Ladyhawke (1985)

Ladyhawke is a 1985 fantasy film and it really is a bit of an oddity. I think it’s a wonderful movie but I can see why it flopped at the box office. It’s totally out of step with other movies of that genre of that era. It’s also to some extent out of step with the mainstream filmmaking approaches of the 80s.

It was produced and directed by Richard Donner.

The setting is northern Italy. The time period is not specified precisely but references to the exploits of the hero’s grandfather during the Crusades might suggest the 13th or 14th centuries.

A young thief, Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), escapes from an escape-proof dungeon.

Local authority is vested in the Bishop of Aquila (played by John Wood) and the bishop wants Phillipe recaptured. He sees the young thief’s escape as a challenge to his prestige and authority. The bishop is something of a tyrant and seems to rule mostly by fear.

Phillipe encounters Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer). Navarre is a rather brooding figure, obviously a man in the grip of some obsession, but in his own way he seems to be a decent man who can even be almost kindly at times. Navarre has a hawk, an impressive bird of which he is inordinately proud. There is clearly a bond between the man and the hawk.

But at nightfall Navarre disappears completely and a beautiful lady appears. She is Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer). She has an animal companion as well, a wolf. There is clearly a bond between the woman and the wolf.

In fact Navarre and Isabeau are the victims of an awful curse. They were lovers, until they aroused the ire of the bishop who called on the powers of darkness to afflict with a cruel and ingenious curse. During the day Isabeau is transformed into the hawk. At night Navarre is transformed into the wolf. They can never be together in human form. They are in fact doomed to be forever together and forever apart.

A nice touch is that in their animal forms they have no knowledge of their human natures. All the wolf knows is that for some reason he must protect this woman. All the hawk knows is that somehow she belongs to this man. They can never communicate. They can only communicate very indirectly, through Phillipe.

Another very nice touch is that Phillipe is a likeable pleasant resourceful young man but he is a chronic liar. That turns out to be useful. Whenever Isabeau asks if Navarre has spoken of her Phillipe assures her that Navarre speaks constantly of the strength of his love for her. That isn’t true. Navarre is a man of few words who could never articulate his feelings in this way. Phillipe tells Isabeau lies, but they are true lies. They are the things that are in Navarre’s heart. When Navarre asks if Isabeau has spoken of him Phillipe tells him the same sorts of true lies. There are things Isabeau cannot bring herself to say but Phillipe has survived as long as he has by being extremely astute. He knows how Isabeau feels about Navarre.

When the hawk is wounded crazy old monk Imperius (Leo McKern) enters the picture. He knows something very very important, but he doesn’t know how to make Navarre and Isabeau believe it.

By the mid-80s the established formula for adventure or fantasy movies was non-stop action, spectacle, some humour and a dash of romance. When the sword-and-sorcery genre emerged the formula remained the same but with a slightly tongue-in-cheek edge.

Ladyhawke ignores this formula completely. The focus is entirely on the love story. There’s some action and some excitement but it’s handled in a low-key way and there are no spectacular action set-pieces. This is a movie that relies on mood rather than spectacle. It’s a beautiful movie but it’s beautiful in a subtle slightly dreamy way.

This is a movie that seems to be aiming for the tone of 19th century medievalism - the romantic harkening back to the days of chivalry of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and of Pre-Raphaelite painting. I think it does this very successfully.

The casting is perfect. Rutger Hauer was a guy who could wear medieval garb and make you think that he’d been dressing that way all his life. He plays Navarre as a brooding but very sympathetic figure. Nothing matters to him except for the woman he loves. It’s an obsession, but a noble obsession. Hauer does not give a conventional action hero performance. He’s much more subtle than that. We feel Navarre’s pain, but the pain is not on the surface. It’s deep within Navarre’s soul. He simply cannot live with Isabeau.

Michelle Pfeiffer is just right. The first time we see her we are struck by her fragile ethereal beauty. And we know that this is a high-born lady. There’s nothing arrogant about Isabeau, just the placid assurance of a woman who has known since childhood what it means to be a lady. Isabeau is definitely not a kickass action heroine or a feisty girl heroine. She has courage, but it is a woman’s courage.

When Phillipe meets her he knows that he is going to devote himself to the service of this lady without any hope of reward. To serve such a lady is an honour. What’s extraordinary is that Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer make this devotion totally convincing. Somehow all three leads are able to make us believe that this world of fairy-tale romance and chivalry is real.

The Bishop of Aquila is not a conventional adventure movie larger-than-life villain. He is a man in the grip of an obession. It has lewd him to do great evil, but the obsession started as love.

Ladyhawke never really had a chance at the box office. It’s a very uncommercial movie. It goes its own way. It’s a beautiful fairy-tale romance and I adored it. Very highly recommended.

Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer in the World (1966)

Isadora (sometimes known under the title Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World) is a 1966 BBC TV-movie based on the life of the famous but tragic pioneer of modern dance, Isadora Duncan.

The TV-movie was directed by Ken Russell. You might be wondering if you’ll see traces of Russell’s later style in this early work. In fact you’ll see more than traces. This is a full-blown Ken Russell movie.

Russell co-wrote the script with Sewell Stokes, who knew Isadora in the latter part of her life.

While Isadora was funded by the BBC and was screened on the BBC in 1966 it was always intended for theatrical release as well, and it did indeed get a theatrical release. It was something of a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. The success of Isadora made it certain that Russell would soon make the jump to directing feature films, which in fact he did in the following year.

The considerable amount of nudity certainly indicates that a theatrical release was the intention.

Isadora was made on a minuscule budget (we’re talking about the BBC here) but it was shot in 35mm and while it’s in black-and-white it feels like a feature film rather than a TV production. Russell was pulling out all the stops with the visual and it has all his trademarks.

Isadora Duncan was briefly a sensation in the world of dance. She was an apostle of dance as free expression. Her dislike of any kind of discipline carried over into her personal life.

Her star faded quickly and her wild lifestyle took its toll. She blundered from disaster to disaster.

She enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1960s, being seen as a kind of godmother to the counter-culture.

Russell resists the temptation to idealise or romanticise her. He doesn’t exactly demonise her but he makes no attempt to downplay her extraordinary self-destructiveness and egotism and spectacularly bad judgment. This was a woman set for fame, stardom and riches and it all fell apart and the disasters were all of her own doing. He also does not downplay her vulgarity or her stupidity.

Isadora did have a touch of genius, but a very limited genius. In the opening years of the 20th century her approach to dance seemed exciting and revolutionary - pure expression, unconstrained by rules or discipline. Just dance what you feel. Like all such artistic approaches it was something of a dead end. The vogue for Isadora waned, her wild lifestyle began to catch up with her, her extravagance left her dependent on wealthy lovers who eventually tired of her whims and her dramas.

After the First World War she went to Russia, feeling sure that the Bolsheviks would recognise her as a fellow revolutionary. They did not. She was soon penniless. Isadora’s politics did not go much beyond thinking that being a revolutionary was exciting and glamorous.

An affair with a drunken lecherous thieving Russian poet ruined her even further.

Tragically she ended up being remembered mostly for the bizarre circumstances of her death.

Russell tells her story as an absurdist tragi-comedy. Isadora remains oblivious to the inevitable consequences of her self-destructiveness and self-absorption.

Isadora’s rejection of rules and discipline made her, briefly, a star in the world of dance. It also doomed her to disaster in life. She was ruled by her passions and her emotions and they led her astray every time.

Vivian Pickles (a dancer herself) is superb in the title role.

Russell was not going to let a micro-budget limit his already soaring ambitions. By necessity he had to use some stock footage. He makes extraordinary use of footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.

This does not look like a TV movie. It looks like a Ken Russell feature film.

Russell’s productions for the BBC in the 60s cannot be dismissed as mere tentative experimentations. He was already Ken Russell. He had already chosen his artistic path.

Russell was fascinated by genius but had no interest in worshipful approaches. He liked to get under the skin of the artistic geniuses about whom he made movies and he wasn’t afraid of what he might find under the surface. He also made two notable films about artistic failures - this one and Savage Messiah (1972). They’d make a fine double feature.

Isadora is a major Ken Russell film and a great one. Very highly recommended.

Red Line 7000 (1965)

Red Line 7000 is late Howard Hawks film. Made in 1965, it was his third-last movie. It’s probably his least admired movie.

Hawks wrote the original story and he produced and directed. Red Line 7000 deals with motor racing, but not with the glamorous world of Le Man or Formula 1. This is the slightly more disreputable world of NASCAR racing. This is certainly a deliberate choice by Hawks. He’s not interested in the glamour. He’s interested in what makes these men tick.

Hawks was fascinated by the idea of exploring the psychology of men who dice with death. He was particularly fascinated by men who dice with death even though they don’t have to. Not soldiers in wartime or cops driven by a sense of duty, but civilians who deliberately make this choice. They’re not doing it for a cause. They’re not doing it for the excitement. It’s more of an existential thing. They’re flirting with death, taunting death, spitting in the eyes of death. And all the time knowing that death will have the last laugh. Maybe they’re half in love with death.

Hawks was also fascinated by the women who love these men.

So the basic setup is there for a classic Howard Hawks movie. But that doesn’t seem to be what he had in mind. It seems like he was trying to make a movie aimed at a young audience. In fact it’s almost as if he tried to make a drive-in movie. There are some very definite exploitation movie elements. You have never seen so many car crashes. Every time the action moves to the racetrack you can be sure there will be crashes. Multiple crashes. Cars in flames. Cars going end over end.

