Film Reviews by Steve

What happens when a US warship in combat is skippered by a dangerous psychotic, if the crew has no practical means of challenging his authority? It's a fascinating premise, at least until the Production Code intervenes in the final scene. Ironically, it also proves awkward for Hollywood to challenge the sanctity of military hierarchy. 

This adaptation of Herman Wouk's bestseller doesn't broaden its scope to take on social hierarchies generally; this was the era of the blacklist and director Edward Dmytryk had already been to jail once! It is an analysis of the improvised, unchecked power of command under the impact of war. 

The seagoing psychodrama is lifted by Humphrey Bogart's landmark portrayal as the erratic Captain Queeg. His performance is hugely overstated, but the final courtroom scene wouldn't work otherwise. Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray and Robert Francis are the officers who mutiny and are put on trial.

We get Technicolor and a rousing score from Max Steiner. The action at sea is exciting and realistic and builds to a powerhouse climax during the court-martial. The social dynamics are scrutinised in some depth. This is more about the interpersonal warfare than WWII; like an update of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

After she won her Oscar for Born Yesterday in 1951, Columbia pictures was stuck with the headache of what to do with Judy Holliday. The response was to insert her strident Brooklyn schtick into a series of lacklustre comedies of diminishing quality. This was again written by Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor, but it's a misfire.

Yet the themes are extraordinarily prophetic... Holliday plays a working girl who wants to be famous for being famous. Jack Lemmon is an ordinary guy who walks around New York with a portable camera filming everything he sees. What could be more internet? Though at the time it was Judy's dumb-kook persona which resonated.

It's a very slight lifestyle picture; an overextended daydream. There's some extraordinary b&w footage of Manhattan, particularly around Central Park. The theme of the banality of celebrity still registers. And it's interesting to see Lemmon's debut in the sensitive, nerdy loser role, which typecast his early career. 

But the premise isn't explored with any intelligence, and Kanin's dialogue delivers zero laughs. His scripts are comedies of propriety. They assert 1950s expectations of social conformity. So Judy is always guarding her reputation. And those conservative values have not only vanished, but now feel tiresome.

Landmark allegorical western which was a response from its writer Carl Foreman to the McCarthy political witch-hunt, which meant he had to leave for the UK to find work. This in turn powered a negative reaction from the Hollywood Right, though it now seems to be highly regarded across the political spectrum; it was the favourite film of Ronald Reagan. And Bill Clinton.

What they saw is a story about individualism. Gary Cooper plays a small town marshal- on his wedding day- who is threatened by a crazy killer who will arrive by train at noon. But he must stand alone, as all the citizens who benefit from law and order, or resent it, refuse to back him, even though his gun has brought peace to their frontier community.

So he is isolated against a ruthless threat, like the liberals on the Hollywood blacklist. And maybe this is director Fred Zinnemann's reflection on US isolationism in the early years of WWII. So it can feel quite schematic, especially as it unfolds in real time, as evidenced by the abundance of clocks... Cooper won his second Academy Award and though he's too old, he is utterly convincing. 

Grace Kelly is insubstantial as his pacifist bride. But there's a relishable support cast. The theme of law and order is scrutinised from many perspectives, like an editorial. The b&w photography is persuasively ominous, though you may tire of the hokey theme song. It's an interesting moral tale yet maybe its exalted status is more apparent to western fans. And US presidents.

Sumptuous medieval romp loosely tied into the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Anyone who assumes basing your Hollywood blockbuster on a cartoon is a new thing will be surprised that this got there first. And it is given a huge production with major stars. It's in luscious Technicolor and one of the first releases in CinemaScope.

There are outdoor locations in magnificent British castles with decent interiors and costumes. The stunts still look fine. Some might wonder at all those American accents, but... this is fantasy... Robert Wagner makes a handsome action hero and James Mason a relishable villain. Janet Leigh is the radiant love interest, who arguably is eclipsed by the exquisite Debra Paget.

