Locker Sixty Nine (1962)

Locker Sixty Nine is a 1962 entry in the British Merton Park Edgar Wallace thriller cycle - a prolific and consistently excellent series of crime B-movies.

This one was directed by Norman Harrison and written by Richard Harris.

We are introduced to businessman Bennett Sanders and we realise he’s the sort of businessman who makes enemies. He has hired ex-cop Craig (Walter Brown) as a bodyguard.

Murder follows, or at least possible murder. With no body to be found Detective Inspector Roon (John Glyn-Jones) is understandably reluctant to commit himself, but there are some suggestive bloodstains.

Miguel Terila (John Carson) and his wife Eva (Clarissa Stolz) have some sort of grudge against Sanders.

Someone might want to kill Sanders for business or financial reasons but with two beautiful glamorous women mixed up in the case, both apparently Sanders’ mistresses, romantic jealousy is just as likely. The second woman is night-club chanteuse Julie Denver (Penelope Horner).

The vital clue is a secret file kept in a safety deposit box. Everyone wants that file. They are prepared to use drastic measures to get hold of it.

Reporter Simon York (Eddie Byrne) is convinced there’s a much bigger story here and he intends to uncover it.

The plot is solid enough overall but the main problem is that the major plot twist is too obvious and there’s not enough sense of urgency or real danger. These criminals are not quite desperate enough.

These Edgar Wallace thrillers were consistently good because they had fine writers and very competent directors and while they did not have huge stars the cast members were always very capable. I can’t single out any particular cast member since they’re all absolutely fine. It is always fun to see Alfred Burke in anything (he plays Simon York’s editor).

These were low-budget movies so there was no scope for spectacular visual set-pieces or lavish sets. They relied on good scripts and on the fact that they were made by professionals who knew what they were doing and who understood the genre.

The very short running times (usually just under an hour) helped as well. There was no time to waste on unnecessary subplots.

As was the case with most of the directors of these movies Norman Harrison worked mostly in television. Screenwriter Richard Harris had a distinguished career as a TV writer.

Locker Sixty Nine is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume Four DVD set. It gets, as usual, a very nice transfer.

Like all the movies in this series Locker Sixty Nine was shot widescreen in black-and-white. Locker Sixty Nine is decent entertainment.

I’ve seen and reviewed a stack of these Edgar Wallace films, including Marriage of Convenience (1960), Man at the Carlton Tower (1961) and The Sinister Man (1961). In fact I’ve reviewed a couple of dozen of these films!

Stage Fright (1950) - Hitchcock Friday #13

Alfred Hitchcock retuned to Britain in 1950 to make Stage Fright. From the mid-1940s he had started to become quite experimental in his approach, both technically and in narrative terms, and most of his 1940s experiments were critical and commercial disappointments. Stage Fright was another experiment and it had a decidedly mixed reception.

The willingness to experiment was part of Hitchcock’s genius and he would certainly have been aware that it was extremely risky. A director who has several flops in quick succession can find himself reduced to making cheap B-movies for Poverty Row studios. But if you don’t take risks you don’t learn anything and while Hitchcock made mistakes he never made the same mistake twice. And without his willingness to take risks we would never have had towering masterpieces like Rear Window, Dial ‘M’ for Murder, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds.

In Stage Fright he utilises a certain plot device that makes this his most controversial and divisive film. I can’t describe the plot device because it would constitute a huge spoiler and if you haven’t seen this movie before it’s best to approach it without knowing about it. Knowing about it can prejudice the viewer against the film. And there are those who consider the device to be a masterstroke rather than a flaw.

Hitchcock himself considered it to have been a very serious mistake. What he was trying to do was perfectly valid, but after the movie was completed Hitch realised that the device did not work as he had intended it to work.

The movie begins with a young man, Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd), on the run from the police. He is suspected of murder. The murder victim was the husband of major show business star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich). Jonathan and Charlotte are lovers. There’s blood-stained dress that Jonathan will need to destroy.

Jonathan is involved with another young lady, aspiring actress Eve Gill (Jane Wyman). Even is hopelessly in love with Jonathan. She will do anything to help him prove his innocence. She considers Charlotte to be a very bad woman.

Jonathan is a man caught between two women, a sexy femme fatale and a good girl. Eve is a woman caught between two men. She’s in love with Jonathan but now she’s met Detective-Inspector Smith (Michael Wilding) and he’s such a nice kind man and so charming and rather good-looking and she thinks he’s a bit of a dreamboat.

