Category: Film Review

IMDb meta-data is run time 1 hair and 21 minutes, rated 6.4 by 190 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery.

Verdict: Predictable but diverting.
As the bodies fall in the Big House, Plod comes to investigate. The formidable chatelaine is uncooperative whereas her musical Lord son is is ever so friendly. Ever so.
Chatelaine wants to get him married off to her secretary, the Frightened Lady of the title, who hears strange sounds and sees creepy shadows that remind her of — shiver! — President Tiny. She and Lord are pals; nothing more. Two lurking footman who seem to have no duties are much present and just a shade short of insolent.
Then the chauffeur is murdered. Well, ‘So what?’ says lawyer Rudy for the Chatelaine? The lower orders will do that.
Plod is not so sure and insists on reading the script. He interrogates the suits of armour in the hall, and generally is never there when he is needed. He concludes the family doctor did it. Inconveniently, then the doctor is murdered and that blows Plod’s KPI clear-up rate.
There are more shadows and sounds. The lies are piled up with the abandon of Faux News. Lord Musician tittles and tattles. The eponymous lady screams, faints, and trips per the stereotypes of the day.
Spoiler alert.
The pace is slow enough for a viewer to realise only one person could be the culprit, and he is. The footman are so dumb they could not possibly have done ‘em in. All the Chatelaine’s scheming slows the pace and draws attention to her motivation. She is a good schemer to be sure but it becomes obvious that she is protecting….
Marius Goring gives a great performance as Lord of the Music. The comic relief plod is irritating. The supercilious doctor gets his comeuppance. The Frightened Lady gets the architect. The haughty chatelaine gets nothing.

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 16 minutes, rated 6.2 by 112 opinionators.
Genre: Krimi komedy

Verdict: Snappy
Boston Blackie (avant le nom) locates a missing heiress and marries her in Reno. Since he is already there, his boss gives him another missing person to find in Reno. He does this by locking his new bride in the bathroom, in the hotel room, and in a car. How anyone can be locked in any of these is beside the point. The sexism is surpassing. He locks her up to keep her out of trouble, he says.
She is feisty enough to get loose, to make him regret it but not enough to stop him from doing it again, and finally to save his bacon though it is too little, too late.
The missing man remains missing, and there is a secondary plot about mistaken identity that was lost on me.
There are many familiar faces from the time and genre: the feisty bride is Jean Parker, Rod Cameron towering over all, Grant Withers scowling, Keye Luke faking bad English, Dick Purcell for once acting, the glacial Astrid Allwyn being glacial, Doc Adams before med school, and those eyebrows on Oscar!
The title comes from a clock on a mortuary across the street from the hotel which has a large pendulum for seconds but no hands for the time. Symbolic? Yes. Of what? Dunno.
By 7 December I suppose audiences had other thing to think about, like the 2,000 widows created on Oahu in just under two hours.

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 43 minutes, rated 6.7 by 4497 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Cavorite about! Be careful.
In 1968 when astronauts at last land on the moon, they find a Union Jack in a Victorian bottle. ‘Huh?’ is the scientific reaction. The political reaction is to slap D-Notices on the news.
H. G. Wells got there first with cavor! Ingenious. It is an anti-gravity paste whipped up in a motor and pestle. Belt up. Get set. Slather it on. Go!
Professor Cavor recruits his neighbour who wishes to escape debt collectors with his obliging girlfriend who wants a honeyMoon. She got it.
They bundle into his garden shed and off they go …’to the Moon, Alice!’
The green cheese is full of holes and they go into the moon, per the title: ‘In’ the moon.
In the cheese they find toiling beetles, not mice, who speak English and are not cooperative.
They escape to return, but keep it all secret for script reasons.
There is good humour, mannered turn-of-the-century charm, and a lot of special imagery from the masterful Ray Harryhausen. Lionel Jeffries as Cavor steals the show with his plucky determination and courageous conscience. Eye candy Martha Hyer is mostly locked away in the Victorian tradition, though she too is in the moon, despite that title. The screen play is from the golden typewriter of Nigel Kneale but….not his best work.
Well, I found it boring. Most of Wells’s social commentary was deleted. It seemed aimed at children which Wells’s story certainly was not. Nor was there any mystery in the flashbacks, perhaps because the pace is so slow.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes, rated 5.6 by 542 insomniacs.
Genre: Sy Fy, Noir

