TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER

TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (1976). Director: Peter Sykes.

Author John Verney (Richard Widmark), who frequently writes on the occult, is importuned by a frightened man named Beddows (Denholm Elliott) to look after his daughter, Catherine (Nastassja Kinski), after she arrives in London. Catherine is a nun who belongs to the Church of the Children of the Lord, a sect that worships Astaroth. The leader of the church, Father Michael (Christopher Lee), is anxious to get his hands on Catherine because of certain bloody rites that must be performed. Initially sweet and compliant, Sister Catherine eventually becomes a danger to Verney's friends, including his literary agent Anna (Honor Blackman) and her boyfriend David (Anthony Valentine). Catherine makes her way to Father Michael as her own father writhes in terror and Verney learns what he can do to fight against the god -- or devil -- Astaroth's entry into earth via Catherine (or something like that). 

To the Devil a Daughter is a co-release of Hammer Studios but don't expect a Hammer classic with this atrocious movie. Most of the actors give it their all (one suspects Widmark wishes he had stayed in America) but they're fighting a losing battle with a hopelessly erratic script and sequences that are so bad they have to be seen to be believed. The last quarter of the film is hilarious, especially a sequence when a character is embroiled in fire and reduced to ashes so quickly that it is more comical than frightening. A bit of business in which a woman commits suicide by draining all of her blood into those special plastic bags turns hysterical when Chris Lee intones with consummate understatement: "she gave her life's blood." An orgy sequence is equally laughable. It's hard to imagine how anything could have been made out of this awful movie, which even Chris Lee can't save. 

Verdict: One of the worst Hammer movies ever made. *1/2. 

NIGHT AND THE CITY

Richard Widmark

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950). Director: Jules Dassin.

In London Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark of Don't Bother to Knock) is a hustler for a night club and is always coming up with one get-rich-quick scheme after another. His loving girlfriend, Mary (Gene Tierney), sings at the same club and tries her best to keep Harry's flights of fancy from careening out of control. He meets the son, Nikolas (Ken Richmond), of a famous retired wrestler. Gregorius (Stanislaus Sbyszko), and decides to become the younger man's manager. But this doesn't sit well with Gregorius' other son, Kristo (Herbert Lom), who has the fight racket in London sewn up. Besides, Harry needs money to stage a match, and if he can't get it from the corpulent club owner, Philip Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan of Hell's Island), he'll get it from the man's wife, Helen (Googie Withers), who has a thing for him. But  Harry may find he's bitten off more than he can chew as he attempts to balance all these factions and emerge a winner ...

Tierney and Widmark

Although he does over-act at times (although this also gives a hint of Harry's essentially neurotic and desperate nature), Widmark gives an excellent performance in this, and he's able to make the man sympathetic, despite his flaws, as well. Gene Tierny has such a small role, and is off-screen for so much time, that you wonder why she even bothered to take the part, but she is nevertheless effective. Sbyszko and Richmond were professional wrestlers in real life and are pretty good, especially the former, considering they weren't really actors. Herbert Lom gives another sharp and dynamic performance as Kristo. Sullivan, who had a lengthy career, adds some nuances to his portrayal of Philip, and Googie Withers, who also had a long career, is quite effective as his unhappy wife, Helen. Mike Mazurki scores as the wrestler known as "The Strangler" and Hugh Marlowe, although his acting is solid, is kind of lost in this crowd as an upstairs neighbor who is carrying a torch for Mary. One must also note the contributions of cinematographer Max Greene, and composer Benjamin Frankel.

The Connecticut-born Jules Dassin also directed Rififi. Night and the City was remade in 1992 with Robert De Niro in the Harry Fabian role but the film was not well-received.

Verdict: Unusual drama with a rich and interesting cast. ***. 

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK

Marilyn Monroe

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952). Director: Roy Ward Baker. Based on the novel "Mischief" by Charlotte Armstrong.

