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The Stabilizer (1986)
Hilarious Exploitation Actioneer
The epitome of derivative 1980s' era exploitation filmmaking, Indonesian director Arizal's explosive, stunt-laden outing "The Stablizer" qualifies as 'a so bad it's good' clone of some of the anti-narcotics thrillers Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris headlined. Think either "Cobra" or "Good Guys Wear Black," and you've got the template for this ultra-low budget, 87-crime epic with a largely unknown cast. A resilient U. S. narcotics agent, Peter Golden (New Zealand born Peter O'Brian of "American Hunter") has sworn to slay his evil nemesis, narcotics smuggler Greg Rainmaker (Craig Gavin of "Pembalasan Rambu (1985), who raped and disfigured Golden's girlfriend. This despicable villain stomps around in shoes equipped with huge spikes, so he can inflict maximum pain and suffering on an adversary. If you're searching for a saga with non-stop action and stunts galore, you may find this crime story distracting when you're not laughing hysterically at the abysmal acting and the subpar martial arts combat sequences. The premise concerns a scientist who has created a device which enables both police and customs agents to pinpoint otherwise difficult to find hidden narcotics. A disgruntled lab assistant, Victor (Mark Sungcar of "Angels Find Wings"), aligns himself with Rainmaker and has kidnapped the professor, so he can learn the secret of the narcotics device. Mind you, we never see this gimmick or gadget, but we hear a lot about it in the predictable Deddy Armand and John Rust screenplay. The dialogue is as embarrassing as the performances, though some of the automotive stunts appear serviceable. The action chronicles the tireless efforts of Golden and local Narcos to dismantle Rainmaker's criminal empire. Indeed, brawny Peter O'Brien garbs himself like Stallone and has a Peter Frampton hairdo. Although this potboiler bristles with explosions and firefights, you'll spend more of your time laughing at the horrible dubbing as well as the impromptu style filmmaking. Prepare yourself for some of the bizarre local color the filmmakers capture at random. Twice, we are asked to witness different men biting into the flesh of lizards and tear of chunks to chew.
Violent Night (2022)
"Die Hard" Meets "Home Alone"
Somebody might have added something extra to the eggnog that "Dead Snow" director Tommy Wirkola and "Sonic Hedge Hog" scribes Pat Casey and Josh Miller drank when they came up with the premise for "Violent Night," but I doubt it. The title itself tells all as it rhymes with the traditional phrase "Silent Night" that celebrates Christmas Eve. Indeed, this 112-minute, R-rated epic, laden heavily with profanity and violence may stun some people who were thinking the film might be something geared to adolescents. Wirkola, Casey, and Miller have concocted a Santa Claus who resembles the jolly fellow but seems far from saintly embodiment of the season. That's right, this Santa Claus emerges as a "Rambo" like superhero. Despite his considerable girth, abundant white beard, and his standard-issue crimson outfit, "Hellboy" actor David Harbour's Saint Nick differs from the conventional Saint Nick. Meaning, this Santa knows how to throw a punch and get down and dirty when the situation dictates no other option. The big difference here is Santa is disillusioned with the commercial image of Christmas. Furthermore, after a lifetime of service, he finds himself contemplating whether he will quit or continue. Chiefly, his complaint concerns children who veg out on computer games. Like the traditional image, Santa has embarked on his global mission to deliver his gifts in his sleight drawn by several familiar rain deer. Without divulging too much plot, our heroic Santa manages to kill some of his adversaries when the refuse bargain with him. He hurls one armed fellow over a second-story balcony, and the unfortunate fool falls onto a giant icicle that is impaled in the back with the spear point sticking out of his chest. Basically, an unhinged criminal mastermind who refers to himself as Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo of "Carlito's Way") descends with an army of trigger-happy gunmen onto the heavily guarded, family compound of a wealthy matriarch, Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D'Angelo of "Every Which Way But Loose"), who has $300 million in stolen cash in her vault. This is what Mr. Scrooge plans to lay his hands on after he wipes out Gertrude's bodyguards and commences to open the vault. Think "Die Hard" mashed up with "Home Alone," and you've got a modicum of an idea what happens. Appropriately, "Violent Night" takes place on Christmas Eve, but this isn't your average, ordinary Santa Claus saga. First, Mr. Scrooge guns down the guard at the front gate with malice aforethought and then the villains mow down Gertrude's staff. Mr. Scrooge has infiltrated the premises with his own evil people. They masqueraded as the caters, serving up good food and cheer until the time comes with they set aside their serving trays and whip out their assault rifles. They threaten to kill Gertrude's son and daughter if she refuses to provide them with the combination to the vault. Predictably, Mr. Scrooge's best laid plan unravel as our heroic Santa Claus gives them better than he gets. Prepare yourself for a lot of gunfire and blood-spattered corpses. When Scrooge's henchmen fight Santa, they draw blood. Like Sylvester Stallone, this Santa was once a Viking, so he knows how to sew himself up with an improvised needle. Parents are warned that "Violent Night" is not a Hallmark Christmas card drama. More than 60 men and women die in this actioneer. At the same time, our hero receives unlikely help from the most unlikely person, an adolescent girl Trudy (Leah Brady of "The Umbrella Academy"), Gertrude's granddaughter. This is where "Home Alone" meets "Die Hard." Naturally, Santa constitutes a clone of John McClane, while Trudy drums up memories of Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister who single-handedly thwarted a home invasion duo. Most of the blood and gore occurs at the hands of Santa Claus. One horrific death involves Saint Nick shoving a star-shaped Christmas ornament into a ruffian's left eye socket and electrocuting him with it since it is attached to a plug! No, this isn't your standard issue "Christmas Carol" of a movie, but it is a lot of fun, despite its shocking mayhem.
Devil's Harvest (1942)
Another Hilarious Anit-Marihuana Scare Saga!!!
The Devil's Harvest (1942) qualifies as predictable pabulum from fade-in to fade out. This embarrassingly bad, black & white, 51-minute expose opens with hard-bitten gangsters bullying a harmless, elderly proprietor, Oliver (Tom Leffing), into sell Mary Jane out of his innocuous hot dog stand near the campus of a high school. Actually, mobster Larry McGuire (Leo Anthony) wants to snuff out Oliver because the latter bemoans his fate. Meantime, as an incentive, McGuire's mob force poor Oliver to pay for their weed or else . . . Basically, when somebody wants from some reefer, Oliver slips it to them inconspicuously in a hotdog bun. Ultimately, this mild melodrama comes to a tepid boil when a girl dies at a nighttime rendezvous in a factory. The authorities decide that marijuana fueled this mishap. Apparently, a fracas broke out while an Irish lass, Kay O'Farrell (one-time only actress June Doyle) is performing her dance routine. A smooth-talking gangster Cliff Dennis (one-time only actor Charles David) persuaded this a naïve high school dish to entertain audiences at his new night club. Mind you, Kay lied to her old school Irish parents about where she was going that evening. The O'Farrells trust their daughter, and she took advantage of them! She told them she would be attending a school function. Instead, she went to a nightclub to dance. Anyway, two fellows tangle in a sloppily orchestrated bout of fisticuffs over her. When the dust settles, and the partygoers scatter, a dead girl's body turns up! Naturally, the local law launches an investigation. They summon the partygoers for any relevant information. One time only director Ray Test and scenarist Edward Clark of "Branded") have cobbled together a run of the mill police procedural that chronicles the efforts of gangsters to corrupt minors with marijuana. After everybody vamooses from the party, Kay goes home and confesses her lie. The police approach Kay, and she offers to help them as an undercover agent! Although the demon weed smolders as the basis for this public service-spirited epic, Test doesn't show anybody huffing and puffing away on joints like the kids in "Reefer Madness." Indeed, marijuana seems only incidental to plot, but when it comes to the topic of conversation, the characters have nothing but derogatory words to say about how marijuana corrupts youth. As expose titles goes, "The Devil's Harvest" promises a lot but delivers little. Neither Test nor Clark conjure up anything remotely resembling suspense and tension. This amounts to one of the worst anti-drug films and its superficial plot confines its cast to more time spent indoors than out of doors. (This 1942 movie was made during the war years when the government eyeballed waste in Hollywood and put a limit on how much a film company could put into a production. Of course, the villains emerge as lame-brained morons decked out in flashy suits and ties, while the righteous police are portrayed as sympathetic crusaders. Again, Test doesn't stage any scenes involving people getting stoned that rivals those vintage "Reefer Madness" moments when the teens are bug-eyed, frantic, and giggling fiendishly, as if Satan possessed them. Altogether, "The Devil's Harvest" comes off as a low-budget, half-baked effort that isn't even "so bad, it's good" potboiler. Moreover, many of the cast members must have known their careers would go up in smoke after they appeared in this bomb, because they realized they had no future in Hollywood.
She-Devils on Wheels (1968)
Chopper Chicks on the Rampage!!!
Renowned cult filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis emerged as one of America's foremost, low-budget film directors, and "She Devils on Wheels" exemplifies his uncanny career in the arena of exploitation movies. Most of Lewis' films are fringe affairs that indulge in blood & gore as well as nudity. Occasionally, he displayed savvy with films destined to live in the limelight longer than he could ever have imagined. "She Devils on Wheels" lives up to this criterion. First, Lewis and scenarists Louise Downe and Fred M. Sandy stood the outlaw male biker movie on its head. This represented the first time the mommas exerted power over the poppas in a biker flick. Around the time Lewis' "She Devils on Wheels" illuminated screens in 1968, vintage forerunners like "The Wild One," "Devils' Angels," "Easy Rider," "The Wild Angels" and "Hell's Angels on Wheel" had scored with moviegoers. Instead of groveling as men's boots, the eponymous "She-Devils" took front and center as the bikers themselves. This hard-nosed gals were no damsels in distress. They could take the worst and dish something infinitely crueler. These hard-riding honeys competed in races to determine who got the pick of the litter when the guys showed up for one of their untamed orgies. Incredibly enough, all the female bikers except the leading lady were played by real-life femme bikers. No, you won't see a stuntman dressed up in drag with an obvious wig duplicating a dangerous stunt for one of these brazen babes. They call their club 'The Man-Eaters!' The highlight of the picture is the revenge they achieve when they retaliate against a group of men who have encroached on 'the She-Devils' domain. This is an abandoned airstrip where the gals careen in back and forth in races. At one point, they lure the chief bad guy into pursuing them, and he rides straight into a length of piano wire stretched across the road. Lewis shows us the biker's severed head (it's fake) flying off his neck in one scene. Predictably, the Florida police in the small town of Medley arrest the Man-Eaters, but this dynamic bunch of ladies don't stay on ice long. "She Devils on Hells" recaptures a bygone era poised on the cusp of a forthcoming era. Pictorially, the cinematography is crude, and the cinematic compositions suffer aesthetically from poor framing and balance. Nevertheless, Lewis seems to have been the first visionary to see the gender flip possibilities in biker movies. Lewis lensed this low-budget, 82-minute epic in sunny Florida, and it remains his second highest grossing film. The performances are subpar, but the casting of real-life chopper chicks provides a modicum of credibility.
