"Man's Castle" starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young

Tonight's movie was "Man's Castle"(1933), a Depression Era tale starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young as a down-on-their-luck couple living in a shantytown in New York City. They meet on a park bench. Tracy is feeding popcorn to the pigeons, Loretta eyes them with envy - she hasn't eaten in two days.  He's gruff at first, but offers to take her to dinner at a nice restaurant. He appears to be loaded, decked out in a three piece suit, but when it comes time to pay the bill, he hasn't got a dime. He's as broke as she is. They have to pull a variation on the old "dine and dash" scheme, and - once outside the restaurant - they're ready to go their separate ways. But Spencer can see that Loretta (only 20 years old here and waiflike) has nowhere to stay. So he brings her back to his homeless camp, which in this case is an acre sized lot of small shacks, built of scrap and tar paper.

Soon, they are a couple, and Loretta is happy with her newfound domestication. She loves keeping house, doesn't care that it's a hovel, and enjoys cooking stew for Spencer over a makeshift stove. 

Tracy, however, abhors the very thought of being tied down. He's a vagabond who's used to living on the edge, riding trains and never staying in any city for more than thirty days. He does aspire to respectability, however, and vows to buy Loretta a real stove one day. She's devoted to Spencer, and in his own way he loves her too, but he's never had responsibility before and he's ill at ease in their relationship.

Then the news comes that she's pregnant. Loretta is delighted. Family is what she's always wanted after being alone most of her life. But for Spencer Tracy, the proposition of a child is cause for him to flee. Still, he wants to do the right thing by this young lady with whom he's become attached, so he scrapes up the cash for a civil ceremony. Now they are officially married, and Tracy makes his plans to escape. But he will not leave her without funds to raise their child, so without her knowledge, he decides to rob the safe inside a toy factory where the couple's surly neighbor has a job.

This guy, who lives in the shack next door, is a true loser who has designs on Loretta when Spencer isn't home. He has his own plan : to assist in the robbery, then frame Spencer Tracy. Once Spencer is in prison, he will coerce Loretta Young into living with him. He sees her as naive and helpless.

The movie is not about the struggle for money, though. It's more concerned with the different ways the characters react to their lot in life. In Young's case, the shantytown is a step up from life on the street. And her relationship with Tracy (now a marriage in name only) is a quantum leap for an orphan girl without relatives. So she's perfectly happy. But for Tracy, the marriage is a death sentence, one he must break free from. But his conscience dictates he must do so with honor, because he's gone "all in" with this girl he met by chance, and he can't leave her hanging, especially since she's carrying his child.

"Man's Castle" was a lot better than I expected, being that it was an early talkie and had the transitional production qualities that marked the period between the Silent era and the onset of Golden Age Hollywood. Much of it's success can be attributed to the acting, but credit must also go to director Frank Borzage, one of the great craftsmen of classical Hollywood. His talent takes the film out of pre-code simplicity and gives it some depth, despite the budget.

I give it Two Big Thumbs Up, but even beyond that, it's worth watching just to see the depiction of life in a shantytown in the 1930s. The only other film I'd seen this in was (of all movies) John Waters' "Desperate Living"(1977). And at 17, I thought it was an absurdist fantasy, because that's how Waters portrayed the lifestyle of his characters. What I didn't know - but Waters obviously did - was that shantytowns once existed in America, just like they remain in existence in countries like Brazil to this day. Yet as bad as they look in "Man's Castle", they are better than what homeless people have now, living in cardboard boxes on concrete.  And the movie does show the other side of the argument, via Spencer Tracy, that there are some folks who cannot adapt to society, and can only find freedom in the margins. You can't force people to conform, in other words, even by offering them a roof over their head. In Tracy's case, that's the last thing he wants. ////

Well, that's all I know for tonight. Tomorrow I'll be writing from home, off work for the next two weeks.