Eve however still has to help Jonathan prove his innocence and she persuades her father Commodore Gill (Alastair Sim) to help. The Commodore thinks it’s all foolishness but it could be fun and he’ll do anything for his daughter.

A lot depends on that blood-stained dress. Maybe it could be used to break down Charlotte’s resistance and persuade her to confess.

This is a movie that feels very very English. It’s very similar in feel to Hitch’s great 1930s British movies. There’s also plenty of very English humour.

It benefits from a great cast. Michael Wilding is very solid and Richard Todd manages to be rather jumpy, as you would expect from a man with the police after him. Sybil Thorndyke is fun as Eve’s dotty mother. I have never liked Jane Wyman but I must admit that she’s excellent here. She somehow manages to be both mousy and feisty.

But the standout performers are of course Alastair Sim and Marlene Dietrich. Sim is in fine form playing the eccentric irascible loveable rogue Commodore Gill.

Dietrich gives one of her best performances. She’s delightfully seductive and wicked and scheming and manipulative but oddly enough she’s rather kind to Eve when Eve goes undercover as her dresser. Charlotte is incredibly self-centred but not gratuitously cruel. Marlene singing I’m the Laziest Girl in Town is definitely a highlight.

The final scenes are very well shot and very Hitchcockian, and very tense with the highlighting of the eyes.

How well the plot works depends entirely on how you feel about that notorious plot device, and whether or not you think it makes the ending difficult to accept. Either way Stage Fright is rather enjoyable and it’s recommended.

The House of the Seven Hawks (1959)

The House of the Seven Hawks is a 1959 British thriller directed by Richard Thorpe.

Robert Taylor is John Nordley, an American who operates a charter boat service in a small British port. His latest job involves a brief cruise in English coastal waters. His passenger is a Dutchman named Anselm. Anselm wants Nordley to take him to the Netherlands. That could cause problems with the British authorities. Nordley had not informed them that he would be heading to a foreign port. But Anselm is paying well.

It’s established from the start that Nordley is a nice guy but perhaps not scrupulously honest. He’s not quite a crook but he can be persuaded to bend the rules and perhaps venture just a little bit outside the strict letter of the law.

He makes it to a Dutch port but by this time his passenger is deceased. Nordley assumes the man had a heart attack.

He’s puzzled when the man’s daughter appears in a small power boat and invites herself aboard his yacht just before he reaches that Dutch port. He’s even more mystified that she seems to be looking for something and having failed to find it she departs very suddenly.

Nordley has already found something curious, a letter with a diagram, among Anselm’s effects.

The Dutch police have astonishing news for Nordley. His passenger was not a man named Anselm. He was a high-ranking Dutch police officer, Inspector Sluiter, engaged in a mysterious investigation in England.

Both Nordley and the Dutch police are puzzled by Sluiter’s actions. Was Sluiter involved in something shady?

Nordley has another surprise in story for him. That girl who came to meet his yacht is no relative to the dead man. She is Elsa (Linda Christian). And now another woman has shown up who really is Inspector Sluiter’s daughter, Constanta (Nicole Maurey). Nordley is not sure that he trusts either woman. They’re not sure that they can trust him.

The mysterious Captain Rohner (Eric Pohlmann) is interested in that letter as well. Nordley has no doubt that Captain Rohner cannot be trusted at all but he is open to the idea of a deal, if the terms are favourable.

That letter is a key, in a metaphorical sense. A key to something interesting, fascinating and valuable. Probably not legal, but nobody involved in this tale is overly concerned with legalities.

Robert Taylor is ideally cast. He did the world-weary slightly morally corrupted thing so very well in so many movies at this period and he does it extremely well here.

Eric Pohlmann is always an absolute joy to watch and he’s in fine form here. Nicole Maurey and Linda Christian are good. Philo Hauser is fun as Nordley’s useful but very disreputable and thoroughly untrustworthy friend Charlie Ponz.

The plot is nicely worked out. There’s not much action (although there is some). Mostly the movie relies on an atmosphere of double-dealing and general moral murkiness.

This is a low-key but fine entertaining thriller and I do enjoy nautical thrillers so it’s highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very satisfactory transfer.