The Silent Hour (2024)
The Cop Who Defies Deaf Ears
Previously, actor Joel Kinneman played an ordinary, everyday, working-class citizen without the power of speech on a path to vigilante justice in director John Woo's slam-bang actioneer "The Silent Night." In "Machinist" director Brad Anderson's edgy, suspenseful thriller "The Silent Hour," Kinneman portrays a Boston Police Detective who loses his hearing during an accident in the line of duty. Although "Silent Hour" doesn't ripple with gunfire galore, this tense, 94-minute movie relies more on suspense and tension than Woo's bloodthirsty shoot'em up. Comparatively, Woo's vigilante epic surpasses Anderson's taut nail-biter in terms of bullet-blasting mayhem. Instead, Anderson conjures up white-knuckled suspense galore as Kinneman's hearing impaired detective must rescue a deaf woman who witnessed a double homicide by a group of low-life thugs sent to silence her with malice aforethought. Initially, Frank Shaw (Kinneman of "RoboCop") and his longtime partner Boston Police Detective Doug Slater (Mark Strong of "Kingsman: The Secret Service") are dispatched to interview a deaf woman, Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank of "Season of Love"), who not only saw the killings but also recorded them on her cell phone. Now, Slater persuaded Shaw to interview Ava because the policeman who specializes in talking to the deaf is not available. Reluctantly, Shaw agrees to question Ava, and the detectives get all the details required for their investigation. As Shaw and Slater head off on their separate ways, Shaw remembers that he left his cell phone at Ava's apartment, so he turns around and cruises back to retrieve it.
Unexpectedly, when he returns to Ava's apartment building, Shaw encounters several gun-toting thugs who have come to kill her. However, they don't plan to shoot her full of lead. Instead, they plan to overdose her on a drug she had previously weaned herself off. Meantime, Slater has no idea his partner is going back to Ava. The group of trigger-happy thugs confront our heroine. Happily, our heroic deaf cop intervenes and thwarts their initial efforts to end Ava's life. Miraculously, they manage to escape from their enemy. Nevertheless, the villains have them both bottled up in the ten-story York Building. Indeed, a gunman in the lobby has his eyes glued to a monitor that is tied into the elevator cameras. If Shaw and Ava's predicament weren't jinxed enough, two uniformed cops arrive, but they do not come to rescue our hero and heroine. The chief villain, Mason Lynch (Mekhi Phifer of "Divergent"), has summoned them because they are dirty cops on the take. "The Silent Hour" bristles with cat and mouse tension as our hero and heroine evade their adversaries in a building sealed off by the villains. Mason has gunmen posted outside at the exits as well as inside. Predictably, in an effort to attract attention, Shaw sets a room ablaze with matches, and firemen arrive to complicate everything.
Ava and Shaw dodge these villainous felons, until Shaw can get a message off to his partner. Predictably, Slater wastes no time careening back to the high-rise. The back story of "Silent Hour" is the property owner is evicting all his tenants. Essentially, he wants to convert the apartments into expensive condominiums for the affluent. A tenant named Dante has a recording studio in his apartment. He has run the volume of his music to maximum levels to protest the evictions. We know the owner is an avaricious sleaze bag because one of his tenants is an elderly woman who will most surely die when she is evicted. The contemporary society depicted in "The Silent Hour" is unsavory and grim. Our hero lost his ability to hear when he collided with a motor vehicle while pursuing an armed felon. Although he recovers from the accident, Shaw struggles in his efforts to get the hang of the hearing aid. Not surprisingly, this gadget always picks the worst times to crap out on him. Of course, this should come as no surprise for audiences. Director Brad Anderson keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace. Primarily, Anderson and freshman scenarist Dan Hall confine themselves to the apartment house itself since it towers at the center of the melodrama. Moreover, they heighten the suspense by painting the hero and heroine in one corner after another as they evade the assailants. As usual, Kinneman delivers a compelling but sympathetic performance as a self-dubbed "old dog" who must learn new tricks. He laments the position his hearing loss has put him in both on the job and at home. He cannot appreciate his daughter's growth as a musician because he cannot hear her play. Naturally, Anderson heightens the suspense during those moments when Shaw's hearing aid malfunctions. If you're yearning for a violent, bullet-riddled actioneer, "The Silent Hour" discharges only about a quarter of the number of bullets that whined away in Kinneman's early epic "Silent Night." Nevertheless, our hero is challenged sufficiently throughout "The Silent Hour" as he struggles to preserve not only his own life but also the damsel-in-distress. Happily, the film ends on a positive note. Altogether, a robust capable cast and Anderson's acute sense of timing pay off in the long run. This above-average but contrived epic never wears out its welcome and leaves you feeling good.
Counterplot (1959)
Cross and Double Cross in Puerto Rico
Everybody is looking for Brock Miller (Forrest Tucker of "Sands of Iwo Jima") in director Kurt Neumann's run-of-the-thrill potboiler "Counterplot," co-starring Allison Hayes and Gerald Milton. Basically, Brock is hiding out in San Juan, Puerto Rico, because the authorities plan to arrest him for allegedly murdering a no-account gambler. As it turns out, Brock and New York gambler David Nibley (Ulises Brenes) quarreled over the latter's unpaid debt. When the high roller couldn't ante up the dough he owed our frustrated protagonist, Brock belted the guy a couple of times and left him sprawled on the floor of his apartment. After Brock exited the premises, another man, Ben Murdock (Richard Verney of "The Witches from Another World"), slipped in from another room and finished the gambler. Mind you, Brock realizes he has been framed for Nibley's murder, so he is searching for a way to get off the island and then relocate somewhere else. Meantime, Brock's old flame, a nightclub canary named Connie Lane (Allison Hayes of "Gunslinger") returns to San Juan to see him. No sooner has she set foot on the island than she runs into a shady shyster, Fritz Bergmann (Gerald Milton of "Underworld, U. S. A."), who knows about Brock and her and cross-examines her about her arrival. She explains she has come back for a nightclub engagement.
Meantime, Brock hides out in an abandoned house on the coast and relies on a youngster, Manuel (one-time thespian Jackie Wayne), to run errands for him. They were partners once when Brock owned a boat and they used to fish. Now, Manuel serves as Brock's eyes and ears and keeps him abreast of matters. The teen lives and breathes for Brock, and he is jealous of anybody who comes between Brock and himself. Particularly, he is troubled by Connie's presence, because he fears Brock will leave him behind when he clears himself of his murder rap. Brock contacts Fritz with information that Steve MacGregor (Charlie Gibbs of "Invaders from Mars") of the Acme Insurance company plans to refuse to pay Murdock owing to a clause in his partnership with Nibley. As it turns out, Murdock had recently taken out a $200,000 life policy on Nibley with Murdock as the policy recipient should Nibley die. MacGregor doesn't believe Brock murdered Nibley. Fritz and Brock decide to convince Murdock to come down to the island. Brock seals a deal with Fritz for $15 thousand to lure Murdock down to San Juan.
Mind you, Murdock had put out a thousand-dollar reward on Brock and the San Juan Police are watching for Brock to show himself so they can arrest him. Once Murdock arrives in San Juan, he comes to see Fritz, and Murdock explains what really happened in Nibley's home. According to Murdock, after Brock stormed out of Nibley's place in a lather, Murdock killed his partner. While Murdock relates this tale of woe, the sleazy attorney has been making a tape recording of his confession. When Manuel isn't lousing things up for Brock and Connie, Fritz's treacherous assistant, Spargo (Miguel Ángel Álvarez of "Madame Death"), tracks down Brock after he figures out that Manuel is his go-between. Meantime, Fritz demands a $100 thousand dollars from Murdock for Brock's whereabouts. Spargo goes behind Fritz's back and provides Murdock with Brock's whereabouts for $10 thousand. Earlier, when Fritz met with MacGregor, he told him about Murdock's taped confession. While Murdock sets out to kill Brock, Fritz and Spargo tangle in a heap, swapping blows with each other. Spargo palms a revolver, but Fritz disarms him. The revolver skids under a sofa and Fritz scrambles to retrieve it, while Spargo seizes a knife from his boss' desk and hurls it at him. The blade imbeds itself in Fritz's back, but he survives long enough to both shoot Spargo and then notify MacGregor about his fate. Happily, the authorities clear Brock of Nibley's murder.
"Counterplot" is a slow-moving, low-stakes murder yarn that suffers from several problems. First, nothing about Brock's character or Tucker's performance endears us to him. Brock is a hothead. Manuel and he quarrel often because Manuel is jealous. Connie is a flat character in terms of dramatic impact. Basically, she is Brock's love interest. Indeed, the character who stands out prominently is the conniving attorney, played to perfection by Gerald Milton. Fritz openly says he has no conscience about doing anything that will land him a payday. Although Kurt Neumann of "The Fly" took his cast to San Juan to shoot them potboiler, we're never allowed to feast our eyes a travelogue of scenic spots on the island. Most of the action plays out at Fritz's residence, the nightclub where Connie sings, and Brock's dilapidated beach house. The themes of betrayal loom large in this 77 minute melodrama, but "Counterplot" qualifies as so forgettable that it makes little impression.
Confidential (1935)
An FBI Agent Thwarts a Gambling Syndicate!!!
Edward L. Cahn helmed approximately 128 films during his 30-year career between 1931 and 1962, but he remains relatively unknown. Versatility was his strong suite. Cahn proved himself as proficient at staging metropolitan crime melodramas as he was at conjuring up chills in his supernatural horror sagas. Remember, Cahn produced the equivalent of Ridley Scott's "Alien" in 1958 when he made "It! The Terror from Beyond Space." A year earlier, he made sci-fi epic "Invasion of the Saucer Men." Virtually, every film Cahn directed amounted to a quintessential B-movie. He made dozens of westerns, too. Hopelessly formulaic but nevertheless fast-moving. "Confidential" serves as one of Cahn's early crime sagas. This 1935 epic appeared the same year the James Cagney sizzler "G-Men" came out! Meantime, Cagney's "Public Enemy" co-star Donald Cook portrays Dave Elliott, a tenacious FBI agent. When he receives orders to weed out the 'big man' who rules the mob, Elliot's superior warns him finding his adversary isn't going to be a picnic. For years, people scoffed at the shibboleth that organized crime posed a threat to America. Cahn's opening scene in "Confidential" shatters this myth! The film unfolds in an underworld board room. Several well-dressed men listen as a distinguished looking gent, J. W. Keaton (Herbert Rawlinson of "Bullets or Ballots") seated at the head of the table boils over with rage. Keaton complains about the annual $2 billion that Americans are blowing on gambling. According to him, the syndicate isn't getting a big enough share of those billions, and he demands not only immediate change but also expansion! He boasts about the criminal syndicate as a transcontinental business enterprise. Clearly, this widespread criminal empire wields considerable power and influence to attain its unlawful goal. An ensuing montage depicts the mob muscling in reluctant entrepreneurs. They threaten those who balk at their demands. Ultimately, in a shadow play, we watch two people argue about this issue. When the businessman refuses to bow to coercion, the criminal shoots the businessman in the back!
Our protagonist Dave Elliot decides to masquerade as a messenger who was sent to a disbarred attorney, Van Cleve (Morgan Wallace of "The Mouthpiece"), about a $100 thousand in ransom money. Elliot closes in on Crowley after the latter hires a pilot to help him elude the authorities. Elliot surprises him, following his adversary in another plane. Elliot riddles Crowley's biplane with machine gun fire. Crowley bails out, and Elliot hits the silk, too. In an ensuing shootout on the ground, Elliot guns down Crowley. Elliot decides to impersonate Crowley so he can get the goods on Van Cleve. Elliot almost succeeds when Van Cleve takes the bait. However, another mob torpedo, Lefty Tate (J. Carrol Naish of "Sahara") intercedes and thwarts Elliot's scheme. Tate kills Elliot's back-up FBI agent, Bob Arnold (Reed Howes of "The Walking Hills"), and Van Cleve and Tate escape. Later, the Feds discover Tate killed not only Bob but also Van Cleve. Elliot vows to track down the criminals and masquerades now as 'Duke Turner,' an ex-convict, looking for a job. As Duke, Elliot ingratiates himself to a half-witted syndicate numbers man, Terence "Midget" Regan (Warren Hymer of "Hitler: Dead or Alive"), who puts in a good word to his boss, about Duke. Before long Elliot, acting as Duke, becomes a part of the gambling racket. He gets friendly with racket's chief bookkeeper, Maxine Travers (Evalyn Knapp of "Slightly Married"), a Joan Blondell look-a-like, who cuddles up to him. Meantime, Lefty Tate shows up at the office. He knows he has heard Elliot's voice before, but he cannot place where he heard it. Tate is a homicidal killer. Later, he murders a lottery winner, Giuseppe Giacomelli (Monte Carter of "Street Scene"), and returns the numbers money. Eventually, Maxine airs her grievances about working for the gambling racket. Things get really complicated when Tate figures out who Elliot is and pulls a gun on him. In the ensuing struggle, Tate misses Elliot, but he kills J. W. Keaton's son Jack (Kane Richmond of "The Shadow Returns") accidentally when the latter tries to intercede! Talk about a bad break! Elliot fights Tate and disarms him. Worse, to Elliot's surprise, he learns the 'big guy' of the gambling racket is none other than Jack's bereaved father. As everybody is being hauled off to jail, Elliot assures "Midget" that he will only draw a 30-day sentence, but he promises Maxine that she will get life as his wife!