Verdict: Broken-backed but diverting in both parts.
Carmine Orrico, his cheek bones have never looked sharper, lands in England and young women start disappearing. Meanwhile a cast of reliable British character actors study a glowing soccer ball, and when it goes missing they call in another set of reliable British character actors to track it down. The reliables include Maurice Denham, Patricia Haines, Alfred Burke, John Carson, Aubrey Morris, Warren Mitchell, Marianne Stone, and Barbara French. It is an ensemble piece and better for it.
The first half is Sy Fy as Denham and Carmine track an object from SPACE and find it on the pitch. Well, it is England and they are soccer mad there. But it is one strange soccer ball. Very. Denham decides to commune with it. Did his life insurance include death by soccer ball?
After killing Denham, the soccer ball grew legs, scarpered, stole a car, and set off for Vienna for the second half of the film which is Noir.
More than twenty young girls answering an ad for swimsuit models — at this point the slumbering fraternity brothers gained consciousness — have disappeared. Since they have disappeared, they are not on screen, and the bros lapsed into the usual state of unconsciousness. The police, oh hum, find these disappearances to be routine. Flighty young girls are always disappearing, it seems.
Carmine tries to convince the stodgy British moustaches that the soccer ball is a menace. He is dismissed as a flighty (wo)man. Then he connects the missing girls with a soccer magazine and the chase is on. It goes all zither and Third Man thereafter.
Squeeze tries to talk to the soccer ball, which is very polite, and assures her that the missing girls will come to no harm (but that they will never be seen again on Earth). She does not find that very reassuring, so soccer ball kills her, because she is too smart. That was a surprise. But at least Carmine is safe, as he is not that smart.
Turns out soccer ball is a man with a lobster claw on one arm — which makes lighting a cigarette a chore — and a lump of rubber on his profile but he has mellifluous voice when he is not a soccer ball.
Eventually, Carmine of and with the Yard corners soccer man, and he explains his world — of all places, Ganymede — has had a Republican apocalypse and needs new blood, i.e., breeding stock, in the hope shaking off the lobster claws. Apologia delivered, he blasts off with the hu(wo)man cargo.
Carmine seems to have forgotten that soccer man killed his mentor, Denham, and his squeeze Squeeze, and has alien-napped twenty-one girls against their wills, and that they will be sex slaves. Carmine seems to find that normal. Ahem. Maybe those rumours about his life style choices have a truth in them.
The pace is brisk though the soccer ball is loquacious for a shy alien.

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 5 minutes, rated 7.0 by 290 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery

Verdict: Art /deco steals the show.
Eight strangers are invited to a swish soiree in a splendid penthouse apartment. After wining and dining at a banquet buffet while waiting for the arrival of the mystery host, Siri on the radio informs them that the ninth guest is DEATH. Each will be murdered. These are Eight Little Indians off the Agatha Christie reservation.
In the penthouse doors are locked, gates carry an electric charge, stairwell doors have been welded shut, windows cannot be opened, the balcony is on the thirtieth floor – too high for shouting or jumping. The fraternity brothers suggested throwing furniture off the balcony to bring a reaction.
There is no escape. They must endure the McKinsey management training seminar that will lead to their deaths. I know the feeling.
The mystery is why they are there and who is the mastermind. There are connections among some but not all of them. None is innocent. They include an oily dean from a university, an egotistical assistant professor from the same university, a political fixer and his mistress, a shyster (aka lawyer), a self-appointed do-gooder, a hypocritical society hostess, a starlet trying to sleep her way to the top, and – shock – an unscrupulous journalist.
They all wear the most formal Tuxedo Park attire, and proclaim their ignorance and innocence. The former is credible but the latter is not.
What follows is a character study as each guest reacts to the doom the awaits. Some panic and in so doing hasten their own end. Others go all rational and try to figure it out. Some read spam email. Others close in on themselves, but no one turns to prayer. There is a butler for comic relief, and mercifully he is not a she or a black. For such a static story, the direction is crisp.
The art deco set and the 1930s hi-tech are marvellous. It makes it a variant of the Old Dark House with all its quirks, lurks, traps, sliding panels, disappearing objects, talking radio, and more.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 7 minutes, rated 6.1 by 202 cinematizens
Genre: Old Dark House

Verdict: It took a long time to get to the Old Dark House.

Querulous relatives unite, briefly, to have elderly Aunt Cassandra certified so that they can get their hand on the dosh she teases them about – more than two million smackers which in today’s geld is about 30 million iron men — which she says she has secreted in her Old Dark House. Whoa!

We start in a courtroom where Cassie appears crazy like a fox. But then what law school did that attorney attend? His prime argument for her being nuts is that she puts vinegar on apple pie. Really! Who doesn’t?

The vultures of the press enjoy the spectacle. The judge gavels Cassie into sanity.

