Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts
In this unofficial sequel to House of Horrors, the Creeper (Rondo Hatton) is back creeping about and periodically snapping people's spines. This time the character is given a name, Hal Moffet, and back story. Moffet was a cocky college football hero whose face was disfigured in a chemistry explosion [Hatton's disfigurement was due to acromegaly due to exposure to poison gas during WW1]. Unlike House of Horrors, which has a few interesting characters and flavorful performances, The Brute Man is comparatively dull and slow-paced. Aside from Hatton, who is fine if limited in the role of the Creeper [Fred Coby actually plays Moffet as a college student], the main character is Jane (Helen Paige), a blind piano teacher who hides Moffet and is befriended by him in turn. Tom Neal is one of Hal's old classmates, and Jan Wiley [Secret Agent X-9], in an especially weak performance, plays Neal's wife. Donald MacBride is the police inspector on the case. Hatton's Creeper character, or at least a variation thereof, also appeared in the modern-day Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death.
Verdict: Not the best of the Creeper. **.
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| Marcel (Martin Kosleck) admires his bust of the Creeper |
HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946). Director: Jean Yarbrough.
Starving artist Marcel De Lange (Great Old Movies' favorite Martin Kosleck) is about to commit suicide in despair when he stumbles across an injured man known only as the Creeper (Rondo Hatton). The Creeper had already committed a series of murders, snapping people's spines, and is presumed dead. Marcel uses the Creeper to get revenge on his enemies, especially the acidic critic Holmes Harmon (Alan Napier), who has no tolerance for the abstract. The main suspect in Harmon's murder, however, is commercial illustrator Steven Morrow (Robert Lowery of the Batman and Robin serial), who was to be the target of his venom in the critic's latest column. Another critic, Joan Medford (Virginia Grey), happens to be Morrow's girlfriend and a champion of De Lange's macabre sculptures. But when she gets too close to figuring out De Lange's deadly secret ... This is a snappy and suspenseful horror thriller, well-directed by Yarbrough, and with an excellent performance from Kosleck, and good back up from Hatton [who thinks his bust is "pretty"], a highly vivacious (perhaps too vivacious considering the goings-on) Grey, and a more than competent Lowery and Napier. Howard Freeman also scores as another art critic, Hal Ormiston, who participates in a scheme to catch the murderer. The beautiful model Stella is played by Joan Shawlee and Lt. Brooks is Bill Goodwin. House of Horrors is an unofficial sequel to the modern-day Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death, in which Hatton also played a Creeper who breaks spines. Oddly the opening credits of Horrors "introduce" Hatton as the Creeper. There were plans to make a series of Creeper films and turn Hatton into a horror star, but the poor fellow, who suffered from acromegaly due to exposure to poison gas in WW1, passed away before House of Horrors opened. Kosleck's most famous part was in The Flesh Eaters. Yarbrough directed She-Wolf of London and many, many others.
Verdict: Highly entertaining horror flick. ***.
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| Robert Mitchum and Laraine Day |
"How could I ever have liked you, Norman? -- you're arrogant, suspicious, neurotic!"
John Willis (Gene Raymond) is just about to marry his fiancee, Nancy (Laraine Day of Foreign Correspondent), when a psychiatrist named Blair (Brian Aherne) bursts in, tells him he was once married to Nancy, and that Willis will be making a terrible mistake if he goes ahead with the wedding. What follows is a long flashback -- interrupted by two flashbacks within the flashback -- in which Blair relates his history with Nancy to Willis, including how an artist named Norman (Robert Mitchum) told him that Nancy had knowledge of a certain crime ... Since all the plot twists are part of the fun of The Locket I won't say any more, only that the movie is certainly psychologically dubious, but nevertheless fascinating, and quite entertaining. Day gives one of her best performances, resisting all chances to chew the scenery, and making it clear how so many men could fall for her despite her, uh, problems. Raymond and Aherne are fine, but a miscast Mitchum really just walks through the role of Norman and gives us absolutely no sign of his emotional torment [which makes one of his actions more surprising but also less believable]. Henry Stephenson and Ricardo Cortez are swell in smaller roles, and Katherine Emery scores as Willis' mother, who knew Nancy as a child in a pivotal flashback sequence. Brahm also directed Hangover Square and many others.
Verdict: Unusual and absorbing melodrama with a fine lead performance. ***.