Eddie Forbes (Elisha Cook Jr.) is an elevator operator at Manhattan's McKinley Hotel who wishes he had never let his niece, Nell (Marilyn Monroe), babysit for the young daughter of guests Peter and Ruth Jones (Jim Backus and Lurene Tuttle of The Manitou). For Nell has been disturbed ever since the man she loved died at sea in a plane crash. It doesn't help that she encounters a pilot named Jed Towers (Richard Widmark), whose girlfriend, Lyn (Anne Bancroft of Gorilla At Large) told him to take a hike because she not only feels they have no future but finds him essentially cold. Confusing Jed with the dead man, Nell becomes increasingly unraveled and things look more and more dangerous for her and the little girl (Donna Corcoran) and possibly Jed as well ... Marilyn Monroe is given a pretty tough assignment to play an emotionally disturbed, indeed mentally ill woman in this, and her performance ranges from some quietly effective moments to the occasionally embarrassing one; but all in all she's good and may even manage to wrangle a tear or two from some viewers. Bancroft and Widmark are excellent, and there is also notable work from young Corcoran, as well as Verna Felton (the stern maid on I Love Lucy) and Don Beddoe, as a nosy hotel guest and her husband. Gloria Blondell is a nightclub photographer, Jeanne Cagney plays a telephone operator, and Michael Ross [Attack of the 50 Foot Woman] is the house dick.  The ending to this is rather moving, and none of the major characters are untouched by the experience. This was released by Twentieth Century Fox with big-name leads, but it's essentially a "B" movie with a short running time. 

Verdict: Sad story of a grieving, neurotic woman disguised as a competent little thriller. ***. 

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974). Director: Sidney Lumet.

Famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney of Tom Jones) takes over the investigation after a man using an assumed name is murdered, and there turns out to be a whole train load of suspects. In her novel, Agatha Christie's starting off point was the murder of the Lindbergh baby, and the victim was involved in the kidnapping of the child, herein named Daisy Armstrong. In both book and movie Poirot perhaps doesn't exhibit quite as much incredulity as he might have when he learns at least two people on the train just happen to have had ties to the victim (as well as others whose deaths were a direct result of little Daisy's murder). And then things get even stranger, but there's a method to Christie's madness ... This was the first of the big-budget, all-star adaptations of the works of Christie, and it's entertaining if unspectacular. Oscar winner for Best Actor, Finney is nothing like Poirot, but if this is a "stunt" performance, I must say it's an excellent one, although he isn't as good as David Suchet, who later made the role his own. Wendy Hiller gives a positively weird, and one assumes, intentionally comic performance as the aged Princess Dragomiroff. Ingrid Bergman is fine but her very small role hardly deserved the supporting Oscar she received. Similarly, Sir John Gielgud is wonderful, but he's on-screen for only a few minutes; he won a BAFTA award. (Surely Oscars should be reserved for actors who are very much outside their comfort zone, which Finney definitely was). In a terrible performance, Anthony Perkins literally twitches all over the place as the secretary to the dead man; Sean Connery has one strong scene explaining himself to Poirot; Rachel Roberts scores as the princess' maid; Richard Widmark is fine as the victim; Vanessa Redgrave [Camelot] is perfect and lovely as Connery's paramour; and Martin Balsam is a delight as a representative of the train line and a personal friend of Poirot's. Richard Rodney Bennett provided the pastiche Porter score, which lacks the suspense this type of picture requires. Many of the cast members, especially Lauren Bacall as the loud American lady, seem self-conscious.

In addition to the 2017 remake, there have been other adaptations of the famous story. Alfred Molina played Poirot in a 2001 television version. David Suchet again essayed Poirot in a 2010 TV movie  which added a prologue, with an adulteress being stoned to death, that was not in the novel, and an epilogue wherein Poirot expresses moral outrage over the murder on the train which he does not express in the book; later he softens his attitude due to the murder of that woman at the opening. Suchet is especially excellent in this and it's amusing to see Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey playing a mere valet. Finally, a Japanese mini-series based on the novel appeared in 2015.

Verdict: Take this train ride or not -- it's up to you. **1/2.

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ROAD HOUSE

Wilde, Lupino and Widmark in a tense moment

ROAD HOUSE (1948). Director: Jean Negulesco.

