The Set Up (1963)

The Set Up is a 1963 entry in the British Merton Park Studios Edgar Wallace B-movie crime thriller cycle - a prolific and consistently very fine series of movies.

Arthur Payne (Brian Peck) has just been released from prison. He meets a man on a train who tells him he might have a job for him.

Payne is then approached by another man with a proposal. It will pay well.  He wants his own safe robbed. His story is that he is trying to catch his wife out - she has been selling off her diamonds and replacing them with fakes. There’s no risk involved in the job. Payne won’t actually be doing anything illegal. There’s no way the police can become involved.

Payne is a nice enough guy but he’s as dumb as a rock. He falls for this story although even a give-year-old child would be suspicious. Of course the fact that Payne has been in prison indicates that he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Payne is so naïve that he doesn’t even bother to wear gloves when robbing the safe.

Naturally it all goes horribly wrong. Payne is now on the run, suspected of a murder.

Then he meets a cute blonde. Meeting a cute blonde is generally trouble but this is a nice cute blonde. She wants to help Payne. He has told her the truth about the way he was set up and she actually believes him. He trusts her and although he thinks she has betrayed him she hasn’t.

Inspector Jackson (John Carson) would like to believe Payne is innocent as well. He arrested Payne last time but he thinks Payne is fundamentally decent. And he finds it hard to believe that a petty thief would suddenly become a murderer.

Maybe Payne really was set up. But possibly he wasn’t the only one.

The strong cast is a bonus here. Maurice Denham as Gaunt is good, Anthony Bate is delightfully smooth and untrustworthy as Gaunt’s business associate Ray Underwood. Luanshya Greer is likeable as Sally, the cute blonde. I always enjoy John Carson’s performances whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. Brian Peck has a tough job as Payne since we have to be on the guy’s side even though he’s been such a total fool.

Gerard Glaister directed this film and several others in the series but he had most success as a television producer. It’s hard to fault the job he does here.

The low budgets of these movies didn’t give directors much scope for being visually ambitious. The most important thing was to keep the stories powering along and the very short running times (usually less than an hour) helped here. If the script was good the movie would work. This one was written by Roger Marshall who had an outstandingly distinguished career as a television writer and wrote several of these Edgar Wallace potboilers.

The Set Up is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume Four DVD set. It gets the usual nice transfer.

As with all the movies in this series The Set Up was shot in black-and-white and widescreen. The Set Up is very decent entertainment and it’s recommended.

I’ve seen and reviewed a lots of these Edgar Wallace films, including several written by Roger Marshall - Ricochet (1963) and Who was Maddox? (1964). Some of the others I’ve reviewed are Number Six (1962), Candidate for Murder (1962) and Time to Remember (1962).

Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

As someone who is rather a fan of Tarzan I eventually had to get around to seeing the 1984 Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. This is an extraordinarily ambitious film and technically it’s extremely impressive. Sadly however it has to be considered to be not a total success. Part of the reason for its partial failure is its inordinate length - at 143 minutes it’s around 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. There’s just not enough substance to justify such a long film. There are however other reasons for its relative failure which we’ll get to later.

One thing that should be pointed out is that the name Tarzan is never mentioned in this movie. He is always referred to as John (his real name being John Clayton). For convenience I will however refer to him as Tarzan (which seems justified because the name does appear in the movie’s title).

It’s a kind of origin story. We not only get Tarzan’s childhood in the African jungle. The movie goes back even farther, to 1885 when Tarzan’s parents set out for Africa. Tarzan’s father is the son of the Earl of Greystoke and heir to the vast family estates.

We get Tarzan’s childhood in exhaustive detail. Too much detail in fact.

Tarzan’s first contact with civilisation comes when he rescues a Belgian explorer, Capitaine Phillippe D’Arnot (Ian Holm). Eventually D’Arnot figures out that Tarzan is the heir to the Greystoke title and estates and he persuades Tarzan to go to England to find his family and assume his destined position in society.