Which may explain why the latter disappears from the second half. Of course, this is a ludicrous pantomime with zero authenticity. The historical context is bunk. Everyone delivers the exaggerated performances demanded by the dubious script. This is a place where the Black Knight is a scurvy knave. It's an old fashioned family film that is no longer fit for that purpose...

Well, because there isn't CGI and the women have no agency. But it's also a ridiculously entertaining swashbuckler, with sword-fights, jousts, romance and fun comic relief. Plus a massive climactic battle scene. And Sterling Hayden as Sir Gawain! It evokes the 1950s more than the middle ages, but who cares! This is one of the jauntiest screen adventures of the decade.

Critics have not been kind to this interesting and realistic WWII picture. But it's worth seeing for the deep cast of British stalwarts, and for the exposure of a sector of the armed forces not often acknowledged: the Air-Sea Rescue Service. There was an ultra-low budget version made in the war years, For Those in Peril (1944).

This can hardly have cost much more, but is an entertainment rather than mostly a tribute. There's a rudimentary plot with a bomber crew drifting in a dinghy in the freezing cold of the North Sea, desperate for the rescue team to locate them in the heavy fog. While the wives and girlfriends wait anxiously on shore...

Only this has a MacGuffin... One of the stricken men (Michael Redgrave) is handcuffed to a briefcase which will change the course of the war! And that hints at the quality of the cast, with Dirk Bogarde also in the dinghy. Anthony Steel is the captain of the rescue team. Nigel Patrick is the standout as the usual tough Sergeant with a heart.

And there's a Who's Who of British support actors. We get shoddy back projection, but the suspense works, and director Lewis Gilbert creates a plausible impression of the hazardous rescue, even if everything goes wrong, like it's a staff induction video! A must-see for fans of British war films.

Actually no... the past is another planet. The mob of posh, male student doctors are so alien, this might as well be sci-fi. Maybe for anyone who was there, this is nostalgia. But it really does feel like it's from another millennium! While the US counterculture began to make pictures about the Beats and juvenile delinquency, these undergrads are getting into scrapes over the college mascot.

And yet, this was the UK's biggest box office hit of the year. It made Dirk Bogarde a huge star and triggered six further sequels. Which are all inferior. It matters less that the actors are too old (Kenneth More was 40) than their characters are entitled pests who treat the nursing staff as a personal harem guarded by a battleaxe Matron. It's no more than an upmarket Carry On film.

Donald Sinden (31) is a ludicrous lech. There is no unifying plot so the sketches have to stand on their jokes. And these situations were squeezed of laughs long ago. It's people walking into doors or crashing through ceilings. There must be a book in explaining why this scored so deeply with '50s audiences. Maybe the Technicolor? The reassurance of conservative values?

Still, there's a decent support cast, with a cameo from Kay Kendall. James Robertson Justice became a cultural icon as Lancelot Spratt, the irascible surgeon. What's the bleeding time? And, miraculously, Bogarde (33) emerges from the hijinks with dignity as the flustered Simon Sparrow. It's far from the arthouse roles he is remembered for but his star charisma is unmissable.

*warning- there is a character in blackface.

MURDERS IN THE ZOO

Creaky, exotic curiosity from the brief horror boom which lasted from the release of Dracula in 1931 to the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934. There are moments that have to be seen to be believed. Especially the jaw dropping opening scene. And the death of the hunter’s wife…

You have been warned! However, there is far too much comic relief padding out the transgressive grotesquery, courtesy of Charles Ruggles as the alcoholic press agent of a US zoo… which has taken a shipment of wild animals from the mysterious east captured by an insane trapper (Lionel Atwill)...

