JOHNNY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

William Terry, Simone Simon and James Ellison

JOHNNY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1944). Director: Joe May.

In this very weird movie a young lady named Kathie (Simone Simon of Girls' Dormitory) takes a train to Washington D.C. and becomes the victim of a tiny bad luck gremlin named Rumplestilzken (voiced by Bugs Bunny's Mel Blanc). She winds up taking the apartment of a departing marine named Johnny (William Terry), but learns too late that he has given out keys to friends, soldiers, lady friends, and other apartment dwellers who need to use the bathroom. (Kathie makes all sorts of repairs to the apartment, but it never occurs to her to have the lock changed!) A sailor named Mike (James Ellison of Next Time I Marry) is one of the interlopers, along with his pal Jack (Chick Chandler of Lost Continent), and he finds himself vying with a returning Johnny, on leave, for Kathie's affections. The first thing you think while watching the beginning of this movie is that it could be either cute or stupid, and unfortunately it's much more of the latter than the former. The cast is appealing, especially a winsome Simon and sensitive Terry, and there are a couple of chuckles, but mostly it's more irritating than amusing. The ending is interesting, however, as you wait to find out which man Kathie is going to agree to marry and there's a surprise or two. Poor Rondo Hatton [House of Horrors] has a bit where he plays an undertaker who frightens Kathie. Grady Sutton and Robert Mitchum have smaller roles and are swell.

Verdict:  Seems different at first but is really the same old silly stuff. **.

THE BRUTE MAN

THE BRUTE MAN (1946). Director: Jean Yarbrough.

In this unofficial sequel to House of Horrors, the Creeper (Rondo Hatton) is back creeping about and periodically snapping people's spines. This time the character is given a name, Hal Moffet, and back story. Moffet was a cocky college football hero whose face was disfigured in a chemistry explosion [Hatton's disfigurement was due to acromegaly due to exposure to poison gas during WW1]. Unlike House of Horrors, which has a few interesting characters and flavorful performances, The Brute Man is comparatively dull and slow-paced. Aside from Hatton, who is fine if limited in the role of the Creeper [Fred Coby actually plays Moffet as a college student], the main character is Jane (Helen Paige), a blind piano teacher who hides Moffet and is befriended by him in turn. Tom Neal is one of Hal's old classmates, and Jan Wiley [Secret Agent X-9], in an especially weak performance, plays Neal's wife. Donald MacBride is the police inspector on the case. Hatton's Creeper character, or at least a variation thereof, also appeared in the modern-day Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death.

Verdict: Not the best of the Creeper. **.

HOUSE OF HORRORS

Marcel (Martin Kosleck) admires his bust of the Creeper

HOUSE OF HORRORS (1946). Director: Jean Yarbrough.

Starving artist Marcel De Lange (Great Old Movies' favorite Martin Kosleck) is about to commit suicide in despair when he stumbles across an injured man known only as the Creeper (Rondo Hatton). The Creeper had already committed a series of murders, snapping people's spines, and is presumed dead. Marcel uses the Creeper to get revenge on his enemies, especially the acidic critic Holmes Harmon (Alan Napier), who has no tolerance for the abstract. The main suspect in Harmon's murder, however, is commercial illustrator Steven Morrow (Robert Lowery of the Batman and Robin serial), who was to be the target of his venom in the critic's latest column. Another critic, Joan Medford (Virginia Grey), happens to be Morrow's girlfriend and a champion of De Lange's macabre sculptures. But when she gets too close to figuring out De Lange's deadly secret ... This is a snappy and suspenseful horror thriller, well-directed by Yarbrough, and with an excellent performance from Kosleck, and good back up from Hatton [who thinks his bust is "pretty"], a highly vivacious (perhaps too vivacious considering the goings-on) Grey, and a more than competent Lowery and Napier. Howard Freeman also scores as another art critic, Hal Ormiston, who participates in a scheme to catch the murderer. The beautiful model Stella is played by Joan Shawlee and Lt. Brooks is Bill Goodwin. House of Horrors is an unofficial sequel to the modern-day Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death, in which Hatton also played a Creeper who breaks spines. Oddly the opening credits of Horrors "introduce" Hatton as the Creeper. There were plans to make a series of Creeper films and turn Hatton into a horror star, but the poor fellow, who suffered from acromegaly due to exposure to poison gas in WW1, passed away before House of Horrors opened. Kosleck's most famous part was in The Flesh Eaters. Yarbrough directed She-Wolf of London and many, many others.

Verdict: Highly entertaining horror flick. ***.

THE ROYAL MOUNTED RIDES AGAIN

Distinctive bad guys:Joe Haworth and Danny Morton

THE ROYAL MOUNTED RIDES AGAIN (13 chapter Universal serial/1945). Directors:Lewis D. Collins; Ray Taylor.