It’s obvious from the start that Tarzan will have difficulty fitting in. He’s fond of his father, the Earl of Greystoke (Ralph Richardson), but he is aware that he will always remain an outcast. He keeps reverting to ape-like behaviour. Tarzan wants to go home to his jungle but he is persuaded that he has a duty to his family to remain in Britain. The only member of the Greystoke household who is nice to him is the earl’s American niece Jane Porter (Andie MacDowell).

There’s a potential romantic triangle between Tarzan, Jane and the wicked Lord Charles Esker (James Fox) but it isn’t developed. There’s one love scene between Tarzan and Jane but it falls rather flat and is absurdly tame. Which is a pity, because it means we never really understand why Jane would consider giving up her society life to be with Tarzan. We expect a bit of passion but we don’t get it. The whole Jane sub-plot just doesn’t work.

This movie is very definitely not in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The movie takes the position that Tarzan’s only home can be the jungle and that the wickedness of English civilisation will destroy him. Burroughs was much more nuanced. His original Tarzan is a man caught between two worlds but capable, up to a point at least, of dealing with the civilised world.

Of course the message of the movie is that the jungle is good and civilisation (especially the English variety) is evil. Apes are good. Englishmen are evil. It’s notable that that there are only two European characters who are sympathetic. One is Belgian and the other is American. Every Englishman in the movie is either a buffoon or a comic-strip villain. This weakens the movie’s central theme.

I can see what this movie was trying to achieve. Early on it tries to give us a vivid picture of the complex social and family life of the apes. When you listen to the audio commentary where the differences between the various ape characters are explained it all makes sense but I doubt if the average viewer would have picked up on most of this stuff. And if your movie includes scenes that only work when the director explains them to you then this has to be accounted a failure. All it really does is contribute to the movie’s excessive length.

It’s a movie that aims at an epic feel, and I can admire that, but the real focus should have been on Tarzan’s dilemma - a man trapped between two worlds. The movie is sometimes in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

One of this movie’s many problems is that it takes itself so seriously. This is a Tarzan movie with no adventure, no fun and no humour. The danger of such an excessively serious approach is that the movie can end up becoming unintentionally ridiculous, which happens at times.

It’s hard to judge Christopher Lambert’s performance as Tarzan. He was clearly giving the performance the director wanted but on occasion it becomes unintentionally silly. Eric Langlois who plays Tarzan at age 12 actually gives a more effective performance.

Ralph Richardson gives one of his standard English Eccentric performances. James Fox is embarrassingly bad as yet another villainous Englishman. Ian Holm tries hard. Andie MacDowell makes a very insipid Jane. It’s difficult not to compare her dull performance with the lively sexy sparkling performances of Maureen O’Sullivan in the early 30s Tarzan movies such as Tarzan and His Mate.

Technically this movie is a stunning achievement. There is of course no CGI. The apes are guys in ape suits but Rick Baker and the rest of the special effects crew really do manage to make them convincingly life-like. Glass paintings are used extensively. The jungle scenes are a mix of studio and location work and look great. This movie is a fine example of the superiority of good old school special effects over CGI.

What this movie desperately needed was some brutal editing. There are too many scenes that are there because they look cool even though they’re unnecessary and slow the film down. Scenes like that belong on the cutting room floor.

Overall this movie is too long, too slow, too dull, too self-indulgent and includes too much heavy-handed messaging. It’s clear that director Hugh Hudson had zero feel for the source material. It’s obvious that Robert Towne (the original screenwriter who wisely had his name removed from the credits) had some good ideas. What was needed was a much better director. It is visually spectacular but I’m not sure I could seriously recommend it.

The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Broadway Melody has some historical importance. It was MGM’s first musical and it was the first musical to win a Best Picture Oscar.

With the advent of sound it was obvious that musicals would be a big thing, but the right formula needed to be found. It was no good just filming a Broadway show. A way would need to be found to make musicals cinematic. Paramount were already getting into the musical business and while Ernst Lubitsh’s The Love Parade is a delight it’s more or less an operetta. The Broadway Melody on the other hand invents a new genre - the backstage musical. Big musical numbers but also lots of human drama and romance and intrigue behind the scenes.

This formula would reach perfection with 42nd Street in 1932 but The Broadway Melody is a bold very early attempt.