...Whose beasts kill anyone who stands against him! Or flirts with his attractive wife (Kathleen Burke). There’s an agreeably deviant shocker squeezed in among the buffoonery. Atwill stands out in the horror role, and Randolph Scott and Gail Patrick are fine as the attractive toxicologists searching for an antidote for snake venom…

But there’s an excess of Ruggles, even in such a slender running time. And there is rather more of the animals than seems reasonable, now that everyone has seen plenty of tigers and alligators. It’s a lesser precode horror which is obviously dated, but fun, and quite stylishly directed by Edward Sutherland. 

NIGHT MONSTER

Crazy low budget Universal monster picture with a gallery of genre oddballs played by a deep cast of B-picture stalwarts. Ralph Morgan is a quadriplegic who holds his highly respected physicians responsible for his extreme deformity. He invites the doctors to his spooky old estate, only for someone to murder them!

It can’t be the host- obviously- as he has no arms or legs… The denouement is completely wild! But fun. Bela Lugosi as the creepy butler and Lionel Atwill as a bumptious medic are only there for name recognition and hardly figure…

In a uniformly relishable cast, the standouts are Irene Hervey as a straight-arrow psychiatrist, Fay Helm as the neurotic relative scared out of her mind and Nils Asther as an unorthodox mystic. There’s a memorable scene where he teleports a skeleton via arcane, yogic ritual!

This is all astonishingly overstated. Ford Beebe is a minor director of serials, but he creates plenty of foggy/shadowy atmosphere from his studio backlot swamp and secret passages. It’s a ludicrous mishmash of melancholy, hokum and weirdness- yet irresistible.

HOUSE OF HORRORS

Classic film fans know Rondo Hatton as The Creeper from the 1944 Sherlock Holmes picture, The Pearl of Death. Universal planned to use him in the same role for his own series of horror releases. Of course, it was his real life acromegaly that made him the 'monster without makeup'. So there is some squeamishness in watching his misfortune made into a franchise.

Anyway, he died after one more Creeper film and he is mostly remembered now for that Sherlock Holmes entry. But this oddball B horror is well worth a look. It's part of an attempt to bring Universal horror out of the gothic and into contemporary US. Martin Kosleck co-stars as a psychopathic modern artist who compels the brute to kill his critics.

The sculptor pulls the Creeper out of the bay as he is about to throw himself in, so there is an impression that the colossus represents his own grotesque, suppressed psyche. The other male leads are colourless, but Virginia Grey is lively as a girl reporter, and she gets some fabulous wisecracks. Actually, the pulpy dialogue is a standout.

And Joan Shawlee brings some jaw-dropping glamour as a sassy model. This is just a 65 minute, low budget shocker. But it is offbeat, and twisted. And a change of direction for the studio, squeezed into the void between Universal gothic and '50s science fiction. With the kind of shadowy pessimism we also get from '40's film noir.

Dreamy psychological noir (adapted from a novel by Winston Graham) which is obviously inspired by Alfred Hitchcock. And that includes the casting of a cool, elegant blonde in Arlene Dahl as a mysterious femme fatale who may be sizing up a stolid insurance man and old flame (Jack Hawkins) for the role of fall guy.

This is a hooky melodrama which grips all the way, so it scarcely matters that the labyrinthine plot rests heavily on coincidence. Dahl is a Hollywood star cast for the export market, but brings ambiguity, and looks great. She might feel reminiscent of Kim Novak in Vertigo, except this was out a year earlier!

Perhaps Hawkins isn't ideal in a romantic role, and he fluffs the sexy banter. But he is at least a believable insurance man... In Hollywood, the film noir cycle was coming to an end, but this deep, hazy, convoluted conundrum shows just how resilient are its motifs...

Launder and Gilliat load the dialogue with fatalistic poetry and pessimistic wisecracks, augmented by an ominous narration by Hawkins. And there's expressionist photography, including some eye-popping point-of-view shots and dream sequences. This isn't as auspicious as a '50s Hitchcock film, but still an effective, exciting UK alternative. 