This movie was based on the 1952 novel The House of the Seven Flies by Victor Canning, a now forgotten but very fine British thriller writer.

The Garden Murder Case (1936)

The Garden Murder Case was the tenth Philo Vance movie. It was released by MGM in 1936.

S.S. Van Dine did not sell the rights to all the Philo Vance novels to the same studio which partly explains why Vance was played by no less than ten different actors! The one actor who really nailed the part was of course William Powell. Most of the other actors’ interpretations of the role were either less than entirely satisfactory or simply awful.

In The Garden Murder Case we get Edmund Lowe as Vance.

A day at the races ends in tragedy. A jockey is killed. The circumstances are ambiguous. In fact the circumstances are downright odd. It may have been a curiously unconventional suicide.

There will shortly be another puzzling death.

Ruthless businessman and racehorse owner Edgar Hammle (Gene Lockhart) might be a suspect.

More deaths follow and again they’re ambiguous - they could be accidents, they could be suicides, they could be murders.

Ace amateur sleuth Philo Vance has his own ideas but he’s missing a very important clue. It’s the key to the case.

The story is complicated but it includes lots of cool plot devices that were fashionable at the time and are now very unfashionable. But they’re the kinds of plot devices that make the detective stories of the interwar period so much fun.

In my opinion most online reviews reveal too much of the plot of this movie. There are things you can guess early on but I think it’s better to be not quite sure if your guesses are accurate.

This is a very old-fashioned detective story and that’s why it’s so enjoyable. There’s no trace of gritty realism here.

There is of course a dangerous dame, in the person of Hammle’s niece Zalia (Virginia Bruce).

Edmund Lowe does at least give us a rather likeable Philo Vance. He is not one of the great screen Philo Vances but he’s not too bad. The main problem is that Vance needs to be a bit more larger-than-life and a lot more flamboyant. Not everyone likes Vance as a character but if you tone him down then he’s not Philo Vance any more.

The other cast members are very solid and I liked Virginia Bruce a great deal.

Edward L. Marin was a solid journeyman director who made several rather good movies, including the superb Nocturne (1946) and Johnny Angel (1945), both with George Raft. He does a very competent job with The Garden Murder Case. It’s not exactly a visually dazzling film but it moves along at a decent pace.

Bertram Millhauser wrote the script.

In 1936 Hollywood was convinced that mysteries and thrillers needed to have comic relief. The comic relief was usually awful. In this case Nat Pendleton is exceptionally irritating as Sergeant (in the novels Heath is no genius detective but he is not a clown).

The Garden Murder Case is not a great Philo Vance movie but it’s reasonably entertaining. Worth a look.

This movie is included in the Warner Archive Philo Vance Murder Case Collection DVD set. The movies in this set, which vary a great deal in quality, also include The Casino Murder Case (1935), The Kennel Murder Case (1933), The Bishop Murder Case (1929) and The Dragon Murder Case (1934). The Garden Murder Case gets an acceptable transfer. This is a boxed set that is definitely worth picking up.

The Wet Parade (1932)

The Wet Parade is a 1932 MGM melodrama directed by Victor Fleming and based on a novel by Upton Sinclair, a once renowned writer now almost entirely forgotten.

The movie is essentially an extended sermon on the evils of the demon drink. The wretched script was written by John Lee Mahin.

There are two parallel plots which gradually converge. One begins in the South, the other in the North. The time is 1916, with much excitement about the upcoming election with Democrat incumbent Woodrow Wilson expected to win due to his solemn promise to keep America out of the war.

Faded southern gentleman Roger Chilcote (Lewis Stone) is determinedly drinking himself to death. His daughter Maggie May (Dorothy Jordan) disapproves of drinking. His son Roger Chilcote, Jr (Neil Hamilton) is a feckless would-be writer who enjoys partying more than writing.

Up north sleazy political operative Pow Tarleton (Walter Huston) is also a drunkard. His son Kip Tarleton (Robert Young) is, like Maggie May, a puritan.

Wilson is re-elected and immediately breaks his election promises.

And Prohibition is brought in. Kip and Maggie May are delighted. They’re keen moral crusaders.

Both Pow Tarleton and Roger Chilcote, Jr are brought to the brink of destruction by the booze. This inspires Kip to join the Prohibition Bureau and become an undercover law enforcement officer for them.