Stay safe and stay healthy, and I'll see you in the morning. Tons and tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Trooper Hook", a Western with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck

Last night I watched a Western for the first time in weeks. We only saw a handful of 'em in 2020, a disturbing trend that has to be reversed, so I chose "Trooper Hook"(1957) from yet another Youtube list. It sounded good on paper : Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck in the lead roles, a script written by Charles Marquis Warren, the creator of the "Rawhide" TV series, which made Clint Eastwood a star. And a solid sounding story about a US Cavalry Sergeant (McCrea) who is charged with returning a white woman (Stanwyck) and her half breed son to her husband. Stanwyck is a captive of the Chiracahua Indian chief "Nanchez", who kidnapped her years earlier in a raid. He had a son by her and brainwashed her into Apache culture. When we first see her, she has the blank stare of a zombie, but holds on to her son with the protective instinct of any mother.

Some of the soldiers in Joel McCrea's regiment question why he would bother providing escort to such a woman. The underlying message, left unsaid, is that - because she has a half-Indian child (a small boy) - she must have been "asking for it" from Nanchez. In other words, they think she lusted after him. But nothing could be further from the truth. She's a victim of kidnapping and rape, and in her years as a captive she has withdrawn inside herself. McRea, as "Sergeant Hook", understands all of this, but the people he encounters as he brings Stanwyck home do not. At every stop they make, she is harangued with prejudicial comments, such as "White Squaw", meaning an Indian lover who willingly left her husband to join with the Apache.

Worse, her little boy is vilified. If not for Trooper Hook's protective presence, he would likely be killed by some white man on the desolate frontier. 

It was a good concept, with a heartfelt script, and you can't go wrong with the pairing of Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck, two major stars who've acted together in previous Westerns. But the execution was slow as molasses. I found myself nodding off here and there as Warren - who also directed - subjected his audience to yet another cramped scene inside a stagecoach.

It's safe to say his forte is television. Besides "Rawhide", he was also the co-creator of "Gunsmoke" and "The Virginian", each a legendary series, but in tv you move quickly. Scenes are short - 10 to 30 seconds. Warren is expert in that format, but here, in "Trooper Hook", he seems lost at maintaining dramatic tension in a lengthier presentation. There is a flatness to the plot, and the performances are professional but slightly wooden. McCrea in particular recites his lines bloodlessly, as if he was on set waiting for lunch break. And he never phones it in; he was one of the greatest Western Stars of them all.

It's not worth it to pick on this film, because it's still watchable and it means well. But there's next to no action and the conflict, despite the serious subject matter, is minimal. All in all, it's better thought of as a nice story than as a motion picture. Give it a shot if you want, but my thumbs are both pointed sideways. ///

We're gonna keep heading out on the dusty trail, though, because we are humongous Western movie fans and we haven't been watching nearly enough of them. Remember that Motorhead song, "Shoot You In The Back" from "Ace of Spades"? That was an ode to Westerns, and Lemmy even used the line "in the Western movies".

Man, I was a huge Motorhead fan back in the day. In 1981-82 they were in regular rotation on my Denon turntable, not just "Ace of Spades", but also their albums "Bomber" and "Overkill", and then "Iron Fist", the last one with Fast Eddie Clarke on guitar. I got to see that original lineup a couple of times, and they made such an impression on me that I even carved "Motorhead" into the newly poured cement of the gutter in front of our house, at 9032 Rathburn Street. I had a bunch of favorite bands in those days, and at the top were always Rush, Van Halen, Judas Priest or Rainbow, but Motorhead were also included for a while, and they had a different image from the other groups. They really did look like outlaws from the Old West. ////

That's all I've got for tonight. I finished reading "1915" by Lyn Macdonald and "The History of Warfare" by John Keegan, and now I'm continuing in the same vein with a book about the bombing of Dresden called "The Fire and the Darkness" by Sinclair McCay. I know it's grim stuff, but besides being a history buff, and especially war history, I really feel it's important to know what has happened in the world due to the dark side of human nature. The dark side never rests, and the only way to keep it down is to be aware of it. 

Peace and love for the week ahead, and for the final ten days of American Psycho.......

xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Riot In Cell Block 11" + Elizabeth

It's a little difficult to write a movie review in light of everything that's going on, just because the news is so unsettling and distracting, but I'll give it a shot anyway. 

Tonight's picture was once again "ripped straight from the headlines", not as fully as "The Killer That Stalked New York", but it was topical all the same. The title speaks for itself : "Riot In Cell Block 11"(1954), the story of a prison uprising led by inmates rebelling against what they feel are inhumane conditions. And as violent as these guys are, you actually have some sympathy for them as they list their complaints. Though they belong in prison, they have some legitimate beefs, compared to the rioters in Washington DC, who stormed the capitol because their seditious, insane cult leader can't admit he lost the election.

