The Curse of Frankenstein

Tonight's second night of Bugs Bunny shorts includes a trio of monster/mad scientist-inspired entries in the 1:00 AM half hour. That will be followed by a couple of horror features, including The Curse of Frankenstein at 3:00 AM. Fortunately, I had that one on my DVR from when John Carpenter selected it in last year's Two for One series, so I was able to watch it to do this review.

Frankenstein is, as always, not the monster (called the "Creature" in this movie), but Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who created the Creature. Here, Victor Frankenstein is played by Peter Cushing, and as the movie opens, he's in a Swiss prison awaiting execution. As you might guess, this is going to lead to a flashback in which the main story is told, to a visiting priest.... (I suppose the other plot device could have involved Dr. Frankenstein escaping prison.)

Flash back to when Victor was an adolescent. His father has been dead for some time and now his mother dies, leaving Victor a fairly substantial estate in addition to the Baron title he's already had. His mom's sister shows up together with her daughter, ie. Victor's cousin Elizabeth (the adult Elizabeth being played by Hazel Court). Apparently Mom had given her sister a modest allowance, and she'd like that to continue, although this scene is more a way to introduce the Elizabeth character. Victor being on his own but still a legal minor, needs an adult, and hires a tutor in Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart).

Krempe proceeds to teach Victor everything he knows about the sciences, and Victor is an adept learner. Victor seems particularly interested in the relatively new field of electricity and what sort of energy animates life-forms. This first bit of experimentation culminates in bringing a dog back to life, which is a pretty neat trick. As you might guess from a Frankenstein movie, however, things aren't going to stop there, and Victor wants to go much farther than Krempe would like, leading Krempe to feel a sense of alarm. Worse, Victor builds his human for the experimentation by obtaining various body parts in highly illicit ways, up to and including murder of an aging professor.

Adult Elizabeth shows up with the intention of marrying her cousin, but Krempe wants her to leave the house right away because he believes she's in danger. Indeed, when Victor kills the professor for the professor's brain, Krempe gets in an argument with him that damages the brain. So when Victor's creature (played by Christopher Lee) comes to life, it's brain-damaged and sociopathic, with a propensity to kill.

The Curse of Frankenstein tells the story of Frankenstein's monster in a very different way from the 1931 Frankenstein with Bela Lugosi. This version focuses on Victor as an openly malevolent person, and that's a take which I think serves the story quite well. This was one of the earliest Hammer horror films, and was extremely successful, which led to all those future Hammer horror movies. Cushing is very good, while Lee doesn't exactly have a whole lot to do here since he doesn't show up in the first half of the movie and doesn't have any lines anyway. If you haven't seen The Curse of Frankenstein before, it's an excellent way to kick off the Hammer horror films.

The Gauntlet

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR for a while that I decided to watch is The Gauntlet.

Clint Eastwood stars as Ben Shockley. During the opening credits, a car is driving through the streets of downtown Phoenix early enough that although the sun is up, there's no traffic on the road. Parking near police headquarters and getting out is police detective Shockley, who drops his bottle of booze getting out of the car, which is a sign that Ben is an alcoholic. Ben runs into his friend and former detective partner Maynard Josephson (Pat Hingle), who warns Ben that Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince), who wants to see Ben, would like to see someone who's polite and polished, things that Ben clearly isn't.

Commissioner Blakelock has a special assignment for Ben. Apparently, there's a trial to be held in Phoenix, Arizona v. Deluca, and one of the witnesses, Gus Mally, is in Vegas. So the Arizona authorities need somebody to go to Vegas and pick up Mally, who is fortunately in the county jail awaiting extradition to Phoenix. Since this isn't much of a job and Shockley is supposedly not much of a cop, he can be spared the day or so it's going to take. Shockley flies to Vegas and asks the duty officer at the jail if they have a man named Gus Mally ready for extradition to Arizona. They don't: the reason is that Gus is actually Augustina Mally (Sondra Locke), making her a woman. She's also one who obviously doesn't want to go to Phoenix.

We fairly quickly learn that it's with good reason she doesn't want to be extradited. Because she's tried to make herself sick, an ambulance takes her to the car that Shockey is going to take her to the airport with. But when they get to the transfer point, the ambluance driver starts the car only to reveal it's been booby-trapped with a car bomb! And somebody from the Mob is following them as they try to get away in the ambulance. They take the ambulance to Gus' house just outside of Vegas, and Shockley calls Blakelock to get the Vegas police to send a car so they can get to the airport. Instead, the Vegas police send an entire divison of man who shoot up the house!