The plot is rambling and disconnected and never really develops a strong narrative momentum. At 118 minutes this movie is about 40 minutes too long.

I’m not sure what the novel was like but the movie is trying to deliver two messages simultaneously - that alcohol is totally evil and that Prohibition just made things worse. It is possible to believe both those things but the movie never quite reconciles the two arguments. It also delivers both messages in an incredibly heavy-handed way.

The ending is what you expect from such a muddled mess of a movie.

The dialogue is clunky, feels phoney and often gives way to speechifying.

The acting is mostly terrible. Even Walter Huston is hard to take. The one bright spot is Myrna Loy as Roger Jr’s deliciously wicked actress girlfriend. Myrna Loy was such a wonderful bad girl in the pre-code era but she doesn’t get enough screen time to save this clunker.

And just when you think things cannot get any worse along comes Jimmy Durante as a prohibition enforcement agent. By this time you’ll probably be really feeling like a drink, even if it is bathtub gin.

The one thing that is truly pre-code about this movie is the assumption that every level of government is riddled with corruption. You wouldn’t get away with that once the Production Code came in.

The idea of a movie about a social problem in which the cure ends up being much worse than the disease is fine. It’s just handled in a very clumsy fashion and the movie is a chaotic mess. This is a truly awful movie. Avoid.

This movie is included in the Warner Archive Forbidden Hollywood Volume 6 DVD boxed set. The transfer is OK.

Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian suspense thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, based on a novel by Charles Williams.

It’s a nautical thriller. John Ingram (Sam Neill) is an Australian naval officer whose son was killed in a car accident. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) survived the accident. The accident was not her fault. They both need time to recover. A cruise on John’s yacht seems like the perfect answer.

They spot a black schooner. A guy in a dinghy rows across from the schooner. He is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). He claims to be the sole survivor of a bizarre tragedy. The other five people on board the schooner died of food poisoning. Hughie claims the schooner is slowly sinking.

John is no fool. He’s spent twenty-five years at sea. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced by Hughie’s story. He locks Hughie into a cabin and rows across to the schooner to investigate. It becomes apparent that very bad very strange things went on aboard that schooner. Meanwhile Hughie has escaped and he’s hijacked John’s yacht, with Rae aboard.

John is stranded on the schooner. There is no wind and the engine doesn’t work. Rae is stuck on the yacht with a guy who could be merely a bit unbalanced but could be a total psycho. The latter seems more and more likely. Either way he’s extremely dangerous.

There are now essentially two stories going on. John, on board the schooner, tries to unravel what really happened on that unlucky vessel. It seems to have been some sort of sex cruise, with some very dangerous games being played.

Rae, on the yacht, has to find some way to subdue or trick Hughie so that she can stay alive and rescue her husband. This is becoming rather urgent. The schooner is slowly sinking.

Hughie’s intentions are frightening because they’re unknown. He might be a killer, he might have been a victim. He may be sexually obsessed with Rae. Or, more worrying, he may have created some weird romantic fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he and Rae sail the South Pacific together. He may intend to kill Rae. He may intend to rape her.

It’s Rae’s story that becomes the main focus. That puts a lot of pressure on Nicole Kidman who was at that time a young relatively inexperienced actress and unknown outside Australia. She is more than equal to the challenge. This is the movie that demonstrated that Kidman could easily carry a film as a lead actress. And Rae is an interesting character. She’s no action heroine, just a resourceful woman fighting for survival. And she’s fighting to save her man. That will make her fight very hard indeed. Kidman makes Rae likeable and convincing. Rae could make things easier for herself by simply killing Hughie but, quite realistically, she is very reluctant to take that step. She’s an ordinary woman. Killing does not come naturally or easily to her.

Rae has one thing going for her. She’s a Navy wife. She knows boats and she knows the sea.

While Kidman is the standout performer both Sam Neill and Billy Zane are excellent.

These three people are the only significant characters in the movie, in fact for most of the running time they’re the only characters. The three leads had to be good and they had to work well together. They’re all equal to the job.

The cinematography is gorgeous. The location shooting was done on the Great Barrier Reef and the natural beauty nicely counterpoints the unnatural horrors.

The only character developed in any detail is Rae. Having lost her only child she comes to the realisation that her husband is all she’s got, but she loves him so that’s enough. She will do whatever it takes to save him. Nicole Kidman never goes over-the-top but she does a fine job letting us know what makes Rae tick.

