FEAR NO MORE

Mala Powers appeals to Jacques Bergerac for help

FEAR NO MORE (1961). Director: Bernard Wiesen. 

Sharon Carlin (Mala Powers of Edge of Doom) is having a bad day. A man points a gun at her in a train compartment and accuses her of murdering the dead blonde whose body is nearby. This man disappears and a police officer (Robert Karnes) shows up and tries to take her into custody. When she runs off she is nearly run over by Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac of Twist of Fate), who is travelling with his young son. Paul eventually comes to care about Sharon and tries to help her figure out what's going on, especially when her employer, Milo Seymour (John Harding), denies all knowledge of sending Sharon on that train trip. Then Mrs. Seymour, for whom Sharon was hired as  a companion, shows up but is a completely different woman (Helena Nash). Still Paul supports Sharon until he learns that she was in a mental institution and may have murdered her last elderly employer. Still, something just doesn't sit right with Paul ... 

Powers with Jon Baer

Fear No More will hold your attention as it maneuvers the various twists and turns of the interesting plot, although Sharon's actions are often stupid, and a lot of the details of the alleged plot she's gotten herself into don't make much sense when all is said and done. However, Powers gives a good accounting of herself and she gets good support from Bergerac, Harding, Nash, and John Baer [Terry and the Pirates] as Keith, a tippling friend of hers who comes to an bad end. Anna Lee Carroll is also good as Paul's ex-wife, Denise. The picture leads up to a tense confrontation at a cabin in the woods. 

Verdict: Intriguing if imperfect mystery-thriller with a good cast. ***. 

CITY BENEATH THE SEA (1953)

Robert Ryan and Mala Powers

CITY BENEATH THE SEA (1953). Director: Budd Boetticher. 

Brad Carlton (Robert Ryan) and Tony Barlett (Anthony Quinn) are salvage divers hired to look for a million dollars worth of gold on a ship that went down with all hands off the coast of Jamaica. Initially, they are told to call off the search as hopeless, but a variety of interested parties know the location of the ship -- right near the undersea ruins of Port Royal, destroyed by earthquake in 1692. When Tony throws in with some suspicious characters, Brad decides to mount his own above-board operation to keep his pal out of jail. But if the misunderstanding between them wasn't enough, they also have a new undersea quake to contend with ... 

Robert Ryan with Anthony Quinn

If City Beneath the Sea sounds exciting, be forewarned that it is nearly a complete stinker. It's hard to imagine that two major stars like Ryan and Quinn could have wound up in such a tacky, dull, below-routine affair that nearly talks itself to death and is even boring during the climax! The FX budget looks like it might have amounted to $1.99. Admittedly, Universal was no MGM, but the production values for this -- considering the players -- are shockingly poor. Ryan and Quinn give good performances, as do the ladies in their lives, Mala Powers [Unknown Terror] as the owner of a charter boat, and Suzan Ball as the sexy singer, Verita (who saucily delivers "Handle with Care") -- and there are some decent supporting players (including Woody Strode who gets very little to do) -- but the movie spends too much time on extraneous matters and not enough on the matter at hand. 

Can the excitement never end?

The surprising thing is that City Beneath the Sea isn't any better than a knock-off entitled Port Sinister that came out the same year. It's been years since I saw the latter -- and I remember that it was hardly a great movie -- but it had more atmosphere and more interesting elements than this dull picture does. In Port Sinister the city of Port Royal (actually a whole island) rises from the watery depths and there is not only a search for treasure and the usual complement of desperadoes, but even a couple of nasty dog-sized crabs that try to snack on people. In any case, it was more fun that this dog of a movie. Ryan and Quinn (admittedly his best work was ahead of him) must have read the script but perhaps they were hoping it could all be put together in the editing room. It wasn't.

Verdict: This could have used some giant crabs. **. 

EDGE OF DOOM

Farley Granger and Dana Andrews

EDGE OF DOOM (1950). Director: Mark Robson.