The movie was directed by Don Siegel of "Dirty Harry fame, and there isn't a set-up or plot. He shows us the riot in real time. It begins right away, in a isolation block that holds the prison's most dangerous inmates, some of whom are psychotic and some who are barely out of their teens. This is one of the complaints listed by Neville Brand, the leader of the convicts, that crazies and young 'uns should not be housed in the prison at large, but sectioned off in their own wards. Brand, who will always be known for his performance in Tobe Hooper's "Eaten Alive", was a very good actor whose looks, and perhaps the roles he was offered as a result, went strikingly downhill in fast fashion. Here he is strong, tall and athletic, with an unlined face. See him 27 years later in Hooper's movie, and he looks fried to a crisp, though his acting is still fantastic. In "Cell Block 11", his right hand man is Leo Gordon, an actor we've commented on recently. To recap, Gordon was a regular on Western TV shows of the 1950s, and he made many films as well. He also wrote several screeplays for television. But what makes him so interesting was his background. He really had been in prison, doing hard time, but he reformed his life, and when he got out he became a famous actor. If I'm not mistaken he did at least five years in San Quentin (where "Cell Block 11" was filmed), and besides his acting talent it's his physical presence that makes him so memorable. He's broad shouldered and muscular, with no fat, and he has the hard face of a real prisoner. Gordon must have been an intelligent man to change his life to the extent that he did, but his onscreen persona is downright scary from actually having lived his role.

And, in this film he plays one of the psychos who should be in a mental ward instead of solitary confinement. Just when Neville Brand is starting to make progress in his negotiations with the warden, Leo Gordon hijacks his leadership, and the situation breaks down into mayhem. Guards are held hostage. The State Police are called in with orders to shoot to kill.

"Riot In Cell Block 11" classifies as a prison flick with a strong social conscience, but devoid of dramatic conventions. There are no cutaways to outside characters at other locations, or interwoven subthemes. The riot is in your face from the start, and Siegel uses the confines of San Quentin as a device to ratchet up the tension, which never lets up. I was surprised to see it was a Criterion release, uploaded right there on Youtube, so the print is once again razor sharp, and it's a hell of a movie. But the current flick in Washington is more frightening.  /////

Elizabeth, I am glad you are writing songs again. Your new one is deeply personal, which is why I didn't comment on Instagram, but your lyrics are beautiful and of course that's where you are always gonna get your best material : when you are writing straight from the heart......I hope all is going well for you in every way, and I also hope that (yeah I always harp on it, lol) that you will make an album of your songs. Maybe you could work toward releasing at least one of them in a completed version? I will hope so and keep fingers crossed.  :):)

That's all I know for tonight. Just like you, I wish peace for the world, but I am dismayed that nothing serious is being done to stop this SOB in the White House. I was heartened to see Colin Powell who said on MSNBC that the military should be deployed to protect against any further threats from Trump and his faction. I am a big supporter of the armed forces of the United States of America, because they have always protected us from threats to our country. And while I am fully aware of unjust wars and misadventures (so don't waste your breath), without a military we would be toast in two seconds, just as our cities would be toast without police. The last couple of days have proved that. We're looking at "Walking Dead" scenarios, where violent mobs take what they want, if we don't put the hammer of law enforcement down on these lowlifes, and cut the heads off of their leadership, and do it now.

Sorry to end the blog on a bum note, but this isn't a joke, it's not just some guy in a wolf skin and steer horns who led the charge on the Capitol. It was the fucking so-called president. In other countries, he would have already been dealt with, and been done with. If we don't do the same, it's to our own peril.

