Thursday, March 14, 2024

THE UNHOLY FOUR (Terence Fisher, 1954)


A dead man returns home after four years to confront those he believes responsible for his murder. This sentence is so much more interesting than the muddled mess of a story that follows, as our protagonist is so cold and detached (though warm and breathing) and the impious tetralogy so ill-defined that our interest in the bickering and arguing over who killed who is tiresome. This may win the Hammer Film Award for most phone calls in an 80-minute film! Terence Fisher’s direction is pedestrian but his DP Walter Harvey, working in widescreen (1:66:1) compositions with deep focus, somehow makes this dull story feel alive. Harvey often shoots characters in mirrors to reveal their duplicitous nature, and his medium shots still keep the background characters in focus so we can see expressions or body language. 

Philip Vickers (William Sylvester), sporting a jagged scar on his forehead, returns home after a four-year absence and is surprised that his wife Angie (Paulette Goddard) may be moving on with her life. She is having a party and coincidentally the three business associates, one of whom Vickers believes is responsible for his murder attempt, are in attendance. When one of these men ends up with his brains bashed in that same night, Vickers becomes the prime suspect. Soon, the story’s convolutions become monotonous and characters act, not out of reason or suspicion, but as plot points to propel the story to its unsurprising conclusion. 

William Sylvester imbues his character Vickers, the story’s protagonist and one we should feel some compassion for, as a stone-cold asshole. Paulette Goddard seems to be following the inept script and not doing much else, as there is zero chemistry between her and her husband. And this is four fucking years later, yet it seems like a few days as people don’t’ seem very shocked or alarmed at his return, while Angie’s life must have remained in stasis for this entire time both physically and emotionally. The entire third act is laughable, as Vicker’s associate attempts to frame him for the murder of the secretary (who claims Vickers was responsible for her father’s suicide years before), but the resolution is so inane it makes one laugh out loud. 

If you’re going to title a film that evokes Tod Browning’s fantastic silent masterpiece, there better be a murderous Ape in the third act! Alas, no such luck. So, the title exclaims that there are four who are blasphemous, but it remains ambiguous as to who the final applicant truly is. The secretary? The wife? Or Vickers himself? I posit the later. 

Final Grade: (C-)

Thursday, March 7, 2024

THE DEADLY GAME (Daniel Birt, 1954)


A high society photographer starts dealing in tiny portraits of the micro kind and embroils his buddy in a darkroom full of nitrate death. Daniel Birt’s utilitarian direction lacks suspense, drama, emotional complexity and thrills for 70 minutes of Lloyd Bridges acting like a goofy nice guy, who knowingly carries the deadly microfilm around in his coat pocket without any bad guy shooting him (or at least clobbering him)! The film eschews action for talky exposition especially in a tearoom where plot points are practically shouted so anyone can overhear the secret information. Bad script, apathetic direction, uninspired compositions (except one scene) define this flaccid noir. 

Philip Graham (Lloyd Bridges) and his photographer buddy Tony (Pete Dyneley) are on vacation in Spain when Tony is suddenly called back to England on business. But he needs to get a mysterious envelope that he had stashed in the hotel’s safe; however, the owner’s wife has the only key, and she won’t be back until morning. Since Tony just has to leave now, Philip will snag the envelope in the morning and drive Tony’s car back to England where they’ll meet up. Of course this leads to Philip getting assaulted, confronting a femme fatale burning letters in Tony’s apartment while his cohort’s body goes all rigor mortise in the darkroom, discovering more mysterious envelopes, and getting involved in tepid blackmail subplot, then discovering that he’s carrying a secret formula on microfilm. It’s way less exciting than it sounds. 

Lloyd Bridges reads his lines and hits his marks, investing his character with a good-natured persona, yet shows practically no emotion like fear or loss (I mean, his wartime buddy was murdered) and his romance is flat and ineffectual. In one neat scene when Philip eavesdrops in the aforementioned tearoom, he slips the microfilm into the pocket of the man who sold it to Tony. It’s a compassionate act towards this little man who loudly proclaims his regret. Of course, Philip takes it back the next day! Then there’s a scene where Philip is led by one of antagonists into an empty theatre while carrying the microfilm, and why this dude doesn’t kill him immediately remains a mystery. Especially since it soon turns into fisticuffs above a trap door revealing a room full of pointy polearms while the theatre burns down around them, and if someone didn’t get impaled, I would have turned the movie off! It’s the only scene that develops some visual interest and tension, as low angle shots through the trap door depict the flailing men, while the weapons are foregrounded. 

