BACK FROM ETERNITY

BACK FROM ETERNITY (1956). Director: John Farrow.

In this widescreen if black and white remake of Five Came Back (which was also directed by John Farrow), a motley group of passengers survive a crash in the South American jungle, only to realize that only a few of them can fly away and there are headhunters right around the corner. Back from Eternity could have been a terrific, gut-wrenching movie if only all of the dumb "Hollywoodisms" had been excised from the script. True, I've watched plenty of silly if entertaining dumb Hollywood movies, but what makes Eternity worse is that it had so much potential. True, the final few minutes are suspenseful, the acting isn't bad, and the conclusion has a certain power, but otherwise it's not a very good movie. Anita Ekberg [Screaming Mimi] got the lion's share of the publicity, and aside from being beautiful and busty, she's not a bad actress, either (by Hollywood standards, at least), although her American career didn't last long. (She appeared in this before her famous role in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.) Robert Ryan as the possibly tippling pilot is perhaps less effective in this than in other films, but Rod Steiger offers the best performance as a condemned man being brought back for execution. Phyllis Kirk and Gene Barry are effective enough as an engaged couple who have problems, and Beulah Bondi and Cameron Prud'homme are fine as an elderly professor and his wife. Jesse White is Jesse White.

SPOILER ALERT: Now let's talk about those "Hollywoodisms:" Fred Clark is taking Steiger back for execution, but he uses no handcuffs on a supposedly dangerous felon. Kirk and Ekberg have a completely ridiculous "cat fight" over a man that serves only to show the latter in a wet, clinging outfit. Worse still is the whole business with the lovely stewardess, Maria (Adele Mara of Night Time in Nevada). First let's make it clear that Maria is a friend and co-worker of the pilot and his co-pilot (Keith Andes), and is an attractive and really nice person. Saving a little boy (Jon Prevost) from falling out of the plane when a tank smashes open the door, she herself falls to her death in a horrifying moment. There is no scene when Andes tells Ryan what happened. After the plane lands in the jungle, Ryan says to Andes "everyone all right?" to which Andes replies that the passengers were only a little bruised. There's absolutely no mention of brave Maria and her horrible death throughout the rest of the movie, and these are her co-workers!  (A somewhat similar sequence occurred in another plane crash drama The Crowded Sky.) Admittedly, the passengers are having their own problems, but even during a quiet, contemplative moment much later on, when the pious professor and his wife lead everyone in the Lord's Prayer, nobody offers up a prayer for Maria. It's unbelievable, cold-blooded and illogical scenes like this (or the lack of them) and others that make me classify Back From Eternity less as drama than as schlock. Farrow's direction, although the plane scenes are well-handled, also does little to disguise/detour around some moments of really bad acting.

Verdict: The final quarter has its moments but then there's the rest of it ... **.

RED GARTERS

Rosemary Clooney

RED GARTERS (1954). Director: George Marshall.

The citizens of Limbo County are holding a barbecue to celebrate the death of a hated individual, when said individual's brother, Reb (Guy Mitchell), shows up wanting revenge on whoever murdered him. It doesn't make any difference that Red also hated his brother, it's "the code of the West." Someone who is sick of this code and all of the fighting and killing is saloon singer Calaveras Kate (Rosemary Clooney of White Christmas), who is inexplicably in love with the fat Jason Carberry (Jack Carson), the unofficial leader of the town. She refers to the bloodthirsty townspeople as "Modern-day Romans." While Reb draws closer to Jason's ward, Susan (Pat Crowley), another romance develops between bandit Rafael (Gene Barry) and newcomer-from-Boston Sheila (Joanne Gilbert). Reb and Rafael have also become fast friends, but what will happen when Red learns that it was his buddy who shot and killed his brother?

Guy Mitchell and Pat Crowley

Red Garters is easily both the weirdest musical and western that I have ever seen. For one thing, the movie is so highly-stylized that it often seems like a cartoon. In some westerns there is some attempt to make sets on a soundstage resemble the real thing, but the town in Red Garters is completely artificial. That pretty much matches the farcical absurdity of the screenplay. However, without putting to fine a point on it, the film has a subtext of using logic to reduce violence, personified in the character of the quite sensible Kate (aside from her infatuation for Jason). Similarly Clooney dominates the movie, and gives a terrific performance. Not only is she surprisingly sexy doing such numbers as the title tune, "Code of the West" and especially the splendid "Bad News," but she delivers her songs with more assurance and professionalism than I've ever quite seen from her before. 