It signals its intentions from the start, with some stunning aerial shots of Manhattan. This is going to be the magic of Broadway meeting the magic of movies. Or that's what we hope.

Songwriter Eddie Kearns (Charles King) has just got his big break. Big-time Broadway producer Francis Zanfield (Eddie Kane) has not only bought one of his songs, he’s going to use it as the centrepiece of his new revue. Eddie now thinks he’s in the big-time, which he is up to a point. His girlfriend Hank Mahoney (Bessie Love) and her kid sister Queenie (Anita Page) have a successful sister act out in the boondocks but now they want to try their luck in the Big Apple. Eddie is sure he can get them a spot in the revue. Unfortunately when Zanfield sees their act he thinks Queenie is terrific but he thinks Hank is no good. There’s going to be some tension between the two sisters.

And there’s a complicated romantic quadrangle involving the Mahoney girls, Eddie and a smooth operator named Jacques Warriner (Kenneth Thomson).

This provides the behind-the-scenes human drama. And the entire focus of the film is this four-way romantic tangle.

The Broadway Melody’s biggest problem is that everybody is going to compare it to 42nd Street and it’s just not in the same league.

It just doesn’t have that Busby Berkeley genius. In the Busby Berkeley musicals the musical production numbers supposedly take place on stage. But they could never be accommodated on any stage and could never be watched by a theatre audience since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s roving eye, from above and beneath and from various angles. We have left the world of the theatre and entered a world of pure cinema. In The Broadway Melody the production numbers are filmed entirely from in front, as if we’re looking through the proscenium arch. These are filmed stage performances. They’re quite good, but they’re totally non-cinematic.

The Broadway Melody lacks the cynical hardboiled edge of the Warner Brothers musicals, and that sense that the show must succeed otherwise they all lose their jobs and starve. That’s because the 1930s Warner Brothers musicals were very much Depression-era musicals. But this is not true of The Broadway Melody. It was made and released in the boom times before the Stock Market Crash. The Broadway Melody is very much a Jazz Age musical, and it has an underlying buoyant optimism. We’re all going to be successful and we’re all going to be rich.

This is of course a pre-code movie. Jacques Warriner makes it clear that he wants to set Queenie up as a kept woman and that marriage will not be part of the deal. Queenie makes it clear that she’s happy with this idea.

There’s one slightly disturbing moment. A showgirl perched on the prow of a prop ship falls 25 feet to the stage floor. She hits the floor and she doesn’t movie. She is taken out on a stretcher - and she is never mentioned again! The poor girl might be dead for all we know. But the show must go on.

This movie really is way too long. The ingredients are here, but the balance is wrong. There’s too much focus on the romance melodrama and not enough on the backstage struggles involved in putting on a show. The staging of the musical numbers is unimaginative and stodgy. It is worth seeing for its historical importance but it just doesn’t catch fire.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray looks terrific.

Night Watch (1973)

Night Watch has the distinction of being the only horror movie Elizabeth Taylor made. And this 1973 British production is a reasonably successful effort.

It follows the psychological horror formula that had become familiar in the early 60s, in movies like Hammer’s psycho-thrillers of that era. But Night Watch adds a few new twists of its own.

Elizabeth Taylor is Ellen Wheeler. She is married to investment consultant John Wheeler (Laurence Harvey) although she is apparently wealthy in her own right. The marriage seems happy enough. John works fairly long hours but Ellen has her friend Sarah Cooke (Billie Whitelaw) to keep her company. Ellen is somewhat disapproving of Sarah’s mysterious affair with a married man. on the whole these seem like reasonably normal upper middle-class people. Until one night, in the middle of a severe storm, Ellen sees something in the window of the deserted house next door.

Ellen is sure she saw a murdered man with his throat cut. It was jut a glimpse as the shutters briefly blew open before blowing closed again but Ellen is convinced that she did indeed see a murdered man. The police are called but a search of the deserted house reveals nothing unusual or sinister. John is inclined to think that Ellen let her imagination play tricks on her, and the police share his view.

Ellen lost her first husband Carl in a car accident some years earlier. We do not find out the circumstances of the accident until late in the picture but Ellen has clearly never quite recovered from this tragedy.

