I'm still pretty shaken up by the news about Pat. In writing about him in the last blog, I forgot to mention that he introduced me to King's X, who I suppose could be my favorite band of all-time. That's a hard thing to decide, of course, but King's X has been the heart and soul of my life, musically, since I first heard "Gretchen Goes To Nebraska" in the Summer of 1989. Pat brought that CD over, saying "Have you ever heard of these guys?" I had not, but was blown away on first listen. I can also remember the night of January 16th, 1994. 'Twas a Sunday. I had played football that day with Johnny B, Ryan, and three kids we found at CSUN. It was a hot day, uncharacteristic for January. Nobody from our usual gang of weekend sports peeps wanted to play football, so we three die-hards had to coax some 12-year-olds to play three-on-three. The game ended about five o'clock. Pat came over to our garage around 9 pm. Terry was living in there at the time and had a stereo. The garage was the hangout place for many of the friends in the early 1990s. Pat had with him an advance copy of the new King's X album, "Dogman". As a Sony employee, and a music business veteran, he often got new releases weeks in advance.
"Let's blast it," someone said and we did. The sound and style were different from other KX albums, low and rumbling as opposed to the brighter, compressed sound of the Sam Taylor-produced records. We listened all the way through, and when it was over, Pat and Terry didn't care for it compared to the first four. I was the exception; I loved "Dogman" and it remains my favorite King's X album. It's also in my Top Three Albums of All-Time. Pat left the garage around 11 pm. I might've hung out a little while longer, then went inside and went to bed around 1:30 am, thinking "Man, what a great album that was." Pat had also made plans with me for the next day, Monday January 17th, which was Martin Luther King Day, and a day off for him. We were gonna go see "Schindler's List."
But we never did get to go, because at 4:31 that morning, whammo! The Northridge Earthquake hit. Everything changed after that. My whole life changed. But that morning, when the Sun came up and chaos reigned, Pat was the first to come over. He rode his bike from his Granada Hills apartment to our house, and he stayed with us for three days. He had taken photos that very morning, of buildings destroyed and on fire. That inspired me to get my camera out. The first weekend after the quake, we drove around and took more photos, and I ended up spending all of 1994 documenting the quake in photographs and video at the Northridge Meadows Apartments.
So that's just another little story about Pat, and I could write a bunch of 'em. For now, I do have some movies. Last night, in "Shadows of the Orient"(1935), the pilot of a small plane smuggling Chinese laborers into the USA, through Mexico, is intercepted by "Inspector Bob Baxter" (Outregis Toomey) of the INS and forced to land in a field. But when his plane is searched, there's no "cargo". That's because he's pulled a lever mid-air, like a bombardier opening a bomb bay, and the Chinamen (as they are called in the script) are dropped to their deaths. It's brutal and callous, but the pilot walks away scot-free. Having no contraband on board, he can't be charged.
However, his Chinese boss in San Francisco is less than happy. "You kill my countrymen, I no pay you!" The pilot threatens to turn him in to the authorities, and makes good on his threat by going to a nearby phone booth to call the INS. But he only gets part of his message out because the boss has had him tailed by an assassin, who shoots him dead while he's still on the phone.
"Inspector Sullivan" (J. Farrell MacDonald), the agent who answered the call, has heard enough to raid the restaurant operated as a front by the Chinese boss, and when he raids it, his men pick up (among others) a blonde named "Viola Avery" (Esther Ralston) who was there playing FanTan. Viola happens to be the daughter of a judge, a fact pointed out by another big shot gambler, who insinuates what will happen if she's charged : "It'll mean your career, Inspector." The big shot and Viola leave unscathed, and the next day, Inspector Sullivan is replaced by Bob Baxter as head of the San Francisco INS branch. Baxter is the young hotshot pilot chasing down the illegal immigrant operation. He's now Sullivan's boss, and the first thing he does is use Viola Avery as leverage. He sweet talks her into cooperating, by saying "Either help me close this thing thing down or I'll tell your Dad you were gambling." All Viola wants is adventure, she's not a bad gal, just restless. She's also a pilot, and airplanes will figure in the resolution of the plot.
