Reviews
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Dark Cinema: Registered Nurse - A Cure for What Ails You
Registered Nurse may not crop up on many lists of must-see Pre-Codes, but for my money, it's 63 minutes of worth-your-time-cinema.Released in April 1934, Registered Nurse stars Bebe Daniels as Sylvia Benton, a wealthy Connecticut socialite whose would-be carefree life is marred by the fact her husband, Jim (Gordon Westcott), is a hopeless alcoholic (not to mention ...
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Colorama: Vertigo
This spooky, unsettling film generally appears near the top of 'best movie' lists, ranking 2nd after Citizen Kane in 2002's Sight and Sound survey, coming in at number one on AFI's list of Mysteries, and ninth on their '100 Years...100 Movies' 10th Anniversary list. Vertigo is also considered to be Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, and remains the most discussed film in...
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Teen Scene: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
October is synonymous with autumn and, for some of you, synonymous with Halloween, too. So, here we are again with another movie that will make you shiver, but you will love! However, unlike my previous review of The Innocents, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is not classified as a horror movie, but as a drama or a drama-thriller. That's not important, because Robert Aldrich ...
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Dancing Under the Moon of Kentucky Moonshine
As movie comedy teams go, I would call The Ritz Brothers an acquired taste. In fact, I don't know too many people who have acquired it. I have been fascinated by them ever since seeing The Gorilla with Bela Lugosi and the even worse short subject Hotel Anchovy. I try to catch their movies whenever I can, so I was excited to see Fox release Kentucky Moonshine ...
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Where's That Been? - The Power of the Whistler
May 16, 1942 marked the premiere date of one of radio's longest-running mystery anthologies. It was known as The Whistler, and it specialized in dramatizing tales of murder and other malfeasance, but the reason why the program was titled as such was it was hosted by an omnipresent narrator who frequently opened the program (after an unforgettably haunting thirteen-note theme created by...
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Teen Scene: The Innocents
In my past reviews for this column, I've primarily reviewed comedies or films that weren't comedic, but that weren't completely dramatic. This time, I'm going to explore a totally different genre, because I want to show that young people might also like heavy dramas. This is the reason why I've chosen to review The Innocents. This movie is not only a drama, but a horror-drama. The ...
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Where's That Been? - Face of Fire
In Whilomville, New York, circa 1898, happy-go-lucky 'Monk' Johnson (James Whitmore) is employed as a groom by Dr. Ned Trescott (Cameron Mitchell). It's a job granting Monk a generous amount of free time, which he often spends at the fishing hole with Trescott's son Jimmie (Miko Oscard), setting a fine example as a mentor in general. Monk is an individual who, when the light hits him from a cer...
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Colorama - A Deeper Look at X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
Film is, first and foremost, a visual medium. No matter how high the quality of dialogue, music, sound, story, and performance, if a movie can't find a way to express its ideas through the images, then filmgoers will inevitably feel cheated. In that respect, a horror film dealing solely with the idea of sight, with a central protagonist whose fatal dilemma is that he can't ever turn his horribl...
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Where's That Been? - Lonesome
In his 1996 book Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared, author Frank J. Thompson discusses a number of motion picture treasures that sadly did not survive the ravages of time and neglect. Thompson reconstructs the plots of these missing movies by relying on reviews from the various trade magazines of the day, and one of the more fascinating chapters focuses on a feature by Hung...
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TV TIME: The Rebel Lives Up to Its Name
Johnny Yuma was a rebelHe roamed through the WestAnd Johnny Yuma, the rebelHe wandered aloneTimeless' 11-DVD collection of The Rebel offers both seasons and all 76 episodes of the 1959-1961 half-hour Western, each uncut with the iconic theme song sung by Johnny Cash. The series, which originally aired o...
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Teen Scene: Sullivan's Travels
In the '40s, talented movie directors directed a ton of diverse and great movies. The beginning of the era was marked by the end of the screwball comedy, while the middle and the end of the era was the Golden Age of film noir. The film I'll review today, Sullivan's Travels, is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant films of the decade. Directed by Preston Sturges in 1941 and starrin...
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Where's That Been? - Champagne for Caesar
There's really only one word to describe Beauregard Bottomley (Ronald Colman): genius. A scholar who has spent much of his time on this earth poring over and devouring books, Bottomley is a know-it-all -- there's no subject on which he's not well-versed, and yet he manages to be a likable sort despite his disdain for people he considers his 'inferiors.' He demonstrates this scorn as he stands o...
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Cary Grant Soars in Only Angels Have Wings
A small, shoestring-run airline delivers mail through a treacherous pass in the Andes; the pilots are misfits looking to run and hide (from dames, mainly) or make a quick buck and go somewhere else. A Sig Rumann is the owner, Cary Grant is the manager, Thomas Mitchell is his best buddy, and John Carroll and Noah Beery, Jr. are amongst the pilots of this French Foreign Legion of the Air. They're...
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Where's That Been? - House by the River
We really shouldn't think of Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) as a wealthy wastrel; he is putting forth an effort to forge a career as an author, but with little success as his manuscripts are continually returned. Byrne lives in an ornate 'house by the river,' and is informed one afternoon by his wife's housemaid Emily Gaunt (Dorothy Patrick) that the plumber still hasn't fixed the bathtub in the...
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It'sabu-bu
Yes it's a SABU double feature! First up, Savage Drums (1951, dir. William Berke): Sabu is a professional boxer with a crack at the title, but after several minutes of that somebody decided that story wasn't going anywhere, so instead he's the younger brother of the king of a small South Pacific island country; the king is about to sign a treaty with the U.S. that would allow the Army to move in, ...
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Where's That Been? - Portland Exposé / They Were So Young
There's a famous catchphrase once used by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe the concept of 'obscenity' when he found himself unable to delineate it by a clinical definition: 'I know it when I see it.' I'm convinced that same phrase is used by home video entities when they classify a movie as 'noir;' once defined as a film style that met strict parameters in terms of lighting, plo...
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What Drood Dooed! - The Mystery of Edwin Drood
In the mid-1930s, Universal head Carl Laemmle had this crazy idea that Depression-era filmgoers would appreciate culture and highbrow entertainment, and in particular they'd flock to see high quality productions based on Charles Dickens, whose works, being in the public domain, came at an economical price. MGM had a hit with David Copperfield and was preparing a lavish version of A...
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For Men Only. Or Not.
Robert Sherman is being pledged into a fraternity, so he has to wear a sign that reads 'SCUM' and do humiliating and dangerous things and take swats right on the, er, campus lawn. Well, come Hell Night he's charged with shooting a puppy, and this he refuses to do (some OTHER kid does it) so Bob is shunned and humiliated and bullied, mostly by frat BMOC Russell Johnson(!), star QB and son of the sc...
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Where's That Been? - The Killer is Loose
It seems like a typical working day for teller Leon 'Foggy' Poole (Wendell Corey), as he conducts business transactions for customers at the savings and loan where he's employed, chatting with each as they approach his window. However, a fellow employee has noticed suspicious activity taking place toward the rear of the S&L; several men are robbing the establishment, and have warned the manager...
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Teen Scene: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. When one movie title has the word 'mad' four times it's because it needs it to be isotopic. We're indeed talking about one of the craziest movies of all time. Stanley Kramer brilliantly directed the film in 1963; Kramer directed such masterpieces as Judgment at Nuremberg, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. He was also an important producer,...
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