Bedlam

With Halloween coming up, it might be a bit surprising that I haven't done much in the way of horror this month. But a nominal horror movie I recorded some months back is coming up on TCM again in the run-up to Halloween, so I watched it in order to be able to do the post here. That movie is Bedlam, which gets a showing tomorrow (October 28) at 3:30 PM.

It's 1761, which an opening title card informs us is the Age of Reason in Britain. St. Mary Bethlehem, which understandably got shortened to "Bedlam" and is a real place that is indeed the source of the word "bedlam" in modern English, is an insane asylum treating -- for some values of treating, as we'll see later in the movie -- mental patients. One of the patients tries to escape and falls off a roof to his death. At the same time, wealthy Lord Mortimer (Billy House) is driving by the asylum and, seeing the commotion, realizes the dead man is an acquaintance.

Mortimer has a girlfriend Nell (Anna Lee), who hears about this, and is horrified. What she doesn't know is things are a whole lot worse than this. Quaker stonemason Hannay (Richard Fraser) sees the head of the asylum, George Sims (Boris Karloff), about a job, and is offered the job on the understanding that he quote an official price more than what he told Sims he could do it for, with each of them pocketing some of the difference since the money is coming from the government. This sort of graft is a sign that there's more going wrong in the management of the asylum.

And then Nell learns how truly bad things are when Sims brings some of the patients to a party Mortimer is giving and having them provide "entertainment" that is in general degrading and even fatal to one of them. Nell is in attendance and is even more horrified by this, asking Mortimer and fellow politician John Wilkes to do something. The two seem willing to do something, but then Mortimer may be in on the graft too. Sims is no dummy, and starts whispering in Mortimer's ear that the improvements Nell would like would cost Mortimer hundreds of pounds in taxes. This is enough to get Mortimer to say no.

Worse, Mortimer and Sims realize what a danger Nell is to them. So they come up with a fairly ridiculous scheme, which is to have Nell committed involuntarily to the asylum through a committal hearing which seems like it has no real basis in law, although I'm not quite certain what the laws on these things were in early Georgian Britain. Thankfully, Nell had previously run into Hannay at some point, and Quakers have a reputation for wanting to institute the same sorts of social improvements that Nell did even if Nell isn't a Quaker herself. So Hannay tries to get in to see Nell, having to resort to trickery. Nell, for her part, tries to keep her sanity, and tries to find the closest to sane fellow inmates to try to see if she can enlist them in some sort of aid.

The opening credits to Bedlam state that the story is based loosely on that told in The Rake's Progress, a series of paintings by William Hogarth. Indeed, dissolves from one scene to the next use the paintings as a template, giving the movie a stylish appearance for a low budget 1940s horror film. The story is OK if not great, and the acting is certainly good enough. So while Bedlam is not an all-time classic, I think it certainly deserves to be better remembered than it is 80 years on.

Out west with Gloria Grahame

Gloria Grahame was TCM's Star of the Month some months back, which gave me the chance to record a couple of her movies that I hadn't seen before. Now, Grahame isn't the sort of person you'd think of when you think westerns; she seems a bit too glamorous for the genre. But in the studio era they put their stars in all sorts of stuff, so it's unsurprising that Grahame got cast in at least one western: Roughshod.

We don't see Grahame right away. Instead, even before the opening credits we see a couple of men in the sort of striped shirt that makes it obvious that they're escaped convicts. They're led by a man named Lednov (John Ireland); coming upon a band of cowboys, they murder the cowboys for the cowboys' clothes since those clothes wouldn't identify their wearer as prisoners. It's only in the next scene that we meet Grahame. She plays Mary Wells, who ran one of those houses of ill repute, at least until the people in the town where she was working decided they wanted to be respectable. So they too are headed to California.

At the next town, Clay stops, where he's informed by the sheriff that Lednov has escaped prison. That's important because Clay was instrumental in getting Lednov put behind bars in the first place. Everybody naturally thinks that Lednov is going to be out looking for Clay to gain revenge. Meanwhile, when Clay and Steve get back out on the road, they run into Mary and her companions. The women's wagon has broken a wheel, so they're in need of assistance. Not that Clay is all that interested in taking on a group of women since it's going to be difficult enough as it is to get those horses through the mountain pass. Still, Clay offers to take them to the next ranch, where they can figure out what to do next.

Mary is hoping to get to Sonora, which just so happens to be the same place Clay is headed for. But the ranch where he plans of dropping the women off is owned by the Wyatts, who as it turns out are the parents of one of the women from the house of ill repute. Mary is insistent on not being left behind, and eventually she and another of the women continue on with Clay and Steve. Mary starts teaching Steve how to read and write, since Clay has thought a cowboy doesn't really need it. But as you can also guess, a romantic attracting is going to develop between Clay and Mary.

You can also guess that the other story line, with the escaped convicts, is going to cross paths with Clay and Mary, leading to the climax.

Roughshod is one of those competently produced westerns from a time when Hollywood was making a lot of such movies. There's nothing particularly special about it either in terms of plot or scenery, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it either. If you like westerns, I think you'll like Roughshod. At the same time, if I were looking to introduce people to any of the actors involved with this movie, Roughshod isn't the first thing I'd think to pick.

Avalanche Express

I've mentioned before that pretty much every big-name star out there who made enough movies had at least one dud in their career. For Lee Marvin, that movie might well be Avalanche Express.

The movie starts off in the Soviet Union, with a bunch of high-ranking KGB officials discussing a germ warfare project code-named "Winter Harvest" and how information about it is getting leaked to the west by some guy named "Angelo". Angelo has passed information on a cassette tape to an American in Zürich, and the information keeps getting passed until the head of the operation, Haller (Mike Connors) can decode it. The Americans should meet Angelo at La Scala opera house in Milan at a particular time when he will reveal himself.

