Odds and Ends : Three Recent Films, Bill Raynor and an Ancient Stone Cutter

Mopping up a few odds and ends from my recent time off : I finally saw "American Grafitti" after all these years. Yep, it was another of the all-time classics, like "Casablanca", that I'd inexplicably missed. I won't go into a long review, but I do think it's a perfect movie in every respect, something I'd say about very few films. For me, the nostalgia aspect was high, and I think that what I loved so much about it now was what caused me to avoid it in 1973. As a thirteen year old, I had no longing to look back at the early 1960s, an era I barely remembered. But childhood memories return as you get older, and now it seems like a magical time, a feeling that was captured in the movie. "Grafitti" also jump-started the 1950s retro craze in the mid-70s that culminated in "Happy Days". Another thing you notice about the movie is that George Lucas was a very talented writer/director of nuanced, character driven stories. In fact "AG" is the kind of coming of age comedy John Hughes or John Landis would later excel at, and here's Lucas doing it before either of them and creating a classic. Interesting to consider what he might've done careerwise, had "Star Wars" not become such a monolith. If, like me, you've somehow never seen "American Grafitti", watch it right away, even tonight. It gets my highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, and could not be more highly recommended. //// 

I also saw a British crime drama called "Moment of Indiscretion"(1958). Ronald Howard of the Sherlock Holmes TV series stars as "John Miller", a prosecutor who's never lost a case. He's been itching for some time off with his wife "Janet" (Lana Morris), whom he's rarely seen in the two years they've been married. But duty forever calls. When it does this time - in the form of another important case - she meets up with her ex-fiancee, who's phoned her just as Miller was leaving. Her ex is an oil driller who'll soon be moving to South America. He just wants to say goodbye to Janet, who was the love of his life before she married. She agrees to meet him - at his friend's apartment - and there's no hanky panky. He respects her marriage (though he was once a rival of her husband) and he leaves her after saying goodbye for the last time. They depart separately to avoid being seen together. "We don't want anyone getting the wrong idea", says the ex.

After he leaves, she waits a few minutes then exits the apartment herself. When she does, she witnesses the murdelization of a woman on the floor below. A man has stabbed her to death. Janet runs out of the building and goes home, shaken, but she can't tell the police or her husband what she's seen, because it will reveal her meeting with her ex. So she keeps it to herself in the hope that no one saw her leave the scene. However, she dropped a monogrammed handkerchief on her way out of the building. "Inspector Marsh" (our pal Denis Shaw) from Scotland Yard gets hold of the hankie, and by checking it with every last boutique in London, he's able to confirm her as the buyer.

Shaw then visits Janet to question her about the 'kerchief, and after her poker face fails, she confesses everything to the Inspector and her husband.

"Yes, I was in the building. I was meeting my ex-fiancee. There was nothing untoward, I just wanted to bid him farewell before he left for South America. I did witness the murder and that's my handkerchief. I must've dropped it when I ran away. But I saw the man who killed that woman! I could identify him if he's ever caught".

Now the plot gets interesting as Inspector Marsh takes her along to meet with the apartment's tenant, a "Mr. Corby" (John Van Eyssen). Upon being introduced to Janet, he smirks. She's shocked, frozen in place and stammering : "It's him! He's the man who killed her"! Then she faints.

Once she's led away, Corby - calm cool and collected - turns the tables and says that he saw Janet arguing with the dead woman a month earlier. Apparently they knew each other? Only if you believe Mr. Corby. The problem for Janet is that the Inspector does! So he arrests Janet Miller. She's in jail awaiting trial, and it looks like she might be going to prison for murder if her husband the prosecutor can't find evidence to refute Corby's "eyewitness" testimony. "Moment of Indiscretion" is more drama than thriller, and centers on Prosecutor Miller's loyalty to his wife Janet. It's a little slow in places and may have worked better at 60 minutes instead of 71, but it still merits Two Solid Thumbs Up and is definitely recommended. ///

Finally, we have "Stillwater", the new Matt Damon movie that I actually saw in a theater (Laemmle Encino) with my sister. It's based on the Amanda Knox story, but the film is more ambitious than that. It's almost like two movies in one, which accounts for it's 140 minute running time. Besides the Knox take, it's also about a father's emotional re-connection with his daughter, who he more or less abandoned by abdicating his responsibilities as a parent. Damon plays an oil field roughneck who got into drugs and alcohol. It's the nature of his job, always away from home, working with other tough men, partying hard at the end of the day. We never see this; when we meet Damon he's clean and sober and has been through hell. His wife committed suicide and his daughter's in prison in France, for a murder she swears she had nothing to do with. That's the Amanda Knox angle.

Damon goes to France, initially to visit his daughter, who he hasn't seen in years. At first, their reunion is tentative, but after she presents him with her version of events, he starts to believe there's a possibility of reversing the verdict. Even when the French defense attorney tells him to forget it, Damon forges ahead, conducting an investigation of his own. I won't tell you too much about what happens during his explorations in Marseilles, but it's not a part of France you'd want to visit.

Damon's a tough Oklahoman, though, and he wants his daughter out of prison, so he does what he has to do to get her freed. Along the way, he meets and becomes friends with a French theater actress, who lives next door to the apartment he's renting. More than that, he becomes a surrogate father to her tomboy little daughter, who loves all things American and takes to Damon like her hero. They become inseparable, like soulmates almost, and the movie diverts for about 45 minutes to examine how this new second family bears on Damon's effort to free his daughter. So you could almost say it's three movies in one.

I thought it was excellent. I'd never heard of it's director, Tom McCarthy, but then I saw he also directed "Spotlight", which won Best Picture in 2015. I also think that Matt Damon did a great job as "Bill Baker", the father who's trying to redeem himself by finally being present for his daughter, when she needs him the most. Damon should get an Oscar nod for Best Actor, I believe, and while he might not win (because there is always heavyweight talent up for the award), I think he's deserving of a nomination because he shines in a low key, restrained performance, much in the way Ethan Hawke did in his role as "Reverend Toller" in "First Reformed". The characters are vastly different, but it's not an easy thing to do, to bring depth to a non-showy role. So yeah, Damon deserves an Oscar nom, and besides that, he's just plain Always Good, in every movie he's in. He's one of those actors where, if you go see his movie, you know it's gonna be a good one, and so is the case with "Stillwater", which gets Two Big Thumbs Up from me.

As for Amanda Knox, I think she's a cuckoo bird. When her case was in the news, I - like everybody else - fell for the news media propaganda that she was 100% innocent, and a victim of the big, bad Italian prosecutor. But then I - like everybody else - saw how she acted during her trial, doing cartwheels at the courthouse and smooching with her Italian boyfriend (a co-defendant), when she was supposed to be brokenhearted over the dead girl. She looked and sounded like a nut job to me, and a spoiled one at that. Now, I think the truth is somewhere in between, in her case. She may not have committed the murder herself, but...........well, see the movie. Kudos to the filmmakers for not flinching. /////

Other odds 'n ends : I have some full season dvd collections of The Loretta Young Show, which I bought a while back because I thought it'd be a nice, old-fashioned show to watch with Pearl once in a while. One night last week we were watching an episode called "My Favorite Monster" about a little girl who can't tell the difference between TV and real life. It was very clever, almost like an episode of Twilight Zone, and when the credits appeared at the end, it said "written by William Raynor". "Wow"!, I said to Pearl. "Bill Raynor again"!

Those who follow the blog will know that Bill Raynor lived right across the street from us (and just around the corner from Pearl and her family) when we lived in Reseda from 1953-1967. He was also a talented amateur photographer who took my baby pictures. He was a screenwriter by trade, and in addition to writing for television he also wrote several movie scripts, including some classic sci-fis that we watched last year. "Wow", I said again to Pearl. "He probably wrote that show about a hundred yards from here". If that. You could throw a rock from Pearl's yard to the old Raynor house. Our little corner of Reseda wasn't exactly Hollywood Central, but we did have a cool little grouping on our street, with actor Richard Reeves and Bill Raynor living next door to one another, and Dad (and us) across the street. Dad of course worked for ABC Television, then Deluxe Laboratories and 20th Century Fox.

And finally, something I've been blowing my mind on. During my most recent break, I went for my usual hikes, at Aliso Canyon, O'Melveny Park and Santa Susana State Park. One day, out at Santa Su, I went off trail a little ways to check out an old metal frame that's bolted into the rock. It looks like it once held a sign, maybe for the shooting range that was located on the land back in the 1950s. I've seen it dozens of times before as I walk down the trail, but for some reason this time I diverted to inspect it, probably cause I'm interested in the history of the place and I wanted to see if it had any markings. It's elevated from the main trail, about 30 feet above it, so you go up a little hillside to get closer. After checking out the frame and finding nothing special (though I'd still love to know it's history), I continued around the side of the small hill, being careful to stick to patches of bare earth because there's no trail up there and you don't wanna chance a rattlesnake.

In that regard, it's a good idea to look down, to keep your eyes on the ground, and when I'm in exploratory mode I usually do that anyway, because ever since I read a book called "Forbidden Archaeology" by Michael Cremo, I've been interested in Indian artifacts. Dad used to talk about finding arrowheads in the woods of northern Indiana when he was a boy, and in recent years, after reading that book, I've been hoping I might find something too, so every now and then on a hike, I'll look down and scan the trail, and just off to the sides, for the heck of it. This time, I was off trail, and in an area I hadn't walked before (or if I did, it was when I was new to the park back in 2014). And as I walked slowly, past the metal frame and around the back of the small hillside, I saw a chipped black rock. Now, of course there are rocks strewn all over the landscape at Santa Su, from pebbles to boulders the size of houses. But this black rock caught my eye because of it's shape. It had sharp edges, and while that's not unusual, it also had a low-angled pyramid shape on top. "OMG", I thought, as I bent down to pick it up. I wanted a closer look because it resembled some of the rocks in my "Forbidden Archeology" book. When I held it in my hand, it fit, like a tool. There was a space for my thumb, and my index finger folded comfortably around the side.

But what blew my mind was a closer examination of the edge. One edge had been "worked", as the archaeologists call it, meaning that the rock has been chiseled down to a sharp edge on one side, for the purpose of cutting or scraping. On this rock you can see the chisel marks, four of them (about 1/3 inch in size), indicative that the rock was indeed "worked" for a stone cutting tool. The marks, when combined with the rough pyramidal shape of the top and the space for a thumb grip, leave no doubt that what I found is a stone cutting tool. The only question is.....how old is it?

The Santa Susana Mountains and the Chatsworth Hills were inhabited by the Tataviam Indians prior to white settlement in the Valley. I don't know their timeline, or when they left, but certainly by the 1880's, when the railroads began to come in, they were sophisticated enough to be using modern tools (at least I would imagine). What I'm saying is that I doubt a Tataviam would still be chipping with stone tools in the 1800s. Or even the 1700s for that matter.

