'The Great Flamarion' is a tale of lust and tragedy

The Great Flamarion (1946)
Starring: Erich von Stroheim, Mary Beth Hughes, Dan Duryea and Stephen Barclay
Director; Anthony Mann
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Reclusive marksman and vaudeville entertainer (von Stroheim) comes out of his shell when he believes the beautiful assistant in his act (Hughes) loves him and wants to be with him instead of her husband (Duryea). However, the coldhearted, manipulative woman simply wants the Great Flamarion to "accidentally" shoot her husband during the act, so she can run off with yet another man.


"The Great Flamarion" is an utterly predictable film, although it might not have been so in 1946 when it was made. The story never misses a chance to go exactly where you'd expect it to go, and the characters never move beyond complete and total cliches.

However, there is still a degree of enjoyment to be derived from this film if you just sit back and go with it. Hughes' performance as the black widow who should make black widows feel uneasy is so over-the-top that it fits perfectly with the nature of the script, while Von Stroheim takes an interesting term as a man who moves from an obsession with lethal guns to a lethal obsession with the woman who took his self-respect and his honor.

Can dreams of death happen when awake?

Fear in the Night (1947)
Starring: DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, and Robert Emmett Keane
Director: Maxwell Shane
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Mild-mannered banker Vincent (Kelley) awakens from a horrible nightmare... only to find that elements of his dream seem to have followed him into the waking world. As evidence mounts that Vincent may indeed have murdered not one but two people, his brother-in-law (Kelly), a homicide detective, becomes involved. What is the answer to the mystery of a nightmare that has taken shape in the real world?


"Fear in the Night" is a quirky little mystery film that merges film noir and hardboiled detective elements with a horror film sensibility. There is very little action in the film--and what there is actually the weakest part of it--but Vincent's mounting horror as he realizes that the murder he dreamed about did happen, and the twists and turns the plot takes as the police detective gradually pieces together a theory about what happened. (His initial conclusion that Vincent is trying to play him a fool is one the viewer never really buys, but within the context of the film, it helps heighten the tension greatly.)

The ultimate solution to the mystery may seem a bit hokey to the modern viewer, but the deadly danger that the very sympathetic Vincent is placed in when the police make a couple of missteps more than makes up for that; I can't go into more detail without spoiling the film, alas. As mentioned above, the action sequence that takes place as part of the film's climax is probably the weakest and most unbelievable part of the film, and it robs it of some potential punch. However, the denouement pulls the film back from the edge and ends it on a high note.

A strong cast and a creative script make this a film that lovers of classic mystery movies need to see.

Don't duck 'Shoot to Kill'

Shoot to Kill (1947)
Starring: Edmund MacDonald, Russell Wade, Luana Walters and Robert Kent
Director: William Berke
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A corrupt Assistant Distric Attorney (MacDonald) starts to aspire to true political and criminal greatness when his new secretary (Walters) encourages him to think big. But, she has an agenda of her own, and even as the ADA is playing various criminals against each other so he can emerge as the last man standing, other plans are being set into motion.


"Shoot to Kill" is a fairly standard crime drama that's made interesting by some nice plot twists and a Big Reveal that is actually rather surprising. (I spent most of the film thinking that it was borrowing from Shakespear's "MacBeth", but it turned out I was wrong.)

With fine performances by all actors (MacDonald and Walters in particular excel as a pair of devious, two-faced schemers that can't be trusted under any circimstances), and a fast-paced, clever plot where the standard issue wise-cracking reporter (Wade) has mercifully little actual screen-time, I think fans of classic crime dramas and film noir will find this a nice way to spend an hour.

It's always the little things that trip up a killer....

The Scar (aka "Hollow Triumph" and "The Man Who Murdered Himself") (1948)
Starring: Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett
Director: Steve Sekeley
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

John Muller (Henreid), a career criminal on the run from vengeful gangsters after a botched casino robbery, finds the ultimate hideout: He remakes himself to take the place of a successful psychoanalyst who bears a strong resemblence to him. However, John fails to take into account that when you take over someone's life, you get the good with the bad.