Clocking in at a meager 65 minutes, "Confidential" moves with swift assurance, and Cahn doesn't let anything get in the way of the action. During his pursuit of the rackets and Lefty Tate, our hero reveals his humanity. He feels guilty when one of his agents sacrifices his life, getting killed in the line of duty, to protect Elliot, but our protagonist overcomes his sense of guilt and completes his assignment. Donald Cook musters all the charisma of a sodden wash cloth as the hero, while Warren Hymer provides some welcome comic relief. Naturally, J. Carroll Naish is appropriately cold-blooded as the mob chief executioner. Altogether, "Confidential" is snappy enough to make the grade.
Frontier Town (1938)
Hokum on the Range!!!
Tex Ritter achieved popularity as a country western singer and cowboy actor throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Many remember this Texan for the mournful title ballad "Do Not Forsake Me, O' My Darlin" in the classic Gary Cooper western "High Noon" (1952). In director Ray Taylor's saddle-sore oater "Frontier Town," Ritter plays a congenial warbler who competes in rodeos in every category. As this Grand National Pictures release opens, likeable Tex Lansing, alias Tex Rawlins (Tex Ritter of "Marshal of Gunsmoke"), has been participating in one rodeo after another. Much to the chagrin of the villainous Regan (Karl Hacket of "Death Rides the Plains") and his crooked henchman, our hero claims first place in every category. Regan's right-hand man, Pete Denby (familiar second-string heavy Charles King of "Prairie Badmen"), is every bit as despicable. Meantime, Tex's two harmless sidekicks, Stubby (Horace Murphy of "Utah Trail") and Pee Wee ('Snub' Pollard of "Lure of the Wasteland"), find themselves up to their ears in trouble when Tex leaves them to see a gal. Regan sends Denby and his cronies with an ultimatum. Not only will Stubby and Pee Wee suffer grievously, but so will Tex unless he lets Regan's man win. Regan is every inch of a rattlesnake. He enjoys exploiting the weak to perform his unscrupulous acts. He has recruited a gullible young hellion, Bob Hawthorne (Marion Feducha of "Passport Husband"), into helping him. Worse, the fiendish Regan has been seeding counterfeit cash in every town along the rodeo route. Regan hates Tex since the latter keeps making Demby into a monkey in each competition. Regan dispatches Denby and another henchman to intimidate Tex's sidekicks. After collecting three grand in rodeo prize money, Tex entrusts it to Stubby and Pee Wee and orders them back to their hotel. Mind you, these two fellas are as honest as they are gullible. As they are traipsing back to the hotel, they cross paths with Denby and his men. These dastards steer Tex's two hopeless fools into a nearby saloon and a crooked game of stud poker!
Now, Tex's sidekicks know squat about poker. Stubby dreads his predicament, while Pee Wee excuses himself and hurries off to Tex. Happily, Tex shows up in time to replace Stubby. Mind you, Tex spins an amusing yarn about a gang of tinhorns who thought they could outsmart the law. Regan and his men start to sweat. Simultaneously, Tex appears oblivious to any threats Regan and his gun hands might pose. Earlier, Tex had encountered young Bob's older sister, Gail Hawthrone (Ann Evers of "Police Bullets"), took a shine to her. When Bob tried to rough up his sister so she would loan him money, Tex intervened and sent him running. Gail hosts a sideshow in the carnival that follows the rodeo circuit. Gail's sideshow challenges the skills of contestants to topple stationary objects by slinging a ring at them. Later, once he has replaced Stubby at poker, Tex catches Pop (Jack Smith of "The Phantom Creeps") trying to switch cards. Pop protests his innocence and blames Regan. Suddenly, Tex whips out his six-gun and wounds one of Regan's henchmen. Pop tries to flee from the saloon. Lunging to their feet, Regan and Bob empty their holsters and blast away at Pop. Bob's bullet strikes Pop in the back and kills him. Bursting into the saloon to investigate, Sheriff Walsh of Frontier (Forrest Taylor of "Bullets and Saddles") finds Tex holding Regan and Bob at gunpoint. Earlier, after Pop lay dead, Tex made Regan return his $ 3-grand. Instead, Regan slipped him to equivalent amount in counterfeit bills. Regan implicates in Pop's demise. The sheriff leaps to the wrong conclusion when he spots Tex covering Regan and Bob. No sooner does the lawman disarm Tex than Tex wrestles free of his clutches and exits the saloon. Tex's sidekicks behave like bumbling idiots. Deliberately, they block the lawmen long enough for Tex to reach his horse and hightail it. Later, Stubby dresses up like Tex and diverts the posse, so Tex can investigate Regan. At the last minute, Tex convinces Sheriff Walsh of his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary when he shows him his Federal Marshal's badge. Tex has been undercover the entire time.
During prolific career as a director, Taylor helmed over 150 B-westerns, jungle safari epics, and crime thrillers, including "The Green Hornet" serial (1940). He is best known for sharing directorial chores with the equally inexhaustible Forde Beebe on the 1940 Universal serial "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe," starring Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes, and Charles Middleton as the merciless Emperor Ming. The generically entitled "Frontier Town" looks like a seven-day quickie. Clearly, Tex Ritter was no rodeo champ. Stock footage of cowboys getting thrown off bucking broncs and bulls is substituted for Ritter. Nevertheless, editor Frederick Bain and Taylor skillfully insert a long shot of our champ picking himself up out of the dust and waving at the crowd. They used the same footage of Tex repeatedly, too. Similarly, Taylor relies on stock footage of the cheering crowd. Later, Tex and his sidekicks are lensed galloping hell-bent for leather through mountainous terrain with a posse at their heels. Violence is minimal. The dead card cheat gets hustled off screen without delay. Not surprisingly, production values are threadbare. Nevertheless, Taylor keeps the action slim and trim at 57 minutes with little time wasted. The Edmond Kelso & Lindsley Parsons screenplay is strictly formulaic. Nothing in the undercover plot will surprise anybody who has seen many pre-World War II, B-westerns. Tex makes a serviceable hero. Karl Hacket with Charles King as just as serviceable as the villains. As Tex's love interest, Gail Hawthrone languishes on the periphery. Kiddies would rather watch killing rather than kissing. Altogether, "Frontier Town" ranks as below average. Neither Horace Murphy nor 'Snub Pollard provide much in the way of comic relief. "Frontier Town" emerges as half-baked hokum.
The People's Enemy (1935)
A HUMDRUN MELODRAMA ABOUT A GANGSTER
A notorious mobster, Vince M. Falcone (Preston Foster of "Kansas City Confidential"),receives a nine-year stretch in Federal prison for defrauding the U. S. Government. His loyal friend and erudite mouthpiece, George R. 'Traps' Stuart (Melvyn Douglas of "Ninotchka"), tries to intervene on his behalf, but the stern judge (Charles Coburn in a cameo) wants Falcone behind bars asap. Predictably, Vince doesn't enjoy his vacation in the pen where the coffee tastes like swill, and the bread is stale. Before the authorities hustled Falcone off to the big house, Vince told 'Traps' to look up the wife and child he cast aside. As Falcone explains it, he couldn't handle his parental duties, much less honor his marriage vows. Nevertheless, he orders 'Traps' to keep tabs on his former wife and child and help them out with some of the dough he still has. Meantime, Vince's hot-tempered little brother, Tony (William Collier Jr of "The Story of Temple Drake"), stirs up trouble for him. Trouble is no stranger where Vince is concerned. Repeatedly, 'Traps' reprimanded Vince about talking first and thinking later for getting him into jams that only 'Traps' could get him out of. 'Traps' points out to Vince-before they ship him off in stir-that he defended the gangster in 34 cases. The years of consorting with hoodlums as their counsel has taken its toll on 'Traps,' and yearns for the easy life. Eventually, he locates Vince's wife, Catherine Carr (Lila Lee of "The Unholy Three"), and does as Falcone has bid him. He lavishes gifts galore on Catherine and her daughter. Tony may be off camera for stretches, but his backdoor machinations get not only him in trouble but also his big brother. Three years later, 'Traps' tried to persuade the parole board that Vince is a changed man. One of Vince's fair-weather friends is Duke Ware (Herbert Rawlinson of "Lady Gangster"), but Duke is despicable. He took $100-thousand dollars from Falcone's brother to bribe a Federal Judge. Instead of bribing the judge, Ware slipped into his vault for safekeeping. Wave bamboozles Tony, a prize idiot who screwed up at every turn. Somehow, Tony figures a way to slip Vince messages that the warden would frown on if he knew about them. Vince has suffered grievously during those three years and he cannot handle prison life. He winds up sharing a cell with another inmate, Slip Laflin (Roscoe Ates of "Freaks") and Laflin teaches him the ropes. Primarily, Roscoe provides the direly needed comic relief in this maudlin melodrama. Not surprisingly, 'Traps' finds Catherine attractive, and se reciprocates his affection for her. Boiling over with raid, Vince believes 'Traps' has double-crossed him, and he figures a way to break out of the slammer. He stows away in a coal truck that Slip waves out of the yard because a fire is raging nearby. Eventually, Vince heads off to see 'Traps,' and he has an itchy trigger finger. The Federal Authorities contact 'Traps' about Vince's whereabouts, but he knows nothing. Instead, he frets now for the safety of Catherine and her daughter. Vince sneaks into the building where 'Traps' has offices and confronts his counselor. Coincidentally, the treacherous Duke Ware has scheduled an appointment with him. 'Traps' sends the Feds off to protect Catherine, and Vince crawls out of the ledge and enters his attorney's office. 'Traps' waves Vince aside when Duke comes in to justify everything he did to send and keep Vince in prison. When the Feds barrel out of the building, they leave one agent behind to block anybody entering 'Traps' office. Vince eavesdrops on the conversation between 'Traps' and Duke. Infuriated, the gangster shoots Duke twice and kills him. The Fed burst into the office and drill Vince twice, too. "The Devils on Wheels" director Crane Wilbur's "The People's Enemy" clocks in at a concise 55 minutes. The trouble is nobody here is remotely charismatic. As the protagonist, Melvyn Douglas seems aloof and cavalier, but he blurts out some choice dialogue and doesn't take any guff from Tony. There is nobody to root for and the relationship between 'Traps' and Catherine occurs largely off-screen with 'Traps' regaling his secretary about the joy he feels when he is around Catherine. "Philadelphia Story" lenser Joseph Ruttenberg's black & white cinematography is exemplary.
