GIRL HAPPY

Shelley Fabares and Elvis Presley

GIRL HAPPY (1965). Director: Boris Sagal.

Club owner Big Frank (Harold J. Stone) is afraid of what might happen if his 21-year-old daughter, Valerie (Shelley Fabares), goes to Fort Lauderdale for vacation, so he hires singer Rusty Wells (Elvis Presley) to be her secret chaperone. In the meantime, Rusty does his best to romance the more voluptuous Deena (Mary Ann Mobley), but his burgeoning feelings for Valerie get in the way. Girl Happy seems inspired by Where the Boys Are, made five years earlier, which had similar hijinks occurring in Fort Lauderdale. Cliche follows cliche as Elvis and his combo -- Joby Baker [Looking for Love], Gary Crosby [Mardi Gras], and Jimmy Hawkins -- warble some pleasant if minor songs, the snappiest of which is "Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce." Nita Talbot shows up briefly as a sexy dancer, Jackie Coogan is a cop, and Fabrizio Mioni romances both Valerie and Deena as an Italian exchange student. This is another in a long line of crappy Elvis Presley musicals that are often indistinguishable from one another. Presley performs nicely, but his character is rather negative. At first thinking that Valerie is unattractive, he immediately pronounces her a "loser." Fabares has a nice enough figure, but she was clearly told: "shoulders back, chest thrust forward." Peter Brooks [The Girls on the Beach] offers some fun as the intellectual Brentwood Von Durgenfeld, who in movies like this only elicits scorn, especially regarding his preference for brains over beauty. His scene with Nita Talbot provides the movie's only laugh, however.

Verdict: Elvis schlock with a couple of decent tunes. *1/2.

THIS SIDE OF THE LAW

Kent Smith and Robert Douglas

THIS SIDE OF THE LAW (1950). Director: Richard L. Bare.

Down and outer David Cummins (Kent Smith) is hired by lawyer Philip Cagle (Robert Douglas) to impersonate his client, Mr. Taylor, a man who has been missing for nearly seven years. David is able to fool the family dog, but he also has to fool his brother, Calder (John Alvin); his sister-in-law, Nadine (Janis Paige), who was having an affair with Taylor; and even his wife, Evelyn (Viveca Lindfors), who reveals that her husband was basically a contemptible person. Cagle claims that the point of the impersonation is to protect Evelyn's interests, but there may be something much more dangerous going on. Most of the story takes place on a creepy estate called Sans Souci, with a big house nestled nearly at the edge of a cliff. Smith [Paula] is okay in the lead, albeit typically bland; Lindfors [These are the Damned] seems atypically disinterested; but Douglas, Alvin [Shanghai Chest], and especially Paige are more on the mark. The trouble with the movie is that the characters are paper-thin, and the plot unravels much too easily; it has a nice ending, however. Nita Talbot is listed prominently in the movie's credits, but she seems to have been left on the cutting room floor. Her character of "Miss Goff" doesn't resemble the older secretary in the movie at all. Bare directed the classic "To Serve Man" episode on The Twilight Zone, more than one Virginia Mayo movie, and the split-screen horror film Wicked, Wicked, among others. Douglas was a busy actor who later directed many television episodes.

Verdict: Film noir lite with an insufficient script. **1/2 out of 4.

ISLAND CLAWS

One Might Big Crab! Note two men at lower right.

ISLAND CLAWS (1980). Director: Herman Cardenas.

Pete Adams (Steve Hanks) is a teaching assistant and researcher working with Dr. McNeal (Barry Nelson), who hopes to increase the size of crabs as, presumably, a food source. Pete is attracted to a woman, Jan (Jo McDonnell), who is doing a story on McNeal's work, but, implausibly, is unaware that her father was driving the car in which his parents died years ago. Pete's surrogate parents are Moody (Robert Lansing) and Rosie (Nita Talbot), the former of whom owns the tavern where Rosie works as barmaid. Meanwhile, an accident at a nearby reactor unleashes radioactive waste into the water. The combination of growth hormones and radioactivity engenders bizarre behavior in ordinary crabs, as well as creates a crab of especially humongous stature. Island Claws combines a "nature turned nasty" plot about killer animals running amok with a giant monster on the loose. The scenes with the small crabs moving en masse toward potential victims are creepy, with the crustaceans being good little actors, but they never really seem to be "attacking." The big crab -- yes, there's only one [at least Attack of the Crab Monsters had two crabs] -- appears to be a full-size mechanical model that lacks great mobility but is efficient enough and is generally masked in darkness. A sub-plot involves a family of Haitians who sneak ashore and are at first blamed for some of the strange deaths in the area. There is some attempt at creating three-dimensional characters, and the acting is generally good. Bill Justis' eerie music is a plus. Island Claws holds the attention and isn't badly done, but ultimately there's not enough of the monster. Ricou Browning, who played the Gill Man in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequels, was co-scripter along with Jack Cowden.