This is the sort of thing a drive-in audience would love. But this was a major-studio picture distributed by Paramount and there was no way that Paramount would have had a clue how to market it.

It needed a Roger Corman to market it. It’s a movie that should have been made by AIP. Red Line 7000 was in fact shot on a very low budget. Mainstream critics were always going to hate it, and they did. Mainstream audiences would have been perplexed. Where are the big stars?

Which brings us to the cast. Hawks went for an entire cast of unknowns. The only big name is James Caan, but in 1965 he was not yet a star. Hawks presumably wanted to avoid having the movie loaded down with stars, which would have created the expectation that this was going to be a star vehicle for one or two big names. It isn’t. There’s no central character. There are eight or so important characters but the focus shifts constantly between them.

There are three drivers. Mike Marsh (James Caan) is the ice-cold professional who cares about nothing other than racing. Dan McCall (Skip Ward) had tried to break into Formula but now he’s back to NASCAR racing. Ned Arp (John Robert Crawford) is the hotshot punk, a nobody determined to be a somebody.

The first of the women is Julie (Laura Devon), the sister of the manager of the racing team. She falls for Ned Arp. The second is French girl Gabrielle (Marianna Hill). She had been Dan’s girlfriend but they’ve split up and now she has set her sights on Mike Marsh. The third is Holly (Gail Hire), who keeps falling in love with racing car drivers who keep dying on her. Now, to her horror, she has fallen in love with yet another race car driver (Dan).

The focus shifts constantly between each of the three couples and between the romantic dramas and the dramas on the racetrack.

Hawks sent his second unit director Bruce Kessler out to film actual race footage so all the racing scenes are real. And they’re spectacular.

The acting is a very mixed bag.

This movie ran into huge censorship problems over the relationship between Julie and Ned, something that now seems bizarre and inexplicable. Major cuts were made.

Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan of this movie which doesn’t surprise me. I dislike Tarantino’s own movies but as a critic he’s perceptive and stimulating. He has, rightly, championed a lot of movies from the 60s and 70s that critics at that time were incapable of understanding.

Red Line 7000 is not quite what either Howard Hawks fans or mainstream audiences and critics expected but has its own oddball charm. I’m going to give it a highly recommended rating.

I’ve reviewed other Hawks movie dealing with similar themes. The Crowd Roars (1932) and Ceiling Zero (1936) are both underrated and very much worth seeing.

Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves is a 1975 private eye thriller. Whether it qualifies as a neo-noir remains to be seen but that label has been affixed to it at times.

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a down-at-heel private eye. He’s not at the bottom of his profession but he’s a long way from the top. He gets by. He has a cute wife. He’s not what you would call a loser.

Or maybe it would be truer to say that he’s not a loser yet, but the potential is there.

He’s been hired by a faded middle-aged former starlet to find her missing teenaged daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith). Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) was never more than a minor starlet. It’s clear that she was one of those Hollywood actresses who gave her best performances on the casting couch. She married a producer. More husbands followed.

Harry has troubles of his own. One of the disadvantages of being a private eye is that you notice things that you’d be better off not noticing and and you make connections you’d be better off not making. For example if your wife is having an affair you’re going to know about it. And Harry’s wife is definitely having an affair.

Harry is not at all happy about this. Harry is a guy who seems a bit on edge at the best of times. A bit inclined to fly off the handle.

Harry thinks he has a lead on the missing girl. She might be with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford) in Florida. He flies down to Florida. Tom has left the rat race. He does some charter boat and charter plane stuff. He’s really a glorified beach bum. He lives with his ex-hooker girlfriend Paula.

Delly is indeed there. She does not want to return to her mother whom she hates.

Delly looks like Miss Junior Femme Fatale 1975. She’s a nice girl but she’s wild and she’s far from innocent.

Then comes a plot twist right out of left field. Delly is doing some skin diving and finds a wrecked plane. With a body in it. Of course that has nothing to do with the case. It was obviously an accidental plane crash and there are plenty of light plane crashes.

The case is now solved. Harry can return to California. Maybe he can patch up his marriage. Perhaps he should give up the private eye business. He’s 40 and maybe his life needs to change direction. He needs to think. Then he receives a cryptic communication from Delly. And a piece of information about her. And yet another piece of information that suggests some interesting connections. Harry may be thinking of giving the game away but he still thinks like a private eye. Give him a puzzle and he’ll try to solve it. Especially if it involves someone of whom he is fond. Not a lover, just someone for whom he developed an odd affection. This case is not over after all.

I don’t think this is a neo-noir at all. It has some dark moments but a neo-noir requires more than that. It requires specific ingredients. Those ingredients are lacking here. Harry does not fit the mould of a noir protagonist.