The finale is as absurd as the previous 60 minutes as Philip meets with the kingpin (which is no surprise) and tries to secretly tape record the conversation. It should be notes that his reel to reel recorded is the size of luggage! It’s just shoved under the table. Once discovered, we are shown another microphone hidden in the dangling light and the Spanish police detectives eavesdropping. But the story builds no suspense as these key elements are never set up prior to the scene! It could have been a more exciting denouement as Philip and the police hide the microphones and maneuver the bad guys to the right table. Then as the conversation begins to reveal implicating details, maybe a loud sound or technical problem could briefly interrupt. Hell, I just plotted a better scene! I do like the final reveal as the bad guys try to escape in costume and the kingpin is exposed by man’s best friend. 

Final Grade: (C-) 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

TEN SECONDS TO HELL (Robert Aldrich, 1959)

 

Six Wehrmacht soldiers, relegated to defusing Allied bombs by their Nazi superiors, are now POWs returning to the rubble of occupied Berlin and must wage another war against rational egoism. Robert Aldrich’s superb direction allows the narrative to unwind and defuse like the dual detonator of a British thousand-pound bomb, while DP Ernest Laszlo’s wonderful compositions and deep focus photography, especially while shooting on location in post-WWII Berlin, add verisimilitude and tension to this taught melodrama. 

The six-pack is led by demoted Architect and anti-Nazi Erik Koertner (Jack Palance), a man whose altruistic temperament reduced him to choose between bomb squad tech or concentration camp victim, who must battle against his SS cohort Karl Wirtz's (Jeff Chandler) inherent selfishness. They gamble their mortality in a tontine, a three-month annuity where they invest their wages (minus living expenses) and all goes to the survivor, winner take all. But the group of experts is confronted by a new, unknown British bomb with a dual detonator, and they soon become extinct, one by one. There is a minor love interest between Koertner and his landlady Margot Hofer (Martine Carol), a French woman who betrayed her country by falling in love with a German soldier who was killed in the Africa Corps during the war. Alone, she is repulsed by Wirtz’s mocking nihilism and drawn to Koertner’s kind humanism. But the film doesn’t explode this melodrama as it’s concerned with the battle between Nazi ideology and Western morality.

The bomb defusing scenes are full of the anxiety of flesh and sinew against rusting steel death, which is less than ten seconds away at any moment. The scenes are shot from low angle without music, so we only hear their sharp breath and the slow grinding of metal as the fuse spins ever so slowly. They wear no armor or padding, their only protection their skill and blind luck, which soon runs out. So, it comes to the final scene were Wirtz is stuck with an unexploded bomb with only a pencil stub keeping him from oblivion, while Koertner works to save both of them (damn the annuity, which he wants to pay to one of the squad’s widows anyway). But Wirtz has the opportunity to sabotage the effort and he does so, with only Koertner’s skill keep him balanced on the razor’s edge of existence. But Wirtz realizes this is his bomb to defuse and as Koertner walks away, Wirtz purposely blows himself to kingdom come. 

Final Grade: (B+) 

Friday, February 23, 2024

THE BLACK GLOVE (Terence Fisher, 1954)

 

James Bradley is a world-famous trumpet player who really digs the London jazz scene but may just get buried by it! Terence Fisher and DP Walter Harvey just point the camera and go, allowing Alex Nicol as the musician James Bradley to blow his own horn once too often, investing his character with a smarmy resilience. Is this a one-man comedy act or a noir murder mystery? 

