures Television.

The lips are out of sync in this video but beyond that (and how awful the two-hour episode is) it is watchable. Yet one more 70s detective who uses the con to trap the bad guy, brilliant female lawyer Toni “Feather” Danton (Stefanie Powers) who is honest and by the book and her con man turned PI father Harry (Harold Gould) who uses his skills and old friends to con killers into revealing themselves. We know the killer from the beginning and the action centers around the con.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NegfHHPl5Rw

OUTLAWS – CBS – TV Movie Pilot (12/28/86)

Written and Executive Produced by Nicholas Corea. Directed by Peter Werner. Produced by Stephen F. Caldwell. Cast: Rod Taylor, William Lucking, Charles Napier, Patrick Houser, Richard Roundtree and Christina Belford. Guest Cast: Lewis VanBergen and Windy Girard. (Mad Dog Productions. Universal Television: credits clipped, source: IMdb.com)

The video is a direct dub from the TV Movie’s original airing complete with commercials and promos of most of the 1986 CBS TV series lineup. Better than average TV movie. It is 1899 Houston, a gang of four bank robbers were running from their former leader, now Sheriff, who leads a posse to catch them. The five have a face off in an ancient Indian burial grounds during a thunderstorm. Lightning strikes the five and sends them into present day Houston (1986). There they struggle to adapt until they come together in the end and form the Double Eagle Ranch Detective agency. The weekly episodes are also available (at the moment) on YouTube.

OVER MY DEAD BODY – CBS – TV Movie Pilot (10/26/90)

Teleplay by David Chisholm. Television Story by David Chisholm and William Link. Suggested by Motion Picture LADY ON A TRAIN. Screenplay by Edmund Beloin & Robert O’Brien. Story by Leslie Charteris. Directed by Bradford May. Created and Executive Produced by William Link and David Chisholm. Consulting Producer Shaun Cassidy. Produced by Ken Topolsky. Cast: Edward Woodward and Jessica Lundry. Guest cast: Edward Winter, Ivory Ocean and Dan Ferro. Universal TV.

Included for William Link fans (COLUMBO). Nikki Page (Jessica Lundry) was the obit writer for a San Francisco newspaper who sees a woman murdered in the apartment across from hers. Before the cops arrive the killer takes the body and no one believe Nikki. So she turns to her favorite mystery writer, ex-Scotland Yard Inspector Maxwell Beckett (Edward Woodward). He refuses to help until she finally convinces him. Two of television’s most annoying characters join up and solve the crime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZI0ZmLQa40

THE HANDLER –CBS – “Street Boss” (9/26/03)

Written, Created and Executive Produced by Chris Haddock. Directed and Produced by Mick Jackson. Co-Produced by Larry Rapaport. Produced by Sean Ryerson. Cast: Joe Pantoliani, Anna Belknap, Lola Glaudini, Tanya Wright and Hill Harper. Guest Cast: Harry Lennix, Mary Mara, James Macdonald and Pruitt Taylor Vince. (Haddock Entertainment. Viacom Productions: credits clipped, source: IMdb.com).

It is a busy time for Joe Renato (Joe Pantoliani) who trains and handles FBI undercover agents. It’s the first night for a new female agent, one of his agents undercover in the Russian mob wants out, the local police need the FBI help finding someone new to go undercover in a possible murder investigation, and Joe’s brother is just out of prison. The episode is a dark drama with a fast pace, interesting characters and some nice twists.

        #17. OLD CALAMITY, by Joseph Fulling Fishman.

   Joseph Fulling Fishman created the prison series (ran 1928-1939) for Detective Fiction Weekly about the jailer Old Calamity, making use of his knowledge of crime and prisons. In fact, Fishman wrote more nonfiction articles on these subjects from 1925-1942 for Detective Fiction Weekly than stories in the fiction series.

   He also wrote articles for other magazines such as Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post, and books about crime and prisons. Fishman was a 1931 choice for a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was awarded a grant for being chosen. According to Wikipedia, the Fellowships “have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those ‘who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.’ ”

   The name Old Calamity is what the three thousand inmates of the state prison at Cosmopolis call him. The guards and other personnel call him Ole Dep Fletch out of his hearing. His real name is Deputy Warden Fletcher, and even though there is a warden who is a political appointee, Fletcher is really the one running the prison.