To show how much she enjoyed the outing Cassandra invites the mob of scheming relatives to her Old Dark House (at last) for a week while she will decide how to divvy up the dosh. They have to go and go they do, one at a time.

No sooner do they arrive than the body count starts. Stabbings, shootings, poisonings here and there reduce the number of relatives. Is Cassie getting her revenge? Did Hillary do it, again? Was the vinegar off?

A newshawk and gal pal have insinuated themselves into the proceedings and Cassie finds that funny. The local sheriff is off work from the circus where he is the clown.

Turns out…. [Spoiler a-coming!] one of the relatives is reducing the number of claimants. To add to the confusion the villain(s) keeps moving the stiffs around. No explanation is ever revealed for this mystery. What, why, and how all are left to the memory-hole.

We also have the house staff, mercifully free of a black comic relief stereotype, a lugubrious butler, a greasy chauffeur, a snippy maid, a jolly cook. There is also an ever present nosy neighbour peering in windows to add to the soup.
The denouement is unexpected, though it is historically inaccurate as we pedants have to say. The Confederate States did not print a $10,000 bill. Tsk, tsk. It also turns out the neighbour is more than a neighbour. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Phil Rosen directed with panache the crisp story by George Brickner.

The best part may be the end, when one of the players breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience saying the Hays Office (1930-1968) will not like this film.

For those born yesterday, the Hays Office was a voluntary production code for the Hollywood factory. The code permitted chaste kisses, but not too many. No profanity and, of course, no nudity. No mixing of races. No adultery. And, hardest of all, law enforcement officials had to be portrayed positively. In its first and last decades it was largely toothless but between 1942 and 1955 it dictated much. As significant as it was, this is the only time I have noticed a reference to it in a movie, and this one is irreverent.

Sharp eyes will spot Hays Code certification as above on many films from that era.

The players were diverting in this exercise. Wallace Ford, a perennial supporting actor, made the most of the male lead. Marian Marsh as his wise cracking assistant held up her end of the partnership.

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 25 minutes but it seemed like m o r e, rated 4.3 by 48 members of the cast.
Genre: Amateurism and Sy Fy

Verdict: The 1957 Chevrolet is the star of the show, along with some (not enough) period music.

A group of thirty-year olds pretend to be high school students wearing saddle shoes, poodle skirts, a-lines, letter sweaters, sporting duck tails, and so on. The period detail was the best part of the effort.

Dweeb’s date with Date is interrupted by Bully and company at the soda shop. After an embarrassing departure, Dweeb and Date go parking, where is seems Dweeb does not know what to do. Did he sleep through human biology in eleventh grade or what?

The inaction is punctuated by a platoon of zombies who could not get date and hence were available to be suborned by Martians claiming to be Republicans. The zombie make-up is far better than any production that starred John Agar, and when I think of that old stone face, I realise the acting here has some energy.

Dweeb and Date are joined by Escapee from Zombieism and the three of them battle the Martian scourge, only two of whom were seen earlier. In a decaying farm shed they find a DIY manual to make an anti-Martian ray gun which they proceed to do. The manufacture is cloaked by the insertion of comic books frames, which were rather cute.

Somewhere, some how, some time along the way we learn that the Martians have ordered the zombie army to zombie-nap teenage girls because ‘Mars Needs Women’ (1967) [discussed elsewhere on this blog]. The zombies are such more respectful and polite to their victims than most jocks on a Saturday night date.

They blast the zombies, who let us remember, were innocent teenagers trapped by the two green Martians dressed up in Masonic gear we saw near the beginning.

These victims were shown with bongo drums, and the whiff of marijuana in the air, berets, beards all the usual paraphernalia of beatniks in the 1950s. They each also have a large number ‘3’ on their labels. Where were ‘1’ and ‘2’? Who knows? Not even close watching revealed the answer to that mystery. Number ‘6’ is way beyond this effort and the fraternity brothers.

Be that as it may.

After saving the world by seeing off the Martians, Dweeb has the confidence to sock Bully.

The end.