"The Scar" is a somewhat far-fetched film-noir crime drama, but it's well-filmed, well-acted (with a couple of slips into over-the-top melodrama), and tense from beginning to end.

Henreid gives an interesting performance as a sociopathic schemer who finds an apparent path to safety and a new life; while co-star Bennett gives a nuanced performance as John's love interest--a character who starts out seeming like a fairly typical secretary for this kind of movie, but which ends up as one of the deeper and interesting characters in the film. What's more, the romance between the two characters actually feels genuine--something very rare in movies--and this makes the viewer feel true sympathy with Bennett's character at the end of the movie.

Another thing that makes the film interesting is the recurring theme that no one really cares enough about anyone but themselves to truly notice the world around them. This is what lets John Muller steal a man's life in every sense, and in a suitably ironic twist, this tendency toward total self-centeredness also ends up contributing to John's undoing.

After a near-perfect execution of everything leading up to it, the movie falters a bit at the ending. Given that crime hardly ever pays in movies, John clearly will not manage to live happily ever after in his stolen identity. However, the main reason for his Bad End comes about due to what feels more like Script-Dictated Character Stupidity rather than a natural consequence of events; John had the information and means to solve the biggest probem facing his new identity, yet he doesn't even make an attempt to do so before it's too late. (I could justify this lapse with some character psychology and the overall themes of the film--John was too arrogant and greedy to deal with the issue, or he was too self-centered for the full magnitude of the problem--but it still doesn't make the ending feel quite right.)

This is a near-perfect crime drama with an excellent script and decent performances. It's well-worth seeking out, particularly if you're a fan of the film noir subgenre.

Decent mystery ruined by not-as-clever as all that writers

The Limping Man (1953)
Starring: Lloyd Bridges, Moria Lister, Alan Wheatley, and Helene Cordet
Director: Cy Endfield
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A WW2 vet, Frank Prior (Bridges), travels to England to reunite with his wartime sweetheart (Lister). As he leaves the plane at the airport, a fellow passenger is gunned down. When the investigating Scotland Yard inspector (Wheatley) discovers a connection between Prior's sweetheart and the dead man, he becomes suspicious of both of them, so Prior sets about to uncover the truth.


I have tried, but I am unable to think of another movie I've seen that is so utterly and completely ruined by an incompetent ending the way "The Limping Man" is destroyed. The ending here is so lame that it spoils whatever enjoyment the viewer may have been deriving from what seemed like an average thriller that was building toward a decent conclusion. The ending is so thoroughly botched--on every conceivable level--that I can't even say "stop the DVD player at THIS point, and you'll preserve what you liked about this film".

The first sign of trouble is an illogical plot-twist that relates to the blackmail effort directed at Prior's thrill-seeking sweetheart. It's the sort of twist that makes you wonder if perhaps the filmmakers were in trouble as far as coming up with a good ending. This is confirmed when the second twist presents itself, and pretty much undoes the entire story. (I can't go into details without revealing the ending, but, believe me, it will ruin the film for you.)

If there ever was a movie that could have been saved by a competent writer handling rewrites, "The Limping Man" is it. And if you've seen it, and if you know of another otherwise decent film so completely ruined by its ending, I'd love to hear about it.

'Wings of Danger' doesn't fly as high as it should

Wiings of Danger (aka "Dead on Course") (1952)
Starring: Zachary Scott, Naomi Chance, Robert Beatty, Colin Tapley, Arthur Lane and Harold Lang
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A traffic controller for a small freight company (Scott) becomes suspicious when the brother of his girlfriend apparently crashes his plane during a storm. His investigation puts him on the trail of a smuggling operation... and in danger.


"Wings of Danger" is a simple mystery story that tries to be more by piling on convoluted subplots. It's too much for the thin story to bear, and it drifts from point repeatedly and by the time it gets to the end, most viewers won't care. And that's a shame, because the final fifteen minutes or so are really well done (even if the actual ending is a bit pat).

Ultimately, this isn't a bad movie but it could be a lot more. The only thing that really recommends it is the moody cinematography of Terence Fisher. Even the acting is a bit on the weak side, which is unusual for a Fisher film; he usually gets the very best out of his actors.