Joanne Gilbert and Gene Barry

As for Guy Mitchell, who was essentially a singer, he gives a good performance in Garters, but his lack of good looks probably didn't help him and he made only two movies, this and Those Redheads from Seattle. Joanne Gilbert, also a good singer, was introduced in this film and she is notable as well, but she did mostly television work and her career petered out in the sixties. Gene Barry's turn as a Mexican bandit may be on the stereotypical side, but he is nevertheless excellent. Buddy Ebsen is only given one number but he dances up a storm as expected. Buck-toothed Cass Daley plays an Indian squaw. Reginald Owen and Frank Faylen score as respectively, Sheila's father, the judge, and a cowardly if highly vocal townsperson. Crowley and Carson do their turns professionally. The songs by Livingstone and Evans [Somebody Loves Me] are a mixed bag, some quite forgettable and others rather pleasant.  

Verdict: Like a Western animated movie with flesh and blood players. **3/4.

THOSE REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE

Gene Barry and Rhonda Fleming

THOSE REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE (1953). Director: Lewis R. Foster.

Mrs. Edmonds (Agnes Moorehead) brings her four daughters from Seattle to the Klondike to meet up with her husband, a reformer who is trying to clean up the town during the gold rush. Unfortunately, when they arrive they discover that the man has been murdered. The chief suspect is saloon owner Johnny Kisco (Gene Barry of Burke's Law), who does what he can for the ladies, including giving one daughter, Patricia (Teresa Brewer) a job as an entertainer in his club. Her sister Katherine (Rhonda Fleming of The Killer is Loose) falls for Johnny and vice versa, but she can't deal with the rumors about his part in her father's death. Patricia winds up on the outs with the rest of her family as Katherine, taking over her late father's newspaper, does her best to run Johnny out of town.

Teresa Brewer

With a storyline like that you wouldn't think that Those Redheads from Seattle would be a musical, but it is; unfortunately it was produced by Paramount and not MGM. The songs are by a variety of composers and lyricists, some of whom went on to better things. But the big problem is that you would think the movie would have employed some famous musical stars, but neither of the two leads really do any singing (Barry later wound up starring on Broadway in La cage aux folles, but he was no great shakes as a singer). Teresa Brewer can sing, more or less, but the less said about her overbearing style the better -- as actress she is more palatable, but this was her only movie. There's only one halfway memorable song anyway, "I Guess It Was You All the Time," very well sung by Guy Mitchell, who plays Johnny's buddy, Joe. This was Mitchell's first movie. Essentially a vocalist, he had only a few credits on TV and in pictures.

Moorehead with Fleming, Brewer and one Bell Sister

Barry and Fleming make a pretty good team, even if they barely talk to one another throughout most of the movie. Moorehead is as terrific as ever as the somewhat feisty widow. The other two daughters in the film are played by "The Bell Sisters," about which little is known -- this was their only movie. The last few minutes of the film are taken up with a shoot out between Johnny and the real murderer as he tries to bring him in to clear his name, an abrupt shift in tone that doesn't bring nearly enough excitement to the proceedings. On a whole, the movie is pleasant enough, but aside from some of the performances there's little to distinguish it from numerous mediocre musicals. NOTE: This was originally released in 3D, probably the first musical to do so. Not that it helped that much.

Verdict: If we must have western-melodrama-musicals, this one will do until something better comes along. **1/2. 

HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL

HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL (1958). Director: Edward L. Cahn.

Special Agent Casey Reed (Gene Barry of The War of the Worlds) works in a nightclub in Hong Kong as a singer as his cover. He is told that the Russians have kidnapped the young son, Abdul, of Thamen's King Faid, to force his cooperation in a deal that is also important to the U.S.. Reed is assigned to find the boy, and along the way pretends to be a crook who wants an alliance with Macao gold smuggler Elena Martine (Allison Hayes of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) and her associates, Chung (Philip Ahn) and Owen Howard (Noel Drayton). Casey's pretty accompanist, Fay (Beverly Tyler) is brought to Macao via subterfuge to put pressure on Reed. Hong Kong Confidential has obtrusive narration that tells us what we're seeing, and is on the level of a cheap TV production, but it does boast a tense scene when Reed, still pretending to be a crook, is told to prove his loyalty by killing the British agent John Blanchard (Michael Pate); the climax is also suspenseful and the movie is fast-paced. The performances are okay, although Hayes, without much of a character to play, seems a trifle bored at times. Ed Kemmer also appears as an old flame of Fay's. When Barry goes into his song and dance routine it looks as if he's doing a parody! Cahn directed a number of cheapie-creepies, some of which, like Voodoo Woman, were a lot of fun.

Verdict: Amos Burke meets the 50 Foot Woman. **1/2.

NAKED ALIBI

Gloria Grahame and Sterling Hayden

NAKED ALIBI (1954). Director: Jerry Hopper. Produced by Ross Hunter.

