boblipton Reviews

The Diamond Wizard (1954)

Goes Off The Rails At The End

[5/10 · 26 May 2024]

Treasury Agent Dennis O'Keefe is seconded to Scotland Yard Inspector Philip Friend because perfect artificlal diamonds have started turning up on the market, threatening the world trade balance. Clues point to nuclear physicist Paul Hardtmuth, whose daughter works for an airline in London and is an occasional girlfriend of O'Keefe. Hardtmuth is working with various characters who grow more unsavory as the movie progresses, in what looks like a steel mill in a ruined castle. Hardtmuth was to make the diamonds for industrial use. The unsavory sorts want to sell them to people to drop into the world market.

That means that De Beers would be ruined as the only successful industrial cartel in the modern world. Boo hoo, say I, but fortunately for my enjoyment of the movie, they don't emphasize it, just making the Bad Guys nastier and nastier, until they inevitably turn on each other. The ending goes way over the top. In Great Britain, the direction is attributed solely to Montgomery Tully. The copy I saw, presumably the American one, solely to O'Keefe. With Alan Wheatley and Michael Balfour.

The Rise of the Krays (2015)

A Pair Of Improper Villains

[5/10 · 26 May 2024]

Simon Cotton and Kevin Leslie star as the twin brothers who were leading gangsters in 1960s London. Filmed simultaneously with its sequel, THE FALL OF THE KRAYS, it purports to offer their lives from their initial move to take over a bar, through their increasing political influence through the election of Harold Wilson.

Although Ronnie's homosexuality is not mentioned -- despite its featuring in other versions -- there is the occasionally almost orgasmic release as Kevin Leslie pulls out a cavalry saber to rip apart some bloke who has offended him. Is this some lingering reticence, or will it be saved for the sequel? There's certainly no shyness about showing young women's breasts in the sequence covering the Profumo Affair. My conclusion is that this was intended as pornography, soft enough to manage an R rating in the US and an 18 in the UK.

Highways by Night (1942)

Abercrombie Had A Zombie

[5/10 · 25 May 2024]

Richard Carlson is so smart he can run an entire automobile plant from home, inventing stuff without seeing the problem. His uncle Ray Collins says he lacks the common touch, which is going to be a problem when he goes into the Navy in a month. Collins complains that he's never had to get Carlson out of trouble with.a chorus girl, and insists he couldn't last a week without the family millions. So that evening, while out with his beautiful but dull fiancee, Carlson, like Abercrombie, has a zombie. By the time dawn rises, he's seen a murder, been knocked out, switched into the dead man's clothes, and been taken for a ride. Fortunately for him, he falls out the back. When he wakes up he finds a gas station and makes a call to Collins for succor, then gets angry and insists he'll get in touch when it's time for him to go into the Navy. He hooks up with Jane Randolph, her brother Gordon Jones, and their grandmother Jane Darwell, who are trying to run a trucking company in competition with the same crooks who tried to kill him.

It's a case of perfect casting all around, but the script from a Clarence Buddington Kelland story is erratic. People change their minds to fit the plot, and make decisions that make little sense; that's fine when you're under the influence of a potent cocktail, but the only one drunk was in the beginning. Even so, it's an engaging movie because everyone is cast square in the middle of their screen personas, so you're willing to forgive the lack of sense. With Iris Adrian, Barton Maclane, Paul Fix, and Emory Parnell.

The Prom: It's a Pleasure! (1961)

There's Nothing To Drink Except Coca-Cola

[5/10 · 25 May 2024]

After she explains that Coca-Cola awards several scholarships at the Junior Miss Pageant, she goes on to explain the current etiquette for a high-school promenade, or 'prom' as they were still known when I attended mine about a decade after this.

Like most Jam Handy industrial films, it doesn't emphasize that nothing is complete without Coca-Cola. No, that would lack subtlety and make this advertising, rather than an instructional film. However, if you look, you can see that everyone drinks Coke out of the familiar silhouette bottles, and at the buffet table, those are all you can see in the way of beverages.

Miss Frann won the Junior Miss Pageant that year. She is best remembered for her role as Bob Newhart's wife in his TV show NEWHART. She died in 1998 at the age of 55.