Gus has various reasons for why the Mob would be after her, but it seems the police want her dead too, and Shockley has no idea why, in part because Gus, who doesn't want to testify, still doesn't trust him. But whoever is after Gus seems to be after Shockley too. Gus, not being stupid, has a feeling that perhaps it might have been Blakelock himself who tipped off the Vegas police as to her and Shockley's whereabouts. Shockley doesn't seem to be able to put two and two together, at least not until they reach the Nevada/Arizona border and find the Arizona cops sent by Blakelock seem to have been sent there to kill him. Still, having escaped yet again, Shockley is compelled to get Gus to Phoenix, in part because he wants to show the world Blakelock's corruption, and in part because the Mob is wagering on whether Gus will make it to Phoenix to testify.

The Gauntlet is another entertaining action movie in the 1970s style, although this again means one of those movies where you're kind of going to have to shut your brain off and just enjoy the ride because the movie is as riddled with plot holes as it is with bullets. I'm sure you all know my thoughts about police corruption, but at the same time I find it hard to believe that a commissioner could make a few phone calls and suddenly every policeman would shoot first and ask questions later. And how come none of this stuff seemed to make the news? And why is every sniper such a terrible shot? But as I said, sit back and watch without too critical an eye. I think you'll be entertained.

TCM's Sorta Star of the Month, February 2026

Bugs Bunny in What's Opera, Doc? (Feb. 2, 8:20 PM)

We're into the start of a new month on TCM, which normally means it's time for new programming features including a Star of the Month. However, the Academy Awards are on Sunday, March 15 this year, which means that 31 Days of Oscar is beginning on February 13 so that the final day of it will fall on the same day as the Oscars, so only the first half of February (and then the second half of March, which as far as I know has not had a schedule release yet) have the more traditional themes.

Having said that, there have been years where TCM programmed something like the Star of the Month differently, but doing prime time every night for a whole week. John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn both had their centenaries in the same month (May 2007), and TCM gave each of them a different week in that month. This month, TCM is doing something similar yet different. To celebrate getting the rights to the Looney Tunes (and I think Merrie Melodies and earlier) cartoons back, TCM is honoring Bugs Bunny as their "Star of the Month".

Of course, most of what Bugs Bunny appears in is one-reel shorts, and I don't think there are enough shorts that TCM could run entire nights of prime time with them. So, instead, TCM has picked trios of Bugs Bunny shorts that have something thematic in common, and then paired those shorts with a traditional movie that also fits the theme. Tonight's opening theme has Bugs with Elmer Fudd, and since two of the shorts are the classic opera shorts Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, the movie at 8:30 PM is the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera. It goes on like this all week.

NB: Tuesday night opens with three desert shorts, and currently the 1939 version of Beau Geste comes on at 8:30 PM. The TCM schedule lists it as 120 minutes with the next set of Bugs shorts to begin at 10:30 PM, which would obviously clash considering that there should be an intro and outro. Wikipedia and IMDb, however, both list Beau Geste as running 112 minutes. (It's been ages since I've seen it, so I don't recall the running time, or whether that might have changed due to any restoration.)

For some values of "mad" and some values of "youth"

A lot of the Poverty Row B movies can be fun to watch in part because they're so nuts, but also because they're so short: if you don't like them, it's not as if you've wasted too much of your time. Recently I watched another such movie, the exploitation frilm Mad Youth.

The "youth" in question is Marian Morgan, played by Mary Ainslee, who was about 25 when the movie was made but playing about 18. (There's no shots of high school, but Marian is considered old enough to marry without parental consent.) She lives with her divorcée mother Lucy (Betty Compson), both of them surviving on the money they get from the ex-husband, which is presumably substantial, since she can call up the "escort" service and get them to send a date of sorts over to accompany her to her bridge game. Mom wants Marian to go over to her friend Helen's house to spend the night, but Marian is horrified: Helen lives with an incredibly old-fashioned granny.

So as a compromise, Marian is allowed to invite her "good" friends over, although of course her friends are the sort who enjoy entertaining themselves in a way that's scandalous for 1939 but fairly tame today. They dance the jitterbug, while some play strip poker! Eventually Mom comes home with her companion, the "Count" DeHoven. Apparently he's supposed to be a young, dashing sort of count, because Marian immediately falls for him and start dating, which really pisses off Mom who is still trying to pass herself off as 28.