There are four women all of whom could be dangerous but not one of them is a classic femme fatale. The first is disqualified because she’s so obvious that even the dumbest schmuck could see through her. The second is just selfish and shallow. The third has some femme fatale tendencies but Harry does not get seriously involved with her which disqualifies her as a femme fatale. The fourth has very definite femme fatale potential but Harry doesn’t get involved with her in any way, either emotionally or sexually. This movie is not structured like a neo-noir. It does not have a plot driven by lust. In fact the plot isn’t driven by anything in particular. There’s no obsessiveness. It’s just a PI who gets stubborn when faced by a puzzling case. The kind of plot you’d expect in a very average crime thriller.

It also lacks a neo-noir feel. The feel is more like a two-part episode of one of the popular TV PI series of the day such as Mannix or Harry O. Night Moves has no particular visual style. I don’t even see it as an homage to the great PI movies of the 40s. Night Moves is very very 70s, but not in a really interesting way.

All of the female characters are underwritten and Harry’s relationships with them are entirely undeveloped.

I have to be honest and state that I’ve seen three Arthur Penn movies and I’ve disliked all of them. I’m also not the biggest Gene Hackman fan. He’s appropriately cast here and he’s competent but no more. The best performance here comes from Melanie Griffith in her film debut. It’s a tricky role. She has to make Delly bratty, but not too bratty. She does a fine job. She actually understands subtlety.

Night Moves is nothing special, just a reasonably entertaining very straightforward PI thriller. A harmless time-killer. Worth a look but I wouldn’t make a huge effort to seek it out.

Camille (1936)

The 1936 Camille was the second Hollywood adaptation of the 1848 novel The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias) by Alexandre Dumas fils.

The movie is set in Paris in the 1840s. It is of course the story of a love affair between celebrated Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gautier and a young man, Armand Duval (Robert Taylor), whose problem is that he is not rich enough to afford her and not rich enough to defy his family by marrying her. He would like to marry her because he fears that her wild lifestyle is having a disastrous effect on her very precarious health.

There is going to be trouble with Armand’s family. His father (played by Lionel Barrymore) doesn’t mind if Armand wants to consort with courtesans but he wants him to be discreet and he certainly isn’t going to agree to a marriage. Had Armand belonged to an aristocratic family there would have been no problem. The aristocracy could treat conventional morality with contempt. But Armand’s bourgeois father is obsessed with respectability and dreads scandal.

A lot of the great actresses of the pre-code era had their careers blighted by the introduction of the Production Code in 1934. They just couldn’t flourish in the new squeaky-clean Code era. Jean Harlow being an obvious example. This was the case to some extent with Greta Garbo. She had some major hits after 1934 but some of the magic was gone.

Camille presented a challenge for MGM in 1936. The Dumas novel was based on the real-life story of one of the most famous prostitutes of the 19th century, Marie Duplessis. The heroine of the novel, like Marie Duplessis, is a courtesan but no matter how expensive she might be a courtesan is after all a prostitute. And if it’s not made clear that the heroine is a prostitute the story makes no sense at all.

The problem was that the Production Code had outlawed bad girls. Even if they suffered horrific punishment at the end it was incredibly difficult to make a movie about a bad girl.

That started to change in the early 40s as the Production Code was (in practice if not in theory) loosened a little, which made film noir possible. But in 1936 movies had to tread very very carefully indeed. And this is not just the story of a prostitute - it’s a very sympathetic story of a prostitute.

This movie solves the problem quite skilfully. It makes it very obvious that the heroine, Marguerite Gautier (Garbo), is a courtesan without ever coming right out and saying it. It relies on hints and on little exchanges that might be interpreted in an innocent way but are in fact clear indications of the way in which she makes her living. She is obviously being kept by the rich Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell). We even see an exchange of money. At one point the Baron gives her a very large sum of money, to spend on whatever takes her fancy. It is impossible to imagine a respectable woman accepting such a large cash gift. The only plausible explanation is that he is paying her for her services.

Marguerite exists in the demi-monde, the half-world of very expensive whores. She mixes with very rich men of the highest social class but her friends are clearly not the least bit respectable.

Armand is not a child. He is not at all concerned about Marguerite’s profession. All he knows is that he loves her.

Garbo is in fine form as a woman constantly veering between exaggerated gaiety and despair, between sincerity and frivolity, a woman who is reluctant to admit that she has fallen in love. Perhaps she is attracted by the prospect of emotional security but she is equally attracted by the frenetic pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure allows her to stop worrying about her health. Perhaps she would like to be respectable, but she doesn’t have a great deal of fondness for respectable people. It’s a complex role which Garbo carries off with ease.

Robert Taylor in the 1930s was generally dismissed as a mere pretty boy. As his matinee idol looks became more weather-beaten in the late 1940s his acting ability really began to blossom. He’s quite solid in Camille but he’s obviously still a bit tentative.

