Within the Law

I've been going through all the B movies I recorded during TCM's salute to B movies last summer, and I think I've finally gotten to the last of the movies I recorded. That would be Within the Law, which has some similarities to the previous one I blogged about, Convicted Women. In any case, having watched Within the Law, now I can do the post on it.

Ruth Hussey, early in her career before she had her breakout role in The Philadelpha Story, plays Mary Turner, working as a shopgirl in Gilder's (Samuel S. Hinds) department store, in the jewelry department. She's dumb enough to leave some of the items on the counter and telling another clerk to watch them. A third clerk takes one of the pieces, intending to store it in her locker until closing time. However, some detectives come into the locker room, forcing this mystery clerk to look for somebody else's unlocked locker to hide the stolen piece. That locker just happens to be the one belonging to Mary. Gilder decides to make a lesson of Mary, with her ultimately getting a three-year sentence.

In prison, she meets Agnes (Rita Johnson) who's been working con games with her boyfriend Garson (Paul Kelly), only to be the one to get caught this last time. Mary and Agnes become friends, but while Agnes intends to go back to Garson once she gets out, Mary looks for a way to get revenge on Gilder. But, because she's got so much time on her hands in prison, she takes books out of the prison library, specifically law books. Her revenge on Gilder is going to be strictly legal.

Eventually, she and Agnes get out of the slammer, and Agnes puts Mary up in part because Mary could use a place to live, while Agnes likes the idea that Mary knows enough about the law to be able to help her and her boyfriend's gang con people in a perfectly legal way. And Mary is surprisingly clever for someone who isn't really a lawyer.

But Mary's plan for revenge on Gilder is to find Gilder's son Richard (Tom Neal) and "con" him into marrying her, although this con is only immoral, not illegal. Richard falls in love with Mary, and because he's a licensed pilot, is able to take a plane to another jurisdiction to elope with Mary before his father can learn what's going on. But complications arise when Mary finds herself falling in love with Richard. He, for his part, fairly stupidly believes that Mary can't possibly be guilty of shoplifting. (The fact that he's right is immaterial; he's still fairly naïve.) A much bigger complication is that Garson decides that with Mary in the Gilder place, he might be able to worm his way into the place and get his gang to steal some of Gilder's artworks.

Within the Law is based on a play that was first staged in 1912, which may be why the plot seems so unbelievable even for a movie from the 1930s. But despite how much the material strains credulity, it's still surprisingly entertaining, thanks to a good performance from Ruth Hussey, and all the sheen that MGM could put on a movie. Within the Law is one of the surprise cases where MGM's gloss actually helps a movie by getting a fine cast for the material. It's definitely worth a watch if it shows up anywhere.

Will you do the fandango?

I think I mentioned it back in September that there's such a thing as a National Day of Silent Pictures, obviously promoted by the sort of groups that want to preserve the extant pictures and restore any that should be found. TCM ran a full day of silents to promote the occasion, and it gave me the opportunity to record several movies that I hadn't seen before. One of them was the 1923 film version of Rafael Sabbatini's Scaramouche.

The movie helpfully informs us that it is set in France during the reign of Louis XVI, with all of the class baggage that this implies. We are then sent to a village somewhere in provinical France. Having grown up here and left for Paris to study law is André-Louis Moreau (Ramon Novarro), who is about to return to his home village together with his friend Philippe, who is studying for the priesthood. They return just in time to see an injustice where a peasant dies.

Philippe, being a bit of a Catholic radical, decries this just as the local bigwig, the Marquie de la Tour (Lewis Stone) shows up. Philippe keeps up his radical views, and when the Marquis acts like a dictator, Philippe slaps him, resulting in the Marquis challenging him to a duel. Of course, the seminarian knows nothing about fencing, so the Marquis bests him, killing him in the process. This is, after all, a duel.

And the Marquis can get away with it too, since he's a nobleman. André, not knowing what to do, goes to his godfather, Quintin de Kercadiou. He's got a daughter Aline (Alice Terry) who is about the same age as André, so naturally he falls in love with her. However, it's a love that's not to be satisfied just yet, since the two have class differences and Dad hoping to marry his daughter off to somebody of good social standing like the Marquis. Never mind that Aline loves André and wouldn't want to marry a drip like the Marquis.

