MAKE HASTE TO LIVE

Stephen McNally and Dorothy Maguire

MAKE HASTE TO LIVE (1954). Director: William A. Seiter. 

At the very beginning of Make Haste to Live, a shadowy stranger arrives at the home of Crys Benson (Dorothy Maguire) -- who has learned that her dangerous husband Steve (Stephen McNally of The Black Castle) has just been released from prison and may be coming to kill her -- and is able to easily open the front door which is not even locked and get inside. This is just one of many problems with the script for Make Haste, but the movie has other issues as well. 

John Howard with a distraught Maguire

Crys (originally named Zena) got away from her husband after she discovered he had shot and killed a cop. He gets away with that murder but winds up going to jail for the murder of Zena in an explosion (it was actually another unknown woman and it may have been an accidental death). Zena has reinvented herself and lives far away from Chicago in New Mexico with her teenage daughter, Randy (Mary Murphy of The Mad Magician). She has a boyfriend named Josh (John Howard of The Mad Doctor) whose proposals she keeps rejecting. The scene when Steve shows up -- something "Crys" has clearly been dreading and is terrified of -- completely lacks tension and impact and is badly muffed. Maguire was certainly a talented actress but in this sequence she acts as if it was only her brother -- whom Steve pretends to be -- showing up instead of the man who spent twenty years in prison for her alleged murder! McNally could also give decent performances but there are a dozen actors who could have made much, much more of this interesting role. For that matter Barbara Stanwyck could also have made a lot more of Crys and her situation. 

Ron Hagerthy and Mary Murphy

The supporting cast, including Howard, Murphy, Ron Hagerthy as her boyfriend, Edgar Buchanan as the sheriff, and Carolyn Jones as Crys' old friend, Mary -- who at Zena's direction tells the authorities she is alive but who is not believed -- are all good, and there is an effective score by Elmer Bernstein [Far From Heaven]. But there are a few too many holes in the plot, and Crys' actions are often senseless. The reactions and attitudes of the two lead characters in an incredibly difficult situation simply do not ring true. There are interesting elements to this that never jell. A bit with a bottomless pit in some Indian diggings being worked by Josh leads to a moderately exciting climax. From Republic studios. 

Verdict: An intriguing situation but you can see why this flick is completely forgotten today. **1/4. 

THE MAD DOCTOR

Basil Rathbone and Ellen Drew

THE MAD DOCTOR (1940). Director: Tim Whelan.

The wife of Dr. Sebastian (Basil Rathbone) dies of pneumonia but her death seems suspicious to her personal physician Dr. Downer (Ralph Morgan). Nevertheless Sebastian and his good right hand Maurice (Martin Kosleck of House of Horrors) settle the will and quickly leave for New York City. In Manhattan Sebastian sets up practice as a prominent psychiatrist and moves in on his latest victim, a wealthy neurotic named Linda (Ellen Drew of The Crooked Way) who has tried to throw herself off of a roof. As the not so good doctor and Maurice cheerily plan what they'll do with the loot once Sebastian marries -- and murders -- Linda, her former boyfriend, reporter Gil Sawyer (John Howard of The Invisible Woman), is checking the background of Sebastian, and crosses paths with the suspicious Dr. Downer. Meanwhile Maurice is not thrilled that Sebastian claims to be truly falling in love with Linda ... 

John Howard and Ellen Drew

The Mad Doctor is more of a suspense-thriller than an out and out horror film, although it is macabre and occasionally chilling. An interesting aspect of the film is the relationship between the two villains, as Maurice seems to be much more than a mere servant. Apparently Sebastian saved Maurice's life at one point and is beholden to him. Maurice sprays cologne on himself with an atomizer, which may have been the film's dated way of suggesting he is queer. In any case, Rathbone offers a superb performance -- no one can display withering contempt as well as Rathbone. The under-rated Kosleck is also excellent. Morgan is quite good as well, but Drew and Howard are simply not in the same league. 

Companions in crime: Rathbone; Kosleck

There are flavorful supporting performances from Barbara Jo Allen (appearing as "Vera Vague") as Linda's sister and Hugh O'Connell as her brother-in-law, although he tries too hard to be inappropriately comical. Billy Benedict and Kitty Kelly are fine in smaller roles and Douglas Kennedy has a bit as a hotel clerk. At one point Linda inexplicably asks to meet a certain person at the 79th Street subway, the only point of which is to apparently set up a chilling subway murder sequence. The picture could have used much more music during certain suspenseful sequences. The screenplay is rather dismissive of the benefits of psychiatry, going to far as to suggest that all shrinks are charlatans. 