The film opens with Bradley (Brad, from here on out) and his orchestra bebopping to a packed house in London’s Palladium. He bails on the after-concert party (he doesn’t dig that scene), and by chance is lured by a siren’s song echoing down a crowded street. He hooks up with this bluesy siren Maxine (Ann Hanslip) and she promises to make a spaghetti dinner for the two of them...at 2 in the morning! When Brad exits a few hours later after a wholesome liaison, he’s surprised to wake up with police detectives hovering over his bed. Maxine was murdered and he’s the person of interest! The next 70 minutes or so involve Brad, a musician whose livelihood and creative outlet are in the use of his hands, get involved in multiple fistfights. Hell, he even dukes it out with a jazz pianist who doesn’t seem to care much about his own hands either. The convoluted story makes little sense as the story unwinds because Terence Fisher doesn’t know how to create tension or suspense; instead of giving the audience information hidden from Brad so we can root for him to uncover the killer or get some cheap thrills as he edges closer towards doom, Fisher gives Brad information not shared with the audience until the final minutes! Ha! So, the whole finale after the poisoned mouthpiece, which should have been a nice piece of suspense, is just Brad telling the police he discovered the killer’s identity so they round-up all of the suspects. The resulting mayhem is absurd. 

What really makes this film kick and feel alive is the jazz score full of diegetic music, as Alex Nicol as our protagonist mimics some killer trumpet solos played by legend Kenny Baker. The music is worth more than the price of admission to this tepid, unintentionally hilarious non-thriller. And it should be noted that there is no fucking black glove anywhere in this story. 

Final Grade: (C)

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

X THE UNKNOWN (Leslie Norman, 1956)

 

The Earth belches forth a parasite that feeds upon the fission of the Atomic Age, its amorphous symmetry laying radioactive waste to the surface world in its endless quest for sustenance. Hammer Films mimics the American zeitgeist of Cold War fiction, adventuring into this hybrid genre of science and horror that actually spawns its own grotesque cinematic bastard child: THE BLOB.

The film begins with restless soldiers during a training exercise, their Geiger counter clicking away in search of a harmlessly radioactive ingot. Suddenly, the ground erupts with fire and brimstone as a crack in the world opens into a grinning chasm, and a soldier’s flesh blisters with radiation burns. The bottomless hole vomit’s a sentient protoplasm that searches for nourishment, plentiful in the modern world of nuclear armament, this food of the gods. The roiling weapon of mass destruction consumes everything in its path, and one lone scientist has a theory that can render the charged creature neutral, as the army is impotent to stop its day of wrath.

Director Leslie Norman evokes a chilling suspense with bleak black and white photography, as landscapes of shadow and fog become the hunting grounds for this unknown evil. The story progresses logically and thrums with tension, as Dr. Royston’s erector set laboratory becomes the nexus of the investigation. Stunned into silence when a dead boy’s parents hold him morally culpable for the child’s gruesome demise, Dr. Royston must perfect his experiment quickly in order to save the world. American science fiction of the Cold War era is ripe with conflict between science and the military, but here the two work together to solve this violent equation.

The final act seems too rushed, as belief is suspended between two trucks that must have been built in a few hours (at most), utilizing Dr. Royston’s esoteric experiment. But they race to capture the malignant mass between two sonic disruptors and blast it to oblivion. As the film fades to black, we wonder if other denizens of this underground labyrinth will someday surface to feed again.

Final grade: (B+)

Sunday, February 4, 2024

PARANOIAC (Freddie Francis, 1963)

 

A dysfunctional family feud becomes a funeral procession as an ancient organ bleats a tormented tune. Freddie Francis imprints this delightfully paranoid celluloid with his signature touch, juxtaposing suspense and melodrama into a sordid mixture of horror where a family’s fortune is an inheritance of nihilism.

Oliver Reed as Simon the drunken antagonist steals nearly every scene, chewing up the scenery with devilish delight, his sharp eyes and Cheshire grin reflecting a playful yet pugnacious nature, like a bully with a grim sense of humor. Simon says and the deranged Aunt follows, her masquerade a chilling falsetto echoing through an empty cathedral, abandoned by both god and sanity. As Simon plans to drive his sister to her grave, his journey ends in his own final resting place of brimstone and hellfire.

The beautiful black and white Scope cinematography is often utilized for triptych compositions, as deep focus allows mise-en-scene to impart information through background events. Francis’ skewed angles are scored with eerie etude, and the pacing induces just the right amount of suspense without overzealous exposition. The opening scene is wonderful, as Francis introduces the family members one at a time (even the grave of the dead ones) with an unbroken crane shot, focusing upon each character and alluding to their unique personality traits. It is the perfect setup for the mystery to come.