André keeps trying to get justice for the death of his friend, but since he's accusing a marquis he's making some very powerful enemies. This results in an order for his arrest, not that of the Marquis. André rather sensibly flees, ultimately joining up with an acting troupe. He becomes a successful playwright, eventually winding up in Paris and getting engaged to the daughter of the man who leads the troupe. The Marquis and Aline show up at one of the plays, and of course she spots André. Meanwhile, the Marquis, being an utter jerk, starts hitting on André's fiancée.

But since this is all set during the reign of Louis XVI, you know that the Revolution is about to start, and that's going to cause problems for everybody, since the mob is going to be braying for the heads of as many aristocrats as they can get.

Scaramouche is the sort of movie where it's easy to see why it was such a big box office hit when it was released a century ago. It's got an easy-to-follow storyline and the sort of melodrama that leads up to a visually exciting climax. Navarro is unsurprisingly good, and this movie was a big boost to his career. The print that TCM ran also looked to be in surprisingly good shape for a movie from 1923. One thing that is slightly surprising, however, is that some of the intertitles look to be a more recent restoration, since there are two totally different typefaces used. Definitely give Scaramouche a chance if should come across it.

I'm not the only person who thought of From Here to Eternity

Last year on Veteran's Day, TCM ran a lineup of war movies, with prime time being a special look at the role of the American Red Cross during various wars, with Ben co-presenting together with a bigwig from the American Red Cross. One of the movies presented was new to me, The Proud and Profane. Not having heard of it and with the movie having an interesting-sounding plot, I decided to record it and eventually watch it.

The movie opens in 1943, in Nouméa, which is the capital of French New Caledonia. This is the height of World War II in the Pacific, and since France itself had been occupied by the Nazis, overseas territories the Nazis couldn't get to might be used by the allies for their own war-staging efforts, at least when such islands weren't taken by the Japanese. Coming to New Caledonia on the latest transport is new Red Cross worker Lee Ashley (Deborah Kerr).

Lee is met at the airport by the head of the Red Cross mission, sympathetic but no-nonsense Kate Connors (Thelma Ritter), who also knows a thing or two about operating with the limited supplies that the various military and adjunct groups have to deal with. The Red Cross' role here is partly like the USO on the home front, to entertain the men who get rotated out of theater here, as well as to do what they can to minister to those who are brought here injured. It's tough work, and Kate isn't so certain Lee is up to it in part because her husband died some time back on Guadalcanal.

Coming into all of this is a platoon of marines commanded by Lt. Col. Black (William Holden, with a ridiculous mustache that I'd have thought wouldn't conform to USMC regulations). He demands perfection out of his men, in part because there's a war on out there and he has to keep his man alive; at the same time, it's also the Marine way and that's the only like Black knows. Lee is a bit put off by this at first, as is Kate, and the platoon's chaplain Holmes.

Also in the platoon is Pvt. Eddie Wlodcik (Dewey Martin). He and Kate have a relationship together, but it's not a romantic one. Kate was Eddie's foster mother stateside and before the war, and they still have the sort of relationship that a mother and son have, at least among families that aren't dysfunctional.

As for romantic relationships, there's about to be one between Lt. Col. Black and Lee. He starts taking her around the island, and it begins to grow into something as Lee begins to realize that there's more to him than just the taskmaster. It also grows into more, once Lee realizes she's gotten knocked up by the lieutenant colonel. She's thinking of marrying him, the Code really requiring that, but that would also mean her getting sent back to the States.

In the opening that Ben and the Red Cross executive recorded, it was mentioned that the movie is a lot soap opera. And to be honest, once we learn of Lee's pregnancy, the movie really does veer into soap opera territory. We learn more about Black, as well as Lee's journey to find her husband's grave on Guadalcanal, which also leads to more revelations. The movie becomes faintly ridiculous.

As I said in the title, I couldn't help but think of From Here to Eternity as I was watching The Proud and Profane. Part of that is the presence of Deborah Kerr. That, and a scene she and Holden have on the beach were I almost expected them to do the Kerr/Lancaster thing. And of course, there's Kerr in the earlier movie mentioning her now infertility. This is also a movie that, although it's theoretically a war movie, is a lot less about the war itself much like From Here to Eternity isn't really a war movie.