The Count and Marian start double dating on the sly with Helen and one of her boyfriends that she's not serious about, since she's been corresponding with a man she's never actually seen before. Eventually we learn that Helen has been climbing out the window to get away from Grandma, who herself figures out what's going on. So Helen decides that she's going to run off and elope, since the alternative is to go live with her uncle on a farm in Iowa. Yeah, the plot, such as it is, gets nuts. And it's only going to get more nuts.

Marian's mom reads Marian's diary, where she learns about the dates Marian has been going on with the Count, as well as learning of Marian's disappointment that the Count just ghosts her for reasons, not that they used the term "ghosting" back in 1939. Marian decides to go off to visit her friend Helen, only to find that Helen is not in fact married but that the correspondence dating was in fact a front for "white slavery"!

Fortunately, the story ends more or less happily, with the young people learning a valuable moral lesson, which was theoretically the point of a movie like Mad Youth. In fact, the real point was to try to slip in as much luridness as they could get away with while making that point. In the case of Mad Youth, it's actually a pretty tame movie by the standards of 2026. But it's some of the attempts to be shocking that are fun, as Mad Youth is a fairly ridiculous movie. The highlight is probably the nightclub "bull fight", with the matador basically made up like a clown and a dog with bull horns acting as the bull and "goring" the matador in the groin on multiple occasions. It's so off the wall that it's fun.

Also, Mad Youth only runs 63 minutes, so if you don't care for it, well, it's not as if you would have been doing something useful with that hour of your life, is it? I've seen much worse.

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone

Some time back TCM did a prime-time spotlight on some of the films of Marjorie Main. One that I had seen quite a few years back, but did not blog about at the time -- it might even have been before I started blogging -- was Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone. So with that in mind I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it so that I could do this post on it.

Marjorie Main plays Mrs. Hattie O'Malley, a widow living in Proudfoot, MT and running some sort of boarding house; the Montana setting at the start is basically an excuse for Main to do a version of the rustic Ma Kettle character. She gets a sudden call from a radio program in New York which plays her a mystery song for a chance to win a cash and prize package of $50,000, which is a pretty darn big sum for 1950 when the movie was released. She's able to recognize the song, and she's invited on an all-expenses paid trip to New York to receive her winnings.

Cut to Chicago, where John J. Malone (James Whitmore) lives. He's a struggling lawyer, who owes a bunch of money largely because his big client, Steve Kepplar (Douglas Fowley), owes him. Malone had defended Kepplar on an embezzlement charge where Kepplar stole $100K from the firm run by Myron Brynk (Don Porter). Kepplar was convicted, but is about to be paroled now, and Malone would like the money he's owed for his services defending Kepplar. But Malone needs to get in line: Kepplar has an ex-wife Connie (Ann Dvorak) who wants alimony. And, besides, that $100K was never returned to the Brynk business. Still, Brynk offers Kepplar his old job back and to celebrate, they'll go to the same hotel lounge where Mrs. O'Malley is staying on a stopover in Chicago. This, as you can guess, is how the two title characters meet.

Kepplar is a no-show at the big reunion, and the natural suspicion is that he's fleeing the jurisdiction, and absconding with the $100K. His probation officer, Marino (Fred Clark), has good reason to believe that Kepplar is on the train to New York, so he gets on the same train that Mrs. O'Malley will be taking. Malone also gets on the train because he wants his $10,000, even though he should know that the money Kepplar embezzled can't be touched. The ex-Mrs. Kepplar shows up too.

Sure enough, Kepplar is on the train, disguised as a sailor and hiding in the compartment of his girlfriend Lola (Dorothy Malone). But wouldn't you know it, that night Malone returns to his compartment, which conveniently enough for the plot happens to be right next to Mrs. O'Malley's. In that compartment he finds... the undressed body of Steve Kepplar, who has been stabbed to death! Who would want to stab him, and why would the murderer want to remove his clothes? All Mr. Malone knows is that since the body was found in his compartment he's going to be the prime suspect. Mrs. O'Malley sees Malone and the body, and is willing to help in a murder mystery.

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone is another of those movies where it's easy to see why the people involved in it would want to make it; the premise of another comic murder mystery is one that has obvious appeal. Unfortunately, this one comes across as a bit too manic. Worse, Mr. Malone is just too dishonest to be a sympathetic character, as opposed to a charming person like Nick Charles. I also think it doesn't help that 1950, when the movie was released, was just about the time when stories like this would have started moving to television. So Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone was underwhelming at best.

