MASSACRE RIVER

Guy Madison

MASSACRE RIVER (1949). Director: John Rawlins. Colorized. 

On a fort in disputed territories in the old west, Phil (Rory Calhoun) is rejected when he proposes to Kitty (Cathy Downs of Missile to the Moon), the colonel's (Art Baker) daughter. Phil takes it surprisingly well when she gets engaged to his best buddy, Larry (Guy Madison of Hilda Crane), not much later. Complications arise in the nearby town of Jackson when Larry falls for the co-owner of the Blue Star saloon, Laura (Carole Mathews of Betrayed Women), after she ministers to the colonel's son, Randy (Johnny Sands), when he is shot by Indians. Before long Larry is caught in a triangle situation: will he marry the colonel's daughter and make advancements in the army, or decide that his future is with a woman who is more like him? His friendship with Phil will certainly be put to the test by further dark developments. 

Rory Calhoun

One could easily say that Massacre River takes advantage of well-worn tropes and cliches in its story, but somehow that doesn't matter. There are beautiful widescreen vistas of western landscapes, courtesy of Jack MacKenzie, a stirring score by John Leipold and Lucien Moraweck, and a fast-paced, engrossing ambiance throughout. Though one wouldn't necessarily argue that the two handsome male leads are acting geniuses, they acquit themselves nicely, as do the ladies. Johnny Sands is appealing as Randy, but had only a few credits. An especially lovely scene has Laura waving at Larry from a window, disappointed that he doesn't wave back from the street below, but then happy again when he finally does wave as he rides off on his horse. As usual, the Indians in this -- on again/off again antagonists -- are mere backdrop for the white players and not even the chief gets much of a back story. John Rawlins directed a wide variety of movies, including Arabian Nights with Maria Montez.  

Verdict: Very entertaining western melodrama-romance. ***. 

THE FLAMING URGE

Harold Lloyd Jr. 

THE FLAMING URGE (1953). Writer/director: Harold Ericson.

Tom Smith (Harold Lloyd Jr. of Frankenstein's Daughter) moves from town to town because he's always losing jobs by running off to watch fires. The latest town has less fires than usual, so Tom gets a job at a department store, where he is befriended by the owner, Chalmers (Jonathan Hale) --  who also likes to chase fires --and even gets a girlfriend, Charlotte (Cathy Downs of The Amazing Colossal Man). Just as life looks good, a firebug runs amok and the obvious suspect is Tom. The Flaming Urge is a very light-hearted look at the very serious subjects of arson and pyromania, but the cost in lives (although apparently no one ever dies!)  and property is completely glossed over by the superficial screenplay, and most of the movie plays like a comedy. An asset is the casting of Lloyd Jr., a talented and appealing actor with handsome and sensitive looks who makes the most of his rather bizarre role; this is one of the few if only times he was seen to advantage in the movies. Hale is fine but the picture is nearly stolen by Byron Foulger [The Master Key] as Mr. Pender, Tom's fussy supervisor at the store. Even Pierre Watkin shows up as Charlotte's father, and he is typically competent if unremarkable. The movie was filmed in Monroe, Michigan, and unlike a lot of movies made outside Hollywood, is perfectly professional if low-budget. Writer/director Ericson only made this one movie while Lloyd went on to make several more before dying tragically young of a stroke. The movie is seen by some as a "coded gay" film because of the title (reminding one of "flaming queen") and because Lloyd Jr. was gay in real life, but it might be reading too much into things to see his interest in fire as being a metaphor for homosexuality, yet. .. the movie is psychologically dubious in many ways. One of Harold Lloyd Sr.'s films was Fireman Save My Child.

Verdict: Offbeat with a fine lead performance. **1/2.

GOBS AND GALS

Robert Hutton and Florence Marly

GOBS AND GALS (1952). Director: R. G. Springsteen.