Jagveld (2017)
Predictable But Entertaining Feminist Revenge Opus
This South African made thriller evoked memories of Cornel Wilde's "The Naked Prey," where tribesmen captured a big game hunter, stripped him of his weapons, and then turned him loose, so they could hunt him in the wild. The predicament in director Byron Davis' "Hunting Emma" is considerably different, but the stakes are just as devastating: life and death. A blonde elementary school teacher embarks on her summer vacation only to have her battered car conk out on her in the middle of nowhere. The radiator in her car overheated. Mind you, Emma Le Roux (Leandie du Randt of "Born to Win") is by nature and temperament a pacifist. In fact, she isn't on speaking terms with her boyfriend because he struck a man in a fit of rage, and she wants nothing to do with him. Anyway, after our heroine realizes she needs water for her ravenously thirsty radiator, she hears fired nearby and heads off into the wilderness in the direction of the gunfire. However, Emma isn't prepared for what she encounters. Six ruthless drug traffickers have shot a highway cop, appropriated his vehicle, and plan to liquidate him with extreme prejudice. When she realizes she is in big trouble, she tries to flee, but the villains pursue her and capture her. While they are interrogating her, the wounded cop recovers from his wound and crawls back to his car. The villains are too focused on Emma to notice the cop's stealthy retreat. Of course, this seems a little contrived, but you've got to expect a little hokum out of everything. Predictably, the villains are upset, especially when the injured cop gets back to his car and careens away down the road. One of the villains who wants a taste of Emma's flesh leaves her handcuffed to a post to join his companions as they pursue the cop. Despite her avowed pacifism, Emma was raised by a father who was a military hero, and he passed along to her his infinite wisdom about surviving in the wild. Now, Emma is being stalked by these six dastards, and they have no qualms about killing her. One of them has a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights, so suspense mounts as they follow her.
Despite its sturdy production values and a serviceable but anonymous cast, "Hunting Emma" suffers from a leaden pace. The exposition is clumsy at times, and the suspense wanes during repeated interludes when characters must provide expository information about their behavior. Above average with interesting characters, "Hunting Emma" benefits from more than its share of good moments. Of course, the villains want to rape her, but they never get the chance. Emma makes a credible transition a damsel in distress to a female Rambo, but the depiction of mayhem seems tame at times. The problem is it just isn't trashy enough compared to another damsel in distress epic "I Am Rage." "Hunting Emma" takes itself far too seriously, but you'll be entertained.
Duchess (2024)
Lady Scarlett
British writer & director Neil Marshall knows how to create gripping, white-knuckled, suspense thrillers that keep audiences poised on the edge of their seats. "Duchess" differs little from Marshall's earlier epics about resilient dames. He made "The Descent" (2005), "Doomsday" (2008) and "Centurion" (2010). Predictably, many critics have derided it as just another derivative empire building crime saga. Mind you, virtually every major mobster movie from "Little Caesar" (1931) to "The Godfather" (1972) to "Wrath of Man" (2021) has chronicled the formation of a criminal organization. Naturally, "Duchess" imitates them in some respects, but Marshall spins everything here from the dame's standpoint. Indeed, "Duchess charts the trajectory of our heroine's efforts to avenge the murder of her gangster boyfriend. A slam-bang revenge epic from fade-in to fadeout, "Duchess" is riddled with gunplay and violence galore which may sicken squeamish souls. Several men are torn apart by a ravenous tiger!
Scarlet Monaghan (Charlotte Kirk of "The Reckoning") is the daughter of a low-life, English hooligan, Frank Monaghan (Colm Meaney of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"), who landed in prison for shooting a guard during a bungled robbery. Not surprisingly, Scarlet feels deeply repelled by the biological fact she shares the same evil blood pulsing through Frank's repugnant veins. Initially, this savvy, blonde, blue-eyed, babe picks pockets for her crime boss. Things change for Scarlet, however, when a rugged, good-looking, diamond smuggler, Robert 'Rob' McNaughton (Robert Winchester of "Strike Back"), lays his eyes on her. At first, she wants nothing to do with him. She owes her success as a pickpocket to her thuggish benefactor until he beats her up in a jealous rage. Inevitably, Rob wins her heart, and they become inseparable. He introduces Scarlet to his big-league underworld cronies. Life with Rob constitutes a fairy tale come true for Scarlet until treachery bursts their bubble. One of Rob's longtime partners of 20 years, Tom Sullivan (Colin Egglesfield of "Reprisal"), emerges as his sworn enemy. He is jealous because Rob spends more time with Scarlet than with him, and it's undermining their partnership. He orders Rob's execution. Miraculously, Scarlet survives certain death at the hands of Tom's gunmen, and then she rechristens herself as 'Duchess.' Earlier, one of Rob's henchmen had addressed Scarlet as 'Duchess,' so it isn't surprising she adopted the title. Rob's bosom buddies, ex-SAS operative Danny Oswald (Sean Pertwee of "Gotham") and former Congo mercenary Billy Baraka (Hoji Fortuna of "Banzo"), form up alongside Scarlet as she plots payback for Tom and his ilk who shattered her life.
Mind you, anything easily attained is hardly worth the effort, and 'Duchess' finds that doling out vengeance is no Sunday picnic. She sloughs off all forms of naivete as she goes in with guns blazing. Along with She assembles a small cadre of friends along with Danny and Billy, and they attend to the dastards who betrayed Robert. Happily, Duchess lives long enough to see the tables turned on her momentarily when the opposition outnumbers them. She finds herself strapped to a chair with electrodes attached to her and a madman who drools to hear her scream. Our anti-heroine pays the price for being a gangster. Nevertheless, she is shrewd enough to have a back-up plan, so she survives the ordeal.
Clocking in at 114 minutes, this intense, R-rated, melodrama shifts gears from scenes of bullet-blasting shootouts to loquacious, dialogue-laden interludes with necessary exposition. Nevertheless, Marshall more than compensates for these bouts of logorrhea with some blazing shootouts and harrowing torture scenes. For example, one criminal refuses to sell out his gang until 'Duchess' applies a scorching iron to his crotch. Right up to the final few moments of the fireworks, our anti-heroine is constantly dodging adversity, so the suspense never slackens until the end credits roll. Repeatedly, throughout the action, gangsters who betray our anti-heroic protagonists find themselves on the brink of a pit in Robert's mansion where a ravenous tiger prowls about awaiting his next meal. Several villains take this fatal plunge. If you can handle the obstacle course of suspense and mayhem that Marshall drums up, you'll enjoy "Duchess" as a first-rate crime thriller.
Rawhide: Incident of the Tumbleweed (1959)
The Premiere Episode of "Rawhide"
Director Richard Whorf's "Incident of the Tumbleweed" served as the first episode of the 217 that comprised "Rawhide" during its eight seasons on CBS-TV between 1959-1965. Trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming of "Curse of the Undead") and his crew of cattle drovers cross trails with a tumbleweed wagon transporting seven unsavory prisoners Ft Craig to stand trial. Among these reprobates is a woman, Dallas Storm (Terry Moore of "Mighty Joe Young"), but every one of them is biding their time, planning an escape, while Dallas' husband, Luke (Val Dufour of "The Undead"), and his gun hands are tracking them. He is riding hard to catch up to the tumbleweed so he can free Dallas as well as one of his outlaw minions, Lennie Dawson (John Larch of "Dirty Harry") before they reach their destination. Marshal Wilt Jackson (Frank Wilcox of "Pony Express") and Deputy Art Gray (Bob Steele of "The Big Sleep") stop to make camp near the herd. During the preparations for camp, the prisoners endeavor to escape. First, they kill the cankerous deputy, who slapped Dallas around when she struck his rifle barrel with her handcuffs. Marshal Jackson gets off a shot but he takes a slug in the chest. Before the prisoners can make good their escape, Mr. Favor's drovers force them to surrender. Wounded so badly he cannot sit upright but must lay on a stretcher in the tumbleweed wagon with the seven, Marshal Jackson persuades a reluctant Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood of "Hang'em High") to resume the journey to Fort Craig. Favor leaves Pete Nolan (Sheb Wooley of "High Noon") in charge of the herd. This journey of hardship turns out to be quite dramatic as Gil and Rowdy contend with the unruly prisoners. One of them, a scheming Englishman, Sinclair (Tom Conway of "Cat People"), who murdered his wife when she refused to include him in her monetary inheritance, giving it instead to her family, poses as much a problem as Dallas and Lennie. Lennie cannot stand Sinclair and doesn't trust him. Eventually, Luke catches up with the tumbleweed during a treacherous river crossing, and indiscriminate fireworks erupt. Rowdy catches a bullet in the upper arm, and Luke brings their progress to a halt. When he learns Sinclair tried to strangle Dallas, Luke shoulders his Winchester repeating rifle, aims it at the tumbleweed wagon stalled in the middle of the river, and shoots Sinclair without a qualm. The doomed Englishman pitches sideways into the river. Luke turns his attention to both Gil and Rowdy, and he plans to kill them. Earlier, during the river crossing fracas, Dallas plunged into the river, and Gil saved her from drowning. Since neither Gil nor Rowdy are actual lawmen, Dallas objects to Luke's decision to murder them in cold blood. Snatching his revolver when he is not expecting her to do so, she shoots him.
Mind you, plenty of action and intrigue unfold in his somewhat implausible episode penned by "Jesse James" scribe Curtis Kenyon and Fred Freiberger of "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms." Several people die in this horse opera. Presumably, one of them survives the conditions under which he must be carried across rugged terrain to his destination. Clint Eastwood fans know he made a rather similar film-"Hang'em High"--after he returned from Italy to establish his own movie production company Malpaso. In "Hang'em High," Clint cast himself as a wrongly accused cattle rustler who winds up stuck in a similar tumbleweed wagon. Interesting enough, the deputy sheriff in this "Rawhide" episode-Bob Steele-played one of the vigilantes that hanged Clint's character. There is just enough conflict and complications in "Incident of the Tumbleweed" to keep viewers alert and aware.