The ancestors of the Tataviam and also the Fernandino and Gabrielino Indians say that their people inhabited the area for 8000 years (freakin' amazing), and indeed there is an ancient cave painting on the property of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, where rocket engines were once tested. That painting is estimated at 3000 years old. There are other pictographs that are newer, just a few hundred years old, but it demonstrates the duration of the tribes in that area.

In "Forbidden Archaeology", stone tools of the type I'm describing originated in the Neolithic Age, which (depending on your Google link) began anywhere from 3000 to 14,000 years ago. The Indians in Santa Su were there for 8000 years. So what I'm wondering is when was this rock made? Who "worked" it, who chiseled it into a cutter, when did they do it, and most of all........how long was it sitting there on the ground before I found it?

Remember, it was off trail, in a park few people visit anyway, and the park itself was not open to the public until the 1990s. So was the cutter made a couple hundred years ago........or several thousand? And had it been sitting in one position all that time, or at least in the same area (accounting for rains, earthquakes, etc)?

The sandstone at Santa Susana has been there for 80 million years and was once at the bottom of an ocean. That blows my mind every time I'm out there. But now.....this cutter.......someone actually made it, and used it. Probably a few thousand years ago.

That blows me off the freakin' map. /////

That's all I know for today. I send you tons of love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Honor Blackman in "Serena", and "A Strange Adventure" starring Jan Merlin, Ben Cooper and Marla English

In scouring the lists for British Crime Films, I was able to come up with "Serena"(1962), a nifty "Laura" knockoff that relies on expository dialogue. "Howard Rogers" (Emrys Jones) is an artist who's making out with his model as the movie opens. He's estranged from his wife "Ann" (Honor Blackman), and when the model goes home, Howard is visited by an "Inspector Gregory" (Patrick Holt) from Scotland Yard, who inquires of his whereabouts that afternoon. "I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, but your wife was found dead. It appears she's been murdered", the Inspector intones flatly.

Howard's got an alibi, and in fact he's got two. One is his model, the other is his gun club. Yes, he's a firearms enthusiast, but no, he didn't kill his wife. Other members of the gun club can confirm his presence.

A great line of dialogue must be noted : "Isn't it rather unusual for an artist to be interested in guns"? - The Inspector.

But it appears Mr. Rogers is telling the truth. He cooperates with The Yard in every way. The Inspector then asks him to come along to the morgue. "I apologize again, but we need you to identify the body". While looking it over, Rogers notes a missing detail. "This can't be my wife! She had a birthmark on her left leg".

The Inspector then drives Rogers back to his studio. He's feeling good, knowing his wife must still be alive, and when they enter, there she is, waiting for Howard in the flesh. Now the question becomes "who, then, is the dead woman, and what was she doing at Ann's house"?

Ann Rogers thinks she knows. Though the woman's face has been obliterated by a shotgun blast (sorry for the graphic detail, but I didn't write the doggone thing), thus making identification difficult, she was wearing Ann's clothes when she died. "I have to confess, she's a friend of mine. Her name is Claire Matthews. Howard knew her too, she was one of his models. I had asked Claire to stay with me and indeed to impersonate me, to follow Howard around dressed as me, because I wanted him back".

I must step in to opine that this bit of plotting is convoluted, and a clearer explanation is best left to Inspector Gregory in the movie.

Suffice it to say that Ann's friend Claire appears to be the dead woman. As for who killed her, the Inspector suspects the model that Howard was making love to at the beginning of the movie. Her name is "Serena Vaughan". We never see her, so there's no acting credit to display, but the Inspector thinks that Serena, eager to marry Howard, wanted to kill his wife to get her out of the way. Only instead of shooting Ann, she got the wrong woman - Claire Matthews - who was doubling for Ann in a ruse.

It's good stuff, very Sherlock Holmesian - Holt is exceptional as the all-business Inspector - and a monkey wrench is thrown into the works when Ann's lawyer shows up. He'd originally gotten the call when it appeared she was dead. Now he's consulting with Howard and the police on how to disperse her will. It seems Ann was a very wealthy woman......or still is......or something. And what happened to Serena Vaughn? She's disappeared from the Earth.

As I say, "Serena" is written with a nod to "Laura", one of the all-time great Film Noirs starring Gene Tierney in the title role, as a woman who goes missing and is presumed dead. "Serena" even has a jazzy, romantic theme that recurs throughout the movie, just like Laura's theme did in that film. It's not as well developed as "Laura", nor does it have the same production values (it's an hour-long programmer rather than a first feature), but the use of exposition is quite clever, as delivered by Inspector Gregory and his assistant "Sergeant Conway" (Bruce Beeby).

Two Big Thumbs Up for "Serena".  ////    

The previous night we watched an excellent American crime film from director William Witney, one of Tarantino's favorite filmmakers. We saw Witney's work about a month ago in "The Cat Burglar", and he's quite good, especially as a technician. In that sense he has the skills of an A-list director. He's not bad with his actors either, considering that they're all B-grade (call them B-minus), and I think it's here, in films like this, where Tarantino gets his inspiration for urgent, stilted dialogue, in which characters speak lines they'd never say if a screenwriter hadn't written them down. QT took this kind of over-literate dialogue to the max in "Pulp Fiction", but it's clear he got it from his directorial heroes, like Witney, who weren't trying to be ironic but only to make the best film from their available budget and talent.

I must jump in to say "God save us from ironic filmmakers and artists of all kinds. Thank You, God".

Well anyhow, "Harold Norton" (Ben Cooper) is a young man who lives and works at a Studio City motel owned by his mother. As the movie opens, he's catering to "Lynn Novak" (Marla English), a voluptuous woman about his own age who's just gotten out of the swimming pool. Lynn asks Harold to towel her off. She's sultry, there's innuendo in her voice and she's up to something, playing Harold in some way because he's innocent and clean cut.

His mother intervenes. "Stop mooning over that actress and get up there and clean room 19".

Harold protests : "She's not an actress, Mom, she's a nightclub singer".

"Oh really? Well that's even worse", says Ma, who really thinks Lynn is a prostitute.

Soon enough, two men arrive, supposedly members of Lynn's "jazz band". In reality they're hoodlums who are planning an armored car robbery. There was to be a third man in the group, but he got busted on their way to California and is locked up somewhere in the Midwest. He'll become a red herring later on, but for now he's a threat, because the other two guys are driving his car, which connects them to a felon.

Harold notices this when he valet parks the car for the "band members". He's got a crush on Lynn, and asks her if she knows the car is hot. "The registration's in another man's name". Of course she's aware of this but can't tell Harold, because her partners have noticed that Harold's a hot rodder, a fast car aficionado, and they're planning to use him as a getaway driver when the Brink's job is done. Completing the plan is the Brink's driver himself. He knows the crooks and is in it for half the take.

The job is pulled, it goes off well, until Harold is pulled over for speeding. The crooks got more than they bargained for by forcing him to be their driver. He exceeds 110mph in the escape, and now the motorcycle cop has other news : "Are you Harold Norton? Your mother has put out a missing persons report on you (he's a minor) and I've gotta take you in".

The crooks are in the back seat, playing non-chalant, but when the cop tells Harold to follow him back to the station, "Al Kutner" (Jan Merlin) - the head honcho -  speaks up. "Excuse me, Officer? I'm thinking we'd better let someone else drive. After all, Harold here almost got us killed, driving recklessly like that. Would it be okay if our friend Phil drives? We'd all be a lot safer that way". "Phil" (Nick Adams) is Kutner's henchman. He gets behind the wheel and starts following the cop along a winding country lane. Then, at Al's command, he runs the policeman into a ditch and they head up to the mountains, to the Angeles National Forest by way of a closed mountain road.

At the summit they stop a weather station, run by the brother/sister team of "Luther" and "Terry Dolgin" (Peter Miller, Joan Evans). Terry knows Harold from his hot rod exploits in the Valley (the movie is set in Studio City). She's secretly in love with him - screenwriter's coincidence - but the bad guys take over the cabin and plan to stay the winter. Harold is forced to play along. They plan to stay for five months. then escape over the High Sierras. "The cops'll never find us by then". It's an epic set-up with a dazzling location, worthy of an A list picture, and Witney uses the mountain hideaway to create a series of power struggles, not only between the crooks and the good guys, but among the Brink's robbers themselves.

Far away from the threat of police intervention, Al Kutner's sociopathic tendencies come to the fore. He's played to the hilt by Jan Merlin, a toothy blonde Nordic type whom you've seen in many a movie and tv show. He almost always played a villian, and he's in Full Psycho mode here, beating and threatening the weather station siblings and Harold, and ordering around his sidekick Phil and Lynn, his moll. She in turn wants to protect Harold, because she feels guilty for involving him (shades of "The Secret Place" from the other night), and she's also jealous of Terry Dolgin, whose love for Harold is now out in the open and reciprocated. Only Kutner's animal aggression and the fact that he's the only one with a gun are preventing everyone from ganging up and killing him.

As the months pass, the victims grow desperate, fearing that when Spring comes, Kutner will shoot them all before escaping. Luther and Harold devise a scheme using the weather station's two-way radio. Assisted by Terry, they are able to send a message to the outside world without Kutner knowing.

Director Witney then stages an impressive endgame, having a snowmobile tractor come up the mountain to rescue the hostages. This reminded me of Scatman Crothers in "The Shining", except that this tractor is twice the size, and photographed from the ground up, to make it look huge. As it bounces around in the snow, Phil the sidekick tries to steal it. He has his own scheme up his sleeve, involving the discovery of a uranium deposit in a nearby hill.   

That's all I'm gonna tell you, but it's a very inventive plot and the actors milk it for all it's worth. Regarding the mountainous terrain of the Angeles National Forest, I want to add that I hope hope hope someone is gonna make a movie out of "Norco '80", the book that was published last year about the notorious Norco bank robbery, which also came to a conclusion in the ANF. There's something spooky about the mountains up there, as anyone who's ever driven the Angeles Crest Highway can attest.

Two Huge Thumbs Up for "A Strange Adventure". It was posted by a Youtube channel called Kino Domain, and I don't know how they obtained it, but the print is not only razor sharp, it also fills the computer screen, just like a widescreen dvd. It looks brand new. Don't miss it! /////  

That's all for the moment. I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you tons of love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

John Payne in "99 River Street", and "Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence" starring Glenn Ford

We're back to American Noir, and this one's pretty high concept. It's also really convoluted, and while it's easy enough to follow as a movie, I don't know how well the numerous twists and turns will translate to the confines of the blog. I'll do my best to review it for ya, but forgive me if I can't sufficiently boil it down.

