Political theory and practice

Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 2 minutes of runtime, rated 6.2 by 449 cinematizens.

Genre:  Mystery

Verdict:  Odd Coupling

At Southern University up north learned professor John or Cyrus Benton (the props department could not make up its mind about his first name) back from a harrowing expedition to the Gobi Desert in the interior of Mongolia gives a lecture — the fraternity bothers fell asleep instantly at this point — on his discoveries, which include…[gasp] a map to the Ming emperor’s legendary temple of Eternal Shopping Mall.  With the lights dimmed for PowerPoint he talks while the film of the expedition runs behind him.  

Dimmed lights, steady drone, cool night air, no wonder the fraternity boys dropped off. 

As Prof’s lugubrious presentation nears the punch line…he keels over and a mêlée ensues as everyone tries to take a selfie with the corpse, because corpse he is.  Plod arrives and declares it a natural death due to PowerPoint overexposure, but Mr James Lee Wong soon undermines that conclusion.    

Casting notes:  Grant Withers plays Plod as only he can: a perfect fit.  This Plod is loud, impatient, stupid, patronising, inept, ranting, incoherent, slow-witted, pompous, inconsistent. and a fool.  In short, he is presidential material.  Withers played this stereotype repeatedly, and he must have brought his own felt hat because he always has it on.  

Boris Karloff played Mr James Lee Wong in five previous film with quiet dignity, a respectful authority, and a certain dry wit.  Karloff’s contract ended and with a contempt for the viewing public now equaled everyday by the News Corporation, the studio cast the diminutive Keye Luke as Wong.  Not even as the nephew of Wong but Wong himself.  Still it is the first, and for years the last time, a Chinese actor was cast to play a Chinese lead.  Progress of a sort.  But in this rendition Number One Son does not have the gravity or grace of Karloff.  He does, nonetheless, hold his own against the village idiot Plod, but that is not a high bar.  

The ethereal Lotus Long is cast as Benton’s loyal assistant Win Len, and endures some of Plod’s groping efforts at humour.  For that alone she deserves a round of applause.  He is clumsy, vulgar, and oafish as he dismisses Chinese as savages, and she is glacial and reserved as he tweets out garbled non-sequiturs.  Now who does he remind me of….  

There is another point when Plod is yucking it up about taking anything Chinese seriously apart from Chop Suey when one of the villains no less points out to him that Genghis Khan ruled the world long before Europeans were using soap. [Was this a personal hygiene hint?] It is all way beyond the fourth grade level Plod attained by cheating.  Presidential indeed. 

Going for gold, Plod makes a meal of the absurdity of burying any Chink in a tomb and then digging it up.  Mr Wong replies that a Chinese expedition is scheduled to dig up George Washington soon.  That comparison passes way over Plod’s head.  

These are pretty pointed remarks though they are passed off as throw-away lines. Let’s credit George Waggner who wrote the screenplay and director Phil Rosen for retaining and staging these lines.   

As between Plod and Wong, the race goes to Wong, but he lets Plod think he figured it out.  It may have been a step forward to cast a Chinese to play a Chinese lead, but Luke is not convincing, scowl though he might.  

Lotus Long was half-Japanese but from the latter 1930s she pretended to be Chinese to avoid the opprobrium increasingly directed at Japan. Thus, when most Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were interned, she was not.  Though in 1946 she played Tokyo Rose in a film of that name. She married a cameraman because he made her look so good, she said, and they stayed married for fifty-six years until his death.  She played Eskimos, red Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians, and other stereotypes in a mere twenty credits.  She quit the business in the 1940s and devoted herself to philanthropy.  Cinematizens loss.  

Grant Withers played this painful fool so routinely the fraternity brothers have come to think that it is the real man.  Maybe he watched too many of his own 202 films. They certainly sap my will to watch.   

Rogues’ Gallery (1944) 

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour, rated 5.2 by 112 cinematizens.

Genre:  Mystery.

Verdict:  Fluff.

Emeritus Professor invents a Big Ear that can eavesdrop on a conversation anywhere in the world once he has the co-ordinates.  No wires, no transmitter, no credibility are required.  All EP needs is the shortwave signature of the spot, and every spot has a unique shortwave signature.  Is that what Google Maps is doing?  Uh huh.  Maybe the President in Thief can explain this.  

This is Big News! Hat and Snap are dispatched by the Daily Rag to get the scoopola.  Sure.  Hat is a no nonsense dame that stomps as she walks and Snap carries a really big iCamera.  Turns out Prof’s KPIs do not require him to talk to idiots so they get nothing.  For a scandal hound ‘No!’ is just the beginning and they barge around, first at the foundation headquarters and then the laboratory.  Sure.  

They take possession of the Top Secret plans for the gizmo. How this possession happens has to be seen to be disbelieved. They use the plans to extort interviews. [Media ethics have changed so little.]  During one interview a board member is shot dead. The flour is in the oil now, thickening the plot.  Hat is well known to Plod and in between praising her perspicacity he derides her intelligence.  Consistency takes a holiday. 