Minor POW escape picture based on a true story, which is unfortunately diminished by never actually leading to a successful getaway... Yet the usual formula is so robust that the flimsy setup is still exciting and interesting, bolstered by a decent (all male) ensemble cast of British character actors. And a couple of Americans

So Jack Warner, Anthony Steel, Robert Beatty et al are bottled up in the barracks, under the sadistic supervision of Anton Diffring as the enthusiastic Nazi guard. They develop a plan to facilitate an escape while outside the perimeter fence, using a homemade dummy they call Albert. The stand-in appears in the lineup while heads are counted.

Well, apparently it worked once, though the fugitive was subsequently found... Presumably as the writers are aware this is a slender premise from which to hang a whole feature film, much of the running time is taken up with psychological issues, like the antagonism between prisoners... and between them and the Nazi screws.

And usually, their homesickness. There is zero budget, but that hardly matters. It feels like the least viable idea for a POW film ever... Yet it is engaging as this genre always is- mainly because the circumstances are fascinating, and the actors make these unlucky officers an absorbing group to be around for 90 minutes. 

Surprisingly objective account of the Siege of Malta during WWII, for which the island was awarded the George Cross. There is some pro-British propaganda, but also an attempt to see the conflict from the perspective of the occupied nation. And it is broadly factual, including a subplot about the interrogation of an Italian spy.

Though it's a stretch to imagine that UK military intelligence was quite so gentlemanly. There is evidence of a difficult production, with about a dozen well known British actors uncredited in tiny roles. The director was replaced and Brian Desmond Hurst's principal task is to splice real footage from the conflict into a dramatic story. 

And this makes the action seem authentic, but rudimentary and dull. The main problem is Alec Guinness, who is miscast in a romantic and heroic role as an RAF spotter who falls in love with a local girl (Muriel Pavlow). She has a moving final scene which is the best moment in the picture, when it suddenly becomes emotionally involving.

Still, Jack Hawkins is reliably brusque and phlegmatic as RAF command. There's a familiar scenario of grumbling Tommies and brave Spitfire pilots. It tells the story of Malta's suffering at the mercy of the Luftwaffe with a fair amount of realism. And that is its merit; as a tribute to the resilient islanders as they resist Nazi invasion.

In 1950 this was a huge critics' favourite, but like Joe Mankiewicz's films generally, now seems less impressive. His abundant dialogue is heavy with sly wit, but without much consequence. The script is in bad need of a shave. And the vicarious thrill of the glimpse into the Machiavellian power plays of backstage Broadway may no longer have such mass appeal in the age of the smartphone. 

The narrative intrigue which seemed cute on release, is now predictable. Consequently, its 14 Oscar nominations, and six wins- including Best Picture- feels excessive. Especially in the same year as Sunset Blvd! Still, that ensemble cast looks better than ever, with Bette Davis perfect as the ageing doyenne of the New York theatre.

Anne Baxter lacks wattage as the duplicitous ingenue who usurps her, but everyone else is relishable, with George Sanders reliably waspish as the manipulative columnist. Though we get far too little of Thelma Ritter as Bette's phlegmatic dresser. Marilyn Monroe is funny as a sexy wannabe who doesn't have the ruthlessness to make the grade.

It's a moral tale about the relentless cycle of ambition, like a showbiz Macbeth. It will be appreciated by anyone able to assimilate the inexhaustible flow of ironic drollery. Or with an interest in the stage. It's awfully overwritten and occasionally even corny, but still sort of fun to watch these grotesques attempt to devour each other. In 1957, Sweet Smell of Success did the same thing, but better. And darker....

The films of Anna Neagle and her director/husband Herbert Wilcox haven't aged well, but this is an exception. It's a faithful biopic about Odette Sansom, a Frenchwoman who spied for the British in WWII, then survived Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was awarded the George Cross and Legion d"Honneur

It follows the standard special operations model , but surprisingly the events are hardly embellished, partly due to the influence of Odette herself. This means the narrative feels undeveloped, but leaves an impression of authenticity. Especially with the use of genuine locations.