See you in the morning. Tons and tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Donald Trump Must Be Put In Prison + "The Killer That Stalked New York"

In writing my blog, over the years I've generally tried to maintain a policy similar to that of my favorite radio station, KUSC. No matter what is going on in the world, they never mention it, except for the most allusive of comments, and then only when the incident or situation is extreme. For instance, they only refer to the pandemic by telling their listeners to "stay safe, stay well". Even 9/11 would only have elicited a reference to "this tragic day", and the music would have kept playing. And if I'm not mistaken, one of their hosts on that day quoted Leonard Bernstein, who said (regarding some other incident) : "This will be our reply to violence; to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before". KUSC has always set itself up as a refuge from worldly events (meaning chaos), and for that it's faithful listeners are grateful. The news media already saturates us with coverage, and the chaos never stops, so why add to it with one more opinion? That's my take, although if I'd been blogging in my twenties you'd have gotten nothing but opinions. However, though I plan to stick with my "no news" pledge, I will offer one comment on today's riot. It's not anything I haven't said before, but I reiterate it now because it's of primary importance.

Donald Trump must be arrested, convicted of not just inciting today's riot, but of his many, many crimes, before and during his presidency, and he must be put in prison for the rest of his life.

In addition to this, incoming President Biden must sign on to a total rebuilding of the Justice Department, so that the FBI once more commands the respect it used to command among criminal groups. We need a massive recruitment of agents, vetted to the max to make certain they are not cretins like the shaven headed guy Trump appointed as acting director a while back. We need an apolitical FBI, we need each and every agent to be ultrapatriotic - not to party but to country - and we need to use them to infiltrate the kinds of groups from which today's rioters emerged - militias, gun nuts, racists and idiots of all stripes - and then to use maximum law enforcement to break up these groups and destabilise the Trumper movement. This, of course, is after Trump is in prison, which is our first priority.

In short, we need to shut these folks down, because if we don't, what happened today will seem mild to what they will do in the future.

Just to be clear, I include rioters of all political persuasions in that statement, including ANTIFA, and the looters and property destroyers from last Summer, who came from the Left. They too should be prosecuted to the max.  

But it's Trump who stirred all of this up, and if someone had stopped Hitler before he built his cult of personality, who knows.........World War Two might have been averted.

Mary Trump said it best : "Stop treating him as if he's normal". He isn't. He's a fucking sociopath, a criminal and an inciter of violence who today had his mob pull an early Hitler tactic, i.e. "the putsch". 

We need leaders who will work to restore the power structures of America where law and order are concerned, so that the everyday citizens don't have to live on a knife edge of constant chaos. I hope to God Joe Biden will be that leader, especially now that we have the Senate and House on our side as well.

What Trump has done cannot go unpunished and he must be put away for good. That is all. ////

Tonight's movie was so close to real life that I may as well have watched the news. It was called "The Killer That Stalked New York"(1950), and while I hadn't heard of it beforehand, and didn't seek out the subject matter, when it did appear in a list of black and white noirs, I knew I had to watch. Evelyn Keyes stars as a diamond smuggler who's just returned to NYC from Cuba (pronounced Koo-ba for period accuracy, or Kyoo-ber if you wanna go for the JFK effect). Straight off her flight she doesn't feel good. She's got a headache and is feverish, but tries to shrug it off until she nearly collapses on the way back to her boyfriend's apartment. A beat cop carries her to a nearby clinic, which she walks out of after the policeman leaves. But not before she encounters another patient in the waiting room, a little girl who inquires about her condition.

They talk, and then Keyes leaves the clinic, not wanting to be examined because of her need for anonymity. Soon the girl is transferred to the hospital, where her condition worsens. Then she dies.

The cause of death eludes doctors, until one of them recalls similar symptoms in patients he saw in the Third World. "But it can't be"! , he says to his colleagues. "It would be a throwback to the Middle Ages". The diagnosis is smallpox.

This is a red flag alert to the doctor in charge, and suddenly the Mayor of New York is on the radio, urging the public to stay inside, to avoid contact with anyone, and for anyone with symptoms to go directly to the quarantine ward at the county hospital. Then the search is on for Patient Zero - Evelyn Keyes - who's getting sicker by the hour but has the complication of needing to avoid authority because of her profession.

On top of that, her boyfriend - the mastermind of the smuggling ring - is ready to leave her high and dry, now that he knows she's sick. But he's got a dose of the 'Pox too, from contact with Keyes, and by now so does half of New York City. 

The noir aspect is minimal, provided only by the subplot involving the diamond smuggling, but the photography by Joseph Biroc is shadowy and excellent as always. He should be considered with the greats in my opinion. Mainly the story is about the breakout of a pandemic, and the attempt by NYC officials to stop it in it's tracks before it kills millions. 