Snap makes clever use of his flashbulb camera to foil a heist of the plans.  Hat gets some good lines, like this exchange.

Plod: ‘Just because a man is cold to the touch doesn’t mean he’s dead.

Hat: ‘When I touch a man and he stays cold, then he is dead.’

In contrast to the dialogue there is an attenuated scene about trying to whistle that, well, where is The Whistler when he is need.  The efforts to whistle go on too long and are repeated to no purpose but to get that the magic hour for theatrical release.  Don’t blame the players, they did as directed, and the director can blame the screenplay, if there was one.  The buck stops there.   

Regrettably there are few Rouges and no Gallery.  The singular villain — Smiley — was there all along, bumping into Hat and Snap wherever they went.  It took these two Mensas an hour to connect the dots to the ever present Smiley who for reasons unknown to the scriptwriter persisted in hiding the stiff.  

It was released on 6 December 1944 when the US was fighting a two-front war with nearly a million men under arms.  B-29s began bombing Iwo Jima for the blood bath that would take place there in a month.  Meanwhile an all-out Japanese offensive had begun on Leyte to expel the invading Americans, and in Europe the Nazis were preparing for the offensive that in ten days would be called The Battle of the Bulge. The Pentagon dispatched the dreaded yellow and black telegrams everyday with many more to come.  In this context some inane light relief was certainly in order. 

Race to Mars (2007+)

IMDb meta-data is four episodes of 46 minutes each, rated 6..8 by 287 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy fact

Verdict:  Only for Mars junkies.  

An international team (code for American, though all the actors are Canadian only one wears that flag patch in this Montréal production) embarks on a two year mission to Mars in 2030.  The trip is long, the arrival short.  Along the way the main obstacles are boredom and the shortcuts taken by the McKinsey-managed low-bid contractor.  Yes, it is all very realistic.  Produced by Discovery Canada, great pains were taken to get the science right.  It is shot in HD and looks great.  

Computer faults arise en route and have to be worked around, not once but twice.  ‘That should work’ fixes don’t (fix it) and more fundamental efforts are needed.  That is an IOS update while in flight.  I did warn them against Catalina, but as usual shouting at the screen has no effect.  

When the crew members were selected for compatibility they must have had some surgery because there is not a spark of sexual tension in the nine month close quarters voyage among the four men and two women.  Definitely rated G on that dimension.  There are a few expletives by way of compensation.  

The master narrative in the title is that the Chinese have sent a robot ship to Mars to drill for water (as the source of life).  Though launched shortly after the International Mission, the Chinese craft will get to Mars first.  Why?  Because it is robotic and without a human crew it can travel faster.  It does not need to provide artificial gravity.  It does not need to liftoff slowly so as not to crush the crew   It does not need a long and slow deceleration to allow the crew to adjust. It does not need to dock and change crafts for ascent and descent. The one bus will make all stops.  But will it get to water first, that remains to be seen. 

Much time and effort is expended in landing, assembling equipment, withstanding the first dust storm, and setting up the drill.  They do not do any exploring and there is never any discussion of that. No one wants to look around. Instead we have occasional views of travelling matte expanses.  (This was not filmed in either Jordan or Morocco and it shows. These countries are favourites for big-budget Mars scenery.) They were sent to drill, and drill they do.

One of the Red Shirts breaks his arm in arraying equipment, and that increases everyone else’s workload.  This is an industrial accident, not a Martian curse, and at this point the fraternity brothers passed out.  Later another low-bid contractor puts in an appearance when the drill breaks.  

Meanwhile the Chinese robot ship (very much like the cute little June bug spacecraft in Mission Stardust [1968], see comments on this film elsewhere on this blog) has struck….salt water.  There is so much salt that no life could exist in it.  Think Dead Sea and there it is.  Think of the Great Salt Lake.  No, wait, don’t.  Anyway the smarty-pants Chinese have come up with nada.  

Then off-camera, with the consent of ground control, suitably lagged for communication, our heroes get permission to cannibalise the Chinese rig for its drill, and they spend the best part of one forty-minute episode fitting it to their equipment, measured in inches, while the Chinese used abaci.  (Joke.)  

Not soon enough they hit water because their drill site is far away from the area the Chinese used and they have a geyser.  In fact, it is too much and it blows the rig apart and shrapnel kills the Red Shirt.  Much guilt follows, but no Christian ritual. 

Now they have water and it seems anti-climatic since the samples are sealed and will only be analysed later on the ground after this series has long ended.  Oh.  It is all race and no finish.  

Though there is much docking and rendezvousing which is passed in silence, and they start back when more computer failures threaten everything and no sooner is that fixed, then a damaged panel requires the Sy Fy mandatory EVA in which another member of the crew is injured.  Was their equipment built by Trabant?  Then they return to Earth orbit.  The End.  