The convoluted plot points an accusing finger at each character except Eleanor, who remains the femme whose fate seems written in blood, her sanity cursed and stripped away without last rights. Traumatized by the death of her parents and the suicide, years before, of her little brother Tony, she is now haunted by the grown-up image of her sibling who proves more flesh than bloodline. Invested by an incestuous affair, Eleanor nearly completes Simon’s murderous recipe for inheritance. But the truth sets her free and condemns Simon, self-medicating his malignant guilt with an excess of alcohol, to a burning embrace with his desiccated brother, evermore.

Final Grade: (B+)

Monday, January 29, 2024

STOP ME BEFORE I KILL (Val Guest, 1960)

 

A race car driver finds his life stuck in neutral after a terrible crash on his wedding night, his emotions twisted metal and impotent rage. Val Guest directs this thriller with the accelerator pushed firmly to the floor, a narrative that races through red flags towards a surprising climax.

Alan Colby is a world-famous race car driver who can no longer run at full speed, suffering post-traumatic stress that relegates him as a passenger to his docile wife. He must conquer the consuming fear of loss of motor control as his hands become weapons, murderous entities that seemingly act of their own accord. Unable to be physically aroused by his beautiful bride, he lashes out with unbridled violence, nearly strangling her with intimacy. Denise sticks by his side and seeks the help of a psychiatrist, but first Alan must swallow his pride and purge his guilty conscious.

Val Guest imbues the film with a riptide of dialogue as the characters trade barbs and malicious tirades, or collapse into crippled silence worn out from the maelstrom. Overlapping conversations heighten the sense of dynamic tension as Alan spins out of control while his wife stands by her man. Dr. Prade utilizes psychiatric gimmicks that would make professionals cringe (oxygen deprivation, drug therapy, hypnotic regression) that works well as a plot device, and finally gets to the root cause of the association between the crash and his urge to strangle his wife. It’s a clever link in the chain of events, as Alan is a man who controls his life with his hands, thundering horsepower his heartbeat…and it’s his hands that betray him. The suspense mounts between the trio: will Alan be cured, are Dr. Prade’s intentions therapeutic, and is Denise faithful?

Though the story relies on pop psychology (but so does Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND) the final suspension of disbelief becomes refreshing and enlightening. The film begins with a car crash and fortunately doesn’t end as one.

Final Grade: (B-)

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

PAID TO KILL (Montgomery Tully, 1954)

 

Bankrupt businessman James Nevill decides he is worth more dead than alive, so he pays an ex-friend to kill him. An interesting setup with a nice twist in the third act! Montgomery Tully’s direction is rather bland and unexceptional, but he tells the story in a linear and straightforward fashion. Here, DP Walter J. Harvey frames the story in a utilitarian style that is neither visually inspired or tonally anesthetizing; the photography is rather neutral and doesn’t get in the way of the story. 

Nevill (Dane Clark) shouts a lot and pushes people around, but he’s the President of Amalgamated, a corporation that does something or other, and he must answer to the Board of Directors. His rather shady dealings bring the company to bankruptcy so he decides to hire his one-time buddy Paul Kirby (Paul Carpenter) to murder him so his wife Andrea (Thea Gregory) can benefit from the insurance policy. But the deal actually pays off so Nevill must track down his buddy before the contract can be carried out! As the brief story progresses, we witness Andrea’s estrangement, Nevill’s secretary getting rather chummy with her boss, a triad of life-threatening encounters, and some bar brawls. So, who is trying to kill Nevill? The story has a neat but not unexpected twist in its final minutes which is full of talking and exposition, explaining all of their motivations leading up to the denouement. It seems all kind of silly, but the film doesn’t overstay it welcome. 

Final Grade: (C)  

Thursday, January 18, 2024

THE GLASS TOMB (Montgomery Tully, 1955)

 

A showman goes straight with a Starvation Act, displaying a man who will go 70 days without eating locked inside a glass cage, but unfortunately the incarcerated carny cheats by ingesting a mouthful of strychnine! Montgomery Tully deftly directs this Tod Browning-like tale of absurdity on the Midway, a strange concoction of film noir and freak-show integrants.