I have never liked Lionel Barrymore as an actor and I’m afraid I don’t like him here. Of course the character he’s playing is a loathsome self-righteous prig and that was something that Barrymore could do.

Henry Daniell as the Baron de Varville is superb. He gives the characters some depth. The Baron is selfish and arrogant and cynical but is able to regard himself, and life in general, with a certain amusement. He’s a rogue but we can’t help liking him for his lack of moralism and hypocrisy.

Marguerite and Armand are fated to misunderstand each. Marguerite does tell lies. That’s part of her profession. A whore is used to telling men what they want to hear. But when Marguerite does tell the truth Armand doesn’t believe her. They don’t really understand how much they love each other, and there is always the money problem. Armand does not have enough money to flout the social conventions. It’s an insanely romantic tale. Highly recommended.

I also highly recommend the visually stunning 1921 silent version, as well as the novel.

King of the Rocket Men (1949), The Rocketer (1991)

King of the Rocket Men is a 1949 Republic serial that mixes crime and science fiction. 

There are those who consider it to be the last great Republic serial.

The hero battles a crime lord, with the aid of a rocket suit. It's a lot of fun.

My full review can be found at Cult Movie Reviews.

And for an equally enjoyable later rocket man movie, The Rocketeer (1991) is highly recommended.

Sierra (1950)

Sierra is an early (1950) Audie Murphy western. I’ve become a rather obsessive Audie Murphy fan. I’ve now seen seven of his westerns. They’re all enjoyable and a couple of them, in my opinion, rank among the very best westerns of the classic western era.

Sierra begins with a cute but headstrong girl, Riley Martin (Wanda Hendrix), causing a major headache for Ring Hassard (Audie Murphy) and his dad Jeff (Dean Jagger). They live in a shack way up in the mountains. No-one knows they’re there. That’s how they want to keep things. They have a good reason. They need to avoid the law. Years earlier Jeff Hazzard was accused of murder. He always proclaimed his innocence but he couldn’t prove it.

Now Riley Martin knows about them. She could talk. She promises she won’t. They trust her. They have to. They can’t kill her. They’re outsiders but they’re nice guys.

There’s another problem. Riley also, quite inadvertently, brought about an accident in which Jeff was so seriously injured that his life in danger. That means they’ll need to get a doctor up there. Then everyone will know that they’ve been living in the mountains and the sheriff will send a posse.

In the midst of all these dramas Ring shoots Riley. He had to. It was for her own good. She’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. You can learn fascinating things by watching movies. Apparently you can eliminate rattlesnake venom by shooting the person in the infected area. It’s something worth remembering.

Of course this attracts more attention.

Jeff and Ring have an obsession. It’s an enormous herd of wild horses. No-one believes the herd exists but they’ve seen it. They aim to round up that herd one day. Then they’ll have the money to buy the ranch they always wanted.

So Ring (with help from some other semi-outlaws) is trying to round up the mustang herd whilst keeping a step ahead of the posse. And he’s made a couple of other very dangerous enemies as well, and they’re also gunning for him. He has a lot on his plate.

Of course Riley has fallen for Ring. A girl always feel closer to a guy after he’s shot her. And he has the glamour of being a sexy outsider rebel with a sensitive side. How could she resist him? Ring thinks Riley is pretty special as well.

It’s a fairly routine but serviceable western plot and a bit on the contrived side. You can see the crucial plot twist coming up a mile away.


The biggest problem is Burl Ives. He plays Jeff Hazzard’s wise old buddy Lonesome. Lonesome is a sort of comic relief character and he’s already irritating enough and he starts to sing. And he just keeps on singing. I guess this is supposed to add a folksy warm-hearted touch but I just wanted someone to fill Lonesome full of lead.

On the plus side it’s a Universal International 1950s western in Technicolor and they always looked nice. This one has cinematography by Russell Metty so it looks very nice indeed.

And it has Audie Murphy. This was the kind of role he handled with erase - a quiet self-effacing nice guy but you can tell that underneath the mild exterior there’s real grit and a stubborn obsessiveness. Added to which Murphy had charm and charisma.

Wanda Hendrix makes a fairly likeable Feisty Heroine. Riley has had a fancy big city education but she was born on the frontier and was one of those girls who learned to ride before she learned to walk.

Look out for Tony Curtis in a bit part.

Sierra is nothing special but it’s enjoyable and it’s recommended. It's included in the second of Kino Lorber's Audie Murphy Blu-Ray boxed sets.

Over the course of the 1950s Audie Murphy’s westerns just got better and better and towards the close of the decade he made the excellent Hell Bent for Leather (1960) and the absolutely magnificent No Name on the Bullet (1959).

The Unfaithful (1947)

The Unfaithful is a 1947 Warner Brothers production directed by Vincent Sherman. It’s sometimes described as a film noir but it’s more of a woman’s melodrama somewhat in the mould of Leave Her To Heaven and The Letter.