Frisco Lil (1942)

The Old Guys Steal The Show

[6/10 · 25 May 2024]

Minor Watson runs an honest gambling house. He knows all the tricks, but doesn't use them. He has taught them to his daughter, Irene Hervey. The only person who knows she's his daughter is Milburn Stone. She's studying law under professor Kent Taylor, and they're very much in love. His parents, Samuel S. Hinds and Claire Whitney, like her very much.

But while Watson is an honest gambler, his partner, Jerome Cowan isn't. While Watson has been on vacation with his daughter, Cowan has installed crooked devices and a couple of strong-arm boys in case someone actually wins. When Watson returns, everything is turned back to honest. That night, an old acquaintance of Watson wins big, and the two go off for a drink. Meanwhile, Cowan sends the boys after the winnings. The winner is killed, Watson is framed as the murderer and goes to prison, and Cowan opens the place up wide. Miss Hervey goes undercover at the club to try to get evidence to clear Watson.

There's some nicely performed card tricks, and I'd like to know who did them. Otherwise, the main story is fairly standard. But when Watson or Hinds is on the screen, they offer kind, warm humor that makes this a very watchable movie.

Careful, Soft Shoulders (1942)

How Are We Going To Win The War?

[5/10 · 25 May 2024]

Virginia Bruce is the daughter of a late Senator. Now she makes her living wearing clothes from shops who want to impress her rich and influential friends. James Ellison is the son of William B. Davidson, who works with Naval Intelligence. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor, and Virginia Bruce is fired up about wanting to help out, but the pair of them are well educated, smart, and utterly useless. So when Aubrey Mather approaches Miss Bruce with an offer to work for the Secret Service, she agrees. But it soon becomes obvious to the audience that he is a spy for an unnamed enemy country. When he orders her to get Ellison to steal some of his father's key papers to see if he is the leak they're searching for....

It's a great idea for a movie, and it could easily work, but Miss Bruce is too ditzy, and Ellison is too patently a useless lout for far too long to make the audience invest much emotion in anything except wondering if and when they figure out what is going on. There's a war on, you know. With Sheila Ryan, Ralph Byrd, and Minerva Urecal.

Night in New Orleans (1942)

Engaging Mystery-Comedy

[6/10 · 25 May 2024]

Preston Foster is in competition with Albert Dekker for the new captaincy that's just opened up.... and the police commissioner's job is also up for grabs. So when a man that Foster is investigating turns up dead and the evidence indicates that Foster might have a hand in it, he has to keep arguing his way out of having Dekker arrest him with the help of his loving but silly wife, Patricia Morrison, and faithful manservant Dooley Wilson.

It's a bright little mystery comedy, with easy play between Foster and Miss Morrison; although it might seem that New Orleans has little to do with the movie, it is set just before the Mardis Gras, and it actually has some relevance. I figured the wrongplayer for the murderer until he was eliminated, so it turned out to be a fairly good time. With Charles Butterworth, Paul Hurst, Cecil Kellaway, and Yola D'Avril.

No End (1985)

No 30

[6/10 · 25 May 2024]

Grazyna Szapolowska's husband dies. He was a public defender, so she tries to arrange for his last client, Artur Barcis, to have a good defendant. She arranges for Aleksander Bardini, under whom her husband had apprenticed, to take the case. Barcis is accused of having led an illegal strike, and Bardini works to have him tread the middle ground of confessing and denial.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's movie is a murky one that tells us we can never tell what is going on at the moment. Only in retrospect can we figure out what was going on, and even that may not be true. It is a gloomy movie, with a lot of motivation left unclear. Did Miss Szapolowska really love her husband? Why has Bardini, who hasn't taken a case of this sort for more than 30 years, taken this one? What was the strike actually about? That remains uncertain, even after the movie's end.

The Head Waiter (1919)

Waiting For The Next Gag

[6/10 · 24 May 2024]

Larry Semon goes from fighting a limping dog for a string of sausages, to trying to deadhead a meal at a fancy restaurant, to being the head waiter at that fancy restaurant.

We're still early in Semon's career, when his gags are fresh, daring, and adroitly performed. There is much to puzzle over in this short. Why is Frank Alexander in such heavy make-up that he appears to be wearing war paint? Why is there are acrobat on a trapeze at the restaurant? Why are the strands of spaghetti cut so long that they stretch from diner to diner, with never a thought to cut any of them?