Evelyn Keyes avoids detection until the end of the film, where the smuggling plot kicks in again and reaches a conclusion.

"The Killer That Stalked New York" is thin on story, it's mostly about the attempt to locate Evelyn Keyes, but there isn't much mystery in that chase because we the audience always know where she is. Instead, the film turns on her performance as her condition deteriorates. In the surrounding context there are parallels galore to today's news, no different than discovering that there was a mask/anti-mask controversy during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Human behavior stays the same, no matter the era. Which makes it all the more important to learn from history. ////

See you in the morning. Sorry about the politics but it had to be said. The print of tonight's film was once again razor sharp, so give it a look.

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Shield For Murder" and "The Naked Street", two excellent crime films with strong lead performances

Remember two nights ago, in "The Man Who Cheated Himself", we had a Good Cop/Bad Cop theme happening, with John Dall and Lee J. Cobb in those roles, respectively, as homicide detectives? Cobb covered up a murder and his Honest John partner (Dall) found out about it? Well, we have a similar plot tonight, and boy is it a good one. The movie is "Shield For Murder"(1954), about a psycho cop who kills a runner for a rackets boss, in order to steal the 25 Grand in cash he's carrying. Noir legend Edmond O'Brien, who also co-directed the film (along with Howard W. Koch), plays "Detective Barney Nolan" as pure evil, a powder keg ready to blow. His colleagues suspect him of murder in the shooting of the runner, but it's ruled as legit by the precinct captain. But just like Lee J. Cobb in the previous movie, O'Brien has a by-the-book partner, played by.......gotta have a drum roll for this......... the one and only John Agar! How weird is that? In writing about "The Man Who Cheated", we said that John Dall might be "the John Agar for 2021". Agar must have read that blog, because tonight he comes storming back to reclaim his crown, in a non-smug good guy role as the cop who has to shut down his partner O'Brien, who goes crazy with rage - and more murders - as the evidence builds against him.

Explosive is the word for this flick, which features some great mid-'50s L.A. locations, in Cheviot Hills near Culver City. When Edmond O'Brien played a heavy, he was as bad as they came, and in this movie he is willing to destroy everyone around him, including his beautiful girlfriend, in order to avoid detection. For a while, he is protected by the Blue Wall of Silence, even though everyone on the Homicide Squad knows he's guilty. But it isn't until new guy John Agar starts examining the chain of evidence that the police face up to the fact that their lead detective is a stone cold killer.

We struck gold with this one, not only because it's an excellent movie, but because we are huge John Agar fans. We became such because of his smug, and often downright smarmy and condescending performances in C-Grade sci-fi flicks from the same era. But here, not only does he turn in a sincere effort, but he's actually quite competent in his role as the morally upright investigator who faces a crisis of conscience, in having to turn in his partner. "Shield For Murder" is brutal in it's depiction of a corrupt, cornered cop, and all the way back in 1954 it sets the tone for what we see in the news today, with police shootings and the internal investigations thereof.

 I give it two big thumbs up.  But that's not all.....

Last night I found a character driven crime drama of the type Martin Scorcese might've made, had he been working in 1955. Perhaps he was even influenced by this film. It was called "The Naked Street", the story of a Brooklyn mobster (Anthony Quinn) whose domineering ways land hard on his kid sister (Anne Bancroft) and her punk boyfriend (Farley Granger). Quinn is one of those gangsters who thinks of himself as a Legitimate Businessman, and though he's loaded with dough, it's never made clear exactly what his business is. Loan sharking, maybe, with some protection racket thrown in. He has an office, and wears a shiny suit, but he's strictly a neighborhood Hood, not one from the big time. And none of that is the point of the film, anyway. This is a family drama, because - sociopath though he is - Quinn does love his Mama and his sister.

The movie opens with a man on fire, literally. This brief scene demonstrates Quinn's ruthlessness in dealing with his enemies, and allows us to know him in full, before the real story begins.

