Three Afternoon Movies

This blog was begun Tuesday Night, March 10th :

I still don't have the Blu-Ray situation remedied, but tomorrow I will do some Googling and try to suss out how to deprogram the Spectrum remote from Pearl's tv set. That should solve the problem (he said hopefully) because the Blu-Ray player and tv have been successfully connected. All that is blocking their operation is the interference of the cable setup. See yesterday's blog for maximum confusion.

I wanted to watch TCM's nine o'clock feature : "Local Boy Makes Good"(1931), starring Joe E. Brown, he of the Wide Open Mouth, but unfortunately job concerns prevented it. I do have three other films in reserve, however, because I've been pounding serials the last several days during my afternoon breaks. I'll just give a brief synopsis of each, otherwise we'd be here all day. On Monday I watched "Terror By Night"(1946), another entry in the Sherlock Holmes franchise. Rathbone and Bruce are back, this time on a train. A world famous diamond known as The Star of Rhodesia has been stolen from it's owner, a wealthy London woman whose son was murdered during the heist. Holmes is certain the culprit is on board. No one is above suspicion, least of all Renee Godfrey, who looks enough like Patricia Morison from "Dressed To Kill" that you'll be doing a double take. It must be in Sherlock's contract to have a stunner in every picture. In any event, Miss Godfrey is traveling with a coffin, ostensibly containing the body of a relative, but Holmes suspects otherwise. Dr. Watson, meanwhile, discovers an old friend in one of the cabins and settles in for a game of gin.....and a drink of gin as well. I very much enjoyed "Terror By Night", though neither the script nor the production was as well developed as "Dressed" (reviewed here the other day). "Terror" was one of those "Ten Little Indians" kind of pictures where all the action takes place in one location, in this case the train. But it's a good story and has all the Sherlock Holmes trademarks of brilliant deductions, etc. I give it Two Solid Thumbs Up.

Yesterday afternoon I watched "Phantom of Chinatown"(1940), the final entry in my six film "Mr.Wong" dvd collection, purchased last Christmas. What's different about "Phantom" is that it's the only movie in the series that doesn't star Boris Karloff as the meticulous detective. Lo and behold, they got an actual Chinese actor to play the part, the great Keye Luke, who had a long and illustrious Hollywood career and was perhaps best known as the sagacious Master Po on "Kung Fu" in the mid-70s. In recent years, we've seen him in several early roles, most if not all of them in other serials such as the "Mr. Moto" series and even moreso in "Charlie Chan", where he played Number One Son several times. Long before he was bald and elderly (as he appeared in "Kung Fu"), he was slick haired and debonair. In his serial roles he spoke perfect English with a California accent, likely having been born here. In the roles I've seen, he usually played a detective or a wannabe, but was always as sharp as a tack, both in dress and intelligence. All of this should make him an interesting "Mr. Wong", should it not? Well, yes and no. The thing is that we're used to Boris, and even though Boris isn't Chinese, we are accustomed to the early motion picture practice of using Anglo actors for Asian roles (even though we know it's not cool by today's standards, but now we're getting off track). So yes, Boris isn't Chinese, but he's made up to be Chinese, and more than that, he's Boris Karloff, a great freakin' actor. He plays Chan in formal Chinese style, polite, deferential and highly inscrutable. We saw him in all of the first five "Mr. Wong" movies and enjoyed him in every one.

This does not take away from Keye Luke's lone performance as the ingenious San Francisco sleuth. It's just that he's 100% different than Karloff. He's short (almost tiny in comparison), he wears a well tailored suit as opposed to Boris's silk robes or old tweed coats, and most of all, he's young. He looks like a twenty-something here (actually 36). He speaks in a hip modern syntax, often throwing in a sarcastic joke that goes over the head of whoever it's aimed at. Luke's a good enough actor, but he just seems a little green to be playing a heavyweight like Wong. Anyway, the plot has him teaming with the beleaguered Captain Street of the SFPD (the returning Grant Withers) to solve the homicide of an archaeologist who'd just returned from Egypt after discovering an ancient scroll. To decipher it's secrets, the pair will enlist the help of the archaeologist's assistant, played by an early Asian actress named Lotus Long, whom we've also seen in the same "Chan" and "Moto" serials as Keye Luke. Plotwise, "Phantom" was one of the best in the "Mr. Wong" series, and once you get used to Luke in the title role, he's very good (just too young looking is the main problem). I loved "Phantom of Chinatown" and give it Two Big Thumbs Up, which goes for the entire dvd collection. Check out the "Mr.Wong" series, especially if you've seen Chan and Moto already.

Lastly, today I watched "The Fighting Gringo"(1939) from my nine film George O'Brien collection. These movies don't technically constitute a serial because Big George is playing a different character in each one, but they all have the same format and running time (59 minutes), and George is always in a similar Good Guy role, so I think of the films as cards from the same deck, as it were. In "Gringo", he plays the leader of a group of hired guns. As the movie opens, they are making their way across Iverson Ranch.....oops, I mean the plains of Arizona....when they come across a robbery in progress. A gang of bandits is holding up a stage, but they abort when they see O'Brien and his men riding in. Inside the stagecoach is a beautiful Senorita (played by Lupita Tovar, who died in 2018 at 106!, outdoing even Patricia Morison). The Senorita's father owns a rancho at the outskirts of town that is coveted by a conniving neighbor. She suspects the robbers were headed up by this dude, who was after the thirty grand in cash she was taking to Wells Fargo bank. The neighbor wants to bankrupt Senior del Campo, and if that doesn't work he's gonna bribe the local surveyor to move the boundaries of the rancho so that they fall on his land. In short, he's gonna get that rancho one way or another, and his plans are working until George O'Brien gets involved. You've gotta love George; he's built like a linebacker but has a smile that won't quit. As I mentioned in another review, he was a very good actor who starred in one of the greatest films ever made, the silent "Sunrise" by F.W. Murnau. Like Keye Luke, though his films are old he seems modern in every way. Unlike Keye, George is a big man, but he's so charming that he avoids macho cliches. You just can't help liking him, and he's not corny either. He's not above using a dirty trick or even a double cross if it'll help him catch the bad guys. I enjoyed "The Fighting Gringo" and give it Two Solid Thumbs Up. The only thing missing was the presence of Chill Wills, who played O'Brien's sidekick in all the other movies. I recommend the George O'Brien Collection most highly. He's my favorite Movie Cowboy so far. /////

Well that's all for the moment and we're all caught up. It's now Wednesday night. I was very excited to see the election results last evening, and I hope you were too. Biden has now basically eliminated Sanders from contention (hooray!) and it is time to focus one thousand percent on kicking Donald Trump's orange behind out out of the White House. We are seeing very high voter turnouts in state after state (see last week's blog about my voting experience), and again I predict that this is an indication that Trump is gonna get whupped come November.

For now, stay well, avoid the virus but don't give in to fear. In a month or two it'll be behind us, just like SARS, Ebola, Swine flu. Bird flu, H1N1 and every other "pandemic" the media hyped 24/7 to scare the daylights out of everyone, which is what they do, it's their job. Mine is to send you Tons of Love, and to see you back here at the Usual Time.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)