Reviews
-
Syncopation: A Thing that Swings
It's still early yet, but Cohen Media Group's rediscovery, restoration and release of Syncopation will surely be considered one of the finest Blu-ray releases of the year at year's end. The bonus material alone is worth the price of the disc.When RKO's Syncopation hit theatres in the spring of 1942, it seemed to please nobody: the New York Times called it ...
Read more
-
One of the better Hammers
Mike Hammer befriends a hooker being assaulted by a john, and admires a gorgeous ring she's wearing. She ends up dead (nearly every woman in this movie does, a darn shame, since they're uniformly gorgeous) and Hammer, grumpy and angry, sets out to find the guy what did it. His quest leads him down a strange path: it seams the ring was part of a treasure trove of jewels hidden by the Nazis, and the...
Read more
-
Where's That Been? - The Road to Hong Kong
In 1940, a musical comedy entitled Road to Singapore kicked off one of Hollywood's most popular film series by teaming three of Paramount Pictures' biggest motion picture draws: actor-crooner Bing Crosby, comedian Bob Hope and actress-singer-sarong model Dorothy Lamour. The two men were great friends off-screen -- often appearing on each other's radio programs, The Pepsodent Show
Read more
-
Colorama: The Bright, Burning Color of The Red Shoes
The Red Shoes is one movie that promises you bright, burning color right from the start. It's there in the title, in the image of the red silk ballet slippers, in the flaming hair of ballerina Moira Shearer, the film's leading lady. Often cited as one of the most gorgeous movies of all time, The Red Shoes inspired filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Brian de Palma. But while t...
Read more
-
Journey to Very Near the Center of the Earth
Given that this is a low-budget film with a B-movie cast (to be kind), it's actually a very good, imaginative movie and the actors deliver the goods. I liked it an awful lot; it was produced independently by two guys who realized that with all the movies about rockets to space glutting the nation's screens in those days a rocket to the center of the earth would prove different and saleable, and su...
Read more
-
Teen Scene - Little Miss Nobody
When you think of classic child movie stars, the first names that probably come to mind are Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and Natalie Wood. While they were charming, memorable, and deservedly iconic in their own right, I can't help but feel sad that others are constantly overlooked in favor of them. Jane Withers is a perfect example of the underrated classic child actor. She was ...
Read more
-
Where's That Been? - Without Warning!
A beautiful blonde woman has been stabbed to death in a seedy Los Angeles motel, and detectives Pete Hamilton (Edward Binns) and Don Warde (Harlan Warde) quickly deduce in their investigation the murder parallels a similar case that occurred a month earlier (namely, a blonde killed with a scissors-like instrument early in the a.m.). It looks as if the L.A. police are going to get a break on thi...
Read more
-
Riding High with Woman They Almost Lynched
When one thinks of highly-empowered Western saloon women in a Republic Studio movie, I suppose the mind generally wanders to Joan Crawford in the cult favorite Johnny Guitar (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1954), but this film, from the same studio, preceded it by a year and is more interesting in different ways.It's early 1865, and Border Town (straddling the line between North and So...
Read more
-
Grand Canyon is, well, pretty Grand
I haven't watched G.I. Jane yet, but I have watched Grand Canyon. Agree with the first reviewer: the print is only 'okay', no doubt why this one's taken so long to be released. That said, I LOVED Grand Canyon, a unique film in the Lippert catalog (or anyone else's). Reed Hadley is directing a low-budget Western called Grand Canyon for a certain Mr. Robert L. Lippert, portrayed, interestingly e...
Read more
-
Waterfront, Vol. 1 Shows the Breezy Life at Sea
VCI's latest classic television DVD is a pleasant surprise, not just because Waterfront may be one of the most obscure programs to get a video release in 2015, but because the show is so entertaining. Airing in syndication from 1954 to 1956, this black-and-white half-hour adventure/drama may not be the most sophisticated example of early TV, but it stands out with its blend of action a...
