boblipton Reviews

Little Swee'pea (1936)

One Of My Favorites

[10/10 · 12 May 2024]

Popeye takes Swee'pea to the zoo. Swee'pea escapes.

It's one of my personal favorites of the Fleischer Popeyes, with the infant crawling unharmed amidst the large, dangerous animals, while Popeye. Has a lot more trouble with them. I like it for the care which the animals are designed, and the nice sequence in which Popeye is taking the baby to the zoo, animated against one of the Fleischers' tabletop rotoscope designs, lending a real dimensionality to the movie.

The gags are variations on a theme; Swee'pea might be riding a leopard (while the soundtrack plays "Hold That Tiger"), or crawling in and out of a crocodile's jaws. Funny, short, and a good capper joke.

No Other Woman (1933)

That's Subornation Of Perjury

[5/10 · 12 May 2024]

Steel mill worker's daughter Irene Dunne marries mill hand Charles Bickford. He eventually becomes a rich owner of a dye works and takes on New York mistress Gwili Andre. When Miss Andre insists on marriage and Miss Dunne refuses him a divorce, witnesses lie that she is the one having an affair.

It looks as ifthis movie had been more ambitious at one point; certainly, the marriage reception, which looks very Polish, shows the attention to detail that director J. Walter Ruben liked to take. But its short length -- impelled by Slavko Vorkapich's transitional montages -- keep it too brisk for anyone to get any real flavor out of its bite-sized portions. With Eric Linden, Christian Rub, Leila Bennet, and J. Carrol Naish.

House on the Waterfront (1955)

Magical Realism Is Dead

[6/10 · 11 May 2024]

Near Marseilles, the ship sank,carrying with it contraband cigarettes and the corpse of a murdered girl. At first it was not a problem, but it has moved, and so the port authorities have hired Jean Gabin to refloat it. He has hired Henri Vidal to do the diving. But the sister of the dead girl, Andrée Debar, is in town looking for her sister, and the owner of the ship, Jean-Roger Caussimon, doesn't want the corpse or the cigarettes found.

Director Edmond T. Gréville has constructed a very 1930s-style movie, but in the post-war years, the easy corruption of the portside society has a different feel to it, mildly disapproving -- and murder, of course, remains a big no-no, even if to Caussimon it seems no more than part of his business. There's no magical realism, no divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. There's just money, sex, and chance no matter how honest or corrupt one is.

La grosse caisse (1965)

Meurisse Steals The Show

[7/10 · 11 May 2024]

Bourvil punches tickets at a decrepit station on Parisian metropolitan train. It's a dull job, and he has taken note of the weekly money train carrying six hundred million francs to the treasury. He has worked out a scheme to rob it, and written a policier based on it. Unfortunately, no publisher will touch it, proclaiming it absurd. His amour-propre wounded, he tries to get some professional thief to do the job. At first he can't even find a crook. But when the elegant and forceful Paul Meurisse finds the manuscript, he is enchanted. No more dull bank robberies! A chance to drive a train! And Bourvil realizes that when the real thing comes along, he is in way over his head.

Bourvil jitters five times a second in this very funny caper movie, but it is Meurisse who carries away the comedy prize with his blithe portrayal. The caper is also carried out in exquisite detail, in. A manner that is completely convincing. It's a lot of fun for fans of Bourvil, and for French comedy in general.

Believe It or Not #11 (1931)

Mr. Ripley Regrets He's Unable To Dine Today

[6/10 · 11 May 2024]

In the eleventh episode of Warner Brother's 'Believe It Or Not' series, Mr. Robert L. Ripley is a complete no-show. For the previous few, he has shown up to announce that he's about to go on one of his globe-hurdling expeditions to find astonishing facts on foreign shore. Americans seem to have run out of things they find astonishing hereabouts, despite the best efforts of the Texas Tall Tale Teller. Now, apparently, he has gone, so we are left with Leo Donnelly doing his Ripley imitation. He tells us about blacksmiths on automobiles, duck-billed platyuses, and men who can tow an auto.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. I'm usually disappointed with Mr. Ripley's facts on film, but these are neither interesting nor particularly novel. True, the platypus is an unlikely critter. It astonished European taxonomists when it first became known. They declared it an obvious hoax. That, however, was in the 18th century. Surely by the 1930s it was common knowledge among people who cared about such things.