'The Glass Tomb' isn't worth visiting

The Glass Tomb (1955)
Starring: John Ireland, Eric Pohlman, Geoffrey Keen, Sidney Taffler, Lian Redmond, Honor Blackman and Sid James
Director: Montgomery Tulley
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A sideshow promoter (Ireland) comes under suspicion of being a killer-for-hire when the lover of a backer of his latest show is murdered. He is eventually cleared... but only because other murders occurr.


"The Glass Tomb" is a movie that feels like its script was the product of the writer combining material cut from other projects and then spending an afternoon or two doing some half-assed rewrites in an attempt to make a coherent whole.

It swings back and forth between being a thriller and a murder mystery. Is it a thriller about an innocent man caught in a love triangle he's not even aware of? Is it a thriller/mystery about an innocent man being set up by his best friend to take the fall for a murder he's planned? Is it a murder mystery about why third-rate British carnies and dance hall performers are being whacked?

Although the murderer's identity is revealed to the audience about halfway through the movie, some of the scenes proceed as if the murderer's ID is still supposed to be a surprise to us. (And even if we HADN'T known the killer's ID, the characters should have figured it well before we did, because it's not that hard if anyone in the film had been immune from Stupid Character Syndrome.)

"The Glass Tomb" has the further problem that none of the characters are well-developed enough for the viewer to feel particularly attached to anyone, nor even fully understand what role they play in the story. This causes the film to completely fail as a thriller and to fizzle as even a Columbo-esque mystery. This underdevelopment of characters is perhaps the film's greatest flaw, particularly when it comes to the central character and his family. He seems very interested in keeping them separate from his showbusiness and circus life, yet we never fully understand why. A little more insight in this area in particular could have helped up the tension when his wife comes under threat.

There are actually plenty of good story ideas in "The Glass Tomb". If only the writer, producers and directors had picked one or two of them to focus on and left the rest for other projects, this might have been a decent film. As it is, it's a film that even the most ardent genre fan can ignore.

'Woman on the Run' is worth chasing after

Woman on the Run (1950)
Starring: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith and Ross Elliot
Director: Norman Foster
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When artist Frank Johnson (Elliot) witnesses a gangland slaying and is subsequently target by the killer, he panics and goes on the run. When the police detective (Keith) in charge of the case contacts his wife, Eleanor (Sheridan) he finds an imbittered woman who is strangely uninterested in helping to locate him. But, once the police are gone, Elanor sets about tracking down her husband herself, first alone, then with the help of scoop-seeking reporter Danny Leggett. But, as Elanor draws closer to finding Frank, she unknowing leads the killer to him as well... a killer who is desperate to eliminate anyone who might identify him.


"Woman on the Run" is a well-scripted, perfectly paced film-noir style crime drama. The dialogue is particularly well-crafted, as is Elanor's gradual transformation from a surly film-noir dame to a wife who discovers that she and her husband still have a marriage worth saving. The way the film reveals the identity of the killer--who is much closer throughout the film than anyone suspects--and the casual way it demonstrates exactly how murderous and coldblooded he is, are also stellar examples of quality screen-writing and filmmaking.

With fine performances by all actors featured, an excellent script, great photography that takes full advantage of the black-and-white film medium, and a perfect music score to round out the package, "Woman on the Run" is a film that's undeserving of its obscurity... and it's a film that makes the 50-movie DVD collection "Dark Crimes " (which is where I saw it) worth the purchase price almost all by itself--another reason why it's such a shame its going out of print.

A cop gone bad is 'The Man Who Cheated Himself'

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)
Starring: Lee J. Cobb, John Dall and Jane Wyatt
Director: Felix E. Feist
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Homicide detective Ed Cullen (Cobb) puts his skills to use to cover for a killer when his married girlfriend, Lois (Wyatt), guns down her husband. But will he be able to keep the deceit hdden from his new partner, a bright rookie detective who also happens to be his brother (Dall)?