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 4 minutes, rated 5.7 by 343 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery

Verdict: Whodunit?
In Pea Soup London a turbaned Stereotype is up to no good on the docks, observed by Smooth. Turns out Smooth and Stereotype are residents of a rambling boarding house whose residents include keyhole peepers, sidlers, creepers, sneakers, priers, snoopers, and suspicious characters all.
Smooth gets stabbed, often, to death; plod appears. He ready to charge anyone and everyone. As the bodies pile up, Plod blames each murder on the next victim. He does not notice this. Well, he is consistent.
Writer-in-residence and Belle, daughter of the manager of the boarding house, take up the investigation while Plod smokes a pipe. They discover everyone’s secrets, including the cross-dresser.
Ha, ha, ha, turns it was all a joke, since it makes no sense otherwise.
Despite the regiment of genuine British accents, it was made by Warner Brothers in Burbank California with denizens of the Hollywood British colony. Many are familiars from the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films of the time.
It was the first Hollywood film for Turhan Bey, the Austrian Jew who fled Anschluss to play stereotypes in Tinsel Town.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 10 minutes, rated 5.1 by 233 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery

Verdict: Where is the old dark house?
While visiting London a brash American chipmunk inherits a House of Secrets. Whacko! Off he goes to claim the abandoned, empty, vacant, House of Secrets only to discover it is occupied and the occupiers have barking dogs and shotguns to prove it. They seem strangely indifferent to his legal claims, as do the local Bobbies.
Meanwhile back at the ranch lawyer’s office there are many phone calls to people with plummy accents. Now the lawyer tells him to sell and skedaddle. Meanwhile he has fallen in lust with a wispy blonde lurking about the House of Secrets. No way is he going to leave this damsel behind.
The next 55 minutes consists of Chipmunk asking a number of people — the lawyer, Bobbies, plummy accent 1, plummy accent 2, wispy blonde, shotgun totting butler — what is going on. They respond by saying they cannot tell him.
Why not? Because it is not in the script.
Meanwhile also in London are three American stereotypical hoodlums who want to break into the House of Secrets and find the treasure. Treasure? Well, any House of Secrets is bound to have treasure, right? Huh? How it got there is…. contrary to the laws of physics.
In the last five minutes, they break in, the secret is revealed, and a treasure is found.
Spoiler coming.
The house is being used to experiment on an anti-poison gas. Evidently no research facilities are available for such a purpose. Budget cutters had been at it again. The ace scientist was also given to acting like a Republican — screaming, grabbing, and going all sanctimonious all at once — and had to be sequestered and sedated far from prying eyes. Further, please, shouted the fraternity brothers. Usually these types get Senate seats.
The house is hardly used apart from a basement. Where are the sliding panels, secret doors, spy holes, remote switches, cobwebs, and the other conveniences of the Old Dark House? Nor is the damsel in distress until the gangsters appear, partly led there inadvertently by Chipmunk.
It was filmed at the Gower Street studios of RKO in Hollywood. The plummy accents all came from the British colony in Tinsel Town at the time.
Poison gas was the atomic bomb of the age, and any British audience would have shuttered at its mere mention. Ditto many in an American audience like Rondo Hatton, as is discussed in another post on this blog. But it is also mentioned in the last ten minutes and has nothing to do with Chipmunk, the gangsters, or much else.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 38 minutes, rated 5.5 by 270 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Charming.
Beau collects old cameras and finds in one exposed film from August 1969 which he develops in his home dark room closet. Whoa! It’s ‘Paul’ (2011) and his brother Asgards on film. Aliens with bulbous heads like ‘My Favourite Martian.’ What to do?
Well he is a free lance (aka unemployed) photo-journalist so he tries to sell the pictures. Editors dismiss them as fakes. He takes them to the Air Force where Chief Gillespie reads him the official word on UFO-riding aliens. Gillespie played the same bumptious fool in ‘Mars Attack’ (1996) discussed elsewhere on this blog. Do I see the hand of the IRS compelling this old stager on to the old stage, again and again?
Then Prince Nerd comes to his door with a thousand smackers for the pictures for his personal UFO collection. Bingo!
Beau soon discovers that Prince Nerd is a paid Liar, that is, he works for Faux News which has plastered the pictures along with Beau’s own countenance across the nation. Faux News blames the aliens on Hillary and this makes Beau a laughing stock.
Righteously indignant he goes to sock Prince Nerd where he meets Frail, who is the daughter of one of the men pictured with the aliens. Her dad and his pal disappeared that very night in 1969. She was there to find out what happened to Dad.
The two join … forces to figure it out. They meet a relentless real estate agent for whom ‘NO!’ is a bargaining gambit, an accordion playing retired football star, UFO nuts who begin to seem sane, some cagey trailer trash, and — well, yes — some aliens without bulbous heads. They read micro-cards, interview witnesses, explore dark houses, and find bright lights. That’s entertainment!
It is slow, low key, shorn of special effects, not a CGI in sight and relies on the droll script and the deft players to move things along. The direction gives it a gentle pace. Accordingly, mouth-breathers score it at 1 or 2 on the IMDb. Ah the benefits of a free public education wasted again.
Way over budget are some of the players, including Jill St John, Billy Bob Thornton, and Rod Steiger along with Mr Hom.