We're talkin' "99 River Street"(1953). John Payne is "Ernie Driscoll", a hard nosed boxer who's just lost a bout for the heavyweight championship. As the movie opens, he's reviewing the fight on tv, some sports show is broadcasting it as a rerun. The announcer notes that in addition to losing, Ernie was also suspended by the boxing association because of damage to his eye. He's in danger of a torn retina, he can't fight for a year. To make ends meet, he's been driving a cab.

This is all a backdrop for his wife "Pauline" (Peggy Castle) to give him grief. She's a bimbo, a gold digger boxing groupie who waited at his dressing room when he was up-and-coming. She slept with him to marry him and now that he's a has-been, she can't wait for a divorce. Ernie's an earnest Joe, and hopes to win back Pauline's heart. He tells her he'll save his money to buy a gas station and earn his living that way. "It'll make us a lot of money", he promises. But it's not just about the money with Pauline (though it's definitely that, too). It's also the prestige. She sought Ernie out because she thought he'd become champ. Now that his career is finished she doesn't want him.

You'd think Ernie would give up, but he doesn't. He wants Pauline to love him, so he buys her a nice box of candy on the advice of his dispatcher. But just as he comes home to deliver it, he sees her making out with another man, the boyfriend he didn't know she had. Instead of confronting them, he drives off in a rage.

Back at the taxi dispatch, while Ernie is stewing, "Linda James" (Evelyn Keyes) shows up. She's an actress that Ernie knows from the local coffee shop. Linda's beside herself with worry and wants Ernie's assistance. "Please, Ernie! I need your help.....I......I just killed a man"!

Ernie is so shocked by her statement that he forgets all about his wife. He asks Linda for details and they run down the street to a theater, where she says the killing occurred. "I swear it was in self defense", she tells him. The body is lying on the stage. "He's the director of the play I auditioned for. The long and short of it is that he said I'd won the part, but now I owed him a favor. I'm not that kind of woman, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. Finally he grabbed me and I didn't know what to do, so I picked up a pipe that was leaning against the wall and I hit him with it. Now he's dead! Oh, Ernie.......what should I do? I'm scared to go to the police.......oh please help me, please tell me what to do".

Ernie offers Linda his advice, which is to go to the police and tell the truth. "It was self defense. The guy deserved it". But Linda says the cops won't believe her. "So many girls in this business are like that, you know? They'll play that game to get parts. It's accepted. The police will think I'm that way, too, and that I killed him cause I was mad about not getting the role". She asks Ernie if he'll help her hide the body, and of course he's reluctant to do so. While he's hemming and hawing, Linda grows hysterical. Just when it seems she's gonna lose her cool completely........the lights go on, someone says "Fantastic"!, the dead body gets up off the floor and it's the director of the play, who isn't dead after all.

The play's producer walks down the aisle and steps up onstage to join the director and Linda, who is beaming. "I told you she was a terrific actress"!, the director exclaims. The producer agrees. "As far as I'm concerned, she's got the part, in this play and any other I'm involved in"! Everyone's thrilled, except for Ernie, who's just been played for a chump. He scowls at Linda. "Thanks for using me to advance your career". When she tries to placate him, he gets even madder. Thinking of his wife, he says "I've got someone like you at home, who only thinks of herself. I don't need two of you in my life". Then the producer insults Ernie by offering him twenty bucks for his trouble. This sends Ernie over the edge and he punches out the two men. Because he's a boxer, his punches do damage. Later on, the producer and director will file assault charges against Ernie, but mainly for publicity. "Just think of the ad copy", says the producer. "A play so convincing, you can't tell the difference from real life"!

I told ya this was gonna be convoluted. But you don't know the half of it. 

Linda feels terrible about deceiving Ernie and even worse now that he's got an assault charge hovering over him. She comes back to the dispatch and pleads for a chance to redeem herself. Ernie won't listen. "You wanna make it up to me? You can make it up by leaving me alone"! Linda's distraught and follows Ernie to his cab. When she opens the back door to get in, a body falls out - a real body this time - and it's the body of Ernie's wife! Holy Smokes! Now the tables are turned and he needs Linda's help. He forgets all about his anger toward her, muttering "Linda, I......I didn't do it".

"I know you didn't", she replies. "The question is 'who did' "?

"I think I know", says Ernie, reconsidering the boyfriend he saw his wife with earlier.

Linda becomes his partner, helping him to solve the crime while they stay one step ahead of the police, who want Ernie on the assault charge. They discover that Pauline's boyfriend is a guy named "Victor Rawlins" (Brad Dexter), a grinning diamond thief. I must cut in here to note that we have a surplus of diamond thieves of late. Must've been a popular Villain Model at the time. At any rate, Victor is a particularly bad guy, a big mofo and a sociopath. He acted like he loved Pauline (we saw the two of them together before Ernie did), but when his fence said he wouldn't pay because a woman was involved, Victor simply murdered her with no compunctions. Then he put her body in the back of Ernie's cab, to frame him. Now Victor has returned to see "Christopher" (Jay Adler), the fence who works out of a pet shop.

"I got rid of the dame, I want my fifty grand". But Christopher is not a man you can bargain with. Once a deal has gone sour, it's overwith. "I'm sorry Victor, but you should've thought of that before. You know I don't deal if a woman's involved. It screws things up, loyalties, you understand".   

"But I told ya, I got rid of her. She can't possibly talk. Just give me my money and we're done".

Christopher is a small man, in late middle age, so Victor thinks he can bully him. But he's making a mistake, because Christopher is a Peter Lorre type, and as everyone knows, Lorre is the absolute Last Man on Earth you should ever mess with, because he will Plan Your Demise as if it's The Most Important Matter in the History of the World, and he has infinite patience. In Christopher's case, he also has Jack Lambert for a henchman, and as everyone also knows (or at least every casting director), Lambert is the last man in motion pictures that you ever want to get into a punchout with, because he's never lost one. Between the two of them - Christopher and Lambert - they've pretty much got the bases covered. Victor doesn't yet see this, but he's gonna find out. 

I hope this is making even one iota of sense. 

What it all boils down to, is that Ernie is trying to avoid the cops, as - in addition to the earlier assault charge leveled by the theater people - he's being framed for the murder of his wife. He's got Linda the actress on his side, as well as his dispatcher and fellow cabbies, who assist by misdirecting the cops. Ernie's also trying to track down Victor, so he can prove his innocence in the murder. Victor, in turn, is being trailed by Peter Lorre and Jack Lambert, who want their 50 thou back.

So you've got three entities - the Payne/Keyes coupling, the Lorre/Lambert nexus, and Victor as the lone ranging psychopath and they're all converging on each other. Many Epic Punchouts take place en route (and a cautionary note is in order because these punchouts are extraordinarily brutal).

It's a good movie, entirely implausible but well directed by Phil Karlson and well acted all around. You could consider it a forerunner of today's hipster Retro-Noir, though by itself, it's not trying to be hip in any way, just super complex.

It's traditional overall, in the sense that the bad guys get what's coming to them, and Ernie finds redemption in a chance for true love. Watch it for yourself and see. Two Big Thumbs Up for "99 River Street". ///// 

The previous night we had another genre shift, this time due to a Youtube recommendation. "Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence"(1939) is a Depression-era road movie with a social conscience, as you might expect from a film written by Dalton Trumbo. Glenn Ford, only 23 and in his feature length debut, stars as "Joe Riley", a New York City sales clerk who's saved his money to buy a ranch in Arizona. In a terrific opening scene, he explains to a street cop why he's leaving the big city. I won't give line-for-line dialogue, but the gist is that he's tired of working in a warehouse, earning pennies on the dollar for the big shots. He wants to live where the air is fresh and the land wide open, where he can be his own boss. He's not afraid of hard work, he just doesn't want anyone telling him what to do. On his ranch, he'll be the shot caller. Now all he's got to do is get there.

The next time we see him, he's hitchhiked his way to Cleveland, Ohio where he stops at a diner in Newhall, California for a bite to eat. There he meets "Tony" (Richard Conte), a train hopping vagabond. Tony tells Ford he's traveling the wrong way. "Hitching's dangerous, brother. You never know who you're riding with, and even if the guy's okay, you can only do a couple hundred miles at best. You say you're goin' all the way to Arizona? Take it from me, the train's the way to go. Getcha there in two days". Ford asks him if train-hopping isn't as dangerous as hitchhiking, or even moreso, but Conte provides a good argument, and he looks pretty clean for a hobo (i.e. he looks like Richard Conte), so Ford joins him on the next choo-choo that passes by. 

I must break in here to say that The Great Mystery of Life is answered by the words "Got to do with where choo-choo go". But you already knew that.

In their freight car, Ford and Tony are startled when a hatch opens. Is it a vicious train bull, like Shack from "Emperor of the North"? If so, they might be dead meat, but it's only a young man with a funny accent, who's equally down on his luck. They allow him to stay, and in the process discover that he's a she. In this respect we wonder if Trumbo is paying homage to the Louise Brooks character in "Beggars of Life", which we saw and reviewed about three years ago. She also dressed as a boy, which a young woman traveling alone would do for obvious reasons. In the current film, "Anita Santos" (Jean Rogers) is an illegal immigrant from Spain, and again we have Trumbo - later to become the political poster boy for Hollywood Blacklist commies - taking on a social issue years ahead of when it would hit mass awareness.

A train bull eventually does come, and the three are forced to jump from their freight car. Wandering beside the tracks they come across a hobo camp, in the wilds of Saugus, Kansas. There they meet Tony's old mentor "Professor B. Townsend Thayer" (Raymond Walburn), a former educator turned professional vagrant. He's good at living free and runs an honest camp; no thievery, no drunks. Some of his campers are pretty rough customers, however. During their first night in camp, "Hunk" (Ward Bond), the Professor's enforcer, finds out Anita is female. He tries to rape her; Tony and Ford beat him up. The travelers then leave, with the Professor in tow. His doesn't want to stay in his dangerous camp, and besides, like Ford and Tony, he's interested in the wide open West.  

The group is now four, and the men have to protect Anita from the Immigration authorities. Word's gotten out that she's illegal. A local Saugus sheriff, trying to be helpful, tells them that one way for Anita to avoid deportation is to get married. The obvious candidate is Glenn Ford but he doesn't want it. "I'm self made and self reliant"!, he says. He envisions Anita dragging him down, but really he's afraid of domestication. At this point, the film's producer kicks in with a romantic subplot ("Hey, we've gotta sell tickets to this thing"!) : boy rejects girl, boy strikes out on his own, boy sees his dream go down the tubes, girl rescues him at the end cause she's from Spain and knows about desert farming. Translated, that means that Ford separates from Anita and the Professor after Tony winds up in the hospital. He feels bad about leaving, but there's no way he's gonna get married. So he jumps another train and makes his way to Arizona, where he locates his ranch. Now remember, he bought it sight unseen, so when he gets there and discovers it's twenty acres of dust, he's devastated.