"The Man Who Cheated Himself" is a very well-done movie. It's got a nice, dramatic script of the film-noir variety that unfolds in a mostly believable fashion and at a perfect pace; it's got well-crafted dialogue being delivered be competent actors giving believable performances; and it's got a detective who actually works a mystery without the aid of plot-aided leaps of logic. It might be worth an 8-rating if the set-up didn't feel a bit forced.

Perhaps it's misplaced gallantry on the part of Cullen, but given the cirucmstances of the killing he witnesses, the smart (and even the only rational) thing for him to have done was to report the shooting Yes, there would have been scandal, but even as soon as immediately after the shooting, Cullen could provide all the evidence a competent lawyer would need to get Lois off scott-free: The husband was planning to kill her and the shooting was a cross between accidental and self-defense... and Cullen should have been smart enough to let things stand as they truly were.

But, if Cullen didn't try to disconnect Lois from the crime, there wouldn't be a movie (or, at least, there would have been a very different movie). Despite its shaky foundation, "The Man Who Cheated Himself" delivers plenty of entertainment for fans of film-noir and classic crime dramas. (The cat-and-mouse sequence near the Golden Gate Bridge--and the use of San Francisco as a backdrop in general--goes a long way to make up for the main character's odd behavior to get the story going.)

"The Man Who Cheated Himself" is one of a couple dozen classic thrillers and detective films included in the "Dark Crimes Collection," a box of 50 black-and-white movies. It has, sadly, been discontinued by the manufacturer, so if you know someone who's just recently discovered the magic of old films, you might want to give him or her an instant collection of them before it's completely off the market.


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Is there truth behind the 'Strange Illusion'?

Strange Illusion (aka "Out of the Dark") (1945)
Starring: James Lydon, William Warren, Sally Eilers, and Regis Toomey
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A college student (Lydon) is suspicious of the man (Warren) his widowed mother (Eilers) is about to marry. Evidence mounts that the boyfriend may actually be a shadowy serial killer who has been eluding police for years... but is the "evidence" merely coincidences that are being exagerrated in the young man's jealous mind, or is his mother truly in danger?


"Strange Illusion" is a thriller with sinister villians, and an interesting plot that's part Shakespeare and part Hitchcock. It's also got an unsual hero for a crime drama--young college kids weren't typically the protagonists in these sorts of films from the 1930s and 1940s--although that's another similarity to both Shakespeare and Hitchcock's films that this one exhibits. The dialogue is well-done, and the performances by the actors are all decent enough.

Despite all those positive points, this film is far from perfect. It could have benefitted immensely from another script rewrite or two before filming wrapped.

Our hero's suspicion of his mother's new love arises from a recurring dream he has. In fact, most of the increasingly damning clues he finds also originate with the recurring dream. I don't have the feeling the film is implying the young man is psychic, but that instead the clues are somehow being delivered to him by his subconcious mind. However, the dream reveals things to him that he couldn't possibly have known, subconscious or otherwise, and this overuse of the plot device drags the movie down to the point where it almost slips to the lower end of average. Then there's a few bits of sloppy filmmaking--such as when the vantage point upon a scene viewed through binoculars changes dramatically between two uses to look at the same spot from the same location--that don't exactly help to enhance the film's quality.

Nonetheless, this is an unusual entry in the thriller/film-noir genre, and it's worth a look. It's not as good as Ulmer's Lugosi/Karloff vehicle "The Black Cat," but it's still damn good.

(I also think that William Warren plays one of the slimiest characters I've yet to see in a movie. Whether or not he's the serial killer Our Hero believes him to be--and I won't say that he is, because I try not to spoil movies in this space--he is definately a Bad Guy who no-one would want to see their mother marry!)

Underrated Orson Welles thriller

The Stranger (1946)
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, and Loretta Young
Director: Orson Welles
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A US government agent, Wilson, (Robinson) is on the trail of Franz Kindler, a psychopathic genius who made the Nazi concentration camps the efficient centers of death they were. No pictures exist of him, but when Wilson traces Kindler to a small Connecticut town, clues start mounting that well-liked newcomer to town college professor Charles Rankin (Welles) who just married the beloved daughter of the town's leading citizen, Mary (Young), is in truth Kindler.