The answer to all of these is that they are present to make a gag work. Semon's comedies are not set in anything like the real world, but in a cartoon world where everything is constructed first to be funny, and any utility is of distantly secondary importance. The the moment they are funny. But as the urge to top each picture with the next grew, eventually the gags ceased to be funny and became merely bizarre. But for the moment, that's a couple of years in the future.

Hindoos and Hazards (1918)

They Sikh Him Here, They Sikh Him There

[7/10 · 24 May 2024]

Larry Semon winds up in possession of a stolen sacred necklace, so the Hindoos of the title chase him.

Actually, given the turbans they wear, it seems more likely they would be Sikhs in single-minded pursuit of what is theirs. Semon has no claim to the necklace other than its thief handed it to him, telling him it was worth a million dollars. Every time he escapes from them in a novel way, they turn up again. Given Semon's bizarre appearance and white-face-clown lack of personality, this becomes a mechanical chase comedy. Given my reviews of other Semon comedies and dislike of them, I am surprised to admit I enjoy this one for its endless cataloguing of the tropes of the chase and escape. Even though I am rooting for the Hindoos, or whoever they are.

The Undercover Woman (1946)

Nice Little B

[6/10 · 24 May 2024]

PI Stephanie Bachelor and pal Isabel Withers are invited to a party at a ranch. That's the cover story. It seems that Helen Heigh is cheating on husband Richard Fraser. Then Fraser turns up murdered and Miss Bachelor has to contend with sheriff Bob Livingston in this modern-dress western mystery with occasional gusts of comedy.

For every four or five westerns Livingston made for Republic, he made some other movie: a fantasy or a murder mystery or such. Here they back him up with an interesting cast that includes Betty Blythe and John Dehner in this high-speed B movie that times in under an hour.

Blackbeard (1911)

Terror Of The Seas

[6/10 · 24 May 2024]

Blackbeard the Pirate -- played by Sidney Ayres, raids Martinique. He takes prisoner governor Hobart Bosworth and his family, and makes Bosworth walk the plank. Fortunately, Bosworth makes it to shore and is picked up by a British man o' war commanded by Ton Santschi, which engages with Blackbeard's ship.

It's slightly primitive for 1911, but well shot by director Francis Boggs, who would be murdered later that year. It's one of William Selig's productions. Like many early film pioneers, he entered show business as a magician, and starting producing films in 1896. By the early 1910s, his was one of the leading production companies, and he was an early employer of such future stars as Broncho Billy Anderson, Tom Mix, and Roscoe Arbuckle. The First World War destroyed his European distribution, the ending of the Patents Trust case -- as well as the expiration of the attending patents -- allowed the former independents to take over the industry, and a zoo and amusement park were on the wrong side of Los Angeles. He died almost broke in 1948 at the age of 84.

Mister Cinderella (1936)

As Usual, Jack Haley Has Stardom Thrust Upon Him

[7/10 · 24 May 2024]

Raymond Walburn will go broke if he can't get $5,000,000 from Monroe Owsley. But Owsley is too hung over to go, and no one knows what he looks like. So he sends barber Jack Haley in his place.

Hal Roach was just moving into features, and it shows the lack of production expertise in that it tries to do too much in too many ways in a comic vein. With Arthur Treacher, Robert McWade, Edward Brophy, Tom Dugan, and Iris Adrian in the listed cast, and Harry Bernard, Charles Judels, Harry Myers, and Bert Roach doing bits, what chance do the actresses like Betty Furness, Rosina Lawrence, Kathleen Lockhart, and Toby Wing. Even director Eddie Sedgwick can't sort them out, and only Walburn gives a topnotch performance. Even so, the comedy that works makes it well worth watching.

Mr. Jack, the Hash Magnate (1916)

Breaking Into Society

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

Harlem hash house cook Frank Daniels reads a book on society and decides to break into the high life. With an outfit from a pawn shop, he heads downtown and registers in a hotel under an Italian name and is mistaken for a prince. The prince soon shows up and challenges him to a duel.

It's not the first comedy in which lowlifes masqueraded as toffs -- it seems to be the plot of every second Three Stooges short. Still, to look at the trope before it settled into low, tired slapstick is amusing. Director C. J. Williams continues his practice of frequent close-ups of Daniels, permitting his mugging to amuse the audience.