Black Angel (1946)
A Disappointing Murder Mystery
Just when you think you have Dan Duryea pegged playing a good guy, "Sherlock Holmes" director Roy William Neill and "Double Alibi" scenarist Roy Chanslor fool us and reveal him as a dastard. "The Black Angel," a brooding black & white, Universal Pictures' whodunit drawn from Cornell Woolrich's novel, exemplifies misdirection like you've never seen it before. At this point, I'm obliged to say most of what follows will take all the surprise out of this talkative 1946 thriller for anybody who likes to solve the murder before the filmmakers tell all themselves. Although it is billed as a film noir, "The Black Angel" differs from most film noirs. First, shadows are few and far between. Second, we have no idea who did the killing. A formally attired gentleman, Kirk Bennett (John Phillips of "John Paul Jones"), entered the woman's apartment where popular vocalist Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling of "Blind Spot") lives and discovers her corpse strewn on the carpet of her bedroom. She has been strangled to death. Bennett had come to see Mavis who had been blackmailing him about their relationship. He wanted to end the blackmail. Bennett displays incredibly poor judgment after he entered Marlowe's apartment. He left behind his fingerprints on a small automatic pistol he found on Marlowe's bed. No sooner does he find the murdered dame's corpse than he hears another door open. Rushing into another room, Bennett watches as a door swings shut, but he saw nobody. Earlier, our protagonist, Martin Blair (Dan Duryea of "Winchester '73"), had sought to see Mavis in her exclusive Wilshire Apartment. However, the door man refused to let him go up and visit her. Earlier, Mavis had phoned the door man and instructed him not to let her ex-husband come up and see her. We learn early on Blair is a weak individual who wrestles with alcoholism. Happily, Blair has a couple of friends run interference for him, and they manage to keep him from landing behind barsl. Professionally, Blair plays piano as well as pens songs. He wrote the hit tune "Heartbreak" for his former wife Mavis. Since they divorced, Blair's life is spiraling into the bottle when he endeavors to meet her one last time. Anyway, all evidence points to Bennett, particularly since he was seen rushing out of Mavis' apartment by her maid. Predictably, Homicide Detective Captain Flood (Broderick Crawford of "All The King's Men") arrests Bennett and tries to sweat a confession out of him, but he never cracks. Later, on trial for Mavis' murder, Bennett is sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Bennett's long-suffering spouse, Catherine (June Vincent of "Shed No Tears"), believes her husband is innocent and sets out to prove it despite the death sentence that hangs over her hubby. Eavesdropping on a conversation, Catherine learns about Blair and his relationship with Mavis. She tracks him down and wants any information he can give her to save her husband from the gas chamber. Bennett and Blair know about a heart-shaped brooch that Bennett said was stolen off Mavis' body while he was distracted in her apartment. Eventually, the trail leads to a sinister nightclub owner, Marko (Peter Lorre of "M") who emerges as a tailor-made red herring. Blair and Catherine audition for him and land a job with Catherine warbling tunes while Blair plinks away on the ivory keys. She suspects Marko killed Mavis. Sadly, the cops prove otherwise, so Marko is off the hook and Catherine is dreading his husband's forthcoming execution date. All along we're told Blair was crazy about Mavis and wanted to get back together with her but she couldn't stand him. We know about Blair being a message in a bottle drunk. Eventually, we learn that he suffered from alcoholic amnesia. At the last minute, Blair realizes he murdered Mavis and confesses to Captain Flood. My problem with this outcome is simple. Initially, the burly door man barred Blair from going up to see Mavis. The filmmakers show Blair being turned away. Presumably, he was not able to gain entry to Mavis' apartment, but somehow he did break in and kill her. Blair stacks up as a film noir protagonist. He is weak and vulnerable and he cannot control himself nor his drinking. After he teams up with Catherine in an effort to get some confidential information from Marko's safe, he learns Catherine doesn't want to get into a relationship with him. Blair guzzles himself virtually to death, and the police pick him up and take him to sanitarium where he confined to a bed with his wrists buckled to the rails. Blair convinces the doctor to contact Flood because he-Blair-has relived the killing in his mind.
The surprise is that the sympathetic Martin Blair turns out to be the homicidal killer. Of course, murder mystery filmmakers always conceal something from audiences, but the eleventh-hour reversal is just too convenient. Personally, I'd rather have seen Marko get nailed for Mavis' murder. Mind you, it is rather disconcerting to learn the man who we have seen behave so sympathetically is a cold-bloodied murder. "The Black Angel" was Roy William Neill's final film.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
The Hills Are Alive With Axel F
Happily, freshman helmer Mike Molloy's legacy sequel "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" surpasses John Landis' lame "Beverly Hills Cop 3," but it only occasionally generates the rowdy, robust energy of either Martin Brest's original or Tony Scott's follow-up. What this Netflix installment does best is deliver four-star fan service with virtually everybody whose live alive reprising their original roles. Some of those holdovers have more screen time than others. For example, John Ashton's Taggart has more scenes (or at least seems to) than Judge Reinhold's Billy Rosewood. We see Rosewood early in the action and then he goes AWOL until the go-for-broke finale. At times, this demolition derby, corrupt cop thriller wallows in too much yap and not enough snap. This time around Axel (Eddie Murphy) tangles with his estranged adult daughter Jane Saunders (Taylour Paige of "White Boy Rick") as much as he does the dastardly villains. Production values are top-notch as one would expect from producers Jerry Bruckheimer & Lorenzo di Bonaventura and the music is perfect with a sufficient but never indulgent content of bullet blazing nonsense. Not surprisingly, the trigger-happy villains waste hundreds of rounds of ammo on Axel and company in this outing. Despite its R-rating, "Axel F" never ramps up its violence with an excessively high body count with blood and gore galore nor spews the kind off incendiary profanity we've come to tolerate for an R-rated feature. Nudity is nowhere to be seen. Indeed, it's almost two-hour runtime is required so audiences can learn about Axel's daughter who practices law in L. A., and is serving as defense for a young man charged with killing a cop. Of course, a standard part of any mystery thriller is the reams of exposition required to bring audiences up to snuff in all the details while planting clues. Naturally, for the sake of some drama, Axel and Jane thrive on father and daughter issues. Jane wants Axel back on a plane to Detroit, so she can get on with her life and see her client exonerated. The daughter's rage seemed slight and she never really tore Axel another one for his faulty fatherhood. Kevin Bacon looks like he had a blast as the overconfident villain. The set-up with Axel alienating himself during a hockey game heist gets the action off to a nimble start with Axel driving a garbage truck around the Motor City in a hellbent-for-leather chase. Altogether, "Axel F" qualifies as above-average.
The Torch (1950)
Love At Hindsight!!!
Hispanic writer & director Emilio Fernández's turn of the century western "The Torch," set amidst the turbulent Mexican Revolution, chronicles a venerable 'attraction of opposites' romance between a hot-tempered revolutionary Army General José Juan Reyes (Pedro Armendáriz) and a tempestuous landowner's daughter (Paulette Goddard of "Modern Times"), who is dead set against loving him. Gilbert Roland co-stars as a solemn Catholic priest named Father Sierra who stands between the two. As it turns out, Reyes and Sierra were childhood friends, and the bond of friendship still thrives after all their years of separation. When the General lays his eyes on the privileged María Dolores Penafiel, he experiences love at first sight and sets out to court her. The conflict is María wants nothing to do with him. She has already set her sights on a doctor, Dr. Robert Stanley (Walter Reed of "The Destructors"), and has no intentions of changing her mind.
Nevertheless, María's stubborn attitude doesn't discourage Reyes' amorous efforts to woo her. Initially, General Reyes and his revolutionary army captured the city where María lives and ordered the executions of the wealthiest men. Foremost among the landowners was María's father, Don Carlos Penafiel (Julio Villarreal of "The Beast of Hollow Mountain") and Reyes was in no mood to be lenient until he learned Don Carlos was María's father. The first half of this 1950, black & white, adventure/romance concerned General Reyes and his army occupying the city and driving out Government troops. Immediately, he orders firing squads to eliminate the wealthy. The second half deals with his efforts to win María's heart. Now, María hates the General passionately. Similarly, she wants nothing to do with this upstart ruffian. Eventually, in Reyes knocks her down after she refuses to comply with his wishes. The friendship with Father Sierra teeters in the balance because Reyes slapped María and the priest interceded. Just moments before this 83-minute epic winds down, María changes her attitude toward the General, seeing him in a new light) and accompanies his army and Reyes as Government troops reenter the city.
"The Torch" boasts the evocative cinematography of the legendary Gabriel Figueroa. Literally, his camera set-ups and the angles that Figueroa adopted are nothing short of brilliant. His use of lighting enhances his imagery. Performances throughout are robust, especially in the scenes coupling General Reyes with María.
Strange Alibi (1941)
A Slam-Bang, Undercover Police Thriller
"Bullet Scars" director David Ross Lederman's ballistically-paced, B-movie thriller "Strange Alibi" casts Warner Brothers contract actor Arthur Kennedy as rogue detective Joe Geary. Geary staggers the chief of police with a punch in the face in front of departmental witnesses after the chief questioned his moral integrity. Police Chief Sprague (Jonathan Hale of "The Black Parachute") refers to Geary's chummy rapport with known criminals. Naturally, our hero is suspended. However, things aren't as incriminating as they appear. Later, we learn Sprague conjured up this elaborate ruse in a desperate effort to unearth corruption within his department. Unfortunately, our hero cannot risk letting his devoted girlfriend, Alice Devlin (Joan Perry of "Shakedown"), in on this secret, so she worries about him. Meantime, the mob welcomes Geary with open arms, and he proves his worth as a tenacious bill collector.
Meantime, notorious gambler King Carney (Herbert Rawlinson of "Dark Victory") has returned to town. Carney has agreed to sing like a canary for the grand jury! No sooner has he arrived than somebody mows him down in a barrage of scorching lead. When Carney dies, the prosecution's case collapses. At the same time, the police search for Carney's driver Louie Butler. However, before they can grille Butler, the guy hangs himself in his cell! What nobody knows until the end is Reddick killed both Carney and Butler! The coroner has his suspicions, but he cannot prove Butler didn't kill himself. As it turns out, another hoodlum fresh out of the pen, Benny McKaye (Joe Downing of "Danger in the Air"), may know something but he refuses to talk. Geary is poised to expose the corrupt officials in the department when he arranges a secret rendezvous with the Chief. Tragically, everything goes to haywire. Another high-ranking but corrupt cop, Lieutenant-Detective Pagle (Stanley Andrews of "Cry Terror"), barges into the room, blasting away at Sprague and hitting him. The chief gets off one shot, but his bullet accidentally strikes Geary rather than the diabolical Pagle. Strewn face down on the floor with a head wound from where Sprague's stray slug grazed him, Geary lies unconscious at Pagle's feet. Naturally, Pagle puts the gun that he riddled Sprague with in Joe's hand, so when the police swarm into the premises, they believe Geary killed the police chief. Predictably, Geary protests his innocence vehemently at his trial. He divulges Sprague's decision to use him as an undercover agent to smoke out corruption. Nevertheless, the jury sentences him to life!
Mind you, this scenario about a cashiered flatfoot infiltrating the mob is as antiquated as Methuselah. Nevertheless, time after time, Hollywood has resorted to this proven formula with success. Typically, the hero and his confidante are the only people privy to their plan. The chances of their best laid plans backfiring on them is ever-present. Moreover, if anything goes amiss, the hero will find himself knee deep in danger, unless his confidante stashed evidence of their collusion. Since Sprague trusted nobody, both Geary and he were running an extreme risk. Since nobody can corroborate Geary's revelations, our hero cannot convince anybody of his innocence.
Geary lands in prison where he tangles with a sadistic guard, Monson (Howard Da Silva of "1776"), who terrorizes him enough that our hero plans to break out of stir with another convict, Tex (John Ridgely of "The Big Sleep"), who unbeknownst to anybody has stashed a car for this very occasion. During their careening getaway with cops racing after them like maniacs on motorcycles and in cruisers, Geary risks their lives with his daredevil driving. Recklessly, Geary avoids a collision with a speeding train at a railroad crossing. Quickly, the authorities resume their pursuit. Sadly, the second time Geary tries to pull this death-defying feat, our protagonist cannot beat the locomotive and careens off the road and skids to a halt. Alas, Tex doesn't survive this close encounter. Nevertheless, Geary manages to get back to town into one piece. Imagine his chagrin when he learns McKaye, the only man who can clear him, has died! For all practical purposes, Geary's goose looks cooked!
Nevertheless, our hero improvises and sets McKaye's corpse in a car and then parks the vehicle in plain sight on a city street. Now, the audacious Geary surprises the reform-minded governor, Phelps (Charles Trowbridge of "The Paleface"), in the latter's hotel room. Holding him at gunpoint, Geary dopes out in detail his own outlandish ploy. Although McKaye is kaput, Geary persuades Phelps to notify the police about the gangster's presence in a parked car and prompts them to send out men to arrest the hoodlum. Since the police believe McKaye may still be alive, Reddick and Pagle decide to handle it themselves but they end up incriminating themselves. Imagine Phelps' shock when he watches the cops dispatched to arrest McKaye blast the car with a fusillade of gunfire nobody could survive. Mind you, not only does Phelps witness this homicidal act, but he can also identify both Reddick and Pagle. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and the foolish villains have incriminated themselves!