The rest of the facts are even less interesting. How does Mr. Donnelly expect farriers -- the correct term for people who shoe horses -- to travel? By sedan chair? Ornithopter?

No, clearly Mr. Ripley's absence is telling on the staff, with their assortment of rather dull facts. They insists they don't care whether I believe them. Me, I'm not interested enough to put them to the test.

Heave-Ho (1928)

Sid Smith Has Good Legs

[4/10 · 11 May 2024]

Sidney Smith and Teddy Reavis agree to run away on a cruise ship. The exigencies of the story call for them to cross-dress, and flirt with members of the same sex.

It's a rather dull late-silent short subject from William Pizor's production company. Long regarded as the cheapest of the Poverty Row producers, he managed to catch Smith for this comedy just at the moment when every comic was wondering how to survive in the coming sound era. Smith was a competent silent comic, but with about 40% of the comics named Sidney or some variation, and three or four other Sidney Smiths, he was undoubtedly worried about working again. The result produces few laughs, but a puzzle: with two male deck officers, why are all the hands girls?

Rule 'Em and Weep (1932)

Sam Hardy Becomes Billy Rhodes

[7/10 · 11 May 2024]

Glen Tryon and James Gleason are robbing a jewelry store when William Austin and cohort come in to proclaim his King of Bulvania. Thither he must return to overthrow the usurper Sam Hardy and rescue his sweetheart, Marion Shilling, from the penthouse dungeon.

It's one of a baker's dozen of movies produced by the Masquers' Club to raise money for charity. They were a sort of offshoot of New York's Lambs Club founded by Broadway Actors who had gone Hollywood. They're still around today, although they don't seem to be producing many two-reel comedies.

And a wacky comedy it is, too, under the direction of the silly Harry Sweet. He produced absurd live-action shorts starring himself in the 1920s. In the 1930s he initiated many successful comedy series for RKO, then died in 1933 at the age of 31.

Laughing Sinners (1931)

Throw A Nickel On The Drum

[6/10 · 11 May 2024]

Traveling salesman Neil Hamilton loeaves torch singer Joan Crawford flat. She decides to end it all, but when she starts to climb over the rails of that bridge, Salvation Army man Clark Gable stops her. Soon, she's an Army member going with Gable to a small town where they're going to open a soup kitchen. Guess who shows up to tempt her?

When we think of pre-code movies, we think of naked women and people having a good time being very bad. But the pre-code era wasn't just about sex. It often examined serious issues in a novel way, from marriage to lynching. Here, the issue of salvation is brought up in a manner that encapsulates a crisis of faith, and a caring and forgiving G*d. Gable is all right, although he is miscast. He was brought in after they shot the entire movie with Johnny Mack Brown, and they wanted to see what he was capable of. He had stolen THE PAINTED DESERT, could he handle this? Director Harry Beaumont spent his early sound career getting great performances out of people, making them stars. Gable had done well in another Crawford starrer, DANCE, FOOLS, DANCE for him.

Alas, it doesn't quite measure up, but the themes, Crawford's flashing eyes, and a nice turn by Guy Kibbee keeps things interesting. With Marjorie Rambeau, Cliff Edwards, and Henry Armetta.

You Belong to Me (1934)

Tracy Is Good Not Playing A Reporter

[6/10 · 10 May 2024]

Lee Tracy used to have his name in lights on Broadway, but the booze got to him. Now he's a comic on the vaudeville circuit, sweet on widowed dancer Helen Mack, and her son, David Holt. But Miss Mack falls for comic dancer Arthur Pierson. They get married, but Holt doesn't get along with Pierson, so they ship him off to military school.