Police Chief Joe Conroy (Sterling Hayden of Crime of Passion) is convinced that baker and family man, Al Willis (Gene Barry of The Girls of Pleasure Island), is responsible for the deaths of several police officers. When he confronts him in his bakery, someone takes a photo of Conroy about to hit Willis and the chief loses his job. That doesn't stop Conroy from following Willis to Mexico on one of his "business trips," where he discovers he has a girlfriend, a singer named Marianna (Gloria Grahame of The Big Heat), who doesn't know that her lover boy is married. If the two of them team up, can they find proof that Willis is a killer? Hayden is just right for the role of the cop; he doesn't get across any character nuances, but the script doesn't do much to make him more dimensional anyway. Gene Barry offers one of his most memorable portrayals as Willis, who is smooth and lovable one minute, and raw and sociopathic the next -- in this Barry is quite different than he is as Amos Burke. Grahame offers another credible and sympathetic portrait of a good girl who's fallen for the wrong guy, yet again. Naked Alibi is a fairly standard crime thriller but it does have some suspenseful moments. One incredible sequence early in the picture has Hayden letting Willis simply walk out of the police station after he's assaulted one of his officers! Yeah -- that would really happen. Chuck Connors, Billy Chapin, and Michael Fox have small roles.

Verdict: Acceptable borderline film noir. **1/2.

NOT YOUNG, STILL RESTLESS Jeanne Cooper

NOT YOUNG, STILL RESTLESS A Memoir. Jeanne Cooper with Lindsay Harrison. Harper Luxe; 2012.

Jeanne Cooper has appeared in films and many television programs [including Highway Patrol, Thriller, Perry Mason, and a very notable turn on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.] but has become most famous for her very long stint on the popular CBS soap The Young and the Restless as matriarch Katherine Chancellor. Naturally, most of her memoir focuses on the show and her cast-mates [as well as her children and grandchildren], so if you're hoping for anecdotes about Cooper working on Black Zoo with Michael Gough you'll be disappointed. [Similarly, while she mentions her friendship with Barbara Hale -- and Raymond Burr -- of Perry Mason, you won't find any notes about her working on The Houston Story with Hale, Gene Barry and William Castle.] However, there is a lot about her upbringing in a liberal household, her lovers and some co-stars, and a lot about her marriage to her handsome but otherwise unsatisfactory husband. Cooper allows herself a few diva moments, and in some of her write ups about her Y&R co-stars seems to be offering as much a slap as a hug, but why not? Cooper is a very talented actress, and in this book emerges as a likable lady as well. Great title!

Verdict: A good read about an interesting woman. ***.

THE GIRLS OF PLEASURE ISLAND

THE GIRLS OF PLEASURE ISLAND (1953). Director: Alvin Ganzer.

Towards the end of WW2 a contingent of marines come to a small island to build an air field. Among the island's inhabitants are a man named Roger Halyard (Leo Genn) and his three nubile daughters. Halyard is afraid his girls will get involved with one or more marines, but nature will have its way... If only this movie were the riotous, sexy romp that the poster suggests [pictured]. Instead it's a mildly pleasant and not-very-entertaining light romance that never rises above a superficial level and isn't even very funny; maybe songs would have helped. Elsa Lanchester is cast as the dithery housekeeper and alleged comedy relief. Don Taylor isn't bad as a marine who romances daughter, Hester (Audrey Dalton, who is better in this, her second screen appearance, than in several subsequent pictures) and Gene Barry of War of the Worlds, Burke's Law and Amos Burke Secret Agent fame, puts in an appearance or two as well. Dalton and the other "sisters" were introduced in Girls as "new Paramount personalities," but Dorothy Bromiley and Joan Elan -- the other two sisters -- had very low profile careers afterward.

Verdict: 1500 marines -- and still not a lot of action! **.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953)

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953). Director: Byron Haskin. 

The first Hollywood version of H. G. Wells' wonderful novel of a Martian invasion is still great entertainment. Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) is called in when strange meteors begin falling to Earth. At one site, he encounters Sylvia (Ann Robinson), her uncle, Pastor Collins (Lewis Martin), and General Mann (Les Tremayne). But neither prayers nor weaponry seem a match for the sleek alien vehicles with their devastating death rays that emerge from the meteors. Edgar Barrier of The Giant Claw is a professor; Gertrude Hoffman of My Little Margie is a news vendor; Paul Frees of Space Master X-7 is a radio announcer; and Paul Birch of Not of This Earth is an early victim. The early scenes are very suspenseful, and the sequence wherein Barry and Robinson are holed up in a farmhouse when the martians come a'callin' is harrowing. Very entertaining, with fine special effects. Produced by George Pal. This clearly inspired many movies, especially Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. 