That bring us to the return of Anita (girl rescues boy at the end). She's followed him to Arizona, not to badger him to marry her, but to help on his ranch. "I thought you might need some assistance. You can't work the land alone". She wants to repay him for standing by her in their travels. Ford is dismayed because the soil's all dried out. He won't be able to grow the corn he envisioned. "But that's a Midwestern crop", Anita tells him. "Out here, you can grow oranges, olives and tomatoes. I should know, I grew up on a farm in Spain, on land just like this"! And that's the happy ending, putting a Hollywood bow on the Grapes of Wrath-ish message.

It's a wonderful little film, very folksy and entertaining rather than depressing despite the subject matter. The travails are kept light, and the whole thing rests on Glenn Ford's handsome-but-casual appeal and the overall acting. Ford was a heck of a different performer as a young man : charming, witty and charismatic, and thin as a rail. When he aged, he was still a great actor, but he turned hard looking and crusty, and his characters were taciturn. Must've been a heavy smoker and drinker, but then.....weren't they all? 

"Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence" benefits from Dalton Trumbo's very tight 62 minute script that, while short on plot, manages to develop fairly complex characters in a number of scenarios as they cross the open country.

I give it Two Big Thumbs Up. ////

So there you have it once again. I'm still on the lookout for British Crime Thrillers, but as always, the law of diminishing returns is kicking in. We'll see what we can find.....and oh yeah! - I forgot to mention that I saw Ron Foster in an episode of "The Virginian"! He had a substantial role as the partner of a con man (Steve Forrest), who's come to Medicine Bow to scam the local bank on a phony oil discovery. But I mean, imagine that. Just when I'd given up on finding any more Ron Foster movies, there he is in an episode of The Virginian. Miracles never cease......

That's all I know for tonight. I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Paul Schrader's "First Reformed", and "The Secret Place" with Belinda Lee

Last night we had a total departure from our regular programming with a relatively new movie, entitled "First Reformed"(2017), which Grim loaned to me. Since we both like Paul Schrader, who wrote and directed the film, I agreed to give it a go. Ethan Hawke stars as "Reverend Ernst Toller", the minister at a historical Protestant church in upstate New York. Not long after the movie opens, he's visited by a new parishioner named "Mary Mensana" (Amanda Seyfried). She wants the Rev to call on her husband (Phillip Ettinger), who's back home after a prison stay in Canada. He's an environmental activist who's willing to get arrested for his beliefs. Now, though, he's acting strange, despondent and even more vocal than usual. For Seyfried, the issue at hand is that she's pregnant and her husband wants her to get an abortion. He doesn't believe that children should be brought into such a messed up, disintegrating world. When Hawke does visit him, he starts right in, rattling off all the woes caused by climate change.

"So you see, Reverend, it's immoral to have a child, when the planet won't be habitable by the time he or she is twenty".

Hawke agrees with his sentiments about the climate, and acknowledges the science, but he disagrees with the husband's conclusion. "Surely man has faced crises of equal weight. What about the Ice Age, or the two World Wars just in the past century? What if the men and women who lived through those experiences had chosen to have no children? We might not be talking now. Despair, while understandable from an emotional standpoint, is never the answer. We must always have faith, and hope".

Their conversation is a lengthy scene, and the husband is never swayed by the Reverend's argument. His wife continues to worry about him (she won't go through with the abortion), and one day she calls Hawke back while her husband is out of the house.

"Reverend, I need you to come over right away. I have to show you something. I'm really scared now, and I need your advice". When he gets there, she takes him into the garage (American pronunciation), and pulls a box from a shelf. In it is a suicide vest. "I know I should call the police", Seyfried says, "but I don't want him sent back to prison. Can you help me, Reverend? Tell me what I should do".

Hawke covers for her, and her husband, by removing the vest from the house, vowing to remain silent on the matter. "However", he adds, "if you discover any more explosives or anything dangerous, call the police at once".

We see that Hawke's a drinker, and he's also having stomach problems. This is obviously Paul Schrader's paean to "Diary of a Country Priest", which is in the Top Ten List of many a well-known cineaste. It's Martin Scorcese's favorite movie (and one of mine as well). Robert Bresson's priest in that film is also an alcoholic and also sick to his stomach, and Schrader has Hawke dip his morning bread in Scotch, just as the Country Priest soaks his in wine. So it's clear that Hawke's character is based on the Priest of Ambricourt, and he does a phenomenal job with his portrayal.

A little later, Reverend Hawke gets a call from the husband, asking for a meet-up. The location is a woodland trailhead. I'm gonna give you a spoiler : When Hawke gets there, he sees a body laying in the dirt. The husband has committed suicide.

This throws Hawke's own troubled psyche into a tailspin. We discover the cause of his drinking : guilt over having urged his son to join the military. "It's a family tradition", he tells his superior. "I was the chaplain at VMI, my father was a graduate before that. We have officers in my ancestry going back to the Revolutionary War. My son wanted to continue the tradition and I commended him on his choice. Only he didn't make it back. He was killed in Afghanistan". 

Hawke becomes more and more obsessed with the husband's suicide, because he feels guilty about his son's death. He also agrees with the husband's environmental stand, and while he initially argued against despair in his conversations with the man, now that he's dead, Hawke's faith begins to slowly drain away. His drinking increases to the point where he's hiding bottles. It's noticeable to the administrator of his church's sponsor, a mega-group known as Abundant Faith. 

When he finds out that the 250th anniversary celebration for his church is to be underwritten by a polluting, planet killing industrialist, he quietly forms a plan to do something about it.

It's extremely heavy stuff, subject wise, but Schrader's talent for pacing turns it into an edgy thriller. He's technically a very good filmmaker, in some respects superior to his partner Scorcese, who is capable of greatness but can also make outright garbage like "Gangs of New York" or "The Wolf of Wall Street". Scriptwise, this is one of Schrader's best works, right up there with "Taxi Driver" and "Rolling Thunder". Ethan Hawke should've received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. I'm gonna give "First Reformed" Two Huge Thumbs Up, it's a tremendous film. See it if you haven't, then watch "Country Priest" for comparison. It's brutal having the weight of the world on your shoulders. ////

The previous night we had another crime thriller, longer and more elaborate than usual. "The Secret Place"(1957) stars Belinda Lee as "Molly", a beautiful 21 year old who runs a snack shop in the slums of East London. "Freddie" (Michael Brooke) is a 14 year old boy with a crush on her. Every day he stops by her shop to buy cocoa and say hello. Once he even brings her a present, a leather belt he's made himself, just for her. Molly does a good job of playing the situation right down the middle. She neither encourages Freddie nor sends him away. Instead, she sees his attention for what it is - an infatuation - and responds by being kind. "We're good friends, aren't we Freddie"?, she says to the serious young lad, who would be her Knight in Shining Armor if she'd let him.

Molly's got a boyfriend, though, a no-goodnik named "Gerry" (Ronald Lewis). He's handsome and wears a sharp suit, but beneath it he's nothing but a criminal. Gerry's planning the robbery of a diamond exchange, with the help of his associate "Steve" (Michael Gwynn), a seasoned vet. They've got the job almost worked out. Steve's even built a cardboard model of the joint to position their every move, but there's still one snag. The exchange is built like a bank, extremely secure and with heavy doors and locks between rooms, and alarms on every wall. How will they even gain entry?

One afternoon with Molly, Gerry gets a brainstorm. "Y'know.....that kid, the one who fancies you? His Dad's a copper, ain't he"? She nods, and we already know that he is. Gerry continues : "What about if...if you could get him to sneak out the old man's uniform for a few hours, say while he was off duty. If you could persuade him - and you could cause he's in love with you - then we could use it to get into the building. I could wear it and say I'm a policeman, give the guard some excuse".

Molly balks at first, because she doesn't want to involve Freddie. "He's just a boy, Gerry". But her brother's in on the job too, as a driver. He's intimidated by Gerry as well, and he gets Molly to go along. The next morning, she asks Freddie if he can pilfer his Dad's uniform, just for an afternoon. "My friends and I wanna use it for a prank". As noted, Freddie's an upright young man, serious in love and life, and for a moment he's taken aback by Molly's request. She's his Queen ; why would she want to play a prank, and why with Dad's uniform?

In the end he does steal it and brings it to her. She in turn takes it to Gerry, who will don it for the diamond heist, which is set to take place that afternoon.

The theft itself is nerve wracking. It doesn't go as perfectly as Gerry and Steve planned, and when it's over and they're back at their hideout, the fence won't deliver, claiming the ice is too hot to sell. Steve wants out of the partnership, so Gerry has to go it alone, with the untrustworthy help of Molly's brother "Mike" (David McCallum, who decided to act this time).

Molly's given her admirer Freddie a box-style gramophone as a present, to reciprocate his friendship. He takes it as an award of the highest order (it's from his Queen), and brings it home to enshrine it. Little does he know - or Molly for that matter - that Gerry has taped the bag of diamonds to the underside of the record player, figuring it's the last place the police would ever look.

The latest newspaper headlines are reporting a "Fake Police Robbery" of the diamond exchange. Freddy puts two and two together and confronts Molly. "You lied to me", he says, devastated that his Queen is dishonest. "You used Dad's uniform to rob that place. You were only pretending to be my friend". Freddie held Molly in the highest place of honor, so now that she's betrayed him he won't talk to her. It's not so much about the robbery or the diamonds, which Freddie says he won't report. For him, it's all about Molly's deceit, when he would've died for her had she ever asked. Now he doesn't trust her anymore, and he despises her boyfriend Gerry, so he takes the bag of diamonds from the inside of the gramophone and hides them in his Secret Place - the upper floor of a semi-demolished brick building, where he hides out at night.

Meanwhile, Gerry is furious about Molly's handover of the gramophone. "What'd you give it to that bloody kid for"?! Her explanation is pointless, so Gerry and a hoodlum friend stake out Freddie's house, waiting for his mother to leave so they can break in and search for the diamonds. Of course, Freddie's stashed them away by now, but they don't know that. Also, sometime during the transfer, the bag opened up and some diamonds fell out. Now the neighborhood children have found them and are trading them in the street. Will this lead the police to question Freddie? And what about his father who's also a policeman? He's noticed that his son is acting strange. But most importantly for Gerry, will he be able to get the diamonds back without alerting Freddie? It'd be unfortunate to have to kill the boy, and dangerous because his Dad's a cop, but he didn't pull that robbery for nothing. He wants the diamonds back, especially now that the fence is back on board.

It's great stuff overall, maybe a tad long at 98 minutes, but made up for by strong acting and suspense. Belinda Lee is superb as the conflicted Molly, who doesn't want to lose Gerry, but also is aghast at how she's involved young Freddie in the crime. Lee is yet another actress with a tragic story. Ronald Lewis, who plays "Gerry", has one too. They helped create a top-notch movie, however, and "The Secret Place" gets Two Big Thumbs Up. Especially good is it's Hitchcockian ending, which takes place on a scaffolding abutting Freddie's Secret Place. It's highly recommended! 

