THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947)

Danny Kaye

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947). Director: Norman Z. McLeod.

Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is an editor at a pulp publishing house that puts out magazines of horror and crime. His own life -- living with his unpleasant mother (Fay Bainter) and engaged to an unappreciative fiancee (Ann Rutherford) -- is dull  enough for him to indulge in a variety of fantasies. He imagines himself as a brilliant physician, a famous pilot in the RAF, a riverboat gambler, old west cowboy, and so on. But then he meets a beautiful blond (Virginia Mayo) and his life suddenly gets more exciting -- and dangerous. The blond is named Rosalind, and she gets Mitty involved with deadly spies who are after a book that lists the location of art treasures hidden away from the Nazis. In their attempts to get the book, Mitty almost loses his life on more than one occasion.

Virginia Mayo with Kaye

Walter Mitty holds the attention for the most part, is generally well-acted, and has some clever and amusing moments -- a shot of Whistler's Mother in a bathing suit -- but it just isn't that funny. A routine Kaye does in which he imitates an old music professor goes on forever and hasn't a single laugh. The song numbers by Sylvia Fine, Kaye's wife, are pretty awful. The ever under-rated Virginia Mayo is luminescent, however, and there's some good work from Fritz Feld as a European designer of women's hats. (Kaye later does an imitation of him with some characterizing the caricature as "homosexual," but I doubt if that was the intention.) Thurston Hall is fine as Kaye's boss, who is near-apoplectic at times, and Boris Karloff shows up as a very peculiar psychiatrist.

Boris Karloff with Kaye

Rutherford does a nice job as the fiancee, and Florence Bates is typically on-target and amusing as her somewhat disapproving mother. Bainter [The Children's Hour] makes Mitty's mother a borderline harridan, treating her son like he's a ten-year-old, and she isn't funny enough to make the character palatable; a very good actress but not a skilled comedienne. Gordon Jones of The Green Hornet serial plays a man who has a romantic interest in Rutherford; Konstantin Shayne [The Unknown Man] is a nasty character known as the Boot; and the ever-cadaverous Milton Parsons plays his butler.

Verdict: Kaye running around amiably but not that memorably. **1/2. 

THE CAT CREATURE

Gale Sondergaard and Meredith Baxter

THE CAT CREATURE (1973 telefilm). Director: Curtis Harrington.

Joe Sung (Keye Luke) steals a cat-medallion from a recently opened Egyptian casket, and begins a chain of deaths from a clawed creature that counts him among its victims. The trail leads to Hester Black (Gale Sondergaard), a shady lady who runs an occult shop. Lt March (Stuart Whitman of Eaten Alive), aided by egyptologist Roger Edmonds (David Hedison of The Lost World), investigates the case, which also embroils Hester's new assistant, Rena Carter (Meredith Baxter). While it's fun at first seeing such veteran actors as Kent Smith [Cat People], John Carradine, Luke, Milton Parsons (as a coroner, naturally), and especially an excellent and criminally wasted Sondergaard [The Letter], The Cat Creature is pretty bad, with one of Robert Bloch's least inspired scripts. Tabbie cats are not exactly fearsome animals, for one thing. "Peter Lorre Jr." -- actually a man named Eugene Weingand who pretended to be Lorre's son -- has a small role as a murdered pawnbroker. Baxter is given a pretty embarrassing role to play.

Verdict: Great to see Sondergaard still in top form, but the movie is terrible. *1/2. 

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 GAS HOUSE KIDS IN HOLLYWOOD

Wissler, Bartlett, Bond, and Switzer

THE GAS HOUSE KIDS IN HOLLYWOOD (1947). Director: Edward L. Cahn.

In the third and last "Gas House Kids" film the boys drive all the way out to Hollywood to meet their idol, movie detective Lance Carter (Michael Whalen of Blonde Ice). Along the way they encounter the weird Professor Crawford (the equally weird Milton Parsons), who seems to have some plan to revive his deceased associate in his basement. While the boys -- Alfie/Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), Scat (Rudy Wissler), Chimp (Tommy Bond of Hot Rod), and Orvie (Benny Bartlett) -- bunk with the professor, a couple of crooks are looking for loot in Crawford's creepy old house. The Kids importune Lance Carter to help them solve the case when a body turns up in the swimming pool. The Gas House Kids in Hollywood reminds one of the East Side Kids movies as well as the Bowery Boys films -- indeed Bartlett later played Butch in that series -- and is about on the same level if not worse. The one and only highlight of the film is when Rudy Wissler sings the memorable romantic ballad "I'm So in Love with You." The boys' performances are fine, and they get excellent support from James Burke [Body and Soul] as a police lieutenant, among others, but the movie is almost an effort to sit through.

Verdict: Might give you gas! *1/2.

THE CAPTURE

THE CAPTURE (1950). Director: John Sturges.

When a payroll is robbed, Lin Vanner (Lew Ayres) goes after the alleged thief, Sam Tevlin (Edwin Rand), and kills him. But it develops that Sam might not have been the robber after all. A guilt-racked Vanner goes off and encounters the man's widow, Ellen (Teresa Wright), and becomes both surrogate husband and a father to her young son, Mike (Jimmy Hunt). Not only does Lin have to wonder how Ellen will react when she learns the truth, but he still has to capture the real payroll thieves. Injured and bleeding, Lin tells his story to a local priest, Father Gomez (Victor Jory of A Woman's Secret). The Capture is half-baked and sets up an intriguing situation that it doesn't develop with any dramatic intensity. Ayres [Damian: Omen 2] isn't bad in the lead, but the part requires a more passionate actor. Wright [Something to Live For] and little Jimmy Hunt come off best, and we also have weird Milton Parsons for good measure. William Bakewell and Duncan Renaldo are also in the cast.