All that said, The Proud and Profane is an inferior movie in every way, although that's not terribly surprising considering how good From Here to Eternity is. The Proud and Profane isn't terribly by any standard, however. It's just that it's the sort of movie that really could have been a good deal better.

Kentucky Fried Movie

Another one of those movies I had heard about as having a bit of a cult status, but never actually getting to see, is Kentucky Fried Movie. TCM ran it some months back, so I recorded it in order to be able to watch it and finally do a post on it. As you can guess, I have now watched it which is why you're getting that post.

Having said that, Kentucky Fried Movie is going to be a tough movie to do a traditional review on. It was made by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team at the beginning of their career, and the success of the movie allowed them to go on to bigger and better things like Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies. Kentucky Fried Movie is, like those later movies, a broad spoof/satire, but with one big difference. The later movies have overarching plots into which to fit all the spoofs.

Kentucky Fried Movie, on the other hand, is more of a sketch comedy, not even an anthology, so there's not that much to tie the various sketches together. Ostensibly, there's a "movie within a movie" along with "coming attractions" that spoof other movies, and the sort of local TV broadcast in which you might see advertisements for the sort of movies being spoofed here. In fact, the movie starts with a broadcaster talking about what's going to be coming up on the 11:00 news, a broadcaster who comes up multiple times during the movie, along with a local morning talk show segment.

Among the movie genres being spoofed are 70s exploitation movies and the all-star disaster genre, the latter including cameos from Donald Sutherland and George Lazenby. The biggest parody, and the one that's the "movie within a movie", is "A Fistful of Yen", parodying kung-fu movies. Unfortunately, I found it to be the weakest part of the movie, and a part that really drags on.

The TV portions also include several advertisements that those who remember vintage advertisements will probably enjoy. That, and the sort of instructional movie those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s would have seen in school, along with a few extended parodies of TV show genres.

There's also a lot of sex, which makes it a bit of a surprise that the movie got the wider release it did, although also makes it understandable why Kentucky Fried Movie has the cult status it does.

Does the material work? Some of it does, but for me not enough of it did. A lot of contemporary critics unsurprisingly found the material -- especially the raunchiness -- juvenile, although that's not what put me off. For me, it was more that a lot of the humor in Kentucky Fried Movie is the sort where it feels like "you had to be there", and I don't just mean that you had to be old enough to have seen it on its original release in 1977. Yes, some of the material does require knowing now-dated references (the "Point/Counterpoint" that preceded Andy Rooney at the close of 60 Minutes being one example), but even then a good portion of it came across as stuff that really felt funny to a group of friends spitballing ideas late at night where people not at the spitballing sessions aren't in on it. Combined with the kung fu spoof portion of the film being the least funny and going on the longest, it all adds up to Kentucky Fried Movie being less of a hit for me than for other people.

Just don't call them Guest Programmers

Another of the TCM spotlights this month -- well, longer than this month -- is called Two for One. Debuting tonight, April 6, it claims to look at the popularity of the double feature.

They'll be doing this by bringing in a series of moviemakers from various parts of the movie business and having them sit down with Ben Mankiewicz to present a double feature of their own choosing, presumably explaining why the two movies put together would make for a good double feature. There will be 12 or 13 of these, every Saturday in prime time through June. The TCM website says 13 consecutive Saturdays, but there's no listing for May 25 as that's the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend which has tended to be given over to war movies.

Anyhow, the series begins tonight with director Martin Scorsese picking (a perfectly appropriate word; don't get me started on the TCM site's use of the word "curated") two films, both from 1948: Blood on the Moon at 8:00 PM, followed by One Touch of Venus at 9:45 PM.

Personally, I'd love to have seen somebody with the guts to select a double feature of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner followed by Soylent Green.

If it's awful it's better

Recently I was looking through the streaming movie channels on my Roku box, and Cinevault Classics was about to show something that looked interesting, and that I hadn't heard of before, so I sat down to watch it. That movie was the 1958 version of The Whole Truth, a title common enough that there are other movies with the same title and completely different plots.