Baxter tracks the operation to an airfield in Mercer County. There, a middleman oversees the hangars and airplanes that are used for the smuggling. A Chinese slave broker is also in place, akin to the African chieftains who sold slaves to European captains who in turn took them to America. The Chinese bosses just want money. They refer to the laborers as "Chinamen", just as the Americans do.
The Chinese boss at Mercer Airfield wants collateral on the next flight, because on the previous one his "cargo" was dumped. "You murder my countrymen, I keep hostage this time, or no deal." The middleman just so happens to be the white man caught in the raid at the FanTan restaurant, who originally rescued Viola from the INS raid. He and the Chinese boss are dealers, humans are just money to them. "You deliver Chinamen, I give back hostage." The middleman agrees and tricks Viola into flying him to Mercer Field, where he plans to strand her as the hostage for the Chinese boss. Meanwhile, Bob Baxter has been trying to infiltrate the front end of the operation, the place where the planes take off. He's posing as an outlaw pilot, a sort of Barry Seal of the human smuggling business. But the underling in charge says, "Now that you've introduced yourself, I've gotta have you checked, to make sure you aren't using a false name."
The acting is a bit stilted, because that was the style in the early sound era, with exaggerated gestures left over from Silent film. Outregis Toomey and Esther Ralston deliver some lines with such a nod and wink that it had to have been deliberate, however.....for a B-picture, and low budget (but not Poverty Row), there is a truckload of plot. There's also good location footage in what looks like the undeveloped Burbank area of 1935. There are airplanes galore, and a dogfight to end the movie. A lot of effort went into this one, including a major editing job that demonstrates the evolution of cutting technique in creating tension, instead of just using static shots. Two Bigs with a high recommendation. The picture is very good. ////
The night before, in "Do You Know This Voice?"(1964), a child is kidnapped on his way home from school. That afternoon, his parents receive a phone call from a person whose voice is disguised, demanding 2000 pounds ransom. The police are summoned. They bring tape recorders and sound equipment, and coach the father to keep the caller on the line for as long as possible when he phones again, to allow them to trace the call.
it doesn't work the first time, and unfortunately, Police Superintendent "Hume" is notified that his men have found and identified a child's body in the village green. Right away, you know this is some grim stuff you're in for, like in "M" with Peter Lorre. Superintendent Hume has the unenviable job of informing the parents of their son's death, just when they were ready to pay the ransom and hopefully reclaim him. Needless to say, they are devastated by the news, to the point that they cannot speak. The father goes more or less catatonic, though he does agree, after some prodding by the inspector, to answer the phone one more time if the caller by chance rings again. He does, using the same disguised voice, and he doesn't know that the father now knows his son is dead, because the news of the body hasn't been released on the radio. Father manages to keep the kidnapper on the line long enough for the cops to trace the call to a phone box (in England it's "box" not "booth") just a few blocks away.
The cops are there in a heartbeat, and they detain a woman using the box at the time. She's "Mrs. Marotta," of Italian heritage. She obviously isn't the kidnapper, but the Superintendent tells her, "We're looking for the person who used the phone box before you. Can you remember anything about him?" She can't, but she's an intuitive lady, and says, "My brain is trying to remember. Something about the person, maybe his coat and shoes? I will remember because it-a bothers my brain."
She has a neighbor, a nice, friendly American man named "Mr. Hopta", played by Dan Duryea. We've already seen them kibbutzing on the sidewalk in front of their slightly dowdy building. Mrs. Marotta "loves" Mr. Hopta and tells him so. She means it in a flirtatious, friendly way, because he's always so nice to her, offering to help around her flat, or run errands for her. But because it's Dan Duryea, and because we know The Laws of Casting, we can surmise that such a legendary actor, known for playing Bad Guys, was not hired to play an innocuous neighbor.