Verdict; An absorbing and colorful science fiction classic. ***1/2.

THE 27TH DAY

THE 27TH DAY (1957). Director: William Asher. 

This picture certainly has an intriguing premise. Earthlings from different countries are taken into space by aliens who claim that they need to populate a new planet: Earth. They are not violent beings so an out and out invasion is out of the question. Instead they give these individuals containers/devices which hold a kind of poison that, once released, could wipe out the human race but leave everything else intact. After 27 days the devices will become inactive. Then they take over world communications and tell everyone on Earth just what the situation is. An American reporter (Gene Barry aka Amos Burke) and a very pretty Englishwoman (Valerie French) combine forces and decide the best thing to do is to hide out until the 27 days are over. Things aren't as simple for the Russian who was given one of the devices. The trouble with the movie -- which is basically a cold war anti-communist tract -- is that it talks itself to death and does very, very little of interest with its intriguing situation. In other words, it's a complete waste of time. French also appeared in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake and Jubal with Glenn Ford. 

Verdict: Read 1984 instead. *.

GREAT OLD TV: BURKE'S LAW

BURKE'S LAW (1963 - 1966). Produced by Aaron Spelling.

This show had a really terrific premise. Amos Burke (Gene Barry) was a very wealthy, sophisticated and cultured man who happened to be a police captain in Los Angeles. He drove to crime scenes in a Rolls Royce chauffeured by Henry (Leon Lontoc). His partners were young, likable turk Tim Tilson (Gary Conway) and older veteran Les Hart (Regis Toomey). Naturally the show had a lighter approach than other cop shows, and sometimes was an out and out (and rather silly) comedy. Still, many episodes were intriguing, well-acted, and suspenseful. The show's other gimmick was to cast well-known former movie stars (or hasbeens), as well as familiar character actors, in supporting roles. Carolyn Jones scored as triplets in one episode, and Lizabeth Scott had a couple of notable guest shots as well. One episode cast Basil Rathbone as a flamboyant director and Edward Everett Horton as a Shakespearean actor. Gene Barry played the playboy detective with just the right note of insouciance and sardonicism, and the other regulars were top-notch as well. For the third season the supporting cast was let go and the show's title was changed to Amos Burke, Secret Agent due to the then-popular spy craze on TV (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; I Spy etc.). This, too, was an entertaining program but it only lasted one season. About thirty years after the show premiered, it was revived, again with Barry in the lead, but there were only 27 episodes.

Verdict: Fun whodunit. ***.

THE HOUSTON STORY

Barbara Hale and Gene Barry

THE HOUSTON STORY (1956). Director: William Castle.

Frank Duncan (Gene Barry), a wannabee player, interests the mob in his plan to steal oil and winds up bogged deeper and deeper in corruption. This is an entertaining, fairly fast-paced crime thriller with good performances from Barry and the rest of the cast. Edward Arnold scores as the mobster Paul Atlas, as does Frank Jenks as Barry's old buddy Louie. Jeanne Cooper is customarily saucy and fine as a waitress that Duncan dallies with but it's Barbara Hale who provides the biggest surprise. Usually cast as comparatively bland good girls (a la "Della Street" on TV's Perry Mason) in this she's a sexed-up blond singer and bad girl Zoe and she seems to be having a ball playing the part. Paul Richards is also vivid as Duncan's rival, Gordy. Some exciting chases and fight scenes.

Verdict: Barbara runs off with the picture! **1/2.

FORTY GUNS

FORTY GUNS (1957). Director/writer/producer: Samuel Fuller.

Joseph F. Biroc's sweeping, beautiful, CinemaScope photography is one of the major assets of this highly unusual and generally unpredictable western starring Barry Sullivan as a U.S. Marshal named Griff Bonnell. Griff comes to town with his two brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix), and comes into contact -- and conflict -- with powerful rancher Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck). John Ericson is Jessica's swaggering, nasty, out of control brother Brockie, who takes a terrible vengeance on the Bonnell boys. There are very good performances in this from all the named principals, but Dean Jagger is especially noteworthy as the sheriff who has an unrequited yen for Jessica. Eve Brent has a nice turn as the gal-- handy with a gun herself -- that Wes falls in love with. There's a terrific scene with a tornado that nearly sweeps Griff and Jessica into the next world, as well as some suspenseful gun battles. Forty Guns just misses being a really great picture; one senses some important scenes were shortened or left on the cutting room floor. Still, it's a pleasant surprise. Barney's (Jidge Carroll) song numbers are okay but a little disconcerting; this was his only film.

Verdict: Flavorful tale of the old west. ***.