Angelo is really the code name of Marenkov (Robert Shaw), a KGB general who is not one of the hard-liners, and troubled that they're gaining the upper hand, hence going forward with Winter Harvest and his planned defection to reveal everything he knows about it. Haller and second-in-command Harry Wargrave (Lee Marvin) want to debrief Marenkov right then and there, but he already agreed that he'd only be debriefed when he reached the US. Plus, he's got a plan of his own.

Marenkov wants to defeat the head of the hard-liners, General Bunin (Maximilian Schell), but to do that is going to require getting him out in the open. So, Marenkov and Wargrave come up with the idea that they take the "Atlantic Express" train that goes from Milan to Rotterdam in the Netherlands (even though none of these places are near the Atlantic) from where he can be flown to the US. This would give the Soviets ample opportunity to try to get Marenkov, opportunities which are a double-edged sword as the CIA can flush out a whole bunch of Soviet agents and liquidate them.

Among the Americans who were already involved in getting the casette from Angelo are Leroy (Joe Namath) and Elsa Lang (Linda Evans). Complicating matters is that Elsa and Harry have an estranged romantic relationship, something that seems like it would be a problem amongst spies, but what do I know. At any rate, the train inexorably makes its way toward Rotterdam, with various groups of Soviet agents trying to ambush the train on one occasion, and setting off an avalanche (hence the title) in the Swiss Alps. Will Marenkov make it to America?

The big problem with Avalance Express is that it seems more like a bunch of set pieces with a threadbare plot, and a bunch of characters who are given overly complicated relationships. Robert Shaw and director Mark Robson both died during post-production, and from what I've read Shaw was already quite ill during primary filming. I can't imagine the Soviets being this violent, either, considering the number of innocents around, but then, we probably wouldn't have much of a movie.

I remember when TCM did a spotlight on the special effects of MGM's A. Arnold Gillespie that one of the modern-day effects artists they had discussing the movie said a big problem trying to film water effects is that the drops can only get so small, so if you're using miniatures you want them as large as possible lest the water droplets look too big. That was the same problem that the avalanche (which I think is supposed to be the highlight of the movie) has, only with snow instead of liquid water.

Overall, Avalanche Express doesn't really work, and feels like a tired late-era entry in a genre that had been played out. It's available on DVD, though, should you wish to watch for yourself.

Home of the Brave

Some weeks back, TCM brought in frequent guest co-host Donald Bogle to present a night of movies about movies from 1949 dealing with racial issues alongside Ben Mankiewicz. One of the movies they showed was one I hadn't blogged about before, Home of the Brave. So I recorded it, and having a long weekend for Christmas, sat down to watch it and do a post on here.

The movie opens on a Pacific island during World War II, where a couple of soldiers are discussing a mission they were on and how one of the other soldiers on the mission, Pvt. Peter Moss (James Edwards) is being seen by an army psychiatrist (Jeff Corey) because the mission left Moss with psychosomatic paralysis.

Flash back to before the mission. This is a voluntary mission to go to a neighboring island and survey it as part of the advance against the Japanese. Maj. Robinson (Douglas Dick) is in command, and has already brought in cartographer Finch (Lloyd Bridges), and soldiers Sgt. Mingo (Frank Lovejoy) and Cpl. T.J. Everett (Steve Brodie). The only surveyor who volunteered for the mission is Moss, who happens to be black.

This of course was set during World War II, which was before President Truman integrated the military, so having a black guy be part of the mission was going to controversial in any case, but making it voluntary is a way to get around any possible issues of historical inaccuracy. As for the four soldiers, Finch and Moss went to high school together and were basketball teammates, so he's supposedly the one guy who isn't supposed to have any racist views. The Major and Mingo are both trying to do their jobs, but growing up in a segregated country, they of course have bigoted attitudes in the back of their mind. T.J., however, has them in the front of his mind. Moss, understandably, carries a lot of resentment, expecting every white person to be racist to him.

Still, since Robinson is trying to be professional and there is a mission to carry out, he's going to try do the best he can with the volatile situation he's been given. Mingo gets shot in the shoulder, and is eventually going to have to have his arm amputated. But things get worse when Finch calls Moss a "ni-", stopping himself before finishing the word although everybody knows what he was going to say and Moss knows what even Finch was thinking. Just after this, Finch gets shot as well, telling Moss to keep on with the mission which is more important.

Moss is beside himself over not being able to save Finch, but eventually takes the maps back to the beach since that's the mission. Finch wasn't killed by the Japanese shot, instead getting captured and tortured by the Japanese, and that is what brings about Moss' paralysis.

The story of the mission presented in Home of the Brave is interesting enough on its own, with the social commentary of racism adding an element that makes the movie more worth a watch. Apparently, the movie is based on a play where the social element was anti-Semitism, but since Hollywood had already covered that topic with Crossfire and Gentlemen's Agreement, the topic got changed to racism. This gave James Edwards his first big role, and he shines, although the supporting cast is mostly good even if the characters all might seem a bit formulaic 70 years on.

One thing that bothered me was the ending, which seemed a bit too pat and happy, and not like what might have happened in real life back in World War II. Neither Mingo nor Moss would have had a completely changed world view like what the movie implies. I noticed it right away watching the movie, and Bogle pointed it out in the post-movie commentary with Ben Mankiewicz. But the question of how we get to a point where the sort of reconciliation Mingo and Moss had might actually be realistis was left unanswered.

So, although Home of the Brave definitely has its flaws, it's still more than worth a watch. The TCM Shop does list is as being available on DVD.