Verdict: Holds the attention. **1/2.

CASTLE IN THE DESERT

CASTLE IN THE DESERT (1942). Director: Harry Lachman.

Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) receives a note from a woman named Lucy Manderley (Lenita Lane of The Bat) that asks him to come immediately to her castle located in the Mojave Desert in California. Once he arrives, Charlie learns that Lucy never sent the note, but there has apparently already been one murder. Lucy is a descendant of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, and when a victim or two winds up poisoned, naturally suspicion falls upon her. But there are other suspects: Carl Detheridge (Richard Derr of When Worlds Collide), who worked with Charlie on a previous case; Lucy's husband (Douglass Dumbrille of Alimony), half of whose face is hidden due to a scar; sculptor Watson King (Henry Daniell), who wants to do a bust of Lucy; cadaverous Arthur Fletcher (Milton Parsons), who has a few secrets; the weird fortune teller Madame Saturnia (Ethel Griffies); and others. As the deaths occur, Charlie and the others, including son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), are trapped in the castle without a car or a telephone. There's an apothecary in the basement that contains numerous poisons as well as a torture chamber. Castle in the Desert gets a little silly at times, but it has a good story and is well acted by the principals. Derr and Griffies appeared in previous Chan films but played different characters. This was the last Charlie Chan film produced by Twentieth Century-Fox.

Verdict: Good fun in a creepy castle. ***.

DEAD MEN TELL

Truman Bradley as the mysterious Captain Kane

DEAD MEN TELL (1941). Director: Harry Lachman.

Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) is invited to participate in a treasure hunt for sixty million dollars on Coco's Island, a hunt presided over by the elderly Patience Nodbury (Ethel Griffies). Poor Patience is found dead on the docked ship, the Suva Star, whose Captain Kane (Truman Bradley of The Night Before the Divorce) does his best to keep out of sight as the other passengers embark. Tales of a pirate's ghost give Jimmy Chan (Victor Sen Yung) the willies when an unknown peg-legged man goes about causing mischief. Other suspects besides the captain include prison escapee Lydig (George Reeves); pretty typist Kate (Sheila Ryan of Great Guns); the weird Gene LaFarge (the ever-cadaverous Milton Parsons); perky Laura Thursday (Kay Aldridge); and Dr. Bonney (Lenita Lane of The Mad Magician); among others. If there's any problem with Dead Men Tell it's that the ship never leaves the dock and there's no action on the aforementioned island at all. Still, this has interesting aspects and is well-acted by everyone. Ethel Griffies [Vigil in the Night] is the cast stand-out even if she isn't around too long. As a running gag, Jimmy falls into the water perhaps once too often.

Verdict: More Jimmy hijinks with "Pop." **1/2.

DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME

DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME (1947). Director: John Rawlins. 

The fourth and last of RKO's Dick Tracy features again stars Ralph Byrd -- who is terrific in the part -- as the intrepid detective, this time involved with a gang who use a paralyzing gas to sort of freeze people so that they can walk into banks unobserved and rob them with little effort. The picture is greatly abetted by the presence of Boris Karloff as the killer -- smarter than the usual one, however -- known as Gruesome. A character named X-Ray (Skelton Knaggs) takes one look at Gruesome and says "he certainly is," even though he's even less attractive. A clever bit has Karloff appearing to be dead and waking up in the morgue to smoke a cigarette as an unsuspecting cop goes about his business. Anne Gwynne is perky as Tess Trueheart, if not as sexy as Anne Jeffreys. Cadaverous Milton Parsons is on hand as the frightened Dr. A. Tomic, who's afraid someone is out to kill him. June Clayworth is his assistant I. (Ida) Learned. Byrd saunters through this stuff without ever losing his dignity. These features, while entertaining enough, were never as much fun as the Dick Tracy serials that also starred Byrd. Others in this series were Dick Tracy, Dick Tracy vs. Cueball and Dick Tracy's Dilemma. 

Verdict: No classic, but don't give it the Byrd. **1/2.

DICK TRACY (1942)

DICK TRACY (1945). Director: William Berke. 

The first of four Dick Tracy features stars Morgan Conway as a more-than-acceptable Tracy investigating a series of murders committed by "Splitface" (referring to a scar), played by Mike Mazurki. [One of the problems with the film, although it's entertaining, is that the suspense is minimized because we know all along who the killer is, a serious mistake, frankly.] Anne Jeffreys makes a pretty sexy Tess Trueheart. Equally pretty Jane Greer plays the saucy daughter of one of the potential victims; she's always making a jealous Tess nervous. The cadaverous Milton Parsons is well cast (as usual) as the undertaker, Deathridge. Mazurki is fine as the villain of the piece. A fast pace helps smooth over the flaws. Followed by Dick Tracy vs. Cueball. Also known as Dick Tracy, Detective. 

Verdict: You can't keep a good Dick down. **1/2.