No meteor showers, no flesh-eating plants, no exploding heads, no monsters of the deep, no creepy caves, no crappy special effects, just hard work and difficult decisions, industrial accidents, personal tensions, though the captain seems to wear his decisions lightly.  That seems far fetched in such small group.  The more so considering there is no military discipline in sight.  I would expect more blowback. The extra shifts, first to compensate for the injured crewman, then to adapt the Chinese drill, then to make the deadline for the departure window, exhausts everyone.  Tempers get shorter.  Personal hygiene is absent.  

I rather liked that low key approach, but the direction is leaden. The camera goes face-to-face for reaction shots every time a line is spoken.  One speaks and we get five reaction shots. It lingers while the actor remembers the next line, and then on to the next actors.  The result is that even the simplest scene is attenuated beyond its dramatic weight.  While the asinine comments in user reviews about it are just that, it is also true that the film invites this reaction with its lethargic pace.  It is one of slowest movies one is ever likely to see with the word ‘race’ in the title.  Every actor gets plenty of close-ups for the demo disc without advancing the story or deepening the character   

It was filmed in Montréal and I did not recognise any of the players but they all have extensive credits in Canadian television.  It won several Gemini Awards for being Canadian.  That the voice of ground control with an egregious Texas accent traces back to an Anglo actor from Montréal.  

It is so low key that only one external reviewer was linked to the IMDb page when I looked.  Moreover, or lessover there is not a single still photograph associated with the IMDb entry. This is the first time I have encountered that.

Murder in the Clouds (1934)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minute, rated 6.0 by 186 cinematizens.

Genre:  Mystery

Verdict:  Go girl!

Clichés have to start somewhere.  Nebraska’s own Lyle Talbot before he descended to the ranks of character actors is Three Star, a hotshot flyboy who boasts, brags, and shows-off, reminds me of that midget.  We never do know if Three Star’s flying days began in the Great War, nor why he is called Three Star, apart from the three stars tattooed (it seemed) on his narrow, pasty chest. Why not four star? No room.  Or just Star?  Still I rather like it that there is no tedious backstory.  

Before LAX ate Westchester a number of small airports served Los Angeles, and one, now long gone, was at Glendale.  This drama takes place in the wide open spaces there.  

Three Star, after character-establishing antics, is assigned a top secret mission, while unnamed enemy agents listen in, and then Three Star promptly goes to a bar and gets into a fist fight set up by the nefarious villains, which he loses, three to one.  The next morning when he is a no-show for the top secret mission, there just happens to be another pilot right there to volunteer for it.  Guess!  Yes, this one is another plant by the unnamed enemy.  

The co-pilot for this flight is the callow younger brother of Ann Dvorak, the airline’s only cabin crew.  On board is an egghead with his invention, which is something to make boom, as if we are ever short of that.  Whoops!  The plane blows up in mid-air.  Was it a Boeing Max? Well maybe, but skulduggery is afoot.

To keep it simple, the plant pilot (after eating Mexican beans) gassed the crew and passengers, took the secret device, and parachuted out after setting a time bomb.  Kablooie!  Four dead ducks. Some design fault. 

Three Star with a nary a word of regret or apology sets out to recover the device, once it is not found in the wreckage.  So far, so standard.  

Here’s where it gets more interesting.  Dvorak, seeking information about her now missing brother, the co-pilot, gets taken in by the villains, led by the redoubtable Russell Hicks, tall, distinguished, thoughtful, cultured, impressive, avuncular, and evil.  Hicks and company trick her into helping them abscond with the device.  So they think.  

In fact, she soon realises their murderous larceny by accident and in a great scene thinks through in silence what she has heard and seen, and arrives at the conclusion to out trick them, and she does with a little help from the McGyver Manual. Marvellous!  

She had overheard the news that her brother was dead, but stifled the stereotypical consequent female hysteria in the screenwriters paucity of imagination and turned the tables on the villains.  Go girl!  

Three Stars then flies around for ten minutes at a time.  Remembers those underwater sequences in Thunderball (1965) that go on and on without advancing plot or character.  Ditto here.  It no doubt had novelty value at the time of release, 15 December 1934, and it is nicely done, but too much is too much (except for Dolly Parton and Arnold Schwarzenegger). 

Ann Dvorak had a reputation in Hollywood for being difficult, according to the Harvey Weinsteins of the day.  She was not compliant with his sort, whatever that may be, and, in addition, she resiled at the fluff she was forced to play and complained about it a lot.  One suspects that her attitude influenced the portrayal of this disciplined, resourceful, and determined heroine.  No doubt her personality was the result of reading too much, because her IMDb biography terms her a bibliophile who collected first editions.  

When she realised she was being paid the same as the juvenile actors in one film, she bought herself out of the Warner contract. Gutsy, indeed, in that fraternity.  The material was bad enough, but to be paid peanuts for it was the last straw.  Later she married a Brit and moved to Old Blighty where she drove ambulances during World War II in the Blitz.  No bone spurs were detected.