Pel Pelham (John Ireland) supports his nuclear family by promoting sideshows, a carny who left the racket behind and now goes it straight and narrow. He gets a call from his shady past in the form of Tony Lewis (Sid James) and is asked to look into a little feminine blackmail situation Tony is suffering from. Nothing rough, mind you, but just talk to her. Tony gifts Pel a nice fat check to help him with the startup cost of his new venture. Coincidentally, this femme isn’t so fatale after all and is the daughter of Pel’s mentor, and she’s living a floor above Sapolio, the man who starves himself for food money. So, Pel can kill two birds with one stone, metaphorically. Pel visits Rena Maroni (Tonia Bern) but she’s not keen on blackmail and just wanted to tell Tony so long, and thanks for all of the fish. She’s not a bad kid. When Pel and Sapolio throw a huge party for the carny gang, Rena ends up in a big sleep and Scotland Yard is hot on the case. 

The film isn’t a whodunit as that's revealed in the first act; it’s concerned with catching the real killer and builds a modicum of suspense. Journeyman DP Walter J. Harvey shows some inspiration, utilizing low angle compositions and low-key lighting, allowing flashing lights through dirty windows to illuminate a murder scene. Tully also utilizes some location filming in bombed out portions of London and it’s historically interesting! The acting is fine, and John Ireland is not too shabby as a barker (seems he had some real-life experience).  The story is sprinkled with humor, from the snot nosed kid at the Midway to Pel’s own child devouring the contents of the refrigerator, a picnic spread on the kitchen floor. The story may not make much sense in the final act as the killer, afraid he’ll be caught for Rena’s murder, commits an even more obvious one...in public! And the story leaves one loose end dangling as another killer is never brought to Justice. However, Pel decides to honor Sapolio in the most freakish way possible: he displays his dead body as a paying attraction! Fucking brilliant. 

Final Grade: (B)

Sunday, January 14, 2024

WINGS OF DANGER (Terence Fisher, 1952)

 

Pilot Richard Van Ness gets entangled in a web of smugglers and counterfeiters, but his greatest fight is against his own wartime brain injury. Terence Fisher’s direction is flat and uninspired, allowing the actors to speak their lines but not “act” them, and visually the film is as forgettable as a dream upon waking. The one interesting detail is that future Hammer Director John Gilling wrote the screenplay. 

Richard Van Ness (Zachary Scott) is a Commercial Pilot whose roguish best friend Nick Talbot (Robert Beatty) blackmails him into allowing Nick to fly during a storm; with friends like that, who needs enemies? Seems Van suffers from random blackouts, and he’d lose his pilot's license, which seems like a good idea. They get in an argument and Van says he only transports cargo, so if he crashes only property will be lost. Doesn’t he fucking think for a moment that he could crash over a city or village, that innocent people on the ground may die? His blackouts are a dirty secret that he even keeps from his paramour Avril Talbot (Naomi Chance) who is Nick’s sister, which is the underlying reason he won’t marry her. So, Van couldn’t settle for another career in the airline industry or Avril’s hotel business as he’d rather risk catastrophe than give up his license. And this is the guy we’re supposed to have sympathy for! 

Now, the blackout idea sounds like a setup for an exciting, thrilling chase scene later in the film as Van would chase the bad guys in a death-defying flight towards the denouement...but nope. We don’t get his first blackout episode until late in the second act when he’s driving a car and chasing a motorcycle. But by this point there’s a police inspector who thinks Van may be involved in smuggling, Nick is presumed dead in airplane crash (hence the first act, his flying in a storm), and a tepid femme fatale Alexia LaRoche (Kay Kendall) who has a notebook full of incriminating evidence (and is being blackmailed herself), and a toolkit made of solid gold. Then there’s something about a Nazi printing press and counterfeit money. Of course, Nick’s alive and involved in this black-market morass yet he saves Van before dying (for real, this time). The ambiguous bad guys escape in a plane without warming up their engines and now we expect a high stakes action sequence. Van will race to his plane, his headaches will increase, we’ll get some nice POV fuzzy compositions as his eyesight blurs, the bad guys will get almost get away before they crash and burn, and Van is the hero. Nope. Our protagonists are busy calling every airport where the plane may possibly land before they hear the engines buzz and see a bright flash: the plane has crashed. See, the engines weren’t warmed up first, right? In the next scene Van is on the runway talking to another pilot but there is no debris or body parts strewn about, no smoking wreckage, not even one single emergency vehicle or mention of the crash that just happened. It’s unintentionally hilarious. I suppose it all ends well for Van but not so well for the Talbot family. I’ve written more words about this film than it deserves. 

Final Grade: (D)