Shortly afterwards Ellen sees another body in the derelict house, this time a woman’s body. The police are called again and again they find nothing. Ellen becomes increasingly distraught and John, by this time very concerned, calls in his psychiatrist friend tony (Tony Britton) to take a look at Ellen.

Ellen refuses to be shaken in her belief that she really did see those bodies. She is so persistent that they even dig up her neighbour Mr Appleby’s flower beds but they can still find absolutely no evidence to support Ellen’s story. Ellen rings Inspector Walker (Bill Dean) so many times that the police dismiss her as a harmless crank and no longer bother to respond to her phone calls. On Tony’s advice Ellen eventually agrees to admit herself to a private clinic in Switzerland but before she takes that plane flight the story reaches its climax.

As you might expect Elizabeth Taylor gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance. Taylor was never afraid to push her acting to extremes that would have been ridiculously histrionic in any other actress, but she was always able to get away with it. And she gets away with it here. Her performance is the key to the film’s success and she delivers the goods.

Laurence Harvey and Billie Whitelaw provide fine support. Robert Lang is amusing as Mr Appleby, a man who seems both absurd and vaguely sinister.

Brian G. Hutton directed only a handful of movies although these included another rather outrageous and very entertaining Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Zee and Co (released in the US as X, Y and Zee). He does a very capable job with Night Watch. Screenwriter Tony Williamson had a prolific carer in British television, writing episodes for just about every crime/adventure series of the 60s and 70s. Twisted little stories were something he was very good at and his screenplay is economical and effective.

This movie has been released in the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD series, in an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Night Watch is a fine example of the British psychological horror thriller and Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in her only horror outing is certainly an added inducement. Taylor proves that she can do horror very well indeed.

Under Eighteen (1931)

Under Eighteen (or Under 18) is a 1931 Warner Brothers romantic melodrama and it’s very much a Depression melodrama.

It begins in 1928 in the optimism and confidence of the Jazz Age. In New York the Evans family is prosperous.

Sophie Evans (Anita Page) has just married Alf (Norman Foster). He’s rather feckless but considers himself something of an entrepreneur. He owns a pool hall. In these pre-Stock Market Crash days business is booming and he looks forward to the day he will own a chain of pool halls.

Sophie’s sister Margie (Marian Marsh) is filled with romantic dreams.

Then comes the Depression. The Evans family is now broke. Alf has lost his pool hall and can’t find a job (partly because he still can’t adjust to the reality of no longer being a big shot and no longer being able to be his own boss).

Margie is expecting to marry Jimmy (Regis Toomey). He’s a delivery man. It’s not glamorous but at least it’s a job. Margie sees her future as an endless struggle against poverty. She’s dissatisfied and reckless. She’s jealous of Elsie (Dorothy Appleby). Elsie is a prostitute but she drives around in a limo and has beautiful clothes and jewellery and never has to worry where her next meal is coming from.

Margie still loves Jimmy, but she’s having doubts about marriage.

The marriage between Sophie and Alf is falling apart, Sophie needs money to pay for a divorce and the money cannot be found.

Margie is working at the fashion house of François (Paul Porcasi) but now she’s landed her big break - a modelling job. This is due to the interest taken in her by François’ biggest client, Raymond Harding (Warren William). Harding is fabulous rich, a notorious womaniser who has kept a string of mistresses and he’s just generally regarded as a very wicked man. He might be wicked, but Margie is now thinking that being nice to Harding might be her best option.

The cast is very strong. Regis Toomey and Norman Foster are very good. Anita Page is good as the increasingly desperate Sophie.

Warren Williams is in top form. Playing rich powerful men who are charming and sinister is what he did better than anyone.

Marian Marsh is excellent. She’s convincingly torn between her ingrained belief in respectability and the temptations of wickedness and she’s cute and likeable.

There’s no shortage of pre-code content. We have no doubt what any arrangement offered by Harding will entail. And there’s some amusing pre-code dialogue. When Margie arrives at Harding’s penthouse where a party is in full swing around the rooftop pool he says to her, “Why don’t you take your clothes off and stay awhile?”