Stewart Grainger, back in his native Britain more or less, is the nominal star here. He plays Max Poulton, a movie producer whose marriage to his wife Carol (Donna Reed) is hitting a bit of a rough patch. That's in part because his work has him away from home a lot, with the current movie he's working on having him on the French Riviera, or what a British studio's backlot thought could pass for the French Riviera. That movie stars Italian actress Gina Bertini (Gianna Maria Bertale), and because they're both away from home, they spend some time together.

That time together blossoms into something a little more, but of course Max is married, and he's been thinking about trying to patch up his relationship with Carol. Gina, for her part, now has information she could use to blackmail Max, information that might help her advance her career. Max goes to her apartment hotel where she's staying during shooting, to try to deal with this headache. It leads to the sort of heated verbal dispute that the folks in the next apartment would be able to hear, and they'll definitely see Max coming and going.

Max returns home where his wife is hosting a soirée, and coming to that party is an uninvited guest, Carliss (George Sanders). Carliss wants to see Max alone, and informs him that he's from Scotland Yard and that, much more distressingly, Gina has been found stabbed to death! Carliss is going to be working with the French authorities, and starts to pump Max for information about when he last saw Gina and the like.

After the conversation, Max is understandably worried, since the evidence might point to him, even though he's presenting himself to the viewing audience as completely innocent of Gina's murder. But some of the evidence is all the stuff he's left at Gina's place. He goes there to retrieve it so that the police won't find it, and when he returns home, he finds among the guests at the party... Gina, very much not dead!

Max talks to Gina, and we learn that Gina is actually Mrs. Carliss, and that their marriage is estranged in part because her being an actress with some public flings has been bad for her husband's career as a publisher of religious textbooks. (Whatever, although he needs to be in some career where having a straying wife would be very bad PR.) This leads Max to suspect Corliss is lying about a lot. But then Gina winds up being murdered, for real this time, with the body being found in Max's car! Is Max really guilty, or did Carliss do it?

The Whole Truth isn't bad, but the whole thing feels like the sort of material that, in a later generation, would have been a TV movie of the week. In fact, reading about it reveals that the material was originally written as a teleplay for the BBC when they were this sort of live drama the way that US shows like Playhouse 90 or the like were putting on live teleplays. The material then got worked into a stage play, from which the resulting movie was lifted.

Everybody does as well as they can with the material, but, as I said above, it feels kind of lacking. This especially for poor Donna Reed, who doesn't have much to do at all. The casting of George Sanders also sets off a metaphorical flashing red light over him, as if to indicate "Bad guy! Bad guy! Bad guy!"

So, if you're looking through the Cinevault Classic listings and see this one come up again, definitely give it a chance, even if it's by no means the greatest thing any of the cast did.

Clara Bow as a killer might be interesting

1920s actress Clara Bow was known as the "It" girl thanks to here appearance in a silent movie with the title It. Some forty years later, a completely different movie with the title It! was made in the UK. TCM ran it some time back -- I think during October since it's got decided horror elements -- and since the synopsis sounde interesting I decided to record it. Having recently watched it, I can now do the post on it.

The movie starts off with a fire in a warehouse somewhere in London. Cut to a museum, where assistant Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall) is walking in for a day at work. He and his boss, curator Mr. Grove, get news of the fire, and go to the warehouse to see what can be saved. It seems as though the only thing that's still standing is a stone statue that came from a delivery of stuff from Prague, which seems surprising considering this was the Communist era and I can't imagine a Czech museum working with the West in the 1960s. There's some sort of inscription on the statue, so Grove sends Pim to get a flashlight. While Pimm is doing that, the statue falls over, killing Grove!

But then things get really weird. Pimm goes home and starts talking to his mother, but the way the scene is staged it sure as heck seems that Pimm's mother is more like Mrs. Bates from Psycho (sorry to spoil Psycho), and sure enough.... Not only that, but Pimm has borrowed one of the jewelry exhibits from the museum for Mom to wear. This guy is an absolute creep.

The statue is getting a bit of attention, however. A curator from the States, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell) has learned of it and is thinking of buying it and shipping it to America for the museum he works for. But before this can happen, the statue kills a couple of janitors, which really makes the news. All this time, Arthur is trying to woo Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth), daughter of the deceased curator.