We don’t know exactly what makes Hughie tick but that’s a plus rather than a minus. It makes him more frightening. It also means that Rae cannot reason with him.

Dead Calm doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. It’s a suspense thriller and it doesn’t get bogged down with extraneous details to any great extent. It just happens to be an extremely well-executed suspense thriller. It’s obviously a must-see if you’re a Nicole Kidman fan. Highly recommended.

The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is very good. There’s been a Blu-Ray release as well.

Philip Noyce went on to direct the criminally underrated erotic thriller Sliver (1993).

The Indian Tomb (1921)

Joe May’s 1921 silent epic The Indian Tomb was based on Thea von Harbou's very successful 1918 novel The Indian Tomb. Thea von Harbou was of course married to Fritz Lang. Lang and von Harbou wrote the screenplay for the film.

The novel, although extremely good, contains one very serious flaw. Interestingly enough that flaw is corrected in the movie. I don’t know whether it was von Harbou or Lang or May who made the change but it was very much a change for the better.

The movie is in two parts, Part I: The Mission of the Yogi (Die Sendung des Yoghi) and Part II: The Tiger of Bengal (Der Tiger von Eschnapur). It is in fact a single story with no obvious break between the two parts and the only reason it was originally released that way was the 3 hours and 40 minutes running time.

The story begins with a prologue. A yogi buried alive is resuscitated by the fabulously rich Ayan III, the Prince of Bengal (Conrad Veidt). According to legend when this happens the yogi must grant the person who revives him one wish. The prologue is important because it establishes that the yogi, Ramigani (Bernhard Goetzke), has supernatural or at least paranormal powers. And it establishes that Ramigani is compelled to carry out out the Prince’s commands even when he disagrees with them.

The Prince instructs Ramigami to persuade famed architect Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) to travel to India to build a tomb for him. Herbert understands that the tomb will house the body of a princess, the beloved of the Prince. Herbert is persuaded that he must leave for India immediately without informing his fiancée Irene Amundsen (Mia May). Herbert departs on the Prince’s steam yacht. Irene is however a resourceful woman and she sets off for India as well.

On arrival in India Herbert discovers that there are very important things he hadn’t been told. The tomb is not to house the body of the Princess. It is to house the memory of a Great Love. A love betrayed. The Princess is alive. She has betrayed the Prince with a dashing but unscrupulous British officer and hunter, MacAllan.

The Prince has plans for revenge but his plans are not straightforward.

Herbert suffers several misfortunes, the most serious being that he is infected with leprosy. Nothing can save him. Or perhaps something can. But the price will be terrible.

MacAllan is a hunted man.

Irene is more or less a prisoner. The Prince’s feelings towards her are ambiguous. It’s possible that he desires her but his feelings about women are more than a little distorted.

Herbert and Irene become involved in attempts to rescue the Princess.

There is plenty of action and adventure. Narrow brushes with hungry tigers! Crocodile-infested rivers. A desperate escape across a rickety rope bridge over a chasm. A shootout at MacAllan’s bungalow. All filmed with style and energy.

This is however mostly a story about love. It’s a story of love betrayed, of misguided misplaced love, obsessive love, unhealthy love. But also noble love and faithful love.

Conrad Veidt is perfectly cast. He could play heroes or villains or victims or mysterious ambiguous characters and the Prince is all those things. He is probably mad, but he was probably once a very good man. Veidt also had tremendous magnetism. He’s in top form here.

The whole cast is good.

There’s plenty of interesting ambiguity. The Prince is not a mere villain. He is a man so shattered by emotional betrayal that he is no longer quite sane. The Princess is no innocent victim. She did betray the Prince’s love. And MacAllan is no hero. He not only seduced the Princess but boasted about it afterwards. Hebert Rowland is perhaps a little ambiguous as well, a man who allowed his artistic ambition to override his judgment. The yogi seems sinister at first but then we start to wonder.

This is a breathtakingly lavish production. The sets are jaw-dropping.

The movie might be better remembered had Lang directed it himself but I can’t fault May’s direction. This is a stunning emotionally complex movie and it’s very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Thea von Harbou's novel The Indian Tomb and also Lang’s own 1959 version, Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Bengal and The Indian Tomb (1959).

I’ve also reviewed another worthwhile Joe May movie, Asphalt (1929).