Mr. Jack Ducks the Alimony (1916)

Playing At Soldiers

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

When Eulalie Jensen catches husband Frank Daniels flirting with the maid, she demands a divorce. Loath to pay alimony, Daniels enlists in the army.

I have seen about half a dozen of Daniels' movies as I write this, and my assessment of his comic abilities is not high. Likewise, director C. J. Williams has not impressed me with his ability to direct comedy in the fifteen or twenty movies I have seen him credited with. Yet here, he settles on the simple expedient of focusing on Daniels in close-up, and allowing the audience to see his mugging, and that is quite amusing. How did Daniels impress the stage audiences in his long career before the movies?

A Little Ouija Work (1918)

Maybe The Ouija Board Can Offer Some Names

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

Edward Earle and Agnes Ayres are married. An old friend shows up and gets invited to dinner. He also wants Earle to pay some poker debts, but Miss Ayres keeps a tight grip on the checkbook. So a session with the Ouija board is maneuvered to set up a debt to Earle's first wife. This is a surprise to Miss Ayres, who knows of no such thing, and relations cool. But the next day she meets the gambling creditor with his wife, and settles that she wants no money, and things are copacetic... until the stakes are upped.

Figuring out who is what in movies of this era would seem to require a Ouija board. There are at least three adult actors besides the lead couple, and not a clue as to whom; three children perform, and their names are likewise a mystery; and although the IMDb thinks writer A. Van Buren Powell is a woman, he is a man. So that's one mystery cleared up, although how to get a correction done hereabouts is an arcane subject that eludes my grasp.

Captain Jinks' Evolution (1916)

Confusion Abounds

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

Office drone Frank Daniels takes a spill off the trolley. Only a blood transfusion from a vigorous man can save him, so Irish neighbor L. Parkes, who knocks his wife down the stairs and gives a flagging workman enough money to buy some stew and get his strength up, is volunteered. Whereupon Franks starts acting like Casey, and vice versa.

The IMDb credits the direction of this movie to Larry Semon. Contemporary sources say that Van Dyke Brooke directed. The on-screen credit is Arthur Ellery, who was an actor and director for Thanhouser. The story likewise shows an utter confusion about eugenics, the pop culture idea that you can breed people like Gregor Mendel bred peas, and the belief that someone else's blood can affect your temperament. That is the humor in it.

Passkey to Danger (1946)

Wanna Buy A Maguffin?

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

Kane Richmond is selling Three Springs.... and no one knows what it is. It's a clever advertising campaign to drive up interest in it. Of course, you could buy it all right now for a set price, as he tells Jay Mohr, but who wants to buy a pig in a poke. So he thinks, until Adele Mara tries to steal the information.... and offers come from Mohr and Gregory Gaye.... and a woman is murdered.

It's a clever variation on the Maguffin. In your typical thriller, like THE MALTESE FALCON or NOTORIOUS, the Maguffin is the thing everyone wants, and is well defined, and it couldn't matter less. What matters is that everyone wants it. In this movie, the Maguffin is completely undefined; it's never revealed, but everyone wants it because they think they know what it is, and don't want anyone else to have it.

Other than that, it's the usual back-and-forth with silky-voiced villains, corpses turning up, thugs beating Our Hero, and the cops getting in the way. But for someone who has seen a thousand Maguffins, it's a pleasant switch.

Fashion Model (1945)

Good First Half

[5/10 · 23 May 2024]

When two models are killed at Dorothy Christy's dress salon, stock boy Robert Lowery winds up in police custody as the murderer. His girl friend, model Marjorie Weave, believes him innocent and helps him escape. They proceed to track down the real murderer.

The first half of this Monogram mystery-comedy moves at a good clip with some nice humor. The second half gets into a long set-up, where they go back to the salon to look for clues, and window dresser Jack Norton mistakes them for mannequins It's co-written by Tim Ryan, who also plays the police lieutenant investigating the murders. Director William Beaudine gets a good comedy performance out of Dewey Robinson as Ryan's dumb-as-a-bagful-of-hammers assistant.