He plays at loving his family, which could be said to be the reality of all Mafiosi, and it's interesting to consider the way this has been portrayed in films. We always see the Benevolent Mafia Kingpin, who provides for his family, takes care of the neighborhood, and attends church, at least when it helps his image. My guess - which I make because of my ongoing attempt to understand the sociopathic personality - is that the Mafioso is attempting to "fit in" to what would be expected of him from his (usually) very religious, ethnic family. So he hides his corruption behind a facade of material respectability. By becoming rich, and playing the role of Gentleman Benefactor to his blue-collar (or poverty stricken) family, he can be seen as a hero, and thus legitimize himself as much in his own eyes as in theirs. I know that's not a profound insight, but it's brilliantly portrayed here, by Quinn and an ensemble of actors. 

Well anyhow, as the story continues, at a family dinner, Quinn finds out that his sister is pregnant. Worse, it's by Farley Granger, a small time neighborhood romeo who's sitting on Death Row in Sing Sing. Granger has only two days to live, for killing a liquor store owner in a holdup. But Quinn has pull. He uses his henchmen to put the muscle on the witnesses who got Granger convicted. They recant their testimony and he is set free. Quinn orders him to marry his pregnant sister straight away, and Granger - in awe and grateful for his new lease on life - obeys.

Talk about your shotgun weddings. Anthony Quinn wants to be loved and respected by his mama and his little sister, the only two people who have emotional power over him, because of his Catholic upbringing. They live right by God and he does not, so he tries to usurp their moral authority by providing luxuries in their lives, which they do not want or need. Finally, when he springs Farley Granger from Death Row, to force him to marry his sister, he's taken his dominance a step too far. You see, Granger is a criminal, and has a criminal mind just like Quinn. He's grateful to be spared the gas chamber, but he'll only take Quinn's orders so far, until he's had enough. Then he stands up for himself, with his wife Ann Bancroft caught in the middle. Bancroft is very young here, and looks like a different person entirely from her later performances in the 1960s and beyond. But this is Anthony Quinn's picture, and he owns it with an authoritative acting job that would've been right at home in "The Godfather" or any other Oscar caliber Mafia film.

Both of tonight's films are available in razor sharp Youtube prints (we've been lucky on that score lately), and both are highly recommended. Please note that I wrote this entire blog from scratch, tonight, so if it reads like gibberish or has unfinished thoughts, come back and re-read it again tomorrow. I will fix all syntactical errors and typos in the morning. Thanks.

Tons of love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Hooray for 2021! + "Berlin Correspondent" & "The Man Who Cheated Himself"

Happy New Year once again, and welcome to another year of blogging. I see that my total was way down last year, with only 261 blogs written as opposed to 331 in 2019 and an astounding 349 the year before that. I guess the main reason for the downturn is that my hours changed dramatically in 2020. After Pearl got out of the hospital last January, I became a round-the-clock caregiver. Since then, I am with her 22 hours a day, whereas before that, I had a lengthy break each night, during which I could write. Now, I am relegated solely to late night writing, a time I used to use to edit what I'd written earlier in the evening. At this time of night, I am too tired to write off the top of my head and then go back and clean it up, which is why my blogs take two days now, instead of one. I know that earlier in 2020, I was still managing a blog a day, but it wasn't easy, and by late Summer I threw in the towel and decided to cut everything in half. Maybe when I'm at home during my weeks off, I can try to write every day. I can't guarantee I'll achieve it, but let's make it a goal.

Well, how 'bout some movies? I started off the year in an excellent way with an Espionage flick, a genre we haven't frequented much, but this was a really good one and it was called "Berlin Correspondent"(1941), starring Dana Andrews as an American radio announcer working in Berlin (pronounced Behr - LEEN) just prior to the U.S. entry into World War Two. He's using code in his news reports, to sneak out messages to the US War Department concerning the movement of German troops. The date is Thanksgiving 1941, which means that the United States is still technically neutral (at least for another couple of weeks), therefore Andrews is in Germany as a neutral party reporting on the war, and is protected by the American Embassy.

But an upstart Gestapo Colonel, played par excellence by Martin Kosleck, gets wind of Dana Andrews' broadcast messages and decides to have him tailed, since he can't arrest him. He enlists his girlfriend in the scheme. Played by Virginia Gilmore, she is a young fraulein who's been brainwashed into believing in National Socialism. Many young Germans suffered the same fate.