While her husband is away a man who has been lying in wait forces his way into the home of Chris Hunter (Ann Sheridan). There is a struggle. The man ends up dead, stabbed to death.

We see these events in silhouette through a curtained window. We can’t be entirely sure what happened.

Given that the maid heard a woman scream a moment before the man’s demise the police see this as as a very obvious case of a killing in self-defence. This was clearly an attempted rape.

The only problem for the police is that the story that Chris tells them is not the one they expected to hear. She tells them that the man, whom she had never seen before, tried to rob her. He tried to steal her jewels. That doesn’t quite make sense to the cops. A simple burglar would not have entered a house he knew to be occupied. A stick-up man would have had a gun. This man carried no weapon of any kind. Her story just doesn’t quite hang together. If she had said that he tried to rape her it would all make perfect sense. That’s why he waited until she was home and her husband was away, and that’s why he carried no gun. They would have believed a story like that without hesitation. But she’s telling them a different story and Detective Lieutenant Reynolds isn’t entirely happy with it.

It’s not that this is a case of a movie plot being made incomprehensible by the Production Code. While the movie has to use euphemisms the cops do ask her if it was an attempted rape. So the movie’s plot is fine. We are expected to jump to the same conclusion that Lieutenant Reynolds jumps to, and like him we are supposed to be feel the beginnings of a slight suspicion about Chris’s story.

The dead man is struggling sculptor Michael Tanner.

Chris’s attorney, Larry Hannaford (Lew Ayres), is an old friend of Chris and her husband Bob (Zachary Scott). He has no suspicions because he doesn’t want to be suspicious. Until he gets a phone call and an art dealer tries to make a sale to him.

So firstly, the movie’s good points. Ann Sheridan isn’t too bad. It is, for 1947, surprisingly open about sex.

Now the movie’s problems. At 109 minutes it’s half an hour too long. The plot is largely completed by the halfway stage and is completely resolved half an hour before the end. The characters then start talking. And they talk and they talk and they talk. They talk until the viewer is ready to beg them stop. But they keep talking. They’re talking about stuff we already know.

Lew Ayres doesn’t have any dialogue. He has speeches. Lots and lots of speeches.

The last 40 minutes is like a therapy session. You know how, if you’re even been unlucky enough to go to therapy, you start looking for an escape. You wonder if they’ve forgotten to bolt the door. Maybe you could make a run for it. Or the French windows. If they’re unlocked you might be able to flee across the garden. That’s what this movie is like.

The Unfaithful was apparently a major reworking of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play The Letter and the 1929 and 1940 film. Screenwriters David Goodis and James Gunn have managed to eliminate everything that made the 1940 movie so good.

The idea that this is a film noir is laughable. It has none of the noir sense of inevitable doom. It has no femme fatale. It lacks even a trace of noir visual style. It does not contain a single film noir ingredient. This is a women’s melodrama. Now I happen to like women’s melodramas, but this is a particularly turgid example of the species. And it’s so grindingly slow.

If you’re a very very keen Ann Sheridan fan you might want to check out The Unfaithful. Otherwise it’s one to avoid.

The Warner Archive DVD looks very good.

Oddly enough in 1947 Ann Sheridan starred in another Vincent Sherman-directed women’s melodrama, Nora Prentiss, which s actually a very good movie and well worth seeing. So I suspect that most of the blame for The Unfaithful should be laid at the feet of the screenwriters.

Campbell’s Kingdom (1957)

Campbell’s Kingdom is a slightly unconventional 1957 British thriller. It was based on the 1952 Hammond Innes novel of the same name. Innes is now largely forgotten but he was one of the great thriller writers.

This is a frontier adventure tale of sorts. Bruce Campbell (Dirk Bogarde) arrives from England to take up his inheritance in the wilds of Canada. His inheritance is known as Campbell’s Kingdom. It’s a completely worthless tract of land, but Campbell doesn’t think it’s worthless. His now deceased grandfather thought there was oil there. Nobody ever believed him. His grandfather was accused of fraud and sent to prison. But Bruce Campbell believes his grandfather was right.

He has his own reasons for believing and he has his own reasons for being determined to find that oil. Those reasons do not include greed. Even if there is oil Bruce Campbell will never see any money from it.

His immediate problem is Owen Morgan (Stanley Baker). Morgan, a very shady construction contractor, has a contract to build a dam. The dam will flood Campbell’s Kingdom. After that, even if there is oil there, no-one will ever be able to be able to find it or access it.

The most recent geological survey by the seismological surveyor, Bladen (Michael Craig), confirmed what everybody knew. There is no oil. But a conversation with Bladen arouses Campbell’s suspicions. And that conversation arouses Bladen’s suspicions as well. He is an honest man. Perhaps he has been deceived in some way as well.