A thing I like about pre-code movies is that this was the very beginning of the sound era and genre conventions for sound films had not yet solidified. As a result you’re always sure which way the plots will jump. In this case Under Eighteen could be heading for a tragic ending but could just as easily be heading for a feelgood happy ending. In fact the ending of this movie might seem dubious unless you remember that the movie doesn’t quite fit neatly into genre formulas that were established by the end of the decade. Not everyone will like the ending to this film but it works for me.

You also can’t predict which way the characters will go. All the characters here could be headed for disaster, but not necessarily. And they could turn out to less sympathetic, or more sympathetic, than they initially appeared to be. This is a movie that doesn’t rush to make moral judgments on the characters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Under Eighteen. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD looks very good.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 is one of the great Warner Brothers pre-code musicals with wild Busby Berkeley production numbers.

The plot is your standard Warner Brothers pre-code backstage musical plot. Producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) is putting on a show or at least he’s trying to. But this is the Depression and the money needed to finance a show is simply impossible to find. The show closes before it even opens.

Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers), Carol King (Joan Blondell) and Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon) are broke again. They’re in utter despair until Barney announces that he has a new show ready to go. But as usual, he has everything he needs except the money.

The girls’ neighbour, Brad (Dick Powell), then offers to finance the show. Since he’s a penniless aspiring songwriter nobody takes him seriously. But somehow he comes up with the money.

Barney wants Brad to be the juvenile lead but Brad tells him that it is simply not possible for him to perform in public.

Then we get the classic Warner Brothers backstage musical scene. The juvenile lead cannot go on. The show is doomed. The only hope is for Brad to go on.

Brad and Polly have already fallen hopelessly in love. They decide to get married.

Things get complicated when Brad’s real identity is revealed and his brother J. Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) arrives on the scene intent on preventing the marriage.

We then get plenty of farce with identities getting mixed up and the girls cooking up a plot to make sure that true love triumphs.

Warren William was always at his best when he could be really slimy and oily. In this movie he’s basically not such a bad guy, which may disappoint some of his fans.

Aline MacMahon is the out-and-out comic character and overdoes things a bit. Guy Kibbee is fun (as always) as J. Lawrence Bradford’s lawyer who has a weakness for the ladies. Ned Sparks is terrific. Ruby Keeler is as sweet as ever but she could get away with being sweet. Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers are excellent.

What I love about these Busby Berkeley musicals is that they have theatrical settings and the musical production numbers are supposedly taking place on stage. But these numbers could never be accommodated on a stage and they could never be watched on stage since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s eye. As soon as the musical production numbers start we are teleported from the world of the theatre into a world of pure cinema.

These are also production numbers that could only work in black-and-white. They need the artificiality of black-and-white. We are in a world of total artifice.

They would also look terribly crass in colour. This is a kind of glamour that only great black-and-white cinematography can provide.

Barney’s show is intended as a show about the Depression and Gold Diggers of 1933 is a movie about the Depression. It’s at its best in the early stages when we see Barney and the showgirls refusing to admit defeat. They’re show people and regardless of the obstacles they’re going to put on a show.

For many people the highlight is the Forgotten Man production number at the end. For me this number goes close to ruining the movie. It’s typical heavy-handed Warner Brothers “social commentary” and it’s like a political lecture clumsily tacked on at the end. These Warner Brother musicals work because they take us into a magical world of pure cinematic fantasy. The Forgotten Man number is out of place and a movie that should end on a playful joyful note ends in misery and whining.

As a result Gold Diggers of 1933 is the weakest of the Warner Brothers pre-code musicals but it does include three terrific production numbers. The Shadow Waltz is visually impressive. Pettin' in the Park is fabulous and inspired pre-code cheerful naughtiness. We're in the Money opens the movie and it’s the movie’s high point and it’s a great showcase for Ginger Rogers.

If you’re a Busby Berkeley newbie start with 42nd Street or Footlight Parade which are much better movies than this. Gold Diggers of 1933 has a few great moments but it doesn’t quite make it.

It’s annoying that this movie is available on Blu-Ray while the vastly superior Footlight Parade is not.

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.