See How They Won (1935)

The Good Health Brigade

[5/10 · 23 May 2024]

Here's an advertising cartoon produced by Ub Iwerks' studio for the Boots Chemist chain in Great Britain. The firm is still in existence as the British arm of Walgreen's. It shows a British family where the father is sick, then the daughter gets scratched by the cat, while the forces of illness wait in their military garb to conquer them. Fortunately, the doctor they summon calls for the Good Health Brigade, who troop in from factories armed with boxes marked with large red crosses.

This was originally shown in Brewster Color, although the copy I looked at was in black-and-white.

This was an early commercial for Iwerks, whose output had been theatrical releases up until then. He broke with partner Pat Powers, and became thereafter a studio for hire.

Devil's Island (1938)

The Penal Colony

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

Doctor Boris Karloff tends to an escaped prisoner. He is convicted of helping him escape and sentenced to Devil's Island.

No, he doesn't go on to be a pirate and duel with Basil Rathbone. Produced in the wake of the previous year's Life Of Emile Zola, this second feature tries for an air of injustice and pity as Karloff saves the commandant's daughter and is betrayed when the commandant refuses to live up to the promises he made. Karloff handles the role with dignity, except when Howard Jackson's score gets in the way. George Barnes camerawork is dark and scrim-laden. For its short length it's good.

Bullies and Bullets (1917)

Ignore The IMDb Plot Description

[2/10 · 22 May 2024]

It starts with Hughie Mack making love to Patsy De Forest. Soon, in comes Jimmy Aubrey dressed like Ford Sterling in his Dutch outfit, who tries to cut in. After a while, they all depart for the War: Miss De Forest for the nursing Corps, Mack for the Army, where he seems to be a surgeon, and Aubrey for Germany to become a spy.

I'm not sure how Larry Semon made the jump from cartoonist to comedy director for Vitagraph, but his aesthetic -- if we grace what he does with that word -- in this movie is cartoonish, and would remain so for the rest of his career. Here, it is also exceedingly chaotic, as we jump from a drawing room to a battlefield, and the performers behave disgracefully, as if they had seen the beautifully edited movies of Mack Sennett, and had forgotten about editing the slapstick gags.

A Telegraphic Tangle (1916)

There Is A Brotherhood Of Man

[7/10 · 22 May 2024]

Mr. And Mrs. Sidney Drew are still in the early phases of their marriage in this short -- that's within the short; they were going on their second year of marriage in real life -- and she believes him an angel. So when he fails to come home so they can go together to a lecture, she is worried. She sends telegrams to several of his friends asking if he spent the night with each and they all reply that he did. Is Mr. Drew going to talk his way out of this?

It's all made most amusing by Drew's expert comic touches. A career spent on the stage had given him an ability that translated very well to the movie theater, and it is on exhibition here.

The Lucky Stiff (1949)

Badly Scripted

[5/10 · 22 May 2024]

The store where Marjorie Rambeau buys her borscht has doubled the price, because a protection racket gang has come to town. She asks her lawyer, Brian Donlevy to investigate. Since she is his best client, he does so, when not distracted by night-club singer Dorothy Lamour. Then a man is killed where she works and the police collar her, so Donlevy takes an interest in her case. He never notices that his secretary, Claire Trevor, loves him.

I had to look at a rather poor copy of this movie, and was not impressed. Despite a good cast that includes Irene Hervey, Robert Armstrong, and Sidney Miller, and is derived from a Craig Rice mystery, there are too many plot holes for what is intended as a light-hearted investigation; writer-director Lewis Foster's script is too erratic in all departments. It looks like Jack Benny's sole movie production was intended as a wise-cracking 'tec in a Raymond-Chandler setting, and everything got caught up in movie cliches.

Paid to Dance (1937)

Undercover Cops

[5/10 · 22 May 2024]

Taxi dancers are disappearing from the dance halls of the state, and some are turning up dead. While citizen groups demand the halls be closed, Don Terry and Julie Bishop go to work undercover to solve the crimes and close down the racket. Miss Bishop gets a job as a dance-hall girl, while Terry opens a competing hall and gets an in as a fixer.

This seems to be based on Lucky Luciano's brothels; it wouldn't be the first or last time that the Production Code turned prostitutes in taxi dancers. It's high speed, timing in at an hour, but lacks much in the way of interesting details thereby, despite. A cast that includes Rita Hayworth, Paul Fix, and Thurston Hall.