Verdict: An outstanding Rathbone performance is the chief joy of this entertaining suspense film. ***. 

RADAR SECRET SERVICE

"Remember me, I'm your boyfriend." Adele Jergens, Tom Neal

RADAR SECRET SERVICE (1950). Director: Sam Newfield.

The "Radar Patrol," which uses radar in its war on crime, is after some uranium which was stolen by Mickey Moran (Tom Neal of Bruce Gentry) and sold to a man named Michael (Tristram Coffin). Hard-boiled blonde Lila (Adele Jergens) is supposedly Mickey's girlfriend, but she's playing up to Michael to help Mickey -- although she may be planning a double-cross just as Michael is. Bill Travis (John Howard) and his partner "Static" (Ralph Byrd) are the agents on the case. Riley Hill is a hood named Blackie; Myrna Dell [Why Men Leave Home] is his girlfriend, a waitress named Marge; and the ever-irritating Sid Melton is "Pill Box," a hypochondriac member of Michael's gang. There's some mild excitement at the climax; a good laugh when Marge makes a comment about how Lila really gets rid of her boyfriends after she sees Michael's corpse; and an inside joke when Ralph Byrd, who played Dick Tracy numerous times, makes a remark about "Dick Tracy's two-way radio." The good guys are called Radar Patrol throughout the movie, and not "Radar Secret Service," possibly because there was a serial called Radar Patrol vs. Spy King two years earlier.

Verdict: Pretty dull cops and robbers, but at least it's less than an hour long. *1/2.

LOST HORIZON (1937)

Jane Wyatt and Ronald Colman

LOST HORIZON (1937). Director: Frank Capra.

Author and foreign secretary Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) winds up shanghaied by plane with his brother, George (John Howard), and several other passengers: fussy paleontologist Lovett (Edward Everett Horton); possible embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell); and a dying, hard-boiled young lady named Gloria (Isabel Jewell of She Had to Choose). The group winds up in the lost city of Shangri-La, which is run by a man named Chang (H. B. Warner of Kidnapped) and ruled by the supposedly wise and benevolent High Lama (Sam Jaffe of The Accused), a 200-year-old priest who discovered and founded the place. The High Lama tells Conway that the most important thing is to "be kind,' but it never occurs to him that it's not exactly "kind" to literally kidnap a bunch of innocents just because the lovely Sondra (Jane Wyatt) has seen Conway's books (and, presumably, his author photo) and developed a yen for him. Understandably, George wants to get back to his own life, while the others find happiness of a sort in Shangri-La. George doesn't believe the High Lama's story, and takes off with a "young" woman, Maria (Margo) in tow with unexpected -- or rather expected -- results. I haven't read James Hilton's novel in a while (I did review certain portions of it after watching the film) but it has to be better than this movie, which takes an interesting premise and dumbs it down to an incredibly superficial level (there are significant differences between the book and the film). Learning that the pilot is dead, the emissaries from Shangri-La -- the guy's own people -- have absolutely no reaction. Presumptuous Sondra has no guilt that her adored one's brother has been dragged along against his will -- after all, why would anyone want to live anywhere besides the rather dull Shangri-La? -- and Robert seems selfishly absorbed in his love for Sondra. The main problem with Lost Horizon isn't that the hypocritical High Lama preaches love and sanity (he also prophecies WW2 and the atom bomb!)  but it never occurs to anyone that running away from the world's problems is hardly the way to solve them -- an influential man like Robert simply wants to drop out! Portraying George as a hot-head, the movie tries its damnedest to strip the character of any dignity or sympathy, and of course Maria has the temerity to lie about her age. [The man who desperately wants to escape from a land that others worship was later borrowed for a plot point in Brigadoon.] The first half of Lost Horizon is quite entertaining, and there are some good adventure scenes in the snowy terrain surrounding Shangri-La, but the movie becomes irritatingly stupid in the second half, so anti-intellectual, in fact, as to be mind-numbing. As in most movies about lost cities, whether in Africa or Tibet, there's a scene when everyone has to walk along a narrow cliff with a mile-high drop inches away -- surely after centuries they would have found a safer way to travel? Capra's direction is swell, but the wrong-headed script ...! The cast, however, is uniformly good. NOTE: This review is of the restored, mostly complete version.

Verdict: Watch the first hour and then turn it off! **.