The plot hinges on her personal crisis, because it turns out that her father is the man supplying Andrews with his information. Because she is the Gestapo Colonel's girlfriend, she is pressured to turn her Dad in. The Colonel promises her he'll be "well treated", because he'll be sent to a mental institution instead of a concentration camp. But Dana Andrews investigates, and discovers that lobotomy is the treatment of choice in the Nazi's nuthouse.

Martin Kosleck's performance sets the tone for this picture. You've seen his angular face before, and you'd recognize his officious onscreen persona. He specialized in playing fey-but-deadly Nazis and was very good at it, but in this film he goes too far by persecuting his girlfriend's father. She fights back, with the help of Dana Andrews, and the plot is set for a series of counterattacks by both sides. It's Grade A stuff for a B-Picture, one of those movies that's off and running at the starting gun. ////

Then tonight I found a top notch noir entitled "The Man Who Cheated Himself"(1950). Lee J. Cobb stars as a San Francisco homicide detective who's involved with a wealthy woman. When she kills her husband, Cobb helps her cover it up. But at the same time, Cobb's brother, also a detective (and played by John Dall of "Gun Crazy" fame), has just been promoted to homicide. In fact he's paired with his bro on the same case, the murder of the husband that Cobb has been covering up.

Because Dall is an eager beaver, trying to solve his first case, Cobb keeps having to shut him down, using seniority and experience as excuses. But Dall - who had a weird acting style bordering on caricature (but who was really good nonetheless) - keeps following his instincts, and little by little the clues add up that it's his womanising brother who is involved in the murder.

As with "Berlin Correspondent", "The Man Who Cheated Himself" runs at a steady pace, with no wasted scenes. You can't take your eyes off either film, and with "Man Who Cheated" you get a lot of great San Francisco location footage to boot. Lee J. Cobb was good at standing behind his physicality. He had that stocky physique, the cleft chin, and his deep voice, and like Brian Dennehy, he "threw his weight around" in the roles he played. His body was part of his acting. But here, in "The Man Who Cheated Himself", he is outdone by goofy John Dall, skinny and tall, whose combination of weirdness and earnest resolve - morally driven and relentless - are more than a match for the brawny Cobb belligerence that Lee J. was most known for. 

Both movies are available in razor sharp prints on Youtube and both are highly recommended. If we can find enough John Dall, he could become our John Agar for 2021!

That's all for tonight. I am hoping, as you are too no doubt, that this year will not just be a rebuke of Trump, and an end to the pandemic, but something very special. Concentrate on what it means to you, and it will happen.  ////

See you in the morning. Tons of love. Go Rams.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

The Year In Review (Part Two) + Some Books + Happy New Year

Happy New Year! The fireworks are still booming throughout the 'Hood as I write (at 12:30am). Folks in Reseda, and all over the world, are very happy to usher in 2021, and even happier - no doubt - to see the end of 2020. 

Well, I was hoping tonight to expand upon my Year In Review (my last blog was subtitled "Part One"), but in looking over my movie list for 2020, I don't see much in the way of Criterion art films, War Movies, Westerns, Musicals, Screwball Comedies ala Preston Sturges, Silent films or pre-code pictures that usually contributed to our compilations in years past.

What I do see, hehe, is hundreds of flicks watched on Youtube, for reasons explained in the previous blog. 

In November we did watch the epic version of "Les Miserables", which clocked in just shy of five hours. It was a towering achievement by any standard, and if I recall correctly, I mentioned that - for me - it was now a candidate for the greatest French film of all time (the current contenders being "Children of Paradise" and "Diary of a Country Priest"), but that may have been the one-and-only Criterion release I watched all year.

So instead of listing the various "mas-tah-pieces" of every stripe that we didn't watch, I'm just gonna mention some of the notable sci-fi and horror flicks that we saw on Youtube, and maybe a couple of others that we actually watched on dvd.

In fact, here are two right now: in October, I acquired a couple of horror films I'd sought for years, both from Hammer Studios : "Plague of the Zombies" and "The Devil Rides Out". We watched them almost back to back (with "The Wolfman" sandwiched in between) on the consecutive dates of October 29, 30, and 31. If ever there was a Triple Scoop of horror, this was it, and while you are familiar with "The Wolfman", you should also become acquainted with the other two films, "Plague" in particular. They represent Hammer Horror at it's lurid best, and upon watching them for the first time, as I did after ten years of anticipation, you'll understand why the original dvd pressings became collectors items. ////

And now, let's present a Top Ten (or thereabouts) of our Youtube flicks. No particular order. 