Test drilling would provide the answer but in a few short weeks the whole valley will be underwater. Even worse, Morgan controls all access to Campell’s kingdom. There is no way to do any test drilling. But Campbell has a plan.

And he has the man to help him carry it out. James MacDonald (James Robertson Justice) is a wildcat oil driller and he’s a man prepared to take a huge gamble.

This is a thriller with almost no violence at all. There’s crookedness and skullduggery but not violence. There is however plenty of action and excitement. And explosions! And there are two race-against-time elements. Ralph Thomas was the director. He made fine movies in lots of different genres, in fact in just about every genre you can name including some good thrillers. It’s no surprise that he is able to get plenty of thrills out of this story.

Dirk Bogarde might seem an odd casting choice but it works. This is a clash between two men representing very different types of masculinity. Stanley Baker as Morgan is aggressive, overbearing, hard-driving and overtly macho. Bruce Campbell is quiet, passive and self-effacing but he does not lack courage and under the surface is a steely determination and an iron will. This is a guy who never backs down and never gives up. Which is why the casting of Bogarde works - he is the perfect counterpoint to Baker.

Michael Craig plays Bladen as a nice guy but he’s also tougher than he looks. James Robertson Justice is of course a delight.

There is, naturally, a girl. Jean Lucas (Barbara Murray) played a part in Bruce Campbell’s past, a part of which Campbell knew nothing. For a number of reasons she knows she cannot play a part in his future. This is in spite of the fact that she fallen instantly head over heels in love with him, and he’s obviously pretty fond of her. Barbara Murray plays her as feisty and likeable.

Look at for Sid James in a small role.

Hammond Innes always made superb use of either nautical settings or settings in the frozen wastes of the North. He had a real feel for such settings, and that’s reflected in this movie. There’s some lovely location shooting, all done in Italy (with the Dolomites standing in for Canada). The special effects are extremely well done.

It’s refreshing and unusual to see a movie in which the oil men are the good guys.

Campbell’s Kingdom is unusual enough to be interesting, it looks great, it has excitement and some romance and some fine acting. Highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray from the now defunct Network is still available and it looks lovely.

Murder Me, Murder You (1983 TV-movie)

Murder Me, Murder You (1983) is one of two Mike Hammer TV-movies which served as pilots for the successful TV series.

Stacy Keach plays Hammer in both the TV-movies and the series.

My full review can be found at Cult TV Lounge.

Casino Royale (1967)

The 1967 Casino Royale is an object lesson in how to create a cinematic disaster.

The movie came about because Eon Productions owned the rights to all the Bond novels, apart from the first. For complicated reasons producer Charles K. Feldman owned the rights to Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale. He knew he wanted to make it into a movie. He had no idea how to do so. He never did figure it out.

It ended up with ten writers and five directors. Five directors at the same time, each directing part of the movie.

Feldman initially thought of doing a straight Bond movie. Then he decided to make it a spoof.

David Niven had been under consideration for the role of Bond in the late 50s. Feldman persuaded him to take the role in Casino Royale. Then he decided it would be cool to have Peter Sellers play the role. So they both play Bond. So we get a crazy scheme to have lots of Bonds. Not because it was a cool or clever idea but because the movie had already become a chaotic mess with nobody have the slightest idea what they were doing and none of the people involved in the movie making any attempt to co-ordinate their wildly differing ideas.

Then Feldman started adding lots of Bond girls. There are no less than three lady super-spies, played by Deborah Kerr, Ursula Andress and Joanna Pettet. Plus we have Miss Moneypenny’s daughter (Barbara Bouchet) playing at being a lady super-spy as well.

We have two diabolical criminal masterminds, played by Orson Welles and Woody Allen, Yes, Woody Allen. Neither of these diabolical criminal masterminds has any actual master plan. That’s because the movie has no actual plot. It has no plot at all.

There were some very good spy spoof movies made during the 60s and what they all have in common is that they have actual spy movie plots. The humour comes from taking a spy movie plot and then playing it for laughs. But you need a plot. If you have an actual spy plot you can extract lots of humour from it. Without that all you have is a bunch of comedy sketches thrown together for no reason at all, which is what Casino Royale is. Which is why Casino Royale is so much less funny than the other 60s spy spoofs.

If you have a plot and you have characters you can extract more humour from the interactions between the characters, especially between the hero and the sexy lady spy and between the hero and the super-villain. Casino Royale is so overloaded with stars and characters that none of the characters is developed sufficiently to bring out their comedic potentials. The interactions are not funny because the characters are not characters, they’re just random actors speaking lines to each other for no discernible reason.

If you’re aiming for comedy it helps to have some decent gags. There’s not a single truly funny moment in this film.

This film relies on being zany, crazy, outrageous and madcap. But it manages to be zany, crazy, outrageous and madcap without actually being funny.