Holt gives a fine performance, and Tracy is very good far form his newspaperman persona. There's also Helen Morgan to make the relationships more complicated. The movie moves along well enough until the very end, which is rather contrived. Alfred Weker directs with his usual undistinguished competence. Lynn Overman and Dean Jagger have small roles.

Pierson was pretty much a utility player for Paramount when he wasn't directing rehearsals for the likes of Lubitsch. He returned to Broadway, then came back behind the camera, ending his career working for Hanna-Barbera. He died in 1973, aged 73.

The Jury's Secret (1938)

One Juror's Secret

[6/10 · 10 May 2024]

Kent Taylor wrote the Grea American Novel, and it flopped. So he left fiancee Fay Wray and moved to a small city where he became the ghost writer for newspaper owner Samuel Hinds' editorials in return for money and stock market advice. After Hinds' opposition to flood control legislation results in the second flood in two years, this time killing four hundred people, Taylor has had enough. He has enough money. When he discovers that Hinds has ruined him, he kills the man in a fury. Luckily for him, agitator Larry J. Blake burst in on Hinds immediately after Taylor has left, and becomes the perfect fall guy without Taylor doing a thing. Imagine his joy when Miss Wray shows up covering the trial for her newspaper.... and his state of mind when he has to sit on the jury!

Edward Sloman's last movie has a good set-up, a good script, and for once does a fair job of depicting the judicial process -- enlivened by a few more objections than I've ever seen. The performances are a bit broad; Sloman was more a visual stylist than a dialogue director, and there isn't much opportunity for him to excel here. He left the movies and went comfortably into writing and directing radio for the rest of his career. He died in 1972 at the age of 89.

Un homme se penche sur son passé (1958)

Whoever's Thinking About What Happened, It Isn't The Director

[4/10 · 10 May 2024]

Jacques Bergerac is a trapper. Every summer he smuggles horses across the border from the US. Every winter he vanishes into the far north to bring back furs. On a horse-trading expedition, his partner is injured, so they put up at a farm, where Bergerac falls in love with Barbara Rütting and they are wed. Soon they have a daughter, but every winter Bergerac leaves them to go trapping. Meanwhile an old suitor of Mademoiselle Rütting buys a farm and calls on her while her husband is gone.

Willy Rozier's nordouestern-camambert (as I suppose it should be called) soon turns into a soap opera. Despite its length, it never examines anyone's motivations beyond the bare minimum. Michel Rocca's camerawork is adequate to show Bergerac's male beauty, but doesn't do much for the snowy landscapes he travels about, making me wonder why Rozier didn't make him a sailor, or some other trade that makes a man leave home for lengths of time. Well, I suppose that's because of the novel it is based on. Bergerac sings a couple of songs. A band performs some fiddle-led tunes.

The Stolen Play (1917)

Not So Proud, Me Beauty

[4/10 · 10 May 2024]

Ruth Roland has been working with blind playwright William Conklin on his new play. Producer Ed Brady is anxious to get his hands on it, so commercial and brilliant a writer is Conklin. He refuses to sell, so Brady kidnaps Conklin, hypnotizes Miss Roland with a gesture, and has his mignonette Lucy Blake invade Conklin's home to steal the script. But Conklin's loyal oriental servant dies destroying the script, all of which sends Conklin's mother, Ruth Lackaye into a permanent tizzy. Back at Brady's isolated mansion, Conklin is imprisoned in the cellar. When Miss Roland is ordered to reconstruct the script in a hypnotic state, Brady conceives a pure passion for her and realizes she must play the lead.

In the end it all turns out to be a dream.