Read more
-
'A Dismal Comedy'
You're going to love the first couple of minutes of this; a slimy newspaper columnist is blackmailing half the town, and making his rounds to pick up his hush money on a dark and rainy night, meeting treacherous dames and murderous thugs and being tailed by a shadowy figure who may or may not be THE Shadow. The sequence is beautifully directed and photographed. Then the columnist is murdered, and ...
Read more
-
If you went out in the lobby for a smoke, you missed it.
Screen Guild (soon to be Lippert Productions) made a six-pack of 'streamliners', four-reel featurettes designed to fit into the B movie slot with particularly long A pictures. Two of those dealt with Tom Neal and Allan Jenkins, Master Detectives; the other four stuck Russ 'Lucky' Hayden north of the border to see what trouble he could cause or get out of. 'neath Canadian Skies and North of the Bor...
Read more
-
Teen Scene: I Remember Mama
I Remember Mama from 1948 is a triumph on every level with brilliant acting, stellar writing, and marvelous direction elevated the film to an incredible high. It’s also the perfect family movie you never tire of.We begin with a young girl named Katrin (Barbara Bel Geddes) completing her novel. It's about the highs and lows of a Norwegian immigrant family with a mom, d...
Read more
-
Three (stars) for Five
Five (1951) was written, produced, directed, catered by and house-party hosted by Arch Oboler (Light's Out). Apparently, the first post-apocalyptic movie to be filmed; a super-hydrogen bomb test has wiped out human life on the planet (leaving plants, a few birds, and a handful of humans). One: Roseanne, a doctor's wife, pregnant with child, who was in a lead-lined X-ray room. She's roaming the ...
Read more
-
Where's That Been? - A Lady of Chance
Dolly Morgan (Norma Shearer) works as a switchboard operator at a very fashionable NYC hotel, and from her vantage point is able to scope out wealthy gentlemen that will serve as unwilling volunteers for her to 'trim,' in the parlance of the confidence man. For Dolly is better known by her alias--'Angel Face'--she's able to use her beatific countenance to fleece suckers, and she has done so man...
Read more
-
Abbott & Costello meet the Clones
The new Brown & Carney set has arrived! Woo-hoo! (I get thrilled over the STRANGEST things, eh?) When the Mexican Spitfire series ended in mid-1943, RKO decided to replace it with a series of Abbott & Costello pictures. Not having the ACTUAL Abbott & Costello, of course, didn't dissuade them -- they had comics Wally Brown (the thin straight man type) and Alan Carney (a fat rubber-faced guy) alr...
Read more
-
Remake of Judge Priest, and a good one.
Following the colossal success of The Quiet Man, Ford's Argosy Pictures had one film left on its deal with Republic Pictures, and the success of the Ireland-set picture meant Ford could do whatever he wanted, and he wanted to do a remake of Judge Priest, which he'd made in the '30s with Will Rogers. Herb Yates could hardly refuse, but he had no enthusiasm for it. The film opened to tepid reviews a...
Read more
-
Teen Scene: The Parent Trap
If you thought the only version of The Parent Trap out there was the 1998 Lindsay Lohan movie, you are mistaken. In 1961, Walt Disney released the original Parent Trap, the story about identical twin girls who meet at summer camp and set out on a quest to reunite their divorced parents. It's adorable (just like the remake) and if you saw the '90s version first, it's worth watc...
Read more
-
Even as Monograms go, this one's...
Ever spend an hour rethinking your entire existence? Or at least, 'Why am I watching this movie?' Funny, until a couple of days ago if you said 'William Beaudine' my first thought would've been 'low-budget quickies.' After watching the 1949 bootleg beef film Tough Assignment and this one, my new first thought is closer to 'waste of time.' He'd better come through with something better, and darn...
Read more
-
Lippert fires his director.
Yeah, so, apparently Bob Lippert decided that directing a low-budget motion picture couldn't be THAT hard, or maybe he thought - as Roger Corman would a few years later - that a producer hiring himself as director was one way of keeping costs in check. After three days of shooting, and already behind schedule, Lippert gave up, fired himself, called in editor Paul Landres, handed him the footage so...
Read more
