BEHIND LOCKED DOORS

Portrait of evil: Douglas Fowley

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS (1948). Director: Budd Boetticher.

Reporter Kathy Lawrence (Lucille Bremer) importunes new private eye Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) to work with her to find a missing corrupt judge whose capture will net them $5000 a piece. The only problem is that Ross will have to get himself committed to the La Siesta sanitarium where Kathy is sure the judge is hiding. Once inside the institution, Ross discovers there's more corruption and danger than  he ever anticipated. Carlson is fine as the flip, overly insouciant private eye who discovers some situations are more serious than others, and Bremer [Till the Clouds Roll By] is okay, but the most striking performance is from Douglas Fowley [He's a Cockeyed Wonder] as the sadistic and utterly evil attendant, Larson. Thomas Browne Henry is fine as the head of the institution and there's nice work from Ralf Harolde [Night Nurse] as Dobbs, another, nicer attendant. A fully grown Dicke Moore plays a young patient who is actually Dobbs' son. John Holland plays a state psychiatrist, Kathleen Freeman has a bit as a nurse, and Tor Johnson plays another inmate who tries to box Carlson to bits in the film's liveliest sequence. I don't know if Behind Locked Doors was the first film to use the premise of a sane man feigning mental illness to get inside an institution for some purpose, but in the early sixties two movies followed suit. In Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor a reporter hopes to win a Pulitzer and Shock Treatment presents a guy whose intention is to get information about some missing moolah. This movie is barely an hour long.

Verdict: Snappy B thriller with a highly sinister Fowley. ***.

UP IN THE AIR

Darro, Renolds, Moreland, and Coffin have a conference

UP IN THE AIR (1940). Director: Howard Bretherton.

Frankie (Frankie Darro) is a page boy in a radio studio who tries to impress new receptionist Anne (Marjorie Reynolds of The Time of Their Lives) by pretending to be a producer, which doesn't sit well with her or with their boss, Mr. Farrell (Tristram Coffin). Farrell and others at the station are having problems with difficult, bitchy radio singer Rita Wilson (Lorna Gray of The Perils of Nyoka) but those problems abruptly end when she's shot dead by an unknown person during a rehearsal. Will Anne be chosen to go on in her place? Will Frankie and his buddy Jeff (Mantan Moreland) unveil the murderer before the police do? Yes, it's another Darro-Moreland mystery comedy from Monogram studios, full of flavorful actors but without much of a story. Gordon Jones (The Green Hornet) is a lousy cowboy singer; Dennis Moore (The Purple Monster Strikes) is a gag writer; Dick Elliott is Hastings, the station owner; and John Holland (The Girl in Black Stockings) -- also Alice's handsome boss on an episode of The Honeymooners -- is Sam Quigley, another executive. Neither of the "girl" singers really do justice to the snappy number "Conga;" the best scene has Mantan Morelamd doing a soft shoe routine.

Verdict: Very likable leads but where's the decent script? **.

PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN

PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN (1940). Director: Phil Rosen.

While giving a lecture accompanying slides of a recent trip he'd undertaken with colleagues, Dr. Benton (Charles Miller) collapses and dies. Jimmy Wong (Keye Luke) investigates and along the way discovers the existence of a scroll that leads to a shrine of eternal flame that is over a valuable oil deposit. Captain Street (Grant Withers) pokes his nose in the plot, and so does Benton's secretary, Win Lee (Lotus Long), who may or may not be on the side of the angels. Keye Luke isn't bad as Wong, and he's authentically Chinese-American, but he's a bit colorless compared to Karloff, who originated the role. Of course, he plays a sort of alternate Wong. Lee Tung Foo makes an impression as Jimmy's excitable cook, Foo. Mason is played by John Holland, probably most famous for his role as Alice's handsome employer, who thinks Ralph is her brother, in a classic episode of The Honeymooners. (He also played Henry Higgins' butler years later in My Fair Lady.)

Verdict: Acceptable if very minor mystery. **.

MY FAIR LADY

MY FAIR LADY (1964). Director: George Cukor.

George Cukor, primarily concerned with actors and not with being "cinematic," may not have been the best choice to helm the film adaptation of the smash Lerner and Loewe musical, but the film is still so entertaining and well-acted that there seems little point in complaining about its static, theatrical aspects. Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, and Stanley Holloway are all superb, and they are bolstered by an outstanding supporting cast made up of the likes of Gladys Cooper as Henry Higgins' mother (wish we saw more of her) -- Cooper, of course, was the dragon-mother of Now, Voyager -- Wilfrid Hyde-White as Pickering; Mona Washbourne as the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce; and Theodore Bikel as that "ruder pest" from Budapest, Zoltan Karpathy etc. This is probably one of the few (only?) film adaptations of a Broadway musical that includes all of the songs (the adaptation of Fanny dropped the songs entirely, although you at least heard the music in the background). Great story, great score, great entertainment. Eliza's haunting refrain of "what's to become of me?' echoes -- along with a great sense of loneliness -- as she returns to the place where she once sold flowers and none of her old companions fully recognize her. You really can't go home again.

Verdict: Loverly. ***1/2.