I suppose the ending is obvious to anyone who reads that precis of the events, but I was annoyed throughout. Technically it is a well photographed movie in the stolid style of the year it was made, with decent editing hiding an immobile camera. But the acting is not what one would expect of a cast that included Balboa's serial queen. Conklin looks like a petulant child looking up to indicate his blindness; Brady lacks only a handlebar mustache and top hat to play a serial villain; and Miss oland wears the same expression throughout.

I See You (II) (2019)

Who Needs Supernatural Evil When You Have People?

[6/10 · 10 May 2024]

Doctor Helen Hunt and Police Officer Jon Tenney has having troubles with their marriage. Tenney has a hard time balancing that with his investigation into a missing youngster. Meanwhile, Owen Teague and Libe Barer are squatting unnoticed in their house; Ms Barer tries to be unnoticed, but Teague likes to mess with their unwitting hosts, removing pictures from frames and hiding coffee mugs. Will Tenney and Miss Hunt wonder if their house is haunted, the investigation turns up a link with an earlier disappearance.

It's an interesting confluence of middle-class anxiety and lower-class anger. The problem is, despite having Miss Hunt at the top of the cast list, director Adam Randall and his team can't think of anything visually interesting to do with the movie; dark lighting, that dark aqua filter that seems to show up so frequently for no reason, and softened images abound. Kudos for a script that shows you don't need supernatural evil to make a disturbing movie.

Primary Flight Training: Before You Fly (1945)

I'm Just A Passenger

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

Like I said up there, I'm just a passenger when I fly, although my brother is a pilot, rated for small jobs. When I've flown with him, he usually involves me in the check, but it's purely mechanical.

Although I am told that modern airplanes, despite the automating of many systems, are far more complicated than the planes in this Navy training film, it's a long-winded procedure, especially with Robert Taylor, who also directed going through the list. As to what happens when the pilot omits one or more points in the checklist, we have Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer, recently graduated from the Our Gang series, to demonstrate the downside of neglecting them.

Primary Flight Training: Taxiing and Take-offs (1945)

Too Complicated For Me

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

Here's a training film produced for the US Armed Forces in which, as you might guess from the title, there's some instruction on taxiing and taking off in your airplane. I've never piloted a plane. In fact, it's thirty years since I drove a car, so the steady pace of the narrator left me no wiser after I had seen the movie than before. All I know is that if the wind is coming from your left, you turn the stick to your left.

Not that I'm ever going to need to. I hope. What impelled me to look at this particular film today is that the narrator is Robert Taylor, in the person of a flight instructor. Also, it is believed he directed it, at least the portions in which Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer plays an inept pilot.

There are people who seem to think that actors make up their own lines in a movie. Occasionally they contribute, but usually there's a script and a director. Taylor was a popular actor, but that's all he was really known for. Yet you can't engage in an industry for a decade or more without picking up some tricks in how to do other jobs.

Sink or Swim (1952)

Self Delusion

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

Dinky Duck can't swim. So he goes to the owl, who gives him a 'sky hook' to stop him from sinking. It seems to work, until an alligator shows up and tries to eat him.

It's one of the movies produced for Terrytoons that shows some actual talent in the service of their main audience, which they viewed as neurotic children, or perhaps their even more neurotic parents. As I am an aging adult, and any children in my extended family are not neurotic to that extent, I was bored by the entire proceeding.

It's a frequent complaint I have of Terrytoons; if you wish to argue that I am not the intended audience, that's fine. Just be warned if you are an adult.

The Winner (1996)

Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

Vincent D'Onofrio starts an incredible lucky streak in Vegas. He worries about when it will end. Everyone else worries about how they can get their hands on his money, particularly lounge singer Rebecca De Mornay.

It's a pretty good movie about the superstitions of the hardcore gambler. As you might expect, the leads give fine performances, as do supporting players like Delroy Lindo, Michael Madsen, and Billy Bob Thornton. The ending is a bit over-the-top for my tastes, but I'm sure it pleases others -- except for director Alex Cox, who disclaimed the movie after it was edited without his consent.