At an isolated military base Sparks (George Bernard) and Salty (Bert Bernard) have cooked up a scheme in which they use their captain's picture to get women to send him what today we would call "care packages." Captain Smith (Robert Hutton of The Vulture) has no idea of this, nor of the fact that the two buddies have opened a store at camp to sell all of the goodies the ladies think they're sending Smith. When the men all return to the U.S., Smith finds himself mobbed at the dock by dozens of lustful ladies who plaster him with hugs and kisses as his fiancee, Betty (Cathy Downs of The Dark Corner), watches in dismay. Now while Smith is nice-looking, he is not a famous singer or matinee idol, so you'd think that Cathy would understand that something strange is going on, maybe a practical joke, but instead she instantly cancels their engagement. Smith pursues Cathy to a train upon which she and her father, a senator (Emory Parnell), are travelling and tries to mend fences with her even as Sparks and Salty, the men responsible for all of his troubles, are supposed to guard a trunk of papers that are also on board. During the ride they encounter a beautiful Russian spy, Sonya (Florence Marly of Queen of Blood); a cute little kid and trouble maker named Bertram (Tommy Rettig); a termagant (Minerva Urecal) who thinks CPO Donovan (Gordon Jones) keeps stealing her purse; not to mention the peppery and dithery conductor (Olin Howlin). Gobs and Gals is a silly but often amusing movie with some good performances and a highly interesting cast. Brothers George Bernard and Bert Bernard were an American comedy team who never rose to any particular prominence -- they appeared in only four films --  and while they aren't bad, the movie could have used the presence of Bud and Lou or Lewis and Martin. Jean Willes, Donald MacBride, and Marie Blake are also in the movie in smaller roles. Marly is rather reminiscent of "Natasha" of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show which debuted several years later.

Verdict: Amiable train farce. **1/2.

THE DARK CORNER

Lucille Ball and Mark Stevens

THE DARK CORNER (1946). Director: Henry Hathaway.

"Love is not just for the young, my dear; it's a heartache that affects all age groups."

Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens), who was sent up the river on a frame-up yet somehow has a private detective license, is convinced that the very man who framed him, Tony Jardine (Kurt Krueger) is now having him tailed and trying to kill him. Presumably Krueger's hired gun is a cowardly tough guy named Stauffer (William Bendix). Also thrown into this hard- boiled mix are Galt's secretary Kathleen (Lucille Ball), a wealthy art collector named Hardy Cathcart (Clifton Webb) and his much younger wife, Mari (Cathy Downs), who has a wandering eye. The main problem with this movie is that the audience, knowing everything that's going on, is always one step ahead of the hero Galt as he tries to figure out what's going on and who's really trying to get him, so there's virtually no suspense. Webb and Bendix are both swell, Ball is completely miscast and wasted -- as much as I love Lucy she's not a good fit with film noir [such as Lured] --  and Stevens does a pretty good approximation of a hardened if pretty-boy gumshoe. Webb is given the best dialogue and delivers it in his inimitable style: "That happens to be a coincidence I took great pains to arrange," he says, as well as  "the enjoyment of art is the only real ecstasy that is neither immoral nor illegal." Downs, who is fine as an adulterous wife, later appeared in The Amazing Colossal Man and Missile to the Moon; she was a talented actress who never quite got the breaks but amassed quite a few credits. 

Verdict: Entertaining if somehow third-rate but saved by Webb and Bendix. **.

THE SHE-CREATURE

THE SHE-CREATURE (1956). Director: Edward L. Cahn.

AIP certainly collected an unusual group of actors for this weird little movie. Chester Morris (who gives a very good performance) is the mentalist Carlo Lombardi, who claims that he can regress his beautiful assistant Andrea (Marla English of Three Bad Sisters) three hundred years into a past life. For reasons that are never made clear Lombardi also regresses her back even further in a -- as he puts it -- "transmigration of the soul of a living woman into her first life body." Apparently her soul first inhabited a female prehistoric sea creature of some kind (at least it keeps coming out of the sea) that is alternately invisible, transparent, and finally very much solid and homicidal, leaving many battered corpses in the movie's best scenes. Timothy Chappel (Tom Conway), whose wife (Frieda Inescort) is a fan of the occult, teams up with Lombardi to make him a household name and both of them rich even as the murders of the she-creature continue. Cathy Downs, the wife of The Amazing Colossal Man, plays Chappel's daughter Dorothy, who is dating Dr. Erickson (Lance Fuller, who was in This Island Earth), another doubting Thomas. Rounding out the cast, Ron Randell is a police lieutenant, Frank Jenks is a sergeant, Jack Mulhall is a lawyer, and William Hudson (from Colossal Man and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) is a snickering party guest. Paul Blaisdell both designed and plays the she-creature; her appearance is amusing and scary at the same time. This oddly likable movie has atmosphere and some creepy scenes, even if it doesn't make much sense.