   The wardens of the prison were all political appointees, but Fletcher was a professional jailer. The wardens were appointed by the state governor, but the governor on one occasion said: “You know, Fletcher. You’re really the one I should appoint warden, but of course there’s politics . . .” (Old Calamity’s Stick-up)

   â€œThirty years of combating the plots and counterplots and the intrigues and chicanery of thousands of inmates of every degree of criminality and cunning and viciousness . . . had sharpened the perceptions of the Deputy Warden.” (Old Calamity Starts a Fight)

   This long experience gave Old Calamity an advantage when dealing with the many problems that he came across in his job. He knew just about every trick the convicts tried, and how to deal with them. He enjoys his work, and at one point turns down a job offer from a rich businessman with the comment “I’m afraid not, thank you,” Old Calamity replied. “I’m doing the kind of work I like and that’s worth more than money.” (Old Calamity Sniffs a Clue)

   He usually went to work in the prison at seven in the morning, and had a regular routine except when emergencies or problems interrupted. His usual morning routine was “supervising the count, reading his mail, making assignments of new prisoners, and so on, . . .” (By a Nose)

   He doesn’t let the routine of everyday work get himself in a rut where he overlooks things; he notices the smallest detail of what may turn out to be very important to him and the prison. Probably why he has lasted so long in his job.

   The stories are basically all about Old Calamity, with very few appearances by a regular cast of characters. One regular is Croaker Engle, the “brusque old prison doctor.” His appearances in the stories are usually very short. Before him, a Doctor Cosgrove made a single appearance in the story “Fine Feathers.”

   The prison warden is mentioned in the stories, but plays very little part in the stories. An exception to this are the stories “Old Calamity Starts a Fight,” and “Between the Lines,” where part of the story takes place around the warden. The warden of the prison is replaced at one point in the series. The warden and Old Calamity both have homes right next to the prison grounds.

   The stories usually involve murder in the prison by inmates murdering other inmates, for various motives. Prison breaks and conspiracies aimed at escaping prison are also elements in the stories. Fletcher has to break up the escapes, which sometimes are very cleverly planned.

   In the story “Old Calamity Scores Twice,” he not only has to foil a planned escape, but solve a clever locked cell murder made to look like suicide. In “Between the Lines,” he literally has to read between the lines of a prisoner’s book reading material to discover a plot to escape using explosives.

   The earliest story in the series, “By a Nose,” involves uncovering a murder by bomb and finding the culprit. His investigations of various kinds involve him acting more as a detail-oriented detective than as a deputy warden.

   Another concern of prison authorities is the use of illegal drugs by the inmates. The story “Fine Feathers” relates the attempt of Old Calamity to stop the flow of drugs into the prison, and in a later story, “Old Calamity Starts a Fight,” the problem of drug usage is also the main theme. This is certainly based on situations in real prisons at the time. Morphine is the drug mentioned in these stories.

   â€œFine Feathers” relates some of the problems that drug usage by inmates causes – aggressiveness and fighting by prisoners, and other irrational behavior. One prisoner high on drugs even set his cell on fire.

   One story showed Old Calamity on vacation, enjoying relaxing fishing. However, the local law enforcement find out he is there and enlist his aid in solving a series of inexplicable burglaries. (Old Calamity Sniffs a Clue)

   This use of Old Calamity’s talents outside his own prison was not the only time this occurred. It appears that he was available for aid at other prisons having problems. In the story “The Suicides in Cell 32,” he travels to Milford State Prison to help investigate a series of murders made to look like suicides.

   Warden Olmstead of the prison knew of his reputation and had requested his help. In less than twelve hours Old Calamity has solved the mystery and was on his way back to his own prison. He noted: “I guess that some of the birds up at my place will be sorry it didn’t take me several weeks. I’m afraid they won’t be any too glad to see me back in the morning.”

   In “Old Calamity Lays the Ghost,” he travels to another prison in Springdale in response to another request for help. Warden Armitage of the prison has a mystery for him to solve: twice men in their cells have been stabbed and nearly killed. In both instances knives were found in the cells, but no evidence was found as to how the men could have been stabbed inside of locked cells.

   Old Calamity finds an ingenious method has been employed in the stabbings. It took him a few days to resolve this one, but he had developed the patience to wait for the right time. “He had often waited weeks and sometimes months for the development of a prison plot. He knew it was something that could not be hurried, . . .”

   The series is very good in its story telling and relation of the various mysteries Old Calamity is involved in. Altogether, Fishman’s descriptions of prison life and the psychological aspects of the stories seem to be very convincing, and made the stories more than mere sensationalistic prison stories such as other pulp writers wrote.