Now, I knew enough about history to suspect that the statue was in fact a golem, what with the inscription being in Hebrew, so you'd think the curators might have figured this stuff out right away. But since a lot of viewers probably wouldn't know, we get an establishing scene with a rabbit telling us that this is a golem, and that it would protect the Jews of the ghetto where it was created by finding the scroll and placing the scroll in its mouth.

Naturally, Arthur decides that he's going to look for the scroll, and then use that scroll to become the golem's master, first killing the new curator, since Arthur thought he was going to be named curator instead. Things spiral out of control from there, and there's the question of how to stop the golem.

It! is another of those movies where you can see why the people involved in making it would want to make it, but one where it doesn't quite work. I think that part of it is that I found it hard to believe it would have taken everybody so long to figure out that the statue was even a golem. A museum like that would have been seeking out experts right away. On top of that is McDoall's character, who is such a nasty creep that it's hard to have any sympathy for him. He's not a tragic figure, which I think it what the movie would need for a lead.

But, as always, watch and judge for yourself. It! wasn't made by Hammer, but I think the sort of people who like the 1960s Hammer horror might well enjoy It!.

I'd like to buy a vowel

I tend to be up for watching movies from the 1930s, and especially if they star certain actors above others. One person I'm always willing to see is May Robson, so when TCM ran a movie of hers that was new to me, You Can't Buy Everything, I made a point to record it so that I could watch later. Recently, I finally got around to watching it off my DVR.

The movie starts with an opening scene set in 1893, with May Robson playing Hannah Bell, claiming to be the mother of a young child, Donny, which seems ridiculous considering that Robson would have been about 75 at the time. Now, if the movie concluded as something contemporary, ie. she'd have a kid pushing fifty, using her in this establishing sequence would make more sense. But.... In any case, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Hannah is taking Donny to the charity clinic under an assumed name, he having hurt his knee because Hannah wasn't able to care for him properly. After arranging for charity care, she reads a newspaper article about the Knickerbocker Bank, which has just elevated someone to the office of vice-president, John Burton (Lewis Stone). This absolutely enrages Hannah, who goes down to the bank.

There, we learn that Hannah is not in fact poor at all. She's quite rich, having married a who did well enough in business to leave Hannah seed money when he died, money which Hannah has grown into something quite substantial. But when she was less well off before her marriage, she apparently was in love with Burton, whose parents nixed the marriage. So Hannah has hated Burton ever since, and decides that she's not going to have one cent of her money in a Burton bank. She withdraws everything and takes it to a new bank, where she's more or less the boss because she's got the largest deposit.

Fast forward to 1906. Donny is now all grown up and about to graduate from Princeton, head of his class. Hannah is even richer than ever, and proud of Donny, expecting him to be able to run the bank now that he's a college graduate. Donny, however, doesn't want to go into banking; he'd rather be a writer. Hannah seems like even more of a miser than ever, so a mutual friend of her and Burton decides he's going to try to figure out what the heck made Hannah such a bitter blankety-blank.

Unfortunately, the planned meeting between Hannah and Burton doesn't happen. What does happen, however, is that Hannah and Burton's children meet. Donny (William Bakewell) meets Burton's daughter Elizabeth (Jean Parker) on the friend's yacht, and they fall in love. Of course, they learn about the difficult relationship between their respective parents, and that may prevent them from getting married, especially when Hannah thinks Elizabeth is only after Donny's money.

Move ahead one more year, to 1907. Donny and Elizabeth did indeed get married, and went off to Europe. While they're away, a bank panic hits. Banks like the Knickerbocker bank are in serious difficulty, while Hannah, who has always been more willing to invest only in safer schemes even if they don't bring in high interest. She sees this as her big chance to get back at Burton. They get back to news of the financial panic as well as what Donny's mom did to Elizabeth's dad....

As soon as I saw the opening scene in the charity hospital, I couldn't help but think of a woman named Hetty Green, who was in the old almanac-style Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest miser or some-such. That's a bit unfair to her; Hetty was closer to thrifty than miserly. But the legend of Green's miserliness was well-known in those days, and this story turns that up to 11, not using her real name probably out of fear of getting sued by her children (Hetty died a good 15 years before the movie was made).