Glenn Holland's journey

Every year, TCM's 31 Days of Oscar serves up some "newer", at least in the context of TCM, movies, that I haven't necessarily seen before. One such movie that's 30 years old now and that I hadn't seen is Mr. Holland's Opus. So, as always, I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it and putting up this review here.

Richard Dreyfuss stars as Glenn Holland. As the movie opens, it's the start of the 1964 school year and Glenn is a young musician and would-be composer. However, as any musician or composer would tell you, trying to make a living doing either of those things is difficult, so a lot of college music majors go on to take jobs teaching music. (My sister is an example: some years back she went to a college reunion which included questions about what jobs in music the assembled graduates had; by far the most people stood up for "being a music teacher". She still gives music lessons.) Dreyfus is taking a job at Kennedy High School in Portland, Oregon under principal Helen Jacobs (Olympia Dukakis). Jacobs is understanding, while taking a much more businesslike attitude is her vice-principal, Gene Wolters (William H. Macy).

Mr. Holland teaches his students the basics of music, while trying to compose a symphony at home with his young loving wife Iris (Glenne Headly) and becoming friends with the gym teacher, Bill Meister (Jay Thomas). Mr. Holland teaches a bunch of different types of students, many of whom aren't very good at music, such as clarinetist Gertrude Lang, or a kid who needs a credit to be able to stay on the football and wrestling teams. Mr. Holland resorts to unorthodox methods, such as showing how pop tunes of the day are often taken from classical themes. This causes trouble with Mr. Wolters, which is going to be a recurring theme throughout the movie. Mr. Holland's story focuses on about three or four stints during his career, with montages showing the intervening years for the skipped-over years at school, although all the major historical events show up.

At home, Glenn knocks up Iris, who eventually gives birth to their son Cole. When Cole is about a year old, there's a parade where Glenn is leading the marching band and Iris and Cole are watching. A fire engine sounds its extremely loud horn, causing everybody to cover their ears -- except poor little Cole, who doesn't even cry. Tests at the doctor's office reveal that Cole has lost 90% of his hearing. Having a deaf kid is tough for any parent, but for a man whose whole life is music, it seems even worse, and a large part of the movie also deals with Glenn's consistently estranged relationship with his son, with Dad not even bothering to learn American Sign Language properly. Things finally start to change, however, when John Lennon gets killed and Cole reveals he knows fully well who Lennon was and what his impact on popular culture is.

And then we get to the present day. Schools are facing increasing budget pressures, although the movie doesn't mention how much of this is due to prioritizing the needs of "special needs" students, instead taking a 1990s-standard view that schools are chronically underfunded. Jacobs had retired many years back, so for the last 15-plus years the principal has been Mr. Wolters. He takes this chance to cut the school's arts and music programs, which is going to cost Mr. Holland his job. Is Mr. Holland going to get a chance to live happily ever after?

My title for this blog post references an old Lionel Barrymore movie called One Man's Journey. I can forgive the writers and everyone else involved with Mr. Holland's Opus for not knowing that movie since it was one of the RKO movies that Merian Cooper gained the rights to and was out of circulation for some 40 years by the time Mr. Holland's Opus was made. TCM got the rights to it in about 2005, and it tells the story of a doctor (Barrymore) who spends 30 years ministering to the poor people of a small midwestern town, sacrificing his chance at a prestigious research career. At the end, Barrymore's doctor gets a celebration of his career in a very sentimental finale. Mr. Holland's Opus, however might outdo One Man's Journey with its own mawkish ending. And that is part of why so many of the reviews I read had issues with Mr. Holland's Opus. It's a well-acted movie, but boy is the plot formulaic and the ending incredibly sappy.

Reckless

Another of the movies that TCM ran during Mickey Rooney's turn as TCM's Star of the Month because it had a small juvenile role for Rooney is Reckless.

Rooney is obviously not the star here; he only gets about one scene. The male lead is William Powell. Powell plays Ned Riley, a professional gambler and promoter. As the movie opens, an old lady is coming out of his office. That's Granny (May Robson), who is not Ned's grandmother but the grandmother of Broadway star Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow), who at this point is as well known for the antics she's getting into off-stage as well as what she does on stage. Granny is there to ask for Ned's help in getting Mona bailed out of jail. We also learn that Ned has known Mona since she was a kid, and has done some behind-the-scenes help in making Mona famous.