"The Stranger" is a greatly underrated Orson Welles movie. It's a little slow in the wind-up, but once it gets gong, it moves along its suspenseful story-track with great deliberation and all of the elements working together in perfect time, just like the mechanisms of the clocks that Rankin and Kindler both enjoy working with.

Full of great acting, great camera work, and a perfectly paced story that first keeps the audience guessing and then keeps them on the edge of their seats as it builds toward its spectacular finale high atop the town's clock tower. Welles is in top form here, both as an actor and a director, and if you are a fan his work, of "film noir", or if you enjoyed recent films like "A History of Violence", you need to track down a copy of "The Stranger."

(Trivia: This was the only film Orson Welles produced/directed that turned a profit, primarily because he stayed on schedule and under budget for this one and only time.)

One of the finest thrillers ever made

The Amazing Mr. X (aka "The Spiritualist") (1948)
Starring: Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, and Cathy O'Donnell
Director: Bernard Verhaus
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Greiving widow Christine Faber (Bari) finds herself haunted by her husband's ghost. In a fortuitous coincidence, Christine meets Alexis (Bey), a psychic who offers to help her contact her husband's spirit put it to rest. But Christine's younger sister (Cathy O'Donnell) and Christine's would-be new paramour thinks that the meeting with Alexis was too fortuitous, and they suspect that perhaps he is part of a scam to defraud the emotionally frail Christine of her inheritance. Meanwhile, the haunting grows more intense, and the ghost seems to want to drag Christine to a watery grave....




This 1948 B-movie is an excellently made thriller. It is well acted, well filmed, moves briskly, and keeps the viewer engaged with clever plot-twists and a couple of nicely done double-reversals of expectations. There are films with perhaps twenty times the budget of "The Amazing Mr. X" that aren't half as successful at telling the kind of story that this film features--which, I admit, was pretty well-worn even in 1948. Modern filmmakers trying their hands at thrillers with supernatural overtones would do well to study this film, as it shows exactly how that kind of film is made.

Don't let the cheesy title fool you. This is a top-notch thriller that's well worth a look by any lover of the genre.

Decent mystery, despite its thin plot

Terror Street (aka "36 Hours") (1953)
Starring: Dan Duryea, John Chandos, Ann Gudrun, Elise Albiin, Kenneth Griffith and Eric Pohlman
Director: Montgomery Tully
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

An AWOL US Air Force officers in London (Duryea) has 36 hours to solve the mystery of why his wife left him and who framed him for her murder.


"Terror Street" is one of those films that only works because of it has a cast who have the talent to sell the rediculous script. Dan Duryea is so sincere as the man trying to figure out why his wife left him and who murdered her that it hardly matters that he seems unable to tell time , nor that Scotland Yard in this film comes across as folks Barney Fife would look down on.

Watch the film for Duryea's performance; for John Chandos' turn as a particularly slimey villain; and for Kenneth Griffin's unitentionally comic turn as a would-be lover of the dead wife. The mystery also isn't have bad, if a little thin. It's one of those tales where evil plots work because the good characters are dumb.

'The Chase' is an interesting, if incomplete, experiment

The Chase (1946)
Starring: Robert Cummings, Peter Lorre, Michele Moran, and Steve Cochran
Director: Arthur Ripley
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Chuck (Cummings), a down-on-his-luck WW2 vet, is hired as a driver for a psychopathic gangster (Cochran) and his morose, penny-pinching sidekick (Lorre). When Chuck takes pity on the gangster's wife (Moran) and helps her flee to Cuba, he finds himself framed for her murder. Or does he?


"The Chase" is an interesting experiment in filmmaking and storytelling that will draw you in with its moody lighting, quirky characters, and good acting. The film will then confuse you when it takes a sudden turn, revealing that part or all of what you've just witnessed was a fantasy had by someone in the throws of a psychotic break. Finally, it will frustrate you by muddling the lines between the film's reality and the dream sequence, and completely blowing the ending with one cop-out piled upon another.