       The “Old Calamity” series by Joseph Fulling Fishman:

By a Nose October 27, 1928
Fine Feathers February 2, 1929
The Yawn March 2, 1929
Old Calamity Stages an Act April 6, 1929
Old Calamity Lays the Ghost April 9, 1932
Old Calamity Holds the Wire July 23, 1932
Old Calamity Starts a Fight September 17, 1932
Old Calamity Scores Twice February 11, 1933
The Suicides in Cell Thirty-Two June 17, 1933
Between the Lines September 9, 1933
Old Calamity Sniffs a Clue April 7, 1934
Old Calamity Cleans Up May 19, 1934
Old Calamity’s Stick-up June 23, 1934
Old Calamity Stops a Leak June 5, 1937
Honor of Thieves March 18, 1939

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.
6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.
7. TUG NORTON by Edward Parrish Ware.
8. CANDID JONES by Richard Sale.
9. THE PATENT LEATHER KID, by Erle Stanley Gardner.
10. OSCAR VAN DUYVEN & PIERRE LEMASSE, by Robert Brennan.
11. INSPECTOR FRAYNE, by Harold de Polo.
12. INDIAN JOHN SEATTLE, by Charles Alexander.
13. HUGO OAKES, LAWYER-DETECTIVE, by J. Lane Linklater.
14. HANIGAN & IRVING, by Roger Torrey.
15. SENOR ARNAZ DE LOBO, by Erle Stanley Gardner.
16. DETECTIVE X. CROOK, by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

EUNICE MAYS BOYD – Murder Wears Mukluks. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1945. Dell #259, paperback, mapback edition, no date [1948].

   Last summer, when I purged my collection preparing to remodel my room, I thought long and hard about one book, the Dell mapback edition of Murder Wears Mukluks, by Eunice Mays Boyd, author of Murder Breaks Trail, Doom in the Midnight Sun, etc. Should I pitch it or keep it?

   It didn’t seem likely I’d ever read this thing, but in some way my library seemed richer, warmer, more diverse and enjoyable just because there was a book there somewhere called Murder Wears Mukluks. Does anyone know what I mean?

   Anyway, I compromised by putting Mukluks on my to-be-read shelf and a few weeks ago I actually started on it, only to give up fifty-some pages inwards. There was plenty going on: jealousy, murder, bitter feuds and even a ghostly apparition, but the characters never seemed to be anything more than figures in a puzzle, their whole existence in these pages defined by their relationship to the murder.

   As such, it got rather hard to take much interest in them, and I gave it up as a bad job with two hundred unread pages to go.

   Which leaves me once again with the same problem I had last summer: keep it or pitch it? I’d sold off much much better books than this, but there’s just something about going through my shelves and discovering Murder Wears Mukluks that appeals mightily to my heart.

   Any thoughts?

Editorial Comment:   My own review of this book was posted on this blog a couple of years ago. Check it out here.

ROSS MACDONALD – The Instant Enemy. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1968. Reprinted many times.

   In many ways The Instant Enemy is typical of Macdonald’s entire output, in that the emphasis is on story and plot, and the personality of the detective, one Lew Archer, hardly ever enters into it.

   Archer, in other words, is an observer, and we never get much of an insight into what makes him tick. One exception I noted was on page 112 (in the Warner paperback edition I read), where the possibility of getting paid $100,000 jars Archer into the unexpected realization that maybe he might even retire.

   That’s probably a million dollars in today’s money, and he feels pretty good about the idea. The moments lasts for only a page, though, and then it’s back to the case on hand. It starts out simply enough — he’s hired to bring back a runaway daughter who’s gone off with a psycho boy friend with a sawed-off shotgun.

   Things are never that simple in a Ross Macdonald book, however, and soon all sorts of entanglements with the past begin to emerge, like pulling a root out of a sewer pipe and finding you’re dragging the whole tree out with it. If trees had Oedipus fixations, I think the analogy would be complete. (See page 146.)

   Although Instant Enemy is much like all of Macdonald’s other books, and the ending is absolutely terrific, I don’t think this is one of his better ones. (Those of you you’ve read them all recently, please feel free to contradict me on this.) I think it may be the pacing. It’s relentless; it doesn’t give up for a minute; and if you’re so minded, it could become downright monotonous.

   Archer is on the go from the beginning of the book to the end. When he’s tired for a moment, he pulls over to a motel and sleeps for a couple of hours, and then he’s on the road again. I think a good many readers are going to feel the need to pull over themselves, right about the three-quarters mark.

   If I’m right about this, and maybe I’m not, second-rate Macdonald is still number-one goods, but in this particular case, the really prime stiff is all at the end. People who prefer the light frothy sort of mystery simply aren’t going to get there.