Clocking in efficiently at an adrenaline-fueled 63 minutes, "Strange Alibi" lives up to its title. In fact, the words 'strange alibi' appear in the newspaper flashes inserted during Geary's trial. Arthur Kennedy delivers another charismatic performance as the wronged hero, while Howard De Silva stands out as Geary's abrasive guard in the prison scenes. Director David Ross Lederman never lets the momentum slacken during this slam-bang, white-knuckled, hellbent, urban crime saga.
Slaves in Bondage (1937)
Sexual Slavery in the 1930s
"Gambling with Souls" director Elmer Clifton's "Slaves in Bondage" reveals the enormous pressure the Production Code brought to bear on exploitation filmmakers during the reign of Hollywood's Code of Self-censorship. This low-budget, black & white, 1937 crime thriller exposed the evils of white slavery. Of course, neither Clifton nor scenarist Robert Dillon could plumb the depths of unadulterated depravity surrounding the circumstances involving these impressionable, young, females. These darlings were bamboozled into accepting apparently harmless jobs before ultimately being railroaded into prostitution. Eventually, after Hollywood abandoned the Code in the 1960s, filmmakers could depict with greater accuracy the perils awaiting young women who stumbled and resorted to prostitution. Nowadays, these venerable exploitation films are treated with amusement because Hollywood was governed by a different set of rules and prevented from exploring the rough stuff. Instead, audiences had to use their imagination. Basically, what constituted a tragedy in 1937 would be ridiculed as "so bad, it's good.'
The story unfolds one evening as a speeding car streaks down the highway. One villainous dastard sits behind the wheel of this jalopy while the second lowlife, mustached Jim Murray (Wheeler Oakman of "Three of a Kind"), rides in the back seat with a defenseless dame, Mary Lou Smith (Louise Small of "College Holiday"), who begs Murray to stop the car and release her. These despicable brutes ignore Mary Lou until the girl resorts to the unimaginable. Hurling herself from the car, Mary Lou tumbles into the middle of the road. Once up she picks herself up, she doesn't get far before she collapses. Fortunately, the three fellas in a car who know Mary Lou stop and alert the authorities about her predicament. Naturally, Mary Lou's mother is shaken up about the incident. Mary Lou explains to a detective that the men pulled up alongside her while she was walking home from church and fooled her into getting into the car. The neighbor consoling Mary Lou's distraught mother is Dona Lee (Lona Andre of "Pilot X") and her boyfriend, out of town newspaper reporter Phillip Miller (Donald Reed of "Secret Agent K-7"), questions the fellows who found Mary Lou in the road. It seems Phillip plans to marry our heroine Dona Lee just as soon as he can land a job on a local newspaper. Despite his account of Mary Lou's escape from sure slavery, Miller cannot persuade the editor to hire him. Meantime, Dona works as a manicurist in a local beauty salon run by Belle Harris (Florence Dudley of "Party Girl") who advertises for employees. Essentially, when Belle interviews prospective employees, she looks at their legs and then hires them if she finds them appealing. Sadly, those ladies who don't work out in beauty salon are shipped off to Jim Murray's notorious roadhouse. As it turns out, Murray and Belle are business partners, and business is booming. Murray loves to sit and watch Dona do his nails. He lusts after this naïve beauty who holes him at arm's length until Murray learns about Phillip Miller. Murray wants Dona in his bed so badly that he will do whatever it takes to land her. He learns that her boyfriend is a small-time gambler, so he fixes it so that Phillip wins a race. Meantime, a pickpocket plans forged dollars on the unsuspecting journalist and he winds up in jail. Murray recommends a mouthpiece to Dona, but this crooked lawyer advises Phillip to do the worst thing: confess his crime.
Eventually, Belle ushers Dona into her house of prostitution and shows her what is involved. This scene will no doubt trigger laughs galore as Belle shows our heroine a variety of ladies sprawled in luxurious beds in their lingerie. You'll laugh yourself silly at this scene. "Slaves in Bondage" provides some hilarious comic relief that has little to do with the plot. Two drunks are at a bar and one goads the other into having a 'mixed drink.' What happens is funny. The bartender furnishes them with three bottles of liquor. One drunk pours a drink from each bottle and then tips it down the other drunk's throat. Once he has filled his friend up with booze, the other drunk squeezes his friend's mouth shut and shakes the man's head vigorously. The drunk staggers happily at this exercise.
Meantime, Dora's suspicions prompt her to visit the police, and she fills them in on what happening at the roadhouse as well as the way her boyfriend is being treats. Turns out the police harbored their own suspicions and have held Phillip until they are sure that Murray's lawyer is railroading the journalist into prison by confessing his crime. Lecherous Jim Murray itches for the opportunity to take advantage of Dona. Not surprisingly, as Dona is being manipulated into the web of evil that Murray and Belle have set her up for, the Production Code dictated that crime could not pay, so the police crash Murray's roadhouse and our two love birds are reunited. Watching "Slaves in Bondage" from the perspective of our enlightened age, we have no alternative not to laugh ourselves silly as the way crime was committed in the 1930s.
Comanche blanco (1968)
Captain Kirk Goes West!!!!
William Shatner plays a dual role as half-breed twin brothers in Spanish helmer José Briz Méndez's hell-bent-for-leather sagebrusher, "White Comanche," co-starring Joseph Cotton and Rosanna Yanni. Shatner made this low-budget oater while on hiatus from "Star Trek." Although neither Méndez nor co-scripter Manuel Gómez Rivera earned any writing credit as scribes, they must have retooled the original screenplay by longtime Hollywood writers Robert I. Holt and Frank Gruber. These two Yanks boasted far more writing credits than Mendez and Rivera together. Indeed, apart from writing with Méndez, Rivera had only one earlier script credit, and it was for a short subject! Comparably, Holt had penned teleplays for many popular, prime-time television series, including "Hunter," "Starsky and Hutch," "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Cannon," and "S. W. A. T." Comparably, not only was Frank Gruber a published author with several western novels to his credit, but he also inked scripts for several episodic western television shows, among them "Shotgun Slade," "Tales of Wells Fargo," "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp," and Rory Calhoun's "The Texan." Presumably, since he was a specialist in the field of frontier western fiction, Gruber may have polished this horse opera.
Neither brother backs down from their inevitable clash in "White Comanche," and the conflict ends efficiently with a showdown about a half-hour into the action. Basically, a Native American chieftain who craves Peyote with a passion, Notah (William Shatner of "The Outrage"), wants to wipe out all whites! Incidentally, for those who know little about it, peyote is a hallucinogenic substance containing mescaline. Moreover, apart from a renegade or two, Notah's tribe stands behind him. Unlike his bad-tempered brother, Johnny Moon (William Shatner) remains the level-headed one of the twins. Nevertheless, he realizes with grim fortitude he must kill the bloodthirsty Notah before his unhinged sibling incites a frontier holocaust.
Mendez introduces us to Notah as he waylays a stagecoach. The chieftain orders his braves to kill the passengers in the coach as well as the driver and the shotgun guard. Just before he is about to depart from the scene of this cold-blooded carnage, Notah catches a whiff of perfume and discovers a lady, Kelly (Rosanna Yanni of "Sonny and Jed"), hidden in the coach. Predictably, after he chases her down in the rocks, Notah rapes this frightened dame but then surprisingly turns her loose! Afterward, she manages to make it back to the town of Rio Hondo on her own where she works in a saloon. She swears the town lawman, Sheriff Logan (Joseph Cotton of "Citizen Kane"), to silence about her ordeal. Clearly, Kelly doesn't want her boss to know about the unfortunate circumstances of her encounter with the renegade Comanche who defiled her.
Meanwhile, Johnny Moon is tracking down his nefarious twin brother when a group of vigilantes jump him. Mind you, this constitutes a case of mistaken identity since these owlhoots plan to string up Johnny because they believe is Notah. In their struggle to slip a noose around his neck, Johnny manages to escape his fumbling captors. The hangmen catch up their mounts, but they fail to capture our hero. Later, Johnny rides into Notah's village and challenges to him to a duel in Rio Hondo.
Shatner does an adequate job as both hero and villain. Literally, he turns in a performance reminiscent of Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When he is decked out in cowboy duds, his Johnny Moon is "Dr. Jekyll." Johnny is the good guy, while Notah is "Mr. Hyde." Hollywood had not perfected the technology to place an actor facing himself in the same shot when "White Comanche" came out, or the producers couldn't afford it, so we never see the faces of both brothers eyeballing each other in the same shot. The writers do furnish some expository information about their lives. Eventually, Johnny Moon reveals his eyes are blue, while Notah has black eyes. Essentially, Shatner appears to have performed all his stunts. Watch the saloon brawl. During one moment in this fracas, Shatner and his opponent swap blows with each other in real time, and the camera follows them without cutting away from them as they demolish saloon. Shatner's face is always visible during this white-knuckled donnybrook. He spends quite a bit of time also in the saddle. At one point, Notah hurls himself from the horse he is riding to one of the team pulling the stagecoach. He brings those horses to a halt, while his braves start slaughtering passengers.
The final showdown in this nimble, 94-minute opus resembles a Medieval jousting tournament. The twins charge each other on horseback down the main street of Rio Hondo, slinging lead at each other. To heighten the suspense, the filmmakers have Shatner riding bare-chested, so it isn't immediately clear who dies until the moment of revelation. Nevertheless, Johnny Moon does kill his blood brother. "White Comanche" boasts solid production values. The rugged Spanish scenery substituted suitably for the old West, but some goofs are apparent in the frantic production schedule of his western. Meantime, Joseph Cotton is still spry enough to indulge in a shootout or two and intervene on Johnny's behalf when everybody in town believes Johnny is Notah.
Altogether, the formulaic "While Comanche" is hardly Oscar winning material, but at least it isn't an embarrassing oater. Since this low-budget film was shot quickly to accommodate Shatner, he doesn't adopt the traditional, fright wigs worn by his braves. Instead, Shatner maintains his "Star Trek" haircut as Notah, with the mere addition of a tribal headband. The only concession is Notah wears war paint smeared. Veteran lenser Francisco Fraile's cinematography is flawless. Between Fraile and Méndez, the camera is always in the appropriate place to cover the action. Unfortunately, composer Jean Ledrut's mundane orchestral score consists of somebody thumping monotonous cords on a base fiddle. Otherwise, production values stand up to scrutiny for a movie that amounts to a curiosity piece in Shatner's resume.
Dark Mountain (1944)
A Wartime Domestic Crime Thriller
Regis Toomey steals the show in "Fighting Buckaroo" director William Berke's pastoral crime melodrama "Dark Mountain." Toomey is cast as a desperate mobster on the lam for cold-blooded murder. Writers Paul Franklin and Charles F. Royal received credit for the story, while Maxwell Shane penned the formulaic screenplay. Best known for an endless string of B-picture potboilers, foremost of which was "The Mummy's Hand" (1940), Shane paints the characters into a corner. Occasionally suspenseful as it is, the storyline suffers from a lack of credibility. A fugitive couple hole up in a remote cabin after the wife deludes a kind-hearted Forest Ranger about her circumstances. During the first two-thirds of the action, our Ranger hero labors under the delusion that the wife is alone in the cabin. Indeed, what he doesn't know is this duplicitous wife has concealed the presence of her sadistic spouse from him. Basically, "Dark Mountain" boils down into a devastating love triangle set in a wilderness cabin. Clocking in at a swift 56-minutes, this black & white crime thriller doesn't waste time. Despite its lack of plausibility, "Dark Mountain" maintains a full head of steam. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine how our forthright hero didn't suspect the villain was hiding right under his nose.
