BURY ME DEAD

June Lockhart and Hugh Beaumont

BURY ME DEAD (1947), Director: Bernard Vorhaus.

"I'm sorry you're alive -- I wish you were dead."

Barbara Carlin (June Lockhart) is supposedly burned to death in a barn fire, but she shows up alive and well at her own funeral. Now she and her husband, Rod (Mark Daniels), have to figure out which woman's body is actually buried in Barbara's grave, and whether it was Barbara or this unknown woman who was the killer's target. Suspects include Barbara's neurotic and hateful sister, Rusty (Cathy O'Donnell); Barbara's boxing paramour George (Greg McClure); Rod's girlfriend, Helen (Sonia Darrin); Barbara's lawyer, Michael (Hugh Beaumont); or even the butler (Milton Parsons). Bury Me Dead is one of PRC's better movies, with a neat premise, plenty of plot twists, and interesting characters and performances. The main problem with the movie is that it mixes far too much foolish domestic comedy in with the suspense. Lockhart makes a good heroine, and Mark Daniels [The Invisible Avenger], a handsome and pleasant leading man with charm to spare, deserved a much bigger career. Cathy O'Donnell [Ben-Hur] certainly makes her mark as the nearly-demented Rusty, and Hugh Beaumont's work is on the money as well. McClure [Sky Liner] is fine as the boxer who seems at least one bulb short of a chandelier. The picture consists mostly of flashbacks, and there's a brief if fairly exciting "cat fight" between Lockhart and Darrin. Vorhaus also directed So Young, So Bad with Paul Henreid.

Verdict: PRC nearly presents a real winner. ***.

THE INVISIBLE AVENGER

THE INVISIBLE AVENGER (1958). Directed by James Wong Howe and John Sledge.

Richard Derr plays the famous Shadow, aka Lamont Cranston, in this pretty much lost curiosity which was one of the few films (co-) directed by famous cinematographer James Wong Howe. The story line has The Shadow getting involved with South American revolutionaries, an exiled King, and his evil lookalike brother, as well as various hoodlums. Reportedly this was originally the pilot for a possible Shadow TV series which received a theatrical release instead, and on the production level it does resemble a TV show. Throughout much of the movie Cranston is accompanied by a man named Jogendra (Mark Daniels), who is his teacher (even though Daniels doesn't seem much older than Derr). The Shadow is able to hypnotize people into thinking he's disappeared, effectively making himself an "invisible" avenger. There's some eerie music and a fair amount of atmosphere, but this is largely forgettable. It's unlikely that the resultant TV series would have amounted to much.

Verdict: Make like a shadow and disappear. *1/2.