So there's your take for the day, a recent heavy hitter from Paul Schrader and a classic British crime flick. I'm back at Pearl's, who just celebrated her 97th birthday on Tuesday. Have a great afternoon, listen to some Beach Boys or some Egg (or both), and let's watch another movie!

I send you tons of love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)   

Rachel Roberts in "Girl on Approval" and "One Way Out" with John Chandos

Last night we had a change of pace akin to the stories in the old ABC After School Specials. In "Girl on Approval" (1962), a 14 year old orphan is sent to live with a foster family in London. Like many youths who've been abandoned, Sheila is troubled, angry and incorrigible. At the state-run home she lives in, the staff do their best to compensate, but she's a handful to say the least. They've tried placing her several times, but in each case the foster parents have given up and sent Sheila back.

This time might be different, however. That's what the administrator "Mrs. Gardner" (Ellen McIntosh) is hoping. John and Anne Howland seem like good people, tolerant and kind, and they're young enough to perhaps be able to handle Sheila's energy, which is mostly negative and always unpredictable. 

The Howlands are approved to take Sheila (hence the title), who at first doesn't want to leave the home. Mrs. Gardner is prepared for that, and tells her she can come back in a day or two if she doesn't like her new parents. Right off the bat, Sheila's sullen and mostly silent toward John and Anne, and when she does speak it's either to insult them or express her ennui. She doesn't know these people and doesn't want to know them. They aren't her real parents (her birth mother is in prison) and the only adults she's ever known are from the orphanage. For their part, the Howlands bend over backward to make Sheila feel at ease, and she does go to sleep in the nice bedroom they provide for her. They also have two young sons, and through exposition we understand that they've lost a two year old daughter prior to Sheila's arrival, which is why they decided to adopt. Initially they wanted another infant, but were affected by Sheila's history and thought they might be able to make a difference in her life.

What follows is Sheila's adjustment to her new surroundings and parents, who she calls Auntie and Uncle. More importantly, they're trying to adjust to her because she's controlling them with her behavior, which is relentlessly unpleasant. To the filmmaker's credit, the character never slips into cliche. When Sheila steals a pair of scissors, you're expecting her to slit her wrists, but that's not what happens. Nor when she steals a watch from a jeweler; you expect her criminal impulse to increase, but it doesn't. As with the Kitchen Sink genre, this movie isn't about plot, i.e. moving from a to z. Instead it's about the nuanced emotion felt inwardly by Sheila, and the way she expresses it outwardly in her attitude, depending on who she's with. If she's alone with Anne (her foster mother, played by Rachel Roberts), she's liable to be petulant, which is somewhat understandable, as it's well known that teen girls can have rivalries with their mothers, even those who aren't foster children. When she's hanging out with foster dad John (James Maxwell), however, Sheila's much more cheerful, or as cheerful as she's capable of being. She also plays to his maleness by making comments about his "broad shoulders" in a the presence of Anne, and while this is not presented as a sexual advance, nor even a flirtation, Sheila - at 14 - is old enough to know how to manipulate a man (or try to) and more importantly, how to create a rift between John and his wife, who Sheila sees as her nemesis.

Anne tries endlessly to befriend Sheila, and snaps when her efforts come to naught, often slapping the youngster in frustration and making matters worse. For husband John, it's easy. All he has to do is take Sheila to the movies and she lightens up, because he's a man. Anne finally throws in the towel and asks John if they can give Sheila back. Mrs. Gardner has told them it's okay if that happens : "Every other couple has given up before you". But John asks her to give it one more try.

To state the obvious, Sheila is crying out for a mother figure, and at one point asks the couple to tell her about her birth mother. This is one moment where Sheila is tentative, however. She asks timidly, as if she doesn't really want to know. Annette Whiteley, who plays Sheila, is fantastic. It's a sad film in many respects but never maudlin. Rachel Roberts is also excellent as Anne, Sheila's would-be mother. Their interplay gives the film it's electricity. You may remember Roberts as the headmistress in"Picnic at Hanging Rock". Her personal story is horrific, something I'd forgotten about but remembered upon re-reading, but she was an incredible actress. Good Lord, the things that happen to people.

At any rate, "Girl on Approval" is a realistic portrayal of what might happen when an adolescent orphan is finally placed with foster parents. As noted, despite Sheila's near-constant belligerence, only small things happen, not big things, but it all adds up for Anne, who wants to send Sheila back. We saw similar petulance in "Tomorrow, the World!", which you might recall was the film about a Hitler youth boy (played by Skip Hoemeier) who came to live in America. He was so rigid and formal, and it was determined that he was unable to cry. If a child cannot cry, he or she can't grieve properly, and thus can't "let go". That's what Sheila's plight is about. It's not so much that she misses her birth mother, because she's never known her, but she's also never known a mother's love. Now she has Anne, who's trying to love her by being helpful and kind, but it's not enough because Anne is grieving for her own lost child - or denying that grief - and her patience with Sheila only extends so far.

The drama does climax when Sheila runs away, ending up in a bad part of town where she is approached by a prostitute and her pimp. I won't reveal what happens, except to tell you that it follows in the pattern of the film. In other words, it isn't startling.

I give "Girl on Approval" Two Big Thumbs Up. Sheila and Anne are each heroes in their own way. Highly recommended. ////

The previous night we had another Shorty with a Simple Plot, similar in style to "The Painted Smile" from about a week ago. "One Way Out"(1955) stars John Chandos as a jewel ring mastermind. As the movie opens, a girl walks into a seedy East End coffee shop, hysterical and begging to talk to "Joe" (Victor Platt), the regular counter man, who's off for the night. The next day, she's found dead in the river. The one clue that's discovered is a diamond necklace on her neck. It's stolen. The case is handed to "Detective Harcourt" (Eddie Byrne). He's about to retire, has only two weeks left, but figures he can handle one more case. And, he's pretty sure he knows where the necklace came from : "Danvers" (Chandos), a known criminal the police have never been able to bust. Chandos is extremely clever, hiring others to do his dirty work. He always has an alibi, and this time it's "Leslie Parrish" (Lyndon Brook), a button down young man who's Chandos' #1 jewel thief.

But Parrish has screwed up by giving his girlfriend the stolen necklace. She's the dead girl in the river. "Don't you know they can trace it back to me"?!, he exclaims.

Parrish apologizes, then Chandos shrugs it off and concocts a plan to ensnare the retiring Inspector. In a clever bit of plotting, Chandos has Leslie go after Harcourt's daughter, who works in a local music store. Leslie is known as a ladies' man; he talks "Shirley" (Jill Adams) into a date. That night, he pulls the old "your car just broke down" routine, by yanking her distributor cable while the pair are stopped on a dark road.

Leslie then sends Shirley to a GARE - ahge (British pronunciation) to ask for help, and while she's talking to a mechanic, a thug storms in - prearranged by John Chandos - to clobber the man and steal the money in his register. This is intended to frame Shirley, and it works. She's scared to death by the encounter and, seeing the unconscious mechanic, she runs away, back to her car and Leslie, who's been "patiently waiting" (yeah right).

He suggests they split the scene immediately, but she isn't sure : "Shouldn't we wait for the police to arrive"?

"Do you want them to arrest you for murder"?, Leslie asks, trying to increase her fear. She's completely freaked out already, but responds rationally : "How do you know he's dead"? "I don't", replies Leslie, "but he could be. And you were seen running away"! He's got Shirley all double-talked by now. It's a total frame up. Back at home, she first tries to bluff when the morning paper is delivered, but when Dad gets sees the headline and gets suspicious, she confesses all.

Now remember, he's about to retire, so his instinct is to protect his daughter, who he knows is being framed but might be found guilty in a court of law. So he goes to John Chandos to cut a deal, which he's disgusted to have to do, but he's gotta clear Shirley. Inspector Harcourt winds up accepting a bribe, in which he'll leave Chandos alone, and in turn Chandos will call off the frame up of his daughter. At first, the deal doesn't hold and the frame up proceeds, all the way to the Police Commisioners office, where the Commish suspects Harcourt is covering something up.

The remainder of the 60 minute film is a boil down to the inevitable confrontation between Chandos and the retired detective. It's a no-frills teeth gritter, but "One Way Out" is effective due to tight direction and strong performances, particularly that of John Chandos as Danvers, the schlumpy sociopath. Two Big Thumbs Up.

So there you have it, a social drama and an ironclad crime thriller. We're gonna stick with our Brit Films as long as we can find 'em. Hope you're enjoying them as much as I am. Now it's time for Aliso Canyon. Have a great evening, I send you tons of love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Two from the Kitchen Sink : "Turn the Key Softly" and "A Place to Go"

Recently I read about something called the Kitchen Sink school of filmmaking that arose in England in the 1950s and was popular through the early 60s, encompassing the same time period as the crime thrillers we've been watching. Without bothering to look it up, I assumed the phrase was short for "everything but the kitchen sink", and figured it meant that the films in that category were constructed from a hodegepodge of styles, featuring the shifts in tone the Brits are so fond of. I thought it must mean that the KS movies were extreme in that way, with their directors throwing "everything but the kitchen sink" - i.e. comedy, drama, music, thrills, pathos, etc. - into their films in the hope that something would stick and attract audiences.

Eventually I ran across a Kitchen sink movie, by accident rather than design, and discovered that the term meant not a mish-mash but hard-nosed realism, specifically of the blue-collar type. After finally Googling it, I found that Kitchen Sink referred to films that looked at hardscrabble life in east London, where folks lived in abject poverty and either accepted it or or were driven toward something better, often through crime.

The movie I found was called "Turn the Key Softly"(1953), which follows three women who've just been released from the notorious Holloway prison (made famous in a song called "Holloway Girls" by Marillion). "Stella" (Joan Collins) is a young prostitute, "Mrs. Quilliam" (Kathleen Harrison) is an elderly shoplifter, and "Monica" (Yvonne Mitchell) is the 30-something victim of a criminal boyfriend, who got her to help him with a "job", then left her holding the bag when the police came. Of the three, Monica has served the longest, having spent twelve long months in Holloway, a year that has left her worn out and wary, but hoping to start a new life away from her no-good boyfriend. 

All of the women are released at the same time, and promise to meet up for dinner that night so they can celebrate their first day of freedom, and bolster one another in their quests to go straight. Collins tells the other two she might not be able to make it. "I'm meeting my fiancee", she claims. They find it hard to believe she's getting married, but it's true. Stella's a Cockney lass, uneducated and full of big talk, but she's telling the truth about her boyfriend, a bus driver who might once have been a customer, before she was arrested.