"Jefty" Robbins (Richard Widmark of Garden of Evil) runs a road house complete with nightclub and bowling alley in a small town with his buddy Pete (Cornel Wilde) as a top employee. Jefty also hires Lily (Ida Lupino of Private Hell 36), upon whom he is struck, as a singer in the club. Jefty seems to think of Lily as his girlfriend even though they've apparently never even kissed, a problem she does not have with Pete, who succumbs to her charms, and vice versa, to the strains of Wagnerian opera on the radio. Clueless Jefty plans to marry Lily, and doesn't take it well when he discovers where her true feelings lie. Before long, he comes up with a plan for revenge ... Road House is one of those twisted melodramas that might have amounted to more than an entertaining time passer with a little more care and a much better script, but it never plumbs below the surface. One very amusing aspect of the film is Lily's "singing." Lupino's voice is not dubbed, and is absolutely awful, although she's a good enough actress to put over a number like "The Right Kind of Lovin'." In real life, the soused patrons of the club would have been tearing the gal to figurative shreds, but only in Hollywood can there be a rapt audience for someone with no talent. As waitress Suzie (Celeste Holm) says of Lily: "She does more without a voice than anybody I've ever heard." The real howler comes when Wagner plays on the radio and Lily tells Pete -- not without a trace of irony -- that her father told her that someday she'd sing at the Met! Lupino is swell, Wilde [The Naked Prey] is suitably manly and handsome and generally good, Holm has little to do (although she is billed above the title with her three more important co-stars) and adds little nuance to her role, and the picture is stolen by a splendid Widmark as the spoiled little boy in a man's body. Those viewers looking for possible homoeroticism in the relationship between Jefty and Pete should look elsewhere -- it's easy to imagine but it really isn't there, in my opinion.

Verdict: Once you get past Ida's singing, this is fun if distinctly minor. **1/2.

GARDEN OF EVIL

Gary Cooper contemplates eternity

GARDEN OF EVIL (1954). Director: Henry Hathaway.

"Age before beauty." -- Richard Widmark to Gary Cooper.

Down in Mexico, a desperate woman, Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward), importunes a group of strangers to take a long trip through Apache country to rescue her husband, John (Hugh Marlowe), who is trapped in a mine. The strangers consist of Hooker (Gary Cooper), Fiske (Richard Widmark), Luke (Cameron Mitchell), and Vincente (Victor Manuel Mendoza). As they effect this rescue, the restless Apaches are keeping watch ... That's the slight storyline to this mediocre picture that does boast some stunning CinemaScope photography (Krasner and Stahl), beautiful location settings, and a score by Bernard Herrmann that is much, much better than the movie deserves. As for the acting, Cooper is listless, Mendoza is fine, Marlowe [Elmer Gantry] is relatively terrible, Hayward is just okay, Widmark [The Tunnel of Love] has a bit more vitality, and Mitchell [Man-eater of Hydra] comes off best as the deceptively friendly Luke. In its attitude towards Native Americans, this is not a progressive western, but then in this pretentious and weak screenplay all of the characters are paper thin. Rita Moreno shows up very briefly as a saloon singer.

Verdict: Great to look at and listen to, but that's it! **.

KISS OF DEATH

Victor Mature and Richard Widmark

KISS OF DEATH (1947). Director: Henry Hathaway.

Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) has already served one term in prison, when in desperation he participates in another robbery and is caught. The D.A. (Brian Donlevy) offers him a deal if he names names, but Bianco refuses to squeal. But when he finds out that his wife is dead and his two adorable little girls are in an orphanage, he wants to see them and changes his tune. Unfortunately, this brings him into deadly conflict with the gleefully sociopathic Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark), who thinks nothing of pushing an old lady in a wheelchair (Mildred Dunnock) to her death in the film's most famous scene. Mature gives one of his best performances in this, and Widmark is also swell, although at times he seems like Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, and at other times like Leo Gorcey of the Eastside Kids. Donlevy is also solid, as is lovely Coleen Gray [The Leech Woman] as Nettie, who loves Nick. Taylor Holmes registers as Nick's deceptively pleasant defense attorney. There are tense scenes that work without music but could have used some. Best shot: a sneering Tommy Udo through the slit in a curtain. This picture almost qualifies as film noir except there's no femme fatale, just a brief appearance by one of Udo's girlfriends. This was Coleen Gray's first major role and she delivers.