Verdict: Has its moments, but can't beat Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters. **1/2.

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST

The movie premiere that climaxes Locust

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1975). Director: John Schlesinger.

"I could only let a fabulously rich man love me. I could only love a man criminally handsome. Please try to understand."

In Hollywood of the 1930's, artist Tod Hackett (William Atherton) lives in the same complex with aspiring star Faye Greener (Karen Black) and her father, an old-time performer named Harry (Burgess Meredith). Although Tod is very drawn to Faye, she wants a man with money, and winds up sexlessly cohabiting with the somewhat strange but wealthy Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland). There is a nasty-minded midget (Billy Barty) and a bratty Shirley Temple clone (actually played by the male Jackie Earle Haley), as well as two guys who run cockfights out of Homer's garage. After two hours of meandering, the film arrives at a climax at a movie premiere that seems intended to wake the benumbed audience out of their lethargy but is too little, too late. When The Day of the Locust was released, it was overpraised in some quarters because of the admittedly vivid climactic riot and a "daring" scene of a child being stomped to death, which fooled people into thinking this piece of treacle was more adult and "meaningful" than it really was. Time has, unfortunately, not made the movie any better. Karen Black probably gives her all-time worst performance, so irritating is she that she almost sinks the movie right from the first, and Burgess Meredith isn't that much better. Atherton isn't bad at all, but Sutherland gives the best performance as Homer. Barty can do nothing to make his character less of a caricature, but Haley in drag is certainly vivid and memorable. Still, the movie presents unpleasant, and worse, uninteresting characters that you simply don't care about. Natalie Schafer, Nita Talbot, and William Castle [as a director] have small roles, as does Geraldine Page as an evangelist. A scene when a set collapses is well done from a technical standpoint. This was based on a novel by Nathaniel West; I don't know how faithful Waldo Salt's screenplay is to the source material, but it's pretty bad. The absolutely most disgusting scene shows poor Billy Barty kissing a rooster on its bloody beak. Dick Powell Jr., plays his father at the premiere-within-the-movie, which explains why he looks so much like the actor. Although Schlesinger was considered a "serious" director as, say, compared to Robert Aldrich, this movie is in reality little better than Aldrich's atrocious Legend of Lylah Clare! This is almost as bad as Schlesinger's Darling.

Verdict: Just a mess -- and boring to boot! **.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND

ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952). Director: Nicholas Ray. 

"Sometimes people who are never alone are the loneliest." 

Two lonely, tormented individuals -- Jim, a sadistic cop (Robert Ryan) and Mary, a blind woman (Ida Lupino) -- are brought together in an unusual, heart-breaking fashion in this unusual love story/crime thriller. Tough cop Jim Wilson is advised by his colleagues and his boss (Ed Begley) that he's losing control and is assigned to a murder in a small upstate town. There he meets the vulnerable if strong blind woman whose brother may be the chief suspect. While Lupino is perhaps a bit too restrained as Mary, Robert Ryan is terrific as Jim, and Ward Bond is also outstanding as the overwrought father of the murdered girl. Sumner Williams also makes an impression as the mentally-disturbed Danny. Nita Talbot has a brief but compelling bit as a sexy underaged gal in a bar who asks Ryan for a drink. This is a moody piece, full of poignant moments, held together by an excellent score by Bernard Herrmann. It's too bad some of the romantic strains are muted; Herrmann wrote a nocturne based on this score that is just beautiful. 

Verdict: Not for all tastes, but compelling and different. ***.