We've talked about short films and we've even seen some that should be shorter, for instance a 70 minute flick that could do with a ten minute cut. But what about a movie that tries to cram 90 minutes worth of plot into an hour long framework? Have we seen that yet? I don't think so. I guess it would be considered the opposite of dragging your movie on too long. In "Murder on the Campus"(1961), everyone's talking so fast, and explaining so much in volumes of expository dialogue that you'll be lucky to pick up half of it. It's as if the producer handed director Michael Winner a 90 page script and said "here, make a 60 minute movie".
"Okayyy........places everybody, annnnnd......action!........oh no, wait a minute cut cut cut! Look everyone, I'm gonna need you all to read it ten times faster. Do you think you can do that? Okay then, places everybody, annnnd......action"!
Winner went on to direct the "Death Wish" films of the mid-70s. It would've been nice if he'd brought in Charles Bronson to kill off this movie before it got annoying.
Here's the plot : a college student is accosted in his dorm room by a burglar, who knocks him out of the upper story windum in the ensuing punchout. We are the only ones who see this. When his reporter brother investigates, the administration won't cooperate, telling him "this is a quiet town and we don't want bad publicity. Furthermore, the cause of your brother's death is inconclusive. It may have been an accident". An American CIA type he meets in a cafe insinuates it was suicide. "Happens all the time with students, the pressure to get good grades can overwhelm them".
The reporter, "Mark Kingston" (Terrence Longdon), knows it's all B.S. , so he starts talking faster and faster in search of an answer. Then there's another murder, of a student who was the last person to see his brother. This too is brushed off as an accident by the university brass, but the young man's girlfriend (Diane Clare) steps in to help. She too believes something fishy is taking place, and in her, Kingston has an ally. She can talk as fast as he can, so they team up to find out what the hell is going on. They go to an antique shop, where the shifty owner throws them some double talk, but he's strictly an amateur. He is selling stolen goods however, which leads us to something vaguely resembling a clue, and in fact it just might be one, if we weren't being given the speed reader treatment, or the cliff notes, or something.
If you hang on till the end (and God Bless your perseverance if you do), you'll be rewarded with the discovery of a scheme to smuggle stolen World War Two artifacts, or is it armaments? I'm frankly not certain, though I'd go with the former if anyone asks. Maybe you can press start-stop-rewind to make sure, repeating this process as much as necessary.
While we love short movies, the same can't be said for short movie impostors, i.e. ones that should've run full length but were sped up to match a quota (see British Quota Quickies for details). Therefore, this is gonna be a short review, simply because I couldn't follow the dialogue. The continuous, noisy jazz score didn't help.
Winner makes a loser, Two Thumbs Down. Nice location shots of Cambridge, however. ////
We fared much better with the previous night's film, though even there we still didn't get what we bargained for. "Fly By Night"(1942) sounded good in it's IMDB synopsis : "After being charged with the murder of a scientist, a young doctor must track down a Nazi spy ring to clear his name". Scientists, Nazis and Murder? You can't go wrong, right? And all of those ingredients are present; it's the context that's deceptive, because instead of the expected espionage, it's delivered as a War-era Rom-Com, when the style was to have guy and gal live through a do-or-die adventure, like Mr. and Mrs. Indiana Jones. Of course, they must Detest One Another At First, with mismatched oil and water personalities, and there must be a Marriage Motif, as in "at one point they will face a situation where they must pretend to be man and wife, in order to survive". In this case, they have to actually get married.
The movie opens on a rainy night. "George Taylor" (Martin Kosleck) escapes from an asylum after being wrongly detained for insanity. His keepers chase him down a winding country road but he eludes them by running into a forest. When he emerges, his pursuers are nowhere in sight. Lucky for him, a car happens by at that moment, being driven by "Dr. Jeff Burton" (Richard Carlson). Taylor pulls a gun and carjacks him. He's not a criminal by nature, though, and wants Burton to know he's not insane. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just drive me away from here and I'll get out". But when Burton stops at a hotel, the hospital staff have picked up their trail. Taylor sees them pull up a moment later. "I'm sorry, but I have to go in with you", he says to Dr. Burton. They run up the stairs to Burton's room, where Taylor turns over his gun. "There. Now you can see I'm not insane, or I never would have given it to you". The phone rings and Taylor gets spooked. He runs from the room, and while Burton is talking on the phone (it's a wrong number), he gets stabbed by one of the bad guys. He manages to stagger back to Burton's room before collapsing.
Being a doctor, Burton knows the man is near death, so he tries to get more information out of Taylor while he can. "You say you escaped from an asylum? What was it's name? Why were you there? How did you get out"?