Old Mrs. Quilliam says she's got someone waiting for her as well : a guy named "Johnny". The way she goes on about him, he sure sounds swell. "Johnny this" and "Johnny that". He must be her husband, or maybe her son.......but when she gets home, to the old rooming house where she's a long time resident, we see that Johnny is a dog, and a cute one at that (a lovable "Asta" - type wire haired terrier). She's even stopped at the butcher's on her way home from prison, to buy a steak with her release money that she'll split with Johnny. Oh, she loves him dearly.

Poor Monica has no one to go home to. She spends the afternoon trying to find a job, but is at first turned down because of her prison record. She perseveres, however, until she finds an employer willing to take her on as an accountant. But when she gets back to her apartment, she finds her old boyfriend "David" (Terence Morgan) waiting for her, the crumb bum who let her take the fall for his crime. David's a safecracker but also a smooth talker, so even though he's the worst thing in the world for Monica right now, she allows him into her flat, and before the afternoon is over he's got her in bed, making like nothing ever happened.

The three ladies do end up keeping their dinner appointment, where they toast one another with champagne. Even Johnny is there, slurping ginger ale out of his doggie bowl. He has impeccable table manners, becoming a centerpiece of the film at this point, and when the ladies part, he goes with Mrs. Quilliam to a pub while Joan Collins strolls off with a stray man from the train station. Is she returning to prostitution? What about her fiancee?  

Meanwhile Monica waits for David to pick her up.

They have a theater date - David's treat - but when they get there, he shows his true colors. We see it's all been a ruse, as he shoves Monica through a security door leading to the roof of the building. There, he forces her into another "job". She's caught entirely by surprise; before she knows it he's got his ropes and burglary tools out. He's been manipulating her all day long, and now he's gonna pull another safe cracking job right across the street. David's a bad man, and we really feel for Monica, who wanted to live an honest life and just got a real job that afternoon.

Now we cut back to Old Mrs. Quilliam. She's at the pub not for alcohol, only another ginger ale for Johnny and herself. When she gets up to use the restroom, Johnny leaves through the open front door, confused about his absent mistress. Upon returning to the bar, Mrs. Quilliam is distraught. She searches the streets for Johnny, calling his name, asking passersby and policemen if they've seen him. We the audience are feeling real anguish by now, such has the relationship been built up. It's one of the sweetest human/dog pairings on film. That's why - and I'll give you a Spoiler Alert right now - it's all the more devastating to see what happens. It isn't fair, it's emotionally manipulative and it made me mad because it's a contrivance. The screenwriter did not have to do this, and it's wrong. If this is what Kitchen Sink realism is about, someone should throw the kitchen sink at him.

The tone then shifts to a crime thriller ending, as the cops use hook and ladder fire engines to catch David the safecracker, who's doing a balancing act off the rooftops and catwalks above the theater.

"Turn the Key Softly" is exceptionally well made and acted, and would be worthy of Two Huge Thumbs Up - our next-to-highest rating - if it weren't for the emotional manipulation I'm referring to. I know that almost all dramatic movies feature some level of this, but what occurs - to my mind - is entirely unnecessary.

But you know what? I'm gonna give it Two Huge anyway, with the caveat that you'll be bummed out when it's over (sorry bout that). It's still recommended very highly because overall it's a tremendous film, up there with the best British movies we've seen. Give it a shot, but bring a full box of Kleenex.  /////

Another Kitchen Sink movie I found was called "A Place to Go"(1963), and in choosing it, I didn't know it was Kitchen Sink. The synopsis on IMDB said it was about the robbery of a cigarette factory, so I thought "heist flick" (oh boy!) and gave it a go.

What turned out was more "slice of life" than plot oriented. It's about an East End family, specifically it's two young men, a factory worker and his brother-in-law, and while there is a plot, it takes an eon to get to.

Really, the story becomes a vehicle to showcase Rita Tushingham, the actress who became a star in the UK on the strength of her portrayals of blunt-spoken Cockney girls. If you remember, we went on a mini Rita Film Fest a couple years ago, watching her in "A Taste of Honey", "Straight on Til Morning" and "Girl with Green Eyes". In addition to her voice, she also had a distinct look, with big round eyes and a wedge shaped face, pretty but with edges.

In the movie, "Ricky" (Michael Sarne) lives with his parents and pregnant sister in a run down flat in Bethnel Green, a London slum. He sings karaoke in a local restaurant by night, works in a cigarette factory by day. His dad is a dockworker on the outs with his union and in danger of losing his job. The family is hard up for money, and when Dad does eventually get fired, he's shamed by his wife, who'll no longer allow him to sit at the head of the table. "You're not the leader of this family any longer", she tells him. That mantle falls now to young Ricky, who at least can pitch in for the bills.

But Ricky's got bigger plans than being merely a wage earner. He knows a hood named "Jack Ellerman" (John Slater), who's set up the robbery of his factory. Jack's older, he poses as a "legitimate businessman" and gambler, who makes his money at the dog track, but really he's a gang boss. He hires Ricky to disable the alarm at the factory so that when they pull the job, it won't go off. Ricky enlists his brother in law in turn, because he's a lorry driver. They'll use his truck to cart the cigarettes away, boxes and boxes of 'em.

The film runs 81 minutes, and for the first hour there's no buildup of plot or tension, because - as we are seeing with Kitchen Sink, plot is not the point.....it's about the characters and their lives.

The gang does eventually pull the robbery, but first Dad dies of a stroke after trying a second career as a busking, Houdini-like escape artist, complete with lock and chains. He takes this act to the streets, where he works for chump change, but then he dies, after an argument with the crook Jack Ellerman ("Stay away from my son"!). Now Mom and Ricky are on their own, except Ricky has already signed on with Jack. Is he headed for a life of crime?

So there's another example of Kitchen Sink for you. This one isn't tight and there ain't much plot. We're just following these folks around for a few days, and half the movie is Rita Tushingham doing her thing. But because they're all characters, in the Cockney sense, it's an interesting hang, culturally speaking. As usual, though, when a tight plot is lacking, the movie would benefit from a fifteen minute cut. The bottom line : I'm gonna give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, which I'll raise to Two Solids if you wanna count the 1963 atmosphere. The Britspeak is unintelligible for long stretches, however, so be forewarned.

Give it a shot if you wish (and check out Rita T. in some of her better known films if you haven't seen them), but it doesn't compare to "Turn the Key Softly" or our recent crime thrillers. ////

So there you have it. That's all I know for today and I'm gonna head out for a hike. Having finished the Brian Wilson book, I'm now giving equal time to Mike Love and his autobiography. Many fans consider him the villain of The Beach Boys. I wanna read his side of the story. One thing's for sure; the BB's are one crazy band, as weird as they are talented. Have a great afternoon, I send you tons of love as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Eva Bartok in "Beyond the Curtain", and "The Painted Smile" with Liz Fraser (plus "Danger Man")

Last night we watched "Beyond the Curtain"(1960), a cold war drama that begins when a commercial flight from Berlin is forced down in East Germany after straying into that country's airspace. Eva Bartok, who we just saw in "Spaceways", is a stewardess for an American airline. She lives in West Berlin but hails from Dresden, which is now part of the communist bloc. When her plane is forced to land by Mig fighters, she's at first despondent, fearing she'll be imprisoned for defecting, but instead, after being processed by the Stasi (secret police), she's allowed to go visit her mother, whose home has been commandeered by the Commies. Mom's been put up in the attic of the house she once owned, because it's bourgeois (booszhe-wah) for an individual to posses private property, when The Needs of the People are considered. Why, the Commies are so magnanimous they've even provided Mom and her new roommates with a minder, a stern woman who "looks after them" but is really there to make sure no one says anything against the government. Such is the mindset of communism and don't even get me started on totalitarian philosophies.

Yet the visit home transforms Bartok's feelings. Suddenly she feels back where she belongs, but when her fiancee Jim (Richard Greene) - the airplane's pilot - is told she doesn't want to return to the West, he's understandably confused. "We were just about to get married", he tells a colleague. He believes that the local administrators in Dresden are either lying about Bartok's intentions or telling her what to say, so he finagles his way back into the country after initially getting kicked out. When he shows up at her Mom's house, Bartok confirms the official story. "I'm sorry, Jim. Things have changed. I belong here, my mother needs me. I can't marry you now". Jim leaves, still believing she's either been brainwashed (she hasn't) or coerced (not that either). Really she's just plain homesick.

Mom, however, knows that her daughter did the right thing the first time, by escaping, and wants her to leave again while she still can, so she removes herself as a burden by swallowing sleeping pills. Now Bartok is devastated, and has only her fiancee to lean on, which is how her mother wanted it, because Mom wanted her out of East Germany.

But then we find out the real reason she's being kept there by the Stasi. Her brother Peter (George Mikell) is a member of the underground resistance. He helps dissidents escape to the West via an elaborate relay system. A family friend named "Dr. Kortner" (Marius Goring) pretends to be concerned about Bartok's welfare, but in reality he's a Stasi agent, trying to locate her brother and using her as bait.

It's a very good story but the direction is dry, and the script could've benefited from a 10 to 15 minute cut. We're learning a lot about the power of shorter, more concise movies, which get to the point without bogging the viewer down in a lot of mish mash. 

Anyway, there is an excellent chase scene involving Peter's collaborator "Linda", my favorite character in the movie. Linda's a whiz on a motor scooter, and with Bartok on the back, she outsmarts and outruns a carload of Stasi, led by the snarling "Inspector Krumm" (great name), played by British actor Denis Shaw, who you'll recognise from his many portrayals of Nazis. But other than a few action scenes like this, the movie doesn't have much zip, and Eva Bartok overacts at the end. We're really missing our British crime thrillers right now, and I hope we can find more. We kind of got spoiled by them. "Beyond the Curtain" isn't a bad film, just slow in places, and we've been used to the ultra tight direction of the 60 minute Brit flicks.

Marius Goring is good as always, and another chase scene near the end, over a rubble-strewn landscape, makes up for some of the slowness.

Let's give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, but a solid recommendation, just because the message against totalitarianism is always important, and especially nowdays. //// 

The previous night we did have a crime thriller, a Shortino, simple but super tight. In "The Painted Smile"(1962) three newly minted college grads are out for a night on the town in London. They're after one last fling before the world drags them down into the conformity of jobs and adult responsibility. One of them - Tony, a science major - is engaged to be married. At first he doesn't want to go to the dance club, feeling it'd be disloyal to his fiancee. But his buddies egg him on, and after all three get hammered, Tony ends up going home with "Jo" (Liz Fraser), a bimbo working an extortion game with her boyfriend "Mark" (Peter Reynolds).