Fearless Forest Service Ranger, Don Bradley (Robert Lowery of "McClintock"), risks life and limb to plunge into a blazing inferno and save two stallions trapped in a barn. Naturally, he ignored his firefighting superior's order when braved the blaze alone. Once in the barn, he wraps blankets over each horse's head and leads the two blind equines back to safety. Although trees topple across his path, Don never loses his glacial cool. Not only does this act of valor earn Don a promotion but he also gets a one-week leave of absence. Don rushes off to propose marriage to his longtime girlfriend Kay Downey (Ellen Drew of "Isle of the Dead") but learns she has married another man. Eventually, Kay discovers Steve (Regis Toomey) has lied about himself and his racket. Turns out he deals in black market goods. Moreover, Steve has implicated her in his evil ways. The feces really hits the fan when she accompanies her husband to police headquarters. She watches him kill an informant, one of Steve's own men pulled in for questioning. After he kills the informant, Steve finishes off his closest accomplice, Whitney (Elisha Cook Jr of "The Maltese Falcon"), because the latter caught a slug. Wounded by police gunfire, Whitney begs Steve to kill him, otherwise he fears he will inform on Steve after the cops beat a confession out of him. Clearly, Steve's criminal empire has fallen, and he must get out of town fast. Initially, Steve and Kay go their separate ways. Kay heads off to see Don. Explaining her dire predicament without divulging the whole truth, Kay convinces Don to let her stay in a nearby forest cabin that is not be occupied for the season.
Naturally, Don is eager to help Kay. He arranges for her to stay in a cabin and surprises her often when he deliver groceries. He lends her a radio, so she can keep abreast of the news. Eventually, things take a turn for the worse. Steve shows up and takes refuge with Kay. Although he pays Kay several visits, Don doesn't have a clue that Kay is mixed up in murder. Later, Don notices minor details that make him suspicious, like different cigarette butts littering the cabin's ashtray. Furthermore, he is puzzled by the amount of food Kay eats. Since he buys her groceries, he begins to wonder. Meantime, Steve has holed up with Kay, and the passage of time-it's taking longer than he imagined-has frayed his nerves to the breaking point. He refuses to shave and looks unkempt. He chain smokes. He rants and rages. Kay struggles to maintain her composure. Repeatedly, Don keeps showing up with little warning and talking to her. Meanwhile, Steve huddles in an adjacent room and bites his tongue. Don wises up. He concocts a scheme to force Steve out into the open.
Don and fellow Forest Ranger Willie Dinsmire (Eddie Quillan of "Mutiny on the Bounty") broadcast a bogus radio message. He announce the authorities have launched a search in another direction. Steve takes advantage of this revelation. He tricks Don by firing two shots in the air. This was the signal agreed upon signal should Kay need to summon Don. Don falls into Steve's trap. Although Steve had initially threatened to kill Don, Willie intervenes and everything evolves into a stand-off. Steve changes his mind. Instead of shooting Don, Steve threatens to kill Kay if the Forest Rangers interfere with his bid for freedom.
Dragging Kay along as a hostage, Steve commandeers Don's official Forestry truck. Steve knows nothing about the boxes of dynamite stacked in the back of the vehicle. Earlier, Don had mentioned he needed the explosives to blast tree stumps. When Willie walked in on Steve, Don, and Kay, he was accompanied by his dog. This tenacious canine chases Steve and Kay as they tear off in the truck. The pooch leaps inside the truck and mauls Steve. Kay leaps out of the careening vehicle, while Steve struggles to thwart man's best friend. Moments later, the dog leaps out, too. Willie and Don are following Steve in close pursuit. By this point, Steve is alone in the truck. Willie manages to shoot out one of the tires, and Steve loses control of the vehicle, slamming it headlong into a tree. The dynamite ignites and Steve is blown to kingdom come! "Dark Mountain" is well-paced with sturdy performances.
The Square Peg (1958)
A Hilarious British Service Comedy
Director John Paddy Carstairs' "The Square Peg" ranks as an above average, black & white, World War 2 service comedy about an error prone civilian who winds up in the British Army because he made a buffoon out of them. Pitkin (Norman Wisdom of "Up In The World") lands himself in more trouble than he can get out of when the British Army interferes with a roadside project that Pitkin is handling. Eventually, Pitkin reaches out for help from his incredulous, bespectacled boss, Mr. Grimsdale (Edward Chapman of "Juno and the Paycock"), who assures him the War Office has made a terrible mistake. It seems Pitkin's misbehavior riled the Army enough that they decided to draft him into the ranks. Not only do they draft Pitkin, but they also call up Mr. Grimsdale as well as his entire staff for service. Wisdom is believably cast as the clueless hero, and he displays great comic timing. During basic training, Pitkin drives everybody crazy when he practices the bayonet drill. He runs the dummies through and then chases after everybody else in a reckless burst of energy. Along the way, our hapless hero encounters a dazzling dish of a dame, Leslie Cartland (Honor Blackman of "Goldfinger") who is a soldier herself. She is poised to embark on a secret mission as a spy in France. Essentially a screwball comedy, Pitkin, Mr. Grimsdale, and some of the latter's employees find themselves bound for France. Mind you, everything goes haywire, and our heroes bail out over France. Eventually, the Nazis capture Mr. Grimsdale because Pitkin and he have inadvertently blundering into enemy territory. The Hun lock him up for interrogation. They believe erroneously Grimsdale is the head of the French Resistence! About the same time this happens, Pitkin enters the Nazi occupied village. Now, he doesn't know he is cavorting about on enemy turf. Later, he discovers he is a dead ringer for a high ranking Nazi. "The Square Peg" recycles is a clever gag straight out of the Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup" where Groucho and Harpo imitated each other movements in pantomime. They matched each others' movements flawlessly. When Pitkin confronts the German officer, he pulls the same pantomime gag. Later, he masquerades as the Nazi officer to obtain the release of his boss from prison. Goofy fun all around, "The Square Peg" has more than its share of funny moments.
Step by Step (1946)
A Slap Happy Marine Tangles with Post War Nazis
Pugnacious Lawrence Tierney and blonde babelicious Anne Jeffreys reunite for the second time in "Paper Bullets" director Phil Rosen's predictable but polished post-World War 2, espionage outing "Step By Step." Basically, they qualify as a Hitchcockian couple on the lam for a murder neither committed. If this weren't enough of a problem, they wind up tangling with renegade Nazis rather than Commies in this concisely edited 62-minute yarn. Unlike most melodramas set after 1945, this snappy little RKO Studio programmer pits our heroic ex-Marine and his dish of a doll sidekick against conniving Nazis. Senator Remmy (Harry Harvey of "Ace in the Hole") has hired a pretty stenographer, Evelyn Smith (Anne Jeffreys of "Dillinger"), to transcribe a telephone conversation with a cloak and dagger, National Security agent, James Blackton (Addison Richards of "Nick Carter, Master Detective"), who has urgent confidential intelligence about Nazi espionage agents in Washington, D. C. As the senator tells Evelyn, the Allies have defeated the Axis, but he argues Germans will simply go underground again and bide their time until they can organize a Fourth Reich. Initially, our heroine frets about her new stenographer's job because she lied to Remmy on her application. She told the senator she had worked for a close friend of his for four years. Actually, she had only worked for four days! Nevertheless, she shrugs off her trepidation about her 'white lie' as the Congressman ushers her out to his Malibu beachfront house on the Pacific Coast Highway where he plans to take a call from Blackton about the identities of these shrewd Fascists.
At first, Blackton planned to call Remmy from his hotel room and relay his information to the senator which Ms. Smith would transcribe. However, during his call with Remmy, Blackton spotted microphones dangling outside his room windows. Blackton and the senator decide it would be infinitely safer for the former to deliver this volatile findings in person. Consequently, Remmy dismisses Ms. Smith and arranges for Blackton to come out to his estate. Since he needs to speak with his agent alone, Remmy suggests Evelyn take a dip in the Pacific Ocean. He advises her she may find suitable swimwear in a storage closet. As it turns out, Ms. Smith has dreamed about frolicking in the Pacific, so she heads off for the beach. While she is splashing in the surf, a recently de-commissioned Marine Corps Sergeant, Johnny Christopher (Lawrence Tierney of "Dillinger"), spots her and cannot get out of his car and into his own swim trunks fast enough to speak to her. Wherever he goes, Christopher is followed by a feisty a Australian Terrier named BUnfortunately, Johnny doesn't get long enough to talk to her before she abandons the beach. She complains about too much freshness in the fresh air since his arrival. After plunging in the surf to cool his ardor, Christopher shrugs off his failure and returns to his jalopy with his feisty little dog named 'Bazooka.' Incredibly, Christopher realizes he has locked his keys in his car. He remembers Evelyn talking about working in a house up the road, so he knocks on the door and inquires after her. Surprisingly, the girl who shows up and claims to be Evelyn is a mysterious blonde who isn't half as pretty. The Nazis have already stuck. They have Evelyn bound and gagged, and they have dealt Remmy a near fatal blow on the head. They send Christopher packing. When our hero in his sodden swimwear gets back to his jalopy, he finds a motorcycle cop scrawling him a ticket for illegally parking on the highway. Christopher sounds off about the suspicious activities in the house up the hill and the inquisitive cop, (Pat Flaherty of "My Man Godfrey ") accompanies him to the house and inquires about Ms. Smith. Not only have the clever Nazis gotten somebody else impersonating Senator Remmy, but they have hung a portrait of the impersonator as the senator on the wall to seal the deal! The Motorcycle cop figures Christopher is a slap-happy Marine still suffering from dodging Japanese bullets. The cop refuses to break into Christopher's car for his keys but plans to call him a locksmith. After the cop tools off on his bike, Christopher marches back up the hill to investigate the matter. He knows something is amiss, and he winds up complicating things for the Nazis. They kill Blackton, but they cannot find the information he said he was taking to Senator Remmy! Lots of action and intrigue follows in this efficiently made and well-acted police procedural.
The Stickup (2002)
Nothing Is What It Initially Seems . . .
Writer & director Rowdy Herrington of "Road House"fame orchestrates a complicated but exciting heist thriller about an apparently rogue LA detective pursued by sheriff's deputies in a small town after a bank robbery. Ingenious best describes this entertaining neo-noir crime thriller that bristles with startling revelations. The reversals never seem to stop coming as a gallery of interesting characters clash. A small town degenerates after the success of a Native American casino that sends everything spinning out of control. The non-linear storytelling with its jumbled chronology will keep you guessing. Told with a smirk, "The Stick-Up" never loses momentum and constantly keeps you on your toes with a happy ending.
The Gladiator (1986)
Freeway Road Warrior of Justice!!!
Any movie "Bad Lieutenant" director Abel Ferrara helms is worth watching at least once, and his competently made-for-TV revenge melodrama, "The Gladiator" proves no exception. "Wiseguy" star Ken Wahl plays the hard-bitten protagonist, and he delivers a sturdy performance. As older brother Rick Benton, Wahl struggles to raise his younger sibling, Jeff (Brian Robbins of "C. H. U. D. II: Bud the Chud") without their parents. He decides to coach Jeff about how to drive since the lad has landed his learner's permit. Buckling up and cruising out into Los Angeles traffic, Rick reminds the fifteen-year-old to abide by the rules of the road. Suddenly, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, a sleek, black, 1969, Dodge Charger, looking souped up and sinister as a phantom, careens in behind them. After the aggressive Charger rams Jeff twice, the youth accelerates in a desperate bid to elude the homicidal driver. Sadly, Jeff floors it and speeds through an intersection. Out of nowhere, a semi-truck collides with him. Not surprisingly, Jeff dies in the horrendous crash. Fortunately, Rick awakens a couple of days later from a coma.