The story in You Can't Buy Everything isn't bad, although it does feel like a bit of a cop-out at the end. Robson, for her part, does quite well playing the villainess who has a change of heart just in time, even if she is way too old for the opening scenes and probably a few years too old even for the bank panic era. There's nothing spectacular here, but You Can't Buy Everything is a good example of the sort of programmer MGM was putting out in the mid-1930s. It's definitely worth a watch.

TCM Star of the Month April 2024: Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando (r.) with Karl Malden in On the Waterfront (8:00 PM, April 3)

This month sees the centenary of actor Marlon Brando. Specifically, that anniversary is tomorrow, April 3. Because the centenary is this year, it's not a surprise that TCM would finally pick this time to make Brando their Star of the Month. Every Wednesday in prime time, TCM will be airing some of the movies that Brando made during his roughly 40-year career.

Now, normally since the movies are airing Wednesdays in prime time, I'd put this post up on the first Wednesday of the month. But in fact, since tomorrow is the centenary, TCM is starting the tribute early, at 6:00 AM tomorrow with The Fugitive Kind.

As of right now, I don't have any of Brando's movies on my DVR that I haven't blogged about before, but I will be recording some stuff as there are a few of the movies airing that I haven't blogged about before. One pleasant surprise on the schedule is The Godfather on April 10; I thought one of the other cable conglomerates had the broadcast rights to that sewn up for ages. Apparently TCM had enough of a budget to get the rights for one more showing. Also on April 10 is Last Tango in Paris.

April 17 sees Guys and Dolls, which has been airing on one of the FAST platforms; I think it's the channel that airs old Samuel Goldwyn movies since they produced the film version originally. April 24 brings Apocalypse Now, as well as one spot on the schedule currently listed as "to be announced".

Accident

Dirk Bogarde having been TCM's Star of the Month last September, it gave me the chance to record quite a few of his films that I hadn't seen before, since most of his work was in Europe. Among those movies was one with an intriguing premise, Accident.

The opening credits are over what looks like one of those large houses on the outskirts of town, with some traffic sounds in the background. As the credits come to a conclusion, we hear what sounds like a terrible crash. It is indeed a terrible crash. Hearing it and coming out of the house to investigate is Stephen (Dirk Bogarde). He's a professor at Oxford who lives in the house with his wife Rosalind and their two children, although it's about to become three.

In the car are two of Stephen's students, William (Michael York) and the Austrian Anna (Jacqueline Sassard, who must have been yet another of those Europeans that English-language studios were trying to groom for stardom since I don't recognize the name. Sadly, William is dead, while Anna is in shock. So Stephen brings Anna into the house before calling the police, and keeping Anna from having to deal with the police. Since Stephen's house is out in the middle of nowhere, the police realize that William and Anna were on their way to visit him, and ask the obvious question of why.

Flash back to the rest of the story. Stephen has already been working as a sort of thesis advisor to William when Anna first shows up, supposedly the daughter of a former prince. She's good-looking, so naturally everybody becomes interested in her. Stephen is of course already married, so he shouldn't show any interest in her. William's the right age, and he's going to be one of Anna's fellow students, so it seems more natural for him to try to start a relationship with her. Even some of Stephen's colleagues seem to want Anna.

So we get a bunch of talky scenes where all of the prinicpals are together in some fairly nice-looking locations since this is Oxford, after all, and Stephen's house has some nice gardens. Stephen goes looking for nookie while his wife is in confinement, various people keep pursuing Anna, and there's a bizarre party scene where all the men play what seems to be a British grown-up version of keep away.

And this is where I had huge problems with Accident. It's one of those movies that seems like it's trying to be daring, and a bit arthouse, with the ultimate result that it's just boring and overcomplicated. None of the characaters are worth getting emotionally invested in.

Unfortunately, when it ran on TCM, Ben Mankiewicz seemed more concerned with the fact that the film's director, Joseph Losey, was one of those Americans who left for Europe as a result of the blacklist, as though this makes the movie immune from criticism. Accident is just plain lousy. But as always, judge for yourself.