Verdict: For monster/horror/B movie aficionados only. **1/2.

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN

THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957). Director: Bert I. Gordon. Written by Gordon and Mark Hanna.

AIP rushed out Gordon's Amazing Colossal Man to take advantage of the success of the superior Incredible Shrinking Man, but on its own terms, Colossal is a creditable effort. Glenn Langan plays Colonel Glen Manning, who is observing a plutonium bomb test from a safe distance when a small plane crashes in the vicinity. Manning bravely rushes in to see if the pilot is alive, and gets caught in the full force of the blast. (Stan Lee essentially lifted this sequence to create an origin for The Hulk.) This makes his cells go out of whack – he heals with great rapidity but his cells keep on growing, until he becomes a literal giant. Eventually he loses his mind, rampages through downtown Las Vegas, and is (presumably) killed near Boulder Dam. Despite some ludicrous detours, this is an “intelligent” B movie with excellent performances from Langan and Cathy Downs as his heartsick fiancee. Langan had played romantic leads and second-leads in such films as Dragonwyck with Vincent Price and Margie but his career was on the downslide (he didn't make a film for eight years after Colossal and had to go to Italy to do so), and it isn't improbable to wonder if he used his anguish over faded career opportunities to empower his performance as the tormented Manning. (“What sin could a man commit in a single lifetime to bring this upon himself?” Manning wonders.) Unlike those who are crippled or disfigured, Manning couldn't possibly reenter society in any realistic manner. Gordon's low-rent FX work features a see-through colossus, but there is an effective moment involving a giant hypodermic needle.

NOTE: Continued in the review of the sequel, War of the Colossal Beast.

Verdict: Not bad at all. ***.

MISSILE TO THE MOON

MISSILE TO THE MOON (1959). Director: Richard Cunha. 

Missile to the Moon is one of a series of astronauts-encounter-beautiful-women-on-a-sinister-planet films of the fifties, which include Queen of Outer Space, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, and Cat-Women of the Moon (of which Missile is a loose remake). None of these would be considered great movies, but they are fun to watch if taken in the right spirit. For one thing, many critics over the years seem to have ignored the fact that these films – certainly Missile to the Moon – were made for juvenile audiences. Some critics, such as Bill Warren in his entertaining “Keep Watching the Skies!,” rant about the ineptitudes of the film and its dumb science, which seems besides the point when you consider that it is clearly a fantasy “comic book” movie geared for children. Missile is actually entertaining in its own dopey way, far more so than its model Cat-Women of the Moon. We have a collection of gorgeous women trapped in an oxygen-rich cavern inside the moon; a giant spider “dark monster” that eats sacrifices; rock monsters that blend in with cliff walls and then pull away to clunk after their victims; a cat-fight between the heroine and the moon bitch who has her eye on the hero; and the enormous bosom of said bitch Nina Bara, who stabs her leader (or “Lido”) in the back so that she can be ruler of the dying (all the men are gone) little moon community. Years before he made this film Richard Travis co-starred with Bette Davis in The Man Who Came to Dinner; his career went on a downslide that never quit (at least Jim Davis, who had been with Bette in Winter Meeting, eventually wound up on TV's Dallas). In Missile Travis plays a scientist who inadvertently goes along with his girlfriend (Cathy Downs), their colleague who built the rocketship, and two escaped convicts on a trip to the moon. Tommy Cook is fairly vivid as the nasty little Gary, and Gary Clarke is competent as his fellow jailbird, Lon. Laurie Mitchell, who played the Queen of Outer Space, has a small role in this and gets eaten by the unconvincing, wiggly prop spider and Marjorie Hellen, another one of the moon gals, betrays some sensitive acting skills that are generally unappreciated in movies like this. (Later she changed her name and became better known as Leslie Parrish.) Nina Bara chews up the scenery (some might say she acts with her breasts) but she's undeniably vital if not downright operatic. Travis merely proves that he really wasn't much of an actor. Several alleged beauty contest winners were chosen to fill out the cast but they are merely decorative; not one of them gets to say a line. Cathy Downs gets the best dialogue: Looking around at the gorgeous moon women, she says “ If I'd known there was going to be this kind of competition I'd have undressed for the occasion.” {DVD available from Image Entertainment. Includes some interesting publicity and backstage shots in a photo gallery extra.} 

Verdict: Entertaining nonsense. **1/2.