We first see Jo at the beginning of the film, where she's arguing with Mark about their racket, known as The Badger Game. It involves a girl taking a drunken married man back to her apartment, having sex with him, and then an "outraged" male appears, posing as the woman's husband. The two then blackmail the married drunk, threatening to tell his wife unless he pays up. During their argument, Jo tells Mark that she doesn't wanna do it anymore. "One last time, baby", he responds. "Then we'll quit".

So she picks up young Tony (who isn't married but engaged, close enough), and takes him to her place. But just as she's stripping down to seduce him, her phone rings. A creepy male voice tells her to look in her bedroom. "There's some rubbish in there for you to throw out". We've already seen what he's referring to. While Jo was at the club, a man named "Kleinie" showed up at her apartment and stabbed Mark to death. It's unclear if Kleinie is her pimp or a previous blackmail victim, but he's definitely a bad hombre (as played by Kenneth Griffith, who was so kind as the club owner in the recently viewed "Rag Doll").

After the phone call, Jo opens the bedroom door and discovers the body of her boyfriend Mark. Tom the college boy freaks out. He runs in, still drunk, and pulls the knife from the body, putting his fingerprints on it and smearing blood all over himself. He also cuts his hand, which Jo bandages. as she does so, she gets an idea.

"You've gotta help me get rid of him", she insists. "If you don't, I'll say you did it. Your fingerprints are on the knife and your're all cut up. The police'll believe me so you'd better help". Tom's terrified by now, so he does what Jo tells him. He pulls his car around, then carries her boyfriend's body downstairs. After placing it in the back seat, he drives off. "Just dump it someplace", Jo tells him. "Remember, if you don't I'll call the police".

Jo's afraid to tell the truth because she's frightened of Kleinie. It would be nice to know his relationship to her (pimp or blackmail victim) but he's not someone to fool with.

While Tom is driving with the body, a police car makes a u-turn to follow him. He ditches his car, and after a cool looking foot chase through a graveyard and a bread factory - where Tom sneaks out on a packaging conveyor belt - he's able to elude the cops and make his way back to his fiancee's apartment. By now, it's early the next morning. Tom's name is in the paper because his car's been found with the body inside. His fiancee "Mary" (Nanette Newman) demands an explanation and Tom tells her everything about his night with Jo. After she chews him out for cheating, she settles down and calls his two friends, Glynn and Roy. The four of them go in search of Jo, to force her to tell the truth. Jo's fled by now, so they have to track her down. Their stops will take them to some hazardous places, all of which are frequented by Kleinie. Will they cross his path unexpectedly? 

"The Painted Smile" has a very simple plot but good energy and some great London locales. The direction is extremely tight and the 56 minute script wastes nothing. A very young David Hemmings appears in the minor (but solid) role as Tony's pal Roy. He of course not only went on to star in Antonioni's "Blow Up" but also served as the narrator on Rick Wakeman's classic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" album. Liz Fraser is very good as Jo, the amoral hooker who doesn't care what happens, as long as she doesn't get caught.

It's a basic story without a lot of mystery, but quite effective, and the acting and atmosphere suffice to earn it Two Big Thumbs Up. ////

Well, that's all for the moment. Last night I finally finished the "Danger Man" TV series, which I own on dvd and began watching early this year. There are 86 episodes, 39 of which are a half hour long, the latter 47 running an hour. It was one of the first television shows I can remember watching, when I was four years old, and in America it was known as "Secret Agent" and came with the famous Johnny Rivers theme song, which became a radio hit. I actually bought the dvd set several years ago, maybe as far back as 2011 or thereabouts, and I began watching it then, but I only got about halfway through because the show was challenging to follow. The plots are so detailed and the dialogue fast; it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-something situation. I did okay on the half hour episodes, but when I got to the hour long ones, I had trouble paying attention. As a result, I put the box set away until this year. In the interim, I purchased Patrick McGoohan's other well-known series, "The Prisoner", which began in 1967. It ran only 17 episodes, but has become something of a cult classic. I myself became a big "Prisoner" fan and have watched the whole series through, several times. In doing so, I slowly grew curious to revisit "Danger Man". Maybe I'd be able to follow it now? I hoped so, and I was encouraged by the fan reviews at IMDB, many of which hailed it as one of the greatest tv shows of all time. I knew it was my favorite, when I was four years old haha, but I didn't have to worry about the plots back then. All I knew was that McGoohan was super cool.

Long story short, I did re-immerse myself at the beginning of this year, and I'm really glad I did, because this time I was not only able to get into the style and pace of the show, but to really become wrapped up in the complexity of it's plots and in Patrick McGoohan's multifaceted character "John Drake", the secret agent working first for NATO, then for M9 in the sixty minute episodes. I came to think of Drake as "the real James Bond", and while I love the Bond movies (who doesn't?), McGoohan's portrayal of an intelligence agent is more realistic than what we see in those films. Over the course of the 86 episodes, which I finished last night, I came to love the show and now, I wish there were 86 more! If I were awarding Thumbs, it'd get Two Gigantic Ones (my highest rating), and I'll go so far as to call it the best show of it's kind ever made. Give it a shot if you've never seen it. As for me, I'm on to "The Avengers", the box set of which I recently purchased from Amazon (helping Bezos to go to the Moon, or wherever he's going).

That's all for tonight. I hope you had a nice day and I send you tons of love as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)   

Ray Milland in "Circle of Danger", and "Spaceways" with Howard Duff and Eva Bartok

Last night's movie was "Circle of Danger"(1951), a murder mystery with World War Two as it's context. Ray Milland stars as "Clay Douglas", an American who travels to Scotland (Skaertlnd) to investigate the death of his brother during a British commando raid in Germany. Side note : his brother had enlisted with the Brits prior to U.S. involvement in the war. His death seems suspicious to Milland, who's been unable to get details from the British war department; no one has any information, except the name of his brother's captain.

So Milland goes to Scotland and locates the captain, a taciturn gent who greets him with a wary eye. Yes, he remembers Milland's brother. "He was a good soldier" is about all he'll say, adding that he was the only man killed during the raid in question. The captain's elderly mother is nicer, and asks Milland in the house for a cuppa tea, and all of a sudden we are thrown what proves to be a Big League Cinematic Curveball. 

So far, we've been digging in for an engrossing mystery, when out of the blue a book falls on Ray Milland's head. It's been dropped by "Elspeth Graham" (Patricia Roc), who is reaching for the volume on a high shelf at the moment Milland walks in the door. Elspeth is ostensibly the captain's girlfriend, but the screenwriter wants to introduce both a conflict and a charm offensive all at once, and so he has Milland and Elspeth hit it off instantaneously, and with such familiarity that you'd think the characters had known each other for years. This steers the movie abruptly off course, into a romantic drama in which the romance is elusive and the dialogue conversational and time wasting.

British films from this postwar period are interesting, dialogue-wise (and I think I've mentioned this before), because they sometimes veer off into "small talk"; i.e. long winded repartees that only dialect-savvy English people would understand. It's as if the filmmakers were aware that their pictures would not have an American (or international) release, so they constructed them for UK audiences exclusively, by loading up on the kind of rapid paced "tea talk", replete with heavy accents and colloquialisms that only Brits would understand and appreciate. Watching now (70 years later), an American can get the gist, but not the literal wording.

None of this matters half as much, however, as the 180% shift in tone from mystery to romance, and it's such a swift turn that within seconds of the book hitting Milland, he and Roc are chatty, familiar friends. It's too quick for even a Hollywood romance to develop and not only does it seem contrived, it happens so fast you kind of go "huh"?, because three seconds ago you were watching a mystery.

I should add that this does not derail the plot, but does drive it way around the bend. The romance becomes the focus, while Milland's search for information on his brother is deliberately inserted from time to time. Every so often, he shows up at various places to talk to men who were in his brother's's unit, and always uses a variation on the same phrase - "I'm trying to get information about my brother" - as if the screenwriter is reminding us why we sat down to watch in the first place.

All of this meandering does lead to a payoff, and a fairly satisfying one, enough for you (or me at least) to forgive the endless small talk (I found myself wondering "who wrote this freakin' thing anyway"?). The ending is solid, thanks mostly to an actor named Marius Goring, who we've seen as evil Nazis in two or three films. Here, he's playing a foppish ballet instructor with a sinister side. He does in fact know the truth about what happened to Milland's brother, but will he reveal it?

The ending aside, "Circle of Danger" is built mostly on Ray Milland's debonair charm and Patricia Roc's pretty smile. It would've worked as a 58 minute thriller, with the romance at a minimum and a complete re-write of the dialogue, but at 82 minutes it's check-your-watch long. This is all the more surprising because the director is Jacques Tourneur, one of the best of the Hollywood Craftsmen, who helmed many excellent movies, including the horror classics "Cat People" and "Night of the Demon". 

I'm still gonna give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, cause it has just barely enough to recommend it, as well as some nice Scottish locations a few good support characters. If you do decide to watch it, could you please tell me what the deal is with the opening scene? What in the world does it have to do with the rest of the movie, and why even include it? Ahh, the mysteries of life.......////

Now, going back to the previous night, what would you say about a Sci-Fi, tinged with melodrama and doubling as a murder mystery? You say you'd be intrigued? (Hang on, I may have to get this in writing). Okay, since you're willing to put your name to it, we'll add a dash of espionage, and I'll give you "Spaceways"(1953), an early effort from Hammer that's reasonably entertaining if you don't mind the ludicrous plot twists.

Howard Duff is "Dr. Stephen Mitchell", a rocket scientist working at a classified base in England. The place is so top secret and heavily guarded that - once inside - the scientists can't get out. This is stipulated in their contracts, of course, but after two years of lockdown, Duff's wife can't stand the isolation. At a cocktail party (on base, naturally), we see she's having an affair with another scientist, Duff's chief biologist. Duff later observes them in intimate embrace on the doorstep of his house, but says nothing to his wife. At bedtime he gives her the cold shoulder.

The next day, he's back to working on the program's latest project, an attempt to launch a three stage rocket into orbit. I must jump in to say that - for me - this is very interesting information. I don't know much about the early history of rocketry, nor much about any NASA experiments prior to Mercury, but I guess there must've been a lot of the science already on the drawing board, because this is 1953, four years before even Sputnik was launched, and they're already talking about three stage rockets and orbital missions.

Anyhow, back to the soap opera. Duff knows his wife is cheating, but the program is more important to him, so he puts the affair on the back burner. Millions of pounds are at stake, in addition to defense budget concerns, and - wait a minute : how'd the Brits become frontrunners in space exploration, anyway? Oh...sorry. That was just me, musing to myself.

With the help of his brilliant and beautiful mathematician (Eva Bartok), Duff convinces the military brass to fund his three stager, and soon it is ready to launch.

All the top brass are in the control room for liftoff. Everything goes well until the third stage is ejected. Then the capsule fails to reach orbital altitude. What could've happened? Bartok notes that it will take decades for the capsule to fall to earth, so the problem will not quickly be determined.