NORTH WEST FRONTIER. The Rank Organisation, UK, 1959. US title: Flame Over India. Kenneth More, Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom, Wilfrid Hyde-White, I. S. Johar, Ian Hunter. Directed by J. Lee Thompson.

   Set your movie on a train and you already have my attention. Make one of the classic action films of all time with a first rate cast and superb tension from an expert at directing action and suspense (Cape Fear, The Guns of Navarone) *, and you have a first rate film shot in gorgeous color and on location.

   Kenneth More is a British officer in command of a small troop of Sikhs in an isolated kingdom on India’s rugged outlaw ridden northwest frontier. A rebellion has broken out against the local Maharajah, and the British consul (Ian Hunter) wants More to get a group of Europeans trapped in the palace out safely — and along with them, the Maharajah’s young son and his American tutor (Lauren Bacall).

   Among the European’s are a Dutch journalist with Indian blood (Lom), a garrulous older man (Hyde-White), a gun runner, and a redoubtable older Englishwoman. Their only means of escape an aging train engine, her Indian driver (I. S. Johar), one coal car, a flat car, and a passenger car.

   Film goers used to today’s frenetically paced films will find the fact this one bothers to stop to develop character, build an intriguing relationship between professional soldier More and doubting American Bacall, and establish the other characters as well, a bit slow, but even they will be impressed by the action sequences beginning with the breakout from the surrounded palace in the train and including running gun fights, a perilously damaged bridge across a precipitous gorge, and a final full out assault by hordes of tribesmen on horseback while a traitor in their midst pins the passengers and soldiers down with a .50 caliber machine gun he has taken over.

   More and Bacall have real spark together, Lom provides both menace and depth, and Hyde White is his usual charming self, but the real surprise of the film is Johar, who takes what could be a stereotyped local and gives him both real courage, strength, determination, and character. Both he, and through him the aging train engine he loves, become compelling characters in the film.

   He takes what could be an embarrassing and potentially racist stereotype and gives him dignity and humanity.

   The film isn’t an old fashioned paean to the Raj though, in the Gunga Din or Lives of the Bengal Lancers tradition. It asks questions, and while it is unstinting in its admiration for More’s professional soldier, it, and Bacall’s character, bring up the question of what right he or the British Empire has there. And More is no superman, but a tough wry professional, limited perhaps in his devotion to his duty, but also human, canny, good humored, and courageous.

   This is a stunningly photographed film with an intelligent script and a real sense of the time and the place.

   One scene in particular in a crowded engine room while a rickety and dangerously open donkey engine runs the pumps to water the train’s engine while Lom is left alone with the prince is splendidly shot and guaranteed to get you on the edge of your seat.

   Within the confines of an action packed thriller it takes on questions of race, fanaticism, duty, freedom, and individual courage without ever faltering in the line of suspense and action or brushing the questions it asks off with simple answers.

   In relation to what has been happening in the Middle East in recent years it may be as pertinent as ever.

   Granted, despite the best efforts of all concerned there isn’t a lot of doubt who the villain proves to be, but that said, he is given both dignity and depth. You may be pulling for him to fail and cheering for the heroes to escape, but you can’t ignore his points or his own plight. All the major characters are presented as real humans rising or failing to rise in a crisis, not as mere plot points.

   And the film manages to end on a nice note of irony — a recognition that an era was coming to an end and a new world being born. It’s the perfect coda to a first class adventure film and a fine study of people caught in desperate circumstances and showing grace under pressure.

    * Sadly Thompson did not live up to his early films and ended up hacking out some tired and unimpressive Charles Bronson films late in his career.

A. FIELDING – The Cautley Conundrum. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, January 1934. Published in the US as The Cautley Mystery: Kinsey, hardcover, 1934.

   A later appearance of Chief Inspector Pointer, and in comparison to the breakneck pace of the previous book [The Net Around Joan Ingilby], just reviewed, this one, some readers may feel, is downright soporific. Well, not I, even though most of the 250 plus pages take place within walking distance of Bunch Cottage, where Jack Cautley, one of the four Cautley cousins makes his home, even though it is Major Howard Cautley to whom it actually belongs.

   And among the four, it is the Major who has the money, and it is he who on page 40 is found dead, lying across a stile after having gone shooting, his gun lying beside his body. It is at first assumed to have been a dreadful accident, but at the same time, a valuable necklace, a family heirloom, is discovered to have gone missing. The local police in the guise of Superintendent Wanklyn, at the Woodhaven police station, do not believe strongly in coincidence (nor does the faithful reader) and eventually Pointer is called in from Scotland Yard.