Verdict: Well-done and well-acted crime film. ***.

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

Note that "Judgment" is misspelled!

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961). Producer/director: Stanley Kramer.

"There can never be any justification for these [acts] -- not in generations, not in centuries."

"It's not the killing that's the problem -- it's the disposal of the bodies."

"We beat the greatest war machine since Alexander the Great -- and now the boy scouts take over."

In 1948, after the "big guns" in the National Socialist Party have already been put on trail, some "smaller fry" -- judges who helped enact the illegal and immoral laws of Nazi Germany -- are also put on trial in Nuremberg. The presiding judge is Dan Heywood (Spencer Tracy), with Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) as prosecutor and Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) as the defense attorney. The most famous defendant is a well-respected jurist named Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Rolfe claims that the U.S. can hardly act morally superior when they dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while Heywood discovers that virtually no one in Nuremberg will admit they knew what was going on in the concentration camps. Meanwhile Lawson is told that the U.S. will need Germany as an ally in the cold war and convicting some of its leading citizens may not be such a good idea. But Lawson was one of the men who liberated the camps, he has horrifying memories, and shows films (actual documentary footage) of Nazi atrocities -- the ovens, children sentenced to death, piles of rotting corpses, starved and frightened human beings, drawings made on human skin, severed heads (all of which is quite hard to watch but highly necessary for the movie's ultimate impact) -- and isn't about to let these guys walk if he can help it. Only two years after the end of the war, he fears that the world is already losing interest. Schell won an Oscar, and deserved it. Widmark gives one of his best performances, and Tracy is superb. Marlene Dietrich also turns in an excellent performance as the widow of a Nazi who has already been executed, and Judy Garland has a fine turn as a woman who was put in jail at sixteen for alleged perjury when a Jewish father figure was accused of intimate relations with her, an Aryan. Montgomery Clift is also superb as a Jewish witness who was forcibly sterilized years before and argues that one could not expect him to be entirely rational after such an experience. Lancaster is a comparative lightweight in this cast, and isn't well-cast as a German, but he does his best and has a few good moments. Some of the best scenes are between Tracy and Dietrich as they try to understand each other's viewpoints, particularly a scene in a lively beer hall after Heywood has seen the disturbing movies taken in the camps and Dietrich protests that few Germans really knew what was going on -- but he just can't quite buy it. There are many other good supporting performances in the film, especially Virginia Christine as a German housekeeper who argues that Hitler did some good things along with the bad. Judgment at Nuremberg covers all viewpoints and all the bases in highly dramatic fashion, and while over three hours long, is never boring. It ends in a most satisfying fashion, and Tracy's final lines -- written by screenwriter Abby Mann -- pretty much sum it up.

Verdict: A masterpiece about a shameful event in history that must never be forgotten. ****.

THE COBWEB

THE COBWEB (1955). Director: Vincente Minelli.

"Van Gogh didn't sell a painting in his lifetime, but now they're worth thirty million. They weren't that bad then and they're not that good now, so who's crazy?"

The patients and staff of a Clinic for Nervous Disorders become embroiled in -- believe it or not -- a fight over which drapes to hang in the library. Some want an attractive if standard pattern, while others, such as Dr. Stewart McIver (Richard Widmark) want to transfer drawings done by a young patient, Stevie (John Kerr), to silk screenings and hang them instead. The complications of the staff's private lives don't help much. Dr. Devanal (Charles Boyer), the former head of the clinic now in a sort of advisory capacity, is an unregenerate skirt-chaser whose secretary (Adele Jergens) is in love with him. Dr. McIver's wife Karen (Gloria Grahame) feels neglected by her husband, who is slowly being drawn to the widowed Activities Director Meg Rinehart (Lauren Bacall). Then there's Miss Inch (Lillian Gish), the prickly, strong-willed spinster with territorial instincts who objects to anyone she sees as threatening to her authority. This is an interesting if overlong melodrama/soap opera with outstanding performances by Gish [great in a mostly unsympathetic part] and Grahame, and very good performances by most of the rest of the cast. The love story between Stevie and fellow patient Sue (Susan Strasberg) is kind of boring, however. Oscar Levant is quite amateurish as a neurotic patient and his scenes should have been cut as they add nothing to the picture. Fay Wray, Myra Marsh [from the operetta episode of I Love Lucy] and Virginia Christine appear in smaller roles. Christine had much bigger roles in The Mummy's Curse, Three Brave Men, and Nightmare (1956). She later became "Mrs. Olsen" of coffee commercial fame.