In the aftermath, an investigator shows up on base, posing as a replacement biologist.

"Oh", he says to Howard Duff, "didn't you know? You wife's gone missing, along with my predecessor". It's clear this "biologist" is really from military intelligence. He suspects Duff murdered his wife and her lover, and..........get this.........placed their bodies in the fuel tank of the experimental rocket, then sent it into outer space where he assumed it would orbit the earth forever.

Except it won't, because it hasn't reached altitude. But according to the mathematician Bartok, it'll still be up there for 30 or 40 years, so what's the diff? I suppose it's another screenwriter's contrivance, and in this case he's hoping no one notices.

Duff knows he's innocent, and volunteers to go up in a second launch, to retrieve the first rocket by tether and bring it back to Terra Firma. Then he can prove there's no bodies aboard and clear his name. The brass okays his mission and he's all set to go for it, when the investigator realizes Duff ain't B.S.-ing. Then he gets off his "Howard Duff" and really starts to investigate the case. Here's where the espionage aspect comes in : it turns out that the biologist and Duff's wife are not dead after all. They've escaped the "inescapable" base, because they're spies and have contacts. They're selling space secrets, which is extremely dangerous, because - as the top brass have already explained - in the future space may be used for the launch of nuclear weapons. Again, the dialogue is remarkably prescient, as this was three decades before Reagan's Star Wars proposal.

The soap opera aspect takes precedence toward the end, when it's revealed that Eva Bartok is in love with Duff. She sneaks aboard the recovery rocket to be by his side. I thought we were still working on the whodunit resolution, and that she was gonna kill Duff once they got to outer space, but hey........it's a really off beat movie. The rocket models look cool, and may be outtakes from a prior movie, and the capsule interiors are reliably the size of living rooms, in keeping with 1950s sci-fi tradition.

I'm gonna give "Spaceways" Two Solid Thumbs Up, which means we didn't have a Two Bigs in this blog, but I'm still gonna recommend it if you're up for something different, a mash-up of sorts. We've been on such a roll with our crime films of late, with almost every movie earning at least Two Big Thumbs Up, that it's a slight letdown to encounter two lesser works in a row, but as I say, give "Spaceways" a shot, and "Circle of Danger" too, for that matter. Neither is awful and both are watchable and entertaining to varying degrees if you're in a pinch. ////

Well, that's all for the moment. I finished the Brian Wilson book so I'm gonna head down to The Libe, to look for something else to read, then up to Aliso or out to Santa Su for a hike. Have a great afternoon and evening. I send you tons of love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

A Bank Job ("Calculated Risk") and a grim Irish prison drama ("The Quare Fellow")

We've been on a roll with our British crime thrillers, and last night we added another heist movie to the list : "Calculated Risk"(1963), in which an ex-con and his brother-in-law plan and carry out a bank job with the help of three professionals. As the movie opens, "Kip" (John Rutland) has just been released from prison. He's picked up by "Steve" (William Lucas), the brother of his wife, who drives him to a cemetery to place flowers on her grave. Kip's wife died while he was in prison, after stoically suffering for years in their marriage. He reveres her, and keeps her picture close at hand, but he hasn't changed his ways. No sooner do they arrive at Steve's house, than Kip is pitching a "job" at him.

Steve listens, then shakes his head in disdain. "I swore to her I'd look after you once you got out", he says, referring to Kip's wife, "but only if you promised to go straight. I've got a real job lined up for you at my firm, but if you don't want it I'm washing my hands".

Before you assume Steve is a Straight Arrow Joe, hang on for a second. Kip then details the specifics of his pitch. "Just listen for a second, Steve. It's a job that'll net us 200,000 pounds". Kip diagrams it out for him, using salt and pepper shakers. "This is the bank, see, and right next door are two abandoned houses, both bombed out and sitting there since the war. In the first one there's a cellar, which leads to an air raid shelter in the next house. My cellmate was down there before he got pinched. This job was his idea! Anyhow, the air raid shelter lines up next to the bank vault, likely through a concrete and steel lining, but with a good explosives man and a tunneler, we'd be able to bring it off".

After some more discussion, we find out that Steve's pulled heists before, so he's not as clean cut as he pretends. But he holds Kip in low regard, and doesn't think he's got the brains or ability to direct a high-stakes caper, so he accepts the job on the condition that he'll be the leader. Kip has a heart condition anyway (for which he pops nitroglycerin pills), and is too frail for heavy work like tunneling. Steve decides to have him stay at home, a block away, and man the police scanner while the job's in progress.

The next act involves the setting up of the team. A tunneler is hired, a big man named "Nodge" (Terrence Cooper). Then they pick up "Dodo" (Shay Gorman), an Irish demolition expert, who's worked with a military bomb squad. Finally, they get a driver, "Ron" (David Brierly), who will pull up at a specified time to help them cart off the money.

Steve decides a test run is necessary, to estimate the time needed for each action, so he and Nodge spend a night in the cellar house : "If we're gonna be successful, we've gotta calculate it down to the minute. Everyone's gotta do his part with no screwups". The trouble is that Nodge can't keep his eyes off an upstairs window, located across the street, where a woman is removing her clothes. Steve reprimands him. "Bloody hell, Nodge! Keep yer bleedin' eyes on the sidewalk"! Nodge is supposed to be timing the rounds of the street beat policeman, but there's a reason he can't get over the naked girl. "My God, Steve! I know 'er! She works on the line at my factory"! He mumbles a few more awestruck words of admiration before Steve smacks him, but this diversion of his attention from the job at hand will prove to have consequences down the line.

Another problem that presents itself too late, is that Dodo, the bomb expert, is a drinker. Steve doesn't find this out until the tunneling is in progress. He's gonna need Dodo to be "all there" once they reach the bank vault barrier, but the Irishman's getting hammered on a covert bottle of whiskey. "Wanna slug"?, he offers, but Steve's not amused. These mishaps build tension, as does the arrival of a barking dog, and a group of stray kids. Will any one of them fracture the plan? The robbers are getting closer; Nodge has already pulled away much of the brick in the first cellar. But something will occur soon that will make the other problems pale in comparison. Keep in mind they're in a bombed-out house. Yet even this potential for disaster is not enough to make Steve call off the job. "We're talking about 200,000 pounds, remember. That's 40 thousand per man. Forget about that thing and keep digging; we're close - we're almost there".

We've remarked on the naturalistic acting in the British crime films of this period, and here it's at it's apex. You feel as if you're down there in the cellar with these men, closed in and claustrophobic, and your pulse races along with theirs' as they try to complete the job and get out, before it's too late. It feels real, like you're watching an actual bank heist. They react to the unexpected disruptions with confusion, as criminals might, but when the bigger problem presents itself, they dig in and strive harder. These are tough blokes, blunt and crude. For them, the money outweighs the danger.    

"Calculated Risk" is super tight at 72 minutes and there's not a throwaway scene in the plot. You also get a treat with the musical score : it's by George Martin! (yes, that George Martin), who must've had some time off from producing The Beatles. I give the movie Two Big Thumbs Up. Thanks to our friends at Flick Vault for many of our recent British crime films. Check out their Youtube channel for more selections. /////

The previous night's picture was "The Quare Fellow"(1962), described on IMDB as a prison drama about a guard who is new to death row. The star was Patrick McGoohan, which is always enough for me. So I gave it a go, and it was......not quite what I expected. 

The movie was adapted from a stage play by the famous Irish playwright Brendan Behan. I knew his name but not much about him. Googling afterward, I see he was a contemporary of Dylan Thomas (about whom I also know little), but I was aware they were both Irish authors, and while Irish is awesome, we've been more attuned to English culture in our viewings, which is relentlessly resolute - stiff upper lip and all that. The English "get on with it", they aren't much for heavy emotion, while Irish is very deep feeling. It's all heart, be it love, hate or hanging, which is what's taking place in this film.

It's grim stuff. a weighty drama about the morality of execution. McGoohan is good but hasn't much to do. The story has the philosophical underpinnings of a play, where the author's "voice" (opinions) are heard in the back and forth dialogue between the characters. This approach can tend to get heavy handed, and when the subject is hanging it is downright depressing. The film is well made in every respect, but way too overwrought. Also, whoever uploaded it on Youtube had the sound turned down to "barely audible", so I missed great chunks of dialogue when the lines were soft spoken. 

I'll give you a synopsis of the plot and you can decide if it suits you. Patrick McGoohan arrives at the prison, which resembles a medieval dungeon. He's all business, a law and order officer, eager to learn the ropes of death row so he can help mete out justice to those who deserve it. His trainer is an older guard who's about to quit because he's seen enough. He tries to show McGoohan that executions are a format, cold and impersonal, which sounds appropriate until you see some of the bureaucratic details involved. McGoohan figures this is okay, considering the crimes the men have committed. But then, one night when off duty, he meets the wife of the man who is next to be executed. She's very upset and has a tale to relate, one which she held back at her husband's trial. He was convicted of murdering his brother. What she didn't tell the court was that she'd been sleeping with the man, so the crime was one of passion, and the charge should've been second degree murder, which is not punishable by death.

McGoohan eventually sides with her, and tries to get her an appointment with the warden so she can present her new testimony. This is where he learns the real truth about the unstoppable machinery of death, at least as it was in Ireland before capital punishment was abolished. He and the woman run into roadblock after administrative roadblock. The condemned man is never shown. The tone is of a bleak downward spiral, and that's all I will tell you.

I myself have gone back and forth on the issue of the death penalty during the course my adult lifetime, and have concluded that it's not something I can fairly weigh in on, because I've lost no one to murder (praise the Lord). When I was in my 20s and as far Left as you can get, I was 100% against it. Then when Polly Klass was murdered, I thought, "I'd pull the switch on that guy myself". There have been other subsequent horrors, and killers, about which and whom I've felt the same way. Then I fall back and think it's wrong overall. So yeah, I've gone back and forth, and have ended up being agnostic on the matter. I feel it's for the victims of crimes to decide, in concordance with the state, and not the general - and unaffected - public. I offer one disclaimer to my (non) opinion, which has of course to do with the wrongly convicted. The very chance, no matter how slim, of executing an innocent man should merit consideration of eliminating capital punishment altogether. 

Well, I'll shut up about it, but it's up to you to watch the movie or not, as I'll neither recommend for or against it. I will give it Two Big Thumbs Up in terms of filmmaking, but it's one big downer as far as I'm concerned. Give it a shot if you're in the mood for something somber. //// 

That's all for the moment. I'm now reading a biography of Brian Wilson, as I've really been getting into the music of The Beach Boys this summer. It's called "Catch A Wave" by Peter Carlin, and it's one heck of an amazing and strange story. I'd say "tragic", too, but it isn't tragic because Brian's still alive and well, and about to go on tour at age 80. Hope you're having a great day. I send you tons and tons of love, as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)