The end result is a film that's worth seeing, even if the experience will be somewhat dissapointing. It teeters on the brink between a 5 and 4 rating, mostly because of the botched ending. If a stronger finale than a car crash and a stronger resolution of Chuck's mental situation had been offered, this could have been a 6 or perhaps even a 7, because everything leading up to the end is pretty good. Lorre's performance is particularly noteworthy. Watch him closely during the scenes in the car for a demonstration of how little a good actor needs to do to establish a character's feelings.

'A Life at Stake' stars a miscast Angela Lansbury

A Life at Stake (aka "The Key Man") (1954)
Starring: Keith Anders, Angela Lansbury, Claudia Barrett, and Douglass Dumbrille
Director: Paul Guilfoyle
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

An architect (Anders) attempting to come back from a business failure is approached by a wealthy couple (Lansbury and Dumbrille) who claim they want to help him get back on his feet so he can build houses for them. The husband insists the architect takes out a large insurance policy so their investment can be recovered if something should go wrong. When the architect starts having unexplained accidents, he starts to fear that he is the investment, and that his death is the pay-off.


"A Life at Stake" is a slow-moving, completely predictable (despite the far-fetched, convoluted nature of its plotline) film with a fairly dull main character and a pair of villians who aren't much better. In fact, the only performer here who displays any charisma whatsoever is Claudia Barrett, who is featured as the innocent younger sister of Lansbury's character.

"But what about Angela Lansbury?" some of you ask.

Well, I think she is horribly miscast here. She simply isn't the slinky, femme fatale type. This part required either a Lauren Bacall-type, or, at the opposite end of the scale, a Heather Angel-type. Lansbury is neither, and she is terribly miscast.

That said, she was more convincing in a similar role in "Please Murder Me", because she wasn't playing a straight-up "scheming trophy wife" as she is here. In the other film, Lansbury WASN'T playing an evil hussy... or so it seemed....

"A Life at Stake" is deserving of its obscurity. It can be found with 49 other black-and-white film noir/crime dramas, or on a double-feature DVD with the above-mentioned "Please Murder Me". As such, it's harmless filler. It's not a film worth seeking out, unless you're the president of the Angela Lansbury Fan Club.

'The Naked Kiss' is interesting but flawed

The Naked Kiss (aka "The Iron Kiss") (1964)
Starring: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante and Patsy Kelley
Director: Samuel Fuller
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Kelly, a reformed prostitute turned nurse's aide (Towers), finds her struggle for a new life and self-respect negated when she is arrested for murder and past deeds come back to haunt her. To make matters worse, the chief investigating officer is Capt. Griff, the man who was her final "trick" (Eisley).


"The Naked Kiss" is a startling movie from beginning to end. It starts so abruptly that I thought the DVD might have somehow skipped, but, no... the very first image of the film is a sharp-featured woman beating the hell out of a man using her shoe.

The film's approach to such topics as prostitution and pedophilia is equally startling and shocking, because neither topic has rarely been dealt with in such a realistic fashion--the way the romance between Kelly and millionaire J.L. Grant (Dante) develops and turns out is probably far closer to what the truth would be than any other of the various movie treatments of such, with "Pretty Woman" being the stupidest of the lot--and I dare say that few films even now have dealt with the topics so frankly and realistically.

The realism of the film also helps keep the final resolution in doubt. In most movies, some form of "Hollywood Ending" can be predicted from other elements of the movie--either everything will work out for the main character , or everything will be utterly miserable and everyone dies --but in "The Naked Kiss" is so matter-of-fact that one can't help feel the outcome is in doubt until almost the very end.

The film is far from perfect, however. There are some scenes that are strangely, abruptly edited--such as the one covering the night Kelly spends spends at the house of Griff, and the visits of Griff and Kelly to a "gentleman's club" across the river. There's also a scene where Kelly records a song with the little children who are her patients at the hospital; while this scene is crucial for developing Kelly's character and is a key element in the tragic events that follow, it goes on for too long. These weak points prevent this film from getting an Eight rating.

"The Naked Kiss" is a film that deals frankly with mature subjects... and it does so without lots of cursing and sex to ensure an R rating. It's the sort of movie that all those contemporary filmmakers running around congratulating each other for being edgy and for pushing the boundaries can only dream of making.