Now, our embittered protagonist embarks on a self-appointed mission to track down this anonymous felon known only as "The Skull." With the help of his long-time buddy Joe Barker (Stan Shaw of "Daylight"), Rick relies on his skill as a custom car designer to modify his two-door, pick-up truck, installing stronger suspension and heavier bumpers as well as equipping it with a police band radio. He searches for the murderous motorist who wheels around town deploying savage "Ben-Hur" blades that telescope from his front hubs during his death dealing escapades. Sometimes, this madman terrorizes other drivers for nothing more than either accidentally bumping his car or he careens up behind them and plows into them, running them off the road.
Meanwhile, an overworked detective, Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp of "Hickey and Boggs"), has little success with the case. After he recovers from the accident, Rick sits in on a support group of people who lost family members to drunk drivers. Initially, Rick suspected the dastard who brought about the death of his brother was a drunk. Later, he comes to the realization that this isn't the case. Here's the deal, however, the genuine culprit of this above-average, television quickie doesn't abuse alcohol! Instead, he is a hopeless psycho who preys at random on innocent, unsuspecting victims. By this time, Rick has begun a relationship with a late-night, radio talk show host, Susan Neville (gorgeous Nancy Allen of "RoboCop"), who juggles phone calls from a variety of listeners that are split along the lines of whether the self-professed "Gladiator" as Rick dubs himself is either a vigilante or a menace to society. Inevitably, he emerges as a celebrity in the sense that he patrols the roads to dissuade drunken drivers from swerving across lanes and killing people. Finally, Rick manages to thwart this madman during a climatic, slam-bang, demolition derby in an automobile junkyard. Moments before this showdown, Rick had phoned Detective Mason and identified himself as the "Gladiator." Like Michael Winner's "Death Wish" starring Charles Bronson, Rick takes it on himself to find his brother's killer. Unlike Bronson, Rick succeeds in bringing the lawbreaker to justice. Unfortunately, not only do we never get a glimpse of this fiend, played by professional stunt car driver Jim Wilkey, but also we never learn what fueled his road rage. For the record, Wilkey drove some of the vehicles in "Mad Max: Fury Road!" This is the only flaw in an otherwise white-knuckled thriller. Although it is a made-for-TV movie, Ferrara never lets the momentum stall in this gripping 94-minute tire shredder of an epic. Interestingly, Ferrara's film was initially supposed to unspool on the big screen instead of television.
The Bikeriders (2023)
Rumble on the Roads
Danny Lyon's 1968 photojournalistic book about a Chicago biker club inspired "Mud" writer & director Jeff Nichols to make "The Bikeriders," starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy. This nostalgic but lackluster, 116-minute epic chronicles the evolution of the fictitious Vandal's Motorcycle Club from its origins in the 1960s to the 1980s. Nicholas pays tribute to Martin Scorsese's classic Mafia crime thriller "Goodfellas" (1990) with the pervasive use of flashbacks, a gabby narrator, and patch work of character interviews to forge an ethnographic portrait of early biker subculture. Although Nicholas humanizes these counter-culture ruffians, letting then chew the scenery about themselves, the film seems to start and stall out and it never maintains sufficient headlong momentum. "Midnight Special" cinematographer Adam Stone, who has shot many of Nichols' films, lenses scenic long shots of these bikers as they cruise through sun-drenched, mid-western America. You can savor the spirit of freedom they bask in on these open roads. Nevertheless, the spectacle of these steel horses cannot compensate for the dire lack of drama. Mind you, gearheads and car-geeks will drool over vintage bikes and cars. Several bikers die tragically. Like Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), the cross-country heroes exploring America in "Easy Rider," the Vandals suffer fates nobody could foresee. One biker who swears he would die first rather than shed his colors capitulates at fadeout. Nobody is really happy long in this journey from one era to another.
"The Bikeriders" shares little in common with those genre-flavored exploitation biker pictures that followed the 1969 success of "Easy Rider." Primarily, Nicholas illustrates the origins of this Chicag0-based club. While watching the iconic black & white biker saga "The Wild One" (1951) on a small television in his family living room, trucker Johnny (Tom Hardy of "Venom") decides to launch his own bike riding club. Whenever anybody wants to challenge his leadership, Johnny promises to give them a chance to topple him. Eventually, Johnny buys a bar and holds meetings there with suds flowing. He installs a phone so anybody who gets arrested or injured in a fight can contact club members. Occasionally, we see Johnny and his followers rumbling through Chicago's concrete canyons in an impressive display of bikers riding in formation. The sight of these noisy choppers growling like mechanical lions captures the heart of a discontented twentysomething who shares Johnny's aspirations.
Meantime, the second protagonist is Benny (Austin Butler of "Elvis"), a quiet loner who would rather die than shed his colors. The opening scene in "Bikeriders" depicts the danger of wearing colors in a hostile setting. Benny suffers grievously at the hands of two obnoxious blue-collar thugs. The scene is brutal, perhaps the most visceral in the film, and Nichols reprises this gripping scene later. Watching that scene unfold when Benny refuses to forsake his colors looks like something in "Easy Rider." This is the show-stopping scene in a film that lacks narrative focus. Basically, Benny, Kathy, and Johnny amount to triangular protagonists. Benny and Kathy are an amorous couple, while Johnny is Benny's best friend. Meantime, a gallery of fascinating characters jabber about their exploits, but we rarely see them doing anything more than drinking and boasting. Occasionally, fights break out, but Johnny doesn't line up any kind of genre style enterprise, such as selling narcotics or robbing businesses.
"The Bikeriders" amounts to an inventory of scenes that resemble excerpts from a photo album. The chief drama here is Johnny's fateful decision to turn over the club to someone else since he lacks the vision to take it beyond a social group. The Vandals neither stick up convenience stores nor banks. They don't molest citizens, etc. Benny's worse crime is evading the police during a high-speed chase. They capture him because he runs out of gas! The early Vandals reminded me of Boy Scouts compared to those psychotic cretins that followed in their footsteps. Nicholas indulges in a peripheral kitchen drama when he introduces the chief villain, the Kid (Toby Wallace of "Dark Frontier"), who hails from a broken inner-city home. His father beats his wife without mercy. Repeatedly, the frustrated Kid approaches Johnny about joining the Vandals. Johnny rejects him twice. Eventually, the Kid challenges Johnny. Meantime, Nichols explores the lopsided romance between Benny and Kathy (Jody Comer of "The Free Guy"), with Kathy talking about them during her interviews. Largely speaking, "The Bikeriders" is filtered through Kathy's eyes. Most traditional biker movies are told from a male perspective, but everything here has a feminine slant. More often than not, these interviews feel like repetitive commercials that interfere with the flow of the action.
Mind you, the cast is impressive. As the Vandals' head honcho, Tom Hardy rules his riding club with a passion. Indeed, Hardy gives a marvelous, Marlon Brando-infused performance. After Benny is beaten down at a bar, Johnny and his riders destroy. Spectators stand in a crowd around the bar with firefighters and watch it go up in smoke. Benny emerges as Johnny's closest confidante, but he refuses to replace Johnny as the Vandals' leader. Most of the picnics that the Vandals have amount to garrulous, booze-fueled, gripe sessions. Michael Shannon has a wonderful scene where he explains how he was rejected for military service because he was branded "an undesirable." Ultimately, little about "The Bikeriders" qualifies as either nostalgic or dramatic. Not only does Benny refuse to be the leader, but he also lets Johnny and the Vandals down by not punishing the Kid. Altogether, "The Bikeriders" leaves you feeling indifferent about the fate of these hellions.
Nightfall (1956)
Taut Suspense and Sinister Characters in a Vintage Film Noir
A sub-genre of crime thrillers exists where the villains corner the hero but fail inexplicably to kill him. Dramatically, no hero can die before his time! This rule applies to heroines, too. Therefore, filmmakers must dream up a reasonable excuse to account for the protagonist's miraculous survival. "Out of the Past" director Jacques Tourneur's atmospheric but formulaic film noir "Nightfall," starring Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, and Anne Bancroft, bristles with sinister characters and suspenseful situations. About 40 minutes into this non-linear, black & white, exercise in tension and intrigue, our elusive hero, James Vanning (Aldo Ray of "The Naked and the Dead"), dodges two cold-blooded murderers. John (Brian Keith of "The Wind and the Lion") and Red (Rudy Bond of "On The Waterfront") are homicidal bank robbers. They lose control of their car and crash it through a railing, plunging the vehicle into a ravine. Vanning and his good friend, Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson of "Bachelor Mother"), are encamping near at a lake in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, when they heard the automobile crash. Driving over to investigate the accident, they spot Red and John trudging up the embankment. John is nursing an arm. Dr. Gurston puts John's forearm in a splint. Suddenly, John and Red brandish firearms and order Vanning and Gurston to drive them back to their camp site. After they park the car, Red shoots the doctor twice in the back with a rifle, polishes his prints off the weapon and pitches the rifle to Vanning. Tossing Vanning a rifle cartridge, he challenges him to try his luck. Predictably, Red shoots Vanning without a qualm.
Although he looked at Vanning's crumpled body, Red didn't carry out a close inspection. Apparently, when Red shot at him, the bullet chipped a rock, and the rock struck Vanning's head. Our unconscious hero lies half-strewn on his stomach with part of his forehead splashed with his own blood. Indeed, the blood on Vanning's inert body fools Red. Worse, not only do these two bank robbers leave Vanning behind alive, they also grab the wrong satchel. Instead of retrieving the one containing $350 thousand, they made a big mistake and took Dr. Gurston's medical bag. Eventually, the two killers realize the error of their way and set out to track down Vanning. Ironically, behaving like a good Samaritan cost the doctor his life. Now, poor Vanning is on the run from the two thugs. "Nightfall" qualifies as a film noir because it features a tormented protagonist. It seems Dr. Gurston was married to a younger woman who kept making passes at Vanning. He has several of her letters which might incriminate him to the authorities as the doctor's killer. So Vanning maintains a low profile so as not to arouse attention to himself. Later, he encounters a mysterious woman in a restaurant. As it turns out, she was used as bait to capture him. Most noir femme fatales are duplicitous dames that prey on these vulnerable heroes.
Since his near-fatal encounter with John and Red, Vanning has been keeping a low profile. At a bus depot, Vanning runs into a sociable passenger awaiting a bus, Ben Fraser (James Gregory of "PT-109), who works for an insurance company that is investigating the bank robbery that involved John and Red. Fraser has been shadowing Vanning and watching his every move. It doesn't take long for John and Red to run down Vanning. They pay a woman, Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft of "The Graduate"), to attract Vanning's attention in a bar. Dying for some companionship, Vanning takes Marie to dinner. Afterward, while they are walking outside on a sidewalk, John and Red appear. They send Marie on his way. She is a model for a fashion agency. Meanwhile, they take Vanning out to an oil pumping station and threaten to mutilate him in the station. Somehow, after taking a beating from the two thugs, Vanning manages to escapes from them. No sooner has he gotten away than he meets a loquacious fellow at a bus depot, Ben Fraser (James Gregory of "PT-109), who strikes up a conversation with him. Turns out Fraser is an insurance investigator who has been conducting surveillance on our protagonist. Later, in a restaurant, Vanning encounters a woman at the bar, Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft of "The Miracle Worker"), who confides in him that she cannot pay her bar tab, so he gives her some cash. Later, we learn Marie models apparel for a living. What our hero doesn't realize is she is supposed to led him right back to John and Red. They slam him in a car and drive out to a remote oilfield pumping station where they interrogate our hero about the whereabouts of a fortune in dough, i.e., their hold-up money. A vicious fight ensues, and Vanning is able to elude them and drive back into the city, drawn irresistibly back to Marie because he doesn't want anything to happen to her. They take on their own aboard a bus, and Fraser gets a ticket and follows them.
A minor gem featuring top-notch performances, "Nightfall" is one of those film noir you've probably never heard of that will surprise and delight you.