And the screenwriter, also knowing this, doesn't play us for fools. He reveals very quickly (probably around the 20 minute mark) that Duryea is the kidnapper, and his thoroughly dominated British wife is the Voice on the telephone, feigning a man's intonation. Inside their flat, they argue about continuing the ransom demand. "Surely we can't collect," says the wife. "We can't return a dead child. Why'd you have to kill him?" "I didn't mean to," claims Duryea. "It was an accident, I tied him up too tight." But he doesn't seem to care much, telling his wife to "forget the kid" because "we'll still collect". But they soon have to give up on the ransom because the cops are all over the neighborhood. As we've noted, what the British police lack in firepower, by not carrying guns, they make up for in tenaciousness. When you commit a crime in England, they are in your freaking face, as also noted by The Ever-Threatening Rolls Royce Grill. Here, they have a young undercover cop stay with Mrs. Marotta, who's offered herself as bait for the kidnapper/child killer, because he now knows that she saw him at the phone box. But the caller was really a "her", Duryea's wife.
The rest of this incredibly chilling movie, which features a standout creepy performance by Dan Duryea, involves his stalking of Mrs Marotta. He tries poisoning her milk bottle in the wee hours of the night, right after the milkman delivers. She uses it to feed her cat, who dies. He then tries breaking in to strangle her, with the undercover cop asleep in the living room! Wearing a stocking mask. Duryea is as scary here as any notable cinematic psycho, from Anthony Perkins to Richard Attenborough in "10 Rillington Place". The scenes where he's trying to eliminate Mrs. Marotta, creepy-crawling her flat in the middle of the night, will run chills down your spine.
But he makes too much noise during one of these treks, waking the cop, who gives chase but doesn't get a good enough look. At this point, Duryea's wife comes out of her flat due to the commotion, and the cop asks her to stay with Mrs. Marotta until he comes back. "I've got to inform the Superintendent!" The problem here, plotwise, is that Duryea's wife has been so paranoid about being found out for the entire movie, because husband Dan dragged her into the kidnapping, that it's doubtful she'd have come outside to show her face, no matter the time of night or commotion. She was the one who made the ransom calls, and there's always the possibility that Mrs. Marotta will remember her from the phone box. So that part is a stretch of our suspension of disbelief, and when her husband gets away, she deliberately wears the same coat she wore to the phone box, to see if Mrs. Marotta will recognize her. It's like she wants to get caught, and the poisoned bottle of milk figures big in the last twenty minutes.
This flick, made at Shepperton Studios, should be more well-known. It may not be quite on the level of "Seance On A Wet Afternoon", another Richard Attenborough psycho flick which also features a kidnapping, but it's close, and should not be relegated to obscurity. It's creepy as all get-out, even though you know who the kidnapper is almost from the start. It's not a whodunit, but a how-are-they-gonna-catch-him? Duryea's character is a poor chump who came to England looking to escape factory life in Pittsburgh and ended up working as a penniless hospital orderly for 20 years, married to a co-dependent wife. Kidnapping was a last resort for the pair, and it turned into a disaster. Dan Duryea was an excellent actor; the subtleties in his character are intriguing, as he first plays the nice guy to Mrs. Marotta, the helpful "Mr. Fixit" neighbor, before changing his mind and trying to kill her. Then at home, with his high, pulled-up pants (like Fred Mertz), and his clinging wife who wants to die, and who hates him for talking her into the kidnapping, yet wouldn't leave him for Prince Charming, he's back to being the jobless American schlub, complaining about being broke. His thought process is some cold-blooded stuff. "Just forget about the kid," he repeats to his wife. "He's in a better place, and he died pure." They don't even think about what they did, just about getting caught. Two Huge Thumbs Up, though the subject matter is disturbing and incredibly grim. The picture is razor sharp. ////
That's all for tonight. My blogging music was "Close To The Edge" by Yes, and "Days of Future Passed" by The Moody Blues. My late night is Chopin by Vladimir Sofronitsky. I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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