Anthony Waldron (Edmund MacDonald of Great Guns), who is presumed dead by the police, is holed up in his wealthy grandmother's estate with an evil brother and sister team who are helping him with his plans. Calling himself "the mysterious Mr. M," Waldron uses a drug called hypnotreme to keep the old lady (Virginia Brissac of The Scarlet Clue) compliant and get many others to do his bidding even while he piles up corpses in the river from his experiments. He is particularly interested in getting the plans for a device that will enable submarines to be as large as ocean liners and do more than forty knots an hour. But Waldron and his cronies get a surprise when somebody else calling himself "Mr. M" sends them recordings giving them orders and threatening to tell the cops Waldron is alive if they don't comply with his wishes. As the gang wonders who this new "Mr. M" could be, agent Grant Farrell (Dennis Moore) is on the case, especially after his brother, Jim (William Brooks/Ching), is hypnotized and killed; Farrell is aided by Detective-Lt. Kirby Walsh (Richard Martin) and insurance investigator Shirley Clinton (Pamela Blake of Ghost of Zorro).
The Mysterious Mr. M is an entertaining and suspenseful serial with Moore in good form as the hero, Waldron suitably gruff, and Jane Randolph [Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein] and Danny Morton [The Royal Mounted Rides Again] effective as the nasty brother and sister team. Byron Foulger [The Master Key] scores as Grandmother Waldron's lawyer, who nearly becomes a victim of Mr. M more than once. Memorable sequences include the fight between the Farrell brothers as electricity discharges all around them; a bit with a cigarette lighter that has a dart inside it; a cliffhanger concerning falling high-tension wires; and another in which Grant's car goes hurtling down a high shaft in a parking garage. The best cliffhanger -- one of the best ever, in fact -- has Waldron and Grant struggling on one parachute after they fall out of a plane even as a train races towards them on the ground below, with Grant eventually falling off the chute right into the path of the express!The serial also keeps you guessing as to the true identity of "Mr. M."
Verdict: Universal's very last serial is one of its best. ***.
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| Claudette Colbert |
On shipboard, Lee (Claudette Colbert) is romanced by Chris (Walter Pidgeon), who urges her to marry him instead of his "friend," Larry Addams (Richard Derr), to whom she is engaged. But Lee does marry Larry and finds herself trapped in a relationship with a neurotic, paranoid composer -- basically an asshole -- who takes a long time to finally dispose of himself. Chris comes back into Lee's life, but she resists him out of guilt. Another complication is that her step-daughter, Penny (June Allyson), thinks she's fallen in love with the much older Chris -- when she learns the truth of whom he really loves will she go the way of her father? The Secret Heart is an absorbing enough romantic melodrama, bolstered by some very good performances, especially from Colbert, Derr [Terror is a Man], Robert Sterling [Bunco Squad] as Lee's stepson and Patricia Medina as his fiancee. Lionel Barrymore is in Wise Old Owl mode as Penny's shrink, and Marshall Thompson is charming as a young man who is attracted to a dismissive Penny. June Allyson is not bad as Penny, although, as usual, she's a trifle cloying, and Pidgeon manages to hold his own with Colbert without being on her level. Elizabeth Patterson and Dwayne Hickman are also in the cast. Leonard also directed the far superior In the Good Old Summertime.
Verdict: Some people you can live without. **1/2.
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| Jennifer Jones watches as horse gives Gregory Peck a kiss |
DUEL IN THE SUN (1946). Director: King Vidor.
In post-Civil War Texas, the tempestuous "half-breed" Pearl (Jennifer Jones) comes to live with her aunt Laura (Lillian Gish) after the death of her father (Herbert Marshall), who was convicted of murdering her mother. Laura's husband, Senator McCanles (Lionel Barrymore) is an anti-Indian bigot who refuses to accept Pearl, and whose main occupation is keeping the railroad off of his property [leading to a tense confrontation between cowboys and train men halfway through the movie]. McCanles has two sons, the decent Jesse (Joseph Cotten) and the more unsavory Lewt (Gregory Peck). While Pearl falls in love with the kind Jesse, she can't fight her attraction to the sexy "bad boy," Lewt, creating a lot of problems, not to mention a highly perverse climax. Producer David Selznick was hoping for another Gone With the Wind when he made Duel in the Sun, but the film is almost forgotten. The acting in this entertaining "epic" is generally of the second-rate "Hollywood" variety across the board, but on that level it isn't bad. Jones [Love Letters] gives a good performance, although she looks almost ugly in some shots, and a miscast Peck [Mirage] does his best with a role he's really not suited for; neither Peck nor Jones are that good with transitions of mood, which occur frequently in their exchanges. Barrymore, Butterfly McQueen (who is great despite the patronizing attitude held toward her by both the other characters and the filmmakers), Charles Bickford (as one of Pearl's suitors), Otto Kruger, Charles Dingle as a sheriff, and Scott McKay as nasty Syd all make a favorable impression. Some beautiful cinematography from Lee Garmes and others. King Vidor also directed Beyond the Forest and the silent masterpiece The Crowd. Possibly the first of the "sex-westerns," as lust has a lot more to do with it than cow-punching.