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow Watchers (2011)

Can't Say Enough About This Being Bad

[1/10 · 8 May 2024]

The audience gets to see the murder of a young woman by a man, while people dressed in black cloaks and masks -- looking a good deal like the ghost in Spirited Away -- watch. Soon, Inspector Lestrade, sporting an accent that varies over the shop, shows up at the home of Sherlock Holmes, as portrayed by the film's writer and director, Anthony D. P. Mann. They have a newspaper reporter in custody because his paper published his story on the murder before it took place. Of course, he refuses to reveal his sources.

'Amateurish' is the first word that springs to mind in describing this movie. The second is 'inept' and the third is 'awful.' None of the performers, with the exception of Terry Wade as Watson, can speak more than two words at a time without pausing. Few of them have appeared in any movies save Mann's productions.

Every once in a while, someone shows up with enough money to produce a movie, but with no talent. Here's an example of that.

A River Called Titas (1973)

Believing Is Seeing

[7/10 · 8 May 2024]

Rosy Samad gets married and goes on a honeymoon trip with her husband from the village where they live to a nearby village. However, she is discovered, without her husband, and no idea of what has happened. This disgraces her, and she spends the next ten years in exile, next to the village. Then a madman turns up, and she attempts to gain redemption by curing him of his madness.

You'd think that after a lifetime of reading fantasy and studying the anthropology of magic, this would be catnip to me. However, fantasy as it is written tends to have an almost engineering quality to its construction, with things like quests that must be undertaken, or great monsters that must be fought, or princesses that must be rescued. The patterns are too familiar. Likewise, the magic in these things is constructed like machinery. Occasionally you run across things based on Greek mythology, where the gods are squabbling people taking one side or the other, and throwing thunderbolts or sending earthquakes.

But to look at this movie is to see a society that is barely above animism, the belief that everything has a soul, whether it is a human or a cat, or a tree, or a rock. And the only way someone like me can handle a worldview like that is in a mechanical fashion. There is no mystery, just ignorance, and a rock falls from your hand to the ground when you release it regardless. But the characters in this movie believe in the mystery. The river Titas may just go away, or Miss Samad may just be fooling herself. No one knows anything, and no one can know anything. It's not a worldview I can believe, and so I am reduced to seeing if the movie is internally consistent.... but that won't work either, because if it's not, then that is also a mystery, an insoluble one that is a fact of existence.

It makes my head spin. Ritwik Ghatak's movie tells a tale of a small fishing village where reality and legend are the same thing. Is it a good telling? My Western mind can't really tell.

Rigadin est un fameux escrimeur (1912)

Reputation Is Everything

[6/10 · 8 May 2024]

Charles Prince stops a man from abusing a woman, and is promptly slapped for his pains -- by the man. After the third time, he has no choice but to exchange cards and prepare for a sword duel, even though he knows nothing about fencing. So he finds a fencing master who is so broke he is trying to kill himself to get out of debt.

Prince was arguably the second best known movie comic in the world at this point, behind his fellow French man Max Linder. In this one, he is not the one who does the gags, but the unnamed fencing master, who tries and fails to kill himself several times. In this era, and for decades later, a man trying to commit suicide and failing was a common comedy situation.

Tonight and Every Night (1945)

Where Are The Naked Ladies?

[5/10 · 8 May 2024]

Rita Hayworth is an American showgirl at the Music Box Theater in London, which proudly proclaims that it's open every night, despite the War raging about them during the Battle of Britain. She also carries on an increasingly serious romance with Squadron Leader Lee Bowman between musical numbers.

It's actually about the Windmill Theater, in a highly expurgated version. The Windmill, in addition to being renowned for staying open throughout the War, is better remembered for featuring naked showgirls. They got around the rules for such matters by featuring them in tableaux vivants, reproductions of famous works of art. They made the case that there was no objection to showing a picture of a naked woman, so.... The Lord Chamberlain issued the ruling that 'If you move it's rude' and the shows continued through 1964. The Hays Office was not so amenable, so the girls never appear in anything less than Union suits.

