THAT TOUCH OF MINK

Doris Day and Cary Grant

THAT TOUCH OF MINK (1962). Director: Delbert Mann.

"When a man donates $200,000, he's entitled to use the facilities."

Wealthy entrepreneur Philip Shayne (Cary Grant) is in his limousine when it splashes mud on out-of-work Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day.) Philip sends his associate, Roger (Gig Young of Hunt the Man Down) to apologize for him, but Cathy insists Philip do it himself. When she meets him, however, she is so instantly smitten that she apologizes to him. Thus begins a difficult romance in which Cathy does her best to maintain her virtue even as Philip flies her off to exotic places and wines and dines her par excellance. A series of comical misunderstandings may or may not lead to the altar ...

A date from Hell: Doris Day and John Astin

That Touch of Mink is a funny movie, greatly abetted by the performances of the two leads. One could quibble that both of them, especially Grant, are a bit too old to be dancing around this whole sex-or-no-sex business, but they make the skirmishes amusing in spite of it. John Astin is also notable as a sleazy man in the unemployment office who has a hankering for Cathy and winds up wishing that he didn't.

Although there's nothing necessarily wrong with Audrey Meadows' performance, I was somehow disappointed by it. Meadows certainly knew how to slap down a line on The Honeymooners, but maybe this part should have been essayed by Eve Arden. Laurie Mitchell, the Queen of Outer Space herself, has a bit part as a showgirl, and John Fiedler is amusing as a confused bridegroom who gets the wrong idea about his wife. That Touch of Mink is typical of many sixties comedies in that it milks some humor out of a misunderstanding over a character's sexual orientation -- in this case Roger's shrink (Alan Hewitt, who is also very good) thinks he is gay. It does lead up to a silly but nevertheless hilarious final sequence.

Verdict: Despite its dated qualities (on so many levels), this is a consistently amusing picture with extremely adept leads. ***. 

CORONADO 9

Dan Adams (Rod Cameron ) questions a suspect

CORONADO 9 TV series. 1960.

Rod Cameron starred in this well-made and entertaining detective series that lasted one season. Cameron plays Dan Adams, a private dick who used to work for Naval Intelligence and works out of San Diego with a Coronado address. Many of the episodes were directed by movie serial master William Witney, who helmed G-Men vs the Black Dragon, in which Cameron played agent Rex Bennett [reprising the role in Secret Service in Darkest Africa]. Cameron may have been stone-faced as Bennett, but he's much, much better as the tough but human and compassionate Adams, who gets involved in some very intriguing cases, and has a solid core of law and order values. Some of the best episodes include: "Doomtown," in which the village geek is accused of a murder he didn't commit; "Remember the Alamo," in which it isn't certain if a man's (David White from Bewitched) younger wife has been kidnapped or not, but his secretary (Beverly Garland) may hold the answer; "Gone With Thy Loot," which has a lot of skulduggery over some stolen jewels; "Blonde Herring," a shipboard adventure with a sizzling Carol Ohmart, and an effective Sue Ann Langdon and Harry Lauter in supporting parts; and "They Met in Honolulu" in which Hayden Rourke's much younger bride simply disappears right after the ceremony. The best episodes are: "Run, Shep, Run" with Jay Novello giving another amazing character turn as a Southern doctor in a swampland chase and mystery; "Sincerely Yours, Napoleon," in which a married, middle-aged man tells his wife (Virginia Christine) that he spent their life savings on certain letters but there's a honey (Sue Ann Langdon, again) in the pot; and "Flight to La Paz," in which Adams is aboard a plane that crash lands in an isolated area and a suitcase of money ignites all kinds of passion in the passengers; Harry Bartell and Laurie Mitchell [Queen of Outer Space] are both excellent in this. [Bartell was the process server who pretended to be a big fan of Ricky's on the I Love Lucy courtoom episode.] Out of 39 episodes there isn't a real stinker in the bunch.Other notable guest-stars include Mary LaRoche, Patricia Medina, Norma Varden, and Coleen Gray [The Leech Woman], who is excellent as a conflicted woman who tries to help the sick mobster father that she's been estranged from for many years in "The Anxious Mariner."

Verdict: Very entertaining and well-done mystery series. ***.

ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE

ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958). Director: Bert I. Gordon. 

"He turned your fiance into a doll!" 

Gordon, who had already helmed The Amazing Colossal Man and its sequel War of the Colossal Beast -- not to mention The Cyclops -- switched from gigantism to miniaturization in this very lower-case Incredible Shrinking Man. A lonely, dotty toy maker, Mr. Franz (John Hoyt), doesn't like anyone -- even his secretaries -- to leave him, and shrinks them down to doll-size, where they stay in suspended animation in cases until he decides to revive them for parties and the like. [There are hints that Franz has shrunken the old mail man, but we never see the guy thereafter.] Franz' latest victims include receptionist Sally (June Kenny), salesman Bob (John Agar), and Laurie Mitchell, the Queen of Outer Space herself. Franz has an old friend, Emile (Michael Mark), who is a puppeteer, and the climax takes place in a theater where Emile is performing. [Emile is also a bit batty. He suggests that he and Franz have a night cap and says "I'll pick you up at noon." The cinematographer is Ernest Laszlo (!) and the score is by the ever-reliable Albert Glasser. There are a couple of mediocre songs, and an strange little girl who shows up at the toy maker's without any parents in sight. There's some suspense, the pic is watchable, and the effects are typically fair-to-middling. 

Verdict: For those who think small. **1/2.

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958). Director: Edward Bernds.

Now classified as a "camp classic," Queen of Outer Space is simply a really awful movie. Being decked out in CinemaScope and Technicolor only makes its flaws more apparent. A spaceship in 1985 is hurled off course and lands on Venus, which is nothing like the way it's been described by scientists (no explanation is offered for this). Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) has taken over the planet and banished the men whose war-mongering caused so much trouble, but she's just as bad. Zsa Zsa Gabor plays a scientist (yeah -- sure!) who is part of an underground conspiracy against the evil queen, and she and others help the earthmen to save their planet from a destructive blast from the queen's beta disintegrator. With costumes from Forbidden Planet (what an insult!), a plastic spider-prop from World Without End, and almost zero entertainment value, Queen of Outer Space isn't "so bad it's good"-- it's just bad. Slow pacing, a dumb script, and mediocre direction don't help. Some of the actors do the best they can -- Laurie Mitchell isn't bad -- but Zsa Zsa gives one of the worst performances by an actress in a professional (more or less) motion picture. Even Missile to the Moon (1959) and Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1955) were better than this! The bit with a deadly beam destroying a space station has some suspense to it even though the beam seems to come from a dozen different directions. A hilarious sequence has Gabor trying to imitate the queen as if none of the queen's guards would notice her accent!

Verdict: Not even the cheesecake and beefcake can save it. *.

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.