Father Thomas (Dana Andrews) tells a colleague (Robert Karnes)  -- who wants to leave this impoverished parish and go elsewhere -- the story of young Martin Lynn (Farley Granger), and how meeting him helped renew his faith. Martin's father was a criminal who committed suicide, and he hates the church because he was denied a Christian burial. Now Martin needs a raise to send his ill mother out of town, but his boss can't afford it. When the mother dies, Martin insists that old Father Kirkman (Harold Vermilyea of Manhandled) -- the one who denied the burial -- make up for all the money his mother gave to the church by paying for an elaborate funeral. Kirkman objects and things go downhill from there.

Granger with Mala Powers

Edge of Doom doesn't exactly take an intellectual approach to the material -- few "religious" movies ever do -- but it is nevertheless an interesting picture, and not as simple-minded as it might at first sound. An interesting aspect is the depiction of Father Kirkman. While he is not quite an ogre, he is also not the beneficent Bing Crosby-type of priest, being generally grumpy (and not in a cute way) and unpleasant, out of touch with his parishioners -- I wonder what the Catholic church thought of how he was portrayed. It would also be all too easy to dismiss Father Thomas as a bleeding heart who confuses reasons (for a person's behavior) with excuses, but it is easy to see why he has sympathy for Martin despite the young man's actions. Oddly, virtually no sympathy is expressed for the victim, despite his being an elderly priest! But this is typical of movies that focus more on troubled-young-men who become killers than they do on the ones they kill (especially if the killers are handsome).

In deep trouble: Farley Granger

The performances in the film are generally good. Granger at 25 may be a little old for the part but he certainly has affecting moments. Andrews is solid and convincing in an unusual role for him. Mala Powers is sensitive and effective as Martin's girlfriend. There is also good work from Paul Stewart as a neighbor, Robert Keith as a detective, Vermilyea as the older priest, Houseley Stevenson [Dark Passage] as Martin's boss at the flower shop, and Mabel Paige as an old woman who sees the priest killer outside the rectory and becomes a witness. Adele Jergens is a bit unsatisfactory as Stewart's girlfriend, however, especially in a scene she has with Andrews and Granger at the rectory. Douglas Fowley and Ellen Corby have smaller roles. Oddly Joan Evans, who was with Granger in Roseanna McCoy the previous year, receives top billing with him and Andrews but only has a small and relatively unimportant role as Father Kirkman's niece; she has one tiny scene with Granger. NOTE: Apparently the scenes with Andrews telling Martin's story were added after the film's initial release, as some feel the whole point of the movie and the novel it is based on is that the Church really can't do much to solve the problems of its parishioners.

Verdict: Imperfect but interesting crime drama. ***.

OUTRAGE (1950)

OUTRAGE (1950). Director: Ida Lupino.

Ann Walton (Mala Powers) is a happy young women who has just been proposed to by Jim Owens (Robert Clarke), the man she's in love with. She's looking forward to a happy future when her future is compromised by a run-in with a rapist who assaults her. The first half of Outrage realistically details the effects of rape on a young woman, as Ann withdraws from her friends and family, shuns her fiance, and feels guilt and shame over an incident that was certainly not her fault. She eventually suffers a breakdown and runs off, coming under the protection of a kindly, attractive priest (Tod Andrews). But then the movie descends into melodrama, and Powers, frankly, isn't up to the challenges of the role. What could have been a powerful film is simply deadly dull. Lupino's direction isn't bad, but it doesn't do much to make the script, weak as it is, come alive. Robert Clarke, who appeared in several genre items in the fifties such as The Hideous Sun Demon, makes a nice impression as the boyfriend (Clarke did a lot of work on nighttime soaps during the 70's.) Powers appeared in Unknown Terror and Andrews was in From Hell it Came.

Verdict: Not memorable but deserves an A for effort, and for tackling a controversial theme. *1/2.

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.