The unspoken titilation aside, it's a fairly standard movie featuring Miss Hayworth's dancing to Jack Cole's choreography, Marc Platt as a dancer who is also in love with Miss Hayworth, and some decent but unremarkable songs by Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne, as well as such lovely ladies as Janet Blair, Leslie Brooks, Dusty Anderson, and Florence Bates.

S.O.S. (1940)

The Readiness Is All

[6/10 · 7 May 2024]

A lifeboat is stationed at the tiny port of Mousehole in Wales, about two and a half miles south of the better known Penzance -- at least if you're a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan.

You've probably never heard of the town, unless you're fan of director Harry Watt; he made a film in 1936 about Frank Blewitt, a fisherman and a member of the lifeboat crew -- as he is here. In the 13th century, the improbably named Mousehole was a major port, judging by the revenue from licensing of fishing boats, more than that from nearby Penzance, Newlyn, or other towns. It gradually fell in importance, and in the 20th century was amalgamated with Penzance.

Mr. District Attorney (1947)

That's Mr. Menjou To You

[6/10 · 7 May 2024]

Dennis O'Keefe can't stomach defending men he knows to be guilty, so he joins D. A. Adolphe Menjou's office. His boss is pleased with his work until he loses a case. Menjou thinks his mind isn't on his business, so he investigates and discovers O'Keefe is in live with Marguerite Chapman. She was tried for murder in Kansas City, but beat the rap. Menjou thinks she did it, and sends O'Keefe to Italy to get a witness. While he's gone, Miss Chapman marries her boss and the local mob's, George Coulouris. O'Keefe returns, finds out what happened, and quits.

It all runs back to Phillips Lord's radio series of the same name, and with an involved and noirish plot, this runs along pretty well. A good part of that can be attributed to the cast, which includes Michael O'Shea, Jeff Donnell, Steve Geray, and Ralph Morgan. Although as a mystery it's no great shakes, the fast pace keeps things interesting.

The Black Doll (1938)

Any Movie In Which Edgar Kennedy Does His Slow Burn Is A Good One

[6/10 · 7 May 2024]

Retired mine owner C. Henry Gordon has isolated himself in his home, with his daughter, his sister, and his son. When a black doll turns up, he calls in his former partners and they discuss a dead man. Then Gordon is killed, and sheriff Edgar Kennedy shows up to bumble his way through the investigation. Thankfully, there's private detective and chef Donald Wood on hand, to woo Gordon's daughter, Nan Grey, and point out the obvious mistakes in observation that Kennedy makes.... except when he's standing on Kennedy's foot.

It's the second of Universal's CRIME CLUB movies, and it has a good if wordy script from William Edward Hayes' mystery novel. Director Otis Garrett is by no means the best director in the world for his first time holding the megaphone, but he had been a skilled editor and knows how to push the movie along at a good pace, leaving his actors to say the words well. With Doris Lloyd, John Wray, Addison Richards, Holmes Herbert, and William Lundigan.

The Walking Dead (1936)

They Have Questions, Not Answers

[6/10 · 7 May 2024]

Boris Karloff is executed by the state, then lawyer Ricardo Corrtez proves he didn't do it. So scientist Edmund Gwenn brings him back from the dead, which causes the big shots on both sides of the law to worry he will try to kill them.

Warner Brothers didn't produce many horror movies. When they did in the 1930s, they usually handed te assignment to Michael Curtiz. He usually turned out something visually interesting. Here, however, the limits of visual inventiveness are limited to using stuff from Universal's Frankenstein movies, especially around the resurrection scene. In story terms, there is an attempt to get from Karloff what happened while he was dead, but he's understandably reticent under the Hays Code.