Verdict: This could have been a lot better, but it certainly has its moments. ***.
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| Barry Sullivan and Belita in Suspense |
A down-and-out drifter named Joe (Barry Sullivan) gets a job hawking peanuts at an ice show. The star attraction is a blonde named Roberta (Belita), who is married to the owner of the show, Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker of Dr. Cyclops). Roberta fights her attraction to Joe until certain circumstances develop that lead the pair into some vaguely macabre situations ... Suspense does have some suspense of a minor kind -- and its main strength is that it's unpredictable -- but its chief flaw among many is that the central plot twist is so utterly implausible that it throws everything else out of whack. Joe is such a confusing and underwritten character that Sullivan, who has given some very good performances elsewhere, can do little but say his lines as written and try to deal with the contradictions [which might have been interesting in another movie] as best he can. Belita was basically a figure skater -- and a very good one -- and not a bad actress, either. She was similar in looks and deportment to Marsha Hunt. Unfortunately she got her start basically playing herself in movies from Monogram studios, so her career in films was a short one. Suspense is also a Monogram production -- and Belita's first thriller -- albeit it appears that the studio spent more money than usual on the picture. Dekker and Eugene Pallette [First Love] as a manager give their usual adept performances. A grown-up Bonita Granville [Nancy Drew -- Detective] plays one of Joe's former flames and is more than satisfactory. At least one of the big production numbers sort of stops the movie dead. Tuttle's direction is okay, but even Hitchcock might have had problems bringing this script to life. There is some mildly inventive business involving Roberta skating her way through a gauntlet of sharp swords, but not enough is done with it.
Verdict: Half-baked Alaska. **1/2.
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| Peter Lorre, Steve Cochran, and Bob Cummings as chauffeur |
Ex-serviceman Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) finds a wallet on the sidewalk and returns it to its owner, the quite unsavory hoodlum Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran). Roman, who has an associate named Gino (Peter Lorre) and a wife named Lorna (Michele Morgan), hires Chuck as his chauffeur. A peculiar feature of the limo is that Roman can take over the controls from the back seat whenever he wants. Roman dispatches a business rival by trapping him in his wine cellar with a vicious dog, so it's fairly likely that he won't have a good reaction when a desperate Lorna begs Chuck to help her escape to Havana ... The Chase begins well, with Cochran offering a chilling portrait of a glib sociopath, but it gets too tricky and an actual "chase" never really develops. Instead of a decent plot and some interesting developments, The Chase substitutes a lengthy dream sequence that serves little purpose besides confusing the viewer. Cummings is always miscast in film noir, but otherwise does okay, and Lorre simply isn't given enough to do. Michele Morgan is pretty and seems efficient enough, but she's also under-utilized. This movie goes nowhere slowly. Loosely based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich that just had to be much, much better.
Verdict: Cochran's picture -- and he can have it. **.
Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) has developed a new anesthesia (although if it only lasts for an hour it can hardly be used in most operations), and wants to test it on herself. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize that her assistant Arline (Hillary Brooke) has much more sinister plans. Like something out of an EC horror story from the fifties, Nora is a good person whose life becomes embroiled in tragedy due to the nasty actions of another person. [Unfortunately, this film doesn't have a clever or exacting EC payoff; in fact the ending may make you groan.] Marshall, who was married to William Holden for thirty years, gives a good performance, as does Brooke in one of her most unsympathetic roles. William Gargan is fine in an unusual turn as a doctor who's in love with Nora, and Ruth Ford [Lady Gangster] is vivid as a drunk woman who walks into Nora's car and later becomes a nuisance and worse. Strange Impersonation has an interesting plot and some good twists, but it's distinctly minor and not well developed. Mary Treen appears as an overly cheerful nurse and Lyle Talbot is a homicide detective. Mann later directed The Furies with Barbara Stanwyck and many others. Marshall starred as Singapore Woman five years earlier.
Verdict: Fraught with possibilities but too cheap and minor-league. **.