Verdict: Over-baked but enjoyable for the most part. ***.

TIME LIMIT

TIME LIMIT (1957). Director: Karl Malden.

Colonel Bill Edwards (Richard Widmark, pictured, who also co-produced) leads an investigation into the charges that Major Cargill (Richard Basehart) collaborated with the enemy while a POW during the Korean War. Edwards wants to give the man a fair hearing, but he isn't helped by the fact that Cargill not only won't defend himself but seems to be hiding something. This is an excellent adaptation of a very strong play that is both intelligent, uncompromising, and compassionate, and poses a poignant moral dilemma to boot. Widmark has never been better, Basehart is wonderful, and the entire cast is top-notch: Martin Balsam as Edwards' assistant, Sgt. Baker; Dolores Michaels as his secretary, Corporal Evans; Rip Torn as Lt. Miller, one of the men who served under Cargill; June Lockhart as Cargill's wife; and especially Carl Benton Reid as General Connors, whose son died in the same POW camp where Cargill was imprisoned. This was the only film Karl Malden, who does not appear in the film, ever directed, and he does a fine job. Powerful, moving material with a peerless cast.

Verdict: Strong stuff. ***1/2.

RUN FOR THE SUN

RUN FOR THE SUN (1956). Director: Roy Boulting. 

Although this will probably hold your attention if you're unfamiliar with earlier versions, this is a fairly lamentable remake of the far superior Most Dangerous Game. Whereas the first film got us right into the action, this variation takes forever to get to the main event, with a protracted sequence wherein Jane Greer plays a magazine reporter trying to find out why famous writer Michael Latimer (Richard Widmark) vanished to Mexico when he was at the top of his game. After an hour or so of this, Widmark offers to fly Greer out of the village he's buried himself in but they crash land in an even more remote area where Trevor Howard and Peter van Eyck have taken up residence. The bad guys in this picture don't actually hunt humans as the villain did in The Most Dangerous Game -- stripping this version of the story's most interesting aspect -- they just don't want Widmark and Greer to get away knowing their secret (which isn't much anyway, although one can understand why they don't want their uninvited guests going off and telling anyone). The scene when the plane nearly crashes is well done, but the climactic chase is slack and unexciting. Roy Boulting was never a good choice to direct thrillers; years later he made a botch of Twisted Nerve. Jane Greer radiates her usual refined sexiness and Widmark, while never a great actor, is full of his usual insolent authority. Trevor Howard is merely wasted in a throwaway part. The music is okay but the widescreen cinematography is unimpressive. It all looks like it was shot on a back lot anyway. 

Verdict: Watch The Most Dangerous Game instead. **.

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE (1958). Director: Gene Kelly.

Richard Widmark plays a married man who comes to the conclusion that he actually fathered the baby that he and his wife (Doris Day) are to receive from an adoption agency – and that the mother is the woman who came to assess their suitability (Gia Golan)! When the baby arrives, even Day is convinced the tyke looks just like Widmark at that age. This amusing, fast-paced, well-acted comedy keeps you guessing over this bizarre situation until the conclusion. Day is less cloying than usual, although still a bit too perky for my taste. Widmark displays hithero unexplored comic talents as her befuddled husband. Gig Young and Elisabeth Fraser are very good as the next-door neighbors, who have several children; Young tries to offer Widmark points on the fine art of philandering in one scene. Elizabeth Wilson is as sharp and fun as ever as another woman from the adoption agency. A very pleasant comedy with a risque premise that is absurd but certainly gets points for originality. Based on the Broadway show (in which Wilson, but none of the other film principals, appeared).

Verdict: Good fun! ***.