Ned is able to get Mona out of jail under extenuating circumstances, which is that she leave to go to a theater where she's going to perform a charity function. That's a ruse, but not on Ned's part. Insted, the "charity" in question is the "Society for the Admiration of Mona Leslie", which has one member: Bob Harrison (Franchot Tone). Bob is one of those idle rich playboys whose using his wealth in all the wrong ways, much to the consternation of his father (Henry Stephenson). Even though Ned has secretly always loved Mona, he's not going to try to stop Bob from pursuing Mona. Bob keeps taking Mona out on his yacht, and the two have nice times together. Ned finally works up the courage to tell Mona how he really feels about her, only to find out that she's fallen asleep.

And then Bob and Mona get incredibly drunk and run out of town to get married somewhere where nobody will find them, except that of course the press does find them as well as a bunch of Bob's friends and family who send them telegrams, including one from a Jo. The new couple rushes back to the Harrison home, where Mona meets Jo (Rosalind Russell). Jo has been Bob's nominal fiancée for quite some time, but it feels like another of those upper-crust relationships where the older generation just knows which families should be brought together for the next marriage. Bob likes Jo as a friend, and Jo is a decent person who likes Mona. (Mona, for her part, is trying to be a decent person, although her reputation precedes her.)

At this point, the movie really starts taking a turn. Jo gets married, Bob gets drunk enough to start thinking that perhaps he should have married Jo all along, and Mona finds out that Bob's been letting this on to Jo. She's also gotten pregnant with Bob's kid. Eventually, a drunk Bob winds up in Ned's hotel apartment, finds Ned's gun, and shoots himself in a way that everybody in the public thinks Mona is responsible, to the point that she should be forced to give custody of the kid to the Harrisons.

Reckless is an odd little movie because of the way it changes tone in the middle of the movie from what seems like a light romantic triangle comedy into a fairly ridiculous melodrama. A lot of people have criticized the casting of Jean Harlow as not being right for the role, and Harlow herself wasn't sure. Harlow does her best, as do everybody else. And the problems with Reckless aren't really because of the casting of Harlow. Instead, I think the problems it has are down to the script, which really is a mess as it veers from one act of the plot to the next. The comic parts are better than the melodrama, with May Robson shining.

Still, Reckless is interesting to watch to see as the sort of misfire a studio could have when it used its contract players in the wrong way.

MGM's Historical Mysteries

After my recent post on God's Little Acre, I watched a short from the late 1930s titled Captain Kidd's Treasure. This is billed in the opening credits as "An MGM Historical Mystery" which, for some reason, I thought was another series headed up by Carey Wilson who did MGM's Nostradamus shorts that I've mentioned in the past. In fact this was a completely different series, and Wilson was mostly a writer and sometime producer.

This being a 10-minute short, there's not much here. William Kidd was a privateer, working to keep pirates away from the American colonies, especially New York. But in the late 1690s he fell afoul of the British authorities, most likely for political reasons. He was eventually hanged for this, but before his hanging he wrote a letter claiming to have buried some of the loot he had stolen and would hand over the loot to the Crown in exchange for his freedom. He was hanged anyway. But the legend of the buried treasure remained.

Fast forward to the 1930s, and the framing story for this short has an adventurer who has what he says is a map highlighting the location of Kidd's buried treasure. But, this adventuree doesn't have the money or ship he needs to mount a voyage to the specific location on the map. That's why he's asking a couple of wealthy men if they'd fund the expedition in exchange for a share of the proceeds, since this was before the days where governments arrogated such finds to themselves.

Now, you'd think that with Kidd having been dead for well over 200 years by this point, somebody would have found any treasure buried on land, especially if there were a record in the form of a map. And, unsurprisingly, one of the two rich guys is extremely skeptical. The other one, however, seems more open to listening. The short, apart from the framing story, is a vehicle for each of these three men expounding a theory of what might actually have happened to any theoretical treasure that Kidd might have had, as well as to exactly how Kidd fell afoul of the authorities. These are accompanied by original (as far as I can discern) film with Stanley Andrews playing Capt. Kidd.

There's really not much here, and what there is isn't particularly good. A longer film version of the Kidd story might have been more interesting, and indeed several years later we'd get a film called Captain Kidd with Charles Laughton as the privateer. I'm not certain whether I've seen that one. For some reason I think I have but a search of the blog says I haven't done a post on it.