Northwestern Canada at the turn of the century. Mine owner Tom Bailey is murdered by Brad Taggart (Milburn Stone), but his employer Jackson Decker (Addison Richards) becomes the chief suspect. Bailey's daughter, June (Daun Kennedy) comes to town to investigate her father's murder, as do mounties Frenchy Moselle (George Dolenz) and Corporal Wayne Decker (Bill Kennedy) the son of Jackson Decker. Jackson wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and work for his copper mine and other businesses, but Wayne didn't like his father's unethical business practices. Now he's hoping to prove that his father was not mixed up in this murder. Other characters include Madame Misterioso, a fortune teller whose real name is Dillie Clark (Helen Bennett), who is an ally of June's; and colorful codger "Latitude" Bucket (Paul E. Burns) '' -- he's been "everywhere" -- who has a rather surprising secret. The bad buys in this movie are not the usual generic gunsels but have a bit more flavor to them, especially Bunker (Joseph Haworth) with his ingratiatingly insolent manner, and "Dancer" (Danny Morton), with his shiny hair and casual, non-subservient attitude. Milburn Stone is typical of the rather bland actor who makes more of an impression as a villain than as a hero [which he played in The Great Alaskan Mystery and other serials], although he's hardly a Charles Middleton. Robert Armstrong, who also appeared in a number of serials such as The Adventures of the Flying Cadets, plays shady Price, who owns the Yukon Gold tavern, where several scenes take place. Rondo Hatton does nothing for chapter after chapter except sit watching the proceedings and drawing his gun now and then; he has no dialogue. Royal Mounted Rides Again has a fairly good story and a few noteworthy cliffhangers, such as when a huge log is shoved down a chute toward a prone Corporal Decker; a mine car that hurtles down a deep shaft towards the same man; and a bit with a dangling suspension bridge in a rainstorm that has explosives attached to it. Paul Birch (Not of This Earth) appears very briefly as a highwayman. While this is not as slick or snappy as Republic's "Mounted" serials such as King of the Mounties, it is nevertheless entertaining. Apparently stars Bill and Daun Kennedy were neither related nor married to one another. Bill was a busy television actor while Daun had only a few credits to her name. Helen Bennett was also in Lost City of the Jungle.

Verdict: Interesting serial with several flavorful performances and good scenes. ***.

THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK

THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (1946). Director: Arthur Lubin. 

"But it won't really be dying -- you'll live on in this beautiful plant!" 

Jean Kingsley (Brenda Joyce) arrives at an isolated community where coincidentally an old boyfriend, Hal (Kirby Grant), just happens to be living. Jean has been hired by a supposedly blind woman named Zenobia Dollard (Gale Sondergaard) -- without either ever meeting the other -- to be her live-in companion. [You would think that name alone would have frightened Miss Kingsley off.] Zenobia seems quite charming, if a touch smarmy, and has a brutish deformed servant, Mario (Rondo Hatton) who has rather poor manners. While a nervous Jean tries to find out what really happened to Zenobia's last companion, who supposedly went off to get married but was never heard from again, Mr. Moore (Milburn Stone) of the Department of Agriculture is trying to find out where the weed is that's poisoning so many of the farmers' cows. Sondergaard is as excellent as ever as the rather batty, vengeance-minded woman who feeds both spiders and human blood to her collection of carnivorous plants. One supposes the title of this film was meant to tie the movie in with the great Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman, made two years earlier, which also features a deadly spider and stars Sondergaard [as Adrea Spedding, a completely different but similarly evil character]? 

Verdict: Gale Sondergaard and flesh-eating plants-- wow! **1/2.

THE PEARL OF DEATH

THE PEARL OF DEATH (1944). Director: Roy William Neill. 

Very loosely based on Doyle's The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, this is the seventh of Universal's "modern-day" Sherlock Holmes films and the 9th in which Basil Rathbone plays Holmes. The great sleuth finds himself temporarily embarrassed when the famous Borgia Pearl is purloined after he disconnects the electric alarms for a demonstration of how ineffective the security for the pearl is. Holmes' main opponent in this is Giles Conover, played by Miles Mander. Scream Queen Evelyn Ankers is Conover's associate Naomi Drake. The plot has a hideous fellow named the Oxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton) running around stealing busts of Napoleon and breaking the backs of their owners. [This Creeper fellow was decidedly not in Doyle's original story. Rondo Hatton later starred in a film called House of Horrors where he again played a "Creeper."] Nigel Bruce as Watson had become dithery comedy relief by this point. Despite its "modern" setting, this still has that old-style flavor, and is quite entertaining, even if you may feel you're one step ahead of everyone in the movie throughout. 

Verdict: Creepy and well-done. ***.