   Accordingly, in mind-expanding fashion, there follows a story full of questions, evasive answers, long-shot inquiries, other deaths, puzzling tales, and a plethora of clever observations. The characters are extremely well-defined as well – there is no mistaking one for another, even though there many, many of them, and all of them have their own desires and motivations. It’s not a book for most modern readers, though. It’s too stationary. It moves, and yet on the surface, it doesn’t. There’s no flair there, you might say.

   Or you might not. I enjoyed it, but largely as an intellectual endeavor only. I truthfully have to admit that I enjoyed the earlier adventure more, as rough and unruly as it was. If I’d read this one first, I confess, I probably wouldn’t have read the one I did read first.

 MICHAEL O’HALLORAN. Republic Pictures, 1937. Wynne Gibson, Warren Hull, Jackie Moran, Charlene Wyatt, Sidney Blackmer, Hope Manning, G. P. Huntley Jr. Based on a novel by Gene Stratton Porter. Director: Karl Brown. Shown at Cinefest 26, Syracuse NY, March 2006.

   One of the great film reference books is Jack Mathis’s Valley of the Cliffhangers, a fascinating detailed history of the Republic serials, and during his research for additional volumes on the studio,he was allowed to have prints made from studio negatives of some rare titles. Three of these ware shown during the weekend.

   Unfortunately, this film, in which Wynne Gibson, an irresponsible party girl, attempts to present herself as a fit parent in a custody struggle with Sidney Blackmer, her dull respectable husband, continues the Cinefest tradition of scheduling a dog to initiate the screenings.

   The plot is mainly an excuse to showcase what my fellow attendee Jim Goodrich referred to as the “unquestionable” talents of a popular young child actor, Jackie Moran, whose invalid sister becomes the do-good project that Gibson takes on to improve her image.

   About twenty minutes of the film don’t survive (except for the soundtrack) and that was something of a blessing. It didn’t, however, deprive us of an especially saccharine (and inept) imitation of Shirley Temple by a child actress who does a walk-on.

SHADOW OF THE LAW. Paramount Pictures, 1930. William Powell, Marion Shilling, Natalie Moorhead, Regis Toomey, Paul Hurst, George Irving, Frederick Burt. Screenwriter John Farrow, based on the novel The Quarry by John A. Moroso (Little, Brown, 1913). Director: Louis Gasnier.

   Back in 1922 a man named Robert Elliott Burns was sentenced to hard labor on a Georgia chain gang for his part in an armed robbery that netted him and two other men less than six dollars. Probably only Steve and Walter are old enough to remember, but Burns escaped from the chain gang and made a new life for himself under another name, eventually becoming a prominent businessman in Chicago and something of a celebrity when his wife (who had been blackmailing him) betrayed him to the law after getting a cash settlement from him in exchange for a divorce.

   Burns could have fought extradition but agreed to return to Georgia when corrections officials there promised him quick release after some nominal service. Instead, they reneged on their promise and he was returned to the chain gang for “extra attention” from the guards, with no release in sight. Eventually Burns escaped again and wrote I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang (Vanguard, 1932), which finally secured his freedom.

   Burns is best remembered for the movie made from his book, but his personal story seems to have been much on the mind of John Farrow, screenwriter of the film Shadow of the Law, which appeared a full two years before I Am a Fugitive hit the bookstands and movie screens.

   The story in Shadow of the Law is slightly changed, but the essential elements are there: William Powell stars as a decent if amorous gentleman who gets in a scrape over a lady (perennial vamp Natalie Moorhead) and ends up accidentally killing a man—whereupon Ms. Moorhead, fearing scandal or worse, promptly decamps, leaving Powell with no witness to clear him of a murder charge that sends him to prison.

   A few years later, Powell is a hardened-enough convict to pal up with a thief (well played by Paul Hurst) and exploit the warden’s trust in him to break out of jail. When we next see him, he has become a highly-placed executive, respected by the workers in his factory and engaged to the owner’s daughter — but determined to find Moorhead and clear his name.

   He does eventually find her, or rather Hurst does, but she proves smarter than Hurst thought and more avaricious than Powell suspected, leading to some plot twists both melodramatic and highly entertaining.

   In fact, the writing and direction (by Louis Gasnier) in Shadow keeps the story right on its edge, offering some juicy plot twists and a couple of suspenseful moments, one of which – as I realized what Powell was going to do to himself and watched him calmly set about it — I swear made my skin crawl. Director Gasnier is not well known as an auteur (unless you count Reefer Madness) but his work here shows a stylishness and pace perfectly suited to the subject.