All Taylor can say by this time is that he knows the formula for something called G32. "That is why they put me there, because I was going to go public. G32 is evil. I wanted the world to know about it. Here, give me a pencil and paper". With the last of his energy, Taylor writes down the name and address of "Professor Langner" (Miles Minter), a scientist he claims to have worked with. Then he dies. Suddenly there's a knock at the door. It's the police. All they see is a dead man on the bed, who appears to have been murdered. They're playing hardball and don't believe a word of Dr. Burton's story : "You say you just met him, and he escaped from an institution? Sounds like you're making it up on the spot".
When it looks like they're gonna arrest him for murder, Burton pulls the gun Taylor gave him. "Now just back off", he orders the coppers. Then he jumps out the window and uses the fire escape to climb into another room. That's where he meets "Pat Lindsey" (Nancy Kelly), the occupant, who's getting ready for bed and is dressed accordingly. Lindsey, a spunky, intelligent gal in her early 20s, wonders what the hell Dr. Burton thinks he's doing, surprising her in her nightgown like that. "Please....don't scream", he whispers, and she's not about to, but still......the nerve of this man. "What do you want and why didn't you come to the door"?, she demands.
"Because the police are after me. They think I killed a man. I didn't, but they don't believe me. Please, you've got to hide me. If they knock, say you haven't seen me".
Maybe because of his aww-shucks demeanor, and his resemblance to Phil Hartman in a Saturday Night Live skit, Miss Lindsey - though displeased with the interruption - is even more exasperated by the cops when they knock, and she does give in to Dr. Burton's request. "Uhh....no, I can't say that I have", she replies, when asked if she's seen a man of his description. And with that, the escapade is on.
It plays well, but you can see how far away from a traditional Nazi spy movie we've drifted. I figured "what the heck, might as well go with it", and with that reasoning I enjoyed myself. The chemistry between Richard Carlson and Nancy Kelly is very good. They have the sparkle of a classic screwball duo, and Kelly has the elan of someone like Evelyn Keyes, who always seemed more modern than her era.
After Kelly helps Dr. Burton avoid the police, the pair drive away in her car to try and locate the address of "Professor Langner" the mysterious scientist. "This G32, whatever it is, it must be some deadly stuff", Dr. Burton surmises. It is, and it turns out to be a chemical weapon that could kill off civilization. Hijinx have taken over by this point, however, so the end of the world must take a back seat to romantic friction as our intrepid duo reluctantly come to realise they need each other if they're to survive the night.
After going to the Professor's house and discovering he's an impostor, they find out that the real Professor Langner has been committed to the same asylum George Taylor escaped from. Nancy Kelly gets an idea : "We can go there and I'll say your my husband. I'll tell them you haven't been yourself lately and I'd like you to be taken in for observation. Then, while you're there you can find the Professor and ask him about this G32. We'll find a way to free him and get this story out to the press".
"Gee, would you really do that for me", he responds. "Pretend you're my wife, I mean".
"Yes, but only if you buy me a new dress. I'm not going in there in my nightgown". This leads to a trip to a clothing store, and some very risque dialogue when the saleslady tries to interest Kelly in lingerie to go with her dress.
They're successful in getting Burton admitted to the asylum, but while he's in there trying to locate Professor Langner, Nancy Kelly is accosted by the cops, who've once again tracked down our fearless fugitives. By now, the monkey business is in overdrive, and after the cops have Burton removed from the nuthouse, they drive the couple away, ostensibly to jail. But the patrolmen assigned to the task are yokels, and when they hear of Kelly and Burton's long night, and the trials and tribulations they've endured, they take pity on them. "This should never happen to a nice man and wife", they agree.
"Uhh, we aren't really married", confesses Kelly. Well, there just so happens to be a Justice of the Peace in the little podunk town they're driving through, so you can guess the rest. The cops insist they get hitched for real, and it looks like they live happily ever after.
Though it's far more convoluted than I've described (or I'd have had you here all night), I think you'll like "Fly By Night" for the reasons described, mainly the onscreen chemistry of Carlson and Kelly and their zippy repartee as they dash through their unscheduled nightmare. I do wish the filmmakers had kept Martin Kosleck around for more of the ride. We usually see him playing officious little Nazis. Here, he's finally a good guy, and he gets bumped off near the beginning. But I guess it had to be that way if we were gonna focus on the romance. Two Solid Thumbs Up overall for "Fly By Night", but Two Bigs for it's eagerness to please. It's the second feature of director Robert Siodmak, who went on to helm many a well-known thriller. Give it a look for good fun. /////
And that's all I've got for the time being. Tomorrow is the first Sunday of the NFL season, which means Go Rams! They're playing Da Bearss, so it should be an easy one.....(Bearss, Bearss, Bearss....Ditka....Bearss, Bearss, Bearss....Ditka....oh man, Farley's having another heart attack).
See you in the morning. I send you Tons of Love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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