There were about 10 of these MGM Historical Mysteries made in the late 1930s; I don't think the Warner Archive has compiled them together and put them on a box set. Frankly, other film series are much more interesting.

TCM's Rob Reiner tribute

Actor-turned director Rob Reiner was killed back in December at the age of 78, and it's time for TCM to do their programming tribute to Reiner. That tribute is in prime time tonight, and includes four of the movies Reiner directed:

8:00 PM The Princess Bride
10:00 PM When Harry Met Sally...
Midnight Stand By Me
1:45 AM This Is Spinal Tap

When I downloaded the monthly schedule, there was still a blank space between This Is Spinal Tap and the "following" movie, The Lost Patrol at 4:45 AM. That blank spot was subsequently filled by The Song Remains the Same at 3:15 AM which is not a Rob Reiner movie. The Song Remains the Same is 137 minutes, which means that The Lost Patrol was removed from the schedule.

I also have to admt that I have yet to see The Princess Bride, so I'm recording that one and will eventually get around to watching it and writing up a review here. I will probably also record Stand By Me; that's one of those movies that I saw ages ago, long before this blog, and haven't seen since, so I've never actually considered blogging about it before.

God's Little Acre

One of those movies that I had seen part of some time back on TCM but never actually watched in full was God's Little Acre. With that in mind, the last time TCM ran it I made it a point to record it so that I could finally watch it in full and do the requisite post on it here. Well, having gotten around to watching it before it expired from the DVR, it's time to write up the review.

Ty Ty Walden (Robert Ryan) is a farmer living in one of those dirt-poor parts of the South in the era that led Variety to write the famous headline "Stix Nix Hick Pix". Or, I suppose you could say he was a farmer since he hasn't been growing anything for quite some time. Instead, he's convinced that his grandfather buried a treasure in gold somewhere on the land and, dammit, Ty Ty is going to find that gold so the family can live on easy street. With that in mind, Ty Ty has been enlisting the aid of two of his sons who still live with him: Buck (Jack Lord), who is married to Griselda (Tina Louise); and Shaw (Vic Morrow). Also living with Ty Ty is a daughter, Darlin' Jill (Fay Spain).

Jill, at least, has a bit of hope to get off the farm and slightly escape this bizarre family dynamic. Visiting the house is sheriff's candidate Pluto Swint (Buddy Hackett, interestingly cast as a sweaty southerner), who has some romantic interest in Jill, although who knows how he's going to make a living if he's not elected sheriff. Having done a slightly better job escaping is daughter Rosamunda (Helen Westcott). She married Will Thompson (Aldo Ray), who worked at the local cotton mill. Unfortunately, that mill has been closed for several months now, putting everybody out of a job. Will, having little hope of a better life, has taken to drink. Not only that, but he's attracted to Griselda, which is a problem since both of them are married to other people.

You wonder how Ty Ty is able to survive financially, and the answer is that he can't really survive financially. And there's only one person he can turn to for help, who is the last of the sons, Jim Leslie (Lance Fuller). Jim got out of this dysfunctional family by marrying a wealthy woman and getting into the side of the cotton business that makes people rich since he seems to have a better head on his shoulders for that sort of thing. Not that he has a good head on his shoulders for dealing with his family, however. Once they all show up he gets sucked into the family dynamic that's threatening to spill over into violence.

Meanwhile, Will gets drunk enough that he decides he's going to reopen the cotton mill. This is, of course, not his decision to make, as he doesn't own the mill. It's going to highly illegal to break into the mill and turn the equipment on, and there are security people out to stop him. This is likely to lead to tragic consequences, although it's an epiphany for the rest of the family....

God's Little Acre was famously steamy upon its first release in 1958. By the standards of 2026, however, it's somewhat tame. It's based on a novel by Erskine Caldwell that's even more nuts because Caldwell had political statements he wanted to make and used the story as an allegory for those. The characters here are way over the top, and how much you like the movie is probably going to depend on how much you can accept these characters as a parody instead of a serious movie. Unfortunately, for me, the second half of the movie devolves into a bad attempt to be too serious, much like a Tennessee Williams play in that regard. On the other hand, it's interesting to see a bunch of people who would go on to bigger fame for their TV work in the near future. In addition to Tina Louise, Jack Lord, and Buddy Hackett, there's also Michael Landon as an albino who is brought to the Walden farm because of a folk belief that albinism gives one the power to find things underground.

I'm glad I finally checked God's Little Acre off my list, but it's a movie I don't know that I'll be revisiting any time soon.