Then there’s the Peter Sellers factor. I have to put it on record that I have never thought Peter Sellers was funny but here he’s particularly feeble. Every single scene in which he appears would have worked better had it been played by David Niven.

There really are just too many unnecessary characters. One diabolical criminal mastermind is enough. Orson Welles could have been a very fine and very amusing tongue-in-cheek Bond Villain but he needed to be given more scope for evil plotting. Woody Allen is one villain too many and he seems to belong to a totally different movie and being a villain is not the kind of role that plays to his comic strengths. There’s probably one too many lady super-spies and they all belong in different movies.

This movie has some huge flaws but it does have a few major strengths. The cinematography, the production design and the costumes are stunning and delightfully extravagant and fun. I love the spy school that looks like it’s straight out of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

I love this film’s extreme artificiality. At times, visually at least, it does achieve a wonderful wild surreal comic-book feel. It looks totally amazing.

A major asset is Ursula Andress. She speaks with her own voice here. She was dubbed in her earlier movies. She has a strong accent but it makes her an even sexier lady spy. She’s enormous fun when she’s being seductive and she projects stupendous amounts of glamour. Her costumes are bizarre but magnificent.

Look out for Alexandra Bastedo and Jacqueline Bisset in bit parts (Bisset plays Miss Goodthighs).

For all its many and egregious flaws Casino Royale is worth a look if you enjoy spectacular but morbidly fascinating cinematic trainwrecks.

I’ve reviewed lots of 60s spy spoofs including Deadlier Than the Male (1967), The President’s Analyst (1967), the Matt Helm movies - Murderers’ Row (1966), Matt Helm in The Silencers (1966), The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1969), the Derek Flint movies Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Flint (1967) and the absolutely delightful Hot Enough for June (Agent 8¾, 1964). These are all examples of totally successful spy spoofs.

Casino Royale came out a year after Modesty Blaise (1966), which suffers from some of the same problems, having been made by a director, Joseph Losey, who did not have a clue what he was doing. Modesty Blaise, like Casino Royale, was aiming for a psychedelic vibe but misses the mark.

Dead Men Tell (1941)

Dead Men Tell is a 1941 20th Century-Fox Charlie Chan mystery starring my favourite screen Chan, Sidney Toler.

Dead Men Tell has a contemporary setting but the opening scenes take place on a sailing ship that looks like it’s right out of a pirate movie. And the ship is about to take part in a treasure. With a treasure map. And the captain’s cabin is filled with pirate memorabilia. OK, this movie has grabbed my attention right away.

Most of the action in fact takes place aboard this sailing ship. An eccentric old lady, Miss Nodbury (Ethel Griffies), has a map showing the location of treasure buried by notorious pirate Blackhook. He was one of her ancestors, which explains her obsession with pirates.

She has organised an expedition. She has torn the map into half a dozen pieces. Each member of the expedition has one piece. Miss Nodbury is a very suspicious old bird. She trusts nobody.

Of course you know that someone will commit murder to get hold of that map. The murder occurs, by one of those amazing detective story coincidences, while Charlie Chan and Number Two Son Jimmy Chan (Victor Sen Yung) are aboard.

Number Two Son has witnessed something important but he doesn’t recognise its significance and Charlie is always inclined to be sceptical when Number Two Son claims to have uncovered vital evidence.

There is indeed a murder. And it won’t be the last.

There are plenty of shady characters about - treasure hunts don’t end to attract reliable responsible citizens. The treasure hunters are not necessarily quite the people they claim to be.

And something happened in the past that could have a bearing on the current situation.

And that notorious pirate Blackhook will exert a certain influence on events.

I like Sidney Toler as Chan because he gives the character a very slight edge. Charlie’s a really nice guy but he is a cop. You don’t become a high-ranking police detective without a certain toughness.

Number Two Son is of course basically a comic relief character but Victor Sen Yung can be genuinely amusing and he’s not excessively irritating. And the character does get to do a few relatively important things. The supporting cast is solid.

Being a B-movie made by a major studio Dead Men Tell is a polished professional production. A B-movie shooting schedule didn’t allow for anything too fancy but it’s clear that director Harry Lachman and DP Charles G. Clarke are at least making an effort to create some atmosphere and to add a bit of visual interest. Although it never leaves port the sailing ship provides an excellent setting.

Dead Men Tell is a fine entry in the Fox Chan cycle. That cycle was drawing to a close by this time (although Charlie and Sidney Toler would find a new home at Monogram) but the quality remained high. Dead Men Tell is highly recommended.

This movie is included in Fox’s Charlie Chan Collection Volume 5 DVD boxed set. The transfer is very nice indeed.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of the Sidney Toler Chan movies - Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940), Charlie Chan in Panama (1940), Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940) and Murder Over New York (1940). They’re all excellent B-movies.