THREE GIRLS ABOUT TOWN

THREE GIRLS ABOUT TOWN (1941). Director: Leigh Jason.

Hope (Joan Blondell) and Faith Banner (Binnie Barnes) are hostesses at a hotel that caters to male conventioneers out for a good time. The more upstanding ladies of the city want to close the hotel down and essentially accuse the two women of being hookers. When a dead body (Walter Soderling) is discovered in one of the rooms, the girls panic, afraid that a murder will surely get the place shut down for good. In the meantime Hope's boyfriend, reporter Tommy Hopkins (John Howard), realizes the dead man is the negotiator who has come to mediate a labor dispute, and wants to scoop other papers with the story of his death. There begins a supposedly comical moving about of the corpse that reminds one of later films The Trouble with Harry and Weekend with Bernie. Added complications include the fact that hotel manager Wilberforce Puddle (Robert Benchley) wants to marry Faith, and the arrival of third sister Charity (Janet Blair) who makes a play for Tommy and is always kissing him. And we musn't forget the drunk conventioneer (Eric Blore) who is always asking for "Charlie." Nobody ever expresses the slightest sympathy for the dead man (although there's a twist where that's concerned). Blore nearly walks off with the picture, not that that's such a great feat in a movie that has only exactly two laughs. Even the scene when Tommy brings the corpse to a poker game falls flat. [Of course someone refers to the dead man, who's won at poker, as a "lucky stiff." Ha, ha.) The actors give it their best, but this is a monumentally stupid "comedy" that lacks the light touch it needs and becomes a positive effort to sit through.

Verdict: Atrocious. *.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (1940). Director: A. Edward Sutherland.

Essentially unrelated to the first two Invisible Man movies, this is an out and out comedy starring John Barrymore -- giving a very funny performance -- as an absent-minded professor who advertises for a human guinea pig for his invisibility machine. Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce, pictured), a model who's fed up with her nasty boss Growley (Charles Lane, playing his usual grumpy Gus and playing it well), volunteers because she wants to get even with Growley without his knowing that it's her. A racketeer in exile, Blackie Cole (Oskar Homolka), also wants the machine so he can return home literally without being seen. Then there's the not-so-wealthy millionaire playboy Rich Russell (John Howard) who has been sponsoring Barrymore, and his ever-suffering butler Charles Ruggles. This is a very cute picture with many amusing moments and lines, some of which sneak up on you, and John P. Fulton's effects are as good as ever. The whole cast is quite good, including the bellicose Donald MacBride and Shemp Howard (of 3 Stooges fame) as Blackie's henchmen. Margaret Hamilton plays Barrymore's housekeeper and she and "the Great Profile" make a very funny team. Terrific ending!

Verdict: If you're in a silly mood on a rainy Sunday. ***.

UNKNOWN TERROR

UNKNOWN TERROR (1957). Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

When a young man disappears while searching for a mysterious cavern known as the “Cave of Death” in South America, his sister (Mala Powers), husband (John Howard) and friend (Paul Richards) decide to go look for him and come across a mad doctor (Gerald Milton) who is experimenting with fungi, allegedly for new antibiotics. Everyone in the small village, including the doctor and his beautiful Indian bride (May Wynn) are tight-lipped about the location of this cave and even deny that it exists, but eventually our intrepid trio make their way inside the place and discover exactly why the cave has such a sinister reputation, to put it mildly. This is a perfectly creditable, atmospheric and well-paced “comic book” movie that piles on one eerie incident after another and has a wild climax that seems derived from everything from H. G. Wells' novel “The Time Machine”with its morlocks to the bogey men/cavern finale of Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland. [Remember, The Time Machine wasn't filmed until seven years later.] It isn't for a moment very reasonable but it is consistently entertaining. In most films of this nature the characters seem to have no real life outside of the story (or any life at all for that matter) but Kenneth Higgins' script at least attempts to create characters who have a convincing back story, and the actors follow suit: for instance, when Paul Richards shows up at the home of Mala Powers, we don't need any dialogue to know that these two were once lovers. For the most part the actors, including May Wynn and Gerald Milton, play with conviction, although the latter does become a little hammy in the final sequences. Powers and Richards certainly deserved bigger parts in better movies, but their work here is nothing they should have been ashamed of. Much – too much – has been made of the fact that the special effects for the big finale are low-tech, to say the least, but the fact is that they are also perfectly effective for a black and white low-budget movie and it is also true that Unknown Terror is creepy and a lot of fun! [Available from Sinister Cinema.]

Verdict: Not great but great fun. **1/2.