I'm gonna start with "Indestructible Man" starring Lon Chaney Jr. That one ruled, and would even be worth buying on dvd, if it was restored.

Another good one, in a decidedly cheesy way, was "The Brain From Planet Arous". It was somewhere around this time (and this movie) that we discovered the genius of John Agar. If you aren't already a fan, make it a point to become one in 2021. To say he enlivens any picture he's in is redundant. He's John Freakin' Agar, and in this movie he takes on a giant talking Brain in a cave. And the Brain is good special effects.

Let's see, we've also got "The Alligator People", a superior sci-fi worthy of a higher classification among all the B-movies. That one starred Beverly Garland, one of our favorite actresses of the 1950s.

"The Killer Shrews" also stood out, and starred James Best, who was a great actor in a wide variety of roles (watch him as a morphine addict on an episode of "The Rebel"), but who will always be remembered, by me anyway, for his portrayal of a Redneck Sumbitch, who orders William Devane's hand to be stuck down a garbage disposal in "Rolling Thunder". Sorry about the graphic description. Maybe you'd have had to be there. 

"The Beast of Yucca Flats" is worth mentioning, even though it rivaled any Ed Wood film for cheapness. What it did have, as we noted, was a Zen quality, brought on by it's minimal, almost poetic narration, in which the narrator described why Tor Johnson was wandering the Mojave desert as a mindless killer, after absorbing the brunt of a nuclear test explosion.

A great horror re-run was "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", perhaps the greatest Zombie movie ever made. They used to show it almost every Saturday night on local TV, for a while in the mid-70s, and my friends and I all had seen it several times. We thought it was a joke when we were teenagers, because of the campy portrayals of the hippie characters, including the performance of Alan Ormsby, the actor who also wrote and produced the movie. But in rewatching it 45 years later, I saw that it is much more than a camp classic. Rather, it's a genuine high achievement in the annals of horror, especially in it's art direction, which features "hand-made" Zombies that actually look like they've just come out of a grave. (Yeah, how would I know, right?)

Sorry about all the gruesomeness, but hey........it was 2020.

And last but not least, let's not forget "Teenagers From Outer Space, an eccentric but very original take on the Alien Invasion motif, written and directed by a young film student named Tom Graeff. The cliched title belies the thoughtfulness of the script, and cheesy as the production is (almost devoid of budget), Graeff manages to articulate a purpose behind his idea, i.e. why the Aliens must be stopped, and why Romance must endure. I was so startled by the competency of this film, that when it ended I had to look up Mr. Graeff. I was sorry to see that he met a tragic end, but for "Teenagers From Outer Space" he will always be remembered, somewhere in the Universe. ////

Let's do a few books before we call it a night. 

I'll start with "Norco 80" one of the top five crime books I've ever read, and in fact maybe the best ever. If you like True Crime, give it a shot. You won't be able to stop reading.

I also recommend "Me & Lee" by Judith Vary Baker, the girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald. "1915" by Lyn Macdonald. I am just now finishing this book, and I almost don't know how to comment, because the horror of World War One, and the sheer agreement by all sides to participate in such a brand new form of technological warfare (and to subject millions of young soldiers to it), really defies description. It's almost as if it took place on another planet, with another species of human, so horrible is the battering of life. No other terrible thing in life compares, except for World War Two, which was worse. I do suggest you read "1915", however, though I know (and understand) that you won't. But for me, it's part of my job in life to try and comprehend these things. Here are a few more books : "The Paris Wife", "Worlds In Collision", "Gobekli Tepe", "Roadshow" by Neil Peart, "Survivor Song" by Paul Tremblay, "The Ox" (a biography of John Entwistle), "A Fast Ride Out Of Here" (about Pete Way),........and "The Temple of Man", by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz" (already lamented over, several times).

Give 'em all a shot, but if you're short of time, go for "Norco 80". Holy smokes, folks. Wait til they make a movie out of this. ///

That's all I know for this evening. I wish the best of health for everyone in the New Year, and all good blessings.

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxo  :):)