This is the role of Neagle's life, and despite her limitations, she gives it a fair shot. Trevor Howard is a natural with the brittle dialogue and maybe upstages her as the British liaison with the Resistance, who Odette married (and divorced) in peacetime. But the romance is only incidental.

Odette is portrayed as an average woman made heroic by extraordinary times. By 1950, there had already been films made from the files of the SOE, but this was new because it is about real, named people and verifiable incidents. And it is a moving and humbling experience..

Contrived but still absorbing social commentary about the nature of justice, which more interestingly touches on euthanasia. This now gets marketed as film noir, but it's an issues drama which eventually plunges into melodrama. And ultimately gets tangled up in the demands of the Production Code.

It's well performed by an auspicious cast and efficiently directed by Michael Gordon. Fredric March plays an honest small town judge not much interested in the quality of mercy, who is pugnaciously challenged by the ambitious, progressive defence lawyer (Edmond O'Brien)... who wants to marry his daughter (Geraldine Brooks)!

But when the judge's wife is found to be terminally ill, his settled world is overturned. The spouse is intriguing played by March's actual spouse, Florence Eldridge. When he impulsively ends her life, he turns his rigid moral code on himself and confesses to murder. Naturally, he is represented at his trial... by his daughter's fiancé!

This would have been better done as social realism. But the Hays Office was never going to allow a fair hearing for mercy killing. Inevitably, the moral case gets mangled by the remorseless gears of censorship. What we get is slight and schematic. Still, it's an unusual and absorbing treatment of a subject not much explored in studio era Hollywood.

Spellbinding adaptation of William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, which remains the best ever screen version. Yes, liberties are taken; this is edited to 150 minutes. It mainly leaves out the (edgy, paranoid) comedy. But no, not enough to make this accessible to anyone who doesn't already appreciate the plays.

But for everyone else, this is a thriller... and made by experts. Or at least an expert. Laurence Olivier's title performance dominates, naturally. Sure he's too old. Famously Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother was 11 years younger. But his Academy Award for best actor was richly deserved.

And he directs with clarity and style. This looks like gothic horror; the deep focus b&w photography presents an Elsinore of yawning darkness and expressionist perspectives. The abridgement leaves us with a narrative about identity as we journey deeper into the prince's state of anxiety, despair and insecurity.

This is Shakespeare noir. The support cast operates in Olivier's shadow but Jean Simmons- as Ophelia- was Oscar nominated. As was William Walton's score. It remains the sole wholly British production to win Best Picture. And, it's the only film ever with more famous lines than Casablanca (1942)!

Amateurish comedy-western which of course became infamous for the censorship kerfuffle caused by Jane Russell's debut appearance in the cantilever bra. Which she says she didn't even wear. It's the 116m censored version which is widely shown. Though even hardcore fans of the star surely do not want to see more of this than absolutely necessary.

There is historical interest for students of the Production Code... but little for anyone else. It's astonishingly badly directed. Howard Hughes obsessed over the released version for years, as he often did. But the problems start earlier, with the witless script, and the departure of Howard Hawks as director. The cast is all dreadful, even the Oscar winners...

Thomas Mitchell gives the worst performance of his career as Pat Garrett. Walter Huston is a saucy, elderly Doc Holiday, who shouldn't even be in this particular legend. Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid has the looks, but zero charisma. Everyone overacts to send up the material. It'd be nice to claim Russell saves the film given her creepy treatment. But she's not yet an actor.

Though she looks right as the sultry señorita. Worst of all is the infantile score with comical effects which belong in a Laurel and Hardy film. There is an obvious gay subtext which doesn't bring any depth to the situations; this has the profundity of Republic's Three Mesquiteers series. The sole positive is Gregg Toland's high contrast b&w photography. Enjoy!